The cost and end of revenge

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Tang Phoeurk remembers the day that revenge brought him to the basketball court outside the Morey Elementary School in Lowell, Mass. He carried a loaded shotgun, and remembers the two tugs as he fired it.

No one died on that August 1991 day, but Phoeurk, then 19, wounded five people in retribution for the gang slaying of a friend. Phoeurk was convicted of five counts of attempted murder and served 12 years in prison. Afterward, he spent a year and a half in a US Immigration and Naturalization Service lockup.

Earlier this year, a guard asked if he wanted to go home.

''I remember saying, 'Yeah, I'm going home to Lowell?' That guard just started laughing. He told me, 'You're going home all right. You're going home to Cambodia.' "

Phoeurk, now 32, is among 112 Cambodian refugees from the United States who have been sent back to their homeland after committing felonies. Roughly 1,500 more are scheduled for repatriation. For the most part, they are lost in a land that they haven't known since early childhood. Separated from their families, neither Cambodia nor America wants them. ''You are a returnee so you've got a lot against you," Phoeurk said. ''I'd rather do two more years of jail time in America than be here."

Like most of the returnees, Phoeurk, who left at age 7, can neither read nor write the Cambodian language of Khmer. His jailhouse build and abundant tattoos also reveal him as a foreigner.

He was one of some 145,000 Cambodian refugees who were admitted to the United States, most between 1980 and 1985. Some 30,000 of the refugees settled in the Lowell area. They arrived after fleeing the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, responsible for the deaths of some 1.8 million Cambodians.

''The educated population was killed off by the Khmer Rouge," said Vong Ros, executive director of the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association of Lowell. ''They came here without education and had to face a new culture with no transferable skills and a traumatic past. They joined the manufacturing economy but then suffered again when jobs went overseas."

Phoeurk said most of what he remembers about his homeland as a child was running around naked in rice fields in northern Cambodia and running over bodies with his mother when they tried to escape.

Advocates for Cambodian refugees argue that US resettlement policy was a ''disaster" when it came to dealing with one of the world's most impoverished refugee populations. Cambodian families in the United States make an average of $10,215 a year, the second-lowest income among all ethnic groups in the country. ''These people have not been given adequate resources to become self-sufficient and part of society," said Truong Chinh Duong, 32, a project manager at the Washington-based Southeast Asia Resource Center. ''The deportation of Cambodians represents an abject failure of the American dream."

Phoeurk's mother and father were peasant farmers -- uneducated and unskilled with no command of English. As the family slipped into poverty in Lowell, Phoeurk joined a gang -- the Little Rat Gangsters -- and turned to crime.

The thought of getting citizenship never occurred to Phoeurk. Even after his deportation, it still seems like something out of reach for his family, who could not afford the application fees. ''We're trying to get citizenship," said Phoeurk's sister, Chanra, 24, who earns $400 a week assembling and inspecting glass for TVs and ATMs at a 3M factory in Methuen. ''But I am waiting to get some money first. I think it costs a lot, and with two kids, I don't have much time."

Chanra Phoeurk calls her brother every month, which is about all she can afford. She cannot get over what she calls the unfairness of her brother's plight.

''He did all that time in jail for nothing," and has paid his debt to society, so he should be allowed to stay in the United States, she said. ''And now he's stressed and he's scared."

US officials call the deportation process necessary in the fight against terror. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration strengthened its efforts to sign and enforce repatriation agreements. Cambodia resisted accepting returnees, then relented in March 2002 -- after the US government threatened to suspend visas to Cambodian nationals.

In his new-old world since April, Phoeurk is quietly learning the rules -- and finding that many of his prison survival skills are useful now. ''It used to be that if I want something, I'd just go out and rob somebody," Phoeurk said. ''But one thing I learned in jail is self-control. Over here, you do that and you are either dead or in jail. You don't want to be in a Cambodian jail because then you're dead, too."

Phoeurk's conversations along these lines with an American social worker in Phnom Penh helped lead to a job-training program for these returnees.

''We were talking about the things he learned in prison -- anger management, mediation, drug issues," said Holly Brandford, a volunteer with the Cambodia-based Refugee Assistance Project. ''Then it just hit me that these guys would make great counselors."

Brandford, 42, who grew up in East Boston, was recently awarded a $50,000 federal grant to train the Cambodian returnees. One aspect is speaking with local street youths about the dangers of drug abuse and AIDS. Local aid workers are hoping that Brandford's program will work.

Early reviews are mixed. While there have been some successes in finding work -- recently several were hired at the five-star Intercontinental Hotel in Phnom Penh -- many of the returnees have failed to show up to jobs that were provided them and half are jobless.

''We actually are concerned that these people will export gang culture to Cambodia," said Sebastian Marot, founder of Friends, which is trying to carry out Brandford's project. ''We're afraid that in a country like Cambodia, where you have a huge number of people unemployed, they will become a negative influence. If these people don't find something to do, they will turn back to what they know."

Already the returnees have had several run-ins with the local police. Bill Herod, director of the Refugee Assistance Project, says that several of the returnees are struggling with serious drug problems. ''I used to think that my job is to keep these guys alive and out of jail," said Herod. ''But I wouldn't say that now. Now my job is to keep them alive."

Phoeurk, training now to be a counselor, has so far managed to find a place to live and stay away from drugs and out of trouble. He'll have a drink or two, though, and spends most of his free time playing pool and seeing his new girlfriend. ''I just want this counseling job to work out," he said. ''I'm scared of letting people down. I've been in jail too long and a man needs to have something to show for himself."

He is being tried, though, on many fronts. Recently he met another returnee from the Lowell area -- one of the men he believes was responsible for killing his friend. He decided that the time for vengeance had passed.

''I shook his hand and it was over," he said. ''I don't get satisfaction out of revenge anymore."