Cambodian Genocide

Cambodian Genocide Documentation Program Established in January 1995 at Yale University under the directorship of Professor Ben Kiernan.  The aim of the project is to study the events that occurred during the period of Khmer Rouge rule, 1975-1978, so as  "to learn as much as possible about the tragedy, and to help determine who was responsible for the crimes of the Pol Pot regime."

The major resources available are four databases: bibliographic, biographic, geographic and photographic.  The bibliographic database holds more than 3000 items and can be queried with the aid of the search engine provided.  The other databases can also be queried with the aid of a search engine.  However, all this is not particularly useful for the non-specialist as the subject category associated with the bibliographic database does not appear to throw up many items.  Thus, torture (1), genocide (2), one of which was in Russian despite the fact that the query was for English-only titles, massacre (0), human rights (8) [accessed 30 July 2001]. It also appears, at least as far as the queries mentioned above are concerned, that when you query by subject, this defaults to title, as all the entries appeared in the titles. 

Much the same applies to the other databases: if you do not know place names, person names, name of family member, or record ID, it may prove difficult to retrieve much of interest.  It is possible in the photographic database to retrieve photographs by querying gender, age, and clothing, although it is not clarified what purpose is likely to be served by doing so.  

There is also a section on Readings, which includes a few online articles, advertisements for some books on Cambodia, and a few, very few in relation to the total number available, translations of documents.  

Perhaps the general user community could expect something better for the total amount of effort/resources expended. 

Cambodia: World Factbook 2001  [Geography, People, Government, Economy, Communications, Transportation, Military, Transnational Issues]

Cambodian History.  From Cambodia: A Country Study. R R Ross (ed.) Federal Research Division, 1987. [Portions most directly proximate and relevant to Khmer Rouge rule 1975-78]

The Khmer Rouge Cannon 1975-1979: The Standard Total Academic View on Cambodia. An Undergraduate Political Science Honors Thesis by Sophal Ear, University of California, Berkeley.