Cambodia govt launches Khmer Rouge map app
LAST MODIFIED: 11:19 AM, February 05, 2019

The department of Media and Communication (DMC) at the Royal University of Phnom Penh has launched a mobile app and website – Mapping Memories Cambodia (MMC) – to help the public, especially young people, learn about the important locations associated with the Khmer Rouge regime.

Students at DMC spent a year investigating the sites and interviewing survivors of the Pol Pot regime. The app marks significant locations from that time on a map and guides users to where historical events happened.

MMC enables users and survivors to submit their stories to the project team, allowing the ongoing collection of testimonies and mapping places of remembrance throughout Cambodia.

It sheds light on individual memories of everyday lives during the Khmer Rouge regime that seldom emerges in the common historical narrative, creating space for public commemoration.

Users can read and listen to stories told by survivors, experts and historians in the multimedia format through articles, short documentary films, podcasts and photo galleries.

The project aims to educate today’s generation on issues such as arranged marriage, forced labour on large dam projects, religious abuse and the Khmer Rouge’s foreign policy.

At the launch ceremony on Saturday, MMC project manager Chan Muyhong said the app and website were created by students at DMC with support from the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) and factual verification by the Documentation Center of Cambodia.

She said the team will continue to work on the project to add more content and “make it even more special and interesting”.

“Students, like many Cambodian people, use digital technology like smartphones and tablets to get information from the media. Therefore, it was obvious that it would be a convenient option to choose a smartphone app to communicate issues regarding the Khmer Rouge regime,” she said.

Chan Muyhong said the app and website are bilingual, with multimedia stories available in Khmer and English.

“Similar to Facebook, anyone can add comments to a place they are interested in or provide additional information about the location,” she said.
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