Promoting the voices of survivors (The Khmer Rouge genocide, Part 4)

[This is the last of four posts by Dr. Leakhena Nou on the legacy of the Khmer Rouge genocide.]

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) provides a unique opportunity for victims to participate in the trials of their accused Khmer Rouge perpetrators.

Survivors’ participation is vital to the judicial process and essential for bringing about participatory democracy and social justice for the Cambodian people.

For this reason, I established the Applied Social Research Institute of Cambodia (ASRIC), and implemented the 2009 Cambodian Diaspora Victims’ Participation Project (CDVPP) to address this critical and urgent opportunity.

In order to participate in the trials, individuals needed to qualify as victims, which the Practice Direction on Victim Participation defines (in brief) as any person or legal entity that has suffered harm as a result of the crimes heard by the ECCC.

To date, ASRIC has submitted the largest collection of victim testimonies in the U.S. Remarkably, the ECCC has accepted 100% of the them.

The work of the CDVPP is ongoing, and various video links of the CDVPP and ASRIC’s other activities–such as the Art as Witness Initiative–can be found on our website.

ASRIC is driven by the desire to promote the voices of the survivors. As Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano wrote,

“When it is genuine, when it is born of the need to speak, no one can stop the human voice. When denied a mouth, it speaks with the hands or the eyes, or the pores, or anything at all. Because every one of us has something to say to the others, something that deserves to be celebrated or forgiven by others.”

If you would like to help survivors’ voices be heard in the ECCC, please consider signing ASRIC’s petition urging the Courts to proceed with the trials of Case 003 and Case 004, and then encourage your friends to do the same.

Thank you for joining in ASRIC’s collective call for justice.

Leakhena Nou, Associate Professor of sociology at California State University at Long Beach and director of the Applied Social Research Institute of Cambodia