Yuk Chhang's Journey to Justice
One man's fight to ensure the voice of justice is finally heard in Cambodia
Brian Eads
Gunning his SUV down dirt tracks flanked by rice paddies in Battambang, in northwestern Cambodia, Youk Chhang trembled with rage. It was autumn 1995, and he was about to confront the man responsible for the deaths of his brother-in-law and niece, and the disappearance of his uncle.
Chhang pictured the man he was looking for: tough and strong, Chhoung had been the chief of a village where families from the capital Phnom Penh had been forcibly relocated during Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime during the 1970s. Under Chhoung's brutal rule, Chhang and his family suffered horrendous privation. The teenage Chhang watched helplessly as his brother-in-law and niece starved to death. A favourite uncle, Keo Chhoeun, disappeared and was never seen again.
Now, almost two decades later, the tall and strong Cambodian-American was back. If he will fight, I will beat him up, Chhang thought.
He found the former village chief sitting bare-chested outside a small house weaving a basket. He was old and skinny, no longer the imposing figure of Chhang's memory.
''I lived in your village during Pol Pot,'' Chhang told him. The chief said he didn't remember.
Dissatisfied, Chhang decided he wanted to uncover the truth about those years – to confront the past and lay his terrible memories and those of thousands of Cambodians to rest.
''This,'' says Chhang, gesturing towards the image on his computer screen in his office in Phnom Penh, ''is the only photo I have from my childhood.'' The black-and-white snapshot shows the wedding of his sister Tithsorye, in Phnom Penh in 1968. Chhang, in shorts, is one of eight people pictured. A decade later, the other seven were dead.
They were among approximately 1.7 million Cambodians, over 20 percent of the population, who lost their lives between 1975 and 1979. Pol Pot died a decade ago while hiding in the jungle, and none of the surviving senior leaders was brought to trial or punished. Indeed, many have lived openly and freely in Cambodia.
For more than a decade, Chhang has worked tirelessly to remedy this by assembling a unique historical archive of the Khmer Rouge era. He hopes that this unvarnished record of what happened will provide vital evidence for prosecutions.
Sometime this year, five senior Khmer Rouge leaders will finally be tried by a special tribunal – the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). ''We are the logical conclusion to Youk Chhang's work,'' says the ECCC's co-prosecutor Robert Petit. ''We can show the Cambodian people how justice can be done.''
But Chhang's mission hasn't ended. He is committed to teaching Cambodians about their troubled history and helping them heal their deep psychological wounds.
Youk Chhang's extraordinary journey was only beginning when the invading Vietnamese army drove Pol Pot from power in 1979. ''Suddenly all the Khmer Rouge disappeared from the village,'' Chhang remembers.
His father had died when he was a boy, and all his older male relatives were dead or missing. Now, at 17, he returned to Phnom Penh with his mother and other surviving relatives.
But life in the desolate capital offered little hope. At his mother's urging, Chhang smuggled himself into Thailand and ended up at Khao-I-Dang, a refugee camp near the Cambodian border.
Chhang taught himself English by playing Scrabble and in 1987, aged 26, was accepted for resettlement in the United States. He got a job making Venetian blinds in Dallas, Texas, polished his English and enrolled at the University of Texas to study political science.
While at university, he joined a campaign to persuade the US government to help bring Khmer Rouge leaders to trial, taking part in demons-trations and handing out leaflets. Few people were interested. ''People said: ‘You from Cambodia? Did it really happen?' Then they walked away,'' Chhang recalls. ''I could not force people to believe unless I could prove it.''
In September 1991, after graduating, he returned to Cambodia for almost two years to work as an electoral officer for United Nations-sponsored elections. Then, in 1994, Yale University secured funding under the US government's newly passed Cambodian Genocide Justice Act to document the Khmer Rouge's mass killings and hired Chhang as its field representative.
Chhang wanted desperately to contribute, but returning to Cambodia would come at a cost. He had married an Asian-American, and they had two children. The couple agreed that his wife should stay in Texas with their children. Henceforth, Chhang would be a long-distance husband and father. ''I miss my kids every single minute,'' he says. ''They are my strength, my discipline, my commitment.''
-Picture taken by myself, Kenneth, during my missions trip to Phnom Penh, 2008
I really really salute Chhang for the effort & contribution he has made for his own people.
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