Cambodia’s beleaguered war crimes tribunal is facing
another obstacle: translators have gone on strike, protesting months of
work without pay, and the one active trial has been adjourned
“indefinitely.” Only international donors can save the day.
The Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC, as it is
known) is currently trying Case 002, in an effort to finally dole out
long-awaited justice to the top surviving leaders of the genocidal Khmer
Rouge regime that killed millions of Cambodians in the 1970s. The
defendants are octogenarians and growing more decrepit by the day.
Local staff at the ECCC have gone without pay since December, as
donor nations have failed to contribute to the ECCC pot on time.
Spokespeople have said they’ve appealed to donors for more operating
funds but don’t know when they’ll actually come through.
36 countries contribute to the UN-backed Tribunal, and over 50% 0f
that funding comes from Japan. Germany, France, the UK, the US, and
Australia are also big donors; UK Foreign Minister William Hague pledged
a cool $2.2 million to the cause at the end of February.
Translators work in the three languages of the proceedings, French,
English, and Khmer, thus performing a rather indispensable function in
the diverse ECCC courtroom. Some murmur it’s possible that the
translator’s walkout is an attempt — likely orchestrated from above — to
convince foreign donors to cough up even more funds to keep the
slow-moving and expensive court alive long to finish off Case 002 before
the elderly defendants pass away.
Money has been a constant problem
for the tribunal: keeping an international war tribunal alive is
exceedingly expensive work, and the global economy has only continued to
tumble downhill since proceedings began in 2006. The devastating
Japanese tsunami of 2011 has also hit the coffers of the court’s most
prolific donor.
Further, some donors suspect that Cambodia and the court is doing
less than it could to keep costs down, which reached $141.1 million from
2006 to 2011, according to court budget statements — $107.9 million of which came from international donors. The
European Union has publicly called on Cambodia to increase its pay-in
to the court last month, withholding a grant until “the contractual
obligations of the grant agreement are fully met,” according to Reuters.
Special Expert on United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials David Scheffer suggested in the New York Times this
summer that a modern day Andrew Carnegie with deep pockets and
philanthropic impulses could keep the court afloat: in the absence of
such a legal minded angel, it’s quite possible that the court might
continue to come to intermittent and damaging halts — slowing down an
already very overdue passage of justice.
2 comments:
There is no value add to any decent human understanding or to pacify the pains of those suffered by the genocide through the current court setup. The real culprits are either dead(Sihanouk - the traitorous tyrant) or currently untouchables(Hun Sen/Heng Samrin/Chea Sim and the Chea brothers).Might as well undo this farsical kangaroo court and send everyone home and lose no more money to prop up the CPP employees working there.
I agree with you. ECCC is just a TV shows created by the CPP, with advertisement sponsored by the CPP Hun Sen himself.
As we all know Hun Sen himself was a high ranking Khmer Rouge Commander, along with Chea Sim and Heng Samrin and Hor Nam Hong. They were high ranking officials, survived this long because they obeyed every command the Vietnamese asked of them, including the K5 Planning Genocide occured in the 1980s, after the Vietnamese Invasion.
When do the world get to know the truth about Hun Sen as the Khmer Rouge leader, behind the killings of the Khmer people and the selling out of the Khmer land to the Vietnamese?
Post a Comment