Veil lifting on cadres’ unwanted weddings
There are
no reliable statistics on how many couples were forced to marry. Only one
photograph of a forced-marriage ceremony – a union between two Khmer Rouge
cadres – is known to exist.
But in
present-day Cambodia, the effects of the marriages are still far-reaching, and
multigenerational.
“It was a
widespread policy,” explained Farina So, a researcher at DC-Cam. “It didn’t
take place in one area. It happened everywhere.”
Marriages
frequently involved violent rape under the threat of punishment from cadres,
who spied on couples on the first night, So said. The trauma was long lasting,
and women especially were reluctant to speak about it.
In 2013, an
independent researcher, Theresa de Langis, began recording Cambodian women’s
stories as part of a larger project on sexual violence under the Khmer Rouge
regime, the Cambodian Women’s Oral History Project. She was often struck by
forced-marriage narratives in particular.
“The stories
are not easy stories, and they are not typical stories,” De Langis said. “They
are very distinct.”
Oral
history, she said, provided a unique means to capture them in survivors’ own
words and on their own terms – a contribution of personal narrative to expand
upon the “accepted history” of the genocide.
Through
this work, De Langis was brought on as a technical adviser at Tuol Sleng
Genocide Museum, training its staff in oral-history methodology. Next week, 21
of her interviews will be deposited in the museum’s collections, for
researchers and future generations.
At the same
time, seven stories of forced marriage will go on public exhibition at Tuol
Sleng – the first of its kind in the Kingdom, both in topic and in execution.
Focusing on the impact on women
The
exhibition, Sorrows and Struggles: Women’s Experience of Forced Marriage during
the Khmer Rouge Regime, was not initially part of Tuol Sleng’s schedule for
2016, according to museum director Chhay Visoth.
The idea
emerged from a meeting last September with the Women’s Association of the
Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, spurring a focus on female stories at the
museum.
The only known wedding photo from the Khmer Rouge period shows
the head of the re-education centre at Prey Sar (known as S-24), Nun Huy aka
Huy Sre (left) marrying Prok Khoeun, aka Prak Samuth, an official at S-24 and
later deputy of an interrogation team at Tuol Sleng. Huy is believed to have
been executed by the regime after a comrade escaped. Photo supplied BY DC-CAM
“We really
want to focus on the impact to women,” Visoth said in his office one afternoon
this week, as his staff scrambled to put the finishing touches on their work.
The lively
37-year-old is still a relatively fresh face at Tuol Sleng – this April will
mark his second year as director – but he’s already injected a new energy into
the museum.
“Even in
this museum, open for more than 30 years already, we didn’t have a strong team
conducting [new] research for our exhibitions,” he said. “It’s not easy doing
research like this.”
The new
exhibition was planned over five months by an 11-person team that included
foreign researchers and designers.
For the
next six months, Sorrows and Struggles will be housed in two rooms on the third
floor of Building A, just above the space reserved for female prisoners under
the Khmer Rouge. It is interactive, contrasting with the museum’s permanent
displays.
The first
room serves as a model of a forced-marriage ceremony: two rows created by
hanging fabric run towards a makeshift altar at the front of the room. An empty
circle on the floor marks a place for visitors – “So it seems like you’re
standing in line,” explained Johanna Quandt, a German designer on the project.
In the
neighbouring room stand seven tall boxes bearing the photographs and stories of
the survivors, one for each of Democratic Kampuchea’s established zones. The
narratives – jarring, violent, and now public – are printed in English and
Khmer. Four are drawn from Tuol Sleng’s new set of interviews and three from De
Langis’ oral-history project.
The young
director already has plans to replicate the methodology for another project, as
well as to bring Sorrows and Struggles to classrooms as part of the museum’s
mobile-exhibition initiative. Only 3 per cent of Phnom Penh students visited
Tuol Sleng last year, he said.
A sea change in attitudes
“Generally
speaking, there really has been a sea change in the way that people talk about
forced marriage,” De Langis said. “When I was first starting to do this work
four years ago, very rarely would people self-disclose.”
Even the
research team at Tuol Sleng had limited knowledge of forced marriage when the
Sorrows and Struggles project began, she added.
De Langis
is not the only one to notice the shifting tide. “It changed in the last two
years because people are aware of the issue. Before, they didn’t understand and
they felt ashamed to talk,” said Sin Soworn, an attorney with the Cambodian
Defenders Project and a civil-party co-lawyer at the Extraordinary Chambers in
the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).
Before
2008, this dearth in awareness extended to the international community and to
the court, where De Langis alleges that there was a belief that forced
marriages were not so different from arranged marriages, just a cultural
practice – rather than a human-rights violation.
Om Yoeurn, one of the interviewees. Photo supplied BY TUOL
SLENG
Female
survivors of forced marriage suffered much differently than men, and continue
to face social stigma, De Langis said. She attributed the stigma to a pressure
to keep trauma hidden, especially if any children were involved, and to
gendered codes of conduct, like a focus on female virginity.
Even during
the Khmer Rouge regime, “moral offences” – like sex between unmarried couples –
could implicate women in cases of rape, according to Farina So, at DC-Cam.
So said
that of the 400 interviews conducted by her oral-history team over the years,
at least half mention forced marriage, though many do not acknowledge its
explicit criminality. “They didn’t get access to full information,
especially in the court,” she said. “They were afraid to speak out.”
Museum
director Chhay Visoth suggested that a change in discourse has to do with an
ageing population of survivors: “In Cambodian culture, when people get old,
they want to connect, to share,” he said. “Through the interviews that we did,
people talked – it’s not like in the past.”
And with disclosure
may come a change in attitude regarding women’s narratives of suffering under
the Khmer Rouge. “There’s been a long-held belief that sexual violence was not
a part of this genocide,” De Langis said. “Once these stories are fully
disclosed, there is no way that can ever stand.”
For
survivors’ retribution, where the gradual change may matter most is at the
court.
A change to be heard
It is no
coincidence that Sorrows and Struggles is to be exhibited in the same year that
the ECCC takes up the case of forced marriage as a crime, Visoth said.
In the
current trial at the ECCC, Case 02/002, there have been 663 civil parties
admitted in relation to the “regulation of marriage”, according to Marie
Guiraud, the international civil-party lead co-lawyer. A majority are women.
Testimony
will likely begin in June, she wrote in an email to Post Weekend. The list set
to testify has not yet been released.
If
classified by crime, survivors of forced marriage could comprise one of the
largest groups of civil parties, according to Silke Studzinsky, a German lawyer
who represented civil parties at the court from 2008 to 2013.
Studzinsky
was part of an effort to bring the case of forced marriage to the court as a
crime, beginning in 2008, when little research on the subject was available.
In meetings
with Studzinsky and her colleagues after the first civil-party applications
were submitted late that year, she said, people began to self-disclose their
experiences with forced marriage and other sexual violence.
“Nearly everybody
knew about forced marriages, as a direct victim or a witness,” Studzinksy said.
“But at the beginning, most of the civil parties did not see forced marriage as
a crime.”
Studzinsky
said her push for further investigation was at first met with “scepticism and a
lack of background knowledge” from both the international and national sides of
the court.
Nonetheless,
the Office of Co-investigating Judges added forced marriages to its
investigation in mid-2009. Ultimately, forced marriage was not included in Case
002/01, and sexual violence outside the context of forced marriage was not
investigated.
Designers Johanna Quandt and Sam Raiya hold displays to be
used in the Tuol Sleng exhibition. Scott Rotzoll
When the
scope of the current case was defined, in April 2014, the Trial Chamber
included nationwide forced marriage as a crime. The contribution of civil
parties was “instrumental” in this decision, Guimaud said.
When they
take the stand, those who testify will of course face a very different audience
than an interview or a group session offers.
“A specific
preparation for the testimony is necessary,” Studzinsky said. Civil parties can
work with their own lawyers, Victims’ Support Services and with mental-health
experts from the Transcultural Psychosocial Organization (TPO) to prepare.
De Langis
worries that accusations of lying on the stand – which has happened when
forced marriage has come up in other case testimony – could
re-traumatise survivors of sexual violence. “This particular group is a
different kind of group that has been silenced for a very long time,” she said.
The reality of forced marriage
Aside from
the public displays, the tangible effects of forced marriage, for some, remain
a part of daily existence.
One
middle-aged couple who spoke with Post Weekend this week by phone, Sa Suth and
El Sorlyhush, remain together, living in Tboung Khmum province. They have seven
children.
Neither is
a civil party at the court, and they knew nothing of an exhibition opening at
Tuol Sleng.
Their story
is not the only one that did not end in fracture, but it remains “distinct”, as
De Langis put it. Suth had another partner at the time of the marriage, but was
allowed only to pick from among a group of 10 women. “There was not a big
party,” he said.
Sorlyhush
said she was afraid of Suth, and of living with him. After the war, they didn’t
at first. Eventually, the two – who remained in the same province, Kampong Cham
– began a business together, then a true marriage, one beyond the control of
the regime.
The couple
have been very open with their children about their story, and even shown them
the place where they were forced to marry, Sorlyhush said.
“He had
another girl to love,” she said. “He tried to reject Angkar, but the leader
told him to marry me.”
By Audrey Wilson,
The Phnom Penh Post, Sat, 27 February 2016
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