When did people begin to understand what happened during the Cambodian Genocide?
No one knew exactly what happened until decades later. When the movie “The Killing Fields” came out in 1984, many of the atrocities were illustrated and people began to realize just how serious it was. Had you done work on Cambodian issues prior to graduating from college? Yes. I interned with researchers in the Cambodian Genocide Program at Yale the summer of my junior year in college. The last year of the grant (2001), I worked with the Program’s director, Susan Cook. From 1997-2003, the UN was negotiating with the Cambodian government to form a tribunal to prosecute the Khmer Rouge, which received a lot of national attention. I wrote a research paper that kept track of the negotiation process. That’s how I was discovered. Helen Jarvis, the adviser to the Cambodian government and a crucial person in the negotiation process, knew Susan Cook. Through her, Helen got to know my work. In January of 2003, when the negotiation team from Cambodia came to the UN in New York, I got to work wit
