State Violence in East Asia provides chapters on eight case studies concerning the uniformed military (sometimes out of uniform) turning its weapons on the home population. The editors focus on four issues: the rationale for the violence, the violence in public memory, the social healing process, and the connection between political transition and reconciliation. They argue that resolution of the violence can take the form of “retribution” (punishment) or “restoration” (reconciliation).
The case studies cover violence varying greatly in magnitude. The three worse cases occurred during regime change: the Khmer Rouge repression from 1975 to 1978 left 1.7 million Cambodians dead; the Indonesian counterrevolution from 1965 to 1968 took over half a million lives, and the Japanese military's policies caused the deaths of over 100,000 Okinawan civilians in 1945. In the midrange are the thousands of deaths in Myanmar/Burma in the 1990s and in Thailand's Phatthalung Province in 1972, and...