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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...

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