Learning from the past? How the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, civil society initiatives and survivor stories shape young Cambodians’ understanding of non-recurrence

Abstract

ABSTRACT Empirical research into the communicative and didactic functions of transitional justice processes remains scarce, obscuring our understanding of their meaningfulness as message sending mechanisms and their (potential) influence on popular knowledge and beliefs. Engaging with expressivist theory, this article focusses on the Cambodian context to study how young adults perceive and interact with messages on memory, justice and ‘dealing with the past’ disseminated by different transitional justice stakeholders, including the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, civil society actors and survivors. Through thematic narrative analysis of iterative focus group discussions, we explore how participating youths interpret these messages and construe their own narratives and positionalities around non-recurrence. We identify four central themes that reflect students’ emphasis on (1) studying and remembering the past, (2) nurturing intra- and interpersonal civic values, (3) seeking justice for the harms of the past and (4) moving towards a democratic rule-of-law based society. While illustrating the resonance of – and perceived synergies between – key messages by the Tribunal and by civil society actors in its orbit, these themes simultaneously point towards dynamics of expressive friction and discursive hegemony, affecting students’ capacity to meaningfully engage with survivors’ alternative or diverging justice perspectives and priorities.