First Quarterly Report, January - March, 2005

1.1       Documentation

1.1.1    Cataloguing and Database Management

Our documentation work has entailed collecting and cataloguing documents, and managing two major databases: the Cambodian Genocide Bibliographic Database (CBIB) and the Cambodian Genocide Biographical Database (CBIO). Both databases were developed by a team of academics, technicians, and documentation specialists at Yale University, DC-Cam, and the University of New South Wales. They hold information on both Khmer Rouge personnel and their victims. These databases also facilitate our program of family tracing, whereby survivors of the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) era can search for information on lost loved ones. Because they are Internet-accessible and available on CD-Rom, expatriate Cambodians can also utilize them.

This quarter, our team continued entering data from the “D” collection for the CBIB database. This collection includes general Khmer Rouge documents ranging from notebooks to biographies, confessions, reports, and execution logs. It also encompasses the Anlong Veng (a Khmer Rouge stronghold until 1996) collection of such post-1979 Khmer Rouge materials as school textbooks, minutes of meetings, and reports.

In early June 2004, we began keying in items in the Khmer version of the D collection. The database fields vary depending on the type of document. For example, some of the fields for execution logs include the document’s title and number of pages, while those for cadre biographies include names, dates, personal background, rank, date of arrest, number of pages, and source of information. This quarter, we keyed 3,705 records into this searchable database, bringing the total number in Khmer to 11,645. We also keyed 4,654 records in English, bringing the total to 8,866.

This quarter we catalogued 682 “R” (Renakse) documents, bringing the total catalogued to date to 1,483. These are petitions made in the 1980s to the successor government (the Peoples Republic of Kampuchea) to oust the Khmer Rouge from their seat at the United Nations. Signed by millions of people, they include accounts of horrific crimes and describe mass burial pits, prisons, and other evidence of Khmer Rouge terror.

Last year, we completed the cataloging of our D collection. We kept pace this quarter, keying over 4,600 items from this collection in Khmer and over 3,700 in English. We have thus catalogued half of the items in Khmer and one-third of those in English.

In addition, we have entered information from 9,500 completed documents in our D Collection (out of a total of 24,000) and 10,826 from our I collection (this collection contains biographies of Khmer Rouge cadre and prisoners) into Microsoft Access List, a program intended to ease public inquiry and research.

Finally, since late 2003, our documentation team has been preparing a printable index for our CBIO database, which contains 10,612 biographies of Khmer Rouge cadres and the general population. So far, we have worked on the field layout and design (name, gender, place and date of birth, names of mother and father). The index contains 2,800 pages at present, and will continue to grow as our Promoting Accountability and Victims of Torture teams add information.

This quarter marked our final decision to enter information from our documents into a new, more user-friendly database with increased capacity and a new format/field design. We will seek assistance on developing the database from experts who are members of our Affinity Group (see below).

1.1.2    Microfilming

Our Microfilming Project aims to preserve historical documents related to the Khmer Rouge. This process allows researchers and legal investigators to access our archival information without handling original documents, many of which have become fragile with age.

Last quarter, we completed microfilming the R collection. We also completed all of the D Collection microfilm (235 reels/176,406 pages). We will continue to microfilm documents as we acquire them.

This quarter, with our microfilm machines in-house and using a newly installed developer/duplicator, DC-Cam has begun to microfilm documents from its Promoting Accountability Team’s interviews.

* began this quarter

From 1998 through 2004, we cooperated with Yale University’s Sterling Library on duplicating our microfilm records for security and academic purposes. We sent the negatives to the library to be developed; they kept the masters and returned a copy to us. We sent an average of 15 reels to Yale each quarter, and in our six years of cooperation with Sterling, sent and received 482 reels from our R, D, L, I, K and J collections.

This quarter, we began sending copies of our microfilmed materials to Rutgers University’s campus in Newark, New Jersey, where we recently opened an office. We a set of 93 microfilm reels and other materials available at DC-Cam to this office during the first quarter of 2005.

1.1.3    Photo Exhibitions

Our photographic exhibitions of former Khmer Rouge cadres and leaders, and of forensic evidence continue to be shown at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. This quarter, we began work on an exhibition from our monograph Stilled Lives: Photographs from the Cambodian Genocide. It will contain photographs and brief excerpts from the book that profile 17 people who joined the Khmer Rouge. Opening at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum on April 17, 2005, the exhibition will mark the 30^th anniversary of the Khmer Rouge’s takeover of Cambodia.

We also contributed photographs to an exhibition that Germany’s Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation is mounting at its headquarters in 2005. The exhibit, whose working title is “The Trauma of Terror and the Challenges of Coming to Terms with the Past,” will be followed by a symposium which a number of DC-Cam staff and Taing Kim will attend.

1.1.4    Digital Photo Archiving

This quarter, we began to interview individuals and collect photographs for a new monograph. It will be similar in format and theme to Stilled Lives: Photographs from the Cambodian Genocide, which was published late last year and told the stories of 51 men and women who joined the Khmer Rouge. The new book (yet to be titled), will be based on the lives of new people (those the Khmer Rouge evacuated from the cities). To date, we have conducted ten interviews for the new monograph.

1.2       Promoting Accountability

To support the Khmer Rouge tribunal, we have worked on a number of programs to ensure access to our documents and to keep the public informed.

1.2.1    Public Access to DC-Cam Archives

DC-Cam’s archives are of great historical interest and may provide important evidentiary materials in any accountability process relating to the DK regime. The over 600,000 pages of documents we have amassed include:

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Documents dating from the DK era: Communist Party of Kampuchea correspondence, confession transcripts, committee minutes and reports, Khmer Rouge biographies, foreign documents, media materials, cadre diaries and notebooks, and documents from foreign countries.

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Post-DK documentary materials: survivor petitions, 1979 trial documents, interview transcripts taken from survivors of the regime as well as scholars’ interviews with former Communist Party of Kampuchea officials, mapping reports, and photographs.

Guidelines for Access. Last year marked the end of legal obstacles to the Khmer Rouge tribunal, while the first quarter of 2005 brought the tribunal closer to being realized in terms of funding. $38.7 million of the estimated budget of $56.3 million has been raised officially, and many in the international community have stated that the overall budget goal will be reached soon. Thus, it is possible that the trial process will be set up in 2005.

In order to provide the court and other authorized officials with full access to our documents, we have been working with our legal advisors to develop and issue a set of rules and guidelines for viewing them as the tribunal process begins. The guidelines are designed to ensure that our documents remain both available for review and as secure as possible. As the tribunal process unfolds, we will develop a more specific set of guidelines to ensure that we assist the proceedings as effectively as possible. We have provided copies of those procedures to the appropriate UN and Cambodian authorities.

A Response Team for the Tribunal. In late 2003 we began to plan for a tribunal response team. This team would comprise Cambodian and non-Cambodian lawyers and political scientists/historians. Two of these experts would work on the team full time and would be assisted by shorter-term personnel on an as-needed basis; they would be supervised by a DC-Cam staff member familiar with our Center’s documentary holdings. This independent and neutral team will be in a position to help tribunal and authorized officials (as well as the public) carry out research and documentary reviews as needed. Also, Center staff will translate additional documents into English in advance of the tribunal.

Public Information Room. To meet the anticipated need for documentation materials at the tribunal, in late April 2004 DC-Cam informally opened its Public Information Room (PIR). Access is given to legal personnel (representing both the defense and prosecution), scholars, reporters, and the general public. DC-Cam’s response team of documentation specialists, translators, and others provide assistance in searching for and interpreting documents.

The PIR also functions as a library and educational forum. In this quarter, it received 283 visitors, hosted guest lectures and in-house training, screened 4 films on the regime, and provided office space for our Victims of Torture Project staff.

This quarter we welcomed 283 visitors (one of our PIR staff was in a motorcycle accident and the person substituting for him did not register all visitors, hence, the lower number this quarter), 12 were researchers and 50 were students writing theses on genocide in Cambodia. The researchers included Fulbright scholars, freelance writers, and individuals from Babel Studio, The American Project, Good Film Works, Khmer Institute for Democracy, WHO Weekly Review, and the Ministry of Environment. The students came from:

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Cambodia: the Royal University of Law and Economics, Royal University of Phnom Penh, Royal Academy of Cambodia, Pannasastra University, National Institute of Management, Mekong University, and University of Cambodia

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Australia: Monash University and University of Sydney

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USA: Preston University and Jamestown Community College

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Japan: Sophia University and Nagoya University

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Thailand: Chulalongkorn University and Mahidol University.

We have also hosted several study groups, including students from the USA (CIEE), Cambodia (journalism students), and Singapore (the National University of Singapore), as well as representatives from the Asia-Japan Women’s Resource Center. Prior to visiting our PIR, some of the study group participants had little knowledge about the Cambodian genocide and expressed appreciation for what they had learned.

We are also in the process of seeking support to bring one or more experts from within Cambodia and/or overseas (e.g., historians, document preservationists) to work closely with our response team before and during the tribunal.

1.2.2    The Promoting Accountability (PA) Project

This project aims to draw a picture of subordinate-superior relationships during Democratic Kampuchea, to identify a pool of survivors (victims and cadres) that may be helpful to the Khmer Rouge tribunal, and to build the historic record on DK. The recent ratification of the Khmer Rouge law and UN/Cambodia agreement signal the need for DC-Cam to both accelerate and expand the scope of this project, and we are confident in our ability to do so.

This quarter, our PA team operated from field offices in Kandal and Kampot provinces. We have completed work in Kampong Thom and Pursat provinces.

* This activity was postponed due to staff allocations to other work, but is expected to pick up later in 2005 with the recruitment of additional volunteers.

DC-Cam also contracted with Stephen Heder from the University of London to produce a manuscript analyzing the nearly 2,000 interviews (30,000 pages) we conducted with former Khmer Rouge cadres. Specifically, he sought to determine if the interviews provide information relevant to the cases of the former Khmer Rouge officials most likely to stand trial: Ieng Sary, Mok, Duch, Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea, Ieng Thirith, and Mam Nai (deputy prison chief of S-21). Dr. Heder prepared English summaries of the historically salient points in selected interviews, while preparing the materials for legal analysis and presentation to the Extraordinary Chambers. He completed his manuscript last quarter; it will be analyzed by our legal advisor during 2005.

1.2.3    Pre-trial Outreach (part of the Living Documents Project)

The broader the public involvement, the more the tribunal will be viewed as effective and responsive to the needs of the Cambodian people. In the fall of 2004, we met with nearly 400 Cham Muslim leaders (hakem) from all parts of the country, 32 Buddhist nuns, and members of 12 youth and student associations, in order to engage them in the tribunal process. These groups represent a variety of religious beliefs and ages. They have been given an introduction to the tribunal and asked to reflect on its importance and their participation.

We also have two new projects that work with the Cham community. The first is an oral history project. Through hakem, we have developed and distributed 30 questionnaires to 336 Cham villages throughout the country. They include 24 questions asking on the roots of the community and their experiences during the Khmer Rouge regime. This quarter, we collected 95 completed questionnaires, which will be used in a new magazine about the Cham community. The second project aims to disseminate information about Chams – their history, livelihoods, and other relevant aspects – through the development of an Internet web page. The website will enable members of this community to communicate with academics, interested members of the public, and other Muslim communities worldwide.

With the nuns, we have planned to organize a march for peace and justice. They would also participate in a number of public forums hosted by DC-Cam. The forums will bring together victims and perpetrators to discuss sexual abuse during Democratic Kampuchea and their impacts today. Plans for the march were finalized this quarter. We anticipate that at least 500 nuns from throughout the country will participate.

The student groups we met with have planned to go door-to-door in several areas of Cambodia to explain the process, activities, and benefits of the tribunal to citizens. This quarter, we selected 171 students from a pool of nearly 200 who applied for a two-month period of voluntary service with DC-Cam. The students will travel throughout the Cambodian countryside distributing project materials (e.g., Khmer Rouge Tribunal Law, KR Law Amendment, UN/Royal Government of Cambodia Agreement, debates).

1.2.4        DC-Cam Overseas Office

In the fall of 2004, we set up an office in the United States at Rutgers University to collect and disseminate information on Khmer Rouge history, with a particular emphasis on assisting the Cambodian North American community. It will also:

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Serve as a reciprocal exchange between DC-Cam and Rutgers’ students and faculty

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 Facilitate internships/externships at DC-Cam for Rutgers’ students

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Present research and training opportunities for Rutgers’ students and faculty

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 Provide a venue for exhibitions, conferences, seminars

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Locate information for and provide translations to personnel from the United Nations, members of the legal community, scholars, and others interested in the upcoming tribunal.

The office was officially opened on April 1, 2005, following an agreement between DC-Cam and Rutgers University. The office is equipped with tables, chairs, desks, bookcases, computers, telephone and internet line. We also sent the Rutgers office the following materials:

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DC-Cam monographs: Division 703 (20 copies in English, 20 in Khmer), Oukoubah (20 copies in English), Reconciliation in Cambodia (20 copies in English), Seven Candidates for Prosecution (20 copies in English), Stilled Lives (20 copies in English), and Victims and Perpetrators (20 copies in English).

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Books by Others: Anne Frank’s Diary (10 copies in Khmer) and First They Killed My Father (1 copy in Khmer).

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Searching for the Truth: 652 copies of English editions and 65 copies of Khmer editions.

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Microfilm: 93 reels, film (The Khmer Rouge Rice Fields): 5 copies, a case study: 19 copies, maps of the killing fields: 5 copies, posters: 4 copies, photographs: 14, and CDs: 1. We will send another set of microfilm to Rutgers next quarter.

1.3       Public Education and Reconciliation Outreach

1.3.1    The Legal Training Project

In response to recommendations made during last summer’s legal training course at DC-Cam, we are planning to hold another course in 2005. It will focus on the defense counsel and be sponsored by the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. In this quarter, we screened several North American law students who had applied for teaching positions for the course.

The 2005 project will involve three intensive two-week courses in Phnom Penh for selected Cambodian officials, university professors, NGO leaders, and journalists. Our aim is to educate a group of Cambodians about transitional justice and human rights law so that they will be able to put those ideas into practice as teachers, writers, activists, and policymakers. Each two-week course will host prominent local and international guest lecturers, and deal with different aspects of international criminal law and criminal defense relevant to the upcoming tribunal in Cambodia.

Our tentative team for the training includes:

            Helyn Unac, Criminal Resource Defense Center, Kosovo, International Coordinator

            Vanthan P. Dara, DC-Cam coordinator

            Karen Yookyung Choi, University of Toroto, summer legal associate

            Devon Chaffee, Georgetown University, summer legal associate

            Janet Lee, Rutgers University, summer legal intern

            Helen Kim, Harvard University, summer legal associate

            Kevin Osborne, Santa Clara University, summer legal associate

            Krissa Lanham, Yale University, summer legal associate.

In addition, we will recruit four law students from Cambodia to assist on the project.

1.3.2    The Victims of Torture Project

We began this two-year project in late 2003 with the Transcultural Psychosocial Organization (TPO). It involves counseling for people who suffered abuse under the DK regime (both victims and perpetrators) and are traumatized today. Our primary roles are to assist the TPO in identifying subjects for care.

Our previous activities included TPO training on counseling and trauma in early 2004, and the development of a questionnaire to interview traumatized individuals as well as obtain local perspectives on justice and reconciliation. Since last quarter, we have been conducting field interviews, producing interview transcripts, and referring prospective patients to TPO. For the purposes of analytical trauma studies, reconciliation, and history, we continued to transcribe interviews this quarter and to key interview data into the CBIB database. This quarter, DC-Cam staff accompanied TPO to the field in Kandal, Kampot, and Takeo provinces, where TPO began therapy and treatment, which will continue through end of the project in September 2005.

This quarter, our staff participated in two local conferences and members of our project team are planning to attend an international conference on psychiatry in Sydney in May and on health and human rights in the USA in June.

1.3.3        Genocide Education

For the past 25 years, formal education about the Khmer Rouge has ranged from near-complete political propaganda to an incomplete history. Since 2002, history books for Cambodian high school students have not contained any text on Democratic Kampuchea.

This two-year project (2004-2006) aims to provide the Ministry of Education with a short, accurate, and unbiased text on Khmer Rouge history for high school students. We anticipate that it will be incorporated into history books by the Cambodian government or published as a supplementary text. The project will also seek to enhance the capabilities of teachers and the Ministry of Education to convey the history of Democratic Kampuchea through the provision of ideas, materials, and recommendations on relevant curricula, books, websites, films, etc.

This quarter, our text author has read and evaluated five books and many articles and primary documents on the regime. He has also written 20 pages of text to date covering a brief history of the origins of the Khmer Rouge, the Democratic Kampuchea era, and the regime’s fall (we anticipate that the text will eventually reach 40 pages, including illustrations). This will be the first history of the regime written by a Cambodian for high school students. The text will be evaluated by our advisor David Chandler, a world-renowned historian on Cambodia, as well as by a number of Cambodian and international academics.

In addition, our project staff reviewed 60 survivor stories from Democratic Kampuchea. When the review is complete, about 20 stories will be selected to represent a wide range of survivors (men, women and children, new and base people, cadres, etc., from throughout Cambodia). A separate booklet of these stories will be published.

Last, we plan to take high school students from both Phnom Penh and rural areas on tours of Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. We have developed surveys to test the knowledge and attitudes of students before and after the tour, as well as a set of questions for teachers on how their students learn best. We have also located Internet sites and screened films that could be useful for students and teachers.

1.3.4    Film Project

Rachana Phat’s 30-minute film The Khmer Rouge Rice Fields: The Story of Rape Survivor Tang Kim is one of three films nominated for a Grace Heritage award. It will be screened at Grace Heritage in Washington, DC on May 1, 2005. The producer and director (Rachana Phat and Youk Chhang, respectively) will attend the awards ceremony on May 7, 2005. On February 15, the film was screened at the Documentary Visions film festival organized by Pannasastra University in Phnom Penh. DVD productions of the film have earned $975 to date, which is being used to support the education of Taing Kim’s children.

In April, Tang Kim will visit Germany, where she will participate in programs, photo exhibitions, museum tours, and speaking engagements. Her visit will be sponsored by the Friedrich Eert Stiftung Institute. Other delegates from DC-Cam will include Youk Chhang, who will present a paper on “The Seizure of Power by the Khmer Rouge—Witnessed by Survivors and War Correspondents,” and Rachana Phat, who will present her film.

1.3.5    Web Site Development (www.dccam.org)

This quarter, we completed the completed the redesign and reorganization of our website, which included writing new face pages, installing a search engine, regrouping materials, and adding several hundred photographs.

As planned, we continued to explore a number of issues surrounding the use of foul or defamatory language on the site in anticipation of hosting a public forum on the Internet. Once we have formulated a policy and determined if we can successfully block such language, we will open the forum, which the public can use to exchange views on Democratic Kampuchea, the tribunal, and other issues. Although we initially planned to develop a chat room for Cambodian students at the University of Massachusetts’ Lowell campus, we determined that we could provide a wider range of services by opening a forum for all those visiting our website.

In addition, the Highest Council for Islamic Religious Affairs Cambodia is now helping us to collect data (number of people in villages, number of males/females, number of children attending school, means of livelihood, economic conditions) on Cambodia’s Cham Muslim community. We will use these data to develop a webite for this community.

An internet researcher found our website useful and wrote to his friends,

I thought I should share this web site that I just stumbled upon-http://www.dccam.org/ very informative and educational..... I am so glad and thankful to Mr. Youk Chhang and those involved in making this possible. And upon my search, a hero we all know is among those many with a story to share.

1.4       Research, Translation and Publication

1.4.1    Historical Research and Writing

Our Research Project aims to develop an historical understanding of the DK era and to build the capacity of young Cambodian scholars to produce quality writing and research. We also publish the work of international scholars who conduct extensive research at DC-Cam. Our main products are the short monographs in our Documentation Series.

The following manuscripts are now in layout and will be published next quarter:

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Tum Teav: A Study of a Cambodian Literary Classic by George Chigas, who holds a PhD from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and teaches at the University of Massachusetts Lowell

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The Chain of Terror: The Khmer Rouge Southwest Zone Security System by Meng-Try Ea, a DC-Cam staff member who is currently working on a PhD at Rugters University.

An additional manuscript is in final editing:

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The Winds from The West: Khmer Rouge Purges in Mondul Kiri, by Sara Colm of Human Rights Watch, with DC-Cam staff member Sorya Sim.

In addition, we have been helping several university students, from both Cambodia and abroad, in their research. Our assistance has included the provision of materials, advice, and responses to inquiries.

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Erik Davis, a PhD student in history and religion at the University of Chicago, who is examining the ways Cambodians remember and commemorate their dead relatives.

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Galina Nelayeva, a PhD candidate at Central European University, Budapest, whose thesis concerns the prosecution of rape as an international crime.

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Gwyneth C. McClendon, a senior at Columbia University, who is working on a political science thesis examining the establishment of t