Word: thailander
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...thing that is most notably different about Laos today: there are fewer people. In proportion to the country's small population (roughly 3 million), the exodus has been staggeringly large. Since the spring of 1975, around 140,000 Laotians have fled to refugee camps in Thailand-in recent months, most of them by paying $150 to secure a nighttime passage on boats plying the Mekong River. Although Pathet Lao soldiers often shoot at those who attempt the crossing (four died in one incident two weeks ago), an estimated 2,500 to 4,000 people seek refuge in Thailand every...
...were deserting to join the enemy forces. Peasants in Cambodian villages near the Vietnamese border had revolted, murdering the fierce Khmer "controllers" who police the villages. At the same time, 200 Cambodian civilians a week were desperately crossing minefields and other deadly border booby traps to take refuge in Thailand. More than 150,000 have already escaped to Viet...
Whoever rules Cambodia in the foreseeable future will reign over a devastated land. According to refugees who have escaped into Thailand, the once lush province of Battambang in Western Cambodia is bare of all fruit and bereft of most of its people. In eerily deserted villages, papaya trees stand like bean poles, their fruit, then their leaves, having been torn off by starving peasants. According to the British Foreign Office study, since 1975 an estimated 2 million Cambodians have died of starvation and disease as a result of a campaign to drive city dwellers into the countryside, where there...
...twelve-hour workday. The daily food ration per person is seven spoonfuls of boiled rice gruel. Since last July there have been four suicides. Other peasants have gone berserk in the fields or have retreated into total, pathological silence. One Ko Tayou villager who fled to Thailand last month was Kim Am, 42, a Canadian-trained physician who survived the purges by masquerading as an illiterate peasant. According to Kim, at least 80% of the Cambodians he observed before his flight were suffering from some form of mental illness. "The only emotional outlet in Cambodia is thinking about escape...
...fishing and commerce across an expanse of ocean stretching from the Malay peninsula to the Philippines. Sumatran pirates constantly harass coastal freighters and fishermen in the Straits of Malacca. Privateers from Malaysia and Khmer Rouge hijackers from Cambodia prey on Vietnamese refugee boats drifting across the Gulf of Thailand. One Japanese cargo line considers southern Philippine waters so dangerous that it has ordered its ships bound for Indonesia to detour westward into the South China Sea. Pleasure boats headed toward Bali from Hong Kong and Thailand are warned to stay away from the Celebes...