ECCC outreach report

Results from Outreach about the Extraordinary Chambers: Lessons Learned during Rural Dialogues

I. Summary
There are more than thirty programs being designed or already in the implementation phase for outreach to the Cambodian people about the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. While their purpose is largely the dissemination of information about the court, there is widespread agreement that the process of outreach is, in the eyes of Cambodians, of paramount importance for the success of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (hereafter referred to as “Extraordinary Chambers,” the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, “KRT,” or “ECCC”).

While it will be up to the court itself to conduct a series of fair trials, the responsibility to manage public expectations for the court, invoke a sense of ownership of the court among Cambodians, and ensure a positive legacy for the court falls squarely on the shoulders of outreach. In many ways, the public’s interpretation of the Extraordinary Chambers is equally as important as the legal process itself in effecting a favorable outcome from the ECCC. If Cambodians misinterpret fair trial procedure as political interference because of a lack of information and understanding, they will likely view the Extraordinary Chambers as a failure.

From this perspective on the role of outreach, the International Center for Conciliation (ICfC) has identified a number of places in the current network of outreach activities, 1 including those of the Extraordinary Chambers and the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (UNAKRT), where programs could be revamped to better fit the needs of rural Cambodians. By conducting dialogues and interviews in rural communities in different locations around the country, the ICfC draws from three case study locations in its presentation of public feedback about the Extraordinary Chambers. This public feedback was put into a longer report as well as this briefing paper.

By choosing the particular format of a series of small-scale dialogues, the ICfC was able to achieve a much deeper understanding of public concerns for the ECCC in a way that enabled us to formulate possible solutions. For example, while it might be made clear from a call-in radio program or a large public forum that there is a general lack of understanding of fair trial principles, such outreach tactics, which mostly serve as a platform for the voicing of concerns, do not typically reveal solutions or allow for an intimate exchange of ideas. However, through extended face-to-face conversation with Cambodians, it becomes possible to comprehend how outreach can most efficiently meet public needs. In terms of improving public comprehension of fair trial principles, the ICfC asserts that it is not merely a matter of increasing legal education as this leaves many confused and thus bored. Rather it is a matter of finding ways to relate relevant information to the public, relying on those analogies that resonate ontologically with people.

The ICfC conducted five dialogues in three locations with a total of eighty villagers attending. The dialogues—an exchange of villagers’ attitudes and information about the ECCC given by facilitators—were conducted in Takeo province, Phnom Penh’s Dong Kor district, and Kampot province. In each location, every dialogue was attended by the same group of participants, an average of twenty-seven villagers per village. The dialogues were conducted over a six-month period. It is important to note here that this report does not reflect statistically valid results. Eighty villagers in three villages in three provinces across the country is not a representative sample. Rather, we hope the reader will find useful the anecdotal feedback from three case-studies in the Cambodian countryside, the dialogue model employed as an outreach tool, the response from rural Cambodians to this process, and the lessons we learned from the pilot project that should inform anybody doing similar work in the future.

This brief paper highlights the concerns of the participants in the ICfC dialogues and provides a number of recommendations for the outreach program of the ECCC and UNAKRT on how it might adjust its program to reap greater success.

The ICfC identifies the following manageable concerns that need to be addressed:

The statements of participants in the ICfC dialogues help piece together a picture for how rural Cambodians comprehend the ECCC. Participants in the ICfC dialogues gave a diverse range of comments on the subject of history, the ECCC, justice, healing, and politics. Many of their comments informed the staff of the ICfC as to how outreach programs might be reformed to better match the interests and needs of the participants. Though we do not generalize and report that the comments of villagers in three villages throughout Cambodia are representative of the whole Cambodian population, consideration of the ideas and concerns they raised as well the questions asked underscore the above-mentioned places in outreach activities that require improvement. In the following pages, we group their comments into the themes of:

Based on the concerns and comments presented, the ICfC has put together a list of recommendations for the outreach program of the Extraordinary Chambers and UNAKRT. Our recommendations center on an increase in the capacity for conducting widespread dialogues in villages, an activity that emphasizes face-to-face contact in an environment that inspires comfort and trust among rural Cambodians. We feel that several of the concerns raised can be addressed by engaging in such direct discussion with Cambodians. To this end, we present a tested model for this type of dialogue. Though this model is more intensive and time consuming, it should be conducted in conjunction with more far-reaching yet superficial activities such as radio broadcasting or the production of posters.

a. Justice, impunity, and the rule of law
By and large the participants in the ICfC’s dialogues remain unaware of fair trial procedures. During the ICfC dialogues, they often spoke of justice as a tool for revenge, reconciliation, or the realignment of an immoral society. One older female participant stated:

Participant: If they allowed me to attend, of course I would go to attend [the ECCC]…I want to know that the leader of the Khmer Rouge gets punishment that is fit for the suffering of the Cambodian people.2

Facilitator: What are your expectations about the prosecution of the Khmer Rouge leaders? And what do you think you can get from the prosecution [of the Khmer Rouge]?

Participant: It seems like when we are angry, if somebody hits us then we have to punch that person in order to relieve our anger.3

When participants state the above or that they “want to condemn those who killed others,”4 one may infer that to them, the job of the Extraordinary Chambers is to facilitate revenge upon the regime’s leaders.

Many participants expressed curiosity about how the ECCC would deal with deceased Khmer Rouge leaders with questions such as this one: “So like how about the people who committed the crimes but have already died? I want to see how they will try Pol Pot and Ta Mok who already died.”5

Others felt that justice for crimes committed during the reign of Democratic Kampuchea had nothing to do with providing a fair trial:

Participant: I don’t know why the court needs witnesses and evidence. Because a million people or more died, so what more evidence do they need?6

Expectations for the Extraordinary Chambers went hand in hand with mistrust stemming from criticisms of what many perceive as a corrupt national court system. In this sense, there is an expectation that the ECCC, particularly because of the United Nations’ participation, may establish a legacy of a court system that provides true justice. Almost all of the participants in our dialogues expressed no confidence in the Cambodian court system. For some, but not all, trust only comes with the presence of the United Nations (UN):

Participant: If the KRT is international then I would trust it, but if the national courts are participating, then I don’t trust them because the court is only reliant on the man in power so you know what I mean. That’s why the people don’t really trust the court.7

When asked why he felt a lack of trust for a court run by Cambodian judges, one participant responded, “Because the Khmer courts take bribes and turn black to white, white to black, right to wrong and wrong to right.”8 Another participant echoed this sentiment: “If you don’t have money you will never win the case. If you have money then you will win. When we hear this, we never trust the court.”9 In another moment from a different dialogue, an older man complained, “If it is only the Khmer court then it will not be fair because most Khmer people are corrupt.”10

Comments such as these relate to a concern that participants do not understand enough about the Extraordinary Chambers to see how the UN role can serve as a check on what is widely considered by many to be a judicial system that does not adhere to the rule of law. They also reflect that for many Cambodians, the concept of justice and trial procedure is something that can only be related to an extremely localized view of the national court system. To the dialogue participants, justice was also an abstract binary opposite to what they perceive as a society plagued by impunity. Thus, if a rural Cambodian is asked for their interpretation of what a fair trial looks like, one might find a vision of judges who do not take bribes and who punish criminals. An emphasis on the role of the defense, the rights of the accused, or an understanding of why a suspect might be a acquitted are completely absent from participants’ responses from the dialogues and interviews the ICfC conducted around the country. For some who expect the tribunal to be a process of punishment as opposed to one that meets fair trial standards, the expectations are not only high, but also misguided and poised to create disappointment.

b. Responsibility for atrocities: tension between former mid and lower-level Khmer Rouge and their victims
The hostility that many dialogue participants expressed toward those former middle and lower level Khmer Rouge who lived and worked in their village and commune during the reign of Democratic Kampuchea should be considered as paramount to anybody conducting outreach about the Extraordinary Chambers. While the job of outreach is not to pacify the Cambodian population, representatives of the ECCC have primarily used either the jurisdiction of the Extraordinary Chambers or subtle threats as the only answer to questions about trying lower level cadre. According to our dialogues, this approach leaves the Cambodians who ask such questions unsatisfied and unclear. One ECCC staff person asked Cambodians at a public forum:

I think that nobody wants to lose [the peace in Cambodia] and go back to fighting and killing. So we have to decide what should happen as a society. Should we say that we should have peace and forget all the crimes and not do anything? Should we say that we should try all the people and risk losing that peace?11

Another responded, “Why don’t we try the lower levels? It is because justice and national reconciliation and peace have to go hand in hand.”12 To a question about prosecuting crimes committed before 1975, a representative from the office of the prosecution answered, “We implement the law, we do not make it.”13

Such language was seen by some Cambodian participants as threatening and unhelpful. Moreover it runs the risk of leaving victims with the feeling that their experience has been invalidated. As true as the answers might be, it may go toward fueling a negative interpretation among Cambodians of what may actually be a fair trial process. Through more direct contact and discussion, it would be possible for the outreach team of the Extraordinary Chambers to acquire a better understanding of Cambodian concerns and which answers best assuage and manage their feelings of distress and suspicion.

For many participants the embodiment of the idea of the Khmer Rouge, and “Angkar,” organization—the vague and elusive name that the average Cambodian was given to call the government and infrastructure of the Communist Party of Kampuchea—does not extend beyond their range of tangible experience. As one participant put it:

We only knew the unit leader or the commune leader. We only met these leaders or the village chief. They would come from a different village to rule here so when the Vietnamese came, they just ran away. So when we talk about the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, I ask myself, “Who is the Khmer Rouge?” Even me, I don’t know.14

Statements such as these are indicative of the level of understanding that rural Cambodians have about the Khmer Rouge and their crimes. There were many villagers with this perspective who attended the ICfC dialogues. For these villagers, a trial that prosecutes only the leaders seems insufficient:

Participant: What about the crimes that we have seen with our own eyes? Eyewitness accounts. If you have seen by your own eyes, like when they kill people or use the knife to cut the stomach—many people have seen these crimes committed—the question is who will be the responsible one for these crimes?

What I mean is that the superiors were the most responsible and that they have the prime responsibility but the subordinates cannot be excused because Pol Pot ordered them. They cannot say they are just victims as well.15

During the ICfC dialogues, facilitators showed villagers cartoon depictions of the types of crimes that have been deemed crimes against humanity in international law. These cartoons—a production of the Khmer Institute for Democracy—portrayed mass executions, monks being defrocked, and torture. The cartoon depictions resonated with the villagers, but also left them debating about whether or not the ECCC should prosecute middle and lower level Khmer Rouge for carrying out these crimes. One villager reacting to the discussion and the cartoons said, “About the punishment [for these crimes], if recently I saw [the Khmer Rouge from my region] I would kill them immediately.”16

ICfC facilitators met several such comments and gave the answer that the ECCC has a particular mandate to follow and so will only be focusing on the “senior leaders of Democratic Kampuchea and those who were most responsible.”17 Yet it is clear that there is both tension and confusion about this mandate. While no participant felt that the former leaders of Democratic Kampuchea should go free, many felt that responsibility for the crimes of the Khmer Rouge lays at least in part with those lower level cadre who were based on the village and commune levels. We believe that clearly understanding this public concern that involves such a large proportion of Cambodian society will help to guide outreach projects. Explaining through sustained face-to-face discussion and information dissemination may be the only way to truly address such a problem. Moreover, the process of the Extraordinary Chambers presents those conducting outreach with a unique opportunity to address the tension between survivors and those former lower and mid-level Khmer Rouge cadre who abused their authority.

c. Access to information
Many of the concerns raised in this paper regarding justice, the rule of law, and responsibility for atrocities stem from a lack of information coming out of the Extraordinary Chambers and UNAKRT that is useful and comprehensible to rural Cambodians. In addition, the ICfC’s concerns related to Cambodian expectations for the Extraordinary Chambers and their misinterpretation of the ECCC’s progress derive from obstacles in the flow and style of information between the court and the public. Understanding Cambodians’ confusion about the ECCC and some of the ways they perceive its comments and actions can go a long way to designing an outreach program that truly reaches out to the public.

This is particularly true in terms of how the Extraordinary Chambers and the UNAKRT explain what is often a valid reason for maintaining silence on particular issues related to the court. The Cambodian context is one of fear, suspicion, and mistrust—especially when it comes to justice.18 In such an environment, the expectation among many Cambodians is that any justice or legal process is corrupt and political. Moreover, in dealings about justice for the crimes of the Khmer Rouge, the assumption of impunity has become the norm. Perhaps these are the reasons that participants in the ICfC dialogues came to such quick judgment about the integrity of the Extraordinary Chambers. Below are some examples of the assumptions made by Cambodians in light of the ECCC’s silence on various issues.

In reference to why the ECCC has taken as long as it has to set up and get started, one participant assumed it was “because the [government was] afraid to be incriminated…that’s why they delayed, I understand very well.”19 As another assumed:

Participant: If [the government] was willing, they would not have taken so long and they should be faster than that. Because those who are related to [the Khmer Rouge] have a hand in the progress of the court.20

These latter comments are in reference to the fact that top leaders of Cambodia have a past as Khmer Rouge cadre. Because of this, many Cambodians might feel afraid to discuss their nation’s recent past and might feel that it is impossible for the ECCC to successfully provide impartial justice. When it is not clear to Cambodians like the participants who attended the ICfC dialogues why the Extraordinary Chambers is silent about a particular issue or why it took so long to get started, this is one of the assumptions that arises.

In another example, the participant at the ICfC dialogue speaks below about the disagreement over the internal rules for the Extraordinary Chambers. This is one participant who claims to listen to the radio quite often:

Participant: Will the Khmer Rouge Tribunal succeed if the judges do not get along? I don’t really believe the Cambodians.21

Even if the United Nations is there, I still don’t trust it. I just don’t trust it. It’s too many cases that we have seen corrupt.22

From what he learned on the radio, this old man living in Kampot province assumes that the judges of the ECCC do not get along because the Cambodian judges are corrupt. Such an assumption is based on this man’s life experience and is not countered by the content of the explanation coming from the ECCC or UNAKRT that he hears on the radio when he tunes in on a daily basis.

For some of the participants in the ICfC dialogues, the content of the radio broadcasts—the main form of gathering information about the Extraordinary Chambers for those Cambodians we met during our work—was superfluous and not of use. According to one male primary school teacher in his early thirties, “I learn something about the ECCC from the radio, but it is not so interesting to me because I am busy with my family business. It is not really something important for daily living.”23

Another participant, a 20 year-old woman from Takeo province described her efforts to learn about the ECCC: “I do not really hear much,” she said, “I am not really interested to listen. Sometimes I listen to the radio, but I prefer to hear songs on the radio.”24 A former Khmer Rouge 35 year-old male farmer from Kampot, informed the team of ICfC facilitators, “I never listen to the radio or the TV about the KRT. I just have a small radio with local channels on it.”25

Others felt that broadcasts were too confusing and complicated. Many of the ICfC facilitators—all university-aged Cambodians—reported a lack of interest in the Extraordinary Chambers due to feeling intimidated by the information presented in radio and television broadcasts.

Also regarding the flow of information from the Extraordinary Chambers and UNAKRT is the sense of ownership that Cambodians feel for the court; the extent to which they feel it was created to bring them justice. In this project, the ICfC identified a correlation between understanding of, contact with, and access to the Extraordinary Chambers and feeling an attachment to the ECCC. As one group of participants expressed during a dialogue:

Facilitator: This is the location of the ECCC along Rd. #4 near Phnom Penh. Not so far from here. Would you like to attend?

Participant: I am afraid that they would not allow us to attend. There will be millions of people who will want to attend. If there are three million people who come to watch, where will they sit? I don’t know how there will be space with only 600 seats.

Participant (other): We would like to know about the tribunal and it is also a relief from the tension. We only just watch the TV or listen to the radio.26

During one of the ICfC dialogues, a participant expressed a feeling of distance from the ECCC when she shared the regret that she would feel if the ECCC collapsed:
Participant: I will regret it because I cannot see that [those responsible] will be brought to court. But whether or not I am satisfied it is still all up to the [current] leader and I don’t know what we can say. Nobody will care about my concerns whether or not I am satisfied.27

While most of the Cambodians who took part in the dialogues shared similar sentiments of alienation from the Extraordinary Chambers, many of these same individuals reported a shift in their feeling after the dialogues. The same was true for the ICfC facilitators. As one 24 year old female attorney and ICfC facilitator said during an exit interview:

Before I joined the [ICfC] program, I didn’t much care about the Khmer Rouge regime and when I joined it made me know more. I thought it was other people’s affair to know about this. I am not a historian or a person who writes a book so I was not really interested. Now that I have heard more about it, I really want to know new information about Pol Pot and the ECCC.28

One of the dialogue participants stated, “After the second dialogue, I started to listen more and more [to the radio] and I grew more interested.”29

The latter statement suggests that a shift in perception and attitude may be possible with the use of face-to-face dialogue as a tool for outreach. It also suggests that such face-to-face discussion might help Cambodians understand more clearly the information broadcast on the radio about the ECCC. While the participants in the ICfC dialogues all stated that they had never engaged in public discussion about justice and history in the way they were doing in their gatherings with the ICfC, during private, follow-up interviews, they unanimously voiced their preference to discuss such issues in public. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that the participants interviewed also unanimously stated that when it came to sharing personal or extremely painful stories, they would prefer to talk one-on-one with an interviewer. In one instance:

Participant: I prefer to discuss these topics in a group because people can share ideas with each other….It is better to have more participants to share their opinion together…It is a good chance to let the participants speak what they have in their minds. It is especially good to do this with such young facilitators. Also having many participants sharing their ideas is good because people can share their different stories about suffering. Even if it is just one person sharing we can all listen. Even if we just listen to one person, it is important to listen and get the idea from them, especially from the older people so the information can go to the younger generation. 30

While the above statement shows clear support for discussion about the Extraordinary Chambers—particularly in a public setting—it is important to question the extent to which those participants from the ICfC dialogues disseminate the information provided during the meeting around the village. During follow up interviews, participants revealed that they did not and would not organize any sort of meeting with their family or other villagers in order to share information from the ICfC dialogues, KID flipcharts, or the ECCC booklets. Rather, if the topic came up during casual conversation, participants indicated that they would share what amounts to an essence of the dialogue with some amount of facts and stories provided by the facilitators and other participants.31 This suggests that outreach programs should not rely on rural Cambodians as the medium to conduct information about the ECCC throughout the nation. Nevertheless, it is likely that some effect of face-to-face discussions will extend beyond those villagers who attended the meeting.

Even if the ECCC and UNAKRT boost their hours on the radio or television to address the lack of understanding of the Extraordinary Chambers among Cambodians, this will likely not be enough. This is because understanding and interest in the court among rural Cambodians is not only about their access to information, but also about access to the right kind of information in the right environment. Moreover, generating interest as well as a sense of ownership of the Extraordinary Chambers among rural Cambodians may be more about creating a safe and familiar environment for them to share their attitudes and concerns than about the type of information disseminated. For practitioners of outreach, this is to say it might be more about listening than speaking.

While our emphasis in this paper is on dialogue, materials are also an important factor to be considered in terms of running an outreach program that resonates with rural Cambodians. The ICfC team employed in the dialogues as a visual aid flipcharts produced by the Khmer Institute for Democracy. While the charts were designed to be an education tool, the ICfC found them more effective as a conversation supplement. Photographs of the Extraordinary Chambers building inspired conversation as did archive photographs taken during the reign of Democratic Kampuchea. Participants requested more depictions of the Khmer Rouge era, particularly photographs of the regime’s leaders.

However, the pages of the flipchart that provided information about defense rights and the different roles of the chambers in the ECCC met with boredom among the participants because of the legalistic explanation provided on the chart. Except for the few older villagers who listen regularly to the radio, participants in the ICfC dialogues had no knowledge whatsoever of the court system or the legal lexicon, including such words as “prosecutor” and “judge.” We also found that pamphlets and booklets that had more words than pictures met with little success. The latter point should not be surprising, given that in Cambodia, 50% of the men and 71% of the women are functionally illiterate.32

Based on its experience with these rural dialogues, the ICfC provides the following recommendations to the outreach program of the ECCC and UNAKRT:

1 For some information summarizing outreach projects in the implementation and design phase, the ICfC relied primarily on a matrix of outreach activities produced by the Cambodian Justice Initiative in January 2007. At the time this matrix was produced, there were at least eighteen groups—including NGOs and NGO coalitions, radio stations, and the Extraordinary Chambers/UNAKRT itself—either planning or implementing some form of outreach for the ECCC. Of that number, seven are committed only to radio and television broadcast programs, while five groups include television and radio programs among their portfolio of activities. In nineteen out of the twenty-nine different programs announced by these groups, the central focus does not entail direct contact with rural Cambodians. Aside from radio and television, those projects that do not bring rural Cambodians into the conversation about the tribunal in their own place of residence center on publications; such as the production and distribution of posters, pamphlets, or booklets. While the dissemination of the latter materials requires visits to villages, the main focus is not on public discussion with villagers. Further, there is a noticeable weight toward radio and television broadcasting as it makes up 41% of all outreach activities, twice the number of activities involving community-based meetings. According to the table, only two of the community meeting activities, including those produced by ICfC, focus primarily on the younger generation though in recent weeks a third has emerged.

2 ICfC, village A, Dialogue #2, Phnom Penh (Dong Kor District), October 22nd, 2006 (hereafter referred to as Village A, Dialogue #2)

3 ICfC, village B, dialogue #2, Kampot province, November 11th, 2006 (hereafter referred to as Village B, dialogue #2)

4 Village A, dialogue #2

5 Id.

6 Id.

7 ICfC, village A, dialogue #1, Phnom Penh (Dong Kor District), August 13th, 2006 (hereafter referred to as Village A, dialogue #1)

8 Id.

9 Id.

10 Village B, dialogue, #2

11 See transcript from CSD Public Forum on Justice and National Reconciliation, Siem Reap, March 2nd, 2007 in which Helen Jarvis is quoted.

12 See transcript from CSD Public Forum on Justice and National Reconciliation, Siem Reap, March 2nd, 2007 in which Reach Sambath is quoted.

13 See transcript from CSD Public Forum on Justice and National Reconciliation, Siem Reap, March 2nd, 2007 in which Alex Bates is quoted.

14 Village A, Dialogue #2

15 Village A, dialogue #1

16 Village A, dialogue #2

17 Cambodian Justice Initiative and Secretariat of the Khmer Rouge Trial Task Force, “Law on the Establishment of Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for the Prosecution of Crimes Committed During the Period of Democratic Kampuchea,” September 2005 (Unofficial English translation including amendments of October 2004). www.cambodia.gov.kh/krt/

18 See for example Caroline Hughes and Kim Sedara, “The Evolution of Democratic Process and Conflict Management in Cambodia: A Comparative Study of Three Cambodian Elections” (Working Paper 30), Cambodia Development Resource Institute, 2004; Fabienne Luco, “Between a Tiger and a Crocodile: Management of Local Conflicts in Cambodia,” SHS/FPH/PHS Section and UNESCO Culture of Peace Program, Cambodia, 2002; and Meas Nee with Joan Healy, Towards Restoring Life: Cambodian Villages, 3rd Edition, Battambang: Krom Akphiwat Phum, 1999.

19 Village A, dialogue #1

20 Id.

21 ICfC interview with 65 year old male farmer, Kampot province, November 27th 2006

22 ICfC, village C, dialogue #1, Takeo province, October 8th, 2006 (hereafter referred to as Village C, dialogue #1)

23 ICfC interview with 32 year-old male primary school teacher, Kampot province, November 27th, 2006

24 ICfC interview with 20 year-old woman, Phnom Penh (Dong Kor district), December 2nd, 2006. See also OSJI, “Strategies for Reaching Rural Communities in Cambodia: Outreach for the Extraordinary Chambers,” (2006), at 4. They write, “The most popular [television] programs are Thai or Chinese drama series (soap operas), Hong Kong action films, Karaoke, and (to a lesser extent) news programs.” See also MEE, et. al., “Information Access Survey Cambodia,” Report of STREAM: Support to Regional Aquatic Resources Management (Cambodia 2003), at (vi). These reflect a trend among Cambodians to rely on radio and television less for the news and more for entertainment at the end of a long day. See also CAS/Asia Foundation, “Democracy in Cambodia: A Survey of the Cambodian Electorate” (2001) (hereafter referred to as “Democracy in Cambodia”) and YOCUM, Lizz Frost, “Maternal and Child Heath Media in Cambodia: Mid-Term Evaluation Preliminary Findings,” BBC World Service Trust, 15 August 2005 (Cambodia) in which they state that across the country, 29% of Cambodians relied primarily on radio for news while 32% relied on television. The same survey showed that 44% of voting Cambodians listened to the radio at least three times per week and pointed out that television watching is on the rise.

25 ICfC interview with 35 year-old male farmer, Kampot province, November 27th, 2006. See “Democracy in Cambodia,” whose results can be calculated to show that closes to 25% of the Cambodian population do not have access to the radio and television broadcasts.

26 Village A, dialogue #2

27 Village B, dialogue #2

28 Exit interview with ICfC volunteer, 24 year-old female attorney, November 23rd, 2006

29 ICfC interview with 20 year-old woman, Phnom Penh (Dong Kor district), December 2nd, 2006

30 ICfC interview with 45 year old male primary school teacher, Kampot province, November 27th, 2006

31 “Democracy in Cambodia” at 88. This study reveals that 22% of the electorate relies primarily on “word of mouth” to send and receive information.

32 “A Fair Share for Women: Cambodia Gender Assessment” (Cambodia 2004), Report of UNIFEM, the World Bank, ADB, UNDP and DFID/UK, in cooperation with the Ministry of Women’s and Veterans’ Affairs, at 81.

APPENDICES

Appendix A
In this section, we provide a tested methodology for setting up dialogues in rural Cambodian villages. The outline below is based on the lessons learned from the ICfC pilot project, “Youth Education, Community Development,” from which the above public feedback was drawn. In developing this dialogue system, the ICfC consulted with a number of different national and international non-governmental organizations that have experience with the production of dialogues and public fora in Cambodia. These organizations include: The National Institute for Democracy, the Cambodian Development Resource Institute, Youth Star—Cambodia, Village Focus International, the Center for Social Development, the Documentation Center of Cambodia, the Khmer Institute for Democracy, and others.

There are six stages to the process from locating the appropriate village to conducting follow-up interviews. They are:

Village selection and local authorities
Village assessment
Dialogue venue
“Informed participants”
Dialogue steps and methods
Follow-up interviews

i. Village selection and local authorities
The first step in this phase is to develop the criteria that will determine which villages are to be visited overall and in the first months of the program. The ICfC established four points of criteria:

Diverse historical group identifications such as Khmer Rouge, “New People,” “base people,” and those who had been resettled after escaping to refugee camps on the Thai border;
Local contact in the village either through partnerships with local, well respected NGOs or family/friend relations between the ICfC volunteer facilitators and village residents;
A location where the village chief and his constituents maintained a positive relationship; and A high level of interest in the work and goals of ICfC among prospective participants.

Next it will be up to the outreach team to tour prospective sites to assess which one would be best for a dialogue. Before arriving on the village level, however, the outreach team should present a letter of intent to the commune or district office. Once the local authorities have pledged their support for the project, the outreach team can begin to consider individual villages.

The best villages to conduct dialogues in are the ones where a member of the team has a connection or villages that have been recommended by trusted local NGOs that have positive relationships with the villagers. Furthermore, villages that are not overly spread out make the best dialogue locations because it is easier for the outreach team to invite people on their own—a necessary task because allowing the village chief to invite all the participants instead does not produce a positive dialogue environment.

ii. Village assessment
Once the village has been chosen, it is imperative that the outreach team takes it upon itself to invite participants from a number of different sources. The village chief will most likely invite his/her own family members or villagers who belong to the same political party as him/her. The invitation process covers two or three trips to the village. During the first, the team should try to informally meet as many individuals as possible. This means that rather than organizing a meeting for all villagers to attend, the outreach team should go house to house or field to field meeting with influential villagers at first, i.e. teachers, elders, pagoda laypeople, NGO workers, and businesspeople. These are the key villagers who the outreach team should ask to branch out, each of them inviting three or four individuals to attend the next assessment trip meetings.

On the second and third assessment trips, the outreach team should meet with several small group of participants to explain to them clearly the purpose of the dialogue and to give a chance for them to raise any issues of concern that they might have about attending a public discussion. The outreach team should state clearly where they come from and should explain that they are not representatives of a political party or the government, if that is the case. They should also state clearly that they will not be paying participants to attend the meeting; that villagers should only come if they are interested. This is also the opportunity for the outreach team to question the villagers about what they might want to discuss during a public dialogue. This is also the appropriate time for the team to question villagers about what time of day would be best to have a public meeting. Participants are invited and told to attend the following week. The ICfC always invites the village chief to attend because this seems to make participants feel more safe knowing the chief is there to hear them talk about benign issues instead of suspecting them of discussing politics.

iii. Dialogue venue
During the assessment phase, the outreach team should review possible spaces in the community where the dialogue might be held. The space in which a dialogue is held greatly influences the process of the discussion. Rather than trying to choose a quiet and controlled environment, it is more important to hold the dialogue in a location that is normally used by villagers for public meetings and gatherings. For example while a village school might appear ideal in its off hours because of its silence and separation from village life by walls and a courtyard, it is out of the ordinary for adult villagers to meet there and may actually cause more distance between the facilitators and the participants.

In terms of seating, the ICfC suggests purchasing a number of woven mats in Phnom Penh and taking them to the village to place in the dialogue locations. These can be used to create a familiar, comfortable discussion environment and, if the outreach team leaves the mats in the communal space, a gift to the village as well.

iv. “Informed participants”
One suggestion that helps to build trustful relationships with participants is to bring along an older—knowledgeable—participant from another province or from Phnom Penh. This individual will enter into the group discussion the same as the other participants, but will help to bridge the relationship between the facilitator and the participants.

The ICfC invited one such individual who is well known throughout Cambodia for her commitment to peace, reconciliation, and the amplification of the voice of Cambodians. When the villagers saw this individual, they felt more secure that we had not come to harm them. Having this “informed participant” act candidly during the dialogue can also help set the precedent for the participants who might be timid to engage openly in a public discussion at first.

v. Dialogue steps and methods
Once the outreach team conducts sufficient assessment and has a sense for what kind of dialogue the participants would like to see, the next step is to arrange for the dialogue. In this phase there are three steps: Introductory discussion, small group dialogue, conclusion. The whole dialogue lasts about 3.5 hours as participants begin to get bored and anxious about their work if the dialogues go on longer.

The first phase should include the following points:

An introduction of the names and background of the facilitators;
An introduction of the names of participants;
The clear stated purpose of the dialogue;
A statement about why it is important to be meeting in this way to discuss the Extraordinary Chambers;
A request to take notes for the purpose of writing up reports about public attitudes;
An assurance that the outreach team will not publicize the names of the participants, nor the name of the village in the above-mentioned report;
A reminder about who the outreach team represents. This means the team should specify that it represents neither a political party nor the Cambodian government. If the team is from the ECCC/UNAKRT, then it should remind the participants that it is not there to conduct any investigation, but simply to conduct outreach; and
A reminder that the participants are all there out of their own free will. They have volunteered their time to attend the dialogue, will not be paid for their attendance, and can leave whenever they feel they wish to do so.

While in the first phase all the participants are together with the facilitators, in the second, participants are divided into three or four small groups of about five to seven individuals each. We found that by dividing the participants up like this, we were creating a more comfortable environment where there would be more opportunity for each individual to speak. This was significant because topics such as the Extraordinary Chambers and the Khmer Rouge are rarely discussed in public and to do so requires more of a sense of safety than usual. Furthermore, we noticed that participants hesitated to express politically sensitive views in front of the village chief. By placing the chief in one of the small groups, the others are more free to say what they want out of the village chief’s earshot.

The last stage is to bring participants together again at the end of the dialogue for a group reflection of the various comments and stories raised during the small group discussion. At the end of this, facilitators gave out t-shirts, a Khmer Institute of Democracy (KID) flipchart and the supplemental picture booklets. They also asked participants if they would like to have another dialogue and when.

vi. Follow up interviews
The final stage to this methodology involves an informal internal assessment of the project’s impact on the target communities. After the last dialogue in each location, two to three individuals from the outreach team should return about three weeks to a month later to conduct informal interviews with a fraction of the participants. The interviewees should not be chosen at random in order to select an even number of participants that represent various age, gender, profession-based categories. Questions should assess what kind of information villagers retained, whether they share the information with other villagers who did not attend the dialogue, and how the dialogue impacted them. Participants should also be asked about their emotions during and after the dialogue as well as how they would like to see the methodology improved.

Appendix B: Village Background
A brief description and background of each location is provided below. To protect the dialogue participants, many of whom made incendiary remarks toward the Royal Cambodian Government and its prime minister, we do not list the name of the village or the commune of the first two village locations. Because the third village location is situated near an officially documented Khmer Rouge administrative office and killing site and would be easily identifiable with knowledge of the district, we withhold the name of the district as well as the village and commune.

a. Village A: Phnom Penh municipality, Dong Kor district
Less than ten kilometers from the structure of the ECCC, village A is a “new village,” informally established in 1979 by the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) government to house internally displaced people. Some of the residents spent time in refugee camps in Thailand near the border with Cambodia, but most settled in village A when returning to Phnom Penh from the homes they were forced into by the government of Democratic Kampuchea. Refused entry to Phnom Penh by the Vietnamese, they settled on its outskirts in Dong Kor district.

The majority of residents in this village were labeled as “new” people, that is, the section of the Cambodian population inhabiting urban areas until they were evacuated by the Khmer Rouge in 1975. Almost all of the dialogue participants reported that during the Democratic Kampuchea regime, they were moved from Phnom Penh to work and live in Battambang, Pursat, and Banteay Meanchey provinces. A small minority of the village is believed to have affiliated with the Khmer Rouge organization at least as early as 1975 and until 1979. There were three such participants at the dialogue.

Villagers assert that today there is not any distinction between villagers’ once with the Khmer Rouge and those not. However, some did mention that villagers divide themselves, though not formally, by those with ancestry in the village and those without. The newcomers are referred to as the “17 people,” in reference to the fact that they were “new” people evacuated on April 17th, 1975. Those villagers with ancestral ties to the village are called the “18 people,” in reference to March 18th, 1970 when Lon Nol and his supporters overthrew Prince Sihanouk’s government. To the villagers, this date corresponds to when people began to be considered as “base” by the Khmer Rouge forces.

There are some residents of village A who make their living as farmers, but the majority of them commute to Phnom Penh for various work. The village chief belongs to the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). The village is designed in a way that mimics city blocks with dirt road intersections. Households are located in close proximity to one another with some paddy fields and orchards on the outlying parts of the village.

b. Village B: Kampot province, Kampot district
Settled near some small mountains several kilometers from national highway #3 between Kampot and Phnom Penh, village B has experienced decades of conflict stuck in the middle of the Cambodian government’s campaign to eradicate the Khmer Rouge. The village fell under the control of the Khmer Rouge in the early 1970s and many of the base people living in the region joined forces with them. According to the male dialogue participants who affiliated with the Khmer Rouge, they were sent by their military commander to fight with the Vietnamese along the border. In 1975, “new” people were brought from Phnom Penh to live in the village. The majority of them did not survive and those that did emigrated from village B after the fall of Democratic Kampuchea in January 1979.

In 1979 when the Vietnamese military presence arrived in the region with the support of the United Front for the National Salvation of Kampuchea, the Khmer Rouge fled to the mountainous region close to the village as well as to Phnom Voar and the foot of the Cardamom Mountains. One source in the village reported that several of the male village residents who had affiliated with the Khmer Rouge defected to the PRK in 1979 and during the early 1980’s. For the next ten years, government soldiers came by day through village B looking for Khmer Rouge and their supporters. Khmer Rouge combatants, in turn, came by night looking for those men who had defected. As a result, the men of the village often snuck away to sleep in the forest at night to avoid being killed. The source, which was a young boy through the early 1980’s recalls nights where he would watch mortars and rockets arcing over his house as the government and Khmer Rouge attacked each other.

Some of the older male villagers made passing remarks that they knew the ex-Khmer Rouge living in the Phnom Voar region1 though none indicated that they kept in touch with such individuals. Today, over 90% of the village inhabitants are people with ancestral ties to the land and the vast majority of residents farm for their living. The village resembles a scattering of houses among rice paddies and orchards at the foot of small mountains where some residents collect wood and bamboo. There is no road through the village; only small paths from the larger dirt road zigzagging along the edges of fields. The village chief is former Khmer Rouge and has held his position since 1979. He affiliates with the CPP.

c. Village C: Takeo province
If villages A and B represent somewhat polarized groups, with A inhabited by mostly “new” people and B by a mix of former Khmer Rouge and “base” people, village C can be considered a middle ground. The majority of residents of the village claim past affiliation as “base” people, though many “new” people, evacuated from the provincial capital and other urban areas in 1975, live there as well. And there are at least a dozen households with members who once belonged to the Khmer Rouge.

After 1975, when the Khmer Rouge fully controlled the region surrounding village C, they turned an existing structure into an administrative facility for the district. Like others around the country, the village pagoda was shut down and its monks defrocked. Khmer Rouge military took up residence in the monks’ dormitory and other houses in the area. Village residents were evacuated to convert the nearby mountainous forest into arable land.

Conflicting reports arise from villagers as to whether the administrative facility housed or was located near a prison. But all villagers asked insist that they were killed there. They have asserted that an old village well was found full of bodies and that close to a dozen pits with bodies were found as well. Many villagers remain unaware of what exactly transpired in their village during the Democratic Kampuchea regime since they were not allowed to return there. In their camp in the forest, however, most of the villagers lost relatives to disease and execution. They reported a very difficult time.

Little was revealed about the village’s history during the 1980’s and 1990’s, though in discussions about reintegration and reconciliation, participants stated that after 1979, there was little to no fighting between government and Khmer Rouge forces in or near their village. Today the vast majority of villagers make their living through rice farming. Unlike the village in Kampot, the houses in village C are clustered together and divided by two roads, with the paddies extending outward, surrounding the village and dividing it from the next. As in villages A and B—and in the rest of the country—the village chief of village C belongs to the CPP.

1 Phnom Voar remained one of Cambodia’s former Khmer Rouge strongholds up until the late 1990s. It was from Phnom Voar that Khmer Rouge combatants launched an attack on a train in 1994, kidnapping and later murdering three foreigners.