The Documentation Center of Cambodia and the Northwestern University School of Law in the US state of Illinois have launched a new Web site, www.cambodiatribunal.org, which plans to offer Webcasts of the judicial proceedings at the Khmer Rouge tribunal, as well as expert commentary, news, and historical information.
“There is a lot of debate in the Cambodian expat community and limited access to information,” DC-Cam Director Youk Chhang said Thursday. “The whole idea is to offer people more choices of opinion in order to contribute to the process of the tribunal,” he said.
Once trials start, the site plans to broadcast video recordings of courtroom proceedings.
Helen Jarvis, chief of public affairs at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia said Thursday that the tribunal plans to provide DVDs of trial proceedings free of charge to the media, NGOs and members of the diplomatic community.
Video footage of the court proceedings will only be edited to conform with judicial orders for protection and will hopefully be available for distribution in English, French and Khmer the same day or the day after proceedings, Jarvis said.
Youk Chhang and David Scheffer, who served as US ambassador at large for war crimes from 1997 to 2001 and now directs the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University School of Law, launched the new Web site’s commentary section with essays on the importance of the tribunal.
“The Cambodia Tribunal Monitor Web site is an important independent endeavor to quickly bring the trial proceedings of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia to a Cambodian and global audience,” Scheffer wrote in an e-mail message on Friday.
“We will be Webcasting the trials on the Web site and providing expert commentaries and other information…. [W]e hope it will show a broad audience that accountability for the atrocities of the Pol Pot regime has finally arrived,” he wrote.
