Collection
Cambodian Women's Oral History Project
ប្រវត្តិសាស្ត្រដែលនិយាយដោយស្រ្តីកម្ពុជា
The Cambodian Women's Oral History Project records the life stories of Cambodian women who survived the Khmer Rouge regime of 1975 to 1979.[1][2] Its full testimonies are archived at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh.[1]
History
Theresa de Langis, a specialist on women, peace and security based in Cambodia since 2012, began the project after informal hearings at which survivors asked that their stories be shared and kept.[2][3] She led it with Cambodian students and young graduates. You Sotheary was senior project assistant, and Thorn Sina worked as translator and transcriber.[2][4] Student volunteers from area universities took notes, translated and transcribed.[2] The project is self-funded and based in Phnom Penh.[2] The Cambodian Defenders Project, the Transcultural Psychosocial Organization, Youth for Peace and the Youth Resource Development Program connected the team with narrators and volunteers.[2][5]
The project set out to show how the Khmer Rouge years affected women in particular, including through sexual and gender-based violence.[2] It gives attention to sexual violence outside forced marriage, which was not among the charges against Khmer Rouge leaders at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). The testimonies tell of sexual violence under the regime and of perpetrators who often went unpunished.[2]
The first field interview took place in Takeo, about two hours by car from Phnom Penh.[6] Kim Khem gave her testimony there on January 24, 2013, and Leang Korn gave hers in Koh Kong on March 15, 2013.[7][4] The team also recorded Prak Sinan in Kampot Province, Nam Mon near Kampong Cham and Sok Samith in Phnom Penh.[6]
De Langis chose Tuol Sleng as the final home of the records because of its tie to the forced confessions kept there, and she calls the placing of women's testimonies beside those records a reclamation.[3]
Material coverage
The project holds 24 testimonies from across Cambodia, recorded in audio, video and text.[2][3] Each covers the narrator's whole life, including violence in the civil war before the Khmer Rouge took power and the long-term effects of instability and personal trauma.[2] Some narrators are survivors of widespread sexual and gender-based violence, and they chose to share their names and experiences publicly.[1][2]
Interviews were held in the narrators' homes or home settings, in their own language, and translated from Khmer into English.[2] The full testimonies are video-audio recordings with transcripts; the project states that the transcribed recordings exist in Khmer and English.[1] The recordings carry the sounds of daily life: in Takeo, Kim Khem spoke inside the house she shared with her daughter, with family, animals and neighbors nearby. She drew on the Chbap Srey, the Code of Womanhood, as she told her story.[6]
Each narrator gave informed consent, and the team paid particular attention to narrators' safety and psychological well-being. The narrators authorized online publication, and each chose the short transcript excerpt shown on the project website. Transcripts are only lightly edited for meaning and consistency.[2]
Catalog and access
The full Khmer transcripts and audiovisual records are held at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum for public access and historical preservation, and for the future generations of the narrators' families and communities.[1][2] The website is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.[8] Narrator pages state that an interview may not be used, published or duplicated without the explicit permission of the lead researcher.[7]
Selected recordings
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Cambodian Women's Oral History Project
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 Cambodian Women's Oral History Project, About
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 UPI, 'I thought I had died': Women share stories of life under Khmer Rouge (June 30, 2017)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Leang Korn testimony page
- ↑ Cambodian Oral History Project (BYU), Related Projects and Books
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Cambodian Women's Oral History Project, Field Notes
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Kim Khem testimony page
- ↑ Cambodian Women's Oral History Project website