By Casey Mayville
Photo: Student using new KhmerOS software
Cambodia has all the makings of an idyllic tourist destination: miles of coastline, year-round warm weather and a rich cultural heritage. Instead, it is a country with a tumultuous past, one that has been caught for decades in the middle of warring nations and civil unrest. Used as a buffer zone by both the U.S. and the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War, Cambodia suffered from bombs, Communist influence and mounting internal struggles in the 1950s and 1960s. By the mid-1970s, military extremist Pol Pot and the Communist Party of Kampuchea — also known as the Khmer Rouge — were rapidly gaining power and thus began the destruction of Cambodian society. People were moved from the cities into the country to live and work in Pol Pot’s version of an agrarian utopia. Convinced that Cambodia needed cleansing, Pol Pot and his regime systematically executed an estimated two to three million of their own countrymen. Former government officials, intellectuals, students, businessmen and countless other innocent lives were lost during the five-year reign of the Khmer Rouge. A genocide comparable to the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge visited torture, mass executions and starvation on the population. Nearly half of Cambodia’s 7.3 million people were brutally exterminated while the living were left to pick up the pieces.
A closer look at Cambodia today will reveal a much improved picture. Although Pol Pot died before he could be held accountable for war crimes, his top officials will soon come to trial. The Khmer Rouge has been largely dismantled and the fighting between neighboring countries has been all but eliminated. But a country littered with landmines, suffering from extreme national poverty and battling internal corruption can hardly be considered a thriving nation. Still agrarian in nature, a majority of Cambodia’s estimated current population of 13.8 million people subsist on growing rice, corn and other crops. With an average life expectancy of 57 years and an average literacy rate of 67 percent, there is no question that Cambodia falls far behind many of the more developed countries of the world. Today, about 44,000 people have access to the Internet, which is about .3 percent of the population — a seven-fold increase from the year 2000. But with an ongoing struggle for the basics of survival, how can technology be considered a priority by and for the citizens of Cambodia? Is it something superficial that would be “nice to have” or is it an essential ingredient for the country’s future economic prosperity?
A Brighter Future
Open Institute, a non-governmental organization based in Cambodia and headed by Spanish engineer Javier Solá takes the view that technology is indeed a key ingredient for Cambodia’s future well-being. “Technology is an essential part of the infrastructure needed for the economical future of Cambodia,” explained Solá. “Humanitarian help is more and more directed to try to create development, and not to solve [immediate] crises. Our project is bringing this infrastructure into Cambodia at the right time, as it will be necessary for most urban jobs within the next five years.”
Part of the answer is The Khmer Software Initiative (KhmerOS) — 2007 finalist in the Stockholm Challenge. With help from this program, the hope is that Cambodia will soon be able to open its doors to foreign development and trade.
Khmer Software Initiative
KhmerOS — initiated in 2004 — is based on two simple principles: 1) Basic technology is essential to development; and 2) The technology must be in the national language to avoid minority control. With the country’s history and current economics, proprietary software companies were not willing to make the translation investment so their products could be marketed there.
Cambodians — with the help of Open Institute — translated applications such as word processing, e-mail, spreadsheets and an Internet browser into Khmer using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). FOSS — which allows for translation, adaptation, modification and free distribution — became the backbone of the programming process. And since power consumption is an important consideration in Cambodia, FOSS’s low power consumption was crucial for sustainability.
During its first year of operation, 2004, Open Institute translated computer applications into the Khmer language. Project workers developed and standardized Khmer scripts and fonts, designed and manufactured keyboards and printed manuals in Khmer for the applications. Translation proved to be a challenge because the Khmer language lacks the equivalent for many words we use in the English language. For example, “They have a word for ‘elder sibling’ and a word for ‘younger sibling’ but no word for ‘brother,’” Solá explained. The incompatibilities necessitated the use of some English words for clarification purposes.
Government and Education
In 2005, Open Institute teamed up with the government’s National ICT Development Authority (NiDA). Together, the two organizations trained approximately 3,000 government officials and 1,000 teachers. For those working in administrative government jobs, the new technology meant the possibility of using computers for their everyday work for the first time, as using English software was not a viable option.
Equally as important was distribution to school teachers and other trainers. Because the education system is the fastest vehicle in which to spread knowledge to the masses, KhmerOS aimed to educate the younger generation of Cambodians through schools and training centers. “The education system produces the professionals of the future [and] these professionals will need computer skills,” said Solá.
Later, in 2006, a National Typing and Document Contest motivated several thousand students and professionals to learn how to type Khmer and use other applications. Knowledge of the KhmerOS program was spreading nationwide and soon schools and government operations all over the country were using the new software and technology. As the program matured, its focus shifted to accommodate social and cultural needs of the country. Open Institute began collaboration with the Cambodian Ministry of Education and by 2008, it became mandatory for all high schools with electricity (roughly 30-40 percent) to use the new technology. The most significant achievement of the project thus far has been its ability to involve the government in a positive and productive way, allowing ICT to become fully integrated into public policy.
Sustainability
To ensure that the new technology would have lasting power, KhmerOS made long-term sustainability a top priority. The physical elements of the project found their own way to sustainability. Technology for the Khmer script keyboards and textbooks was transferred to local vendors, who are now manufacturing and selling them. Other aspects of the project are also looking for interested third parties that will turn portions of the project, that now require funding, into businesses that make the system sustainable.
“The most important success factor of the KhmerOS project has been its ability to bring together the [developmental] know-how of NGOs with the technological expertise of the FOSS community and the experience and vision of the Cambodian government,” said Solá. “This has interested commercial stakeholders, leading to the sustainable low-cost use of local language ICT in education, government and local society, strongly reducing the digital divide.”
Change is always difficult, even when it brings clear advantages. But when change is necessary for survival, bold, and sometimes daunting, steps must be taken. By removing the language barrier, technology has been made accessible to most of the population and is helping Cambodia move out of the past and into the future; a future where information is just a click away.
Life after the killing fields
Thirty years after the reign of the Khmer Rouge, during which Cambodians were forced into labour camps and an estimated one-fifth of the population exterminated, one man gives his account of what happened. Yous Sopanha, 41, now lives in a suburb outside Phnom Penh and works as a tour guide. He recounts the years of killing and starvation that claimed the lives of most of his family.
I was born in 1967 and brought up in Phnom Penh. My father was a government lawyer – an “intellectual”. He used to be a farmer, like his father before him, but he worked hard and eventually became a lawyer. My mother was a nurse.
When I was growing up I only spoke French. I went to a French school and my parents planned to send us to France to study. We used to be one of the richest families in the city.
Then, in 1975, everything changed. The Khmer Rouge captured the city and drove us into the countryside to work. My family and I went to live in my father’s province near Kampot. The Khmer Rouge wanted to kill my parents, but they escaped because someone warned them.
Then, one morning I got up and they weren’t there. I didn’t know where they’d gone. When I asked my grandmother she started crying and told me they had run away because the organisation was after them. They had taken my youngest brother and sister but not me or my eldest siblings because they thought we were old enough to give the Khmer Rouge information if they forced us to.
I watched from a banana tree as they took my grandmother away. They blindfolded her, tied her up and hit her. They said: “You! You cannot tell us where your children are, so I have to take you instead!” Then they killed her.
Even though I was only 10, 11, 12 years old at the time, the Khmer Rouge forced me to work in one of their mobile units – work camps that moved around the country, fulfilling the need for rural labour. There were separate camps for men, women and children. Whole families were split up during that time. They separated me from my siblings; I didn’t know where they were, or if they were still alive.
I hated the mobile unit and always tried to escape. I used to run away back to my grandmother’s village and stay there until they came to find me. They always found me, and when they did they would arrest me and take me back to the work camp.
Once, they punished me by hanging me by my neck from a tree. My feet were just 5cm from the ground. They questioned me and just when I thought I was going to die they let me down again.
The walk back to the village from the work camp was about 20km, and I would always do it at night so as not to be seen, but I was never scared. The situation at the time forced me to do it. But if you asked me to do it now, I wouldn’t.
One day, when I had run away from the mobile unit, I decided to go up into the mountains instead of going back to the village. I stayed there for two months, surviving on fruit and small frogs that I would catch from the river and eat raw. I would sleep wherever I could – on the ground, in a shed, wherever. Sometimes I got sick, but there was no medicine. I was lucky: I always got better. I survived.
The hills were only 5km from my village, and I used to creep down at night to steal food from the houses. The Khmer Rouge grew corn and nuts at the foot of the mountain so I would steal from them also.
Once, I went down to the place where they cooked for all the people and I found a big bucket of raw beef. I was so hungry I ate it all. A couple of months later I felt something coming out of my mouth as I was eating. I didn’t know what it was. I pulled and pulled. It was a worm – three of them. That was from eating the raw meat. I cried.
From the hills I could watch what was going on below. I could see soldiers and people running from the village. Even I ran once. I didn’t realise the soldiers had come from Vietnam. I didn’t know how close we were to the border.
After the liberation of Cambodia, in 1979, I returned to the village to find my family. I met my aunt and my other brother and sister. We were so happy to be together again; we ate so much food.
The Khmer Rouge was in power for three years, eight months and 20 days. My family spent three years of that time apart.
We decided to go back to our home in Phnom Penh. We harvested some rice to take with us as we didn’t know if there would be any food when we got there. I carried a lot of rice on that journey – everybody did, because we knew we were going to have to rely on it to survive.
When we got to Phnom Penh there was nobody else around. We were among the first people to return and it was like a ghost town. There were no markets, no money, nothing. They had even killed the monks. Our house had been destroyed; there was rubbish everywhere, and burned cars in the streets. We used to be one of the richest families in Phnom Penh, but now we had nothing, not even paper and a pencil to write with.
In Phnom Penh, we were reunited with our mother. My father didn’t survive the war; the organisation killed him. I lost a hundred relatives in total. I lost my father, my uncle and his whole family, my grandfather and grandmother.
My mother decided she couldn’t stay in the city any more – it held too many bad memories for her – so she moved to a town 60km away, near the Vietnamese border, and sent me and my six brothers and sisters to live in an orphanage. I don’t blame her. She couldn’t take care of us any more. Her nurse’s salary wasn’t enough to survive on. We had nothing to eat. We lived off rice, corn and the roots of banana trees. When there was no rice we lived off water lilies. We weren’t allowed to talk about food.
The war had created thousands of orphans, and the government collected them all up to live in one place. Because my mother was a widow and worked as a nurse for the government, they allowed us to live in the orphanage, too.
My mother came to work in the orphanage and eventually she became the head. She looked after all the children and everybody called her “mum”. So I had thousands of brothers and sisters. Even now, many of them still go to visit her. Most of them joined the army, but not me. She advised me not to. She said: “We are an educated family. You have to continue to study and work hard. That’s the only way to survive.” So that’s what I did.
During communist times it was very hard to pass the high school diploma – only a small percentage of students got through. But I was one of them. I went on to study history and philosophy at Phnom Penh university, where I met my wife. She was in the same class as me. We got married in 1995 – the same year that we graduated. It took a long time to get in to university because the education system was corrupt and you had to pay a bribe to get in. After graduation I got my teaching certificate and taught culture, civilisation and history at a local high school.
My teaching salary wasn’t enough, so I got a job with an NGO called Cambodia World Family, teaching literacy and numeracy in rural areas within Cambodia. Because of the war, at that time only around 50% of the population could read or write. I also taught prisoners in Phnom Penh jail, and members of the Khmer Rouge. I taught them literacy, Buddhism and human rights, and provided them with microcredit. These people were killers, and we taught them about sin and the meaning of life. Everybody is the same – we all have the right to live.
Now I work as a tour guide in Siem Reap, but it isn’t well paid, and there’s so much corruption in the country that it doesn’t matter what qualifications you have – if you have the money, you get the good job. I had to pay $1,800 just to get my license. When it’s busy, I have to work every single day.
In Cambodia, the husband must look after the wife’s family, so I have a lot of responsibility. I have to provide for my wife’s parents, my sister-in-law and her two children, six orphan girls whose father was killed in the war, and my only son. Twelve of us live together in a small house. We all sleep on the floor in the same room.
Most men would run a mile from my situation, but I don’t care. I love my family so much I would do anything for them. When I get home from work I do the washing, the cooking, whatever needs to be done. I’m a good cook – I learned from my mum.
I have many health problems, but I have to be strong for my family. It doesn’t matter how I’m feeling, I have to go to work.
Things are better in my country now than they were before. Over the past 10 years – since we’ve been rid of the Khmer Rouge completely – it has slowly become more developed. We have the freedom to go wherever we please, even at night – something we couldn’t do before. And the country is peaceful. But the biggest problem is corruption: we waste millions of dollars each year on it. And the people cannot challenge those in power. If anybody has a problem with the police or the government, they always lose the case in court. Human rights are only on paper. I don’t trust politicians, which is why I don’t vote. They all seem to be the same.
If my father were still alive, things would be very different for us. We used to be the richest family here, but now we are poor, just like everybody else.
We have a proverb in Cambodia: “The fruits have sunk to the bottom and the stones have floated to the surface.” That’s how we describe the state of our country. After liberation Cambodia was ruled by soldiers and uneducated people. The poor became rich and powerful, and the educated people were left with nothing.
But I believe the fruit will never truly sink. It will always rise back up. It just takes time.
Ducuments : 177 people were released from Khmer Rouge torture centre
Phnom Penh - Documents showed 177 prisoners were released from the Khmer Rouge’s notorious S-21 torture centre, the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam) told local media Thursday in a dramatic turnaround from previous statements that only seven people had survived.
DC-Cam previously maintained only a handful of people had survived the torture centre by the time the Khmer Rouge fell in 1979 and up to 16,000 had died there. DC-Cam is credited with archiving thousands of documents left by the 1975-79 Democratic Kampuchea regime and being the foremost documentary authority on it.
DC-Cam has supplied the bulk of documentary evidence to the joint UN-Cambodian court set up to try former leaders of the Khmer Rouge.
‘These are documents sitting there for the past 30 years,’ the English-language Cambodia Daily quoted DC-Cam director Youk Chhang as saying.
Chhang said the 177 released prisoners should ‘not be considered survivors as they had been spared by their captors.’
He was unavailable for comment Thursday as to why DC-Cam had not drawn public attention to the historically invaluable documents earlier nor perused testimonies of released prisoners before the indictment of former S-21 jailer Kaing Guek Euv, alias Duch, if it knew of them.
In July 2007, DC-Cam initially disputed the claims of Chim Math, who was subsequently recognized by others as S-21’s first known female survivor, saying no available documents supported her claims.
It was unclear if the new evidence would affect the defence case for Duch, who was expected to face court as early as October.
Duch is charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity and has not denied overseeing the centre, where men, women and children were beaten, starved and subjected to horrors, including being forced to wear buckets of live scorpions on their heads.
In his August 8 indictment, the co-investigating judges upheld the previously held theory that nobody was ever released.
Up to 2 million Cambodians perished under the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge regimeកម្ពុជាស្នើឲ្យដាក់បញ្ចូលអតីតគុកទួលស្លែងជាសារមន្ទីរចងចាំរបស់ពិភពលោក
សារមន្ទីរ ឧក្រិដ្ឋកម្មប្រល័យពូជសាសន៍ទួលស្លែង ដែលជាអតីតមន្ទីរឃុំឃាំងធំមួយរបស់ខ្មែរក្រហម ក្នុងក្រុងភ្នំពេញ ត្រូវបានរៀបចំដើម្បីដាក់បញ្ចូលជាសារមន្ទីរចងចាំរបស់សកលលោកនៃ អង្គការយូណេស្កូ ឬហៅជាភាសាអង់គ្លេសថា Memory of the World។RFA file photo
ទេសចរ បរទេសឈរមើលរូបថតនៃជនរងគ្រោះដែលស្លាប់ដោយសារការធ្វើទារុណកម្ម និងការប្រហារជីវិតនៅគុកទួលស្លែង ក្រោមរបបខ្មែរក្រហមពីឆ្នាំ១៩៧៥-១៩៧៩។
លោកស្រី Isabel Qowxavez ជាមន្ត្រីអង្គការយូណេស្កូ ប្រចាំនៅប្រទេសកម្ពុជា និងជាអ្នកជួយសម្របសម្រួលរៀបចំឯកសារស្តីពីការដាក់បញ្ចូលសារមន្ទីរ ទួលស្លែងចូលជាសម្បត្តិមនុស្សជាតិនេះ បានប្រាប់វិទ្យុអាស៊ីសេរីថា ឯកសារស្នើសុំនឹងត្រូវបញ្ជូនទៅកាន់ការិយាល័យអង្គការយូណេស្កូ នៅទីក្រុងប៉ារីស ប្រទេសបារាំង នៅថ្ងៃសុក្រ សប្តាហ៍នេះ។
សូមជម្រាបថា នេះគឺជាកិច្ចប្រឹងប្រែងរបស់កម្ពុជាថ្មីមួយទៀត ក្នុងការដាក់កេរដំណែលរបស់ខ្លួនចូលទៅជាសម្បត្តិសម្រាប់មនុស្ស ជាតិ បន្ទាប់ពីប្រាសាទព្រះវិហារខ្មែរ ដែលស្ថាបនាក្នុងសតវត្សរ៍ទី១១ ត្រូវបានដាក់បញ្ចូលជាបេតិកភណ្ឌពិភពលោកកាលពីថ្ងៃទី៧ កក្កដា ឆ្នាំ២០០៨។
លោក ជ័យ សុភារ៉ា ជាប្រធានសារមន្ទីរឧក្រិដ្ឋកម្មប្រល័យពូជសាសន៍ ទួលស្លែង បានថ្លែងបញ្ជាក់ពីក្តីរំពឹងរបស់លោកយ៉ាងដូច្នេះថា ៖ «យើង គិតថា នៅក្នុងន័យមនុស្សជាតិនេះ វាមានតម្លៃខ្លាំងណាស់។ ចង់និយាយថា ការប្រល័យពូជសាសន៍មួយ ដែលកើតនៅក្នុងយុគសម័យមួយពីចន្លោះឆ្នាំ ៧៥ មក ៧៨នេះ គឺប្រជាជនយើងស្លាប់ទៅនេះ គឺស្លាប់ដោយអយុត្តិធម៌។ ដូច្នេះ វាមិនមែនថា ការឈឺចាប់ហ្នឹង វាមិនមែននៅតែក្នុងប្រជាជនកម្ពុជាទេ គឺការឈឺចាប់ហ្នឹង មានសម្រាប់ប្រជាជនទាំងអស់ ក្នុងពិភពលោកដែរ ព្រោះជាឧក្រិដ្ឋកម្មមួយប្រឆាំងនឹងមនុស្សជាតិ»។
សារមន្ទីរទួលស្លែង ត្រូវបានជួយរៀបចំជាលើកដំបូងដោយអ្នកឯកទេសសារមន្ទីរជនជាតិវៀតណាម មួយរូបឈ្មោះ ម៉ៃ ឡាំ ដោយប្រែក្លាយពីគុករបស់ខ្មែក្រហមមួយ ឈ្មោះមន្ទីរស-២១ ដែលត្រូវបានបោះបង់ចោលនៅក្រោយការដួលរលំនៃរបបខ្មែរក្រហមនោះ។ សារមន្ទីរទួលស្លែង ត្រូវបានបើកឲ្យភ្ញៀវជាតិនិងភ្ញៀវអន្តរជាតិចូលទស្សនាចាប់តាំងពី ឆ្នាំ១៩៨០មក។
នៅក្នុងសារមន្ទីរទួលស្លែង ដែលមានទម្រង់ជាអគារសាលារៀនកំពស់៣ជាន់ និងមានចំនួន៤ខ្នងធំៗនោះ គឺមានដាក់តាំងរូបថតអ្នកទោសជាច្រើនពាន់សន្លឹក ឧបករណ៍ធ្វើទារុណកម្ម លលាដ៍សាកសពអ្នកទោសដែលត្រូវបានសម្លាប់ក្នុងរបបខ្មែរក្រហមនិង ឯកសារដើមរបស់ខ្មែរក្រហមជាច្រើនម៉ឺនទំព័រ។
លោក ជ័យ សុភារ៉ា មានប្រសាសន៍ទៀតថា កេរដំណែលនៅសារមន្ទីរទួលស្លែង ត្រូវបានប្រើប្រាស់យ៉ាងទូលំទូលាយដោយអ្នកសិក្សាស្រាវជ្រាវនិង មន្ត្រីច្បាប់នៅសាលាក្តីខ្មែរក្រហមដើម្បីជាភស្តុតាងក្នុងការ ជំនុំជម្រះក្ដីអតីតមេដឹកនាំជាន់ខ្ពស់ខ្មែរក្រហម ដែលរួមមានទាំង កាំង ហ្កិចអ៊ាវ ហៅ ឌុច ជាអតីតប្រធានគុកទួលស្លែង ហើយទទួលខុសត្រូវលើការស្លាប់រង្គាលមនុស្សជាង ១២.០០០នាក់ នៅទីនោះផងដែរ៕
Sar Kapon's Remarks on Pol Pot regime
“It is a sentiment of sufferings and passionate hatred of the Pol Pot genocidal regime,” Sar Kapon, representative of professors, teachers, and intellectuals of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea said on September 12, 1983 in a Phnom Penh’s conference. Even though it was made many years ago, the essence could still wake Cambodian children’s mind to remember a Killing Field regime.
Sar Kapon recalled at the time that mass graves were scattered on every part of Cambodian land and that they were the historical scrolls which could describe the “more than atrocious” crimes of the Khmer Rouge. Sar Kapon said that the mass graves were the memorials used to keep the bones of ruthlessly killed victims and teachers.
“From August 15 to August 18, 1983 the People’s Republic of Kampuchea’s National Assembly adopted a note on the number of death, the disabled, orphans, and demolished school buildings. They claimed that the statistics was scientific. Indeed, the real events happening during the genocidal regime we’ve gone through make educationalists, writers, virtuous persons, sociologists, and teachers shocked as such things had never happened before. No books have ever been written about such events. No artists who could visualize such brutalities,” he said in the conference.
“Monks and religion experts have never seen any chapter in Tripitika, Bible, or Koran talking about the sufferings equal to those in the genocidal regime. The weak economy, separated families, indoctrination, culture persecution, false politics, and unfaithfulness were typical scenes of the Khmer Rouge regime,” he said.
“All teachers! We have a common wisdom which supports human right, freedom, humanity, justice, society, and peace. We can’t stand when our children became ruthless murderers and spies and when our people died of overwork, starvation, and torture. The teenage militants called themselves “Koun Koun” (a term a child use to address himself) and others “Nhoam” (term monks use to address people), but they took Nhoams for torture,” Kapon said, adding that all teachers had gone through the ruthless acts. “Those teachers who had not been killed were living a life of slave in a body which had no “spirit” and only lived prior to the death,” he recalled.
“Any teacher’s resistance was traced down and destroyed. Young female “crows and vultures” (Khmer Rouge militants) were vicious, referring themselves as knowledgeable people who could discipline others while they were actually amateurish. They especially looked down on teachers, saying that there were no certificates anymore, but real actions. If there were no actions, the teachers would be made “fertilizer”,” he said.
“Allow me to apologize for not having enough pages to describe everything in details, but only the mass graves,” Sar Kapon added eventually. This is a remark by then senior educational official Sar Kapon.
painting Pol Pot
Cambodian artists of all ages depict the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime in vastly different ways.
Cambodian artist Oeur Sokuntevy, 25, was born after the atrocities of Pol Pot’s regime. So when she was asked to produce an artwork for an exhibition looking back at that period, she struggled; Pol Pot and the legacy of his rule are not discussed much by her generation. “It’s sad, but it’s in the past,” she says. “Everybody has a sad story. It’s time to move on.”
In the end, Oeur painted “I Am Too Young to Understand These Words,” a watercolor of a young girl in a bathing suit talking on her mobile phone beside a phrase reproduced from Pol Pot’s “Little Red Book,” extolling the regime’s aims. Her painting stands in sharp contrast to “The Khmer Rouge Leader,” a painting by Hen Sophal, 50, who depicts a grinning Pol Pot seated like an emperor atop a mountain of bones and skulls. Amid the macabre pile, a monk’s torn saffron robe represents the regime’s destruction of religion, and an Angkorean-carved stone its disregard for the country’s ancient culture.
These two works represent the divergent perspectives of different generations of Cambodians on Pol Pot and his killing fields, and lie at the heart of “Art of Survival,” a group exhibition at the contemporary art space Meta House in Phnom Penh. The exhibit is a “long-overdue dialogue through art” that seeks to address modern memories of Cambodia’s painful past, says Meta House director Nico Mesterharm. The two-part exhibition began in January with 21 artists and expanded this month to include a total of 40 artists, who were each given a blank canvas to document their reflections on the Khmer Rouge period. The show was scheduled to coincide with current efforts to bring former Khmer Rouge leaders to justice through a U.N.-assisted genocide tribunal, which is preparing for its first trial—of Kaing Guek Eac, the former commander of the notorious S-21 prison and torture center—next month.
The exhibit includes international artists such as Vietnamese-Khmer painter Le Huy Hoang, who painted a portrait of his father, a Cambodian military doctor who died in one of Pol Pot’s detention camps, and the American Bradford Edwards, who has regularly traveled to Cambodia over the past 12 years. “We’re trying to show the impact of the genocide not just on Cambodia but on the region as well,” says Lydia Parusol, art manager of Meta House.
Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge presided over the deaths of almost 2 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979. But their presence was felt long after they were overthrown 10 years ago. The Southeast Asian nation’s culture was nearly wiped out during that time, and though the new government sought to rebuild the arts, it placed more emphasis on traditional dance and theater than on contemporary art. Indeed, most artists have been extremely reluctant to confront the past, notes Hen, admitting that he painted “The Khmer Rouge Leader” in 2000 but was afraid to show the work in public for fear of “retribution.” “Everybody knows this happened to Cambodia, so actually, some artists feel they don’t need to paint [it],” he says. “But I think about the Khmer Rouge all the time. It’s in my head; it’s an obsession.”
The works on display are clearly skewed by age. Older artists who survived the regime, like Hen, Chhim Sothy and Vann Nath, tend to show more graphic depictions of the Khmer Rouge, with skulls and death crowding canvases. Vann’s untitled oil painting, which depicts a group of blindfolded prisoners with ropes around their necks being led inside the S-21 prison, is made more poignant by the knowledge that the artist is only one of a handful of remaining survivors from the torture center, where nearly 20,000 people are believed to have been tortured and killed. Since the end of the Khmer regime, Vann is probably the only painter to have continuously depicted in great detail the atrocities of the regime. Some of his works are on permanent display at the Phnom Penh prison, which has been turned into the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.
Meta House in Phnom Penh Opens Exhibition Remembering the Vietnam War
PHNOM PENH.- “Art of Survival” is back! The Khmer Rouge genocide and its impact on the Cambodian society today is reflected by Cambodian artists Pich Sopheap, Chat Piersat, Chhouen Rithy, Chan Vitarin, Ching Taingchea, Khauch Touch, Koung Channa, Phe Sophon, Kong Vollak, Kvay Samnang, Tor Vutha and many more – accompanied by foreign guests such as Vietnamese-Khmer artist Le Huy Hoang, who visits Phnom Penh for the first time since the 1980s. Other participants are Bradfort Edwards (USA), Panca Evenblij (Netherland) and Ali Sanderson (Australia), Virginie Noel (Belgium) and Herbert Mueller (Germany). Special screenings take place on the META HOUSE rooftop - about the KR genocide and the Vietnam War.
For the highly acclaimed AOS exhibition Meta House is partnering with the “Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center”. The center (founded by famous film director Rithy Panh) collects and safeguards audiovisual documents about Cambodia in order to open access to the memory and pass it on to the new generations. At Bophana they will also screen the video documentation of the first AOS exhibition “Cambodian artists speak out: The Art of Survival” (Khmer/Engl.), that has been produced in cooperation with the KONRAD–ADENAUER–FOUNDATION (KAS). The book with the same title will also be available in both locations.
Boasting more than 200 square meters of art exhibition space, the three storey META HOUSE gallery in Phnom Penh/Cambodia offers an excellent space for artists-in-residence and visiting artists to interact. The kingdom’s first art/media/communication center promotes the development of contemporary art in Cambodia through local and international exhibitions, workshops, community-based projects, artist exchange programs and by fostering links with South East Asian and international universities, galleries, curators, non-governmental and governmental organizations.
Aggression Rights and wrong: Vietnam in Cambodia; the united states in Iraq
A recent book by Michael Vickery, Cambodia: A Political Survey, dramatizes once again the fantastic double standard that operates in cases of cross-border attacks by the weak, and U.S. targets, and the strong, especially the United States. Vietnam invaded Cambodia in December 1978, quickly defeating the Khmer Rouge and pushing its remnant forces into Thailand. Vietnam did this under considerable provocation, as the Pol Pot regime was extremely hostile to Vietnam, carried out a major ethnic cleansing of Vietnamese within Cambodia, and mounted a series of cross-border attacks that cost many Vietnamese lives. Vietnam’s invasion was therefore based on, and a response to, serious Cambodian provocations. By contrast, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not based on actions by Saddam Hussein injurious to the United States. The Bush administration was obliged to construct a series of lies to justify the attack and occupation of a distant country, lies that had been crudely (and obviously) fabricated before the attack, which were decisively confirmed as lies in its aftermath.
Of course, both before and after the invasion of Iraq it had been alleged that as Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator ousting him was desirable and therefore in itself justified the invasion. But the same argument would justify the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, as Pol Pot had been furiously assailed as a mass killer and “another Hitler.” In a politically neutral world his ouster by the Vietnamese would have been treated at least equally as a liberation and part of that “responsibility to protect” that has become a favorite of contemporary interventionists—in fact more so, as in the late 1970s Pol Pot ranked higher than Saddam as a killer.
But following the failed U.S. attempt to dominate Vietnam by military attack, that country was hated by U.S. officials who had actually cozied up to Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge in the last years of Pol Pot’s rule, even while the U.S. and Western establishments continued to denounce that rule as beyond the pale. A useful indication of the shift was former U.S. official and Vietnam expert Douglas Pike’s November 1979 reference to Pol Pot as a “charismatic leader” of a “bloody but successful peasant revolution.” Thus, although there had been Western calls for forcible action against the Pol Pot regime when Vietnam proceeded to oust that regime, the United States—hence its allies, clients, and the “international community”—treated this as intolerable aggression. The view was that the government soon installed in Phnom Penh was a Vietnamese and illegitimate “puppet”—although it was composed of Cambodians who had been a political faction in Cambodia under attack by Pol Pot—and that it was urgent that Vietnam remove itself from Cambodia and allow an “independent” Cambodian government to be formed and rule.
What followed then was international condemnation of Vietnam, sanctions, a Chinese punitive invasion of Vietnam in February 1979, and a widespread refusal to recognize the new government of Cambodia. Cambodia’s seat at the UN was kept for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge on the grounds of “continuity” with the old Cambodia (as the State Department informed Congress in 1982). Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, along with several other exiled Cambodian factions, fled to Thailand, were welcomed there, and their cadres were protected and funded by China, the United States, and other countries. The Khmer Rouge was free to make sporadic attacks on (and steal timber from) their former homeland. (Imagine the U.S. and UN response if Iran provided a homeland for an ousted Saddam Hussein faction that made periodic incursions into Iraq.) The design in supporting Pol Pot was to “bleed” Vietnam, as explicitly stated by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. The United States cooperated fully in this bleeding enterprise, even though it involved the huge hypocrisy of supporting “another Hitler” and imposed further injury on the long-suffering Cambodian people, about whom many crocodile tears had been shed while Pol Pot had ruled Cambodia.
Another part of the U.S. and allied design was to force Vietnam to withdraw from Cambodia and to replace the government it had brought into power with one either closely aligned with the West or impotent. The United States succeeded in getting the UN and its allies to put enough pressure on the Cambodian government and Vietnam to force them to accept an election process that would replace the existing government. One problem with this solution was that the Cambodian government that was to be replaced was doing a credible job, despite the horrendous conditions that it inherited and the refusal of the “international community” to give any substantial aid to the badly damaged and slowly recovering country. According to a UN report of 1990: “Considering the devastation inherited from war and internal strife, the centrally directed system of economic management…has attained unquestionable successes, especially marked in restoring productive capacity to a level of normalcy and accelerating the pace of economic growth to a respectable per capita magnitude from the ruinously low level of the late 1970s.”
Vickery claims that this new government also “made creditable progress in developing social services, health care, education, agriculture, and vaccination programs for children and animals.” It also performed relatively well on women’s rights and civil liberties, given the immediate background and in comparison with its Cambodian predecessors and nearby neighbors (like Thailand).
A second problem for Western interventionism was that Vietnam gradually withdrew its military forces from Cambodia and had them all out by 1989, in keeping with Vietnam’s promises and contrary to Western assurances that Vietnam intended a permanent stay. This suggested that the Cambodian government no longer needed the Vietnamese military presence to govern and in another political context it might have raised questions about the need for foreign intervention to assure “independence.” But all of this was irrelevant to the United States, which refused to accept a government friendly toward and influenced by the Vietnamese. That government had to be ousted, no matter what the consequences, and the experiences of post-ouster Guatemala (1954 onward) and post-ouster Nicaragua (1990 onward) indicated that the consequences could be painful and even disastrous to the indigenous population.
A third problem for the West was that Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge (KR) was the most powerful faction across the border in Thailand and anxious to return to power. Not only did this not interfere with the effort at regime change, the United States and its allies actually insisted that the KR be one of the constituent parties that would take part in an election for the new government. The U.S. and its allies organized a Paris conference in 1991 to firm up a massive international intervention in Cambodia, with the supposedly regime-changing election to be held in 1993. This regime change process ended the progress made by the post-KR government by introducing neoliberal rules that cut back needed social programs, and via the deliberately splintering political arrangements that made the government more corrupt.
Amusingly, the electoral rules imposed to help weaken the power of the Vietnam-sponsored government, including proportional voting, succeeded in allowing that earlier government to retain preeminent power, although its effectiveness was reduced as it struggled in a more hostile environment. But the power of the KR, which had rested heavily on Western subsidy and diplomatic support, dwindled quickly, although its indigenous partners, now uneasily linked to the new government, maintained the KR’s venomous hostility toward Vietnam and Vietnamese.
What has been called the “Nicaragua strategy”—with an international boycott and sanctions, a subsidized contra force attacking the target state and forcing it to spend resources on defense, and an election designed to finalize regime change—was used in the case of Cambodia and was partially successful: it succeeded in imposing a great deal of pain on the target population and terminated economic and social progress under a government opposed by the United States; but it did not succeed, as in Guatemala and Nicaragua, in fully effecting a regime change. The heavy costs to the Cambodian people resulting from Western (U.S.) hostility to the Cambodian government continues to today.
Vietnam did not have aggression rights so its occupation and the government that it installed had to be removed in the interests of international law and justice with the help of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.
In the case of the U.S. invasion-occupation of Iraq, all the principles that affected Vietnam and Cambodia are stood on their head.
(1) Although in contrast with the Vietnam-Cambodia case the U.S. invasion was based on no provocation by the distant victim state, no sanctions were imposed on the U.S. by the UN or international community, and although “humanitarian interventionists” proclaim a newly accepted “responsibility to protect,” no protection was offered the Iraqis from March 2003 to the present. David Rieff, George Packer, Samantha Power, Michael Ignatieff, Thomas G. Weiss, Kofi Annan, Ban Ki-Moon and company have never called upon the world to intervene to protect the Iraqis—despite a million or more Iraqi deaths, over four million refugees, and a steady stream of Falluja type assaults and massacres—although, according to Thomas Weiss of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, the responsibility to use force to protect “kicks in…if a state is manifestly unable or unwilling to protect its citizens,” as is manifestly the case with Iraq under U.S. attack and occupation.
(2) No demand has been made that the invader get out and the Security Council even voted shortly after the invasion to give the invader occupation rights (under Security Council Resolution 1546, June 8, 2003, which might be called the U.S. “pacification rights” resolution). This has not been altered even though the invader has made it plain that it intends to stay indefinitely with a gigantic embassy, a number of very large “enduring bases,” and steady efforts to negotiate a long-term presence with the Iraqi government.
(3) No protest has been made that the government of Iraq, militarily and financially dependent on the occupation, is not truly “independent,” and that independence would require the withdrawal of the occupation army and other conditions that might make an election free and meaningful (points forcibly made as regards the Vietnam occupation of Cambodia or as regards Syria in Lebanon).
(4) In the decisions on “surges” and debates about how long the United States will stay in Iraq, neither the conditions of true independence, nor the demands of international law, nor the desires of the Iraqi people, enter the discussion. (Polls there have regularly shown that the Iraqis, as well the U.S. public want us out.) These are decisions for the U.S. ruling elite, grounded in U.S. aggression rights and the cowardice and lack of moral force of the international community.
CULTURE-CAMBODIA: pre-war khmer Music Making a Comback
IPS News
By Andrew Nette - Newsmekong*
PHNOM PENH, Aug 17 (IPS) - Grainy black and white newsreel footage of B-52 bombing raids and fierce fighting are the images most frequently associated with Cambodia in the sixties and early seventies — not rock and roll, hot pants and wild dancing.
But when the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, emptying the cities and systematically eradicating the so-called old culture as corrupt and decadent, they almost completely destroyed what was probably, for its time, the most unique and vibrant rock and roll scene in South-east Asia.
“Cambodia definitely had one of the most advanced music scenes in Asia at the time,” agrees Greg Cahill, who is currently seeking finance to turn his 30-minute film on the most famous of the era’s female singers, Ros Sereysothea, ‘The Golden Voice’, into a fully-fledged biopic.
“It is amazing that a lot of it survived at all,” says Cahill, who was recently in Phnom Penh to scout for locations. “The Khmer Rouge destroyed everything related to the music scene they could get their hands on, including trashing all the recording studios and destroying all the musical recordings they could find.”
All the major singers, many of them still household names today such as Sin Sisamouth and Sereysothea, were killed.
Not only has the music survived. Its legacy of thousands of songs ranging over musical styles as diverse as psychodelia and Latin, is garnering increasing international attention.
‘The Golden Voice’ is one of two films on Cambodia’s pre-war music scene in the works. The other, Los Angeles-based cinematographer John Pirozzi’s ‘Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten’, a history of the scene, is currently in production.
Songs from the period featured on the soundtrack of the 2002 crime thriller shot in Cambodia, ‘City of Ghosts’.
It has also been given significant exposure by the six-piece Los Angeles-based band ‘Dengue Fever’, whose lead singer, Cambodian-born Chhom Nimol, covers many of the classic hits from the period.
While the music’s domestic popularity is mostly restricted to older Khmers, the pre-war artists are being sampled and mixed in hip hop and rap music tracks, slowly exposing it to a new, younger audience.
“When I first heard this music, I did not think much of it,” says Sok ‘Cream’ Visal. “I thought it was just the style back then.”
“The more I listened, the more I realised just how different and edgy this music was,” says Visal, art director at a local advertising company who, for the past few years, has been experimenting with remixing pre-war music with more modern sounds. “Thailand, Vietnam and Laos did not have this scene. It was unique to Cambodia.”
Two factors are credited with kickstarting Cambodia’s pre-war music industry.
The first was the patronage of then King Norodom Sihanouk. As part of his post-independence nation-building efforts, Sihanouk encouraged royal court musicians to experiment with new styles.
This influenced people like Sisamouth, whose career started as a ballad singer in the royal court and by the end of the sixties had become the ‘King of Cambodian rock and roll’.
In the sixties, Sihanouk began importing Western music into Cambodia. Local record labels sprung up and by the seventies, these were being supported by a well-developed network of distributors and clubs.
The other major influence was the R and B, country and rock music that was blared into Cambodia by the U.S. Armed Forces radio in Vietnam.
“This exposed Cambodian musicians to Jimi Hendrix, Phil Spector, the Doors,” says Visal. “Meanwhile, from Europe we got Latin styles such as cha cha, rumba and flamenco.’
These sounds, as well as influences as diverse as do-wop, psychodelic and Motown, can clearly be heard in the pre-war music, often mixed with traditional Cambodian instruments.
From the royal court, Sisamouth became a popular radio singer in the late fifties, before branching into film and TV. Although he did many rock and Latin tunes, he is better known for his more silky crooner numbers and is often compared to singers like Nat King Cole.
Although Sisamouth was the bigger star, it is Sereysothea who had the greatest mystique and exercises the strongest contemporary interest.
Born into poverty in a small village in Battambang province, Sereysothea spent her teens performing with her family in a traditional peasant band touring Cambodia’s rural backwaters of the north-west.
Her reputation slowly grew and she moved to Phnom Penh and started performing at local clubs. By the late sixties she was a major star, producing a number of albums and starring in films. It was during this time hat she started performing with Sisamouth.
She was married for a time to another singer, Suos Mat, who was incredibly jealous of her success and is said to have beaten her regularly. Sereysothea was subsequently involved with a paratrooper in the Lon Nol army who was killed fighting the Khmer Rouge.
When the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh on Apr. 17, 1975, Sereysothea joined the rest of the city’s residents in being marched at gunpoint to the countryside.
Sereysothea and Sisamouth in particular were very creative, says Cahill, who has extensively researched the era.
Over the seven to eight years leading to the Khmer Rouge takeover, they wrote, sang and produced about 2,000 songs, often at a rate of one or two songs a day. They also recorded a wide array of covers in English and Khmer.
Under the Khmer Rouge, even the slightest western influence such as speaking a second language, having long hair or wearing flares was enough to invite a death sentence.
Sisamouth was reportedly shot. Sereysothea successfully hid her identity for some time until she was finally discovered and made to perform revolutionary songs celebrating the regime.
According to Cahill’s research, Sereysothea was in a camp in central Cambodia when her real identity was discovered. She was forced to marry one of Pol Pot’s commanders who eventually had her murdered.
The music of the sixties and early seventies is currently available on CD and cassette in markets throughout Phnom Penh. That it survived the destruction of Cambodian culture wrought by the Khmer Rouge is due to Cambodians who took it with them when they fled the country.
“In the Khmer community in Long Beach, California you cannot go down the street without hearing this music,” says Cahill.
Visal remembers his parents taking music with them when they fled Cambodia to France. “Music was a part of their everyday lives,” he recalls. “For them it was about memories of Cambodia in the good times.”
A compilation CD of Khmer pre-war music was released in the U.S. in 1999. Called ‘Cambodian Rocks’, it was put together from cassettes bought by a U.S. tourist during a trip to Cambodia. The CD, which contained no information about the singers or names of their songs, became a cult favourite among college students.
However, it was not until the music was released as part of the soundtrack for ‘City of Ghosts’, written and directed by U.S. actor Matt Dillon, that it started to get serious international exposure.
Visal’s own path back to Cambodia’s pre-war music involved a long detour through the rap and hip that he listened to in the housing projects of suburban Paris.
“I remember seeing the tapes of artists like Sisamouth and Sereysothea for sale in the Phnom Penh in the nineties,” says Visal, who returned to Cambodia in 1993. “I did not really pay any attention to the music until I bought a computer to learn design. I stumbled on music editing software and started messing around with sampling Khmer music.”
“Soon, I was started going out and combing the markets, listening to every song I could find from this period and I started to mix and sample them,” Visal continues. “The first reaction I had from people was shock. They thought it was blasphemy and did not understand why I wanted to do it.”
Visal recently started up his own label, Klapyahandz, promoting young Khmer hip hop and rap bands and is keen to release a CD of his mixed songs. “I started remixing old music for fun but now it has become a real mission, trying to remind people now just how creative people were back then.”
“In the next five years we are going to see a real explosion of the arts in Cambodia, particularly in music,” predicts Visal. “I hope the pre-war songs will be part of that.”
(*This story was written for the Imaging Our Mekong Programme coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific)
Exhibition explores cruel legacy of khmer Rouge era
Young artists make contemporary statements in an effort to come to grips with past atrocities, in the second part of the Art of Survival exhibition
Gallery visitors view a work by Cambodian artist Chan Pisey, part of the Art of Survival exhibition that offered a second series of artworks in Phnom Penh on Tuesday.
MART of Survival, an ongoing exhibition of works by contemporary local artists that reflects on the Khmer Rouge period, unveiled a second series of artworks at Meta House in Phnom Penh Tuesday evening.
Rekindled public interest in the Khmer Rouge era inspired the exhibition which will later go on a world tour to raise awareness of Cambodia in the international art community.
Cambodia is not currently as well known for its contemporary art scene as Thailand or Vietnam, said exhibition organiser and Meta House director Nico Mesterharm.
“There has been a huge international interest in the Khmer Rouge trials. We plan to take Art of Survival on a travelling exhibition in 2009 and hope it will coincide with the trial.”
The works in the exhibition are all personal interpretations of Cambodia’s recent traumatic past and each viewer’s reaction is likely to differ, said Mesterharm.
“I feel that the creation and display of these pieces is another part of the process of reconciliation in Cambodia,” he told the Post.
“Older Cambodians may be reminded of their experiences under Pol Pot and so may feel scared. Younger Cambodians may be furious that such events occurred. Foreigners may get a new perspective on Cambodian history and interpretations of the genocide.”
One such “furious” young Cambodian is 26-year-old artist Chan Pisey, who said even though she wasn’t born during the regime, she feels “terribly shocked” at the way the Khmer Rouge killed innocent people.
“I feel very hurt when I hear the tale of millions of Khmer people that died during the Khmer Rouge regime,” Chan Pisey said. “I wonder how they can use their hands to kill their own people. Maybe they don’t care for the eyes of people, which look at them and ask them to save their lives? Or are they maybe not human beings?”
Blood on black fabric
Pisey’s artwork consisted of three frames, each with a different coloured krama and acrylic illustrations of soldiers with guns, victims of mass killings, and finally just dust and ashes.
An inscription of a Khmer Rouge slogan on one of the krama reads, “Justice organisation. The organisation does not wonder, the organisation just want to have a little blood and all the little blood will go in to the land very quick and disappear with the black tissue.”
“All these words make me understand why all the Khmer people during that time had to wear black clothes, because the Khmer Rouge thought that the blood of the people would disappear into the black fabric,” explained Pisey.
She bought the krama - “representative of the Khmer people” - from the Russian Market and finished the painting in one day, but the layout and framing of the piece took over a week.
“I wanted to show the Khmer Rouge psychology, how they kill without sentiment,” said Pisey.
The exhibition, which runs through September 13, also features works by Cambodian artists Pich Sopheap, Chat Piersat, Chhouen Rithy, Chan Vitarin, and Chhim Sothy, as well as international guests Le Huy Hoang (Vietnam), Bradford Edwards (US), Panca Evenblij (Netherlands), Ali Sanderson (Australia), Virginie Noel (Belgium) and Herbert Mueller (Germany).
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