Lessons for the Future: Khmer Rouge Survivor Testimonies as Sites of Individual and Social Regeneration

Abstract

ABSTRACT Decades after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian government and international community established a tribunal to prosecute leaders of the regime. The court’s creation was accompanied by numerous outreach efforts, including psychological support for those who had survived the brutal period. Many of these interventions were foreign to Cambodians and drew upon transitional justice tropes that emphasised the importance of ‘bearing witness to atrocity’, while stressing the need to process traumatic events. This paper examines the implementation of ‘testimonial therapy’ among two groups of survivors – ‘new people’, mostly urban dwellers targeted by the regime, and ‘base people’, rural Cambodians who had a prior Khmer Rouge affiliation. It argues that through repeated narrativization, survivors draw upon elements of the globalised figure of the moral witness (Margalit, Avishai. 2002. The Ethics of Memory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.), combining this concept with pre-existing beliefs about the performance of Buddhist morality.