Cambodia

Philip Jones Griffiths

 

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James Fenton: Poems on Cambodia

 

Decision to Leave Cambodia

 

The sisters wound up at their town's city hall, which had been converted into a shelter. But Ly-Sieng Ngo could see that there was no future for her in this new Cambodia. "My neighbors, my friends, they keep walking to Thailand," she relates. Soon, she herself joined the tide of refugees. There were family members scattered throughout the world — Ly-Sieng Ngo had a brother in America, who had been on his way to study in Paris when the Khmer Rouge took over, stranding him in mid-journey. He wound up in Seattle, although he spoke no English, only French. Still, he was a connection, a lifeline to a fresh start, a hopeful future. He co-sponsored Ly-Sieng Neo together with a local church. Eventually, the rest of their family came over to join them.

When she arrived in Seattle, Ly-Sieng Ngo was sent to ESL (English as a Second Language) courses to improve her skills. But her English was already good enough for her to serve as a volunteer interpreter and educator for the Cambodian Association. Church volunteers had set up public assistance for her, but Ms. Ngo was uncomfortable having to account for every dollar she spent, and pleaded for help getting a paying job. Soon, she was earning her own keep as a bilingual family health worker for the Indochinese Language Bank (now called Community Health Interpretation Service) of Central Seattle Community Health Centers. It is a position she holds to this day.

Pol Pot's Rule Ended

Pol Pot

Pol Pot's rule ended in 1979 with the victory of invading Vietnamese troops who set up a new, less fanatical Communist regime. Nearly 50 members of Ms. Ngo's own family did not survive the four-year ordeal.  Ly Sieng Ngo finally was released from her work camp, and headed back to her village on foot. "In my village, we started with 500 people, and ended up with 34. She found one of her sisters waiting for her outside the house that had been theirs. The sister had been waiting for five months. Soon, two more sisters appeared. But the house was padlocked, and it never occurred to any of them to try to break the locks. "We didn't think of it," she admits, "and didn't have the courage to do it. You know? I was a student my entire life before I became a slave. We did not know what to do at all!" The four girls headed out of town to their grandparents' house, where they had spent much of their youth. The Vietnamese and their Cambodian allies were using the house, center of a substantial estate, as a hospital for wounded soldiers.

Security Prison 21--Tuol Svay Prey

 

Inmates at Tuol Sleng prison

Perhaps the most notorious of the atrocities that occurred under the rule of Pol Pot occurred at  Security Prison 21 (S-21), formerly the Tuol Svay Prey High School (named after a royal ancestor of King Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia) in Phnom Penh.  The five buildings of the complex were converted in August 1975 into a prison and interrogation center by the Khmer Rouge regime.  The buildings were enclosed in electrified barbed wire, the classrooms converted into tiny prison and torture chambers, and all windows were covered with iron bars and barbed wire to prevent escapes.  From 1975 to 1979, an estimated 17,000 people were imprisoned at S-21 (some estimates suggest a number as high as 20,000, though the real number is unknown); there were only twelve known survivors.  At any one time, the prison held between 1,000 to 1,500 inmates.  They were repeatedly tortured and coerced into naming family members and close associates, who were in turn arrested, tortured, and killed.  The Khmer Rouge required that the prison staff make a detailed dossier for each prisoner.  Included in the documentation was a photograph.  Since the original negatives and photographs were separated from the dossiers in the 1979-1980 period, most of the photographs remain anonymous today.  The photographs are currently exhibited at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, located at the former site of S-21 in Phnom Penh. (Tuol Sleng in Khmer [tuəl slaeŋ] means “Hill of the Poisonous Trees” or “Strychnine Hill”.)

 

Source: diogenesii.wordpress.com/2009/04/

 

 

Slave Labor

A Khmer Rouge fighter guarding Cambodians forced into farm labor

From that day she left the town, Ly-Sieng Ngo endured a living nightmare: Her days consisted of slave labor from 4 a.m. to 11 p.m., starvation rations, ditch-digging, rice planting, and water carrying. "Fifteen pound buckets on either side of the pole, back and forth from the river, 120 times a day," she remembers. "You didn't know how you could do it, but I think when you have to do it, you have to do it." There were beatings or worse for those who tried to escape, broke down, or tried to get around the rules. "Some people were killed because they stole one sweet potato. They poured gasoline on these people and burned them in front of us, to show us," she remembers. "They buried some of them alive. This happened almost every day." Three times that she knows of, she herself was targeted for execution because of her family background. She was spared only by capricious good fortune, and by her own reputation as a reliable hard worker.

 

The Arrival of the Khmer Rouge

Khmer Rouge arrive in Phnom Penh

Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975.  Ly-Sieng Ngo's life — and that of virtually every other Cambodian — was turned upside-down. For the next four years, the people of Cambodia lived a nightmare; a holocaust that would result in the deaths of more than a million, perhaps as many as 2 million people, out of a population of 5 million. No one came out unscathed; but the educated and professional classes, the elite, the rich, city folk, and the Chinese minority, were all singled out for extermination. Ly-Sieng Ngo and her family qualified on all counts.

Phnom Penh fell under the control of the Khmer Rouge, the communist guerrilla group led by Pol Pot.  He immediately directed a ruthless program to “purify” Cambodian society of capitalism, Western culture, religion, and all foreign influences.  He wanted to turn Cambodia into an isolated and totally self-sufficient Maoist agrarian state.  Foreigners were expelled, embassies closed, and the currency abolished.  Markets, schools, newspapers, religious practices, and private property were forbidden.   Members of the Lon Nol government, public servants, police, military officers, teachers, ethnic Vietnamese, Christian clergy, Muslim leaders, members of the Cham Muslim minority, members of the middle-class, and the educated were identified and executed.  Anyone who opposed was killed.

Source: diogenesii.wordpress.com/2009/04/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUjxQJrLR-s

 

Ly Sieng Ngo: Quilting Peace

Ly-Sieng Ngo

People don't appreciate what they have until they've lost it.
— Ly-Sieng Ngo

This is the story of Ly Sieng Ngo, a native a Cambodian and now a resident of Seattle, Washington.  Ly Sieng was born into a priviliged Chinese-Cambodian family all of whom became victims of Pol Pot's "Killing Fields."  The text that follows tells of Ly Sieng's life and is further illustrated with a video she graciously filmed with organizational consultant, Dr. Sally Fox, and the Voices Technology Director, Otts Bolisey.  In 1994 the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation awarded Ly Sieng as a recipient of their Family Health Community Award.

  • I am repeatedly astounded at the difficulties Ly-Sieng has overcome in her transition from being a survivor for four years under Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia to being a functioning individual in a totally alien culture. She is truly an inspiration of compassion and the ability of the human spirit to triumph in the face of extreme adversity.
    — Family Nurse Practitioner, Country Doctor Clinic
  • Nobody knows the suffering of the Cambodian people, nor recognizes the complex, long-term needs of the community, better than she. She has achieved a remarkable balance between translator, social worker, and advocate. She has always been exquisitely effective as a cross-cultural broker, and is extraordinarily respected by providers and patients alike. She is clearly qualified for many higher-paying jobs, but has made a commitment and stuck to it. She inspires all of us who are lucky enough to have worked with her.
    —Medical Director, Country Doctor Health Centers


Source: Much of Ly Sieng's story is derived from her own words and from the "Profile of Leaders," by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, http://www.rwjf.org/reports/npreports/chlpNgo.htm.