Cambodian Refugees See Hopes of Home Fade : Thailand: More than 300,000 who fled the war remain in border camps. Despite Vietnam’s pullout, most of them foresee a grim future.

Hung Hong has been a refugee since 1979. A former farmer from Battambang in western Cambodia, he has given up hope of ever going home.

“I don’t want to go back anymore,” he told a visitor to this sprawling refugee camp along the Thai border north of the town of Aranyaprathet. “We get a lot of aid. It’s not my land here, but it’s better to stay here than live under the Communists.”

Pat Piek is also afraid to go home. She said she fled as Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979. Now that Vietnam says it has withdrawn the last of its troops, she still doesn’t believe they will leave her alone.

“When our leaders tell us it is safe to go back, I’ll return,” she said. “I don’t have much hope for the future.”

Almost forgotten in the heated debate that has accompanied Vietnam’s announced withdrawal from Cambodia, more than 300,000 Cambodian refugees remain confined in camps strung along Thailand’s border with Cambodia, awaiting the elusive settlement that will permit them to return home.

In this sprawling facility alone, 143,956 Cambodians--the largest Cambodian population outside of Phnom Penh--dwell aimlessly in their bamboo huts with thatched roofs.

The camp has the look of a place stuck in time, with residents picking their way down the muddy streets in platform shoes, bell-bottom trousers and Beatle haircuts, all considered fashionable more than a decade ago when they fled their homeland and then lost contact with the outside world.

A recent addition are concrete pipes covered with dirt that now serve as shelters when Cambodian government troops across the border decide to lob shells at the camp to pressure the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front, a non-Communist guerrilla group that also runs the civilian administration at Site 2.

The mood here has been particularly gloomy since August with the collapse of peace talks that would have led to a political settlement in their homeland, allowing the refugees to return home.

“Everyone seems depressed since the Paris talks collapsed,” said one Western aid worker. “There had been a lot of high hopes, and when the talks didn’t work out, things just crashed for many people.”

One sign of the increased tensions is a dramatic increase in domestic violence in the camp. According to the U.N. Border Relief Organization, which supervises the camp, incidents are up 350% in the last year.

While a reporter was recently on a tour of the camp, the Thai guard force at the camp found the bodies of two newborn infants dumped in a drainage ditch. The Thais said the children had been strangled by an enraged parent, but U.N. agency officials said they suspected illegal abortion.

Noting that Site 2 has more freedoms than any other camp, one aid worker said: “With openness has come a bit of lawlessness. People are stuck here; farmers aren’t used to this closed environment for so long. People are suffering a lot of psychotic illnesses, and there’s a lot of alcoholism.”

In an effort to deal with the law and order aspects of the problem, the U.N. agency has brought in police officers from Europe and Australia to help train a camp police force.

According to a recent study of the refugees, 70% of the adult population has been confined at the camp since 1979. There is a 45% illiteracy rate and a 4.5% birthrate.

Even more disturbing to many Western aid workers, 53% of the camp’s population is under 14 and 45% under 7 years of age, meaning that a sizable percentage of Site 2’s residents have never set foot outside a refugee camp.

Lai Kek, an official of the liberation group who is a senior administrator of the camp, said the facility will remain open until there is a negotiated settlement in Cambodia. He rejected suggestions that the guerrilla groups might try to move civilians across the border into newly liberated zones to help maintain their control.

“If we cross the border, who will support all these people?” Lai Kek said. “We need the aid from abroad. If we go back ‘inside’ now, we’ll lose everything.”

The camp is a recruiting ground for the Liberation Front forces, just as Site 8 to the south is connected with the Communist Khmer Rouge, which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1978 and is blamed for the deaths of more than 1 million Cambodians before it was ousted by the Vietnamese invasion.

Pat Piek, for example, has sent two sons into Cambodia as soldiers with the Liberation Front, which has recently claimed a series of battlefield victories against the Cambodian government in Phnom Penh. She said they have been fighting for more than six months and, in the eternal complaint of mothers everywhere, grumbled that they haven’t found time for a visit.

Allegations that assistance was being siphoned off to help the Liberation Front’s guerrilla army resulted in the U.N. agency’s announcing Oct. 11 that it is suspending special administrative food rations at Site 2. The assistance was given to people who helped to distribute food aid. The new move will cut supplies to about 25,000 people, but will not affect regular food rations.

Recently, camp residents have been disconcerted by reports filtering out of Cambodia about the sweeping reforms now taking place in their country under the Vietnamese-backed government of Premier Hun Sen. Can it be, they wonder, that a Communist government has restored private property rights, opened up markets and rejuvenated Buddhism?

“I can’t believe people own their own houses,” said Hung Hong. “It must be a Vietnamese trick.”

So far, there have been only four cases of people wishing to be repatriated from the camps to their homeland. In part, Western aid workers believe, this reflects a degree of intimidation, even in relatively open camps like Site 2.

But the camps are experiencing a continuing round of defections, with Cambodian government soldiers coming over to Site 2, Khmer Rouge defecting to the Liberation Front and Liberation Front members going back home.