Claire On the Border: The Genocide and the Refugee Crisis of Cambodia (1980)

This blog post is, in some small way, prompted by the refugee crises impacting so much of the world. The current, tragic situation in Gaza (Oct/23-May/24) has been especially triggering for Claire. Accordingly, she wishes to share a bit about her past work with refugees traumatized by war.

Long before she met Jim, Claire was an adventurous soul. At age 19 and shortly after finishing CEGEP in the small town she grew up in (Victoriaville, Quebec), she fled her domineering father and the limited future her parents envisaged for her. The next five years were a period of learning about the wider world, self-discovery and inadvertently, lots of adventure, culminating in her work with the International Red Cross on the Cambodian border. Unlike Jim, Claire is understated and much less likely to ramble on about her past accomplishments and adventures. So, with a little encouragement from Jim, this is her story:

Growing up I often thought of becoming a doctor but a lack of resources and in those days, a lack of self-confidence, led me to do a three year, Certificate in Nursing as part of my CEGEP. It was also, in my mind, the fastest way to gain the financial independence required to leave what I saw as a limited future in my home town. So, shortly after graduating I moved to Quebec City and started work as a neo-natal ICU nurse. After maybe a year and half in that lovely town, I was ready for something new, so I moved to Switzerland and got a job, also neo-natal ICU nursing, at a hospital in Lausanne. Despite the many joys of living in beautiful Switzerland with wonderful, short-hop, travel opportunities in every direction, work in the conservative, physician-dominated atmosphere of a Swiss hospital, grated on my burgeoning emancipation and contrasted with the more relaxed, collegial atmosphere I was accustomed to in Quebec. So, after a year in Lausanne, I backpacked Europe for a while then headed to Senegal for an eye-opening travel experience. At the time, I thought I would never be able to work in Africa. Little did I know that I would later live and work in Africa for seven years. I then went back to Canada where I landed another neo-natal position at a hospital in Ottawa. This was also an opportunity to improve my English, which at the time was quite limited, and to take some courses towards a Bachelor’s Degree In Nursing. Despite the work load I remained restless. I wasn’t sure why, or what I was looking for but my new found interest in travel and discovering the wider world had taken hold

So when I heard that the Canadian Red Cross was recruiting medical staff to work on the border of Kampuchea (Cambodia) and Thailand, I applied. My limited nursing experience at that point, neonatology and pediatric ER, all within highly structured hospital environments, was hardly preparation for ad hoc, field nursing in the rudimentary conditions of refugee camps with a traumatized population. Despite this lack of relevant experience (they wanted 10 years), they hired me as I was ‘bilingual’. A bit of a stretch, but I wasn’t about to dispel the notion. 

Despite promises to my boss to the contrary, I quit my job in Ottawa and soon (July,1980) found myself in Toronto as part of a small team (two logisticians, two doctors, an anesthetist and three nurses) being briefed by the Canadian Red Cross for an upcoming relief mission with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to one of the large refugee camps on the border between Cambodia and Thailand. As the instructor briefed us on the volatile military situation, the ubiquitous landmines, the conditions in the camps and all the attendant security measures, I thought ‘what have I got myself into’. I was young (24 years old), inexperienced and quite frankly, nervous.

Most of you will remember hearing about the horror that was the Cambodian genocide during the reign of the Khmer Rouge (1976 -79). The tragic and convoluted history of Cambodia in the 20th century is hard to get one’s head around but, as they say, “who doesn’t learn from history is doomed to repeat it”, so I tried to write a short recap of the past 80 years in that country. I gave up. It’s too complicated, tumultuous and with too many players. Suffice it to say, that it was the destabilization of the region brought on by the Vietnam War (locally referred to as the American War), the malign influence of neighboring countries, the ‘secret’ US bombing campaign of eastern Cambodia and the fragile, often corrupt, political situation that led to the conditions that facilitated the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Even today, though constitutionally a multi-party state, Cambodia is now a de facto one-party state ruled by a dictator. Sadly, if the past is any indication, and despite the seeming stability of recent times, Cambodia’s future remains uncertain.

Most relevant to my experience, is that 4 year period of the KR, under the leadership of the infamous Pol Pot and his efforts to create an entirely self-sufficient, agrarian, socialist society. To fulfill its goals, the Khmer Rouge emptied the cities and forced Cambodians to relocate to labor camps in the countryside, where mass executions, forced labour, physical abuse, malnutrition and disease were rampant. Most estimates are that two million people (25% of the population) died during this short, still difficult to comprehend, period. With the Vietnamese invasion in 1978 and subsequent collapse of the KR regime, a massive flow of refugees fled towards the safety of Thailand. By the end of 1979, about 750,000 Cambodians were believed to be either in Thailand, in the border camps, or near the border attempting to cross into Thailand. The Thai army was very aggressive and did everything in their power to prevent refugees from crossing the border. In their effort to flee, many perished in the heavily mined border region. Note: The 1984 film The Killing Fields and the book, The Quality of Mercy by William Shawcross are both excellent accounts of this horrific period in modern history.

After a comprehensive 3 day orientation in Toronto covering the Red Cross itself (mission, values, objectives) and our specific task to assist the refugees in the Thai-Cambodia border camps. The ICRC’s mandate is to protect victims of international and internal armed conflicts as opposed to the role of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which is to provide relief in the case of natural disasters. My assignment was to work as a public health nurse in a team that included an American and a Dutch nurse, both of whom had way more experience than me.

Those three months of my first posting with the Red Cross were truly unforgettable. Despite my lack of experience, I somehow managed to ‘wing it’ (something I’ve been doing all my life)and performed my duties to a level acceptable to both the need and my employer. I got along with and worked well with my international colleagues. Most importantly, I really enjoyed working with the Khmer staff and felt I connected well with the refugees.

It’s funny the things one remembers from that time. Stuck in my brain is the the flip flop sound of the Khmers walking in sandals. Everyday, the children of the camp would welcome us and send us home with “hello” and “bye-bye” and their unforgettable smiles. Some of the newborns were even named Bye-bye. As I said before, the refugees were unfailingly friendly, kind and, despite the desperate situation they were in, amazingly never complaining. I don’t remember ever seeing an outward display of anger or even frustration. I think many of us secretly wanted to take some of the orphans home with us. Some international workers managed to smuggle some Khmers in the Red Cross ambulance out of the camps to a better equipped hospital on the Thai side. This ‘operation’ was eventually uncovered and the Thai army guarding the border became much more hostile towards us.

Our team was assigned to Nong Chan, a refugee camp of 15,000 individuals. We worked 6 days on then one day off, with a bit longer break at the end of each month.

Each morning, we drove our truck to a warehouse to pick up supplies for the day, made sure that our radios were working then drove as a convoy with a big Red Cross flag on the side of the truck to a designated site. Once there, we waited for a ‘green light’ that came from our Chief Delegate, ensuring the camps were safe – neither infiltrated by KR forces or under attack by Vietnamese troops – so that we could cross the Thai border and enter the camps.

Nong Chan served not only its residents but also the ‘travelers’. These were Khmers who still lived in Cambodia but came for food and seed distributions, most of which was managed by CARE, the international NGO. Once a month, there was a distribution of food for the ‘walking travelers’ and then another for the ‘oxcarts travelers’. The day the oxcarts came was an impressive sight. Thousands (I seem to remember the number 30,000 ??)of oxcarts attended the distribution in a very orderly fashion. It was during the rainy season and the carts picked up mud as they traveled. The road out of camp was noticeably lower once they’d left. The UNICEF logistician who organized the distribution was very good and well respected.

Nong Chan camp had a simple hospital (built all in bamboo) with surgery, pediatric and obstetric services. There was also a nutritional center for children. Several other international and local organizations worked in the camps providing different services such as rehabilitation, prosthetics, food distribution, traditional medicine, etc.

After finishing my three month contract, but while still in Bangkok (preparing to visit Nepal), the Canadian Red Cross offered me another posting. I had a couple of weeks to return home, visit my folks and then meet a new team in Toronto, which, BTW, included a nurse from BC who, unbeknownst to me at the time, would a few years later become my sister-in-law. This time it was a six month posting, working with the League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in refugee camps in Djibouti (on the ‘Horn of Africa’), working with a drought-impacted population of nomadic herders in truly desperate straights – a story for another time. I left that difficult posting quite exhausted emotionally and returned to Canada for some much needed rest. I applied for some courses, one in midwifery in England and another in tropical medicine in Belgium. A colleague from the Red Cross encouraged tropical medicine so off I went to Antwerp. The course was an intensive six months and upon graduation I felt more prepared for ongoing international relief work. Within weeks of leaving Antwerp I was offered another posting and soon after returned to the border camps. This time, I would be working as a surgical nurse (once again, with questionable qualifications)! The posting was for three months and I worked in Khao I Dang, another large camp but more established with better facilities and resources to attend to the injured.

One last tale. Jim and I lived and worked in Zimbabwe for over three years. When Jim was home in Canada on a conference, we were, without warning, given 24 hours to leave the country – a complex story involving a corrupt businessman and, much to his advantage, also a cousin to President Mugabe, who wanted to control our project funds, that ostensibly Jim controlled. This character orchestrated the situation wherein we could not get our visas renewed. To make a long story short, I had to pack up our lives of 3+ years, by myself, in short order, with two kids under four years of age and head to the airport, loaded down with baggage. Last minute border control issues compounded an incredibly stressful time but we boarded our plane in the nick of time and headed for Paris. I tell this tale to highlight how, despite our enormous privilege, resources and connections, that I felt, just a wee bit, like a refugee forced to flee my home. To fully understand the feelings/emotions/mental state of a true refugee is quite another thing. My thoughts are with the people of Gaza, Ukraine, Syria and the many other unstable and unsafe countries around our world! We are so lucky.