Nong Mak Mun
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Mak Mun was initially the most important of the border hamlets, situated strategically between Nong Samet and Nong Chan, and the largest with perhaps as many as 200,000 inhabitants. Described as “a rural slum, an unsettling limbo of poverty, extortion and menace…where murders were rife and the threat of artillery attack…was constant” (William Shawcross), Mak Mun was controlled by a warlord named Van Saren who styled himself as a “Marshal” and proclaimed himself “the most honorable” of the Khmer Serei (Free Khmer). Van Saren’s power came from rice dealing and links with the Thai Army. He mounted attacks on Nong Chan on 30th December 1979, and 007, near Nong Samet, together with the Khmer Rouge, (4th-6th January 1980) in an attempt to quash their rivalry. In March 1980 Nong Samet attacked Mak Mun with the aid of the Thai Army, and two days later Van Saren counterattacked 007 near Nong Samet. In yet another counterattack from 007 on 22nd March, Van Saren was apparently killed. Mak Mun was reportedly closed by the Thai government on April 11th. However, I was not informed of this, and I went there with a JVC (Japan Volunteer Centre) group in early May to deliver medical supplies to the hospital. Mak Mun was certainly not ‘closed’, and in fact a large “Welcome” banner proclaimed its existence. At the gate to the hospital, a guard dressed as a Boy Scout, unarmed except for a whistle, saluted smartly. The small hospital staff were very thankful for the small donation, as they had almost no medicine. Five weeks later, on June 23rd, the Vietnamese attacked Mak Mun, the hospital was destroyed, and the remaining inhabitants of Mak Mun fled to Nong Chan.
(Information from William Shawcross, Wikipedia and Thai/Cambodia Border Refugee Camps Information & Documentation Website)
(Japanese volunteer Kenji Nishizaki is in three of the above photos)
I first met Ken Nishizaki in Tokyo in 1979. I was interviewing candidates for JOCV (Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers) to assess their English language ability, and Ken was one of them. I probably spent a bit too long on his assessment because he had a lot to say and it was interesting. He was a potter. His English was not bad, but I passed him on personality.
The next time I saw him was in Thailand the following year. We had both joined JVC (Japan Volunteer Centre), a new NGO. Ken told me he had decided against joining JOCV because it didn't seem like "real" volunteering to him. He wanted to make a positive contribution to helping people who needed it.
JVC rented a little wooden house in Aranyaprathet in which we all stayed. Then Keiko Miura and I moved to Wattana Nakhon to work with WFP. A year later, we were shocked to hear that Ken was dead. He had been walking back to the house with the director of JVC, Ms. Hoshino, when two men tried to grab her bag. Ken tried to stop them and they blew his head away with something like a sawn-off shotgun. They looked like Thai army soldiers. No one was ever arrested.