 revisited. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech and I'm broadcasting from New York City. And we are talking to Atatep Mies. He's with Project Expedite Justice in Cambodia, Nampen. What a day, my gosh. We're strapping the world here between New York and Nampen here on Think Tech. Fabulous. Welcome to the show, Atatep. Thank you for having me. So tell us about, you know, your background because you're not the average Cambodian, but you are Cambodian. Tell us, how Cambodian are you and what you're doing in Nampen these days? So for the majority of my life, I was raised here. I went to school here, graduated with a diploma here. I went to law school here. So I'm like 95% Cambodian. So in terms of my background, I'm currently a legal consultant for Project Expedite Justice and also a case manager. Outside of PEJ, I work as a moot court coach for my law university, which is a Royal University of Law and Economics. And I essentially coach a team of five students and prepare them for an international moot court competition that usually takes place in D.C. Oh, fabulous. So where'd you get your English in Brooklyn? I grew up watching and consuming a lot of American media. So that is probably where I got the accent from. Well, you know, your English could pass for American English anytime. I must say that's terrific. And that's a benefit, isn't it? I mean, being a lawyer is a benefit. And speaking English the way you do, that's got to be a benefit, isn't it? Right, correction. I'm not yet a lawyer, although I intend to try for the bar here and perhaps after if I finish a master's in the U.S., I could also try for the bar there. Okay, well, stop by Hawaii. You know, we have a master's program at the University of Hawaii. William S. Richardson School of Law and we have a close connection with them. So stop by Hawaii. That'll be great. Okay, so we're going to talk about I want you to maybe you can just show while you're here. That would be really interesting. So I would like to talk about Cambodia for a minute and I'm interested in Cambodia maybe more than I was ever because three weeks ago in Honolulu, they were doing a state play called other Cambodian rock band. And it's really interesting. So what is this about? Well, it was about killing fields and it was about a rock band. And they played a lot of rock music in this play in Cambodia. And through this through this look at it, this approach to it, you learned a lot about what happened in Cambodia. But can you talk about that for a minute? What did happen in Cambodia? And what kind of effect did it leave on Cambodia? And how do you feel that effect now? So I would describe every Cambodians as being very resilient. Because if you look into our history, we've had a lot of wars, wars with our neighboring countries, and also internal wars, where we just fight each other prominently in 1975. That's when the bad stuff started to happen. The Khmer Rouge overtook the city and then it led to millions and millions of executions, senseless killings actually, and genocide of people in Cambodia. I read that a lot of that Khmer Rouge was in fact funded by China. And there's been some reporting too that the US in part also funded Khmer Rouge. And I'm not sure why. But do you know about that? Is that something that's generally known in Cambodia that China was funding that government and as a government, a special kind of government that kills its own citizens? And that the US also had a part in supporting Khmer Rouge? So I'll talk as a lay person. Like when I was as a freshman, a first year law student, I didn't know that at all. I know that the killing fields, the genocide Khmer Rouge took place, but not who backed or who contributed to the war. So China did send arms to, I think, a part of the faction here that was fighting. And also, there was this prominent military general from the US, Henry Kissinger. He sort of ordered the bombing of Cambodia, which the effect of that bombing is quite debatable as to whether it was the catalyst for the Khmer Rouge to overtake because it did do some damage to one of the rivaling parties here. But interesting how sometimes you don't know the consequences of your act. Every act has a reaction, especially geopolitical and military. And in this case, that was probably a surprise to Henry Kissinger, who a lot of people like him, but a lot of people don't. So this doesn't endear me to him actually. Yeah, sometimes in the pursuit of fighting evil, you are yourself committing acts that are more evil than evil that you're trying to combat. Yeah. Yeah. So it's good to criticize. Commissions going on. You still have commissions going on about the killing fields. Is that over yet? And that was, I guess, encouraged by European interests and probably American interests to have a commission and have some, what do you want to call it, justice in Cambodia about the genocide? What's the state of affairs with that now? So the court is currently ending. We have a sort of a Cambodian version of the international criminal tribunal from the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the ICTY and ICTR. Here we call it the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, otherwise known as the ECCC, and it aims to prosecute senior leaders of Marouge. As of current, it is set to end or be terminated by the end of this year with one active case that is ongoing. Hmm. Is that fellow of a criminal type who committed a lot of atrocities? Yeah. He was one of the senior leaders of Marouge. This is all in the Cambodian rock band play. Tell you, it's very educational and it actually makes me want to know more about Cambodia. So when I saw this article today in the Washington Post, I haven't seen it yet in the New York Times, but in the Washington Post, reporting that Cambodia was doing a groundbreaking to start the construction for a Chinese naval base, I guess in the Gulf of Thailand. This is very, very interesting. I know we're not here to talk about geopolitics, but I wonder if you could speak just a little on Cambodia's relationship with China, friendly or not, and its relationship with Russia, friendly or not, and its relationship with the United States. So admittedly, I have very limited knowledge in the construction of the naval base, but to give insight to the relationship between Cambodia and China in past experience, we were handling a case of human trafficking, which the perpetrators were Taiwanese nationals, and the victims were Cambodian nationals. All of them were male. All of them came from diverse backgrounds, but the one thing that they share in common is that they want to turn their lives around. These people come from very poor backgrounds that they have to sacrifice, that they have to liquidate most of their assets to get money so that they can pay a recruitment agency to teach them the vocational skills and be sent to another country in hopes of finding a better economic opportunity. Then turns out they were defrauded, they were smuggled into another, no sorry, smuggled is a wrong term to use. They were sent there legally, but upon reaching the country, they had their passports withheld and they were forced to beg in a country where they're not familiar with in a language that they do not know. This was what got me into Project Expedite Justice in the first place because my supervisor at the time, Christina Rosella, she invited me or she tagged me along to a witness or a victim sort of interview and we sort of took statements and that sort of enrages me when I hear the accounts of the victims. These people are already poor, these people want to work to turn their lives around and they were exploited. So how is this relevant to the relationship between China and Cambodia? The perpetrators were Taiwanese and before our authorities could act, they fled to Taiwan. We sort of asked our local authorities to try to cooperate with Taiwanese authorities to get these perpetrators, perhaps extradite them to prosecute them here in Cambodia because the crime happened here. Our authorities just refused because in doing so, they have not explicitly stated their reasoning, but they just refused without a reason and this is sort of speculation, but I think in doing so, we would be impliedly recognizing Taiwan as their own sovereign nation. Oh, how interesting the way that creeps into everything in Asia, Taiwan and China. That's so interesting. And in doing so, we would be angering China and that China being our biggest investor, we wouldn't want to do that. Oh my goodness, that is so offensive, actually. I'm sorry. And China is everywhere pulling the Taiwan game. So anyway, so let's talk about what you're doing for, well, let's talk about the state of corruption, if you will, in Cambodia. I mean, Cambodia is attractive in some sense. You're having a nice enough life there, maybe a better life than you would have had in other parts of Southeast Asia. And you've been able to go to school and I'm sure you'll do well in your career, which I guess is you're planning to do your career in Cambodia, in Nampen, I guess. But query, what kind of place is it in terms of the corruption, in terms of your ability to express yourself, freedom of expression, in terms of your work for Project Expedite Justice? I'm very thankful for the life that I have and have been given so far. I've been introduced to many opportunities, law school, and especially the introduction to Moot Court, it was one of them where I got to experience what it's like to be in D.C. We went to D.C. for about three weeks, one week for the competition, the remaining two to just sightsee. And the type of expression that are allowed in between the two countries are vastly different. So we do have our own laws concerning free speech here, but it's not as broad or as free as the First Amendment in America. And it gave me perspective when one of the just Moot Court competition, the problem was about the freedom of speech. And there was this activist who was just going crazy on Twitter, and then he had his account suspended for banned. And then I tried to take various incidents from other countries from the U.S., from India, from China, where similar things have happened. And my group of students were very happy. They were very knowledgeable in discussing these cases until I bring up cases relating to Cambodia. Then they started to whisper, and then they started to not respond at all. And it was just me explaining what is happening. So that is anecdotal, but people are scared to express their political opinions because defamation is one thing and can be liable to sanctions, but lies can also be sanctions, which I think is contrary to what international law provides us in terms of political rights. Very interesting that you talk about that. Have you followed the Shapiro case, which is going on now in Washington? I think it's... The Shapiro case. Yeah. He was a law professor who was hired by, I think it was the GW Law School. And before he got there, he made some statements about the First Amendment and about how you should and could be able to discuss, and I forget exactly what he said in an article, discuss Trumpist anti-democratic values in an article, and that would be more important. And the First Amendment would permit that, even though these values were really not acceptable to a lot of people at the university and at the law school. And there was a big stink raised about it, so much so that he had to go in front of some committee in the law school, and they ultimately found that, yes, the First Amendment trumped his comments, and although the students didn't like it much, they were going to let him do it, but he was under so much pressure that he ultimately resigned his job at the law school. Now, what I'm telling you all of this, and you can read up on the Shapiro thing, but what I'm telling you is that I think the First Amendment is in a different place now, because you can make statements that nobody would have wondered about before that they were protected by the First Amendment, but there are some people who spew poison, who spew hatred, who spew things that are inconsistent with our democratic values, and maybe just maybe that's so dangerous that the First Amendment will not protect you. And that was the issue with this guy, Shapiro. Have you had any knowledge about that? Do you agree with what I'm saying? Was this covered in your moot court, your just a moot court? So my moot court problem was predicated upon election fraud. So one of the part of the competition is that it takes up very cutting-edge issues, meaning what issues are relevant at our current time, so the students can feel like they are actual lawyers going before the International Court of Justice, debating the current issue. So last year's problem was based off of Trump's suspension, off of Twitter for his posting of tweets that were, I think, by Twitter related to the Jan 6th riot. So he was suspended for that. So it was something similar. Yeah, something very similar. It was interesting how you certainly covered that issue, or at least you had it on the table anyway. Yeah, the just a competition does provide an opportunity for us to discuss current relevant cases. And even back in 2018, the whole theme was about nuclear weapons, and that was the whole debacle between North Korea threatening to, I think, strike Guam, a U.S. military base. And then Trump infamously went before the United Nations General Assembly to give that very infamous speech of Little Rocket Man is on a suicide mission. I remember that. Death to diplomacy, I suppose. But going back to the discussion of free speech, you have to look into what is socially acceptable, but that is a very hard assessment to make because you're always going to have groups that think differently. You're going to have two or three or four groups that might think that certain things are acceptable and others are not. I, for instance, the discussion of abortion. You have the people who are extremely pro-life and those who are extremely pro-choice. And then there's the middle ground people, the people sitting on the fences that think that abortion should be legalized, but only in certain conditions like under rape, incest, or it is to protect the mother's life. You certainly sound like an American lawyer out of town. Do you think about coming and practicing the United States? Do you think about becoming an international lawyer and practicing in many places? I try to be as reasonable as possible and not look extreme. Let's talk a bunch of work for Project Dexford and Justice. What are you doing for them? So I am a consultant and a case manager. I am sort of the person that makes sure that every cases are managed properly. And by manage, I mean they are processed. They're stored properly so that when our members, our team needed, they know where to go. That might seem like an irrelevant job, but when you are working in multiple countries, conducting multiple investigations, and cases will start to pile up, right? So you'll face hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of documents, thousands even, and it's going to get very hectic to find certain tidbits of information that you really need from tens and thousands of documents. But I'm lucky that I've been given this opportunity because also part of that is to analyze evidence. And I've worked along my supervisors to essentially process evidence so that they can be prepared into a memorial and be sent before the ICC. Or if we are not pursuing judicial accountability, we can do it in the form of advocacy. And the judicial accountability can be done later. And under advocacy, we try to let the world know these are the things that are happening in these countries, namely Sudan, South Sudan, and other parts of Africa where there's just to an outsider. It is very confusing and strange. And you can't really determine as to why this is still happening. There's mass ethnic violence happening in these countries. It is treading on the line of genocide where different tribes from different regions are fighting each other. Some are trying to claim territory. Some are just trying to claim dominance. It's what you see with what happened in Rwanda with the... I forgot the faction's names. I apologize. It's okay. We're flying around the world here. It's okay. You know, there was something also in the paper today about talk about genocide and attacking people in another ethnic or religious culture, organization, race, what have you. And there was something in the paper today about an attack. I guess it was a shooting attack in Africa where these people attacked Catholics in the church and killed a lot of people, Catholics praying in a church. And that's new. We know there's been a lot of genocide and senseless killing in Rwanda, in Sudan, other places in Africa, Central Africa, but this is new, religious. And so I ask you this question, is it getting worse? It appears to be, but it really depends on the country. Some countries are doing far better than others and far better than they were in the past few years, like South Sudan. There has been less violence because of this discussion around a peace agreement, although violence is... It is not non-existent, but it is definitely at a lower rate than what we've seen during the birth of that country back in 2011 or 2012. Yeah. And in America, my heart goes to all the families who are victimized by all the shootings that are happening across the country. There was one in Oklahoma, there was one in think in Tulsa, and there was another, I think it was five hours ago. There was another mass shooting at a church. So it depends on the country. What do you make of that? I mean, you're a student lawyer, law student, and you're familiar with American court process and appellate court process in the Jessup Mood Court. And you have the vantage of being in a country which has seen atrocities and thinks about atrocities. And you can see from Project Expedite Justice what's going on in Africa. I suppose you know what's going on in Latin America and the world. And you have told me, as many have, that these atrocities, these war crimes, the need for this investigation, the need for this database of documents is growing. If not for prosecution, then at least to make a memorial record of who's been doing what. Really important what you're doing. But the question is, how do you see the U.S. these days? Did you follow the January 6 insurrection? Are you following what is happening to our democracy, our rule of law, our Supreme Court? What are your thoughts about that? I know you're not American, but you're very close to being American. So I wonder what your thoughts are. Thank you. You can't really pinpoint as to why these events occur. All you know is that it's horrible and these people should get the maximum sentence with due respect to their fair trial rights, of course. But I think part of why these shootings keep occurring is I think the glorification of murderers. People keep looking back into the Columbine shooting, I think, and they keep making these stories. It's always talked about and especially in the digital age, I think everybody wants to become famous. Everybody wants their 15 minutes of fame. Some would go on to a social media app, make themselves go viral so that they can do something with that fame, 15 minutes of fame, while others take a different approach and then try to, I don't know, they just commit the most evil. My only take of that is to, I'm not sure why as to America does not employ or mandate that all schools have security screenings. You can just put, I think, one of those metal detectors at the entrance or at the exit of school and make sure that there's limited entrances so that these things don't happen. Maybe take some away from the TSA and put them in schools instead. The security at the TSA is crazy. You have to take off your jacket, any metal on you, you have to take off your shoes. Don't I know. But with all good reason, of course. All that considered, and you work for BEJ, your experience that we've discussed, what's the solution to this? Not necessarily limited to the U.S., although the U.S. is certainly a special case. And I totally agree with you about this public spectacular kind of legacy that some of these young people want to have, even though they're likely to die in the process. But what's the solution to it? What's the solution to it in all the places you've investigated and in the U.S.? There must be something we as a species can do to cut this out. I mean, for example, people suggested never mention the name of the perpetrator, don't give him the legacy. But that seems like a small step. What are your thoughts in general? So before getting to America, I'll just speak for other parts of the country in relation to my work at BEJ. As part of case management, I think it is important to document these atrocities. There was a popular saying about case management, if you don't document it, technically it never happened. And the purpose of documentation is to make sure to raise awareness so that history never repeats itself. It is very important for other countries besides America, because in America almost every case is publicized and there is a nationwide debate of everything. But in other countries like Sudan or even here in Cambodia, there's less transparency with our judiciary. Law students are not engaged with the law. They only read what the law says and tries to interpret it by text, but they don't really know how to apply that law. And the only way to know is to become a lawyer and be involved in the case of that specific law. So we have no database. We have no release of judicial decisions, which is contrary to what the ECCC does, because it's a hybrid court. It releases all of its judicial decisions. It gives outsiders an opportunity to learn why the court come to a certain reasoning and the opinions of judges, these people who we say that deserves to apply the law in the best interests of the public. But because there's no transparency, law students are not engaged. And so the continuous occurrence of corruption will be ongoing, because when there is an instance of corruption, when it does make public news, it is not as public, I guess. You have to really look forward. So that is also another issue with access to information, where cases are not blown up. And because of that, the ripple effect is not that much. So then when violations do occur, sometimes they go under the radar, which would lead to more impunity. Yeah, really important thoughts. One last thing I wanted to ask you about, again, from your vantage, from seeing this on the basis of your experience and your view of the world, what about Ukraine? We know there have been war crimes there, and they have been documented in so many ways, although I'm not sure about the way that all that documentation has been managed, included in databases and presented so far. But what are your thoughts about the atrocities that have happened in Ukraine? What do you think about the liberal world order, which is at risk in Ukraine? Again, I think it's all about geopolitics, and when you put, for lack of a better term, psychopaths in positions of power, they tend to go crazy, and they think they are owed everything. And this is not just limited to Russia. China is doing the same with Southeast Asian countries. Russia and the US has been doing it for a very long time ever since World War II. They are not directly fighting, but it's a series of proxy wars where I would coin it like small hot wars, I suppose. With respect to Ukraine, I think there are a lot of public engagement and a lot of documentation on social media. You see it every day. It's continuous, and I think everyone is doing a great job in terms of showing the world what is happening. Again, I think that is when diplomacy goes to die. I think states should just try to negotiate, and I believe that there were no compromises which led to the war. I'm sorry, I cannot give like a more detailed... I just wanted to get your view, your gut reaction to it on the basis of where you are and what you're doing, and your reach not only in Nampan and Cambodia, but other places in the world through your work with P.E.J. But our conversation is not over at a temp. I really want to revisit all these things with you, and I hope you do come to Hawaii, but before you come, it's okay. We'll get together just this way. We'll have another free-wheeling discussion and find out what's happening in Nampan and Cambodia in Southeast Asia with Russia and China and the US. So many important things to talk about, and they are changing as we speak. I really appreciate your work and your association with P.E.J. Thank you very much for coming to our show and talking about these things with me. Thank you for having me, and I would like to say my thanks to P.E.J. and all my previous supervisors that got me into the field of human rights. I think almost everybody that I know, including my students, they sort of sense that I hate work at private law firms and dealing with private sectors and such. I think there's already enough resources for that, so yeah, I would like to offer my thanks to my organization for giving me this opportunity for supporting me. I have great supervisors and great colleagues, and thank you for having me on the program, and I would love to appear again. Well, I want to follow your career. I want to see, I want to see you and people like you, lawyers and incipient lawyers like you help us deal with a very complex world. Thank you so much, Anitep. Anitep, me joining us from Nampan, Cambodia. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.