Revealing Cambodia’s secret Khmer Rouge resistance

The prevailing image of Cambodians under the Khmer Rouge is one of dignified suffering and passivity. But many resisted the regime in ways often overlooked by historians

“Sometimes, I miss the Khmer Rouge days,” says Youk Chhang, cradling a photograph of a field specked with trees and flowers in his hands. “That is where I lived during those times. People died there. My family died there. But in the mornings, when I went to work, I saw the flowers blossom, and I was so happy. It gave you hope. It meant you didn’t give in to the Khmer Rouge.”

Forced pregnancy [during the Khmer Rouge Regime]

One of the few forced-marriage photographs from the Khmer Rouge period shows the head of S-24 prison Nun Huy, aka Huy Sre (left), marrying Prok Khoeun, aka Prak Samuth, a prison official. Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

Forced pregnancy: crime but no punishment?

When she was six months pregnant, Srey Neang* pressed the palm of her hand to her navel and felt her unborn child stop moving. It was 1976 and she had been struck down with malaria. Three months later, she gave birth, but her daughter had already died.

Forced to marry in 1975 – at the dawn of the Khmer Rouge’s brutal regime – Neang is a victim of a crime that may never be investigated or tried before the Khmer Rouge tribunal: forced pregnancy.

Although the tribunal is currently hearing victim and expert-witness testimony on the crime of forced marriage – which is in itself a milestone, say legal advocates – it decided earlier this year that it would not investigate forced pregnancy as a distinct crime.

Those representing the victims were disappointed, seeing it as a missed opportunity to probe the often inextricably linked crime of forced pregnancy. That decision also means forced pregnancy is a crime no international criminal tribunal has yet prosecuted.

‘Serve Angkar’