February 1–8, 2001

cover story

Deadly Destiny

The nightmare of the killing fields continues to haunt Philadelphia’s Cambodian community.

by Helen i-lin Hwang

part 1 | part 2

Sitting around the living room in a South Philly row home, eating pizza from Old City, Hap (who would not give his last name) and Heng Han reminisce about the old days in Cambodia. Hap was 29 and Han was 10 when they left their country in 1979.

On this winter evening, Hap wears a dark sweater and a light gray jacket. Clutching a copy of the Light of the Khmer Nation, a Khmer-language newspaper he gets every week from Cambodia, Hap talks about the unspeakable.

"My parents, five brothers and four sisters walked to Thailand overnight. We stopped in the daytime and walked at night," says Hap, sitting stiffly on the large couch with his hands on his lap.

"I carried a mattress on my head [for] every time we rested," Han adds. "My whole family and I slept on it. I was 10 years old but I don’t remember the mattress being heavy. I just did what I was told. I passed by all these dead bodies — Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese — and I remember looking at the corpses curiously, almost like I was meeting somebody new."

It’s hard for the two men to talk about the four years when arbitrary killing and hard labor were an everyday part of their lives. Recalling the small details of horrible incidents that happened more than 20 years ago in another world is painful. They have pushed these memories to the very back of their minds as they work hard to attain success in Philadelphia.

Now, however, all the memories of the injustices they have suffered are flooding back. Back home in Cambodia, legal proceedings are underway that may give both men, and the tens of thousands of other Cambodian refugees in Philadelphia, some measure of peace.

"They should absolutely have a tribunal to prosecute the Khmer Rouge," Hap says firmly. "All the things they’ve done in the past is very terrible. Pol Pot killed his own people!"

In January, the Cambodian government agreed to hold an international tribunal to put the leaders of the Khmer Rouge on trial. Khmer Rouge leaders are responsible for the Cambodian Holocaust that killed over 1.7 million people in four short years. Estimates by the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project put the death toll between 15 to 40 percent of the total population. (Dith Pran is the Cambodian journalist who inspired the film The Killing Fields.) People died of starvation, overwork, disease and execution. Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, wanted to turn Cambodia into an ultra-Communist society. The Khmer Rouge forced most of the population to evacuate to the countryside and they abolished all institutions—including school systems, finance and currency and property ownership.

The news about the upcoming Khmer Rouge tribunal has caused quite a stir in the Cambodian community here but it also has raised fears that have been subdued for years. Fear of ex-Khmer Rouge soldiers who, rumors say, lurk in South Philadelphia. Fear of Prime Minister Hun Sen, whose strong-arm tactics reach all the way to the United States. And finally, fear of the old feelings of oppression and paranoia which constrain Cambodians from speaking up, lest they risk being killed.

The terror is so real and traumatic that some people in the Cambodian community will not use their last names or pictures in discussing how the Khmer Rouge tribunal affects the Cambodian-American community in Philadelphia.

Dr. Haing Ngor, the Academy Award-winning actor who portrayed Dith Pran in The Killing Fields, was shot to death in 1996. The official police investigation concluded his murder was due to a robbery attempt by gang members, but speculation still persists that agents of the Khmer Rouge or the Cambodian government shot him.

"Distrust" is the best way to describe the reaction in the Philadelphia Cambodian community to the pending Khmer Rouge tribunal in Phnom Penh.

"There’s never going to be a fair trial," declares Han.

Samuel Noh, a Cambodian-American who is President of the Southeast Asian Mutual Assistance Coalition (SEAMAC), doubts the tribunal will happen soon.

"This is just a ploy by Prime Minister Hun Sen. He has lied a lot in the last few years. One day, he says yes to a trial and the next day, he says no."

Kim Ung, a Cambodian-American who lives in Upper Merion Township, does not care if there is a tribunal. "There’s no need for a trial. Just kill them!"

	Lost souls: Skulls from the Killing Fields Museum in Cambodia.

Behind the large-framed glasses, quiet tears roll down the face of the 40-year-old mother of three. She is a small-boned woman with medium-length black hair, tied back in a ponytail. When she talks to her husband and children, she is gentle and maternal and seems to anticipate their needs. Still, the scars of her old wounds are deep and painful.

In 1975, Ung was 15 when the Khmer Rouge stormed into her town in Batthambang province, located in western Cambodia. She wasn’t living with her parents at the time; they had sent her and her younger brother to that town to keep them safe from the Khmer Rouge. Her parents’ ploy to protect their children was futile, as were the attempts of thousands of parents. Immediately, the Khmer Rouge sent her and thousands of other children to the mountains to cut down trees and plant corn as slave laborers. Ung ate "worms, crickets and tree leaves" to supplement her daily diet of one cup of watered-down rice, flavored with salt, that she received each day from the Khmer Rouge commanders.

"When the corn was ready [to be harvested], we were moved to a different section of the mountain to start all over again," Ung recalls. She did not reap the fruits of her labor; instead the corn she grew was devoured by the Khmer Rouge soldiers. Ung and the others had to keep eating insects and rice.

Before Pol Pot came into power, she was a student in high school and her parents were successful business people who owned a gas station and a trucking business. She and her 10 siblings lived a comfortable life in Cambodia. That all disappeared when Pol Pot took over and turned back the clocks as he brought the Khmer society back to Year Zero, wiping out any infrastructure Cambodia ever had.

"I had never been separated from my parents before," Ung says, describing the first few days under Pol Pot. As she speaks, she strokes the hair of her four-year-old daughter whom she and her husband, Sam, nickname "Princess." The Khmer Rouge brutally disrupted her carefree teenage life. She wouldn’t see her parents and siblings for almost a year at a time. She was constantly homesick and worried about them. And the work, consisting of 14 hours of hard labor every day, was unbearable.

In spite of the risks, Ung escaped back to her family when her four-year old sister was sick. That night, the little girl died of dysentery in Ung’s arms, another innocent victim of Pol Pot’s reign of terror. Ung had to quickly sneak back to the camp, leaving little time to grieve for her young sister.

She was lucky she wasn’t discovered. Some time later in the slave labor camp, the entire camp was awakened for an emergency meeting in the middle of the night. The Khmer Rouge leaders announced to everyone that no one should try to escape. Then, they brought out two boys, both around 16, with their hands tied behind their backs. They had tried to sneak away but were caught.

The boys were forced to kneel in front of the leaders. One of the Khmer Rouge soldiers knocked one boy to the ground with the butt of a revolver. When the second boy saw what would happen to him, he scrambled to his feet and tried to make a run for it. The Khmer Rouge shot him in the back as he tried to flee and the boy crumpled to the ground. The other boy was executed shortly after.

"Let this be a lesson to you. Do not try to escape," the commanders warned Ung and the thousands of others enslaved at the site.

The dead boys were half-buried along the side of the road, the same road that Ung had to pass everyday to and from work. Each morning and night, Ung had to march past their decomposing bodies, their hands poking through the shallow graves. This was her daily reminder of what would happen to her if she tried to leave the camp.

Supporting the survivors: Kim Hort Ou, co-founder and past president of the Cambodian Association, which is committed to helping Cambodian immigrants who have fled the war-torn country.

The Khmer Rouge moved the workers to the jungle areas to clear trees. There was no water nearby and the child prisoners took turns to walk half a day through the jungle to fill two buckets of water. Each person in the camp would get a cup, or sometimes just a spoonful, of water each day. At times, Ung would be so thirsty that she would drink pond water, topped with scum. She would pinch her nostrils as she drank the water because it stank so badly.

Everyday, she experienced harsh brutality and witnessed horrible atrocities.

Once, she saw an 8-year-old boy dragged down from a mango tree and shot to death for "stealing mangos." The boy was so hungry that he climbed the tree to eat a piece of fruit even though everyone knew what the consequences might be.

It wasn’t beneath the Khmer Rouge to shoot children for "stealing." And many members of the Khmer Rouge were children themselves who were easily brainwashed into heartless murderers.

Given her experience, Ung repeats that there is no need to bring the Khmer Rouge into court.

"We already know they killed so many people. Why do they need a trial?" she asks.

Not only did the Khmer Rouge end many lives, they also altered the fate of all those who survived.
Hap was a first-year medical student when Pol Pot took over Cambodia. He was sent to the countryside to "learn from the farmers and forget all the education."

Hap acclimated to the farmer’s way of life because he knew that was what he had to do to keep alive. His uncle, who was a fifth-year medical student at the time, was also sent with Hap to the countryside. He "didn’t know how to farm and the Khmer Rouge took him to jail," says Hap. That was the last time Hap ever saw his uncle.

Most of the educated — including doctors, lawyers and teachers — were summarily imprisoned and executed. Between 1963 and 1975, 431 doctors graduated in Cambodia. By the end of Pol Pot’s regime, only 42 of those graduates were alive.

Since Hap arrived in America, he has been a blueberry picker, a dental lab technician and a grocery store owner, and he now owns a beauty salon. He doesn’t allow himself to feel any remorse for his lost dream of entering the medical profession.

Ung also never planned on making a living by cleaning houses, churches and flower shops, but she is just "glad to be alive."

After the anti-Khmer Rouge troops eventually won control of Cambodia, Ung joined her family and they fled to Thailand. They were in a refugee camp for a month before they were relocated to Philadelphia in July 1979. She and 10 other family members lived in a three-bedroom apartment on Broad Street and Logan in the Olney area. She learned English as she toiled away at menial jobs.

Today, Ung lives in the Philadelphia area with her husband and three children. She and her husband are filmmakers, looking for a distributor for the movie they recently made, called Destiny. Ung used some of her recollections as scenes for the film, like the memory of the boy dragged down from the mango tree. The fictional story centers on Paula, a Cambodian survivor of the Killing Fields, who comes to America to find her American husband who was separated from her during Pol Pot’s incursion. More information about the film can be found on www.destinymovie.4t.com.

Han is another success story. He made it to South Philadelphia, with his brother and mother, in October 1984 after spending time in refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines. He, along with his family, went to pick blueberries as laborers on New Jersey farms. Many Cambodian refugees are familiar with agriculture, whether they like it or not. Under Pol Pot’s rule, most Cambodians were forced to farm as a way of creating an agrarian Communist society.

When Han was 15, he started school at the Abigail Vare Elementary School, entering in the seventh grade. Pol Pot had eliminated all schools in Cambodia and the only education Han received was in the refugee camps. Han went on to Temple University and the University of the Arts. He now has his own independent recording label, Mixx Entertainment Company, and he also designs websites. You can find more information about his company at www.Mixx-Entertainment.com.

These are just a few of the stories, similar to tens of thousands of refugees that have made it out of Cambodia into Philadelphia since Pol Pot’s reign of terror. For many Cambodian refugees, that dark period in their lives is very difficult to recall.

Nonetheless, Cambodia will always be the homeland for some. As Hap puts it, "I love my country because I was born over there."

part 1 | part 2