ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author proceeds through sketches of the nearly 50 years of war, conflict, atrocity and genocide that Cambodia has experienced, though he have deliberately eschewed the chronological ordering of complex episodes in deference to the need to devote specific attention to political violence and flux prior to 1975 and the politics of genocide recognition after 1979 as substantive concerns in their own rights. One aspect of the violence suffered under Democratic Kampuchea that has only recently garnered full attention was its gendered distribution, dynamics and implications. The author offers both a background of events in Cambodia for unfamiliar readers, while preparing the ground for a wider analysis that reads appeals for justice, truth and reconciliation as politically contingent claims for memory. International isolation within the bifurcated Cold War political landscape and the prospect of further civil war with a coalition of Khmer Rouge and other anti-Vietnamese Cambodian factions exacerbated social reconstruction challenges.
