After the Killing Fields: Lessons from the Cambodian Genocide

For 25 years, Cambodia's Khmer Rouge have avoided responsibility for their crimes against humanity. For 30 long years, from the late 1960s to the late 1990s, the Cambodian people suffered from a war that has no name. Arguing that this series of hostilities, which included both civil and external war, amounted to one long conflict—The Thirty Years War—Craig Etcheson demonstrates that there was one constant, churning presence that drove that conflict: the Khmer Rouge. New findings demonstrate that the death toll was approximately 2.2 million people—about half a million more than commonly believed. Detailing the struggle of coming to terms with what happened in Cambodia, Etcheson concludes that real justice is not merely elusive but may, in fact, be impossible for crimes on the scale of genocide. This book details the work of a unique partnership, Yale University's Cambodian Genocide Program, which laid the evidentiary basis for the forthcoming Khmer Rouge tribunal and also played a key role in the international advocacy necessary for the tribunal's creation. It presents the information collected through the Mass Grave Mapping Project of the Documentation Center of Cambodia and reveals that the pattern of killing was relatively uniform throughout the country. Despite regular denial of knowledge of the mass killing among the surviving leadership of the Khmer Rouge, Etcheson demonstrates that they were not only aware of it, but that they personally managed and directed the killing.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Preface The Thirty Years War A Desperate Time After the Peace Documenting Mass Murder Centralized Terror Terror in the East Digging in the Killing Fields The Persistence of Impunity The Politics of Genocide Justice Challenging the Culture of Impunity Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Craig Etcheson is a principal founder of the Documentation Center of Cambodia. He works with governments, international organizations, and NGOs in the search for ways to help heal nations that are recovering from genocide and other extreme violence. He has been a faculty member at the Johns Hopkins University, Yale University, and the University of Southern California. He is the author of several book-length treatises on extreme conflict, including The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea (1984).

Review :
More than 25 years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, those responsible for genocide and human rights violations in Cambodia have yet to answer for their crimes. Why has justice for the Cambodian people been so elusive? Etcheson argues that a culture of impunity persists in Cambodia, and that national reconciliation and healing will require a properly conducted war crimes tribunal, perhaps overseen by the UN. The author describes the efforts of the Documentation Center of Cambodia in amassing proof that the leaders of the Khmer Rouge ordered mass executions throughout Cambodia during the 1975-79 regime. But the abuses began earlier and continue to the present. Moreover, no one in Cambodia's political elite is completely untainted. Etcheson's historical and legal concerns are intertwined, since the evidence from documents, interviews, and eyewitness accounts, backed up by physical evidence from mass graves, is meant to combat the denial syndrome that is part of Cambodia's tragic and apparently intractable situation. These essays will appeal mainly to specialists in Cambodian political history and international politics, as well as to other readers interested in legal remedies for political violence and genocide. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students/faculty. ^IAfter the Killing Fields: Lessons from the Cambodian Genocide^R is a thorough insider's description of the Documentation Center of Cambodia's valuable work. More importantly, the book probes the culture of impunity and enhances our understanding of this extraordinarily complex issue. It is a major contribution to genocide studies, as well as an eloquent tribute to the Cambodians who suffered under the Khmer Rouge. [E]tcheson's great contribution is his orderly, detailed relating of DC-Cam's postwar research into the organization and location of mass murder as well as international legal efforts to bring surviving perpetrators to account. After the Killing Fields is a thorough description of the step-by-step accumulation of evidence of Khmer Rouge crimes.