Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Somebody should tell them...

...it is *their* trial.

That being the Genocide trial of former Khmer Rouge, and they being the people of Cambodia. There have been some pretty ugly rumors that the Hun Sen regime has been intentionally minimizing the matter of the tribunal in local media while milking the U.N. and other international sponsors of the tribunals for as much as they can.

Now this report comes out basically stating that a tiny percentage of the people of Cambodia have any real understanding of what the tribunal is. In fairness, one should note both of these two excerpts:
According to the survey - which was conducted by the University of California's Human Rights Centre in September and October - 39 per cent of respondents said they had no knowledge about the tribunal, while 46 per cent said they had "a little" knowledge about the court.

...

Tribunal spokeswoman Helen Jarvis said the court welcomed the report but said much of the data collected was "open to interpretation."

"This data shows that 15 per cent of respondents had a moderate or higher knowledge of the tribunal, so it could also be understood as showing that 61 per cent had at least some knowledge," she said.

"This also contradicts an International Republican Institute report that 72 per cent of people had knowledge about the court," she added.
Hmm, vested interests on both sides of the argument.

Seems pretty clear though that if part of the goal is to get victims of the Khmer Rouge reign-of-terror to come forward, there really is no upper limit on the amount of effort that should be made to publicize the tribunal...

...unless some one in power now has some skeletons in the closet from back in the dark days.

2 comments:

L.Douglas Garrett said...

Compare and Contrast time, ladies and gentlemen.

Here is the UC Human Rights Center survey and analysis, data as of September 2008...

and here is the International Republican Institute survey and analysis, data as of Feb 2008.

***
Reminder to assist casual readers: The ECCC, or Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, is the formal name for the trial(s).

Purr said...

talking to yourself again, I see!