A UNC-led study finds that 75 percent of Cambodians believe the
Khmer Rouge trials will provide justice and promote
reconciliation, but more than 87 percent of people old enough to
remember the torture and murder during the Khmer Rouge era say
the trials will rekindle “painful memories. A new study offers
insight, but sustains the paradox: more than 75 percent of
Cambodians believe the Khmer Rouge trials, formally called the
Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, will provide
justice and promote reconciliation, but more than 87 percent of
people old enough to remember the torture and murder during the
Khmer Rouge era say the trials will rekindle “painful memories.”
“Cambodians have high hopes that the Khmer Rouge trials will
deliver justice. However, they also have great fears of
revisiting the past,” says Jeffrey Sonis, M.D., M.P.H., an
assistant professor in the departments of Social Medicine and
Family Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill School of Medicine, lead author of