White Hand
Mar 2nd, 2006 by Jinja
White Hand
Room knea prachan ampuu bukruloi / “Sa’at som”
A ‘white hand’ is a scary symbol in Latin America. But a hemisphere away, in Cambodia, it’s part of an anticorruption campaign. This is one of the stickers. (Thanks to Michael for photo help.)
“Sa’at som” (in my amateur translation) is someone who never commits a bad action.
(I wonder just how much of this derives from Buddhism?)
Tags: Cambodia
An anonymous commmenter sent in a note that authorities requested billboards for the ‘white hand’ campaign be taken down.
I’m going to be instituting a ‘no anonymous comment’ policy for the time being.
I don’t have verification on this (I can call program sponsor PACT and check, I suppose).
But if you have a rumor? The best place for it would be the various message boards that are out there. It’s usually in open discussion that stories shake out as false or fact. Free speech is a handy thing, unless you have something to hide.
Sometimes it gets heated but better the pen (or typewriter) than the sword.
Just a few of many:
http://khmer.cc/community/
http://www.talesofasia.com/forum/index.php
http://forum.khmer.ws/
http://www.lesjeuneskhmers.com/forum/
http://www.khmerlife.com/forum/index.php
http://www.bongthom.com/groups/messagelist.asp
http://groups.google.com/group/camdisc/
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.cambodia
http://www.khmeros.info/drupal/?q=en/forum
http://www.khmerclub.com/forums.asp
Each has different rules, and different administrators. Some may edit your posts.
There’s also Khmer Intelligence, all politics, all gossip, all the time.
http://www.khmerintelligence.org/