There are bad people

I had the privilege to visit Cambodia just over a year ago on a working trip.  While on a short break, I managed to visit the magnificent King’s Palace and a few temples, and appreciate the deep cultural and spiritual roots that we all associate with the Eastern peoples.  At the same time, I visited the museum of the Cambodia genocide of the 1970s.  The Cambodian Genocide refers to the attempt of Khmer Rouge party leader “Pol Pot” to nationalize and centralize the peasant farming society of Cambodia virtually overnight, in accordance with the Chinese Communist agricultural model. This resulted in the gradual devastation of over 25% of the country’s population in just three short years. It is estimated that nearly two million people died in the genocide (http://worldwithoutgenocide.org/genocides-and-conflicts/cambodian-genocide). The Genocide museum that I visited is set in a former prison compound that was the central ‘slaughter house’ of the genocide. 

I left the genocide museum with a sick feeling in my stomach and the words that kept echoing in my mind were – there are bad people in the world!  I have spent time in Rwanda that was also subjected to genocide in 1994 and even visited several museums there.  But none of my previous experiences left me with such an effect.  I concluded that it must have something to do with the story that is told of one of the leaders of the Cambodia genocide.  The story goes that there is a guy who was the chief of the prison that was at the centre of the genocide.  Apparently, at the end of the genocide, the guy disappeared and found a job as a driver in a rural relief organisation. He worked in that setting for eighteen years before someone suspected him and blew the whistle on him.   He denied the accusations and it was until they took him back to the prison site and replayed some of the recordings of the time that he broke down and confessed.  I found that absolutely unbelievable – there are indeed some very bad people in the world.

I had completely forgotten this story until a few weeks ago when the African Union voted to petition the United Nations on some matters that are currently being handled by the International Criminal Court (ICC).  While the process of how these matters ended up in the court are not the focus of this article, I noted the blanket condemnation of the ICC.  In my understanding, the ICC is the instrument that the world has collectively created to handle ‘bad people’.  There are bad people in the history of our civilisation who need to be kept in check by systems that go beyond their own countries’ laws and judicial systems.  There are bad people who will corrupt the minds of large populations to cause immeasurable death and destruction.  There are many countries whose internal systems and institutions are not mature enough to push back these bad people.  And it is true that a good number of these countries are in Africa.

My concern is that as the Africa Union trashes and condemns the ICC, it does not offer any credible substitute to put bad people in check.  My concern is that as Kenyans cheer the African Union in this episode for their own patriotic reasons, they compromise the only institution that shields them, and others, from the possibility of bad people arising from their midst.  There is a song that goes: bad boys bad boys, what you gonna do, what you gonna do when they come for you!

There are bad people out there.  Who are you gonna call when the bad people come out?