WUNRN
WORLD PULSE MAGAZINE
Global Issues Through the Eyes of
Women
CAMBODIAN WOMAN SURVIVOR'S STORY
As
"At 9 years old, I found
myself without my mother and father, displaced in a cold, violent, anarchic,
incomprehensible world, without shelter or the security of a home. The Khmer
Rouge had shredded my heart."
·
"At last buried truths can begin to
surface and our country can move forward."
My life’s journey has been one in
passionate pursuit of peace—of mind, of heart, of home. It has been a selfish
pursuit, in search of a way to quiet the violent restlessness and turmoil
broiling within and without me, to quiet the consuming angst of being born
Cambodian.
How to explain my homeland? The trafficking
of human beings; the land evictions that strip those already dangerously poor
of their homes and their livelihoods? The disdain and neglect of
It is not possible to understand these
things, to understand our current culture of fear and impunity, without first
knowing the destruction wreaked by the Khmer Rouge during the 1970s. Now that
the Khmer Rouge trials are finally upon us, at last buried truths can begin to
surface and our country can move forward. Yet, beyond the courtroom, there are
now endless stories emerging, many of courageous women survivors who are
channeling their pain to hasten our nation’s healing.
I will tell you mine.
A childhood, bombed
Turmoil awaited me at birth. I experienced
the first four years of my life in a
In these early years, I grew up loved by a
father who was oftentimes far away from our home in
Survival
I spent the next four years of my life
fighting for survival—as much as a toddler of five, six, seven, eight years old
could—from the consuming hell of the Khmer Rouge. Immediately after
Just three years later, in a prison
compound in the heart of the “Eastern Zone,” Khmer Rouge security guards led
the prisoners—including my mother, my four brothers, and myself—into the night
and executed nearly everyone in nearby fields and bushes. I later learned that
nearly 20,000 were executed at this prison compound. That dark night, somehow,
inexplicably, my mother managed to untangle herself out of my embrace without
waking me. For some reason, they let the children live.
Occupation
Peace eluded me even after
At 9 years old, I found myself without my
mother and father, displaced in a cold, violent, anarchic, incomprehensible
world, without shelter or the security of a home. The Khmer Rouge had shredded
my heart and the external sociopolitical confusion mirrored my internal chaos.
After several months, my relatives came to the conclusion that it was better to
risk an escape across minefields, Khmer Rouge soldiers, commonplace plunderers
and robbers, and mountainous terrain to
It was November 1979 when my maternal
relatives, my four brothers, and I crossed into
We arrived in the
My thoughts—no longer consumed by how to survive—focused on how to live without the angst from within, without the nightmares that terrorized my sleep causing me to act out violently against my grandmother who had the misfortune of sharing a bed with me. I focused on how to mend the fragmented pieces of my heart and spirit, how to purge the demons from within. I didn’t have a road map, and my relatives could not help—they were consumed with the same struggle. . . .
It
is safe to say that every Cambodian who lived under the Khmer Rouge encountered
similar emotional disquietude and restlessness. This tumult has been absorbed
by the newer generation born following the brutal Khmer Rouge years.
We
have been living without war for some years now, but we want and need more. We
want a complete peace, a peace where there is justice. Just now we are
painstakingly, slowly trading our past for our present.
After
thirty painful years, we have cobbled together a court of law known informally
as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (also called the Extraordinary Chambers in the
Courts of Cambodia, ECCC) to address the mass crimes of the Khmer Rouge and to
usher in an era of peace.
Of
course, a court of law anywhere in the world has its limitations. It must
narrowly weigh evidence in order to determine guilt, and in this case, this
evidence is 30 years old, compromised, lost, and witnesses are too fearful to
come forward. The Tribunal is limited by charges of corruption, and the narrow
scope of trying only the “most senior Khmer Rouge leaders” and those “most
responsible” between April 1975 and January 1979. This narrows it down to only
five members of the Khmer Rouge who will stand trial: the infamous director of
the genocidal detention center Duch, Kang Kek Iew, and the senior leaders, Nuon
Chea, Khieu Samphan, and Mr. and Mrs. Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith.
Even
so, the Tribunal provides for the first time in international law the
opportunity for victims to become a ‘civil party.’ This unprecedented
opportunity offers Cambodia two concrete, principal benefits: In the short
term, it allows for the empowerment that comes from confronting head-on those
senior Khmer Rouge leaders victims hold responsible. In the long term, the
process provides for a lasting legacy of putting faces and names to the cold
figure of 1.7 million.
In
addition to the court of law, the Tribunal is also serving as a “court of
public opinion.” As such it has become a powerful catalyst to build a culture
of dialogue. We are finally discussing long-overdue topics of history, trauma,
healing, reconciliation, and forgiveness.
We
are imprisoned by our past and the Tribunal offers us a way out to freedom.
However, it is difficult to assess what type of legacy will be had from this
process that is fraught with politicking and charges of corruption. No matter
how we slice society, behind every issue lies the history of the Khmer Rouge.
We must deal with this horrific past if we are to win our battle against all
the prevailing human rights abuses in contemporary Cambodian society.
Challenges, Hopes
Sometimes
the challenges feel countless and they overwhelm me. We live in a sea of urgent
issues constantly competing for our time—from military land grabbings, to
rampant trafficking of women and children, to corruption, to deforestation, to
political violence, to domestic abuse… Still, we are not without hope; we see
it in the courage of Somaly Mam and the many others who are turning the tide
against modern-day slavery; in Dr. Ing Kantha Phavi; in parliamentarians Mu
Sochua and Tioulong Saumura working at the political level; to Chou Vineath and
Chap Chandina who are using their skills in the NGO sector to expand the voice
of the weak and vulnerable and to address issues of court reform. And, today,
over half of Cambodian bloggers are young women who are creatively using new
modes of communication to connect and to inspire.
Hope
lies in the fellowship of being women, in collective suffering, in being attuned
to compassion and the work of peace.
I
have started out saying that my life has been a journey in pursuit of peace. I
am glad to be traveling with kindred spirits: men and women who desire peace,
the kind that is more than the absence of war, but necessitates the presence of
justice. My homeland is a good place to start.
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