Khmer Rouge

Temples and killing fields, mighty rivers and impenetrable forests, a past filled with glory and decline Cambodia is a land of contrasts. A millennia ago it was an empire at the height of its power, building the vast temple complexes of Angkor. Now, a thousand years later, ravaged by conflict and a genocidal civil war, Cambodia finds itself struggling with democracy, beset by corruption and on the lowest end of the global spectrum of economic wealth.

To many in the West, the name Cambodia still conjures up indelible images of destruction and death, the legacy of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime and the terror it inflicted in its attempt to create a communist utopia in the 1970s.

The backdrop to Bridging Divides in Transitional Justice is Cambodia's history of radical Communist revolution (1975-1979) under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, and the culture of impunity and silence imposed on the society by successive national governments for close to three decades.

This work tells of the events and personalities that shaped Cambodian history during the 13-year period between the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979 and the signing of the 1991 peace accords that resulted in UN-administered elections. It offers a nuanced understanding of complex questions concerning human rights, economic reconstruction, institutional development and national sovereignty, issues that were framed by the legacy of the Khmer Rouge and by a Vietnamese occupation.

This volume brings together an interdisciplinary team of established and emerging scholars from the disciplines of history, political science and communication studies, to provide a historical reappraisal of Cambodia’s relationships with the West. Contributors to the volume examine moments of historical import in Cambodia's history, from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century.

1979, Cambodia, Eastern Zone: Two comrades, twelve and fourteen, are RUNNING to get away from their infantry unit before the invading Vietnamese kill all of them. They reach the foot of a mountain – and disappear into the jungle. Neither of them has any food or water. They have no blankets, either, or protective clothing of any kind.

Watching Cambodia opens with a visit to the Khmer Rouge zone in 1972, the only one by a western observer before Pol Pot's victory in 1975. But legwork in the rice fields was not enough. Understanding Cambodia is not an easy matter. It requires sifting through mountains of documents, from Angkorian stone inscriptions to Khmer Rouge radio transcripts, as well as reading and evaluating piles of books written by scholars, travelers, journalists, and technicians.

Chanrithy Him felt compelled to tell of surviving life under the Khmer Rouge in a way "worthy of the suffering which I endured as a child."

In the Cambodian proverb, "when broken glass floats" is the time when evil triumphs over good. That time began in 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia and the Him family began their trek through the hell of the "killing fields."

In April 1975, Channy Chhi Laux was a happy thirteen-year-old girl who was excited to start a new school year. But as news reports announced that the Khmer Rouge was getting closer to taking control of Cambodia, Channy and her family were forced to relocate to Poipet, a border town to Thailand. From that point forward, Channy lived a life dictated by fear.

Cambodia is a history buff’s dream, with rich stories of empire and tyranny over the past 1,000 years. There are a variety of books and websites (some of which are listed in the Resources for Further Information section) that provide excellent summaries of Cambodia’s ancient and recent history. Wikipedia's site (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodia) provides a good overview. Cambodia is a successor state of the once-powerful Hindu and Buddhist Khmer Empire, which ruled most of the Indo-Chinese peninsula between the 11th and 14th centuries.