School of Vice:
There must be a reason why this KRT keeps dragging on with no end in sight!
The scientific approach is believed to be paramount in any attempt to unravel and establish a sequence of events leading to the actual commission of a crime. So too is the judicial question as to whether the collected and corroborated evidence and data provided through this scientific framework will have been sufficient in answering the call for, and arbitration of justice to which the victimised party is due.
The 'pragmatism' of the Court itself [if that be its true nature] betrays its gaping flaws as wide as the confluence of the rivers by the front of the Royal Palace! The Court knows full well that there are prominent former KR suspects and remnants still at large; some of these have been holding positions of power and influence within the Phnom Penh regime, and despite having issued summons for their appearances before the tribunal to act as witnesses, none has yet to complied, insisting openly that as 'liberators' and 'saviours' of the nation [as Keo Remy reminded Ms Rhona Smith the other day in their meeting] they should be considered above and beyond suspicion. If anything - so this line of reasoning goes - the summons constitute a grave moral offence! The Court itself has no teeth to enforce its own procedures, but instead operates and navigates within this politically precarious and sensitive channels or compromises on offer. In stark contrast, the besieged political opposition party of the CNRP and its acting president is daily threatened with threats of violence, arbitrary arrest and detention despite holding parliamentary immunity and, the existence of relevant constitutional guarantees on political and civil rights.
Moreover, many observers have questioned the court's failure to summon those directly involved in the Cambodian 'genocide' and 'crimes against humanity'. These include the late Norodom Sihanouk, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Hanoi leaders as well as the Chinese who backed Pol Pot; all of whom had been principal actors and culprits in the crime - one way or the other.
If at the end of its mission the tribunal will have succeeded only in establishing the guilt of a handful auxiliary KR cadres and leaders whilst the aforementioned figures could not even be posthumously implicated or mentioned at all for whatever reasons, then its selling defense line that the judicial procedure must be observed and exhausted will have held little water despite traversing a distance longer than the Mekong's.
I will return to the issue of 'forced marriage' under the KR another time as my coffee is getting cold...
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Expert witness Peg LeVine gives her testimony on Monday at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia during Case 002/02. ECCC
Wed, 12 October 2016
Andrew Nachemson
ppp
The prosecution at the Khmer Rouge tribunal came out swinging yesterday, attempting to hammer expert witness Peg LeVine on alleged contradictions between her testimony and her research into marriage under Democratic Kampuchea.
LeVine on Monday had bucked conventional wisdom on the subject of the Khmer Rouge’s alleged policy of forced marriage, maintaining that none of her interviewees had been forced to marry – a stance she held firm on yesterday despite pointed questioning from prosecutor Nicholas Koumjian.
Koumjain questioned outright the validity of 29 of the 192 interview subjects included in LeVine’s study who were listed as having been married in 1979. Since the Khmer Rouge were officially toppled on January 7 of that year, Koumjian said, “unless [these marriages] took place in the first six days of 1979, all took place after the regime fell”.
“I would need to go back to my hard data,” LeVine said.
Koumjian also questioned why a list of questions that LeVine put to all of her subjects didn’t include one about whether their marriages were forced.
“There were times I did ask, but I was very careful not to lead,” LeVine countered.
Numerous witnesses and civil parties at the tribunal in recent weeks have testified to having also been forced to consummate their marriages, and Koumjian yesterday asked why nearly half – 84 of 192 – of LeVine’s interviews contained no information on that subject.
“In my hard documents, I have the other data,” LeVine responded, before allowing that many weren’t asked at all.
LeVine said she felt the prosecution was conflating coercion with force, and noted marriages are often arranged in Cambodia under intense social pressure and coercion. She also clarified her that her conclusion was not that forced marriages did not happen, but that they did not happen to her subjects.
The tensest point of the day came when Koumjian read a series of quotations from LeVine’s report that seemed to confirm that some subjects were forced to marry under threat of death.
“Angkar chose, I had to follow Angkar or I would be killed,” one such subject reported.
At the end of his questioning, Koumjian asked: “Do you acknowledge that many of the marriages were done under coercive circumstances against the free consent of those involved?”
“My answer is no,” LeVine replied.
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