Monday, 02 July 2012, Roth Meas
Books detailing what happened during the Khmer Rouge era have finally
reached young people living in the regime’s final stronghold, Anlong
Veng.
Last Friday, the
Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam), an NGO that focuses on historical memory and education, distributed more than 1,000 copies of the book
A History of Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979) to students of the Anlong Veng High School.
Most of the students’ parents are former Khmer Rouge supporters.
The
book distribution also included the unveiling of an Anlong Veng
genocide memorial, the first of its kind in the region. The monument’s
engraving reads: “Learning about the history of Democratic Kampuchea is
to prevent genocide.”
Promotion of awareness and education of
Khmer Rouge history is considered critical by DC-CAM for reconciliation
between perpetrators and victims.
“As I talked to people here,
only a few of them disagreed with us. Most didn’t mind us educating
their children about Khmer Rouge history,” says Dy Kamboly, the team
leader of genocide education at DC-Cam and the author of A History of
Democratic Kampuchea.
“We have hosted more than 20 similar events
in other provinces, but we invited only students. Here, we had to
invite older people so we could avoid confusion.”
Theam Song Hor, a history teacher at Anlong Veng High School, says that although the
Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports provides a textbook for use by his Grade 12 students, it is not as detailed as Dy Kamboly’s.
The
government’s book has only one lesson about the 1975-1979 regime, Theam
Song Hor says, and the ministry requires him to teach his students the
material for only a few hours.
“The book from the ministry just
tells the main points: how that regime happened, how many administration
zones were divided, and who the permanent committees were between 1975
and 1979.
“So my students still don’t know why they called the Anlong Veng district a Khmer Rouge stronghold.”
But
Theam Song Hor has not been afraid to take the discussion with his
students beyond the contents of the official government textbook.
“Before
we started teaching Khmer Rouge history, we were told by DC-Cam to
encourage students to speak openly about the Khmer Rouge and to
acknowledge the past, but never to teach them to hate their parents
because of their background,” he says.
During the ceremony, Ton
Sa Im, Under-Secretary of State of the Ministry of Education, Youth and
Sports, appealed to older people to tell their children about what had
happened in the past, “so our younger generation will learn from our
experience”.
Yim Phanna, the governor of Anlong Veng district
and a former Khmer Rouge soldier, encouraged residents to participate in
the process of historical education.
“Even though war has
finished, and this place was reformed and developed, regret still stays
with us. It insists that we not let that regime happen again,” he said.
“To prevent that regime happening again, we have to tell the past story broadly to the next generation.
Ron
Noun, a 19-year-old Grade 11 student at Anlong Veng High School, said
his mother had told him that she had been a Khmer Rouge solider, but she
had never revealed whether she witnessed killings.
“Maybe my
mother was still young during the Khmer Rouge regime, so she didn’t know
much about what was happening,” Ron Noun said.
“Anyway, I will read the book to find out more.”
