Editorial | Articles about Cambodia | Khmer
Message from Dr. Leakhena NOU, Ph.D
ASRIC is asking for your support to push for continued prosecutions of other potential KR defendants for cases 003-004. Please see link below and sign if you wish, and fyi you don't have to be Khmer/a survivor to sign the petition. We are simply asking for your support to help the survivors fight for justice they deserve.
"Cambodian Survivors Seek Justice"
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San Jose Cambodian community awaits justice
One of the worst genocides of the 20th century happened in Cambodia, in the 1970s. The extremist Khmer Rouge party, led by Pol Pot tried to create a rural farming society, evacuating people from their homes and jobs in urban areas to the country, where many were killed by the government, starved, or were worked to death.
SOPHANY BAY: If I did not see justice, you know, it’s kind of like I kind of cannot close me eyes properly when I die.
SINA MEAS: Pain me to death. I cannot find my husband, I cannot find my son. So I do not care the judgment day, but for the sake of my community I want justice done for them.
KELVIN SO: I am so happy that this is the first time that my case have been accepted by the Phnom Penh tribunal.
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Local Cambodian-Americans play active role in trial of Khmer Rouge leaders
Cambodia’s brutal Khmer Rouge government fell more than 30 years ago. The power behind the infamous “Killing Fields” killed as many as 2 million Cambodians through executions, starvation and disease....
Sophany Bay counsels Cambodian-Americans on mental health matters. In the 1970s, she was a teacher in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, until the Khmer Rouge sent her to a forced labor camp in the countryside.
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Petition Link:
Facebook Page link: (A quick way to send a link of the petition to all of your facebook friends by logging in and selecting the 'Share' option as well as the 'Like' button - I also suggest sending a personal message to all of your friends letting them know how important it is to sign this petition and share it with others as well)
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Leakhena NOU, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Sociology
California State University, Long Beach
Department of Sociology, PSY-143
1250 Bellflower Blvd.
Long Beach, CA 90840-0906
Direct Office #: (562) 985-7439
Fax #: (562) 985-2090
E-mail: lnou@csulb.edu
Labels: Khmer Rouge, Khmer Rouge Tribunal, Leakhena NOU, San Jose
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By John Boudreau
jboudreau@mercurynews.com
Posted: 02/26/2011 09:27:41 PM PST
Many Cambodians have lived the lives of ghosts in Silicon Valley, not seen or heard from much, quietly tormented every day and every night with unbearable memories of the genocide that wiped out entire families -- parents, spouses, children, extended relatives.
Now, finally, some of them will have their day in international court. When the second trial of alleged perpetrators of the Khmer Rouge genocide begins in a few months, members of the Cambodian community in the United States will be represented by attorneys at the proceedings.
On Saturday, about 50 members of Silicon Valley's 10,000 strong Cambodian community gathered at the Wat Khemara Rangsey Buddhist temple in East San Jose to hear about the upcoming trial of four senior Khmer Rouge leaders charged in connection with the deaths of 1.7 million people from execution, torture, starvation and disease from 1975 to 1979.
"For our clients, who have waited so long for this, it can be overwhelming to revisit the past," said Andrea Evans, legal director at the Center for Justice and Accountability, a San Francisco human rights legal group that will represent scores of Cambodians living in the U.S. before the United Nations-backed tribunal.
Sophany Bay, a 65-year-old San Jose counselor, is providing written testimony.
"For more than three decades, I waited to see justice," she said in a statement to the international court. "We are getting old. We want to see justice before we die."
The reason, Bay said Saturday, is that the nightmares never stop.
"I lost all my family," said Bay, whose three children died. One of them, a baby girl named Pom, died after a Khmer Rouge soldier injected something into her head.
"I don't have any siblings," she said. "I don't have any nephews. They killed my whole family."
Bay said she hasn't dreamed in the present ever since. All her dreams, she said, are of the past horrors in her homeland.
The once-powerful Khmer Rouge leaders who will stand before the tribunal as early as June are now in their late 70s and mid-80s. The complex trial could last as long as two to three years.
The defendants are Ieng Sary, who was foreign minister; his wife, Ieng Thirith, minister of social welfare; Khieu Samphan, head of state; and Nuon Chea, known as Brother No 2. The top leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998. In the earlier trial, Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, was sentenced to 19 years in prison for the torture and death of at least 14,000 people in the Tuol Sleng prison in the capital of Phnom Penh.
The regime took control in 1975 after the war in next-door Vietnam spread to Cambodia. Khmer Rouge leaders believed they could create a utopian communist society by purging the country of intellectuals, business leaders, government officials and anyone else considered a threat to their revolution.
Approximately 157,500 Cambodians resettled in the U.S. from 1975 to 1994, the vast majority as refugees. Many still suffer serious mental health problems as a result of experiencing torture and witnessing killings of their family members.
In 2009, researcher Leakhena Nou, a medical sociologist at Cal State Long Beach, began documenting the stories of genocide survivors in the United States. She discovered that Cambodian-Americans, like their countrymen, could offer testimony and have legal representation at the tribunal proceedings.
During her research, she discovered that many Cambodians in America experienced the same symptoms of young people living in Cambodia.
"I found the same hopelessness, helplessness and lack of trust in themselves, family and government leaders," Nou said.
Nou's research is deeply personal. Her family escaped the reign of terror because her father, a Cambodian military officer who had been living in Thailand with his family when the Khmer Rouge took over, sensed grave danger when he and others were asked to return. Those who answered the call were executed immediately upon their return or taken to prison and tortured to death.
"The instinct my dad had saved our lives," she said.
The process of retelling stories can, at least in the short run, cause substantial emotional trauma for survivors, said Dr. Daryn Reicherter, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine who treats many Cambodian emigres in San Jose.
"They had this rough patch," he said. But, Reicherter added, "Not one of them had a regret" about their decision to retell their experiences in excruciating detail.
Labels: Khmer Rouge Tribunal, San Jose
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Message from Dr. Leakhena NOU, Ph.D
