GIZ Civil Peace Service Oral History Project
Mr. Houn Sat is 67 years old. He lives in Krang Skear village, Kampong Thom province — not far from where his life was upended as a teenager by the Khmer Rouge regime.
Born in 1956, he grew up in relative stability before the regime forced the evacuation of Phnom Penh in April 1975. He was sent to a labour camp, separated from the structures and relationships that had once defined his life, and put to work clearing forest and farming under constant surveillance.
At nineteen, with no say in the matter, he was assigned a wife in a mass wedding ceremony — one of dozens of couples married in a single ceremony orchestrated by the regime. He did not know her. Neither had chosen this. They were told simply that the marriage "would happen regardless" of what they wanted. "Whether I agreed or not, it was going to happen anyway."
The years that followed brought loss after loss. His mother, his older brother, his younger sister, an uncle, an aunt - all died during the regime, from starvation, illness, or execution. After the regime fell, he continued to lose: a son, taken in a violent incident years later. Survival meant learning to weave bamboo baskets to make a living, carrying grief that had nowhere to go.
Decades later, participating in an oral history project supported by Kdei Karuna and GIZ's Civil Peace Service gave him something he had not had before - a structured space to tell his story, to a young interviewer willing to listen without judgement.
His message to the generation hearing his story for the first time is simple, and hard-earned: "I am like a fish without water - but somehow, I am still here."
Born in 1956, he grew up in relative stability before the regime forced the evacuation of Phnom Penh in April 1975. He was sent to a labour camp, separated from the structures and relationships that had once defined his life, and put to work clearing forest and farming under constant surveillance.
At nineteen, with no say in the matter, he was assigned a wife in a mass wedding ceremony — one of dozens of couples married in a single ceremony orchestrated by the regime. He did not know her. Neither had chosen this. They were told simply that the marriage "would happen regardless" of what they wanted. "Whether I agreed or not, it was going to happen anyway."
The years that followed brought loss after loss. His mother, his older brother, his younger sister, an uncle, an aunt - all died during the regime, from starvation, illness, or execution. After the regime fell, he continued to lose: a son, taken in a violent incident years later. Survival meant learning to weave bamboo baskets to make a living, carrying grief that had nowhere to go.
Decades later, participating in an oral history project supported by Kdei Karuna and GIZ's Civil Peace Service gave him something he had not had before - a structured space to tell his story, to a young interviewer willing to listen without judgement.
His message to the generation hearing his story for the first time is simple, and hard-earned: "I am like a fish without water - but somehow, I am still here."
