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Khmer Rouge:Use of Media in Memorialization

After the mass atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979, Cambodian conventional wisdom had dictated that Cambodians needed to bury the past in order to move forward, but the nagging of painful memories continued to haunt Cambodians in their everyday lives. Establishment of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) in 2007 helped break out the silence on Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge past. Cambodian government, civil society groups as well as ECCC have been using media as a tool for the historical memorialization process.

Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia(ECCC)

See also Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.

ECCC was established as a Cambodian court with international participation and assistance to bring to trial senior leaders and those most responsible for crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge regime. It has been handling four cases since 2007. ECCC's efforts for outreach toward both national and international audience include public trial hearings, study tours, video screenings, school lectures, and video archives on the website.

Public trial hearings in Phnom Penh are open to the people of Cambodia over the age of 18 including foreigners. In order to assist people's will to participate in the public hearings, the court provides free bus transportation for groups of Cambodians who want to visit the court. Since the commencement of Case 001 trial in 2009 through the end of 2011, 53,287 people have participated in the public hearings. ECCC also has hosted Study Tour Program to help villagers in rural areas understand the history of the Khmer Rouge regime. The court provides free transport for them to come to visit the court and meet with court officials to learn about its work, in addition to visits to the genocide museum and the killing fields. ECCC also has visited village to village to provide video screenings and school lectures to promote their understanding of the trial proceedings. Furthermore, trials and transcripts are partially available with English translation on the ECCC's website.

Internet

ECCC use the following social media to update the development of the tribunal: Facebook(updates, text, news, photographs), You Tube(videos),Flickr(photographs) and Twitter(updates,news).

Other Internet sources:

• Cambodia Tribunal Monitor, a consortium of academic, philanthropic and non-profit organizations, provides free access to videos of the proceedings,relevant news, statements as well as overview of each case.
• Cambodian Genocide Program (CGP) at Yale University offers a comprehensive set of resources on the Khmer Rouge and the tribunal including news updates, photographs, databases, literature, maps, overview of US involvement in the Cambodian war and genocide, and links to other organizations.
• Cambodian Genocide Project by Genocide Watch updates the development of the tribunal on the website.

Television Broadcast

All Cambodian television stations include regular coverage of the progress of the trials. The following stations feature special programming:

• Cambodian Television Network (CTN)(English/Khmer) maintains a special van at the court for live transmission of the proceedings.
• National Television Kampuchea (TVK)(Khmer)
• Apsara TV(English/French/Khmer) targets viewers in Europe, Australia and North America.

International television stations such as BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN, NHK and Channel News Asia also cover the development of trials.

Radio Programs

Radio National Kampuchea (RNK) as well as private and NGO radio stations broadcast programs on the Khmer Rouge and trials. ECCC has its own weekly radio program on RNK, which provides an opportunity for the public to interact with court officials and deepen their understanding of Cases.

Youth for Peace, a Cambodian NGO that offers education in peace, leadership, conflict resolution, and reconciliation to Cambodian’s youth, has broadcast the weekly radio program "You also have a chance since 2009 Aiming at preventing the passing on of hatred and violence to future generations, the program allows former Khmer Rouge to talk anonymously about their past experience.

Museums

The Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide and Choeng Ek Killing Fields are two major museums to learn the history of the Khmer Rouge.

The Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide is a former high school building, which was transformed into a torture, interrogation and execution center between 1976 and 1979. The Khmer Rouge called the center as "S-21." Of the estimated 15,000 to 30,000 prisoners, only seven prisoners survived. The Khmer Rouge photographed the vast majority of the inmates and left a photographic archive, which enables visitors to see almost 6,000 S-21 portraits on the walls. Visitors can also learn how the inmates were tortured from the equipments and facilities exhibited in the buildings. In addition, one of the seven survivors shares his story with visitors at the museum.

Skulls displayed in the memorial tower

The Choeng Ek killing fields are located about 15 kilometers outside of Phnom Penh. Most of the prisoners who were held captive at S-21 were taken to the fields to be executed and deposited in one of the approximately 129 mass graves. It is estimated that the graves contain the remains of over 20,000 victims. After the discovery of the site in 1979, the Vietnamese transformed the site into a memorial and stored skulls and bones in an open-walled wooden memorial pavilion. Eventually, these remains were showcased in the memorial’s centerpiece stupa, or Buddhist shrine.

Publications

The Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), an independent research institute, published A History of Democratic Kampuchea 1975 - 1979, the national first textbook on the Khmer Rouge history. The 74-page textbook was approved by the government as a supplementary text in 2007. The textbook is aiming at standardising and improving the information students receive about the Khmer Rouge years because the government-issued social studies textbook devotes eight or nine pages to the period. The publication was a part of their genocide education project that includes leading the design of a national genocide studies curriculum with the Ministry of Education, training thousands of teachers and 1700 high schools on how to teach about genocide, and working with universities across Cambodia.

Youth for Peace, a Cambodian NGO that offers education in peace, leadership, conflict resolution, and reconciliation to Cambodian’s youth,published a book titled "Behind the Darkness:Taking Responsibility or Acting Under Orders?" in 2011. The book is unique in that, instead of focusing on the victims as most books do, it collects the stories of former Khmer Rouge, giving insights into the functioning of the regime and approaching the question of how such a regime could take place.

Dialogues

While the tribunal contributes to the memorialization process at national level, some civil society groups promote memorialization at community level. The International Center for Conciliation (ICfC) began working in Cambodia in 2004 as a branch of the ICfC in Boston. ICfC launched the Justice and History Outreach (JHO) project in 2007 and has worked in villages in rural Cambodia with the goal of creating mutual understanding and empathy between victims and former members of the Khmer Rouge. Following the dialogues, villagers identify their own ways of memorialization such as collecting stories to be transmitted to the younger generations or building a memorial. Through the process, some villagers are beginning to accept the possibility of an alternative viewpoint to the traditional notions of evil associated with anyone who worked for the Khmer Rouge regime.