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.
patriotic retreat Sacralisation and militarisation in the remembrance of the ‘cursed soldiers’ Hristova Marije marije.hristova@gmail.com Żychlińska Monika monika.zychlinska@gmail.com 24 11 2020 10 2020 6 6 2 2 42 42 60 60 4 10.7227/HRV.6.2.4 Human remains, materiality and memorialisation Cambodia’s bones Gill Fiona fiona.gill@sydney.edu.au 24 11 2020 10 2020 6 6 2 2 61 61 80 80 5 10.7227/HRV.6.2.5 Structural violence and the nature of cemetery-based skeletal reference collections Vanderbyl Greer Albanese John Cardoso Hugo F. V. hcardoso@sfu.ca 24 11 2020 10
commemoration of the civil war dead in southwestern Spain Araguete-Toribio Zahira October 2015 1 1 2 2 5 5 20 20 10.7227/HRV.1.2.3 The transfer of ashes after the Holocaust in Europe, 1945–60 Dreyfus Jean-Marc October 2015 1 1 2 2 21 21 35 35 10.7227/HRV.1.2.4 Powerful remains: the continuing presence of victims of the Khmer Rouge regime in today‘s Cambodia
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.
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
