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SUMMARY

They are the continuing victims of a Cambodian holocaust that shocked the world -- and they are all but forgotten. Seventeen years after the Khmer Rouge began killing more than one million of their countrymen, the tragedy continues for some 350,000 all-but-forgotten Khmer refugees trapped in camps along the Thai-Cambodian border.

Nowhere is the suffering more widespread than at Site 2, a dusty bamboo slum in the middle of no man's land. A place where even the strongest spirits can shatter.

Originally meant to be an emergency way station, Site 2 became the largest Cambodian city in the world outside of Phnom Penh. Its 200,000 residents -- proud and resilient people -- live behind barbed wire, ket alive on a diet of United Nations rations.

Site 2 is a place where enemy artillery shells can fall at any moment, a community where the crime is soaring. People are crammed into rows of small huts, and their children have little to do. Many of the residents have been at the camp since it was created in 1985 as a refuge from the Cambodian civil war, and they are desperate to return home.

Their fate is uncertain. But somehow the people at Site 2 look to the future. They are trying to preserve Khmer culture and educate their young. They are learning medical and governmental skills to prepare for the day when they can finally go home.

Told in dramatic pictures and words, Beyond the Killing Fields is a reminder that the Cambodian nightmare continues, and an eye-opening look at one of the notorious refugee camps in the world today.

 
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© Kari Rene Hall