Tuesday, 22 April 2008

Genocide museum to be built in Cambodia

Radio Australia

A genocide museum is to be built in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, to chronicle human rights crimes and mass killings carried out by the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s.

The museum, to be built with $US2 million in funding from the United States, is expected to feature a permanent exhibition on the 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge regime, during which up to two million people died of overwork and starvation, or were executed.

The museum's curator will be Youk Chhang, who currently heads the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which collects evidence of Khmer Rouge atrocities.

He says the museum, with an associated library and research centre, should open in 2010.

"We want to help prevent genocide from happening. Genocide is happening all over the world in this new century," he said.

"By building this museum, we focus on showing genocide in Cambodia, but what we are doing is not only for Cambodia, but also for humanity."

The Khmer Rouge's notorious Tuol Sleng torture centre in Phnom Penh has already been turned into a museum.

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