Chapter One
On Life in Phnom Penh:
“I’m late.” I rushed to pack my bag and brush my hair, the morning of my third day of work. I grab my shoes and fumble down the staircase from my second floor apartment. As I reach the front door, I am greeted by the darkness and stillness of nighttime. I look to my phone, realizing it is 12:45 a.m., not 6:45 a.m.. Perhaps I have not quite adjusted to the eleven hour time difference.
My first week in Phnom Penh, Cambodia was filled with surprises. As this is my first time in Southeast Asia, I was not sure what to expect for my three months in Cambodia. In preparation for my travels, I watched travel documentaries that portrayed Cambodia as a closed off society, and was slightly shocked to walk around my neighborhood and find an international community—restaurants from Brunei, French bakeries, and gelatarias. In between a more Cambodian meal of rice and pork, it is nice to have the opportunity to sip on a cappuccino and snack on a croissant.
The family that I am renting a room from, and many of the locals, have astonished me with kindness. The family I am staying with provides free breakfast to their guests. Because I leave for work so early, however, I am gone before breakfast starts. Concerned that I was going to spend money, my host family now has a breakfast and coffee packed for me in the mornings to take to the court. The family’s two young daughters come visit my room to help me with my WiFi problems, and their mother teaches me a new Khmer word each evening.
Unfortunately, May falls within Southern Cambodia’s monsoon season. The rain mainly occurs between 3:00-6:000 p.m., while I am at work. However, this Friday, I watched the clouds roll in and the palm trees sway on my bus ride home. As I stepped off the bus to begin my ten minute walk to my apartment, rain drops started to slowly fall onto the sidewalk. I continued to walk with a group of other interns, praying that the rain would mostly hold off until we reached our homes. These hopes were entirely unrealistic. When the heavy downpour started, we took refuge under the overhang of a small shop. Instead of shooing us away, the shop-owner brought out several chairs for us to sit in and wait out the storm. He also supplied us with his two black pugs to play with and pet through the cracks of thunder.
On a Case Tried by the Khmer Rouge Tribunal:
This summer I am interning with the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, or the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. The first person tried before the Khmer Rouge Tribunal was Kaing Guek Eav, who operated under the alias of ‘Duch,’ in Case 001. Duch was the Chairman of the S-21 Security Center—a high school that was converted into a prison as well as a torture and execution center. The majority of people that were brought to S-21 were former Khmer Republic officials and their families, as well as Vietnamese individuals. It is estimated that around 12,000 people were held at this prison, but the number is likely a low estimate of the people that were actually detained.
Kaing Guek Eav was indicted by the Tribunal in 2008, but the trial did not begin until 2009. In 2010, the Trial Chamber convicted ‘Duch’ to 35 years in prison for crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. However, both the defendant and the prosecutors appealed this conviction. In 2011, the Supreme Court Chamber conducted hearings for Case 001, and issued a decision in 2012. Instead of 35 years, the Supreme Court Chamber sentenced Kaing Guek Eav to life imprisonment, finding that the Trial Chamber had not considered the seriousness of the crimes—an aggravating circumstance— as an error of law. After the final judgment, ‘Duch’ was convicted of the crimes against humanity of persecution on political grounds, extermination, enslavement, imprisonment, torture, and other inhumane acts. Further, he was found guilty the grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Convention of willful killing, torture, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, willfully depriving a prisoner of war or civilian of the rights of fair and regular trial, and unlawful confinement of a civilian.