For six years, the only luxuries Bopha Sayavong dreamed of were peace, quiet, food, and shelter.
It wasn’t until she landed in Little Rock, Arkansas, as a refugee from communist Cambodia on Oct. 31, 1981, that she began to imagine the luxuries freedom would bring.
Anything would beat the four years from 1975 to 1979 she spent as a teenager in work camps created by the oppressive communist regime known as the Khmer Rouge.
During the four years of the Khmer Rouge’s reign, the government owned all resources; currency did not exist.
Sayavong said she was separated from her family during the evacuation as all Cambodians were divided by age, sex, and marital status. It was four years before she was reunited with her family.
“Their model is that everybody is equal, nobody is richer, nobody is poor,” Sayavong said of socialists and communists. “Sounds great, isn’t it? But that’s not true because the government owns everything. So guess who is the richest one? The government.”
https://fee.org/articles/a-teen-refugees-flight-to-freedom-from-communist-cambodia/
It wasn’t until she landed in Little Rock, Arkansas, as a refugee from communist Cambodia on Oct. 31, 1981, that she began to imagine the luxuries freedom would bring.
Anything would beat the four years from 1975 to 1979 she spent as a teenager in work camps created by the oppressive communist regime known as the Khmer Rouge.
During the four years of the Khmer Rouge’s reign, the government owned all resources; currency did not exist.
Sayavong said she was separated from her family during the evacuation as all Cambodians were divided by age, sex, and marital status. It was four years before she was reunited with her family.
“Their model is that everybody is equal, nobody is richer, nobody is poor,” Sayavong said of socialists and communists. “Sounds great, isn’t it? But that’s not true because the government owns everything. So guess who is the richest one? The government.”
https://fee.org/articles/a-teen-refugees-flight-to-freedom-from-communist-cambodia/