A New Beginning For Cambodia

On the day of Buddhist Lent, the beginning of Vassa, the war crimes tribunal in Cambodia found Duch guilty in the Khmer Rouge genocide. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Vassa, also called the Rains Retreat, is a Buddhist holiday that lasts from July until October and is observed primarily in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Burma. During this time monks stay in their temples, where they study, meditate and pray. Lay-people often take this holiday as an opportunity to re-connect with their spiritual beliefs and give up habits such as eating meat, smoking, or drinking alcohol. Vassa is a time for reflection and renewal.

It seems fitting that it was on the beginning of Vassa, yesterday, that Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, was found guilty of war crimes. He was the head of the infamous Security Prison 21 in Phnom Penh, where an estimated 17,000 people were imprisoned from 1975 to 1979, very few of whom made it out of the prison alive.

I asked Sopheap, General Manager of our Battambang office in Cambodia, what she thinks the sentence means to Cambodia?

“I was glad when this conviction was announced. I was born three years after the Khmer Rouge ended. I still cannot imagine what life looked like in those three years, eight months, and 20 days.”

Still, Sopheap raises the question whether the Khmer Rouge trial was worth the expenses: “I know that millions of dollars have been spent on the court for years. I wonder how different Cambodia would look, if that money was spend in the right development areas, such as education, health care, etc. I think Cambodians think differently about this matter, maybe some of them feel it is the right decision to have this Khmer Rouge tribunal, but many think the people who are found guilty are more guilty than it is publicly published, and many people ask why we have to spend so much money to find him guilty and take so long — when the KR leadership was so obvious.”

In this way, the verdict over Duch was long awaited in Cambodia, and thousands watched live on TV as the sentence was announced. The end of the trial is also the end of an era – a chance for Cambodians to put the genocide behind them and move on, with renewed determination to build a strong and peaceful future for their country.