Khmer Rouge Re-Visit

Om Po and I: sharing laughter while recalling my childhood's trial and tribulation.

The house where I used to live in.

The site where my father was cremated in the compound of Wat Ponlear Chey.

Pu Phy, The man whose oxen I looked after during the Khmer Rouge's era.

The temple of Wat Ponlear Chey.

One of the Best Moments in My Life

Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Story by Chanda Chhay
Originally posted at http://cambodianchildren.blogspot.com/

After 33 years, I have finally had an opportunity to revisit Phum Ponlear Chey again, a place where my family was exiled during the Khmer Rouge’s era. I spent about 3 years living in Ponlear Chey during my early teen. For those of you who have read my book: War and Genocide, Ponlear Chey was one of the places which held many secrets in my life. Anyway, I just wanted to share with you what it was like to return to visit a place where the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror made a lasting impact in my memory.

My visit to Ponlear Chey was unplanned. While on my way to Siem Reap, I made an impromptu decision to visit Phum Ponlear Chey, which is located about 5 kilometers north of National Highway 6 in Staung District, K. Thom Province. My initial intention was to just drive through the village and return to Highway 6 to continue on my journey to Siem Reap. However, after reaching Wat Ponlear Chey, a place where my father was cremated in 1977, I decided to go visit his cremating site to pay respect to his spirit. It was a somber place. The site where my father was cremated remains almost exactly the same as it was 33 years ago. While I was wandering around the pagoda’s compound, an elderly man came up to me and called out my older brother’s name. Because I look similar to my older brother, the old man mistook me as him. So I introduced myself and inquired about his identity. The old man’s name was Phy, and it turned out that I used to look after his oxen, Ah Popeal and Ah Kaek, during my stay in Ponlear Chey. I spent about half an hour talking with Pu Phy, making some inquiries about my childhood friends. To my absolute surprise, I learned that Om Po, the host whose house we lived in during our sojourn in Ponlear Chey, was still alive. So I asked Pu Phy to take me to visit with Om Po.

SRP MP Ho Vann arrives home

SRP MP Ho Vann (Photo: Sok Serey, RFA)

31 October 2009
By Sok Serey
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Socheata
Click here to read the article in Khmer

SRP MP Ho Vann returned back to Cambodia in the evening of 30 October, following the Phnom Penh municipal court decision to drop the defamation charge leveled against him. The charge stemmed from a lawsuit brought up by 22 high ranking RCAF officers against him.

Phnom Penh SRP MP Son Chhay told RFA on Friday 30 October that Ho Vann returned home to serve the Cambodian people following a few months of absence.

Son Chhay said: “I believe that it is a reasonable time for Mr. Ho Vann to return back to fulfill his role as Phnom Penh MP.”

Sok Serey: The representative of the 20 or so officers did not appeal?

Son Chhay: We don’t know if they will appeal or not.

General Khieu Sopheak, spokesman for the ministry of Interior, said that Mr. Ho Vann should not worry about his personal safety.

Khieu Sopheak said: “Come back, there is nothing! Unless the police receive a letter from the court, then we will do our work accordingly, but we have nothing at all.”

Sok Serey: So, he is a regular citizen, he has no charge against him, right?

Khieu Sopheak: First, he is a regular citizen, but it looks like he did not receive his immunity back from the National Assembly yet.

Chan Soveth, an official for the Adhoc human rights group, said that the National Assembly should return the immunity back to Mr. Ho Vann.

Chan Soveth indicated: “In particular, our National Assembly, the President of the NA should think and make the court [requests for the] return the immunity to Mr. Ho Vann, the SRP MP, so he can serve his constituents again.”

It is not yet known when the NA will return the immunity back to Mr. Ho Vann.

Ho Vann returned to Cambodia after the Phnom Penh municipal court decided to drop the defamation charge against him on 22 September because the court did not find that he did anything wrong as he was accused by the 22 RCAF officers.

SRP MP Ho Vann and Mu Sochua saw their parliamentary immunities lifted on 22 June so that they can face the court. Following that lifting, Mr. Ho Vann left for self-exile in June.

22 RCAF officers sued the 62-year-old Ho Vann, as well as reporters for The Cambodia Daily newspaper because Ho Vann gave his comments to the newspaper on 21 April in which he criticized the diplomas received by these 22 officers for their education in Vietnam as being valueless and lacking quality.

Two reporters for The Cambodia Daily, Nao Vannarin and Kevin Doyle, were ordered by the court to pay 4 million riels ($1,000) each for repeating defamation information.

Cambodian Homecoming

Davik Teng shows her scar from heart surgery after returning from Long Beach. (Peter Chhun)
L-R Davik Teng and her sister, Davin Teng, reunited in their village in Cambodia following a successful heart surgery for Davik in California. Photo By Peter Chhun for the Press Telegram
L-R Sin Chhon, mother and Davik Teng meet the King of Cambodia, Norodom Sihamoni after returning from Long Beach, California following a successful heart surgery for Davik. Photo By Peter Chhun for the Press Telegram
Sin Chhon, mother and Davik Teng Photo by Peter Chhun for the Press Telegram
Sin Chhon, mother and Davik Teng returned to their village in Cambodia and found the front wall had blown off their hut.

07/24/2008
By Greg Mellen, Staff Writer
Long Beach Press Telegram (California, USA)

Davik Teng got one last shiny bauble to put in her memory chest before returning to her tiny village in Cambodia.

The 9-year-old girl, brought to the United States by a Long Beach nonprofit for life-altering heart surgery, met Cambodia's king, Norodom Sihamoni, July 20 in a special audience in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

The king spent 40 minutes, well beyond the scheduled 15, with Davik, her mother, Sin Chhon, members of Hearts Without Boundaries and others in an 11-person group.

Peter Chhun, president of Hearts Without Boundaries, said the audience was an immense success.

"(The king) praised us for our work to save poor and suffering children," Chhun said. "I promised we'd continue."

The king donated $1,000 to Hearts Without Boundaries and offered future support.

The king also gave Sin and Davik gifts and some money.

According to Chhun, the meeting was big news in the local press and a 15-minute news piece was devoted to it on national television.

Chhun, who returns to Long Beach Saturday, says the trip has been busy as he searches for another child in need of medical treatment.

In October, Chhun plans to return with surgeons from UC San Diego and Variety Children's Lifeline. It was during his trip with this group last year that Chhun first met Davik. Variety Children's Lifeline provides medical services to children with treatable, survivable heart ailments in developing countries.

If there is another child in need of more help than they can provide, Chhun hopes to have a deal in place with an American hospital to bring over another child.

Before Chhun could think of the next child, however, he had to close the books with Davik and Sin.

That meant reuniting them with Davik's older sister, Davin Teng, and returning them to their village of Svay Chrom.

Chhun said about 40 to 50 villagers showed up at the family compound to greet the mother and child and the crowd swelled to more than 100.

To celebrate the homecoming, Chhun arranged for local monks to hold a ceremony to bless Davik's "new soul."

Later, Davik obliged villagers by showing her surgical scar.

"The people were stunned," said Chhun.

"I'm so happy to see her back," Chhun says an elder told him. "At one point I thought she'd never come home."

Davik appeared to take her return to the village in stride and Chhun said soon "it was like she never left.

"After changing clothes she went right away and joined her cousins and played," Chhun said. "I'm sure she had a lot to tell them."

For the mom, the return was not quite so blissful.

Chhun says after tearful greetings, Sin walked slowly to her small bamboo hut. Most of the slats that make up the front wall of the structure had come off in the recent rainy weather exposing the inside and the family's meager belongings.

As Sin placed a suitcase onto the raised area that is the family's floor and sleeping place, Chhun says she whispered "I feel like Davik and I have returned to the wrong place."

Chhun said he reminded her of the purpose of the journey.

Davik was discovered suffering from a heart ailment known as a ventricular septal defect. The quarter-sized hole in her heart caused it to work inefficiently and left her struggling to breathe, weak and unable to attend school.

Although the ailment is routinely repaired in the United States, it requires open heart surgery and use of a heart-lung machine. Sin had failed in attempts to have her daughter operated on in Cambodia and resigned herself to watching her child die young.

Dr. Vaughn Starnes, the surgeon who repaired the heart, said Davik may have survived into her 30s without treatment, although the condition would have progressively worsened.

Now, after the surgery, Davik is expected to live a full life without complications.

"Your journey to find a cure for your daughter has ended with great success," Chhun says he reminded Sin as they stood near her dilapidated hut. "You have been a great and strong mother and I want you to continue to be strong and raise your two daughters. Now you start a new chapter of your life. But you can do it knowing Davik will be healthy."

At that point, Sin's eyes still filled with tears, Chhun says she looked up and said in soft voice, "Thank you so much for your help."

HOW TO HELP

Hearts Without Boundaries is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that brings Cambodian children with life-threatening ailments to the United States for treatment and supports poor and suffering children in Cambodia. The group helped Davik Teng get her heart surgery.

It can be found online at heartswithoutboundaries.org, via e-mail at
PeterChhun@heartswithoutboundaries.org or LuckyChhuon@

heartswithoutboundaries.org, or by calling Peter Chhun at 818-640-6191.

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

Crowds hit the road to mark Cambodia’s New Year holiday

Monday, Apr 14, 2008
AFP, PHNOM PENH

Thousands of people crammed onto buses and cars, some clinging to roofs and spilling out of doors, as they headed out of Phnom Penh yesterday for the Buddhist New Year holiday.

The three-day holiday — also celebrated in Thailand, Myanmar and Laos — gives thousands of Cambodia’s transient workers a rare chance to spend time with family, leaving the normally busy capital unusually empty.

“This is the only chance I have to visit my parents, and I am so excited,” said 22-year-old Sun Srey Pov, who left her hometown in the east to work in a Phnom Penh garment factory.

“It is a pleasurable time, although it is hard to travel,” she said while trying to elbow some room in a 12-seat minibus, which was packed with 20 people inside and five hanging off the roof.

In Phnom Penh, elderly women dressed in traditional costume carried food to give to monks at pagodas. The younger generation pursued different traditions — spraying each other with talcum powder, playing street games and dancing to loud music.

But the practice of throwing water and talcum powder on passing motorists has been discouraged by the government.

A truck with a megaphone patrolled the streets, warning that the practice could cause traffic accidents.