Meeting with an Amazing Khmer American Woman

I meant to post this a long time ago. Putsata was one of our first contacts in Cambodia. She is an amazing story teller and I wish that we had more time to just sit and listen to all her amazing tales.

A Reporter Returns Home

Teaching in Cambodia, and learning some tough lessons

By Putsata Reang

Just one month after I helped launch a pioneer project training Khmer journalists in investigative reporting, Cambodia's repressive government cracked down on dissent, arresting at least five human rights activists and journalists. In spite of the risks, I urged the reporters to continue their dangerous but critical work. They lashed back.

"It's easy for you to say," one journalist told me. "You can get on a plane and go back home. We have to stay."

I wanted to say: "But this is my home. I'm Khmer, just like you," until I realized the hollowness of those words. The shameful truth was that if Cambodia's political instability worsened, I would leave again. Only this time, by choice. Thirty-two years before, my family and I fled the Khmer Rouge.

Growing up in Corvallis, Oregon, I listened to my Ma spin stories about Cambodia, tales of climbing coconut trees and riding water buffalo through sun-smeared rice paddies. She said little about the war, only that we were lucky to be alive.

"When you are old enough," she'd say, "go help Cambodia."

I finally did, two years ago. Supported by an Alicia Patterson Fellowship, I was going to spend a year researching Cambodia's intractable problem of land grabbing. At Portland International Airport, my mother dabbed at big watery eyes. "Good luck, gohn ma [mother's child]," she said. "Be careful."

When I moved there in February 2005, Cambodia was volatile. The year before, popular labor rights activist Chea Vichea was gunned down while reading a newspaper. Garment workers and farmers alternately protested in front of the National Assembly. One month after I arrived, military police shot and killed five farmers during a forced eviction. Few Khmer journalists had the skills or resources to get beyond basic facts and dig deeper into such stories.

As my fellowship came to a close and I prepared to head home, Internews, an international media development organization, posted a job advising journalists in Cambodia. I read the description and knew it was made for me. I took a buyout from the San Jose Mercury News and then called my Ma to tell her I wasn't coming home. I was already there.

I thought I was the ideal candidate to push for media development in Cambodia. I had solid professional credentials and was qualified like no other candidate. I'm Khmer. I speak the language and understand the culture. The benefits were clear. The drawbacks were not.

Being able to communicate with journalists during training and one-on-one mentoring sessions meant greater efficiency. Understanding the culture meant there were things they did not need to explain, such as why stories never included ages (it's rude to ask) and few were infused with direct quotes (it's an affront to directly question authority).

I wasn't prepared for the more nuanced challenges that working in media development in my homeland would present — challenges that invariably pitted me against the journalists I was trying to help.

Forging trust and extracting respect from them would be my first obstacle. I was working in a field with few women, in a program where all the participants were male and mostly older than I. No one in Cambodia's male-dominated society wants to answer to a woman, much less a younger one. I had no credibility and a lot to prove. I was also what the journalists called "Khmer pordadeh ," or "Cambodian from abroad," a foreigner. A fraud. In America, I never felt truly American. Now in Cambodia, I was told I wasn't really Cambodian.

I soon started to appreciate the distinction. Nariddh, the assistant journalism adviser, and I habitually urged good ethics. Cambodian journalists routinely practice "reporting by envelope," where getting paid to attend press conferences by the people holding them was not the exception but the rule.

One afternoon, a few reporters from our group strolled into our office and joked loudly about a press conference they covered that morning, where journalists jostled afterward as government officials distributed envelopes stuffed with R10,000 (roughly $5).

"Did you take one?" I asked Sem Saroeun, a journalist who earns about $50 monthly.

He paused, then said: "Of course I did. What can I do? My children are hungry."

"How can we write about corruption if we are corrupt?" I asked the other reporters during one training session on objectivity, balance and fairness.

Averted eyes. Silence. Then one weighed in.

"How much do you make on your NGO salary?" Eng Mengleng asked.

My answer mimicked theirs. Averted eyes. Silence. We shared shame, but for different reasons.

That night, I cried. In a country where some journalists make in one month what I might spend on a good Cabernet, and where my international job paid international wages and extras, like housing and health insurance, my condemnation of their bribe-taking felt disingenuous. In Cambodia, depending upon who you were, professional ethics was either a sacrifice or a luxury.

Beyond their lack of writing and reporting experience, the journalists were operating in a country with no freedom of information law, a place where telling the truth meant risking their lives. The end result: stories populated by anonymous sources and rumors that reporters tried to pass off as fact. Ban Chandararith ("Rith") investigated generous tax breaks on farmland for wealthy and politically connected businessmen. He refused to name names.

"It kills credibility," I said.

"I don't want to get killed," Rith replied.

I dropped the matter.

The biggest challenge arrived quickly. Just as the program tottered to its feet, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen began targeting journalists who criticized his border treaty with Vietnam. The string of arrests left our reporters shaken. Some of them — even those who worked for pro-government newspapers — wanted to leave the program, while others threatened to drop out of journalism altogether. A few talked privately about fleeing to Thailand.

Now was not the time to quit, Nariddh and I pleaded, but rather to stay and fight. When the journalists pointed out that I had something they did not — freedom to leave — I felt betrayed, confused, guilty as charged. I had already prepared for my own escape, withdrawing several thousand dollars in cash and wedging it inside my passport. Just in case.

By virtue of escaping from Cambodia in 1975 — and the Khmer Rouge genocide these journalists had survived — I possessed a dark blue passport emblazoned with a bald eagle seal that was my golden ticket to safety.

There were no more arrests that year. The journalists' stories led to major changes, including an overhaul of hiring practices within the Ministry of Education, long overdue pension payments for demobilized soldiers and the firing of the Minister of Labor accused in a human trafficking scandal. The program grew. The guys and I did, too.

Throughout the year, I walked a fine line between nudging them to fight for a free press and being complicit in their self-censorship for safety's sake.

When my contract with Internews ended, I knew that for all the reasons I was right for the job, I was also wrong for it. I declined a promotion, even as the guys were asking me to stay.

It was time for me to go home.

Putsata Reang (Putsata@gmail.com) is a journalist and author of the true crime novel "Deadly Secrets." She is currently at work on a family biography.

http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4409

Deported! Surprising Details on Who Can Get the Boot

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER
http://www.iexaminer.org/archives/?cat=3

Category/Issue: News, Volume 34 No. 24

Deported! Surprising details on who can get the boot
What’s considered a “deportable crime” is widening — at the expense of families and people’s rights
BY DIEM LY
Examiner Assistant Editor

It’s a one-way ticket no one wants.

Recent incidents of deportation and the protests against them have once again shed light on this bitter struggle over rights, home, and family.

On Dec. 7, a young man committed suicide a year after he was deported back to Cambodia. “Chan” had been suffering from depression and psychotic episodes for years before his deportation. Without proper medication in Cambodia, he relapsed and hung himself. Korsang Khmer, an organization in Cambodia that hires deportees and performs drug prevention outreach, reported other similar instances of attempted suicides, which included jumping off buildings and self-poisoning.

On Dec. 10, thousands of protesters at Canada’s Vancouver International Airport delayed a paralyzed man’s deportation flight back to India. Immigration officials charged Laibar Singh for entering the country on improper documents and attempted to deport him for the crime. Singh had suffered a stroke while in the country.

In Pennsylvania, a Filipino American couple is facing deportation because of a “misrepresentation” in their marital status during their visa-application process more than 20 years ago — a deportable crime. Dr. Pedro Servano and his wife, Salvacion, are defending their rights to stay in America and have four U.S.-born children, a medical practice, and a grocery business.

Why all the fuss?
In the last 10 years, U.S. immigration officials have been deporting Asian Pacific American (APA) immigrants with a zeal and cunning not seen since the Chinese Exclusion Acts of the 1880s.

The catalyst was the new immigration legislation in 1996 that greatly expanded what’s considered a “deportable crime.” As a result, relatively minor offenses, like shoplifting or “joy-riding,” can lead to removal from the United States.

Here’s another kicker — the 1996 immigration changes are retroactive. Therefore, offenses committed long before the 1996 changes — are subject to review, detention, and expulsion. For example, a now law-abiding 50-year-old immigrant man is susceptible to deportation for a crime he committed — and served time for — as a teen 20 years ago, at an age when he could not grasp the severe consequences of his actions. But even for those who committed a crime post-1996, advocates like Many Uch, 31, say deportation is still an unjust and cruel punishment.

Uch, a Cambodian American activist in Seattle, was detained in an immigration jail for two-and-a-half years after completing a sentence of 40 months for a 1994 burglary. Uch told the IE in an interview that his experience in detention felt like “I was doing life in immigration jail.”

Then once detained, the “illegal alien” has to endure a frustrating uphill battle with the system. Those who have been detained, like Uch, reported their rights were stripped away, access to a public defender was not offered nor provided, and detainees were expected to wait indefinitely in immigration prison for a possible release, for their country of origin to accept them — whenever that would be — or for banishment.

Background
Prior to 1996, immigrants were permitted to go before an immigration judge, who could exercise his discretion in imposing penalties, case-by-case. In this way, the judge could consider the immigrant’s family, children, community ties, U.S. military service, or possibility of persecution in the home country, and determine whether deportation is an excessively harsh punishment for that situation.

The 1996 changes stripped away this power from the judges, and instead, sweeping deportation procedures were implemented.

“Immigration judges’ hand are tied in the U.S.,” said Human Rights Watch researcher Alison Parker on the organization’s Web site. “There’s nothing they can do to protect families or to acknowledge the many contributions non-citizens have made to their communities or the nation.”

But that seemed to matter little because in 2003, the United States reached a decision to hold deportable aliens indefinitely. Indefinitely. The Bush administration continues to hold this position that any non-U.S. citizen convicted of an aggravated felony or sentenced to more than 365 days for certain crimes must be deportable to their country of origin.

And, it doesn’t matter if the person has served their criminal sentence or that the sentence was suspended — deportation is as real as the sentence they just served.

Uch said he instigated prison riots and was involved in two hunger strikes, because, as he explains, “there was nothing to lose” as you languish in jail with multiple barriers to justice and no power or knowledge of when you will be released or deported.

So is anyone deportable? Pretty much — non-citizens with a criminal conviction, lawful permanent residents (green card holders), and legal immigrants such as refugees, students, business people, and those who had been involved in war or a humanitarian disaster — are considered deportable if the crime fits. And, immigration officials said being married to a U.S. citizen doesn’t automatically guarantee that you’re safe.

Surely then, only hardened criminals and violent felons are deported, right? Actually, any violation of your status in the United States can potentially lead to deportation proceedings. This includes staying beyond the period authorized, as in student visas, or entering without proper documents.

According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data in a 2007 Human Rights Watch report, 65 percent of immigrants deported for crimes in 2005 had been convicted of non-violent offenses, including non-violent theft offenses such as shoplifting; 21 percent were deported for offenses involving violence against people; and 15 percent were deported for “other” crimes. Currently, 2,000 Cambodians are detained in the United States, while 5,000 Vietnamese are imprisoned until the government of Vietnam accepts deportees, which it currently does not, or until they are released through a waiver or appeal. To date, over half a million people have been deported from American shores.

As reported by Human Rights Watch, many of those deported arrived in the United States as children and were lawful permanent residents who lived legally in the country for decades. The Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC) confirms this in an earlier 2002 report (the year the Cambodian government declared its repatriation agreement with the United States, which stated it would now accept deportees) which reported the immigrants were an average of nine years old when they entered America and had lived in the country for an average of 20 years.

Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. deportation policy didn’t become more severe after Sept. 11, instead, the drastic changes made in 1996 have been at work for more than a decade.

The issues of “booting” someone out
Yes, people can be deported for minor offenses. Yes, the law is retroactive. But, there are other concerns — very human concerns that advocates against deportation are worried about most. The concerns greatly outweigh any “danger to society” immigration officials or the government will assert regarding deportable immigrants. With information from SEARAC, the main issues are:

1. Deportees receive double or triple punishment: They served their original sentence, then were detained, sometimes, for as long or longer than their sentence, and then punished again by deportation.

2. People fighting deportation lack due process: People have few, if any, opportunities to argue their case, seek good legal representation, and immigration judges have few opportunities to save them from deportation.

3. Deportation hurts and separates families: This is a biggie, as deportation is essentially banishment from all you know and love. Reports said more than half of the time deportation removes the individual who is the family’s sole breadwinner.

4. Deportees usually lack support once in their country of origin: Those deported have few, if any, relationships in the country of origin, no job skills, and often do not speak, read, or write the languages well. Some Cambodians, like “Chan,” were sent away without the treatment they need for health issues like mental illness or diabetes.

5. People fear human rights violations in Southeast Asia: Many immigrants could face persecution due to their flight from the homeland and personal or family histories.

6. Acts resulting in deportation can stem from educational and economic hardships common to resettled refugees: The refugee experience can illicit many social, educational, and economic challenges.

What to do
The issue of deportation is complex and will require a creative solution. The Asian American community is especially impacted by the 1996 law as a significant number of its population is made up of immigrants and refugees. Unfortunately, Human Rights Watch reported that a reformation of the 1996 laws were not included in the immigration legislation Congress considered this year. Former INS General Counsel David Martin told Human Rights Watch that “Congress didn’t anticipate what would happen,” but didn’t want to seem soft on immigration.

So, the fight continues.
Some might ask, “Why don’t they just become U.S. citizens?” This has challenges of its own. Before, a dual citizenship wasn’t available and immigrants didn’t want to lose the citizenship of their home country where family members may still be. Also, for some, there was ignorance of the legal steps to become a citizen and many did not understand that “permanent resident” status means anything but permanent, as it doesn’t shield you from expulsion.

SEARAC suggests educating community members about deportation so they will be able to avoid it and support organizations that work with deportees and their families in the United States and Asia. Also, demand Congress to amend harsh laws and return judicial discretion to immigration judges; in this way, officials can take into consideration the person’s family relationships in the United States, the hardship they may experience in the country of origin, the length of time spent in America, the period of time after the conviction of the crime, and the person’s investment in the community.

To address the impact of deportation and its repercussions on deportees and families, Many Uch is coordinating a press conference and rally on Jan. 8, 2008 in downtown Seattle in an effort to raise awareness around these issues. He wanted to use his deportation experience as a catalyst to change the laws and save families from separation. Uch helped free himself and others from detention (but not from the possibility of expulsion) when he and other detainees won a case in the U.S. Supreme Court — an unprecedented and rare win for detainees, but reflects a common hope for all immigrants and those detained to be free from the cloud of deportation hanging forever over their heads.

When asked how he’s taking his possible deportation, Uch sums it up: “I just live day by day. I don’t make long-term plans. It’s too hard to think about. It comes down to things you have control over and things you can’t. I can work, go out and do outreach and educate people, but as to deportation, I have no control over it … but I’m not gonna go without a fight, I know that.”