1 research outputs found
No Justice without Narratives:Transition, Justice and the Khmer Rouge Trials
The article addresses the relationship between the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) and the supposed constituents of that transitional justice institution. The article sets out to offer a sociological methodology that TJ mechanism could contemplate in the process of enabling victims/witnesses to narrate justice and transition in their own terms and using Cambodia as a case study. It offers a theoretical and methodological approach to be reflected upon by transitional justice scholars and practitioners, which may enable a more victim-centered attitude in practical interactions with atrocity survivors ( not a cure-all policy solution ). My own research has actively used this methodology to serve this task. This article draws on 70 in-depth oral histories taken from regime survivors, former Khmer Rouge, religious leaders, international and domestic jurists at the ECCC ,witnesses, civil parties, historical and cultural figures from multiple communities in 10 provinces in Cambodia. I have established some basis for situating individual voices into a specifically Cambodian intellectual context. In discussing the Cambodian case from the position of those outside the ECCC (but whom that institution serves) the article engages with the normative assumptions of transitional justice praxis and broader thematic problems such as bridging local and global conceptions of justice