Wild Fire of Lies

by School of Vice

Re: Three Cambodians Killed by Thai soldiers at Border

Scene of Koh Pich Tragedy - image by thedailystar.net

Hun Sen (and wife, Bun Ranny) weeps, but blames the victims for causing their own deaths.

There may be more to these killings than meets the eyes. People usually take known risks into account and work out the "pros and cons" of their actions before committing themselves to a decision. However, they may not always be in possession of all the facts relating to specific decisions made in their names, be it to do with illegal logging or seeking work overseas as maids and labourers etc. Many of these "risk-takers" are often very young and ill-informed or misled into taking on these ventures with the possibility of serious life-threatening consequences deliberately hidden from view.

Remember that recently even after the ban on overseas maids had been announced one recruitment firm still found ways to send more Cambodian maids to Malaysia. But the most worrying thing is that Cambodian authorities themselves failed to act in Khmer citizens' best interests by forcing the relative of one of the dead victims to sign an "agreement" that the victim in question had died of "natural causes" before the body could be repatriated to Cambodia! Even after having been physically abused and beaten to death, the victims still lack leverage.

This is outrageous, but otherwise unsurprising when we look at the cultural and political contexts of all countries involved here, including Malaysia and Thailand whose respective governments and authorities can at least rest in the knowledge that the victims are mainly Cambodian, and not Thai or Malaysian! In an open liberal political climate where public opinion and individual rights count for something, such tragedies would not have been allowed to escape due judicial procedures or stringent, independent enquiries or an inquest into the causes that led to those tragedies in the first instance. That the relative of the said victim was coerced into legally "agreeing" with the official line of explanation regarding the causes of the victim's death speaks volumes about the absence of enshrined legal protection, or instruments thereof, pertaining to the safeguarding of fundamental human rights and civil liberty as well as prevailing institutional impediments that serve to handicap or curb the full expression of such rights and liberties.

When a large scale public tragedy occurred as it did this time last year at Koh Pich, the authorities, led by the Prime Minister of the country, placed the blame squarely upon the victims themselves for having conspired in their own deaths! This official verdict would be transmitted across to the citizenry at large through the state owned media, backed up by carefully selected accounts of witnesses and survivors, and before long the official version of the tragedy gathered real momentum and clout, spreading forth like a tropical wild fire, impossible even for a minority with critical minds to put down . . .  If it is not the act of nature or the gods, it must be self-inflicted, right? What else could it be, eh?