Street Roots • June 2-8, 2017
News
Page 5
FORGIVING, from page 4
As tempting as it
was, suicide was not
Cambodia into a network of barbaric prison
an option. Khmer
like labor camps, forcing families apart and
Rouge soldiers
out of the cities to work on communal farms
made it clear they
and build infrastructure.
would torture and
Workers were not allowed possessions or
kill all the family
contact with their families. They were
members of anyone
expendable cogs in a machine, worked to
who took their own
death and frequently tortured or executed for
life to escape the
trivial missteps.
killing fields.
Cambodians starved to death beneath trees
“I was forced to
full of ripe coconuts and oranges. In the newly work 13 hours a day,
communist and heavily militarized Cambodia,
every day, 365 days a
trees belonged to everyone, so their fruits
year, for almost 5
were off-limits.
years,” Kilong said.
Due to his boyish looks, Khmer Rouge
His spirit and his
soldiers initially thought Kilong was much
body were broken.
younger, and they placed him in school with
As a child he had
little children.
spent more than a year studying under a
As Kilong recounted
Buddhist monk in the temple near his home,
life under the Khmer
but under the Khmer Rouge, he lost all faith.
Rouge, he said up until
But at the time, he said, the only thing on
about 15 years ago, he
his mind was figuring out how to survive each
couldn’t get through his
day.
story without breaking
The two daily meals under the Khmer
T h e E i m e r B o u g e sh®»W into tears.
Rouge were typically porridge containing
h a w k ille d
at the w r y
In 2009 he revisited
water and two spoonsful of rice.
many painful memories
least. T h e y destroyed say
There were other times when workers
from his life under the
fa ith In hum anity, a n d yet
would squat, 10 men around a single small pot
Khmer
Rouge
in
his
of stew. It would be mostly water, with a few
here I am, W hen you go
brutally candid
vegetables and maybe one fish tossed in for
th ro u g h so m e th in g lik e
autobiography, “Golden
nutrients.
that? yow east twrst oat to be Leaf.”
Starving and eager to eat, the men were
a re a lly b a d person, o r yo a
The book led to a
forced to wait for a whistle. Then it was a free
speaking
tour
where
he
ca n tarsi oat to be a decent
for all, each man for himself as he attacked
told
his
story
to
the soup.
person^ yon have a o h o lo e /4
audiences at Columbia
Kilong’s mother traded some salt to get
University and
him a large copper spoon.
Massachusetts Institute
“She got it on the black market,” he
of Technology (MIT).
explained, because under communist rule,
“I didn’t know
there was no trade and no commerce.
anything until I read his
“That’s corruption,” Kilong said
book,” his older sister,
sardonically. “That’s evil, that’s a crime. You
Sivheng Ung, told Street
get up, work, contribute, and there is nothing
Roots. “I just cried and there’s a lot more
else.”
things too that he didn’t write in the book.”
Aside from the clothes on his back, that
She said he doesn’t like to talk about the
spoon was his only belonging. Half the handle
murders he witnessed when he was placed
was removed so he could plunge his hand to
with the children. She said the Khmer Rouge
the bottom of the pot and try to retrieve some
would kill people for trivial transgressions,
vegetable pieces after the whistle blew.
such as stealing a coconut, by crushing their
Kilong learned to secretly hunt rats, bats,
termites, snakes and bees to supplement his
skulls with a hammer.
They would make the children watch so
diet. Those who didn’t often starved to death.
they would be easier to control.
Before the Khmer Rouge’s four-year reign
“Some of the kids cried, because they miss
of terror ended, both of Kilong’s parents and
their parents; they run away, they get caught,
his grandparents would be dead.
He was laboring in a rice paddy when he
they get killed,” she said.
Kilong wasn’t kept in the school for very
received news that his beloved little sister, Ali,
long as it became apparent he was older than
and his nephew, had both died on the same
the other children during lessons. He had a
day - his nephew in the morning and his
seventh-grade education, and it was difficult
sister in the afternoon.
for him to contain his knowledge among
He was not allowed to leave the killing
children learning the alphabet.
fields to attend funerals, nor does he know
Once his age was discovered, he was sent
where his parents’ bodies are buried.
to what he described as the “Navy Seals” of
In all, nearly 2 million Cambodians died
from starvation, execution, disease and
the labor forces.
Cambodians who resided in cities, such as
overwork during the Khmer Rouge genocide.
Kilong and his family, were handed the
Kilong saw his sister not long before her
harshest work assignments, and as a young
death, and he described her appearance in his
man, he was in the hardest-worked
book. She was 11.
“I noticed her legs, bare from the knees
demographic.
He built roadways and dams, working with
down - dry, cracked, stained, and barefoot.
about 400 other prisoners. They were divided
Her entire body was covered only by an old
ragged sarong rolled at the waist, leaving the
into groups of 10, each group with one leader
and three subgroups. Each subgroup had its
top of her body naked. From behind, through
own leader with a second in command as well.
the exposed dry, rough skin, I could see her
vertebrae and the backside of her rib cage. If
“This is how they control you,” he said.
I hadn’t been so weak from hard labor and
“You breathe, these two people know, and
malnutrition, I could have picked her frail
then this other person knows, and it gets
body up with one hand,” he wrote.
escalated to the top.”
In January 1979,
Vietnamese Army defeated the Khmer Rouge,
liberating Cambodia from one oppressive
regime and replacing it with another.
Kilong was reunited with several of his
surviving sisters. Upon returning to
Battambang, they found their family home
had been demolished. In its place were
squatters’ shelters.
Eventually Kilong escaped to Thailand with
his older sister, Sivheng, and her boyfriend. It
was an adventure he recounts in detail in his
book. They were shot at, held hostage and
had run-ins with bandits and Khmer Rouge
soldiers in exile. But eventually they made it
safely to a refugee camp.
They registered as a family, lying about
Kilong’s age. They claimed he was born in
1964 because they were told this would make
immigrating to the U .S . more likely. He was
15 all over again.
They flew to San Diego that same year
when a family there agreed to sponsor them.
It was the first time Kilong had ever been on
a plane. About six months after arriving, they
took a Greyhound bus north to Portland,
where they moved in with the brother of
Sivheng’s boyfriend.
Kilong thinks he was about 20 at the time,
but he was enrolled as a sophomore at
Washington-Monroe High School. For the
previous five years, he’d had no education. He
didn’t speak English and couldn’t multiply or
divide. When he first arrived in the U .S ., he
See FORGIVING, page 7
A t top, m ug shots
o f K ilo n g (far
right), his sister
Sivheng U ng a n d a
friend, Vann M ealy
Metta Touch, are
taken at a refugee
camp before
im m igrating to the
United States.
Above, K ilo n g at
age 10, poses with
his father, K ilin
Ung, in fro n t o f a
12th century temple
in Cam bodia in
1970. The day
before Street Roots
sat down with
K ilo n g Ung, he
received a copy o f
this photo from his
cousin, whom he
h a d n ’t spoken to in
30 years. H e had
no idea the photo
existed. Under the
K h m er Rouge, it
was a capital crime
to keep photos, but
his co u sin ’s fam ily
kept this photo
hidden d u rin g the
genocide.