Chilling memories from the Killing Fields

In this thesis I will explore one aspect of the aftermath of the genocide which has until recently not received a lot of attention, namely the remembrance culture(s) that developed after the genocide in Cambodia. The last decade memorial sites and collective remembrance is a subject that wins terrain in the historical debates and researches. This thesis will draw on the subject how the genocide is commemorated in Cambodia after 1979. By researching different memorial sites in Cambodia I try to answer the questions above. It will give an inside in the way Cambodians and the Cambodian government (re)constructed the past. My research question is: “What kind of influence did different groups have on the way the genocide, inflicted by the Khmer Rouge, is commemorated after the fall of Pol Pot in 1979 until the present day? What are the social and political thoughts behind memorial sites and museums?” In this thesis concepts on commemoration, memorialisation and reconciliation are important. The concepts enclose the spectrum of remembrance. The dictionary defines the concept commemoration as: “To commemorate an important event or person means to remember them by means of a special action, ceremony, or specially created object.” The question raised to mind is who determines who or what is special enough to be commemorated? The concept of memorialisation is different from commemoration. “If a person or event is memorialized, something is produced that will continue to exist and remind people of them [or it]”. So within a country a lot of commemoration initiatives can exist without memorials. People then commemorate in the private sphere or at a religious institution. Reconciliation is not so much the remembrance of things that occurred but it has more to do with the process of coming to terms with the past. “Reconciliation between (two) people or countries who have quarrelled is the process of their becoming friends again”. It does not mean that the past is being ignored or forgotten in order to move forward. It means that there is a consensus about the way the past is looked upon. In chapter two the theoretical framework of this dissertation will be further examined. I will examine commemoration politics on three different levels. The first level is the level of Cambodians as citizens of a nation, the generation that survived the genocide but also the generation born after 1979. The second level is the level of the Cambodian government and their influence on the remembrance of the genocide and the commemoration initiatives they have taken. This thesis will examine Cambodia over the course of three decades so the government has changed over the course of these years, in this way it is not a fixed group of people and institutions that are examined. The third level is the international community and their influence on the way the genocide was commemorated in Cambodia as well as in other countries. Several commemoration initiatives are researched in three different periods. These periods are respectively from 1979 until 1989/90, 1989/90 until 1998, 1998-2008. These periods all represent a different stage in the development of Cambodia. The first time-stage starts with the ‘invasion/liberation’ of the Vietnamese army into Cambodia until 1989 when Vietnam voluntarily withdrew its last occupation troops. The second time-stage starts in September 1990 when ‘The Supreme National Council’ was formed, after the last Vietnamese troops had left the country, until Pol Pot died in 1998. In this period a peace agreement is signed and free elections are organized. The third time-stage is from 1998 until 2008. After Pol Pot died the final collapse of the Khmer Rouge was a fact.