PRESS RELEASE: The Extraordinary Reunion of Father and Sons 36 Years Later

The Extraordinary Reunion of Father and Sons 36 Years Later

Dr. Sorpong Peou, KR Survivor and Chair of the Politics Department of University of Winnipeg, Enterpreneur Phyrun Peou, and Family are Miraculously Reunited with their Father Nam Peou, an Official of the Khmer Republic, Who Climbed Out of a Mass Grave after the KR Killed Him in 1975

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PRESS RELEASE
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PHNOM PENH, 8 June 2011:  On 1 June 2011, Dr. Sorpong PEOU and other family members were reunited with their 86-year-old father for the first time in 36 years, since that fateful day in April 1975 when the Khmer Rouge came for their father, Mr. PEOU Nam, an official in the Ministry of Interior of the Lon Nol’s Khmer Republic, while the family of nine (parents and seven children) was celebrating Khmer New Year away from their Battambang home in border-crossing town of Poipet in Banteay Meanchey Province. 

Bound and blindfolded, Mr. Peou was whacked behind the neck and pushed into a mass grave.  

Mr. Phyrun Peou recounts his father’s story:  “The Khmer Rouge soldiers tied him up and led him to the jungle where he was executed, not once but twice. They hit the back of his head with a hoe and threw his body into a big hole and then other bodies on top of him. The next day, he gained consciousness and crawled out from below the dead bodies and escaped to the bushes nearby. The way the Khmer Rouge tortured him was worse than what they did to animals, and they beat him - with his hands and feet tied in a small cell - until he became unconscious, for at least 10 times. He also lost his nails because of the torture. One time, they bound him under a tree and let ants bite him.  He was also forced to watch Khmer Rouge executioners beat other prisoners to death.”

The Khmer Rouge took him for dead,  so did his family: his wife Chea Vath, the oldest son Sorpong and his siblings Phyrun, Ratana, Sorpech, Chola, Sambath, and Sambo who all survived the KR regime and moved to Ottawa in September 1982 as refugees and prospered there in their new life as Canadians.

Mr. PEOU Nam, however, gained consciousness in the grave and managed to push aside the dead bodies stacked on top of him and climb out.  He survived the Khmer Rouge years and began searching for his family members.  After years of wandering alone, half-crazed with amnesia and begging for a living, Mr. Nam Peou was taken in by a compassionate family in Kampot.  He gave up any hope of finding his family and agreed to the new family’s offer of their daughter in marriage and subsequently became the father to an additional six children.

Meanwhile, the newly-minted Canadian Peou family prospered in their new country.  Sorpong Peou obtained his Ph.D and moved to Singapore in January 1995 until March 1999 when he was offered first an Associate followed by a Full Professorship at Sophia University in Japan where his own family stayed for another 11 years, before returning to Canada in August 2010 to become the Chair of the Politics Department of the University of Winnipeg.

On Christmas Day 2009, Dr. Sorpong Peou dreamt he was alongside and conversing with his father as if he was alive.  Independently, Dr. Sorpong Peou’s younger brother entrepreneur Phyrun Peou had his own premonitions of his father’s current whereabouts.  After many intense, animated family conversations and piecing together their personal supernatural experiences, Phyrun decided personally to canvass the Thai-Cambodian border with thousands of posters of the one photo the family has of Mr. Nam Peou before 1975.

Mr. Phyrun Peou found his father through a miraculous incident in November 2010 in Poipet at the same location where the KR forcefully separated the father from the family in 1975. 

Mr. Phyrun Peou recalls:  “One day I came to a small town near Thai border, called Poipet, where he used to work before in 1975. In this town, I handed out 1500 flyers. Many people told me that they saw an old man, a beggar, who resembled the man in the only old photo of my family has with us all these years and also resembled me. Finally, I met an old man who was a beggar in a market - not too far from my hotel.”

After repeated denials due to loss of memory, incredulity and many tests from the family in Canada, Mr. PEOU Nam finally was convinced he is the father to Sorpong, Phyrun, Ratana, Sorpech, Chola, Sambath and Sambo.

Mr. Phyrun Peou reflects further:  “My father kept insisting ‘You are not my son. My children were all dead, a long time ago’. He told me that his wife and children had died and that he even forgot their names. Having denied that he was my father, the old man left me to go back to his home - about 525 km from where I met him. He only told me that something had caused him to come to the border for the first time, to where he used to live and work, given that he had been sick for almost ten years and hardly could walk, and that no one could stop him from going there. After 3 minutes of our meeting, he started crying so bitterly, with deep pain, but he didn’t know why. He said ‘when I saw you, it reminded me of something about the past...something that reconnected the two of us, perhaps from the previous life. I met hundreds of people every day, but I never cried; and it didn't give me any pain or remind me about the past. But only you, why? why?’"

Mr. Phyrun Peou continues:  “After talking with him for about an hour, we said good bye. The next day I went out searching for my father, as usual, with the hopes that I would see another old man - not the last old man I met the day before – the man who would look more like my father 35 years ago. For some strange reason, I met the same old man again, unexpectedly, in a local market where people were giving him some money. So I gave him some money too, and I invited him for a drink at a place nearby. As soon as he sat down and looked at me in the face, he started to weep again, for about half hour before he could talk to me. The atmosphere was covered with sadness and quietness with wondering, which made me and other surrounding people had tears, for seeing him in such an emotional deep pain. He said the same thing to me, ‘When I saw you, I was reminded of something about the past... something that connected you and me, perhaps from the past life or this life. I met hundreds of people every day, but never cried; it didn't cause me any pain or remind me of my past. But only you, why? Why?’"

AKRVC is honored to have such distinguished members as Dr. Sorpong Peou and Mr. Phyrun Peou joining our Victims Association in addition to the distinguished four who joined us earlier this week from the local community: Ms. OM Chantha, Mr. CHEA Mab, Ms. NUON Sarum, and Mr. HEM Sovannarith.

Dr. Sorpong Peou is in Cambodia until June 10.  His younger brother Mr. Phyrun Peou who found their father is here in Cambodia through September.

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For more information, please contact:

-  Dr. Sorpong Peou, Chair of Political Science Department, University of Winnipeg: +855.788.97.300 or s.peou@uwinnipeg.ca

-  Mr. Phyrun Peou, Entrepreneur: +855.788.77.079 or phyrun_peou@yahoo.com

 

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The Association of Khmer Rouge Victims in Cambodia—the first association based in Cambodia to be registered with the Ministry of Interior and the first to be recognized by the ECCC Victims Support Section and independent of any political or religious affiliation—is a network of survivors of the 1975-79 killing fields who are joined in the fellowship of suffering, in the demand for justice, and in the work for a just peace. The members of the Victims Association are from overseas and spread across the provinces and capital of Cambodia, coming together as a result of the public forums conducted by its Founder, and now its president Ms. Theary C. SENG and Victims Outreach Manager Mr. SOK Leang since 2007. They include widows and orphans; former child soldiers and former prisoners; hard-working farmers and middle-class city-dwellers; well-known actresses playwrights, authors and journalists; as well as teachers, translators, security guards, taxi drivers, inter alia. Among the other members of the Victims Association is the Civil Parties of Orphans Class, a special grouping pre-dating the AKRVC founding when introduced officially in the Pre-Trial Chamber hearing of Nuon Chea in Feb. 2008, and since officially recognized by the ECCC Victims Support Section and a party to the Extraordinary Chambers Case File No. 002 against the senior Khmer Rouge leaders.

www.akrvictims.org