Cafe Khmer Rouge
Aug 12th, 2005 by Jinja
Imagine if you were, say, French. And all people knew about, wanted to ask about, was the Vichy French period. As if there were no other aspect of culture and history.
Via Beth’s Blog, I notice that there’s a radio show slated about the very sexy topic of Cambodia blogs. http://www.radioopensource.org/cambodias-nascent-bloggosphere/
We’re less interested in the, “hey! digital media technology is spreading to the Third World!” factor, and more interested in the notion that Cambodians are using online writing as a way of dealing with their painful, not often discussed past. Their blogs are recording personal and collective memory, sorting through the country’s history of brutal repression under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, and talking openly about wounds that have never really healed.
“sorting through the country’s history of brutal repression”
“talking openly about wounds that have never really healed”
Um, which blogs are these? I don’t think I’ve seen them yet. Sounds like this story is already written. (Prove me wrong, guys!)
My recommendation to our friends in the press: explore your story without preconceptions. You may find something new.
Most local tech-savvy Khmer webloggers are under 30, and were born after the Khmer Rouge era. They’re products of the postwar baby boom.
Why is it that foreigners are so interested in the Khmer Rouge time? There are activists who would contend brutal repression is going on in the present day. There are plenty of wounds in a society that has huge difficulties with human trafficking, rural poverty, and laws that are poorly enforced.
I find many projects from overseas want to focus on Cambodia’s history of war, not its history of art, scholarship, and peace that has survived the very brief Khmer Rouge era and lives on today.
The Khmer Rouge Tribunal is an extremely important issue that has some good people working on it. It certainly is horrific, but must it be used to frame every story? It’s actually pretty difficult to find much about the KR time in contemporary Cambodian culture.
This foreign interest comes with dollars attached. Cambodia is not a rich country. The result? Genocide Tourism.
After seeing the above advertisement in a locaI free tourist guide, I gave this number a ring yesterday, and asked about their meals, drinks and unforgettable songs. I was hurriedly told that “we don’t do any more.”
L’ Histoire. For whom?
Jinja:
I think the topic is in development, not slated. They’re looking forward feedback. Perhaps you should post your take on it.
Meant to say, post your thoughts on their message board …
Argh, the messageboard is limited to WordPress members only. I will try to register and get a password. I’m in a slow cafe today.
I think about the perception of Cambodia/Cambodians pretty much on a daily basis, so the preceding post may have seemed a little strong.
Open Source Radio’s second paragraph (“If you’re a Cambodian blogger, we’d love to hear from you.” etc.) sounds pretty good. If they sample a wide group of Khmer webloggers they should have the makings of a decent feature.
In Cambodia, foriegn attention is often expected to have dollars attached. So if you ask a question, people may tell you what they think you want to hear. Development researchers run across this in surveys, and performing artists find this in workshops.
Recovering and reexamining memory is important, but highly charged. And when money enters the mix, things can get complicated.
“L’Histoire” is probably the most extreme example I’ve seen yet of market-driven historical ‘reenactment’, and kind of serves as a warning of how warped things can get. I’ll probably do a follow-up post on them later, it’s so weird!
“not often discussed past” ?
These words surprise me. On one hand, the 75-79 period is by large the most discussed and written about range of time of Cambodian history. Tons of articles, books, forum posts, movies and summaries for tourist books have been made. I don’t think you can find any other event that generated as much words about this country, even until now. On the other hand, no one from this country has not had his/her life completely torn apart. No one over 25 hasn’t been deeply impacted. Khmer people have talked a LOT about it. They still do. Or they don’t. But that’s their choice. We don’t have to bring Freud to them. I know people I see on a weekly or a monthly basis have lived terrible things. If they want to share it with me someday, they will. I won’t ask until I feel they’re ready. I ask about their current life, their projects.
Those ‘clogs’ will be useful to many things. Healing some wounds might be one of them. But we shouldn’t focus a priori on that because, as Jinja said, “people may tell you what they think you want to hear”.