| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 
|
Cambodia: People: Huat
Huat is the project manager for the World Vision Area Development Programme in Samrong Tong. As an educated Cambodian, some of his experiences were different from those of Siep and her family. Here he tells his story.Civil War Time During the Lon Nol regime, it was very difficult for people to live. Across the whole country people were leaving villages to live in cities. The economy was bad, people could not have a business or grow things. There was no security at that time and many people were forced to be soldiers to fight with the Khmer Rouge. Find out more about this time Khmer Rouge Time When the Khmer Rouge took over, things became even worse. People had to move out of their villages and cities. The Khmer Rouge soldiers told people that they had to leave their place for a week or two so the soldiers could look for the enemy but it was a lie. Families were divided and people suffered a lot during that regime. People were forced to change their traditions. The Khmer Rouge had absolute power, they could kill anyone and people were always afraid. If the Khmer Rouge said that they had to abandon their customs, traditions or religion, people had to do that otherwise they would be killed. Even now some people are afraid of everything. The Khmer Rouge did not give salaries and people had to work without food, medicine and holidays. People were very hungry and even if I had a potato that I grew myself and a soldier would see it, he would think that I stole it from Angkar ("the organisation") and he would kill me. Even children who were getting a small piece of maize were killed. It was very bad. A lot of people died of starvation. I could not tell anybody about myself, who I was and what kind of work I was doing before. The Khmer Rouge tested me three times. Once, it was an early morning. The Khmer Rouge called all people and they told us that we should be honest and tell Angkar ("the organisation") who we were during the Lon Nol regime. They said that Angkar would forgive them if they were a high school student or a government worker or even a Lon Nol soldier. I was interrogated three times. They asked me what grade of school I went to. I told them that I escaped from my village and I never went to school and I could not read or write. But actually I went to high school and I was in the Lon Nol air force, I repaired aeroplanes. Find out more about this time Vietnamese Control When the Vietnamese occupied Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge escaped to the border. At that time, I left my village where I lived with the Khmer Rouge and went to the border, to Battambang, near Thailand. I was a refugee there. I spent thirteen years at the refugee camp. I came back only in 1992. It was after the United Nations repatriation that I could come back. There was an agreement between Sihanouk and Hun Sen and the Vietnamese started to leave Cambodia. Find out more about this time Development World Vision started working in this community in 1998. Before World Vision started doing the five year design, we invited the community members to have a meeting together to find out the problems and work out solutions to deal with these problems. In the process of the discussion, we found that some people who came into the meeting didn't have a lot of creative ideas to share in the meeting. This is because they have passed through the Khmer Rouge period of time, when they just did what the Khmer Rouge asked them to do. They just did it by order, so their ideas were blocked. This really impacts in this generation especially on World Vision development activities. Also many educated people were killed during that time. When we started working here, there was only a small number of educated people left in this community. We focus on various development activities such as building the irrigation systems and road construction, rice bank, cow bank, and kindergartens and fertiliser loans. World Vision is helping to improve the living condition of people. For example, we are building the irrigation system because we want to improve agricultural production. The road reconstruction will help improve communications from one place to another. The rice bank, the cow bank and the fertiliser loan can help people not get into debt to the money lenders. And the kindergarten can help the young children learn and understand literature before they step into the first grade at school. World Vision has been working here for four years. It's just in the early stages. We still need a lot of time and years to go. We just met with village leaders who said that 'without World Vision in this community the situation would be worse, it would be difficult with more hardships'. Find out more about this time  
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  |
copyright worldvision 2003
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
