Heritage site

Site 2 refugee camp

The Site 2 refugee camp, known as Site 2 or Site II, was the largest camp for Cambodians on the Thai side of the border with Cambodia. It held more than 140,000 people in the late 1980s and closed in March 1993.[1][2][3] Its residents were Cambodians pushed into Thailand by fighting along the border.[4] When it closed, more than 300,000 Cambodian refugees had gone home under the UN peace plan for Cambodia.[3]

Location

The camp lay close to the border, north of the Thai town of Aranyaprathet. In 1989 it sat in Ta Phraya district of Prachinburi province, about 80 kilometers (50 miles)[2] or 70 kilometers (43 miles)[5] north of Aranyaprathet. The Christian Science Monitor put it 1.2 miles (about two kilometers) from the border in 1987.[6] The camp stood on flat, dry land with few trees, and a road divided it into northern and southern parts.[2]

History

In the early 1980s Cambodians lived in a string of border camps in both countries. They moved across the line as Vietnamese forces attacked and withdrew. After the Vietnamese dry season offensive of 1984 to 1986, the people of these camps were pushed into Thailand. Thailand gave them temporary asylum until they could return home safely.[4] The Thai government had signed neither the 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention nor its 1967 Protocol. It treated those who came after 1980 as displaced persons rather than refugees, so they could not be resettled in other countries.[4][7]

Site 2 brought several of these evacuated camps together in one place. It was set up in 1984[8] or 1985.[7] Dong Rek camp joined it in March 1985 and San Ro camp later that year. Ampil camp, also called Ban Sa Ngae, and Nong Chan camp joined in 1986, as did Nam Yuen camp from a distant part of the border. Nong Samet camp, also known as Rithysen, was the largest of the sub-camps, with 66,546 people in August 1989.[2]

The camp grew quickly. The Christian Science Monitor counted 152,000 people in 1987, including 3,500 Vietnamese.[6] In 1989 it held over 140,000 people.[2][1] The Los Angeles Times put the figure at more than 170,000 in 1990.[9] Sources give 165,748[4] or 198,582[1] for 1991. The historian Bertrand Taithe writes that camp managers often overstated the numbers, so that food rations could also feed soldiers and the black market.[1] Reporters and the US General Accounting Office described it as the largest gathering of Cambodians anywhere after Phnom Penh.[6][9][4]

Site 2 closed in March 1993. The Independent reported on March 31, 1993, that the closing ceremony had taken place the day before. Sadako Ogata, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, flew to Thailand for the ceremony.[3] The camp's people had gone back to Cambodia in 1992 and 1993, after the peace accords of 1991.[7]

Administration

Politically, the camp belonged to the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF), the faction led by Son Sann, which the United States supported.[2][9] The KPNLF named the leader of each sub-camp. Each sub-camp had its own administration, and the northern part also had a central one. The camps were divided into sections of 1,000 to 3,000 people.[2]

The United Nations Border Relief Operation (UNBRO), set up in 1982 to care for Cambodians in the camps in Thailand, ran the relief work.[4][8] From 1988 a special unit of the Thai military, the Displaced Persons Protection Unit, guarded the camp's edges. It replaced the Thai army's Task Force 80.[2] Foreign aid workers had to leave by 4 p.m. each day, and the Thai authorities allowed almost no permanent buildings.[1]

Life in the camp

Homes were built in a grid from bamboo and thatch, with plastic sheeting from UNBRO. The camp had no water supply of its own and relied on water trucks.[2] Like Khao I Dang, the camp grew into a real city. In the late 1980s its residents could find restaurants, many workshops, a Buddhist monastery and even "universities".[1] Its busy roads and large markets set it apart from the other border camps.[2]

The camp had primary and technical schools, some secondary classes and vocational training. It had three hospitals and a number of clinics. Each sub-camp had a Khmer Women's Association, which taught weaving, sewing and reading to adults.[2] Aid groups, foreign funders and researchers focused much of their work on Site 2 and on Khao I Dang, the second-largest camp.[1]

Arts

Classes in traditional Khmer music and dance were part of the camp's schooling.[2] The Site 2 dance troupe was among the best-known groups that kept Khmer classical dance alive outside Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge years.[10] In the Ampil sub-camp, the dancers Voan Savay and Meas Van Roeun directed the Fine Arts Service. The palace musician Proeung Pruon and other artists formed a full pin peat orchestra there to play for the classical dances.[7]

In 1989 the camp's artists began a six-month project to record the dance and music on paper, film and video. A fire in their section destroyed the camp's copies just before they went home, but copies sent abroad went to the Bophana Center in Phnom Penh. A troupe of 53 dancers, musicians and costume makers from Site 2 toured the United States and then returned to the camp.[7]

Drawing classes for children began in the camp in 1986. In 1994 nine of those children, back in Cambodia, founded the arts school Phare Ponleu Selpak in Battambang.[11] Site 2 (1989), the first feature documentary by Rithy Panh, is set in a camp for Cambodian refugees on the border with Thailand.[12]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Cambridge University Press, Bertrand Taithe, The Cradle of the New Humanitarian System? International Work and European Volunteers at the Cambodian Border Camps, 1979–1993, Contemporary European History 25(2) (May 2016)
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 Ford Foundation, James F. Lynch, Border Khmer: A Demographic Study of the Residents of Site 2 / Site II, Site B, and Site 8 (November 1989; reproduced on the Thai / Cambodia Border Refugee Camps documentation website)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 The Independent, Terry McCarthy, Refugees fear rerun of history: Violence is sweeping Cambodia as those who fled Pol Pot return home (March 31, 1993)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 United States General Accounting Office (GAO), Cambodia: Multilateral Relief Efforts in Border Camps (January 22, 1991)
  5. ↑ International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Audiovisual Archives, Thomas Pizer, Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand. Site 2. (photo record V-P-TH-D-00102-16, 1988)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 The Christian Science Monitor, Mary Anne Weaver, Cambodians in limbo (March 5, 1987)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Music & Minorities, Toni Shapiro-Phim, A Cambodian Dancer in a Displaced Persons' Camp (2021)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Royal College of Art, Magali An Berthon, Silk and Post-Conflict Cambodia: Embodied Practices and Global and Local Dynamics of Heritage and Knowledge Transference (1991-2018) (PhD thesis, October 2021)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Los Angeles Times, Charles P. Wallace, Thai Officials Preparing to Shut Down Border Camps (March 20, 1990)
  10. ↑ Angkor Database, Le Ballet Royal (The Royal Ballet) (undated)
  11. ↑ Cooperation Committee for Cambodia (CCC), Phare Ponleu Selpak (NGO database record, undated)
  12. ↑ Screen Daily, Geoffrey Macnab, Rithy Panh on the joy he finds in mentoring rising filmmakers (March 18, 2022)
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This page was last edited on 11 October 2026, at 20:25.