Imagine that you are an eleven year old Cambodian boy or girl in the year 1975 living in
Phnom Penh.
Your immediate family consists of your parents, three brothers, and 2 sisters.
You have grown up surrounded by war never truly knowing a time of peace.
After the war in
Vietnam is over, you and your family thought there might be peace but civil war breaks out.
This civil war is followed by the destruction of about 1/3 of your people group.
In the 1960’s during the Vietnam War a communist movement in
Cambodia began to grow.
This movement was called the Khmer Rouge and was under the leadership of Pol Pot.
Civil war broke out between the Cambodian government and the Khmer Rouge.
Cambodians began to join this new movement due to being unhappy with the government.
The king joined the communists and due to their love of the king, people followed his lead.
Shortly after the war in
Vietnam was over the Khmer Rouge began to make their move.
As this 11 year old child the worst years of your life are about to start. In April of 1975 the Khmer Rouge move into
Phnom Penh and begin a mass evacuation of the city.
You and your family are told that you can return to your home in 3 days and are only moving out because there is a possibility that the
United States could bomb the city.
After fleeing the city your family moves into a nearby village where you have an aunt and uncle.
Six months later you still have not returned home and no longer have any of your family around you.
The Khmer Rouge have come in and separated your family and sent all of you in different directions.
You are now forced to work in the rice fields and dig ditches from early in the morning to late at night, barely existing on 2 cups of watered down rice a day.
You have only enough energy to work and even then it is a struggle.
Suddenly you are moved to a new village and reunited with most of your family.
One of your sisters is missing and no one knows where she is.
You continue to work in the rice fields and do whatever the khmer rouge tells you to.
One day your uncle, a former teacher is taken by the khmer rouge along with several neighbors, all teachers.
None of them ever return.
Your aunt passes away due to an unnamed disease.
Your older cousin is then accused of stealing food.
He is taken away and shortly after you hear gun shots in a nearby field.
Your cousin does not return and his body is never found.
Your 12th birthday arrives, by now you are just glad that you are alive to see it.
And yet at the same time you wish your young life was over, that you did not have to live under this regime.
You have again been taken away from your family and are forced to work and live in a concentration type camp.
Right before you were separated from your loved ones, the Khmer rouge came to your hut in the middle of the night taking your father and oldest brother.
Your father is a doctor and your brother a teacher.
According to the Khmer rouge they are now the enemy because they have been corrupted by westernized thinking.
You hear no shots fired but your father and brother do not return.
Separated from your family you feel you have no where to go.
You don’t know who you can trust.
Many of your peers have now joined the regime, hoping to save their lives.
They have become spies for the Khmer rouge.
The Khmer rouge have created so much distrust among you and your peers that you don’t know who is for you and who is against you.
You don’t dare breathe one word to anyone because of the fear of something being overheard or taken wrong.
