Human Rights
15.04.2010
Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998 but is still a highly regarded figure in Anlong VengA Cambodian NGO recently completed the first reconciliation meeting of former Khmer Rouge cadres in an attempt to discover the reasons behind certain atrocities.
150 former Khmer Rouge gathered last week at the compound of their last leader, the late general Ta Mok, on the outskirts of Anlong Veng in northwestern Cambodia.
Anlong Veng was the last stronghold of the Khmer Rouge and only came under government control in 1998. Some of the Khmer Rouge’s most notorious leaders are still highly regarded here.
The former cadres came to the gathering to give their opinions on what reconciliation and justice mean to them, and to discuss the psychological trauma from decades of war.
Preventing atrocities in future
Daravuth Seng, who heads the Center for Justice and Reconciliation that organized the meeting, said that despite the trauma of the Khmer Rouge’s four-year rule – when up to two million people died – and the subsequent two-decade long civil war, precious little reconciliation work had been done in Cambodia.
Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: The Khmer Rouge took control of the Cambodian capital in April 1975
“People in general are very much social animals, and they want to come back into the fold,” Seng said while explaining the background for the gathering. “So we have to be really careful in not putting them into a context where they are saying things they don’t necessarily mean, but yet leaving the language open enough so that meaningful reconciliation can happen.”
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