T.V.K
TVK lives in Connecticut. She was born on January 10, 1947, in Mongkol Borei, Battambang Province. TVK was born to an upper-middle class family. She was tenth of twelve children. Well-educated, she became a teacher in Cambodia. She lost her husband during the Khmer Rouge period. Currently, she is Executive Director of a leading Cambodian mental health program in the United States.
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"Oh! There was physical torture and mental torture during the concentration camp time. The people tell you that if you do not do it the way they want you to do it you'd get killed. They would ask you to kill somebody if you don't kill they would kill you, a lot of things occurred like that. Mental torture was worse for the people between 1975 through 1978. Physical torture was as bad as mental torture especially in the place where I lived... As for mental torture before the sunset, everybody looked sad because they don't know whether the communists were going to murder them tonight or the next night. So the people lived day by day. As for physical torture, the communists would ask you to work even though they could see you falling down or dying in the fields. They don't care about your condition, they'd say you must keep working. Otherwise, they use the stick on you or they say that they will kill you. Some people were forced to work until they dropped."
"I grew up in a small village outside of the city of Battambang. I knew all the city. I came to study there. I had a lot of family: uncles, aunts, and my grandmother. Yet, I when I was growing up I did not even know my grandmother's name. I always called her grandmother and grandma... she was very quiet, quiet woman. She never did anything at all like housework or cooking. No, when I was growing up, I always saw my whole family respect and treat her very well. In the morning, afternoon and supper we'd bring her food, and talk to her. She liked to plant vegetables, but she did not do too much. She always asked her grandchildren to do that. She was the commander."