History & Testimony: ‘How I survived the Khmer Rouge’

Youk Chhang: ‘Since I started working at the Cambodia Documentation Centre, journalists have asked me this question more than any other.’

I have thought long and hard about my answer, especially on each anniversary of the Khmer Rouge takeover.

At the beginning

On 17 April 1975, I was a 14-year-old boy. My father was an architect and was later enlisted in Lon Nol's army. Although we were better off than many others in the early 1970s, prices were rising every day and we had to be careful with my father's small salary.

In addition, many of our relatives had moved into our house in Phnom Penh to escape the fighting in the countryside. Every banana and every grain of rice was rationed in our house. My parents were also constantly worried that something bad would happen to my sisters, and devoted much of their attention to protecting them. And my school closed almost every week. Because of all this, I learned to do a lot of things on my own (like making my own kites out of newspaper) and to fend for myself. In a way, becoming independent helped prepare me for life under the Khmer Rouge.

Exodus

When the Khmer Rouge began evacuating Phnom Penh, I was home alone; my mother and another family member had left the day before for a safer place, telling me they would come back for me. But the road was blocked, and on 18 April, the Khmer Rouge told me I had to leave. So I left, but I had no idea where to go, as our neighbourhood was completely deserted. So I started walking.

On the way, I heard people saying they were going to their home villages, so I decided to go to my mother's house in Takeo province. As I had no food with me, I asked the Khmer Rouge soldiers for some and they gave me round cakes made of palm sugar. After walking for several weeks, I arrived at the village. In the meantime, my mother had tried to cross the border into Vietnam, but she had been stopped. About four months later, she also arrived at her village and we were reunited.

My family was then evacuated to Battambang province. After staying there for a few months, I was separated from them and placed in a mobile unit of teenagers to dig canals. For about a year, I was able to sneak home at night to visit my family, but later our unit started working too far away. I became increasingly lonely and felt more and more isolated.

Survival

As a city kid, I hadn't really learned any survival skills, but hunger can teach you a lot. I learned to swim, for example, so I could dive down and cut the sugar cane growing in the flooded rice fields. And I learned to steal food, kill and eat snakes and rats, and find edible leaves in the jungle.

Food became my religion during the regime. I dreamed all the time about all kinds of food. It helped me fall asleep and gave me the strength to go back to the fields to work every day. Even today, when I see hungry children on the streets, it upsets me. I wonder why they can't get enough to eat now that we no longer live under the Khmer Rouge regime. I see myself in their hungry faces.

I was also angry, which got me into trouble with the village and unit leaders. But I was saved from death by many people and their small acts of kindness.

Clemency

Once, the Khmer Rouge put me in the sub-district security office, where I was beaten and tortured. A man who had grown up in my mother's village went to see the sub-district chief, telling him that I was still very young and begging him to release me. Two weeks later, I was released from prison. That man was then accused of having relatives in enemy territory and was never seen again. Another person from the Touk base gave our family food when we needed it most.

Trapeang Veng, the village where we stayed in Battambang, had a leader who came from the western zone; her name was Comrade Aun and she was only 12 years old. My mother begged her not to send me to work in the fields and gave Aun her shiny scissors from China as a favour. My mother cherished those scissors because they had been given to her by her youngest brother, but she sacrificed them for me. The scissors saved me for a few days until the Angkar ordered Aun to send me back with the mobile unit.

At the end of 1978, rumours began to circulate in Cambodia about the large number of deaths (Trapeang Veng once had 1,200 families, but only 12 survived Democratic Kampuchea), and people began to steal and take great risks. At the time, an informant told my uncle that he had to flee to Thailand because he had worked for the National Bank of Cambodia and would certainly be killed if he stayed. My brother-in-law followed him a little later. After walking for a few days, my brother-in-law retraced his steps because he missed his wife.

I was told not to escape, which may have saved me from sharing my uncle's fate. He continued walking to Thailand, but we never saw him again. I think he stepped on a landmine.

These gestures from members of my family and even complete strangers may have saved my life more than once. These are people who saw the value of life and did their best to assert their humanity at a time when it was difficult to do so. They gave me a reason to hope.

Finding answers

Journalists also ask me if I still have nightmares about the Khmer Rouge. My life at that time was a real nightmare, but it no longer haunts my nights.

One day, however, my mother had a dream about me. I was sitting on the mountain of the Eye of Buddha and looking into the distance. She said it was a sign that I would survive, and that gave me hope.

So I never thought about dying, not even once, during Democratic Kampuchea. Instead, I hoped that I would get a good night's sleep and enough to eat. That hope has always been with me and encouraged me to fight to stay alive.

The Khmer Rouge changed my life forever. The need to find answers to why I endured so much pain and lost so many family members during the regime led me to research Democratic Kampuchea.

I wanted to know why my sister was murdered, why I was imprisoned and tortured when I was trying to find vegetables for one of my sisters who was pregnant and starving, and why my mother couldn't help me when I was being tortured. And I also wanted revenge.

Although I am still searching for answers to these and other questions, I no longer have a strong desire for revenge. Visiting the house where I grew up is a comfort to me; it renews the hopes I had for education when I was a child, and it keeps the memories of my friends and loved ones alive. I grew flowers at home when I was young: orchids, storm plants, nail plants, and winter Tuesday plants. I grow the same flowers today at DC-Cam. They remind me of where I have been and where I am going now.

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Youk Chhang Youk Chhang est le directeur du Centre de documentation du Cambodge, et un leader dans l’éducation, la prévention et la recherche sur le génocide. En 2018, Chhang a reçu le prix Ramon Magsaysay, connu comme le « prix Nobel de l’Asie », pour son travail de préservation de la mémoire du génocide et de recherche de la justice dans la nation cambodgienne et dans le monde. En 2007, Chhang a été reconnu comme l’une des « 100 personnes les plus influentes » par le magazine Time.

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