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ABSTRACT
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are a constituent part of post-conflict Transitional Justice interventions and as such their projects shape but are also constrained by various narratives about the past. This article introduces the concept of mnemonic role attributions defined as the sum of how actors, their roles, their responsibility and their suffering are categorised as they are remembered regarding a certain period of time. The article analyses how different mnemonic role attributions that are propagated during interventions by Transitional Justice experts in civil society influence the potential for reconciliation in post-conflict Cambodia.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Timothy Williams is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Conflict Studies at Marburg University, Germany, where he also concluded his PhD in 2017. His research deals with violence, perpetrators and victims, focussing on the consequences for post-conflict societies and Transitional Justice, as well as dynamics during violence at the micro-level. He has conducted extensive field research in Cambodia. His PhD received multiple awards and he was also the recipient of the Emerging Scholar Prize of the International Association of Genocide Scholars in 2017, as well as the Raphael Lemkin Fellow of the Armenian Genocide Memorial and Institute in 2015. Timothy has published in Terrorism and Political Violence, International Peacekeeping, Genocide Studies and Prevention, Transitional Justice Review, among others, and has co-edited a volume on perpetrators (with Susanne Buckley-Zistel, 2018, Routledge).
Notes
1 Who is defined to be a cadre of the Khmer Rouge is not always clear as there was no formal membership and the regime’s organisational structures afforded people responsibility for various tasks that left implicit whether they were full cadres or not. My sample, however, includes only low-level cadres in relatively clear positions who could potentially have come into contact with the violence of the regime: members of militias, commune and district chiefs and their staff, working unit leaders, etc. Interviews were conducted in ten provinces, including both former Khmer Rouge strongholds from the civil war and areas that have been under government control since 1979 (for a critical methodological reflection, see Williams Citation2018).
2 The survey was conducted in all 25 provinces of Cambodia according to a stratified, random sampling design.
3 These interviews focussed on these actors’ conceptions of justice and reconciliation and how they construct victimhood and perpetration in the context of their work.
4 Interview with a senior staff member at DC-Cam, conducted in January 2017 in Phnom Penh.
5 Interview with a senior staff member at DC-Cam, conducted in January 2017 in Phnom Penh; the interview was not recorded, so the quote is not verbatim but reconstructed from notes.
6 Interview with a former messenger and subsequently commune chief, conducted in September 2014 in Battambang province.
7 Interview with a Cambodian NGO staff member working in an education-related project, conducted in January 2017 in Phnom Penh.
8 Interview with a mid-level leader of a Transitional Justice NGO, conducted in January 2017 in Phnom Penh.
9 Interview with an international civil party lawyer from case 001, conducted by telephone in February 2017.
10 The precise proportion is disputed, with estimates ranging from a conservative 60% (see Co-Prosecutors’ Closing Brief in Case 002/02 – Annex F.2, 11.) to 80% or more (Interview with an international civil party lawyer from case 001, conducted by telephone in February 2017).
11 Interview with a former development consultant, conducted by telephone in February 2017. As such, universal victimhood is often discursively constructed for all victims, but can also in some contexts be claimed only for certain groups, for example tacitly or explicitly excluding certain minority groups like the ethnic Vietnamese, who remained marginalised today.
12 Interview with a former office guard, conducted in December 2014 in Kandal province.
13 Among many other interviews, for example, interview with a former Khmer Rouge soldier, conducted in October 2014 in Prey Veng province; interview with a former Khmer Rouge commune militiaman, conducted in September 2014 in Banteay Meanchay province; interview with a former Khmer Rouge military messenger, conducted in September 2014 in Pailin province.
14 Among many other interviews, for example, interview with a former Khmer Rouge commune militiaman and subsequently collective committee member, conducted in August 2014 in Kampong Chhnang province; interview with a former Khmer Rouge messenger, conducted in December 2014 in Takeo province; interview with a former S-21 guard and interrogator, conducted in November 2014 in Kampong Chhnang province.
15 Interview with a former S-21 guard, conducted in October 2014 in Kampong Chhnang province.
16 Interview with a former office guard, conducted in December 2014 in Kandal province; interview with a former S-21 guard, conducted in September 2014 in Kampong Chhnang province.
17 Interview with a former soldier, conducted in September 2014 in Pailin.
18 The terms primary and secondary victims are used here by an interviewee and suggest no legal connotations, but only a passing suggestion of a hierarchy of victimhood in which former Khmer Rouge are to be considered the most victimised people.
19 Demonstrating the complexity of mnemonic role attributions, Nhem Ein himself is sometimes framed more in light of the individual guilt mnemonic, as he acted as a photographer in S-21 and his victimhood is questioned by some of the surviving prisoners; notably, however, this overlaps with economic interests associated with being able to sell memoirs as a survivor at Tuol Sleng Genocide Memorial (Herman Citation2018, 199)
20 ECCC Internal Rule 23 bis, Revision 8, available at https://www.eccc.gov.kh/sites/default/files/legal-documents/ECCC%20Internal%20Rules%20%28Rev.8%29%20English.pdf [accessed 18.08.2017]; for an analysis of some civil parties as complex political perpetrators see (Bernath Citation2016)
21 Sorpong Peou (Citation2017) argues that retributive justice is detrimental to reconciliation and peace because it poses security threats to individuals within the government who may be indicted. The argument put forth here runs counter to this in that reconciliation is enhanced by this specific form of retributive justice that bundles responsibility with very few individuals, as the ECCC narrative propagates universal victimhood for all others allowing for more reconciled relations within communities. The effect of the process of formal participation at the ECCC on victims is disputed as some argue that it allows for negative emotions to be addressed (Jeffery Citation2015), victims needs to be responded to (Hein Citation2015) and victim agency to be developed in the face of curtailed victims’ rights (Herman Citation2013, Citation2018; Hughes Citation2016), while others emphasise how the processes render some victims less visible (Jasini Citation2016, 55; Killean Citation2018) and how in the process of testifying emotions were prohibited causing additional grief (Elander Citation2013, 188; Mohan Citation2009).
22 Interview with a former Khmer Rouge journalist, conducted in September 2014 in Pailin.
23 Interviews with a former assistant of a commune leader, conducted in Battambang province in August, September and November 2014.
24 Among many other interviews, for example, interview with a former Khmer Rouge soldier, conducted in October 2014 in Prey Veng province; interview with a former Khmer Rouge commune militiaman, conducted in September 2014 in Banteay Meanchay province; interview with a former Khmer Rouge military messenger, conducted in September 2014 in Pailin province.
25 Among many other interviews, for example, interview with a former Khmer Rouge commune militiaman and subsequently collective committee member, conducted in August 2014 in Kampong Chhnang province; interview with a former Khmer Rouge messenger, conducted in December 2014 in Takeo province; interview with a former S-21 guard and interrogator, conducted in November 2014 in Kampong Chhnang province.
26 For example, interview with a former S-21 guard and interrogator in October 2014 in Kampong Chhnang province.
27 Among many other interviews, for example, interview with a former S-21 guard, conducted in October 2014 in Kampong Chhnang province; interview with a former Khmer Rouge militiaman, conducted in January 2015 in Takeo province.
28 Among many other interviews, for example, interview with the former Khmer Rouge chief of a hard labour site, conducted in August 2014 in Battambang province; interview with several former S-21 guards, conducted in September 2014 in Kampong Chhnang province; interview with a former Khmer Rouge village chief and soldier, conducted in October 2014 in Kampong Thom province.
29 This is a recurring theme across almost all interviews, for example, in most detail in an interview with a former S-21 guard, conducted in August 2014 in Kampong Chhnang province; interview with a former Khmer Rouge soldier, conducted in September 2014 in Pailin province; interview with a former Khmer Rouge commune militiaman and subsequently collective committee member, conducted in August 2014 in Kampong Chhnang province.
30 Among many other interviews, for example, interview with a former Khmer Rouge militiaman, later also militia group leader, conducted in September 2014 in Battambang province; interview with a former Khmer Rouge soldier and militiaman, conducted in August 2014 in Kampong Chhnang province; interview with a former Khmer Rouge commune militiaman, teacher, security guard and interrogator, conducted in October 2014 in Svay Rieng province; interview with a former S-21 guard, conducted in August 2014 in Kampong Chhnang province.
31 Interview with a former S-21 guard, conducted in November 2014 in Takeo province.
32 Interview with a senior staff member at DC-Cam in January 2017; the interview was not recorded, so the quote is not verbatim but reconstructed from notes.
33 Presentation by Suyheang Kry on the panel ‘Hate Speech and the Global Peace Index’ at the workshop ‘Dealing with the Past: Engaging in the Present’ on 26 January 2017 in Phnom Penh.
34 The performance is part of a reparation project; the author saw the performance at Chaktomuk Theatre in Phnom Penh on 22 January 2017.
35 Kdei Karuna (Citation2013).
36 Kdei Karuna (Citation2013).
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 Presentation by Yim Sotheary on the panel ‘Healing the Trauma’ at the workshop ‘Dealing with the Past: Engaging in the Present’ on 26 January 2017 in Phnom Penh.
42 Interview with international and Cambodian staff members of AIJI, conducted in January 2017 in Phnom Penh.