‘King’s living’ — refugees so happy to be in Christchurch

Press, 29 September 1979, Page 15

‘King’s living’ — refugees so happy to be in Christchurch

By

GENEVIEVE FORDE

“Are you happy with New Zealand now that you are here?” Mr Eng Veng put down his modestly sized glass of beer, spread his arms wide, and, with a huge grin, said something in Cambodian.

“He said that he is very happy: he has got a king's living,” interpreted his Cambodian friend, Mr Ly Kheng Sakorn, who has lived in Christchurch since June.

Mr Eng, aged 44. is one of the second family of Cambodian refugees to arrive in Christchurch. He has his wife, Meas Sean, aged 35, whom he married in a Thai refugee camp last year, and his cousin, Mr Eng Lay Hy, aged 26, with him.

All three fled from the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia at various times in the last three years and lived in a refugee camp at Kamput, eastern Thailand, before coming to New Zealand.

It is the same camp that the Ly family, six members of whom arrived in Christchurch in June, was in. The two families know each other well.

The camp originally held about 2000 refugees. Between 400 and 500 are

still waiting to be resettled in another country. Altogether an estimated 200,000 refugees are in camps in Thailand at present.

Mr Eng arrived at the Kamput camp in May, 1977, and met his future wife the same day. She had been there since August, 1975. They couldn’t, remember the date of their wedding. Apparently one loses one’s sense of time in a refugee camp if one is there long enough. It was just by chance that Mr Eng encountered his cousin, who arrived in the camp in May, 1978. Lay Hy had left his two brothers dead behind him near the border. They had been shot at close range by the Khmer Rouge, while trying to find the border “in the forest.”

Lay Hy said he had been “very lucky” to escape and swim the border river to safety. Lay Hv’s two brothers,

aged 42 and 27. were both married and had four children and one child respectively. He said that when the Communists had come to their village the first people they had wanted to kill were high-ranking officers, government officials, the teacher, students, the doctor, and later “the rich man.” His eldest brother, who had been a goldsmith, like himself, was accused by the Communists of being a rich man because he had his own shop selling gold jewellery. The other brother was a gem cutter.

Without telling their families they decided to leave because they feared they would be killed.

They set off on foot to travel the 100 km to the border, walking by night and hiding by day. Meas Sean, who used to work in a jute factory making bags for rice, said she had left when her whole village had, all 2000 of them, in 1975.

The village was near the Thai border and “they waited and waited until they got a good chance,” said Mr Ly. One night the villagers killed some Khmer Rouge, took their 16 guns, and “ran to Thailand.”

Mr Eng also left because he feared being killed by the Khmer Rouge. He also is a goldsmith and had been accused by a Communist officer in his village of being a gem merchant and a rich man. The Khmer Rouge came to see him twice and he knew they would arrest him. He fled to another village and finally across the border.

The family said the Pol Pot regime, which lasted from 1975 until it was overthrown by the Vietnamese last January, had been “a tyrant’s regime because more than one million people were killed.”

The present regime, under Heng Samrin, was not brutal. “He is gentle,” said Mr Ly, “so gentle that he is just the puppet of the Vietnamese. They don’t like either regime." The family said that the Russians wanted to control all of South-East Asia through the Vietnamese and that Cambodia had plenty of rice and fish which the Vietnamese wanted.

They had heard on the Communist radio while in Thailand that people were now allowed to come and go in Cambodia as they pleased but they did not believe this.

Lay Hy said that while the new regime was not organised enough to control the border this might be so but he expected it would tighten again.

According to the “Economist” about 200,000 refugees are expected to flee from Cambodia to Thailand this year. Mr Ly said the reason was that Cambodians did not like the Communist Governments, whether controlled from Peking, as they said Pol Pot’s had been, or from Hanoi as the present Government was. There was no freedom.

“You have to work 12 hours a day, from six in the morning to six at night with no wages,” said Mr Ly. “Only a tin of rice and some salt.” The two families were not allowed to practise Buddhism. “They destroy not only the church but the Buddhist temple,” said

Mr Ly. “And the people who believe in God, Catholic and Christian, were accused to be foreign spies and killed by them, too.” The families applied to come to New Zealand because they had heard that “the people are good and friendly and, most imports ant, freedom and equality and no racial discrimination,” Mr Ly said. The two males in the

Ly family have jobs at a Skellerup factory in Christchurch, and they, as well as their four sisters, attend English classes at the Technical Institute. The girls would also like jobs, Mr Ly said, but their English is not good enough yet. Mr Ly worked in a plastics factory and used to teach languages part-time in Cambodia. He speaks five languages, including

French. Thai. Vietnamese, and some Chinese dialects. The Ly family left be'-' 1 their parents and an older brother in Camoouia anu they do not expect to see them again or to hear from them because of the war between the two Communist factions in that country. The Eng family is also attending English classes, and Lay Hy is working at the Bagcraft Leathercraft

factory In Sydenham Eng Veng has a job as a jeweller in the city — but was unable to start for a week until he got the glasses he needs. Five or six families in the St Barnabas Anglican parish in Fendalton have sponsored the Eng family. They have found them a flat, provided food and jobs, and one of those involved. Mrs P Michaelson, takes them to their English lessons weekly. The Ly family was sponsored by a group of Protestant and Roman Catholic parishes in the north-west of Christchurch. Mrs Michaelson said that Meas Sean was too shy to take a job yet. Each morning. women from the parish visited her for an hour to help her to improve her English so that she would be able to take a job, probably at the leather factory with Lay Hy.