Bun Bong, now in Phnom Penh and married, works at a center for addicts. Deported from Phila., he found himself in wretchedly poor rural Cambodia. (Photo: TROY GRAHAM / Inquirer Staff)U.S. deportees are struggling in Cambodia.
Mon, Dec. 31, 2007
By Troy Graham
Inquirer Staff Writer
The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA)
Last of two parts.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Bun Bong pulls up on a Yamaha dirt bike twice as big and many times more powerful than the mopeds typical Cambodians drive on this capital's chaotic streets.
But Bun, tattooed and menacing in the way of the American inner city gangster, is no typical Cambodian.
He is among a small but growing number of political refugees who were accepted into the United States as children in the 1980s, years after their families fled the war and starvation of the Khmer Rouge genocide, only to be deported back to Cambodia for committing adult crimes in America.
The gangsta culture embodied by Bun and some of the others makes them pariahs in this poor, hierarchical, Buddhist nation - a nation that the "returnees," as they're known, barely remember and can scarcely understand.
The reaction here to Bun's appearance, with his baggy clothes and Rasheed Wallace baseball cap, speaks volumes about the fascination with - and a revulsion for - American popular culture.
Bun said the locals called out to him, mockingly, "Yo, yo," and called him "deejay" because they assume he's a rapper. He does little to discourage those notions.
"I can't put on no small shirt, no small pants," said Bun, 27. "They say, 'These guys went to heaven, but they didn't know how to act in heaven, so they got sent back to hell.' "
The returnees' odyssey also underscores just how unprepared everyone here - the Cambodian government, nongovernmental aid organizations, and the returnees themselves - was for this new reality.
The returnees' criminal histories undoubtedly do more to bolster the argument for returning Cambodians than not, especially when sympathies in the United States run low for immigrants who commit crimes.
But those who advocate for the 169 returnees here, and for the Cambodian refugees still facing deportation in the United States, say there should be some leeway in America's rigid deportation law. It makes no distinction between refugees, who were brought to the United States fleeing war and oppression, and immigrants who come seeking economic opportunity, often illegally.
This is especially true for Cambodian refugees, they maintain, in light of America's role in destabilizing Cambodia during the Vietnam War. As many as two million Cambodians died in a genocide that ensued when the Maoist-inspired Khmer Rouge took power from 1975 to 1979 and triggered the Cambodian diaspora.
While advocates have begun lobbying Congress for relief, immigration officials remain unmoved. "What we like to say is that it's a land of opportunity, but it's also a land of laws," said Pat Reilly, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman. "If you break the laws, you lose the opportunity."
The returnees find themselves back in Cambodia because they were among the two-thirds of Cambodian refugees in America who never applied for U.S. citizenship, which would have shielded them from deportation.
Bun left his family in Richmond, Va., and came to Philadelphia to live with an older brother as a teenager. He spent his teens dealing drugs in South Philadelphia. His friend and fellow returnee Mel Kosol, 32, whose family settled at Sixth and Jackson, ran with a neighborhood gang and was convicted in a shooting at age 15.
Bun and Mel were among the first refugees deported to Cambodia in 2003, both for gun-related crimes. Both had histories of violence that spoke to the tough neighborhoods where Cambodian refugees were resettled. Since most arrived in the 1980s, there have been individual success stories, but the community has struggled with extreme poverty, isolation, mental illness, high dropout rates, unemployment and substance abuse.
In Phnom Penh, Cambodian authorities immediately jailed Bun and Mel until they paid nominal bribes - $10 in Bun's case.
They were eventually released into a country as foreign to them as any other. Bun's only memories of his native land were vague impressions of air-raid sirens.
"I didn't know nothing about Cambodia. I was shocked, man. I was scared," Mel said. "I was, like . . . they got mosquitoes, no AC, no flush toilets."
Both men tried to live with relatives in the countryside - Bun in Siem Reap and Mel in Battambong province. Rural Cambodia is one of the poorest places on earth, where villagers live on subsistence farming. Bun and Mel were as unprepared for those conditions as their parents were for the United States.
"I can't stay in the country. It smells . . .," Mel said. "And the water from the lake - I take a shower and I get itchy."
Back in Phnom Penh, both have taken steps to assimilate and are now employed, Bun at a center for addicts, and Mel for a program that works with returnees.
Because relatives can send them American dollars, they and their fellow returnees are considered rich in such a poor country, where a third of the people live on less than 50 cents a day. Bun rented a two-story apartment for $65 a month. Mel was living in a $25-a-month room.
Given these relative advantages, both also have married Khmer women and fathered children.
Bun met his wife, Oeur Chomnan, 26, over cards. He used to go to her house to gamble with her father and uncles. After a few months of flirting, he had his parents in the United States call her parents in Phnom Penh to ask for her hand.
"I know the traditions," Bun said. "They accepted me."
A neighbor asked Oeur Chomnan's mother why on earth she would let her daughter marry such a man.
"I told my mom, 'Ignore them. Nobody is perfect,' " Oeur Chomnan said through a translator.
She likes that Bun is not like other Khmer men.
"He meets a rich and powerful guy, he never bows down," she said. "He doesn't care. I like that. I don't like a coward."
Indeed, Bun's and Mel's clash with the country's Buddhist ethos could not have been more severe.
For Bill Herod, an American minister who has been working with the returnees since the first group arrived, Bun's Yamaha dirt bike is a symbol of their unwillingness to adapt to Cambodian society.
"They're here, depressed, angry, alienated, jobless, homeless - it goes on and on," he said. ". . . A lot of them get into drugs and alcohol heavily. That's a big problem. They're regarded as Khmer, but they're not Khmer socially. You get these enormous misunderstandings."
While some returnees adapt to life in Cambodia and lead somewhat normal lives, Herod estimated that a third were "failing miserably."
More troublesome, Herod said, is that the returnees ignore customs that require a certain deference, especially to women and authority figures - traits not common in tough U.S. neighborhoods.
The easy availability of cheap drugs and sex, through the thriving prostitute trade, also presents a problem. Herod said Bun, Mel, and other early returnees had torn through numerous bars near his guest house until they had been kicked out of every one except the ironically named Sweet Home.
George Ellis, an American psychologist who worked with returnees here under a contract from the U.S. Agency for International Development, said many of the returnees "haven't accepted psychologically that they're here forever."
"The first big state is betrayal, that feeling of being victimized," he said. "A lot of the guys are not doing very well. They never left that stage."
Their situation is made more difficult, he said, by the symbols of their former lives, such as tattoos, which some Cambodians consider a sign of disgraceful thuggery. One returnee, Ellis said, has a chest tattoo of a couple having sex.
Chen Sokheang, a 25-year-old Cambodian woman, said she couldn't help but notice the tattoos on a returnee she had come in contact with. "I kind of freaked out when I saw those tattoos," she said.
Mel embodies the defiance that many returnees cannot leave behind. After a traffic argument on Phnom Penh's teeming streets, he recalled, he bashed a soldier in the face.
"He's lucky he's alive. I hit him soft - that's why his jaw broke," Mel said with cold bravado. "I hit him hard, he'd be dead."
Another time, a local gangster with a butcher knife tried to collect a debt from one of Mel's friends. Mel paid him a visit.
"I put a gun in his mouth," he said. "Then I start thinking I'm doing wrong. I should go talk to them nicely, see what happened. But I don't think like that. I think violent."
Despite these confrontation, Mel said he had not faced the inside of a Cambodian prison - unlike some returnees. In the fall of 2006, seven of them were locked up for various reasons.
"Before, the first time in Cambodia, you're like, 'I can't stay here,' " Mel said. "I don't care anymore. I'm used to it."
Bun hasn't been so lucky. He spent 3-1/2 months in a wretched cell, eating a cup of rice and soup every day, after he was charged with murder.
Although he denies any involvement, a man was stabbed during a brawl at the wedding of one of Bun's Cambodian cousins. Bun was charged with three other returnees and a local Cambodian.
"We didn't kill him," Bun said. "I saw him drop before I even touched him."
Bun said his family in Richmond had to pay $27,000 to get him out of prison.
"I got sick," he said. "But it all worked out. If you got family and money, it's cool."
Bun arrived for an interview at Herod's guest house on his Yamaha. He climbed off the bike with a limp, left over from a nasty crash six weeks earlier. It was the second time he had nearly been killed on his high-powered motorcycle.
He pulled up his baggy jeans to reveal horrific, swollen gashes along his shin and thigh. But he shrugged off any concern for his well-being.
"I'm used to Cambodia now," Bun said. "I don't know about the States anymore. If I go back to the States, I'd do the same thing - sell more drugs."
After the interview at Herod's house, Bun limped back to his motorcycle. As he tried to kick-start the engine, the bike listed toward his injured leg. Unable to put weight on his limb, Bun tumbled, and the bike crashed to the pavement.
Bun simply laughed, awkwardly, and got back aboard.
Herod, watching, could only shake his head as Bun roared into traffic.
Contact staff writer Troy Graham at 856-779-3893 or tgraham@phillynews.com.
Inquirer correspondent Erika Kinetz contributed to this article.
But Bun, tattooed and menacing in the way of the American inner city gangster, is no typical Cambodian.
He is among a small but growing number of political refugees who were accepted into the United States as children in the 1980s, years after their families fled the war and starvation of the Khmer Rouge genocide, only to be deported back to Cambodia for committing adult crimes in America.
The gangsta culture embodied by Bun and some of the others makes them pariahs in this poor, hierarchical, Buddhist nation - a nation that the "returnees," as they're known, barely remember and can scarcely understand.
The reaction here to Bun's appearance, with his baggy clothes and Rasheed Wallace baseball cap, speaks volumes about the fascination with - and a revulsion for - American popular culture.
Bun said the locals called out to him, mockingly, "Yo, yo," and called him "deejay" because they assume he's a rapper. He does little to discourage those notions.
"I can't put on no small shirt, no small pants," said Bun, 27. "They say, 'These guys went to heaven, but they didn't know how to act in heaven, so they got sent back to hell.' "
The returnees' odyssey also underscores just how unprepared everyone here - the Cambodian government, nongovernmental aid organizations, and the returnees themselves - was for this new reality.
The returnees' criminal histories undoubtedly do more to bolster the argument for returning Cambodians than not, especially when sympathies in the United States run low for immigrants who commit crimes.
But those who advocate for the 169 returnees here, and for the Cambodian refugees still facing deportation in the United States, say there should be some leeway in America's rigid deportation law. It makes no distinction between refugees, who were brought to the United States fleeing war and oppression, and immigrants who come seeking economic opportunity, often illegally.
This is especially true for Cambodian refugees, they maintain, in light of America's role in destabilizing Cambodia during the Vietnam War. As many as two million Cambodians died in a genocide that ensued when the Maoist-inspired Khmer Rouge took power from 1975 to 1979 and triggered the Cambodian diaspora.
While advocates have begun lobbying Congress for relief, immigration officials remain unmoved. "What we like to say is that it's a land of opportunity, but it's also a land of laws," said Pat Reilly, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman. "If you break the laws, you lose the opportunity."
The returnees find themselves back in Cambodia because they were among the two-thirds of Cambodian refugees in America who never applied for U.S. citizenship, which would have shielded them from deportation.
Bun left his family in Richmond, Va., and came to Philadelphia to live with an older brother as a teenager. He spent his teens dealing drugs in South Philadelphia. His friend and fellow returnee Mel Kosol, 32, whose family settled at Sixth and Jackson, ran with a neighborhood gang and was convicted in a shooting at age 15.
Bun and Mel were among the first refugees deported to Cambodia in 2003, both for gun-related crimes. Both had histories of violence that spoke to the tough neighborhoods where Cambodian refugees were resettled. Since most arrived in the 1980s, there have been individual success stories, but the community has struggled with extreme poverty, isolation, mental illness, high dropout rates, unemployment and substance abuse.
In Phnom Penh, Cambodian authorities immediately jailed Bun and Mel until they paid nominal bribes - $10 in Bun's case.
They were eventually released into a country as foreign to them as any other. Bun's only memories of his native land were vague impressions of air-raid sirens.
"I didn't know nothing about Cambodia. I was shocked, man. I was scared," Mel said. "I was, like . . . they got mosquitoes, no AC, no flush toilets."
Both men tried to live with relatives in the countryside - Bun in Siem Reap and Mel in Battambong province. Rural Cambodia is one of the poorest places on earth, where villagers live on subsistence farming. Bun and Mel were as unprepared for those conditions as their parents were for the United States.
"I can't stay in the country. It smells . . .," Mel said. "And the water from the lake - I take a shower and I get itchy."
Back in Phnom Penh, both have taken steps to assimilate and are now employed, Bun at a center for addicts, and Mel for a program that works with returnees.
Because relatives can send them American dollars, they and their fellow returnees are considered rich in such a poor country, where a third of the people live on less than 50 cents a day. Bun rented a two-story apartment for $65 a month. Mel was living in a $25-a-month room.
Given these relative advantages, both also have married Khmer women and fathered children.
Bun met his wife, Oeur Chomnan, 26, over cards. He used to go to her house to gamble with her father and uncles. After a few months of flirting, he had his parents in the United States call her parents in Phnom Penh to ask for her hand.
"I know the traditions," Bun said. "They accepted me."
A neighbor asked Oeur Chomnan's mother why on earth she would let her daughter marry such a man.
"I told my mom, 'Ignore them. Nobody is perfect,' " Oeur Chomnan said through a translator.
She likes that Bun is not like other Khmer men.
"He meets a rich and powerful guy, he never bows down," she said. "He doesn't care. I like that. I don't like a coward."
Indeed, Bun's and Mel's clash with the country's Buddhist ethos could not have been more severe.
For Bill Herod, an American minister who has been working with the returnees since the first group arrived, Bun's Yamaha dirt bike is a symbol of their unwillingness to adapt to Cambodian society.
"They're here, depressed, angry, alienated, jobless, homeless - it goes on and on," he said. ". . . A lot of them get into drugs and alcohol heavily. That's a big problem. They're regarded as Khmer, but they're not Khmer socially. You get these enormous misunderstandings."
While some returnees adapt to life in Cambodia and lead somewhat normal lives, Herod estimated that a third were "failing miserably."
More troublesome, Herod said, is that the returnees ignore customs that require a certain deference, especially to women and authority figures - traits not common in tough U.S. neighborhoods.
The easy availability of cheap drugs and sex, through the thriving prostitute trade, also presents a problem. Herod said Bun, Mel, and other early returnees had torn through numerous bars near his guest house until they had been kicked out of every one except the ironically named Sweet Home.
George Ellis, an American psychologist who worked with returnees here under a contract from the U.S. Agency for International Development, said many of the returnees "haven't accepted psychologically that they're here forever."
"The first big state is betrayal, that feeling of being victimized," he said. "A lot of the guys are not doing very well. They never left that stage."
Their situation is made more difficult, he said, by the symbols of their former lives, such as tattoos, which some Cambodians consider a sign of disgraceful thuggery. One returnee, Ellis said, has a chest tattoo of a couple having sex.
Chen Sokheang, a 25-year-old Cambodian woman, said she couldn't help but notice the tattoos on a returnee she had come in contact with. "I kind of freaked out when I saw those tattoos," she said.
Mel embodies the defiance that many returnees cannot leave behind. After a traffic argument on Phnom Penh's teeming streets, he recalled, he bashed a soldier in the face.
"He's lucky he's alive. I hit him soft - that's why his jaw broke," Mel said with cold bravado. "I hit him hard, he'd be dead."
Another time, a local gangster with a butcher knife tried to collect a debt from one of Mel's friends. Mel paid him a visit.
"I put a gun in his mouth," he said. "Then I start thinking I'm doing wrong. I should go talk to them nicely, see what happened. But I don't think like that. I think violent."
Despite these confrontation, Mel said he had not faced the inside of a Cambodian prison - unlike some returnees. In the fall of 2006, seven of them were locked up for various reasons.
"Before, the first time in Cambodia, you're like, 'I can't stay here,' " Mel said. "I don't care anymore. I'm used to it."
Bun hasn't been so lucky. He spent 3-1/2 months in a wretched cell, eating a cup of rice and soup every day, after he was charged with murder.
Although he denies any involvement, a man was stabbed during a brawl at the wedding of one of Bun's Cambodian cousins. Bun was charged with three other returnees and a local Cambodian.
"We didn't kill him," Bun said. "I saw him drop before I even touched him."
Bun said his family in Richmond had to pay $27,000 to get him out of prison.
"I got sick," he said. "But it all worked out. If you got family and money, it's cool."
Bun arrived for an interview at Herod's guest house on his Yamaha. He climbed off the bike with a limp, left over from a nasty crash six weeks earlier. It was the second time he had nearly been killed on his high-powered motorcycle.
He pulled up his baggy jeans to reveal horrific, swollen gashes along his shin and thigh. But he shrugged off any concern for his well-being.
"I'm used to Cambodia now," Bun said. "I don't know about the States anymore. If I go back to the States, I'd do the same thing - sell more drugs."
After the interview at Herod's house, Bun limped back to his motorcycle. As he tried to kick-start the engine, the bike listed toward his injured leg. Unable to put weight on his limb, Bun tumbled, and the bike crashed to the pavement.
Bun simply laughed, awkwardly, and got back aboard.
Herod, watching, could only shake his head as Bun roared into traffic.
Contact staff writer Troy Graham at 856-779-3893 or tgraham@phillynews.com.
Inquirer correspondent Erika Kinetz contributed to this article.
14 comments:
ALL KHMER ARE FUCKING SLAVES
WE NEED YOU TO CLEAN OUR CITY IN BANGKOK
WHAT A SLAVE COUNTRY
5:25
errrrr..uhuh...ok...yea...sure..
These shit heads lived in the USA for years and they or their parents didn't apply for citizenship. Talking about stupidity, this is a perfect example.
Don't react to 5:25pm.He is Khmer but he work as double agent to Kheiv kann and HS.They want you to stop pay attention to Veitnam and go back to Thai.
people always have natural instint to learn. A person as young as 2 years old can adapt to the parents' teaching.
A 35 years old wo/man can always learn new culture and norms in the new land despite s/he was being grown up in another land since they were aged 2-3 years old. ONLY THING they don't know, because they don't want to learn.
This is a major problem because under US immigration laws a noncitizen (non legal permanent residents (LPS), those who have LPS and those who entered as refugees or asylies, can be deported easily if the conviction is considered an "aggravated felony".
It's one thing if someone was convicted of murder, rape, sexual abuse of a minor but offeses such as fraud or tax evasion + plus loss to victims of $10,000 or more, various other crimes including domestic violence convictions including stalking, child abuse, neglect or abandonment, or violationof order for protection (criminal or civil). "Particularly serious crimes" make noncitizens ineligible for asylum and withholding. They include: trafficking in controlled substances. Even simple possession can result in a deportation finding.
As to deportees to Camboida, once the RGOC decided to accept these returning khmers, the US started shipping them in. Initially, the US was not really contributing anything to help them get relocated. Some of these guys had no memory of Cambodia because they came with their refugee parents when i.e. they were 2 years of age. Language skills are often poor which makes the adjustment even more difficult. Many deportees were mentally ill on medication but often no medical records including psychiatric records were not accompaning the deportee so they flipped out when the effects of their medication ran out.
There is a "halfway house" run by a Canadian that has been the only real resourse for helping these individuals adjust and find employment. After the first couple of years, I think the US finally provides some financial support to the halfway house via USAID.
My suggestion is that the RGC should not accept any deportees until they review their criminal file and make there own determination as to suitability from a medical point of view. Perhaps this is being done now.
On thing Khmers in the US should know is that if you apply for LPS or citizenship and have a prior conviction on ANY kind, you should consult a U.S. immigration lawyer BEFORE you apply because it can trigger deportation.
5:25PM, have you been to Siem Reap? Thais love the Angkor Wat complexes, taught their children that it's belong to them, then when grew up-finally realized the truth was twisted by their parents and society. The facts was not coincide with the world. Shameful. Shit on the face.
If you have been to Angkor Wat, then you would see the carving on the wall of Angkor chain/tied by the neck and shackled by arms/legs. THOSE ARE THAIS, WE USED THAI SLAVES TO ERECTED THE ANGKOR WAT KINGDOM.
So, to answered your comment, thais were slave ancestrally--long before your country name "Thailand". IT WAS KHMER EMPIRE THAT RULED SE ASIA DOWN TO INDONESIA. STOP. A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE IS DANGEROUS.
This is one of those "not-what-it-seems" situations. Sure people are saying "you had your chance, a chance many would have given anything for and you blew it you dumb-ass."
When refugees come to the U.S., the assistance that they get, plus their determination to send money back home results in the parents picking the most dangerous (cheapest) of places to live. This results in the young people being drawn to the glitz and cheap glamour of the streets. You can say what you like but you combine that with what we all now now about the juvenile brain, the gas-pedal works but the brakes do not, and of COURSE you have these young people doing what most people do in the worst part of town, get into trouble. These "aggravated felonies" are NOT for the most part rape and murder. They are petty crap that any teenager might get into. The law is also retroactive, which is bullshit. You take a young Khmer man who got in a bit of trouble, weed possesion, shoplifting, it happened once, and he pulled himself out of it and for the last many years has a family, job, no trouble. After this law passed, the long arm of the govt (which by the way has SEVERAL convicted felons working cush jobs, hello Negroponte you scum) grabbed these guys and charged and deported them. The ONLY thing I like about this law is that the woman-beaters get sent back and that's fine with me. But what is happening to most of these guys is hugely unfair.
Most charged with spousal abuse is very minor- a slap, being pushed, throwing something. Threating but no physical abuse. Being deported for these minor issues is very unfair.
It is eerily quite unfortunate and disappointed that the Cambodian government accepted the extradition treaty (from the US). Perhaps the Cambodian government must have something (special program)in mind for these ex-cons. Additionally, the government perhaps already turned these ex-criminals into a killing machine to strengthen the CPP security measures.
Khmer forever! Yuon out of Cambodia!
Unfair or not, I honestly have no sympathy for those being deported. I've listen to both sides of the story/issue. I believe they deserve it, they take the country rights and civil liberties for granted. A place where they were offer refuged and safety. It's not about the littlest things, but the cycle needs to end, it's a negative impact on our society. Now reading this article it makes me sick or disturbed to see that they still don't learn their lesson over there, and influence is a really big thing. I would hate to visit my motherland and have to see Khmers over there have raging gang warfare and go into all sorts of American Gangster culture. They need to change their lifestyles and make positive contribution to Khmer society in our beloved Cambodia.
You commit crime and you're from other country and you get caught, you leave.
Relatives needs to open their eyes up. How long or how much money do you still continue to dumping over the little shit head? Let him lose his freedom and go to jail. He needs to learn and that is just so sad or too bad and tought shit for him. Save your money and save yourself. No more $27,000 sending over. It won't do any good. In jail for a while, that might do.
ahahhahhahahha!
AH Bun Bong thinks he is a man of steel!
What up Kosol Mel, Tony. This is Chris Marquette from Kato. Leave a message here if you want to get back in contact. Hope all is going well out there B. Keep your head up and know you're missed out here in Minnesota.
Post a Comment