Module 3: Genocide and State Violence
Did Cambodian Americans attain justice for the harms of war and genocide?
My husband is the last historian. The others were found out by Angkar early on, taken beyond fields, to black holes, dark corners of temples, some say, to Ratanakiri, then thrown into Laos, some say. Nobody can know they were our friends, not now, not in Year Zero. Now alone, he can’t help his research. I hear him in secret…. His song of labyrinths stops when a spy passes our hut…. They have the many eyes of a pineapple.
– Monica Sok, excerpted from “I am Rachana,” A Nail the Evening Hangs On 1
In the poem “I am Rachana,” poet Monica Sok takes on the imagined voice of Rachana, a singer and wife to Rithisal, the historian introduced in the earlier poem “The Radio Host Goes into Hiding.” Through Rachana, Sok illustrates the lived experience of Khmer Rouge policy from 1975 to 1979 during the Cambodian Genocide. “Angkar,” meaning “The Organization,” referred to the initially secret ruling body of the Khmer Rouge government, led by the politician and dictator Pol Pot. “Year Zero,” a term popularized by French writer Francois Ponchaud, refers to the Khmer Rouge policy dictating the destruction and replacement of existing culture and traditions, and the beginning of a new society from scratch.
State violence in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 has been referred to by many names. In addition to Year Zero, the period of Khmer Rouge terror has been referred to as the Cambodian Genocide, Cambodian Auto-Genocide, Cambodia’s Holocaust, and Cambodia’s Killing Fields. For many survivors of Khmer Rouge rule, the historical period is referred to as “samay Pol Pot,” meaning the “Pol Pot era” or “time of Pol Pot.”
The debate around what to call the state violence in Cambodia reflects the limits of law and, specifically, international law. What becomes law is dependent on transnational context and global relationships of power. The law is always incomplete and cannot account for the full range of human experience. As discussed in previous modules, after World War II, international law was revised and modern laws of war were developed. One of the emerging concepts was the idea of genocide, enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UN Genocide Convention), adopted on December 9, 1948.
This module addresses the topics of genocide and state violence, which help us to better understand the meanings of genocide in international law. We learn about the conditions that shaped experiences of the Cambodian Holocaust of 1975–1979. The module also explores the everyday actions that people living under state violence took in order to survive.
What was the Cambodian Holocaust?
According to international law, what is “genocide”?
How did Cambodians respond to and survive state violence?
