Cambodian TV show reunites families separated by Khmer Rouge

A flimsy wall is all that divides Moung Ramary and the father she has never met (second from right) as she talks with the host on stage. (Photo by Brendan Brady.)

21 August, 2012
PRI's The World (Public Radio International, USA)

In 1975, the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia and began a four-year experiment in social reordering. To destroy traditional authority, the regime split families apart. Two million Cambodians perished, but some missing loved ones were never found. Now, a Cambodian reality show is reconnecting family members.

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A new Cambodian reality show is reconnecting family members separated by the brutal Khmer Rouge, and doing it all in front of cameras.

The show is called "It's Not a Dream." It encourages viewers to send in their stories of missing loved ones. Some of those who write in get their stories read on TV and a lucky few are reunited with their families in front of a live audience.

It's a gimmick, but that's not a problem for Moung Ramary.

"I saw the program on TV that finds lost family members, many of the families they reunite are so excited," she said.

Cambodia: Reality TV Reunites Families Torn Apart by Khmer Rouge

Moung Sokhem (second from left) reunites with estranged children Ramary (left) and Sokhoeun (right in black suit) (Photo: Brendan Brady)

Harnessing the emotional trauma of one of the 20th century’s most tragic episodes—a nearly four-year ultra-Communist revolution that left a quarter of Cambodia’s population dead— the reality TV show “It’s Not a Dream” is jarringly raw.

June 20, 2012

By Brendan Brady / Phnom Penh

Time Magazine (USA)

The television host asked Moung Ramary about her estranged father as cameras zoomed in on her anguished face and panned across the studio audience. Ramary, who today is a photogenic and expressive 33-year-old woman, was in her mother’s womb when, in 1979, in the days after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, her parents separated, she explained to her inquisitor. As the host teased out tears by prodding her to talk about her sorrowful childhood, the father she had never met was just a few yards away, hidden by a wall but watching her talk through a live video feed. Harnessing the emotional trauma of one of the 20th century’s most tragic episodes—a nearly four-year ultra-Communist revolution that left a quarter of Cambodia’s population dead— the reality TV show “It’s Not a Dream” is jarringly raw.

Three months earlier, Ramary was flipping through channels when she came across the television program on which she would soon appear. “I started watching and saw how they helped people find lost family members so I decided to call in,” she told TIME the day before her reunion. The show, which airs on the Cambodian network Bayon, debuted in 2010 and is modeled on a program in neighboring Vietnam that reunited family members who were separated during the country’s years of civil strife in the 1960s and 1970s. Most people in the Cambodian version were separated during the Khmer Rouge’s rule from 1975 to 1979, during which some two million Cambodians died from starvation, overwork or execution. The regime often forcefully split families as part of a wider policy to destroy traditional bonds. It also banned schooling, religion, and any other belief system or institution it deemed a threat to its authority. By the same Orwellian logic, they frequently arranged marriages between strangers to ensure their union was purely procreational.

Fortune Brings a Family Together, 36 Years Later

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVZlHQri_9o

The family celebrates their reunion with friends at a party in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.(Photo: by Pin Sisovann)

Wednesday, 12 October 2011
Say Mony, VOA Khmer | Phnom Penh

“I wept when I embraced him. I’ve never known my father.”

Never in her life did Chhea Vat imagine she would have such an occasion: meeting her husband again after 36 years.

The 73-year-old Cambodian-Canadian had always thought her husband, Peou Nam, was killed when soldiers of the regime took him away, so many years ago.

“I never imagined this meeting before, because I thought the Khmer Rouge never left their captives alive,” Chhea Vat said in a recent interview in Phnom Penh, where her family had found him at long last.

Peou Nam was a soldier in Lon Nol's government, a target for execution by the Khmer Rouge. He has seven children with Chhea Vat.

TV show reunites families torn apart by KRouge

Cambodian Sem Savoeun (2nd L) talking during an interview with her aunt (L) next to her at a studio of the commercial station Bayon TV in Phnom Penh. Photo courtesy: AFP

Cambodian Saing Va (R) crying and hugging his daughter Sem Savoeun (C) as Sem's aunt cries (L) at a studio of the commercial station Bayon TV in Phnom Penh. Photo courtesy: AFP

Cambodian Sem Savoeun (R) talking during an interview at a studio of the commercial station Bayon TV in Phnom Penh. Photo courtesy: AFP

Cambodian Sem Savoeun (R) talking during an interview at a studio of the commercial station Bayon TV in Phnom Penh. Photo courtesy: AFP

By Sor Chandara

PHNOM PENH, August 9, 2011 (AFP) - The cameras were rolling and a studio audience looked on but the emotional reunion of a daughter and her father, torn apart 30 years ago by Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge regime, was no act.

Sem Savoeun sobbed as she embraced the father she thought was lost forever on the new Cambodian hit reality show "It's Not a Dream". And she did not mind the intrusion -- in fact without the programme, she said they never would have met.

"I tried to find my dad but I never had much hope. I never expected this moment," Sem, 42, told the slick young host of the popular show, in an episode that aired on commercial station Bayon TV in July.

"I feel overjoyed to have a dad again."

Hun Xen warned his kin not to perform misdeeds

The Hun clan

29 Dec 2009
By Leang Delux
Radio France Internationale
Translated from Khmer by Tola Ek

Hun Xen took the opportunity of the Hun clan family reunion that was held in the evening of 27 December to give a lecture to his children, nephews and nieces, telling them not to perform misdeeds in order to avoid backlash when he quits power.

In a discussion during the Hun clan reunion on Sunday evening, Hun Xen used severe words to lecture his children, nephew and nieces and he told them not to perform misdeeds to the society by using their uncle’s power as PM.

Four generations of the Hun clan, including more than 100 members organized a reunion at the Intercontinental Hotel in the evening of 27 December. The huge gathering is the first of its kind for Hun Xen’s family and it was broadcasted on television networks throughout the country.

In a discussion with his kin, Hun Xen warned them, especially his nephews, that he will use the law against them should they take advantage of being the relative of a PM to act illegally. On the other hand, Hun Xen lectured them to help poor people according to their means.

Hun Xen indicated that the day he leaves power, his kin and his nephews and nieces will become attack targets. Hun Xen reminded his kin about the historical event that took place during the fall of the Lon Nol regime where sons and daughters of powerful officials of the Lon Nol regime were pointed out by the people to the Pol Pot soldiers. However, some children of government officials received help from the people and their identity was hidden because of the good deeds they performed.

Kem Sokha, President of the Human Rights Party, believed that it is the opposite of what Hun Xen claimed. Kem Sokha said that according to his personal experience, love or hate for relatives of a country leader by the people depends on the action of that leader when he was still in power.

Hun Xen’s family out of touch with the Cambodian people?

The clan of the thieves of the Nation

Hun Sen gives a moral lesson to his relatives

28 Dec 2009
By Nhim Sophal
Cambodge Soir Hebdo
Translated from French by Tola Ek

Hun Xen offered a moral lesson to his kin and he urged them to be more involved with the Cambodian people.

“If I were to quit power, my dear children, nephews and nieces could become attack targets,” Hun Xen claimed in front of the TVK camera during a family reunion at the Phnom Penh Intercontinental Hotel on Monday 28 December.

Hun Xen publicly suggested to his kin, and his nephews in particular, to engage themselves in humanitarian works for the Cambodian people in order to gain their confidence. He proclaimed that he was against the culture of impunity in the cases where members of his family were to act against the law (sic!).

Hun Xen indicated that he was inspired by the bloody backlash against high-ranking officials and powerful VIPs by the Khmer Rouge following the fall of the Khmer Republic regime in 1975. Following the fall of General Lon Nol, members of his family were spared for their good deeds toward the people.

[Cambodian-American US] Marine meets extended family while deployed in Cambodia

Petty Officer 3rd Class Bunthoeun Ham, the Khmer translator for 3rd Medical Battalion. (Photo by Lance Cpl. Stefanie C. Pupkiewicz).
Vouch Nap grips the arm of her great nephew, Petty Officer 3rd Class Bunthoeun Ham, the Khmer translator for 3rd Medical Battalion, Combat Logistics Regiment 35, 3rd Marine Logistics Group, during his deployment to Cambodia for a medical and dental civil action project. (Photo by Lance Cpl. Stefanie C. Pupkiewicz).

Lance Cpl. Stefanie C. Pupkiewicz
http://www.okinawa.usmc.mil

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (June 5, 2009) -- An hour and a half outside of Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia, a man in a cowboy hat wearing a blue surgical mask waits anxiously as a van pulls up.

One of the passengers is his nephew, Bunthoeun Ham, whose parents fled Cambodia in the 1970's to escape the bloody and violent hand of the Khmer Rouge and the civil wars that followed its fall from power.

The van arrives and the man in the cowboy hat, Moun Ey, approaches his nephew and sweeps him into an embrace that leaves no doubt they are family, even though this is their first time meeting.

Ham is a petty officer 3rd class in the U.S. Navy who served as the Khmer translator for the 3rd Medical Battalion, Combat Logistics Regiment 35, 3rd Marine Logistics Group, during the Cambodia Interoperability Program 2009.

It was the combination of good timing and eavesdropping that got Ham, a personnel specialist with the personnel support detachment, CLR 37, 3rd MLG, his place on the 3rd Medical Battalion deployment to Cambodia as their translator and ultimately his opportunity to meet the family that his parents had forlornly left behind.

In November, Ham arrived on Okinawa for his second tour and while checking in he overheard Petty Officer 1st Class Mark Craig, who was one of the coordinators for the Cambodia Interoperability Program 2009, speaking about 3rd Medical Battalion's deployment to Cambodia. Ham inserted himself into the conversation and vouched for his credentials as a native speaker.

Ham did not hear anything for a few months but followed the recommendations of Craig to get his passport and medical records in order then he was contacted by Craig, followed by a phone call in Khmer. On the other end was Maj. John Cherry, the Cambodian foreign affairs officer for the III Marine Expeditionary Force. Cherry asked Ham a few questions and the stuttering petty officer replied in Khmer, receiving a stamp of approval from Cherry.

Within weeks he was touching down in Phnom Penh with a plane full of Marines and sailors who had no ability to speak the language. A language that he had spoken his entire life, but when he stepped off the plane he was anxious about how good his Khmer was.

He didn't have the opportunity to avoid his role as translator. The officials from the airport who were processing the passports of the service members recognized his name as Khmer and sought him out.

Ham felt shy and stuttered a bit during his first Khmer exchange, he said.

But, he got used to it quickly. Over the next two weeks, he was immersed in the culture and language that he had always known was his but had never truly experienced, Ham said.

The Cambodia that Ham found was not the Cambodia that his parents left behind. Their Cambodia was victim to constant gun battles, the sounds of which echoed almost constantly across the rice paddies.

The refugees would move about in large groups and Ham's parents told him, "You just stayed in the middle and tried not to get shot."

Ham's visit to the Killing Fields, where thousands of Cambodians were killed during the brutal reign of the Khmer Rouge made Ham realize the sheer scale of the horrors his parents endured, he said. But, the people of Cambodia have recovered from those horrors.

Phnom Penh is a budding metropolis filled with new construction and motorbikes that seem to drive with little caution. The provinces, where the medical and dental civil action project occurred and his family live are developing.

"You see growth everywhere, and I know there is plenty of room for more," Ham said.

The medical and dental civil action project was deeply rewarding for him, Ham said.

In Khmer, people are referred to as older brother or older sister instead of sir or ma'am, so, for Ham, that meant he was helping the members of his very large extended family, he said.

It was his meeting with his actual family though that moved him to tears because of all of the sacrifices that his parents made to ensure that he and his siblings had a better life. He took special liberty to be able to visit them and see all the sights. The visit allowed him to see the life that he would have had if his parents hadn't left, Ham said.

The visit to his parents' villages took careful navigation on narrow roads and then further navigation on foot through the rice paddies to meet everyone.

An afternoon at the sea with his father's family wrapped up the day for Ham and his family. They parted ways thinking it was his last opportunity to see them.

But the next day, after a morning of sightseeing in Phnom Penh, Ham returned to the hotel only to have a Cambodian woman approach him with a strangely familiar face.

Alin, Ham's cousin, waited almost five hours in the lobby of the hotel for him to come back. She had never met or seen him before but her family had said that he looked identical to her father, she said.

She was incredibly anxious and a little scared waiting for Ham to come back from his sight seeing, she said. The hotel staff informed her when he walked in and he was all the way across the lobby and almost into the elevator before she mustered up the courage to speak to her American cousin.

The two spent the next two days getting to know more about each other and exploring Phnom Penh.

It felt good to let Alin experience the city as a tourist with the leisure to eat from food vendors and experience her culture, Ham said. She normally works seven days a week with no days off so that she and her husband can afford to eat and live in their modest apartment.

Ham says that he misses his family now that he has returned to Okinawa, and hopes to be able to return to Cambodia in his role as translator again. His ability to help the Cambodian people and reconnect with his family made his job with 3rd Medical Battalion rewarding.

Recovering the roots of a family

Suree Pritchard with her mother, Sin Simath. (Photo by: Chris Pritchard)

Thursday, 22 January 2009
Written by Chris Pritchard
The Phnom Penh Post

Australian photojournalist Chris Pritchard recounts the improbable journey that led his wife to reconnect with a mother who was feared lost to the violence of the Khmer Rouge regime.

THE map, hand-drawn on a scrap of paper, resembled those in corny movies that lead the hero to buried treasure. Tears of joy and giant tropical raindrops quickly combined to make it more abstract art than an accurate guide, but this map kindled a love affair with Angkor Wat's grand antiquities that still endures.

My wife and I were handed the map back in 1991 in the Thai frontier town of Aranyaprathet. It was here that Aunt Sopee raised my wife Suree.

Aunt Sopee was Cambodian but, gazing over her shoulder into a tragic land, she determined her future was Thai. She did not conceal her family's Cambodian origins but always said no one else in the family was alive. "Forget about Cambodia," she would opine in Thai. "Nothing but trouble. Make your future here in Thailand."

Suree moved to Australia, where she worked as a photographer in the late 1970s but kept in close contact with her irascible aunt. In Aunt Sopee's final years during the late 1980s, her rambling recollections acquired intriguing new details.

Mapping the way home

While Suree's father had indeed lost his life in the 1950s during a burst of domestic and violent political turmoil, her mother was alive.

Word of this survival leaked across the porous border even before the xenophobic Khmer Rouge were overthrown in 1979, but Aunt Sopee had for a long time kept this news to herself. Then, one day, shortly before her death, she ripped the corner from a piece of wrinkled wrapping paper, drew a rudimentary map and handed it to Suree. "That's where you'll find your mother," she promised.

That was in 1990. We took this precious paper to Cambodia in 1991, and travelled from Phnom Penh to Battambang. It was the rainy season and the road trip of nearly 300 kilometres along a rutted road with numerous temporary bridges took 12 hours.

"SOPEE WAS CAMBODIAN BUT, GAZING OVER HER SHOULDER INTO A TRAGIC LAND, SHE DETERMINED HER FUTURE WAS THAI."

On arrival, we took out our smudged map and began our needle-in-a-haystack search, but became increasingly pessimistic. Next day, we grew suspicious of a solicitous man, a distant relative of Suree, who said he knew Suree's mother. He said he would fetch her from the outskirts of Siem Reap where she now lived.

We continued to search and, using the scribbled map, found the family house.

It was inhabited by two of Suree's elderly aunts who confirmed that my wife's mother indeed now lived in Siem Reap. They also said the cousin who had gone to Siem Reap would indeed return with Suree's mother, so we spent the rest of the day waiting at the hotel.

Then, just before dusk, we were standing outside the hotel when a diminutive woman in her mid-60s slid from a motorcycle pillion. She was dripping wet and caked in mud. Mother and daughter collapsed in each other's arms. Over the next few days, amid much weeping, a story tumbled out that filled gaps in an exceptionally minimalist sketch.

Rediscovered family

My mother-in-law had three children. After her husband had been shot dead, she could not support them all. She decided Suree, the middle child who was then three years old, would be raised by Aunt Sopee, whose departure for Thailand was imminent.

Suree's siblings, a brother and sister, later perished during the Khmer Rouge era.

Suree's mother, Sin Samath, remarried. We travelled back to Siem Reap with her and met her daughter, Sok Kanthea, and grandchildren.

In this way Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat, became an enriching element in our lives. We go roughly once a year, strengthening bonds with a rediscovered family.

Home turned out to be a large, sturdy timber dwelling on stilts beyond Siem Reap's bustling New Market and about four kilometres from town.

Rice fields extended from a cluster of a half-dozen houses off a road heading to the Rolous group of temples.

Circumstances back home in Australia meant we skipped two years before returning recently to discover Siem Reap had changed.

Suree's mother had lived in the countryside - but last year we discovered her living in town. She hadn't moved. But Siem Reap had spread dramatically.