Escape from the Killing Fields

Phy Sem in the family's Octagon food stall. Photo by Jane Dawber.

Otago Daily Times
By Hamish McNeilly
on Sat, 5 Jul 2008
Magazine

Taken from her parents and forced to fight for the Khmer Rouge, Phy Sem somehow survived to find safety in Dunedin.

It was so cold when we got here [to Dunedin]. It was like sleeping on the freezer

One of the most appalling atrocities of the 20th century was played out in Phy Sem's country of birth. There, the dictator Pol Pot created his Killing Fields, where his regime murdered many thousands of his countrymen as he sought to force the clock back to a new year zero.

His regime grew out of a region ravaged by war - war that coloured even Phy's early years.

The eldest daughter of a Cambodian peasant family from the Oudong district, outside Phnom Penh, Phy knew nothing of the battles raging in nearby Vietnam, but she knew one thing very well - she was hungry.

One of her earliest memories is crying at how her mother gave some of the family's precious amount of food to Buddha.

"I always remember that. It is why I became a Christian . . . I not like Buddha taking our food."

Life was hard, as work on the family farm was broken only by the occasional school lesson, but this was one of the happiest periods in Phy's life - until the bombs came. Then her father would dig a shelter in the ground and order his family to remain in the hole as he stood watch for the bombs raining down from the American B-52 bombers on the hunt for Viet Cong hiding in Cambodia.

I didn't know where the bombs came from. I just remember being always hungry

Though Phy knew little about the turmoil engulfing the region, she knew something was wrong when the men came for her father.

"They came for rice. Every time they come at night, my mother take me and sisters to hide."

The Khmer Rouge wore all black. My mother did not want me to see them. My father worried they would rape me.

Her mother would wrap Phy in a blanket and hide her and her sisters in different locations so the communist rebels would not find them. During this period, the soldiers took the family's dog for meat, the cows that they used for ploughing their fields, and the majority of their rice and vegetable crops.

As the war between the Khmer Rouge and the pro-United States government of General Lon Nol intensified, the attempts by Phy's parents to hide their daughter proved futile.

They came and took me and other children to a camp.

It would be more than 20 years before Phy would see her parents again.

Together with several hundred terrified children at a Khmer Rouge jungle camp, Phy would sleep all day before venturing out in darkness.

Dressed in black uniforms, the children would practise shooting at targets with their newly issued rifles.

Talking with some of the older women who cooked for the camp, Phy was given advice that would later save her life.

If the Khmer Rouge ever said they would take you somewhere for "learning", it was a euphemism for being shot, and you might as well run because you were as good as dead, they told her.

You think, every morning you may die

While some of the children studied communism at the camp, Phy was considered too young and "I did not want to know about communism".

The diet in the camp consisted of a bowl of rice twice a day. Meat was reserved for soldiers who had been in a fight. So, Phy and the other girls ate leaves in the hope of alleviating their hunger.

And then it came; the order to fight.

Not much taller than her rifle and loaded up with ammunition, Phy was sent to fight an unknown enemy for an army she knew nothing about.

I was very scared, I want to go home

The noise of bullets slicing through the air mixed with the rumble of Gen Lon Nol's tanks as they crushed those of Phy's friends too scared to run from their hiding places dug into the ground.

The tanks killed everyone but I run away. I see a lot of shooting, shooting everywhere . . . and I run.

About 30 of the child soldiers broke through the enemy lines as they fled the battle scene, but they were soon captured by the opposing forces and taken to Phnom Penh.

Under questioning, Phy told what she knew about the Khmer Rouge - which was next to nothing - and was sent to a prisoner of war camp.

Eventually released, Phy fled Phnom Penh and began the perilous task of searching for her parents.

I don't know if they are alive or dead

While dates are difficult to pin down during this period, Phy's flight probably took place between 1973 and 1974, given Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge in 1975.

The countryside around Phnom Penh was already in the hands of the Khmer Rouge forces and every effort Phy made to find her parents was thwarted.

Faced with death or joining the Khmer Rouge, Phy chose the latter.

I had to join the Khmer Rouge again. I don't, I die

Spared a combat role, Phy was sent to the countryside to farm during the day and sew the black uniforms of the Khmer Rouge at night.

She kept her head down and survived, sleep-deprived and hungry. By now, the Khmer Rouge had taken the capital and the country was renamed Democratic Kampuchea.

It was 1975 and Phy was given the order to return to Phnom Penh - and to marry.

Sixteen unmarried men and women were taken to have dinner, and Phy was paired up with her future husband, Song Sem.

"I went to dinner, and I see all the men but I don't know who my husband is."

Now married, Phy would leave her job in the country once a week and spend time with Song who taught children mechanical engineering in Phnom Penh.

"We got no money, but we just stay alive," she said.

However, Song's involvement as a soldier in the army of former head of state Norodom Sihanouk, who was ousted by Prime Minister Lon Nol in a military coup in 1970, aroused the suspicion of the Khmer Rouge.

When the country fell to the Khmer Rouge in April 1975, Prince Sihanouk became the head of state of the new regime, while Pol Pot remained in power. But the move was largely symbolic, with Sihanouk rendered politically impotent just a year later.

Now with their first child, Sopheak, Phy was asked by the Khmer Rouge to go on a "learning trip with Song".

"They wanted to kill me because my husband was a soldier and they want to keep Sopheak."

Every night, Song and Phy witnessed a large truckload of people leave for "learning" - never to return.

They were taken instead to the Killing Fields, sites around the country where people were executed by the Khmer Rouge. The regime is estimated to have butchered more than 200,000 people during its rule from 1975 to 1979.

Remembering the advice from her time in the jungle, Phy and Song hastily made a plan to escape before they were sent away to die.

Song found a truck and the couple left the city bound for the Thai border only for the truck to run out of petrol, leaving the young family to cover the distance on foot.

During this time, the couple had their second daughter, Sophear, who was born in the jungle.

"I did not know I was pregnant because too much worry, too much stress."

The closer they got to the border, the more dangerous their journey became, and if they were found by Khmer Rouge soldiers they would have met almost certain death.

To avoid detection, the couple would often separate at night, Song with Sopheak, and Phy with Sophear. Hiding at night in many of the large bomb craters in the country, Phy said she spent many nerve-racking nights worried her family would be discovered by the Khmer Rouge.

As their journey continued, they were joined by a large group of children, more than half of whom died from hunger before reaching the border.

Phy and Song were both close to exhaustion.

But soon they would receive news that would give them much-needed strength - a villager telling them that white people were nearby - and that they had food.

Late in 1979, the Sem family crossed the Thai border.

They ask us if we were army. We said 'no', and they let us in. Red Cross gave us food and medicine to Song, who was sick

The Sem family spent four years in three different refugees camps in Thailand, and their only son, Sophath, was born during this period.

Initially, the family set its sights on getting to the United States, but heard New Zealand would be a better destination.

"Students from Wellington were working at camp. When they hear we go to America, they said 'come to New Zealand'."

Eventually, the family received the news it was waiting for - they would be sent to New Zealand.

"It was a happy day," Phy said.

After saying goodbye to their friends at the camp, the Sems were taken by bus to the airport where they boarded a plane for New Zealand.

Phy said none of the refugees could speak any English and when the air hostess handed them refresher towels they tried to eat them thinking it was food.

"And we all sick on the plane," she said.

Arriving in Auckland on October 18, 1983, with little more than what they could fit in their pockets, the Sems were overjoyed and overwhelmed by their new country.

It was very cold, but everything great. People nice, people kind, we very happy

Phy and her family's stay at the Mangere Refugee Centre was cut by several weeks so they could settle into their chosen destination of Dunedin before she gave birth to her daughter Rottana.

"People say Dunedin is too cold for us, but we hear it is good place with jobs," she said.

Arriving in Dunedin on November 20, Phy said the first thing she noticed was the cold.

"It was like sleeping on the freezer.

"We were cold but we were happy."