AsiaLIFE

This month Meta House hosts the Cambodian premiere of WAR DON DON, an award-winning documentary about post-conflict justice in Sierra Leone. AsiaLIFE talks to director Rebecca Richman Cohen about the documentary and its parallels with Cambodia.

In the summer of 2006, Rebecca Richman Cohen sat behind bullet-proof glass in the observer gallery of the Special Court for Sierra Leone. She was watching the trial of Issa Hassan Sesay, the former interim leader of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), the main rebel faction in a conflict that devastated Sierra Leone between 1991 and 2002.

Cohen was working at the Special Court as a legal intern on the defence team for Alex Tamba Brima, a former military commander of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, another faction involved in the war. Over her time at the Special Court, Cohen found herself drawn to observe the trial of Sesay with increasing fascination.

“I came to know lawyers for both the prosecution and the defence at Issa Sesay’s trial,” she explains. “It seemed that both sides had some of the brightest and most impassioned lawyers I’ve ever met–and I was fascinated by the moral, political, and legal questions that their commitments evoked.”

Realising that a documentary film could capture the complexities of the issues presented by the Sesay case in a way that neither law review articles nor mainstream media could represent, she set about making the film that became WAR DON DON (“war is over”).

A film about “the nature of justice,” according to Cohen, WAR DON DON explores the concept of criminal responsibility and some of the moral questions that arise when nine men are tried for crimes committed during a decade long civil war involving multiple factions, and perhaps thousands of individual perpetrators. It is also an examination of the character of one individual and the battle to define how he would be perceived.

Leaving school in Sierra Leone aged 16, Issay Sesay worked as a trader in the Ivory Coast when he was, according to his testimony, unknowingly recruited by RUF leader and founder Foday Sankoh to join a planned revolutionary insurgency against the Sierra Leone government. Sankoh was a former corporal in the Sierra Leone army who had fought for future Liberian President Charles Taylor in neighbouring Liberia.

According to Sesay, he and other young men were told they would be taken to Burkina Faso where they would be employed in a restaurant. Instead they found themselves in Liberia to receive ideological training and instruction in the use of arms and tactical warfare.

When the RUF began its attacks on villages in eastern Sierra Leone in 1991, Issa Sessay was 21. Over the next decade RUF’s war against the Sierra Leone government resulted in the death of tens of thousands of civilians and the displacement of over two million people. The RUF became notorious for its brutality, with its forces carrying out amputations, rape and the destruction of entire villages.

In 2002, acting as interim leader for the RUF after the arrest of Sankoh, Sesay completed the disarmament of the RUF with the support of other west African nations and the UN. This ended the war, bringing peace to Sierra Leone.

On Mar. 7, 2003, Sesay was indicted by the Special Court on 18 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, extermination, terrorism, rape, sexual slavery and enlistment of child soldiers. As military commander, Sesay was deemed responsible for the actions of RUF subordinates, actions that included rape, murder, mutilation and amputation.

Prosecutor David Crane described looking into Sesay’s eyes during his opening address as, “the first time I looked into the eyes of a human being and realised they have no soul.”

On Feb. 25, 2009, Sesay was found guilty of 16 of the 18 charges against him and was later sentenced to 52 years imprisonment, the longest sentence handed down by the Special Court. Wayne Jordash, lead defence counsel for Sesay, described the sentence requested by the prosecution as a “continuation of the process of demonisation that seeks to hold Mr. Sesay responsible for the crimes of all the RUF.”

As the Special Court for Sierra Leone moves towards the conclusion of its final case, that against former Liberian President Charles Taylor, it seems destined to become the first international criminal tribunal to complete its mandate.

The court shares many similarities with Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge Tribunal, including a hybrid structure that utilises both local and international staff, and a narrow jurisdiction that is likely to result in the prosecution of only a handful of those accused.

In 2011 the Khmer Rouge Tribunal will begin its second trial, that against the four accused persons–Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith–who are alleged to have been senior leaders of the Democratic Kampuchea regime responsible for millions of deaths during a period of rule in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. WAR DON DON provides a fascinating insight into the experiences of a nation that has been through a similar process of seeking justice and reconciliation and highlights some of the debates that such a trial may ignite.

Cohen says she is pleased to have created a film that stimulates thought and discussion about international criminal justice. “Different audiences will come to their own conclusions,” she says. “One of the greatest joys of documentary filmmaking is the debate that arises from having to sort through the tensions within and between conflicting stories.”

WAR DON DON is being hosted by the Cambodian Center for Human Rights at the Meta House, 37 Sothearos Blvd., Phnom Penh, on Dec. 9 at 7pm. For more information, contact Nicolaus Mesterharm on: 012 607 465. Admission is free.