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Statement from Korsang

Korsang is a program that hires and trains young men who were deported from the USA to work as HIV Prevention Harm Reduction outreach workers. 

One of our Korsang staff killed himself on December 6th 2007. Chan, he was 33, from Long Beach , California .  This is the 5th returnee death since 2002.

I was training for an AUSAID workshop in Kompong Som when I got the call around 1am.  Four Korsang staff found him hanging in his room.  He'd been dead for over a day.  Our staff cut him down.

He had been depressed and suicidal for a long time, he'd been here a year and had worked at Korsang for about 11 months.  We all knew that he needed support.  In the states he had major depression with psychotic features and was on medication that basically kept him stable.  Since his deportation out here he could never get the proper medications in Cambodia , so he went on a huge decline into a really deep dark place.  And then he started smoking yama (crude form of crystal meth) and that escalated his demise.  We got him meds from the clinic, but they didn't work, we got him a counselor but he couldn't keep appointments. 

He was cremated on Saturday afternoon and we held a traditional 7 day Buddhist ceremony at Korsang last Thursday.

We hope Chan's death helps end the deportation of Cambodian's with a diagnosed mental health disorder. This madness and unnecessary death needs to stop.

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

Deported! Surprising details on who can get the boot
What's considered a “deportable crime” is widening — at the expense of families and people's rights
BY DIEM LY
Examiner Assistant Editor

It's a one-way ticket no one wants.

Recent incidents of deportation and the protests against them have once again shed light on this bitter struggle over rights, home, and family.

On Dec. 7, a young man committed suicide a year after he was deported back to Cambodia . “Chan” had been suffering from depression and psychotic episodes for years before his deportation. Without proper medication in Cambodia , he relapsed and hung himself. Korsang Khmer, an organization in Cambodia that hires deportees and performs drug prevention outreach, reported other similar instances of attempted suicides, which included jumping off buildings and self-poisoning.

( see website - http://www.iexaminer.org/archives/?cat=3Category/Issue: - for complete article )

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Current Funding:
UNAIDS contracted through WHO
UNICEF direct funding to Korsang
USAID contracted through KHANA