Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Mon, 28 Sep 1992 12:00:52 -0400
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      CAM: Cambodian Americans

09/28

Cambodian Americans

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

By PETER ENG
 Associated Press Writer
   PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) -- Bisa Cheng and her husband left their tragic
nation years ago and settled in California, but could not totally abandon their
loved ones and heritage for the prosperity and peace of America.
   They recently returned to visit Bisa's uncle, whom she had not seen for 16
years. Her husband, Konthal, entertains thoughts of returning permanently to
help preserve Cambodia's traditional art and architecture.
   "I'm a naturalized American, but I'm a Cambodian at heart," said Konthal,
39, who works for the Stockton, Calif., school district.
   A growing number of Cambodian-Americans have visited their homeland since
October 1991, when a U.N.-sponsored peace accord ended two decades of war.
Before that, even telephone and mail contact was nearly impossible.
   Besides the fighting, expatriates feared the communist-style government
would give them trouble if they returned. The government has been granting
Cambodians more freedom, however, and welcoming those who fled for whatever
reason.
   Thousands of U.N. peacekeepers now are in the streets, helping guide the
country toward elections next year.
   Cambodian-Americans say many more would come back if the future was not
clouded by Khmer Rouge stalling on aspects of the peace agreement.
   Since 1975, the United States has accepted 150,000 Cambodian refugees, far
more than any other nation.
   They fled a succession of terrible events: the civil war of 1970-75, the
fanatical Khmer Rouge regime that followed, killing hundreds of thousands of
people; a Vietnamese invasion in December 1978, and an ensuing guerrilla war
that lasted 13 years.
   Many returning Cambodian-Americans are from California. They are seeing the
sights, searching for lost relatives, setting up businesses to profit from the
free-spending U.N. personnel, even trying to help chart the political future.
   Many who had fled the Khmer Rouge horror are relieved to see what, by
comparison, is an economic boom. Others, wearing trendy athletic shoes and
similar rewards of affluence, are shocked by the malnutrition and poverty.
   Bisa Cheng fled to the refugee camps of Thailand in 1979, after Vietnam had
driven the Khmer Rouge from power and installed a new government, then was
sponsored by a family to live in America.
   Her uncle was the only close relative who survived. She remembered only his
nickname and that he was a sign painter.
   In 1990, on her first return to Phnom Penh, she went to four painting shops
before finding him.
   "He was older," she said, "but when he came to me, I knew: He's my uncle."
   Another California resident said that, after 10 years of separation, he
found his mother selling fruit at the central market.
   She did not recognize him because of the mustache, strange clothing and
added weight. His mother thought he was Japanese, the man said, but began
crying when he spoke her name.
   Sam Oum, a former real estate agent in Long Beach, Calif., saw a business
opportunity in the flood of U.N. officials, diplomats and journalists. He
returned with his wife and daughter and opened the International House, serving
cheeseburgers, pancakes and other American-style food.
   Oum said many expatriate Cambodians look down on those who stayed behind.
   "They come like Americans," he said. "Their dress is different, their shoes
are different. They're flashing U.S. dollars. ... Some play around, get a bunch
of girls and go back."
   While people like Konthal Cheng want to preserve Cambodia's cultural
uniqueness, others want to replace its dictatorial political tradition with the
liberal democratic ideals they learned in America.
   Human rights activists demand that the Khmer Rouge be punished for genocide.
Several Cambodian-Americans work for anti-communist political parties formed to
contest next year's election.
   Chanphal Ngy, 42, quit his job at a life insurance company in Newington,
Conn., and returned in June to work for the Liberal Democratic Party.
   He was a Cambodian air force pilot and flew to safety when the Khmer Rouge
seized power in 1975, but could not forget his homeland.
   "Every day I dreamed about it," he said.
   Ngy felt he must return to help his people with what he had learned in
America.
   "We will inform them that democracy and human rights will benefit their
standard of living," he said. "We experience it firsthand in the United States,
and I think we can help the Cambodians to believe the same way."
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