Khmer Rouge Tribunal Research Articles

The Khmer Rouge Tribunal: Power, Politics, and Resistance in Transitional Justice by Julie Bernath (review)

The Khmer Rouge Tribunal: Power, Politics, and Resistance in Transitional Justice by Julie Bernath (review)

Hinton, Alexander Laban: Anthropological Witness. Lessons from the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

Hinton, Alexander Laban: Anthropological Witness. Lessons from the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

BOOK REVIEW: The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, Power Politics, and Resistance in Transitional Justice, by Julie Bernath

BOOK REVIEW: The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, Power Politics, and Resistance in Transitional Justice, by Julie Bernath

Interpretation and translation in atrocity trials: insights from the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

This article draws attention to some of the ways the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia’s (ECCC) proceedings have been shaped by the process of translation, interpretation and vernacularisation. In doing so, it seeks to add a novel case study to a growing literature that exposes the central role of language professionals in the operation of international courts and tribunals. The article highlights challenges that arose at the ECCC around the interpretation, translation and vernacularisation of legal concepts, using the examples of ‘genocide’ and ‘reparation’ to demonstrate how a focus on linguistic translation can obscure the more substantial vernacularisation work involved in rendering legal concepts legible. It then explores the challenges raised by victims’ and witnesses’ use of euphemism, interrogating different approaches towards translating and interpreting euphemism in the context of a criminal trial. Finally, it explores victims’ and witnesses’ use of Khmer Rouge jargon, and the challenges that posed for Khmer language professionals born after the fall of the regime. Drawing from these examples, the article emphasises the need for international criminal institutions to take the process of translation seriously, to understand it as significantly more than a technical linguistic exercise, and to give thought to the additional resources, training and expertise that might be needed to ensure accuracy both in the courtroom and when communicating concepts and processes outside the courtroom. This extends both to the training and resources that interpreters and translators might need, and the cultural awareness and sensitivity that legal practitioners might need in order to engage with victims and witnesses across language barriers.

Alexander Laban Hinton, Anthropological Witness: Lessons from the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

Alexander Laban Hinton, Anthropological Witness: Lessons from the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

Talking About Torture: A Novel Approach to the Mixed Methods Analysis of Genocide-Related Witness Statements in the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

This study investigates differences in torture-related witness statements during the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. It follows a three-phased sequential mixed methods design to identify disparities between testimonies of former detainees and interrogators and to examine how different methods complement each other for a comprehensive perspective on witness accounts. This includes training a natural language processing (NLP) model, sentiment analysis (SA), and qualitative content analysis (QCA). The qualitative and NLP-based analyses showed apparent differences between witness groups; a significant difference in sentiment values could not be detected. This study presents the first mixed methods approach based on court transcripts in genocide research. Its digital approach contributes to mixed methods research (MMR) by showing how NLP and data transformation can contribute to integration.

A New Paradigm for the Genocidal Interview: The Documentary Duel and the Question of Collaboration

A global boom in mainly documentary films interviewing perpetrators recognizes the current shift from the era of the witness to that of the perpetrator. Post Khmer-Rouge Cambodian cinema (1989–present) is a unique and highly important case of perpetrator cinema. It proposes for the first time in cinema direct confrontation between first-generation survivor-filmmakers and perpetrators, a new form of genocidal interview: the documentary duel. Enabled both by the intimate horror of the autogenocide and the Khmer Rouge tribunal (the ECCC), dueling with high-ranking perpetrators shifts power relations between the two. In contrast, dueling with low-ranking perpetrators and collaborators, never to be tried, does not generate this much-desired shift. Thus, Cambodian collaboration revealed through cinema stresses the immense importance of the law in promoting familial-social-cultural processes of acknowledgement of accountability. Further, Cambodian duel documentaries constitute the ethics of “moral resentment” (my term), while objecting to and disrupting the political view that reconciliation is the only legitimate response to the atrocious past.

Book Review: Anthropological witness: lessons from the Khmer rouge tribunal

Book Review: Anthropological witness: lessons from the Khmer rouge tribunal

Interpretation and Translation in Atrocity Trials: Insights From the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

Interpretation and Translation in Atrocity Trials: Insights From the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

Gendered Genocide

The remarkable gendered renaissance of post–Khmer Rouge (KR) New Cambodian Cinema is evidenced in recent years through first- and second- generation post-traumatic films. This article analyzes one prominent example—Lida Chan and Guillaume P. Suon’s Noces Rouges (Red Wedding, Cambodia/France, 2012)—showing how the Cambodian genocide is for the first time dealt with as a gendered genocide, breaking the taboo issues of forced marriage (a unique form of genocide in the world) and rape. A detailed analysis of Red Wedding describes how the meaning of forced marriage and rape is framed by both the cinema and the relevant national and international discourses embodied by the KR tribunal (also known as the ECCC) and the controversies its proceedings caused. The article compares the cinematic testimony per se and that testimony transferred into legal testimony in court to reflect on the role of cinema in promoting women’s history. Furthermore, it raises highly controversial subjects, such as how to analyze the layers of gendered silencing surrounding both women’s traumatic history and women perpetrators of these sexual crimes; the influence of former KR cadres within current Cambodian society; and the necropolitical function of the killing fields as “truth spaces.” Female testimony, putting forth necrophagic ethics, ultimately becomes the foundation of traumatic history. The conclusion suggests that these intense, embodied first-generation memories resist remembering and instead continue to haunt the individual and the collective; it thus proposes some reflections on the unique role of gendered cinema in healing post- traumatic society in a postgenocide era.

'Worth the Effort'? Assessing the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

'Worth the Effort'? Assessing the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

Embodying the Pain and Cruelty of Others

Abstract A ground-breaking performing arts-centered reparations project of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia – also known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal – is entitled Phka Sla. The Phka Sla initiative was proposed by survivors of the practice of forced marriage under the Khmer Rouge. While organizations collaborating on Phka Sla are assessing the impact of its innovative dance drama, exhibition and other activities on audiences and survivors, this article offers initial observations regarding the impact of embodying survivor testimony on the artists themselves.

Seen and unseen: sexual and gender-based crimes in the Khmer Rouge Tribunal’s Case 002/02 judgment

ABSTRACTThe most recent judgment of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), delivered in November 2018 and published in March 2019, provides rich scope for gender analysis. Some sexual and gender-based crimes are highly visible in this judgment, while others are obscured or overlooked. In the spotlight is the inhumane act of “forced marriage”, which, according to the judgment, was committed against both women and men. By contrast, incidents of sexual violence against men, forced breeding, and the repression of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities are relegated to the margins. These gaps and silences are not unique to the ECCC; rather, they are continuous with the patterns in previous international and internationalised courts.

The Khmer Rouge Tribunal’s first reparation for gender-based crimes

ABSTRACTThe Khmer Rouge’s crimes of forced marriage and sexual violence have been commemorated in a dance production, entitled Pka Sla Krom Angkar. It is one of several artworks that were recognised in 2018 as “reparations” by the United Nations-backed Khmer Rouge Tribunal, known officially as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). In this article, researchers from Australia and Cambodia reflect on the production’s significance from multiple perspectives. It is a catalyst for discussing human rights; a tool for promoting psychological healing; and a part of the ECCC’s legal process.

Karma after Democratic Kampuchea: Justice Outside the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

This article considers ways people in Cambodia narrate the Khmer Rouge regime and its genocide outside the bounds of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). Based on anthropological fieldwork, I explore how informants use ‘karma’ to discuss the genocide, and by doing so create their own understandings and lived experiences of that period of historical violence, understandings that do not fit neatly into the narrative modes created by the courts. By stepping outside the court, I consider ways of dealing with the genocide that exist beyond the international framework of transitional justice, thereby asking wider questions of what justice is and does. Rather than claiming a dichotomy between (inter)national and local forms of providing “justice” and dealing with genocide, I consider the different frameworks to be co-exisiting forms of global interaction; sometimes at odds with each other; sometimes complementary; often times unrelated but important companions.

Political Violence as a Time That is Past? Engaging With Non-Participation in Transitional Justice in Cambodia

Transitional justice scholarship has increasingly focused on participation to critically reflect upon the legitimacy and transformative potential of transitional justice. This article addresses these issues yet through a different vantage point: that of non-participation. It focuses on the case study of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal and a particular set of actors: those who continue to face political violence in Cambodia today. Thereby, it engages with the perspectives of those often overlooked in transitional justice for having opted out of the process, but also for putting forward justice claims that exceed the mandate of established transitional justice institutions. This article draws from qualitative fieldwork conducted in Cambodia between 2013 and 2016. It demonstrates the epistemic value of engaging with non-participation in transitional justice. It argues that non-participation in judicial transitional justice processes is inherently linked to the ways in which ordinary citizens experience and understand the law in their everyday life. It further highlights continuities in subjective experiences of political violence, which question discourses that political violence is a time that is past in Cambodia.

Elusive retributive justice in post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia: Challenges of using ECCC Victim Information Forms as a victim participatory rights mechanism

This paper focuses on the procedural challenges of using the Victim Information Forms (VIFs) to analyze survivors' experiences with the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), commonly known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. The paper takes a systematic public/medical sociology approach to examining the VIF as a participatory rights mechanism for victims wishing to pursue justice for themselves and their loved ones who experienced the Khmer Rouge atrocities, torture, forced relocation, starvation, forced labor, rape, robbery, and other physical and psychological torment, firsthand. It provides the first comparative, critical analysis of both the original VIF and the revised form issued midway through the submission period; both forms appear as appendices to the paper. Conclusions are drawn and suggestions made by the researcher based on the firsthand collection and submission of the largest group of VIFs from any single source around the world (outside of Cambodia itself), as well as on support work with victims/survivors during the ECCC proceedings in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 2013.

Trading a Theatre for Military Headquarters: Locating the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

Trading a Theatre for Military Headquarters: Locating the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

The Politics of Difference in Transitional Justice: Genocide and the Construction of Victimhood at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

ABSTRACTAlthough aiming to disrupt the othering that enables political violence and mass victimization, transitional justice processes – which are integral to international peacebuilding – may also (re)produce difference in intricate and possibly problematic ways. This article argues that as this dilemma is inherent to the politics of difference, it is crucial to consider how difference is constructed in transitional justice processes, and with what consequences, as this can feed into problematic processes of othering. This article focuses on the genocide charges at the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Cambodia, using transcripts of the legal proceedings and qualitative fieldwork conducted between 2013 and 2018.

Hybridity in Transitional Justice: Legacy of The “Khmer Rouge Tribunal”

AbstractCountries throughout the world practice several forms of transitional justice, hoping to attain peace, democratic stability and reconciliation. They apply different mechanisms to achieve these goals. Thispaper offers a theoretical analysis of foundation, proceedings and legacy of the Extraordinary hambersin the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). First, the Author examines the notion of the analysis of hybrid courts as a way of overcoming constraints that criminal justice mechanisms in post-conflict societies may face. Second, the Author explores the so-called “Khmer Rouge Tribunal”. Due to the significance and controversies that surround the ECCC, its work attracts great attention. Furthermore, political will is critical, so these hybrid judicial institutions should have more international support in terms of political means, funds, dissemination of results, and complementary mechanisms of transitional justice.IntisariNegara-negara di seluruh dunia mempraktikkan beragam bentuk keadilan transisional, dengan harapan untuk memelihara perdamaian, stabilitas demokrasi, dan rekonsiliasi. Mereka menerapkan mekanisme yang berbeda-beda untuk mencapai tujuan tersebut. Penelitian ini menyajikan analisis teori yang dilakukan terhadap landasan, proses, dan pengaruh Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). Pertama-tama, penelitian ini meninjau gagasan mengenai analisa terhadap pengadilan hibrida sebagai cara untuk mengatasi kendala yang dihadapi oleh mekanisme pengadilan pidana di masyarakat pascakonflik, dan kedua, mengeksplorasi apa yang disebut “Pengadilan Khmer Rouge”. Karena signifikansi dan kontroversi yang menyelubungi ECCC, karyanya menerima perhatian yang besar. Tekad secara politis sangat penting, sehingga pengadilan hibrida ini dapat memperoleh dukungan internasional lebih banyak dalam hal sarana politik, dana, penyebaran hasil, dan mekanisme untuk melengkapi keadilan transisional.