SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

SHAME ! SHAME ! SHAME ! How unspeakably shameful and unspeakably infuriating that we -- our dignity, our present, our future, OUR NATION, our people -- should suffer the FLAGRANT ignorance and FLAGRANT stupidity of our government and judiciary!

It is one thing for someone who doesn't know how to read and write to not know how to read and write; we have a different understanding and expectations of them -- lack of resources, lack of opportunities; we do not hold them morally bankrupt. Many times, to the contrary, we admire their simplicity and honesty.

But for people -- public officials, REPRESENTING US -- people, who hold themselves to be "educated" to play stupid and ignorant -- this would be laughable if not for the very real, serious spill-over consequences into public life and development of Cambodia.

The context has changed by the many misused billions of U.S. dollars pouring into Cambodia to give us a better facade, a better designer suit.

But the bloody dirt and grime, the bloody paranoia and deceit, the bloody elevation of ignorance and anti-intellectualism of Khmer Rouge mentality continue to lead us backward into Cold War destruction.

The Khmer Rouge leadership claimed ignorance or "I have no choice" for the killings.  Do current officials in the government, in the judiciary, in parliament, not use the same line of argument -- "I have no choice"?  "I was forced to kill"; "I was forced to lie"; "I was forced to inform on my neighbor", etc.?

Silence/inaction in the midst of wrongdoing is already considered morally bankrupt; how much more to be the hands to execute the unjust order (even if lawful), to aid and abet?!  Remember Hitler did everything "lawful" but perpetrated the indelible injustices to humankind!)

What are the sorry excuses of the Svay Rieng Court to be either this incompetent or criminal or both (in knowingly convicting innocent villagers and opposition leader Sam Rainsy)? "I have no choice; if I don't do it, I will lose favor with the powers that be? I will lose my Lexus? I will lose my position?"

What the Khmer Rouge Tribunal is telling us is that:  no matter how difficult the choice, we are all held INDIVIDUALLY RESPONSIBLE for our choices! If we are to consider the degree of difficulty of the Svay Rieng Court to those of KR cadres, the degree is one of comfort and less of life and death.

SHAME! SHAME ! SHAME ! Unless we mature as individuals and as a people, expect more of this stupidity and ignorance and anti-intellectualism to be the norm. And weep. Weep for yourself, weep for our children. Weep for the death of Khmer dignity and Khmer nation.

The conviction of Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy is the death knell of democracy as we know it, and the squandering of countless misused billions of US dollars since 1993 of UNTAC elections.

The emperor after all has no clothes... let's quit the charade and call a spade a spade...

We the Cambodian people have been living the bloody grime of a sham democracy as the few Cambodian elites party their wealth away in Singapore and Hong Kong and the UN officials and international community live as Lords of Poverty and tick off one humanitarian crisis and perpetuate its existence in its aftermath or prepare for another.

SHAME ON US ALL for playing and perpetuating this game at the expense of Cambodian lives!

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Theary C. SENG

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