An Unnecessary Tribunal

Leslie Hook’s essay on Cambodia omits very important things (“Cambodia’s Flawed Search for Justice,” January/February 2008). The U.S. and other Western powers all supported the Khmer Rouge from 1978 until 1989 in their fight against the Cambodian people. The United Nations refused to discuss their human rights record and certain NGOs were even mouthpieces of the Khmer Rouge. I remember in 1989 the Belgian daily Le Libre Belgique editorialized for the return to government of the Khmer Rouge. No doubt the tribunal will never discuss this. Speaking of a “flawed search for justice,” the West should leave Cambodia alone and first take a close look at its ugly self.

Willy Van Damme
Belgium


Although the Cambodia article makes for real provocative reading, I have my reservations. The kingpins of the infamous, Cambodia massacre are practically all dead. Is there really a necessity to waste the U.N.’s precious time and money just to try a couple of lesser criminals?

The Cambodians are still suffering, living under the control of their despotic leaders. Is there genuinely an exigency to recall and re-enact those cruel and dreadful days of heinous butchery when many of the loved ones of the living Cambodians perished? The U.N. ought to redirect its effort in helping to reconstruct the shattered country and rebuild its economy, rather than reviving the tragic nightmare of the genocide. A donation of $50 million dollars could have been better utilized to alleviate the abject poverty of the most unfortunate.

Munn-zie Chan
Hong Kong


Playing the Right Song

Messrs. Laurson and Pieler are right to suggest the New York Philharmonic should have selected a more daring program for its concert in Pyongyang (“Serenading a Dictator,” feer Forum, Feb. 22), but I’m not sure a Shostakovich piece, especially the Fourth Symphony, would be appropriate. Though later in his life Dmitri Shostakovich claimed his Fourth was an act of dissent, he had already written most of the symphony before he believed he was in any danger. After his work was attacked, instead of continuing with his “shrieks” and “brutality” he ended his piece by having the orchestra slowly die away. The piece ends in tragedy, unable to escape from the “crushing regime.”

A better suggestion might be Beethoven’s Ninth. When the Berlin Wall was being dismantled in December of 1989, Leonard Bernstein conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on both sides of the wall with musicians from West and East Germany. The Ode to Joy became a symbol of freedom and cooperation despite years of a DMZ dividing the two. Surely with this brief anecdote told by Lorin Maazel, the symbolism—though heavy-handed—would not be lost on the North Korean audience.

Christopher Shay
Hong Kong