‘Then he realised the other one was a Victim, too.’ How Competing Victimhood Constructions in Cambodia’s Transitional Justice Process Impacts Reconciliation

In post-Khmer Rouge (KR) Cambodia there exists an official narrative, which allows almost anyone, including former KR members to claim victimhood, while at the same time, there are men and women in various communities who are confronted with the individual who perpetrated the crimes against them or their loved ones. Departing from this juxtaposition, the paper asks how different constructions of victimhood which are propagated in the Transitional Justice process of Cambodia influence the potential for reconciliation. The paper first identifies these competing constructions of victimhood with reference to Erin Baine’s idea of ‘complex political perpetrators’, before demonstrating how Transitional Justice experts in civil society intervene in this situation with various projects. These interventions are analysed regarding their aims in portraying perpetration and victimhood and discussed as to what this means for ‘reconciliation’ and inter-communal relations in the target communities and for the involved individuals. Finally, the paper discusses briefly what these post-conflict discussions of perpetration and victimhood mean for an understanding of the KR regime, agency during this time and what it could potentially mean for future violence prevention efforts. This paper contributes to a discussion on how competing memories of the past have manifest consequences for post-conflict dynamics.