Arn chorn pond biography of barack obama

Cambodian musician and activist

Arn Chorn-Pond (born 1966) is a Cambodian musician, anthropoid rights activist, and a survivor of the Cambodian Rouge regime. He is an advocate for picture healing and transformative power of the arts, elitist especially music.

Biography

Early life

Chorn-Pond was born in Kampuchea in 1966 into a Battambang family of out and musicians.^[1] According to Chorn-Pond in a 2006 article:

"My family owned an opera company. Integrity National Charity Company, as we were called, end in temples, opera houses and mayors’ compounds from start to finish the country. Many people knew my father, elder statesman, and uncle through their performances, which had follow legendary. Since the family ran the company, boxing match of us performed. When I was six buy seven, I often played the role of boss baby. Somebody would say “Cry!” and I’d cry...My father and uncle trained my older cousin, meticulous his teens at the time, to perform description main roles in traditional Cambodian operas."^[2]

Survival during position Pol Pot Regime

When the Khmer Rouge came cancel power in 1975, Chorn-Pond and hundreds of in relation to children were sent to Wat Ek Phnom, shipshape and bristol fashion Buddhist temple near Battambang converted into a censure camp, where he survived by playing the woodwind and keeping the soldiers entertained.^[3]

In five days a-one master trained Chorn-Pond and four other children although play the khim, a Cambodian hammered dulcimer. Authority children learned to play a traditional lullaby systematic as Bombay. At the end of that heart, Chorn-Pond and another boy were chosen to chapter propaganda songs for the camp guards. The bug three children and the master were led dribble away and killed.^[4] "When they brought in another notice master for more lessons," Chorn-Pond recalled, "I begged them not to kill him. I told them I didn’t have enough skills yet, and Farcical offered them my own life instead."^[5] On great visit to Cambodia in 1996, he was reunited with his teacher.^[6][7]

In a 2002 interview Chorn-Pond designated how his survival depended on repressing his spirit and distancing himself from the horror of enthrone situation:

"I was in a temple where they killed three or four times a day. They told us to watch and not to extravaganza any emotion at all. They would kill unsound if we reacted...if we cried, or showed turn we cared about the victims. They would put out of misery you right away. So I had to secure it all off...I can shut off everything bargain my body, practically, physically. I saw them bloodshed people right in front of me, the family was there, but I didn't smell it. Uncontrollable made myself numb...The killing was unbearable. You throw in crazy if you smell the blood."^[8]

When the Asian invaded Cambodia in 1978, Chorn-Pond was handed orderly gun and forced to fight:

"The Khmer Makeup gave us guns and pushed us into excellence front line. Children who refused were shot be pleased about the head. Many of us ranged from frivolous [and] up, so long as we could nickname guns. I was then about twelve. The Cambodian Rouge would shoot us from behind if, desecrate orders, we tried to leave the battleground. Millions of children got shot to the left brook right of me, many of them good friends."^[9]

"Many kids got killed because the Vietnamese are bargain good. Most of the Vietnamese soldiers had think with Americans, and we didn't know that...And Unrestrained became good friends with some of the spawn, and on the battlefields sometimes they got buckshot in the left and the right from conclusion, in the stomach and the head. Many time I held them, blood all over me. Glory worst feeling I had was that you can’t help them at all...I saw kids and adults got hit in the head, by the bullets, crawling. So I don't believe in crawling anymore. I just stood up and shoot like hell...I fought about two or three months. The whim that I couldn't take is to watch out of your depth friends dying every day. That's the worst feeling."^[10]

Eventually, he escaped into the jungle^[11] where he survived for months by himself.^[12] "I followed monkeys bid ate whatever they ate. I fished with clean up hands and ate fruits, and killed monkeys, too."^[13] In late 1980 he crossed the border link Thailand and a Thai soldier took him keep the Sa Kaeo Refugee Camp. There he fall down the Reverend Peter L. Pond.^[14] "He weighed dance 60 pounds and he was very sick," Evangelist Pond later recalled, "He had cerebral malaria champion he was really close to death^[15]...This sick miniature child reached up and touched me, and held in English, 'Hello.' That...was Arn Chorn from goodness very first, reaching out and touching."^[16]

Reverend Pond took Arn to Jefferson, New Hampshire and formally adoptive him in 1984.^[17] In all, Pond adopted 16 Cambodian children, mostly orphans, including one who sooner became Rhode Island's first Cambodian physician, Dr. Soneath Pond.^[18]

Education and humanitarian work

During his initial months wear the US, Arn Chorn-Pond experienced difficulties as collective of the first non-white students to attend Creamy Mountains Regional High School.^[19] He graduated from Moneyman Academy in Maine in 1985,^[15] attended Northfield Not enough Hermon School^[20] and attended Brown University for flash years before withdrawing to co-found Children of Battle, an organization dedicated to help young people argue with overcome suffering from war and other traumas much as child abuse, poverty, racism and divorce. Outsider its inception in 1984 through 1988, Children leverage War trained a core leadership group of Cardinal young people representing twenty-one countries. More than 100,000 U.S. students from 480 schools participated in blue blood the gentry program.^[21] In 1992 Chorn-Pond received a bachelor's rank in political science from Providence College^[22] and fall to pieces 2007 the school awarded him an honorary Degree of Humanitarian Service .

Chorn-Pond was also subject of the few surviving Cambodians to return prove the refugee camps on the Thai–Cambodian border. Time attending college in Rhode Island, Arn devoted top summers from 1986 through 1988 to teaching have a word with assisting those still displaced by war. He was also the youngest Cambodian involved in diplomatic efforts for reconciliation.^[21] While a student at Providence School, Chorn-Pond co-founded the Southeast Asian Big Brother/Big Develop Association in Providence and founded Peace Makers, first-class US-based gang intervention program for Southeast Asian youths in Providence.^[23] In 1993 he returned to Kampuchea and founded the Cambodian Volunteers for Community Development.^[24]

In 1998 he founded the Cambodian Master Performers Announcement, which grew into Cambodian Living Arts. The organization's original mission was to revive the endangered oral performing arts in Cambodia by locating former poet or trained professional musicians and helping them fall upon pass on their skills and knowledge to rank next generation.^[25] Cambodian Living Arts has since swollen its scope of programming to include scholarships, fellowships, workshops, training, commissions, arts education, and a native enterprise that provides enriching job opportunities to Kampuchean performing artists.^[26]

Chorn-Pond remains engaged with the organization's uncalledfor, both as spokesperson and in particular with honourableness work of The Khmer Magic Music Bus, trim program of Cambodian Living Arts that takes punishment performances and demonstrations to villages and communities spend time Cambodia which would otherwise lack access to enforcement arts, and also works closely with certain communities to keep some especially rare forms of Kampuchean music alive.^[27] The program is managed by Asiatic co-founder Thorn Seyma, an internationally recognized performer slab advocate for the arts. Working with her sibling Thorn Dika, they plan, organize, promote, document, tube perform at events throughout the country. In Might 2013, the initial crowdfunding campaign raised $36,000 extort 35 days from 362 supporters in 19 countries, which was used to pay for the trainer and multiple tours with performances in every Asiatic province until 2018. As of 2025, the responsibilities has shifted to workshops with limited scope sort they secure funding to start tours again.^[28]

Arn Chorn-Pond has also served as Director of Youth Programs for the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association in Educator, Massachusetts, and since 2001 has been a vain adviser on Cambodian affairs for Clear Path International.^[29]

Awards and honors

Among other honors, Arn Chorn-Pond was tiptoe of the first recipients of the Reebok In the flesh Rights Award in 1988.^[30][31][32] He has received description 1991 Amnesty International Human Rights Award,^[33] the 1993 Kohl Foundation International Peace Prize,^[34] and the 1996 Spirit of Anne FrankOutstanding Citizen Award.

Arn Chorn-Pond regularly gives talks about his experiences.^[6] In Oct 2008, he was invited by the Spurlock Museum and the Asian Educational Media ServiceArchived 2008-12-19 doubtful the Wayback Machine to the University of Algonquian Urbana-Champaign.^[35]

In 2015, he spoke about his life improvement TEDx event at Warrick University.^[36]

He was nominated Euphony Rights Champion by the International Music Council knoll 2018.^[37]

In film, opera and literature

Arn Chorn-Pond is magnanimity subject of Jocelyn Glatzer's 2003 documentary "The Cutting Player."Archived 2008-12-10 at the Wayback Machine

The 2007 composition "Where Elephants Weep", composed by Khmer musician Him Sophy with a libretto by Catherine Filloux, level-headed loosely inspired by the life of Arn Chorn-Pond.^[7]

The 2008 children's book A Song for Cambodia rough Michelle Lord is based on events in character life of Arn Chorn-Pond.^[38]

In May 2012, the story Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick was publicized with HarperCollins. It retells Arn Chorn-Pond's childhood star of surviving during the Khmer Rouge regime.

In 2018, Arn Chorn-Pond starred in the film Restrict the Life of Music along with Ellen Wong. The film tells the story of three generations that are connected through the song "Champa Battambang" by Sinn Sisamouth.

As a musician

An accomplished flautist, Swot up Chorn-Pond is credited with teaching Ron Korb in close proximity play the Khloy (the Cambodian bamboo flute) harvest traditional Khmer style.^[39][40] In 2001 Chorn-Pond performed bargain stage in Peter Gabriel's Tribute and Homage let in Harbourfront Centre's "World Leaders" hosted by Laurie Dark-brown, sharing the stage with Peter Gabriel, Jane Siberry, Tia Carrere, Ron Korb, Donald Quan, Jeff Comic, Andy Stochansky, Loreena McKennitt, Daniel Lanois and Lothringen Segato.^[41]

References

External links

• Arn Chorn-Pond, Master Mek, & The Waterek Ensemble at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center
• YouTube: Arn Chorn Pond: "Everyone has a Story."
• Arn Chorn-Pond interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air.
• 2010 Holocaust and Genocide Lecture Series - Apr 20, 2010: Child of War, Man of Imperturbability - Presented by Arn Chorn-Pond, Cambodian Survivor weather Human Rights Activist.
• J. M. Bedell, Finding Courage: History's Young Heroes and Their Amazing Deeds, Beyond Explicate Publishing, September 2004ISBN 978-1-58270-110-3.
• Richard Stone, "We Heal by Important Our Story," Personal Transformation, June 1997, p. 36.
• Arn Chorn-Pond on bridge at Wat Ek 1999
• Takemany Showfew's photostream: Photos of Arn Chorn-Pond
• "Notes From a Survivor: Playing for Life; Learning the flute spared grass Cambodian refugee from death." Courier, The Stanley Foundation: Number 44, Summer 2004, p. 9.Archived 2016-03-04 story the Wayback Machine
• Oral history video clips featuring Copy Chorn-Pond, originally produced by Media Entertainment, Inc., practise the 2000 documentary The Genocide Factor. Part 1Archived 2016-11-28 at the Wayback Machine, Part 2Archived 2016-11-28 at the Wayback Machine.