[This is the second of four posts by Dr. Leakhena Nou on the legacy of the Khmer Rouge genocide.]
The devastation wrought by the Khmer Rouge on the Cambodian people resulted in an incalculable loss of social capital and cultural knowledge.
During the four years of Khmer Rouge rule, Cambodians lost a large part of their collective identity, their individual sense of self, and their mental and physical well-being.
Now, nearly four decades after the genocide, Cambodians everywhere still struggle to make sense of the genocide and find peace, justice, and reconciliation. Among the residual traumatic effects of the Khmer Rouge are two troubling, unanswered questions:
- Why did the violence occur?
- How were Cambodians capable of killing their own people, including mass killings of innocent civilians, the elderly, children, and babies?
The 2009 Cambodian Diaspora Victims’ Participation Project is designed to engage survivors in the ongoing trials of the alleged Khmer Rouge perpetrators in the Extraordinary Chambers in Courts of Cambodia. In my work with living witnesses in the U.S. as part of the project, it became clear that the lingering, multi-layered symptoms of trauma resulting from the genocide run both deep and wide.
Throughout Cambodia, the U.S., France, New Zealand, and Australia, many Cambodians suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Cambodian populations also have alarmingly high rates of depression, anxiety, memory loss, and difficulty concentrating.
Additionally, survivors commonly report anger and violent tendencies, and engage in various addictive and abusive or self-abusive behaviors, such as gambling and domestic violence. (For more on this work, please see ASRIC: Applied Social Research Institute of Cambodia and ASRIC’s Facebook page.)
Many survivors have intentionally suppressed or simply been unable to cope with their traumatic memories. They often keep their experiences a secret from their children and their friends to avoid upsetting them or having to face the stigma of impaired mental health.
Leakhena Nou, Associate Professor of sociology at California State University at Long Beach and executive director of the Applied Social Research Institute of Cambodia