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A SPIRIT OF SURVIVAL
by Mardi Seng
posted on soc.culture.cambodia
UY- Public Radio program about Angola. The report stated that the Angolan political factions
adopted a widely used military strategy among "Third World" countries; the strategy is to starve
the innocent Angolan people so that the opposition would surrender because of this act of
animosity. The reporter estimated that about 1,000 people die every day from bullet-wounds,
diseases, and hunger related causes. In the report, a blind five year old boy was crying; his
blindness was caused by severe hunger. Compassion overwhelmed me; I wept.
In my world of peace and affluence, I am removed from the horror of war, of hunger, and of disease.
But I share the pain, the horror, the anguish of children and of innocent people who live in war-torn
countries like Angola, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Cambodia. In the first fourteen years of my
life, I had seen, experienced, and tasted the horror of war which will stay width me for eternity. I
would like to take this opportunity to share width you my story of war, hunger, suffering, and death
but also of peace and hope and life .
My name is Mardi Seng. I was born in Cambodia in 1965. My father, Im Kao, was a junior high
school teacher even though he only finished the ninth grade. My mother, Chen Id Seng, was a
tailor. They were the proud parents of four sons and a daughter. I am the oldest child.
In late 1968, the war in Vietnam began to spill into Cambodia. Americans bombed the
Cambodia-Vietnam border. The once not-well-known communist insurgent group, the Khmer
Rouge, gained support and took control over many remote villages. Early 1970, Cambodia was
pulled into the conflict; General Lon Nol succeeded in a coupe d'etat width the American support.
My father was drafted by Lon Nol's army. He spent many months at the battle front; he came home
about three to five weeks during a year. Sometimes my mother would take us to visit my father at
the battle front. On the first visit, my sibblings and I were so excited about seeing the
weapons--artillery, rocket launchers, bazookas, and M-16's. But that night, the excitement turned
into terror and fear as the Khmer Rouge bombarded the camp width rockets and artillery. My mother
comforted us in a misty earthy trench while my father left to command his company.
Beginning in May 1974, my father, his company and three other companies were under siege by the
Khmer Rouge for eleven months. During that period, they lived in trenches which spread over one
square mile. They were bombarded day and night and could not walk on the level ground. One day
in late March 1975, the Khmer Rouge army left the stranded Lon Nol's army to assist their comrades
in capturing the capital city, Phnom Penh.
Four days later my father was reunited width us in Phnom Penh. He was wounded. He could not see
width his left eye. But thank God, my father was alive.
April 17, 1975, two weeks after my family was reunited, the Khmer Rouge toppled the Lon Nol
Regime. On that same bright, warm, glorious and victorious day, a new era not of peace and
tranquility, nor of hope and prosperity but of suffering, torture, hunger, diseases, work camps,
reeducation, and systematic killing began.
April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge began evacuating and emptying people from all of the cities and
towns in Cambodia. They told the people that the Americans would drop bombs in the city, so
everyone had to leave. The streets were filled width a sea of faces. Traveling was slow; everyone
walked; occasionally people had to step off the street to let a GMC army truck pass by. Sadness
reflected on the adults' faces. Children were crying because of hunger and of exhaustion from the
tropical heat. My father was weak because of his wound. My mother was carrying my
five-month-old brother; my two other brothers and I assisted my grandparents and three aunts in
carrying our belongings.
In four hours we had traveled only about half a mile. My family was silent and anxious as we
moved slowly. While deep in thought, a Khmer Rouge soldier crept up behind and jerked my father
by the arm.
"Are you a Lon Nol soldier?", the soldier threatened.
The world stopped during that eternal three second pause, "no, I am a teacher" my father
reluctantly replied.
"What happened to your eye and this band-aid?" he asked.
My mother trembled; "a rocket landed in my school and debris hit my eye" my father replied. As
the soldier walked away, we sighed width relief. It was almost 2 o'clock in the afternoon, we were
hungry and tired. My grandfather suggested that we could take a short break in a small abandon
house along the road. The house was a beautiful white house. A few of the windows were broken.
Four or five families were resting in the yard and no one was inside. We walked into the living
room; there was a family of five lying there--dead. They died from multiple gun shot wounds; blood
covered their faces and bodies. We walked out and joined other people in the yard. People's
reaction to this barbarous scene was not one of shock and horror but of casualness and coolness. I
would and will never forget that living room.
At 3 o'clock, we were only a block away from that house. My grandfather asked me to get some
water for my siblings. As I pushed my way toward a house, I saw a boy who was not much older
than I was. He was wearing a large green camouflage army shirt. The shirt was not large; it was just
the boy was too small for the shirt. A Khmer Rouge soldier walked up to the boy, pulled him by the
collar, put his pistol against the boy's head, and fired.
April 20, 1975, many things had happened in the last few days besides sleeping in the streets and
escaping death. It would require many hours to recount the horrors, the inhuman treatment, and the
unjustifiable killings--not that any killing of human life is justifiable. The Khmer Rouge had
propaganda requesting professors, previous government workers, educated men and women, and
army officers to join the new regime to rebuild Cambodia into an utopian state. Having experienced
enough suffering, many Cambodians responded to this noble calling. For the love of his country,
my father joined thousands of other Cambodians on a calling that ended all sufferings--death. April
20, 1975, my father died so that my family might live.
In November of 1975, after walking 90 miles, we arrived at my father's parents' farm in a small village.
My grandparents and my mother's three sisters who left Phnom Penh width us lived in the next
village, about two miles from where we lived.
On the first day on the farm, my father's youngest sister (my siblings and I did not know any of my
father's family; the last time I saw them was when I was four years old) took me and my two
brothers to take care our family's water buffaloes. In the field many children came to greet the
newcomers. I was impressed width their vocabulary. They were very nice and proper to each other;
they addressed each other "comrade".
One boy asked "Comrade, what is your name?"
"My name is Mardi" I replied. I pointed to my two brothers and said, "these comrades' names are
Sina and Lundi." They broke down and laughed; we joined them in the laughter but we did not
know why. Later that day, my aunt told me that I should not address my siblings as "comrades". I
was embarrassed.
Four months had passed. My sibblings and I really enjoyed living on the farm. The sense of peace,
tranquillity and contentment overwhelmed us. There was no war nor suffering, hunger nor material
need. Life was basic and simple. But in life nothing is forever.
In March 1976, the hot and dry season began. A dining hall was erected in every village. Onka (the
Khmer Rouge government) wanted to provide for all of our needs. This way, people would not
have to cook for themselves; equality also could be achieved. But this was also a method of
control.
Since we ate in the dining hall, many things started to change. People worked for longer hours.
Young people (15 to 25) worked from 5 o'clock in the morning until midnight. We had less food to
eat even though we just harvested a good crop. We could not walk from one village to another
widthout a permit, not even to the next village. They started to mistreat the "new people" (the city
people like us). There was worry and fear on the adults' faces.
"Bang, bang, bang" the dinner bell resounded to break the silence of busy workers. Some men and
women, width their right hands over their foreheads to block out the merciless bright sun and width
squinting eyes, estimated the time of day. The sound of the bell always brought smiles on people's
faces. The children filed on narrow paths from their homes and strolled innocently toward the
dining hall. The adults--all dressed in black, some width straw hats and some width white/red or
white/blue checker krawma (krawma is a native cloth width many uses)--marched toward the dinning
hall. The sight was haunting and dramatic.
In the dinning hall, the children sat at one end of the room because the adults complained that
these children had no manners. They would stir the soup for meat and left nothing for the adults. A
group of ten people sat around a table and on each table there was a bowl of soup and a bowl of
stir fry. The soup consisted mostly of vegetables and water. There was no meat. The usual lunch or
dinner consisted of two or three chickens--for 500 people. At the other corner of the room were the
Chinese ' new-people'. They always sat and ate together.
In August 1976, the rainy season had started. Water covered most of the land. The grass was
green; buds sprouted; water vegetation emerged from the fields. The rice patties were teeming width
life--frogs and tadpoles, large fish and small ones, and herd of water buffaloes and children. The
children were responsible for the care of the herd of water buffaloes and bulls. In a field away from
the village, while my two buffaloes enjoyed the freshness of vegetation, I was chasing a frog. Onka
did not want us to fish or catch frogs to supplement our diets, but I was hungry. The frog tried to
escape and jumped into a newly dug hole. I did not take much notice of the hole then; I was too
involved width my potential dinner. I jumped into it after the frog. I got it.
Getting out of the hole was not easy because the lip was over my head. The hole was rectangular in
shape--it was about 2.5m X 2m. I was a little curious because I did not remember seeing it there the
previous day.
In the dinning hall, two days later, I noticed that I had not seen some of the chinese new-people. I
asked my mother where these people went, but she did not know. The next day, I went back to that
hole in the hope that I would catch another frog, but the hole was filled. It was no longer a hole or
grave but a mount. It smelled awful; 15 to 20 people rotted in that grave because they were
Chinese.
In the next couple of months, many new people disappeared at nights. When nights fell, fear and
terror reigned. Many questions haunted my mind. "What is death? What does it feel like? I am so
young, I do not want to die. Why do people kill?" I did not understand the reasons for taking lives.
I still do not understand. I was afraid of death. I still am. I daydreamed what it would be like to live
width my two uncles in France or an uncle in the U.S., and what would it be like to go to school.
Every night I dreamed that Onka killed me and my family, but I always barely escaped because I
knew how to fly. The nightmares persist to this day.
Two of my mother's sisters were married in the middle of 1977. One aunt moved away to live width
her husband in a nearby village. The other couple lived width my grandparents in another village.
Onka did not like the new people because the new people were "corrupted by American imperialism
and need to be cleansed." My grandparents' family and their in-laws were the only 'new people' left
in their village. But this might change.
One day in August 1977, the news spread over the village that my grandparents' family and their
in-laws would be killed that night. My mother's youngest sister wailed all afternoon saying
good-bye to all the villagers. My grandmother bathed and dressed in her best dress ready to go. At
dusk four men width ropes, guns, and bamboo sticks sat only ten yards from my grandparents' hut,
and waited for night fall to take the two families away. The Khmer Rouge did not use guns and
bullets to kill passive innocent people. They tied up their victims, sat them next to the grave, and
hit them on the backs of their necks. Most of these victims did not die from the blow but from
suffocation because they were buried alive.
At about 8 o'clock, one of the aunts finally became exhausted from her wailing. They sat in silence
waiting like sheep await to be slaughtered. In the midst of a moonless night, one could see the glow
of hand-rolled cigarette lights floating across the rice patties toward the group of men. A man came
and talked to those men, my grandparents and family could not hear the conversation, but the
result of the conversation was life-giving. Ten minutes later, the men walked away. The family was
overjoyed. My other aunt who lived in her husband's village was not as lucky. She, her husband,
and all of the new people in their village were buried alive in two graves.
December 1977, a Cambodian rebel group aided by the Vietnamese government invaded Cambodia.
My village was only 15 miles from the Vietnamese border and was 7 miles away from the battle
front. We could hear the sound of the battles. Sometimes we had to sleep in trenches because of
the artillery bombardment. Vietnamese planes usually made bomb raids on the Khmer Rouge camps
during the day. My sibblings and I tending to our buffaloes in the fields witnessed spectacular air
shows. Every day for a month or two at 2 O'clock in the afternoon, four planes dove to bomb the
Khmer Rouge camps and the anti-aircraft guns were fired at the planes.
One afternoon in late December 1977, the luscious open fields about half of a mile from a Khmer
Rouge camp were filled width children and their water-buffaloes. Children gathered themselves
under trees in a wooded area for protection from tropical heat and played games in small groups.
The buffaloes walked lazily and enjoyed the luscious grass. My water buffaloes were on the far
side of this open field and led other buffaloes away from the herd. My two brothers walked toward
the buffaloes to stop them from straying. A few minutes later, I followed. We were about a quarter
of a mile away from the wooded area in an wide open field. My brothers, about 50 meters in front of
me, pointed toward the eastern sky. In the midst of the deep blue cloudless sky, four World War II
T-28 planes were on a dive, not at the nearby camp but at me and my brothers in the open field. We
were stunned and stood there motionlessly watching the dive. We were helpless; there was no
cover. I think the pilots thought the black buffaloes were the khmer Rouge soldiers because the
soldiers dress in black uniforms. While the planes were diving toward us, we heard and saw the
explosions of the anti-aircraft shells in the air. At the bottom of the bomb dive, we could see the
pilots in the planes and the writing on the bombs. We fell to the ground and placed our hands over
our ears because of the loud noise of the plane engines and the explosion of the anti-aircraft shells.
I was terrified. I thought that was it for me. I still can picture those bombs under those wings. But
thank God, the anti-aircraft shells were fired so rapidly that the planes had to fly away.
January 1978, the Khmer Rouge soldiers had receded and camped in my village. The villagers had
to move to a different village away from the battle fields. My grandfather had permission to stay in
the village to tend to his tobacco crop. One afternoon, the soldiers who used our house as their
camp offered my grandfather a bowl of soup. The bowl was so full that my grandfather had to drain
some of the broth out. My grandfather was arrested for draining the broth and was tied
up-side-down hanging off a tree on his own property.
The next day, the villagers came back to the village because the Vietnamese had pulled back. My
sibblings and I went to the fields to tend our buffaloes. In the late afternoon, my two brothers and I
came back from the fields. There was a gathering of people in our house. My mother and my
father's three sisters were wailing. My father's mother was caring for my crying sister and four year
old brother. My 84 year old great-grandmother was lost in thought.
My mother walked up to us and said " they will take us tonight."
In that moment, my strength left me; my brother Lundi jumped off his buffalo and screamed "no, I
don't want to die" and ran away. My aunts held us and we cried. My mother encouraged us to eat
so that we had strength to walk for that night. The sun was setting and Lundi was still in hiding.
My brother Sina and I went to look for Lundi. We found him crying himself to sleep in an old
storage hut. We took him home.
It was dark. There were about forty family members who came to say goodbye. We awaited death
width fear and trembling. The men came for us. With them was my grandfather. His arms were tied
behind his back.
"I don't want to go; I want to live," Lundi begged and ran to my great-grandmother and cried. Her
eyes, filled width sorrow, stared straight ahead into the darkness of the night, and she softly ran her
fingers through his hair. Her heart was broken and she passed away later that night.
Two men tied my mother's arms above the elbows behind her back. I carried my four year old
brother Dar; Sina was holding my sister's hand while Lundi was carrying our extra clothes. My
grandfather, mother and my sibblings and I were led into the darkness by four armed men. It was
known to every Cambodian during that time that if one was taken away during the night it meant
death for that person. So we knew we were going to die that night.
We walked for two hours and stopped at this compound. To our relief, we could not see any open
graves. We were not familiar width the area because it was too dark. The compound was a prison.
Our legs were chained together in one of the three buildings. We were physically and emotionally
exhausted from the ordeal and slept very soundly.
The next morning was an incredibly beautiful morning. We were alive. The morning sun was
brilliant; the birds were singing; we were still breathing. How can I explain how I felt. Life! Life is so
beautiful.
As my two brothers and I surveyed the ground, we noticed there were covered graves everywhere.
Some were old; the covered ground sank a bit. Some were new; the ground heaved up and blood
oozed out due to the intense heat of the tropical sun. And to our dismay, some graves were not
covered.
We lived in the prison camp for five months. During those five months, we witnessed and
experienced inhumane events. A few hundred prisoners came and never left. A few tried to escape
but were gunned down and left to rot in an open field. Even in the midst of these trials, we still
hoped; hoped for supernatural events to take place. The supernatural events did happen but they
took place in natural ways.
One early evening in late June 1978, a monsoon rain just passed by and left a tremendous amount
of water in the fields. A group of prison guards walked lazily toward our building.
"Mardi. Sina. Lundi. Come width me," our guard called. "We're going to the next village to find
stranded buffaloes," he continued. My two brothers and I knew that was not true because when
we counted them two hours earlier; for all 112 of them were accounted for. My mother knew what
was going on; she tried to put my sister Theary and youngest brother Dar to sleep. A guard
unchained Sina, Lundi and myself and walked us away from the camp.
The clear quiet night was incredibly beautiful; the heavens declared the glory of God. Against the
pitch dark canvas of infinite space, thousands of stars radiated their diamond quality. The waning
moon reflected its golden rays off the water-covered fields. The scene was one of peace,
tranquility, and contentment.
In the midst of the splendor, I forgot about my situation until Sina whispered to me, "did you see,
there were a lot of guards width ropes, guns and shovels outside the prison compound?"
"No," I answered. He looked at me and his face was saddened. I understood his thought. Tears
rolled down our eyes but we did not cry. Thoughts raced through my mind. Anguish heavied my
soul but I was relieved that at least three of us would survive this insane act of genocide by Onka.
We stayed at a nearby village for the night. There we told Lundi what was happening back at the
prison. We tried to comfort him. In our silence, we prayed that Theary and Dar did not wake up
while they took our mother away. We felt (feel) guilty that our mother died and we lived. But it was
her wish that she should die so that we might live.
The next morning, we hurried back to the camp width the hope to see at least Theary and Dar. The
prison was unusually empty. With relief, we sighted my sister and brother. They were crying while
they were searching hopelessly for their mother. Sina and I picked them up and told them that
everything would be alright. A prisoner told me that they had been crying on-and-off since the
middle of the night because they could not find their mother when they awoke. That same morning,
a guard told us to go back to our village.
In January 1979, Vietnamese overthrew the Khmer Rouge regime and established a puppet
government. Seizing this opportunity, my mother's mother took her family and us (her
grandchildren) to escape into Thailand. While waiting for sponsorship, we lived in refugee camps
in Thailand for one and one half year.
December 23, 1980, my family arrived in Michigan under the sponsorship of Millbrook Christian
Reformed Church. The Church has provided an incredible amount of support to my family. With
the Church's and family's support and direction, my three brothers, sister and I have thrived in this
great country. We have been active and involved in our church, community, and school activities.
Lundi and Theary, who did not know a word of English upon their arrival to this country, became
top place winners in the National Spelling Bees for the city of Grand Rapids, and were mentioned in
the United States Congress. Lundi also graduated from his junior high school as a valedictorian.
Theary was her high school's class Saluatorian, while Sina, Dar and I placed in the top ten percent
of our classes.
Sina is finishing up width his electrical engineering program at Grand Valley University in Michigan.
Lundi, while waiting to enter a medical school next fall, will graduate from the University of
California at Irvine as a Biological Sciences major. Theary is in her third year in the International
Relations program at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Upon graduation, she plans to
go on to law school. Dar is in his first year at University of California at Irvine enrolling in the
pre-med program. I am attending Northeastern University in Boston, MA in an MBA-Coop
program. I have been given the honor of working for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
(OCC) as a bank examiner for my co-op work period.
My work experience width the OCC has been a beneficial, functional, and practical experience. The
people width whom I have worked are professional, capable, supportive, and amiable. I have enjoyed
my OCC experience immensely. I desire to work for the OCC upon my graduation from Northeastern
University. My most influential rationale to work for the OCC is to gain work experience and
knowledge about the American banking system, so that someday in the near-future, professional
American-Cambodians like myself can go back to Cambodia to assist in rebuilding Cambodia.
On December 4, 1993, I plan to take my grandmother and Lundi to visit my father's relatives in
Cambodia. This will be the first time in fourteen years. For fourteen years, my soul has been stirred
restlessly, aching to possess serviceable skills to contribute in the molding of a self-sufficient state
of Cambodia. For fourteen years, my heart has uttered countless prayers for peace in Cambodia, her
well-being, and cultural preservation. For fourteen years, my spirit has yearned to be width her, to
care for her people who have been agonizing over the pain of wars, starvation, diseases, and
experiencing the hopelessness of social and cultural annihilation.
During my preparation for this trip, emotions fly high; ideas race ceaselessly. Untenable
expectations await disappointment. But in the midst of this uncertainty and anxiety, one thing is for
sure; that it will not be America.....by Mardi Seng, November 1993. (UPDATES Mardi received his
MBA degree and is currently working as a bank examiner for the U.S.Treasury. He is married to
Jenny and has two beautiful children...Sina, is currently working as a mechanical engineer and is
getting ready to tie the knot width Nancy this summer...Lundi is a first year medical student at the
University of California at Irvine, College of Medicine and hoping to serve his community one
day...Theary is graduating from Georgetown this May and plans to work and help in the
reconstruction and rehabilitation of Cambodia for one year before coming back to enroll in the law
program...Dar is in his second year at UC Irvine, hoping to attend medical school in the future and
be a part of the 'healing process')...ls 4/8/95... CAMBODIANS IN AMERICA Courageous People
From a Troubled Country...by Alice Lucas... "The Circumstances that precipated the emigration of
300,000 Cambodian refugees from their war-ravaged homeland to countries of asylum around the
world, began in 1973 when U.S. troops pulled out of Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam War.
In spite of the continued support of U.S. military and civilian advisors to the government in Phnom
Penh, the Maoist-styled communist governmetn of Pol Pot continued to gain strength. In April
1975, the Khmer Rouge army entered the capital city and assumed power....At first, they were
welcomed as liberators by a population exhausted and frustrated by the war. But widthin a few
hours, any dream of peace was destroyed. Khmer Rouge troops, some as young as 14 years old,
forced everyone in the city from their homes and into the streets. All educated people, bankers,
teachers, doctors were either executed on the spot or if, they were able to hide their identity by
pretending to be street peddlers or cyclo-drivers, were driven from the city into the
countryside...The film "The Killing Fields" is a powerful picture of this horrifying event.
Cambodians who were part of the evacuation and the tragic years that followed say the film is
accurate, but does not adequately portray the misery and terror they experienced.
During the next five years, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge carried out a careful and deliberate plan
designed to destroy every aspect of Cambodian social, political and cultural life...Families were
deliberately separated, children sent to boys or girls work camps, babies left for strangers to care
for. City people became the "new people", forced to work extra hard, punished more severly and
given fewer grains of rice than the peasants. In a country abundant width fruits and edible grain, no
one was allowed to gather food from the forest. Grand parents, traditionally honored in Buddhist
culture, were killed if they were too weak to work. No Khmer traditions were honored; there were no
weddings, buddhist holidays or burials. Monks were stripped of their saffron robes, temples were
blown up. In the final days of Khmer Rouge rule, 8,000 men, women and children were purged from
their own ranks, tortured to death in Toul Sleng, a building that once housed a high school in
Phnom Penh. More than a million people died of starvation, brutal treatment and execution in the
Khmer Rouge's attempt to eradicate the traces of Western influence and traditional Cambodian
culture, including all aspects of the Buddhist beliefs and practices that are so central to Cambodian
identity. After four years of what can only be describes as genocide, Vietnam invaded Cambodia in
response to repeated violations fo its borders by Khmer Rouge tropps. During the next few
months, millions of half-starved people were released from Khmer Rouge slave labor camps and
prisons by advancing Vietnamese troops. These are the Cambodians who fled to Thailand in the
1980s and then on to third countries around the world, including the United STates."
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