Cambodian native Sichan Siv went from being a captive laborer during the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal regime to working in the White House in 13 years.
But it took Siv more than 30 years to begin chronicling his harrowing escape to Thailand and the murders of more than a dozen of his relatives. The 71-year-old’s autobiography, “Golden Bones: An Extraordinary Journey from Hell in Cambodia to a New Life in America,” was published in 2009.
“I didn’t want to revisit my painful past, because my mother was killed, my sister, my brother, their children—15 of our family members and my friends, my neighbors, almost two million people were killed. I was just trying to get on with my new life. But as I traveled around the country and around the world, the questions persisted. So finally when we moved to San Antonio when I was six, I got a laptop so there was like a message for me to go to work,” he says.
Siv, who visited Texas Tech recently and spoke to students about his life’s journey, was a founding commissioner of the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission. It’s helping to fund an upcoming documentary about modern genocides. Siv’s story will be part of the KTTZ-produced film. He says it’s unfortunate that the commission’s work remains vital.
“After World War II, we said, ‘never again,’ right? What happened to Cambodia? That was like 30 years after World War II. In 1975 they slaughtered millions of people. And then you had Rwanda. Then you had the Balkans. It’s never again, never again—that is because we forgot. We didn’t think it would happen again, and that’s the major mission of the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission,” Siv says.
He then volunteered in George H.W. Bush's presidential campaign, which led to him being appointed as his deputy assistant – a first for an American of Asian ancestry. In 2001, he was appointed by President George W. Bush as the United States ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, a position he held until 2006.
The trek to freedom in Thailand in 1976 – which began after Siv jumped from a logging truck while in a forced labor camp -- was wrought with danger. He traveled mostly by night to avoid detection and used the moon and stars to guide him. He suffered non-life threatening injuries when he fell into a booby trap with punji sticks.
When I was on top of that truck,” he recalls, “he was like now or never. I had a 50/50 chance of getting killed if I did that trek, and I had a hundred percent chance of getting killed if I stayed behind. So, I took the 50 percent chance of being alive if I escaped. Then when I jumped off it was a leap of faith.”
Siv had already begun his master’s work in international affairs at Columbia University in 1976 when he learned about the deaths of his family.
Siv says Pol Pot’s genocidal actions brought what the regime sought.
“I saw the result of their policy, and that created more fear. I saw the results of their society and the Khmer Rouge, everyday people were taken away and they disappeared. I saw skeletons. I never saw them execute,” he says.
Siv’s mother sent him away from their village before Pol Pot’s troops arrived and killed his relatives. She told him to never give up hope and gave him her wedding band, a scarf of hers and a bag of rice.
“Hope was probably the big foundation for me to stay alive and to survive. I prayed a lot,” he says.
The upcoming documentary in which Siv’s story will be included likely will be finished in a few months.
