Exploring the limits of catharsis in transitional justice : the khmer rouge tribunal, victim elitism, and the reconfiguration of Cambodian memoryscapes
3
Issued Date
2011
Resource Type
Language
eng
Rights
Mahidol University
Suggested Citation
Oesterheld, Christian (2011). Exploring the limits of catharsis in transitional justice : the khmer rouge tribunal, victim elitism, and the reconfiguration of Cambodian memoryscapes. Retrieved from: https://repository.li.mahidol.ac.th/handle/123456789/40216
Title
Exploring the limits of catharsis in transitional justice : the khmer rouge tribunal, victim elitism, and the reconfiguration of Cambodian memoryscapes
Author(s)
Other Contributor(s)
Abstract
The Khmer Rouge tribunal is expected to bring to justice former Khmer Rouge leaders and those “most responsible” for crimes committed during the Democratic Kampuchea regime, and by doing so to contribute to national reconciliation. During the 2009 proceedings of the Extraodinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), civil party lawyers have frequently invoked the importance of the public acknowledgment of their clients suffering to “heal the wounds of the past”. However, it is doubtful whether the selective
acknowledgement of suffering is capable of initiating a wider process of catharsis in Cambodia society. The number of civil parties admitted to the proceedings is limited, and, more importantly, the number of indictments has been minimized by procedural considerations and repeated political interference from the Cambodian government. The ECCC’s Case 001 tries Kaing Guek Eav alias ‘Duch’, the director of the notorious Khmer Rouge security centre S-21,but other S-21 staff, including his deputy, have merely been summoned as witnesses. Moreover, S-21, despite its notoriety, was only one out of nearly 200
Khmer Rouge detention centres, some of them with notably greater number of executions. Its elevated position in the Cambodian memoryscape was fostered by its preservation during the Vietnam-backed People’s Republic of Kampuchea and its transformation into the Tuol Sleng Genocide, a fate denied to other former prisons which have been leveled and disappeared from the visible memoryscape of contemporary Cambodia. Although their significance is implicitly denied by the current Khmer Rouge Tribunal, they continue to exist in the memory of a large number of survivors and the family members of those
who disappeared. This paper argues that reconfigurations of the Cambodian memoryscape since 1979 have contributed to the creation of two categories of victims, an “elite” whose suffering is publicly acknowledged, and a traumatized “mass” which is poorly served by the workings of the ECCC. Consideration that S-21 mostly detained former Khmer Rouge cadres from leading positions, often themselves involved in crimes against humanity prior to their detention, contributes further to the dilemma of transitional justice in ontemporary Cambodia.
Description
ASEAS-UK Conference 2011 at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. September 9-11, 2011