PHNOM PENH (Reuters) – Cambodia called on US media group VICE to retract an article featuring freshly colored photos of Khmer Rouge victims ‘Killing Fields’, saying the images were an insult to the dead because some mugshots had been changed to add a smile.
At 12:00 GMT Sunday, the article was later no longer available from the VICE.com website.
In the article published Friday, artist Matt Loughrey said his project to color images from the infamous Tuol Sleng prison, or S-21, was intended to humanize the 14,000 Cambodians who were executed and tortured there.
However, the article caused a backlash on social media after comparisons to the original black and white photos showed that some subjects only laughed in Loughrey’s color images. The VICE article did not contain the original images.
“Playing with technology to make up the victims of S21 … is a very serious insult to the souls of the victims of #genocide,” exiled Cambodian politician Mu Sochua wrote on Twitter.
The Cambodian Ministry of Culture has released a statement calling on Loughrey and VICE to remove the images.
“We urge researchers, artists and the public not to manipulate any historical source to respect the victims,” the ministry said.
Loughrey, who said in the VICE interview that he had worked with the victims’ families to recover the photos, declined to comment when he reached out to Reuters.
VICE also did not respond to a request for comment, but added a note from the editor on Sunday, before the article later disappeared from the site.
“It has been brought to our attention that the restored portraits published in this article have been modified in such a way that they can no longer be colored. We are reviewing the article and are considering further action to correct the record, ”he said.
Youk Chhang, director of Cambodia’s Documentation Center, compared the changes to rewriting history. An online petition demanding the article be removed resulted in thousands of signatures.
At least 1.7 million Cambodians died during the extremist Khmer Rouge terrorism in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.
Reporting by Prak Chan Thul; Written by Kay Johnson; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky