Published by The Documentation Center of Cambodia and The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport
~ 2009
COVER PHOTO: Children at Angkor Wat. After the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime on 7 January 1979, hundreds of thousands of children were left orphaned. This photo was taken in 1979 by a Vietnamese soldier.
Preface
Cambodia has experienced different historical periods since its beginning, some periods of prosperity while others of sadness. There was one dark period, in particular, that lasted for three years, eight months and twenty days under the rule of Democratic Kampuchea regime. In this relatively short, but most atrocious period, Cambodia’s national and social fabric was destroyed. Over a million of our people perished and so many more suffered. Rebuilding our country has been far from easy: subsequent leaderships along with survivors and their families have had to pick up the pieces to restore Cambodia, a process that has taken decades and still in progress today.
As custodians of our own dark chapter in history, we are indebted with grave responsibilities: to memorialize, remember, and pass down knowledge of events, acts, and thoughts that give rise to atrocious crimes and inhumanity. As such, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport has established a national curriculum to integrate this painful, yet crucial, history into all Cambodian public schools.
Younger generations of Cambodians must understand and know about this grave past in order to learn from our past mistakes, prevent such events from happening again, and recognize and know when to stand up for fundamental principles of humanity, integrity, and justice.
Im Sethy
Minister of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport
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About Me
- Duong Dara
- Dara Duong was born in 1971 in Battambang province, Cambodia. His life changed forever at age four, when the Khmer Rouge took over the country in 1975. During the regime that controlled Cambodia from 1975-1979, Dara’s father, grandparents, uncle and aunt were executed, along with almost 3 million other Cambodians. Dara’s mother managed to keep him and his brothers and sisters together and survive the years of the Khmer Rouge regime. However, when the Vietnamese liberated Cambodia, she did not want to live under Communist rule. She fled with her family to a refugee camp on the Cambodian-Thai border, where they lived for more than ten years. Since arriving in the United States, Dara’s goal has been to educate people about the rich Cambodian culture that the Khmer Rouge tried to destroy and about the genocide, so that the world will not stand by and allow such atrocities to occur again. Toward that end, he has created the Cambodian Cultural Museum and Killing Fields Memorial, which began in his garage and is now in White Center, Washington. Dara’s story is one of survival against enormous odds, one of perseverance, one of courage and hope.
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