Rampant Injustice

In the last week I have decided that there are two kinds of injustice. Obviously, this is pretty reductionist, and feel free to contradict me-- but first, hear me out. The first kind is Big Injustice: poverty, racism, sexism, genocide... the big ticket items. The second type is personal injustice: things that happen to us that don't seem fair. You may be thinking, "well clearly we're in a battle against Big Injustice, Kate. The little things are just bumps in the road. Unfair, but you know, in the face of Big Injustice, the little things are just an annoyance." Right, well, that line of thinking makes you a better person than me. Why? Because last week, I found myself pretty annoyed by all those little things, and a big one, too.

To start with, my home internet connection died without any explanation last Friday night. Poof, gone. Internet is a luxury item, I keep reminding myself, but it doesn't help soothe my irritation when it was nearly a week and we were still attempting to reconfigure the wireless router without the aid of a technician or anyone who has a clue what they are doing. Power outages compounded the problem, as twenty minutes before the tech was supposed to arrive, we lost the electricity, and it stayed off for 6 hours. This doesn't really count as injustice, unless you count random power outages and surges as such, but it is something that's unfair.

The second injustice, again, of the personal variety, we discovered last Saturday. A can of Pringles went missing. Then, on Sunday, we attempted to eat some snacks that Deanna carried back from her recent trip to the US. We found the box torn open (not neatly!) and half the cakes gone! My landlords (or, more likely, their grandchildren) must have come into my house through the connecting door--which, until I recently realized it was somewhat of a hazard in case of an emergency, was locked-- and opened our treats. Again, snack food is not on par with stealing someone's home, possessions, or freedom. It does, however, reveal that my neighbors are not to be trusted. And it makes me feel cheated, and resentful, grappling with how to address the issue without stepping over some invisible cultural boundary.

Lastly, the big ticket item (literally). I was pulled over by the traffic police last weekend, with a truckload of volunteers in tow. To be fair, I did go through an intersection just as the light turned red, as the left turn arrow began to turn green, and along with a few motorbikes. Of course, in my decision-making to go (versus to stop and have volunteers fly around the back of the truck), I failed to factor in that this is a known hang-out for the police. I pulled over, showed the officer my licencse while requesting that he give it back (sometimes they make you pay) and we started our negotiations.

The initial offer: 3 days of traffic school, for the foreigner.* Unless, of course, we can compromise (read: come to some agreement on how much money I will pay him).

The compromise: $20.00

My counter-offer: 5,000 riel (approx. $1.25)

Second offer: $10.00

My counter: 10,000 riel (approx. $2.50), or go ahead and write the ticket.

His reply: Fine, $5.00.

The end result: somewhere just over $4. (since I claimed I didn't have any money, despite carrying around a large cash advance for the visiting teams.)

*Note: every time he said "foreigner," I thought he was saying "for dinner," and could not figure out if I was being asked on a date, or for money to pay for his dinner. Either way, it was a no.

The whole thing was just annoying, since Phnom Penh is not known for its strict enforcement of traffic laws. In fact, we saw many people making the same move I had, just without the watchful (and greedy) eyes of the police on them.

This last incident, I think, is actually indicative of Big Injustice. It's no secret that Cambodia is corrupt, that the police do not do their job (and now I am evidence of that fact). Echoes of my mother's lectures on "civil societies" were sounding in my head after my run-in with the police. We obey the law because we anticipate that the penalties for not doing so are worse than the inconvenience of a red light. We obey the law because there are consequences, things that make it wrong to disobey. Here, the consequences are flexible, because the enforcers are not motivated or taught to be strict. Here, the consequences vary, based on who you are, how much money you have, on who else is available to take the fall. The worst part? This is the case from the lowest traffic offense all the way up to the highest, most public crimes. Just look at how long justice has been delayed in the Khmer Rouge tribunals. Nearly 30 years have passed, the perpetrators have died, and still the court system is only trying the case.

I know the US isn't perfect, I know that people are wrongly accused, wrongly convicted, that it is not an impartial system. In fact, I ran a red light in the US and got out of that ticket too. We live, though, with the expectation of justice, with the idea that when we are wronged, when others break the law, there will be a consequence. In the absence of that... well, snack food goes missing, and traffic is a mess, and eventually, somewhere along the line, there's poverty and genocide, and a host of other Big Injustices that are really hard to understand.

There's a spiritual parallel here, I'm sure, if we wanted to dig it out. "Justice is mine, says the Lord" and all of that. At the moment, I'm annoyed by injustice, big and small, wishing for things to be better, wondering if there was a way to fix it, and hoping I'll see change in my lifetime. I'm also humbled by my coworker, who when told the story of my neighbors and the snacks said, "well, just bless them. They will never get to try that food unless you bring it to them." Instantly, I felt like a jerk, whining about my lack of imported snacks. In the face of injustice, what else are we to do? We bless those who hurt us, turn the other cheek, and continue to fight for the poor, the oppressed, and for justice from the Lord.