N.Z. delegation shown death, suffering of Kampucheans

Press, 5 November 1979, Page 1

N.Z. delegation shown death, suffering of Kampucheans

NZPA Bangkok The sufferings of war and the results of political fanaticism in IndoChina were seen by an official New Zealand delegation visiting Thai refugee camps on Saturday.

At the latest camp established to deal with the outflow of refugees from Kampuchea, members of a group led by Mrs Pat Taiboys, wife of the Deputy Prime Minister, saw the desperate situation of civilians shattered by the conflict for control of their country. An average daily -death rate of 30 among the 20,000 refugees summarises the wretchedness at the camp, about 80km from the Thai-Kampuchean border in the district of Sa Kaeo. Medical workers at the camp, established two weeks ago, said 60 per cent of the refugees were suffering from malaria, thousands from malnutrition, and many from pneumonia.

About 95 per cent who had malaria had a type which led to the development of cerebal malaria and unconsciousness.

The 20.000 are packed into an area little bigger than two rugby fields.

Their shelters are either tents supplied by relief agencies or scraps of plastic, canvas, and blankets hung over poles hewn from nearby trees. Saturday was brilliantly fine. When the camp was established the area was centimetres deep in water. Relief workers said the refugees had been placed in appalling conditions but with the monsoon season ending the blazing hot sun was drying out the ground. Nevertheless new arrivals on Saturday were in some cases trying to put together rough shelters above deep puddles of water.

While the New Zealand group toured, among it the Deputy Secretary' of Foreign Affairs (Mr M. Templeton), refugees huddled miserably under shelters.

Day-old babies were seen to have been born almost freakishly small because of the ill health of their mothers.

Distended bellies resulting from starvation could be seen among children being given hospital treatment or lying sickly in their shelters. Mothers and fathers were often skeletal as they lay being drip-fed on

the wooden hospital beds. In spite of the wretchedness and overcrowding, officials said the camp seemed a paradise compared with conditions 10 days ago.

Volunteer relief workers from the foreign community in Bangkok worked alongside professional nurses and doctors to help the sick. Some made it clear they regarded the visiting group as tourists, gawking at misery while they handed out malaria pills, gave injections, helped build shelters, and tended ailing children.

Miss Colleen McNaughten, aged 30, a nurse, of Auckland, was working at a hospital tent with 60 patients established by World Vision. She said all help possible was needed. “It is pretty horrific,” she said. “I have been here two and a half weeks and started working among them near the border. “The situation was bad here when they moved the refugees in but the Thais had to move them because of the security situation. “Machine-guns were rattling 800 metres from the border camps where they were before. “I can cope better than many because of my past experience.” Miss McNaughten said before the fall of Kampuchea to the Communists in 1975 she had worked in aid missions in Pnom Penh. For two weeks before coming to the border area she had worked among Laotian and hill-tribe refugees in north-east Thailand.

American correspondents dubbed her “the angel of Klang Wah” for her work in the area.

Miss McNaughten said the refugees were being fed rice and vegetable soups and officials hoped to add fish to their diets.

“A big problem we face what to do with patients we discharge. They are often very -weak but they have to make shelters for themselves.

“We discharged a 20-year-old legless boy in a wheelchair two days ago. He lost his legs when he stood on a mine but he still got out of the jungle

in his wheelchair. “When 1 saw him coming towards our tent in it I couldn’t believe my eyes. We treated him a’nd he wheeled off. I’m not sure how he got on making a shelter.” Miss McNaughten said Khmer Rouge women soldiers of the deposed Pol Pot regime were being assigned to tents to look after sick people. Many of these fighting women were in much better physical condition than the refugees. “They work well but you can see the revolutionary background. When they hand out food they say it should be eaten to help the battle against hunger and that tents are being put up to help the battle for shelter. They have said 1 could be a soldier with them.

Miss McNaughten said that in the days of Pol Pot rule when so-called in-

tellectuals had been purged, people wearing spectacles had been known as intellectuals.

As a result refugees would not initially accept sickness pills or medicine from relief workers wearing them. Initially aid officials had had to take off spectacles before distributing medicines. This suspicion had now been removed.

Miss McNaughten believed about 3 per cent of the former Khmer Rouge soldiers remained committed to their ideological cause.

“But most just want to be left alone. If the bones of the dead they have seen and the bodies don’t say something to them about communism, nothing will."

Miss McNaughten said she would continue working in the camp for as long as needed and would be joined by other medical teams from New Zealand.

Before visiting the camp Mrs Taiboys and her party visited a military base camp and flew by'helicopter along the Thai-Kam-puchea border, a flight which gave them an idea of the heavily jungled hills through which the refugees move on their flight from the conflicting Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge forces.