Documentation

Documenting, Disseminating and Preserving Records of Past Atrocities

1995-present

 

Democratic Kampuchea leaders and  members of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). Facing forward from left, Pol Pot (CPK Secretary and Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea), Nuon Chea (Deputy Secretary of the CPK and DK President of the People’s Representative Assembly), Ieng Sary (Deputy Prime Minister of Foreign Affairs), Son Sen (Deputy Prime Minister of Defense), and Vorn Vet (Deputy Prime Minister of Economy).
Source: Documentation Center of Cambodia Archives.
  The Documentation Center of Cambodia
  The core objectives of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) are memory and justice, and documentation is a crucial component. Documentation helps hold leaders accountable for their decisions while ensuring that the past is not forgotten. It is a resource for research and understanding and a starting point for education, justice, and national reconciliation. It is therefore a necessary foundation for a just society and lasting peace.

Documenting and disseminating records of past atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime has been the core activity of DC-Cam since 1995. Approximately one million documents have been collected from a multitude of sources, both inside and
 
outside of Cambodia. These documents include biographies of former Khmer Rouge members and cadres, the minutes of Central and Standing Committee meetings, daily reports, telegrams, and victim confessions. In addition, there are Khmer Rouge notebooks, songs, and publications as well as crime-site photographs, interview transcripts, documentary films, physical materials, diaries, maps, and other relevant materials.

These documents serve to advance the core values of the “right to the truth” and “right to justice,” which form the normative backbone of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (KRT). Over 500,000 pages of DC-Cam documents have been provided to the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), including the Office of the Co-Prosecutors, the Office of the Co-Investigating Judges, the Defense Support Section and Defense teams, Civil Party lawyers, and the Office of Public Affairs. These documents provide crucial evidence in the prosecution of senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge.

 

In collaboration with Yale University and New South Wales University, DC-Cam uses four extensive databases to manage and catalogue its documents for the purpose of wide dissemination, both locally and abroad. The databases include biographic, bibliographic, photographic and geographic clusters and are equipped with an online search engine. In addition, DC-Cam has established an access list of documents, accompanied by a user-friendly search engine, which allows interested members of the public to access all of the documents in DC-Cam’s archives more broadly and effectively.

 

To provide public online access to the entirety of DC-Cam documentation, DC-Cam is digitizing its documents and uploading them onto the Internet. DC-Cam is also planning the development of an optical recognition system that would allow for identification of certain Khmer characters and symbols in the original documents. This would facilitate more convenient and efficient research and thus contribute to a better understanding of Khmer Rouge history. In addition, DC-Cam intends to collect documents from a variety of newly opened communist archives.

 

Because human rights, democracy and reconciliation depend on a clear picture of the past, and documentation is the cornerstone to historical clarity, DC-Cam is committed to the mission of building its archive and making it publicly accessible and available for future generations.

Archiving Memory after Mass Atrocities
The Secure Heritage Project
Contact: Ros Sampeou