Cambodia has often been cast as a broken, amnesiac nation, unable to confront the memory of the horrors it experienced during the Khmer Rouge era.  How did these assumptions justify the establishment of transitional justice mechanisms such as the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)?  In what ways were the therapeutic claims of…

The system of enforced prostitution by the Japanese military went unpunished and unexamined for decades after the Asia-Pacific War.  International recognition only began in 1991 when Korean survivor Kim Hak-sun spoke out in graphic detail about her dark past.  In Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in Indonesia, University of Melbourne historian Kate McGregor…

In May 1980 the city of Gwangju in South Korea erupted in violence.  Shocked by the brutal suppression of student protests against the threat of renewed dictatorship, the citizens of Gwangju, South Korea’s six largest city, seized weapons, formed their own army, and liberated the city from government control. The euphoria created by this victory…

In 1964 the military seized power in Brazil, overthrowing the democratically elected government of João Goulart.  The military ruled Brazil for the next 21 years relying on increasingly repressive measures to retain its grip on power.  The most infamous decree, Institutional Act Number 5, known simply as AI-5, empowered the government to imprison and torture…

The wars that led to the breakup of Yugoslavia stretched across the 1990s unleashing a level of destruction and human devastation not seen in Europe since World War II.  The repercussions of the conflict were profound and can still be felt today.  Over 130,000 died and another 4 million fled their homes.  The predominantly Muslim…

The partition of British India was a two step process.  First in 1947, Pakistan and India became independent nations.  For over the next twenty years, however, a very uneasy relationship existed between the two culturally and linguistically very different wings of Pakistan—East and West Pakistan.  In 1971 war broke out leading to the creation of…

What made the Punjab particularly susceptible to violence at the time of partition was that it was one of the most militarized regions of British India.  The Punjab had historically contributed a disportionate percentage of the soldiers of British India.  Well over half of all recruits from British India during World War I and World…

The partition of British India was one of the most traumatic events of the 20th century.  The chaos that followed the creation of the nations of India and Pakistan in 1947 displaced over 14 million people and claimed the lives of another 1 million.  Some of the worst violence occurred in the Punjab, one the…

Nottingham Trent University historian Jenny Wüstenberg, author of Civil Society and Memory in Postwar Germany, argues that Berlin’s Topography of Terror Museum is emblematic of the dramatic transformation of Germany’s memoryscape beginning in the 1980s.  It was in the course of the 1980s that Germany pivoted from commemorating the German victims of World War II to the victims…

The beginnings of many nations are marred by traumatic histories.  This is certainly true for Turkey.  The modern Republic of Turkey began with the dispossession and even eradication of many of the ethnic and religious minorities who had lived for centuries within the borders of the Ottoman Empire.  The Armenian genocide is one of the…