Safe at Last: Refugees in America

SAFE AT LAST: REFUGEES IN AMERICA

by

DON E. MILLER, Ph.D.

COVER AND INSIDE BOOK ART WORK BY YASUKO BOCKMAN

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:

Speranza Productions on Smashwords

SAFE AT LAST: REFUGEES IN AMERICA

Copyright 2011 by Don E. Miller, Ph.D.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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CHAPTER ONE: OVERVIEW

In 1883 Emma Lazarus wrote in The New Colossus, Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost, to me. I lift my lamp beside the Golden Door. These words are inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty. Now, well over 100 years later, these words ring truer than ever for the many thousands of asylum-seeking refugee survivors in the United States, their new adopted land.

I am a Clinical Psychologist and over the years, I have interviewed over 2,000 refugees who escaped from danger and tyranny in many different countries. These are their stories as told to me. The stories are true though sometimes the experiences of several different individuals or families have been combined into a composite story. The stories are presented in the first person. Sometimes the survivor of the horror, perhaps mercifully, could no longer remember the details of the trauma they had experienced. So at times, the children of the survivors contributed to the stories. What their parents forgot, their children often remembered years later.

The names have been changed as well as some details in the stories to protect identities. These refugees went through terror and horror in their native countries. This included ethnic cleansing, starvation and torture, watching family members being beaten, murdered and long periods of incarceration in jails or Prisoner-of-War camps. In many countries people went to jail for their beliefs or for making a casual negative comment about the current regime. Many displaced people spent up to 20 years in a refugee camp before finally entering the United States. These refugee camps were often dangerous places. In some, refugees lived in a tent in the desert with insufficient food and water. In others, built in jungles, dysentery, disease and death stalked the refugees.

The refugees’ dream was that in America they would be free, that they would have food to eat and their children could make something of themselves. Many of the refugees who came to the U.S. worked hard and did get a piece of the American dream; a house, a business, a good job. But many others had been badly damaged by the beatings and horror. The moment they would close their eyes, even after settling safely in America, the nightmares began. For them, America meant sleepless nights and days spent shaking on the couch and jumping in fear if there was a knock on the door. These are the walking wounded who had seen family members murdered in front of them or who had spent days or even weeks in a coma after a beating. Some couldn’t remember their own names so trying to work was out of the question. Their only hope was for their children. These children, in their native country, would most likely have never gone beyond elementary school, if that far. In many refugee families who have settled across America the children are graduating from college and becoming nurses, engineers and schoolteachers.

The problems and abuses reported in this book span over 50 years. The world has changed. Many of the abuses and horrific residuals of wars that happened in various countries, as described in this book, have stopped. Other abuses and more dead bodies from more wars and more ethnic cleansings in different countries have taken their place. This book is neither about good and evil nor about the perfect system of government. Governments are different; countries are different. We are finding that what works in America will not necessarily work everywhere else. What should we do about the abuses around the world that still continue? Where is the line to be drawn between meddling in the affairs of a sovereign nation and preventing ethnic cleansing? The truth is that we in the United States don’t have the resources to fix all the problems in the world. United States saved many thousands from ethnic cleansing in Bosnia but we have not been able to prevent the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Africa, especially Darfur.

On a cautionary note to the reader, the stories of brutality, violence and multiple methods of torture and murder of fellow human beings witnessed or personally experienced by these refugees are very graphic in nature. In the final analysis, these stories of survival hold our interest because these brave souls pursued the goal of freedom in spite of incredible odds and risks. If it seems sad, when reading about the continued psychological suffering of the refugees described in this book, remember – these are the happy endings. These are the stories of the people who made it to America. Millions died in the Cambodian killing fields. Hundreds of thousands drowned escaping from Vietnam in rickety boats across the water. Other hundreds of thousands lie in mass graves, especially in Cambodia and Iraq. Some estimates place Saddam’s death toll at two million.

If there are lessons to be learned from these stories, one is that, compared to most of the rest of the world, people in the United States take care of each other very well. A number of developed countries have universal health care. Most of the refugees I interviewed said that before coming to America, they could not access health care if they didn’t have any money. Some watched their children die of fever because they had no medicine. Once in the United States, they had access to medical care. I have interviewed refugees who have been given very costly heart valve transplants in the U.S., paid for by the United States Government – operations that saved their lives. Such care was extremely unlikely in their countries of origin. We do a much better job of taking care of our children and the elderly than many countries. Even those in the U.S. with no health insurance have a better chance of accessing health care than the residents of many other countries.

We teach the immigrants and their children new trades, English, and how to become Americans. But there are things they can teach us, especially about family. Countless times I have seen the children of these enfeebled and elderly immigrants all pitch in to help. They take turns to make sure that the care provided to their sick and aging parents, in their own home, maintains as high a quality of life as possible, as long as possible.

Female refugees have reported incredible spousal abuse in their native countries but there was never any help. In many places in the world wives are still treated like property. Other refugees had experienced totally disabling job injuries but at the most, received a couple months of pay and were told to not come back to work anymore. United States does much better in taking care of abused women and injured workers.

Justice in their country of origin, according to many of the refugees I interviewed, was dispensed on the basis of how much money you had available to pay off officials. In the United States system of justice we have trials, not just executions or disappearances of those who have wronged someone in power. These benefits of living in America we often take for granted. Perhaps these stories will help Americans feel more appreciative of the freedom and many benefits and advantages in multiple life areas that we enjoy in America. Another lesson to be learned from these refugee stories is that what we have in the United States works well for us. We seem to be on the right path and we need to stay on that path and not lose our way.

Citizens of the United States can take great pride in the generosity and tender care the United States has provided for these refugee populations. Many died on the way here. Many died even in the sub-standard refugee camps while waiting to come. Many thousands of these refugees, because of being either too old or too disabled to work, receive monthly disability checks from the United States government Social Security Administration. No American could go to any of the seven countries represented here and receive a pension because of old age or because of disabling physical or mental injuries. Who pays for this? The taxes of the hard-working children of the refugees, if not now, will eventually pay back any money paid out to their ailing and aged refugee parents.

The people whose stories appear in this book deserve to have their stories told. How many thousands of books have been published and hundreds of movies have been produced about the Holocaust, even before Schindler’s List? Yet, each Holocaust story was different. What is the value of so many stories about the Holocaust? If we don’t study history, we take the risk of repeating it.

The Cambodian Khmer Rouge children were recruited from the mountains and taught to hate and kill, practicing from childhood by killing and torturing animals. Then they killed two million fellow Cambodians in a four-year period of time. If we do not study history we risk repeating it. Germany has learned and has taken exceptional steps to make sure they never have another Holocaust.

Obviously, not every immigrant who went through extensive trauma and suffering ended up as the ‘walking wounded,’ with confusion and poor memories. Incredibly, some who went through amazing trauma and torture have survived it all relatively intact. I rarely interviewed those who came through the trauma with flying colors. It was the immigrants who were suffering who were brought to me for my help. Only a small percentage of the refugees described in this book were able to take advantage of psychotherapy services. Most had suffered fairly extensive brain damage due to head trauma and other factors. Thus, anything talked about today in a psychotherapy session would be forgotten tomorrow, along with any new insights or coping skills.

Even so, psychiatric medications often provided considerable relief. Insomnia was an almost universal complaint of these traumatized refugees. Many were lucky to sleep a couple of hours a night. Up to three or four more hours of sleep per night could be added with antidepressants and tranquilizers. Pains from headaches caused by old head trauma and the multiple pains of other old injuries (often the result of torture and beatings), together with the night terrors from horrific nightmares, could be dulled with combinations of pain killers and psychotropic medications. Though psychotherapy usually wasn’t going to be a big help, there were other services I offered to these refugees. My evaluations often helped their treating physicians understand their needs. Their doctors could then prescribe antidepressants for depressions I had diagnosed and sleep or pain medications for insomnia or pains I had documented.

I often worked with family members, advising them in the care of these damaged individuals. After years of starvation and often arriving in the U.S. underweight, I saw many of these refugees experience rapid weight gains. Going from a shortage of food to an abundance often resulted in over-eating. Obesity would result in all the dangers of carrying extra weight including diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiac problems. These refugee’s children often noticed that their ailing parents would say that they were hungry and wanted to eat. When they would be told they just eaten awhile before they would say the children were lying and would demand to be fed again. Most of the time, the children would then prepare them another meal. I talked to the children about a need to learn to say no or at a minimum, provide a low calorie snack. I would encourage them to take the ailing refugee parent for a half hour walk each day. Lack of exercise and obesity contribute to even further mental deterioration.

I have seen many cases where the family had still left the control of medications to the patient. Family members would admit that the patient sometimes missed doses or took double doses, having forgotten they just took their medications. I have told many families that the patient’s medications will have to be closely monitored or their life is in danger. Often someone must approach the patient with the pills and water and stand there while they take them. Just leaving the pills next to the patient for the patient to take later often resulted in the pills still being there hours later. Their treating physicians were not always aware of the under-medication problems. Hopefully, my efforts resulted in a longer and healthier life for at least some of the refugees who came under my care.

Often, over a period of a few years I and the families of many refugees have observed drastic losses in cognitive/intellectual function in many refugees. There is yet another reason for cognitive decline. Researchers have found that extended time periods of high levels of the stress hormones, cortisol and adrenalin cause brain damage, particularly in the hippocampus. This is the area of the brain that processes new information. Insomniacs, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder sufferers and those with high levels of anxiety have high levels of cortisol and adrenalin in their blood stream. Thus, long months or years of anxiety, lack of sleep, fear and flashbacks, can result in actual brain damage. Also, high levels of tension and fear often result in high blood pressure, another condition that results in brain damage, especially if poorly controlled by medications.

This is yet another reason why I instruct family members to be diligent about closely supervising the medications of these damaged refugees. Other researchers have found that the death of brain cells caused by stroke or head trauma triggers the production of amyloid-beta protein, which forms the brain tangling plaques of Alzheimer’s. Treating high blood pressure can reduce the risk of stroke. Thus, head trauma in and of itself, though causing immediate brain cell loss and cognitive decline, over time, takes an even greater toll due to plaque production triggered by cell death.

In addition to the tales of incredible valor and persistence, the various ways their past traumas have finally caught up with these many brave refugees are detailed in the following survival stories of immigrants from Cambodia, China, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Laos, Somalia and Vietnam.

CHAPTER TWO: CAMBODIA

HISTORY

In 1863, the king of Cambodia placed the country under French protection; it became a part of French Indochina in 1887. The Japanese occupied the country in World War II; Cambodia became fully independent in 1953. After a five-year struggle, Communist Khmer Rouge forces captured Phnom Penh in April 1975. They evacuated all the cities and towns, ordering the people into the rural areas into slave labor camps. The Khmer Rouge was determined to turn the country into a nation of peasants in which the corruption and parasitism of city life would be completely uprooted. In 1977 and 1978 the violence reached a climax as the revolutionaries themselves turned against each other in bloody purges.

Before 1975 the Khmer Rouge tolerated the activities of the community of Buddhist monks, or sangha, in the liberated areas in order to win popular support. This changed abruptly after the fall of Phnom Penh. The country's 40,000 to 60,000 Buddhist monks, regarded by the regime as social parasites, were defrocked and forced into labor brigades. Many monks were executed; temples and pagodas were destroyed or turned into storehouses or jails. Images of the Buddha were defaced and dumped into rivers and lakes. People who were discovered praying or expressing religious sentiments in other ways were often killed.

Some of the greatest causes of death under the Khmer Rouge were hunger, disease, and exposure. Many city people could not survive the rigors of life in the countryside, the forced marches, and the hard physical labor. People died from the bites of venomous snakes, drowned in flooded areas during the rainy season, and were killed by wild beasts in jungle areas. Many fell victim to malaria. Others died in the fighting between Vietnam and Cambodia in 1978 and in 1979. Executions accounted for hundreds of thousands of victims and perhaps for as many as 1 million.

The Vietnamese invaded in December 1978 and drove the Khmer Rouge into the countryside. The Vietnamese occupied the country for 10 years, but there was almost 13 years of civil war. The 1991 Paris Peace Accords ordered a ceasefire, which was not fully respected by the Khmer Rouge. UN sponsored elections in 1993 helped restore some semblance of normalcy. The final elements of the Khmer Rouge surrendered in early 1999.

TRAINING FOR MURDER: THE KHMER ROUGE

Disturbing stories of Khmer Rouge atrocities began to surface even before they took over Cambodia in 1975. In March 1974, they captured the old capital city of Odongk north of Phnom Penh, destroyed it, dispersed its 20,000 inhabitants into the countryside, and executed the teachers and civil servants. The same year, they brutally murdered sixty people, including women and children, in a small village called Sar Sarsdam in Siemreab Province. A similar incident was reported at Ang Snuol, a town west of the capital.

Wilfred Burchett’s book, The China Cambodia Vietnam Triangle was published in 1981. He described how the Khmer Rouge children were recruited from the poorest of the poor in the mountains. Their indoctrination was that educated city dwellers were their enemy. They were convinced that their task was to track down and murder their country’s class enemies or eventually they would be killed themselves. Those who were enrolled in the revolutionary forces began their military careers at the age of 12. They were separated from their families and removed from their native villages to be indoctrinated in what Sihanouk called a cult of cruelty.

Pol Pot believed that getting the youth used to the cruelty game would result in these soldiers delighting in massacres and in waging war. They were taught to harden their skills by killing dogs, cats and other animals by clubbing or bayoneting them. The Four-Year Plan of 1977 to 1980, an Angkar directive stated, was the eradication of culture, art, all vestiges of imperialism, colonialism, feudalism and all other former classes in power. The Khmer Rouge carried out the directive and murdered classical dancers, musicians, doctors, technicians, engineers, students, diplomats, professors, journalists, light skinned people and people wearing glasses.

The Khmer Rouge killed two million fellow Cambodians in a four-year period of time. They delighted in their murders, feeling they were cleansing the land of undesirable elements. The Khmer Rouge had the enslaved nation of Cambodia (Kampuchea) working up to 20 hours a day, seven days a week. Historically, captives from a war or skirmishes were considered by the Khmer Rouge to legitimately be property, slaves of the conquerors, and to be disposed of as desired.

The Khmer Rouge treated all the citizens of their own country that they had captured, as slaves. The slaves grew rice, which they could not eat or they would be killed. The many tons of rice grown were exported to China in exchange for guns and other weaponry so the Khmer Rouge could maintain a hold on their power. The Khmer Rouge felt that no knowledge about anything was necessary. Anyone could build a dam. They had their slaves carry sticks, rocks and dirt to pile up to make dams so that rice fields could be irrigated. But they had no engineers instructing them (they had killed them all) and the dams often washed away, killing hundreds in the wake of the floods.

The Khmer Rouge forced their slaves to build aqueducts but they had no surveyors or engineers to advise them as to the slope of the land and they often found, when it rained, water ran in the opposite direction than they had intended. Like the German concentration camps, they worked people to death, watching them become more and more emaciated, to save on food rations. The rice was for trading for guns, not for the slaves, who were often killed for grabbing a handful of rice

I LIGHT MY WAY

My name is Somboon. During the day when I go out, I take a flashlight with me. When I have appointments to keep such as with doctors, I have scheduled the appointment for the morning or sometimes in the afternoon. I never have appointments at night because I am afraid of the dark. I worry that sometime I won’t get back home before it gets dark. So that’s why I take the flashlight to light my way just in case I am out after dark sometime. In the United States a lot of streets have streetlights but you never know when you could find yourself in a dark place.

While I was growing up in Cambodia I went to school for four years and I learned to read and write in Cambodian. Now, I can still recognize a few words in Cambodian but for the most part I have forgotten most of what I learned. I can’t write anything anymore though I can still sign my name.

My husband and I were married a few months before the Communists took over Cambodia. When the Communists got closer to our village, we escaped to the city. In the next couple of years we had two children. The Communists eventually got to that city also and took over. When the Khmer rouge Communists first captured my family members they gathered us all together. They somehow found out that my sister’s husband had been a soldier. This was in spite of the fact that he had changed into civilian clothes. They killed him by shooting him between the eyes. My sister and several other family members were standing within a few feet of my sister’s husband when he was killed. Then the Communists forced my husband and I to return to our old village. From there we were all shipped off to different forced labor camps. My husband was sent to a different camp than me.

On the long march to the camp I saw a lot of killing and dead bodies along the side of the road. Soldiers and teachers were lined up and killed. I myself was tied up and taken to a place and asked a lot of questions. The ones who answered the questions wrong were killed. The ones who were suspected of being educated, or suspected of being soldiers who had fought the Khmer rouge, were killed. A lot of my family members were killed. Many of them I saw shot in front of me. Some of the murdered people first had holes poked in their ears. A rope was pulled through this hole. There would be ten or fifteen people on a rope, in a line, being pulled along on the rope. They would be led off into the fields never to be seen again, though the soldiers who had led the people off on the ear-rope came back.

In the camps we were forced to work up to 20 hours a day. We did farming. Sometimes we had to break up rocks in the mountains, load them into carts and the rocks were carried away to somewhere else.

I was pregnant when the Communists took over and after a couple of months I had another baby. The next day after I had the baby I had to go back to the field to work. My other two babies were age two and age three. There was not enough food to eat. Some of