Sunday, May 2, 2010

Long Beach's Cambodian-Americans revisit darkest of times

Reflections on the Killing Fields a step toward healing.

05/01/2010
By Greg Mellen, Staff Writer
Long Beach Press Telegram

LONG BEACH -- It began with tears and it ended with tears.
And in between there was a lot of information when a local nonprofit held a community forum before a packed house at the Mark Twain Library.
The Applied Social Research Institute of Cambodia staged the forum to update members of the local community on what the institute's leader, Dr. Leakhena Nou, called "a beginning of a new chapter in healing" in the Cambodian-American community.
Nou and her fledgling all-volunteer nonprofit spearheaded an unprecedented effort to gather statements and testimonials from refugee survivors of the 1970s Cambodian genocide about the abuses they suffered. Their stories and the evidence contained within were made available for use at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

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