25 February 2007
Rocky Road to Khmer
Rouge Trial
By Guy De Launey
The buildings that make up the
Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, as the Khmer Rouge tribunal
is officially known, are situated in something of a suburban desert.
Staff and visitors have to drive way out past the airport to a district that
was not even part of Phnom Penh until the city boundaries were specially
re-drawn a couple of months ago.
As a result, lunchtime options are few and far between, and the staff canteen
is an important amenity.
It has also become an emblem of the problems which have plagued the courts,
caused divisions between local and international staff, and threatened to
derail the entire process.
At first the concession to operate the canteen was held by a cafe in central
While options like goat cheese salad went down well with the international
court officials, reports soon appeared that the local staff were complaining
they would "die in two days" if they were not given something more to
their taste.
Then a local caterer took over, and offerings such as snail curry replaced
the Western menu.
The international staff complained of food poisoning, and one told the BBC
that his stomach troubles only stopped when he started bringing a packed lunch
to work.
Disagreements
So now the Cambodian officials and their international counterparts lunch
apart. They also do much of their work separately, and have very different
views about how the trials should be conducted.
That much became clear at the end of November, when a plenary session of
judges that was called to approve the internal rules of the tribunal descended
into farce.
The participants could not even agree on who was eligible to vote, let alone
the issues they were supposed to be deciding.
Hopes of swift prosecutions promptly evaporated, replaced by fears for the
future of the tribunal.
There were many points of dispute, but the cause of the most rancour was the
role of foreign defence lawyers.
International officials have insisted that as foreign prosecutors and judges
will be taking part, defendants must have the right to retain an overseas
lawyer if they wish.
The Cambodian Bar Association has, equally forcefully, made it clear that
under local law only their members are allowed to represent clients in court.
At the centre of the controversy is the British barrister who is the
principal defender at the tribunal, Rupert Skilbeck.
At 35, he is already a veteran of tribunals in
"All the tribunals have had a difficult birth process. The tribunal in
"In Bosnia, where there was a hybrid tribunal, probably the process
closest to this one, the process of agreeing the legal process for the court
took about two or three years," Mr. Skilbeck said.
"The balance between the foreigners and the locals has always been a
problem in these tribunals."
Government 'interference'
Mr. Skilbeck seems an affable character, but critics within the courts claim
that he has antagonised the very people with whom he needed to build bridges.
There have also been suggestions that some of the other international
officials have failed to understand that a less direct approach to working
relationships is required in South East Asia.
The split is so marked that referring to the "Cambodian side" and
"the international side", as people both within and outside the
tribunal do, seems entirely appropriate.
Walking down the corridors of the tribunal's administration building, a
visitor cannot help but notice the separate offices to the left and right for
local and international staff.
All the talk of sides makes it sound more like a football match than a
judicial process, but such a comparison just raises a smile from Cambodian
judge Mong Monichariya.
He insists that relations are cordial, and that differences of opinion are
inevitable when the aim is to produce an international-standard tribunal within
the Cambodian judicial system.
"The media publish information that the problems are caused by the
Cambodian judges, but that is not true. We have many issues to resolve between
the Cambodian judges and the international judges," he said.
"Cambodian judges need time to understand the international legal
system, and the international judges take time to understand the Cambodian
legal system."
Some observers, however, see the hand of the government behind the delays.
They point out that several senior members of the current administration
were themselves once in the Khmer Rouge.
While there is little chance of ministers being charged, they could be
implicated by defendants or even called as witnesses.
The Center for Social Development, a non-governmental organisation
specialising in legal issues, has been monitoring events at the tribunal.
Its executive director, Theary Seng, believes "there is no doubt that
the government is pulling strings".
"The trials will go ahead, but it may just be a minimum to appease the
international side. They have to delay so that all the senior Khmer Rouge
people who could name names will die out," she said.
Conciliatory noises
For the millions of Cambodians waiting to see justice, that is a genuine
concern.
Last year Ta Mok, the only senior member of the Khmer Rouge in custody, died
without delivering any kind of testimony.
The other likely candidates for prosecution are also elderly, and some of
them have been in ill health.
Time is also running short for the tribunal itself. The three-year mandate
began last July, and further delays would have a serious impact on the ability
of the legal officials to complete their work.
Perhaps with that in mind, both sides are making conciliatory noises.
They agree that significant progress has been made on resolving differences,
and say that meetings in March should iron out the remaining concerns.
After all the setbacks, optimism will always be accompanied by a dose of
scepticism.
There is, however, one concrete sign that international relations at the
tribunal may be warming up: The catering service is, once again, up for tender.
Copyright 2007
BBC News