Kerry Kennedy's letter to her twin daughters about her trip to Cambodia

Dear Friends,

I recently returned from Italy, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and Cambodia, where we produced performances of Speak Truth To Power, worked with students on human rights issues, and launched the education program in schools.

Below is a letter I sent to my daughters about the Cambodia portion, which I thought you might like to read.

All the best,

Kerry

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Dear Cara and Mariah,

Upon arrival into Phnom Penh and immediately after lunch at the FCC, we took a tuk-tuk ride in a roundabout way to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, only to be nicely distracted and greeted by Sambo at Wat Phnom. Here, the newly minted teenager, ever engaging Michaela Kennedy Cuomo lavishing kisses on Sambo as mom, Kerry Kennedy, memorializes the moment (Phnom Penh, 22 Feb. 2011).

Michaela and I are on the way home to New York, but our hearts are in Cambodia. We stepped foot into our first tuc-tuc (a cart attached to a motorcycle), grateful for the cool breeze as the driver weaved through one motorcycle hosting four saffron-robed monks and another boasting a family of six -- mother, father and four children. We travelled north on Preah Sisovath Boulevard in Phnom Penh, past the convergence of the serene Tonle Sap River and the gentle Mekong, laden with graceful fishing boats to our right, while to our left the street and sidewalks teamed with shopkeepers, tourists, and busy locals scurrying in every direction.

We saw students learning computer skills, printing and welding at the Don Bosco Center, and visited an orphanage called Children’s Village in Siem Reap. We saw old friends, like Speak Truth To Power defender Kek Galabru, and met new ones whose courage is also breathtaking, like women’s rights activist Mu Sochua and the great teachers’ and garment workers’ union organizer Rong Chhun. (Garment workers are sometimes paid not in cash, but in tee-shirts, which they must then pay someone to sell to tourists at the market, at the pre-bargaining price of $2.00 each.) We discovered delicacies like deep-fried duck tongues and our much loved “fish amok,” but we missed sautéed tarantula, a local favorite. We met government officials and diplomats, donors and doers, survivors of the genocide and students hard at work, ready to create a more just and peaceful future.

There are no words for the agony of Toul Sleng (meaning, “Strychnine Hill”), the school-turned-death-camp during the Khmer Rouge period, when 1.7 million of Cambodia’s 8 million people were slaughtered or starved. Others escaped into refugee camps. Millions of survivors who lost loved ones were internally displaced. In Cambodia, there was no Allied victory, and Khmer Rouge officials still hold high government posts. At Toul Sleng, prisoners were repeatedly tortured and coerced into naming family members and close associates, who were in turn arrested, tortured, and killed. Targets included those suspected of working for the previous government or of being educated -- soldiers, government officials, academics, doctors, teachers, students, factory workers, monks, engineers, or anyone wearing glasses (glasses indicated a person educated enough to read and, therefore, murder).

Our tour guide, Van Nath, was one of six survivors of Toul Sleng, allowed to live, he explained, because he was an artist and keenly skilled at creating idyllic sculptures of Pol Pot. His paintings of his experiences in the camp are haunting depictions of waterboarding, executions, electric shock and other horrors. His willingness to stay in that death chamber day after day and tell the stories of so many lost lives, is an almost incomprehensible tribute to the commitment to memory -- memorializing the agony shared by an entire generation of Cambodians.

When actors from nine countries took the stage to depict the human rights heroes from Speak Truth To Power, every word resonated in a way that we didn’t fully appreciate until the play began. Presented at Pannasastra University with actors from the diplomatic corps, the drama brought to the fore the universality of many of the struggles which Cambodians face today, and the triumph over abuse. The day before, Theary Seng organized a seminar which set the stage, with representatives from the human rights, government, academic, NGO, and diplomatic communities -- a rare occurrence in the capital city. The path is now cleared for the distribution of the education packet, now undergoing translation and review before the pilot program commences by year’s end.

On our last evening, one survivor, a government minister, spoke about hovering with his family in Phnom Penh, and sacrificing the meager portion of salt -- sometimes all the food they had for days -- in order to place it in the empty battery casings of their dead radios. They prayed for confirmation that the rumors they’d been told that the Americans would save them from the genocide were true. They believed that the Americans, who had bombed their capital in order to stop the North Vietnamese, would not abandon the people who sacrificed all in order to support the United States. But that help never materialized. He lost most of his nine siblings under the Khmer Rouge. When I mentioned that I’d seen advertisements for National Geographic’s new documentary on Henry Kissinger, this minister replied, “He is a war criminal, and should be brought to justice.”

On our last day, we visited Angkor Wat, one of the great wonders of the world. But I must admit I was more taken with the Bayon, a nearby temple devoted to happiness. Thirty-seven towers rise from the earth, most with four faces, one on each side of the apex, all expressing joy -- joy in this land where collective pain is pervasive, and yet people forge ahead, with uncommon determination. In a country of 7 million, there are 3,000 NGOs, the base of a vibrant civil society, which is the envy of the region. Yet every day during our stay, the newspapers ran front-page stories documenting dissatisfaction with U.S. and U.N. officials who raised human rights concerns. Reflecting on our brief journey while gazing at those beneficent smiles, I thought about our work ahead. Through Speak Truth To Power, we will take the stories of the defenders to the schools. And we will help the next generation create a just society so that simple joy can be shared not only by the gods, but by mere mortals.

With all my love,

Momma