DATABASES
We apologize for the inconvenience this situation may have caused and we appreciate your patience. Nous nous excusons des inconvénients que cette situation a pu vous causer et vous remercions de votre patience.
HISTORY OF DATABASE: The Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) uses four databases to catalog our documentary materials and to facilitate our research. Much of the information in these databases comes from our archives, which contain hundreds of thousands of pages of documents related to the Khmer Rouge and the history of Democratic Kampuchea between April 1975 and January 1979. We have collected documents from Tuol Sleng museum, the Cambodian Ministry of Interior, the National Archives, and a number of other sources, and our staff has catalogued hundreds of thousands of pages. Our archives include many documents from the 1975-79 period, including official Khmer Rouge correspondence, biographies of Party members and arrested persons, prisoner confessions, notebooks of Khmer Rouge cadres, photos of Party cadres, films, tape recordings, Party magazines, other publications, and maps of Democratic Kampuchea. We also hold materials dating from the pre-1975 period, including documents from the Lon Nol regime, and from the post-1979 era, such as interview transcripts from survivors of the regime, victim petitions from the 1982-83 period, and many other written or recorded materials.
We catalog information from these documents and enter them into biographic, bibliographic, photographic, and geographic databases. These four databases are DC-Cam’s authorized copies of the Cambodian Genocide Databases, which are copyrighted property of Yale University’s Cambodian Genocide Program (CGP). The Cambodian Genocide Databases are the products of collaboration between DC-Cam, the CGP, and the University of New South Wales. In 1995, the CGP founded DC-Cam as a field office in Phnom Penh, and we began work on document and data collection and entry, sending files to the University of New South Wales for entry into the databases pursuant to a sub-contracting agreement between the CGP and UNSW. DC-Cam became an independent Cambodian institute in 1997 and continued to collaborate closely with CGP and UNSW on development of the databases until our formal program drew to a successful conclusion in September 2001. Together, we collected, catalogued and entered 2,963 bibliographical records, 10,690 biographical records, 5,190 photographs from the former Tuol Sleng Prison, and a wealth of geographic information on the locations of mass graves, genocide memorials, and former Khmer Rouge prisons in Cambodia.
Since September 2001, we have modified these databases to present the information in a different form and to include new information. The CGP retains copyright over the organizational structure of the databases and content entered before September 2001, and we at DC-Cam are grateful for the opportunity to supplement our copies of the databases and to modify their visual presentation. For example, we have added 19,752 records to our authorized copy of the biographical database, and we are continuously adding new information to this and other databases.
DC-Cam has copyright over these additions and modifications. We have attempted to note the proper copyright on each of the records in our versions of the databases and continue to enjoy productive cooperation with the CGP.
An overview of each of our databases is as follows: 1) Biographic Database – 30,442 biographies are catalogued in this database. They are biographies of victims (ordinary citizens), KR commanders, cadres, soldiers, medical staff, messengers, militiamen, and other KR members, including those imprisoned and tortured in Tuol Sleng (S-21) prison.
2) Bibliographic Database – This database contains 2,963 records entered by DC-Cam and CGP. The records consist of confessions collected from prisoners detained in the Khmer Rouge prison at Kraing Tachann in Takeo province, as well as other sources. They include: interviews, books, articles, primary documents. In the near future, DC-Cam will add more information from our “D-collection” of documents, which include 24,184 books, newspaper articles, confessions, Khmer Rouge notebooks, telegrams and other documents.
3) Photographic Database – This database contains 5,190 photographs of prisoners from Tuol Sleng (S-21) prison in Phnom Penh. In the future the database will be updated as DC-Cam adds more photographs relevant to the Khmer Rouge regime and genocidal activities committed between 1975 and 1979.
4) Geographic Database – The geographic database contains information collected during systematic survey and mapping of Khmer Rouge era prisons, execution centers, and mass graves. Global positioning and geographic information systems (GPS and GIS) technology is used to collect and plot the digital information.
Since 1995, DC-Cam has surveyed and mapped 170 districts across Cambodia. DC-Cam has created a detailed, accurate map of KR security offices, killing sites, and mass graves, as well as Cambodia’s genocide memorials. The mapping project aims to map and detail all genocide sites, and serves as a crucial resource for historical research and legal inquiry. Based on an ISIS search engine, each database functions separately and can be searched for biographic, bibliographic, photographic, and geographic information. The biographic database contains biographies of Khmer Rouge personnel as well as prisoners. The bibliographic database lists Khmer Rouge documents, and references, books, and research papers about the Khmer Rouge era. The photographic database can be searched for photos of Tuol Sleng (S-21) prisoners and Khmer Rouge personnel. The geographic database contains location information and figures and accounts of mass graves, prisons, and memorials.
