Rebuilding lives in the shadow of Khmer Rouge terror

The Age

3 days ago

In 1975, a four-year genocide began in which 2 million people were murdered or starved to death. The bloody chapter wiped out a generation of educated Cambodians and still haunts the country's people.
Dictator Pol Pot's brutal Khmer Rouge regime murdered and starved millions in pursuit of Year Zero, brutally targeting anyone with perceived privilege. Fifty years on, while the scars of war persist, Cambodian Australians are reflecting on their journey, embracing their identities and preserving their culture.
Through the trauma, there is also triumph and the resilience of a minority community that has thrived in a new country.
My father's story
Growing up with refugee parents, I often heard about having no food, about labour camps and having to conceal their identities to stay alive. My sister and I were constantly reminded of how lucky we were to grow up in Australia.
It is only since having my own children that I've started to understand what my parents and other innocent Cambodians endured. The anniversary presented an opportunity for my father to tell his story to others.
I interview Dad in the home where I grew up. The walls are the same colour, the furniture hasn't changed.
Over the years, his collection of artefacts and memorabilia has grown. There are paintings of Angkor Wat. Wooden sculptures give it a mini-museum feel.
They represent a longing for the 'motherland' my parents fled 42 years ago as refugees leaving behind their identities, and loved ones, carrying nothing but haunting memories.
Dad had already lived a hard life. His mother died when he was seven, his dad kicked him out of home as a teenager.
As an orphan, he sold sticky rice and snacks on the streets before being adopted by kind strangers with links to the royal family. They raised him until he became a police officer.
During the five-year civil war against the Khmer Rouge, he fought for the incumbent Lon Nol government.
This made him a target of the Khmer Rouge's Year Zero agenda – a world with no division between the rich and poor.
Soldiers were told to kill educated people. Government officials, engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, police officers, even monks didn't stand a chance.
'Pol Pot [was] cruel, barbaric. He killed his own people,' my dad, Saphen Ty, says. 'No one was spared. They just killed off all the educated people.'
As Phnom Penh fell, a friend asked if Dad wanted to escape to Thailand.
'I told him that I wanted to go back to Battambang to reunite with my wife and children. When I returned home, they had all been killed.'
Dad's wife, Chhoeub, also a police officer, and their eldest daughter, Ly, who was nine years old, were taken away and murdered.
According to Dad's nephew, when Chhoeub realised the soldiers showed no mercy towards children, she gave her one-year-old boy to a neighbour, who hid him.
'The Khmer Rouge later found out, so they went to look in the hiding spot where they stored rice, so they took the baby and the woman who was hiding him and they killed them all,' Dad says he was told.
Dad's son's name was Pino. His second son survived the war but died in the early 1990s. Dad's third child, a daughter, survived and is now living in Australia.
It's estimated more than 2 million people died during the genocide. Many were murdered, others died from disease or from malnutrition and exhaustion in concentration camps or as forced labour in the fields.
Dad remembers one family taken for execution.
'There were around six to seven of them, all engineers,' he recalls. 'There was one daughter left; she was unconscious after being shot in the foot. The following day, locals came to dispose of the bodies to bury.'
The three-year-old girl was Thida, who miraculously survived. She lifted her hands together in a 'Sampeah' gesture, begging the locals for help
Thida was taken to a temple, where nuns raised her. She now lives in Austria and reunited with Dad when he visited Austria about a decade ago.
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Dad recalls being just 'skin and bones', too afraid to even pick fruit from trees or catch animals to eat for fear of being killed.
Anyone suspected of having any connection to the former government was persecuted. To save on ammunition, the Khmer Rouge improvised using sharp bamboo sticks to kill. Some babies were slammed against tree trunks as the countryside became gravesites for mass killings.
'They would stab people and just throw them off the cliff,' Dad says.
My parents met on the border. Mum was a nurse who had lost her former husband and nine-year-old son, who died in her arms from starvation. She was skeletal, pushed on a cart by strangers as she made her way to the border.
Mum and Dad escaped to Thailand, married in a refugee camp and had my sister in Khao I Dang before being sponsored to come to Australia in 1983.
For which Dad says he is forever grateful: 'So happy, a new life.'
Forty at the time, Dad didn't want to be a 'dole bludger' and for weeks walked kilometres with my sister in a pram to the Job Network Centre.
'They said to me, 'Your English isn't good enough; you need to go to school and improve before you get a job. I didn't listen. I was determined, so I kept going back every day until they got sick of me.'
He eventually scored a job interview at the Coles distribution centre in Moorabbin.
'I told them my English was poor and I only knew a couple of words, but I really wanted a job,' he says. 'The boss said, 'Don't worry. When you go to work, your English will improve.'
'I bought a pushbike and cycled to work [in Moorabbin] from Noble Park until one floor manager felt sorry for me, so he asked another colleague to drive me until I got my driving licence.'
He notched up 22 years working at Coles Myer before retiring.
Dad is scarred by what he witnessed in Cambodia. He chokes back tears thinking of those he lost.
'I miss them, I always think about them,' he says. 'During New Year and Buddhist festivals, I reminisce. I always think about the people who helped me, my foster mum and those who took me in and cared for me.'
How a quirky student outsmarted the Khmer Rouge
Richard Lim's adventurous streak may have saved his life. Born as Suor Lim to a middle-class family outside of Phnom Penh, Richard loved the outdoors, and his knowledge of wild plants helped him survive when he fled the Khmer Rouge.
'My experience, my childhood saved my life. I know all the food tucker in the bush,' he says.
It's still difficult for him to talk about what happened when the Khmer Rouge took control during his second year as a pharmacy student.
'I never thought the world could turn upside down … it was just like a nightmare,' he says. 'They tried to eliminate all the intellectuals.'
One of 10 children, Richard was separated from most of his family and answered honestly about his occupation when first interviewed by the Khmer Rouge. Placed in a group with 32 other young medical and law students, he didn't know then that they were marked for execution. He was saved when the illiterate soldiers accidentally swapped his group for another.
From then on, Richard and his brother concealed their identities.
'I said, 'You have to tell a lie.' I told them that I worked as a labourer, and they believed me,' he says. 'They eliminated people by asking questions. You tell the truth it means you go. If you didn't tell the truth, they still had a lot of spies, the young kids. They always had someone following you.'
Richard thought many times that he would die. In 1979, Vietnam invaded Cambodia. He recalls hiding under a palm tree leaf as bullets flew.
Vietnamese soldiers captured him and asked at gunpoint: 'Are you Pol Pot? Pol Pot?'
'They couldn't speak Khmer. We said, 'No, no, no, no Pol Pot.''
Only when a Khmer-speaking South Vietnamese soldier interviewed Richard and his group, were they convinced.
Seven years had passed since Richard had seen his family. He often dreamt about his mother and her cooking.
'I dreamt about if I meet them, I'm going to have nice food to eat – porridge and the nice cake that she used to cook for me.'
Richard embarked on a dangerous weeks-long journey to find his family, riding a pushbike to his home town of Pursat.
On arrival, he was told: 'Your parents have been killed, along with your older sister.'
Richard's surviving sister and brother were spotted walking west towards the Thai border, so he followed and eventually caught up with them.
'I stood in front of her, I looked at her,' Richard says. 'It was hard to recognise [her] because she was dark and skinny … all of a sudden, she cried. I said, 'Are you my sister?' She recognised me straight away.'
Richard spent almost a year helping the sick in a refugee camp before arriving in Australia in 1980. He wanted to finish studying, but his certificates were destroyed during the war, meaning a return to high school at the age of 24.
'No one knew … Asians we don't look old,' he says with a laugh.
Working at a factory and as a fruit picker to earn extra cash while studying at night, Richard formed the Cambodian Youth Association. He tutored young Khmer students and encouraged them to finish school.
By 1991, he opened Lim's Pharmacy in Springvale, attracted by its diversity. It has become a go-to place for newly arrived Asian migrants.
'I love diverse communities because I'm one of them,' Richard says. 'I put myself in their shoes. How much I struggled when I came to Australia to face the new culture, the new way of living.'
Richard prides himself on leading a team of multilingual staff, one of his managers can speak up to eight languages.
'To treat someone, you have to understand their medical condition,' Richard says.
Recognised with an Order of Australia Medal, the former deputy mayor of Dandenong also established Cambodian Vision, which provides free eye surgery in his home country.
From a refugee child in the burbs to the boardroom
Sophea Heng grew up quickly. At seven, she was folding and packing bags at her parents' plastics factory.
It was 'unconventional' but instilled in her drive, tenacity and a work ethic.
At 42, she is the co-founder and director of Heng and Hurst, a successful medical recruitment agency.
'My parents are my heroes,' Sophea says. 'They have the most inspiring story when it comes to running a business and creating wealth and giving us the best lives.
'I've had a good life, but they are also children from war as well, so now that I'm a mum and raising my own kids, I'm learning to understand the trauma that my parents experienced therefore influenced the way that I was raised.'
The Khmer Rouge imprisoned Sophea's parents when they were 16.
'The Pol Pot regime was about eliminating any educated person,' Sophea says. 'My mum's family was one of the first to be targeted and executed.'
The children of a governor, Sophea's mother, aunties and uncles changed their names to hide.
'My mum's name is Mollica, but their pet dog's name was Lonn,' Sophea says. 'Her name was changed to Lonn, and her name is still Lonn now.'
Sophea's mother still suffers from nightmares after witnessing the execution of family members.
'My mum would go to bed at night, and even as a child she would scream in her sleep, like blood-curdling screaming, and still does to this day,' she says.
'It's affected them a lot in terms of their ability to communicate, their ability to trust each other. They were young kids. It was a fight for survival in prison.
'You even see it growing up now in our community, where our parents couldn't be happy for other Cambodians because at a young age they were taught to compete with each other as opposed to be happy for each other.'
Sophea, who was born in a Thai refugee camp, her older brother and their parents were sponsored to come to Australia.
'I grew up like any other Australian,' Sophea says. 'I grew up in the '80s, loved Kylie Minogue. I grew up in a milk bar, loved Home and Away, loved Neighbours, was inspired and influenced by Dolly magazine and Cosmo, just like any other Aussie teenager.
'What was different, which I've only realised now, is the impact [my parents' journey] had, and the sense of responsibility when you're the only one in your family that speaks English … my parents never came to parent-teacher interviews; they couldn't speak the language.
'I had to ask my parents to sign excursion forms, but they had no idea where I was going.'
She moved primary schools seven times, traversing Melbourne suburbs as her parents attempted to settle.
Sophea remembers feeling confused when her grade 2 schoolmates' parents told their children not to be friends with her because she was Cambodian.
'I was sad, and I didn't understand.'
In her teenage years, she 'witnessed and was terrified by the drug culture'.
'By the time I finished year 12, I lost around five school friends due to drug overdose or suicide,' she says.
Despite her lonely childhood, Sophea counts herself as one of the lucky ones.
'In my generation not a lot of them made it through to a professional career. A lot of people my age and perhaps five years older didn't have the chance to start life the way that I did.'
Sophea wants to show her children what it's like to be proud of their identity. She says her experience of growing up in Australia is different to that of her cousins in Cambodia.
'We were scattered everywhere, a minority community, so we grew up not having a tight-knit community,' she says.
That's partly why she decided to start Khmer Professionals Australia, to celebrate Khmer culture, network and uplift the stories of Cambodian Australians.
Sophea says another driver was an inaccurate narrative on social media.
'We have a very silly sense of humour, which I love and it's very much in me,' she says. 'But there's also another part of Cambodians – they are beautiful, they are charming, they are very elegant, they've got a work ethic. And I found this wasn't being expressed.'
The group has grown from a handful of her close friends and family to more than 250 Cambodian Australians.
'I'm the beginning of a new generation of educated Cambodians … A lot of us had to work hard, we had to do a lot of heavy lifting,' she says.
Sophea says she feels a huge responsibility to be a role model for younger Khmer Australians.
'There are young Cambodians out there who may not have parents who are professionals, who may not have parents who are educated because they were teenagers or they were young during the regime, and they've come to live in a country where they just had to work hard and didn't have a chance to go to school.'
How a grocery store forged a community connection
Michael Taing spent his teenage years helping his parents at their Cambodian grocery store in Springvale.
Called Battambang, after his mother's home town, it became a place of comfort for so many in the Khmer community, providing them with food and connecting Michael with his people.
'Closing up, early mornings, late nights, meeting people of the same ethnicity, you really get a sense of the community that came from the struggles that came here,' he says.
'The smiles, the stories, and the sense of community. Because it really felt like, even though I was born here, having that shop made me more in touch with my culture.'
Still, Michael never knew his parents' story until he sat them down and asked them about their past.
'The struggles they went through and the trials and tribulations of being here today were eye-opening for me,' he says. 'It was very emotional and very welcoming to see their side of the story and to see it through their lens.'
Michael, now a father of two, tears up talking about his mother's harrowing experience.
'Mum had a miscarriage with her first, stillborn during the Khmer Rouge period, and still had to work the next day,' he says. 'Trying to understand that is so hard.'
When Michael's family decided to make the dangerous journey to escape Cambodia, they all got a traditional tattoo. Known as Sak Yant, the tattoo is believed to possess magical and protective powers.
Michael's parents, aunts and uncles were all inked.
During the escape, says Michael, 'immediately, gunshots were heard, then all of a sudden you can hear boom – landmine – [the] family don't know who, but someone obviously died. Shots were flying past my parents, past my aunties and uncles. Some people in front of them 20 metres away got shot dead.
'All they could see was tunnel vision. They had to get to the border. The whole night, all they could hear was gunfire, people screaming, landmines going off.'
By morning, they had reached a safe spot. The entire family – including his older brother, who was just a baby – were uninjured. Their suitcases, though, were riddled with bullets.
To this day, Michael's mother believes the special tattoos got them over the line.
'We got shot at, but we survived. My parents were saying, 'How did we get so lucky?'
'The belief is of the essence of the tattoo, the culture that we've had for 2000 years in magic. My mum honestly believes that's what saved them.'
Michael says he tries to put himself in his parents' shoes, but their experience is unfathomable.
'You can never really understand what they went through,' he says. 'But you can understand why they are the way they are because of the experiences they've been through.'
He spent months unpacking the traumatic stories and started to appreciate the war's impact on his parents, including certain habits and traits growing up.
'You can't make loud noises at night; you know you make a noise and someone's going to kill you.'
Michael and his older sister and brother would always have to finish their food.
'Having to eat everything off your plate because [my parents] had nothing,' he says.
Michael says he is grateful for his life in Australia, and understanding his parents' sacrifices has been therapeutic for him and them.
'For us, it was healing in a sense – OK, I know why my parents are the way they are, I know why they raised us the way they raised us,' he says. 'For them, it was a relief telling their story to their children to be able to get that off their chest as well. Holding it in for so long.'
Another important moment arrived when his uncle came from Cambodia, bringing the teachings of kun khmer – traditional Cambodian martial arts.
'It just opened my eyes to everything,' he says. 'With that, I learnt more about our history through martial arts.'
Michael says kids his age at the time were more into kickboxing and karate.
'It was different for me. I wanted to do kun khmer, I wanted to do what my ancestors did,' he says. 'It gave me a sense of purpose. This was like a calling for me. It just made me feel like I was home; this was something I had to do to understand not just myself but my culture a little bit more.'
Now 36, Michael hopes to open his own gym and teach the combat sport. He hopes to ignite a sense of pride in younger generations to embrace their identity, celebrate Khmer culture and carry the legacy of their ancestors for many years to come.
'It will provide them with a sense of self,' he says. 'The kids that I see who come from a background like myself, who come from generational trauma, it will help them find themselves.
'I have roots in my culture. I can find a way to identify with my parents in some sort of way, and I'm also helping preserve something that means so uniquely and so special to us. For me being able to preserve that is pretty damn important.'