Loung Ung is a Cambodian-born American human-rights activist and lecturer.

She is the national

spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World. At ten years of age, she escaped from
Cambodia as a survivor of what became known as "the Killing Fields" during the reign of Pol Pot's
Khmer Rouge regime. After emigrating to the United States and adjusting to her new country, she
wrote two books which related her life experiences from 1975 through 2003 in Cambodia. Ung's first
memoir, First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, details her experiences in
Cambodia from 1975 until 1980: "From 1975 to 1979—through execution, starvation, disease, and
forced labour—the Khmer Rouge systematically killed an estimated two million Cambodians, almost
a fourth of the country's population. Published in the United States in 2000 by HarperCollins, it
became a national bestseller, and in 2001 it won the award for "Excellence in Adult Non-fiction
Literature" from the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association. During her childhood, the family
was relatively well-off and owned two cars and a truck, and their house used running water, a
flushable toilet, and an iron bathtub. By her own account, Loung lived a happy and carefree life in a
close-knit loving family, until April 17, 1975, when the Khmer Rouge gained control of Cambodia and
evacuated Phnom Penh. Loung was playing near her home when the trucks filled with Khmer Rouge
troops rolled into her neighbourhood. The populace of Phnom Penh, estimated at nearly two million
people, was forced to evacuate. By 1978, the Khmer Rouge had killed her parents and two of her
siblings, and she was forced to train as a child soldier. Only two years later, she and her older
brother escaped by boat to Thailand, where they spent five months in a refugee camp before
relocating to Vermont through sponsorship by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and
a parish in Burlington. Fifteen years after her escape, Ung returned to Cambodia and learned that 20
of her relatives—among some 1.7 million others—had died at the hands of Pol Pot and the Khmer
Rouge regime. This realization compelled her to devote herself to justice and reconciliation in her
homeland.