Parents should share with their children their experiences under the Khmer
Rouge, which can help heal old wounds and move the country forward, the
author of a groundbreaking history book said Monday.
Dy Kamboly, whose "History of Democratic Kampuchea" is being distributed
in Cambodia to help teach about the regime, told "Hello VOA" that digging
into the past can be painful, but it can also be helpful.
Saturday, April 17, will mark the 35th anniversary of the fall of Phnom
Penh to the Khmer Rouge guerrillas, who immediately emptied the cities and
began Year Zero, a communist experiment that led to the deaths of up to 2
million people.
Cambodians are still reticent to discuss their experiences with their
children, and many still live among those who followed the Khmer Rouge.
But authors like Dy Kamboly and others at the Documentation Center of
Cambodia encourage speaking out, claiming that sharing can be helpful,
even among victims and former perpetrators.
"In order to avoid negative consequences of bringing up the painful past,
the Documentation Center, in cooperation with the Ministry of Education,
has come up with a plan to teach more than 3,200 teachers around Cambodia
how to teach the history of Democratic Kampuchea," he said.
This is being done in a way that avoids "negative impact on society," he
said.
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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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