By Jennifer Prestholdt (pictured) and Amy BergquistThe Minnesota Post
Monoram Hang was just 9 years old in April 1975, when Khmer Rouge soldiers forced his family from their home in Phnom Penh. His mother, weak from giving birth two days earlier, fell to her knees and begged for permission to wait for her husband to return from work so their family could leave together. The soldiers kicked her to the ground and ordered them out at gunpoint, forcing them to join the swollen river of people leaving Cambodia’s capital. As Hang related, “At that time we walk, we don’t know where we are going, we don’t know where we end up. We just walk and walk. ... And Khmer Rouge soldiers behind us and shoot from behind and force us to go.”
Hang was lucky to survive; as many as 2 million Cambodians died in the “killing fields” of the Khmer Rouge regime. He found refuge in the United States, one of nearly 10,000 Cambodians now living in Minnesota — the country’s sixth-largest home to Cambodians. Like Hang, most witnessed genocide and endured forced migration and labor camps under the Khmer Rouge.
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