RUTGERS-NEWARK ONLINE  

Agreement Establishes Khmer Rouge Archive at Rutgers-Newark

March 08, 2005

 

 (NEWARK) - A new agreement between Rutgers-Newark and a Cambodianhuman rights organization has made Rutgers-Newark one of only two universities in America to serve as U.S. repositories for the most comprehensive archive on the Khmer Rouge regime - and its four year reign of terror and genocide in Cambodia.

      The agreement between the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-CAM) and Rutgers-Newark - similar to one also finalized between DC-CAM and Yale University, which has a portion of the material - places an invaluable archive of primary Khmer Rouge documents in digital and microfiche form at the fingertips of both R-N faculty and student scholars and investigators throughout the Western Hemisphere: papers, photographs, films and other materials that provide a record of the Khmer Rouge-orchestrated genocide from 1975-1979 that claimed almost a quarter of Cambodia's 8 million people.

      The partnership between Rutgers-Newark and DC-CAM marks both the 30th anniversary of the Khmer Rouge's rise to power and Cambodia's current preparations for war crimes tribunals to punish those responsible for the atrocities committed. Many of the documents in the archives will be used as evidence at the trials of the individuals who created Cambodia's infamous "killing fields."

      "In hosting this important human-rights project, Rutgers-Newark is reinforcing its role as a major center of global scholarship and international public policy development," noted Rutgers-Newark Provost Steven Diner. "Rutgers-Newark's location could not be more appropriate, as the New York City/New Jersey metropolitan area is located at the heart of one of the world's most diverse regions, with citizens from around the globe making up our student body and living in the cities that surround us."

      In addition to the unparalleled research opportunities that the DC-CAM archive brings to the Western world, DC-CAM will invite selected Rutgers students to participate in intern- and externships, conducting research both at the center's office at Rutgers-Newark and at its headquarters in Cambodia. DC-CAM's R-N branch also will allow DC-CAM staff members such as Meng-Try Ea and Vannak Huy - who will simultaneously be pursuing graduate degrees in global studies at Rutgers-Newark's Center for Global Change and Governance - to present and organize talks to classes at R-N about the Khmer-Rouge genocide, international law and other related topics.

      The agreement was engineered in part by Rutgers-Newark anthropology professor Alexander Hinton as he was researching his most recent book, Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide (University of California Press, 2005). He had met Youk Chhang, director of DC-CAM, while doing research on genocide in Cambodia.

      The bewilderment of Cambodians over how their own countrymen could do such things redirected Hinton's research so that he began to explore other genocides across the globe. "How does genocide take place?" mused Hinton. "What makes people able to commit such atrocities?"

      For DC-CAM founder and director Chhang, it was his own experiences - which included torture and imprisonment by the Khmer Rouge - that drove him to assemble the unparalleled archive now in the joint custody of DC-CAM's home and American offices detailing the activities that took place in his country.

      "It was a personal commitment because of my personal experiences under the Khmer Rouge regime," he said. "People don't understand it - what happened with the Khmer Rouge. Failure to explain it makes me very uncomfortable.

      "To me, it's not just about being a Cambodian - it's about being a human being."

      For more information on the DC-CAM project, visit the organization's Web site at www.dccam.org.

CONTACT:
      For additional information, contact Michael Sutton at 973/353-5262 or msutton@andromeda.rutgers.edu.

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