PHNOM PENH, Tuesday 22 June 2010 (AFP) - Anti-genocide slogans encouraging youngsters to study the legacy of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime are to be hung in high schools across Cambodia, organisers of the project said Tuesday.
The Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which collects evidence of Khmer Rouge atrocities, said it would start hanging the government-approved messages in 1,700 schools from January.
"This is to remember and to study daily ... so that the students know we have this history," said the centre's director, Youk Chhang (pictured).
Referring to the communist movement's name for their 1975-1979 regime, one of the slogans reads: "Learning about the history of Democratic Kampuchea is to prevent genocide."
Even though five Khmer Rouge leaders are being held by a UN-backed genocide court, many young Cambodians are unaware that up to two million people died through overwork, starvation and execution under the brutal regime.
More than 70 percent of Cambodia's 14 million people were born after the Khmer Rouge were ousted in 1979 and, as the topic is sensitive among elites who were involved with the regime, little about it has been taught in schools.
Last year Cambodia unveiled its first textbook about the Khmer Rouge regime and began distributing about half a million copies to high schools.
The genocide court in Phnom Penh is scheduled to deliver its first verdict on July 26, in the case of former prison chief Duch -- the first Khmer Rouge leader to face international justice.
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998. The joint trial of four other senior regime leaders is expected to start in 2011, while the court is considering whether to open cases against five other former Khmer Rouge cadres.
The Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which collects evidence of Khmer Rouge atrocities, said it would start hanging the government-approved messages in 1,700 schools from January.
"This is to remember and to study daily ... so that the students know we have this history," said the centre's director, Youk Chhang (pictured).
Referring to the communist movement's name for their 1975-1979 regime, one of the slogans reads: "Learning about the history of Democratic Kampuchea is to prevent genocide."
Even though five Khmer Rouge leaders are being held by a UN-backed genocide court, many young Cambodians are unaware that up to two million people died through overwork, starvation and execution under the brutal regime.
More than 70 percent of Cambodia's 14 million people were born after the Khmer Rouge were ousted in 1979 and, as the topic is sensitive among elites who were involved with the regime, little about it has been taught in schools.
Last year Cambodia unveiled its first textbook about the Khmer Rouge regime and began distributing about half a million copies to high schools.
The genocide court in Phnom Penh is scheduled to deliver its first verdict on July 26, in the case of former prison chief Duch -- the first Khmer Rouge leader to face international justice.
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998. The joint trial of four other senior regime leaders is expected to start in 2011, while the court is considering whether to open cases against five other former Khmer Rouge cadres.
2 comments:
We are all aware of the Pol Pot era, the deliberate systematic extermination of their own people. It is noteworthy, that the vast majority of the Khmer Rouge members including their leaders are very illiterate (having or demonstrating very little or no education), my first point is that the vast majority of our Cambodian survivors and the world still did not articulated the real motivation behind the atrocity during that regime, and the distinction between the genocide during the holocaust and the Khmer Rouge Regime, during the holocaust, by now the world knew that the Nazi had so much of hatred toward the Jews and they want to extinct the Jews populations. Again, during the Pol Pot regime no one really have the real reason of why the genocide has happened. When you have large group of people that running the country during the Pol Pot regime that illiterate, who know, and it is a very strong possibility that the Khmer Rouge were controlled and manipulated by the outsider of the different race, it is very easily control by other group of people or other ethic, or race for their future interests. My second point is we just don't want to put too much emphasis of the Khmer Rouge to our younger generation, and the study of our history should not only involve the Khmer Rouge regime that last only three years, our history has many thousand of years, from the strongest and biggest in size to the smallest and sometime we can't even spotted on the map. My fellow Cambodian, our history is too long, the longest history in that region, and the real story behind loss was very bitter with our neighbors. We must include the a lot of more of our history to educate our younger generation, not only the three years of the Khmer Rouge era.
We are all aware of the Pol Pot era, the deliberate systematic extermination of their own people. It is noteworthy, that the vast majority of the Khmer Rouge members including their leaders are very illiterate (having or demonstrating very little or no education), my first point is that the vast majority of our Cambodian survivors and the world still not articulated the real motivation behind the atrocity during that regime. And the distinction between the genocide during the holocaust and the Khmer Rouge Regime genocidal, during the holocaust, by now the world knew that the Nazi had so much of hatred toward the Jews and they want to extinct the Jews populations. Again, during the Pol Pot regime no one really know of why the genocide has happened; well, except the people involved but maybe NOT the people that committed the crime aware of the motivation. When you have large group of people that running the country during the Pol Pot regime that so illiterate; who know, and it is a very strong possibility that the Khmer Rouge were controlled and manipulated by the outsiders of the different race, it is very easily control by other group of people or other ethic, or race for their interests. My second point is we just don't want to put too much emphasis in our history related to the Khmer Rouge to our younger generation, and the study of our history should not only involve the Khmer Rouge regime that last only three years, our history has many thousand of years, the history from the strongest and biggest to the smallest and weakest, and sometime we can't even spotted it on the map. My fellow Cambodian, our history is too long, the longest history in that region, and the real story behind the loss of power, loss of territories, the weaknesses, the poor, and the illiterate among our people and country; were very bitter, with our neighbors, and we also take a look at ourselves, we also blame our ancestors and older generation of their incapability of leading the country. We must include the a lot of more of our history to educate our younger generation, not only the three years of the Khmer Rouge era. At this day and age, our people should be more educate, the government should have a system to encourage our people to be smarter, I wish that by now no foreign government or people should tell us what we can teach our youngsters, and what information or history that our children should know or shouldn't know.
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