Duch Verdict on 26/7/2010 delivers Only Partial Justice

Crowd gathered at the entrance of the ECCC




This is my complete reflection on Duch Verdict on 26/7/2010

All distinguished members of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)—both Cambodian and international—deserve praise for their achievement and contribution in bringing the Khmer Rouge Tribunal to its first verdict. Despite the intricacies and the difficulties of the task, there has been a huge amount of work accomplished through the professional effort and collaboration of all involved.

As a silent victim in search of the truth and justice, I went to the ECCC to experience firsthand the delivery of the verdict on the trial of former S-21 (Toul Sleng) prison chief AING Guek Eav, commonly known as Duch. In the court chamber, I sat alongside more than 500 observers to personally witness the hybrid justice proceeding. It was a moving experience and historic event for all the victims, who have waited more than 30 years to experience some sort justice for the thousands upon thousands of Cambodians who were detained, tortured and executed under Duch’s command. For his role in these atrocities, Duch stood trial for intentional murder, torture, one case of rape, illegal imprisonment, mass execution and other sadistic acts. Found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Duch was convicted and sentenced to 35 years imprisonment. However, according to the court decision, he will serve only 19 years in prison because he has already spent 11 years in pre-trial detention and received another five years clemency for cooperating with the court.

I have long anticipated the response that this verdict would elicit. Yet, when the president of the trial chamber, Judge Nil Nonn, summarized Duch’s crimes and announced the reduction of his sentence, I felt doubtful that most Cambodians would understand and accept these legal concessions to Duch. When it registered that Duch would serve a mere 19 years—or as one lawyer now famously characterized it, a meager 11 ½ hours for every life that he stole—I predicted that this leniency would be difficult for the victims’ families and the broader Cambodian public to comprehend.

This pursuit of justice, however incomplete, is at least the first step toward establishing a historical record of truth, admitting guilt, and perhaps pursuing some type of reconciliation and healing. But national and international victims still have many questions. There are concerns that due to lack of funds and the old age of the KR leaders awaiting on trial, the ECCC should complete its term and find tangible justice as soon as possible. Time and funding are of the main essence: will the due process of justice in which the investigation process alone to build up Case Two can take months, if years, to complete be too little, too late? What is the view of the donors in trying to gather wider support from the international community, especially from the United States and China? What is the budgeting prospect beyond 2010? These are just the logistic concerns—what about broader issues of societal perceptions and future directions? How might this hybrid court promote accountability and human security in general, particularly in relation to Cambodia embracing the principle of responsibility to protect (R2P)? How might the ECCC end impunity, promote national reconciliation, deter future atrocities, and finally contribute to building an accountable local judiciary that is legitimate in the eye and the feelings of the victims? At the end of the KRT process, will Cambodians experience and internalize a sense of justice? Will the ECCC satisfy the Khmer people’s emotional feeling that justice is finally served, particularly when it seemingly offers lenient sentences and distills the whole of the Khmer Rouge’s guilt to the trial of only a few individual leaders?

At the end of this first verdict, I feel that the ECCC succeeded in establishing a record of truth of the mass killings, but failed to satisfy the survivors’ emotional feeling of justice with the shortening of Duch’s prison term. Justice is not just delivered, it is experienced. Khmer people place moral value in the hope that the verdict would release them internally, emotionally. From my observations, for Cambodian victims, justice was not fully served. For the Khmer Rouge survivors, this ruling does not completely acknowledge the scale and perversity of the violations. More work and fuller understanding of the victims’ side are necessary if the ECCC is to deliver a real justice, end impunity, and promote national reconciliation.

Duch's Verdict

My Brother and I in front of the entrance of ECCC








Duch’s Verdict on 26/7/2010

I just came back from the delivery verdict of AING Guek Eav, also known as Duch at ECCC (Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia). First, I want to acknowledge and congratulate all the distinguished members of the ECCC both from Cambodia and from many countries for the achievement and contribution in bringing the Khmer Rouge Tribunal to present day. Despite the difficulty and intricacy in the past, there has been huge amount of work accomplished through the professional effort and collaboration of all involved.

In the court chamber, I personally witnessed the hybrid justice proceeding live with more than 500 people, most of them are victims. It was a moving experience and historic event for all the victims to wait more than 30 years to finally having some sort of justice. Duch was convicted of intentional murder, torture, rape, crimes against humanity and sentenced to 35 years. Moreover, according to the decision, he actually serves 19 years in prison because he has already spent 11 years in detention and got another five more years credit for cooperating with the court.

After today’s judgment, as a victim I am doubtful that most Cambodian understands and accepts the reasons of these credits. There still are many unanswered questions for the national and international victims but this piece of justice is at least the first step toward the truth, admission of guilt, perhaps reconciliation and healing. At the end, I think that the ECCC provided the truth of the mass killings but failed to satisfy the survivors’ emotional feeling with the shortening of Duch's prison term. Justice for the Khmer victims was not completely and fully served. More works and right understanding of the victims’ side must take into full consideration if ECCC wants to put a closure on finding real justice, end impunity, and promote national reconciliation.

Wealth Disparity and Inequality

Pictures of the poor

Wealth Disparity and Inequality

As a Cambodian, I understand there are no quick fixes to the issues wealth disparity and inequality. The recent development, the luxurious buildings and the city life in Phnom-Penh design to create the image of a good life but do not reflect reality for most people. According to the UN report on local development (The Cambodia Daily, 1st July 2010), 3.7 million people estimated to be living below the poverty threshold, and only ten percent of the rural population owns a title of their land. Yet, those people also want decent housings, clean water, good sewage, and electricity. They want justice. They want basic health care. They want education. They want a piece land to grow their crops. They see poverty worsening, corruption spreading, and inefficiency rampant. The widening gap between the rich and the poor expands and rising inequality persists to the highest level. It is pity and heartbreaking that our present government doesn’t acknowledge the problem and try to find the real solutions. Here, once again the government is more interested in assigning blame than fixing problems for the poor. The leader doesn’t seem to acknowledge and grasp the legitimate issues raised by the UN, let alone be genuinely prepared to make the right and strategic decisions to help those really in desperate needs by looking into the validity and recommendation of the report. As we all know actions always speak louder than words and what the poor needed now is concrete actions. May ALL see the truth of what really happened.

Liberating Education

Liberating Education
"Education is a constant process for the liberation of human beings.”- Paulo Freire (1921–1997) Brazilian educator and activist.

In Cambodia, each student has a different educational background and in general, most students wait for a teacher to tell them what to do, study, learn, and act. Many teachers have tendency to take the curriculum from other countries and just copy them, having the students study whatever is listed in those course books without really engaging them in critical thinking. In the big picture, most people wait for a leader to tell them what to do. They all wait for the master to tell them what to do and follow. This approach is teacher centered instead of focusing on the development and nurturing of each student unique capacities and personal characteristics to help them attain authenticity and self-actualization. This approach as a whole also creates intellectual dependency and lack of innovative ideas as well freedom to think creatively. It encourages hard work, but oppresses creativity and innovative thoughts. Teacher holds the key to learning. Students are passive. They act as the recipients to knowledge, skills, and understandings.

Many of our religious, political, social and moral beliefs are beliefs that we are accepted as children before we could question them, and understand the reasons behind them. The aim here is not to reject but to understand and to learn good reasons to continue holding after personal observation and analysis. Furthermore, Cambodian culture believes in authority, hierarchy and tradition. People all grow up in the narrow world of our parents and friends, a small place where their views, beliefs, and values become ours through the process sociologists call primary socialization. I believe only education gives us the opportunity to free ourselves from the accident of our birth in a particular time, place, environment, and family. It broadens our horizons and helps us to become productive members of the humankind. Education is then freedom and liberation.

Is education a form of indoctrination? Why do we go through the struggle to be educated? Is it merely in order to pass the exam and get a job? Or is it the function of education to prepare us while we are young to understand the whole process of life? In developed nations, we teach people that it’s all right to question, to challenge authority on logical, moral, or other reasonable grounds. Freedom is not only being allowed to do that, it is also learning the skills needed to do it well. Learning to be a critical thinker is what a liberal education should be about. Then we can determine by ourselves truth and falsity, good and evil, and not behave like unthinking sheep in a herd. That something is our belief in reason, in having good evidence for our claims, in open-mindset, and in critical thinking.

I advocate a liberating education where knowledge leads to reflection, introspection and action where school is a place for learning, making mistakes, growing and creating memories, but not worrying. Liberating education is based in acts of cognition, not transfers of information. It encourages critical and creative thinking, debate and dialogues on real issues, even controversial ones, so that people can stand or take sides. Conflicts are resolved not by imposing the majority will upon all people, but by genuine dialogues between groups. Participants are encouraged to take stand on issues. The purpose of such fundamental change in the social order is to achieve justice and peace. I believe “right knowledge is power.” It enables people to overcome injustice, poverty, and fear and to handle all of the daily decisions they face that have a direct impact on their quality of life. The knowledge they impart may result in a new awareness of their social situation with its exploitation and oppression. In this case, new knowledge is not simply added to the existing body of knowledge but rather transforming the persons and culture by the use of knowledge. Education is then the transformation of self through possessing knowledge. It relates learning to practice, thus bringing theory and actions.

Students learn through experience and construct their reality based on their experiences. They are encouraged to seek the truth by asking more why rather than how’s to do it. In this sense, education invites students and teachers to put their learning and teaching into action for social development and justice. The curriculum is based more on the learner or student center. What does the student want to learn versus what does the teacher wants to teach? In the liberating education curriculum, students learn best by reflection and experience and least by copying and imitating.

As teachers, we can teach more than the subject. We can even cover much more than the rigor of critical thinking; we can cover life and how to live life with dignity, respect and honor. We can teach the students to believe in their own abilities and to have faith in what they could achieve with hard work and dedication to learning. Students learn to accept responsibility for their own life. They know that it is them who will get where they want to go, no one else. They need to investigate life. Where they are today, what they’ve accomplished in their life, and who they will become in the future is determined by one person; their own self! Once they grasp that concept, they take the first steps toward empowering themselves to become the person they’ve always longed to be. They understand the whole process of life. They are free to pursue their own vision of good life by accepting their own responsibility

Parker Palmer, an author, educator, and activist who focuses on issues in education, community, leadership, spirituality and social change, expresses eloquently in the Aim of Education Revisited: "If higher education is to serve human purposes, we who educate must insist that knowing is not enough, that we are not fully human until we recognize that we know and take responsibility for it."

I argue the only lasting education is one that promotes higher modes of thoughts and moral actions not just storage of facts. In my view, the kinds of minds we will need to cultivate in the future are:
1. The disciplined mind masters bodies of knowledge and skill.
2. The synthesizing mind decides what most important and puts knowledge together in useful ways.
3. The creative mind ventures regularly into new, unexploited territory.
4. The respectful mind prizes diversity and tries to work effectively with individuals of all background.
5. The ethical mind proceeds from principles. It seeks to act in ways that serve the wider and just society.

May the next generation of Khmer people grow up to become a well-rounded, knowledgeable and moral human being through liberating education.

What have I learned?

Sunrise at Bakheng Temple


Sunset at Sihanoukville


What have I learned?

In my life:

1. I’ve learned it takes me a long time to become the person I want to be.
2. I’ve learned the best contribution I can make to humanity is to improve and develop myself.
3. I’ve learned to be a volunteer teacher; I am free to do more for my country and the people from all the working for money restraints.
4. I’ve learned my life will not go according to plan if I don't have a plan.
5. I’ve learned that I can’t pay somebody to practice for me.
6. I’ve learned to accept the injustice of life.
7. I’ve learned that if I wait until all conditions are perfect, I’ll never act.
8. I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.
9. I’ve learned that it is easier to keep up than to catch up.
10. I’ve learned that I have to “BE” first before I can “DO”, and “DO” before I can “HAVE”.
11. I’ve learned that TRUST is the most important factor in both personal and professional relationship.
12. I’ve learned that kindness is the language of the dumb can speak and the deaf can hear and understand.
13. I’ve learned that making a life is more important than making a living.
14. I've learned that life sometimes gives me a second and may be a third chance.
15. I’ve learned that it is impossible to accomplish anything worthwhile without the help of others and a little luck.
16. I’ve learned what works and what is not working for me?
17. I’ve learned that no life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated and disciplined
18. I’ve learned that there is always someone who cares about me.
19. I’ve learned that people treat me the way I allow them to treat me.
20. I’ve learned that I can’t please SOME people, no matter what I do.
21. I’ve learned that I should make the ‘little’ decision with my head and the ‘big’ decision with my heart.
22. I’ve learned that real teaching is not the subject I am teaching, but the people I am teaching.
23. I’ve learned to be good at kids watching.
24. I’ve learned to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.
25. I’ve learned everyone can be great.
26. I’ve learned everything I teach should have a context and should be relevant.
27. I’ve learned I don’t owe the future a brighter people but I do owe our people a brighter future.
28. I’ve learned if I always do what I always did, I always get what I always got.
29. I’ve learned when there is faith there is hope.
30. I’ve learned that I shouldn’t look back except to learn.
31. I’ve learned the shortest answer is doing.
32. I’ve learned nothing great was ever achieved without endurance and enthusiasm.
33. I’ve learned to be content with I am rather than what I have.
34. I’ve learned the world will not value me until I value myself.
35. I’ve learned whatever is worth doing is worth doing it right.
36. I’ve learned that I have to do things I don’t like.
37. I’ve learned that no one is free when others are oppressed.
38. I’ve learned to oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible.
39. I’ve learned if there is any peace, it will come from being, not having.
40. I’ve learned that no one can do this work for me.
41. I’ve learned the love money and material wealth is the source of all evils.
42. I’ve learned that life’s most important question is what am I doing for others?
43. I’ve learned my darkness well enough that I can sit in the darkness with others.
44. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
45. I’ve learned to live simply and humbly.
46. I’ve learned to love unconditionally.
47. I’ve learned to care deeply.
48. I’ve learned to give generously.
49. I’ve learned to speak only the truth.
50. I’ve learned to teach compassionately.
51. I’ve learned to be me because everything is taken.
52. I’ve learned that change makes all things possible.
53. I’ve learned happiness never decreased when shared.
54. I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn.

The Importance of Reading and Writing

Students at Pannasastra University of Cambodia practice writing


Reading to students at "BambooShoot School"

The Importance of Reading and Writing
“If you don’t know how to read and write, it doesn’t matter how creative you are,”- Bill Gates.

I am not sure what kind of reader and writer you are, I want to share and explain how reading and writing have affected my life. I read and write everywhere I go. I read and I write when I study. I read and I write when I work (I teach). I read and I write when I stay home. I read and I write when I go on vacations. I read and I write every day. I read because I want to learn what I need. I write because I want to share what I know with others.

Reading is a multidimensional, dynamic process that involves thinking and responding, not only based on fluency and accuracy but also on discovering and understanding the power of language and communication. Reading is about making sense of my life and my world. It is about what I want to read when I need to know something or do something. There is no frigate like a book to take me lands away. I view reading as a pleasurable activity–as a source of entertainment and useful and interesting factual information. I receive great pleasure and satisfaction from burying myself in a Dhamma book. Reading has opened the door and the window for me. Reading can be thought of as preparation for a very important race. To me, reading is the single most important obstacle to academic success.

Writing exercises my mind to express thoughts, ideas and opinions. I admit writing is not easy, but rewarding. I write because I want a place to record my life experience and create something that I could look back on and laugh, cry and reminisce. Writing to me become more and more than a place to record my daily life experience, my thoughts. The papers I wrote become my friend; they were made and willing to accept anything and everything I had to say and feel. It could handle my questions, my sadness, my fear, my opportunity, and my joys. I discovered the beauty of writing – when I can pour myself onto white sheet of emptiness and fill it with emotions, ideas and thoughts and leave them there forever. It became a type of therapy for me for dealing with everything that was going on with my life, my country and humanity as a whole. If I want a reflective message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, I have to keep putting oil in it.

To all youngsters, I challenge and encourage you to read and write everyday. The more you read and the more you write the better you become. You become better reader by reading. You become better writer by writing. No one can do this for you. Reading and writing are your best investments in your future. They will bring you success in everything you want to be, you want to do and you want to have. Reading and writing are just like air. You don’t see but you need it to live in today’s world. Have fun reading and writing.

I posted "The Black Economy" in The Cambodia Daily