Anti-genocide slogans to be hung in Cambodian schools

Tuesday 22 June 2010
(AFP)

PHNOM PENH - Anti-genocide slogans encouraging youngsters to study the legacy of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime are to be hung in high schools across Cambodia, organisers of the project said Tuesday.

The Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which collects evidence of Khmer Rouge atrocities, said it would start hanging the government-approved messages in 1,700 schools from January.

"This is to remember and to study daily ... so that the students know we have this history," said the centre's director, Youk Chhang.

Referring to the communist movement's name for their 1975-1979 regime, one of the slogans reads: "Learning about the history of Democratic Kampuchea is to prevent genocide."

Even though five Khmer Rouge leaders are being held by a UN-backed genocide court, many young Cambodians are unaware that up to two million people died through overwork, starvation and execution under the brutal regime.

More than 70 percent of Cambodia's 14 million people were born after the Khmer Rouge were ousted in 1979 and, as the topic is sensitive among elites who were involved with the regime, little about it has been taught in schools.

Last year Cambodia unveiled its first textbook about the Khmer Rouge regime and began distributing about half a million copies to high schools.

The genocide court in Phnom Penh is scheduled to deliver its first verdict on July 26, in the case of former prison chief Duch -- the first Khmer Rouge leader to face international justice.

Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998. The joint trial of four other senior regime leaders is expected to start in 2011, while the court is considering whether to open cases against five other former Khmer Rouge cadres.