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Education and Photography at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

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The Arts of Transitional Justice

Part of the book series: Springer Series in Transitional Justice ((SSTJ,volume 6))

Abstract

How do photographs teach a past that is marked by atrocity? What is the justice of a photograph? The occasion for these questions is the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. Once a high school, under the Khmer Rouge, it was the site of the S-21 Security Centre headed by Kaing Guev Eak, alias Duch. It is now a museum, a memorial and an archive. Amongst its most well-known features is its collection of photographs. With meticulous organization, every prisoner was photographed upon entry into S-21 and some 7,200 photographs remain. Today, many of these photographs are on display in the museum. It is open to the public. It also plays an important part in the outreach work—not least as part of a study tour—of the extraordinary chambers in the courts of Cambodia (ECCC). This chapter considers the educational use of the Tuol Sleng Museum and its photographs in the outreach programme of the ECCC. In doing so, it extends the mission of an international(ized) legal institution beyond the courtroom and puts the museum and its photographs in relation with the didactic dimension of transitional justice enterprises—here phrased as educating the general public about historical injustice. In this context, the chapter reconstructs the various dimensions of the image-making of the Tuol Sleng photographs: the archival (the transformation of mugshots into portraits), the museum exhibition (a tension between the studium and punctum of the photographs generated by their mode of display), the evidential (the force of the photograph as proof of atrocity which nevertheless relies on a narrative and memory created elsewhere) and the orchestration of the relation between perpetrator and victim. In all these dimensions, the haunted, rhythmic character of the photograph has much to teach transitional justice projects.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This chapter is based on research I conducted in Phnom Penh in June and July 2011, enabled by funding through MATS and the Office of Research, Melbourne Law School, as well as by the generous support and help by staff at the ECCC and various NGOs in Phnom Penh.

  2. 2.

    Patrizia Violi ‘Trauma Site Museums and Politics of Memory: Tuol Sleng, Villa Grimaldi and the Bologna Ustica Museum’, (2012) 29(1) Theory, Culture & Society 36–75, 42.

  3. 3.

    David Chandler, Voices from S-21, Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret Prison (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1999) 4, 8.

  4. 4.

    The Yale Cambodian Genocide Program has a collection of 5,000 photos, but has stated the correct number is uncertain. http://www.yale.edu/cgp/cimgdoc.html. In the MoMA exhibition and an accompanying book, the number is given as 6,000. In August 2012, a collection of 1,200 photographs supposedly from S-21 was given to the NGO DC Cam and these are currently being verified. See Phnom Penh Post ‘Mystery Surrounds S-21 Faces’, 21 August 2012, http://www.cambodiatribunal.org/sites/default/files/news/Phnom%20Penh%20Post%208-21-12.pdf

  5. 5.

    Peter Manning, ‘Governing memory: Justice, reconciliation and outreach at the ECCC’, Memory Studies 5(2) (2011): 167; Norman Henry Pentelovich, ‘Seeing Justice Done, The Importance Prioritizing Outreach Efforts at International Criminal Tribunals’, Georgetown Journal of International Law 39 (2008): 445–495; Janine Natalya Clark, International War Crimes Tribunals and the Challenge of Outreach, International Criminal Law Review 9 (2009): 99–116; Jaya Ramji-Nogales, ‘Designing Bespoke Transitional Justice: Pluralist Process Approach’ Michigan Journal of International Law 32 (2010): 1–72.

  6. 6.

    Manning, supra note 6 at 3.

  7. 7.

    ECCC, Court Report No 32 (January 2011): 1.

  8. 8.

    Hence, this chapter does not engage in the debate on the didactic purposes of a trial. For an example of such work, see Lawrence Douglas The Memory of Judgment, Making law and history in the trials of the Holocaust (Yale University Press, 2001).

  9. 9.

    For other works dealing with and analysing outreach at the ECCC, see Rachel Hughes, ‘Legal Outreach and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia’, paper presented at the Historical Justice and Memory Conference, Swinburne University, February 14–17 2012; Pentelovitch, supra note 6: and Manning, supra note 6.

  10. 10.

    Tom Fawthorp and Helen Jarvis, Getting Away with Genocide? Elusive Justice and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2005): 3. For other work on the Khmer Rouge period and its aftermath, see inter alia David Chandler, supra note 4; Alexander Laban Hinton, Why did they kill? Cambodia in the shadow of genocide (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2005).

  11. 11.

    Chandler, supra note 4, at 4.

  12. 12.

    Ibid at 6.

  13. 13.

    Ibid at 15.

  14. 14.

    Nhem Ein was identified as one of the six photographers at Tuol Sleng by the journalist Niven in the1990 s. Nhem has since given several interviews, and in 2007, he gave testimony before the ECCC. While Nhem was ‘team leader’, he only took mugshots and never pictures of diseased. Trial Transcript, Duch trial, 4 Aug 2008, p 107–108.

  15. 15.

    See John Tagg Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories (Macmillan Education, London, 1988) 74–76.

  16. 16.

    Chandler, supra note 4, at 1–2.

  17. 17.

    Mai Lam himself is unsure whether it was in February or March 1979. See Chandler, supra note 4 at 5.

  18. 18.

    Quoted in Judy Ledgerwood, ‘The Cambodian Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocidal Crimes: National Narrative’, Museum Anthropology 21(1) (1999): 88.

  19. 19.

    Ibid at 89.

  20. 20.

    Quoted in ibid at 88.

  21. 21.

    Interview by Sara Colm in 1995, quoted in Chandler, supra note 4, at 8.

  22. 22.

    With the Paris Peace Accord of 1991, the Khmer Rouge was legitimized and returned to Phnom Penh, but only to leave again before the UN supported elections of 1993. After the elections in 1993, the National Assembly in 1994 passed a law that outlawed the Khmer Rouge. In 1996, a Royal Decree granted high-ranking Ieng Sary pardon. See Suzannah Linton, ‘Putting Cambodia’s Extraordinary Chambers into Context’, Singapore Year Book of International Law and Contributors 11 (2007): 200–201; and Jarvis & Fawthorp, supra note 11, for thorough discussions on the peace deal and its aftermath in terms of peace and/or justice.

  23. 23.

    Prosecutor v. Kaing Guek Eav alias Duch (Judgment) (Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), Trial Chamber, Case No 001/18-07-2007/ECCC/TC 26 July 2010) 567.

  24. 24.

    Prosecutor v KAING Guek Eav (Summary of Appeal Judgement) (Case File 001/18-07-2007/ECCC/SC) 3 February 2012.

  25. 25.

    A fourth person, former social action minister Ieng Thirith, was indicted but in November 2011 found unfit for trial. She was finally released in September 2012.

  26. 26.

    Prosecutor v. Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith, Khieu Samphan (Severance Order Pursuant to Internal Rule 89ter) ECCC Trial Chamber, Case File/Dossier No. 002/19-09-2007-ECCCITC, 22 Sep 2011.

  27. 27.

    In February 2013, the Supreme Court Chamber annulled the Trial Chamber’s severance decision. At the moment of writing, the implications of this annulment are unclear. (Decision on the Co-Prosecutors’ Immediate Appeal of the Trial Chamber’s Decision Concerning the Scope of Case 002/01 (Feb. 8, 2013).

  28. 28.

    Documentation Center of Cambodia, Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee, Khmer Institute of Democracy, Center for Social Development, Cambodian Defenders Project.

  29. 29.

    Christoph Sperfeldt, ‘Cambodian Civil Society and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 6 (2012) 149–160; Pentelovich, supra note 6 at 470.

  30. 30.

    ECCC website, Public Affairs Section,

    http://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/office-of-administration/public-affairs accessed 20 July 2012.

  31. 31.

    See e.g. ECCC Court Report 31 (November 2010) 4.

  32. 32.

    DC Cam journal Searching for the truth, 1st quarter 2006; on CSD see Manning, supra note 6.

  33. 33.

    ECCC Court Report 33 (February 2011): 4; DC Cam director Youk Chhang in 2011 explained that they changed focus, from the masses to working closely with a smaller number of very active or local leaders, as well as students, all of whom then disseminate information. Personal communication, 5 July 2011.

  34. 34.

    ECCC Court Report 46 (February 2012); contradictory data in ECCC Court Report 32 (January 2011).

  35. 35.

    ECCC Court Report 31 (November 2010): 4.

  36. 36.

    ECCC Court Report 32 (January 2011): 3.

  37. 37.

    www.bophana.org.

  38. 38.

    Both are Bophana film productions. See e.g. ECCC Court Report 31 (November 2010); Manning, supra note 6; Hughes, supra note 10.

  39. 39.

    ECCC Court Report 47 (March 2012): 1.

  40. 40.

    See Hughes, supra note 10; Manning supra note 6.

  41. 41.

    Reach Sambath in ECCC Court Report 31 (November 2010) 4.

  42. 42.

    Ledgerwood, supra note 19, at 90.

  43. 43.

    See discussions between Shawcross, Becker and Vickery in Rachel Hughes, ‘The abject artefacts of memory photographs from Cambodia’s genocide’ (2003) 25 Media, Culture and Society 23–44, 26–27.

  44. 44.

    Ibid 26–27; Chandler, supra note 4 at 11; Cornell University, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Tuol Sleng Prison Confessions and Photographs, #4883. http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/ead/htmldocs/RMM04883.html.

  45. 45.

    See http://cgp.research.yale.edu/cgp/cts/ctssearch.jsp.

  46. 46.

    Chandler, supra note 4, at 12.

  47. 47.

    Voice of America, ‘Nearly 1,500 Khmer Rouge Prison Photographs Donated to Documentation Center’, August 24, 2012.

  48. 48.

    Chandler supra note 4 at 27.

  49. 49.

    Niven and Riley’s Photo Archive Group, 1993, in Hughes (2003), supra note 46, at 29.

  50. 50.

    See Hughes (2003) supra note 46, at 36–37 and Rachel Hughes, Fielding Genocide: Post 1979 Cambodia and the Geopolitics of Memory (Doctoral Thesis, University of Melbourne, 2006), for thorough discussion on this exhibition.

  51. 51.

    Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (Picador 2003), 61.

  52. 52.

    Roland Barthes Camera Lucida (Vintage 2000 (1980)) 26.

  53. 53.

    Ibid, at 27.

  54. 54.

    Duch Testimony Transcript of trial proceedings, 28 July 2009, 40; Chandler, supra note 4, at 27.

  55. 55.

    On authenticity and art, see Sontag, supra note 54, at 26–27.

  56. 56.

    Compare with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, where ‘curators found that they preferred so-called dirty photographs—those marred by scratches, dust, dirt, and generations of copying—that gave the photograph a badge of authenticity.’ Barbie Zelizer Remembering to Forget: Holocaust memory Through the Camera’s Eye (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998) 195.

  57. 57.

    Ibid at 42.

  58. 58.

    For a discussion on image and affect, see Alison Young ‘The Scene of the Crime: Is there such a thing as “just looking”?’ in Keith J Haywar and Mike Presdee (eds.) Framing Crime: Cultural Criminology and the Image (New York: Routledge, a GlassHouse book, 2010) 83–97; 84–85.

  59. 59.

    Ledgerwood, supra note 19 at 89.

  60. 60.

    Quoted in Court Report No 32, January 2011, 3.

  61. 61.

    Barthes, supra note 55, at 87.

  62. 62.

    Ibid, at 82.

  63. 63.

    Ibid, at 88–89.

  64. 64.

    Violi, supra note 1, at 49.

  65. 65.

    Hughes (2006), supra note 53 at 189.

  66. 66.

    Ibid at 189.

  67. 67.

    Hughes, (2003) supra note 46, 28.

  68. 68.

    Barthes, supra note 55, at 89.

  69. 69.

    Marianne Hirsch ‘Projected Memory: Holocaust photographs in Personal and Public Fantasy’ in Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe & Leo Spitzer (eds) Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present (Dartmouth College, University press of New England, Hanover, 1999) 2–23, 8.

  70. 70.

    Zelizer, supra note 59, at 187.

  71. 71.

    Sontag, supra note 54, at 29 and 89.

  72. 72.

    John Tagg The Burden of Representation, Essays on Photographies and Histories (Macmillan Education, London, 1988) 4.

  73. 73.

    Sontag, supra note 54 at 29.

  74. 74.

    e.g the CNN documentary Scream Bloody Murder. Also see Sontag supra note 54 at 60. I have discussed this further in Maria Elander ‘The Victim’s Address: Expressivism and the Victim at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 7 (2013) 95–115.

  75. 75.

    See Edkins discussing the implications of the attributes in Jenny Edkins, ‘Exposed Singularity’ (2005) 9(4) Journal for Cultural Research 359–386, 367.

  76. 76.

    Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia (1979).

  77. 77.

    Thion 1993 in Ledgerwood, supra note 19, at 89.

  78. 78.

    For a discussion see Ledgerwood, supra note 19 at 89.

  79. 79.

    Ibid.

  80. 80.

    Ibid. at 82 and 91.

  81. 81.

    Ibid at 82 and 83, building on Vickery’s Standard Total View.

  82. 82.

    Hughes, supra note 53 at 141.

  83. 83.

    DC Cam Searching for the Truth (2006, 3rd quarter) 18.

  84. 84.

    All common reasons for perceived ‘treason’. CIA/KGB came to mean any foreign agency and often had nothing to do with the US or Soviet.

  85. 85.

    Duch judgment, supra note 24, at 141.

  86. 86.

    For example, Lisa M. Moore, ‘(Re) Covering The Past, Remembering Trauma: The Politics Of Commemoration At Sites Of Atrocity’, Journal of Public and International Affairs Spring (2009) 53.

  87. 87.

    Manning supra note 6, at 2.

  88. 88.

    Ibid at 10.

  89. 89.

    See e.g. Kieran McEvoy, ‘Beyond Legalism: Towards a Thicker Understanding of Transitional Justice’ (2007) 34(4) Journal Of Law And Society 411–440.

  90. 90.

    Sontag, supra note 54, at 89.

  91. 91.

    On art and rhythm, see Giorgio Agamben, The Man Without Content (trans Georgia Albert, Stanford University Press, 1999): 59–63.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Peter Rush for his generous help with this chapter, Rachel Hughes for useful comments on earlier drafts, as well as to Dianne Otto.

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  1. Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia

    Maria Elander

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  1. Faculty of Law, University of Melbourne, Carlton, VIC, Australia

    Peter D. Rush

  2. Griffith Law School Griffith University, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

    Olivera Simić

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Elander, M. (2014). Education and Photography at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. In: Rush, P., Simić, O. (eds) The Arts of Transitional Justice. Springer Series in Transitional Justice, vol 6. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8385-4_3

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