CEOCambodiaNews wrote: ↑Fri Aug 18, 2023 4:08 am ‘Like becoming a refugee again’: They paid for their crimes. The US deported them anyway
Hundreds of Cambodians who fled genocide and civil war are being sent back to a country they barely know
by Vivian Ho in Phnom Penh and San Francisco
Thu 17 Aug 2023 12.00 BST
Last modified on Thu 17 Aug 2023 19.34 BST

The yellowed eyes of Phal Pen stared, unseeing, as he lay on his hospital bed, waiting for another scan at the Khmer-Russian Friendship hospital in Phnom Penh.

Since doctors diagnosed him at the end of 2022 with bile-duct cancer, Pen has been struck low by a constant pain in his abdomen. He could barely eat, let alone move.

His bed was one of several lining the hospital’s open-air hallway, where weary patients waited, sweating it out in the humid Cambodian heat. Families surrounded him, women rubbing damp cloths over their loved ones’ foreheads and fussing over every pained expression. Bored children napped on the ground in quieter corridors while others entertained themselves by roughhousing one another.

In Cambodia, you need your family with you if you’re hospitalized. You need somebody with the wherewithal to advocate for your care in a system where money talks, and where those who cannot afford to pay are overlooked. You need somebody for the most basic tasks: pushing your bed to the exam room, or walking you to the restroom. You need someone to bring you meals and small comforts like blankets and pillows – none of which the hospital provides.

But Pen, 48, is alone. He’s been alone since he was forcibly sent back in 2018 to Cambodia, a country he left when he was just six years old.

Pen and his family were among the more than 195,000 Cambodian refugees who resettled in the US between 1975 and 1999. Escaping the unrest left behind by the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, these refugees were granted green card status as permanent residents, free from the harrowing violence that tore through the country of their ancestors.

Pen spent almost four decades in Modesto, California, where he grew into adulthood, raised four children as a single father, and opened an auto repair shop. He knew no other home than the one he and his family built from nothing in the US.

He was ripped from that home five years ago when he was deported to Cambodia, one of hundreds of wartime refugees the US has cast out over the past 21 years.

“I was sent to Cambodia and abandoned,” Pen whispered from his hospital bed. “I have no family bloodline here. If I pass away, who is going to be at my funeral?”
Full article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... eportation

Jerry Atrick wrote: ↑Fri Aug 18, 2023 8:28 am

Another shitty guardian article basically singing eulogies to murderers and felons without even alluding to the crimes that get these gang banging scumbags sent back here to begin with

Pen spent almost four decades in Modesto, California, where he grew into adulthood, raised four children as a single father, and opened an auto repair shop. He knew no other home than the one he and his family built from nothing in the US.

He was ripped from that home five years ago when he was deported to Cambodia, one of hundreds of wartime refugees the US has cast out over the past 21 years.

John Bingham wrote:

Jerry Atrick wrote: ↑Fri Aug 18, 2023 8:28 am

Another shitty guardian article basically singing eulogies to murderers and felons without even alluding to the crimes that get these gang banging scumbags sent back here to begin with

Pen spent almost four decades in Modesto, California, where he grew into adulthood, raised four children as a single father, and opened an auto repair shop. He knew no other home than the one he and his family built from nothing in the US.

He was ripped from that home five years ago when he was deported to Cambodia, one of hundreds of wartime refugees the US has cast out over the past 21 years.

Yes, you'd imagine he was deported for no reason at all from the article.