The Flight of Refugees From China

"I'VE GOT TO GET OUT"

Month after month, the refugees straggle into Macao, Portugal's ancient island colony just off the Chinese mainland. Ever since Mao Tse-tung launched his drive to force peasants off their land and into communes two years ago, the trickle has averaged 200 a month. But in recent weeks the slow flow has tripled and quadrupled. Among the recent refugees was one Kou Kong-kit, 20. Kou's story:

TWO years ago, Kou had been a carefree student, the son of a small landowner in Kwangtung Province's fertile Chungshan County. Then the farm was requisitioned to add to the giant Ku Cheang commune. Parents and children were marched off to different work barracks. With five other men and boys, Kou was assigned to a one-room mud hut.

The day he escaped started as an ordinary day. He woke up at dawn. In the corner, he could make out the crumpled figure of the oldest member of their work detail. Old Wong was suffering from the national malady of peasant China, beriberi, or the "no-vegetable sickness." Kou helped Wong up, noticing his horribly swollen feet. Fearing punishment if they reported late to the fields five miles away, Kou and the younger men trotted off, leaving Wong to hobble along behind.

At 9, after working four hours without food, Kou went to stand in line at the cook shack for his twice-a-day bowl of rice. Wong was lying in a heap on the ground, moaning. The section foreman was shouting "Get up!" and punctuating each command with a kick in the belly. Wong tried to rise but could not. On his field telephone, the foreman summoned seven members of Mao's militia--big, well-fed northern men chosen because their ignorance of the Kwangtung dialect isolates them from the peasants they bully.

Execution at 10. With a rifle butt, the militia commander prodded old Wong until he was satisfied that Wong really could not move. Then, on command, one soldier stepped forward, shot Wong through the head. As Kou and the other commune workers watched, the soldiers trussed Wong's wrists and ankles and slung him over a bamboo pole like a freshly slaughtered hog. All of a sudden, the workers began to chant: "We won't work! We won't work! We won't work!"

The militia captain sent for Lok Yeng, the commune's political boss. Lok, dressed in military boots and a well-tailored tunic, was a middle-aged woman, known locally as "Dead Devil." As if by habit, the workers obediently formed a circle around her and listened. "Go back to work or you will all be arrested," said Lok. "Since you have caused this disturbance, you will get no dinner." The crowd broke into a howl of rage. The militia began firing.

Kou ran. He thought: "This is it. I've got to get out of here. In a little while, everyone will die." Back in the fields, he slipped the word to his four hut mates. That evening they met at a prearranged rendezvous near the river. After dark they slipped out into the water and untied a small fishing sampan. Traveling at night and hiding out by day, they covered more than 60 miles of winding streams and canals. On the third morning they reached the point where the West River sweeps out into the South China Sea. Ahead, across a 600-yard expanse of open water, lay Macao. But behind them was Lappa Island, where Red Chinese gunboats lay in wait to intercept any boat attempting to run their blockade.

Dash for Freedom. In Macao Father Pierre, a missionary who has lived in the Portuguese colony for 30 years, was at his morning prayers. He listened, as he listened every morning, for the gunshots that would signal the death of some refugee's hopes. But there was only silence. Matins over, Father Pierre hurried out just in time to see the mist part, revealing Kou's boat paddling furiously for shore.

Not all refugees last week were so lucky. One boatload was turned back only yards from freedom. But others got through. Relief workers distributed 20,000 loaves of bread a day, tended the sick, and listened to other stories of Kwang-tung's miseries.

Among the refugees were nursing mothers, who had fled in desperation when they found that their starved breasts could not produce enough milk to keep their babies alive under the meager diet allowed them in Mao's communes. From one commune came reports that 50% of the children had died of malnutrition. There have been no reports of widespread crop failure, but apparently, Red Chinese authorities were taking the food Kwangtung produced and shipping it to the cities to feed industrial workers, or selling it abroad to acquire needed foreign exchange. In one area, peasants had derailed and looted a food train taking their grain away to the north.

As for Kou, at week's end he was happily at work at a $5-a-month busboy job in a Macao restaurant.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.