Phnom Penh, 28 February 2013
- Excellencies, Co-Organizing Partners from Argentina, Switzerland and Tanzania
- Excellencies, Members of the Diplomatic Corps
- Guest Speakers and Experts, including my colleague The Honourable Gareth Evans, former Foreign Minister of Australia, with whom I worked closely in the negotiations leading up to the Paris Peace Agreements of October 1991
- Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen
We are gathered here in Phnom Penh today to honour and remember the victims and to pledge ourselves to do our utmost to prevent the recurrence of genocide. We represent more than 20 countries – 17 from Asia and the Pacific plus three partner countries from the continents of Africa Europe and South America – as well as guest speakers from the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region in Africa, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the Genocide Prevention Advisory Group, the Asian Sites of Conscience Network and other scholars and experts.
For Cambodia, the issue of genocide is not an abstract or theoretical one, but one that brutally and directly affected us, and still does today. The magnitude and severity of the crimes committed throughout the country during the 3 years, 8 months and 20 days of the Khmer Rouge regime can scarcely be comprehended.
From one quarter to one third of our population perished, an estimated 3 million individuals, including almost all the very young, very old and the ill and infirm. The wounds from that time are still very raw among the survivors, and even the 70% of our people who were born since that time, bear a heavy burden, not only in a physical sense (schools, hospitals, roads and bridges) but from the destruction of our society and family bonds, and from the loss of the wisdom of their elders.
Since the Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown on 7 January 1979, just over 34 years ago, we have struggled to rebuild our society, but at the same time we have never lost sight of the need to seek justice for the crimes committed; to remember the victims; and to make sure such a tragedy will never recur.
For more than twenty years, the international community turned a blind eye to our suffering and unbelievably continued to seat the perpetrators as representatives of Cambodia in the United Nations. In response to repeated requests from the Cambodian government, in December 1997 the General Assembly finally acknowledged the genocide, decided to help, and, after years of intense and difficult negotiations, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) was eventually established in early 2006.
It is a new type of court in the annals of international justice – a national court with international participation and assistance. Every step along the way has been conducted by national and foreign judges and legal officers working alongside each other, as our national Co-Prosecutor will describe to you in more detail later in the agenda. In its first case, the ECCC reached a final judgment in February 2012 convicting Kaing Guek Eav or Duch (director of the infamous S-21 or Tuol Sleng prison and torture centre) for crimes against humanity and war crimes and sentencing him to life imprisonment.
The ECCC is now working on an even more extensive and complex trial covering crimes committed throughout the country. Case 002 has been termed the most significant case in international legal history that all surviving senior leaders of the regime are now on trial (including the former Head of State, former Foreign Minister, and former President of the National Assembly and chief ideologue).
It was our concern to ensure that the trials would be meaningful for the Cambodian people – the victims of the crimes – that our government insisted that the court be established here in Cambodia and that Cambodian judges and officials form the majority.
The ECCC provides victim participation as civil parties – unprecedented in international criminal trials. And more than 160,000 people have so far come to sit in the public gallery and see the trial with their own eyes, while millions more have been able to follow it through live television and radio broadcasts. Through its outreach program the ECCC has reached people in the most remote parts of the country, keeping them abreast of developments in the court.
The legacy of the ECCC is already being felt in other ways too. Court administration is now being introduced into our national courts, and a centre for documentation including the archives from the ECCC is being established as a centre for public education and research. The Victims Support Section is participating in proposed programs of reparations and non-judicial measures.
But we are in a race against time. During the long years since 1979 many perpetrators, witnesses and victims have died, while those who survive grow older day by day. Those now on trial are in frail health, causing the court’s proceedings to be constantly delayed. The wheels of justice have moved too slowly, and a judgment needs to be reached quickly or it will be too late.
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen
In Cambodia, our determination to pursue the legal path in dealing with these crimes has been accompanied by a strong commitment to achieve national reconciliation.
The Paris Peace Agreements of 1991 accorded political legitimacy to the Khmer Rouge and, when UNTAC left Cambodia in 1993, the new coalition government had to cope with the Khmer Rouge continuing policy of civil war and destabilisation. We then launched a multi-faceted strategy involving political, legal, social, economic and military campaigns, including the 1994 legislation to Outlaw the Khmer Rouge. The “win-win” policy initiated by Samdach Techo Prime Minister Hun Sen formed the bedrock of the political platform of the Royal Government of Cambodia in the 1990s. Under this policy the Khmer Rouge were encouraged to rejoin society by being guaranteed their life; their livelihood; and their assets.
By the end of December 1998 we had managed to put an end to the Khmer Rouge political and military structure, and their ranks went on to be integrated into the mainstream. For the first time in some 500 years our entire country is now fully at peace and enjoying full stability, with no armed struggle or rebellion – a precious achievement indeed.
Cambodia can perhaps offer the lessons of this long and complex process of reconciliation. Some people are even starting to speak of “the Cambodian model”, seeing the former warring factions taking up the challenge of working together to develop the country on the road to prosperity.
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen
In Cambodia, reconciliation has not meant amnesia. To the contrary, we regard remembrance of the past and of the victims as an essential prerequisite to non-recurrence. You will see tangible signs of this concern for remembrance when you visit the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide tomorrow, and I hope you will also make time to visit our national memorial Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre, where each year we commemorate the genocide.
Allow me to conclude my opening remarks to talk about prevention of genocide, for we came here today to discuss how to avoid passing through that horror by preventing it from happening in the first place. We have learned from history that genocide does not spring up and seize a country without warning. And it does not occur when a country is genuinely at peace – a peace that involves all people living within its boundaries.
Like many other countries with us today, my country, Cambodia, has experienced centuries of intervention from abroad, both from neighbouring countries and those from far across the sea, often in the name of advancing a “mission civilisatrice” or“defending democracy and human rights”. We struggled and sacrificed to regain our national independence and sovereignty, and it is therefore with some reason that we respond cautiously to calls for “humanitarian intervention” or the more recent doctrine of the “responsibility to protect” (R2P). We look forward to discussion over the next two days on all these concepts and especially to hearing the views of other countries in our region on how to prevent genocide.
On this note I wish you a robust and fruitful discussion. I thank our main sponsor, Switzerland, together with our other partners, Argentina and Tanzania, for the collaborative spirit in which the forum has been organised.
I welcome you to the Kingdom of Cambodia and I declare open the 4th Regional Forum on the Prevention of Genocide.
Thank you!