After the Killing Fields: Lessons from the Cambodian Genocide

Modern Southeast Asia

by Craig Etcheson

"In spite of all the hand-wringing over the international community's failures to stop past crimes against humanity, we have not yet developed a consistent approach to the aftermath of these crimes. A sort of 'cottage industry devoted to denying that the Khmer Rouge committed any crimes' has appeared in Cambodia, as Craig Etcheson explains in After the Killing Fields, and a new generation of Cambodians is growing up in a society where perpetrators of unbelievable evil walk free."—Times Literary Supplement "Craig Etcheson is well known internationally as an expert dedicated to documenting the bitter harvest of the Khmer Rouge's grip on the Cambodian people, 1975-1978, and to evaluating its enduring aftermath. . . . After the Killing Fields is a thorough insider's description of the Documentation Center of Cambodia's valuable work. More importantly, the book probes the culture of impunity and enhances our understanding of this extraordinarily complex issue. It is a major contribution to genocide studies, as well as an eloquent tribute to the Cambodians who suffered under the Khmer Rouge."—Frederick Z. Brown, H-Genocide New findings show that the death toll from the Cambodian genocide was approximately 2.2 million—about a half million higher than commonly believed. Despite regular denials from the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge, in After the Killing Fields Craig Etcheson demonstrates not only that they were aware of the mass killings, but that they personally managed and directed them. This book details the work of Yale University’s Cambodian Genocide Program, which laid the evidentiary basis for the forthcoming Khmer Rouge Tribunal. The book also presents the information collected through the Mass Grave Mapping Project of the Documentation Center of Cambodia and reveals that the pattern of killing was relatively uniform throughout the country. Detailing the struggle to come to terms with what happened in Cambodia, Etcheson concludes that real justice is not merely elusive, but in fact may be impossible, for crimes on the scale of genocide. “After the Killing Fields should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in Cambodia and international law.” —Peter Maguire, author of Facing Death in Cambodia “Etcheson draws on extensive field-work, archival research, and his own analytical skills to bring the horrors of the Khmer Rouge into focus and to make readers aware of the many-faceted, saddening aftermath of that murderous regime.” —David Chandler, author of Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret Prison

Genres: History, Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published March 30, 2005

Reviews

[Daniel Butsko · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is more of a historical, factual retelling of the events of the Cambodian genocide and other conflicts relevant to the shaping of Cambodia’s history. Prior to reading this book, I had only learned a small bit of what happened in the late 70s/early 80s from a memoir about one man and his family’s experience under Khmer Rouge tyranny. In this book, however, I learned much more detail about the atrocities that occurred across a longer time span. It was particularly disheartening to learn that no Khmer Rouge commanding officers or organizers have been held responsible for the annihilation of roughly one third of the population during the three decades of civil unrest. In fact, many have been pardoned or given positions in the governments that followed. It’s also a grim reality that many of the victims of this genocide have gone unaccounted for due to destruction of records or flawed research. There are simply too many victims to be able to document and honor each one, and that in itself is the worst reality of the situation. Though a dense read, this book helped me to contextualize what I had read before and understand the why behind the what.