Earlier this year I wrote about the tribunal set up in Cambodia to examine the genocidal crimes committed by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge three decades ago and to bring the perpetrators, those still alive, to justice — see here and here.

Even though the government was committed to it, or seemed to be, “procedural differences” threatened to sink the process. The issue had to do with differences between international legal standards and local law.

But, thankfully, the tribunal is up and running, differences overcome. And it is, it seems, working well:

Police and security guards from Cambodia’s “Killing Fields” tribunal arrested former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary on Monday, the third Pol Pot henchman to be taken into custody by the UN-backed court.

His wife, Khieu Thirith, another leading member of the Khmer Rouge, was arrested with him, a tribunal spokesman said after the couple had been ferried from their plush Phnom Penh villa in a police convoy with sirens blazing.

They would be questioned by investigating judges in an initial appearance later on Monday, he said. The pair would be charged, the spokesman added without specifying the charges or when they would be brought.

*****

He and Khieu Thirith were the third and fourth to be arrested after years of delays since the $56-million tribunal got off the ground in earnest this year.

Kaing Guek Eav — commonly known as Duch — is a former schoolteacher who ran the notorious S-21, or Tuol Sleng, interrogation and torture centre at a former Phnom Penh high school. He has been charged with crimes against humanity.

So has “Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea, who is also accused of war crimes.

While Nuon Chea has proclaimed his innocence, Duch, in interviews with Western reporters, has confessed to his role in the mass killings and is expected to be a key witness against other senior regime figures.

Let us hope that justice is finally brought to bear on those who turned Cambodia into a bloodbath.

A Conversation with Dr. Jack Kornfield, American Buddhist Teacher trained in Thailand, Burma and India…on Burma, Buddhism, H.H. the Dalai Lama, and non-violence.

Kornfield is one of the foremost teachers of Theravada Buddhism in the West. He was trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India (He is on the far right in the photo). He graduated from Dartmouth in 1967, joined the Peace Corps in Public Health Service in northeast Thailand, home to some of the last forest monasteries of Buddhist monks and nuns.

There Buddhist master Ajahn Chah became his teacher for many years. Returning to the United States, Kornfield took a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and became a founding teacher of the Buddhist Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California.

I met Jack some years ago when we were both teaching at a symposium in D.C. His father suddenly took a turn for the worse, and Jack was called away. I joined in teaching Jack’s group in order to help, and we have had a friendship since then.

Now 62 years old, he is a soft spoken, devout man with a secular sense of humor lurking beneath the surface, a wonderful trait in a religious. He meets yearly with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, and has published twenty books.

Here is a part of our conversation from October 9, 2007, about the use of violence against violence; the potential use of violence to effect change in Burma… from one man’s deeply Buddhist point of view.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés: “Jack, Buddhists often seem simpatico with others I grew up amongst and admired; Amish, Mennonites, Quakers, Dunkards, priests, brothers and nuns of The Holy Cross … most all being people who often managed to act calmly in helping to aright injustices in the midst of mayhem all around. It’s one thing to be calm in a peaceful mountain monastery, and quite another to act calmly on a festering street corner in East L.A.

“But, right now, looking between the worlds at the murderous mayhems of our times, many hearts are breaking for the millionth time, Jack, and this time, it’s Burma again. On the newsblog I write for, Themoderatevoice.com, some thoughtful commenters have said, amongst other cogent ideas, that the Burmese monks and nuns perhaps ought arm themselves and overtake the junta.

“As an old believer, I know a literal warrior pledges to strive to act with courage in the face of scorn, ridicule and aggression… but not to act in violence. Yet, I know there are warrior traditions in my faiths, amongst them, the Knights, and that there is a warrior-monk tradition in Buddhism from times of old too, as amongst some of the Samurai. Neither of these ancient traditions are portrayed well in modern works, seeming instead to have been severed from their mystical underpinnings…

“… But, thinking of the Burmese again, can holy monks and nuns arm themselves in aggression? Can this be integrated somehow in the non-violent heart of Buddhism?”

Jack Kornfield: ”I’d tell you a story about His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. A group of young Tibetans came to the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala. They told him they were very distraught by the suffering of the Tibetans, and thought they should go back into Tibet armed. They said, We have lost temples, nuns, monks, our culture. We want Stinger missiles for we have nomads who know the mountains and the Chinese don’t know our mountains, and we can launch from there.

“The Dalai Lama put his head in his hands and wept. He reminded them of the Buddhist precept of no killing, no harming living beings, the precept the Dalai Lama has taught all his life as the incarnate head of Buddhism. His Holiness told the young Tibetans, I don’t know if I have done the right thing; but I’ll step down if I have done it wrong. If I believed I have taught untruth, I would resign.

“I’ll tell you another story. We have in our history as Buddhists, many times of being treated unjustly… Yet, I knew Maha Ghosananda, the holy man of Cambodia. After Pol Pot, one-third of the population of Cambodia was massacred. Ninety-five percent of the monks and nuns were felled.

“We were in Thailand at the time, and traveled to where refugees were from Cambodia. And Maha Ghosananda came as the elder to the refugee camps, and he asked permission from UN to reopen a Buddhist temple right there in the camps.

“It was dangerous to do. The Khmer Rouge were underground in the refugee camps. The KR said to the refugees, You go to this man, this ceremony, and we will kill you later.

“But, there in the midst of thousands and thousands of tiny bamboo huts, Maha Ghosananda rang a sacred bell.

“25,000 refugees came; the ones who’d’ had their village temples burned, the ones who’d survived the murders by the Khmer Rouge of their elders, their children, their sisters, brothers, parents, so that now a family was one grandparent and two children left, or one uncle and one niece, left.

“Mahan Ghosananda chanted in Cambodian and Sanskrit, chanting from the Dhammapada, that Hatred never ceases by hatred, that hatred is conquered by love, that this is the ancient and eternal law…

“25 thousand Cambodians who had not heard the holy scripture aloud in years, were chanting and weeping. Read the rest of this entry »