In recent weeks, the world has been debating about the possibility of prosecuting Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot for the war crimes that he and his followers committed in Cambodia's "killing fields." Meanwhile, work at Yale documenting those atrocities has won additional support from the U.S. government.
The State Department has approved a $1 million grant to help finance the Cambodian Genocide Program's work at Yale and in Cambodia for the next five years. A previous grant for $500,000 lapses this year.
The Cambodian Genocide Program (CGP), which is based at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, is an ongoing research project that has documented and released information on the Internet detailing atrocities committed under the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, 1975-79. Up to 2 million Cambodians are believed to have perished under that regime.
The letter from the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor announcing the grant said: "We view the project as highly successful thus far, and believe it important that the program be enabled to complete its task of investigating, documenting, and analyzing the Cambodian genocide." The project has also received support from the Henry Luce Foundation, Inc., the goverment of the Netherlands and the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies.
"We are grateful for this recognition of our achievements on the part of the State Department," says Ben Kiernan, director of the CGP and associate professor of history. "The information we have made public on the Internet represents the largest collection of data so far assembled on Khmer Rouge violations of human rights, and includes a large amount of previously unknown material,"
The CGP's World Wide Web site (www.yale.edu/cgp), which went online in January, is the product of two years of intensive documentation work funded by grants from the U.S. State Department, the Australian government, and several private foundations. The site is divided into four data bases, augmented by a bulletin board that includes photographs and extensive excerpts from a secret diary of the former foreign ministry, headed by Ieng Sary 1975-79.
Craig Etcheson, who has been acting director of the CGP during Professor Kiernan's sabbatical this spring, notes, "The new grant will allow us to greatly expand the amount of information available to governments who may wish to pursue legal sanctions for Khmer Rouge crimes against humanity."
He adds: "It is a particularly timely and important grant, in view of recent declarations by United Nations' envoys to the effect that they expect to soon receive a formal request from the Royal Cambodian Government for the establishment of an international criminal tribunal to pass judgment on the crimes of the Khmer Rouge."