Memory construction of former Khmer Rouge cadres: resistance to dominant discourses of genocide in Cambodia

ABSTRACT

In the context of post-genocide Cambodia, this article explores resistance as the product of knowledge derived from the entanglement of official and personal memories of the Khmer Rouge (KR) period. By examining two public exhibitions produced by the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), namely, Forced Transfers: The Second Evacuation of the Khmer Rouge Regime and Life Experiences of Former Khmer Rouge Cadres, the article argues that narratives of the KR period as portrayed by the exhibits have the potential to destabilize official narratives by disrupting the homogeneity of dominant narratives and challenging reductive dichotomies of victim and perpetrator.

KEYWORDS:

• Resistance
• memorialization
• narrative
• DC-Cam
• Cambodia

1. Introduction

The article examines how knowledge produced through the construction of narratives of past atrocities has the potential to resist dominant official narratives. Through empirical research of two public exhibitions in Cambodia, the article explores practices of productive resistance by a civil society organization through an analysis of entanglements between official and personal narratives in the context of genocide memorialization. In doing so, it provides an enhanced understanding of how resistance to the dominant power expressed through the official memory of Cambodian genocide has the possibility to facilitate a sustainable reconciliation.

In recent years, memorialization has received increasing recognition in societies transitioning from post-genocide status to a peaceful future (Hamber et al. 2010). Memorialization of violent past history represents an important aspect of the reconciliation process, on both individual and societal levels (Jelin 2007). On an individual level, memorialization can facilitate the process of acknowledging the past and sharing truths about what happened. On a societal level, it is assumed that the process can serve as a public reminder in order to learn from the past and avoid a recurrence of mass violence (Barsalou and Baxter 2007). However, memorialization processes are often influenced by the national politics of post-conflict societies and ultimately coincide with the political agenda of the state or its powerful elites. As Edkins (2003) notes, memorials are used as political tools to encourage a hegemonic narrative of the past, thereby upholding the political legitimacy of the state and its political elites. These narratives are highly susceptible to simplified presentation and often suggest a clear distinction between victim and perpetrator. Such a distinction is often at odds with the reality of post-conflict societies and has a negative impact on attempts at reconciliation (Edkins 2003, Poulter 2018, p. 193). As Edkins discusses, hegemonic narratives of atrocity or genocide produced through state-sanctioned museums, monuments, or memorials may be countered by resistance which is evident in non-violent protests at sites of memory.

However, while such forms of resistance attempt to counter the appropriation of the past in the present, they remain trapped in the binary logic of ‘us’ versus ‘them,’ a logic which can perpetuate a further divide between the conflicting groups which gave rise to mass atrocities or genocide. As Pinkerton (2012, p. 132) argues in his analysis of a memorial site in Belfast, counter-narratives of conflicts can offer only an ‘alternative politicization of memory.’ Instead, he suggests that a deconstructive reading of memorials can offer a form of resistance to memorialization that does more than reproduce divisions through exclusive engagements with the past.

In contemporary Cambodia, civil society organizations are playing an increasingly significant role in facilitating memorialization processes, further complicating memory construction in a country, which has been dominated by the State. For example, Youth for Peace (YFP) and the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) have been actively influencing genocide narratives in Cambodia through programs such as the construction of community peace centers at local memorial sites and the documenting and dissemination of personal accounts from the past through publications, exhibitions, school curricula, and public forums.¹ In academic research, however, only a few studies have focused on the role of civil society in transitional justice and memory construction in Cambodia. Christoph Sperfeldt (2012), for example, studies the significant role of civil society in facilitating and enriching the judicial transitional justice processes in Cambodia, such as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC). Some scholars have researched the influence of civil society initiatives on reconciliation of the past and facilitation of narrative construction (Manning 2015, 2017, Williams 2019).

My paper seeks to contribute to this discussion by exploring practices of resistance produced through the entanglement of official and personal memories of the Khmer Rouge period, facilitated by a civil society organization (specifically DC-Cam), a non-governmental research and archival institution devoted to documenting and preserving memories of the KR period (1975–1979). In particular, the current article asks: how does the knowledge gleaned from DC-Cam’s exhibit narratives resist dominant official narratives? What are some of the strategies used in practices of resistance? It is argued that narratives of the KR period, as presented in DC-Cam exhibitions, have the potential to destabilize official narratives presented through state-sanctioned museums and institutions by disrupting the homogeneity of dominant official narratives and challenging reductive dichotomies of victim and perpetrator commonly constructed in post-conflict situations. By examining relevant exhibit narratives, the article contributes to a more thorough understanding of various practices of resistance in relation to power manifested through the entanglement of official memory and personal narratives.

This article draws on five months of fieldwork carried out between November 2018 and August 2019, during which I conducted semi-structured interviews with thirty-six Khmer Rouge survivors and former cadres, four DC-Cam staff members and nine high school and university teachers who have been closely involved with DC-Cam in the development and production of exhibitions and educational programs focused on the KR regime. During the course of my fieldwork, I visited the exhibitions (which I use for analysis of resistance practices in this paper), reviewed documents, and observed related educational programs. While all this data contributes to the analysis presented in this paper, the focus is on a close reading of the exhibition texts and photographs.

The article proceeds in five parts. First, it presents two DC-Cam exhibitions, describing the contents and the settings in which they are situated. Second, it provides a brief theoretical account of genocide memorialization and the conceptual underpinning of resistance. Third, the paper lays out a contextual background of the politics of memory and memorialization practices in Cambodia. In this section, an overview of Khmer Rouge narratives produced by state-sanctioned memorials and commemorative events is presented, highlighting the politics of memorialization in the production of collective memory and identity. Fourth, it analyzes narratives presented by DC-Cam in its exhibitions, inquiring into the various ways in which DC-Cam constructs narratives of the KR vis-à-vis state narratives. As will be discussed, the entanglements of official and personal narratives produce resistant effects that destabilize the official narratives predominantly constructed through state memorials and institutions. Finally, a concluding discussion is put forth, summarizing the main findings and highlighting the importance of memorialization in reconciliation processes.

2. DC-Cam exhibitions

In this section, I provide an overview of two public exhibitions and the settings in which the exhibitions are displayed. The first exhibition on ‘Forced Transfers’ is located at the site of a former Khmer Rouge mass grave site, which is currently a memorial and Buddhist temple known as Wat Thmei. The second exhibition, ‘Life Experiences of Former Khmer Rouge Cadres,’ is located in Anlong Veng in northwestern Cambodia, an area, which was the last stronghold of the Khmer Rouge.

2.1. Exhibition at Wat Thmei

Wat Thmei (New Temple) is located roughly three kilometers north of Siem Reap town on a minor road leading toward the Angkor temple complex. The pagoda houses one of 89 memorials erected across Cambodia with the intention of providing legitimacy to the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) government which assumed power in 1979. In the center of the Wat Thmei pagoda compound stands a memorial stupa housing the remains of victims of the KR regime. The memorial stupa was constructed in 1996 at the direction of local authorities and religious leaders, and the design reflects that of the primary KR state memorial at Choeung Ek on the outskirts of Phnom Penh (Manning 2017).

Adjacent to the display of bones inside the stupa are photographic panels featuring images from the KR regime accompanied by explanatory texts in Khmer and English. Instead of maintaining the anonymity of the victims being remembered, the exhibition features archival photographs of individuals, families, and activities at work sites during the Democratic Kampuchea regime. The captions provide context regarding the specific site, mass graves located in the vicinity, history of the memorial, as well as personal narratives of individuals. The exhibition is entitled The Forced Transfer: The Second Evacuation of the Khmer Rouge Regime and was developed by DC-Cam in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts. It has been on display in the Wat Thmei compound since 2015, as part of the broader initiatives of DC-Cam to memorialize and provide symbolic reparations to victims and survivors of the KR regime. The exhibition showcases an historical event – the Khmer Rouge evacuation – with specific focus on the second phase of the evacuation, which took place in 1976. Stories of survivors/victims and former cadres are displayed alongside archival photographs, depicting individual experiences related to events that occurred during the evacuation and how life was altered after the forced movement. The stories are primarily focused on separation, starvation, working and living conditions, torture, death of family members, and reflect the policies enforced on the evacuees as well as the actual implementation of those policies. Along with stories of survivors, the exhibition narrates the experiences of former cadres who worked as train drivers for the KR government.

2.2. Exhibition in Anlong Veng

An exhibition about the lives and experiences of Anlong Veng residents is on display at Anlong Veng History Museum, (the former house of Ta Mok, who was a senior Khmer Rouge leader in charge of the military), in Anlong Veng District in the northwestern Cambodian province of Uddar Meancheay. The house was built in 1993 on 1.614 hectares located about two kilometers from the roundabout of Anlong Veng District (Ministry of Tourism and DC-Cam brochure). The exhibition is organized and displayed in the second house of Ta Mok, which consists of three stories and was constructed from 1994 to 1996. According to a former Khmer Rouge cadre who helped to construct this house, the ground floor was used to store important items such as ancient artifacts and statues, including Buddha statues of various sizes (Ministry of Tourism and DC-Cam brochure). The exhibition is displayed on the top and middle floors.

According to the Ministry of Tourism and DC-Cam brochure, the photo exhibition is an educational tool used to convey an untold story of Cambodia’s troubled past in order to promote a better understanding of the history of its people and its land. As indicated in the brochure, the exhibition also serves as physical evidence, preserving the memory of the horrific events Cambodians endured during that time. The exhibition consists of 21 panels of color photographs of former KR cadres (individually and in groups), accompanied by text written in Khmer. Some individual and group photographs show KR cadres dressed in military uniforms posing for pictures, while others show cadres performing daily activities. The photo exhibition displays individual narratives of former KR cadres who reside in the district of Anlong Veng, in conjunction with a more recent photo exhibit entitled 100 Historical Photos. The brief captions accompany color images depicting individuals or families, without identifying the location or persons depicted. The panels represent experiences of former KR cadres and their families during the DK regime and throughout their struggles as part of the resistance from 1979 to 1998. The color photographs and individual narratives represent the period of Anlong Veng under Ta Mok’s rule and the final reintegration of the area into the Cambodian government in 1998.

3. Memorialization as a site of power struggle

Memorialization is increasingly understood as a mechanism in transitional justice for promoting individual and social healing as well as fostering societal reconciliation among conflict-affected communities (Hamber et al. 2010). Indeed, the main premise of memorialization is that acknowledgement of the suffering of victims and survivors will contribute to the healing of individuals and promote social recovery within post-conflict societies (Barsalou and Baxter 2007). However, memorialization in post-genocide situations is often subject to politicization, wherein those holding power draw on the past to gain political legitimacy, consolidate power and construct a collective identity (Edkin 2003, Wertsch and Billingsley 2011, McDowell & Braniff 2014). Jenny Edkins (2003) argues that one of the concerns of the memorialization process is that only a version of the past that aligns with the current political agenda of those in power gets represented through memorialization, while other narratives tend to be obscured or relegated to the background. Edkins (2003) even suggests that alternative narratives produced through non-violent protests may serve as resistance to officially sanctioned narratives. Memorialization thus represents a powerful arena of contested memory and offers or constrains the possibility of facilitating processes of reconciliation and reconstruction in the aftermath of genocide and mass atrocities.

While Edkins’s argument highlights the importance of counter-narratives as a subversive resistance against official narratives, this view has drawn some criticism. One of the most prominent critiques relates to the constraint of narratives in the binary logic, which ultimately produces an alternative politicization of the past (Pinkerton 2012). Pinkerton argues that such a subversive resistance may further divide adversarial parties and fuel future conflict. According to Pinkerton, narratives of the past must be deconstructed via ‘double reading’ in order to construct a new narrative that moves beyond these binaries (2012, p. 132). However, while a ‘double reading’ of narratives may serve to unsettle the antagonistic logic of counter-narratives, it is not clear how narratives represented through memorialization may be constructed or de-constructed in order to promote healing and societal reconciliation. Meanwhile, complex relations between narratives at different scales have also been analyzed using the concepts of friction and hybridity in order to explore asymmetric relations between the actors and practices as well as potentials these encounters may have on empowerment and disempowerment of agency (Björkdahl and Höglund 2013, Mannergren Selimovic 2016). Mannergren Selimovic, for example, examines post-conflict commemoration as a site for frictional encounters between local agents and global memory entrepreneurs, perceiving it as a struggle for control over social memory. However, although the complex dynamics between local and global actors and narratives are captured in the study of conflict commemoration, some scholars argue that such an analytical approach is still not sufficient to capture the complex realities of the relationships, since it is confined to reductive binaries of ‘local’ versus ‘global.’ Instead, Hunt argues that the focus of analysis should be on the relationships between entities, in this case narratives of atrocity, rather than characteristics of the entities themselves (2017, p. 212).

4. Discourse, power, and resistance

Power struggles around representations within memorials or memory practices, particularly in construction of narratives, can be understood by considering the relationship between discursive power and resistance. Discourse is a structured way of thinking about and representing an event through writing and speaking as well as through cultural and social practices (Fairclough 1995 cited Kent 2012, p. 19). Fairclough further notes that discourses are not merely a representation of issues or events in the world, but they also contribute to the reproduction of power relations and thus are empowered politically (Fairclough 2013). Michel Foucault (2002) considers that in the relationship between discourse and power, discourse always implicates power, inclusion and exclusion, and determines who is authorized to speak about the past and how they may do so. In this sense, power is diffused, enabling and constraining, and clarifies rather than mystifies the way we perceive the world. It can be exercised in the name of specific discursive bodies of knowledge. In this paper, power is understood as the discursive constructions that provide hierarchies and frameworks for one to act and perform in a certain way. For example, one might observe how discourse of genocide provides a structure or framework for one to think about the KR regime in a specific way.

Considering that power is embedded in the discursive construction, knowledge produced in relation to a specific discourse may produce a form of resistance in response to power, which is a discursive power in this case. Drawing from Foucault (1980), Scott (1985) and others, resistance is understood as a response to power (in this case the dominant narratives of the KR period). From this insight and following the concept developed by scholars in the field of resistance studies, I understand the concept of resistance as relational to power and that different strategies and practices of resistance may challenge, negotiate, and undermine power (see further Lilja et al. 2013, 2017). However, it can sometimes produce and reproduce relations of power through the exact same resistance that it provokes (Lilja et al. 2013, Lilja and Vinthagen 2018). Resistance to hegemonic status or power is not always overt. Highly visible forms of resistance may involve demonstrations, strikes, or other overt activities with the intent of overturning structures of dominance. However, other challenges to dominant power may be subtle or invisible (Scott 1985). This is a phenomenon which James Scott (1985) has termed ‘everyday resistance,’ and it consists of unorganized acts and covert or low-intensity actions.

Building upon the ‘everyday resistance’ concept introduced by James Scott, Lilja and Vinthagen develop the concept of ‘dispersed resistance’ to cover individual and small-scale resistance practices such as ‘everyday, subtle or loud and extraordinary,’ (Lilja and Vinthagen 2018, p. 212) which are broader and more complex than the everyday forms of resistance conceptualized by Scott. All forms of resistance are analyzed with regard to the power relationship, meaning the type of power affects the type of resistance; practices of dispersed resistance are similarly informed by the different technologies of power (Lilja and Vinthagen 2018). The authors propose two forms of dispersed resistance: counter-repressive resistance and productive resistance. While counter-repressive resistance refers to ‘individual or small-scale resistance against repressive – sometimes sovereign – power,’ productive resistance is represented by practices that ‘embrace reverse discourses, meaning-making and the negotiating of “truths,” as well as the creation of other ways of life through counter-conduct and techniques of self’ (Lilja and Vinthagen 2018, pp. 217–219). The latter is relevant and significant in this paper as it provides a conceptual understanding of practices of resistance that correspond to different forms of power relations. Foucault suggested that power and discourse could be reversed, thus this type of resistance also becomes reversed power/discourses (cited Lilja and Vinthagen 2018, p. 220), which have the possibility to destabilize dominant discourses. This form of resistance seeks to contest dominant relations of power by using the same technologies as power, which it seeks to challenge. In other words, the same power techniques are used as reference points to analyze practices and techniques of resistance (Lilja and Vinthagen 2018). For example, resisters are able to carry out their resistance through repeating categories or vocabularies as the dominant discourses with slightly different meanings. This resistance is possible through the (re)categorization, reiteration, rearticulation, and repetition of dominant discourses.

The concept of productive resistance, particularly the reversed discourse/power, is relevant and useful in this paper. First, it helps to detect practices of resistance that are subtle, everyday, and individual. Furthermore, productive resistance is important during the process in which new meanings are created and truth is negotiated. As I will discuss below, practices of constructing victimhood narratives of former KR cadres, produced in the DC-Cam exhibition by referencing specific aspects of official narratives regarding shared victimhood, create the possibility for resistance against official-sanctioned narratives of the KR regime in post-conflict Cambodia. If we treat narratives as discursively produced, and consider that they are sets of knowledge about past events or experiences, then the possibility of those narratives producing resistance becomes critical in the process of challenging or destabilizing dominant power. The contents of what has been articulated and constructed by DC-Cam in the exhibitions can be considered practices of resistance in relation to the official narratives of the Khmer Rouge. The construction of narratives thus provides survivors with opportunities to reconnect with and understand their past, in relation to the present, within the context of their contemporary cultural and social norms. Before further discussing these practices, the subsequent section presents a brief background on genocide memorialization practices in Cambodia in order to provide context for the ways in which dominant state narratives, including the standard narratives and shared victimhood, have been constructed.

5. Official memorialization and narratives in post-genocide Cambodia

Before engaging in the empirical development of the article, a brief introduction to post-genocide memorialization in Cambodia is necessary to establish a backdrop for the discussions in the subsequent sections. Since the fall of the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) regime (commonly known as the Khmer Rouge (KR) regime, which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 and caused nearly two million deaths), the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), officially known today as the Kingdom of Cambodia (KOC) and led by Hun Sen of the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), carried out the very important task of legitimizing its right to exist by initiating a political agenda which justified its military intervention of the DK regime. This legitimization took the form of memorialization of sites of violence left behind by the DK regime (Chandler 2008, Tyner et al. 2012). The official versions of the KR period presented in state-sanctioned memorials and institutions (such as the prominent genocide memorials Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and Cheoung Ek Genocide Center), produced hegemonic narratives about KR atrocities in support of the PRK’s legitimacy and political agenda. As an institutionalized effort similar to the establishment of schools, political leaders have actively engaged in the construction of genocide narratives. Official national narratives presented through state-sanctioned memorials and monuments, as well as three decades of careful rhetorical manipulation by various political parties, have produced a hegemonic narrative of events that demonize the KR and maintain the ruling party as having saved the population from the genocidal regime. The PRK government quickly recognized that the S-21 prison site had the potential to garner support from the masses and help legitimize their rule. Thus the site was converted into a public museum (which ultimately became the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum) in an effort to provide visual evidence of KR atrocities and to impart legitimacy to the PRK state (Hughes 2003, pp. 176–8). As such, the narrative constructed is that the DK regime and its communist party had committed the crime of genocide against their own population, with the PRK as savior of the surviving victims. Within this narrative, Long and Reeves remark that the interpretation set forth by the genocide museum placed blame upon a small group of leaders – the ‘Pol Pot/Ieng Sary Clique’ – for hijacking Cambodian communism and driving the country into genocidal madness (Long and Reeves 2008, p. 75). In extension, it states that the small faction of criminals who took power in 1975 committed genocide against their native population and was finally removed from power three years later by the PRK, a group which represented the true revolutionaries (Chandler 2008). Ultimately, this narrative came to dominate the state discourse and continues to be enforced and reinforced by the state in public dialogues about the DK regime at a variety of official sites of commemoration.

5.1. Standard narratives

State-dominant narratives constructed via memorials and commemoration practices have been politicized to gain popular support and legitimacy, and the representation of atrocities at these sites and through these practices has been widely communicated as nationally generalized (Ledgerwood 1997). Michael Vickery has termed this concept the ‘Standard Total View,’ a notion in which the narratives of lives under the DK period are standardized across time and geographical space (Vickery 1984). These narratives highlight the horrendous experiences of the population, including execution and torture, shared across geographical regions as evidenced by the mass graves discovered throughout the country. This view also generally describes the living and working conditions during DK as harsh across time and space – schools and hospitals were closed; money and markets were abolished; all intellectuals were killed; and all towns were evacuated (Ibid).

However, considering the regional and zonal variance in policies and practices of the DK regime, the experiences of survivors tend to be diverse and complex, reflecting the policy implementation of individual leaders within a specific region. Michael Vickery has examined the experiences of Cambodians who survived the Khmer Rouge regime and argued that most narratives that have been collected by reporters and journalists demonstrated the most extreme and brutal accounts of some victims, but do not represent the experiences of the majority when assessed across different geographic regions of the DK regime (Vickery 1984). However, this argument is contested by Judy Ledgerwood, who posits that the experiences of urbanites, who endured starvation, disease, and malnutrition while being subjected to brutal working conditions and violence, were shared by peasants (also known as ‘base people’), depending on where they lived and worked, their social status, and their background (Ledgerwood 1997). Ledgerwood maintains that even though state narratives tended to be standardized, they served as a starting point for Cambodians to develop an understanding of DK (1997, p. 93). Following Vickery’s argument, I concur that experiences of KR survivors and former cadres may differ across geographical and temporal spaces, and that the narratives of extreme or brutal experiences do not represent all survivors’ personal stories. However, as will be illustrated in this paper, in line with Ledgerwood’s reasoning, I argue that survivors and former KR cadres construct their personal narratives using major discourses of the DK regime, such as evacuation, executions, starvation or separation of family members, as reference points. I further suggest that the process of constructing a personal narrative of the past depends upon how one constructs self-identity in the present and one’s current understanding of the past.

5.2. Narrative of shared victimhood emanating from the ‘Win-Win’ policy

The government’s position regarding the Khmer Rouge shifted significantly in the late 1990s. Following the UN-brokered 1991 Paris Peace Agreement, which ended the Vietnamese military occupation and initiated a cease-fire in Cambodia, a discourse of national reconciliation emerged in order to encourage the KR to abandon opposition to the government and renounce its involvement with Pol Pot’s forces. The emerging discourse of integration and reconciliation encouraged Cambodians to repress many aspects of the KR genocidal past, as Prime Minister Hun Sen famously urged, ‘Dig a hole and bury the past in it,’ a statement which called for national reconciliation and forgiveness for low-level KR cadres by eliminating or suppressing memories of the genocide. During this reconstruction process, reconciliation, integration, and development were major components of the price for peace. Policies, strategies and practices were implemented in order to defeat the remaining KR factions. The 1998 fall of the last KR stronghold of Anlong Veng signaled the defeat of the movement by the Phnom Penh government. Prime Minister Hun Sen of the CPP precipitated the collapse of the KR via his ‘win-win policy’ to achieve national reconciliation through the integration of KR cadres and their families into society-at-large. Through the implementation of this strategy, the government officially granted umbrella amnesty to KR members – what David Chandler (2008) calls ‘induced amnesia,’ – in order to achieve national reconciliation. The position of the government regarding the Khmer Rouge is ambivalent and confusing for Cambodian people. On one hand, the Khmer Rouge were responsible for heinous crimes committed during their regime, while on the other hand, reconciliation and forgiveness are the price for peace, even if reconciliation means digging a hole in which to bury the past.

Narratives of shared victimhood promoted by the ‘win-win policy’ of the Hun Sen government in 1998 emerged as a framework in which KR members began to construct their own identities in relation to contemporary sociopolitical contexts. Astrid Noren-Nilsson (2011, p. 464) argues that political changes in the country have forced many former Khmer Rouge cadres to ‘formulate heterogeneous narratives of the meaning of the historical movement on their own,’ as well as to negotiate their own relationship with the tragic past. In this sense, shared victimhood narratives provided by the government or implicitly found in discursive practices have allowed lower-level KR cadres to do exactly that. In his research on former KR experiences, Kosal Path argues that collective amnesia and shared victimhood form the framework for former KR to construct their personal stories and challenge the official narratives regarding the temporal and personal jurisdiction of the ECCC (2017, p. 134). He shows that former cadres not only relate their stories in a way that positions their experiences in the parameter of victimhood, but they also contest the temporal limits of the ECCC by contextualizing their experiences in the much more extensive history of war before 1975 and after 1979. The domestic politics of reconciliation and shared victimhood has provided a backdrop for the narrative produced through the ECCC’s operation, which I will discuss in the next section.

6. Disrupting homogeneity of KR experiences in dominant state narratives

Constructed around overarching themes, such as evacuation or starvation, some of the individual experiences highlighted in the DC-Cam exhibitions do not easily conform to the standard state-dominant narratives. The process of constructing narratives in the exhibition at Wat Thmei, for example, reflects diverse and conflicting memories of KR experiences. The exhibition does not represent homogeneity, but rather heterogeneity, of the experiences of atrocity.

Constructing narratives within the exhibitions can influence the narrative regarding a certain event beyond the standard discourse. Individual narratives reflect diverse and multiple experiences, thereby providing a more nuanced understanding of the broader event. For instance, one narrative in the exhibition on Forced Transfers is that of a KR train driver who was responsible for operating trains during the evacuations. His account, narrated by his wife, disrupts the standard account of evacuation and reveals a more nuanced account of KR experience:

In 1970, during the Lon Nol regime, they moved my husband [the train driver]to Battambang, and he drove the train from Battambang to Phnom Penh. Sometimes he traveled to Poi Pet. In 1975, when Pol Pot came to power, he was still a train driver and taught Khmer Rouge soldiers how to drive the train. We were separated [by the KR] and my job was to carry water, water crops and grow vegetables. Periodically, we were able to meet.

On 4 January 1977, at 12:15 p.m., the Khmer Rouge came to take him away and I watched as he left. The Khmer Rouge said they were moving him to Pechnil. He wrote me a letter saying: ‘I will be in touch in four or five days. If you receive no word from me, it means I am dead.’ … I heard from people who came from Phnom Penh that they saw him one night in the city, and then he rode the train westward. Then there was no more information. They all disappeared …

(Narrator 3, extract from an exhibition panel on Forced Transfers at Wat Thmei, DC-Cam)

Although survivors and former KR members experienced the event of forced evacuation differently, especially with regard to their specific individual encounters, the KR train driver’s experience preceding and during the KR period moves beyond the standard narratives associated with the KR atrocity. Bernath argues, ‘moving beyond such [standard] narratives, then, becomes an act of discursive resistance,’ through which former KR cadres ‘resist the decontexualizaton and dehistorisation’ of the KR regime (2017, p. 118). In chronological order, the narrator told the story about what her husband had done prior to the DK regime and how this led him to be assigned a certain job during the DK years. The narrative provides a means through which the narrator and DC-Cam establish reasoning for why train driver’s experiences during the evacuation were different from those of other survivors. Also, the temporal scope of the experiences was expanded to include events that happened before and after the official DK regime, enriching knowledge of why and how the train driver had been selected to perform the job. The knowledge produced through this narrative thus has the possibility to destabilize the standard narratives by adding complexity and nuances.

The narrative shared by the train driver’s wife can be analyzed as disruptive to the consistency and flow of the narrative about the KR evacuation in general. The individual’s experience as a train driver before and during the KR period clearly set him apart from other victims and survivors who experienced the same evacuation event. The train driver’s experience was different because he was a KR member who operated the train and might have taken part in evacuating the population. Although details of horrific experiences of evacuees (such as being separated from family members, starved or executed) are often articulated in standard narratives, the experience of the train driver was rather different and hence could possibly disrupt the consistency of the narratives. Narratives of the traumatic past are often standardized around a few key themes such as evacuation, starvation, forced labor, and arrest or death of family members (Sanders 2006; cited in Bernath 2017, p. 118). In her study of civil parties’ resistance in the context of transitional justice in Cambodia, Bernath notes the repetition of ‘meta narratives’ used by different groups of her research respondents. The consistent expression of ‘three years, eight months and twenty days’ (the duration of the Democratic Kampuchea regime), she observed, not only provides survivors with a means to cope with psychological distress, but is also an effective way in which official discourses of the past are circulated about the DK regime (2017, p. 118). Although the train driver was a former KR cadre, which might set him apart from other victims, his wife’s memory of their separation and his disappearance suggests that the major themes of death and disappearance of family members were repeated or rearticulated in order to position her husband experiences within the meta narratives. As suggested earlier, individual narratives are often constructed with reference to the dominant discourses of the DK regime. Thus the train driver’s story articulated in this exhibition can add nuances to the narrative of evacuation by offering insights into the heterogeneity of evacuation experiences.

Baaz and Lilja (2017) discuss different practices of resistance from the discursive and material perspectives, showing how re-categorization of the Preah Vihear temple with new meanings can be interpreted as resistance against the dominant nationalistic discourses of the temple conflict. The authors show that the repetition of the discourses has provided space for the truths about the temple to be challenged and/or changed (Baaz and Lilja 2017, p. 303). The fact that KR cadres could also be victimized through separation or death has the possibility to disrupt consistency of a prevalent discourse which suggests that only ‘new people’ experienced extreme working and living conditions that led to death and loss. The victimization in this sense was not only experienced by victims or survivors, but also those who served the KR regime. In this sense, the memory of the narrator serves as a resistance to the standardized narratives on separation and loss by repeating and re-articulating the discourses and adding a more complex picture to the narratives.

The narrative related to family separation and disappearance also suggests that the privileged position of a KR cadre could be dramatically reversed for the worst, and suddenly they, too, could become victimized by the DK regime. Zucker (2017) analyzes the accounts of former KR cadres, noting the tension and conflict throughout their narratives. While narratives of individual persons presented in the exhibition demonstrate some tension, they also reveal patterns that represent a broad range of experiences described by the narrators. Some former KR cadres refer to loss, struggle, disruption, and separation during and after the KR regime to reveal that they too suffered from mass violence. For example, a former KR cadre describes how his life was disrupted due to the war:

I lived in the village and studied until 1972. I left school because the KR conscripted me as a soldier. Then I was assigned to various mobile work units until 1977 when I returned to being a soldier.

(Narrator 4, extract from a panel of the exhibition in Anlong Veng, DC-Cam)

In the above narration, the eruption of war had impacted his ordinary life, turning him from a schoolboy into a soldier. The disruption of this normality created a sense of loss and struggle which he endured throughout and following the DK regime. He continued explaining how his background as a KR soldier placed him under scrutiny by his neighbors and community members following the DK years, forcing him to separate from his family and leave his village. In this sense, the narrative provides a differing perspective, depicting the life of former cadres who not only have to deal with loss and separation, but who have also struggled to integrate into mainstream society. From these narratives, one can realize that inconsistency and tension within an individual narrative did occur and served to destabilize the flow and uninterrupted nature of standard narratives.

The strategy of articulating individual experiences in the exhibition does not necessarily discount the existing standard narratives related to major themes of starvation, execution, separation or death, but rather attempts to present a more complex understanding of the past experiences. DC-Cam utilizes the category of evacuation, a key theme within the broader narratives, to develop a nuanced understanding of how narratives of the evacuation can be expanded to assist in understanding not only the experiences of victims or evacuees, but also the experiences of KR cadres who carried out the evacuation. As illustrated, DC-Cam highlighted the experiences of a KR train driver during the evacuation, a story which may have been obscured in the standard narrative. This strategy is not necessarily intended to reject the dominant understanding of Khmer Rouge evacuation. However, the construction of this narrative can be interpreted as a practice of productive resistance through which repetition of discourses of evacuation, separation, and disappearance and expansion of the temporal scope of KR experiences can provide new meanings and add complexities to dominant understanding of the DK regime.

7. Challenging clear distinction of victim and perpetrator by constructing complex identities

The clear distinction between perpetrators and victims is often contested in post-conflict narratives. The former is associated with notions of destruction and evil, while the latter is generally considered innocent, passive, and morally elevated vis-à-vis the perpetrators (Zucker 2017, p. 38). The notion of innocent victims has been problematized within the studies of complex victimhood, where the definition of victims is rather fluid and complex (Bernath 2016, Killean 2018, William 2019). In many post-conflict contexts, however, the construction of the category of victims and perpetrators as oppositional binaries is fundamentally contested as the lines between these categories become blurred. An additional problem with the construction of clear-cut categories of victim and perpetrator is that the post-conflict contexts seem to shape the kinds of personal narratives allowed or disallowed for survivors to tell (Bernath and Rubli 2016, p. 94).

Official narratives of shared victimhood formed through state institutions such as the recently built Win-Win Monument (Khuon 2018) and born out of the government’s policy of a win-win strategy, provide a means for former KR cadres to recount their experiences and construct a group identity (Path 2017). Under the framework of peace and reconciliation, some former cadres self-identify as victims based on the narrative, blurring the divide between victim and perpetrator. However, such blurred categories of victim/perpetrator tend to be constructed differently during the transitional justice’s legal prosecution of KR senior leaders. The term ‘victim’ has been problematized within studies of victimology, with some arguing that victims should not be simply portrayed as persons of innocence and passivity (Killean 2018). Julie Bernath (2016, p. 47) argues that ‘relying on a simple, idealized image of the victim not only obscures critical aspects of political violence and mass atrocity but also contributes to problematic differentiations between good/bad and us/them.’ The simplification of a victim as an idealized image of innocence and passivity reinforces this clear categorization of victim as innocent and perpetrator as evil or criminal.

To address the simplistic notion of victim versus perpetrator, Erica Bouris (2007) introduces the concept of ‘complex political victims’ to identify those who simultaneously experienced harm and participated in political violence. Recognizing these ‘complex political victims’ is crucial for post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation, particularly in the context of post-conflict Cambodia, where many former KR still live alongside the survivors (Bernath 2016). The notion of complex political victim has been adapted by former cadres to redefine the definition of victim, commonly constructed within the transitional justice frame. This is illustrated through the ways in which a former soldier articulates his experiences in the exhibition in Anlong Veng.

I worked in a Khmer Rouge unit at the border of Cambodia-Vietnam. Soldiers were arrested and killed just like other ordinary people. I can recall that one day my unit chief was arrested. I was on duty and had to guard him. … When I arrived at the detention house, I saw my unit chief, Pheak, with his hands tied up. I was really sad. … I loosened up his tie and gave him a cigarette. I told him not to run or otherwise I would be killed too. … At 6:00 p.m., an executioner took him to a place located 200 meters away from the village. He shot him three times in the back. An hour later, I walked to the execution site and saw his body. The executioner had not untied him, so I cut the rope from his hands. I felt regret and sympathy for him.

(Narrator 1, extract from a panel of the exhibition in Anlong Veng, DC-Cam)

I was assigned to work in a mobile unit until 1977 when I was conscripted into the army. In 1979, I left the KR army, returned to live in my home village and served as a temporary soldier. I got married in 1984 and had children. But in 1987, I was accused by the villagers of being a spy for Pol Pot. Because of this, I was very scared. No matter how much I tried to prove my innocence, the villagers did not believe me. I thought that if I continued living in the same village, I would definitely be killed. Therefore, I decided to leave my family and relatives behind and traveled to the Thai-Cambodian border. I decided to join Ta Mok in 1987. At the time, I had four children. I had no choice but to leave the village to join the KR. I did not see my family until we defected to the new government.

(Narrator 2, extracted from a panel of the exhibition in Anlong Veng, DC-Cam)

The narrative of the former KR cadre in the first quotation demonstrates that although he became a KR soldier due to the broader socio-political situation, he was also at risk of becoming a victim because soldiers could be arrested and killed at any time, just like the population-at-large. In this sense, Narrator 1 self-identifies as a victim, rearticulating his victim status, with a different meaning, adding more complexity to the discourse of victimhood. In addition, the act of bearing witness to the killing of his superior and living in fear for his own life marks his experience as that of a survivor or victim. He identifies himself as a victim of the KR regime, although he had been a KR soldier whose experiences might have been, to a certain degree, different from those of other people in the village.

Although KR cadres prefer to identify themselves as victims or belonging in the victim camp, they find it difficult to articulate their experiences due to tension emanating from the non-compatibility of their self-perceived status with the collective identity of victim or perpetrator. Collectively, on one hand, victims defined by the ECCC are those who were purely innocent and passive and distinguished from the category of perpetrator, while on the other hand, the shared victimhood narrative of the government tends to construct the identity of all lower-level KR as victims. As the ECCC narrative tends to delineate those who participate in the process as victims, leaving out those who do not meet the pure victim criteria, it is difficult for former KR to identify themselves as victims per the definition of the ECCC. Bernath (2016) suggests that the collective condemnation of those involved in the KR regime constructed earlier during the PRK period and recently, by the ECCC, makes it difficult for former cadres to publicly articulate their experiences and involvement in the KR regime. Many of them joined the KR cause based upon a variety of legitimate reasons. As indicated in the statement of Narrator 2, KR cadres continue to fear that their experiences might incriminate them or become a source of discrimination within their own communities. While the current socio-political situation affects the manner in which individual KR members relate their stories, Zucker (2017) argues that there are also internal forces such as fear, desire, doubts and hope that lead individuals to tell stories that seem conflicted within themselves. The conflicted nature of the narrative of a KR cadre reveals that both the external frame of shared victimhood constructed by the government’s win-win policy, and the internal factors residing in their own emotions, influence the ways in which narrators articulate the experiences as well as the strategy of DC-Cam exhibit narratives.

Those categorized as perpetrators consider or proclaim themselves as victims, which leads to a perception of them as complex political victims. As we observe in the narratives, during their struggle to reconcile the role they played during the genocide and their subsequent integration into the national community, the KR individual formulates a social identity that conforms to the current political narrative of shared victimhood. Path argues that the 1998 win-win policy of the Cambodian government has provided a framework for former KR cadres to discursively represent their experiences and their family’s histories in relation to the national narrative of shared victimhood (2017, p. 34). It is unclear, however, if the former cadres want to situate their experiences and family history within the framework of the state narratives or if they want to overcome their past actions by finding refuge within the identity of complex victimhood.

The stories presented in this exhibition portray the complex identities of former KR cadres relative to their past experiences. The exhibition narrative is constructed to help audiences make sense of the complexity underlying the personal experiences of individual survivors during the genocide period. It also illustrates complex identities constructed after the mass atrocities. However, the narration reflects not only the personal experiences of the narrators, but also the strategy that DC-Cam uses in rearticulating the meaning of victims as perceived by former cadres. As highlighted in these excerpts, the sense of victimhood is drawn upon to illustrate the conflicted experiences of former cadres. Victimhood in this sense does not represent an innocence, purity, or good morality. Rather, the meaning is negotiated to include the act of bearing witness to crimes as well as the fear of being stigmatized by the larger society. As Tal (1996) notes, bearing witness is an act of resistance which is born out of a refusal to conform to the existing frame. As such, the practice of bearing witness and refusal to conform to the discourse of victimhood as constituted in the dominant narratives embraces resistance.

8. Concluding discussion

By analyzing narratives about the Khmer Rouge period as presented in DC-Cam exhibitions at Wat Thmei and Anlong Veng, I have argued that those narratives have the potential to destabilize official narratives constituted through state-sanctioned memorialization by disrupting the homogeneity of dominant official narratives and challenging reductive dichotomies of victim and perpetrator commonly constructed in post-conflict situations. Importantly, however, these practices of resistance are not merely understood in broad and oppositional terms as acts of opposition (see Hollander and Einwohner 2004) or counter-narratives (Edkins 2003). Instead, this article approaches resistance as entangled with dominant official narratives, which moves beyond the binary logic of national versus local. As we have seen in the above discussion, the relationships between official narratives and individual memories were present throughout the exhibit narratives. While DC-Cam selected evacuation as the main theme of its exhibit on Forced Transfers, it has also drawn upon and expanded the dominant narratives of evacuation, separation, disappearance, and death by highlighting stories of former KR cadres. Furthermore, through narratives included in the Anlong Veng exhibition, the stories of former KR cadres are told in a way that highlights the complexity of KR experiences and challenges the clear distinction of victim and perpetrator categories. The negotiation of the meaning of victim has the potential to destabilize not only the dominant discourse of victimhood, but also the binary notion of victims and perpetrators, by situating former cadres’ narratives and family histories within the framework of shared victimhood narratives and identifying the cadres as complex political victims.

This article shows that through re-articulation and the application of nuanced meanings of the narrative of victimhood and standard narratives of evacuation, separation, disappearance, and death, the knowledge produced through the exhibition narratives has the possibility to challenge and destabilize the official accounts of the KR regime as well as the dominant discourse of victim and perpetrator. In this sense, DC-Cam and narrators, as agents of resistance, are able to negotiate the truth of the DK regime, offering an alternative truth emanating from the perspectives of former KR cadres. It is, nonetheless, important to note that these forms of resistance do not stand in opposition to the existing dominant narratives, but rather seek to bring an obscured narrative of individuals, who experienced the KR regime differently, into the discourse. These practices can be interpreted as a productive resistance as they create possibilities for individual narrators and DC-Cam to produce knowledge through memory construction, which would have been hidden behind the official accounts or relegated to the background.

While memorialization represents a powerful arena of contested memory, it also offers the possibility of facilitating reconciliation. In a sense, memorialization provides a space for constant interaction between state and societal actors in the struggle for understanding and recognition of heterogenous experiences of genocide and mass atrocity. As discussed in this paper, this struggle has been analyzed as a productive resistance in response to dominant power. The practices of resistance discussed above have paved the way for rather obscured narratives to entangle with public discourses about the past through the construction of narratives at sites of memorialization. They also produce new knowledge and power, facilitating processes of reconciliation and reconstruction in the aftermath of genocide and mass atrocity. For example, the complex experiences and identities of former KR cadres as articulated through story-telling in the exhibition narratives help provide a better understanding of how former KR portray themselves and self-identify in relation to other people within society. Creating a more-informed understanding among groups in conflict could help reduce stigmatized feelings and encourage a more sympathetic attitude toward adversaries.

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my research participants and to the staff at the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) for their insights, guidance, and assistance. My thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers and to the members of the PoReSo research group for their very helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

There is no potential conflict of interest in regard to this article.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this paper is funded in part by the Open Society Foundations’ Civil Society Scholar Award (Grant Number IN2018-45487).

Notes on contributors

Savina Sirik

Savina Sirik is a doctoral student in Peace and Development Research in the School of Global Studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research interests include memory, memorialization, narrative construction, complex victims, and resistance.

Notes

1. See further on YFP and DC-Cam’s memory initiatives http://www.yfpcambodia.org/index.php?p = home.php&menuId = 1&menuf = 1 and http://dccam.org/home (accessed 27 January 2020).