Genocide by the Khmer Rouge
from Part II - Separate Paths
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2025
The chapter discusses the only partial coming to terms with the genocide trauma against the background of the socio-economic-political and cultural-religious conditions of this Southeast Asian country. The surviving victims and their descendants suffered severe marginalization in their role: their fates were not really dealt with publicly, and they were not granted the status of historical victors. The psychosocial and social science research conducted in relation to genocide survivors, generally from the late 1990s and largely only in the 2000s and 2010s, mirrored in many respects the international developments. It was mainly researchers from the Global North who published studies on the post-genocidal situation in Cambodia. However, anthropologists from the Global North dealt extensively with certain cultural Cambodian aspects of the genocide aftermath. One cultural syndrome garnered particular attention: baksbat, which is characterized by a subjective feeling of ‘broken courage’. This phenomenon manifests as both a normal reaction and a pathological, exaggerated reaction. The treatment approaches for survivors usually include Buddhist or ethnically mediated rituals as an amalgam alongside internationally developed testimony therapy.
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