Survivor of Cambodian atrocities visits Kansas City to increase understanding of genocide

Channy Chhi Laux is an American. Her list of American-sounding accomplishments is long, including working as an engineer in Silicon Valley for 30 years and starting a specialty foods company called Apsara.

Before building this life, though, Laux had to flee the Khmer Rouge, whose genocidal takeover of Cambodia in the 1970s wiped out two million people, including Laux’s father and little brother.

Laux visits Kansas City to tell her story on April 6 as part of the First Friday lecture series, which is open to the public, at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She has recently published a first-person account of her life from April 1975 through her escape, assisted by UNICEF and First Lutheran Church, in June of 1979. She titled it “Short Hair Detention.” Read more…