November 14–21, 1996

hit and run

Remember The Killing Fields

Last year was the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II and the Holocaust. It was also the 20th anniversary of the rise to power of the Khmer Rouge, the Communist guerilla group which seized control of Cambodia in the '70s, depopulated its cities, forced its citizens into "re-education" camps and slaughtered some two million Cambodians in the process.

Taking a cue from survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, Saphan Ros, executive director of the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia, says his organization has begun to raise funds for a Cambodian Holocaust memorial.

"The Cambodians of the Greater Philadelphia region have resolved on erecting a memorial to the countless thousands of their friends and relatives who died in the grim 'killing fields' of the Khmer Rouge," writes Ros in a fundraising letter he's sending to corporations and foundations in the region. "They plan on erecting this monument when the political situation is such that it is possible that the same Khmer Rouge might one day take power again in Cambodia and resume their genocidal program... [and] hope to alert the people of the United States and the world that, without the full attention of concerned people in this country and abroad, the bloody history of Cambodia in the 1970s might repeat itself."

The projected multimedia monument will contain an archive of survivor eyewitness accounts as well as still photos and video footage of the Cambodian killing fields.

Ros, the author of Brother Rabbit,The Two Brothers and several other children's stories derived from traditional Cambodian lore, says he's asking for funding from outside sources because the majority of Philadelphia's 12,000 Cambodians are impoverished refugees "for whom daily survival is precarious."

For more information: 324-4070.

— Daisy Fried