scholarly journals Pod rękę z Pol Potem. Komunistyczna Partia Robotników wobec Czerwonych Khmerów 1975–1981

2019 ◽  
pp. 133-149
Author(s):  
Michał Gęsiarz
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
Phnom Penh ◽  
Positive View ◽  
Khmer Rouge Regime ◽  
Maoist Movement ◽  
Democratic Kampuchea

The aim of this article is to examine relations between the Norwegian Workers’ Communist Party and Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea between 1975 and 1981. The Norwegian Maoist movement held a deeply positive view of the Khmer Rouge regime, which resulted in its sending a delegation to Phnom Penh in September 1978. In the article I will analyze how they interpreted the regime, focusing on delegates’ memoirs and debates after the fall of the Khmer Rouge government.

Brothers at War

2020 ◽  
pp. 384-405
Author(s):  
Vicente Sánchez-Biosca
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
People's Republic Of China ◽  
Phnom Penh ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Visual Strategies ◽  
Democratic Kampuchea

In January 1979, Vietnamese troops triumphantly entered Phnom Penh, the capital of Democratic Kampuchea ruled by the Khmer Rouge. The images they produced to justify their military offensive dwelled on the horror of the atrocities committed by the overthrown Pol Pot regime in the former torture center code-named S-21. In the framework of a split within the communist Bloc between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, this article discusses three strategies put forward by the Vietnamese propaganda machinery in which the visual imagery of the former prison played a crucial role: an intense documentary production, the atrocity-themed museum constructed on the site of S-21, and the trial for genocide held in absentia against Pol Pot and Ieng Sary. These visual strategies aimed to deprive the Khmer Rouge of their communist status by associating them with Nazis and their crimes.

Chikreng Rebellion: Coup and Its Aftermath in Democratic Kampuchea

2006 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
Margaret Slocomb
Keyword(s):  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
Political Prisoners ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
Phnom Penh ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Salvation ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Many Sources ◽  
Democratic Kampuchea

AbstractThe history of the regime of Democratic Kampuchea (DK) which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 in the name of social revolution made on behalf of Cambodia's poor peasants has been researched and documented according to many sources. When the leaders of the counter-revolutionary Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation, spearheaded by a massive force of the People's Army of Vietnam, took back the capital, Phnom Penh, on 7 January 1979, they captured official documents, particularly the forced confessions of thousands of political prisoners, which threw light on the nature of the regime and its catastrophic course after victory in April 1975. Other contemporary sources included monitored radio broadcasts of the regime, the dossiers of Khmer Rouge defectors to Thailand compiled by the US State Department, and the rich vein of information provided to western scholars of Cambodian history by refugees in the Thai camps and in other countries which received them after 1979.

Rithy Panh

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chairat Polmuk
Keyword(s):  
Documentary Film ◽  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
Refugee Camp ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
General Context ◽  
Phnom Penh ◽  
Resource Center ◽  
Khmer Rouge Regime ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Asian Cinema

Rithy Panh (b. 1964) is an internationally and critically acclaimed Cambodian filmmaker and screenwriter. A survivor of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime (1975–1979), Panh spent a year at a refugee camp in Thailand and another ten years in France, where he attended the prestigious Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques (Institute for advanced cinematographic studies). Panh’s first documentary film Site 2 (1989) documents lives of his compatriots at the refugee camp at a Cambodian-Thai border area; it also marks the filmmaker’s return to Cambodia to confront the country’s past violence and its continuing impact on the present. The cinema of Rithy Panh is thus well known for its thematic emphasis on the traumatic experience of genocide, displacement, and exploitation. His fiction films such as Rice People (1994) and One Evening After the War (1998), as well as documentaries such as The Land of the Wandering Souls (2000) and People of Angkor (2003), showcase Pan’s sustained meditations on socioeconomic struggles in post-genocide Cambodia. During the past decades, Panh’s documentary practices and experimental aesthetics have rekindled critical attention to the complex relations between film and memory, visual representation and ethics, and media testimony and justice. His 2003 documentary film S–21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine, in which Khmer Rouge survivors reenact their memories at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison center (known by its code name S–21), has sparked scholarly debates regarding the method of reenactment in relation to trauma. The use of hand-carved clay figurines in his 2013 film The Missing Picture demonstrates another inventive feature of Panh’s documentary aesthetics. The film won Cannes’ Un Certain Regard award and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Panh’s transnational trajectory sheds light on the general context of postcolonial Southeast Asian cinema as well as the particular situation of the contemporary Cambodian film industry. In 2006, Panh co-founded the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center in Phnom Penh, an archive of records from the Khmer Rouge period and beyond and a training center for a new generation of Cambodian filmmakers. The Bophana Center is named after Hout Bophana, a woman who was executed under the Pol Pot regime and who inspired Panh’s 1996 film Bophana: A Cambodian Tragedy. Panh has recently expanded his cinematic practices, serving as a co-producer of the Netflix adaptation of Loung Ung’s memoir about the Cambodian genocide, First They Killed My Father (dir. Angelina Jolie, 2017). Panh also curated the multimedia installation Exile, which accompanied his 2017 film by the same name, and directed a stage production, Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia (2018).

Will There Be a Trial for the Khmer Rouge?

2000 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 67-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Chandler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
The United States ◽  
Truth Commission ◽  
Government Control ◽  
Phnom Penh ◽  
The Past ◽  
International Participation ◽  
Khmer Rouge Regime

The scale of what happened under the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 is difficult to deal with (over one million Cambodians lost their lives), but efforts are now underway to bring at least some of the surviving leaders of the regime to justice. This essay explores the reasons for delay of the trials, citing:The absence of international precedents prior to the 1990s;The show trial of two Khmer Rouge leaders in 1979; andThe obstacles to a trial arising from geopolitical considerations in the 1980s (in which some powers now calling for a trial, including the United States, were effectively allied with the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese-imposed regime in Phnom Penh).In the 1990s, following the Paris Peace Accords and the brief UN protectorate over Cambodia, demands for a trial came from overseas and from Cambodian human rights groups. The Cambodian regime considered the show trials of 1979 sufficient, however, and in 1998 Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen urged his compatriots to “dig a hole and bury the past.” Eager to regain foreign support for his regime after several brutal incidents in which political opponents were killed, Hun Sen has more recently agreed to limited international participation in a trial. A procedure targeting a few Khmer Rouge leaders seems likely in 2000, but Cambodian government control of the proceedings means that nothing like a truth commission or a wide-ranging inquiry will result.

Trauma and Its Aftermath: Local Configurations of Reconciliation in Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 793-800 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eve Monique Zucker
Keyword(s):  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Wooden House ◽  
To Come ◽  
Khmer Rouge Regime ◽  
Democratic Kampuchea

“I wish for you two boys and two girls,” the elderly man pronounced. He was addressing both myself and my fiancé as he reached out to shake our hands as we were leaving his traditional wooden house. He had told us earlier that he spends his days in this late chapter of his life enjoying his grandchildren and tending his vegetable plot. Now at the door ready to leave I hesitated, not wanting to extend my hand, but then I did so anyway. This grandfather was Nuon Chea, “Brother Number Two” of Cambodia's notorious Khmer Rouge regime, officially known as Democratic Kampuchea (1975–79). The year was 2002. My fiancé, a cameraman, was working with reporter and author Tom Fawthrop on a documentary about former Khmer Rouge leaders' evasion of justice and I had been invited to come along.

scholarly journals Hidden Identities in Contemporary Cambodian Photography

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Suzie Kim
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Third Generation ◽  
Community Groups ◽  
Phnom Penh ◽  
Ordinary Objects ◽  
Khmer Rouge Regime

Abstract This article examines the works of three photographers, Kim Hak (b. 1981), Khvay Samnang (b. 1982), and Neak Sophal (b. 1989), all born in the post-Khmer Rouge era and all established relatively early in their careers. These third-generation Cambodian photographers construct portraitures that steer away from identity to address the larger issues of individuals and local communities in present-day Cambodia, which still lives in the shadow of the trauma of the Khmer Rouge. Kim's photography avoids a direct representation of people who suffered through the Khmer Rouge regime and instead presents small, ordinary objects that were kept secretly in their household; Khvay documents the hardship of local communities in Phnom Penh and their questioned identity by portraying masked faces; Neak questions the hardship of the youth, women, and townspeople through the erasure of face in her series of photographs depicting various community groups in Cambodia. This subtle avoidance of portraying individuals in a direct, straightforward way signifies a multi-faceted interpretation of the traumatic past, its resilience, and the newly added social problems of contemporary Cambodia, which struggles in the aftermath of the genocide and more recent economic growth.

scholarly journals Fragments in the Archive: The Khmer Rouge Years

Plaridel ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Annette Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Centre ◽  
Phnom Penh ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Film Maker ◽  
Popular Films ◽  
The North ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Khmer Rouge Regime

Cambodia’s cinema history is strange and surprising. Popular films from France and the United States circulated through the Kingdom during the French colonial period. The 1950s and 60s saw extensive local production with the enthusiastic support of King Norodom Sihanouk, himself a passionate film-maker, but the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979) destroyed most of the existing material, including hundreds of feature films, raw footage and countless other ephemeral documents. In 2006, after representations by film-maker Rithy Panh and others, the Bophana Audio-Visual Research Centre was established in Phnom Penh to comb the world for every fragment of film and audio material relating to Cambodia’s history in order to reproduce it in an accessible digitized form. The archival preservation and duplication has continued apace. However the ethical use of these materials presents challenges. Contemporary documentary makers and digital enthusiasts frequently use fragmentary footage to support their political or historical interpretations without attribution or context. This paper discusses a propaganda film featuring the former King Norodom Sihanouk and his wife Monique shot in1973 in collaboration with the Communist Chinese, the North Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge. Short scenes and extracts from this film circulate online and appear in many documentaries. The “archive effect” of this footage raises questions about the source and circulation of archival images with significant historical and political consequences.

Mass fainting in garment factories in Cambodia

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice Eisenbruch
Keyword(s):  
Health Workers ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Industrial Accidents ◽  
Factory Workers ◽  
Phnom Penh ◽  
Garment Factory ◽  
Garment Factories ◽  
Garment Factory Workers

This paper reports an ethnographic study of mass fainting among garment factory workers in Cambodia. Research was undertaken in 2010–2015 in 48 factories in Phnom Penh and 8 provinces. Data were collected in Khmer using nonprobability sampling. In participant observation with monks, factory managers, health workers, and affected women, cultural understandings were explored. One or more episodes of mass fainting occurred at 34 factories, of which 9 were triggered by spirit possession. Informants viewed the causes in the domains of ill-health/toxins and supernatural activities. These included “haunting” ghosts at factory sites in the wake of Khmer Rouge atrocities or recent fatal accidents and retaliating guardian spirits at sites violated by foreign owners. Prefigurative dreams, industrial accidents, or possession of a coworker heralded the episodes. Workers witnessing a coworker fainting felt afraid and fainted. When taken to clinics, some showed signs of continued spirit influence. Afterwards, monks performed ritual ceremonies to appease spirits, extinguish bonds with ghosts, and prevent recurrence. Decoded through its cultural motifs of fear and protest, contagion, forebodings, the bloody Khmer Rouge legacy, and trespass, mass fainting in Cambodia becomes less enigmatic.

scholarly journals Accessing Justice Through Victim Participation at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Yesberg
Keyword(s):  
Healing Process ◽  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Victim Participation ◽  
Khmer Rouge Regime ◽  
National Reconciliation

This article explores the role of victims in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) – the forum tasked with bringing leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime to justice. Victims have been afforded broad participatory rights at the ECCC, including the opportunity to be joined as third parties to the trial. These innovations must be applauded. However, the role victims can play in the wider process of national reconciliation remains under-utilised. This article suggests that victim participation can be used to increase public accessibility to the trial to ensure proceedings occupy a more positive, and prominent space in Cambodia's healing process.

Pchum Ben

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Clifford Holt
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
Phnom Penh ◽  
The Dead

This is a study about how the killing of almost two million people by the Khmer Rouge brought about the great importance now attached to an annual ritual that emphasizes assisting the dead in their after-lives by transferring merit for their benefit. The chapter provides accounts of how ritual performances on behalf of the dead are performed at major Buddhist temples in Phnom Penh as well as in the rural areas of Cambodia. There are extensive interviews with the relatives of survivors.

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