Couple vow they won't be parted by Home Office decision over wife's visa

DETERMINED: Left, housing manager Paul Cooper and his wife, Sokkha, who he met in Cambodia, have lived in the UK for around two years but the couple face quitting the country after the Home Office ruled she must return to Cambodia.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Derby Telegraph (UK)

PAUL Cooper's love for sweetheart Sokkha Mey saw past her frailties – but may not be strong enough to save her from being thrown out of the country.

Graduate Paul was travelling the world when he met Sokkha in her home country of Cambodia in 2005.

Paul said the moment was simply love at first sight.

A railway accident and a childhood disease had left Sokkha deprived of her right arm and barely able to walk, but Paul said her strength of character was incredible.

He said: "I noticed she didn't have her right arm but I also noticed the way she carried on, always smiling.

"When we met, the dazzling qualities of her personality shone through and I saw what a strong and loving person she was."

The couple eventually wed, moved to Britain and had two children.

But now youngsters Angel, three, and Dylan, one, face the prospect of never seeing their mother again – or having to move to a strange country where they have no roots.

Sokkha has been told by the Home Office she must leave because she has not taken a citizenship test.

This is despite another Government ministry, the Department for Work and Pensions, ruling she is "virtually unable to walk".

The Home Office told Sokkha she must return to Cambodia as soon as possible.

Paul, 28, a housing manager, said: "It was never a question of whether she could take the test but whether she was able to get to classes to help her pass and to get to the test centre.

"Sokkha is often in a lot of discomfort with her disabilities. She can walk about as far as 20 metres without stopping and we sometimes use a wheelchair when she really needs help.

"But we try to live a normal life and she spends a lot of time looking after the children. We looked up the guidance to obtaining her visa and never saw any problems.

"This has left us in an awful position."

Last night, after the Derby Telegraph spoke to the Home Office, a spokesman for the UK Border Agency said: "Mrs Cooper has not been given the full rights of appeal to which she is entitled. On that basis we are happy to reconsider her case in full and she will be receiving confirmation of that in writing shortly."

Paul had always planned to go travelling after graduation and it was during a tour of south-east Asia that he met Sokkha.

They first saw each other in Sokkha's parents' bar.

Two years later, the couple had married and, in November 2007, they decided to continue their lives in the UK.

Sokkha, 23, had sought exemption from taking the Life in the UK test, a mandatory part of obtaining a permanent settlement visa, because of her disabilities.

Following guidance from the Home Office, the couple submitted a letter from Sokkha's GP with her visa application, explaining why they prevented her from taking the test.

But the couple, of Killingworth Avenue, Sinfin, were shocked and upset to learn, three months later, that Sokkha's application had been refused because the Home Office did not feel her case was exceptional.

The Life in the UK test, designed to demonstrate a person's knowledge of language and life in this country, consists of 24 multiple-choice questions.

Some applicants are exempt from taking this test if they have a long-standing, permanent disability that severely restricts their mobility and ability to attend language classes.

When applying for settlement, applicants are also asked to send evidence from a medical practitioner.

Sokkha lost her right arm in a train accident as a child and later developed polio.

Paul said the significant wastage in her legs meant she could not place the whole of her foot on the floor while walking and had to use the balls of her feet.

The pair had received an assessment of Sokkha's condition when applying to the Department of Work and Pensions for disability living allowance.

They sent this assessment to the Home Office as part of their application. Paul said: "We did everything we thought we needed to do.

"We sent off evidence to show we were still living together as a couple and bank statements to prove we could keep ourselves.

"Now we've been told she has to leave as soon as possible and that we have limited rights of appeal against the decision."

Paul said that, while it was one thing to help Sokkha to get about when he was around, it was another matter to get time off work to take his wife to the classes and tests.

He said: "The problem comes down to whether or not I can get her to the places she needs to go to complete this test.

"When, for instance, we are at the airport, Sokkha needs a wheelchair to get around but it's all right because she has me.

"But I work a lot and to be able to be there all the time to help would be incredibly difficult, which is why we applied for exemption.

"We will lodge an appeal but we can't even afford legal representation. It's so unfair to think we were living our normal lives and now this has happened."

Before they were married, the pair visited Australia on a joint holiday and their daughter Angel was born in Cambodia.

After getting married in January 2007, Sokkha secured a visitors' permit to come to the UK and, that November, applied for a probationary Leave to Enter visa to stay in the country for two years. Before this expired, she had already applied for permanent settlement in the UK and only received the news days ago that it had been refused.

Paul said the family would not be split up by the decision and, if necessary, would go to live in Cambodia.

He said: "There's no doubt we will stay together but we have no house in Cambodia and it is very difficult to get employment there.

"It's also not fair on our children because they are Anglicised now, having lived here all their lives.

"They are used to English ways and customs and I think the move would be very unsettling for them.

"The worst thing about this is that we have lived here for so long and done nothing wrong to cause this change. We just want to be normal."

Sokkha said: "My children are English and my husband is English and this is where we wanted to start our family and settle into our home.

"Paul is such a nice guy and a very good man and I trust him completely. We love each other for who we are.

"I don't want us to be apart because I need him and my children need me and I don't want them to have to come back to Cambodia.

"It is such a horrible decision and it really has upset us all."

Disabled Derby mother fears deportation to Cambodia

Sokkha and her family

Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Derby Telegraph (UK)

A DISABLED Derby mother-of- two has been told she faces being kicked out of the country – because she cannot study for a citizenship test.

Sokkha Cooper, from Cambodia, lost her right arm in a train accident as a child and suffered from polio while growing up, leaving her virtually unable to walk.

She has lived with her husband, Paul, in the UK for more than two years. The couple have two children and, three months ago, Sokkha applied for a visa to allow her to permanently settle.

However, the Home Office said she would be refused permission to stay in the UK because she has not taken the Life in the UK test.

The Sinfin couple thought Sokkha, 23, would be exempt because of her disabilities.


She can walk only about 20 metres at a time and Paul cannot take time off work to take her to classes to help her pass the test.

The couple sent statements from both her GP and the Department of Work and Pensions as evidence she should be excused from the test. But they were told that the Home Office was not satisfied and that she had to leave the country "as soon as possible".

Last night, after the Derby Telegraph took up her case, the Home Office appeared to soften its position and suggested that Sokkha might be able to appeal.

Sokkha said she was devastated by the thought of being separated from her children, Angel, three, and Dylan, one. She said: "I know I'm not from England but I feel it is my home. I don't want to leave it."

Cambodia's killing fields 30 years on: 'They will kill our parents tonight... we must escape'

Orphaned Cambodian children in refugee camp in 1979
Young Somaly Lun
Somaly as she is today
With her daughters (All pics: Harry Page, Getty)

27/10/2009
By Ros Wynne-Jones
Mirror.co.uk

It is 30 years since John Pilger revealed the existence of the Cambodian Killing Fields in the Daily Mirror. For Somaly Lun, the anniversary is bittersweet.

Today, customers at the Oxfordshire supermarket checkout where she works have no idea of her extraordinary story.

How she escaped US B-52 bombers as a child, a Khmer Rouge concentration camp as a teenager, and Vietnamese soldiers as a young woman. How she lost her father and six brothers to the Khmer Rouge.

Somaly owes her life in the UK to Oxfam's Marcus Thompson, then a young humanitarian worker who had become friends with Somaly and her husband Borithy.

"England gave me the first safe place I had ever lived," Somaly says.

By the time she was 10, her home town of Kratie was under attack, even though Cambodia was neutral. Kratie was close to the border with Vietnam which was at war with the States, and US President Richard Nixon ordered 100,000 tonnes of secret bombings.

"The B-52s came every day," Somaly recalls. "Every day, shooting and bombing and running." One day a man grabbed her as an F-11 US fighter jet swept low and held her in front of him as a shield. "The plane was so low I could almost see the pilot's face," she says. It permanently damaged her hearing.

Somaly's family fled to Phnom Penh, but by 1975 it had fallen to Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. Backed by the US against the Vietnamese communists, the Khmer Rouge were determined to return Cambodia to Year Zero, to a time before industrialisation.

"My father, a doctor, was in the middle of an operation the day the Khmer Rouge came," Somaly says. "He said, 'What about the patient?' They pointed a gun at him and asked, 'Do you want to die?'"

Somaly's family were herded out at gunpoint with two million other people. The family was taken to Pursat, a concentration camp in the remote countryside. Then the Khmer Rouge came for Somaly's father.

"They said, 'We know you are a doctor'." The first time, they wanted him to treat one of the leaders. But the second time, "they took him away and he never came back". Somaly was forced to spend 20 hours a day as a slave doing hard labour in the rice fields despite starvation, exhaustion and malaria.

Her older brother was caught saving his food rations for her. "They made him confess he was a US spy," she says. "They kept beating him until he died. Then my younger brother was taken. They put him in a prison with other children, and burned it to the ground. The screams have haunted me ever since.

"One day, they came and took 2,000 people. One of the girls came back like a zombie with blood all over her. She said, 'They killed everyone'." Then, one day a pal whispered: "They are killing our parents and we have to escape now, tonight." Somaly says: "After dark we went to where people were gathered with three big boats."

The Khmer Rouge chased them along the river, firing at the boats. She says: "We hid in the mangrove and caught fish and ate it raw as we didn't dare to make a fire. We drank muddy water. We all became sick - just skin and bones."

Everyone on Somaly's boat was drifting in and out of consciousness. "But somehow it arrived by itself at Kampong Chhnang, where the Khmer Rouge was driven out," she says. "They gave us food, water, shelter."

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New escapees from Pursat told Somaly that thousands had been taken to a cliff and forced off at gunpoint. Yet, somehow her mother, sister and brother had escaped. "The day I saw them again was the happiest day of my life," Somaly says.

When they returned to Phnom Penh in 1979 they found a ghost city occupied by the Vietnamese liberators.

Somaly took a job at the hotel Samaki - now Le Royale - as a receptionist, where she met Borithy, who was working for the Cambodian foreign office as a translator.

She also met Marcus Thompson, a 34-year-old British aid worker sent by Oxfam to set up a humanitarian programme. "We became friends," he remembers. "We were all stuck together at the hotel."

But Cambodia was still dangerous - and Borithy was warned to leave Phnom Penh. "He said he was in love with me and refused to leave without me," Somaly says.

On March 16, 1980, the couple married in secret inside a destroyed pagoda. The next day, they escaped. Passing through fields of landmines, they made it through Vietnamese, then Khmer Rouge territory and even past the Thai border guards to Khao I Dang, a squalid refugee camp on the border. Somaly wrote to her family and to Marcus to tell them they were alive.

"I needed to go to those camps as part of my work," Marcus says. Somaly says she will never forget seeing Marcus walking through the camp. "I cried out 'Marcus!' and just hung on to his neck," she says.

Marcus was shocked by their plight. "They couldn't go back to Cambodia," he says. "The Thais wouldn't accept them. We had to do something."

Back in England, Marcus and his Oxfam colleagues went through official channels to ask whether Britain would accept the family as refugees.

"We had no expectation anything would happen," Marcus says. "But then we got a letter saying 'Yes'."

Somaly, 22 and pregnant, arrived in the UK on May 12, 1981, with Borithy, Somaly's mother Moeun, brother Rithy and sister Virak - and settled close to Marcus and his family in Witney, Oxfordshire.

"People at the Oxfam offices donated all kinds of furniture, saucepans, an old TV, carpets," Somaly remembers.

Today, the couple's daughters are success stories in their own right. The youngest, 23-year-old Bophanie, is a teacher in Brighton, while her sister, Mary Thida Lun, 27, is Assistant Private Secretary to the Minister of State for International Development, Gareth Thomas.

At 64, Marcus still works as an adviser to Oxfam, and the charity remains working in Cambodia, still tackling the legacy of the dark days of the Khmer Rouge and facing new challenges from climate change, typhoons and flooding.

Today, 30 years on, when she goes to and from work at the local supermarket, living her British life, Somaly sometimes remembers the words her father said to her before they took him away.

"He said, 'You are going to survive. You are going to go places'." She shakes her head slowly. "I think that was what gave me the strength to survive."

Village arranges wedding for Asian bomb strike pair

WEDDED BLISS: Chomno and Kim at their second 'wedding'.

Thursday, 22nd May, 2008
By Steve McElroy
Helensburgh Advertiser (Scotland, UK)

A REFUGEE couple whose wedding day was dramatically ruined after they fled a ruthless regime, staged a rerun in a peaceful Garelochside setting at the weekend.

Cambodians Chomno In and Kim Sorn renewed their vows at Garelochhead Parish Church, 23 years after escaping the Khmar Rouge during the Vietnam war and finding love in a refugee camp.

Parishioners raised enough money to bring the couple to Scotland and, as part of their trip, decided to organise what they had never really had — a proper wedding, after their original attempt was disrupted by bombing.

Everyone in the congregation offered what they could — some provided catering, others organised the wedding reception and a professional photographer in the congregation offered his services free of charge.

Even the Minister, the Reverend Alastair Duncan, loaned his kilt for groom, Chomno, while bride-to-be Kim borrowed a wedding dress from a parishioner, both of which turned out to be a perfect fit.

The wedding was completed with a piper and a ceilidh afterwards, witnessed by more than 100 guests.

Mr Duncan — who first met the couple in 2005 — said: “This was no ‘ordinary’ Scottish wedding, if such a thing exists, but truly was a wedding with a difference.

“Most brides dream of a happy-ever-after ending to their wedding day, but for Chomno In and Kim Sorn that original day was cut short by fear and tragedy.”

The couple met in a Thai refugee camp after escaping from their native Cambodia which had been ruled by the brutal Khmer Rouge, under the control of its notorious leader Pol Pot.

By 1985, when they married, Cambodia was at war as the Khmer Rouge sought to resist the Vietnamese forces which had come to liberate the country.

Chomno had been in the camp for several years and trained to work as a medical orderly. He met Kim, who was helping to care for her mother in the hospital where he worked. Love blossomed and the two decided to marry.

Mr Duncan said Chomno described the wedding as a small event and added: “In Chomno’s words, ‘They bombed the camp on our wedding day and people had to run away’.”

The Minister met the couple on a Tearfund relief agency visit to Poipet, a town on the border with Thailand, where they now live.

He is Director of the Cambodian Hope Organisation which provides relief, skills, training and education, as well as raising awareness of the risks and menace of human trafficking which is rife in the region.

Mr Duncan also organised a return mercy visit to the area, for members of the Garelochhead Church, last year.

He added: “We were able to raise enough money to bring the couple over and to tell more people about the work they do.

“Everything came together beautifully. There were over a hundred guests at the renewal of vows ceremony, with as many Scottish wedding traditions as we could muster, including a piper.

“The ceremony was interpreted into Khmer, the Cambodian language, by a former Cambodian missionary who had travelled from Lewis specially for the occasion.

“Fortunately the weather, though a little cold, behaved impeccably and the rain kept away.

“The only down side was that, whilst the couple are used to living amongst mosquitoes, they were not quite prepared for the midge season when they went to have their photographs taken.”

Parishioners staged a reception for the couple in the village hall, where they cut their cake and — after a typically Scottish meal — experienced an evening of ceilidh dancing.

Members of the Route 81 youth project also presented the couple with over £900, they had raised through a sponsored famine event.