Life is Precious — Be thankful
To commemorate World Refugee Day 2021, I am taking the time to reflect on my experience as a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime, displaced persons as the result of that regime, and a returnee.
Some of those who read the Chicago Tribune article by William Mullen about my experience ask me why I decided to return to Cambodia versus resettling in the United States during the early 90s. The brief answer is that being a displaced person, “choices” were not a subject for discussion.
Fleeing Cambodia Following the Fall of the Khmer Rouge
I was born to a big family in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. I lived there until I was 11 when the Khmer Rouge seized power from the Khmer Republic headed by President Lon Nol, who came to power through the 1970 coup d’état, ousting late King Norodom Sihanouk.
From 1975–1979 the communist Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia and turned the entire country into a labor camp, particularly city dwellers who were forced to leave their home and relocate to the countryside and even, the jungles. My family was among those who lived through the genocidal regime in which over 2 million people lost their lives from execution and starvation.
The period from 1979 to 1993 saw a civil war, which was historically crucial to today’s Cambodia, stemming from the Vietnamese army and the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation occupied Cambodia and overthrew the Khmer Rouge. Soon after that, they established the new People Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), ruled by the Kampuchean People’s Revolutionary Party — the origin of the Cambodian People’s Party. During this period, there was a rise of three major resistance movements against the Cambodian government, all of whom held different viewpoints regarding Cambodia’s future. The civil war displaced hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, who fled to refugee camps along the Cambodian-Thai border.
I was one among those people fleeing Cambodia, just a few months after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, together with only my mother and brother who survived the genocide — we had lost seven lives to the regime as a result of overwork and starvation between 1975 and 1977. We left due to poverty — the economy was nonexistent after the fall of the regime. We could hardly survive due to lack of food, so we had to leave, and we ended up in a displaced person camp on the Cambodian-Thai border. Our life in the camp was in limbo — we were neither able to move forward nor return to Cambodia. Although it was far better than living in Cambodia since we had access to daily basic subsistence such as modest food rations, medical care, education, and the right to belief, we lived in fear every day due to frequent military attacks, night raids, and robbery. I did not feel safe. I was thankful for surviving the night when I got up in the morning, and when the night came, I was thankful for surviving the day. Very often, we talked about going back to our country, however, it was simply just a dream. Going further to a third country was also my dream — that dream was impossible because camp dwellers were not granted refugee status, which would make them eligible to seek asylum in a third country.
Peace efforts began in Paris in 1989, which resulted in a comprehensive peace settlement commonly known as the Paris Peace Agreement Cambodia two years later (October 1991). The United Nations was given the mandate to enforce a ceasefire, help refugees, and disarmament — known as the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). Following the mandate, six hundred thousand people living in the camps along the Cambodian-Thai border were repatriated to Cambodia to participate in the UN-sponsored elections.
Returning to Cambodia
After 13 years in the border camps, returning to the country under the United Nations’ auspice was both a hope and a concern. I was hopeful for the country to open to the world for development. Under the peace agreement, I was so excited that Cambodians around the world could return to participate in the elections to choose a government that we believe to be by the people, with the people, and for the people. I was also excited to start my life in a peaceful and normal setting since I was not able to experience that for the last 17 years. Although I was excited, there were a lot of things that I was concerned about such as transitioning from being dependent on weekly food supplies to being completely on our own.
In July 1992, my mother, brother, and I, with thousands of camp people were transported back to Cambodia. It was the first time that I had set foot in Phnom Penh again after 17 years of evacuation. I was full of excitement and anxiety — the feeling of uncertainty — not knowing what to expect as I hadn’t been back to the city since 1975 when the Khmer Rouge had taken control of Cambodia. We brought along our personal belongings such as clothes, modest kitchen utensils, and some food items — everything was stuffed in a few blue plastic bags with a UN stamp on them. The most precious belongings that we brought along were books — the books that we studied for over ten years in the border camp — my brother had quite a number of medical books and I brought all my English books together with piles of cassettes. We had to stay overnight in a transit center waiting for a bus to transport us to Cambodia. The next day more than 10 buses arrived. When our names were called, we boarded one of the buses that carried us from Site Two[1] to Aranyaprathet Thailand and then headed to the border at Poi Pet, Cambodia.
We arrived in Sisophon around 4:00 p.m., where we were in transit for more than 10 hours. At 2:00 a.m. we boarded a train, which transferred us to Phnom Penh. It took us 14 hours on an old, slow train crawling on a partially damaged railroad of about 340 kilometers. At 4:00 p.m. we arrived at the reception center in Kop Srov, located on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. It was another three-day transit before a final transfer. We were all tired from the two-day journey and we experienced bad motion sickness — even three days
later, we still felt like we were swinging although we were sitting. In the afternoon on the third day, buses were waiting in the reception center to transfer us to our final destination. While we were ready to load our belongings onto the bus, I was approached by Sister Denise Coghlan, who introduced me to her friends. Sister Denise, a Sister of Mercy from the Brisbane congregation in Australia helped found Jesuit Refugee Service Cambodia. She has worked in Cambodia since 1990 on reconciliation, peace and justice, and the human development of people hurt by war, oppression, and exile. Sister Denise was a Nobel Peace Prize winner for the key role she played in the International Campaign to Ban Landmines in 1997. She was my former teacher in the camp.
One of them started a conversation with me. How long were you in the border camp? 13 years, I replied. Where was your hometown? Here in Phnom Penh, but I haven’t been here for the last 17 years since the Khmer Rouge took control of the country; this is my first time coming back to Phnom Penh. Are you by yourself? No, I am with my mother and my brother. They are over there safeguarding our luggage as we are now waiting for a call to board the bus. Where is your father? I was totally stunned when I heard this question. My emotion started running as I tried to tell them that my father lost his life during the Khmer Rouge, but the words could not come out. Those words were dried up and they were replaced with tears rolling down on my cheeks. I did not even think about my father until this question was asked. All the memories returned — I left Phnom Penh with 10 family members, including my father, but only three of us survived. The other seven left this world because of starvation, overwork — they fell ill and died one after another. And now that we were back, they were not with us anymore — they were buried in the jungles, and I had no clue how to go back there to find their graves. I had no intention to show my emotion, but I couldn’t do any better than this no matter how hard I tried to present myself as a strong and confident person. I knew that my emotions had put them in a difficult position. They must have felt bad to ask me such a sensitive question. Sister Denise quickly patted my back gently, and continued after a moment of silence: “where are you going now?” Her question even made me more emotional as I had no idea where I was going to go. I was sobbing while answering her question with my vibrating voice “I have nowhere to go.” It was so bad that I made the whole group feel emotional. I had to apologize that I could not handle the situation any better. I should have been proud and happy that I was finally able to come back to my home city. But it was completely the opposite. I felt like I was dumped into the sea where I could not see the horizon at that moment. Sister Denise quickly offered to take me to the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) Cambodia office. She immediately went to the bus and provided her address to the bus driver who later brought my family and me there. It is not an easy situation when you are in your own country but you feel as if you are in a new world where you cannot find any support network, which you need so badly to at least give you some guidance and emotional support. I was emotionally unstable. I left Phnom Penh when I was 11 years of age, and at the time I returned, I was 28 years old. So it was 17 years away from my homeland. I can hardly put in words how sad I felt at the time I arrived in Phnom Penh, and how grateful I was for Sister Denise’s offer for us to stay at her place for one whole week before we were able to figure out our next destination. If I hadn’t met her at the reception center, I would have asked the bus driver to drop me at any Buddhist temples on that day, as I had no idea of where to go.
Life in the Refugee Camps
Many people were unable to imagine how people lived their lives in refugee camps for decades while they lived in fear of military fighting, night raids, and robbery with restricted movement. In Site Two, where we lived, there were at least six camp administrations overseeing their respective camps. School infrastructures were constructed in each camp to provide education from primary to upper secondary levels to adult literacy to higher education. Teacher training centers produced numerous qualified teachers to deliver knowledge to students at all levels. Education departments developed and improved school curriculum constantly. Numerous international organizations supported the education initiatives. To name a few: United Nations Border Relief and Operations (UNBRO), Catholic Office for Emergency, Relief, and Refugees (COERR), and International Rescue Committee (ICR).
Each camp had hospitals that were equipped with modest medical supplies to provide basic health services to people in need of medical care. Patients who needed more advanced medical care were transferred to a hospital in Khao I Dang, a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand, administered by the Thai Interior Ministry and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). A few medical schools trained numerous health officers, nurses, and medics to manage the hospitals and to work side-by-side with foreign medical doctors/practitioners from international organizations such as COERR, MSF, YWAM who worked in the camps during the day, and they exited the camp at around 4:00 p.m. My brother was one among many who was trained in tropical medicine and worked in one of the camp hospitals.
The camp administrations respected individual religious beliefs, and they allowed the practice of various religions. A Buddhist temple was built in each camp for people to practice Buddhism. It also served as a venue for entertainment, particularly during Cambodian traditional festivities such as Khmer New Year and Pchum Ben. Churches and Mosques were also built for people to practice their Christianity and Islam.
The educational infrastructure allowed me to access education, obtain technical skills, and gain work experience, which, ironically, prepared me for my new job and new life in Phnom Penh. It also paved a path for me to further my education in Thailand, where I spent a good year exploring educational leadership training, and later, in the Philippines where I did my master’s in development management.
Support for Returnees
There were two options offered by the UN for our repatriation — a small plot of land for housing in a province or rice supply for six months and $50 for each returnee. I chose the second option simply because I needed to begin my work in Phnom Penh. Because of the uncertainty and lack of confidence to start our life from scratch in a big city, I had initially thought about returning to Battambang, a province in the northwest of Cambodia; however, my brother disagreed due to the plight in our life during and after the Khmer Rouge. He set a clear goal to return to Phnom Penh and would do whatever it took to return — both mother and I agreed with him. If jobs had not been secured and temporary shelter not been found, I don’t know what would have become of us.
In many cases of returnees who accepted land, they were not able to settle down on their given plots simply because their basic needs such as food, health, shelter, school, and access to work or income-generating activities were not met. The designated areas were absent of water for consumption and drinking, not to mention lack of electricity because the power supply was not widespread — even in the city. Moreover, access to school and health facilities was not available, which forced the returnees to relocate themselves to another area, where their basic needs could be met. Others migrated from time to time to earn their living, depriving their small children of schooling — a barrier to the country’s development.
Reintegrating in Phnom Penh
Although a job with UNTAC had been secured for both my brother and me prior to our departure from the camp, the big challenges for us were shelter and social safety net. As human beings, our basic needs for food were met at that time, the question was where we would live and who we could turn to for help when in need. During one week at Sister Denise’s place, I was searching for relatives and fortunately found my second cousin who was so kind that she accepted three of us to temporarily stay with her. Click Here to read how I first met my cousin whose mother was my father’s cousin. I was very grateful for her kindness. She was my angel who gave me a hand when I was in need.
Reintegrating into society was a process, and took time and effort. It may not be fair to generalize how people viewed returnees since they held different perspectives, but it is worth noting a particular situation I encountered, where I had to prove myself and my capability. People could not visualize life in the camps — their general view of refugees was that we lived each day with humanitarian support without any personal development. That was true for some, but not for all. In my conversation with a neighbor who was then a teacher, I told him that I got a job offer with UNTAC and I was selected to go for training in New York, scheduled to fly out in a week. He did not seem to believe me. He asserted that it was impossible for people to travel to the U.S. He even asked me if I had a passport, a visa, an air ticket, and so on. (Perhaps his response was not because I was a woman and a returnee since traveling to the U.S at that time was rare as the country had just opened its doors to the West.) I could clearly sense at that time that I was being viewed as just a normal poor, displaced woman who returned to the country without any wealth — but I knew that my wealth was my education.
Today, I can still remember myself in old clothes looking exhausted from the long repatriation journey and the restless moments after my arrival in Phnom Penh because I still struggled to find a place to settle, ran around the city to report myself to my new job, processed my passport and visa for my U.S trip — all were done within two weeks. The good thing then was that I had my cousin and her family who believed I was capable and would not be a financial burden to her as she often alluded that she was so proud of both my brother and me who had the ability to work with UNTAC — she had assumed we would sell bottled gasoline and cigarettes on the street to start of new life. Her assumption reflects how people in the country view returnees. As I mentioned earlier people could not visualize real life in the border camps as they only heard the negative side of it. This is the same for Cambodia that was known to the world only about the genocide, but not about our beautiful culture and civilization.
Reflecting on My Experience
I was delighted that my return to Cambodia was not only about striving to survive, but my one-year work with UNTAC was a meaningful contribution to building a block of democracy for the country, and my subsequent 23 years with the Asia Foundation enriched my professionalism and social intelligence, which made my contribution to the society even more impactful. My current responsibilities with the Harpswell Foundation are rewarding, allowing me to continue making an impact on the lives of young women. I have no regret that I did not get the chance to move to the U.S although I still think that if I had been granted an immigration visa to the U.S, I would have gotten a U.S education, which would later allow me to return and help my country.
Despite the hardships of all those years in the camps, I am very thankful for the opportunities, and the people with whom I crossed paths. They provided me with educational and emotional support and friendship that shaped me.