By Catherine Louise Geach | Founder
Dear Kind Donors,
Today, on this day of writing this report, 17th April, although you will read it a bit later, is the day of Remembrance in Cambodia, Maha Bangskol.
On this day in 1975, Khmer Rouge troops led by Pol Pot and his cadres took over Phnom Penh and there followed the mass forced-exodus of the entire population, including the sick and dying, from the capital city and all towns in Cambodia, into the countryside. From there every man, woman and child was forced into vast concentration camps and made to work from before dawn to dusk and given only rice-gruel. Hospitals, Schools, Banks, Buddhist Pagodas were destroyed and the majority of intellectuals, artists, former-civil servants, Buddhist monks and their families were tortured and then put to death in huge pits, whilst hundreds of thousands died by starvation and disease.
By December 1979, when Vietnam troops invaded Cambodia, one third of Cambodians had perished. Yet still, the Khmer Rouge, though they no longer ran the country, supported by some members of the international community, still wielded power in the Southwest and Northwest of the country and used the Cardamom mountain ranges and jungle to build strongholds from which to attack, terrorise, plant anti-personnel mines and control the local populations. This war of attrition continued until 1998-99.
It is near one of these strongholds (Phnom Voar) in Kampot, that our School was built in 1994, exactly because there was so little assistance reaching the population, as most humanitarian organisations were afraid to go there.
Today, as our Blind Students continue to perfect their skills as Professional Musicans at our School with their Traditional Music Ensemble, "Vichak Santepheap" - "The Way of Peace", we Remember. We remember all those who died, including 90% of Cambodian Artists, and those who survived, but who carry the traumatic scars still and we celebrate that Music triumphed and that the Ancient Traditional Culture of Cambodia of over a millennium, survived and was not lost.
We also celebrate that Vichak Santepheap is one of the only very high calibre ensembles of all-Blind Musicians, both in Cambodia and the World and we Thank our Music Masters, some of whom, like Loak Kru Samouen, actually miraculously survived Khmer Rouge imprisonment, but went on to work tirelessly for the conservation and revival of Traditional Khmer Music and Arts.
We Thank you with all our Hearts, for believing in us and for supporting our work not only for our Blind Students so that they can have a truly good future, but also for the preservation of Traditional Cambodian Music for future generations of Cambodians.
Thank You!
Photographs of our Blind Students at KCDI, Loak Kru Samouen and Catherine L. Geach. Taken with their permission by kind courtesy Steve Porte.
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By Catherine Louise Geach | Founder
By Catherine Louise Geach | Founder
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