WAR AND GENOCIDE - By Chanda Chhay (Part 1)

Special Announcement:

From today onward, the book: WAR AND GENOCIDE will be posted in sequence (every week) at http://www.cambodianchildren.blogspot.com/. If you are interested in reading this book from beginning to end, please bookmark this blog's address or visit it weekly to follow the story.

Turmoil

March 18, 1970. The date was historical for Cambodia and the Cambodians. But for the rest of the world, it was just one of those normal cycles of the week, the month, the year, and the century. Nothing would ever stop the inexorable evolution of time. The sun would rise and set as it had for millennia. The new day arrived, the old day disappeared. Everything seemed to move forward peacefully. However, being caught on the verge of a civil war, Cambodia appeared to fall into a world of uncertainty. News of the Americans invasion and bombardments on the Viet Cong’s (North Vietnamese Communist guerrillas) sanctuaries in northeastern Cambodian territory had spread as fast as the blasting sounds of those bombs. Every day, rumors and gossips about Cambodia being dragged into the tumult of the Vietnam War began to diffuse from town to town. Despite lack of information from the media, the earth trembling caused by the explosions of the American secret bombardments in Cambodia spread even faster than the press release. Day after day, the explosions of cluster bombs dropped down by the U.S.’s B-52 war planes had sent plenty of clear messages to the local people indicating that Cambodia’s independence, neutrality, and territorial integrity, which were guaranteed by the Geneva Conference in 1954, were now threatened, and devil and danger were on the way to steal their souls. Though it seemed a bit premature to predict any possible disaster at the moment, based on the ever present sounds of explosions, the smell of destruction was unmistakable. It was at that point in time that I began learning and memorizing life’s lesson about being caught in a war--a war that was to forever shape and change the course of my life. At the age of six, I had my first taste of escaping the destructive forces of war.

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Family unites after 36 years

Nam (lower right) was found by his son Phyrun (upper right) last November in Poipet. Chea Vath, Nam’s first wife, and Sorpong, the eldest son, are also pictured. (Photo by: Heng Chivoan)

Friday, 10 June 2011
Thomas Miller
The Phnom Penh Post

Twice left for dead and dumped in mass graves by Khmer Rouge cadres, only to regain consciousness and drag himself out, former Lon Nol official Peou Nam survived Cambodia’s killing fields believing he had lost all his loved ones.

Left traumatised by torture, beatings and attempted murder, he couldn’t remember the names or faces of his seven children by the time Vietnam toppled the Pol Pot regime.

Nam remarried, took on a new name and tried to begin a fresh life in Kampot province, where he had another six children. He had no contact with the children from his first marriage until, 36 years later, his lost family tracked him down.

“Nothing is more important than being reunited with my family,” Nam, who is well into his 80s, said yesterday, while relaxing at the home of his rediscovered son, Phnom Penh businessman Peou Phyrun.

Survivors’ Voices - Slide Shows By Stephane Janin

While the trial of Khmer Rouge leaders in Phnom Penh is still on process, some survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime in the United States continue to share their stories and file complaints to be addressed to the ECCC in Cambodia. Supported by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University, and local Cambodian organizations, non profit ASRIC (Applied Social Research Institute of Cambodia) has organized in November two workshops in Philadelphia and Lowell, Massachusetts. More than 30 new complaints have been added to the more than 100 already received in previous workshops throughout America earlier in 2009. You can see two slideshows of these last two workshops at this link: http://www.stephanejanin.com/ as usual.

Direct link for Phillie is http://stephanejanin.com/2009/12/03/survivors-voices-3/
Direct link for Lowell is http://stephanejanin.com/2009/12/03/survivors-voices-2/

Still photos are also available at http://khmerabroad.blogspot.com/

At 39, Loung Ung enters a new phase of writing and storytelling

Shaker Heights author Loung Ung: "Now I write because I really enjoy it." (Chris Stephens/The Plain Dealer)

November 13, 2009
By Karen R. Long
The Plain Dealer

AUTHOR TALK
Loung Ung

• When: 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 15.
• Where: Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium, Cleveland Public Library, 525 Superior Ave., Cleveland.
• Cost: Free. Call 216-623-2955.

Loung Ung has broken bread with Queen Noor of Jordan, lunched with Paul McCartney and opened her own restaurant, Bar Cento, in Ohio City.

At 39, she is a world away from the childhood starvation that distended belly and drove her to swallow rotten leaves. Born into an upper-middle-class family, Ung was 10 when she fled Cambodia with an older brother. Eventually, they learned that more than 20 relatives, including both their parents, had been murdered by the Khmer Rouge.

Those privations are contained in her 2000 memoir, "First They Killed My Father," a story that Ung tells in a child's voice. It is now widely taught and has been translated into 10 languages.

Critics have praised her as the Anne Frank of Pol Pot's killing fields.

Nevertheless, Ung said she was surprised to be asked to speak Sunday at the Cleveland Public Library. The memoirist and activist described the invitation as an unanticipated honor.

For local authors, it signals an arrival of sorts. Ung, who lives in Shaker Heights, will deliver her speech in English, her fourth language, after Khmer, Chinese and French. In advance of the Writers & Readers talk, she agreed to answer a few questions.

In your peripatetic anti-land mine work, you've become a professional lecturer. How do you find the proper distance for telling your own story?

My work has evolved from personal writing, writing that was therapeutic, a way to take away the power of those soldiers, who were monsters and gods of mythical proportion.

It changed next to activist writing, interviews with those at the rehabilitation centers [in Cambodia], writing that can actually do something. Now I write because I really enjoy it. I'm in a third phase that combines the internal and external. Honestly, I love it.

Memoir as a genre has taken a beating since the James Frey fiasco. Where do you see it now?

I think it is swinging back. I'm one who believes there are always going to be a few bad apples. And I've read many novels that are inauthentic.

Memoir is a collection of memories -- different from biography or autobiography. For me, it started as a beautiful form. People tell me all the time that my books read like novels.

One hundred and 20 million people have survived some kind of war. And the stories of all the Cambodians who survived seem like fiction to Americans. I get mail every day from readers, and they often say it took them years to open my book.

You know with something called "First They Killed my Father" that you're not in for a funny, rock 'n' roll ride.

Your second book, "Lucky Child," focuses on the parallel life of your older sister, Chou, who stayed in Cambodia. How is she now?

She's fabulous. She's 41 and a grandmother for the second time. She's really happy.

When I last saw her, I was watching her brush her hair. Most Cambodian girls do have long hair, and the bonding thing between sisters and cousins is you brush each other's hair.

She asks me, "Who brushes your hair?" and I have to say, "I do." It is so good for me to spend time around her. I've been back to Cambodia many, many times.

You've suggested, intriguingly, that your family may have picked you, the sixth of seven children, to escape with your brother because you were combative, and therefore more likely to survive but harder to marry off in Cambodia.

In every culture, being a tomboy is not highly prized. But my father praised me; he saw it as a sort of cleverness. My mother didn't like it. She'd always been two-dimensional to me -- my mother, my father's wife. [Ung last saw her mother alive when she was 8.]

But I'm writing a book now about my mother, and I'm newly in love with her. I've interviewed her best friend, my uncle and my aunt. She was really funny and spunky and a woman before her time.

Survivors Stories by Justin Sok

Respect KI-Media Readers,

We are pleased to post below a collection of KR Survivors Stories by Justin Sok. However, due to the raw graphic description contained in the article, readers discretion is advised.

Thank you.
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Survivors Stories

Justin C. Sok
May 10, 2009

For those who had survived the “Killing Fields”, their daily life has been haunted by the memories of those events that they had thought to be long forgotten, and all of sudden these memories began to surface, and brought back those horrible memories. They have experienced intense psychological distress, recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the events, including images, ruminating thoughts, flashbacks, anxiousness and nervousness. They are easily startled, heart palpitations, feeling sudden hot and cold sensations in their bodies, and difficulty falling and staying asleep.

Their nights are like dancing ghosts in their dreams. Their daily thinking has been like seeing the snapshots of all the events that had happened in their lives, which has appeared before them like pictures in a slow-motion filmstrip. It was as if they were describing something they had seen in a movie, a movie in graphic color that left nothing to the imagination. They knew and remembered exactly what had happened to them, and who did these atrocities to them. The descriptions of the symptoms are the classic diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The following are some of the stories shared by the Cambodian survivors:

Case Scenario #1

When the Communists took over the country, immediately, the Khmer Rouge comrades were prodding people at gunpoint to leave their homes. I got separated from my family. My sisters, brothers, and my parents were forced to live in another village. People were dying of starvation and illnesses. The people were taken away in groups to be killed. We barely had anything to eat. During that time I had my three year-old daughter and was six or seven months pregnant. I did not have any food to feed my baby, so I asked the head of the village to spare me a little brown sugar to feed my baby. He refused my pleas. The next day, my baby died in my arms. I buried my daughter in a haystack.

A couple months had passed, and although I was in full-term pregnancy, the KR comrades still forced me to work in the fields for long hours. I was so exhausted, hungry, and was so sick, that while I was walking on the dam that the people had built for an irrigation canal, I slipped and fell into the water. I experienced severe stomach pains afterward. The next day, I had a midwife checked me, and she told me that the baby had already died, stillborn.

Early 1979, my sister and I were reunited. My sister had recapitulated about the death of our parents to me. My sister had witnessed the Khmer Rouge comrades chaining our parents together, face-to-face. The KR comrades let our parents stand under the car tire, which they had hung on the tree branch from above. They lit a car tire on fire, and let the burning flame of rubber dripping down onto our parents until they died. Even though, I was not there to save my parents, but the way my sister had painted the picture for me, I could feel the excruciating pain of what our parents had to go through. I would never forget this until the day I die. It was horrible. I had never wanted to talk about it any more.

Case Scenario #2

Late one afternoon, after long hours in the fields, digging a ditch to make an irrigation canal, one of the Khmer Rouge comrades hit the gong. They led us off for a short break. There were many of us in the original group, but they had separated us into smaller groups of about 15 people each. While we were all sitting quietly in groups under the hot sun, there were four KR comrades walking up toward our group. One of the KR comrades called out a gentleman who was sitting three men away from me. He was a big man. His gait was wobbly and slow. His facial expression was flat. We did not know the reason why he was called out. Everyone was scared and dead silent. I did not think that there was anything bad was going to happen to him.

The KR comrades walked the man away from us, approximately 20 feet from where we were sitting. All of sudden, the KR comrades were beating up on this poor man. They beat the poor man with their AK-47 rifles until he died. Then, one of the KR comrades turned to us and said, “This is what you will get if anyone of you betrays our Angkar!”

During that late afternoon, the KR comrades herded us back to the village. Once I got to my home, and because I did not have anything to eat, and I was so tired and I tried to rest. All of sudden, I heard a familiar voice calling. The KR comrades were calling on one of the gentlemen from my group. So I forced myself to get up and slipped out of the house and hid behind a haystack near by. I saw the KR comrades chained the poor man and walked him away to the forest near by. The next day, before we started our usual labor, the KR comrades informed us that, they had killed this poor man.

One day I got a message from the people in the village, that my mother who was at that time living at another village, was very sick, and needs someone to take care of her. I had asked my village chief and foreman to release me to visit my mother but they had refused. I knew my mother was dying and I had to take a chance to go see her.

On the way back to my village, two KR comrades stopped me. They were questioning me. I lied to them and told them that I had lost my cows and I have been looking for them. But they did not care because I did not have a permission slip from my village chief. So, they chained me up and hung me in the tree and let the red ants gnawed me for two days and two nights. My life was spared by one of the older KR comrades. They released me and had warned me not to go awol.

Case Scenario #3

The place where I was living, more people were dying of starvation and illnesses then the KR comrades killed. The people were eating anything that they could find – bugs, ants, tadpoles, lizards, rats, leaves, roots, etc. We combed the jungle any time we got a chance looking for any kind of edible vegetation to eat. Some of the people got poisoned and died from eating those poisonous plants. At the village, I lived close to a family who had family members died one after another due to starvation and illnesses. One day, I detected a strange odor coming out from that family’s house. The next day, I found out from another neighbor that the older brother had killed his own younger sister who was very sick and bedridden, and fried the flesh and ate it. This was a horrible memory for me.

Case Scenario #4

Before the communist Khmer Rouge took power, we were living near the Cambodian-Thai border. When the communists took over the country, many people filed across the border. It was very dangerous to attempt to cross the border. But the people felt hopeless and they had no choice. Some people had stepped on landmines and/or shot and killed by the KR comrades.

It was too dangerous for us to make any attempt for an escape, so we had to wait until the situation had calmed down. Late one afternoon, when we were planting rice in the rice paddy, we took off. Our group got separated when we reached dense jungle. I was with a smaller group. The KR comrades chased and shot at us. I heard them called out to their KR comrades, “Shoot them! Shoot them!” During our escape, I was carrying my two-year-old son, strapping him to the Sarong behind my back. When we got to the safe area, we took a short break. I felt wet in all over my back. When I checked on my son, he was already dead. My son was hit by a bullet. At that time, I felt like I did not want to live anymore. I lost all my family members. I lost all my strength. I felt so sad to cry. The few people that were there with me tried to offer their condolences and encouragement. They helped me bury my son in the middle of nowhere in the deep jungle. Then, we sneaked across the border.

Case Scenario #5

During the KR Rouge regime, my family and I were living in one of the villages in Pursat Province. It was either late 1978 or in the early 1979, and I was about 13 years old. The KR comrades were with their guns pointing every direction, moving the people into the jungle and into different locations. At the same time, mass killings had already taken place. My father knew that we were not going to survive. So he had told us about an escape plan. One early morning, my parents, my three brothers and my youngest sister, and a family from our neighborhood made an attempt to escape. We were not far before the KR comrades captured us. Once the KR comrades had caught us, they paraded us into the thick and tall grass to be killed. We were walking in line. As I was walking behind them, I sensed something. And all of sudden, it was something snatched me off the line. Up until now, I still find it is very difficult to explain.

I was hiding in the tall grass near by. The KR comrades were scrambling looking for me. I heard they said to each other, “We lost one of the boys.” After a few moments, the KR comrades gave up looking for me. They continued to parade my family and the rest of the members to a place not too far from where I was hiding. While I was hiding, I heard the sounds of their rifles and wooden sticks hitting my family members. I continued to hide in the grass until I was sure that those KR comrades were gone. I came out from the grass and walked quietly, straight to where they had killed my family members. There, I had witnessed everything. I still remember I was not shock or panic or anything like that. Both of my parents were stripped naked and were killed by wooden stick. My brothers and sister were all killed; their clothes were in tact. The other family – both husband and wife, and their three children were laid lifelessly next to one another. All of them had their arms tied to the backs.

As I was scrambling, leaping from one corpse to another looking and feeling for any sign of life, I noticed that the man was twitching. He was struggling for air – coughing and moaning. I rushed to talk to him. He was still alive. I helped untie his ropes. I carried him to hide in the different location. He got blood all over himself, and his blood was all over me. We hid in the jungle until the nightfall, and then we made our journey to escape. Before we reached to the outskirts of another village, we were chased by the Vietnamese and Khmer’s soldiers. They shot their guns upward. They thought we were the KR comrades. I had to run for my life, so I left him. Up until now, I don’t know whether he is dead or alive.

About a month had passed, I went back to the location where the KR comrades had killed my family. I still remembered everything – the dirt road, the tall grass, and the location. When I got there, I saw only the remnants of some bones. I realized I was the only one that had survived. I had to move on.

These are some of the stories that the Cambodian survivors have reflected upon their lives during the country’s recent violent past. Although Cambodian people had gone through the same “Killing Fields”, but each of them has a very unique and distinctive story to tell. Many of the Cambodian survivors spoke of this period with tears in their eyes. All most all of them broke in sobs, and some were unable to continue. There are hundreds of thousands of Cambodian victims who either would not want to share their stories because they are still afraid or because it would result in their having memories too painful to share. Their daily life is fragile, and their daily coping strategies with their chronic and ongoing psychiatric problems are so limited.

They say, “It is better late, then never.” Thirty years later, the trial to try senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge has begun. The general public, especially, the Cambodian survivors and their families, are pleading you, for your compassion and authority, to help them get “closure” by pushing the trial through so that justice can be served. We owe it to the survivors and their families. We owe it to the millions who died so they can rest in peace. We owe it to the world to hear the truth. And I owe it to my father, whom I have always admired in my heart, mind, and in my dream. Unfortunately, because of the wars, which led to the “Killing Fields,” we never had the time to share and doing normal things together as father and son always do.

Thank you.