High-Powered Meetings

First of all, I apologize for the lack of updates. The last week has been a bit slow here, but I will try to post more, perhaps talking a little bit about day-to-day life in Phnom Penh and Cambodia.

I will talk about a couple of neat encounters I had on Friday. First, my group, which is working on the HIV/AIDS legal rights manual, took a field trip to visit NCHADS, which is an off-shoot of the Cambodian Ministry of Health and responsible for, among other things, the country's response to HIV/AIDS. We were lucky enough to meet with Dr. Mean Chhi-Vun, the director of NCHADS, who spoke with us for about 45 minutes about the status of Cambodia's fight against AIDS. Cambodia has struggled a lot with AIDS in the past few years and in fact has the highest AIDS rate in Asia. However, apparently things are starting to turn around and recent statistics showed that the infection rate is slowing down.

NCHADS has been involved with and received funding from, among other groups, the Clinton Foundation and it seems they have become focused on the care of persons with AIDS in addition to the prevention of AIDS, which dominated the government's early work on HIV/AIDS. More and more anti-retroviral (I hope that is correct) drugs are becoming available and there are more and more HIV clinics opening up all over the country.

My second interesting encounter of the day was a presentation we saw on Friday afternoon from Richard Rodgers, who is a lawyer and deputy head of the Defence Support Section at the Khmer Rouge Trials. The trials are finally scheduled to get underway early next year after a lot of debate and disagreement about the rules and structure. Richard gave us the background on the trials and talked about some of the challenges in working for the defence side in a genocide/crimes against humanity trial.

Some people find it hard to believe that anyone could work for the defence of someone like Duch, who ran the Tuol Sleng prison and is the most senior member of the Khmer Rouge still alive. However, for these trials to be effective and fair, the defendants need to have a good defence to ensure that the prosecutors and the judges do their jobs.

There are a lot of obstacles in the way of making these trials fair and effective. Since the KR genocide happened about 30 years ago, it can be harder to obtain evidence. Further, most of the senior members of the Khmer Rouge have already died. Pol Pot, for example, died in 1998. Also, there are concerns about impartiality. Unlike other international tribunals, the KR trials are taking place in Cambodia (just outside Phnom Penh) and with Cambodian judges, many of whom likely had some connection to the genocide, either with family members who were killed or perhaps their own involvement with the KR. So, there are concerns that the judges may be somewhat biased and will not conduct a fair trial.

In any case, it was really interesting to hear about the background to the trials. It is definitely a unique time to be in Cambodia with the KR trials about to start. This marks a significant point in Cambodia's history and it is fascinating to be in the country to witness all of this happening.