<...>
> Studying the 1975-9 period in Cambodian history is difficult because
> of the lack of evidence. Most of the evidence is limited to oral
> accounts from refugees and survivors of the regime. The Communist Party
> of Kampuchea (CPK) or Khmer Rouge prided itself on secrecy. <...>
<...>
> Language exacerbates the problem since all languages except Khmer
> were banned by the CPK as artifacts of imperialism. Few scholars are
> fluent in Khmer and can thus conduct primary research. Not until 1981
> were foreign scholars and journalists allowed into Cambodia to conduct
> research.
<...>
> The violence and the virulence of the CPK surprised even the most
> hardened of political analysts. Between 750,000 and 2 million people
> perished during 1975-9 from either starvation, disease or execution.
> Brutal violence was not new in Cambodia and this aspect of DK
> represented a continuity with Cambodia's past. Vickery p 17
<...>
> "Thus for the rural 80-90 percent of the Cambodian people arbitrary
> justice, sudden violent death, political oppression, exploitive use of
> religion and anti-religious reaction, both violent and quiescent, were
> common facts of life long before the war and revolution of the 1970's.
> The creations of Pol Pot-ism were all there in embryo." Vickery p 17
it's quite interesting to watch the shifting standards here.
on the one hand, 'brutal violence' is dismissed as a 'continuity' and present 'in embryo' prior to the rise of the KR, whereas the nature of the evidence of KR atrocities is treated as problematic --rather than, say, similarly endemic to cambodian society prior to and during the rule of the KR.
efforts to obfuscate or destroy traces of belligerent action are quite common, though done for different reasons: in the case of cambodia as a part of a larger anti-imperialist project, in the recent wars in FYU for different reasons--to impede prosecution, and to facilitate redistribution of property, for example. since these kinds of activities are becoming increasingly common, his- torical and forensic methods are faced with a stark choice be- tween adhering to normative or transcultural/transhistorical cri- teria, on the one hand, or to adapt to changing circumstances and thereby admit that these more flexible criteria might be val- id elsewhere.
but the problem doesn't really stem from the heterogeneous nature of evidence in different places and times; rather, it stems from the gesture, inspired by normative methodologies, of diagnosing evidence as inadequate.
cheers, t