Author, activist talks about Cambodia with students, faculty

Editor's note: Typical inveverted pyramid structure will not do for this piece. That was my first thought walking out of the main theatre of the Vern Riffe Center for the Arts this evening as the elevator carried me up to my office. There is no way that the inverted pyramid of facts in descending order could ever convey the real meaning and impact of this evening's events.

"Peace is not automatic. It is something we must commit to and work for on a daily basis," author and activist Loung Ung said during the question and answer session following her lecture on her experiences as a child, surviving the genocide in Cambodia in the 1970s.

Loung Ung met for dinner with a small group of students, faculty, and university staff members in the provost's conference room. She had just arrived from Cleveland where her husband is from, after spending the past three months in Cambodia. On Feb. 20, 30 years after the war and 10 years after Cambodia and the United Nations began negotiations, a tribunal was finally meeting to try many of the leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime for crimes against humanity. It took 10 years of negotiations to decide who would go on trial, as well as other issues such as funding and witness protection. The actual trial begins March 30.

"I wasn't sure how I was going to feel," Ung said.

At the age of five, she was forced to flee her home along with her family. The communist Khmer Rouge brought war on the Cambodian people, killing nearly two million people in the space of three years, eight months, and 21 days.

"Three years, eight months, 21 days," Ung's clear gentle voice sounded eerie repeating the numbers to drive her point home.

There were only 40 seats allowed for the press, but Ung chose to go in as a civilian. She related what it was like to sit and interact with the people, a group of monks in orange robes, villagers, and students.

"So many of the young people there do not believe it happened. They know people died in the war, but they do not know what that means," Ung said.

She told a story about one of the student s she spoke to who lived near one of the country's 20,000 mass graves. Every year during the rainy season the impression in the ground would fill up with water and water lilies would grow there, the girl told her. One of the students Ung spoke to that day had decided that not all these people could be telling the same lie, and so it had to be believed. Children in Cambodia are not taught about the genocide until the 12th grade, but only about 25 percent of students make it that far in school. She said it is often difficult for the younger people to connect what they see now in their country with the stories they hear of the war.

"The same rules no longer apply to this game," Ung said about the differences in International and Cambodian ideas about law and justice in this case. One of the men on trial signed the death warrants of 14,000 people. Ung plans to go back to Cambodia in June or July when the verdict comes out.

At dinner, Shawnee State student Bethany Heidenreich asked what Ms. Ung would like to see come out of the trial.

"Accurate information," Ung said. "At the very least that's what we need. Healing for us comes out of new generations. How do you teach a kid about the law when those who have broken the greatest law of all are not held accountable?"

Ung also spoke about her writing. She kept a journal for many years, and her book "First They Killed My Father" was written from her journal. She said that the goal of her writing is to tie the horror with the heart and make it a human story.

"Human spirits can be broken. We're just trying to do the best we can, so we need to give each other a helping hand," Ung said about her realization that it was part of her purpose to raise awareness.

She chose to go the authentic route, to write what felt real. Her first book is told in the first person present tense, in the voice of her five-year-old self.

"I was angry, I was hurt; I wanted people to know what it was like to survive a war," Ung said. "What do you do when on day 366, on day 1000, people stop talking about it, stop writing about it?"

Ung said that as of about a year and a half ago she has been able to devote more time to writing and has found that she greatly enjoys it. Her new book is about her mother's childhood migration from China to Cambodia.

"So many places I walked in Cambodia I had memories, it was like they rose up out of the pavement," Ung said about her return visits and memories from her childhood.

She said that she chose to write her book in a child's voice as a way of speaking for all those children out there who don't have the words to tell their stories.

Then Ung asked Dave Todt, vice president for academic affairs, what he would want the audience members at her lecture to take away with them from her visit.

"A desire to know more…about Cambodia, the impact that violence has on families, on countries; that there's some spark of interest," Todt said.

Loung Ung's lecture about her book "First They Killed My Father, A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers" began at 7 p.m. SSU professors Rita Haider and Shannon Lawson introduced Ung to the audience with a thought-provoking recollection of how the promise of never again after the mass killings of the Holocaust and World War II turned into again and again with the numerous tragic instances of genocide around the world since then.

"I want to share with you my journey from a child of war to an activist for peace," Ung said. "Never again turned into again, and again, and again. And I am one of the lucky ones."

Loung Ung's book "First They Killed My Father" is available in the SSU bookstore or online.

Editor's note: Bring a few tissues when you read it, and be prepared to find the heart in the horror story-a human story that made me remember why I chose journalism in the first place.