Be part of A multimedia series On four members of the FRG staff who look at life under the Red Khmer fifty years later
The parents made signs of giving back to their son in 13 -year -old tears. The father patted the boy on his shoulder, the reassuring that he would come back soon.
There was no hiding place that Vuthy Huot’s parents were delighted to return to Phnom Penh. It had been six weeks since the family had been forced to leave their homes and had left the city.
A mass trauma event. Two million inhabitants evacuated overnight, creating a ghost city in their wake.
Now the son was invited to stay in a rural village, and for the first time in his life, Vuthy was separated from his parents. He was told that he was the only one he could trust to take care of his elderly grandmother.
“I was very upset. It was the first time that I have been separated from the family,” Vuthy told his office at the head of Radio Free Asia in Washington. “But my father hit me on my shoulder and said to me:” Stay strong, we will come back and make you pick you up as soon as we settle in Phnom Penh. “”
“New people”
The last few weeks had first offered enthusiasm for a young boy in the city who thought he was about to have the chance to go to the countryside with his family.
“I was very happy to spend time with my family and see the countryside. But soon all happiness and joy have disappeared, “he said.
During Phnom Penh’s march, Vuthy watched his father and brother-in-law was separated from their family group. Khmer Rouge Frame, who had first been friendly, then angry, took the two men aside, tied up the hands of the rope, then put on them and removed them from the family.
“They walked almost at the same time along the road with us, so I could probably see them during the first days,” he said.
Vuthy thinks that adult men have been separated from their families to facilitate evacuation.
Vuthy and his other members of his family arrived in the village of the commune of Prie de Kabas, province of Takeso – about 90 km (56 miles) from the capital. His father and brother-in-law would arrive in the village shortly after.
In the coming days, Khmer Rouge Frame began to verify the “new people”, the derogatory name given to the evacuated of the city.
Vuthy said that his father had said the truth: he was a qualified cartographer. Surprisingly, his answer was welcomed.
“Khmer red people have risen and said,” We need your skills. We want you to see and work for Angka. “
They considered us traitors
As soon as they arrived in the village, his father, his mother and three of his brothers were returned to return to Phnom Penh.
A few days later, his sister was also taken. She and her husband were sent to work in the fields.
Still in the village, Vuthy’s immediate mission was to learn to keep himself and his grandmother alive.
“I didn’t know how to catch a fish, a frog, a crab or a snake,” he said. “And as a newcomer, no one wanted to speak to us, because they considered us traitors.”
Nor did he know how to cook, and his grandmother, a fervent Buddhist, refused to kill everything that was alive. When he managed to catch fish and crabs and brought them to the kitchen, she did not touch them.
It was only a question of weeks after the departure of his parents that her grandmother died of famine. He was now alone. He swore that he would live to find his parents.
The first year under the Red Khmer was the most difficult. Vuthy was sent to work in rice fields. There was a massive flood in the first rainy season and food was rare.
He was installed alongside a river in northwestern Cambodia where he lived on a high bamboo platform. Dozens of other platforms were nearby, divided into family groups. As the rain fell, the river rose until the platforms were surrounded by water.
He remembers the leeches and the kindness of a woman he called Eunty Poh, who was sleeping on the platform next to him with his three children. She cut her skirt to make him pants to protect him from leeches.
“People Khmer Rouge would come in the evening by boat and distribute a bowl of rice per family,” he said. “If you had three people in a family, you would have three spoonfuls of rice. I was alone and I had only one spoon.”
Near succumbing
This first rainy season, the river remained high for two months. When he finally removed these pants to wash them, they were covered on the trails of hundreds of leeches. He had survived.
Aunty Poh, who did the pants for him, did not do it. Neither is her children. She kept the body of her last child next to her for days, to claim her meager rice allowance until she could no longer. Hunger killed them both. Vuthy almost succumbed.
“You know when people die of hunger, they usually die around 3 or 4 am,” he said.
The latter raucous panting is a sound that he remembers himself. He woke up his neighbor, Aunty Poh. She opened her mouth with a spoon and fed the rice porridge that he had saved for the morning.
“When your body feels this porridge, you start to feel, you feel the food and you can move. I was still aware, but I couldn’t move.”
For Vuthy, many memories remain painful, but worse, there are others that they can no longer invoke.
“I do not remember the faces of my parents or my brother or my sister. I have no photos left. The Khmer Rouge has destroyed or burned all photo albums. ”
What made him survive when so many others did not, he attributes to one of the greatest human emotions – that of hope.
“If you have hope, you have the inspiration to stay alive, to fight and stay alive.”
‘At least I survived’
For four years, Vuthy held out, believing that he would one day be found with his parents. When the Red Khmer was ousted from power in 1979, he returned to the capital. Every day for more than three months, he waited at the gates of the city, wanting them to enter in sight.
Eye witnesses who knew that his parents told him what had happened. They died shortly after they left him in the village, and just before they reach Phnom Penh.
The boat transporting them by the river to the capital had capsized in front of the royal palace. Overwhelmed with people happy to go back to the city, there had been a rush on one side of the boat. He obtained one side and sank.
From that day to this, one thing made him move forward. A mantra he often says. It starts with “at least”.
“At least I survived. At least I survived and continued to represent my family. At least my family, my mother, my father, my sister and my brothers do not have to undergo all the difficulties I did during the Red Khmer. At least, when they died horribly, drowning, but at least they have suffered. ”
In recent years, as an antenna host and deputy director of the Khmer service of RFA, Vuthy has seen Cambodia go from democracy to authoritarianism. It was difficult to assist, he said.
“Return to the history of Cambodia itself. He has crossed a lot,” he said.
“But if we do not continue to fight. We will not survive. We have only one life to live, and we die all or later. Do something good. Do something for your country.”
Published by Matt Reed