21. Beyond the Margins of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal: A Multidisciplinary Multisited Approach to Recovery and Framing the Past. Sponsored by the Center for Khmer Studies

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

The Khmer Rouge Tribunal has received wide recognition for its role in framing the Khmer Rouge past and providing a means to recovery through international justice mechanisms and processes. The aim of this panel is to shift the lens from the tribunal to sites where other voices are heard, to places where the tribunal is absent, and to spaces where other processes of recovery and framing the past occur. What other sources are Cambodians using to frame and heal from the past? How relevant is the tribunal to recovery in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge?

The panel provides insight to these questions by presenting micro as well as macro perspectives from political science and sociocultural anthropology and by providing a comparative approach between different sites and cases. More specifically, Widyono’s paper argues that cold war politics delayed the initiation of transitional justice in Cambodia, and suggests similar processes have hampered recovery and justice following the 1960s massacre in Indonesia. Path’s research shows that during this period of delay, the idea of western transitional justice was resisted among Cambodians; and the narratives of the tribunal remain contested today. The irrelevancy of the tribunal to people’s everyday lives is further suggested in Bennett’s, and Uk’s papers. Bennett posits that Buddhism, rather than the court, is a source for recovery, whereas Uk’s research shows that some locales still exist where the Khmer Rouge continue to use fear and intimidation to control others thereby demonstrating the impotence of transitional justice in some areas.

Area of Study

• Southeast

Session Organizer

• Eve Monique Zucker, Yale Council of Southeast Asian Studies

Chair

• Eve Monique Zucker, Yale Council of Southeast Asian Studies

Individual Presentations

• International Culpability in the Aftermath of Cold War Massacres in Cambodia and Indonesia - Benny Widyono, University of Connecticut

• Resistance to Transitional Justice in Post-Genocide Cambodia - Kosal Lee Path, Brooklyn College

• Past Present, Present Past: Restoring Time beyond the Khmer Rouge Regime - Caroline Bennett, School of Social and Cultural Studies

Discussant

• Andrew C. Mertha, Cornell University