CAMBODIA:
Adam Saltsman

Since the last update, the ICfC has continued to work with one of its local partner organization, the Center for Social Development, as they bring the Youth Education Community Development (YECD) pilot project to a close. After conducting a series of dialogues in rural communities, the volunteer facilitators—university aged Cambodian young adults—are now revisiting the village dialogue locations to conduct evaluations with samples of villagers who participated in the last months’ meetings. Thus far, our findings reveal that most of the participants preferred discussing the issue of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal and history in a public meeting setting rather than one-on-one conversations. For the most part, those we interviewed said this was because the dialogue format allowed for villagers to hear their community members’ views on these topics for the first time. One participant expressed his feeling that talking in groups where villagers could share stories of suffering would be beneficial to finding relief from pent up anger or suffering. Other participants, however, have alluded to their fear of upsetting village leadership with attitudes that in some way counter the sentiments of the dominant party. These participants stress that party politics on the village level inhibit the free flow of conversation about the tribunal, indicating that preference for dialogue over individual conversation might be contingent not only on the level of fear of re-opening village-level conflicts that stem from the Khmer Rouge era, but also on dialogue participants’ political party affiliations. Such findings, while not statistically significant, may benefit many outreach programs for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal that do not take into consideration the possibility that the tribunal could come to represent more of a political event than anything else for the Cambodian public.

These unique dialogues conducted by the YECD team and their subsequent evaluation trips highlight the need for such meetings where rural Cambodians have the space to share their attitudes and concerns regarding history and the upcoming Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Thus the ICfC is pleased to announce that the dialogue format it developed will be continued through the work of another local non-governmental organization, Youth for Peace. Facilitators will conduct educational workshops on peace-building, the history of the Khmer Rouge, as well as the structure of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal with Cambodia’s younger generation. Following this, they will visit communities with some of the workshop participants in order to engage in dialogues with older village residents, monks, and local teachers to further the benefits of intimate public discussion about history and the tribunal.
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