SURVIVING THE CAMBODIAN KILLING FIELDS  

“At the time when the Khmer Rouge came to our home in Phenom Penh (the capital city of Cambodia),” Dr. Sereivudh Ly thinks back to that horrific nightmare, “myself and my two sisters, who survived with me, were visiting our grandmother in another province. The airport in Phenom Penh had been recently bombed, so we could not return home. Being away from our home in Phenom Penh saved our lives, but we never saw our two brothers, two sisters, mother and father ever again.”

The arrival of the Khmer Rouge in April of 1975 marked the beginning of an horrific era in Cambodian history. The Khmer Rouge told the people of Phenom Penh to leave the city to save themselves from an American bombing that never occurred, with the promise that the Cambodian people from Phenom Penh could return within three days. However, the people were not ever allowed to return to their homes, and everyone who was captured after leaving the city were either sent to harsh labour camps or killed.

The prisoners in these camps were subjected to grueling conditions, working up to 90 hours in the boiling heat, pouring rain, and little to no food—only a bit of watered-down rice porridge. The leader of the Khmer Rouge, Communist dictator Pol Pot, perpetrated the Cambodian genocide, killing more than 2 million people, targeting intellectuals, Muslims, Christians, Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, and other religious, ethnic, and non-Khmer people who lived in the country. From 1975 to 1979, more than a quarter of the Cambodian population perished through executions, overwork, starvation, and disease.

Dr. Sereivudh Ly, who was in his early teens at the time, miraculously survived the Cambodian killing fields and shared his story with us on It Is Written Canada.

“They came into my grandmother’s house and took everything,” Dr. Ly recalled. “Even my brand-new shoes; they almost killed me for my shoes. Then they forced us out of our grandmother’s home, and the soldiers threatened us: ‘You leave, or you get killed!’ I knew they were serious because I witnessed the first killing that I had ever seen at the pharmacy earlier that day.”

Young Sereivudh was separated from his sisters and grandmother and forced to work in the jungle cutting trees. “They did not care about anyone. Their slogan was ‘To keep you alive was not beneficial, and to kill you is no loss.’ If you are lazy or sick, they will get rid of you, but I see that the hand of the LORD must have been upon me, even though I did not believe in God at that time.

“Two times, I fell and failed, and they brought me to the hospital. Most people, they just killed them right there, yet they took me to the hospital once for three months, and the last time for six months. I could not even walk, so I have no idea why they spared me. Many people in my condition, they just shot and left them to die, without any remorse. If not for God, I really would not be here today.”

To hear more of the heart-stopping and inspirational details of Dr. Ly’s compelling story, simply watch It Is Written Canada this month on CTV or the dozens of networks where It Is Written Canada is aired across Canada and around the world. Or go to iiw.ca or It Is Written Canada’s YouTube videos and click on the two programs entitled: “Surviving the Cambodian Killing Fields” and “Healing from PTSD after the Killing Fields.”