bm267 Empowering Cambodian Children with Friends International

Friends International is a very unique organization doing some very revolutionary work in an often overlooked part of the world with the most overlooked people on this planet- street children. While in Phnom Penh I stumbled upon one of their restaurants by luck and asked about doing an interview.  One day later, I was sitting down with Sébastien Marot, the international coordinator of friends international.  Following the interview, he introduced me to actress, activist and concerned citizen Leslie Hope who also sat down for a drink with me to talk about the film she had just completed about Friends entitled – What I See When I Close My Eyes.  After this surprise interview, I joined them both at the film screening and had one of the more unforgettable nights of my visit to Cambodia.

Music in this episode:

  • The Breeders – Wicked Little Town
  • Utah Phillips – Kid’s Liberation
  • Phil Ochs. – Outside of a Small Circle of Friends

Evidence to Convict A Murderer

Many visitors to this site and readers of this blog are no doubt listeners or watchers of democracy now, perhaps the most important 60 min of audio one can consult in the average day.  Well last friday’s show is one I had to listen to a second time.

People often fall back on slogans like, “the past is the past” and “its time to move on” whenever you bring up an uncomfortable or unresolved conflict.  I hear it very often in both the mainstream media and mainstream political conversations when it comes to impeaching the president.  Beyond impeachment, even the demand to arrest the current president of the United States and his inner circle on the charge of mass murder and fraud seems to have become some crazy idea, too far fetched to be worthy of discussion.

Why exactly doesn’t anyone want to talk about it? That part isn’t so clear.  People are still dying everyday while carrying out his orders.  An entire nation is still living under occupation while their national funds are being held hostage by that same administration.  The US itself is, even as I write this, being drained of all its resources, wealth, and young minds, again for the whims of that same president. But perhaps like Eddie Izzard used to say, when one murders tens of thousands it is as if people don’t know what to do with you or how to respond.

Last friday’s democracy now featured the man who led the case against Charles Manson, the infamous American serial killer.  He’s now laid out the case against George W. Bush, for the crime of murder; mass murder. To learn the details of the case itself is important and worth your time, so give it a listen.

What I found particularly eye opening was the document called “the manning memo”.  This memo, written by a Tony Blair advisor, provided details of the conversations that included Bush, Blair, and Condi Rice among others.  In those details it is revealed by Manning, that Bush was worried that the case for war in Iraq was too weak, and he discussed a plan to fly a US air force plane low over Iraq, painted with UN colors and insignias.  In doing so it would provoke Iraq to fire, and the plane’s destruction would outrage the international community and further garuntee the desire to go to invade the country.

The evidence of the murders and fraud was already significant, but looking at the manning memo and seeing the premeditated, fraudulent, and blantent thirst for blood, this cabal needs to be arrested and kept from comitting anymore murders or other haneous acts.  The world cannot wait for the next election, just as you don’t wait 6 months before picking up a serial killer til he is finished with his current job. This is not a time for moving on, or keeping the past in the past… this is the present and there is a series of criminal acts that got us here, and something must be done about it.

bm266 Finding Cambodia’s Lost Culture

Bophana is an organization based in Phnom Penh, dedicated to finding and archiving video, audio, and text documentation of Cambodian culture.  Throughout the decades of war and the destructive Khmer Rouge regime, much of the nation’s audio-visual archives were lost. But Bophana has taken on the task of gathering this material, from private individuals in the country, or institutions and film companies abroad.  I was given an informative tour and a demonstration of how the archive works, later we recorded this podcast interview.

We Discuss:

  • What is Bophana
  • Who is behind this organization
  • Why should Cambodia need such a place
  • Types of activities and areas of interest
  • Funding sources, funding problems
  • Difficulties with finding skilled workers for this type of work

Music:

  • Apostle of Hustle – Folkloric Field
  • Kanye West – Heard’em Say

Talking about the Killing Fields

Although I’ve arrived back home in Amsterdam, my mind still drifts regularly back to Cambodia.  In conversations with friends and day dreams as I ride my bike around town, I think most about the killing fields and that horrible torture prison known as S-21.

It was last friday that Mr. Lee and I set out on the motorscooter for the 25 or so minute ride out to the killing fields of Choeung Ek. Along the way I caught my first long glimpses of the country side, and the boggy farms that dot the landscape.  Mr. Lee  chimed in “Mr. Mark, you want go firing range and shoot machine gun?”  – I tried to control my laughter and calmy replied, no, no, I’m ok, I don’t need shooting range. Noticing my disdain for the question he redirected, “many tourists like, they come and they shoot the guns.”

Eventually we arrive at the killing fields late that morning, on the way in -oddly enough-, greeting someone I met the night before at the Foreign Correspondents Club. Looking past the modest shrine, that I can already see contains many levels of skulls stored behind Plexiglas, I noticed the covered areas of land.  Having heard the stories of the mass graves, of the more than 8,000 people that were killed at Choeung Ek, I knew those covered areas where some of the biggest mass graves.  Slowly reading and moving past the wooden boards explaining how people were brought to this plot of land from the S-21 prison, to be slaughtered using various types of weapons and methods, I made my way to the covered areas.  There in the pit of muddy water and wild grasses, I could see remnants of fabric, the collar of a shirt, perhaps the edge of a pant leg, almost too hard to tell at that point.  Eventually I found myself staring at what could only be pieces of bone, somehow still there, sticking up out of the ground.  I kept thinking, nooo.. thats not bone. But Iooking again, yes… yes it was; all that was left of some of these thousands of people killed between 1975 and 1979, the year of my birth.

Whether it was walking quietly and slowly through the killing fields, or staring at the floors and walls of the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, my mind would not stop trying to recreate the sounds and smells of these places in those days.  Prisoners being tortured, guards torturing prisoners out of fear of their own lives and that of their families. The muffled screams as prisoners would only be further punished for crying out.  The requirement of all prisoners to ask before drinking water or even just going to the bathroom right there in their own tiny cells.  All this within rooms that had originally been built and served as places of knowledge, a high school, a place of great hope for the future.

It was nothing short of humbling to see these places. They alone merit the long journey of anyone anywhere in the world who can afford to come; to see, to learn and remember, to visualize what it was like and think about how something like that can happen, just 28 years ago…. my lifetime.

It is easy to say, never again. Yet how often have people been rounded up, tortured, and mass murdered since 1979? Right at this moment, it is happening. THAT is perhaps more disturbing and horrifing than any former prison or field of death – that people are unable or unwilling to mobilize to stop history from repeating itself. Sadly there will be more S-21’s and more Choeung Ek’s in this world. The lone silver lining one could point to, after having also seen how the Cambodian nation is dealing with both the past and present to some extent, is that they have resolved to never repeat that part of history again.

bmtv86 Arrival in Cambodia

Going back a few days, this vlog entry is from my first day in Cambodia.  It includes footage from my arrival via Tuc-Tuc, to me Royal Palace visit.

On that note, I’m off to the airport for the long long flight back to Amsterdam. It has been, well, overwhelming to say the least.  A fantastic experience that has left me profoundly happy and hungry for more journeys like this one.

Cambodia Connections

He asked me not to blog about our conversations, so I’ll make a decent effort not to.  But I can’t help but aknowledge that even out here in Cambodia, I manage to ride around late at night on the back of a motorcycle which belongs to someone I worked with all the way back in New York City.  To say the world is small would be an understatement.  That’s all I’ll say on that specific case.

Today I had the great pleasure of meeting up with Cambodian bloggers, or cloggers as they affectionately refer to themselves. Took Mr. LEe and I some time to locate the venue, but once there it was a very familiar café atmosphere with wifi.  And as luck would have it, not only did I get to sit down with Tharum, the first blogger in Cambodia, but several of his friends and fellow bloggers were there as well.  Together with Virak, Kuji, and even this man, we sat and discussed the upcoming Cambodian elections and the lack of a viable opposition party that can defeat the ruling party.  I think it was Tharum who said “It used to be that before an election people worried about the stability of the country afterwards, now nobody worries and expects any real change.”

As my new friends explained and become very clear to me, the world of personal publishing and citizenjournalism is quite large in Cambodia.  Although outside of a few cities, few people have real internet access, in the places where it is available, many people are writing about different topics, and a surprising many are doing so in English!

As we drank iced tea and ate some cake, I had that feeling that although I’m sitting in Phnom Penh, I could be sitting anywhere in the world, and that indeed these bloggers and I share a common culture, language, and understanding of both the possiblilities and the responsibilities that can come with being our own media, writing our own stories, and just being active players in the growing world of internet communication.

Cambodian bloggers: I didn’t get to meet you all and join the boatride this sunday, but to my new pals who sat with me today, THANKS, and I will be back and we can pick up where we left off.