A Great Mother!!

The speaker shared a personal story. How did they escape from the war. 

They are actually Cambodians, but he showed one picture which was taken in Vietnam in 1977. It happened during Khmer Rouge regime during 1975 and 1979. 

The communist Khmer Rouge enters Phnom Penh to liberate their people from the encroaching conflict in Vietnam, and American bombing campaigns. The Khmer Rouge evacuates people to the countryside in order to create a rural communist utopia, much like Mao Tse-Tung’s Cultural Revolution in China. The Khmer Rouge closes the doors to the outside world. After four years, a half million were murdered by their own leaders. 

On April 17th 1975, speaker’s family lived in Phnom Penh. They were moved from Phnom Penh to Pursat province. People were forced to work the fields. His father and mother ended up in a sort of concentration camp, labor camp. During that time his mother got word from the commune chief that the Vietnamese were actually asking for their citizens to go back to Vietnam. His mother spoke some Vietnamese, as a child having grown up with Vietnamese friends. And she decided to take a chance and claim to be Vietnamese so that they could have a chance to survive. 

At that time, his father were very sick and passed away in Jan 1976. Because his dad didn’t speak Vietnamese, his death made thing possible. Khmer Rouge took them from a place to the Vietnam border and people had to take a language test. 

His mom’s Vietnamese was so bad and she gave al boys girl’s name and girl boys’ names. Until she met a Vietnam lady who tutored her for two days intensively. She passed the exam somehow and then they survived. 

Until 2008, U.N. helped Cambodia take on or started the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. He involved into it as he filed a Civil Complaint with the Tribunal about his father’s passing away. 

Khmer Rouge regime  红色高棉统治政权