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The four-year regime (1975-1979) led by Pol Pot Khmer Rouge inundated the country with a wave of invisible cruelty that killed some 2 million people. population, and the country was delayed to the Middle Ages.
For the ruthless genocide, the leader of the regime was inspired by the socialist writings and the life of the remote mountain tribes that were seen in his youth. Then, after gaining power, Pol Pot set out to make Cambodia a land state utopia, emphasizing that the nation must start again from “Year Zero.”
This era of sad history was realistically recreated by British director Roland Joffé in The Killing Fields (1984). But more and more my heart beats strongly when I read the memories of witnesses, especially those who, due to the consequences of the tragedy, were destined to give up on childhood. It is the story of Loung Ung, a fierce daily life in the eyes of a girl.
An idyll at the forefront of chaos
L. Ung was born in 1970. in the spirit-filled western capital of Cambodia. His famous book, First My Father Was Killed (2000), begins with an idyllic description of the city seen by five-year-old Loung at the dawn of dictatorship.
“As early as 6 pm In the morning, on the narrow and dusty streets of Phnom Penh, the cobblestone dwellers were pushing. Waiters in black and white uniforms open the store doors, and the aroma of pasta soup Say hello to amazing visitors.
The Ungai, a typical middle-class family, lived in an apartment building in the center of Phnom Penh. Loung’s mother, Ay Choung, of Chinese descent, married a poor Khmer Sen Im Ung against her parents’ will and soon moved to the capital. For his service to Prince Norodom Sihanouk, in the 1970s, S. I. Ungas joined the new government of President Lon Pol and appointed a high-ranking military police officer. It is true that, although she has risen in the professional career, according to her daughter, “the father never forgot the difficulties he suffered in his youth, so he voluntarily helped others. People sincerely loved and respected him. “
The family multiplied, Loung was the sixth of seven children. Recalling the atmosphere of a childhood home, she exudes enthusiasm. “My brothers listened to Elvis Presley, and during the Chinese New Year we received complete envelopes of money.”
“Why can you never stay still? <…> How will you become a decent lady when you grow up? ”- my mother constantly repeated. As an example, this has always been given to Princess Monineath. “She walks so quietly that no one can hear her approach. She smiles without showing teeth. She talks to men without looking into their eyes. What a pretty lady.
And then he looked at the baby, sucked Coca-Cola loudly through the straw, and shook his head in frustration. However, the father pampered his beloved daughter and encouraged her to be curious. “Just have fun,” he added. Even as the civil war approached the capital, the Hungarian family did not give in to fear. When the children stayed home from the bombing, the returning father scattered them with funny stories. So, according to Loung, she experienced a happy and carefree life surrounded by a loving family until 1975. April 17, when the Khmer Rouge occupied Phnom Penh.
The path to the unknown.
Initially, residents of the capital welcomed the Khmer Rouge forces with joy. Flags flew everywhere, slogans of peace were chanted. But the happiness of the spears became anxiety. “That afternoon, I was taking classes with friends in front of the house when I heard the noise of the truck,” recalls Ung.
After leaving, armed students began urging everyone through the loudspeaker to evacuate the city as the Americans prepared to bombard it. No one resisted, relying on promises that they could return in three days. And then 2 million. People carrying essentials flooded the streets of the night capital.
“I remember people floating on the streets like black ants,” says Loung, who saw it all while sitting in his parents’ truck. – Around me I heard a commotion crying children. No one knew where we had to go. ” After a long time, the Hungarian car ran out of fuel, and the weary crowd was terrified by the soldiers who threw them into the air, insulting and stealing. It was then that it became clear that a brief evacuation would be a seven-day walk to Bat Deng Village. The room hints at how the family slept in the fields and begged for food in the surrounding villages.
At the Kom Baul checkpoint, the Khmer Rouge guard seized and burned the rest of the family’s belongings here; the girl with a heart ache saw her favorite New Year’s red dress burn. “I realized that parents couldn’t protect us,” he writes.
The new government valued only people who could work the land, so the townspeople, the intellectuals, or simply with glasses, were shot as a threat to the regime. Feeling the danger of his rank, S. I. Ungas lied to the family like peasants. This made it easier to cross the firewalls until they were finally greeted on the road by the man’s uncle and brought a carriage with him.
After all, they spent only a few months in the village of Krang Troup because “we feared that newcomers from the capital would betray us when they recognized us.” So we had to be late.
Frequent relocations, unsanitary conditions increased population mortality. For example, in one village, more than half of the 300 newcomers died in 5 months. Finally, the Ungas met at the Ro Leap labor camp, where they experienced all the horrors of the regime. Separated from the outside world and constantly scared by the patrol soldiers, they were forced to work long hours in the fields (including five-year-old Loung) receiving small portions of food.
Hunger and physical exhaustion became his daily routine. The regime banned calendars, watches, radios, and even colored clothing. “It just caught our eye then. <...> We didn’t know what month or day it was now, and we calculated the time according to the position of the sun, “writes L. Ung. Also, at night, the soldiers took out girls who were forcibly married.
“They used to say: it was the duty of women to have children in Angkar (for the organization).” A few months later, the older Hungarian children were sent to work in different adolescent camps. 1976 In August, parents were informed that their fifteen-year-old daughter, Keav, had died of food poisoning. Still, the greatest tragedy occurred at the end of the year, when a couple of soldiers who arrived at the camp asked S. I. Ungo to help move the stuck car.
“We asked when my father would return, ‘tomorrow,'” a soldier answered calmly. But the next day he did not return. I did not return the next day. We finally realized that I had killed him, ”Loung writes. – It was shocking. The Father was the foundation of our family, our strength and our minds, so we doubted if we could continue living. “
Thus, the mother was left alone with four small children. They avoided hunger only by killing the youngest son Kim from the protected plantations and occasionally bringing their own food rations to the older children. However, rumors circulated in the village that they had escaped revenge against the children of the murdered parents, and the leadership plans to destroy them as well. So Ay Choung felt that if he wanted to save the offspring he had to part with them.
This happened in 1977. in May, “the mother who woke us up at night said it was time to go. <...> Go until you get to the orphanage, don’t say real names and don’t tell each other, ”Loung writes.
In an interview with American television later, Ung admitted that she hated her mother at the time and felt rejected. “But as I was writing the book, I realized that it was amazing courage. Send your children to the war zone in the hope that they will survive. “
It is true that with the mother she was still the youngest daughter of three years, Geak. The children separated as soon as they left the camp. Loung stayed with Sister Chou and soon approached an orphanage in the jungle. Being agile and often scrambled, the seven-year-old Loung was transferred to a children’s military camp a few weeks later, where he spent seventeen months. Here she is trained to fight the Vietnamese army, such as shooting, detonating land mines, etc.
“The government sought to create a new and obedient society out of children. They have avenged us.” However, Loung was tormented by his mother’s longing. “A year later, one day I had a bad feeling. carving on my body. So, without listening, I went to visit my mother. “But when she arrived at the Ro Leap forced labor camp, the girl only found an empty shed.” A neighbor revealed that they had been taken out by a guard. That means the mother and little sister have been killed. “
Surprised, Loung returned to the military camp, but in 1979. In January, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and the girl decided to flee. After a long and difficult journey through the jungle trails, he arrived at a refugee camp controlled by the Vietnamese army, where he was reunited with his brothers and sisters.
Nightmares turned into a book.
The refugee camp did not become a quiet refuge, because the people gathered here were furious. For example, in the eyes of nine-year-old Ung, rural women carried out a lynching trial against a Khmer Rouge soldier trapped by Vietnamese; he was hit with a hammer.
So it’s no surprise that Loung’s older brother, Meng, has tried to get the family out as soon as possible. Still, due to limited finances, he had to make a decision. “My brother thought it would be the easiest to adapt in a foreign country,” writes L. Ung. At first, they crossed the Vietnamese border in a smuggled ship. But he was not going to stay here.
1980 pr. Loung, along with his brother and wife, embarked on a river for a dangerous three-day trip along the Gulf of Thailand before reaching the Lam Sing refugee camp. Their goal was to leave Southeast Asia. The Ungai survived in this camp for four months before being sponsored by missionaries from the Vermont Christian Organization. It was they who financed the transportation of the disaster to the United States.
By getting used to the new place, the girl had no luck. “When I came to America, I wanted to forget everything. But in adolescence, the horrible memories were renewed. “
To fight these nightmares, the girl was left alone because there were no psychologists to treat war wounds in Vermont. “I couldn’t tell anyone about it, because when I found out that I was looking for land for beetles in my childhood, my friends would have thought I was crazy.”
Then he became depressed and balanced on the brink of suicide. “I felt like I had a history lesson that I couldn’t share.” She was rescued by a teacher who, after reading a girl’s essay about her childhood in Cambodia, suggested that she describe her experiences in more detail.
“It just caught our eye then. I wrote days, nights, lessons. And these notes shaped the future book.” As soon as the book was published, it became an international best seller and in 2001, it won the Association of American Librarians of Asia and the Pacific.
The author said the work reflects not only her personal experience but the story of millions of Cambodians. “If you lived in Cambodia during that period, it would be your story.” Also, memories are given in the first person.
“When you write, you get a kind of protection in real time, although you must see the events described and talk about them in real time. You cannot develop a political and philosophical plane of thought. You cannot hide anything. And as adults, often we use it “.
The brutal events, easily described both stylistically and in terms of content, reveal the girl’s emotional world here. “They will not survive the genocide alone,” he told People magazine. “They need each other.” Everything earned Mr. Ung the epithet for Anna Cambodia in Cambodia. Since 1996 he has been collaborating with the American Veterans Foundation of Vietnam (VVAF), which has donated 20,000 people to four centers in Cambodia alone. equip the population with new orthopedic limbs and wheelchairs.
In addition, he worked for the Peace Action Education Fund with a special focus on landmines and the arms trade. Loung and her husband currently run a restaurant chain in Cleveland.
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