Book Review: The Justice Façade: The Trials of Transition in Cambodia

Everything that's important goes on in the darkness, no doubt about it," said Céline, author of Journey to the End of the Night, alluding to the vortex of one's psyche where the most important thoughts are formed, and decisions made.Alexander Hinton's The Justice Facade is also a book that sheds light on what's important but obscured, this time by the grand aims of Transitional Justice (TJ).Written as a complement, rather than a rejoinder to Kathryn Sikkink's The Justice Cascade, 1 The Justice Facade brings to the fore an important and timely debate on the Greek concept of "telos".This term, which signifies "the ultimate object or aim", has long dominated the way we think, and also defined the way we present and evaluate information.In essence, the prevalence of this idea in everything we do, implies that after objectives have been set down, our focus is shifted entirely on whether, and how far these have been achieved, denoting our obsession with causal effects.It also demonstrates the superstitious belief on our part in radical changes, linear in nature, from a "Before" to an "After", 2 say from primitiveness to modernity, or authoritarian rule to a democracy, when in truth, the transformations may be more dispersed, interstitial, and rhizomic, giving credence to "variance and complexity".3 The problem with understanding change in terms of such linearity is that considerations of all collateral effects-good and bad-are foregone, so that for the most part, our critical appraisal of the project or endeavour in question, ends up being reductive and inadequate.Along similar lines, Hinton draws our attention to the idealism inherent in the causal aims of TJ, these being articulated as "justice, national reconciliation, stability, peace, and security" 4 , and then turns our attention to all that happens insidiously, surreptitiously and organically when a tribunal is set up, focusing on the study of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).This tribunal, he reveals, paved the way for alternative modes of peace, justice and reconciliation to be instilled among survivors and their families, in ways as simple as "the ability to forget the past, to share coffee or tea with neighbours who were once enemies, or to rebalance one's relationships to the spirits of the dead." 5 Therefore, beyond the traditional discourse on TJ and whether its aims have been achieved, the lighting of incense sticks, the holding of prayers and incantations, and the performance of cremation ceremonies, 6 should also be looked upon as attempts to instill peace, justice and reconciliation.They are after all attempts to reconnect with the dead, the tortured, and finally soothe angry and wandering souls, and "restore the equilibrium", all this against the backdrop of a predominantly Buddhist society.But in this exercise of salvaging information which is usually discarded (or redacted), the information that Hinton restores to us is (not surprisingly) not entirely positive, in that it does not 1 Kathryn Sikkink, The Justice Cascade -How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics (New York: W. W.

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