Silence and the Khmer Rouge

The crippling effects of silence have been difficult to combat. My first full week here began as a simple human rights based leadership training with our Cambodian counter parts at partnering NGOs. It soon became something else. After the training was over, there were several things that I walked away with from the training. Most pressing was the incredible need I felt to try and describe the effects of the genocide in Cambodia at the hands of the military dictator Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime. (For those of you that didn’t know: the genocide occurred from 1975-1979. This systematic killing was directed at all the educated people in Cambodia it is estimated that 2 million people died.)

One of the many reasons I came to Cambodia, was to see first hand how a country and an entire group of people recover from such an atrocity. Like Guatemala, this country has had a similar history of violence.

As each day has gone by since the training, I slowly have come to realize that the effects of the mass violations are still being felt all around me. For a country that is almost 40 years beyond this grave moment in their history this tragedy continues to alter its entire existence. Through friends from the training and other Cambodian friends I have made along the way, I have only begun to scratch the surface about how it still affects them. These friends have entrusted a great deal of confidence in me about their lives and have described their path to the work they now do. In each personal story some describe a level of poverty I may never really understand. For others they slowly recount the painful effects of pervasive death. Each time this has happened I suck back the tears that slowly form at the corners of my eyes and just wish that I could hold them. Then I shake myself to realize, that I just met this person and say thank you for sharing. However even the phrase “thank you – akun chiran” seems to fall short of demonstrating my gratitude. I am left stunned, and feel honored with the opportunity to get to know them. I sink back and fester in the muggy silence.

My constant meditation is: What do I do with this kind of information? I found myself feeling pretty frustrated. Would it matter if I wrote about it in a blog entry? Would people even care that this happened? Would educating an entire population about this situation achieve something tangible and positive for the Cambodian people? I still don’t really have the answer to these questions.

Like a bad song playing in my mind, my thoughts return to the fact that after WWII and the holocaust, the world said never again. It is now 2008, and genocide continues to happen again and again all over the world.

In Cambodia, this summer marks the beginning of an international tribunal that was established to prosecute those responsible for the genocide. What is this supposed to mean in a country that still has no rule of law? What is this supposed to mean in a country where freedom can be bought and sold to the highest bidder? What is this supposed to mean when the tribunal process has already been corrupted because the Cambodian judges bought their way into serving in the court? This international tribunal is appropriately occurring in an auditorium behind a glass wall set up like a theatre. It is all an act anyways, and the show must go on.

Call me a cynic; I will admit I have some estranged feelings towards the judicial process. Somewhere, maybe, there is a part of me that wants to believe that the law will prevail. That somehow justice will be served. Also, to be fair we are only in the pretrial phase. Yet, I know not to hold my breath and only time will unfold what will actually come from the tribunals.

What I focus on in this lingering air of anguish, destroyed families, pervasive destitution, and abandoned people is that the Khmer people still have hope and a determined peaceful strength.

This is what has inspired me to blog about it. So that is a start.

If you want more information about the Cambodian Genocide please visit:
http://www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_cambodia1.html