To live amongst the dead: an ethnographic exploration of mass graves in Cambodia Caroline

341 Pages·2015·29.76 MB·English

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Bennett, Caroline (2015) To Live Amongst the Dead: an Ethnographic Exploration of Mass Graves
in Cambodia. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) thesis, University of Kent,.
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To live amongst the dead: an ethnographic
exploration of mass graves in Cambodia

Caroline Bennett

PhD in Social Anthropology
September 2015
94,989 words

School of Anthropology and Conservation
University of Kent
Canterbury
Kent, UK
1
Abstract
This thesis uses mass graves as a lens through which to examine how people in
contemporary Cambodia use the Khmer Rouge period (1975 – 1979) to
reconstitute and re-imagine the world they live in. Based on sixteen months of
multisited ethnographic fieldwork, this thesis will argue that the Khmer Rouge
regime was a critical event (Das 1997) in Cambodian life, and as such has triggered
a re-shaping of relationships between local and the national, and the national and
the global, leading to new forms of social and community life and action in post
Khmer Rouge Cambodia. As physical markers of violence and political instability,
mass graves are inherently political and articulate these re-imaginations on the
state, community, and individual level. The Cambodian state exercises and
legitimates its authority by constructing modern history in reference to a narrative
of liberation from the Khmer Rouge, and the ‘innocent suffering’ of Cambodia and
its people, while local communities use Buddhism and animism to narrate and
conceptualise the period, bringing it into expected and understandable events
within Khmer Buddhist cosmology. These approaches are not necessarily in
opposition to one another, but rather represent the overlapping plurality of
connections with mass graves.
This thesis provides a unique exploration of social relationships to mass graves in
Cambodia contributing to debates within the anthropology of politics, violence
and collective memory by examining how moments of national mass violence re-
shape the state and relationships within it, and how destructive periods of
violence nonetheless create new fields for the imagination of the political, the
religious, and the social. It also contributes to the emerging field of Cambodian
ethnography that combines local considerations with wider national and geo-
political discourses and how these are played out at the local level.
All work in this thesis, and all photographs presented, are my own, except where
otherwise stated.
2
Acknowledgements
This PhD was supported by funding from the Economic and Social Research
Council Southeast Doctoral Training Centre (grant number ES/J500148/1), for
which I am very grateful.
Thank you to my supervisors Glenn Bowman and Mike Poltorak, to my third panel
member Judith Bovensiepen, and to those in the School of Anthropology and
Conservation at the University of Kent who took extra time out of their
enormously busy schedules to help and support me throughout this process, in
particular David Henig, but also Daniela Peluso and Miguel Alexiades.
To all the Khmer communities I visited, worked and lived in, in particular the
people of Choeung Ek Genocidal Center, Koh Sop, and Phnom Grahom - by giving
generously of your time and stories you gave me this thesis for which I cannot
express enough gratitude. And for those who helped make it possible, in
particular Mina Bui Jones and Jean Luc and Serena Temman, thank you. I am
eternally grateful to my research assistants - Um Sompoah, Res Phasy, Sann
Kalyan, Buth Sereibunnwath, and Toem Savorn; without you I could never have
navigated Khmer life. And thank you to the many Cambodian scholars who took
interest in my work and gave valuable input along the way, most especially
Professor David Chandler, Henri Locard, Helen Jarvis, Ian Harris, Erik Davis, the
Venerable Khy Sovanratana, Craig Etcheson, and James Tyner. Thank you also to
the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies at the University of Copenhagen, and
DORISEA at Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of
Göttingen for their support.
My PhD colleagues in the UK and Cambodia deserve a special acknowledgement
for keeping me on track, sharing ideas, and for the ongoing fun we have together.
Paul Christensen, Tallyn Gray, Colleen McGinn, Maria Paz Peirano, Natalia Garcia
Bonet, and Carin Tunåker; thanks for helping me survive. I look forward to our
future work together.
To my family: my parents, brothers and sisters, their husbands and wives, and all
the little Bennetts and Tokgözs: thanks for being there, making me take breaks,
and listening to my rants.
And finally to my partner, Steve Hull. You got me through this. Thank you.
Bennett (2015): To live amongst the dead 3
Table of Contents

Abstract..............................................................................................................2
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................3
List of Figures......................................................................................................7
List of Abbreviations...........................................................................................8
Terminology .......................................................................................................9
Cambodian Maps..............................................................................................10
Section One: Setting the Scene .........................................................................11
Introduction .....................................................................................................11
The Khmer Rouge and their dead...........................................................................................................14
Motivations ....................................................................................................................................................17
Literature review ..........................................................................................................................................19
Theoretical framework...............................................................................................................................33
What is a mass grave? ................................................................................................................................37
Thesis outline.................................................................................................................................................41
Section one: setting the scene ............................................................................................................... 41
Section two: digging up the dead ........................................................................................................ 42
Section three: grave concerns................................................................................................................ 44
Chapter one: Fields of death, sites of life- fieldsites and methods ....................46
Choeung Ek.....................................................................................................................................................46
Making the killing field............................................................................................................................. 49
After Democratic Kampuchea ............................................................................................................... 54
Choeung Ek today....................................................................................................................................... 60
Researching at Choeung Ek .................................................................................................................... 61
Koh Sop ............................................................................................................................................................66
During Democratic Kampuchea ............................................................................................................ 68
After 1979...................................................................................................................................................... 70
Koh Sop today .............................................................................................................................................. 73
Researching at Koh Sop............................................................................................................................ 76
Other sites and particular methods .......................................................................................................80
My position ................................................................................................................................................... 82
Visual methods ............................................................................................................................................ 83
Interviews ...................................................................................................................................................... 86
Language and the use of research assistants.................................................................................. 89
A note on writing ........................................................................................................................................ 92
What’s in a name? ..................................................................................................................................... 93
Bennett (2015): To live amongst the dead 4
Section Two: Digging up the Dead.....................................................................95
Chapter two: Spiritual remains - caring for the dead .........................................95
Buddhism and animism in contemporary Cambodia.......................................................................97
The grievous dead.....................................................................................................................................102
Care of those killed under the Khmer Rouge...................................................................................108
Care for the physical remains ..............................................................................................................108
Annual ritual care .....................................................................................................................................115
Ritual resilience..........................................................................................................................................120
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................124
Chapter three: Helpful dead, frightening ghosts - relationships between the
living and the dead .........................................................................................126
Theoretical background ..........................................................................................................................128
Ghosts and spirits in Cambodia ............................................................................................................134
Ethnographic case studies......................................................................................................................138
Rebuilding lives: the dead at Koh Sop ..............................................................................................139
Rebuilding the country: the dead at Choeung Ek.........................................................................148
Discussion ....................................................................................................................................................153
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................161
Chapter four: Karma and reincarnation in the killing fields.............................164
Theoretical background ..........................................................................................................................166
Reincarnation and karma in Khmer Buddhism ...............................................................................169
Ethnographic case studies......................................................................................................................175
Reintegrating the nameless dead ......................................................................................................175
Repairing ruptured relations................................................................................................................181
The justice of karma and reincarnation...........................................................................................185
Discussion ....................................................................................................................................................189
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................197
Section Three: Grave Concerns .......................................................................201
Chapter five: Past present, present past – politics in Cambodia ......................201
Politics in contemporary Cambodia....................................................................................................203
Raising the dead: political uses of the dead and their graves....................................................209
Memorialising violence, forgetting names.....................................................................................212
Resurging interest: the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia...................217
Hierarchies of death in the written record .....................................................................................221
Violent bodies and affective remains.................................................................................................223
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................230
Chapter six: Haunting the future - tourism at Choeung Ek...............................234
Theoretical background ..........................................................................................................................236
Choeung Ek in Cambodian Tourism ....................................................................................................241
Ethnographic case studies......................................................................................................................247
Displaying death, ensuring life ............................................................................................................248
‘If we forget about it, history will be erased’.................................................................................253
Building a future by using the past....................................................................................................256
Discussion ....................................................................................................................................................259
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................267
Bennett (2015): To live amongst the dead 5
Chapter seven: Dead of today, ghosts of tomorrow - elections and the spectral
Khmer Rouge..................................................................................................270
Theoretical background ..........................................................................................................................272
Elections in Cambodia – a brief overview.........................................................................................276
Ethnographic Case Studies.....................................................................................................................278
Spirits of the past: the ‘heroes’ of the nation ................................................................................278
Spirits of the present: rallying against the opposition ...............................................................284
Spirits of the future: fear and rumour ..............................................................................................290
Discussion ....................................................................................................................................................295
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................305
Conclusion: Now is the Time for the Living......................................................308
References......................................................................................................319
Appendix one: DC-Cam List of Mass Graves ....................................................341

Bennett (2015): To live amongst the dead 6
List of Figures

Figure one: provincial boundaries (UN 2015).........................................................10
Figure two: killing field distribution (CGP 2011) .....................................................10
Figure three: Choeung Ek stupa and displayed remains (source: the author)........59
Figure four: Koh Sop p’teah khmouch (source: the author) ...................................73
Figure five: farm at Koh Sop. After the regime bodies covered the land (source:
the author)......................................................................................................75
Figure six: Khmer Rouge remains and urns of the poor at two different pagoda
(source: the author)......................................................................................112
Figure seven: depiction of Pchum Benh at Wat Kampong Tralach (source: the
author) ..........................................................................................................116
Figure eight: Po Tonle stupa with remnants of Cheng Meng decorations (souce:
the author)....................................................................................................120
Figure nine: Neak Ta on the main road into Battambang ....................................135
Figure ten: Choeung Ek killing tree (source: the author) ......................................246
Figure eleven: human remains emerging at Choeung Ek (source: the author) ....251
Figure twelve: Khmer Rouge tourism at Phnom Sampeau (source: the author)..264
Figure thirteen: Khmer Rouge re-enactment at Choeung Ek remembrance event
(souce: the author) .......................................................................................281
Figure fourteen: protestors at rally against Kem Sokha, June 2013 (source: the
author) ..........................................................................................................288
Figure fifteen: Protestors listen to speeches in front of the cheddei of remains
(source: the author)......................................................................................290

Bennett (2015): To live amongst the dead 7
List of Abbreviations
CGDK: Coalition Party of Democratic Kampuchea
CNRP: Cambodia National Rescue Party
CPK: Communist Party of Kampuchea, colloquially known as the Khmer
Rouge
CPP: Cambodian Peoples Party
DC-Cam: The Documentation Centre of Cambodia
DK: Democratic Kampuchea (1976 – 1979)
ECCC: The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
(the Khmer Rouge Trials/Tribunal)
FUNCINPEC: Front Uni National Pour Un Cambodge Indepéndent, Neutre,
Pacifique, et Coopératif
FUNSK: Front Uni National pour le Salut de Kampuchéa (in English UFNSK)
KR: Khmer Rouge
NGO: Non-Governmental Organization
PRK: People’s Republic of Kampuchea (1979 – 1989)
S-21: Security Centre 21, which included Tuol Sleng, Prey Sar and
Takhmao prisons, and the killing site of Choeung Ek (nowadays S-21
is used almost exclusively to refer to Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom
Penh)
SOC: State of Cambodia (1989 – 1993)
UN: United Nations
UNTAC: United Nations Transitional Authority
US: United States of America
Bennett (2015): To live amongst the dead 8
Terminology
Ângkar: ‘The Organisation.’ Ângkar was the term the Khmer
Rouge gave to themselves, and by which they are still
known by many people.
aPot: ‘The Pol Pots.’ The colloquial name used in Cambodia
to refer to members of the Khmer Rouge.
Democratic Kampuchea: The name given to Cambodia by the Communist Party
of Kampuchea from 1976 – 1979. Although it formally
only includes the time period above, I use the term in
this thesis to refer to the entire period of the Khmer
th th
Rouge rule (April 17 1975 – January 7 1979).
Khmer: The Cambodian word for Cambodian language, but
also used to refer to all things Cambodian (i.e. Khmer
people, Khmer history and so on). Throughout this
thesis, Khmer and Cambodian are used
interchangeably.
Khmer Rouge: Members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea
(CPK). The name was first given to comrades of the
CPK by the Cambodian Head of State, King Norodom
Sihanouk, but was quickly adopted by the
international community of Cambodia and exported as
people began leaving Cambodia in the early 1970s.
The Khmer Rouge is often used interchangeably with
Democratic Kampuchea to refer to their whole period
of rule.
Killing Site: An area where executions were conducted – during
Democratic Kampuchea these were always
concomitant with gravesites and usually very close
to security centres. Most contain multiple mass
grave pits and large numbers of dead.
Mass Grave: Sites in which multiple graves exist, all resulting from
the policies and practices of the Khmer Rouge regime.
Samay aPot: ‘The Time of Pol Pot.’ A colloquial Khmer name for
Democratic Kampuchea.
Year Zero: 1975, as renamed by the Khmer Rouge to assert their
re-invention of Cambodia.
Bennett (2015): To live amongst the dead 9