Putting
a price on a human life has never been easy.
Hospitals constantly face financial pressures,
but patients’ right to privacy ensures such awkward subjects are handled behind
closed doors.
Courts, however, and the public’s right to
know, are a different story.
The exorbitant costs often associated with
delivering justice are at times kicked around with as much force as a political
football before an election.
In Cambodia, this has remained a sore point
since 1998, when Prime Minister Hun Sen served the United Nations with his wish
list after three decades of war had left him at the helm of a ravaged nation.
Hun Sen needed money and, despite his
misgivings, a UN-endorsed tribunal mandated with finding justice for as many as
two million people who perished under the Khmer Rouge and the traumatised survivors
who watched helplessly as ultra-Maoists annihilated their country’s culture.
Such a tribunal had been touted since 1979,
when a Vietnamese invasion ended Pol Pot’s bloody reign, but had remained
unrealised.
Amid the arguments were the dirtiest of questions.
How much? And who should pay?
A figure of $56 million was costed for the
first three years of the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts in Cambodia
(ECCC).
But this figure would eventually triple, and
critics have found some traction for their arguments that the tribunal was
flawed and the money wasted.
“It’s difficult to monetise the value of
justice for victims of mass crimes, but all recent examples have shown that
prosecution of international crimes such as genocide and crimes against humanity
requires substantial resources,” ECCC spokesman Lars Olsen says.
The ECCC has spent about $150 million since
its investigations began in 2006.
The biggest funders ($70 million to date) are
the Japanese, and cynics argue that Tokyo enjoys bankrolling the tribunal to
embarrass its traditional enemy China, which backed, traded with and sent aid
to, the Khmer Rouge.
“It’s not a great amount of money,” says Helen
Jarvis, a senior adviser to the Cambodian government and a staunch supporter of
the ECCC since its inception.
“It’s about the cost of a bridge. Is one
bridge worth more than justice for so many? I don’t think so.”
But others, including Brad Adams of New
York-based Human Rights Watch, are unimpressed, claiming political interference
has tainted the ECCC and the tribunal is delivering too little, too late.
“After five years and more than $150 million,
the court has tried just one defendant,” Adams says.
That defendant, Duch, has been sentenced to
life imprisonment.
Before the ECCC in Case 002 are party
ideologue Nuon Chea, 85, former head of state Khieu Samphan, 80, and ex-foreign
minister Ieng Sary, 86.
They are the surviving members of the Khmer
Rouge standing committee that wrote and deployed government policy.
Allegations levelled at them include crimes
against humanity, murder and genocide.
Members of that committee have always been the
main targets of tribunal investigators.
The court has heard grisly evidence of mass
graves, cannibalism, rape, forced labour and bizarre forms of torture that
ranged from electrocution to being fed to fish.
Olsen insists the ECCC isn’t costing more than
other tribunals; in fact, he says, it’s relatively cheap.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia has spent more than $2 billion since 1993 to secure 63
convictions.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
has spent $1.4 billion since 1994, winning 44 convictions.
The ECCC has spent about $30 million a year
since investigations began five years ago.
Costs are kept down by combining locals with
international staff in a hybrid system of Cambodian and international laws.
ECCC sources say foreign judges and lawyers
are being paid between $120,000 and $150,000 a year – hardly exorbitant
compared with what a defence attorney in the US or a prosecutor in London
earns.
Local ECCC staff make about half that amount.
But the carping by critics has been
relentless, and Adams is among the harshest, particularly over whether further
indictments should be issued for Case 003 and 004, involving five lower-ranked
cadres allegedly involved in the slaughter.
Adams’ claims are ambitious and a little
shrill. He has said there is wide agreement in UN circles that the ECCC “is a
mistake that should never be repeated elsewhere” and the UN’s reputation in
Cambodia is at stake unless it acts “to reverse the ECCC’s descent into a
quagmire”.
The ECCC has taken significant steps to reduce
costs and hasten the pace of hearings amid fears the three before the court
will die of old age before justice is served.
Costs aside, there are some real advantages to
the hybrid court system.
Importantly, justice is rendered to
international standards, and hybrids tend to be more respectful of sovereignty
than fully fledged international courts.
This mix of the domestic and international
also increases the court’s legitimacy in the public’s eye.
That recognition is displayed on the manicured
lawns outside the ECCC, where survivors of Pol Pot’s regime queue with monks,
farmers and schoolchildren, all hoping for a front-row seat at the most
important show in town.
About 100,000 people have visited the court.
Hearings are broadcast live, and most
Cambodians are hearing for the first time what happened when their families and
friends – like their livelihoods and culture – were obliterated in one of the
great tragedies of the 20th century.
Once Case 002 concludes, the ECCC will
probably have racked up a $200 million bill: about $100 for every person who
died in this country when the Khmer Rouge ran what it called Democratic
Kampuchea.
And, according to Lars Olsen, Helen Jarvis and
the thousands who arrive here each week in buses and cattle trucks to catch a
glimpse of Pol Pot’s surviving comrades, that’s not a bad deal.
Luke Hunt
The Phnom Penh Post
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