01234
Promoting gender equality and improving access to justice for female survivors and victims of gender-based violence (GBV) under the Khmer Rouge regime
was implemented by Victims Support Section (VSS) in cooperation with the Transcultural Psychosocial Organization (TPO). Four main projects were implemented:
Memorial to Victims of Khmer Rouges at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum
(by the ECCC/VSS and Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts)
Community Peace Learning Center in Kraing Tachan Takeo Province
(Youth for Peace (YfP))
Healing ceremonies
(local initiative)
A.
Access to justice and victim participation
For female survivors, in particular GBV victims, criminal justice is essential to deal with the past. For Cambodian society and the international community, criminal justice is equivalent to the end of impunity which has prevailed in cases of GBV over centuries. VSS and TPO ran a series of activities to support female survivors and GBV victims, including:
- Facilitating GBV and female civil parties’ attendance at the ECCC to enable them to follow the trial directly
- Conducting civil party forums and meetings to provide legal updates and psychological support to GBV victim-survivors and female civil parties
B.
Raising awareness and advocacy
- In order to raise awareness about gender and increase support to victims, VSS has worked with youths, government officials, NGOs, and the public:
- Radio live show programme “Women in the Khmer Rouge Regime”, broadcast
monthly on FM 102, discusses various aspects of women’s experiences in conflict,
including GBV, psychosocial consequences, and civil parties’ participation at
the ECCC.
- The website www.gbvkr.org and Facebook page were created to document the
impact of the entire project and to disseminate information to young generation
- Meetings were held with relevant government institutions to seek support for victims of gender-based violence during the Khmer Rouge and solutions to the present impacts.
- Participation in the 16-Day Campaign to End Violence against Women and International Women’s Day.
C.
Psychological Interventions
Many GBV survivors suffer from mental health problems that hinder them from fully engaging in social, political and professional fields. Psychosocial support is indispensable when working with GBV survivors. TPO developed a series of new and innovative interventions in the Cambodian context in response to the needs of Khmer Rouge survivors:
- Self-help group is a psychological intervention that brings a group of women with
the similar background of GBV in the past together to share their experiences,
find support from each other in order to contribute to a healing process
- Counselling and medical treatment are provided to a number of civil parties with severe trauma and other forms of mental health problems
- Testimonial therapy is an innovative approach that combines individual truth-telling with a public ceremony during which suffering is acknowledged
- Research on “Idiom of Distress” is conducted and documented
D.
Capacity building
Training courses and workshops on gender sensitivity and psychological effects are conducted to build capacity to employees of ECCC and NGO partners working with victims of gender-based violence.
The construction of a stupa in Tuol Sleng Museum was an important request by Civil
Parties and Victims Associations in Case 001 which, unfortunately, could not be
granted by the judges of the ECCC. To fill this gap, the VSS implemented this project
under its mandate as a Non-Judicial Measure project.
The stupa together, with the Golden Book (with all names of the victims who
perished at S-21 Security Centre) serves to remind future generations about what
has happened during the Khmer Rouge regime and significantly contributes to the
memorialization process in Cambodia.
All survivors of the S-21 prison, all victims of the Khmer Rouge regime, as well as the
next generations and all visitors (Cambodian and international) benefit from the
stupa in finding a place on the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum to commemorate and
pray and to show respect to the victims of the Khmer Rouge regime.
The Community Peace Learning Center project (CPLC) was developed to involve the
communities of Kraing Ta Chan of Takeo province in transforming their negative
past into a positive future by converting existing mass killing sites by the Khmer
Rouge Regime into places of commemoration, remembrance, dialogue and
education.
exhibition room and library. Existing memory initiatives (mostly stupas and religious
ceremonial halls) are integrated into a larger framework of site preservation. The key
actors such as local authorities, educators, religious leaders, victims-survivors, young
people, and civil party were empowered and engaged in the CPLC.
A civil party mobilised a community to conduct a mourning ceremony for their
relatives who perished under the Khmer Rouge. VSS supported and participated
in the ceremony.
