After more than 30 years of impunity, key architects of the notorious Khmer Rouge (KR) regime are finally being held accountable at the UN-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (“ECCC”). This Project supports the award-winning representation of lowland Khmers (or Khmer Krom) in the ongoing war crimes trials.
As with all our projects, AJA takes an inter-disciplinary approach, marrying both our legal and non-legal expertise.
Led by international lawyer and AJA Co-Founder Mahdev Mohan, AJA’s legal Associates and lawyers from the Legal Aid of Cambodia (supported by the German Development Service (DED)) provide legal advice and representation to Khmer Krom.
AJA works closely with students from the Singapore Management University’s School of Law (SMU) who provide legal research support under the auspices of SMU’s Asian Peace-Building & Human Rights Programme
Bridging theory and practice, this Project aims to provide SMU law students with hands-on litigation experience by analyzing field interviews, drafting research memoranda and analytical reports, and designing case theory.
We also seek to chronicle the daily lives and aspirations of the communities we represent through photography and stories. To this end, our J.A.M™ Programme led by co-founder Vinita Ramani Mohan, launched its inaugural project in Cambodia in 2010.
Khmer Krom Case
Historically marginalized and overlooked by the UN-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), Khmer Krom survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide have gained ground in their struggle for justice in advance of the trial against the four remaining Khmer Rouge leaders. A Khmer minority group with geographic and cultural ties to Vietnam, the Khmer Krom were targeted for elimination by the Khmer Rouge regime after 1975, when relations between the two countries became strained and Pol Pot turned against Vietnam.
The ECCC did not include the crimes against the Khmer Krom as part of the three-year investigation it just concluded. However, Khmer Krom survivors continued to press their case with the court, submitting extensive evidence of the atrocities they suffered. These efforts have paid off.
On 13 June 2010, Co-Prosecutor Andrew Cayley reached out to Khmer Krom survivors. Meeting for the first time with nearly 200 Khmer Krom in Pursat Province, on the grounds of a pagoda that was an execution site of Khmer Krom, Cayley acknowledged the need to present to the court the atrocities committed against the Khmer Krom people.
Cayley can rely for help on the 83 Khmer Krom survivors who the court has recognized as “civil parties” with rights to participate at next year’s trial. These civil parties are represented by a team of lawyers from Cambodia and Singapore led by Assistant Professor Mahdev Mohan, founding director of Access to Justice Asia (AJA). AJA is a Singapore-based non-profit dedicated to providing representation to victims of conflict in Asia. This result has been described by ECCC judges as “a very important contribution to the ascertainment of the truth” and means a great deal to our clients, who for the past two years, have come forward to painstakingly provide data to the ECCC to demonstrate the gravity of their suffering at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.
Partnering with Yale Law School
In a further boost to the Khmer Krom cause, Clinical Visiting Professor Laurel Fletcher, an expert in transitional justice and humanitarian law, will head a team of students from the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale that will work with AJA. The Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School involves law students in a wide variety of advocacy projects on behalf of human rights organizations and individual victims of human rights abuse. It contributes to efforts to protect human rights by providing valuable legal assistance. Professor James Silk is Director of the Lowenstein Human Rights Clinic.
As the trial against the remaining defendants nears, the legal team will be marshalling evidence of mass atrocities suffered by the Khmer Krom and advocating for the Khmer Krom to testify before the ECCC about the grave crimes committed against them.
“Our goal is to ensure that the harm suffered by the Khmer Krom as a distinctive group is acknowledged, documented, and redressed through this justice process. We trust that as the evidence of the Khmer Krom’s ordeal is developed during trial, the court will treat the Khmer Krom equally with other minority groups and our clients will share equally in any reparations awarded by the court,” said Professor Fletcher.
The legal team will continue working to overcome the disadvantages faced by the Khmer Krom from the onset of the proceedings. Indictments issued earlier this month charge former senior Khmer Rouge leaders for genocide against Cambodia’s Cham Muslim and ethnic Vietnamese minorities but not the Khmer Krom.
This omission stems in part from the prosecution’s exclusion of the Khmer Krom from its investigation, which left the tribunal’s judges unable to pursue such charges, despite compelling evidence of mass killing and forced displacement of the Khmer Krom throughout Cambodia.
Preparing for Trial
The AJA legal team remains determined to ensure that the court hears evidence of the crimes committed against their clients.
“Our Khmer Krom clients’ evidence bridges a missing link in the case against the Khmer Rouge and sheds light on why Khmers killed Khmers under the Pol Pot regime. After all that they have endured, their evidence should be presented, not swept under the carpet. We intend to vigorously represent our clients’ interests and work to ensure that they have their day in court,” said Mr. Mohan.
Media coverage of these developments can be viewed here. While these developments mark an important step forward for AJA’s Khmer Krom clients, in the larger scheme of the court process, we are at the beginning of what commentators anticipate to be a historic genocide trial, which is expected to begin in mid 2011.
Beyond the Trial
Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, was the commandant of detention centre S-21 in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge rule between 1975 and 1979. Under his authority, several thousands were tortured and forcibly made to write confessions before being executed.
The haunting images of S-21’s countless inmates have become a ubiquitous and powerful representation of the horrors of the Cambodian genocide. Photographs like these serve as evidence in international efforts to seek accountability and justice for mass crimes. In that sense, they are an important document and belong in national archives and museums, where they can remind us of history.
Communities that have suffered through mass conflict and genocide are often “documented” in this manner by either the perpetrators of the crimes, or by documentary photographers who capture reality on the ground, as it is happening, or years after the conflict.
Yet, victims are rarely seen as survivors who have emerged from conflict and wish to share both stories of trauma and stories of their hopes for the future. The Khmer Krom have not yet had the opportunity to tell their stories visually or orally as yet.
The project in Cambodia focused on broadening the existing approaches and uses of documentary photography in post-conflict Cambodia by doing two things:
- Documenting sites of conflict and Khmer Krom communities in the aftermath of the genocide;
- Going beyond victimhood: showing how the Khmer Krom have survived and moved beyond the genocide and what their contemporary hopes and aspirations are.
In the annual ritual of Pchum Ben, for example, the names of ancestors must be recorded onto an invitation list by their living relatives. If this is not done, the ancestors cannot receive the offerings of Num Onsorm Chruk, Num Onsorm Chrek or Num Korm (home-made cakes). The dead cannot congregate, cannot eat and cannot be with their loved ones.
In this spirit, we hope that the photographs, stories and vignettes we have recorded will serve to help the broader community and the Khmer Krom diaspora remember, recall and share ideas on community aspirations and broader goals.
See a sample of the photos here