Justice key to ensuring peace in Cambodia, says Catholic nun

A Catholic missionary-nun working in Cambodia is advocating a path of healing and reconciliation in the national process to which many religious communities and civil society associations have dedicated themselves and which is underway through the trial of Khmer Rouge leaders.

“In order to promote reconciliation, peace, and justice, we had to be on both sides of the border and make friends with Cambodians from all warring factions,” Denise Coghlan, a member of the Sisters of Mercy congregation told FIDES in an interview. 

The Australian nun moved to the Cambodia-Thailand border in 1988 and has been active in Cambodia since 1990. Her congregation has been ministering in the Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam area since 1987.

Sister Coghlan, the first foreign sister in Cambodia after Pol Pot’s time in leadership in Cambodia (1975-1979), works with the Jesuit Refugee Service and its Cambodian team Metta Karuna (mercy and loving kindness), that includes a number of Cambodians, some Providence Sisters, and some Jesuit priests from around the world.  

At the JRS reflection center in Cambodia, visitors come to heal the struggles they faced in a safe, interfaith environment though the international court failed in its mission with the tardy progress in trial. 

Sister Coghlan coordinates educational, health, and rural development programmes in several provinces, advocating for land titles and for services for the poorest and helping those who have been affected by landmines.

In 1997 when the International Campaign to Ban Landmines was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Sister  Coghlan was part of the 11-person delegation in attendance to receive the award.  

Khmer Rouge Tribunal

After 19 years and just two successful convictions, the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Cambodia is nearing its end. Most architects of the genocide in the Southeast Asian nation are already dead or too infirm to stand trial by this time.

The only case for the brutal atrocities committed by Pol Pot’s regime is an appeal by Khieu Samphan, who was convicted in 2018.

Cambodia’s National Assembly has unanimously voted to conclude the special court’s activities this year-end. In November 2021, King Norodom Sihamoni signed off on legislation that enabled the tribunal to finalize its mission within the next three years.

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), also known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, was set up in 2003 by the Cambodian government and the United Nations.

The court was given the responsibility to identify and prosecute those who committed atrocities during the rule of the ultra-Maoist political party, led by Pol Pot, from 1975 to 1979 in Cambodia. 

Charges against members of Khmer Rouge include mass murder, torture, and genocide of Cambodia’s Cham and Vietnamese ethnic minorities.

In four years time, more than 2 million Cambodians were either killed or died of starvation, overwork, and disease as the country’s population was redistributed to collective farms and construction projects. All local Catholic clergy, nuns and catechists perished during the Khmer Rouge regime.

The ECCC is a joint project between the UN and the Cambodian government and judgments are made in accordance with Cambodia’s laws so that they get legitimacy in the country by avoiding the allegation levelled against many UN-sponsored trials in the past that they are neo-colonial interventions. By giving it a local touch, the ECCC wanted to ensure that those prosecuted would actually go to jail.

Political interference

The court has dealt with four cases. The first case led to the successful prosecution of ‘Comrade Duch’ (Kaing Guek Eav), who ran the notorious prison S-21, – a former school building that housed more than 18,000 men, women, and children, before being sent for execution in the Killing Fields.

Under the second, Khmer Rouge Chairman Khieu Samphan and ‘Brother Number Two’ – Pol Pot’s second-in-command – Nuon Chea were both convicted in 2018 on genocide charges.

Chief architect Pol Pot died in 1998 and his military chief Ta Mok died in custody in 2006 before the trials started.

‘Brother Number Three’ Ieng Sary died of heart failure before a verdict was out. His wife Ieng Thirith, who served as minister of social affairs under the Khmer Rouge, was declared unfit for trial due to Alzheimer’s disease.

Aged 87, Ao An, who was charged with crimes against humanity, died at his house in 2020. Nuon Chea, considered the Khmer Rouge’s chief ideologue, appealed his conviction before dying in 2019, aged 93, while still awaiting the outcome.

From day one, the ECCC has had to face increasing pressure from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) as the country’s all-powerful prime minister Hun Sen himself was a former Khmer Rouge member.

When UN lawyers tried to broaden the scope of the trial, Cambodian judges pushed back. The political interference brought criticism from international human rights agencies, including Human Rights Watch, which described the two convictions in 2014 as “too little, too late.” It termed the court as a “fundamentally flawed” failure. 

Initially, Hun Sen welcomed the court; hoping to get an endorsement from the international community that refused to support his Vietnam-backed government. Later, he backtracked, fearing that the threat of mass trials would undermine the country’s fragile peace.