Learning Lessons From the Khmer Rouge [-The lesson is NEVER allow a group of KR judge another group of KR!!!]

By Irwin Loy

PHNOM PENH, Mar 28, 2012 (IPS) - For four years, Wan Preung toiled in the fields under the Khmer Rouge, unable to speak his mind. But after the regime fell in 1979, there was still one sensitive subject the teacher could seldom broach with his students: the Khmer Rouge.

"It was difficult to teach the students about the Khmer Rouge, because we didn’t know this story clearly," Preung says. "We didn’t have much information in our books."

When students asked, Preung would tell them about his own experiences living under a regime responsible for the deaths of an estimated one-quarter of the population. But for years, Cambodian history textbooks contained only a brief mention of the Khmer Rouge. The country’s political future was still uncertain in the aftermath of the regime, and the facts of the Khmer Rouge rule were obscured by the politics of the era.

"We couldn’t talk much," Preung says. "It was so political, so we didn’t want to say much about it." Khmer Rouge was the name given to followers of the Communist Party, that was held responsible for mass killing of perceived opponents during its rule 1975-1979.

Regime’s History Should Not Just Come From Tribunal: Researcher

Dy Khamboly, author of "A History of Democratic Kampuchea" and Huy Vannak, a Public Affairs Officers at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, discuss the importance of youth participation in the Khmer Rouge trial process. (Photo: Heng Reaksmey, VOA Khmer)

Thursday, 22 December 2011
Say Mony, VOA Khmer | Phnom Penh

“Khmer Rouge history cannot be determined by the trials of the Khmer Rouge leaders. The youth must learn from numerous other documents, especially living documents like their parents or grandparents, so that they understand clearly what really happened under the Democratic Kampuchea regime.”

The Khmer Rouge trial currently under way at the UN-backed court should not be the only source of information Cambodians have, especially the youth, a researcher said Monday.

Dy Khamboly, who authored a book on the regime for the Documentation Center of Cambodia, told “Hello VOA” that Cambodian youth must understand the history of the regime to avoid confusion or misinformation; however, that history should come from multiple sources.

“Khmer Rouge history cannot be determined by the trials of the Khmer Rouge leaders,” he said. “The youth must learn from numerous other documents, especially living documents like their parents or grandparents, so that they understand clearly what really happened under the Democratic Kampuchea regime.”

Books, But Difficulties Teaching Khmer Rouge Era

By Soeung Sophat, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
26 March 2010

Khmer Rouge history is a sensitive subject in Cambodia, though the ongoing Khmer Rouge trials and recent inclusion of more comprehensive teaching materials in the national secondary curriculum have helped.

But while it took many years to get a textbook into the nation’s classrooms, the authors say the real challenges have just begun.

Dy Khamboly, a senior researcher with the Documentation Center of Cambodia, is the author of “A History of Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979),” a book published in 2007 and slated for use in a national genocide education project.

In an interview with VOA Khmer, he said for the project to be effective requires more than good textbooks and a carefully planned curriculum.

“I hope that the teachers as well as the students, their surviving parents, or any survivor from the Khmer Rouge era will all participate” in the educational process, he said recently. “Genocide education about Democratic Kampuchea cannot be achieved by any one person or institution, but requires everyone’s participation: the government, civil society, teachers, students, as well as parents who are survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime.”

The Khmer Rouge trial process has gone on for years now, but comprehensive teaching and discussion of the regime’s history have remained socially and politically sensitive.

Only recently has the government, with the help of the Documentation Center, been open to the idea of more comprehensive genocide education.

The Documentation Center has embarked on a long-term genocide education project that involves writing, publishing, teacher training, teaching and evaluation.

The project aims to publish another 700,000 textbooks for an anticipated 1 million 9th- to 12th-grade students. It is also nearing the completion of its training phase with the opening of the last phase to take place in Siem Reap on March 27.

A total 230 new trainers will instruct 1,627 teachers nationwide to use a teacher and student books for “A History of Democratic Kampuchea,” which was published jointly by the Ministry of Education and the Documentation Center.

Chea Phala, a Cambodian-American in Lowell, Massachusetts, is the co-author of the guide. She told VOA Khmer the book was carefully reviewed because methodology is crucial in teaching about genocide.

“It is a very tough subject, and we have to be very sensitive when we teach and when we deal with students and their families,” she said. “So we tried to think of ways to introduce the subject without traumatizing our audience, our students, and we did it in a manner that would build interest in students in learning about the subject and give them a safe place for discussion and opportunities to discuss different topics and different issues regarding the genocide.”

Dy Khamboly said the emotional sensitivity of the subject can be problematic for teachers. ​

“Because some teachers are themselves survivors, it is possible that they might take what they are teaching personally, instead of teaching it professionally,” he said. “Therefore, this training will help teachers teach in a scientific, professional way, and not from personal emotions.”

Despite the difficulties, Chea Phala said it is not only the students who are learning, but also the teachers, most of whom were born after the Khmer Rouge, as well as the parents and other survivors who lack a holistic view of what was happening to them.

And it is especially timely now that the tribunal is underway, prompting families and society to discuss about the subject more willingly and openly.

Dy Khamboly agreed, noting that the project will serve a long-term social goal. Cambodians must learn from their past to rebuild their nation and create a better future, he said.

“Our objectives are that students understand and can think critically about the events that occurred during the Khmer Rouge period and use this [knowledge] as a foundation in their daily lives, in rebuilding the country, in preventing the reoccurrence of genocide, and in helping their parents reconcile,” he said. “So the idea of retribution and revenge will not exist in the minds of the younger generations of Cambodians.”

Cambodia learns lessons of its bloody history

March 13, 2010
Aubrey Belford, Kampong Trach, Cambodia
The Australian

SCHOOLTEACHER Bin Cheat has already had his lesson on the Khmer Rouge.

As a six-year-old, he saw Pol Pot's army roll into his village in Cambodia's scrappy southern countryside. Fascinated by the rare sight of a car, he trundled up to a tyre as the men stood distracted, unscrewed the cap and let out a hiss of air. Moments later he was dragged and bound, set, like many others, for death by bludgeoning.

"They tied my arms behind my back and stuffed me in a sack. I'm lucky that one of the neighbourhood women begged with them for so long that they let me go," Bin Cheat says with a laugh.

Many older Cambodians remember the brutality of the Khmer Rouge. Up to two million people were killed through executions, starvation and forced labour as the ultra-communist regime attempted to create an agrarian utopia, while erasing the history and memory of a people.

For younger generations of children, that forgetting has continued, with the four years of the Khmer Rouge regime left off the school curriculum.

Only now, after years of debate, are teachers like Bin Cheat tentatively beginning to explain Cambodia's full history. The process is delicate and painful, as former Khmer Rouge are spread throughout society, from Prime Minister Hun Sen downwards.

Key to that process is a new textbook for high school students, A History of Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979), produced by the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-CAM), a non-profit organisation given the task of recording the history of the genocide.

Other books teach the history up until the Khmer Rouge's rise in 1975 and then fall silent, only to pick up the thread long after the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge in a Vietnamese invasion, explains DC-CAM director Youk Chhang. The one concession granted over the years was a single photo of a seated Pol Pot, accompanied by a brief description of his regime and its genocide.

"I believe in prosecution to reach full forgiveness. But at the same time, for the future, to move beyond the Khmer Rouge, one way to prevent (such things from recurring) is to teach the children," Youk Chhang says.

Conceived in 1996, the idea for the book received only limited in-principle support from the government in 2004 and began being taught in a small number of schools at the end of last year. The plan is to have a million Khmer-language editions of the books in schools by the end of the year, being taught by 3200 teachers.

Re-engaging with the issue is proving a challenge. Of the country's 14 million people, only five million were alive during Khmer Rouge rule. The government of Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge cadre who defected to Vietnam and rose to the country's leadership after the regime's 1979 fall, has been at best a reluctant participant in efforts to bring former regime leaders to justice. "The Khmer Rouge aren't just in the government, trust me. They are in the opposition, the NGOs, the private sector, everywhere," he says.

"In the classroom I can assure you that at least 30 per cent are the children of former Khmer Rouge, another 70 per cent are the children of the victims.

"Among these 3000 teachers I can assure you almost 25 to 30 per cent are former Khmer Rouge themselves.

"This is a broken society, it is a fragile society, so I think you have to live for the future, commit for the future, teach for the future."

At Bin Cheat's school in Kampong Trach near the southern border with Vietnam, amid a landscape of red earth and lonely palm trees and sheer hills, the Khmer Rouge's shadow stretches longer than in most places.

Throughout the 1990s, Khmer Rouge rebels fighting the government in Phnom Penh lingered in the nearby hills, periodically sweeping down to abduct officials, including local teachers, and holding them for ransoms of rice, food and fuel. Those who were not ransomed were killed.

The students here respond blankly to questions of this recent history.

Ny Pagnavuth, 17, says he heard stories of the Khmer Rouge when he was growing up, including vague tales of an uncle and aunt killed. But he knew little of how the Khmer Rouge came to power or why they did what they did, and was shocked to hear the broader story in class.

"I was surprised and I felt it was strange. Why did the regime empty out Phnom Penh? Cities are where industry and the economy grows," he says.

Clearing the Fog from Khmer Rouge History

By Soeung Sophat, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
03 March 2010

While many Americans are familiar with the idea of genocide through education in schools, they may be less familiar with the Cambodian tragedy. Even so, they likely know more about it than everyday Cambodian students. A young Cambodian-American would like to change all that.

“One reason why they are probably the most informed about this issue is because in 30 out of 50 states in the United States, there is a mandate in public schools to teach about to have some kind of genocide or Holocaust education,” said filmmaker Poeuv Socheata, 29, whose “New Year Baby” follows the effect of the Khmer Rouge on her family. “And so almost every American student learns about the Holocaust at some point in their education and some of them will also learn about other genocides.”

An estimated 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, one of the worst atrocities of the 20th Centuries. As many as 2 million Cambodians died under the Khmer Rouge, just 30 years later, though their story is less known. Poeuv Socheata, who leads an oral history project at Yale University, says this is because of inadequate education, a problem she is trying to address.

Educational efforts by her and other Cambodian-Americans have paid off, and some American schools are starting to teach of Khmer Rouge atrocities using books like “First They Killed My Father,” by Ung Loung, or Poeuv Socheata’s own 2006 documentary.

Meanwhile, Poeuv Socheata has been invited by the US Embassy to be a cultural ambassador for Cambodia and to screen her film in July.

Poeuv Socheata recently discussed the Cambodian tragedy in videoconferencing with three North American high schools, whose students she said have a good understanding of the concept of genocide.

Cambodian-Americans have only a “vague” understanding of what happened during the Khmer Rouge, she told VOA Khmer, because their parents only talk about it in the educational context of hardship. Students in their native Cambodia should know more, she said.

“For me the idea that in Cambodia now there is a generation of young people who are probably the most educated people in the country [but] who don’t have a full knowledge about what happened during the Khmer Rouge seems crazy,” she said.

The so-called negative transmission of Khmer Rouge history in a family setting is also the case in Cambodia, according to Chhang Youk, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia.

“One negative aspect of parents telling their children about this period is that they tend to use it as a punitive action, like blaming their children for demanding bicycles, motorcycles, and music players when none of that was available during the Khmer Rouge period,” he said. “So this is a mistake we have often overlooked.”

However, he said that informal oral history of an event like the Cambodian tragedy can be important, and is often overlooked. Cambodian youth are everywhere exposed to Khmer Rouge history, he said.

“These stories are all around us,” he said. “So once our youth grow up, they will learn more questions than factual events. Many questions are beyond what students should know or ask about, and they are possibly also beyond a teacher’s ability to answer.”

Questions remain unanswered for many Cambodian youth, who, according to surveys, say they have an inadequate understanding of the Khmer Rouge and want to learn more.

That lack of understanding may soon change. In 2009, the government, with the help of the Documentation Center, mandated the inclusion of Khmer Rouge history in the national high school curriculum—for an estimated 1 million students.

“This teaching will transform us from being a victim to being an educator,” Chhang Youk said, adding that Cambodian seemed more open than other countries to the national education of a national tragedy.

Chhang Youk believes post-conflict countries must learn their history, or they will repeat it, and Poeuv Socheata agrees.

“I also think that as a society, in order to rebuild the country and to create a stronger democracy, it’s very important to implement the lessons that were learned during the Khmer Rouge,” she said.

Cambodia’s young generation should listen more to survivors of the Khmer Rouge

Researchers End Documentation Study

By Taing Sarada, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
08 June 2009

Cambodia’s young generation should listen more to survivors of the Khmer Rouge, if the memory of the regime is to survive, recent students of an oral history project said.

Three researchers for the Documentation Center have finished three months at the Shoah Foundation, a holocaust research center in California, learning techniques about interviewing and video documentary.

Leng Ratanak, Sa Fatily and Chey Bunthy workerd closely with the Shoah Foundation to develop a 43-page questionnaire for genocide survivors based on questions designed by the institute for Holocaust survivors and others.

The Shoah Foundation produced a video documentary by interviewing 52,000 Holocaust survivors.

In recent interviews with VOA Khmer, the researchers said they had discovered the importance of retelling memories of the regime.

Participant Leng Ratanak had dozens of family members killed under the Khmer Rouge, including uncles, aunts and a grandfather.

He learned from his course how to ask detailed questions of Khmer Rouge survivors, to describe their lives before, during and after the genocide. He said after the course he and his group would pursue interviews with survivors for the Document Center of Cambodia within detail and high standards.

Document Center of Cambodia Director Chhang Youk said the bitter experiences and memories of the survivors should never be forgotten.

Sa Fatily, a Cambodian Muslim, had her grandfather, grandmother and an uncle killed under the regime. She said after the training she had more ideas for video production. She has made a 17-minute video about genocide survivors preparing for the UN-backed tribunal. She said in the future she plans to make a one-hour video to make it more detailed.

Chey Bunthy’s father and grandfather were burned alive by the Khmer Rouge. She said she was interested in learning to archive and protect film documentary, such as copying onto a master tape, burning onto a CD or storage on the Internet.

Hun Sen lashes out at former PM Pen Sovann

23 Dec 2008
By Chivita
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Heng Soy

"I only face those who know history, those who have good manners, those who are grateful, then I respect and praise them, but for me to talk to the likes of him, he has mental problem or crazy, but that’s his illness, I am not replying back" - Pen Sovann

Prime minister Hun Sen attacked a 7-January VIP, saying that the latter lied and distorted the truth when he stated that he (Hun Sen) was his subordinate during the liberation struggle from the Pol Pot regime.

Hun Sen said: “There is a guy who claimed to be the father of 2-December and 7-January. He said that I am his foot soldier. This guy (using derogatory “Ah noeung”) was making noise in Phnom Penh the other day, I saw him saying that he is the father of 7-January and 2-December. Since mid-1977, I was the biggest leader on the eastern shore of the Mekong River, I already built up a lot of troops, so there was nobody bigger than me. This guy, by what I know, he was a lieutenant in the Vietnamese army only, and he pretended to be my boss, and he made noise through the Fly nest or Beehive radio station. Now, I want to send a message to this fellow: be moderate will you? If you lie, be moderate in your lie, give a decent lie. I don’t need to provide his name, but in Khmer he is called the liar-in-chief.”

Hun Sen made this lashing during a diploma distribution ceremony for students at the Vanda Institute which was held at the Pedagogy University in Phnom Penh on the morning of 22 December.

Even though he did not reveal the name of the person whom he lashed out at, he admitted that this fellow told the truth when he claimed that Hun Sen was the one who arrested him and sent him to prison in Vietnam.

Hun Sen added: “He told the truth on one point only: when he said that I arrested him at his house. You told the truth on this point only. (It was) I with Ta (Grandpa) Say Bou Thang – at that time, I was the vice-PM and minister of Foreign Affairs – (who made the arrest). It was because we can’t talk to each other anymore, and at that time, I did not arrest him so I can take the position, it was H.E. Chan Si who became the prime minister.”

According to Cambodian history, Pen Sovann was the former PM of the Phnom Penh regime installed by the Vietnamese in 1979.

Nevertheless, Pen Sovann, who is currently the president of the HRP rule committee, did not provide any reaction to Hun Sen’s lashing. However, he raised the following question instead: “I am telling the ordinary people, including monks, civil servants, and the government, even foreign and local journalists came to ask me for my reaction. I told them that I will not reply to those who falsify history, those who do not understand Khmer history. If you want the truth, I ask TVK for one hour to broadcast once again 2-December and 7-January documents that I now have. So, let TVK broadcast the original documents of 2-December and 7-January, and let it show the images of who said what, let (the people) look at them. I only face those who know history, those who have good manners, those who are grateful, then I respect and praise them, but for me to talk to the likes of him, he has mental problem or crazy, but that’s his illness, I am not replying back.”

Nevertheless, Pen Sovann provided information on how he met Hun Sen: “The Khmer Rouge sent him (Hun Sen) to attack Vietnam, but Vietnam fought back and they destroyed all of the KR. When he (Hun Sen) returned back, Pol Pot, his boss, wanted to kill him, then he fled to Vietnam. The Vietnamese were angry, they said that he brought KR troops to attack them along the border in Song Bea province, and the Vietnamese arrested and jailed both him (Hun Sen) and Ung Phan. It was him (Hun Sen) who told me that Vietnam jailed him, at that time, I was preparing to form the Front and I asked to meet with Le Duc Tho, and I told Le Duc Tho not to send him (Hun Sen) to tough jail yet because I was trying to gather important people to form a front at that time. I was teaching politics for the front at the Vietnamese Army Unit no. 7 barrack.”