A GHOST OUTSIDE THE FENCE
Ranney, Jonathan
THE LAST WORD Jonathan Ranney A Ghost Outside the Fence It was one of those steaming tropical afternoons in eastern Thailand. Six sanitation workers and I were rebuilding a section of the...
...A lucky few get to join their families in another country, but most remain squatting on a dry, dusty patch of Thai soil, living on handouts from the United Nations...
...Others, former members of the Khmer Rouge, fled across the border ten years ago, fearing revenge at the hands of their fellow Khmer...
...Twenty years of civil war take their toll not only in human lives but in the economic strength of a nation...
...My mind flashed back to an incident two weeks before, when Khmer bandits had attacked the camp at night right near the spot where we were mending fence...
...His shoes were tied to his belt...
...I'm sure his story was true, but it had a polished edge to it...
...In silence we trudged into the shimmering rows of baked bamboo huts that formed the Khao I Dang Holding Center, a refugee camp on the Thai-Kampuchean border...
...From the rusting basket he produced a bottle of Mekong whiskey, and Samat went in search of some cups...
...Six sanitation workers and I were rebuilding a section of the perimeter fence that surrounded the camp...
...A small pouch of bright-colored kroma cloth lay half open at his side, and some of its contents—including a plastic medicine packet from a camp clinic—were strewn about...
...It's time for the international community to break the stalemate that traps the Khmer refugees on the border...
...We were plowing through the waist-high weeds when a local Thai farmer shouted to us from the distance...
...Two Thai rangers who had been watching us waded toward the spot where we were gathered...
...As we struggled with the heavy rolls of barbed wire, one of the workers, Samat, rattled on about how he was beaten with bamboo by the Khmer Rouge and how he fled his village and crossed the border into Thailand when the Vietnamese came...
...Shortly the camp authorities arrived and waved our group back into the camp...
...As the last details were being sorted out, Ta Khan, the garbage-collection supervisor, rolled into the compound on his clanking bicycle...
...The front of his shirt was drenched in blood, his sunken eyes glinting in the scorching sun...
...Now they watch their children grow up never knowing anything outside the camps...
...Like most of the Khmer refugees in the camps, the people in Khao I Dang are political prisoners, trapped in a web of fear and uncertainty...
...I glanced at my watch and realized it was time to go home...
...If the refugees were able to return to Kampuchea, how would they survive without some kind of assistance in resettling...
...One Thai ranger had been killed and six Khmer refugees wounded...
...Though the border is only a few kilometers away, any overland trip can mean death in a minefield or at the hands of roving bandits...
...Samat turned and translated: The man claimed he had found a ghost...
...Soon we were having a short drink and hors d'oeuvres made of an unidentifiable piece of grilled chicken...
...The Khmer refugees don't have many options...
...Some came to the border only to find that the countries in which they hoped to resettle had virtually shut their doors...
...We knelt beside the corpse and slowly rolled it on its back...
...They remained silent as Samat, Ta Thong, and the others recounted the events of the afternoon...
...It's time to help them rebuild their lives in Kampuchea in peace...
...Though we could see no marks on the body, there was no doubt the man was dead...
...We slipped through the small gap in the peJonathan Ranney worked with Khmer refugees at the Khao I Dang Holding Center in Thailand...
...Two large, round bullet holes were in the man's chest...
...It was the end of another day in Khao I Dang...
...Ta Thong, another of the workers, picked at the contents of the kroma pouch for any salvageable items...
...Where the farmer stood, we could make out a motionless form lying face down in the grass...
...Since then, the Thai rangers who patrolled the fence-boys in black trousers carrying battered AK47s—had been jittery, shooting at anything that moved outside the fence at night...
...rimeter fence and wired it shut behind us...
...When we arrived back at the sanitation office, a throng of other workers had already heard the news about the body...
...The rangers notified the camp authorities...
...It looked to be a Khmer man in his early twenties, dressed in a faded, wine-colored shirt and ragged trousers...
...Within the next few months, Samat would come up for an interview at the American Embassy, and his story would be his ticket out of the camp...
...Even a quick excursion outside the fence can have fatal consequences...
Vol. 53 • April 1989 • No. 4
