CSEAS Brown Bag Seminar: “Time for Reparations? A View on the Cambodian government’s response to the genocide”

Event time: 
Wednesday, November 14, 2018 - 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Location: 
Henry R. Luce Hall (LUCE ), 203 See map
34 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06511
Event description: 

Cambodia was severely ravaged by Pol Pot’s regime known as Khmer Rouge’s “Killing Fields” (1975-1979) in which a millions of people perished. The atrocity committed in the genocidal regime was one of the most devastating events in the twentieth century, destroying entire social, educational and economic infrastructures in the country. Although a national court was set up to try those perpetrators responsible for the mass killing after the fall of the regime in 1979, and a hybrid international tribunal has been established in the country since 2007 to bring top surviving Khmer Rouge leaders to justice, the Cambodian general public claim that justice has not been done as a reparation for them. Today, despite UN-backing, the court has faced political interference by the country’s political actors attempting to meddle with the court’s legal proceedings to address the crimes when it comes to their involvement in the regime of terror. This has resulted in questions about the independence and validity of the hybrid court in finding justice for the people. This paper presents a perspective about the Cambodian government’s response to the genocide in the country since the collapse of Khmer Rouge regime in 1979. It aims to explore people’s views and reactions to the way the Cambodian ruling elites and the international community joined together in setting up the hybrid court to address the ‘crimes against humanity and genocide in the country.’

Sreang Heng, is a Cambodian scholar and writer, who worked as a university lecturer at Paññāsāstra University of Cambodia (PUC) from 2004 – 2006. He also served as President of PEN Cambodia, 2010 – 2016. He was a Visiting Scholar at the Council on Southeast Asian Studies, Yale University 2016-2017. He is now a research scholar at Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University.

Heng Sreang, Research Scholar, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University