‘We vowed by force, not by our heart’: men’s and women’s perspectives on forced marriage during the Cambodian genocide

While many of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime during the Cambodian genocide have been well documented, forced marriage remains poorly understood. This article documents the perspectives of women and men who experienced forced marriage under the Khmer Rouge, using primary data from interviews with 28 women and 30 men. The interviews reveal the profound violence, coercion and threats that surrounded the experience of forced marriage, with similarities and differences in the experiences of men and women. In addition, drawing upon participant narratives, we highlight the three ways in which forced marriage was used to advance the unique socio-political and ideological goals of the Khmer Rouge. First, forced marriage was a used as a mechanism to both secure absolute loyalty to the regime, and further the Khmer Rouge’s goal of an agrarian revolutionary order. Second, forced marriage was used to systematically dismantle families of origin, while simultaneously constructing a ‘new’ family, representing the regime itself. Finally, forced marriage appeared to be a channel through which the next generation of loyal members of the Khmer Rouge regime could be assured through procreation. We conclude with a discussion of the gendered and intergenerational implications of our findings.