Need to Know, June 8, 2012: International justice

June 8, 2012

 

Ray Suarez

This week’s show explores genocide and how to punish those who perpetrate it. First up: a report from Cambodia, where former leaders of the Khmer Rouge are being tried for the mass murders committed there decades ago.

Anchor Ray Suarez interviews “New Yorker” writer Philip Gourevitch, who has written extensively about genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda.

In the “American Voices” essay, Sadia Hameed of Human Rights First comments on the U.S. obligation to prevent genocide.

What’s on this week:

Imperfect justice in Cambodia

A report from Cambodia, where former leaders of the Khmer Rouge are being tried for the mass murders committed there decades ago.

Interview: Philip Gourevitch

New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch, who has written extensively about genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda, talks to Ray Suarez.

American Voices

Sadia Hameed of Human Rights First comments on the U.S. obligation to prevent genocide.

Watch more full episodes of Need to Know.

Last modified: June 8, 2012 at 6:07 pm
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Comments

  • Anonymous
  • Beefield49

    This is not just about a political or judicial resolution but about healing. Even one conviction at these war crimes trials might help this process for the victims and may wake up the need for the rest of the world to listen. The family members of those who were lost must be heard–MUST be heard–not just on PBS but in all media, like what happened in South Africa. There is a whole generation now in the rest of the world who has little or no knowledge of this terrible history of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot. In the face of this, we must put great value in the victims’ testimony, both because each story carries profound weight but also because history has continued to be repeated–for example in Rwanda not all that long ago and yet again today in Syria. Oppression and the devastation it causes exist in every part of the world; there are so many silent victims….We all must bear witness, to honor the suffering of those who died and those who were left behind, as if they were our own. Because they are, and we are theirs.

  • rainstake

    The United States should definitely intervene when there are genocides happening.  We cannot merely sit by and turn our heads with indifference.  I am sure not one is in opposition to this.  ‘We’ as I use it here is mytonomy for United States government employees responsible for intervening.

  • jan

    We can’t afford to intervene. 

    Close your eyes for a moment and imagine a nation that only spends its money on the military and allows the citizens within its own borders to be jobless, homeless, hungry, and without much hope.  Now open your eyes, look around and realize that you don’t have to imagine any more because you’re living the nightmare. 

    30 years of GOP policies of cut taxes and cut government followed by, more recently, democratic party refusal to reverse those policies have made us unable to intervene.   

  • Richard Pelto

    Look at the census number for Cambodia in 1975 and then in 1980, a year after the ouster of Pol Pot. Then subtract the former from the latter and ask whether the resultant number adds up anywhere near the millions too often cited, and then ask yourself about the many factors today contributing to hundreds of thousands daying annually.