Keepin' me busy this week: http://www.nouhachjournal.net

In the Shadow of Angkor The new issue of Manoa, The University of Hawaii's literary journal, features both pre and post civil war writing. --------------------------------------------------- In the Shadow of Angkor - Contemporary Writing from Cambodia Editors: Frank Stewart (Editor) Sharon May (Feature Editor) Publisher: Manoa 16:1, University of Hawaii Press, 2840 Kolowalu Street, Honolulu, HI 96822 Tel: (888) 847 7377 ISBN: 0-8248-2849-6 http://manoajournal.hawaii.edu ***** Table of Contents Essays The diabolic sweetness of Pol Pot - Soth Polin In the shadow of Angkor - Sharon May From journey into light - Ranachit Ronnie Yimsut The dinner guests - Putsata Reang The perpetrator, the victim, and the witness - Alex Hinton Ten gems on a thread - Catherine Filloux Crossing the killing fields - Min Keth Or The rule of the universe - Maha Ghosananda Fiction Communicate, they say - Soth Polin The origin of kounlok bird - Traditional Folktale Sokha and apopeal - Darina Siv The accused - Khun Srun Ghouls, ghosts, and other infernal creatures - Chuth Khay I hate the word and the letter [Ta] - Khun Srun Love on cowback - Hak Chhay Hok Workman - Keir Saramak A mysterious passenger - King Bunchhoeun Caged bird will fly - Pollie Bith Interviews Beyond words: Soth Polin - Sharon May Surviving the peace: Loung Ung - Sharon May Art of faCt: praCh - Sharon May Words from the fire: Three Cambodian women writers - Sharon May Ambassador of the silent world: U Sam Oeur - Sharon May Film Script Bophana: A Cambodian tragedy - Rithy Panh Three rap lyrics from Dalama - praCh Four poems - U Sam Oeur Members of the Cambodian community and educators may purchase the book at a discount ($16, including shipping). Make the check payable to "University of Hawai'i Foundation" and mail to: Manoa journal Dept. of English University of Hawai'i Honolulu, HI 96822 Books may also be ordered from the website: http://manoajournal.hawaii.edu ***************************************** Click for Press Release

Turns out Angkor was a lot like Los Angeles From Roland Fletcher and crew: http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/06/08/fallenangkor.ap/index.html

'S-21' Reviews 'S21': Cambodia's Bloody Hands By Ann Hornaday, Washington Post Staff Writer As movies enter their silly season, "S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine" arrives like a sobering splash of cold water. This devastating, elegantly simple documentary about the ravages of the communist regime in Cambodia during the 1970s testifies not only to human dignity and resilience but to cinema at its most intellectually honest and morally necessary. In 1975, the independent state of Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge, an agrarian communist movement that had engaged that country in a civil war since 1970. For the next four years, the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, instituted a series of murderous purges throughout the country, ultimately taking nearly 2 million lives. S21, the main Khmer Rouge "security bureau" in the capital, Phnom Penh, was the main detention center of the regime, where about 17,000 men, women and children were tortured and killed. Only a handful survived. One of those survivors, an artist named Nath, is the center of "S21," a gripping cinema verite account of his emotional and troubling reunion with his former guards and interrogators. Now a genocide museum, the bleak concrete barracks of S21 serves as the spare backdrop while Nath and several of his captors sift through prison records, photographs and artifacts of one of the most brutal genocides in history. With no narration and only a few titles explaining historical context, "S21" trains the camera on victims and victimizers as they tell their own unvarnished stories to each other and, indirectly, to the world. The result is a deeply moving, provocative meditation on cruelty and suffering, all the more effective for being so starkly rendered. >From Nath and a fellow survivor we learn of the unspeakable atrocities they and their countrymen suffered the arrests, the interrogations, the torture, the ritualized "confessions" of counterrevolutionary treason (even falling in love, one man explains, was considered a crime against the state). Their accounts of lying for hours with the corpses of fellow prisoners, of catching crickets in their mouths and being beaten until they spat them out, of being starved and humiliated, are wrenching. But perhaps even more painful are the narratives of the guards - some of them recruited and indoctrinated as teenagers - who impassively describe their methods of questioning and abuse. In the film's most breathtaking passages, the guards physically reenact their savage routines, their bodies unleashing memories that had been buried under years of twisted political rhetoric and rationalizations. The most frightening and dispiriting aspect of "S21" may not be the atrocities themselves but the ease with which otherwise decent men were able to commit them and their resistance to their own accountability. As a study in human psychology, the film may strike viewers as distressingly relevant in light of recent reports from Iraq. But "S21" never makes such glib equivalencies, nor does it offer up easy catharsis or closure. Director Rithy Panh, who was forced to work in Khmer Rouge labor camps at 11, has provided a vital historical record in the face of decades of denial (Khmer Rouge officials didn't admit to the genocide until last year, after one of them had seen this film). But on another level, Panh has done something more difficult in addressing the proper role of an artist in the face of unspeakable acts. That role, he seems to say through this compelling, heartbreaking film, is fulfilled by choosing simply to bear witness. S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine - (101 minutes, in Khmer with subtitles, at the Avalon) is not rated. It contains adult material and images of death and torture.[End] 'S21': Unspeakable Crimes By Desson Thomson The Washington Post Friday, June 11, 2004 WHEN a documentary tries to focus on evil, when it zeros in on the people who committed unspeakable acts, there's a frustrating diffusion. It somehow never finds the target. The evil is always somewhere else. There's the testimony of Nazis, for instance, who insist they were only following orders. It was the fault of their superiors. They seem so reasonable, so disquietingly normal. Or the mass killer who speaks with detachment about his (usually his) victims and, quite often, the extenuating circumstances (abused as a child, etc.) that turned him into a killer. Suddenly the humanity of the person, the distancing of time, and the fact that this conversation is taking place in civil circumstances, all combine to pollute the moral clarity we desperately seek. The same disquieting phenomenon occurs in Rithy Panh's "S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine," a modest but nonetheless devastating documentary about the kind of brutality that was official procedure in Cambodia a generation ago. In its conquest and occupation of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge army slaughtered approximately 25 percent of the Cambodian people between 1975 and 1979. Its methods of interrogation, as we learn, were not only cruel but absurd. Prisoners were beaten and abused until they revealed the names of enemies of the new state: the Communist Party of Democratic Kampuchea. Unable to think of anyone, the victims would simply name the people they knew. Those named people were then hauled in for systematic cruelty and inevitable death. All were killed, no matter what they said. As the movie shows, one of the central points for this inhumane activity was in Phnom Penh at the S21 "security bureau," where 17,000 detainees were killed. (A total of 1.7 million Cambodians perished.) Barely more than a dozen survived; and only three, it seems, have survived to give their testimony for this film. It's a white-knuckle experience to listen to these former prisoners, to watch them break down emotionally as they visit this place (now it's the Tuol Sleng museum) after many years. One survivor, an artist, relates how he was allowed to live because he could render flattering portraits of the guards. Director Panh, who managed to escape from Cambodia in 1979 and now lives in France, also talks to young men who were the guards of this hell. They were also executioners. They dug graves, killed people and buried them. Back then they were teenagers, instructed to beat, torture and kill. Now, they are still relatively young. But they cannot permit themselves to take the blame. Had they not complied with orders, they say, they would have been executed by the Angkar, or Organization, as well. And yet, in the most surrealistic of moments, one of those guards reenacts -- with a sickening authority no professional actor could achieve -- his routine of feeding, harassing and yelling at the prisoners. He does it with a fluidity and a joy of performance. It's harrowing and enlightening. And somehow the evil floats away. Leaders such as Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea (the Khmer Rouge's chief ideologue), Ta Mok and Kaing Khek Iev, all await trial for genocide. They are not in this film. We see only their work. And their underlings. And once again, evil remains elusive. S21: THE KHMER ROUGE KILLING MACHINE (Unrated, 101 minutes) -- Contains harrowing anecdotes of a truly disturbing nature. In Khmer with subtitles. At the Avalon Theatre. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Andy Brouwer's S-21 page http://andybrouwer.co.uk/s21.html Google Search http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=S-21+%2B+Rithy+Panh

Khmeye An exhibition of photographs taken by orphans living in Phnom Penh opens at the Sorya Centre (4th floor), Street 63, Phnom Penh on Wednesday 9th June, 6pm – 9pm. Opening times: Wednesday 9th June – Tuesday 15th June, 8am to 9pm. The exhibition ‘Khmeye’ marks the culmination of a ten-week photography course which has been held at the Kean Kleang Orphanage for eighteen young people. The project, initiated through a collaboration between the NGO’s PhotoVoice and Global Children, aims to provide the students with a new creative skill through which they can speak about the issues they and other disadvantaged young people in Cambodia face. Armed initially with automatic cameras, and later with manual SLR cameras, the students have turned the lens in on, amongst other things, their native villages, the orphanage, daily Khmer life and the Steung Chey Rubbish Dump. They have tackled serious issues such as poverty, homelessness and child labour whilst also managing to capture the enduring playfulness and joy of youth. Situated over the ‘Japanese Bridge’ and alongside the Tonle Sap River, the Kien Kleang orphanage is housed in an old French convent. One of only two state-run orphanages in Phnom Penh, it is home to 115 children and 20 babies. The majority of children come from the provinces of Cambodia. Some have lost their relatives to HIV/ AIDS, a disease which is at endemic proportions in Cambodia, others died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge - some have been referred to the orphanage after being found wandering the streets of Phnom Penh, selling flower garlands, peanuts or small souvenirs to try and survive. With an estimated 8,000 people coming through the Sorya centre on an average week day it is hoped ‘Khmeye’ will bring the voices and visions of this group of young people to a wide and diverse local and international audience. In time it is hoped at a number of the photography students will continue their studies and undertake apprenticeships with photographic organisations in Phnom Penh and also that the courses will expand to other orphanages in Cambodia. Funds are currently being raised for project continuation both through print sales and through a new partnership between PhotoVoice and the FFC. About disadvantaged children in Cambodia: With over half of the population under the age of 18 years, there are serious concerns for the economic and social well being of children. Sexual abuse and exploitation, and trafficking for this purpose, is a major problem in the country. There are many children living or working in the streets or in situations of exploitative labour detrimental to their development and there are reported to be over a quarter of a million orphans living in Cambodia. About PhotoVoice: PhotoVoice is an international non-profit organization, based in London UK. Our mission is empowerment – to support people in need around the world in using photography as a medium to ‘speak out’ about their challenges, concerns, hopes and fears. Working alongside both international organizations and local partners, we provide in-field photojournalism workshops for those living on the fringes of society. Internationally we provide the platform for these groups to exhibit and market their work. Long-term PhotoVoice projects have been set up in Afghanistan, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nepal, Vietnam and the United Kingdom. About Global Children: Global Children is a charitable, non-profit organization dedicated to improving the welfare of children, families and communities in need through the implementation and support of culturally appropriate projects. Global Children has been working in Cambodia since September of 2000 to promote the survival of a threatened culture and for the past three years has been running an Orphanage~Performing Arts Project and an Orphanage~Visual Arts Project throughout orphanages across Cambodia. Notice to editors: • BBC online have been documenting the project since its initial stages. To view these stories please follow the link for ‘Visual Voices’ from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/default.stm ? For more information, to receive copies of photographs from the exhibition and for press enquiries, please contact Anna Blackman, PhotoVoice Director and project manager on 012207281 or Eugenie Dolberg, Project Co-ordinator on 012207284, or write to anna@photovoice.org ?For more information on Global children please contact Heng on 012885 224 or at heng@global-children.org, or view www.global–children.org ?For information on the project in Khmer please contact Mak Remissa, photographer and project trainer on 012724484 •For more information on PhotoVoice visit www.photovoice.org . To support PhotoVoice’s work as an individual sign up as a founding friend at: http://www.photovoice.org/html/supportingourwork/becomeamember • ‘Khmeye’ will also be exhibited in London October 2004 in association with The Economist Group, who have supported PhotoVoice’s involvement in this project.

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