Organizer: The Center for Khmer Studies (CKS); NYSEAN
Type/Location: Virtual
Description:
The Center for Khmer Studies (CKS) and the New York Southeast Asia Netweork (NYSEAN) invite you to a panel discussion on the book Cambodia’s Trials: Contrasting Visions of Truth, Transitional Justice, and National Recovery on February 20, 2025, from 8:30 pm to 10:00 pm (Cambodia time). This book talk will examine Cambodia’s journey of justice and recovery more than 40 years after the Khmer Rouge genocide.
The panel features the book’s editors, Robin Biddulph, Associate Professor at the University of Gothenburg, and Alexandra Kent, Retired Associate Professor of Social Anthropology. They will be joined by Dr. Courtney Work, Associate Professor at National Chengchi University, and Prof. Pádraig McAuliffe, Professor of Law and Social Justice at the University of Liverpool, and Dr. Eve Zucker, CKS President and NYSEAN Executive Board Member, who will also serve as the session’s moderator.
About the Book:
More than four decades have passed since the end of Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia in 1979. Yet, the country is still coming to terms with the destruction wrought by the decades of genocide and civil war that continued until 1998. The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, formally known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) was established in 2006 to bring the Khmer Rouge leadership to justice and has long been the focus of scholarly attention in Cambodia’s post-conflict recovery. In many ways a product of the 1990s, a time when liberal democracy appeared to be on the rise both in Cambodia and internationally, the ECCC was imagined as a ‘Transitional Justice’ initiative, that is, while delivering justice it should also ease the transition to liberal democracy. This compelling study argues that approach is dated. The political circumstances in which the ECCC was born have changed profoundly, both globally and locally. No longer can Cambodia’s current situation be analysed solely in terms of transitional justice narratives or the work of the ECCC. Other ways in which Cambodians have come to terms with their past and built new lives must also be considered. Decentring the ECCC in the scholarly narrative of Cambodia’s recovery, the volume’s authors offer fascinating new insights into the Khmer Rouge period and Cambodia’s more recent years of social, cultural, and political change.
Registration Link:
To attend the event online, please register here.