Dear Editor,

I read

with horror about Dr Jarvis's appointment to head the Victims' Unit.

Youk Chhang, the head of DC-Cam, is by far the most experienced

professional insofar as outreach to the Cambodian people and the

outside world about the genocide and the Tribunal.... The fact that

Chhang was not offered the position, or even asked about the

appointment, speaks volumes about the ineptitude and corruption which

has marked the Tribunal from the outset. The fact that Dr Jarvis is

neither a Cambodian nor a victim of the regime is offensive, but not

shocking.

The appointment of overpaid foreigners in NGOs and UN

agencies is nothing new in Cambodia. The glaring offence is not her

ethnicity, however, but her political ties and alliances. In a letter

from just three years ago she signed to the following: "In time of

revolution and civil war, the most extreme measures will sometimes

become necessary and justified."

This kind of speech is something

that the Khmer Rouge themselves subscribed to, and it is Marxist

ideology that led to the deaths of roughly 2 million people in

Cambodia, which created the necessity for a Khmer Rouge tribunal and a

Victims' Unit in the first place. The philosophy that the "ends justify

the means" in the pursuit of creating a communist nation is something

that Pol Pot himself was a champion of. Having Dr Jarvis head the

Victims' Unit of the Khmer Rouge tribunal and Extraordinary Chambers in

the Courts of Cambodia is akin to having a Nazi Party member running

victim relations at the Nuremburg Trial for Josef Mengele, the "Doctor"

and head of torture at Auschwitz.

Bethany Murphy

Washington, DC

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