Radio Current Affairs Documentary: Kosal Khiev

Tens of thousands of Cambodians fled the Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s and ended up in refugee camps on the Thai border. Some of those families were resettled in the United States and their children were raised as Americans, often with little connection to their homeland.

January 17, 2012

Liam Cochrane

PM - ABC News (Australia)

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Tens of thousands of Cambodians fled the Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s and ended up in refugee camps on the Thai border. Some of those families were resettled in the United States and their children were raised as Americans, often with little connection to their homeland.

A small number of young Cambodian-Americans find themselves in trouble with the law - drugs and gang violence mostly - and their convictions earn them a one-way ticket to a country many have never known. For many, it's the first time they realise they're not full citizens of America, despite their parents being granted asylum and permanent residency.

More than 200 people have been deported to Cambodia under this scheme since it began in 2003 and an estimated 2,000 more await a similar fate.

In Phnom Penh, Radio Australia's Liam Cochrane met up with one of these deportees, Kosal Khiev, and spoke to him about his childhood alienation and his long stretch in tough US prisons, where he discovered the spoken word poetry that's helped him turn his life around.

KOSAL KHIEV: (reading a poem) And if the world is black and white, then let me bring the colours.

My name is Kosal Khiev. I'm 31 years old.

LIAM COCHRANE: Kosal, tell me about your early life, where did you grow up?

KOSAL KHIEV: I grew up in Santa Ana, Minnie Street. Well, when we first came here we was in North Carolina through church sponsorship and from there we didn't know any other Cambodians. There was no other Cambodians. So I guess... but I was only a year old of course, right.

LIAM COCHRANE: And you were born in, whereabouts?

KOSAL KHIEV: I was born in a Thai refugee camp in the border of Thailand and Cambodia and Khao I Dang. So from there we fled the refugee camp to North Carolina being sponsored. And when we got to North Carolina there was no Cambodians as far as my mum told me and my sisters and brothers.

So they went out to relatives out in Santa Ana, Minnie Street, in California. Now that's where I grew up. It was a projects. You grow up and you realise, you're different here. You know, gook, chink, tai-die, you know all these slurs, racial slurs. You somehow grew up knowing/understanding what they really meant.

Now at first you're thinking no that's what they call you but then you realise, oh, it's a derogatory term. It was strange, it was weird you know, 'cause there was nine of us. We were living in a two bedroom apartment - me, my mum, my grandmother, my three brothers, my three sisters. And my childhood, if I were to look back on it, was relatively okay.

I mean, most of my family they didn't know what to do. My mum was working three jobs, she was sewing. My grandmother was like in the backyard, with this little backyard and she's having her little garden, she was growing our garden. I remember as a little kid I used to like walk with her door to door because every time the garden would be right she pick it and stuff like that and we would put it in basket and we'd walk door to door trying to sell these vegetables.

LIAM COCHRANE: How did that go down in modern American society?

KOSAL KHIEV: (laughs) It was pretty okay. It was cute because they couldn't say no to her because she was the old lady and I was this little bitty boy. And I'm the one that's handing the vegetables so it's like, you know. So we got a lot of sales, we'd usually end up selling the whole bag and then coming home and then trying to put food on the table and what not.

LIAM COCHRANE: What did Cambodia mean to you as you grew up?

KOSAL KHIEV: I didn't really know anything about it. I knew that something bad happened but I really didn't know the whole extent of it. And then me growing up, everyone had their own issues and I didn't realise that.

You know, me growing up in America, raised here and taught here - taught there. I didn't know that they had their own issues that they were dealing of reintegration; they were dealing with cultural shock and everything and trying to educate themselves and all this stuff. When in actuality I thought they didn't want me because I wasn't included in anything.

So I'm like okay, it's fine. So I started making my own friends. So in a lot of ways like I know they're excuses and they're really sorry excuses for the choices that I made but at that moment in time I made them because of that.

LIAM COCHRANE: Let's talk about those choices that you made because your journey to Cambodia was as a result of your arrest in the States. Can you tell me about what happened?

KOSAL KHIEV: So there was a group of guys and one of the guys he was like one of my best friends at that time and he started having beef with some other guys. You know, 'cause we're already in a gang and those were already in a gang and I was like: 'What's going on man?' 'Well, I don't know man, these guys they're going to take this out or we're going to take them out'.

It was just like a gang war. And I was just a straight soldier. That's all I was. I was a gunner. "Hey, minor, go take care of this guy". I didn't care about living or dying, I didn't care about anyone else for that matter. All I cared was about the family that I knew then, that came to become my family and I would have done anything to protect them or to serve that purpose.

LIAM COCHRANE: What did you do, if you don't mind me asking?

KOSAL KHIEV: Well, we ended up in a shootout at a party and I got caught like a week later or so for attempted murder. Nobody died, he got hit but he didn't die. So they charged me with attempted murder. Actually they charged me with six attempted murders because it was in a group setting.

I fought it for two years thinking OK, they really didn't have no evidence, they really didn't have anything but I was placed in the scene but then they did have one of my co-defenders and he ended up turning state evidence later on down the line saying yes, he was one of the shooters and stuff like that.

So I ended up getting sentenced to 16 years. I got tried... see the thing was I was trying to fight to get tried as a juvenile because I was 16. It was my first offence for anything and I lost the fitness hearing and they said oh no, you did an adult crime you're going to do adult time.

LIAM COCHRANE: Can you tell me about your time in prison and what you did with that time and your experience of it?

KOSAL KHIEV: Sure. Fourteen years. I remember in county jail 'cause you know you've got to take steps to go to prison. County jail is where you're fighting your case and what not and said I just caught my time.

And we get shipped on a bus in an orange jumpsuit, nothing underneath except flip flops in the middle of the night on that Greyhound bus. We were riding through and I have all these thoughts in mind like, wow, this is really happening. You know, I'm going with the big boys. Now I'm fresh 18 years old, smaller than I am now if you could imagine that.

I remember getting there and it was snowing, it was snowing. It's probably one of the first times I've seen snow falling. I remember getting off of that bus and we stopped in front of this big old machine. It just, it felt like a machine, 'cause it had these armed gates with barbed wires and the thing with the smoke coming out, one of them industrialised, you know, places.

I'm like wow. This must be the beast that eats men's souls. And I remember that big old gate just rumbled just (makes rumbling noise) and opens up finally. Go in. The gate closes back and I look back and I look back and say this is it. For the next 14 years I won't see the outside.

LIAM COCHRANE: Was it violent inside the prison?

KOSAL KHIEV: It was violent. It was really violent, you know. I mean this is how violent it is when you're able to learn how to make a knife that can pierce through skin with newspaper, soap and wax.

LIAM COCHRANE: What about your spoken word poetry, did that begin in prison?

KOSAL KHIEV: Yes, it began in prison, but then it was just writing. A year and a half later I was shipped off to New Folsom state prison. It was there when I met a group of poets, you could say. And it was by fluke.

I was working PIA (Prison Industry Authority) in the laundry and it was like three guys and they were like doing poetry. And I'm just listening. They stopped and looked at me, like: "Hey, you write? You do poetry?"

I'm like yeah, I write. I write poetry. Cool. I'm like: Yeah, can I hear some more? And they're like: "Yeah". And then so I started to hear some more and stuff like that. And they say "Hey, you know, we hold a poetry class every Tuesday, would you like to come?" Why yes, awesome, cool.

And then, there was this guy named Marty Williams. He was a war veteran and he read his poetry. Oh, man, the way he read it, the cadences, the drops, the highs, the lows, the emotion, the life behind it. Beautiful. Never heard it before in my life.

I'm like yo Marty, what is that right there man? What is that? 'Cause it's not rap, it's not... what is that? He's like "Man the spoken word". Spoken word? "Like yeah". I'm like how do you do that? "Well, you know, just bring life to the words, you know, some words just can't sit still on paper".

(Kosal Khiev reading poetry)

"Yeah. I write for the essence of soul. For the old, 'cause experience is wisdom and wisdom is gold. The old.

I write for the guerrillas in the Congos, for the nomads in the jungles following the rhythm of the bongos.

Man I write for the wars in trench and battle. Stretch out in the four corners of Burma, Malaysia, Cambodia, Afghan, Iran, Iraq and deep Africa.

Man I write for the souls lost in Attica. I write for California, the golden state where we holding weight, strugglin' to hold onto faith 'cause they steady packing us in prisons till we're old and grey.

So I write for those in blue that's doing all day. Tehachapi, New Folsom, Corcoran, Pelican Bay, all the way to Susanville, High Desert and back down this way.

Calipat, Lancasters, Soledad, Ironwood and so many more man, built into cesspools. So I write about what's less cool. Yeah. Let's break.

So let's take a minute of silence and press pause. So let's take a minute of silence ... and press pause (deep breath)".

LIAM COCHRANE: After you did your time, you were deported back to Cambodia?

KOSAL KHIEV: Yes.

LIAM COCHRANE: For people who've never heard of this, can you explain why you were, as a kid who grew up in the States, why you were sent back to Cambodia, or sent to Cambodia, not back?

KOSAL KHIEV: Okay. So, they said that because I committed a crime of immoral turpitude that it's reason to be deported. So if I didn't have my citizenship, which I couldn't have had my citizenship because I got locked up at 16, so how was I supposed to apply for my citizenship?

LIAM COCHRANE: You were sent to Cambodia...

KOSAL KHIEV: I was sent to Cambodia.

LIAM COCHRANE: Tell me your first impressions upon arriving back.

KOSAL KHIEV: I remember landing, I was so scared. I didn't know what to expect. I mean I didn't know anyone here. All those dreams that I had when I was locked up - how am I going to accomplish them? What am I going to do?

I had no language. You know, I could speak it, I could understand it, but it's limited. I tried to take in the beauty that is freedom. Your freedom. You know, whatever it is you're free. Try to remember that.

But it didn't even hit me because I was fortunate enough to where my sister and her husband and my nephew and niece came and picked me up. They flew out here to meet me out here. And I was fortunate of that. So when they came to pick me up, it felt like we were having a family vacation.

LIAM COCHRANE: The difference being, they could fly back and you couldn't.

KOSAL KHIEV: Yeah. But it really didn't hit me until they did fly back and I couldn't. How monumentous that was and when they flew back I felt really alone. That's when I really broke down.

But that breaking down is familiar to me 'cause I've had to do that many times in my life. Break myself down in order to pick myself back up, you know rebuild myself.

So I brought myself down and I stayed like for maybe two or three days. Not doing anything, not caring or anything like that. But then I said man okay, now what? Are you just going to lay down or are you going to get back up?

LIAM COCHRANE: So now we're less than a year on, tell me about your life now in Phnom Penh.

KOSAL KHIEV: It's been amazing. I mean the journey that I've gone through has been an amazing journey. I've been able to meet so many amazing people. From Minnie Sokha, Sokha had a mutual friend named Thea Som. Thea Som is an amazing person as well. Thea Som was the one that introduced me to Anida and Masa (Masahiro Sugarno).

LIAM COCHRANE: They're the filmmakers who have turned this spoken word piece that we're featuring into a film clip.

KOSAL KHIEV: Yes.

LIAM COCHRANE: An amazing visual performance. Can you describe the video? What does it look like?

KOSAL KHIEV: Okay, the video, it's on the road to the killing fields. It has rice fields in the background, it has just a dirt field with breaks in the background of like new houses being built but it's just a brick wall. But it's such an amazing because when we got there, that day of the shoot, there was so many kids, just because it was a field and just like all the neighbourhood kids come there during the sundown and they're all out there.

And I'm like oh man, this is awesome. So I told them while they're setting up for the shoot and everything, I'm going to go play with the kids. I'll see you all later. And the kids were all running around chasing each other and there's this little girl like, yay-high, she was so small, she was running. I'm running like Eddie Munster, rahhh. And she's like: "ohhh". And then another girl's like follow me, chase me, chase me. So I chase her, I picked her up. Alright, come on, let's chase the other kids. So we start chasing the other kids. It was just an amazing time.

LIAM COCHRANE: And the video is yourself in what looks almost like a boxing ring. Lit black and white, performing a piece called Why I Write. Tell me about the piece.

KOSAL KHIEV: We wanted to make it look like a stage and this is like my own stage that I'm building, creating. And in the background of the piece you can hear: "if the world is black and white, then let me bring the colours. Anyone who felt alone, anyone who has felt the song. See I write for the bones buried in a country I call home..."

And that right there is subject to like, you can literally say that's Cambodia or the States because I buried bones in both places. For so long Cambodia has been calling me back home as well. It has. It's unfortunate that I was able to be sent here the way I was but in a way I find it a blessing as well because Cambodia has been calling me. It called me when I was doing time and it said hey, come back.

LIAM COCHRANE: Is it what you expected?

KOSAL KHIEV: No. It's not at all what I expected at all. Cambodia has so many surprises. So much beauty. She's so resilient. Cambodia, I mean, to go what Cambodia has gone through and to be able to rise above that and say you know what? We're not going anywhere.

You know, you can try to extinguish us, you can try to exterminate the culture, the people, the language but it's not going anywhere. We're here and we're going to evolve, we're going to change, we're going to grow.

And when I saw that, the resilience of Cambodia, that was afterwards, after the broken down part, and I said you know what? Cambodia's resilient. I'm resilient as well. I survived. Cambodia survived. Now it's like two survivors that found each other.

(Kosal Khiev speaking his poetry to heartbeat)

"Okay. Okay. That's enough. Let's get back to the cause. Let's get back to these walls built to separate ways and generate hate. Built to execute and induce waste.

So I write from a place of pure base, pure base. All the five elements put together to produce faith.

See I write for man, woman and children. Anyone who felt alone. Anyone who felt the soul.

I write for the bones buried in a country I call home. I write for you, the listeners, so listen up. Take a step back and imagine the bigger picture. 'Cause I write the real, so feel me."

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Liam Cochrane with that report.