A N EXAMINATION OF the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) 1 should prove especially illuminating for our study in that this mission points to the growing willingness of the international community to involve the UN in intra-state governance. It helps us, in other words, to scrutinise more closely the relationship between the changing
The Khmer Rouge forbade the conduct of any funeral rites at the time of the death of the estimated two million people who perished during their rule (1975–79). Since then, however, memorials have been erected and commemorative ceremonies performed, both public and private, especially at former execution sites, known widely as the killing fields. The physical remains themselves, as well as images of skulls and the haunting photographs of prisoners destined for execution, have come to serve as iconic representations of that tragic period in Cambodian history and have been deployed in contested interpretations of the regime and its overthrow.
The display of human remains is a controversial issue in many contemporary societies, with many museums globally removing them from display. However, their place in genocide memorials is also contested. Objections towards the display of remains are based strongly in the social sciences and humanities, predicated on assumptions made regarding the relationship between respect, identification and personhood. As remains are displayed scientifically and anonymously, it is often argued that the personhood of the remains is denied, thereby rendering the person ‘within’ the remains invisible. In this article I argue that the link between identification and personhood is, in some contexts, tenuous at best. Further, in the context of Cambodia, I suggest that such analyses ignore the ways that local communities and Cambodians choose to interact with human remains in their memorials. In such contexts, the display of the remains is central to restoring their personhood and dignity.
cover for governments and institutions to co-opt and channel criticism ( de Waal, 2015 : 31–6). In humanitarian action, activism manifested in the form of the Cambodian March for Survival, in 1980, when many aid representatives organised a demonstration at the Thai-Cambodian border to allow cross-border assistance into Cambodia ( Weissman, 2011 : 179). While activism is a confrontational form of realising change, advocacy relies on building relationships
she organises into three groups by the geographical regions they come from: South East Asians (from Cambodia, Burma and Thailand), Africans and the third group, comprising Iraqis, Iranians and Afghans. She discovers differences in their ability to use telecommunications technology (e.g. telephones, fax machines and mobile phones), depending on their countries of origin, suggesting that conflict, war or government surveillance hindered their abilities. Leung also observes that exposure to new
that the major Western powers have been complicit in creating (think Vietnam, Congo, Cambodia, Iraq, Syria, to name just a few). All of which confronts humanitarians with an existential choice. How might they function in a world which doesn’t have liberal institutions at its core? Human rights activists struggle given they rely on broad international agreement – treaties, customary law, courts, Western foreign-policy support – to do their work. Is humanitarianism any different? The version of global humanitarianism with which we are familiar might
that created independent Bangladesh (1970–72), through the sector’s intervention in Cambodia, El Salvador and elsewhere, its expansion into development and social justice issues, and, finally, the popular fundraising extravaganza of Live Aid in the mid-1980s. Lasse: Placing Biafra in the longue durée of colonial history is indeed significant. There was a colonial baggage of humanitarianism, echoes of colonial optic and colonial iconography; colonialism
this is legal, since 2006 ( Daccord, 2018 ). The British Red Cross also admitted ‘a small number’ of sexual harassment or abuse cases in the UK ( Gillespie et al. , 2018 ). This sits in a longer international context, including the controversies around UN peacekeeping forces, starting with Cambodia in 1993, encompassing Bosnia and Herzegovina, Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, DRC and Haiti, which led to the UN concluding in 2013 that the biggest risk in peacekeeping
status of the corpse as it moves towards different forms of existence, and all the rituals relating to this change.3 While these definitions of the body are well established within the field of anthropology, the student of genocide must also take into account an additional dimension, namely that of the specific political and legal issues raised by mass violence. I describe in this chapter the ways in which, during my research, I have come to consider corpses of mass violence in Cambodia, and how the question of observation schedules and temporality seems to me to be
. Some three decades later came the Namibia operation, which would have been unimaginable even a few years earlier. El Salvador, Cambodia, and Bosnia, to cite but a few, were each more ‘daring’ than the missions that came before. Yet the extent and modalities of UN involvement in intra-state conflicts, and ultimately governance, have proved ever more remarkable. What exactly was the UN trying to do in