POLITICAL VIOLENCE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA SINCE 1945 Case Studies from Six Countries

329 Pages·2021·12.392 MB·English

by  Eve Monique Zucker and Ben Kiernan (eds)

POLITICAL VIOLENCE IN SOUTHEAST
ASIA SINCE 1945
This book examines postwar waves of political violence that affected six Southeast
Asiancountries–Indonesia,Burma/Myanmar,Cambodia,Thailand,thePhilippines,
and Vietnam – from the wars of independence in the mid-twentieth century to the
recent Rohingya genocide.
Featuring cases not previously explored, and offering fresh insights into more
familiar cases, the chapters cover a range of topics including the technologies of
violence, the politics of fear, inclusion and exclusion, justice and ethics, repetitions
of mass violence events, impunity, law, ethnic and racial killings, crimes against
humanity, and genocide. The book delves into the violence that has reverberated
across the region spurred by local and global politics and ideologies, through the
examination of such themes as identity ascription and formation, existential and
ontological questions, collective memories of violence, and social and political
transformation. In our current era of global social and political transition, the
volume’s case studies provide an opportunity to consider potential repercussions
and outcomes of various political and ideological positionings and policies.
Enhancing our understanding of the technologies, techniques, motives, causes,
consequences, and connections between violent episodes in the Southeast Asian
cases, the book raises key questions for the study of mass violence worldwide.
Eve Monique Zucker is a lecturer in anthropology at Yale University, US. Her
research focuses on the social, moral, and digital dimensions of remembrance and
recovery after mass atrocities in Southeast Asia and beyond. Her books include
Forest of Struggle: Moralities of Remembrance in Upland Cambodia; Mass Violence and
Memory in the Digital Age; and Coexistence in the Aftermath of Mass Violence.
Ben Kiernan is the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History and founding
Director (1994–2015) of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, US.
His books include How Pol Pot Came to Power; The Pol Pot Regime; Blood and Soil;
Genocide and Resistance in Southeast Asia; and Việt Nam.
MASS VIOLENCE IN MODERN HISTORY
Edited by Alexander Korb (University of Leicester, United Kingdom) and Uğur Ümit
Üngor (Utrecht University, the Netherlands)
DespitethehorrorsofnineteenthcenturyconflictsincludingtheUSCivilWarand
the Napoleonic Wars, it was not until the twentieth century that mass killing was
conductedonanindustrializedscale.WhilethetrenchesofFlandersandtheatomic
bomb were major manifestations of this, mass violence often occurred outside the
context of conventional war or away from the traditional battlefield. Research has
understandably tended to focus on major events and often within a binary super-
power narrative. In fact, instances of mass violence are often hard to pin down as
well as being little known, and involving civilians and citizens of a wider range of
territoriesthan ispublicized. Thebooksinthis series shedlightonmassviolence in
the modern era, from Armenia to Rwanda; from Belarus to Bosnia-Herzegovina
and many points in between.
5. The Construction of National Socialist Europe During the Second
World War
Raimund Bauer
6. Cultural Violence and the Destruction of Human Communities: New
Theoretical Perspectives
Edited by Fiona Greenland and Fatma Müge Göçek
7. Remembering Genocides in Central Africa
Rene Lemarchand
8. Political Violence in Southeast Asia since 1945
Case Studies from Six Countries
Edited by Eve Monique Zucker and Ben Kiernan
9. Conceptualizing Mass Violence
Representations, Recollections, and Reinterpretations
Edited by Navras J. Aafreedi and Priya Singh
For more information about this series, please visit:
https://www.routledge.com/Mass-Violence-in-Modern-History/book-series/
MASSVIOLENCE
POLITICAL VIOLENCE
IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
SINCE 1945
Case Studies from Six Countries
Edited by Eve Monique Zucker and Ben Kiernan
Firstpublished2021
byRoutledge
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Names:Zucker,EveMonique,editor.|Kiernan,Ben,editor.
Title:PoliticalviolenceinSoutheastAsiasince1945:casestudiesfromsix
countries/editedbyEveMoniqueZuckerandBenKiernan.
Description:MiltonPark,Abingdon,Oxon;NewYork,NY:Routledge,
2021.|Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
Identifiers:LCCN2020057608(print)|LCCN2020057609(ebook)|
ISBN9780367675462(hardback)|ISBN9780367675592(paperback)|
ISBN9781003131809(ebook)
Subjects:LCSH:Politicalviolence--SoutheastAsia--History--20thcentury.|
SoutheastAsia--Socialconditions--20thcentury.|SoutheastAsia--Politicsand
government--20thcentury.
Classification:LCCHN670.3.Z9V5692021(print)|LCCHN670.3.Z9
(ebook)|DDC303.60959--dc23
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LCebookrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2020057609
ISBN:978-0-367-67546-2(hbk)
ISBN:978-0-367-67559-2(pbk)
ISBN:978-1-003-13180-9(ebk)
TypesetinBembo
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
In memory of Benny Widyono, 1936–2019.

CONTENTS
List of illustrations x
List of contributors xii
Acknowledgements xv
Editors’ Preface xvi
Introduction 1
Ben Kiernan and Eve M. Zucker
PART1
Dimensions of Mass Violence 19
1 A time to kill: The anti-communist violence in Indonesia,
1965–66 21
Geoffrey Robinson
2 Expulsion/incorporation: Valences of mass violence in
Myanmar 41
Elliott Prasse-Freeman and Andrew Ong
PART2
The Politics of Fear 57
3 Performative violence and Philippine populism 59
Alfred W. McCoy
viii Contents
4 The political organization of genocide: Central orders and
regional implementation under the Khmer Rouge 80
William Kwok
5 Mass violence against the Rohingya: Strategic and ideological
drivers of ethnic cleansing 101
Mayesha Alam
PART3
Minorities and the State 115
6 The crucible of Điện Biên Phủ: Making Vietnam in the First
Indochina War 117
Christian C. Lentz
7 The Khmer Republic’s mass persecution of the Vietnamese
minority in Cambodia 1970–75 134
Kosal Path
8 The genocide of Rohingyas in Burma 148
Azeem Ibrahim
PART4
Technologies, Techniques, and Ideologies 161
9 The air war in Vietnam: Responses to the machinery of mass
violence 163
Sophie Quinn-Judge
10 Medical experiments, blood, and gall: Revolutionary utilization
of the body in Khmer Rouge prisons 174
Daniel Bultmann
PART5
Justice, Ethics, and History 189
11 Assessing genocidal intent in the context of Myanmar’s
Rohingya 191
Katherine E. Munyan
12 Justice after dictatorship in Thailand 209
Tyrell Haberkorn
13 Investigating genocide: Rithy Panh’s S-21 (2004) 222
Phirum Laurence Gaillard
Contents ix
14 Vietnam, ASEAN, the Great Powers, and the challenges of
learning from the Cambodian genocide 234
Hoang Minh Vu
PART6
The Shadow of the Past on the Present 251
15 The mobilization of state-sponsored mass organizations since the
2006 coup in Thailand 253
Puangthong R. Pawakapan
16 Something in the water: Toward a symbolic history of otherness
in Chrouy Changvar, Cambodia 268
Ngoc Tram Luong
17 Mass violence and mob violence in Cambodia: Responses and
social repair – Hope for the future? 282
Laura McGrew
Index 299