A Facebook Page for Duch - Kaing Guek Eav

Kaing Guek Eav (Duch) is an assassin. He oversaw the detention, torture, cruel death of an estimated 14000 Khmer citizens.  Today his sentence for the crimes he committed equates to less than one day for every 2 people he murdered.  

Anyone who has visited the Tuol Sleng prison knows that this sentence is a travesty. 

Tuol Sleng was originally a public school in  Phnom Penh.

After the Khmer Rouge victory in April 1975 Duch and his men set up prisons throughout the capital including the infamous Tuol Sleng prison.  As the party purges increased towards the end of the Democratic Kampuchea period, more and more people were brought to Duch, including many former colleagues including his predecessor at Tuol Sleng, In Lon. Throughout this period Duch built up a large archive of prison records, mug shots and extracted "confessions".

The routine was atrocious. Any person who fell under suspicion within Democratic Kampuchea was sent to Tuol Sleng.  Suspicion was enough to send you there.  Once at Tuol Sleng, you were photographed and sent through a serious of interrogations that always included torture.  The purpose of these interrogations was to get more names of individuals who were suspicious.  This included relations, children, acquaintances, anyone. If you survived the torture, you were taken out to a ditch, and a hoe was embedded in the back of your skull. Your body was thrown into a mass grave.

14000 people suffered through this routine. 

How do you imagine the impact today?  Think about these:

• If you came under suspicion today, you would never see your family again.
• You would be tortured daily until you gave up the names of every person you have ever known.
• If you had a baby with you, it too would die.
• Your parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins would be implicated.
• You would end up providing these names in full knowledge that they would be following you to this end.
• Eventually, the torture would overwhelm you and there would be nothing that you could recall.
• Then you would be led out to a field where you would dig your own grave, be told to kneel down, and your end would come.

So I created a Facebook Page for Kaing Guek Eav.

This is it:

Daniel Schorr, I'll miss you....

Daniel Schorr passed away yesterday and already I miss him.  He was the feisty, principled journalist who was number 17 on Richard Nixon's famous enemies list.  In fact, he was the reporter who revealed that such a list actually existed, and I imagine his surprise and pride at discovering his name on it.

He literally worked his way up through the ranks of broadcast journalism from the ground floor, starting by sending in tips to a local newspaper at the age of 15.  Then he worked his way down through the same industry to end his career broadcasting on NPR.  His concerns were my concerns -- as a citizen and a student of American politics.

His sonorous voice on TV or radio tended to sound professorial as he grew older, but he earned my respect as a viewer and a listener year after year.  As I learned to listen to him over so many years (and one had to really learn to listen) he became, for me, a kind of extension of the voice of Edward R. Murrow -- the extension of the idea that a primary role of journalism is to speak truth to power.

I was listening in my car to his last broadcast on NPR, just a few weeks ago, wondering how much longer I would hear his voice. I found myself stopped at the intersection, saying to myself "Thank God NPR is keeping his voice alive  after he was driven off of broadcast TV." His commentary was as strong on the last broadcast as it had always been. Only Bill Moyers today garners a similar respect from me, and right now Moyers too has gone off the airwaves. 

Schorr's contribution to journalism is difficult to understand in the current climate of corporate broadcasting and the daily Internet news cycle.  He was not particularly photogenic. His voice had a slightly unnerving quality about it.  He was not funny -- rather a bit erudite.  But his commentary provided context, knowledge, and insight -- and not a small amount of wisdom -- as he laid out his perspective on current events.  He seemed to muse about what was happening, sometimes awestruck that his craft had sunk to such depths of frivolous nattering. When so much was at stake for humanity, how can shows like Entertainment News and the Daily Show represent the heart of reporting today?

He reminded us that there is a kind of insanity in the reporting of current events today that too often propels personality demagoguery in journalism.  He was not of that school: Indeed, he seemed to go against that grain.  His reporting and commentary demonstrated that journalism should be more about substance than style; that news anchors and reporters should actually think about what is being said before they open their mouths or read a prepared script.  His instincts were often right: We're living in an age of propaganda now, and not an age of information delivered through news broadcasts. But sometimes he was wrong, and we took him for a honest person, fooled like the rest of us, by the twists and turns of history.

If there were truly an enemy of the Conservative Right, Schorr seemed willing and capable of taking on the role, without bowing to mud-slinging.  When something was wrong -- as is so often the case -- Schorr looked for the historical angle to describe it, and then constructed an argument, often nuanced and detailed, to cut it down to its bone.  But the Progressives couldn't take him for granted either. If he disagreed, they were warned that trouble was in the offing. His commentaries on the Obama Administration were filled with such warnings.  His continual critiques of the Clinton Administration were also usually on the mark.

But most of all, it was a sense that he couldn't be bought or co-opted.  I think that's why radio and NPR became his final formats for expressing himself: Corporate sponsors could no longer reach him; Politicians could not intimidate him.  They couldn't influence his words.  Instead, they chose to try to marginalize what he was saying, believing no one really cared any more.


I cared.


I will miss Daniel Schorr.  His voice was the voice that glued a past excellence in journalism to its present sad state, and I -- as a writer working in a completely different realm -- admired him.  I admired his detailed reporting, his thoughtful commentary, and his feisty sense of right and wrong.

More importantly to me, I admired his courage to speak truth to power.

Peace Corps Calls Up Memories of East Capital Street in Washington, DC

5:30 AM. I stumble to the phone that has awakened me from a deep sleep. It's Peace Corps in Washington, DC. Somebody name Danielle Smith. They've received our medical forms, but -- on mine -- there's a problem. They had my SS# wrong, so I'd crossed it out on the forms and put in the right one. Now they want to know why. I told them the preprinted SS# was inaccurate. So they want me to fax them a signed statement explaining why I had changed this. Argh! Bureaucracies!

The voice on the other end is patient as I struggle to find my glasses and then careen through the house looking for something to write down their fax number. Finally she says "I'm sorry if I woke you or sumtin."I said, "It's okay! I had to get up to answer the phone anyway!"

Sumtin! The inflection of Ms. Smith's voice makes me remember the inflections of friends we knew back in DC in 1972. A flood of memories comes back, when we lived on East Capitol Street, ten blocks from the Capitol, on the edge of Lincoln Park.

 We lived on the top floor of a three story house amid brownstones, directly across from the park, where a large statue entitled "Emancipation" stood.  It was a statue of Lincoln reaching down to a slave. Every morning I arose early to move the car because the street changed direction to accommodate the influx of traffic.  If I slept late, my car would be ticketed and towed, and many a morning I arrived just in time to prevent the tow trucks from hooking up to our old Saab 96.

And every morning the park was the playground of greyhounds that ran the length of the green, chasing the pigeons that roosted everywhere.

Judith wrote a beautifully frightening poem about Lincoln Park during our time there. 

Our housemates were the Baycotts - an African American family with five beautiful young children.  They lived on the bottom two floors, and Mrs. Baycott took a special interest in Judith, who was nearing full term with our first child, Dagan.

The inflection of "somtin" by Ms. Smith made me start thinking of Mrs. Baycott and those beautiful kids.

One evening, as we climbed the stairway up through the house to our third floor apartment -- as we reached the second story loaded down with groceries -- our eyes were caught by a single brown finger of one hand wriggling beneath the door of the second floor bedrooms.  First one finger wiggling, then a second, then a third -- waving a silent hello.

Then there was a second hand, then a third, then a fourth, each hand wiggling fingers.  Before we reached the landing, five pairs of hands, fingers wriggling, shown beneath the old wooden door.  "Hello!" the fingers said. "Ssh! Don't tell Momma we're here doing this! Hello! Goodbye!"

In February of that year our son Dagan was born, and Mrs. Baycott daily came up to attend Judith and to see the new baby.  I recall how she sat in the chair by the third story window, baby between her hands, looking deeply into his newly opened eyes.  She was such a help, curious about the name we'd given to him, present but distant, somehow separated from us, but deeply engaged in our new adventure.

"Isn't he sumtin!" I remember her saying.  "He's such a beautiful boy!"

After Danielle Smith has hung up this morning,  I lay in bed unable to fall back asleep. I can't stop thinking about those old days more than 30 years ago.  Ms. Smith would be just about the age of one of those Baycott children, I think to myself.  All grown up. And it makes me wonder how their lives have gone, thousands of miles away, growing up in the nation's capitol.  Do they each have their own children now?  Is Mrs. Baycott a grandmother too?  How has life treated them?  Do they even remember us, the arrival of the new baby?  The chaos of our sudden departure? Did they ever wonder what became of us, just as I now am wondering what became of them?

For me, growing up as I did in the Midwest -- amid racial segregation and cultural stereotypes, in a middle class white family -- trying to emotionally navigate an era of riots and prejudice -- that moment on that flight of stairs so long ago was a kind of milestone of a personal emancipation. The barriers between us seem to break by the simplicity of their silent, waving greetings.  Were I to meet one of those grown up children today, I know my fingers would wriggle their own silent "Hello! How's it been for you?"

And then I would whisper "Don't worry! I never told your Momma! But then, I know she wouldn't mind either."

The Endless Peace Corps Application Process

Today Judith and I finally mailed off our medical clearance forms to Peace Corps. It was a process begun last March when we received the pile of forms from Washington, D.C. It was a relief to finally get each group of records into the SASE, lock it down with tape, and send each packet off as certified mail. The Post Office window clerk, seeing the address, put both hands together in a prayer salute and wished us luck.

Luck! How we've needed it these last five months as we navigated the forms. One might suppose that they would have sent a cohesive package of forms, numbered and lettered, with the appropriate check-off lists to make certain everything was there.

And indeed, the materials they sent could be seen as having once had a sort of maniacal order. But it must have been at some distant moment in the past. Perhaps back in the 1980s or 70s or 60s.

Unfortunately, as the forms currently appear, they are a hodge-podge of requests for information, each request clearly devised by a separate internal entity within the medical establishment of the Peace Corps offices.

On some level I imagined it would be like going into the Army. But now I suspect the Army must have the medical process down to a science, using their own physicians. How else could we have built us such a large military?

By comparison, the Peace Corps medical forms process would seem archaic at best. Were Peace Corps to fight a war by drafting Peace Corps recruits, the processes of getting everyone through the medical forms would, in itself, eventually cause us to suite for peace.

For example, we are responsible for getting the various doctors to fill out the forms precisely, and for paying those doctors their going rates for their services. Imagine trying to fight in Afghanistan if each soldier were required to go back home and have his/her doctor complete a half-inch sheaf of paper forms. Then, when the whole examination process is complete, the soldier was required to pay up out of his own pocket.

Peace Corps does provide a small remuneration, but we haven't gone through that process yet. The reimbursement amounts listed are small, I'm afraid. So I'm really hopeful that we don't end up being eliminated because of some minor issue with our health. Then the whole process would seem like a waste of money.

So how bad was the overall medical examination process? Not too bad!

The basic exams are pretty simple: A physical exam, providing an immunization record, a few blood tests, an eye exam, and a dental exam.

Thereafter, the unique medical history of each applicant is queried with specific tests, based upon what the applicant has revealed in his/her medical narrative that was a part of the in the initial Peace Corps application.

For instance, I have high blood pressure, and I identified that I had this condition on my initial Peace Corps application. This led the medical screening staff to request more specific information, and a separate form was enclosed which need to be filled out. Likewise, I used to faint when I was younger -- a condition called Vasal Vagil Syncop. I used to faint whenever I became overly stressed, and my blood pressure would suddenly descend. The condition is harmless, but this too had to be explained by a specialist, even though today I no longer experience this condition.

But for a young person - someone who has not yet suffered tribulations that life inflicts upon each of us - the medical screening process would probably seem pretty straight forward. By comparison, for older applicants -- 50 or greater -- the battery of tests and proofs tend to multiply. Colonoscopy, Electro Cardiogram, additional blood work: All to prove that you are in fact alive and will not succumb during deployment.

The worse part for me was obtaining the past medical records from a hospitalization more than 10 years ago. I emailed, phoned, faxed -- but to no avail. Finally, they told me that I actually could not have my own records. According to their rules, only a physician could receive copies, and only if I were physically present at the time the hospital faxed them the records. That entire episode of record retrieval took four months to work out. Then, after my doctor gave me the records, I had to go to a local specialist who could review the old records and vouchsafe that I was still alive and unencumbered by the old ailment.

Some requests for information related to illnesses or conditions that I experienced back when I was 15 years old. Peace Corps wanted to be certain that I was no longer afflicted. Puberty? Don't even ask!

Unfortunately, those medical records -- and all the people who treated me back then -- have long since disappeared. And so, after speaking to the medical coordinator back in Washington, DC, it was recommended that I simply enclose a "personal statement" explaining the circumstances.

We were very lucky that our own local doctor, Barry Brown, was so patient and understanding with us. When he first heard us talking about going into the Peace Corps more than a year ago, he smiled and shook our hands. His encouragement has certainly made the whole process much easier. Over and over again we traipsed through his examination rooms as we tried repeatedly to complete the endless medical clearance processes. Each test resulted in one more question, which required more tests, etc. By the end of it I'm sure even his nurse Erin was relieved to see the end of us. We can't thank them enough for their good will, patience, and professionalism.

But what will we say if we still don't get into the Peace Corp?

During the midst of all this coming and going to the doctors' offices we received a notice that we were taking too long, and that if Peace Corps did not receive our completed forms by July 8th, our applications would automatically be placed on hold.

Argh! July 8th was yesterday! Our medical packets shipped today! What now?

We'll have to wait and see.

And if they reject us because we're too "feeble and frail"?

Oh yes! They can still reject us!

Stay tuned. We have been told that -- now that we have sent the medical forms -- it will take them up to six months to process them. That puts us into December.