Search Results

This chapter describes the political and policy apparatus of Democratic Kampuchea (DK), tracing how power and authority were refracted throughout the system along functional and spatial dimensions, respectively, to underscore the variation in institutional integrity necessary to translate the power emerging from it into concrete policy locally. It shows that the state apparatus in DK did provide a modicum of governance despite the fact that it took some time to establish them, and even after they were up and running, they were unable to function effectively because of the deadly political atmosphere. However, by the latter half of the regime, the intuitive and flexible approach to governance and administration had ossified into a rigidly cellular and risk-averse collection of individual officials throughout the system, all of whom had little reason to trust any of their colleagues. Ultimately, the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) imploded on itself as the search for enemies seeking to undermine the state led to a series of purges that decimated its ranks.

This chapter first sets out the central question of this book: why was a powerful state like China unable to influence its far weaker and ostensibly dependent client state, Democratic Kampuchea (DK)? Or, to put it in policy terms: exactly what did Chinese development aid buy? The book shows that in the deeply uneven bilateral relationship, on the policy front at least, China was the one that ended up as the subordinate party. The remainder of the chapter reviews the political history of China's relationship with DK, which confirms that the expected outcome—a relationship in which Beijing dictated critical strategic terms to Phnom Penh—never came to pass.

This chapter looks at trade and commerce, the one area where China was able to shape Democratic Kampuchea (DK) practices significantly—as well as the institutions involved. This was because Chinese commercial institutions did not suffer from significant fragmentation and lack of coordination, and because DK's Ministry of Commerce was institutionally complex and fragmented. This allowed China to colonize the institution structurally and especially procedurally in ways unimaginable in the case of military assistance. Like much that was being constructed and initiated at the time, this commercial infrastructure was modest in scale, and it was cut short by the Vietnamese invasion of 1979. Yet it appears to have been a viable forum for the exchange of ideas and expertise, one that could have been developed into an important asset in terms of creating revenue and maintaining informal contacts with a wider range of international actors than was willing to admit public dealings with the Phnom Penh regime.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Khmer Rouge regime, which pursued an untenable agricultural revolution and which was also determined to eradicate any signs of a Western influence. The Pol Pot-led Khmer Rouge renamed Cambodia, Democratic Kampuchea and dismantled centuries-old traditions and prerevolutionary socioeconomic infrastructures. This book focuses on both collected and collective memorialization, beginning with author James Young’s examination of Holocaust memorials and remembrance. It investigates how Cambodian American cultural producers have rearticulated and reimagined the Killing Fields era using three distinct and unfixed modes of negation: dominant-held erasures, refugee-oriented ruptures, and juridical open-endedness.

This chapter considers the environment encountered by the thousands of Chinese technicians, skilled workers, and other expatriates working in Democratic Kampuchea (DK). It shows that, unlike the conventional wisdom, there appears to have been little sense of socialist brotherhood. Rather, Chinese workers appeared to have expected a professional experience in which they might act as mentors to a rising class of technical workers in DK. Although these Chinese experts were almost certainly aware that some horrific political violence was afoot—given their own, less lethal but nonetheless highly violent experiences in China—there was absolutely nothing that they could do about it, except perhaps help in a modest way by helping the Cambodians with whom they worked when their Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) supervisors were not looking. Finally, while assistance to DK afforded Chinese experts the opportunity to ply their trades, there was always a possibility that organizational and institutional problems would prevent them from doing so. In fact, Chinese foreign assistance projects were often at the mercy of institutional constraints among Chinese bureaucracies as well as the state apparatus of the recipient country.

This concluding chapter returns to the developments in Buddhism during the PRK period and beyond in discussing the struggles of these Cambodian Buddhists in the face of changing sociopolitical climes. As well, it considers the underlying themes present in all regimes since colonial times in their treatment of Buddhism. On a broader scale the chapter examines how the run-up to the first post-Democratic Kampuchea elections in May 1993 marked a turning point in Buddhist engagement with the international community. It then shifts the discussion inward to analyze Theravāda Buddhist perspectives on such a desperate period in its Cambodian history, remarking on the implications and consequences this holds for the Buddhists, and the actions they have taken in moving forward from their troubled past.

This chapter presents the first of three case studies driving the argument of this book, namely that Chinese influence was largely insignificant when it came to shaping Democratic Kampuchea (DK) goals and means of achieving them. The case involves the planning and construction of Krang Leav airfield, located just outside the Cambodian village of Palarng. First, the case shows that decision to place the airfield in Kampong Chhnang is just one of many instances where DK preferences won out over Chinese ones. Second, even if China wanted to, it was unable to influence DK in the implementation of policy because the bureaucracy in charge of the airfield, the Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea's (RAK) Division 502, was among the strongest and most centralized in the country. As a result, Krang Leav is a rare instance in which a major Chinese assistance project in DK was an unqualified success; indeed, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in December 1978 was the only thing that prevented the airfield from becoming fully operational.

This chapter presents a case study of the repair and refitting of the Kampong Som petroleum refinery, describing the project as one of the most spectacular failures of Chinese assistance to Democratic Kampuchea (DK). China was unable to shape the DK policy area of infrastructure development for two reasons. First, DK institutions were simply incapable of managing the complex tasks assigned to them, particularly once the internal political purges began. Skilled Cambodians had either been killed during the early stages of the revolution or were hiding their identities in order to avoid such a fate. Thus, the majority of managers as well as laborers at Kampong Som were Cambodian children, aged eight to fifteen. The second reason has to do with the fact that the Chinese institutions were themselves fragmented and incapable of effectively planning and coordinating the various technical and managerial dimensions of the project, let alone of exploiting DK institutional weakness, however modestly, to influence DK policy.

This chapter discusses the concept of trust as well as attempts to recover trust after radical distrust swept O'Thmaa and its neighboring communities from the civil war years through the period of Democratic Kampuchea and into the 1980s and 1990s. It first provides a theoretical background on the notion of trust before turning to the ethnography of trust and distrust in Southeast Asia. It then explains how the intrinsic interconnections between trust and moral and social order made trust the object of the Khmer Rouge's vehement attack, in part by seeking to expunge even—and especially—the most intimate expressions of trust in the sphere of family and kinship relations. It also examines the ways that the people of O'Thmaa are trying to rebuild trust in the moral/social order and personal trust with each other while contending with the residue of distrust left by the Khmer Rouge conflict. Finally, it considers how sentiments of trust and distrust are understood and mobilized by villagers in response to sweeping social changes.

Beginning with an interview with Youk Chhang, the head of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, the chapter explores his path to the non-governmental organization and the projects it undertook, including Khmer Rouge Tribunal outreach. The second half of the chapter looks at how the play “Breaking the Silence” emerged from these efforts. A collaboration from the start, the play on the surface reflects the aspirations of the transitional justice imaginary, as illustrated by the title. Chhang, however, pointed out that this title made little sense in Khmer and therefore that his staff simply referred to it as “Pol Pot Stories.” Indeed, Chhang carefully translated the text so that it would make sense in rural Cambodian vernaculars. He noted that transitional justice imaginary ideas of “reconciliation” and “healing” were problematic and did not accord with the complicated on the ground understandings of Cambodian villagers. Nevertheless, the tribunal made a positive impact not just by holding former Khmer Rouge leaders accountable, but by potentially catalyzing combustive acts of imagination as Cambodians directly or indirectly engaged with the court.