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The Mirror, Vol. 14, No. 697

Similar to the season of Valentine’s Day, Christmas is also an annual occasion for some discussion – whether Valentin’s Day is a danger for Khmer culture because it is becoming popular among young people, or whether to participate in the gifts-giving at Christmas time is against Buddhism. But most such discussions seem to stay quite at the surface.

The Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia declares Nation, Religion, King to be the national motto, which is everywhere on documents and papers. The meaning, significance, and role of the motto is hardly discussed.

Theary Seng, in an interview on 17 September 2010, was not shy to take up some related issues.

The Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs of Georgetown University in the USA, introduces her at the beginning of the interview as follows:

Theary Seng is the founder of the Cambodian Center for Justice and Reconciliation and the founding director of CIVICUS: Center for Cambodian Civic Education. Born in Phnom Penh in 1971, she lost both of her parents under the Khmer Rouge and spent five months imprisoned in Svay Rieng province before emigrating to the United States in 1980. She returned to Cambodia in 1995 after having completed a Bachelor of Science in International Politics from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and a Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School. Since her return, she has become a leading advocate for democratization and an expanded role for civil society in Cambodia. Her work directly and indirectly with the Khmer Rouge Tribunal is part of an ongoing commitment to justice and reconciliation in the country.

In response to a question about her path to faith, she says:

My parents were very much Buddhist. My aunts and uncles continue to be Buddhist even though they’ve been exposed to the church and live in a Christian American community. Some of my brothers would say that they’re probably agnostics, meaning that they could be Buddhists or they could be Christians; only one would stress his faith identity. The other two or three might see themselves as one or the other or both.

I have espoused Christianity as my own. Part of it was the initial exposure through Christian education, living in a Christian community. But I read a lot. I’ve read probably as much as any theologian on Christianity. So when I say I’ve come to own it, come to espouse it on my own, it’s not just through exposure but by deliberately thinking it through. So I would describe myself as a Christian, a Christian who is culturally Buddhist. I have no problem going to a Wat or celebrating the Buddhist ceremonies, for example. Although it’s not a belief system that I hold, it is my culture.

Right now I’m very much fully engaged in civil society, human rights, democracy, and development work. I’m hoping to be in the role for a while. CIVICUS is a secular non-profit organization that focuses on civic responsibility. What does it mean to be a citizen? The emphasis up until now in Cambodia has been on the rights of citizens, and there hasn’t been enough focus on the responsibility side. A citizen is defined by not only rights but responsibilities, with two sides — sort of like a coin has two sides. On one side are rights, and the human rights community has been very active in imparting these rights to the population even though there’s still work to be done. What has been lacking is the emphasis on responsibility. Freedom without responsibility is chaos; it is anarchy.

So with CIVICUS we want to focus on civic responsibility. First of all, the larger mandate of CIVICUS is to transform Cambodians who are ‘subjects’ and ‘survivors’ into Cambodians who are ‘citizens.’ Up until now we have never been ‘citizens;’ we have only been ‘subjects’ because we lived in a monarchy and it’s always been a one-way directive from the higher-up to the population. Then the Khmer Rouge made us ‘survivors.’ Since the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia and since democracy have been implemented, we’ve been introduced to this concept, which we use but I don’t think we fully understand what it means or how to make it ours.

Right now, we (Cambodians) learn about citizenship as a concept, but haven’t yet translated that to identify how we are citizens. The basic way that we define a citizen is as a person with rights and responsibilities. Now the shift should be towards responsibility; not only the political rights and responsibilities but also the social rights and responsibilities…

We’ve been using the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC, or informally the Khmer Rouge Tribunal), as a catalyst to jumpstart the conversation on reconciliation. The ECCC is within Cambodia’s domestic legal system but is fully financed by the international community, with participation of UN officials. Of course reconciliation has a religious connotation to it as well. I think it has been adapted by other religions but I really think that it’s more a Christian concept. I believe Buddhism is a philosophy, first of all; it’s a philosophy, not a religion. In the Buddhist concept everything is based on fate, so why do you need to reconcile if that is just the way it is? I don’t know enough about the other religions to speak on them, but because I know Christianity well, it’s hard to think about reconciliation without thinking of it as a Christian concept, even though it can be implemented and is being implemented in a very Buddhist society…

[Why are there plenty of secular and Christian organizations addressing [human] trafficking but almost no Buddhist organizations? Would you say that this is because they approach the issue in a different way?]

I think it’s innate in the philosophy on the one hand and the religion on the other because if we just take Buddhist philosophy at its basis, it’s based on fate. It’s based on karma, which, again, is fate. So there’s not much that individuals can do; it doesn’t give the individual much incentive to do anything. Then there’s the whole idea of reincarnation. In the Christian faith there’s the whole idea that the image of God is an innate value. You don’t allow the image of God [that is in every human being] to be crushed, or to be abused, or to be raped, or to be in tattered clothing, or to be found in an undignified form. So already fundamentally I think there’s a diversion between the two belief systems. Of course the teachings are different as well. Predestination is different than fate. There’s a law that says if you’re taking care of the least of them you’re taking care of Jesus himself. It’s coming at it from two different perspectives, so that’s why it’s not surprising that the Christians are more active in social affairs.

We have done a lot of terrible things in history, take slavery for example. Look at all the social changes in Western history and also in India. Gandhi came out with Satyagraha based on the teachings of Christ as well. Mandela has based much on the Sermon on the Mount [of Jesus]. So I think we came from two different starting points. One says this is your fate, this is your karma. The other says you need to do something. This is why we have a situation where Christians are more active in the social justice fields.

KI-Media – “Dedicated to publish sensitive information about Cambodia” – republished this interview on Christmas Day, on 25 December 2010. Whatever is published there, normally results in many reactions and responses. The report about this interview deserves attention.

The publishers of KI-Media state on their publication:

KI-Media loves to hear from you, and we’re giving you a bullhorn. We just ask that you keep things civil. Please leave out personal attacks, do not use profanity, ethnic or racial slurs, or take shots at anyone’s sexual orientation or religion. We thank you for your cooperation!

What is called here not to be appropriate, is what actually happens very often: personal attacks, profanity, there are ethnic and racial slurs, etc. Massive comments of this nature in KI-Media – but also direct publications – contradict the stated policy line – and so it is difficult to see serious debate of dialogue developing. And it is an embarrassing regular display of a kind of Cambodia related discussion which is a disgrace – as if this would be representative of a critical, reflective opinion in Cambodia.

One response to the interview published says – anonymously, as the majority of comments on KI-Media:

Ms. Theary sounds just like a smart ass bitch. Please don’t even mention about our beloved Buddhist if you know nothing about it.

All the more it is necessary to cultivate serious thinking and discussion in the country.

Have a look at the last editorial – you can access it directly from the main page of the Mirror.
And please recommend The Mirror also to your colleagues and friends.

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