CIVIL RESISTANCE
My TREASON & INCITEMENT MASS TRIAL (Initial Page on Trial Matters) TUESDAY, 14 JUNE 2022 VERDICT ANNOUNCEMENT Court Statement: Concluding Remarks ការការពារ ផ្លូវច្បាប់ របស់ខ្ញុំ [ ... ] |
CIVIC EDUCATION
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THE BOOK OF VIRTUES edited by William J. Bennett
[excerpts on importance of developing a habit of READING throughout one’s life]
HONEST ABE
[Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States] Abe loved to lie under a shade tree, or up in the loft of the cabin, and read, cipher, and scribble. At night he sat by the chimney jamb, and ciphered by the light of the fire, on the wooden fire shovel. … His stepmother repeats often that ‘he read every book he could lay his hands on.’ She says, ‘Abe read diligently. He read every book he could lay his hands on, and when he came across a passage that struck him, he would write it down on boards if he had no paper, and keep it there until he did get paper. Then he would rewrite it, look at it, repeat it. He had a copybook, a kind of scrapbook, in which he put down all things, and thus preserved them.’
…[A] reminiscence of John Hanks , who lived with the Lincolns from the time Abe was fourteen to the time he became eighteen years of age: “When Lincoln—Abe—and I returned to the house from work, he would go to the cupboard, snatch a piece of cornbread, take down a book, sit down on a chair, cock his legs up as high as his head, and read. He and I worked barefooted, grubbed it, plowed, mowed, and cradled together, plowed corn, gathered it, and shucked corn. Abraham read constantly when he had opportunity.” It may well be supposed, however, that the books upon which Abe could lay his hands were few in number. There were no libraries, either public or private, in the neighborhood… (p. 621-2)
THOMAS EDISON
This wonderful portrait by his son Charles lets us glimpse the character of one of America’s greatest minds. Thomas Edison has sometimes been represented as uneducated. Actually he had only six months of formal schooling. But under his mother’s tutelage in Port Huron, Michigan, he had read such classics as Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire at the age of eight or nine. After becoming a vendor and a newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railroad, he spent whole days in the Detroit Free Library—which he read “from top to bottom.” In our home he always had books and magazines, as well as half a dozen daily newspapers (p. 413). UP FROM SLAVERY
by Booker T. Washington From fearing Mrs. Ruffner I soon learned to look upon her as one of my best friends. When she found she could trust me she did so implicitly. During one or two winters that I was with her she gave me an opportunity to go to school for an hour in the day during a portion of the winter months, but most of my studying was done at night, sometimes alone, sometimes under someone whom I could hire to teach me. Mrs. Ruffner always encouraged and sympathized with me in all my efforts to get an education. It was while living with her that I began to get together my first library. I secured a dry goods box, knocked out one side of it, put some shelves in it, and began putting into it every kind of book that I could get my hands upon, and called it my “library.” (p. 406)
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4th International Conference on International Relations and Development
Mahidol University, 9-10 July 2015
Traversing the next ASEAN:
Challenges and Prospects in Development, Democratization, Human Rights and Peace
Click here to see the 2-day program
The conference’s chair, Dr. Sriprapha Petcharamesree (front row, left, listening to keynote address by Prof. Vitit Muntarbhorn. Sitting alongside me (very left of this photo) is a Rohingya activist who founded an NGO Equal Harmony Together with the ever so cool Veronica Pedrosa (who is in this crowd somewhere giving support to her colleague Htike Htike during a powerful, informative panel presentation that started off the conference after the keynote address.
For the Conference's 2nd day keynote, I will address the topic of "THE ASEAN IDENTITY AND GLOBALIZATION", or stated differently,
"How do we maintain UNITY IN DIVERSITY amid the onslaught of GLOBALIZATION?"
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US Supreme Court, 26 June 2015
USURPING THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
Chief Justice Roberts dissenting:
But this Court is not a legislature. … Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be. The people who ratified the Constitution authorized courts to exercise “neither force nor will but merely judgment.” (The Federalist No. 78) …
Although the policy arguments for extending marriage to same-sex couples may be compelling, the legal arguments for requiring such an extension are not. The fundamental right to marry does not include a right to make a State change its definition of marriage. And a State’s decision to maintain the meaning of marriage that has persisted in every culture throughout human history can hardly be called irrational. …
… the democratic process … That ends today. Five lawyers have closed the debate and enacted their own vision of marriage as a matter of constitutional law. Stealing this issue from the people …
The majority’s decision is an act of will, not legal judgment. The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or this Court’s precedent. …
As a result, the Court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half the States and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs. Just who do we think we are?
It can be tempting for judges to confuse our own preferences with the requirements of the law. …the Constitution “is made for people of fundamentally differing views.” …
Understand well what this dissent is about: It is not about whether, in my judgment, the institution of marriage should be changed to include same-sex couples. It is instead about whether, in our democratic five lawyers who happen to hold commissions authorizing them to resolve legal disputes according to law. …
The real question in these cases is what constitutes “marriage,” or—more precisely—who decides what constitutes “marriage”?
Justice Scalia dissenting:
…this Court’s threat to American democracy …
This is a naked judicial claim to legislative—indeed, super-legislative—power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government. …
A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy. Judges are selected precisely for their skill as lawyers; …
this Court, which consists of only nine… all of them successful lawyers who studied at Harvard or Yale Law School. …natives of New York City. … Not a single evangelical Christian (a group that comprises about one quarter of Americans19), or even a Protestant of any denomination. The strikingly unrepresentative character of the body voting on today’s social upheaval would be irrelevant if they were functioning as judges, answering the legal question… And to allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.
But what really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch.
Obergefell's Decision a THREAT TO RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Chief Justice Roberts dissenting: Today’s decision, for example, creates serious questions about religious liberty. Many good and decent people oppose same-sex marriage as a tenet of faith, and their freedom to exercise religion is—unlike the right imagined by the majority— actually spelled out in the Constitution. … The majority graciously suggests that religious believers may continue to “advocate” and “teach” their views of marriage. The First Amendment guarantees, however, the freedom to “exercise” religion. Ominously, that is not a word the majority uses. … Perhaps the most discouraging aspect of today’s decision is the extent to which the majority feels compelled to sully those on the other side of the debate. … By the majority’s account, Americans who did nothing more than follow the understanding of marriage that has existed for our entire history—in particular, the tens of millions of people who voted to reaffirm their States’ enduring definition of marriage—have acted to “lock . . . out,” “disparage,” “disrespect and subordinate,” and inflict “[d]ignitary wounds” upon their gay and lesbian neighbors. These apparent assaults on the character of fairminded people will have an effect, in society and in court. Moreover, they are entirely gratuitous. It is one thing for the majority to conclude that the Constitution protects a right to same-sex marriage; it is something else to portray everyone who does not share the majority’s “better informed understanding” as bigoted.
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After Obergefell: A First Things Symposium
How should we respond to the ruling by the Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage? What’s next?
These are the question that we asked the following contributors—male and female, gay and straight, Christian and Jewish, Protestant and Catholic and Orthodox—to answer in this First Things symposium. –Ed.
[Excerpts]
Misfortune engenders the obligation of repentance, teaches Judaism. Only yesterday, when the notion of overturning the traditional conception of marriage seemed like a far-fetched fantasy, too many of us put too many of our eggs in the psychological illness basket, condoning on pseudo-ideological grounds therapies that, in our hearts, we knew were a waste of money, the cause of false hope and misplaced guilt. Worse, many of us tolerated without protest bigoted and vulgar voices alien to our sense of decency and outside the bounds of God-fearing discourse. Shall we take umbrage now when those whom we allowed to be humiliated turn their resentment and intolerance on us and on the religion we represent? For this we must repent, before God and before our fellow men.
- Shalom Carmy teaches Jewish Studies and Philosophy at Yeshiva University and is editor of Tradition, the theological journal sponsored by the Rabbinical Council of America.
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Guimaras Province, The Philippines for ANSA-EAP board meeting and Checkmyschool site visit
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READ. It makes you SMART. Possibly smart and MAD (as in KUH-razy; think, Nietzsche). Or, just plainly MAD (Aunt to Theary).
READ. It will make you SMART. Or, smart and MAD (as in KUH-razy; think, Nietzsche), or just plain MAD (Aunt to Theary). But better this risk than be st--, uh, not-so-smart. FUZZY READING leads to FUZZY THINKING (Left image). The current state of Khmer written language. Punctuation marks are tools for CLARITY which allows your mind to read with 20/20 vision. (Right image). Clarity of reading leads to clarity of thoughts leads to building of IDEAS. Currently lacking in Cambodia. I am as blind as a bat without wearing glasses or contact lenses. I started to wear glasses in 2nd or 3rd grade (many moons ago).
I've written about the need to update and modernize the Khmer written language for many years now, but it was only this past February 2015 when I first gave a presentation on this KEY TO DEVELOPMENT at an international conference. Thank goodness, it was well received; "winsome" according to philosopher Yale Nicholas Wolterstorff. Still waiting for the video to come out, as it was recorded as I am told. Read the full commentary here:
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A Historian's Reckoning with the Past
Christianity Today |12 June 2015 (also at Truth2Power Media)
This article is adapted from Grant Wacker’s farewell address as he retired as Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Christian History at Duke Divinity School. He is also author, most recently, of America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (Harvard University Press, 2014).
Excerpts:
I think it’s useful to ponder how we reckon with the past and, more important, why. The key word is reckoning. The other substantive word, past, is rich with nuances and complexities. But for present purposes I will define past simply as anything that happened more than five minutes ago. But what is reckoning? This word conventionally holds three meanings: counting, interpreting, and evaluating. [...] When I was in graduate school we called those data facts. That word has fallen out of fashion, which is unfortunate, for it aptly suggests that the data are out there, independent of us, and cannot be changed. The past really is past, forever gone. But facts never come to us naked. They always come dressed in the clothes that historians dress them in. That brings us to interpreting, the second meaning of reckoning. Interpreting is more interesting than counting. It highlights the role of perception. [...] These considerations bring us to the final meaning of reckoning: evaluating. This is by far the richest one. My advisor in graduate school, with pipe smoke billowing to the ceiling, liked to ask me about my seminar papers, “Well, Grant, what difference does it make? Why would anyone need to know that? Why would anyone want to know that?”[...] So the task is to hear the voices of the past—with our ears and minds and hearts. This means we let those voices speak again in all the pathos, power, and beauty of their original utterance. It means giving them a vote, maybe two votes. Besides honesty and diligence, responsible evaluation of the past requires following certain rules. There are lots of rules, including ones about sifting the evidence, torturing it for reliability, and others. Two rules are especially important: charity and humility.
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Click to read the newly revised Punctuated Version of the Khmer Bible, June 2015
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Watch video at Financial Times Facebook
Return to the killing fields
Theary Seng and her family were held in this pagoda in Champa, an impromptu detention centre, 40 years ago. (All Photographs: Antoine Raab; Getty)
One woman’s quest to find the truth about her parents’ death under Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime
Michael Peel / Financial Times | 15 May 2015
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Honorable Exit Strategy for Hun Sen Part II of the commentary written on 17 Sept. 2013 Click on image to read Commentary of Sept. 2013
HUN SEN'S LAST CHANCE:
Promising "Culture of Dialogue" to usher in Reconciliation
Theary C. Seng (Kirirom, 27 April 2015, edited/expanded 29 April, 4-5 May)
This is a companion piece to the commentary Honorable Exit Strategy for Hun Sen that I wrote on 17 Sept. 2013, almost two months after the July 2013 elections during a period of high hopes for regime change, what I called the “Season of Cambodia Flourishing”.
That September commentary has received 1.9 million hits, a reflection of the desire for and curiosity at the possibility....
In one masterstroke, Hun Sen could make all serious reprisals obsolete by accepting Sam Rainsy’s offer of reconciliation by genuinely reforming and making way to step down peacefully. Any lawsuit will be greatly deflated with a genuine reconciliation.
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For asylum seekers, a novel (and odd) solution: Cambodia AP / Yahoo News | 24 April 2015
Theary Seng, a Phnom Penh-based lawyer, expressed similar sentiments. When it comes to statistics for human development, corruption, education, social welfare and security, "Cambodia ranks at the very bottom tier," she said. "These refugees," she said, "will be dumped into a sea of human-rights abuses."
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Scars of the Khmer Rouge: How Cambodia is healing from a genocide
CNN | 16 April 2015
"The scars of the Khmer Rouge are very deep and physical and present in modern Cambodia," said Theary Seng, a human rights lawyer whose parents were killed by the regime, and who moved to the U.S. as a refugee before returning to her homeland as an adult. ... She described the country as a "land of orphans."... How to heal? The silence was also due to the fact that Cambodians, in Seng's words, "lacked the vocabulary" of therapy and healing to process a crime of the magnitude of the one perpetrated against their society.
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Cambodia's Khmer Rouge Tribunal Charges 2 New Suspects
Associated Press / ABC News (America)
Theary Seng, a Cambodian-American human rights activist and lawyer, said she doubted that Hun Sen would allow the cases to proceed to trial, likening the court's proceedings under his pressure to "a political farce that is ridiculing the memory of the dead and grinding salt into the wounds of the survivors."
CAMBODIA'S CURSE (Joel Brinkley): "Human rights groups estimated that 650,000 more people had died in the year following the fall of the Khmer Rouge."
THEARY: So, in 1979-1980, Cambodia had a population of less than 4 million (5 M survivors MINUS these 650,000 deaths MINUS another 500,000 refugees who went to Europe, US, Canada, Austr/NZ).
For a people, malnourished with the women not menstruating from genocide and the similar destitution under occupation and famine, beginning in 1984, K5 Plan took another million of the male civilian population.
In law, we have a term for these abuses under occupation: GENOCIDE, the intentional destruction of a people.
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GENOCIDE CONVENTION
Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Article III: The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.
Indochina Report Publisher M. Rajaretnam:
Dr. Luciolli's is the fourth in a series of exposes that Indochina Report has published on the Vietnamization process and confirms the previous analyses. The others in the series are: "The Vietnamization of Cambodia: A New Model of Colonialism" (pre-publication issue, October 1984), "The Military Occupation of Kampuchea" (Issue No. 3, July-September 1985), and "Vietnamized Cambodia: A Silent Ethnocide" by Marie Alexandrine Martin (Issue No. 7, July-September 1986).
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30 YEARS OF HUN SEN (Human Rights Watch, Jan. 2015) III. Hun Sen and the “K5” Forced Labor Program Vietnam installed a new government, mixing Hanoi-trained communists with former Khmer Rouge officers to run the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK)....Pen Sovann soon fell afoul of Hanoi and was arrested. He was replaced by Chan Si, who died in office in December 1984. Hanoi, impressed with the capacity and loyalty of the young foreign minister, promoted Hun Sen to the post of PRK prime minister on January 14, 1985. The PRK was a police state, with virtually no civil or political freedoms. Among the many serious human rights abuses of its rule, few were more notorious than the Kế hoạch năm or K5 plan. K5 involved the mass mobilization of Cambodian civilians for labor on the Cambodia-Thai border and which led to the deaths of many thousands of Cambodians from disease and landmines. Planned in early 1983 by the Vietnamese military command for Cambodia... The overwhelming bulk of this was carried out by the civilian population as planned.... According to Sin Sen, “K5 was led by Hun Sen. He was assigned this responsibility by Vietnam.”... [by July 1985] 90,362 ordinary people were involved in the construction work.... Overall, one million or more Cambodians may have been sent to the border. Read full report here:
Human Rights Watch | 12 January 2015 The 67-page report chronicles Hun Sen’s career from being a Khmer Rouge commander in the 1970s to his present role as prime minister and head of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). The report details the violence, repression, and corruption that have characterized his rule under successive governments since 1985.
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My commentary on the 30 year rule of Hun Sen
Based on a response to media inquiry (well-known wire service) which I've since edited and expanded: Thirty years ago, Vietnam gave birth to Hun Sen the Prime Minister. Thirty years later, the umbilical cord of Hun Sen and his CPP to Vietnam has not been severed. As a puppet of a historically aggressive, more powerful neighbor, whose annexation of Cambodia consistently over the years are well-documented but uninteresting to non-Cambodians, Hun Sen has consistently appeased and catered to the whims of its political master Vietnam. The facts are indisputable. However, these continuing national security concerns vis-a-vis Vietnam have been overshadowed by virulent charges of racism by foreigners of Cambodians. The unfortunate and potentially dangerous effect has been the silencing of any robust discussion. This in turn leaves the Cambodians frustrated that they can't even express freely what they daily experience in their own home--the flooding of illegal immigrants--while simultaneously are unfairly denounced with the ugly moniker of racism.
Theary's Curriculum Vitae / Resume
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CNRP-NA nominates Ms. Theary Seng to NEC
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Click on image to watch the Skype video interview with Andrew Stevens
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See photos of this amazing trip from the Airport to the CNRP HQ, 19 July 2014
Cambodian Unionists Mark Murder of Prominent Labor Leader (AFP | 22 Jan. 2014)
Photos 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
My presentation on the first day was on The Right to Vote
Sam Rainsy Returns
to a Rapturous
Hero's Welcome
Photos: Theary C. Seng, 19 July 2013 More images taken by me from the truck carrying Sam Rainsy at my Facebook accounts and in KI-Media 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Global Convening to End Mass Atrocities Istanbul (16-21 June 2013) Istanbul, Turkey's largest city at 15 to 17 million people, is magical, as exquisitely stunning as one can imagine it to be and more (!!). Also known as Constantinople, named after the Roman Emperor Constantine who converted to Christianity in 4th century, it has now only one percent Christian out of 55 Million population.
I'm presenting on 19 June 2013 "Reconciling Peace with Justice in Cambodia: the Limitations of Tribunals to Address Mass Crimes"
https://www.box.com/s/g9go7em1jyvuhvy8jbjj
Click here to read narratives and see more photos, or go to Ms. Seng's Facebook accounts
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Theary C. Seng and the Road Ahead in Cambodia By Michelle Phipps-Evans Asian Fortune News, 3 Feb. 2013
The name Theary Chan Seng generates a fervor approaching reverence in the Cambodian community here and abroad. She is the Cambodian-born, American-educated lawyer and civil rights activist who founded the Cambodian Center for Justice & Reconciliation. It is a major component of another organization she serves as founding president, CIVICUS: Center for Cambodian Civic Education. This nonprofit group is dedicated to promoting an enlightened and responsible citizenry committed to democratic principles. It is actively engaged in the practice of democracy and reconciliation in Cambodia and the larger, globalized world. So who really is Seng, the person? She is a survivor of the Khmer Rouge (KR) regime, and has spent almost two decades advocating for its victims, many of whom were orphaned, widowed, abused or molested—victims who were like Seng herself.
. . . Obama, in Cambodia for a Meeting, Sidesteps the Ghosts of History
International Herald Tribune (Peter Baker, November 20, 2012)
Theary Seng, president of the Association of Khmer Rouge Victims in Cambodia, said, “President Obama should have met with the human rights community and activists challenging the Hun Sen regime, and while then and there, offer a public apology to the Cambodian people for the illegal U.S. bombings, which took the lives of half a million Cambodians and created the conditions for the Khmer Rouge genocide.”
Click here to read this complete news analysis
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Protests Greet Obama's Visit International Herald Tribune / New York Times PHNOM PENH — Theary Seng was taking aim with precision and anger. The 41-year-old U.S.-trained lawyer and a regular on Cambodia’s crowded protest circuit was about to throw a dart at a poster of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Kissinger is one of 13 politicians and senior Khmer Rouge leaders in a dart game created by Poetic Justice, a nongovernmental organization run by Theary Seng that highlights deficiencies of the special U.N.-backed tribunal judging the Khmer Rouge’s crimes. Each player gets five throws. A bull’s-eye is worth seven points. The highest score wins. Last Sunday afternoon, Theary Seng and three members of her staff were playing on Phnom Penh’s riverfront opposite the storied Foreign Correspondents’ Club. On this occasion — the fourth time the game has been staged in public — the point was to draw attention to the narrow scope of the Khmer Rouge tribunal ahead of President Barack Obama’s visit for a summit meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Click here to read full article.
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Watch the TV3 New Zealand broadcast with Mike McRoberts (aired 21 Nov. 2012) At ASEAN summit, trade overshadows human rights
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Open Letter to U.S. President Barack Obama Published in The Phnom Penh Post, 20 November 2012
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Theary Seng and some 30 security (plus more embedded in Wat Phnom Penh and Sunway Hotel) Narrative of harassment and images of Ms. Theary C. Seng's stand-off with at least 30 big bulky, heavily armed security in front of US Embassy Phnom Penh (Tuesday, 19 Nov. 2012)
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Emotional Violence of Past Poetic Justice Dart Games flared into Physical Assault on Ms. Theary C. Seng and those around her along the Riverfront, Sunday, 18 Nov. 2012
Reykjavik, Iceland SESSION 3: CALLING 4.15 - 5.45 pm Led by Miriam Subirana, Foundation for a Culture of Peace The session includes: Theary C. Seng, Founder, Centre for Justice and Reconciliation, Cambodia
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More at Association of Khmer Rouge Victims in Cambodia... "Cambodia's Khmer Rouge Court 'Dying' ABC News film, aired 16 Oct. 2012
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Khmer Rouge defendant Ieng Thirith ruled unfit for Cambodian genocide trial due to dementia The Washington Post, 13 Sept. 2012 Of course if she is seriously ill with Alzheimer’s, she should be released. There is no point in trying an incapacitated person,” said Theary Seng, a human rights advocate representing some victims who are allowed a role in the proceedings. “The point is the (tribunal) is so late in coming. The political foot-dragging and inertia has caused this travesty of justice.”
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Poetic Justice and Civil Party Withdrawal in the News Nov. 2011 Ex-leader: Khmer Rouge atrocities are 'fairy tale' AP Newswire, 23 Nov. 2011 "I'm not surprised that Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan and Ieng Sary continue to deny their crimes as the charges against them of genocide, war crimes are very serious," said Theary Seng, a Cambodian lawyer and human rights activist who lost family members under their regime. "Even if I am not surprised, I am however disgusted by their lack of remorse for the suffering they caused. They are delusional in their denial in light of the weight of evidence against them - the mounds of skulls and bones, the horrific testimonies from every survivor of cruelty, the magnitude and scope of evil unleashed by them across the whole of Cambodia."
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"Khmer Rouge trial is failing Cambodian victims of Pol Pot's regime" Human Rights Watch Brad Adams' editorial The Guardian, 26 Nov. 2011
. . . "Justice Denied" Douglas Gillison, Foreign Policy Magazine, 23 Nov. 2011 . . . Deputy President of Victims Association, a Civil Party of the Orphans Class, Mr. CHEY Theara, Withdraws Civil Party Status, Denounces ECCC as Political Farce _______________________ PRESS RELEASE _______________________
Full statement in both Khmer and English in KI-Media. Here, if ISP censors in Cambodia.
. . . . .
Khmer Rouge Trial Missing a Marquee Defendant Wall Street Journal, 21 Nov. 2011 “The release of Ieng Thirith is only one reflection of how incredibly late these trials are coming into place,” said Theary Seng, founder of the Cambodian Center for Justice and Reconciliation and herself, too, a victim of the Khmer Rouge regime, having lost her parents and spent five months in prison. She has withdrawn from the tribunal process, and instead put her energy into organizing public games of darts featuring the faces of the Khmer Rouge leaders along Phnom Penh’s riverfront – a “way of release” following victims’ frustrations with the trial process, mixed with “dark humor,” she said.
But the trial - a joint enterprise between the UN and Cambodia - has been heavily criticised. Theary Seng, whose parents were killed by the Khmer Rouge, said putting three people on trial for the deaths of 1.7 million simply wasn't enough. (BBC News, 21 Nov. 2011)
Khmer Rouge Trial: Cambodia Awaits Answers BBC News, 21 Nov. 2011
. . . AFP, 21 Nov. 2011 Khmer Rouge survivor Theary Seng told AFP she was "frustrated beyond words" that only Khieu Samphan looked likely to shed light on what happened. "The people want to know who is behind the Khmer Rouge, we want to see and understand the larger picture and we're not going to get that," she said.
From Tragedy to Sham in Cambodia Asia Times Online, 19 Nov. 2011 In KI-Media Others have gone further, arguing that the time might be ripe for the UN to pull the plug on the controversy-plagued court altogether. Last week, Theary Seng, a Cambodian-American survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime and a prominent advocate for victims' rights, withdrew her status as a civil party to the court, describing the proceedings as a "complete sham". She said the UN should threaten to withdraw after setting some clear conditions for its continued participation. By pressing ahead, Seng said, the world body runs the risk of rubber-stamping a flawed process and further embedding cynicism in the Cambodian population. "I understand the unwieldiness of any large bureaucracy, but at the end of the day it comes down to personalities, and there have been extremely weak personalities," she said. "In this regard, the UN is complicit."
In the End, Loss of Faith in Tribunal: Former Complainant Hello VOA Special with Theary Seng, 16 Nov. 2011 Khmer Rouge Victim Quits Tribunal Saying UN-backed Court is a Sham DPA, 15 Nov. 2011
Prominent Victims' Advocate Quits Khmer Rouge Tribunal VOA International/English, 15 Nov. 2011 KRT Critic Offers 'Poetic Justice' The Phnom Penh Post, 16 Nov. 2011 Theary Seng Denounces Tribunal; Introduces Dartboard Scheme The Cambodia Daily, 16 Nov. 2011
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Click here to read the full press release...
More information at "ECCC Civil Party" More information at Association of Khmer Rouge Victims in Cambodia Theary Seng Criticizes KRT as "Political Farce" The Phnom Penh Post, 10 Nov. 2011
Radio Free Asia (both AM and PM broadcasts on 10 Nov. 2011)
Cambodian-American Lawyer Withdraws her Civil Party Status Voice of America Khmer Service, 10 Nov. 2011
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