Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

In practice, of course, some are more equal than others.

It is not his fault. Why, he’s dead. And he truly was a hero. Christopher Howes worked in a mine-clearing team around Angkor Wat in 1996. He and his team were captured by the Khmer Rouge guerillas that were still operating there at the time, leftover from the Khmer Rouge times. He was offered freedom in return for his team. He refused. Therefore, the kidnappers kept him and his interpreter and released the rest. Both him and his Khmer companion were executed shortly thereafter.

On October 3, 2008, the Cambodian court held a swift one day trial of five indicted perpetrators, and the sentence will be announced tomorrow. The news of the trial spread across the main Western media like a wildfire.

Well, I thought… Finally something is moving, even if the Khmer Rouge Tribunal is not. I spoke to my colleague in Phnom Penh, curious about the reactions on the ground. It didn’t really make press in Cambodia. No, people were not talking about it. It doesn’t relate to them. Where there similar trials for murders of Cambodians? No, not that she knows of.

Almost two millions of mostly Cambodians have perished during the brutal Pol Pot regime between 1975 and 1979, and countless thousands in many clashes thereafter. The Khmer Rouge Tribunal started operating in 2006, nearly 30 years after the genocidal regime collapsed. It has been marked by remarkable slowness, massive corruption scandals that nearly did the Tribunal under, and delays. To date, five former top leaders were indicted, none were yet tried. In fact, none will be tried until 2009. “Legal hold-ups.”

I am glad for Mr. Howes’s family. It must have been terrible not to know what happened to their son for so long and that the perpetrators were free and some even serving in  cushy government jobs. Trials like this should take place all the time.

But…they don’t. And I can’t help but feel confused and bewildered by the disproportion of it and by the message this trial sends to the Cambodians and the rest of the world. It seems to be a trial put on for the West, picked up and covered by the Western press. It was swift because the victim happened to be a British citizen. What does that say about the global value system? About the value of life? What does it say about us? I can’t help but feel despair and pain for those who will never feel even a whiff of justice pass them by. But I can turn the page in the paper and pick a natural disaster or a lost football match to get agitated about in a cafe. But for the Cambodians, it never goes away. It’s life. This trial will unfortunately not contribute to the sense of justice being carried out for the Camobdian people. Trial shmial, they still have to live with their losses, knowing others will be given priority to them whenever a choice has to be made.

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