What, No Stones to Throw?

So yesterday, Kaing Guek Eav, a prominent figure of Khmer Rouge, was found guilty of war crimes. As a prison ward, Eav oversaw the torture and slaughter of more than 14,000 prisoners. Upon conviction, the UN tribunal that conducted the trial sentenced Eav to nineteen years in prison (having already served sixteen). You may be wondering why such a monster of a man, a man who directed the deaths of thousands of innocents, would only be sentenced to a mere nineteen years.

Well there are two reasons; the first being that Kaing Guek Eav is now 67 years old, and it's probable that he'd be dead before eighty-six. And the second? Cambodia has no death penalty.

Here we have a man who represents the sheer brutality and inhumanity of the Khmer Rouge, a regime that brought about the deaths of 1.7 million people in just four years in the late 1970s. And yet, Cambodia will not have him executed.

What does that say about our system, in which a citizen can be tossed on death row with nothing more than a murder to his name? In the state of Texas alone, twenty-four people were put to death in 2009. And the number of people still waitin' to see the needle there this year? Three-hundred and thirty-three.

As Americans, we'd like to think of ourselves as being a fully matured and developed nation. At least more fully matured than a nation like Cambodia, right? We'd like to think that we have a better understanding of what is right and wrong than a country capable of the Khmer Rouge would. And yet, Cambodia, a nation that was devastated by an onslaught of sadistic oppression, seems to understand that an eye-for-an-eye doesn't make a victim less blind.

But we gotta have revenge, right? You kill someone, we kill you. That's the good-old American way, right?

Or is that the good-old ancient Babylonian way?

There are people who are shocked that Kaing Guek Eav isn't getting the death penalty. I for one am shocked that we insist on keeping a system of punishment that is almost four thousand years old.

Your average American's opinion of Cambodia (if he/she had ever heard of the country) would be that it's a primitive country, and that its citizens are a primitive people. But why? What, they don't have iPods?

The United States puts itself on the pedestal of progress. We send smirks to the world with every astronaut we launch into space. If your fingers haven't caressed the sleek surface of a touch-screen, you might as well be a caveman to us. And yet we haven't grown past the justice code of an ancient civilization.

Capital punishment is true primitivism. And yet while every good ole boy on the Bible Belt has a Facebook and a cell phone, he's still lickin' his lips at the chance to throw stones.

Cheers, Cambodia. But not really. You just make us look more stupid.

-Little Brother, Big Mouth-