Conflicting Sites of Memory in Post-Genocide Cambodia

Abstract

Conflicting Sites of Memory in Post-Genocide Cambodia Brigitte Sion (bio) A new road connects the towns of Siem Reap to Along Veng, in northern Cambodia; it now takes less then two hours from the temples of Angkor to reach the last bastion of the Khmer Rouge, in what used to be a dense jungle. It is enough time for my driver, thirty-one-year-old Vann, to tell me the story of his family. “Every Cambodian family has lost relatives under the Khmer Rouge,” he says. Vann’s mother lost her husband and children in the early years of Pol Pot’s murderous regime. She remarried and gave birth to a new set of children, including Vann. “A total of ten family members died,” he sums up. Later, when Vann was in school, he was required, along with all residents of his village outside Siem Reap, to excavate the killing fields and exhume the bodily remains for cremation. “The smell was horrible,” he recalls. “I see too many bones. It scares me.” For years, Vann avoided the former mass graves. “My children don’t know what happened.” A Khmer song is playing in the car. “Old music from the 1960s,” he says by means of introduction. “The singer was killed.” We pass Along Veng and continue through the lush countryside and rice fields toward the Thai border. It takes a number of stops and questions, and a few dollars, to find the cremation site of Pol Pot, who was burned hastily in 1998 on a pile of rubbish. It is hidden behind a house, amid high weeds, junk, and garbage. A low wooden fence and a rusty corrugated-metal roof mark the spot. Next to it, a faded blue sign in Khmer and English reads, “Pol Pot was cremated here. Please help preserve this historical site. Ministry of Tourism.” There are plastic plates for offerings and small jars filled with burnt incense. As I start taking pictures of the site, Vann takes off his sandals, pulls out a lighter, and ignites an incense stick as a tribute to the spirit of the dead. I cannot help but react strongly. “Vann, what are you doing? Pol Pot was responsible for the death of ten family members, and you are paying your respect to him?” Holding the smoking incense between his joined palms, he answers, “I know, but it is a long time ago. It is time to forget.” This vignette from the summer of 2009 illustrates the divided memory of the genocide perpetrated in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979, under the leadership of Pol Pot. Thirty years after a Marxist dictatorship, the self-proclaimed “Democratic Kampuchea,” caused the death of about 1.5 million people, or a quarter of the population, collective memory inches its way through monuments, commemorations, an international court judging Khmer Rouge cadres, new textbooks, and artistic productions. However, memorialization stands at the center of conflicted interests—the government’s politics of reconciliation, Buddhist beliefs in karma, [End Page 1] economic development, mass tourism opportunities, international law, and national historical narratives. This essay examines the performance of memory in Cambodia through the lens of various memorials and commemorative practices: the major sites of murder in Phnom Penh (Tuol Sleng prison and Choeung Ek killing fields); local repositories of victims’ remains in villages; places associated with the perpetrators such as Pol Pot’s cremation site, as well as various holidays connected to the genocide. I look at the boom in memorials, the multiple functions they have to perform, the various populations and interests they serve, the different commemorations and ceremonies, and the resulting tensions. I argue that memorialization efforts take on different shapes and espouse conflicted narratives that serve opposing agendas, in which the memory of the Khmer Rouge’s victims is not always the priority. Many remarkable scholarly works have been written about the Khmer Rouge takeover, the establishment of Democratic Kampuchea, the atrocities committed against civilians in the name of Marxist ideology, and the terrifying human death toll.1 In the last decade, a growing number of survivors published testimonies and memoirs about their personal suffering, mending their lives after the genocide...