Cambodian killing fields survivor encourages students to value family

Author and activist Loung Ung, speaks Tuesday morning at the OSU Newark Convocation. / Jamie Potts/ The Advocate

Sep. 20, 2011
Written by Abbey Roy
Newark Advocate Reporter

NEWARK — The first-time college students who attended convocation Tuesday at the Newark campus of Ohio State University might have been under the impression it was finally their year for freedom.

No more parents to come home to after class — commuters exempted — plenty of late nights out with friends, long-awaited independence from the sheltered life of the high school years.

Loung Ung’s keynote address might have made them want to cling just a little bit longer.

The author and survivor of the Cambodian killing fields — the extermination of roughly 2 million Cambodian residents, including Ung’s father, mother and two siblings, by the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979 — recalled in intimate detail her struggles as a child and lifelong search for peace.

She urged the students to strike a balance between studies, activities, friends and family.

“How blessed are you to be here?” she asked them. “How blessed are you to have family?”

Ung told them the story of her close-knit family when she was a child growing up in Phnom Penh; how, before the Khmer Rouge invasions, they would watch movies together and she would sit in her father’s lap. They didn’t have cupholders, but Ung’s father would automatically turn his palms up to hold her “junk food of choice” — fried crickets — when she tapped his arm to let him know she was finished.

The last time she would see him would be in 1976, when she was 5 years old, as he hugged her goodbye and walked into the sunset flanked by two soldiers.

That night, she prayed only that they would kill him with a bullet so his death would be fast and painless.

Not long after, Ung’s mother forced her and some of her siblings to leave home and never return — to spare their lives, though Ung didn’t understand it at the time.

She never saw her 4-year-old sister or mother again, Ung said, but “I am proud to be her daughter today.”

Ung told her listeners to cherish the moments they had to spend with their families.

“What I wouldn’t give to have an hour, to have a day ... to be with my mom, dad, sisters and brothers,” she said. “When you think about not reaching out to your families, I hope you remember my story.”

Ung also encouraged the students to take advantage of their time at OSU-Newark to pursue their talents and use them for peace.

After Ung, who emigrated to America at the age of 10, graduated from high school and college in Vermont, she traveled back to Cambodia more than 30 times. She became an activist against land mines, whose devastating effects she saw firsthand during her visits back to her homeland.

Even without traveling abroad, students have opportunities to pursue peace in their own way, Ung said.

“Peace is not an automatic. It is something we devote, we strategize, we count on a daily basis,” she said. “It is something we seek out.”

She asked the students to think about what peace looks like to them.

“In this environment, you have the luxury of finding what peace means to you,” she said. “When you find this, pursue it.”

Freshmen Kimi Bentley and Heather Kelly, both of Pickerington, attended the ceremony Tuesday and said Ung’s had been a poignant message.

“It’s nice to hear someone’s actual story,” Bentley said.

Kelly agreed. “I thought it was really good and informative,” she said.