Survivor's Testimonies
Survivors in the Film
Ambassador Sichan Siv
Ambassador Siv holds a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University. He also attended the Army War College, FBI Citizens Academy, and Air War College. He escaped Cambodia’s killing fields in 1976 and was resettled as a refugee in scarf, an empty rice bag, and two dollars. From 1989 to 1993, Ambassador Siv served at The White House as Deputy Assistant to President George H.W. Bush and at the State Department as Deputy Assistant Secretary. In 2001, Sichan Siv was unanimously confirmed by the Senate and appointed by President George W. Bush as an ambassador to the United Nations, serving until 2006. In June 2005, Ambassador Siv represented the United Nations at the 60th anniversary of the U.N. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the George H.W. Bush Award for Outstanding Public Service, the Daughters of the American Revolution Americanism Medal, U.S. Army Commander’s Award, Anne Frank Lifetime Achievement Award, and Brazilian Academy of Art, culture, and History Honors. He is the international bestselling author of his American Dream story, Golden Bones: An Extraordinary Journey from Hell in Cambodia to a New Life in America (Harper Perennial, 2009).
Gilbert Tuhabonye
Gilbert Tuhabonye is a beloved role model, coach and an inspiration to people all over the world. He is also a genocide survivor. In 1993, as a high school junior, Gilbert escaped a horrific massacre in the long Tutsi-Hutu war of Burundi where endured unbearable torture, witnessed mass murder and barely escaped his own fiery death. A runner since childhood, he ran from that horror, into a new life. Over 20 years later, and more than 8,000 miles from Burundi, Gilbert is now a retired professional runner, a philanthropist, an author, and a community leader in Austin, Texas. He is also the owner and founder of Gilbert’s Gazelles (www.gilbertsgazelles.com), one of Austin's largest running training groups, the head cross country and track coach at St. Andrews High School, and a co-founder of the Gazelle Foundation (https://gazellefoundation.org), which provides clean water to people in his homeland of Burundi, Africa. While Gilbert’s story includes great tragedy, it is also one of faith, hope, and resilience. He is living proof that one person can make the world a better, more compassionate place, and that love really does conquer all evil.
Valentina Iribagiza
Valentina was only ten years old when violence came to her village in Rwanda. Her family fled to the nearby Roman Catholic Church to seek sanctuary. She barely survived the ensuing Nyarubuye massacre at the church (an estimated 20,000 deaths), enduring injury, deprivation, and starvation before rescue and recovery. Friends from the United States found Valentine after seeing her picture in the Rwandan National Museum and invited her to come visit them in Vermont. She then procured a student visa to study at the University of New Hampshire before eventually relocating to Texas. Valentina Iribagiza was the subject of PBS Frontline episode entitled Valentina’s Nightmare (2017), and is a strong voice and witness to the horrors of the Rwandan genocide, a courageous upstander in the battle against mass murder and human cruelty, and a fierce advocate for human dignity and human rights.
Nasma Abdulkhalik
Houston, TX
Nasma Abdulkhalik was only seven years old when war came to her home in western Sudan. Taking her three brothers, she fled immediately to the mountains. Despite horrific violence all around her, Nasma joined the millions of Darfuris displaced by war as she searched for peace and reunion with her family. After time in Chad, Kenya, and Burkina Faso, Nasma came to the United States with her family in 2010 where she entered the Houston school system, first as a middle schooler before quickly promoted to high school. In June 2013, she married Khaled Handhal, and they currently have two children.
Albert Cheng
Richardson, TX
After forced evacuation from Phnom Penh, Albert Cheng survived interrogation before escaping into the jungle, a place where he spent much of his childhood. Later recaptured, he experienced years of forced labor and reeducation before fleeing to a Thailand refugee camp. He was resettled in the United States to Houston in 1980, but soon moved to be a part of the Cambodian community in Dallas. In 1997, he made his first return trip to Cambodia for a reunion with his brother. He has sense made trips back to work in a medical clinic and other humanitarian efforts.
Mirzeta Colic
Houston, TX
Mirzeta Colic grew up in the city of Bijeljina along the Serbian border in her native Bosnia. Trained as an electrical engineer, she worked closely with a team of Serbs until war came to the region in the early 1990s. She escaped with her pregnant sister under the threat of violence, settling in Germany from 1994 to 1998, before immgrating to the United States and finding work in the banking industry. She has worked since then to assist most of her immediate family to resettle in Texas.
Serge Gasore
Fort Worth, TX
Serge Gasore was only eight years old when war came to his small village of Ntarama. He lost his family before spending months evading capture, fighting off attackers, and helping fellow Tutsis survive the violence. He came to the United States in 2005 to attend Abilene Christian University on a track scholarship. Serge and his wife are the co-founders of Rwanda Children, which provides aid to vulnerable children in his home village of Ntarama.
Khaled Handhal
Houston, TX
Khaled was born near the city of Kutum in the state of North Darfur in Sudan. He worked as an interpreter for the International Committee of the Red Cross in various refugee camps in and around Sudan from 2007-2008. In the aftermath of the militia attacks he documented the atrocities, interviewing the displaced and injured and calling international attention to the ongoing violence in his home region.
Abdulah Hasic
Fort Worth, TX
Abdulah Hasic was a resident of Srebrenica who lost his brother and father in mass executions during the war in Bosnia. A ham radio operator, he was used by UN officials to communicate and gather information during the conflict.
Baisa Heldic
Burleson, TX
When war came to her country of Bosnia in 1992, it separated Baisa Heldic from her daughter for three years. She survived amidst increasing oppression and violence toward Muslims in her city of Banja Luka. She continued to work in a local vegetable market and relied on her wits to survive until finding her daughter and escaping to the US in 1995. Despite a difficult transition to living in the US and missing her home country immensely, Baisa built a life for her family in the Burleson area. She currently owns and operates a retail cleaning business.
Valentina Iribagiza
Bedford, TX
Valentina was only ten years old when violence came to her village in Rwanda. Her family fled to the nearby Roman Catholic Church to seek sanctuary. She barely survived the ensuing Nyarubuye massacre at the church (an estimated 20,000 deaths), enduring injury, deprivation, and starvation before rescue and recovery. Friends from the United States found Valentine after seeing her picture in the Rwandan National Museum and invited her to come visit them in Vermont. She then procured a student visa to study at the University of New Hampshire before eventually relocating to Texas.
Ibrahim Mohammed Ishag
Houston, TX
A long-time advocate of the history and culture of Darfur, writer and journalist Ibrahim Ishag worked in the aftermath of militia attacks to document atrocities and interview the displaced and injured. After relocating to Egypt in 2007, he continued to serve his home region by calling international attention to the ongoing violence in Darfur. He also served as the leader of the Civil Society of Darfur, which works to assist Darfurian refugees, before his resettlement to the United States in 2015.
Hajrudin "Dino" Jusupovic
Plano, TX
Dino was in high school in Rogatica at the outbreak of war in Bosnia in April 1992. His family escaped to Zepa which became a Boniak enclave surrounded by the Army of the Republika Srpska just upstream of Srebrenica during the over three-year conflict. When the town fell in 1995, he fled to Serbia and was held in Sljivovica concentration camp for several months before his relocation to the United States. He was soon after rejoined by his parents and future wife from his homeland. After working several temporary jobs he built a career in real estate in the DFW Metroplex.
Savann Kruoch
Houston, TX
The son of a rice farmer, Savann Kruoch was involved in the mass evacuation from Phnom Penh where he was attending college. He survived four years of forced labor under the Khmer Rouge until the invasion of Cambodia by the Vietnamese. After spending time in several refugee camps, Kruoch was able to resettle in the United States. For over twenty five years he has been pastor of the First Cambodian Baptist Church, Aldine, Texas, and has led several mission trips back to his home country of Cambodia.
Sichan Siv
- San Antonio, TX
Sichan Siv experienced horrific violence at the hands of the Khmer Rouge as they took over his home country of Cambodia in 1975. After injury, abuse, and forced labor, he would escape to Thailand and then the US in 1976. Despite the recent loss of his family, Siv decided to enter school at Columbia University. He has since held various posts in the private sector, written books, and served as a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Paul Thai
Rockwall, TX
Paul Thai, one of seven sons in a middle class family, spent his early life in Phnom Penh, his father a restaranteur. The Thais moved several times during the Cambodian Civil War to escape the conflict before being broken apart and scattered with the takeover of the Khmer Rouge. After several years in work camps, the Thais were reunited only to encounter additional hardships attempting to flee their country. Currently, Lietenant Paul Thai serves the city of Dallas as a police officer, providing a safer and more just community for his new Texas home.
Gilbert Tuhabonye
Austin, TX
Young Gilbert Tuhabonye was attending school in Kibimba on October 21, 1993, when violence between Hutus and Tutsis erupted into mass atrocities. It would be a day that changed his life forever. Escaping fire and slaughter, he made his way to a local hospital before finding assistance. Gilbert then came to the US as part of an Olympic training program and received a track scholarship from Abilene Christian University. He is now the award-winning running coach of Gilbert’s Gazelles Training Group in Austin and the co-founder of the Gazelle Foundation, which seeks to improve the lives of people in Burundi regardless of tribal affiliation.
