NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/soc/culture/vietname/17020

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From: [e-mail] (Lien Nguyen)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Subject: [REFUGEE] THE TERROR AND TRAGEDY OF DONGREK.
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Date: 23 Nov 92 11:26:30 GMT
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This article was written by James M. Freeman, professor of
Anthropology at San Jose State University is also author of " Hearts
of Sorrow: Vietnamese-American Lives", and Huu D. Nguyen, social
worker of Santa Clara County Dept. They both are founder and executive
director of Aid to Refugee Children Without Parents, Inc. They
recently visited 11 refugee camps in Southeast Asia and are writing
the book about the children of these camps. They wrote this article
for Perspective  which appeared on San Jose Mercury News, Sunday Sept.
6,1992 issue.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

              THE TERROR AND TRAGEDY OF DONGREK

" Nobody wants them. Not America, not Canada, not France. They had
their chance; we asked them to move, but they refused. Now they are
stuck. They may sit forever without a solution. It's painful to sit 10
years in a camp, but the humanitarian solution is to return them to
Vietnam."

We were interviewing an official of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees in Bangkok about the plight of several
hundred Vietnamese land refugees, also known as Platform people, who
were languishing in DongRek, Site 2, an isolated camp on the Thai -
Cambodian border. Between 1982 and 1986, they had escaped from VN,
traveling overland through Cambodia to Thailand. Along the way, they
had weathered attacks by VNese soldiers, Khmer Rouge soldiers and
bandits, while also avoiding the many mines along the Cambodian
border. Only 10 percent survived the journey.

Once in Thailand, they were placed in Site 2. All other Vietnamese who
arrived in countries of first asylum during this period were
resettled; only those in Site 2 remain.

Under the best of conditions, detention in a Southeast Asian or
HongKong refugee camp is a destructive and degrading experience:
Refugees report abusive treatment by guards, overcrowding, inadequate
food, nothing to do and anxiety over an uncertain future. But Thai
border camps such as DongRek are far worse. In the 1980s, VNese troops
in Cambodia frequently shelled the camp. Do thanh Hue, a survivor of
the camp now living in Milpitas, recalls those days. " in some months,
shelling went on continuously, day after day. It was an indescribable
horror. We would hear the screams and cries of the wounded; bodies
were everyhere, and blood was all over the streets. We were terrified;
our family simply huddled together, embraced one another and cried."
For Hue, the nights were even more terrifying. That's when the
Cambodian bandits would come down from the hills and enter the camp.
"They shot people, they raped women and they took whatever they
wanted: clothes and rations, especially rice. We were completedly
unprotected. We would hide in a corner and hope they did not find us."
But the greatest danger, says hue, came from the Thai camp guards. "
They killed, raped and beat people whenever they wanted. Almost every
youngster was hit on the head with rifles two or three times. Once,
the guards stopped three Vietnamese young men who were talking with a
Lao girl. They cut up and down the arms of the young men until blood
flowed freely; then they poured vinegar on the wounds to cause the
young men great pain. After that, the guards buried the three of them
alive. I saw that." " And I was there when they stopped a Cambodian
woman from selling fried bananas in the market. She was not permitted
to do that, so the guards took the boiling oil from her pan and poured
it on her head. Her two eyes blew up and she died instantly, right in
front of her two small children."
Hue says, " You cannot imagine what it was like to be there, the
horror of it beyond description. I wrote to my relatives back in VN,'
Do not escape.' With the never-ending hunger, the shelling, the
Cambodian bandits, the Thai guards, the continuous fear of death and
torture at any moment, the dirt, the lack of privacy, the exhaustion,
the disease, and the uncertainty of what was to happen to us, we were
easily swayed by rumors that we would be sent back to VN. We did not
know whom to believe or what to do. We were always in a panic; we were
not in clear mind to make decisions."

In 1992, though the shelling has long ceased, DongRek remains a
dangerous place. The camp is so vulnerable to attack by bands of
Cambodian bandits 70-80 strong that by 4p.m., outside a handful of
Thai guards, all other government officials and international relief
workers flee in car caravans to their homes in or near Aranyaprathet,
50 miles southwest of Site 2, abandoning the camp inhabitants to the
terrors that night brings. The bandits also attack Thai villages near
the camp, kidnapping the inhabitants, holding them for ransom, and
sometimes killing them. North and west of the camp, the roads and
villages were controlled by bandits day and night. To reach the camp
safely from that direction, as we did in January, requires a caravan,
an armed escort and a bit of luck. Because we had provided assistance
to the VNese children of Section 19 at Site 2,the people of that
section had invited us to visit them. Site 2, an area of sprawling
camps, is home primarily to 250,000 Cambodians who are considered "
displaced persons" temporarily residing in Thailand. Now that free
elections are occuring in Cambodia, they are being sent back to their
homeland. The people we visited in Section 19 are VNese citizens who
are of Vietnamese, Chinese, Cham ( a Vietnamese minority), and Cambodian
ancestry (Khmer Krom). The exact number is difficult to document,
since some people from Cambodia have mixed in with them in the hopes
of being resettled rather than repatriated. The number registered is
947, of whom more than 600 are Vietnamese citizens. Tensions are high
and violence frequent between the VNese and the Combodians who are
historic enemies. The worst incident occured in July 1991, when a
large grenade, thrown into an evening gathering, killed 26 people.

Why have the VNese land refugees not been resettled????

( to be continued )