Richard Bernstein: As Notorious Khmer Figure Is Tried, Few in U.S. Take Notice
[Richard Bernstein writes for the International Herald Tribune.]
A “historic” event — in the words of some experts and observers — finished its first momentous phase in Cambodia a few days ago, but it doesn’t seem as though many in the United States know or care.
To be sure, a few newspapers have provided continuing coverage of the nine-month trial of Kaing Guek Eav, known as Comrade Duch, who was the director of the Tuol Sleng prison during the years the Khmer Rouge was in power. He supervised the systematic torture and execution of some 14,000 alleged enemies of the revolution, including hundreds of children.
That overused word “historic” does legitimately apply to the trial of this man — which is to be followed in a year or two by a separate trial of the four highest-ranking surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime. In the century-long history of Communist revolutionaries from Lenin to Mao, Kaing Guek Eav is the first to have once wielded power and then to face justice before an internationally recognized and sanctioned tribunal, this one composed of Cambodian and foreign judges and prosecutors in Phnom Penh.
One frequent observer at the trial, David Scheffer of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University Law School, provides this perspective: “People don’t realize that the number of dead in Cambodia exceeded the total number of dead in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Darfur combined — about 1.2 million to 1.7 million, so this should be of interest.”
But while there has been some excellent continuing reporting of the Duch trial by Seth Mydans of The New York Times and a few others, it plainly has not been of much interest to the general public in the United States, or to the broadcast media, which, with a few exceptions, have ignored it.
Why? Some of the reason may stem from what another frequent trial observer, Alex Hinton of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University, calls “tribunal fatigue.”
There are four special tribunals taking place in the world these days covering crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, plus what is officially known as the extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, so there are a lot of claims on the public’s and the media’s attention.
Mr. Hinton says the Cambodia case is hampered by other factors, not least that the Khmer Rouge was a long time ago. Even “The Killing Fields,” the movie that more widely publicized the horror, was in theaters 25 years ago...
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A “historic” event — in the words of some experts and observers — finished its first momentous phase in Cambodia a few days ago, but it doesn’t seem as though many in the United States know or care.
To be sure, a few newspapers have provided continuing coverage of the nine-month trial of Kaing Guek Eav, known as Comrade Duch, who was the director of the Tuol Sleng prison during the years the Khmer Rouge was in power. He supervised the systematic torture and execution of some 14,000 alleged enemies of the revolution, including hundreds of children.
That overused word “historic” does legitimately apply to the trial of this man — which is to be followed in a year or two by a separate trial of the four highest-ranking surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime. In the century-long history of Communist revolutionaries from Lenin to Mao, Kaing Guek Eav is the first to have once wielded power and then to face justice before an internationally recognized and sanctioned tribunal, this one composed of Cambodian and foreign judges and prosecutors in Phnom Penh.
One frequent observer at the trial, David Scheffer of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University Law School, provides this perspective: “People don’t realize that the number of dead in Cambodia exceeded the total number of dead in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Darfur combined — about 1.2 million to 1.7 million, so this should be of interest.”
But while there has been some excellent continuing reporting of the Duch trial by Seth Mydans of The New York Times and a few others, it plainly has not been of much interest to the general public in the United States, or to the broadcast media, which, with a few exceptions, have ignored it.
Why? Some of the reason may stem from what another frequent trial observer, Alex Hinton of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University, calls “tribunal fatigue.”
There are four special tribunals taking place in the world these days covering crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, plus what is officially known as the extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, so there are a lot of claims on the public’s and the media’s attention.
Mr. Hinton says the Cambodia case is hampered by other factors, not least that the Khmer Rouge was a long time ago. Even “The Killing Fields,” the movie that more widely publicized the horror, was in theaters 25 years ago...
Read more...