History

In 1974 former Khmer Rouge commander Touj Soeurly and the fourteen year old Chhem Sip were deadly enemies. Sip was imprisoned, tortured, and just barely managed to escape with his life to the US. Soeurly lost his leg in battle.

Now these two former enemies are working together to make possible the community of Veal Thom, a cooperative village composed primarily of disabled veterans, from both sides of the war, and their families.

The amputees of Veal Thom cope with extreme poverty, the elements, poor health, lack of education and lack of resources. Through an unprecedented cooperation in a country still torn by political strife, a miracle takes place. With "bare hands and wooden limbs", the amputees make their village blossom.

This film is a testament to what an impossible friendship and cooperation between a former Khmer Rouge commander and a former Khmer Rouge victim can accomplish.

Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in the world. Two decades of civil war from the 1970s through the 1990s have seen extensive damage perpetrated on the Cambodian economy, culture and social order. The scars of war are still impacting negatively, particularly with regard to rural areas of the country. Steadily over 800 landmine accidents are occurring annually. There are currently 67,000 landmine victims in Cambodia. Generally, landmine victims survive (80%), but are left with severe disabilities.

Around the world, landmines claim 26,000 new victims a year - that's 71 people every day. Already over a quarter of a million people have fallen victim to the more than 100 million landmines in 64 countries, a number that continues to grow. These landmines are installed during wartime, but usually attack their victims years later, after the conflict they were set for is long over.

Nowhere is this truer than in Cambodia, where 35 percent more land could be cultivated if it weren't polluted with landmines. Victims from landmines often die and leave behind their dependents. Those who survive are disabled, a condition that guarantees a lifetime of ostracism and extreme impoverishment in a country where half the population already lives below the poverty level.

Most amputees end up becoming beggars, but 227 of them, along with their families, have rejected this path and banded together in the village of Veal Thom, 60 miles NW of Phnom Penh, to improve their lives as a group in ways that they could not have done on their own. Without support they are coping with a dearth of resources (including a lack of clean water) and have set about building a school and running cooperative farms.

The village of Veal Thom stands as a model of how the most desperate of people, with motivation and with sufficient support and training can move from the lowest depths of helplessness and poverty to succeed and take control of their lives and the organization of a mutually supportive community. The village is composed of over 400 families, each with at least one disabled person. Members of the village fought on both sides of the war, but in Veal Thom politics are laid aside in favor of economic and social renewal.

The Poverty Alleviation through Community Empowerment (PACE) project (see Cambodia: Living with Landmines) has been successfully applied to the experience of Veal Thom.

Within only a two-year period, 177 persons were provided training with over 90% of these persons having initiated businesses that have enabled them to reach economic self-sufficiency for them and their families. Training encompassed 18 different occupations.

Now, four years later, everyone in the village who was in need of training, that is, over 400 amputees, have received it and the majority of trainees are now employed or running their own businesses.

As individuals in Veal Thom coordinated their new awareness about their vocational accomplishments, it became increasingly clear that what has evolved through WRF's efforts was a community who has learned to put abilities to work and achieved very productive outcomes.

Here we tell some of those individual stories.