Biography: Arn Chorn Pond

When Arn Chorn Pond was only nine years old, his family was executed in a Khmer Rouge death camp. Of the 500 children forced into the camp, only sixty survived. In the Killing Fields of Cambodia, Arn was forced to undress the children and hold their hands while the Khmer Rouge murdered them with a makeshift pickax. 

Long after he escaped, the horrifying memories of the ceaseless executions continued to haunt him, but they didn't immobilize him. Instead, he dedicated his life to ending the suffering of children who were victims of this horrible atrocity.

The Khmer Rouge was a communist movement that controlled the government of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Communist leader Pol Pot led the group for much of its existence. During its regime of terror, more than 1.5 million Cambodians were massacred. In the years that followed, surviving children languished in refugee camps. 

In 1984, under the auspices of the Religious Task Force, Arn co-founded an organization called Children of War to help end the suffering of children held hostage by war and violence and to help them rebuild their lives. This youth program brought together young Cambodian war survivors with U.S. teenagers for the purpose of effecting change through training, education, and participation in youth empowerment activities. 

The group used nationwide tours, leadership training workshops, and school visitations to revitalize grassroots youth action groups. From its inception in 1984 though 1988, Children of War trained a core leadership group of 150 young people representing twenty-one countries. More than 100,000 U.S. students from 480 schools participated in the program. 

Arn was also one of the few surviving Cambodians to return to the border camps. While attending college in Rhode Island, Arn devoted his summers from 1986 through 1988 to teaching and assisting those still displaced by war. Additionally, he was the youngest Cambodian involved in diplomatic efforts for reconciliation.

Arn not only personally triumphed over the adversity of his youth and the period of holocaust in his troubled homeland, he became a leading voice testifying to Amnesty International groups in several cities. He also worked to persuade the United Nations to take action to prevent the recurrence of genocide and massive violations of human rights in Cambodia.

In 1991, Arn returned to Cambodia to involve youth in the rebuilding of Cambodia through community service. In recent years, he worked with at-risk youths and gang members on violence prevention in Lowell, Massachusetts. Currently, Arn is working on a project to preserve the work of the surviving masters of Cambodian traditional music.