Arn Chorn-Pond watched his siblings die slowly, narrowly escaped his own death by fleeing to the jungle and became a human rights activist as he works to revive traditional Cambodian arts, an aspect of the culture that was silenced during the years of the Khmer Rouge communist Killing Fields. “Most of the prisoners were digging out their own graves,” Chorn-Pond said. “Many children starved to death. Fifty survived —I was one of them.” Chorn-Pond visited WSU as part of International Education Week and was the keynote speaker Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in the Compton Union Building (CUB) Senior Ballroom. The Khmer Rouge was the ruling communist party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, during which time its leaders overworked and starved citizens who were forced into labor camps, he said. The government arrested, tortured and executed anyone considered to be an enemy. About 1.7 million people died. The Killing Fields are the mass of grave sites where Cambodians were killed and buried during the four years of genocide. “When we went to the battlefield, we expected someone to die,” Chorn-Pond said. “Some of the kids as young as I was couldn’t even hold the guns. Sometimes, they would blow their heads off.” Chorn-Pond said 90 percent of Cambodia’s traditional artists died as a result of the Khmer Rouge genocide or famine that followed for years after. He said he believes the only reason he was not killed is because he excelled at playing the flute, and played government propaganda songs for Khmer Rouge officials. Now Chorn-Pond is working to revive Cambodian arts. His effort began in Lowell, Mass., where he worked with Cambodian gang members and taught them to play traditional Cambodian instruments, he said. When he returned to Cambodia, he began teaching music to three girls. Now Chorn-Pond said his dream has drastically expanded. He has helped set up arts centers of 500 students each in 10 provinces around Cambodia. But his work is not yet finished. Chorn-Pond said he wants to create an art movement in Cambodia and around the world. “I’m just scratching the surface now of the art of Cambodia,” he said. “The Khmer Rouge silenced it. Every child — not only Cambodian children, but children around the world — they will dance, they will sing. They will carry musical instruments, not guns.” Chorn-Pond said he got so tired of blindly following the Khmer Rouge’s orders that he fled the Killing Fields and ran off into the jungle. Amid snakes, leeches and malaria threats, Chorn-Pond walked through the jungle for several months, following monkeys and eating the fruit they dropped. On occasion, he would eat the wrong fruit and succumb to the symptoms of food poisoning, his body growing weak. In 1980, Chorn-Pond was found unconscious in a bush by two girls looking for firewood, he said. He had walked to Thailand and was about to die. He weighed just 30 pounds. The father of the girls who found him was an American man, he said. The man adopted Chorn-Pond and two other Cambodian orphans and moved with him to New Hampshire. They were the first three orphans brought to the U.S. after the genocide. Living in the U.S. was a struggle at first, Chorn-Pond said. He got in trouble at school and with the law. He was made fun of and bullied to the point that he became suicidal. “It was hard sometimes,” he said. “I was depressed. I was planning to shoot myself, but I didn’t have guns. What you get now is a total different Arn. I was always ready to strike all the time, and I had a reason to. I never knew anything but hate and kill.” When Chorn-Pond finally began telling his story, people started listening, he said. He met former president Jimmy Carter, who wrote him a recommendation letter and got him into Brown University. Carter asked him to speak for human rights on behalf of Amnesty International, the organization Chorn-Pond has now been with for 15 years. He said he would much rather talk about his arts foundation instead of his life, but it is good for people to know what happened, even though it hurts him to recount it time after time. By telling his story, Chorn-Pond said he hopes others will be motivated to stop tragedies from happening. There are not many survivors who are willing to share their story. Politicians screwed up the world a long time ago, he said. Now it will take the work of peace-makers to fix what they destroyed. Chorn-Pond told students in the audience not be materialistic and make their dreams about more than just making money. He said there is still a major struggle between the poor and the rich all around the world. “It’s very hard to refuse to go shopping,” he said. “That’s all American teenagers know. But the suffering continues. Making money, living an American life – it used to be my dream, too. There are so many things I don’t like about this country, but I want to make it better. When I don’t like something, I work.” Sina Sam, junior basic medical sciences major, said hearing Chorn-Pond’s story was really moving because she is Cambodian-American. “I’m so starstruck because for me, he’s one of the only Cambodian heroes we have to look up to,” she said. “Everything he was saying is something that my parents could never tell me. There’s no one that hasn’t been touched by death if you’re Cambodian-American.” Theary Chhim, a graduate pharmacy student, echoed Sam’s thoughts as a Cambodian-American. She said listening to Chorn-Pond’s speech made her really sad, especially knowing that her parents had gone through the same struggles Chorn-Pond did. She said her dad worked in Khmer Rouge hospitals and her mom witnessed people digging up graves. “Right now I still feel like somebody squeezed my heart,” she said. “For me, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (to meet Chorn-Pond).” Chorn-Pond is the recipient of the Reebok Human Rights Award, the Anne Frank Memorial Award and the Kohl Foundation International Peace Prize. He is also the subject of the Emmy-nominated documentary, “The Flute Player.” To learn more about Chorn-Pond and his foundation, or to watch “The Flute Player,” go to www.cambodianlivingarts.org.