A Khmer History, not yet finished.

With thanks to the Cambodian Documentation Centre, additional reporting by DC

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He looks back and he does not know how he did it - how he survived the Khmer Rouge.
You would wonder too.

Mr Youk Chhang was just 14 when Khmer Rouge soldiers chased him and thousands of other Cambodians from Phnom Penh to the countryside in April 1975.

It was the start of 'Year Zero' according to the Khmer Rouge regime led by Pol Pot, who wanted Cambodia to become an agrarian communist utopia.

For Mr Chhang, it was the start of four long years under the regime and many brushes with death.

Now 44, he spoke to academics and diplomats at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies recently. He spoke about how Asean can help with the tribunal set up to bring the killers to justice.

It is all about finding answers for the country and humanity - and himself, he said.
'My sister died. I want some answers. Otherwise, who do I forgive?'
And he has much to forgive.

DUG CANALS, ATE SNAKES
He spent the Khmer Rouge years digging canals as part of a youth mobile unit, away from his family, which had been moved to Battambang province, 250km north-west of Phnom Penh.

He had to learn to swim so that he could dive into the flooded rice fields and cut sugarcane.

He also had to steal food, find edible leaves in the jungle and kill and eat snakes and rats.

His communist masters may have trumpeted atheism, but food became his god, he said.
'I never thought of dying. Instead, I hoped for a good night's sleep and to have enough to eat one day. That hope encouraged me to fight for life.'

He was thrown into jail for weeks once, after trying to steal food for his pregnant sister.

MUM AFRAID TO CRY
'They hit me with an axe, pushed me to the ground, tied me up with rope and put me in jail.

My mother was afraid to cry in front of them while they were torturing me. Crying was also a crime under the Khmer Rouge, ' he said.

Ten of his family members died for various 'crimes'.

A brother-in-law caught stealing garbage to feed his three children was beaten and died from his injuries.

His wife - one of Mr Chhang's five sisters - kept his body and did not report his death for a week so that she could collect his food ration for her kids.

SISTER SPLIT OPEN, KILLED
She was later accused of stealing rice from a communal kitchen, and when she denied it, a Khmer Rouge cadre slashed opened her belly and killed her, said Mr Chhang.

His family members were among the 1.7 million to two million Cambodians - about a quarter of the country's population - who died of starvation, or by forced labour or execution by the time the Vietnamese invasion in early 1979 toppled the Khmer Rouge.

That is when a 17-year-old Mr Chhang walked across the Thai border to a refugee camp.
'I had no fear. Not even of landmines. I just walked. Looking back, I do not know how I did it,' he said.

Two years later - with '$10 and just one pair of jeans' - he found his way to Texas and a new life.

He worked and went to university in the US before returning to Phnom Penh in 1992 to work for the United Nations.

'I wanted to do something for Cambodia and for my mother,' he said.

His mother, who had remained behind in Cambodia, is still alive.
'My mother was lucky. And I was lucky,' he said.

'There're so many other families who were not so lucky.'

As director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia for the past 10 years, he is documenting the Khmer Rouge years.

His centre has mapped more than 19,000 mass graves and 167 prisons (or extermination centres).

DEATH THREATS
In a country yet to bury the past, it is no wonder he has received death threats because of his work, he said.

But the father of two added: 'I am prepared to trade my life for truth... I believe in the truth... being sincere and honest... the truth will set you free.'

During the seminar, Mr Chhang spoke passionately on the need to find closure.

'You ask the rank and file Khmer Rouge now why they killed and they say they do not know.

Yet the leaders say they did not give orders to kill. So how did two million people lose their lives?

'I do not have the answer. You have to search for your own truth.'
His work is also a struggle against historical amnesia.

Already, young Cambodians are finding it hard to come to terms with their parents' experience.

'They can't believe there was a time when there was no money, no video games, no ice-cream, no school,' Mr Chhang noted.

And while youngsters think black is 'cool', that - for their parents - was the colour of death, the colour the Khmer Rouge cadres dressed in.

A whole generation of Cambodians still needs to find ways to deal with the memory of what happened between 1975 and 1979, he said.

His niece, who was 5 or 6 when her parents and sister died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, still believes a tale relatives told her at the time: Her family had just gone away for a while and would come back for her.

STILL WAITING FOR MUM and DAD
'We told her: 'See, they even left you a bowl of water to drink'. And she stopped crying. She's now 31, married with three kids, and that bowl - she's kept it in a safe deposit box in the Bank of Maryland,' said Mr Chhang.

She's struggling to hang on to that story even as her own children ask her: 'Where are your parents? Why do not they visit us in the holidays?'

Mr Chhang said: 'She couldn't answer. She told the kids: 'Your uncle knows. I'll send him an e-mail. He'll tell you.''

Mr Chhang hasn't answered that e-mail.

To date, no Khmer Rouge leaders have been brought to justice.

SURVIVING LEADERS
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998.

Surviving leaders likely to be tried are
· Nuon Chea, former chief ideologue;
· Khieu Samphan, head of state;
· Ieng Sary, foreign minister;
· Ta Mok, army chief; and
· Kang Kek Ieu, who headed the notorious S-21 prison, which is now the genocide museum in Phnom Penh.

Mr Chhang said data collected by the Documentation Centre of Cambodia will be offered to both the defence and the prosecution at the tribunal.