Devastated Vision(s): The Khmer Rouge Scopic Regime in Cambodia
Author(s)
Ly, Boreth
Abstract
Poetic justice? On April 15, 1998, I saw from the comfort of my Berkeley apartment a photograph of Pol Pot’s corpse on television. Apparently, the man responsible for the genocide of 1.7 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979 had just died a natural death. Although I had experienced Pol Pot’s atrocities firsthand, I learned his name only in 1979, after Vietnam had overthrown the Khmer Rouge regime, for until then we Cambodians had been obeying the orders not of a man, but of Angka: “the Organization.” Recently, an international tribunal has investigated the crimes committed by Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge leaders, and trials are currently being conducted in Cambodia. The names of many have come to light, but whether just verdicts will occur is still a question. For those of us Cambodians who lived through that bloody era, during which entire families disappeared overnight, these acts of public justice leave us still asking ourselves: What happened? Should we remember or try to forget? If we remember, how do we envision the past?
