Craig Etcheson: Establishing the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (ECCC)

In this episode, we sit down with Craig Etcheson to explore his experiences conducting groundbreaking research on the Khmer Rouge and his role in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). We delve into the continued activities of the Khmer Rouge, the challenges of balancing justice and negotiation, and how narratives surrounding the Cambodian Genocide have evolved over time. Craig shares insights on genocide's legal constitution, the unique challenges faced by post-conflict societies, and parallels between international tribunals. He also offers advice for scholars and reflects on the human capacity for extraordinary evil.

00:00:00 Opening and Introduction
00:01:42 Insights from Research on the Khmer Rouge
00:04:03 Ongoing Activities of the Khmer Rouge Post-1979
00:06:57 Balancing Justice and Diplomacy in Negotiations
00:09:15 Reflecting on Choices: What Could Have Been Done Differently?
00:13:34 Evolving Narratives: How Research Shaped Our Understanding
00:15:44 Defining Genocide: The Case of Cambodia
00:18:21 The Naming of Genocide
00:19:55 Finding Workarounds: Challenges in Addressing Genocide
00:22:05 Lessons for Post-Conflict Societies from Cambodia
00:24:27 Historical Precedents in Transitional Justice
00:27:04 Comparing the ECCC and Sierra Leone’s Special Court
00:28:37 The Future of International Tribunals: What’s Next?
00:31:45 Career Advice for Aspiring Scholars and Practitioners
00:33:40 Exploring Creative Writing
00:38:04 What Are We Still Missing in Understanding Genocide?
00:43:13 The Impact of "Othering" on Personal and Professional Work
00:45:44 Key Advice for Researchers in Genocide Studies
00:47:58 Grappling with the Concept of Extraordinary Evil

Transcript

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I essentially conceive of my professional career as having been a genocide investigator, I often joked with people who thought that was a very strange career that, no, it's a growth industry. And indeed, it it has been. When when I was beginning as a genocide investigator, I didn't have very many role models or colleagues in the world. Genocide is a new word combining the Greek word genos- meaning, race or group with the root of the Latin caedere meaning to kill. I became interested in genocide because it happened so many times. Power is all against the violence is the opposite. The extremist is one against all. This is Not to Forgive, but to Understand. A podcast series discussing genocide studies with experts and those connected to its critical questions. I'm Luis Gonzalez Aponte, co-host with Sabah Carrim. And what we're about is really to try to understand why evil happens, why there are perpetrations in genocidal scenarios and scenarios of mass atrocity, Not to Forgive, but to Understand Craig Etcheson is a leading expert on international conflict and transitional justice, with extensive experience investigating and documenting the Cambodian genocide. His work has shaped global understanding of post-conflict reconciliation and justice, including his role in the Khmer Rouge tribunal. Please enjoy our conversation. Well, my first book, which was titled The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea. I wrote that when I was a graduate student at the University of Southern California. I became fascinated with the country, and little did I know it would end up consuming much, if not most of my entire career. Then after graduate school, I moved to Washington, D.C., and ended up as the executive director of a small NGO called the Campaign to Oppose the Return of the Khmer Rouge. And our principal lobbying objectives were first to end foreign support for the Khmer Rouge insurgency, which at that time included support from many Southeast Asian nations, especially Thailand, as well as the United States, Britain and some other countries. And our second primary objective was to cause the creation of an international criminal tribunal to hear charges of war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity by the Khmer Rouge. So that task ended up consuming me for many, many years and but did eventually lead to the creation of the Extraordinary Chambers and the Courts of Cambodia, where, much to my surprise and delight, I became the chief of investigations in the office of Prosecutors. So I had a kind of a front seat to the entire affair. And I got to make what I think are significant contributions to the overall process. So I would like to hear more about, the fact that the Khmer Rouge was still an active organization, even post 1979, which is when we think that the Khmer Rouge was deposed and in 1979, Vietnam took over, or rather Vietnam helped in the liberation of Cambodia. So my question to you is, could you tell us more about the continued activities of the Khmer Rouge? Because that doesn't happen all the time in all cases of genocide. And what were, for instance, the means and methods that we use by different bodies to try to like whittle down the power that they still had over the population there? For centuries, really, if not millennia for that matter, the power, the writ of the Khmer, the Cambodian state has not really extended all the way to the frontiers of their lands. And so that has always provided fertile grounds for opposition movements to the government or the king, as the case may be. And other revolutionary movements. And once the Vietnamese military had seized Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge and the remaining rump of their military fled to those border regions where with the help especially of China, they were able to reconstitute their organization and rebuild their army into a formidable force. And they subsequently entered into an alliance with, oddly enough, the leader of the previous government and the remaining leaders of the previous government. They had overthrown the Khmer Republic and it's the oppositional guerrilla movement which was also in the borderlands, as well as the government, that the leaders of the Khmer Republic had overthrown, that of the former king Norodom Sihanouk. And so it became a tripartite alliance of which the Khmer Rouge was by far the dominant player, and they were able to continue their insurgency, much to the detriment of the Cambodian people into the late 1990s. So more than 20 years, it took more than 20 years to finally defeat the this tripartite insurgency. And we also know that the fact of Hun Sen's involvement, the Khmer Rouge became very contentious during the negotiations that happened in the set up of the ECCC, And so my question to you is, how was that negotiated during that whole process? So many members of the Khmer Rouge were still in the active government when the ECCC was set up or when the whole process was being negotiated. With great difficulty. I think it's fair to say the Cambodian government had just succeeded in finally defeating the Khmer Rouge military organization and was absorbing its military formations and effectively be giving amnesties to its remaining leadership. Just when the United Nations became engaged with the whole process, the whole idea of establishing an internationalized tribunal for the Khmer Rouge and Hun Sen was faced with a delicate balance between trying to draw these formerly oppositional forces into some sort of concord or peaceful coexistence with his government, while at the same time, many in the international community were demanding the establishment of some sort of the tribunal to judge the Khmer Rouge's alleged crimes. And working out that delicate balance took some the better part of another decade of negotiations and back and forth, during which, in my estimation, Hun Sen fairly well out-negotiated. The United Nations negotiators and ended up with a structure for the tribunal that was very favorable to his interests. I'm interested to find out what you feel today as a researcher, as a senior researcher, when you look back on the time that you and of course, many other researchers from the west went to Cambodia and did the research they did to come up with the books that we deemed to be canonical works today. Do you feel that you would have done certain things differently, or that certain other things by other people should have been done differently? Well, when I wrote my first book on Cambodia The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea, I had actually never been to Cambodia, never visited Cambodia. That was in the early eighties that I wrote the book, and I actually wasn't able to visit the country for the first time until 1993. But once I did begin visiting the country and spending more and more time there and becoming personally acquainted with most of the leaders of the government, that, of course, tremendously transformed my understanding of both the country and the Khmer Rouge themselves. But I think it was a the establishment of the Cambodian genocide program at Yale University is where the research really became supercharged with the institutional resources that were available at Yale and with funding from the United States government, we were able to establish an on the ground research center in Cambodia called the Documentation Center of Cambodia, and the amount of information we were able to accumulate truly transformed our understanding of the regime and how it operated and what they had done. We established bibliographic databases, biographical databases, photographic databases and geographical databases, collecting information about all aspects of the regime, and with really astonishing cooperation from the government. We discovered that there was a tremendous wealth of documents that the Khmer Rouge regime had left behind, and we were able to gather those and begin analyzing them. And that resulted in our being able to identify the structure of the Khmer Rouge organizations, different components. The Communist Party of Kampuchea, the Government of Democratic Kampuchea, and the Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea, and especially of a part of the Khmer Rouge organization known as the Sentebal their internal security apparatus until we began to assemble and analyze all of this material, no one really understood that apparatus at all, and we were able to determine that it was really a nationwide organization with operations and headquarters in every district of the country. So that really added an astonishing amount to our collective knowledge of what had happened during the Democratic Kampuchea regime. And not incidentally, also laid the evidentiary groundwork for who would eventually become the extraordinary chambers in the courts of Cambodia. I remember when I was doing my research on the Khmer Rouge regime, I came across the initial American scholars who had actually gone to witness what was happening in Cambodia and came back with a very different understanding of that, compared to what we know today of the regime. And there were even scholars who actually praised the regime because maybe what was really happening was hidden from them. If I remember clearly there was criticism that ensued because their understanding of what had happened was completely thwarted, completely oblique from reality. Is there anything you'd like to say about that? About, how narratives about regimes change over time with research and with more information? One of the things I noted when I was writing my first book, everything that had been published about Cambodia in the academic literature up to that point was very much politicized. And partizan, either from the left to which often praised the Khmer Rouge revolution and from the right, which condemned it unequivocally. And there was very little not to say basically nothing I would consider to be a dispassionate analytical work, strictly a search for the truth, rather than defending a political position or a political ideology. So in that respect, it wasn't until the the 1990s really that a broader spectrum of dispassionate academic work began to be undertaken and published. And I think one of the big questions we we should ask right now at this juncture, especially because there is always a big debate about the definition of genocide and all the technical complications about when it can be applied in which cases. And then the requirement of dolus specialis, which is special intent before genocide can be established. My question to you is, of course, what was particular about the Khmer Rouge genocide was that it was Khmer killing Khmers. That was the main brunt of whatever happened during that time. So how was the ECCC able to establish that there was a genocide, which it did a few years ago, despite the fact that it was Khmer killing Khmer? And as we know, the original definition of genocide in the UN convention speaks about the destruction of refers to destruction of another people. Of a different race. Of a different group of people. So how was that carried out? Well, that's a very interesting question, actually, because when you begin to dig into the details, in fact, the vast majority of the victims of the Khmer Rouge were, in fact, ethnic Khmer, generally speaking, the same ethnicity as the dominant group in the Khmer Rouge. But Cambodia also has many minorities. It has a muslim minority, the Cham, it has a Thai minority, it has a Lao minority. It has a minority called the Khmer Krom, who are Khmer people who originated in what is today Southern Vietnam. And once you examine this, you see that in fact genocide was carried out against all of these groups, not just the it wasn't just mass killing of ethnic Khmer, but in fact, of everybody. And so at the Extraordinary Chambers, the judges did not convict Khmer Rouge leaders of genocide against the ethnic Khmer majority. But instead of against the various minority groups. Right. So very often, whenever we speak about genocide, for example, even in the context of the Rwandan genocide, we speak about the genocide of the Tutsis. And this is how we are now trying to frame it. We don't call it the Rwandan genocide anymore. So shouldn't we technically based on what you said, call it the genocide of the Cham Muslims and the Khmer Krom Well, that's quite right. But I think generally speaking, what happened under the Khmer Rouge was referred to as the Cambodian genocide, and of course, some not many people are familiar with all of the gory details. And so that's probably a good way to summarize the fact that all of these different minority groups within Cambodia were subjected to genocidal violence. And of course, the Khmer Rouge leaders were also convicted of crimes against humanity pertaining to what they had done to the majority group in Cambodia, the ethnic Khmers. And in fact, genocide is a special case of crimes against humanity. So the word genocide has a certain popular cachet and a certain political potency. But other types of crimes against humanity can be just as horrible. Since we are on this topic about the definition of genocide. I think it is important to point out right now, even in these bigger debates we're having about other ongoing genocides in the world right now, we do have a problem with the definition of genocide itself, where in the court, in the extraordinary courts of extraordinary chambers, of the courts of Cambodia, there was and it was important to find alternative ways to establish genocide, where there was a need to focus on the minorities who had been subjected to violence. The question that comes up is course, and because we had to find these roundabout ways in a way we haven't done justice to the people, to the Khmers who were killed, who were murdered under that regime. And in the same way, then I think for me, this brings me to the conclusion that it is quite sad that we need to keep finding roundabout ways to establish genocide when it is right there in our face. Would you agree? Well, on that note, there is a juridical precedent from Argentina where they found that genocide had been committed against the ethnic majority group in Argentina and one of the Cambodian judges at the Extraordinary Chambers wrote a long and fascinating dissent to the genocide judgment, arguing that, in fact, the court should have found genocide against the ethnic Khmer majority as well. But that position was not agreed to by enough of the other judges for it to become part of the judgment. Given what you just said and your experiences, what lessons can other post-conflict societies draw from Cambodia's journey through this transitional justice, especially looking at the amount of hurdles and difficulties that were faced in the formation of the ECCC? I’m thinking about dealing with concerns that I believe that you that you've addressed in your writing, which are concerning classical legalism and strategic legalism, using law as a tool for politic and so forth. Well, it's interesting. From early on in the process of standing up and then operating the extraordinary chambers, the Cambodian government was loudly touting what was happening as a model for other post-conflict societies to adopt. And in fact, in the years since, two more retributive justice processes have been stood up based on the extraordinary Chambers model. The most interesting one is in the Central African Republic, where in fact during the design of the Special Criminal Court in the Central African Republic, several key players from the extraordinary Chambers were brought in and attempted to modify the structure that had been used at the Extraordinary Chambers in an effort to avoid some of the more problematic aspects of the extraordinary chambers, especially the ability of the host government to manipulate the proceedings. And I think making a long story short there, that effort has not been very successful. And what precedent was there for the ECCC, whenever it was being formed? I'm thinking about what other scholars, what other researchers would you have been able to look to? Because a lot of what I was able to gather from your writing was that it was rather unprecedented. A lot of the things that you were that you were facing. Were you pulling from or was everybody involved pulling from an idea of, let's say, in Nuremberg, as kind of a prototypical model to follow? Yes. In fact, when we first conceived the notion that there should be a international criminal tribunal for the Khmer Rouge at that time, the only precedent we had was Nuremberg. And so naturally, that was the only model we could look to. And but of course, the parallels were very much inexact since, during Nuremberg, that victorious allied armies were occupying and in total control of Germany, the land the all of the accused hailed from. Whereas in Cambodia there was no such similar parallel. In fact, there was a government that was largely composed of the people who were former Khmer Rouge themselves. And so that was very much a complicating factor. But on the other hand, well before we actually succeeded in getting the structure for the Khmer Rouge tribunal, established by then we had the precedents of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. And so initially those became the models, but that was rejected by the Cambodian government and over many years of a very difficult negotiation with some a bewildering array of interlocutors from all over the world on the structure that was eventually settled upon gradually emerged. Since we spoke about, for instance, how the only precedent in terms of the form of the hybrid tribunal that the ECCC was, was basically the Nuremberg trial. My question to you is I knew that the ECCC was set up in 2001 and the Special Court of Sierra Leone was set up a year later. And my question is, what could you say about, the parallels and the differences between these two tribunals and the way everything was conducted? That's an interesting question because the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs had originally proposed a structure for the Khmer Rouge tribunal that the Cambodian government immediately rejected. But then they had that model sitting on the shelf. And when the Sierra Leone question arose, they essentially plucked that model that the Cambodian government rejected off the shelf. And the Sierra Leonean government essentially immediately agreed to it. And so the Sierra Leone court was up and running long before the Khmer Rouge tribunal, which still had many years of contentious negotiations ahead of it. Right. And so now, looking back, we have these different forms of tribunals. We have international tribunals, we have internationalized tribunals. And so my question to you and of course, now growingly we are prosecuting Génocidaires in local courts in different jurisdictions. That was done, for instance, in France, where a gynecologist, a Rwandan gynecologist, was prosecuted for what had happened during the genocide there in Rwanda. I mean, my conclusion from that is that this is a triumph of international law. Where we see all it's norms spreading and spilling into local jurisdictions across the world. So what can we expect in the future in terms of this constant evolution that we have seen within the gamut of tribunals and the different types that have been set up so far? What is going to be, for instance, the model that we are heading towards? I essentially conceive of my professional career as having been a genocide investigator, and I often joked with people who thought that was a very strange career that, no, it's a growth industry. And indeed, it it has been. When when I was beginning as a genocide investigator, this was I didn't have very many role models or colleagues in the world. But now there are a large swaths of the international legal community whose careers are entirely dedicated to this kind of work. So I think it is safe to say that what the future holds is sort of a Smörgåsbord, of different approaches, as you just alluded to. Nation states using universal jurisdiction to try accused from genocides in countries essentially unconnected to the country where the trial is held. Then you have the International Criminal Court on and its efforts to attack these problems in various places around the world. And then, of course, you have the hybrid tribunal, which largely tend to be seated inside the countries where the violence occurred, proliferating as well. So I see a future where there will be many different approaches to tackling these kinds of the challenges. Your career spans multiple disciplines from academia to field work in transitional justice. I would just want to ask you is, what advice would you give to young scholars, Sabah’s students, and professionals interested in pursuing a similar path? Gird Your loins would be my prime directive because you need incredible patience and discipline and determination. These things take an ungainly amount of time and also to be considered is that it's very intense work, not just physically and mentally, but especially emotionally. The things you will see, the people you will talk to will put an intense strain on your mental, emotional and physical well-being. Not to mention perhaps your financial well-being. For approximately half of my career as a genocide investigator, I functioned as a volunteer because I knew what I wanted to do. No one was willing to pay me to do it, so I just did it anyway. So in my Social Security records, there are long stretches with zero income. You have to really want to do this kind of work in order to be able to sustain it. Craig, I’m interested in talking about, as I said at the beginning of the podcast, the other experiences that we don't really necessarily document, especially when we have the academic format in front of us and we are limited by it. I'm interested. Let's start off with the piece that you sent us. Genocide Studies and Prevention, the Arts and Literature section, which I edited. You sent a very insightful piece about what went on. I think the title of the piece that you sent in was “Pol Pot’s Pyre”. So could you tell us more about that event, which is of historical importance, but which you witnessed? And I specifically think of the the verses in that in that piece where you talked about how the people around the bonfire told you.‘Well, you can take the bones’ of Pol Pot, of course. So could you tell us more about that whole event? Well, this was shortly after the surrender of the Khmer Rouge to the government, the final surrender of the Khmer Rouge to the government, or rather their final defeat, the capture of the final military units and resistance. And I decided to take a field trip to visit what had been Khmer Rouge headquarters in far northern Cambodia, really out in the jungle right on the Thai border. And this was where the Khmer Rouge supreme leader, Pol Pot, had made his last stand and subsequently died. And he had been cremated on a basically a pile of rubbish furniture and tires and I thought that I had spent many, many years trying to put Pol Pot in jail. And here I was with his ashes. And so I thought, well, if I can't put him in jail, I'm going to put him in a film canister. And so I collected a small amount of remains from the funeral pyre. And I still have them somewhere here. But there were so many peculiar aspects to that particular field trip. One of the things that I had heard was that Cambodians were visiting the the site of this cremation and praying to the spirit of Pol Pot for lucky lottery numbers, which considering that one of the first acts of the Khmer Rouge when they seized power was to abolish money and currency. There's a certain irony there. But the young formerly Khmer Rouge soldiers now wearing government uniforms who were guarding that place. I asked them, I said, so is it true that people come here and pray to Pol Pot spirit for Lucky Lottery numbers? And the soldiers responded, Yes, it's true that they come here to pray for peace. And I said, Yes, yes. Everybody loves peace. Everybody wants peace. What about the lucky lottery numbers? And he said, yes, it's true. Everybody comes here to pray for peace. So I thought, okay, they've got their story down and they're sticking to it. So what is what we don't understand here from our perspective and our understanding of the world what is really going on in that belief system that justifies their worship being literally a person who we all know is a Génocidaire and is a Génocidaire to their society too, or have I probably gotten that wrong? Well, there's a variety of things going on, and part of it has to do with a Cambodian culture and the extremely important role that the spirit world plays in Cambodian culture. Many, probably most Cambodians believe that they are surrounded everywhere and interact with the spirit world on a daily basis, and that's something that’s alien to me personally. And it takes a while to really understand how Cambodian people think and act. You have to come to understand that when you're in a room with a Cambodian person from their point of view. But you and they are not the only presences in that room. For example, when I was with the Cambodian Genocide Program at Yale, I would spend half of each year in Cambodia conducting field research, and in one of my first long stints in Cambodia. It transpired that a relative of my assistant fell ill and my assistant wanted to go out and take some medicine to this this relative and that person lived in a extremely remote part of Takéo Province, in the southwestern part of the country. So we loaded up and ventured out there. And when we arrived in this little village out in the middle of nowhere, the local people were astonished and fascinated to see me because they claimed they had never seen a white person before. And so I was an object of immense curiosity. And they immediately convened a council of elders to interrogate me in an attempt to determine whether I was a human being or something else, possibly a spirit. And, you know, if a spirit or a malevolent spirit or a friendly spirit. And so they asked me many questions and at one point they said, well, are you married? And I said, No, not yet. But I'm looking. And one of them said, well, no problem. You've come to the right place. We have many wonderful girls and you can choose one. And I said, well, we can discuss that. And then he said, but she wouldn't know what to cook for. You. And I said, no, that's not a problem, because I really like rice. And besides, I like to cook. And so I can show her what I like to cook, what I like to eat and the elders erupted at that. They'd caught me. Clearly, I was not a human being because everybody knows that men can't cook. And so they decided that I was an alien from another world. I'm sure that it was not the first time that that the local population there had this approach to you. I'm sure that this happened many times. And I'm actually very curious as a researcher how this sort of othering that they did to you would have probably affected the research work that you were doing over there. Do you think that it affected the other scholars you saw who came from different parts of the world into the country there? I'm sure it did. But you know, it in some senses it works in both directions. more than a few times I would show up in some remote rural village and locate a Khmer Rouge or a former Khmer Rouge that I wanted to talk to. And, you know, I'm a little bit overweight and, have very white skin. And so I would walk up to my target person and say, Hello, aren't you the one they used to call him. In the Khmer Rouge, they had code names depending upon how important you were, and maybe you had many code names and in many instances this was a name that was super secret and the individual probably hadn't been addressed that way for many years. And that would blow their minds and give me a very strong psychological advantage. You know, like, oh my God, who is this fat foreigner who knows my deepest secrets? So it the cultural chasm functions in both directions. So what is the advice you would give to somebody, and this is something very crucial to us genocide scholars, because we often have to, if ever would be fieldwork, we have to penetrate places where we are faced with a different language, a different culture. That happens very often. So what is the advice you would give now? Having had all of these years of experience, researching a very different culture, very different language from the one that you used to. Each genocide is, in many respects, a unique event. Deeply embedded in the social and cultural context of the the place in question and as whether you're approaching it as a scholar or for purposes of a legal investigation, it is absolutely crucial to develop as deep an understanding of the cultural context as you can before you attempt to actually penetrate the individual players, whether they be a victim or bystander or perpetrator or, as is the case. And so often someone who's a combination of all three. And that's not easily done. And it was something that I only dimly perceived when I was starting out. But that is a lesson you can either learn the easy way by listening to people like me who have done this or the hard way where you instead will be thrashing for decades before you begin to get the dimmest of grip on of dimmest of grips on how to understand the people you're trying to understand. I have one last question, which is about one subbranch that we genocide scholars delve into. You know, and I think the many works that have been written on the subject, this is the subject of perpetrators. So I think when you have a close encounter with perpetrators and you have many realizations, and I think these realizations definitely form part of some of the studies we expose our students to. Mainly the main idea being what Jim Waller speaks about, which is the idea that behind an extraordinary evil, we tend to want to associate an extraordinary person. But when we get deeper into the studies, we realize that very often behind an extraordinary evil, there is actually an ordinary person. Well, on the question of perpetrators, it's really a complex category. There are many different kinds of perpetrators, ranging from the the the masterminds at the heads of these kinds of movements, you know, your your Hitlers and your Pol Pots and what have you down to the lowest level perpetrators, the militia men out in a village with a club bashing people's heads and the mentality of these various different players varies tremendously. In the case I know the best that of the Khmer Rouge, the top leadership of that movement were very sophisticated people. Some of them had PhDs from European universities and were well versed in the history of the arts and sciences. So extremely sophisticated people, although in many in most cases, these people thought they were far more intelligent and clever than they actually were. The Khmer Rouge leaders had spent decades studying communist ideology and the classics of communist theory. But their their grasp of the fundamentals of, Marxist theory and Leninist theory were rudimentary to say the least. So to that extent, yes, I would would agree there are reasonably sophisticated individuals, but not nearly as smart because they think are. This was Not to Forgive, but to Understand with our guest Craig Etcheson. To our listeners, don't forget to like subscribe and stay tuned for more discussions. As the first test for the Office of Prosecutors at the Extraordinary Chambers Courts of Cambodia, another dog fighting for the dogs outside the office. Thank you. just be probably an hour and 30 minutes. Okay. Welcome, Dr. Etches. And and thank you for joining. Your career has to reverse the image of the United Nations and as a scholar of transitional justice and international conflict. Could you share how your journey began and what led you to focus on Cambodia and transitional justice as an investigator for the office? The Copan. Hi there. Well, hello. Good morning, sir. How are you? not too shabby. About to. Shine. I'm doing well, thank you, sir. I'm going to go ahead and let someone know that you're online and hopefully should be with us shortly. My apologies again for that confusion. There is just some miscommunication with the with some time zones. But once all's well that ends well. Well, that ends well, Absolutely wonderful. She should be here soon. But first, are you able to hear me clearly? I think we're able to hear you just Well. Yes, I am. Okay. Just leave me. I cannot see you. I see. I see your wonderful name. The video is off. There we go. There you are, sir. Lovely to see. Good. In my mind, I ask, where are you from today? Where? Where are you in. I'm in western Quebec, Canada. just a little bit northeast of Ottawa. I know that's about ten. You were. You were going to be based in Canada for this. I just. She couldn't recall where. Are you doing a series of lectures? Are you working? No, we moved here. that's wonderful. When did. How recently did you move? well, we came about a year ago, and a couple of months ago, we bought a house and yesterday I got the good news from Quebec that they'll let me stay still waiting for similar news from the rest of Canada. Okay, Isabelle. I know how. How both of you. Morning. Good. you ready, Louise? well, first, you're happy with the lighting. Do you think we can turn up your lighting just a little bit? Turn it up. Okay. Yeah. I see what that does. What about this? How about this? I think it would be okay. You know. What? Be okay. I think. I think I'm just going to bring home a lot of. It's on the pedestal. I was, like, wants to show off her library to everybody. That's. She wants to brag, But first, Craig, so that I can go ahead and get some of the, let's say, information out of the way is that we tend to go ahead and record a brief introduction in post-production. So after we do our interview today, I'll go ahead and read a few lines from a brief biography extracted from any affiliated and affiliated institutions with your stuff. And then I'll just introduce the topic of the podcast for today. After that, you can go ahead and feel free to let me know of any projects that you're currently working on. Anything that is in the process of publishing or recently published that you would like to be able to advertise. Or if we can promote in any way, we'll be happy to do so typically at the end of the podcast and I about and of course in post-production as well. So no rush to think about it right now. The second thing is that all of this is going to be subject to editing. So if there's anything that you want to go ahead and clarify or do another take on, you can feel free to go ahead and say, Let me go ahead and say that again, and then I'll be happy to go ahead and take out that first take. Otherwise, do you have any questions? Nope. Okay, Wonderful. So, are you all right. Louise? Did you send me the file just now on my WhatsApp? Is that what you did? You made it on your Gmail? Yes, I put it on WhatsApp. Let me just check if I could just log into my WhatsApp and. I can send it to your email as well. We'll see. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Okay. Just send. It. All right. I think we're good to go. It's done. But would you like to go ahead and start the conversation off or do you want me to write off? No, I'll do it as agreed. Okay. Good to meet you, Lewis. Some and absolutely some clever user, and I'll make sure to send you a link to YouTube and also Spotify for you to have access and to go ahead and approve the biography and description. Very good, Doctor. Thank you. Good. Thank you. Thank you. Louise, do you have any questions or you could. No, no, I think that's a wonderful notes. And Don. Actually, you think you got enough to put something together? Yes, absolutely. Good. I think we will definitely have such I mean, we will we will have we have a very interesting interview, actually, with some of the anecdotes about Talbott's exhumation would be something very interesting to talk about. Thank you, Greg. We really enjoyed this. This was very for me to, if there is, do you think we could touch on anything else that you feel is important to discuss further? gosh. Well, you know, I've been thinking about this all day, every day for 40 years, so I'd better be careful. Don't get me started. But what you do have. I got I got a note from a student in Brazil recently who said she wanted to interview me about all aspects of the Khmer Rouge. And I was just like, you know, boy, you have no idea. I've been studying this for 40 years and I haven't even touched on all aspects. So that meant sense of complex. I mean, it's what, it's what I heard. you know, a friend who was doing a PhD on the Holocaust said the same thing where, you know, he completed his PhD and said, we many, many genocide scholars say that why are we still doing research on the Holocaust? I mean, there's so many other genocides in the world. But then he said, you went on to say, which is true, that there are so many more aspects we've not uncovered, there is none about it. So I don't think there is such a thing as we've exhausted whatever there is to learn about any one thing. Absolutely. And well, that's a good thing about both the Documentation Center of Cambodia and the Archives of the Extraordinary Chambers is that there is enough material in there for 100, if not a thousand Ph.D. dissertations. you still think so? There's still a lot of material that you feel. absolutely. Right. Right. So so many so many aspects to explore such a complex problem. And John is still the director there. Yes, he is. Well, I've sort of like lost a lost touch a bit with what's happening there. But it's it's it's good to know. It's good to know that. I mean, I can always direct students to come and see whatever is possible. But thank you, Craig. Thanks for your time and we will be in touch very soon. Okey doke. My pleasure. Adonis. Était. À ses audiences à huis clos. Bad this technical meeting. S'il s'agissait d'une réunion technique. Concernant. Cette. Partie espagnol. Concernant ainsi les parties civiles. Would like to wait today. Ce que de préciser. Maintenant il semble names and night get the name is clearly. Il a fait mention de nous et mon. Frère, mais nous sommes bien de l'un. Et de l'autre. En sorte que les conditions auxquelles étaient assujetti l'ensemble des. At Work dans. Ce réseau de camps de rééducation d'archives ont survécu au centre de sécurité. En tout cas. Pour elles, 21. Lieu commun dans. Certains cas où vous pouvez. M'inscrire. Sans se douter de charniers à proximité. Et quand. On voit de. Cadavres. A fait son devoir. Personnel. Et une tuerie, ça peut être l'occasion d'aller voir si ça intéresse. Sourit. Yann. Un vice-Premier ministre chargé des Affaires étrangères. Comme Rad. Redford. Ou First You. Qui, avant une vague. De scripts. Occupe les fonctions de ministre chargé de l'économie et des finances. Du. Camarade. Hewlett Ford, sont sans. Risque. Il est vice premier ministre chargé de la Défense nationale et vous aurez le loisir plus tard de dire quelles sont vos conclusions. Sur ces facilités. Maud a un petit travail tout à fait à son request. Je pourrais peut être d'ores et déjà associer cette question à cette promenade au travail, se mettre autour du tourisme, se réaliser pendant la pause do et nous, nous avons encore une liste claire de bien et me rendre à voir ailleurs. La portée de ce qui vient d'être dit. Je suis quand même un peu inquiet. Peut être. Mon confrère M. Verner avait annoncé hier 20 minutes de questions Yesterday. Même en retranchant le quart d'heure consacré consacré à l'observation des co procureur date d'il y a maintenant que je n'ai pas vu. Documents provenant siégeant. Au. Je me forme. Autorisant une forme ou une autre. d'Erreur. Cependant, il existe de nombreux documents de toutes sortes. Sujet cette bonne Estonie de site. Applied as well to the security center outside. Plus une panne si le pouvoir de torturer les prisonniers. Ma question est la suivante est ce que cette technique. Est d'inscrire réellement. Son intérêt à. Des audiences ? Et le public de Kevin Desmond est mené. which would tend to suggest that some captured Vietnamese soldiers were also interned here. Every family lost some members. Many families were completely wiped out. And to the Cambodian people, it seems self-evident that something like genocide occurred here. The question of being able to demonstrate to Western legal standards beyond a reasonable doubt and according to the strict criteria that are laid out in international law is entirely another matter. One question is whether the. Investigations. To carry out The kind of forensic evidence that's being gathered in this project that might be particularly relevant to a charge of crimes against humanity. Because crimes against humanity involves crimes that are defined as mass and systematic. The Cambodian government recently signed an agreement with the United Nations to create a Adonis. Était. Cette. Partie wait today. Ce que Et de l'autre. En sorte At Work d'archives ont survécu au centre de sécurité. A fait son devoir. Sourit. Yann. et vous aurez le loisir plus request. Je pourrais peut être une Mon confrère M. Verner avait je n'ai pas vu. sortes. Sujet cette bonne which would tend to suggest that lost some members. Many families the. The kind of forensic evidence that's being Craig Etcheson is a leading expert on international conflict and transitional justice, with extensive experience investigating and documenting the Cambodian genocide. His work has shaped global understanding of post-conflict reconciliation and justice, including his role in the Khmer Rouge tribunal. Please enjoy our conversation.