Long journey to a new life

Manawatu Standard

HAPPY: Cambodian refugee Sam Put with his partner Nicky and daughter Madison.

War, extreme poverty and starvation are not issues Manawatu residents face every day, but for migrants and refugees, these problems have often been part of life. Adjusting to a new homeland may not be easy, but when JONATHON HOWE spoke to 29-year-old Cambodian refugee Sam Put, he discovered that success in the face of adversity was possible.

Sam Put was just one week old when his mother carried him, his brother and a bag of rice across Cambodia's killing fields and into Thailand.

His parents were fleeing from Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime, which killed more than one million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979. "My parents had to flee," Sam says. "If they'd stayed, they would have been shot or abducted to work in rice fields.
"Pol Pot's regime, they don't want anyone that could think, because they don't want leaders, they want followers."

The 14-day trek to the Thai border was a dangerous journey over mountains and across rivers. Sam's parents endured many horrors on that journey. They lost a daughter to starvation, they saw the dead and disfigured bodies of men, women and children on the side of the road, they saw babies abandoned because their cries would alert soldiers. Sam's cries led to his family being ostracised by a larger group, but his mother would not abandon him. [Read Story]