The Fancies and the Fact

A march is foiled, but the omens are encouraging

Folk Singer Joan Baez sang Oh Freedom. Civil Rights Leader Bayard Rustin led a rousing chorus of We Shall Overcome. Elie Wiesel, author of many books on the Holocaust, recited Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. Actress Liv Ullmann gave a pint of blood for Cambodian refugees.

The celebrities were among the 100 participants in last week's much touted "March for Survival," organized by the International Rescue Committee and Doctors Across Frontiers, a French aid organization. When this earnest band reached the Cambodia-Thailand frontier they shouted an appeal through a red bullhorn, asking that they be allowed to cross the bridge to Cambodia with 20 truckloads of food and medicine. Rebuffed, the marchers donated the relief supplies to Cambodian refugees in Thai camps.

The demonstration failed to move the Phnom-Penh government or the country's Vietnamese occupiers, who denounced it as an act of "hostile interference" in the country's internal affairs. Nonetheless, the march helped renew the world's interest in the country, at a time when its situation--at least for now--seemed to be improving. After a tour of the Thailand-Cambodia border last week, TIME'S Hong Kong bureau chief, Marsh Clark, found that conditions have changed so much in the past 13 months that the Western public's perception of Cambodia is a mixture of fact and fancy. Clark's report:

FANCY: The Cambodians are in imminent danger of being wiped out as a race.

FACT: There are now about 150,000 Cambodians in refugee camps well inside Thailand. An estimated 740,000 Cambodians, mostly civilians, are within a short distance of the border on the Cambodian side; it takes a considerable amount of imagination to speculate that they will all die of starvation or be killed.

FANCY: Since international relief efforts are only a "drop in the bucket" (as they are often characterized), the Cambodians are still dying of hunger and disease by the hundreds of thousands.

FACT: While the situation is bad, it is an improvement over the famine of last summer and fall. The Vietnamese have allowed peasants to keep the rice crop just harvested. This move, combined with the arrival of international relief supplies, has eased the crisis.

FANCY: The Vietnamese and the Phnom-Penh government have systematically prevented international relief supplies from being distributed to the starving inside Cambodia.

FACT: Most visible evidence suggests this is not true. While relief stores have piled up at the port of Kompong Som and at Phnom-Penh, there is no proof that Hanoi or Phnom-Penh is deliberately obstructing delivery. Distribution delays appear to be due to the lack of Cambodian administrators, the shortage of transportation, and continued fighting between the Vietnamese and forces loyal to the deposed Pol Pot regime.

FANCY: Now that the world has been alerted to Cambodia's plight and huge amounts of food are being channeled into the country, there will soon no longer be a need for an aid effort.

FACT: At least 200,000 tons of additional food must reach Cambodia, and 40,000 more tons of pesticides and seeds, if a major famine is to be avoided later this year.

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