Life after the killing fields

A shrine in Phnom Penh contains bones of some of the 1.7 million victims of the Khmer Rouge. Photograph: Chor Sokunthea/Reuters

Monday September 1st 2008
The Guardian Weekly (UK)

"After liberation Cambodia was ruled by soldiers and uneducated people. The poor became rich and powerful, and the educated people were left with nothing ... But I believe the fruit will never truly sink. It will always rise back up. It just takes time."

Thirty years after the reign of the Khmer Rouge, during which Cambodians were forced into labour camps and an estimated one-fifth of the population exterminated, one man gives his account of what happened. Yous Sopanha, 41, now lives in a suburb outside Phnom Penh and works as a tour guide. He recounts the years of killing and starvation that claimed the lives of most of his family

I was born in 1967 and brought up in Phnom Penh. My father was a government lawyer – an "intellectual". He used to be a farmer, like his father before him, but he worked hard and eventually became a lawyer. My mother was a nurse.

When I was growing up I only spoke French. I went to a French school and my parents planned to send us to France to study. We used to be one of the richest families in the city.

Then, in 1975, everything changed. The Khmer Rouge captured the city and drove us into the countryside to work. My family and I went to live in my father's province near Kampot. The Khmer Rouge wanted to kill my parents, but they escaped because someone warned them.

Then, one morning I got up and they weren't there. I didn't know where they'd gone. When I asked my grandmother she started crying and told me they had run away because the organisation was after them. They had taken my youngest brother and sister but not me or my eldest siblings because they thought we were old enough to give the Khmer Rouge information if they forced us to.

I watched from a banana tree as they took my grandmother away. They blindfolded her, tied her up and hit her. They said: "You! You cannot tell us where your children are, so I have to take you instead!" Then they killed her.

Even though I was only 10, 11, 12 years old at the time, the Khmer Rouge forced me to work in one of their mobile units – work camps that moved around the country, fulfilling the need for rural labour. There were separate camps for men, women and children. Whole families were split up during that time. They separated me from my siblings; I didn't know where they were, or if they were still alive.

I hated the mobile unit and always tried to escape. I used to run away back to my grandmother's village and stay there until they came to find me. They always found me, and when they did they would arrest me and take me back to the work camp.

Once, they punished me by hanging me by my neck from a tree. My feet were just 5cm from the ground. They questioned me and just when I thought I was going to die they let me down again.

The walk back to the village from the work camp was about 20km, and I would always do it at night so as not to be seen, but I was never scared. The situation at the time forced me to do it. But if you asked me to do it now, I wouldn't.

One day, when I had run away from the mobile unit, I decided to go up into the mountains instead of going back to the village. I stayed there for two months, surviving on fruit and small frogs that I would catch from the river and eat raw. I would sleep wherever I could – on the ground, in a shed, wherever. Sometimes I got sick, but there was no medicine. I was lucky: I always got better. I survived.

The hills were only 5km from my village, and I used to creep down at night to steal food from the houses. The Khmer Rouge grew corn and nuts at the foot of the mountain so I would steal from them also.

Once, I went down to the place where they cooked for all the people and I found a big bucket of raw beef. I was so hungry I ate it all. A couple of months later I felt something coming out of my mouth as I was eating. I didn't know what it was. I pulled and pulled. It was a worm – three of them. That was from eating the raw meat. I cried.

From the hills I could watch what was going on below. I could see soldiers and people running from the village. Even I ran once. I didn't realise the soldiers had come from Vietnam. I didn't know how close we were to the border.

After the liberation of Cambodia, in 1979, I returned to the village to find my family. I met my aunt and my other brother and sister. We were so happy to be together again; we ate so much food.

The Khmer Rouge was in power for three years, eight months and 20 days. My family spent three years of that time apart.

We decided to go back to our home in Phnom Penh. We harvested some rice to take with us as we didn't know if there would be any food when we got there. I carried a lot of rice on that journey – everybody did, because we knew we were going to have to rely on it to survive.

When we got to Phnom Penh there was nobody else around. We were among the first people to return and it was like a ghost town. There were no markets, no money, nothing. They had even killed the monks. Our house had been destroyed; there was rubbish everywhere, and burned cars in the streets. We used to be one of the richest families in Phnom Penh, but now we had nothing, not even paper and a pencil to write with.

In Phnom Penh, we were reunited with our mother. My father didn't survive the war; the organisation killed him. I lost a hundred relatives in total. I lost my father, my uncle and his whole family, my grandfather and grandmother.

My mother decided she couldn't stay in the city any more – it held too many bad memories for her – so she moved to a town 60km away, near the Vietnamese border, and sent me and my six brothers and sisters to live in an orphanage. I don't blame her. She couldn't take care of us any more. Her nurse's salary wasn't enough to survive on. We had nothing to eat. We lived off rice, corn and the roots of banana trees. When there was no rice we lived off water lilies. We weren't allowed to talk about food.

The war had created thousands of orphans, and the government collected them all up to live in one place. Because my mother was a widow and worked as a nurse for the government, they allowed us to live in the orphanage, too.

My mother came to work in the orphanage and eventually she became the head. She looked after all the children and everybody called her "mum". So I had thousands of brothers and sisters. Even now, many of them still go to visit her. Most of them joined the army, but not me. She advised me not to. She said: "We are an educated family. You have to continue to study and work hard. That's the only way to survive." So that's what I did.

During communist times it was very hard to pass the high school diploma – only a small percentage of students got through. But I was one of them. I went on to study history and philosophy at Phnom Penh university, where I met my wife. She was in the same class as me. We got married in 1995 – the same year that we graduated. It took a long time to get in to university because the education system was corrupt and you had to pay a bribe to get in. After graduation I got my teaching certificate and taught culture, civilisation and history at a local high school.

My teaching salary wasn't enough, so I got a job with an NGO called Cambodia World Family, teaching literacy and numeracy in rural areas within Cambodia. Because of the war, at that time only around 50% of the population could read or write. I also taught prisoners in Phnom Penh jail, and members of the Khmer Rouge. I taught them literacy, Buddhism and human rights, and provided them with microcredit. These people were killers, and we taught them about sin and the meaning of life. Everybody is the same – we all have the right to live.

Now I work as a tour guide in Siem Reap, but it isn't well paid, and there's so much corruption in the country that it doesn't matter what qualifications you have – if you have the money, you get the good job. I had to pay $1,800 just to get my license. When it's busy, I have to work every single day.

In Cambodia, the husband must look after the wife's family, so I have a lot of responsibility. I have to provide for my wife's parents, my sister-in-law and her two children, six orphan girls whose father was killed in the war, and my only son. Twelve of us live together in a small house. We all sleep on the floor in the same room.

Most men would run a mile from my situation, but I don't care. I love my family so much I would do anything for them. When I get home from work I do the washing, the cooking, whatever needs to be done. I'm a good cook – I learned from my mum.

I have many health problems, but I have to be strong for my family. It doesn't matter how I'm feeling, I have to go to work.

Things are better in my country now than they were before. Over the past 10 years – since we've been rid of the Khmer Rouge completely – it has slowly become more developed. We have the freedom to go wherever we please, even at night – something we couldn’t do before. And the country is peaceful. But the biggest problem is corruption: we waste millions of dollars each year on it. And the people cannot challenge those in power. If anybody has a problem with the police or the government, they always lose the case in court. Human rights are only on paper. I don't trust politicians, which is why I don't vote. They all seem to be the same.

If my father were still alive, things would be very different for us. We used to be the richest family here, but now we are poor, just like everybody else.

We have a proverb in Cambodia: "The fruits have sunk to the bottom and the stones have floated to the surface." That's how we describe the state of our country. After liberation Cambodia was ruled by soldiers and uneducated people. The poor became rich and powerful, and the educated people were left with nothing.

But I believe the fruit will never truly sink. It will always rise back up. It just takes time.

• Yous Sopanha was talking to Katie Monk.