Interact Rotary Club supports Cambodia Project

Intermountain Catholic

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Rotary Club members Rachel Palmer (left), Alexis Naylor, and Teresa Highsmith invite you to ?The Cambodia Project,? dinner fund raiser and silent auction, Saturday, March 21, at Judge Memorial Catholic High School, 650 South 1100 East, Salt Lake City. The silent auction begins at 6 p.m., with dinner at 7:30 p.m. Proceeds from the dinner will be used to build a school in Cambodia. IC photo by Christine Young

SALT LAKE CITY — Judge Memorial Catholic High School’s Interact Rotary Club will host a dinner fund raiser March 21, to raise funds to help build a school in rural Cambodia.

Dr. Corethia Qualls, Judge Memorial Interact Rotary Club facilitator, said the Rotary Club is an internationally organized group that provides service to others to make the world better.

"It is not a matter of just giving charity, although we do give charity," said Qualls. "Our emphasis is on helping people in ways to allow them to help themselves."

Judge Memorial seniors and Rotary Club officers Alexis Naylor, president; Teresa Highsmith, vice president; and Rachel Palmer, vice president, explained the Cambodia Project and their involvement.

"The Cambodia Project is a nonprofit organization, whose mission is to better the lives of young children in rural Cambodia by providing them with a suitable education," said Naylor. "The money we raise from our dinner fund raiser will be used to help build a school in rural Cambodia for boys and girls. Education was ruled out by Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot. At first we wanted to focus on the girls in Cambodia who are being sold into prostitution so their families can provide food and other necessities for themselves. But the money will be used to build a school for both boys and girls."

"Our Judge Memorial Rotary Club is working through the Cambodia Project based in New York," said Palmer. "Their mission is to better the lives of children with an adequate education by providing them with a school so they can grow and prosper on their own."

"Education is the key," said Naylor. "It now costs $360,000 to build a school in Cambodia, which includes a dormitory. There is another $175,000 that goes toward supplies and teachers salaries. Currently, Cambodia is the fourth poorest country in the world."

"As a Rotary Club we have one international project, and one local project each year," said Naylor. "This year for our local project, we worked at the Utah Food Bank sorting food because the need was and is so great.

"We also have been selling bracelets to raise money for our international Cambodia Project," said Naylor. "All of the students have been so willing to support us and give to charity. We have been earning a lot of money that way, but the fund raiser dinner and silent auction, which will be held March 21 at Judge Memorial at 6 p.m. will also be a great help. Every year our budget begins with basically a zero balance.

"Judge Memorial has a magazine drive each year, and the students can choose where the profits go. Some students have given their profits to the Interact international project," said Naylor. "We also received funds from the Judge Memorial Phonathon. We will fund our dinner with these monies. The majority of our auction items are donated. Some of the items include two pairs of signed Utah Jazz shoes and a two-night stay in a Park City condo with a $100 gift certificate to a sushi restaurant. The dinner will be a lot of fun, and the money help the children in Cambodia who desperately need an education."

According to the United Human Rights Council, Pol Pot was born in 1925, into a farming family in central Cambodia, which was then part of French Indochina. In 1949, at age 20, he traveled to Paris on a scholarship to study radio electronics but became absorbed in Marxism and neglected his studies. He lost his scholarship and returned to Cambodia in 1953 and joined the underground Communist movement. The following year, Cambodia achieved full independence from France and was then ruled by a royal monarchy.

By 1962, Pol Pot had become leader of the Cambodian Communist Party and was forced to flee into the jungle to escape the wrath of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, leader of Cambodia. In the jungle, Pol Pot formed an armed resistance movement that became known as the Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodians) and waged a guerrilla war against Sihanouk’s government.

In 1970, Prince Sihanouk was ousted, not by Pol Pot, but due to a U.S.-backed right-wing military coup. An embittered Sihanouk retaliated by joining with Pol Pot, his former enemy, in opposing Cambodia’s new military government. That same year, the U.S. invaded Cambodia to expel the North Vietnamese from their border encampments, but instead drove them deeper into Cambodia where they allied themselves with the Khmer Rouge.

Once in power, Pol Pot began a radical experiment to create an agrarian utopia inspired in part by Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, which he had witnessed, first-hand. Zedong’s "Great Leap Forward" economic program included forced evacuations of Chinese cities and the purging of "class enemies." Pol Pot attempted his own "Super Great Leap Forward" in Cambodia, which he renamed the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea.

Pol Pot began by purifying the society. Capitalism, Western culture, city life, religion, and all foreign influences were extinguished in favor of an extreme form of peasant Communism.

All foreigners were expelled, embassies closed, and any foreign, economic, or medical assistance was refused. The use of foreign languages was banned. Newspapers and television stations were shut down, radios and bicycles confiscated, and mail and telephone usage curtailed. Money was forbidden. All businesses were shuttered, religion banned, education halted, health care eliminated, and parental authority revoked. Thus Cambodia was sealed off from the outside world.

From 1975 to 1979, an attempt by Pol Pot to form a Communist peasant farming society resulted in 2,000,000 deaths from starvation, overwork, and executions. This was 25 percent of the country’s population.

On Dec. 25, 1978, Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Cambodia seeking to end Khmer Rouge border attacks. On Jan. 7, 1979, Phnom Penh fell and Pol Pot was deposed. The Vietnamese then installed a puppet government consisting of Khmer Rouge defectors.

Pol Pot retreated into Thailand with the remnants of his Khmer Rouge army and began a guerrilla war against a succession of Cambodian governments lasting over the next 17 years. After a series of internal power struggles in the 1990s, Pol Pot finally lost control of the Khmer Rouge. In April 1998, 73-year-old Pol Pot died of an apparent heart attack following his arrest, before he could be brought to trial by an international tribunal for the events of 1975-1979.