The youth for a country, 2011
Invited in November 2011 to the Photo Phnom Penh festival at the French Institute, Malik Nejmi photographed a rehearsal of The Youth for a Country, a theatrical reconstruction of the mass massacres perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge until the fall of the regime.
The show was commissioned by Prime Minister Hun Sen for the party of the Cambodian People’s Party, the pillar of a corrupt political system. The former Khmer Rouge petty commander, who fled to Vietnam to escape the purges that were tearing the regime apart, managed to impose himself at the top of the state after its fall by dint of intrigue and power grabs, and dramatized his role in the defeat of the Khmer Rouge.
To legitimize his power,” observes activist Kek Galabru, ”Hun Sen wears the defeat of the Khmer Rouge and the salvation of the nation to the bone.
The Olympic Stadium in Phnom Pehn, where the show takes place, was one of the execution sites for officials of General Lon Nol’s “Khmer Republic”, the US-sponsored authoritarian regime overthrown by the Khmer Rouge in 1975.
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