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Women's History Month:
Daughter of Cambodia

On April 17, 1975, five-year-old Loung Ung, her family, and the other two million residents of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, were ordered into the countryside by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge forces. "I was literally playing hopscotch on the sidewalk in front of my house one minute. The next minute I was sent on a three-year, eight-month, twenty-one day death march," Ung said.

Because her father worked for the royal secret service, Ung's family was in danger. Her father told his seven children, "You must not ever talk about your past. You must not ever remember Phnom Penh. You must forget about everything you ever did, saw, ate, went." When cowbells in the countryside reminded Ung of ice cream carts, she thought, "I must not think about ice cream carts. I must not think about ice cream, because if I think about it, what if I accidentally blurt it out." If they knew the truth, the Khmer Rouge would kill her family. So Ung remained quiet. "I survived because I became mute. I had to be dumb, I had to be blind, I had to lose my voice."

Loung Ung has found her voice. She wrote a memoir of the war, First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Speaks, and is today a national spokesperson for the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, which received the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. The organization is a program of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. Her March 15 presentation in Chico was sponsored by the Women's Center in honor of Women's History Month.

The Khmer Rouge killed a quarter of Cambodia's population between 1975 and 1979. The killing fields still kill. During the war, the Khmer Rouge planted four to six million land mines. Ung wonders, "All those who survived the war, can they survive the peace?"

Ung showed the audience three examples of the 340 different types of land mines in the world. These small, toy-like objects that easily fit in the hand may look innocuous, but the sixty to eighty million land mines throughout the world kill 26,000 people each year. During the Vietnam War, 64,000 American soldiers died or were injured by land mines. Ung said, "It is a weapon of mass destruction, albeit in slow motion."

Ung's father was killed about a year after the family left Phnom Penh. Several months later, her mother told the children they could not stay together. She sent Ung off with two of her siblings. Ung remembered her mother "turning me around by my shoulders, pushing me out the door, slapping me on the butt and saying, ŒGo, I don't want you; I can't take care of you; you're too much of a burden. Get out.'" As an adult, Ung came to understand her mother's great courage and pain, but as a child the anger, grief, and rejection smoldered.

In an orphanage camp, Ung's anger led to fights with other children. Her tendency toward violence was rewarded with a transfer to a military training camp for children. Ung knows that none of us believes we can kill. Neither did she. By age nine, she learned that with enough anger, hatred, and military training, anyone can kill.

Ung was trained to kill and to avoid being killed: "When I was running a field, I didn't dodge soccer balls. I didn't run track and field. I was told to run in a zigzag line if I was being shot at -- it was easier for them to miss me." Any child labeled a troublemaker went to work in the mine fields. Many never came back.

When Ung's family decided to leave Cambodia, they didn't try the land route, fearing the danger of the mines. They couldn't afford the five ounces of gold per person price for everyone to board the boat, so they sent only the oldest brother and Ung, who didn't see any of their family for fifteen years. During the war, she lost both her parents, two sisters, and twenty other relatives to the Khmer Rouge and the killing fields. Ung reminded us, "My story is not unique."

As Americans, we often feel protected from such terrors, because we have not fought a war on our land in over a century, and our soil is not filled with land mines. Yet, Ung told of the American civilian land mine victims: journalists, tourists, Peace Corps volunteers.

The International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, headquartered in Vermont, urges all nations to support and ratify the 1997 treaty which bans the manufacture, use, stockpiling, and transfer of land mines. As of March 15, 2000, 137 countries have signed the treaty, and 94 countries have ratified it. The United States refuses to sign or ratify this treaty. -- BA