From
Phnom Penh

I am You Sokhanno, a Cambodian refugee. For the last five months I have been living in the Philippines Refugee Processing Center on the peninsula of Bataan, about three hours drive north of Manila. There are 17,000 refugees here from Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Almost all of us have been approved for permanent resettlement in the United States. I live here with my mother, two sisters, two nieces, three nephews, and one brother-in-law. At 21, I am the youngest girl in the family.

This is the story of my life in Cambodia, the death of half of my family, and of my life as a refugee.

I was born in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia in 1960. I remember growing up with my five brothers and three sisters. My father was a clerk in an office and my mother was a housewife. We were a middle-class Cambodian family; we did not have money to spare, but still, all of us were able to attend school.

When I was six years old I started school. I liked it very much and always did well. After three years in the primary school, I passed the entrance examination to the only government-run English speaking school in Cambodia. I was the scholar in the family, and my parents always let me know that they were very proud of me. They said that their hopes were in me.

When I was 13 my father died. For a month he struggled with malaria and cancer while my mother and I took care of him. One day he told me that he did not have much longer to live and that he hoped that I would get a good education. I promised him that I would do the best I could. The next day he died, and his death was a great sorrow to us all.

On March 18, 1970 the Royalist Government of Prince Sihanouk fell and a right-wing politician by the name of General Lon Nol came into power, but our lives stayed the same. Four of my brothers were soldiers with Lon Nol, and one was even a colonel. I remember those years (1970–1975) as happy years. We had a television, and I can remember watching Superman.

During those years I heard about Pol Pot, a guerrilla fighter. He had once worked with Prince Sihanouk's government, but he had formed his own army in the Cambodian jungles. We never thought that his guerrilla band would one day take over Cambodia.

In 1973 I heard gunfire outside of Phnom Penh, and I saw pictures of the fighting on television, but I continued going to high school. In 1974, the Khmer Rouge (the soldiers of Pol Pot) began shelling Phnom Penh. One of my girlfriends was killed as she was taking a bath. She was a very pretty girl and I saw her cremated. We were frightened, but I was young and didn't know what to do. Some of my friends went to America, but we did not have enough money for that.

At the end of 1974, the shelling increased. We built a bomb shelter out of the sandbags in our house. The bombing and the tremendous flow of refugees caused by fighting in the provinces made life in Phnom Penh difficult for everyone.

"Finally, when the troops of Pol Pot overtook Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975 we all felt that peace had come… We cheered the soldiers in their black uniforms as they carried a white flag that said, 'Peace has Come.'"

A few hours later I saw a liberal soldier, a supporter of Lon Nol, shot and fall dead on the road. That was the first time I had seen anyone die; I was 15 years old. Chills ran up my spine. I ran back home as quickly as I could and told my family what I had seen. There was not going to be peace.

Later I learned that on that day the Khmer Rouge soldiers were traveling around the city in trucks gathering up all the men who were wearing the uniforms of Lon Nol's army. The Khmer Rouge took them to Phnom Penh's stadium where they shot them.

As I was telling my family what I had seen, two soldiers of Pol Pot appeared at our gate. They told us that for our own safety we would have to leave the city for three days. They said that anyone who stayed would be killed.

The entire city was being emptied. We packed a few things and joined the long lines out of the city. My oldest sister carried most of our gold, platinum, and jewels around her waist. We had kept our savings in this manner as was the Cambodian custom.

The soldiers allowed the people to travel only on one road and the entire city seemed to be on that road. The hospitals were evacuated as well. I saw sick people being carried in hammocks, some with bottles of serum attached to their makeshift beds. Soldiers prodded people with bayonets to keep moving, but the road was so crowded that everyone had to travel very slowly. Many people did not want to leave their homes; I heard that some of the people who stayed behind were later killed by the soldiers.

My family traveled as slowly as possible. We thought that since we were only going out of the capital for three days we should stay as close to the city as we could. That first night we slept outside the Vealsbauv temple. We stayed there for ten days waiting to return home and then we understood that we had been tricked.

On the tenth day the soldiers of Pol Pot told us that we would not be returning to the city and that there was work to be done in the country. My family decided to go back to Phnau, the native village of my parents. We traveled 30 kilometers to the Mekong River, got on a boat, and went up the Mekong to Srey Santhor.

When we arrived in Phnau our relatives there did not greet us with their usual warm hospitality, instead, they seemed suspicious of us. Later they told us secretly that officials of Pol Pot had told them to be wary of people from Phnom Penh.

Shortly after our arrival in Phnau the soldiers called us to a general meeting. We were told to forget the ways of the city and to become farmers. Girls had to cut their hair short and rid themselves of all western ornamentation such as long fingernails and western clothes. We had to dye our clothes black. We were put in groups of ten and in sections of fifty. The people from the city came to be known as the "April 17 people" and the people from the country were known as the "old people."

We worked in the rice fields. The women and the men worked together, with the young children being taken care of by the older people, like my mother. Having spent most of life in the city, I knew nothing about the planting and caring of rice. Planting rice is tremendously hard and tedious work and requires long days in the hot sun or in the cold rain. I hated it.

My oldest sister's husband had been a professor in Phnom Penh. When we first came to the country he had been able to pass himself off as an ordinary worker, but then, we believe, someone from Phnom Penh told the Angka that he had been an intellectual. He was told that he would go away to "study." He took his clothes with him and left us. We never saw him again and believe that the Angka killed him.

We stayed in our native village for ten months and then Pol Pot ordered the April 17 people to go to Battambang Province, the largest rice producing province in Cambodia.

We traveled by boat for twelve more hours to about a third of the way to Battambang. A few hours after we boarded, we passed Phnom Penh. All of the April 17 people crowded to one side of the boat so that we could see our beloved home. Tears came to my eyes: where there had once been a beautiful beach, now banana trees had been planted; what had formerly been flower gardens were now mountains of rusting cars and motorcycles that people had left behind. We could see that many buildings had been destroyed. So many of us were pressing against the windows of the steamer that the boat almost tipped over. The Khmer Rouge in charge ordered everyone to go back to their places and told us that we would never be allowed to go back to our city.

We eventually arrived at the tiny village of Kong Toum where we would stay for two and a half years. When we first got there we had enough food. We had rice porridge for lunch and cooked rice for dinner. We picked a wild green leafy plant for our vegetable. After six months we were forced to eat collectively. By that time the food situation had gotten much worse: we ate the trunks of banana trees, the roots of papaya trees, and watered down rice porridge. I started to lose weight.

Teenagers were put in a work battalion called the "mobile brigade" or "first strength." We all had to live apart from our parents. We would travel around the countryside staying in different locations from one week to three months doing things like planting rice and digging irrigation canals. It was very difficult for me to see my family: we had to get special permission from the group leader to see our families.

In 1977 I worked with the mobile brigade planting rice in the rainy season. After days and days of working in the rain, I got sick. I asked the group leader for permission not to work. He wanted me to work and said, "You are not really sick comrade. You will not eat unless you work." I continued to work in the rain and one day I passed out while working.

I was taken from the field to the village hospital by oxcart where I was given an injection of what they told me was vitamin B-12. I developed a large abscess on my hip from the injection. They told me that they would have to operate on me in a larger hospital. Going in to the hospital I knew three things: that they had no anesthesia for the operation, that most people who entered the hospital died there, and that I was going to die. I told my mother where I wanted to be buried and asked her to plant some flowers on my grave. Five people had to hold me down while they operated.

Surprisingly, after the operation I was still alive. I was able to bribe the nurses with a new sarong and some gold to give me some antibiotics, and I slowly recovered. I spent a total of six months in the hospital.

"Starvation. Most people swell up and later die in their sleep, others get skinny and die. I can still hear dying people shouting out for food…"

I lost four brothers and one sister. The sister who died was working in a field when she cut herself with a shovel. It would have been easy to treat with antibiotics, but the Angka believed that people should be treated with herbal medicine so my sister developed tetanus and died a week later. She was 27.

I decided that I would steal some rice. That night, before the work began the Angka section leader warned us that anyone caught stealing rice would be severely punished. I was not deterred, however, and an hour after the work had begun I had secretly filled the pocket of my sarong. That was enough rice to give the five of us a good meal. The second time I tried to steal rice I was caught. A person caught stealing rice could be beaten to death. I got down on my knees and clasped his feet. I pleaded with him saying that I had only taken the rice because I was tired of eating the Angka's watered down rice porridge. He hit me hard on the back twice, then let me go. That was the last time I stole rice.

On January 7, 1979, the Vietnamese Army captured the city of Phnom Penh. When the supporters of Pol Pot fled to the jungles we thought that we were going to be free. The Vietnamese protected us from Pol Pot's soldiers, and when it was harvest time we worked as individuals to harvest as much rice as we could. It took my sister and I one month to harvest ten 60-kilogram bags of rice, enough to keep my family alive for five months.

When Pol Pot had taken control of Cambodia he had banned the English language. Because of that and because I had seen educated people killed, I had pretended to be totally uneducated during the Pol Pot regime. So one day when I used an English word while talking to a friend of mine she was very surprised. She said that she too had feigned ignorance and that she would lend me an English book that she had kept hidden for four years. The book was Essential English.

We met a cousin of ours who told us what had happened to two of my brothers — a colonel and a lieutenant in Lon Nol's army. They had been persuaded by the Angka to "go off to study." They took all of their families with them when they went to study, but it was all a ruse. They were all killed.

We felt we had no choice. We believed that under the Vietnamese our lives would not improve and that we would eventually run out of food and starve to death. The nine people in my family who were still alive moved to Serey Sophorn, from where we might be able to escape to Thailand.

On the 31st of September, we left Serey Sophorn in the early morning. The jungle was not so heavily patrolled, but the path was very muddy. Along the way we had to watch for Khmer Rouge soldiers, Vietnamese soldiers, and land mines. Including our guide there were ten of us: six adults and four children. My niece, a four-year-old who had had dysentery for one month, died in my oldest sister's arms on the first day of our trek into Thailand. We buried her along the path.

I was 19 years old in 1979 when my mother, my oldest sister Sokhom, her daughter Somanette, my older sister Sokhen, her husband Soklin, her two sons, and I walked the muddy slippery path out of the jungle into Camp 007 near Nong Samet, Thailand.

The camp had more than 40,000 people and was totally unplanned: it was a case of thousands and thousands of people fleeing for their lives into a place where they thought they would be safe. Many of them were starving when they came into the camp. All of us depended on humanitarian organizations like the Red Cross, World Vision, and Catholic Relief Service.

For us, the important thing was eating. We were so happy to have food again.

I got a job in the hospital and then in the information office as a translator. I translated for French, German, Swiss, New Zealand, and American doctors and nurses. My two sisters got jobs in the post office and administration office. We were all paid in rice. I spent my free time studying English and after I had worked a while I had enough money to buy a pair of jeans. It was the first time for me to wear pants since 1975; it felt very good to once again dress the way I wanted to.

On January 4, 1980, the Khmer Rouge soldiers attacked the Khmer Serei soldiers inside the camp. At nine in the morning I heard gunshots; confusion erupted immediately. Everyone in the camp was fleeing for their lives. That night my distant relative, his girlfriend, and I slept together in a field outside the camp. At midnight we heard shots and saw flashes from guns. The three of us ran into the jungle and kept moving around all night. When morning finally came we were in a Thai village.

I met one of my sister's friends in Khao-I-Dang and soon found my family. Khao-I-Dang was a legal camp so we had international help. We were told where to build a house and given some plastic sheeting to keep out the rain. I stayed there one year. I worked in the hospital again, but this time I was paid in money — 300 baht or $15 a month, which I used to buy clothes and books.

In February of 1980, my oldest sister sent applications to the American and French embassies in Bangkok asking permission for permanent resettlement. She sent in more applications in April, and then in July she sent in an application every week. In September we saw my sister's name on a list posted on the wall of the post office. It would be the United States.

We were elated. We never thought that we would be accepted to the US because we didn't have any family there, but we were, and we were told to go to the Panat Nikhom Refugee Camp in Chonburi province.

In the Panat Nikhom camp we lived in a one-room asbestos house with three other families. We were given food, but it wasn't enough. Fortunately, I had saved some money from Khao-I-Dang and my sister still had some gold plus some money from her sister-in-law in Paris, so we could buy all the food we needed.

I worked as a translator in the office that helped process people for settlement in the United States, the Joint Voluntary Agencies, or JVA. I was there about two months when I saw the initials P.R.P.C. in my file and realized that I was coming here, to the Philippines Refugee Processing Center.

I came to the P.R.P.C. in November 1980. Here we are given enough food — rice, vegetables, fish, and meat. Additionally, we are given English and cultural orientation classes.

On March 19 my sister and her family came here and now we are all waiting to go to America, but we don't know where or when.

I read that almost half a million refugees have entered the United States in the last six years. So many people and I will be one of them. When I finally get to America for the first time in six or seven years my life will be in my hands. I'll be 22 in December. I plan to try and keep the promise that I made my father in Phnom Penh about getting a good education. Beyond that, I don't know.

— End —