MORE LUCK THAN ANYTHING

More Luck Than Anything focuses on what happened in the west of Cambodia and tells the story of Richard Ear (now Heng) who was evacuated along with his entire family from Pailin to a series of Khmer Rouge camps in the area known as Sadao. Sadao, around thirty kilometers northeast of Pailin was a series of interconnected Khmer Rouge camps but movement between the camps was severely restricted.

Richard entered one of the Khmer Rouge camps at Sadao in 1975 at the age of five. He emerged at the age of nine, having worked under the brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge for five years. Those years have been described by other witnesses as the 'open cell'. There was no education in the camp.

Every day the morning began with propaganda and patriotic songs blasted out from loudspeakers that ringed the makeshift parade ground. All aspects of a normal childhood were deliberately erased by the regime. Family relationships were shattered. Men and women were forced to greet each other as comrades. Mother, father, sister and brother as terms of family relationships were banned.

The all-powerful ruling body created by the Khmer Rouge was known as ANKAR, the organisation that sought to transform Cambodian society by enforcing strict loyalty to the regime and eliminating personal ties to family and religion. The State became the people's mother and father, brother and sister. Sexual relations outside of marriage were forbidden. If discovered it could lead to brutal punishment, often execution. Mass marriages were common as the State took control of both bodies and minds.

Somehow, through all this deprivation, Richard and his family survived, not just the Pol Pot era but the exodus to Thailand and the three desperate years in harsh refugee camps along the Thai border. His entire extended family endured the years of 'living dangerously', and in 1982 they were accepted into Australia as part of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) program.