High-school history text divides Cambodians
Instead, the book will be assigned as a supplementary source and used by the Cambodian Ministry of Education to produce a less controversial work on the same topic.
A History of Democratic Kampuchea, written by 26-year-old Khamboly Dy, provides a warts-and-all assessment of the rise and fall of the Pol Pot regime. It was published by the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent organization that specializes in Khmer Rouge history, with funding from the Soros Foundation and the National Endowment for Democracy.
The government-appointed committee that reviewed the text criticized it for identifying specific members of the Khmer Rouge and focusing too much on the post-1979 Cambodian civil war. Explaining the reason for his veto, one member of the committee argued that history “should be kept for at least 60 years before starting to discuss it.”