NEW YORK — From 1990 to 2000, the Cambodian population of New York City decreased by 31%, according to a census analysis by the Hmong Studies Internet Resource Center. By 2005, barely 1,000 Cambodians remained in the city. The decline occurred as nearly all the country’s other Cambodian communities were expanding.
At one time, 2,565 Cambodians lived in the city. Most were refugees fleeing the repressive Khmer Rouge regime, which fell in 1979 and claimed nearly two million lives.
In the turbulent Bronx, few of the Cambodian cultural, religious and community centers that have formed in places like Long Beach, Calif., Lowell, Mass., and Minneapolis took root.
“The violence they experienced during the Khmer Rouge was similar to the violence they saw every day in the Bronx,” said Chhaya Chhoum, director of the youth leadership project at CAAAV, formerly the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence, “so they were never able to move away from their trauma.”
— The New York Times
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