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Cambodia's Samaritans
On a night of savagery, they risked death to save life
The village of squatter shacks behind the Thai embassy in Phnom Penh is so poor it doesn't even have a name. It's a desperate place, home to some 300 Cambodians, who have washed up here beside the fetid, garbage-strewn overflow of the nearby Bassac River. But one day in late January, as the Thai embassy burned and the chants of mobs grew louder, a handful of these forgotten squatters became heroes.
When Yun Ry heard the mayhem, she was only vaguely aware of what the anti-Thai riots were about. But the 45-year-old cake-seller knew enough about Cambodian mobs to know what to do in such a situation: run away. As she rushed toward the main road, Ry barely noticed a group of five men milling along one junction. Only when she heard one of them speak in a language she didn't understand did she glance back and realize they weren't locals. Decked out in dress shirts and suit trousers that were rumpled and torn, they looked dazed, terrified and hopelessly lost. Ry realized the men must be Thai embassy employees fleeing for their lives.
The prudent thing for her to do was keep running. Instead, Ry spun around and dashed back. "Stop speaking in Thai! Do you want to die?" she cautioned in Khmer. The shouts of the rioters were getting nearer. Ry knew the Thais might not find a way out before the mob reached them. In an instant, she made her decision. "Come with me," she said. In the darkness she led the men down the uneven catwalks until they reached a ladder leading to the river. Then she pointed the way through the reeds to a boat and safety. Sitting some weeks later in her one-room shack, Ry seems taken aback when asked why she stopped to assist these privileged foreign diplomats: "They needed help and they were human beings. I could not ignore them."
Cambodia is a brutally violent society, where strongmen thrive and the rest suffer. That's not surprising, given the horrors of the Khmer Rouge rule in the 1970s. A recent study by the Dutch-funded Transcultural Psychosocial Organization estimates that one-third of all Cambodians suffer post-traumatic stress disorder from the Pol Pot regime that left a quarter of the population dead. Violence erupts daily, from families settling disputes by throwing grenades to the common practice of neighborhood vigilante gangs beating accused thieves to death. The rampage that led to the wrecking of the Thai embassy and more than a dozen businesses on Jan. 29 was equally senseless and vicious—triggered by nothing more than a false rumor of an insult against Cambodia by a Thai actress. But many Cambodians have summoned the courage and humanity to rise above their past horrors.
When Yu Samoeun was 13 years old, the Khmer Rouge forced her to watch them drown her uncle for being lazy. They tied stones around his neck and to his wrists and pushed him into an irrigation canal. "I wanted to help, but I couldn't. They told me if I cried, I'd be the next one," recalls Samoeun. Twenty-seven years later, on the night the Thai embassy was attacked, she found herself hiding behind a plywood partition in her tiny wooden home when four desperate Thai women ran in, carrying their high-heeled shoes. They were shaking and couldn't speak any Khmer, but their frightened eyes pleaded for sanctuary. This time, Samoeun could help. Quickly, she hustled them behind a curtain. A few minutes later, a gang of a dozen Cambodian youths came to her door. "They asked if I had seen any Thais trying to escape," Samoeun says. "I lied and told them no." One of the Thai women took off her gold earrings and offered them as a reward. But Samoeun, who earns barely $1 a day selling candy, refused to accept them.
That night at least half a dozen squatters from the village with no name helped desperate Thai embassy officials escape—this despite the long-standing friction that has existed between the embassy and the slum. When the embassy was built in 2000, Cambodian authorities blocked off a narrow alley that the villagers had used for years. Samoeun, for example, now has to walk 20 minutes instead of five to get to the main road to buy the candy she sells to passersby. Any lingering bitterness about the embassy was put aside during the riots. "We could never think of that dispute at such a time," says Sam Piseth, 34, who fetched a ladder to help Thais climb down the embassy walls.
Since January, life has returned to normal in the squatter village behind the gutted embassy. The stench of festering garbage still fills the air, and money is as scarce as ever. But the rescuers know that for one night they made a difference. "I don't know how to stop the violence in my country," Samoeun says. "I can only do what's good myself."
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