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3. The Making of Narratives
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
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97 3 The Mak ing of Nar ra tives The peo ple pic tured here are im por tant and unique, their photo graphs heart break ing cries for rec og ni tion. Fro zen by the lens, the pris on ers stare out at their cap tors. Nearly twenty years later, they are also re gard ing us. Their ex pres sions ask their cap tors: “Who are you? Why am I here?”— and ask us: “Why did this hap pen? Why have we been killed?” David Chan dler, “The Pa thol ogy of Ter ror in Pol Pot’s Cam bo dia” But a truth about all photo graphic por traits, in clud ing the Cam bo dian pic tures, is that they are mute. We can never be sure what their ex pres sions mean. Mi chael Kim mel man, “Hyp no tized by Mug Shots That Stare Back: Are They Win dows or Mir rors?” Until very re cently, it was taboo in Cam bo dia to dis cuss the Khmer Rouge. The re gime was con spic u ously ab sent from class rooms, and par ents rarely dis cussed their ex pe ri ences with their chil dren. In the past decade, foreign tour ists have been the pri mary vis i tors to the Tuol Sleng Gen o cide Mu seum. Until 2009, when DC-Cam com mis sioned a staff mem ber, Kham boly Dy, to write a new his tory text book and dis trib uted it free of charge to hun dreds of thou sands of high school stu dents, young Cam bo dians were for mally taught very lit tle about the re gime. The ninth-grade his tory text book pre pared by the Royal Govern ment of Cam bo dia in 2000 con tained only the fol low ing in for ma tion on the Khmer Rouge, re pro duced 98 T h e M a k i n g o f N a r r a t i v e s here in its en tirety, as quoted on the “Gen o cide Ed u ca tion” page of the DC-Cam web site: “From April 25 to April 27, 1975, the Khmer Rouge lead ers held an ex traor di nary Con gress in order to form a new Con sti tu tion, and re named the coun try ‘Dem o cratic Kam pu chea.’ A new govern ment of the DK, led by Pol Pot, came into ex is tence after which Cam bo dian peo ple were mas sa cred.”1 By 2002, even this pas sage was omit ted, as a po lit i cal dis pute over cover age of the United Na tions–spon sored elec tions in 1993 caused the en tire modern-history sec tion to be re moved. A whole gen er a tion of Cam bo dians, too young to have first hand mem ory of the Khmer Rouge, was being raised with lit er ally no for mal in for ma tion about the re gime. A 2009 sur vey con ducted by the Uni ver sity of Cal i for nia, Berkeley’s Human Rights Cen ter found that, out of the 68 per cent of Cam bo dians age twenty-nine or younger (who there fore did not live under the Khmer Rouge), 81 per cent of re spon dents de scribed their knowl edge of that time pe riod as ei ther poor or very poor.2 Anec do tally, a guide at the Tuol Sleng Gen o cide Mu seum told me in 2005 that even her own chil dren did not be lieve her sto ries about forced labor, star va tion, and ex e cu tion under the Khmer Rouge. In this in for ma tion vac uum, the Berke ley sur vey found that 77 per cent of all re spon dents and 85 per cent of re spon dents too young to have lived dur ing the 1970s re ported that they wanted to learn more about what hap pened dur ing the Khmer Rouge’s rule.3 Both DC-Cam and the tri bu nal have emerged against the back drop of this prior na tional am ne sia and have made sig nifi cant strides in get ting Cam bo dians to talk about the country’s bloody past. But, de spite this ear...