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Karma After Democratic Kampuchea: Justice Outside The Khmer Rouge Tribunal, Caroline Bennett

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article considers ways people in Cambodia narrate the Khmer Rouge regime and its genocide outside the bounds of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). Based on anthropological fieldwork, I explore how informants use ‘karma’ to discuss the genocide, and by doing so create their own understandings and lived experiences of that period of historical violence, understandings that do not fit neatly into the narrative modes created by the courts. By stepping outside the court, I consider ways of dealing with the genocide that exist beyond the international framework of transitional justice, thereby asking wider questions of …