A thirst for justice delayed
In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge killed 2 million people in Cambodia’s “killing fields,” roughly a quarter of the population. Today, 80 percent of Cambodians say they’re victims of the regime, including half of respondents too young to have lived under it, but nonetheless affected by it. The results of the survey, conducted by Harvard researchers Phuong Pham and Patrick Vinck, illustrate the depth and breadth of the impact of the Khmer Rouge’s bloody four-year reign. They also highlight the importance of trials under way today, called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, to prosecute those who participated in the massacre. “We have people say: ‘We want to know what happened to our family,’” said Pham, a research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI). “They’re all gone, missing. People want to know what happened to them.” Pham and Vinck, also a research...