By MARK SPENCER
Courant Staff Writer (Hartford, Connecticut, USA)
For years, the nightmares kept Pholla Craveen from talking about her childhood experience of the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s.
She couldn't bear to relive it as she built a new life in the United States.
But on Tuesday, she marshaled her courage to speak in favor of educating young people in the state about genocide.
It is a modest proposal, contained in a bill that state Rep. Andrew Fleischmann, an education committee chairman said he will introduce this week. The proposal encourages schools to include in their curriculum "genocide education, including the scope and consequences of genocide."
Craveen gave a firsthand account to about 75 educators, students, legislators and anti-genocide activists in a room at the state Capitol in Hartford.
She was clearly nervous as she told the group that her father and a brother were two of about 1.7 million people killed, or 21 percent of the country's population, according to Yale University's Cambodian Genocide Program.
She stumbled over words as she recalled the trucks laden with the bodies of men, women and children, and walking through minefields at age 5 as she fled with her mother and remaining siblings.
She paused occasionally as she recounted her eight years in a refugee camp, where terror fell from the skies in the form of bombs, and where women and girls lived with the threat of rape.
It was not easy for Craveen, but she set aside her fears to deliver a message.
"The more people who know about the history of genocide, perhaps genocide becomes a thing of the past," she said.
A group of administrators, teachers and students in Danbury have already started that work in their school. In 2005, Tim Salem, assistant principal at Danbury High School, did a survey and was alarmed to learn that 85 percent of the students and faculty did not know of the genocide in Darfur, which has claimed the lives of 200,000 to 400,000 people.
Lena Negron, a senior at the school, said the media gives more attention to celebrities such as Britney Spears than Darfur.
The school has since produced two documentaries and has a group that does programs on genocide for schools and other groups.
Several groups, including Teach Against Genocide and the Connecticut Coalition to Save Darfur, have pledged to lobby aggressively for the bill. House Majority Leader Christopher Donovan also addressed Tuesday's meeting, promising to support the bill.
Supporters say awareness is the key to mobilizing a quick and powerful response when genocide occurs. The Rev. Tim Oslovich, now chairman of the Connecticut Coalition to Save Darfur, said he was unaware in 1994 that hundreds of thousands of people were being killed in the Rwandan genocide.
Carl Wilkens witnessed it firsthand. He was the only American aid worker to remain in Rwanda during the genocide and he came from his home in Oregon to address the gathering. He is credited with saving hundreds of lives, including those of children in orphanages, while risking his own.
He said genocide is perpetrated by those who take the view that "my world would be better without you and your kind."
Even though Wilkens had helped people in another time, in another country, Craveen rose from her seat to thank him for those who could not.
"I am one of the lucky ones," she said earlier.
Contact Mark Spencer at mspencer@courant.com.
She couldn't bear to relive it as she built a new life in the United States.
But on Tuesday, she marshaled her courage to speak in favor of educating young people in the state about genocide.
It is a modest proposal, contained in a bill that state Rep. Andrew Fleischmann, an education committee chairman said he will introduce this week. The proposal encourages schools to include in their curriculum "genocide education, including the scope and consequences of genocide."
Craveen gave a firsthand account to about 75 educators, students, legislators and anti-genocide activists in a room at the state Capitol in Hartford.
She was clearly nervous as she told the group that her father and a brother were two of about 1.7 million people killed, or 21 percent of the country's population, according to Yale University's Cambodian Genocide Program.
She stumbled over words as she recalled the trucks laden with the bodies of men, women and children, and walking through minefields at age 5 as she fled with her mother and remaining siblings.
She paused occasionally as she recounted her eight years in a refugee camp, where terror fell from the skies in the form of bombs, and where women and girls lived with the threat of rape.
It was not easy for Craveen, but she set aside her fears to deliver a message.
"The more people who know about the history of genocide, perhaps genocide becomes a thing of the past," she said.
A group of administrators, teachers and students in Danbury have already started that work in their school. In 2005, Tim Salem, assistant principal at Danbury High School, did a survey and was alarmed to learn that 85 percent of the students and faculty did not know of the genocide in Darfur, which has claimed the lives of 200,000 to 400,000 people.
Lena Negron, a senior at the school, said the media gives more attention to celebrities such as Britney Spears than Darfur.
The school has since produced two documentaries and has a group that does programs on genocide for schools and other groups.
Several groups, including Teach Against Genocide and the Connecticut Coalition to Save Darfur, have pledged to lobby aggressively for the bill. House Majority Leader Christopher Donovan also addressed Tuesday's meeting, promising to support the bill.
Supporters say awareness is the key to mobilizing a quick and powerful response when genocide occurs. The Rev. Tim Oslovich, now chairman of the Connecticut Coalition to Save Darfur, said he was unaware in 1994 that hundreds of thousands of people were being killed in the Rwandan genocide.
Carl Wilkens witnessed it firsthand. He was the only American aid worker to remain in Rwanda during the genocide and he came from his home in Oregon to address the gathering. He is credited with saving hundreds of lives, including those of children in orphanages, while risking his own.
He said genocide is perpetrated by those who take the view that "my world would be better without you and your kind."
Even though Wilkens had helped people in another time, in another country, Craveen rose from her seat to thank him for those who could not.
"I am one of the lucky ones," she said earlier.
Contact Mark Spencer at mspencer@courant.com.
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