By: Peter Bin, written on Mother's Day 2020
I never knew how terrible the word
"guilty" was until that last day of my trial. As the jury foreman
read the word "guilty", my legs weakened, my life flashed, and my
heart stopped.
Upon hearing those dreadful words, I turn to look at
my family. I can see my parents and siblings with tears rolling down their
face.
For the next few months I was sent to solitary
confinement. There, the jail did not give me any clothes and I barely had any
food to eat. This was the county jail's standard procedure for a defendant
convicted of first degree murder. I guess the purpose of this is to strip us of
any humanity that we have left . (Although the jail claim it is for other
reasons.)
During this time of despair my mother came to see me.
There, behind a glass window, she witnessed how much weight I had lost and the
terrible condition I had succumb to. As any mother would, she cried for
her son.
As she cried, she told me something that I would
never forget. She said: "I would give anything to trade places with you,
I'm old, I lived my life, I don't need my freedom nor do I need my life".
Through out the years of my incarceration, I
reflect on my mother's words. With her willingness to sacrifice her life for
me, I realize how much I took her and my own life for granted.
It makes me think of my
childhood and how from time to time my mother would share bits and pieces of
her life.
My mother was born in the year
1960. During the surrounding years of her birth, Southeast Asia was a region
full of bloodshed. Neighboring countries were at war, fellow countrymen were
involved with violent disagreements and there were constant political power
struggles. Due to these persistent battles, Cambodia's economy fell apart. It
cause people like my mother to be born into a life full of struggles, poverty
and violence.
My mother's family were peasant
farmers whom came from Takeo province. They barely had any education, income
and only farmed to feed themselves. Her own mother had past away at an early
age in her life. By the age of 7 years old, she left school to help care for
her family. Her responsibilities was to care for her siblings, the livestock
and to work the rice fields.
As she worked the rice
fields, she can hear explosions from bombs being dropped by military aircrafts.
There was a sense of danger every where. Often, a relative was killed by a
landmine left by different warring factions.
At one period during her childhood,
armed Vietnamese soldiers invaded her village. In this invasion, the soldiers
ordered the village men, by gun point, to walk ahead of their company into the
jungle. The Vietnamese soldiers were doing this so the Cambodian villagers
could clear the pathway of any explosives. It was a cruel act that cause many
innocent lives.
Years later her village was invaded
by another military group, The Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge was a military
regime led by Pol Pot. Their regime would be responsible for the massacre and
genocide of 2.5 million Cambodians.
My mother was still a child
when she was stripped away from her family by the Khmer Rouge. Because of her
age, the Khmer Rouge first sent her to a weapons training camp. It was common
for the Khmer Rouge to do this to children. The Khmer Rouge often recruited
child soldiers because they were more easy to be persuaded to kill their own
countrymen. But as a child, my mother was not easy to manipulate and she did
not believe in their propagandas (in which she could not reveal). Once she
became a teenager, she was transfered to do slave work in the labor camps.
In the labor camps, my mother
and many others were forced to work endless hours with barely any thing to eat.
Regardless how exhausted and weak she felt, she still found the strength to
push through. If she was to show any sign of exhaustion and weakness, she would
face the penalty of death. That fear of death never left my mother's mind.
Every night, while men and women
slept after the work day, the Khmer Rouge would round up a group of men and
women to go into the fields. Everybody knew they were being gather to be
slaughtered. Many feared they would be next.
To avoid being executed, my mother would go
and sleep in the ditches where the Khmer Rouge kept their murdered
victims. There among the dead, she knew she was safe.
By 1979, Vietnam attacked Cambodia and
the Khmer Rouge regime. The Vietnamese attack opened a window of opportunity
for my mother and many others to escape. Many of the escapees headed north in
hopes of reaching Thailand. The escape towards the north was a dangerous
journey.
People of her escape group was dying of
exhaustion, starvation and landmine explosives. Many people started to doubt if
the journey was worth it. Although my mother had doubts herself, she knew she could
not return to the life she left behind.
Through blood, sweat, and tears she made
it to a Thailand refugee camp.
At the refugee camp she searched for her
family and friends. But all she found was strangers. She was alone, believing
that her entire family may of been massacred.
Living at the refugee camp
offered no relief from oppression. The Thai soldiers ran the camp like a
prison, they set strict rules, and they frequently abused the refugees.
Although the conditions were poor, it was better than living in Cambodia under
the Khmer Rouge.
At the refugee camp, people started to
marry, in hopes of a new future, a new life, or just for a sense of
security. My mother thought it was best she do the same. She choose a man
who she thought was young, healthy and strong. She knew nothing about him,
other than what she saw. All she was looking for was protection from the Khmer
Rouge, Vietnamese, and Thai Soldiers. In 1980 she married my father.
By 1985, my parents made it to
America, but they were far from escaping their struggles. They were victims of
racism and crime. She witness her children become victims of gang violence.
This hardship motivated her to worked endlessly at a medical assembly line to
save up money and get her family out of a crime ridden neighborhood.
In 2005, along side my father, she finally
succeeded and bought a single family home in a better neighborhood.
For over forty years my mother fought to overcome
poverty, violence, and oppression. In America she succeeded and found her
freedom. But she was willing to give that all up for her youngest son. She was
willing to return to a life of bondage that she fought so hard to escape.
Her life has been full of struggles,
where there was barely any room to experience love. She had raised me and my
siblings without ever saying the words "I love you". I use to wonder
why she had never told us these three little words.
But going back to that day, to that one
visit behind a glass window at a Massachusetts jail, and knowing what she had
endured; There, I knew she loved me more than anything in the world. She did
not have to tell me "I love you". Her willingness to sacrifice
everything for me was way beyond enough.
-----
Peterr Bin is an advocate for the incarcerated.
Contact him @
Instagram@PeterRock781
Facebook.com/PeterBin781
Corrslink.com: Peter Bin W105814
