CIVIL RESISTANCE


My TREASON & INCITEMENT MASS TRIAL (Initial Page on Trial Matters)     TUESDAY, 14 JUNE 2022 VERDICT ANNOUNCEMENT Court Statement: Concluding Remarks ការការពារ ផ្លូវច្បាប់ របស់ខ្ញុំ  [ ... ]


CIVIC EDUCATION


The Perils of Indifference


The Perils of Indifference by most famous holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel has many resonances for us Cambodians. The title says it all - in light of our Khmer Rouge history and the KR mentality of fear and intimidation which continues to exist to this day, as well as human rights abuses of land evictions, using the court as a political tool etc. The middle way does not work in this case: you are either for justice or injustice; you either care or are indifferent. Omission is as much a sin as commission. You cannot be a bystander in life to abuses and still call yourself "moral" or free of guilt. The choice is yours: do you stand on the side of justice or injustice? Simply put, justice is not neutral. It stands on the side of the poor and the oppressed. -- Theary Seng



Elie Wiesel

delivered 12 April 1999, Washington, D.C.


Mr. President, Mrs. Clinton, members of Congress, Ambassador Holbrooke, Excellencies, friends:



Fifty-four years ago to the day, a young Jewish boy from a small town in the Carpathian Mountains woke up, not far from Goethe's beloved Weimar, in a place of eternal infamy called Buchenwald. He was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart. He thought there never would be again. Liberated a day earlier by American soldiers, he remembers their rage at what they saw. And even if he lives to be a very old man, he will always be grateful to them for that rage, and also for their compassion. Though he did not understand their language, their eyes told him what he needed to know -- that they, too, would remember, and bear witness.



And now, I stand before you, Mr. President -- Commander-in-Chief of the army that freed me, and tens of thousands of others -- and I am filled with a profound and abiding gratitude to the American people. "Gratitude" is a word that I cherish. Gratitude is what defines the humanity of the human being. And I am grateful to you, Hillary, or Mrs. Clinton, for what you said, and for what you are doing for children in the world, for the homeless, for the victims of injustice, the victims of destiny and society. And I thank all of you for being here.


We are on the threshold of a new century, a new millennium. What will the legacy of this vanishing century be? How will it be remembered in the new millennium? Surely it will be judged, and judged severely, in both moral and metaphysical terms. These failures have cast a dark shadow over humanity: two World Wars, countless civil wars, the senseless chain of assassinations (Gandhi, the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Sadat, Rabin), bloodbaths in Cambodia and Algeria, India and Pakistan, Ireland and Rwanda, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Sarajevo and Kosovo; the inhumanity in the gulag and the tragedy of Hiroshima. And, on a different level, of course, Auschwitz and Treblinka. So much violence; so much indifference.

Continue for the FULL TEXT...

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Tribunal Must Consider Reparations: Victim


Seng Theary, head of the Center for Justice and Reconciliation. (Photo: by Roland Neveu)


Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Washington, DC Friday, 27 August 2010


Reparation for victims of the Khmer Rouge should be a chief concern for the UN-backed tribunal in its eventual plans to bring hearings for senior leaders to a close, a civil party participant said Thursday.

Seng Theary, who has filed as a complainant in upcoming Case 002, said reparations should include a center in each of the nation's 24 provinces and municipalities to help bring reconciliation to the country.

“If we wait until the trials are finished, they'll forget it,” she said, as a guest on “Hello VOA.
“We're requesting the equipment of the [tribunal], as we know the Khmer Rouge court has a lot of materials, such as computers and vehicles,” she said.

“This is a basic demand, and we will demand more than this. But to make it effective, the victims should make the requests.”

Tribunal judges are now preparing for Case 002, to try Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith for atrocity crimes committed while the Khmer Rouge was in power. But experts have also said administration officials should consider how they will wrap up the court when trials are finished.

Besides bringing senior leaders to trial, the tribunal was also meant to bring a measure of reconciliation to the country.

But the court did not do enough for victims following its first trial, for Tuol Sleng prison chief Duch, Seng Theary said.

Victims will need more, like a memorial stupa, education centers and preservation of prisons like Tuol Sleng, she said.

 

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The Cambodia Daily, 23 July 2010

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Theary's BLOG

Published Articles of Vietnamization

Vietnamization: Military Occupation - Present
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 Francois Ponchaud, a French Jesuit who had diligently chronicled the destructiveness of the Khmer Rouge in his book "Cambodia: Year Zero," maintained that the Vietnamese were conducting a [ ... ]


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