From Khmer Rouge to Khmerself

By Nayla Huq
Photos By Nayla Huq
Additional Research By Tiffany Sanhamel

The Khmer (pronounced Khmire) Girls in Action presented "Yellow Lounge", an enlightening, sincere, touching display of the lives of these 20 or so young Cambodian-American women, Saturday, December 6th at the Cal State Long Beach campus. The girls read aloud their poetry, delivered spoken word elocution and showed short, autobiographical documentary films entitled "Reels of Khmerself". The content of the films could be interpreted as visual representations of what the KGA poets described in their poetry.

Khmer is the name of the ethnic majority in Cambodia. Basically, the Khmer are Cambodians.

The performances and presentations focused on a range of topics from cultural/generational issues to humorous social commentary to sobbing expressions of loss. The Khmer Girls approached their poetry and biographical films with honesty and directness.

These young women, mostly teenagers, opened the doors into their world, showing us that there is more to the lives of Cambodian-Americans than tragedy and sadness, but they cannot, and do not disregard the horror their parents lived through less than 30 years ago in Cambodia.

To be able to understand what concerns these empowered young women, one has to know Cambodia's complex recent history to understand the mindset of the parents of the first-generation Cambodian-American children.

The Cambodian Genocide (also referred to as The Khmer Rouge, The Killing Fields, and the Cambodian Genocide)

There are differing accounts as to what exactly happened in Cambodia from the 1960s until 1998, but in short that period saw an unfathomable amount of strife. Cambodia became a war-torn country as a result of Vietnamese Communist invasions, US air raids, political coups, the Khmer Rouge (the name of the Cambodian Communists guerilla forces) and continuous warring despite the installation of a new government and peace treaty signings.

1975-1979 - Darkness covered Cambodia as it had never covered any place in the word - as far as I know. From this point on the names Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge froze the blood. Immediately after the coup, two million people were evacuated from the urban areas and taken to the rural areas to work in agricultural labor camps. This period is marked as the bloodiest, most gruesome of all known genocides of the 20th century. Somewhere between one to three million human beings (those relocated and those already living in the countryside) were brutally massacred. Yale's Cambodian Genocide Project has so far come up with the number 1.7 million, which seems to be the most widely accepted count.

Pol Pot sought to bring Cambodia to a classless state of total agrarian purity, eliminate all Western influence, and seclude Cambodia from the rest of the world. It was a case of ideologies taken to an ungodly extreme. Communism isn't about killing people, but creating an egalitarian society.

The Paris-educated Pol Pot, originally named Saloth Sar, took the ideologies of Communism, Stalinism/totalitarianism and Maoism to a level of evil exceeding Hitler. (Though Hitler killed more people than Pol Pot, the Cambodian Genocide is said to be the bloodiest genocide of the twentieth century, more so than that of Rwanda, Yugoslavia and East Timor.)

People were killed if they wore glasses, because they were perceived as intellectuals. Skilled workers were killed. Babies thought to be the offspring of non-peasants were killed in front of their parents. One technique was to launch these babies at trees.

In 1979 the Vietnamese army invaded and deposed Pol Pot from his seat as premier, but guerilla warfare continued into 1996, when the KR split into 2 factions, one which made an accord with the government. Pol Pot was ousted, arrested and incarcerated by the remaining members of the Khmer Rouge.

1998 - Pol Pot died before he received his official punishment, but since justice has not been served to the surviving members of the Khmer Rouge, one wonders if he Pol Pot would have been given such punishment either.

Those who could, fled the country, taking temporary refuge in Thai refugee camps, until the US was able to bring them over. Families, a very important aspect of Khmer culture, were broken up by death or separation.

Taking Refuge in the US and Becoming Khmer-American

Cambodian communities formed in different states, mostly along the coasts, primarily in Long Beach, California and Lowell, Massachusetts. The Khmer Girls in Action are based in the former. The KGA are the first-generation daughters of survivors of the genocide. This tumultuous history is in the back of the minds of the parents of Cambodian-Americans. Though they have come to the United States for a fresh start, they cannot separate themselves from their past, which affects their relationship with their children.

Many of the poems were written as apostrophes (apostrophe: style of poetry in which an invisible or imaginary person is being spoken to as if in a one-sided conversation), in which the poem's character is addressing her parents, mostly to express their concerns as Khmer-American teenagers living in the US. The poems did not have any particular structure, so they allowed the girls to express themselves directly. Though several of the poems were complaints about parents not trusting their daughters who just want to go out and "hang with their girls," and the occasional boyfriend, they should not be taken as trivial. These girls want to live more freely, as they perceive American girls live - dating without sneaking around, hanging out at the mall with their female friends, etc. - not be "the perfect Cambodian girl," the nearly universal image of the docile, obedient female who follows traditional norms exactly by the book. "Let me be who I am!" they demand their parents. The poems, the stage, the audience allow them to be themselves. They cannot so easily express these sentiments to their parents, like so many first-generation hyphenated Americans. Khmer-American girls' fight for solidarity and independence is more difficult to win, considering what their parents have gone through. Most mothers, not just Cambodian mothers, are protective of their children, particularly their daughters, because they believe that females are vulnerable to the actions of rapists, kidnappers, and the like. Khmer parents would be even more unlikely to comply with the demands of American youth culture because of what they have experienced. They have lost so much that they hold on even tighter.

I do not wish to counteract the KGA's attempts to present their community from a perspective other than "tragedy and sadness", but one cannot avoid making these connections. The KGA poets expressed themselves and were faithfully supported by the audience, largely consisting of their friends, who shouted out their names and cheered them on, especially during the most emotional times.

Some of the poems are humorous and quirky, dealing with seemingly trivial, day-to-day activities. For example, Lina Sok's poem, "White Hair" tells the story about how the character of the poem and her siblings would pluck out their parents white hairs. Father somehow always had more, so the children would trick their parents into thinking that they shared an equal amount of white hair, so father doesn't feel like he's so much older than his wife.

One of the most outstanding poems was Mary Im's "To the Lady Who Thinks She Knows," read aloud by Ra Pok, who also wrote the touching poem, "My Mother's Hair." Im rebukes the patronizing, condescending pretentiousness of an American woman, who thinks she has the Cambodian Genocide figured out.

Pok's "My Mother's Hair" poetically describes the intimate relationship the character of the poem had with her mother until time and age - adolescence - ripped them apart. The character wants to reconnect with her mother, but doubts that it is possible. The simple touch, the brushing or braiding of her mother's beautiful, strong, long, black hair might make that closeness a possibility, but it seems neither mother nor daughter can bridge that gap.

The last poem of the night was Gloria Tho's dedication to her recently murdered older brother, Vouthy Tho. Vouthy was a peace-loving musician, singer/rapper who was gunned down in the streets of Long Beach. Gloria needed lots of time and support to deliver this dedication because the sorrow was still too fresh for her to speak without breaking down into tears. She tearfully reminisced listening to him sing in the shower, being her protective brother, and a role model helping their parents. She moved members of the audience to tears, including me.

Gloria Tho's dedication was followed by a documentary film titled, "We Will Not be Moved" presented by KGA and the Southeast Asian Freedom Network (SEAFN), to speak out against the current deportation of Cambodians living in the US.

This film was particularly enlightening to me because I had no idea that Cambodians were being evicted from the country, along with South Asian and Middle Eastern citizens, as a result of 9/11.

Prior to March 2002, Cambodia refused to accept Cambodians deported from the United States. But last March, Premier Hun Sen, who many Cambodians find suspicious, signed the repatriation agreement, accepting Cambodian deportees from the US. He initially said he would immediately jail the deportees in a political prison that, according to a 2002 Human Rights Watch report, uses torture.

Why after years of refusing to take Cambodian deportees did Hun Sen sign this repatriation agreement?

The majority of Cambodian refugees being targeted are non-citizens - even though many of them are permanent residents - are male permanent residents between the ages of about 20-45, who have been convicted of committing aggravated assault, the definition of which has come to include non-violent crimes including the possession of marijuana, and even writing a bad checks by order of the "drastic 1996 anti-immigrant law, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA)."

Protestors fear what will happen to families when they lose their primary breadwinners. They know that breaking up families puts people further into poverty, and breaks down the family structure. Males between the ages of 20-45 are not the only group being deported. The deportees include women and even an eighty year-old man.

Overall, "Yellow Lounge" proved to be a great experience. The performance showed the audience what it means to be Khmer-American, squashing the stereotypes people have of the Cambodian-American community. The performances were followed by a reception with delicious homemade Cambodian foods.

The presentation the Khmer Girls in Action showcased entertained and moved me, but more importantly it gave me something else to think about, something else to fight for. I learned about the Cambodian Genocide and the current wave of Cambodian deportations, both of which I was clueless of before taking on this assignment and attending this event. Someone had to tell me about it. It was never mentioned in high school American or World History class. I appreciate the Khmer Girls in Action's efforts at educating people about their culture. I would like to attend another one of their events and see a larger, more diverse audience that is willing to learn.

December 12, 2003