KI Media: “Sacrava's Political Cartoon: The Dark Day of Cambodia” plus 24 more

To commemorate the Dark Day of Cambodia,I would like to post my 90 black & white drawings here.

You could see them all at www.khmerrouge-toons.blogspot.com.

Cheers,

KATHMANDU, April 17: Angkor Photo Festival, the first platform for photography in Southeast Asia, has opened submissions for the seventh festival scheduled to be held in Siem Reap, Cambodia, from November 19 to 26.

"Through this program, the Festival guides emerging photographers in developing the skills to better document their own societies, understand universal ethical and professional standards, and eventually create a vibrant photographic network across Asia," states the website, photographyforchange.net.

The website further states, "Consistent with the festival's mission of highlighting emerging Southeast Asian photographers, of the 110 photographers exhibiting in 2010, fifty were from Asia.

The work was curated by two well-known figures in photography, Yumi Goto and Antoine d'Agata, as well as by Françoise Callier, program director of the Angkor Photo Festival.

During their stay, renowned photographers will tutor emerging Asian photographers in the free Angkor Photo workshops, while the festival operates its own outreach program, the Anjali Children's Photo Workshops."

The Festival recognizes talented emerging photographers and encourages them to participate in other international photography events as well as provide them with important career advice.

All events at the festival are free of charge.

The deadline for submissions is June 15. For more information and to download the application form, visit http://www.photographyforchange.net/submission2010.html

Far Eastern Air Transport (FAT) will resume operations on Monday, with its first flight scheduled for the outlying island of Kinmen. That's the word from sources from the carrier on Sunday.

The airline's service was suspended in 2008 due to financial problems.

The carrier is also planning to resume international flights to Siem Reap in Cambodia. FAT had its first flight to Siem Reap -- the closest international airport to the famed Angkor Wat -- in 2004. That was as the ancient temple complex was listed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The carrier is scheduled to resume charter flights to the area in May.

The airline is also planning to resume domestic flights to Makung City in offshore Penghu County as well as southern Kaohsiung City.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Two decades ago Ian "Snow" Woodford, an Australian, came to Cambodia on a whim and has been watching the country recover from isolated madness ever since. He's gotten an eyeful.

He saw firefights on the streets in late 1990s as political factions battled for power, while Cambodia was gasping for air after the Khmer Rouge's murderous reign. Later he saw the destruction of French colonial buildings, and the mass evictions of locals to make room for one new modern development after another.

Now, as developers continue to clamor for space in Phnom Penh, Snow has witnessed the end of another era. His business, Maxine's Bar on the River, more often called Snow's, has seen its final days, at least for now.

Tucked into a quiet, remote location across the river from the bustle of the capital, it was the only expat-run bar on the east bank of the Tonle Sap, and hence the favored spot for unwinding with a Beer Lao and watching the sun set over the city. The New York Times touted its authentic feel and National Geographic and the celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain used it as a backdrop.

But as construction recovers from a recession, his bar in its original location, like many local institutions in Cambodia's fast-changing capital, came to an end late last month. A "beautification project," as the government calls it, has demolished Snow's and more than 100 homes that line that road leading to an unfinished hotel project.

"Nothing lasts forever. I did know that because this place is on the river, it would come. But it's a little too quick," said Snow, a thin and tanned former miner with a toothy smile and a crew cut. "This will never be the same. You'll never recreate this. The view on the river. The breeze."

It is one of the latest in a series of evictions as investment dollars change the cityscape to make room for the new.

There are also plans for a $3 billion project, dubbed "Chruy Changva, City of the Future," just north of Snow's that would create a stadium, residential areas and hotels, displacing an undetermined amount of people.

.Across the Tonle Sap river from the more developed side of the riverfront Snow's was a sleepy oasis away from the capital's hazardous traffic, dust and diesel fumes and oppressive heat.

Its relaxed country feel attracted everyone from senior bank officials and private equity fund managers to aid workers, directors, journalists, tourists and English teachers.

Housed in a traditional Khmer wooden home, the bar was a long and bumpy ride from the city center. Down a winding dark road, visited by cattle, the bar wasn't even known by its actual name. You'd never find it on your own.

Hundreds of bells, hanging from the rafters, chimed and red paper lanterns swung in the wind. Silver painted vases and Buddha statuettes sparkled with the setting sun. Snow's own paintings shined in yellow, red and orange.

"It had no pretensions. It didn't try to be what it wasn't," said John Brinsden, vice president of Acleda Bank and a regular Snow's customer. "You can't say it was an art gallery. You can't say it was museum, you can't say it was art shop or bar, it was something quite different."

That uniqueness, the comfort of the breeze, the view of sunset, Snow's taste in old school rock and a friendly, low-key atmosphere made Snow's popular and memorable, he said.

Snow's wasn't just a destination for those within the confines of the capital.

Television crews for National Geographic and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain filmed episodes at the clay-tiled, stilted structure last year. The U.S. rock group Dengue Fever — the lead singer of which is a Cambodian woman — played an impromptu concert there in 2005.

For Snow, who draws his nickname from the Snowy Mountains in Australia where he once worked as a miner, life in Cambodia has been eventful — the photos on the wall of Snow's and few albums he kept behind the bar told his story.

One photo captures Snow on a golf course in 2001 standing next to Prime Minister Hun Sen in a chance meeting, both beaming. Another shows the filming of the movie "City of Ghosts," starring Matt Dillon, in which Snow had a cameo.

When Snow arrived in Cambodia, as Ian Woodford in 1993 after a painful divorce, he found a country in flux.

All it took was a helicopter ride shortly after his arrival, and he was hooked. "That was my introduction to Cambodia. I saw it all by air and I loved it. So I was in," he said.

The international community had just paid $1.5 billion to set up elections under the auspices of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), which hired the company that in turn employed Snow.

As part of his contract, he helped move hundreds of U.N. SUVs that were quickly being stolen and sold on the black market by impoverished Cambodians employed by the UNTAC.

In one of his first missions, he hired Khmer Rouge soldiers to transport the vehicles between Stung Treng and Kratie provinces, where they were loaded onto barges and shipped to Thailand. UNTAC soldiers had refused to do the job because of the Khmer Rouge presence that still posed a threat though its reign was officially over.

In the quiet days that followed UNTAC, Snow was one of the few foreigners to stay in the country, at first doing nothing, later teaching and doing logistics work. "I just hung around because I wanted to see what would happen to this place ... it couldn't get any worse," he said.

In 1997 battles in Phnom Penh erupted and firefights cleared the streets. But Snow stayed, even when it took days for him to cross the city due to unrest.

During some of the heaviest fighting, he watched soldiers march down Sihanouk Boulevard, a main thoroughfare leading to Independence Monument. "You could hear gunfire and it was madness," he said in his clipped Aussie accent. "You didn't know what was going to happen next."

Expats left in droves, businesses pulled out, embassies cut staff, but Snow stayed at a time when it was still common for soldiers to get drunk and fire off AK-47s at beer gardens.

By 2001, things had cooled down a bit. He auditioned for the role of an angry brothel customer in the film "City of Ghosts" and got the part. In his role he screams that he must take a prostitute to Battambang province for beauty school, a performance that still gets him recognized.

At the time of the filming, he was working at a school, painting art in an Aboriginal style he witnessed back in Australia that involves using small dots to create images. He used that technique to depict traditional Khmer images, and ultimately decided to open Snow's to sell more of his art and support his daughter for whom the bar was officially named. Maxine's mother and his partner, Sreyny, passed away in 2003.

While Snow said he appreciated the changes in Phnom Penh since his arrival — the reduction of violence, more restaurants — he acknowledged that the same trends had cost him his bar.

He has a temporary location in mind, but it's much smaller concrete building and the view is partly blocked by a giant-size billboard that advertises for a Russian-owned mobile phone company.

"It's the total Cambodia experience, you have these experiences in Cambodia, and usually the final one is when you lose your business to someone else. You know?" Snow said.

"It's a kick in the head, you know what I mean? It happens to a lot of people in Cambodia."

A decade ago, Cambodia was practically a ward of the international community, relying on international donors and nongovernmental organizations to get by. But its economy has since grown at an annual average rate of 10%, creating a $10 billion economy today, to which exports contribute more than $4 billion a year. Phnom Penh deserves credit for its low, flat tax and minimal regulations that have allowed the private sector to flourish.

The stain on this record of economic freedom is Phnom Penh's backtracking on political freedom. Prime Minister Hun Sen, in and out of power for 26 years, has never taken kindly to criticism and dissent. He is now proposing a law that would give him tight control over NGOs. A draft of this law was released last month.

This law is one more in a series of measures to curb civil society. In 2006, Mr. Hun Sen did away with a rule that required a two-thirds legislative majority to form a government and pass laws, making it easier to consolidate his power. In 2009, the parliament banned protests comprising more than 200 persons and stiffened the country's defamation laws. Mr. Hun Sen has sued his political opponents on defamation charges and intimidated them by other means. In December, he put into effect a criminal code that charges someone for incitement if he merely shared articles from the Internet. He's also contemplating a law that would curb trade unions.

NGOs are a prime target, because the 300-odd groups and more than 1,000 smaller associations currently operating in the country stand up for those disenfranchised by Phnom Penh's autocracy—offering the best check against the government in a country with a weak judiciary. If the draft law is enacted, even the smallest groups in the countryside will be forced to undergo an onerous registration process. Phnom Penh can reject registration without explanation or appeal.

Western donors have been reluctant to exercise leverage in some part because of a broad concern that if the West doesn't offer money, China will—without strings attached. Beijing, happy to undercut the West, wrote a $1.2 billion check for aid and soft loans in late 2009.

But the West has ample clout—more through trade than aid. Phnom Penh wants to be part of the international economic order, with which the West can help. China offers trade and investment too, but Cambodia's textile exporters sell enough to Western markets that the U.S. is now its largest trading partner. Phnom Penh cares enough for its U.S. market that in 1999 it agreed to follow international labor standards for its sweatshops, to avoid boycott from American trade unions.

As late as 2009, U.S. politicians celebrated applying this pressure on Cambodia because, as Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.) said, it "significantly [improved] the rights of and conditions for workers, which, in turn, can help expand other freedoms." This time, instead of pressuring employers like Nike who are expanding job opportunities for Cambodians, the U.S. and European Union would help the country more if they pressured Mr. Hun Sen on his political record. Playing the trade and investment card is one way to do it.

Greater political accountability of Mr. Hun Sen will guarantee not only civil liberties for Cambodians, but also a better business environment. The lack of political checks is breeding fears of cronyism, especially regarding land. The worse corruption gets—Cambodia ranked 154 on Transparency International's 2010 corruption perception index of 178 nations—the more businesses, especially foreign ones, will be wary of investing. Growth could slow down, interrupting the country's momentum, and also depriving the newfound freedoms Cambodians have begun to enjoy.

KUALA TERENGGANU, April 17 (Bernama) -- Two Cambodian fishermen were charged in the Magistrate's Court here Sunday with murdering a Thai skipper in Malaysian territorial waters last month.

Brothers, Arifin Salleh, 27, and Kadir, 25, from Dombei Komprecho, Cambodia, are charged with murdering Phat Phetpuk in a fishing boat in Malaysian waters at about 1pm last March 27.

The charge, under Section 302 of the Penal Code, carries the death sentence upon conviction.

However, no plea was recorded after the charge was read before Magistrate Siti Faraziana Zainuddin, who then fixed May 18 for mention.

Meanwhile, Kadir was also charged in the Sessions Court with attempting to murder Thai fisherman, Visak Phonet, at the same place and time.

No plea was also recorded.

Judge Zainal Abidin Kamaruddin set May 18 for mention.

BANGKOK - Laos has quietly begun work on the first dam across the lower Mekong River even before a four-nation meeting to decide on the project that has roused critics ranging from a U.S. senator to the country's closest ally, Vietnam, an environmental group said Sunday.

The governments of Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand are scheduled to meet Tuesday to officially decide whether to construct the $3.5 billion, 1,260 megawatt Xayaburi dam in northern Laos.

But reports say Laos is already moving ahead on the project.

"We have been informed by local people that a road is being built as preparation for work on the Xayaburi dam. We have heard about this for some time," said Pianporn Deetes, of the U.S.-based International Rivers.

The English-language Bangkok Post Sunday said more than 20 miles (30 kilometres) of roadway leading to the dam site were under construction and that some villagers were already told they would be provided with new homes and compensation as low as $15 for being evicted.

Photographs showed road work in progress and trucks bearing logos of Ch Karnchang, the Thai company that won the bid to build the proposed dam that would generate electricity for sale to Thailand.

Lao officials could not be reached for comment and an email requesting explanation was not answered.

The Mekong River Commission, an intergovernmental agency that includes the four decision-making countries, said it would contact the Lao government Monday. The commission is based in the Lao capital of Vientiane.

"We have never been informed by the Lao government about the possible construction around the Xayaburi dam. This has never been raised in any of the MRC meetings," said a commission spokesman, Surasak Glahan.

Tuesday's meeting will be held under the commission's umbrella. Its members try to forge a consensus on major, trans-boundary issues, but can go ahead with projects like Xayaburi despite opposition from others in the group — so Tuesday's decision would be non-binding.

The proposed dam has sparked a major environmental battle in Southeast Asia and beyond with opponents fearing the dam would spur plans to build 10 more dams on the hitherto free-flowing mainstream of the lower Mekong. China has already dammed its upper reaches.

But Laos, one of the world's poorest nations, has said revenue from the dam is needed for social and economic development, maintaining that the project is environmentally sound.

Last week, U.S. Senator Jim Webb called the dam "a dangerously harmful precedent as it relates to the environmental health of Southeast Asia."

The Virginia Democrat said numerous scientific studies have concluded construction would have "devastating environmental, economic and social consequences for the entire Mekong sub-region."

The studies say the dam would disrupt fish migrations, block nutrients for downstream farming and even foul Vietnam's rice bowl by slowing the river's speed and allowing saltwater to creep into the Mekong River Delta. Vietnam's official media has slammed the project in a rare disagreement with the country's communist ally.

On Monday, 100 villagers from Thai provinces bordering the Mekong were to deliver protest letters to the Lao Embassy in Bangkok and to Thailand's Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

It's been a life of hard work, perseverance and hope for House of Leng owners Eang Leng, 40, and his wife, Pun, 39.

From living a life as refugees in Cambodia to successfully running two restaurants in the University City area, Eang and Pun know what it means to be survivors.

In January, House of Leng restaurant opened at University Place, in the same building where the House of Taipei restaurant operated years ago. Eang Leng, who started as a busboy at the House of Taipei, and Pun started House of Leng at Cochran Commons on W. Mallard Creek Church Road six years ago and decided it was time to expand.

"We weren't thinking of opening back here, but the landlord (sought) us out," Eang said in sometimes halting English. "I love the location. A lot of people like to come here, relax and walk around the lake and walk the dog."

At the House of Taipei, Eang worked his way up to general manager. For Eang, it's different owning a restaurant.

"I have my name behind it ... I want to make sure I do the right thing," he said. "I do care a lot for my customers. They come from far away. Concord, Kannapolis ... even from South Carolina and Lake Norman just to come and have our food. I want to make sure they enjoy."

His wife said there is a lot more work and effort as owners. "Our hearts and souls are in this," said Pun, who quit her job as the assistant nurse manager at Carolinas Medical Center to work with her husband. "We spend a lot more time here than at home."

Eang and Pun are originally from Cambodia but met in Charlotte in 1994. At the time, Pun was a student at Queens University, where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in nursing.

But for the two of them, life was very different before coming to the United States. They spent their early childhoods amid a civil war, after the brutal Khmer Rouge regime took control of Cambodia.

The war is all Eang can remember, and he does not recall any happy childhood memories. There was no such thing as television and no toys. Kids played with dirt and rubber bands, he said.

During this time of social unrest, Eang lost his father and two older sisters, Quen and Ming, to starvation.

"One sister that week and a couple weeks later my other sister and a couple weeks later my dad," he said. "Almost my turn, but I'm lucky, Vietnamese invaded and everything came back."

Even though there was a hospital, it was a place where people went and became sick.

"You go in there, they give you coconut milk," Eang said. "Sometimes they just give you a water shot. You go there, you going to get worse. Just like a virus. If you are not that sick, you are going to get sick."

Eang and his mother tried to stop Quen from going to the hospital, but she was so hungry she felt like she had no other choice.

A week later, she got worse and couldn't walk straight, he said. One day she was lying down, shaking, he said.

"My mom said, 'Help me! Help her!' I don't know what to do," said Eang. His mother tried to give her a spoon of sugar, but it was too late and she died soon after.

In 1979, when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia, Eang and his family had a chance to escape. At the time, people would take refugees to the border of Thailand for a token sum.

But Eang's family had no money. Instead they traded their mother's gold jewelry for a ride to the border, where they stayed at different refugee camps for several months at a time.

"It's horrible...nighttime you can't sleep, they bomb," said Eang. "They give us blanket and tent and water and all that stuff but still people are hungry."

With the help of missionaries from a church organization, Eang and his family left Cambodia and moved to Mobile, Ala., in 1981.

"When we come, we have little money," said Eang. "We have to rent our own place and we have to go to work right away."

Eang's family picked crabs for a living and saved enough money to move to Charlotte in 1989.

His mother always encouraged him to study and work hard. There was no such thing as computers or sitting around doing nothing.

That mentality has stayed with Eang till this day.

"No job is too little, no job is too big," said Pun, "He's not too big to go clean the bathroom or take the orders. It's the mentality that you (were) there once. Just because you become a boss or owner doesn't mean you are too high to serve the customers."

Eang and Pun live in the University City area with their four children, Richard, 13, Anessa, 11, Lanica, 8, and Benjamin, 3. Their two oldest children attend Ridge Road Middle School and their third attends Mallard Creek Elementary School.

"We like living and working here," said Pun. "It's active. It's got a variety of people that live here ... every race and every culture. It's never boring."

Eang and his wife raise their children with a strong work ethic. They tell them of their history, where they came from, and what it means to be a survivor. It's a constant reminder of true resilience and that hard work pays off.

I was born and raised in the small south-east Asian country of Cambodia, and brought up in the town of Takeo, south of the capital Phnom Penh. Cambodia was then ruled by King Norodom Sihanouk, and in its first years of independence from French colonial rule. In March 1970, Sihanouk was overthrown in a coup led by General Lon Nol, who declared the country a republic seven months later. This, along with the encroachment of the war from neighbouring Vietnam, threw the country into civil war.

My family and social background was rather privileged. My parents lived a comfortable life. They always employed domestic help for household tasks, in the kitchen and even with raising the children. By 1975 I was married with two girls (4 years and 20 months old at the time). My husband worked for Unesco, and I was an English teacher in a Phnom Penh college.

On 17 April 1975, we applauded the parade of victorious Khmer Rouge soldiers in the streets of Phnom Penh. Everyone was so happy just thinking it was the end of the civil war, which had lasted for five years and had already created so much suffering. We could not have imagined what was to come.

A few hours later, our misery started. The Khmer Rouge ordered us to leave the city "for three hours only" and to carry nothing with us so that they could search the place for republican soldiers who had gone into hiding. This order applied to all towns and cities, small or large, throughout the country. Of course, people did what they were ordered to do.

I left my house with my mother (who was going blind for lack of essential care after an eye operation), my two daughters, three sisters and two brothers. My father and my husband were not with us, and I was to learn their fates only later. My father, a colonel and head of a regiment of 2,000 soldiers was at the frontline; the Khmer Rouge killed him along with his brother officers when they surrendered. My husband was in Paris during this period; the Khmer Rouge tricked him into returning to Cambodia, and killed him on his arrival.

Five hours passed, one day, two days, three days…. We realised by now that this was a trip without return. The Khmer Rouge fired machine-gun rounds in the air to force us to advance under the intense heat of the scorching sun (April is the hottest month of the year in Cambodia). The children cried of thirst and hunger; the elderly were exhausted; pregnant women gave birth on the roadside; young people broke into houses along the road – empty since their owners had been evacuated ahead of us – to seek food.

We saw unbearable scenes: the decaying corpses of those who had dared question the orders to leave or refused to satisfy the whims of the Khmer Rouge; old people who pleaded not to be left behind; children wailing, having lost their parents; the wounded who had been waiting for an operation and who were forced to leave the hospitals, hardly able to hold themselves upright, with their wounds still open. It was extremely painful and alarming.

Everyone was in a pitiful physical state and an utterly powerless state of mind. Nobody could come to the assistance of others. We were faced with a hopeless situation.

The Khmer Rouge, I understood later, intended to eliminate the rich, the intellectuals, and anyone educated – like doctors, engineers and professors, the majority of whom tended to live in the city. For the Khmer Rouge these people were part of a dictatorial and corrupt regime that exploited the poor, and they sought to destroy everything they thought belonged to this world: buildings, luxury cars, villas, refrigerators.

After about a month, completely exhausted, we stopped in a village where the Khmer Rouge started to integrate arriving city-dwellers like us into the life of the rural inhabitants. They distinguished us from the villagers, whom they called neak mool-thaan (old people) by describing us as neak jum-leah (new people) or, in some villages pror-cheer-chun thmey (new population).

It was still the dry season. My family and the other new people families were assigned to dig irrigation canals, ponds, dams, and cut trees in the forest and the jungle to make sites for orchards. When the rainy season started, we were woken up at 4 o'clock in the morning to go to work in the fields to plant rice. We were permitted to return home at 7 o'clock in the evening to eat. We were then forced to attend brainwashing sessions between 9 and 11 o'clock. At 4 the next morning, after a few hours rest, it all started again.

It continued like this during the entire harvest season. During the day, we were given a small bowl of salted rice porridge. This was eventually reduced to two tablespoons of clear porridge soup, twice a day. Everyone became very thin and extremely feeble. We came home exhausted after a day of planting rice. Then it was time for the brainwashing sessions.

The Khmer Rouge used to keep us on the move from village to village so that we couldn't organise an insurrection. We usually travelled on foot or by ox-cart, but on one occasion we were sent by train. The long, slow train journey lasted three days and two nights. The coaches were crammed and we were like sardines in a tin. Most of us in a coach of more than 150 people had to stand.

A baby died. In the next coach an old woman also died. The authorities refused to stop the train for time and safety reasons. With some travellers complaining, and after long, cruel, anguished deliberations, the families of the dead had no other option than to throw the bodies out of the window.

Everyone became quiet for a long time while wondering who would be the next victim. My heart was heavy with sorrow for the families of the deceased. Moreover, I had almost lost my daughters in the jungle during this same journey – a story too long to describe here.

With time, more and more of the new people died – from hunger, disease, from a plague of sheer exhaustion, but most of all from the massacres perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge. They killed people on perfectly ridiculous pretexts: wearing spectacles, knowing how to read or how to open the door of a car, even for having a white mark on the wrist (a sign of having worn a watch). For the Khmer Rouge, these were all signs that the person concerned belonged to a rich, dictatorial class.

It was common to see a man whose face was pale, trembling with fear, being paraded through the village with his hands bound behind the back, guarded on either side by Khmer Rouge cadre carrying large machetes. It was terrifying: everyone knew that they were going to decapitate this man. The scene served its purpose of warning us that the Khmer Rouge wielded absolute power. We lived from one day to the next. We had no idea what might happen to us in the night or on the following day.

How did I manage to survive? It was not easy. You constantly had to keep your presence of mind and be alert to the ways the Khmer Rouge might deceive you. They tested us constantly and without warning. On two occasions I managed to outsmart them.

The first time, a Khmer Rouge cadre gave me a piece of paper to read. Thinking rapidly, I held it upside down, and asked him what he wanted me to do with this sheet. He laughed and told me that I was stupid to try to read it upside down.

The second time, one of my former students recognised me in front of a Khmer Rouge soldier and addressed me as neak kroo (teacher). She quickly realised that she had made a terrible mistake. The soldier looked me up and down. A thousand thoughts crossed my mind in an instant. I needed to react very quickly. In that moment, I recalled that the Khmer word neak kroo can also mean "wise woman". I pretended to be quite calm and started to address the Khmer Rouge soldier, smiling: "Now what do you think of this? My profession was to be a fortune-teller, and I was one of the best clairvoyants in my village".

When he heard this, the soldier asked me to read his palm and predict his future. "My God", I told myself, "help me!" Then I remembered what my mother had once said to me: peasants in Cambodia can be credulous…you have learn a little of their mentality. Almost all Khmer Rouge had been young peasant boys and girls – some of them so young that they could not even carry their rifle properly. I drew on my experiences at parents' evenings, where I met parents of all social classes, on my studies of psychology at the Phnom Penh's faculty of pedagogy, and on some books of astrology I had read, to mislead this Khmer Rouge soldier sufficiently to convince him that I was really a fortune-teller.

I think that on this day God was with me. Because of this terrifying incident, I could continue to play the role of clairvoyant. I even could gain some advantage from it: the Khmer Rouges cadres whose futures I portrayed gave me in "exchange" small amounts of food which helped keep my family alive.

This was not my only brush with death. After this incident, I was nearly killed on three more occasions, and many other horrible events occurred. Just to mention one: my small, then 7-year-old daughter was once tied to a tree and beaten in front of me. I could not do anything to help her. It was terribly painful and it still makes me dreadfully upset just to think about it.

The Khmer Rouge continued frequently to move the new people from one place to another. My family ended up in a distant village surrounded by jungle, at the foot of the Cardamom mountains in western Cambodia, near the border with Thailand. We heard distant rumours that the Vietnamese army had invaded Cambodia and were fighting against the Khmer Rouge. The arrival of Vietnamese soldiers in our area confirmed that it was true, and the Khmer Rouge fled into the mountains.

I had learned to speak Vietnamese in Phnom Penh, and quickly became friendly with the Vietnamese forces stationed in the village. They gave me food for my children and vitamins and drugs for my mother. This good luck did not last: the Vietnamese soon had to withdraw, and the returning Khmer Rouge accused me of being a spy for the Vietnamese army. They searched for me everywhere in order to kill me. A good friend warned me, and I managed to hide. My mother had to pretend she was very angry with me because I had abandoned my children to follow the Vietnamese. She cried (in fact they were tears of fear) and said that I was an ungrateful daughter. The Khmer Rouge appeared convinced.

In my hiding-place I spent my time mending clothes and hats from palm-tree leaves for fellow-fugitives, in exchange for food. I still lived in constant fear and apprehension. I was convinced that the Khmer Rouge would find me.

One day, a girl carrying palm-tree leaves came to see me. I received her with joy, thinking that this meant work and therefore food for my family and myself. But the girl acted in a strange way, looking from side to side and whispering. I was becoming afraid when she assured me that she had good news.

Her brother Yom, who knew the Thai-Khmer border like his pocket, had just arrived from Thailand on a mission to find the family of a Khmer friend, a former helicopter pilot who now lived in Thailand. By chance, the wife of this pilot had the same first name as me, two daughters around the same age as mine, and a blind aunt. The girl was convinced that I was the pilot's wife. I told the girl that I was not the person Yom was looking for, but she believed without any doubt that I was. She was convinced that I was afraid of a Khmer Rouge trick and so did not trust her.

After the girl left, my mother and I discussed what to do. If it was a Khmer Rouge trap, why did they not just come directly and arrest me? Perhaps the girl was honest and did only want to help her brother to achieve his mission? In the end, the decisive point was that I had had enough of living in hiding. I had a better chance of surviving the Khmer Rouge by trying to escape to Thailand.

A few days later, Vietnamese troops returned to the area and the Khmer Rouge fled once more towards the mountains. Yom's sister came back to see me, again with palm-tree leaves in hand. I resolved to follow her brother's plan. We met Yom, who told me that it was impossible to bring my mother with us. I had to agree. I thus decided to take with me my two daughters and one of my sisters, leaving two other sisters to take care of my mother and other members of my family.

Yom suggested that we benefit from the sudden departure of the Khmer Rouge, along with their own families, by pretending to be part of a Khmer Rouge retinue. We gathered in Yom's village, not far from mine. By nightfall, more than a hundred villagers (all of them Yom's relatives) left on a track towards the border. All of us were on foot, except for some old men and women who rode in ox-carts.

As Yom had foretold, distant strange sounds – like night birds – responded to the sound of the ox-carts. Yom told us that the Khmer Rouge had invented these as signals to communicate among themselves. Fortunately, Yom could understand them and answered that we also were Khmer Rouge in the process of evacuation.

After a few hours trekking, Yom announced that we had entered the zone of mines and traps. Everyone had to walk in line closely behind him. My heart beat quickly, I did not dare even to breathe. Further on, Yom pointed to large holes in the ground covered by branches, which had bamboo-spikes at the bottom: traps for people who tried to escape towards Thailand. It was a nightmarish night.

At 5 o'clock in the morning, we heard the cocks crow. Although I was completely exhausted and ravenously hungry, my heart was filled with joy because I knew that finally we had arrived in a Thai village. We were almost free.

Yom, before disappearing, had instructed us about what to say and do when we met the Thai authorities. The Thai police sent us in army trucks to a refugee camp almost forty kilometres away from the border. When I arrived in the camp, exhausted but happy, I breathed intensely as if I had never been so free in my life.

Soon, for the first time in four years I tasted tap water and ate a bowl of rice with meat, had electricity, and saw people with clean clothes with different colours (we wore only black under the Khmer Rouge). I had to tell myself repeatedly that this wasn't a dream.

After such ecstasy, I knelt down to thank God who had protected me and saved my life. I had passed the hardest trials of my life and emerged from them healthy and safe, along with several members of my family.

In the refugee camp, I met Robert Ashe, a young Englishman who worked for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. A year later, in a small village in Gloucestershire called "Paradise", we were married.

I remained for a long time traumatised by the cruelty, cowardice and inhumanity of the Khmer Rouge who walked into Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975. It is painful even now to recall and write these memories. Since then, I have lived other lifetimes, which include a return to Cambodia to revisit what remains of my home, my family and my country. Everything I went through, and all those who were lost, still haunt me.

Var Hong Ashe was born in Cambodia where she worked as an English teacher. She has lived in England since 1979, and is the author of From Phnom Penh to Paradise. This article has been reproduced under a Creative Commons licence from OpenDemocracy.net.

17 April 1975 is the day of victory over the U.S. imperialists. The Khmer Liberation Army, "or the Khmer Rouge army," was able to eliminate the pain and suffering of the Cambodian people during a war that lasted five years, since 1970-1975. 17 April 1975 gave the people of Cambodia much hope, motivation, and happiness knowing that their country had achieved peace and prosperity. It became a peaceful country after people united from their separation from parents, families, and relatives during the war.

My mother and father, as well as the rest of the people in the city of Phnom Penh, came out to congratulate and welcome the Khmer Liberation Army that entered and filled the entire city of Phnom Penh. They felt joyful and happy. My father, like other people in the city of Phnom Penh, raised a white flag, screaming, "Bravo to victory and peace!" with a beaming face filled with hope for the future. But it was not too long after people had become excited and joyful about this peace, that the Khmer Liberation Army, or the Khmer Rouge, began ordering people out of their homes. For three days they would leave Phnom Penh. The Khmer Liberation Army said, "The Americans are going to drop bombs on the city of Phnom Penh. The Khmer Liberation Army will stay to clear out all the imperialists in the city of Phnom Penh and then you can return. Therefore, we ask all brothers and sisters to leave without taking any of your belongings, because you will only leave for three days." With the threats of their guns, the Khmer Liberation Army forced my family and our neighbors to quickly leave our homes. Anybody or any family that was not willing to leave, the Khmer Rouge Liberation Army would threaten and if they remained stubborn and were not willing to leave their homes, they would be shot and killed.

My family left our home that was north of Tuol Svay Prey School in Sangkat #5, Phnom Penh. Remorse mixed with fear. When we left our home, my father brought a motorcycle to load our clothes, a ricepot, a kettle, and a small bag of rice. We then began our journey on Monivong Street that was filled with throngs of people, pushing and crowding each other. Children were crying and screaming and people were calling to each other and asking for their families and relatives that they had lost along the journey. On the side of the road, my mother saw corpses that were hit by shrapnel as well as corpses of Lon Nol soldiers dressed in military uniforms who were shot and lying dead on the ground. At that time I was six years old and my mother who was seven months pregnant held on to my hand behind my father who was straddling his motorcycle among the crowd of thousands of people. My younger sibling who was three years old, sat on the motorcycle with a bag of clothing, a kettle, and a small bag of rice. We walked forward along the side of Monivong Street without knowing where we were going. When we reached the circle intersection at the head of the road, the Khmer Liberation Army asked my father to give up his motorcycle. At this time, my family experienced great difficulty on our journey, because my younger sibling was still very small and my mother was also pregnant. But no matter how difficult things were we needed to continue our journey forward, because the Khmer Liberation Army kept yelling at us from behind with a gun always pointed at us. My family crossed Kbal Khnal Bridge and towards the bank on the far eastern side. Other evacuees felt exhausted, scared and hopeless. I can not remember every event that took place in 1975, especially what happened on 17 April 1975, which my family and the other people throughout Cambodia have experienced in fright and terror. My mother has told me about these events and has made me feel pity, compassion, and anger for the people who have died in innocence. I feel especially remorseful for the events that have made me an orphan without a father. 17 April 1975 has remained a day I will always remember.

For every one U.n. greasy, slimy, bureaucrat lacking backbone and feigning the most patronizing deference to his/her Cambodian counterpart while snickering with all their good Cambodia stories at cocktail parties - there is an equal number of really decent un-bureaucrat, courageous individuals who are pushing the boundary in their quest for justice for victims. at the ECCC.


We would like to recognize a few of them here -- former UN prosecutor Robert Petit, Judge Silvia Cartwright, Judge Jean-Marc Lavergne, Judge Rowan Downing, former defense chief Richard Rogers, etc.

We also would like to recognize the courageous Cambodian officials who are trying to do their best despite the various pressures (political!) -- Co-investigating Judge You Bunleng, Judge Non Nil, Rong Chhorng, etc.

On April 17th 1975, Khmer Rouge forces entered Phnom Penh, Cambodia and defeated the ruling Lon Nol Army. The taking of Phnom Penh marked the beginning of the Cambodian genocide. Survivor Sophal Leng Stagg remembers: "On the night of April 16, 1975 we were awakened by the terrible sounds of bombs and guns, close at hand. The explosions were so near that our house shook with each burst. To the mind of a terrified nine-year-old girl, it seemed that the gunfire was aimed directly at me… I soon learned that the people I loved the most would begin to experience the worst horrors imaginable. We knew our lives would be changed forever."

Holocaust Memorial Day exists to commemorate and teach the lessons of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides.

You can read the testimony of survivors of the Cambodian genocide on the HMD website Mardi Seng Ronnie Yimsut and Sophal Leng Stagg

Between 1975 and 1978 a brutal revolution took place in Cambodia. Led by Pol Pot, a radical communist group the Khmer Rouge seized power following a period of instability. The Khmer Rouge's interpretation of Marxist/Leninist/Maoist communist models allowed them to believe that they could create a classless society simply by eliminating all social classes apart from poor peasants. They declared the date year zero and ruthlessly imposed an extremist programme to reconstruct Cambodia (Khmer name: Kampuchea). They claimed to be returning society to a golden age when the land was cultivated by peasants. They believed that Cambodia should be ruled for and by the poorest people; that the most members of society should be rural agricultural workers rather than educated city dwellers, who had been corrupted by western capitalist ideas.

Immediately they ordered all the towns and cities to be emptied of people. No-one was excused. People who refused to leave were killed, so were those who did not leave fast enough and those who would not obey orders. The ill, disabled, old and very young were driven out, regardless of their physical condition.

The majority of people were made to work as agricultural slave labourers in a federation of collective farms. These farms are today known as the 'killing fields' because so many workers died or were killed there. Money was abolished and all aspects of life were subject to regulation. People were not allowed to choose their own marriage partners. They could not leave their given place of work or even select the clothes that they would wear. Working days were long and food rations meagre.

Everyone had to be obedient to the state. Ties to religion and family had to be broken and all loyalties transferred to the state. All political and civil rights were abolished. Formal education was stopped and from January 1977 all children from the age of eight were separated from their parents and placed in separate labour camps. Children were taught that their only real family was the Khmer Rouge. They were instructed to report all adults who were not behaving in approved ways i.e. conforming to Khmer Rouge laws, to 'Angkar' the official Khmer Rouge organisation. Children were central to the revolution as the Khmer Rouge saw that they could be easily moulded, conditioned and indoctrinated. They would obey orders, become soldiers, kill enemies. Children were taught to believe that anyone not conforming to Khmer Rouge rules was a corrupt enemy. Loving family members or showing pity was seen as weakness.

The only acceptable lifestyle was that of poor agricultural workers. Factories, schools and universities were shut down, so were hospitals. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers, scientists and professional people in any field were murdered, together with their extended families. Religion was banned, so were music and radio sets. Those thought to be educated, intellectual or capable of emotion were seen as class enemies and disloyal to the state. It was possible for people to be shot simply for knowing a foreign language, wearing glasses, laughing, crying or expressing love for another person.

Minority groups were also victims of the Khmer Rouge. Ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai people became targets of the racism encouraged by the Khmer Rouge. Cambodians believed to have Chinese, Vietnamese or Thai ancestry were not safe from attack. Religious believers were sought out and half the Cham Muslim population was murdered, as were 8,000 Christians. Buddhism was eliminated from the country and by 1977 there were no functioning monasteries left in Cambodia.

Killing developed on an industrial scale. At the centre of the murder was a concentration camp at Tuol Sleng, known as S21 by the Khmer Rouge. The camp, in the centre of the capital city was created by converting a primary school into an official place for interrogation, torture and death. Thousands of men women and children were processed at the centre and records were kept of their interrogation, torture and execution. Everyone passing through the centre was photographed and their images survive in the centre, which is now a museum. Of an estimated 20, 00 held at Tuol Sleng only 7 people are believed to have survived.

It is difficult to give precise figures for how many people lost their lives during this period. People died from starvation, disease and exhaustion. Thousands were executed by the state. Estimates range between one and three million. Official organisations suggest at least 1.7 million but many researching the period now suggest that between 2.2 and 2.5 million perished* with half of the total executed as perceived enemies of the regime; this is a quarter to a third of the whole Cambodian population was destroyed by its own rulers.

A timeline of events in Cambodia http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1244006.stm

More information and resources for finding out more about the genocide can be found at the Cambodian Genocide Project

The website of Dith Pran survivor and subject of the film 'The Killing Fields' provides comprehensive information on the genocide.

For more information, please check for yourself at:

China has notched up controls over state-controlled media in the wake of recent online calls for a "Jasmine" revolution, but some major news organizations are pushing back against a growing wave of directives from the top, journalists said.

Independent journalist and blogger Zan Aizong said China's state-owned media has been increasingly responsive to the desire of the public for accurate information, with editors scrambling at times to make sure reports come out before officials have a chance to ban them.

"Some of the more daring media are reporting major stories with such speed that they get in there before the order forbidding coverage has had time to land," Zan said.

"The joke among journalists is that they publish first, even when the order runs as fast as [champion hurdler] Liu Xiang."

He said some media had made sure to publish the news of the 2008 fire at the headquarters of state broadcaster CCTV overnight.

"By the time the gag order arrived, they had already printed it," Zan said.

According to the California-based China Digital Times (CDT) website, journalists were recently forbidden to carry out their own reporting on the spread of radioactive material from the quake-damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.

"All media are only to use copy circulated from the Xinhua News Agency," a March 29 directive from the ruling Communist Party's powerful central propaganda department, translated and posted by CDT, said.

"Media are not allowed to conduct their own interviews and reports."

Following a speech last month by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Internet freedom, Chinese media were ordered to post an editorial in response to her outline for U.S. Internet policy overseas.

"All websites are requested to repost, on the front page and in a prominent position, the story, 'Internet Freedom: Unilateralism, Hillary Clinton style,'" said a directive from the State Council Information Office.

"It is not permitted to change the title, and the article must stay on the front page until March 15, 6:00 a.m.," the directive said.

Rights activists say that government controls over the media have been stepped up recently in the wake of anonymous online calls for a "Jasmine" revolution inspired by uprisings in the Middle East earlier this year.

Indeed, the use of the word "Jasmine" itself was forbidden in a March 2 directive from the propaganda bureau, according to CDT's archive.

Journalists have also been banned from carrying out their own interviews on certain stories related to official corruption, one of the key grievances highlighted by the organizers of the "Jasmine" rallies.

"The only corruption reports the media can run are of those cases that have already been dealt with," said Sichuan-based rights activist Li Yunsheng.

"China hasn't got a media," Li said. "It only has the propaganda tools of the Party."

"We can safely say that this doesn't exist in China: only mouthpieces and propaganda machines do."

Both Zan and Li called on the government to relax its stranglehold on the media and to end the oppression of journalists who dare to report the truth.

Last month, Paris-based press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) accused Beijing of "gagging" its population with increased censorship that appears to be aimed at "stamping out all forms of freedom of expression."

Overseas press freedom groups have pointed to a sharp rise in the number of Chinese journalists in jail in the past year, fueled by a series of convictions of ethnic minority writers.

A total of 34 journalists remained in Chinese prisons on Dec. 1, compared with 24 in the previous year, putting China in joint first place with Iran for having the highest number of jailed reporters, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a report released in February.

Reported by Gao Shan for RFA's Mandarin service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

Bangkok - A leading US senator has added his voice to a growing chorus of international opposition to a proposed dam on the Mekong River in Laos.

Democrat Senator Jim Webb, chair of the Committee on Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Thursday issued a statement raising concerns over the Xayaburi dam project, which could get the go-ahead next week.

Officials from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, through which the lower Mekong flows, are to decide on April 22 whether the project is to proceed.

The Xayaburi hydropower dam is the first of 11 planned on the lower Mekong mainstream.

'This is a dangerously harmful precedent as it relates to the environmental health of South-East Asia,' Webb warned.

'Numerous scientific studies have concluded that construction of the Xayaburi dam and other proposed mainstream dams will have devastating environmental, economic, and social consequences for the entire Mekong sub-region,' he said.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) on Thursday warned that the dam's environmental impact assessment study was 'woefully inadequate and fell well below international standards for such studies.'

The WWF and 263 international non-governmental organizations have called for a 10-year moratorium on all lower Mekong dams, until full assessments are made on their impact.

'To avoid irreversible damage to the region, I believe it would be prudent to delay the construction of any mainstream dam along the river, including those along the upper Mekong River, until adequate planning and multilateral coordination can be guaranteed,' Webb said.

Sustainable development of the Mekong, South-East Asia's longest waterway that starts in China and runs through Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam has become key in US efforts to re-engage with the region.

Environmentalists fear that the construction of the Xayaburi dam will disrupt fish migrations in the lower Mekong with devastating impact on food supplies for millions of people.

China has already built four hydropower dams in Yunnan province on the upper mainstream of the Mekong.

The Modern History of a Troubled Land

By Joel Brinkley

(PublicAffairs; 386 pages; $27.99)

This year Arab leaders have been caught off balance by their citizens, who have shown unexpected courage and come out in force to demand democracy and an end to corruption and cruel inequities. Those protests are proof that the truism that Arabs needed "strongmen" to rule them was wrong. In just weeks, the nonviolent demonstrators overthrew the ruling tyrants in Tunisia and Egypt, inspiring other uprisings in Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria. Now, no matter how these revolts play out, Arabs have broken out of racial and cultural stereotypes that said they were unfit for democracy.

In his new book "Cambodia's Curse," the former New York Times journalist Joel Brinkley comes very close to offering a similar dead-end theory to explain why he thinks the people of Cambodia are "cursed" by history to live under abusive tyrants. In his telling, Cambodians are passive Buddhists who have accepted their stern overlords since the days of the Angkor Empire. "Far more than almost any other state, modern Cambodia is a product of customs and practices set in stone a millennium ago," he writes, blaming that history for the ability of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen to squash meaningful dissent against his corrupt regime.

As a young reporter, Brinkley won a Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for his coverage of the Cambodian refugee crisis. Returning to the region 30 years later, Brinkley - now a professor of journalism at Stanford - chose his subject well. Hun Sen deserves a thorough examination. Along with his cronies, he has amassed extraordinary wealth selling off the country's assets to the highest bidder. Everything is up for grabs - land wrested from peasants to be sold to corporations and turned into plantations or tourist resorts, young girls and boys sold into prostitution, and dense forests cut down and the lumber sold abroad. Corruption is everywhere. Underpaid schoolteachers demand bribes from their students, judges issue rulings based on the amount of money paid on the side or the dictates of the government, businesses flourish by paying handsome bribes for licenses and to avoid unwelcome regulations.

Brinkley admirably highlights nearly all of these crimes and demonstrates that Hun Sen's administration has been a disaster for many Cambodians. His portrait of the businessman Mong Reththy is a gem, showing how businessmen enrich themselves through corrupt government concessions and then underwrite charities or schools in the areas impoverished by their corruption.

Yet there are only two types of Cambodians in these pages - either victims (passive, poverty-stricken Cambodians for whom Brinkley shows great sympathy) or villains (cruel, selfish politicians and businessmen). Missing are normal Cambodians who work day jobs and study at night to get ahead; Cambodians who return from abroad with dreams of a better life; Cambodians who promote human rights or flourish in the arts and sciences.

The few people painted in full, heroic strokes are American diplomats who served as ambassadors to Cambodia. Brinkley focuses on them and the foreign community of aid groups and governments who spend billions of dollars to improve the lives of Cambodia's poor. He correctly asks whether much of that money has gone to waste or into bank accounts of corrupt officials, and chastises foreign governments for not demanding real reforms for the aid.

Undermining his reporting is his thesis that thousand-year-old traditions are to blame for this state of affairs rather than 21st century realities. Brinkley fails to track the extraordinary sums of foreign investment fueling official corruption. Crooked signing bonuses and commissions, money laundering, selling off government land to foreign investors, human trafficking - these modern plagues are hardly confined to Cambodia. International businesses are pouring billions into Cambodia. China and South Korea are at the top of that list, giving them an outsize influence in Cambodia, yet they barely appear in Brinkley's book.

To retain control over all that money, Hun Sen has amassed a monopoly on power through the army and police, buying off or killing off dissidents. His path to power has been anything but democratic: Trained as a young Khmer Rouge officer, Hun Sen defected and was installed as prime minister by the Vietnamese occupiers; later he bullied the United Nations into appointing him a co-prime minister even though he lost the country's first election, then rigged subsequent elections.

Brinkley makes the blanket claim that Cambodians accept this because they are a people who "could not, would not, stand up and advocate for themselves," forgetting Cambodia's history of revolts or movements against French colonial rule, King Sihanouk's autocracy, the corrupt Lon Nol regime, the Khmer Rouge, Vietnam's occupation and Hun Sen himself. In more recent times, Chea Vichea led a free-trade union movement and became a serious challenger to Hun Sen's power until he was gunned down by thugs. Brink- ley mentions Vichea's murder in a short paragraph without fully describing his impact or the courage and skill he showed organizing Cambodia's textile workers.

And countless Cambodians have fought back when soldiers and police have thrown them off their lands. Cambodian activists like Dr. Pung Chhiv Kek have been so successful defending against human rights abuses that the government issued a draft law in December to effectively put them under government control. Brinkley might have also given greater weight to Cambodia's short experience with fully free elections and the legacy of the Khmer Rouge revolution, which could put a damper on anyone's desire to revolt again.

Further clouding his book are frequent errors. He describes the United Nations' 1993 peacekeeping operation as an "occupation," and then compares it unfavorably to the Allied occupation of Germany. He claims it is "rare to see Cambodians laugh." He confuses the Hindu faith with the Hindi language. He has China invading Vietnam in 1989, rather than in 1979. And why does he make the exaggerated claim that Cambodians are "the most abused people in the world"?

By arguing that Cambodians are passive and that the "Buddhist notion of individual helplessness" is a central factor holding them down, he dismisses the possibility that Cambodians could reform their own country. Instead he concludes that the country's best hope is in the hands of foreigners. He challenges the foreign governments to withhold aid money until Hun Sen lives up to his promises to enact reforms and respect human rights. "Maybe, just maybe, after 1,000 years, Cambodia's rulers might finally be forced to give the people their due," he writes.

Or maybe Hun Sen doesn't need that money so desperately and those donor governments are not such disinterested parties.

Brinkley may blame the legacy of Angkor kings for Hun Sen's ability to keep down Cambodians. But the Cambodian leader's recent actions suggest otherwise. When Egypt's Hosni Mu- barak started tottering under the demands of protesters, Hun Sen shut down the opposition websites in Cambodia.