'Safe and free': Cambodians on finding sanctuary in Australia 50 years since the Khmer Rouge

Five decades since the Khmer Rouge genocide, memories are still raw for many members of Australia's Cambodian community.

Seda Douglas (left) and her mother, Touch Liv, fled Cambodia during the genocidal reign of Pol Pot in 1975. Credit: SBS

Key Points

• It's been 50 years since the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, took control of Cambodia in 1975, following a five-year civil war.
• Australia accepted several thousand Cambodian refugees from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s.
• As SBS marks its 50th anniversary, some say the broadcaster's in-language programs helped them feel at home in Australia.

Drawings by Phiny Ung's late husband Bun Heang are a capsule of their shared memories — illustrating the struggle of life after the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia, which they renamed Kampuchea.

Under its leader, Pol Pot, more than two million Cambodians are estimated to have been killed between 1975 and 1979 as the communist regime tried to create a so-called 'classless' society.

Drawings by Phiny Ung's late husband Bun Heang. Credit: SBS

It has been estimated that the Khmer Rouge murdered almost a quarter of the population through mass executions, torture, starvation and forced labour.

"That was the time when everybody in the city had to be evacuated and that's when our life changed completely ... it turned upside down," Ung said.

"There's no comfort in the loss, but the one thing that eased me a little bit, is that I'm not the only one."

Phiny Ung and her late husband Bun Heang after arriving in Australia with their baby daughter. Credit: Phiny Ung

Forced to flee Cambodia, Ung arrived in Australia with her husband and young daughter in 1980 and was later able to sponsor her mother and remaining siblings to join them in their new home.

"When I arrived, I just felt safe and free, those are the two words that I can come up with, I don't feel under threat with anything at all, at least I am human, I am treated as human," she said.

Phiny Ung today. Credit: SBS

Australia accepted several thousand Cambodian refugees from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s.

According to the 2021 Census, there are currently just over 39,000 Cambodian-born people living in Australia.

Five siblings, father killed

For Seda Douglas and her mother, Touch Liv, the memories of what happened in Phnom Penh in 1975 are still raw.

"They said if you want to survive, you must leave the village, your family is not safe," Douglas said.

Seda Douglas (right) with her mother, Touch Liv. Credit: SBS

Douglas's five siblings and her father were killed by the Pol Pot regime.

Liv said: "When my five children died. I did not even see their faces for the last time. I was in the forest, did the farming in Boeung Sdor, in the bushes."

I did not see my husband, I did not see my children until they died, I still could not see them for the last time.

Touch Liv

The two women arrived in Australia in 1983 with Douglas' surviving brother.

"I don't normally celebrate my birthday but I celebrate the day that I arrived in Australia because I was given an opportunity to restart my life and I did it well," Douglas said.

The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. It's estimated as many as two million people were murdered or died from starvation under the Pol Pot dictatorship. Credit: Pascal Deloche/Getty Images

SBS Khmer launched

To assist the growing Cambodian community, the SBS Khmer program first started broadcasting in 1979 — and continues to serve as a vital source of news and information.

Douglas went on to work with SBS Khmer in the 1980s.

"We wanted to hear what's going on in Australia, the government, but mainly we were concerned about what's going on in Cambodia because we left the country by force not by choice," she said.

A portrait of Phiny Ung by her late husband, Bun Heang. Credit: SBS

For Ung, the anniversary is painful, but a portrait, painted by her late-husband while the pair were still in Cambodia, holds a special memory.

"He just found three or four colours in the sea of rubbish that he can mix and match. I sat for him a few hours a day," she said.

Ung had to leave the painting behind when she fled, but in 1989 she was reunited with her aunt in Cambodia. To her surprise, she was also reunited with the portrait as well as her father's sword, a family heirloom.

"It's so much of a souvenir ... it's the love in our relationship, husband and wife."

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