Can Cambodia’s Push for Justice Outlast the Khmer Rouge Tribunal?

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But there’s a larger constellation of professionals and organizations and survivors who are still working toward justice and reconciliation — work that has no end, given the scale of pain experienced in the 1970s and passed on through the generations since.

 

For nearly two decades, their work has revolved around the tribunal and associated foreign funding for activities ranging from education, intergenerational dialogue, psychological services, public remembrance and engagement in the judicial process. Non-profits have built out programs that not only help heal old wounds, but seek to foster a society with less hate and more capacity to resolve disputes peacefully.

 

And the leaders of these groups aren’t sure that international partners — which have spent some $337 million on the tribunal alone — will continue to support their work now that “justice” has been served through the tribunal.

 

“Dealing with the past context is like: Cambodia is no longer a post-conflict country so why do you have to respond to this area? So I think in terms of that particular context, there is a decline in funding support,” said Suyheang Kry, the executive director of Women Peace Makers, a Cambodian non-profit focused on inter-ethnic conflict resolution.

 

However, her organization still sees a need for building a bridge between remaining Khmer Rouge survivors and future generations of Cambodians, to ensure that the lessons learned from the country’s dark history aren’t lost.

 

“How are we going to ensure that the younger generations can also bring that; not just about knowing the past, but also how they can also reflect and use that as a tool for them to deal with the present…and build more non-violent types of response,” Suyheang Kry said.

 

A number of studies have found widespread “secondary trauma” among the children of Khmer Rouge survivors — even if they grew up in the diaspora.

 

Leakhena Nou, a sociology professor at the University of California Long Beach who has worked extensively with Khmer Rouge survivors, said she still sees signs of unresolved Khmer Rouge trauma throughout Cambodian society, including among younger generations.

 

“The legacy of the Khmer Rouge continues to live on vicariously through behavioral manifestations like gambling, domestic violence, drug addiction,” she said, noting that violence is often present in everyday language and on social media.

“It just shows that society has not truly addressed the underlying trauma,” Leakhena Nou said.

 

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