[Cambodian-American] LB students persevered

AWARDS: Many of the 2009 scholarship winners overcame struggles to succeed.

06/05/2009
By Greg Mellen
Staff Writer
Long Beach Press Telegram (California, USA)

LONG BEACH - When Rada Hong steps to the lectern today he'll tell his story. Hong came to the United States in 2000 with his family as a 14-year-old immigrant from Cambodia.

He went to the Khmer Parents Association for help in English, which he couldn't read, write, nor understand. In 2009, Hong graduated from UC Berkeley with dual degrees in nuclear and mechanical engineering.

Today, he tells his story to about 100 Southeast Asian seniors and their families, who are expected to attend the 2009 Southeast Asian Scholarship Awards at Cal State Long Beach.

The event, annually sponsored by the KPA, is co-hosted this year by the Nisei Student Relocation and Commemorative Fund.

A group of nisei ("second-generation" U.S.-born descendants of Japanese immigrants) created the fund to pay tribute to the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council, an organization of religious groups and educators that had helped nisei students leave the internment camps during World War II to pursue college educations.

Each year, the group picks a community in which to give out college scholarships to children of refugee and immigrant families and in 2009 Long Beach is the choice.

Because of the Nisei fund, 30 students from the community will receive $35,000 in scholarships ranging from $2,000 to $500.

They will be kids like Hong, who overcame his obstacles to graduate from Long Beach Poly in 2004 with honors, earn a bachelor's in business management economics from UC Santa Cruz and went on to Berkeley, where he now does research in nuclear thermal hydraulics. To continue the legacy of KPA, Hong also teaches SAT preparation to students in San Francisco.

Dean Toji, who teaches at Cal State Long Beach and helped organize the event, says he was impressed by the applicants.

"I really admire them," Toji said. "Most are low-income and quite a few have a parent missing or disabled, and they've worked really hard. "

Today's event is free and open to Long Beach Southeast Asian graduates from the class of 2009. In addition to the scholarships, there will be door prizes, including a flat-screen computer monitor, digital camera, scientific calculator and gift cards and vouchers.

The event is from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Student Union at Cal State Long Beach. A reception catered by Sophy's Restaurant follows.

greg.mellen@presstelegram.com

FORUM: Testimonials from the Long Beach gathering may be offered to war crimes tribunal

Cambodian emigres share pain

FORUM: Testimonials from the Long Beach gathering may be offered to war crimes tribunal.

03/21/2008
By Greg Mellen, Staff Writer
Long Beach Press Telegram (California, USA)

LONG BEACH - The pain is never far below the surface for Cambodian refugees. Their shared history informs much of what they do and how they see society.

While the recollection and sharing of survivor stories is nothing new, especially in Long Beach, it remains relevant and vital to recovery for individuals and the community.

The memories of the atrocities of the Killing Fields genocide of the late 1970s still run deep and few in Long Beach's Cambodian community escaped without being profoundly affected.

On March 29 at Cal State Long Beach, survivors and those interested in Cambodian social issues will be convening in a daylong event called "Shared Suffering, Shared Resilience: A Critical Dialogue Forum and Film Screening."

The event will have an added layer of relevance as testimonials and discussion may be relayed to the international tribunal in Cambodia that is currently prosecuting alleged perpetrators of the Killing Fields atrocities.

"Many Cambodian refugees say they feel helpless and victimized and unheard by the international community; now here's your chance (to be heard,)" said Leakhena Nou, an assistant professor of sociology at Cal State Long Beach and organizer of the event.

The Open Society Justice Initiative, which has a watchdog group monitoring the international tribunal being conducted by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, will have a representative at the forum and will receive and review transcripts from the day.

A representative from the State Department's Office of War Crimes Issues may also attend.

Tracey Gurd, an associate legal officer with Open Society, says the event provides a rare opportunity for refugees in the U.S. to be heard in Cambodia, which really hasn't reached out to emigrants during the tribunal process.

Gurd said that by sharing experiences and giving feedback, Long Beach Cambodians can be engaged in the trial.

Nou, who is also the founder of the nonprofit Association for Social Research Institute of Cambodia which is sponsoring the forum, said this could be the first in a series of similar events both in the United States and overseas.

Nou and her nonprofit have been talking to Cambodian groups in Lowell, Mass.; Oregon; Virginia; and Washington, D.C., about presenting similar programs and seeing what patterns emerge in the Cambodian refugee experience.

The Cambodian-American professor, whose family was able to emigrate before the Khmer Rouge rose to power, stresses that her event is not at all political.

"This is an academic and public event," she said. "It has nothing to do with putting down the current regime."

Rather she says, it is a chance for Cambodians to begin redefining their history and their identity and moving past the suffering to solutions and reconciliation.

The all-day CSULB event will feature discussion panels with both younger and older Cambodians, cultural presentations by Cambodian artists and performers and a screening of the documentary film "Bombhunters" by Skye Fitzgerald.

"The experiences (of Cambodian refugees) have defined their current existence and their future, both positively and negatively," Nou said.

What matters, she says, is "how they use it as a basis to move forward."

greg.mellen@presstelegram.com, 562-499-1291

To Touch the Soul: Make Art/Stop AIDS in Cambodia

Film screening and Q&A with filmmakers.

Sunday, May 04, 2008
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Fowler Museum of Cultural History
UCLA Campus
Los Angeles, CA 90095

"To Touch the Soul"
(2007, 70 minutes, color, English)

In January 2005, Cal State University Long Beach art education professor Carlos Silveira took twenty-seven of his students to Cambodia, where they worked alongside students from a local university to conduct art projects involving impoverished children affected by HIV/AIDS. While grappling with issues including cultural differences and language barriers, the group learned the true meaning of kindness, selflessness, courage, community and social activism. The documentary features a mix of diary voice-overs and interviews with Carlos, his students and their young charges, and highlights the growing problem of AIDS orphans in Cambodia. A Q & A with Carlos Silveira, Teresa Hagen (producer), and Ryan Goble (director/editor) follows the screening.

Co-sponsored by the Fowler Museum of Cultural History in connection with the "Make Art/Stop AIDS" exhibit through June 15.

Cost: Free and open to the public.
Special Instructions
Parking at UCLA costs $8.

For more information please contact
Barbara Gaerlan
Tel: 310-206-9163
cseas@international.ucla.edu
www.international.ucla.edu/cseas/

Sponsor(s): Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Fowler Museum at UCLA
Asia Institute • 11288 Bunche Hall • Los Angeles, CA 90095-1487
Campus Mail Code: 148703 • Tel: (310) 825-0007 • Fax: (310) 206-3555
Email: asia@international.ucla.edu

Genocides haunt survivors

02/13/2008
By Kevin Butler, Staff Writer
Long Beach Press Telegram (California, USA)

LONG BEACH - Phansy Peang lost her family, including her children, during the massacres of the Khmer Rouge in her native Cambodia.

Years later, Peang, 60, still is haunted and suffers depression, occasionally dreaming of her children that perished.

"It's lucky for me that I can see them in my dreams," she said.

Peang was among three survivors of genocidal regimes that shared their harrowing stories during a panel discussion Wednesday, part of a human rights forum at Cal State Long Beach.

The three-day President's Forum on International Human Rights, which concluded Wednesday, focused on "Modern Genocides and Global Responsibility."

Mariana Francisco, a Mayan woman who survived mass killings in Guatemala in the 1980s, described how she witnessed tortures and executions while serving as a nurse in her native country.

At least 200,000 Guatemalans died or disappeared as a result of the military's effort to suppress the Mayan population, whom government officials accused of harboring communist sympathies during a civil war.

When she was 8, she witnessed her brother's kidnapping by troops to force him to join the army, she said.

Some boys from Mayan villages who were conscripted into the army later wielded weapons against their indigenous community, she said.

Lillian Black, who spent seven months as a prisoner in the Nazi-run Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland, described how her family was forcibly moved to a ghetto and then placed into crowded train cars.

Upon arriving at the concentration camp, Nazi guards separated the passengers into two lines - in one stood her parents, in the other Black and her sister.

Black and her sister, who also survived, never saw their parents again.

The Nazi guards cut off her hair, gave her clothes and wooden shoes and later made her break stones as a slave laborer.

Early on in her time in the camp, Black, then 14 years old, did not realize mass executions were occurring.

She asked another person in the camp what had happened to her parents.

"She said, `Do you really want to know? Look over there where the fires are. That's where they are,"' Black said.

Black, 77, transferred to another camp and liberated by the U.S. military, said she has struggled with feelings of guilt at having survived. Her distress once caused her to visit a psychiatrist.

"He said, `You know, you have a right to live, it's OK,"' she said.