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"I was nine years old when the Khmer Rouge
took over my country. I saw so much death, that life itself lost all meaning. Every day, I
had to kill my own heart in order to endure. Life, one human life, meant nothing. If you
cared about someone, the suffering was unbearable. And those who did not die lived at the
very edge of death. We were half-starved. In the wildness of those moments, I did not realize what it meant when children would go
out into burial grounds seeking food. It was worse than a nightmare. I am here to tell the
world to stop shooting, to stop arguing, to stop trying to be right. When I was a child in
Cambodia, of course, I did not know enough to question why there was no interest in saving
us. It seemed as if it was our destiny to die."
Excerpts from a speech by Arn Chorn Pond at an Amnesty International Human Rights Day,
December 1987.
Some Facts and Observations:
- The world's population of refugees, asylum seekers, and internally
displaced persons totaled more than 30.4 million at the end of 1998 - an increase of more
than 500,000 over 1997
World Refugee Survey, September 1999 - U.S. Committee For Refugees (USCR).
- Refugees leave their homelands because of persecution,
political violence, civil warfare of abuse of human rights. Other problems that often
contribute to the plight of refugees are hunger, poverty, illiteracy and disease.
- Refugees leave behind everything important to them: family, friends,
homes, lands, possessions, and livelihoods.
- Refugees suffer after leaving home. There have been
savage acts of piracy, armed attacks on refugee camps, acts of forcible return or
rejection at the frontier, unjustifiable detention, and manifestations of discrimination
towards refugees.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees, June 1984
- As many as 85% of all refugees are children. Most,
orphaned or with only one parent, live in detention centers, where condition are sometimes
appalling.
Migration & Refugee Services, U.S. Catholic Conference
- Almost every major refugee-producing conflict has been extant since 1979
or earlier. We are approaching the age of the permanent refugee....
- Countless thousands of young refugees - the
children of a dozen years ago - have grown to adulthood under the most violent and brutal
of circumstances.... At the very least, these refugees deserve a secure sanctuary, free
from the fear of being forced back into the violence and brutality that they risked their
lives to escape.
World Refugee Survey
Despite a Generous Spirit
- The developed world's flagging interest in refugee resettlement
diminishes hope for the refugee. The U.S. is accepting a fraction of the number of
refugees it once did, and other countries are following this lead.
Migration & Refugee Services, U.S. Catholic Conference
- Increasingly, refugees are presented not as people
in need of help, but as people who constitute a threat to the order of things; they do not
have problems, they are the problem.
World Refugee Survey
- There is a difference, in U.S. policy, between a refugee and an asylum
seeker, While both flee persecution or the fear of persecution in their home countries, an
asylum seeker enters the U.S., often illegally, and then tries to gain the right to stay
in this country. An asylum seeker does not pass through the U.S. Refugee Resettlement
Program.
- The U.S. does not particularly welcome many of
those seeking asylum in this country, especially those from countries "friendly"
to the U.S.
U.S. Committee for Refugees
- In 1987, the U.S. accepted almost 65,000 refugees into the country; this
number is small compared to the estimated 300,000 to 500,000 residents from El Salvador
who have come to this country for safe haven.
- The U.S. has granted refugee status to very few Central
Americans and Haitians , who are considered as economic migrants in U.S. policy.
Immigration & Refugee Program, Church World Service
- Many are therefore dead today who otherwise would have been alive if
given the chance to ... enjoy asylum. Some died quickly, others in horrible ways. We do
not cut throats, but we are busily cutting lifelines.
Peter Nobel, World Refugee Survey
SOURCES:
- Building Bridges Supplement, 1986, Church World Service Immigration and
Refugee Program, 475 Riverside Drive, Room 656, New York, NY 10115.
- Migration and Refugee Services, United States Catholic Conference, 1312
Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005.
- Despite a Generous Spirit, 1986, U.S. Committee for Refugees, 1015
Vermont Avenue NW , Suite 900, Washington, DC 20005.
- Refugee Resettlement Appeal, 1988, Church World Service Immigration and
Refugee Program, 475 Riverside Drive, Room 656, New York, NY 10115.
- World Refugee Survey, 1987, U.S. Committee for Refugees, 1015 Vermont
Avenue NW , Suite 900, Washington, DC 20005.
Produced by the Office on Global Education, National Council of
Churches, 2115 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218-5755 - A program of the Divisions of
Education and Ministry, and Church World Service For more information, Please contact: Immigration and Refugee Program, 475 Riverside
Drive, Room 656, New York, NY 10115.
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