Oukoubah: Justice for the Cham Muslims under the
Democratic Kampuchea Regime

Ysa Osman
Cambodia: Documentation Center of Cambodia, 2002. 154 pages.

Imagine that a struggling revolutionary movement is promising paradise
after your defenseless country is unwillingly sucked into the maelstrom of
total war; that the revolutionary leaders are highly respected men and
women, many of whom were educated in the former colonial master’s
homeland; and that the ruler, who is credited with single-handedly achiev-
ing your nation’s independence and enjoys near-divine status among the

Book Reviews 103



masses, joins the revolutionaries after being overthrown and calls upon you
to do likewise. And then, full of post-victory idealism, imagine that you live
for three years, eight months, and twenty days in the horror that introduced
a new word into the English language: auto-genocide. Welcome to Demo-
cratic Kampuchea, whose ruling elite, the Khmer Rouge, targeted the
author’s people, the Cham Muslims, for extermination: “The enemies of
Angkar [the “Organization”] come in many categories, but the biggest ene-
mies are the Cham. The plan is to destroy them all before 1980” (p. 6).

This book is divided into five parts: “Introduction,” “S-21 Prisoner
Cases,” “Analysis,” “References,” and “Appendix.” The “Introduction” deals
with the controversial questions of how many Cham died under the Khmer
Rouge (from 77,000 to 400,000-500,000) and how many lived in Cambodia
before the Khmer Rouge took over (from about 250,000 to 700,000, the lat-
ter number being accepted by the Cham). Osman then moves on to how the
Khmer Rouge sought to destroy community solidarity: turning Cham against
Cham and children against parents, forbidding Islamic and Cham customs in
toto, destroying the Qur’an and the keitab (a book explaining the Qur’an),
making local leaders “disappear,” splitting up families during forced evacua-
tions, and resettling the Cham among ethnic Khmer and Chinese. He also
explains why he chose the thirteen case studies that make up the next part:
“…there is sufficient documentation for study and research” (p. 8).

“S-21 Prisoner Cases” presents information about thirteen Cham prison-
ers who died in S-21, the code name for Tuol Sleng, part of a former high
school complex that became the “crown jewel” of a nation-wide system of
concentration camps and torture centers. Each case is based on “confes-
sions” extracted under extreme torture (“[T]orture is used to get their
answers, not for entertainment. So make them hurt so they will answer
quickly.” p. 59, n. 225) and then cross-checked with survivors who had had
some contact with the deceased both before and during the Khmer Rouge
period, as well as with surviving family members or relatives. Each pris-
oner is identified by name, date and place of birth, parents and siblings, pro-
fession, and a brief life sketch until he ended up in the Khmer Rouge army
(through forced conscription), in S-21, and, finally, in a mass grave.

“Analysis” details the plan to turn Cambodia into “… a society of hap-
piness, equality, justice and true democracy, with no rich, no poor, no class
oppressors and no class oppressed, a society in which the people live together
happily in great national unity …” (p. 77). The method chosen was, to say
the least, unique: initiating forced population transfers from urban to rural
areas right after their 17 April 1975 victory; creating new social classes: “old
(base) people” who had lived under the Khmer Rouge before April 17 and

104 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 23:3



“new (April 17) people” who had been evacuated, and their various subcat-
egories; prohibiting private property, currency, markets, exchanges, and bar-
tering; and limiting (in practice, outlawing) traditional rights and freedoms
(e.g., observance of ethnic customs and religious practices, speech, travel,
personal relationships, and protest). Smaller sections are devoted to who
bears responsibility for the prisoners’ deaths, the rules they had to obey, why
and how they were arrested (usually implicated by someone being tortured
or through trickery), and similar matters. The final two sections deal with the
Khmer Rouge’s attempted elimination of Islam and ideological training for
the youth, who were regarded as “‘pure,’ having never been affected by the
reactionary influence of earlier societies” (p. 98) – and upon whom the
regime depended.

The “References” document the tertiary sources, the DC-Cam (Docu-
mentation Center of Cambodia) sources, the author’s interviews, and inter-
views by DC-Cam researchers and others. The “Appendix” gives information
about the number of Cham killed, who and how many of the Cham intelli-
gentsia were murdered, and other data.

The book has a few shortcomings. First, it seems to have been written
for those who are familiar with recent Cambodian history; there is no map,
no discussion of Cham history, how and why the Khmer Rouge came to
power, the sources of its murderous ideology, its leaders and what happened
to them, how Prince Sihanouk helped them to power, and why Washington
supported the Khmer Rouge for twelve years after Vietnam drove them from
power on 7 January 1979. Second, no “confessions” by female Cham pris-
oners are included. While the full list of Cham prisoners is provided, due to
the Cham penchant for truncating Muslim names and then spelling them
phonetically, the reader cannot even ascertain if there were any female Cham
prisoners at S-21.

Osman acknowledges the third problem: “Given the experience levels
of DC-Cam researchers, we do not strictly apply the standard social research
hypothetical-deductive methodology. … Cambodian schools as yet do not
inculcate a culture of learning that respects individual critical thinking and
writing. Aspiring Cambodian scholars also face a severe lack of library
resources, both in quantity and quality” (p. 149). Since the Khmer and the
Cham intelligentsia were largely “disappeared” and Cambodia remains one
of the world’s poorest countries, this situation is hardly surprising.

All of that aside, however, this is a valuable book simply because it lets
the Cham speak for themselves. Thus, it does not become lost in theorizing
and speculation. Osman and his informants know what they are talking about,
because they lived – and survived – a holocaust that will always remain

Book Reviews 105



largely incomprehensible to an outsider. One hopes that more such Cham
narratives and analyses will follow, and that their quality will improve.

Jay Willoughby
AJISS Managing Editor

Herndon, Virginia

106 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 23:3