Genocide survivor discusses experiences
Best-selling author gives vivid Forum presentation
Alison Pelleymounter
Issue date: 3/29/06 Section: Campus News
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A 5-year-old girl was one of the 2 million evacuees during the 72-hour operation on the city in mid-April 1975. At the time she could not foresee the murders of her mother, father and two of her siblings that would occur at the hands of the Khmer Rouge regime during the next four years.
Activist and author Loung Ung shared her story with attendees of The Forum Wednesday night, detailing how she turned her experience during one of the deadliest episodes of the 21st century into hope for the future.The communist Khmer Rouge regime ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, killing those it believed to be tainted by foreign influence, such as authors, painters, religious leaders, dancers and people who lived in cities. The dictator Pol Pot ordered all cities be evacuated, taking the former urban dwellers to labor camps, where most would not survive.
During that period, more than 1.5 million Cambodians were killed, according to the CIA World Factbook. Because bullets were too expensive, many were murdered using bamboo sticks.
"I didn't know what happened to my father," Ung said after explaining how soldiers took him from the hut to which her family had been relocated. After hearing he had been killed, she said she "only asked the gods to make his death quick and painless."
Ung's mother soon sent Ung and her siblings on their own, realizing she could not protect them herself. Ung wandered to a child soldier's camp, where she said she was taught the art of war.
"I thought the world really hated me," Ung said of her time in the camp. "I spent four hours a day being taught that people wanted me dead."
After fleeing Cambodia by boat with her brother, Ung, then 15, lived in Vermont. Enduring therapy for the next 18 years, Ung said she could not truly recover from her past until she embraced it.