Dith Pran, survivor of Cambodian horror, faces cancer with serenity

BY JUDY PEET Star-Ledger Staff (New Jersey, USA), Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The world knows him as a powerful voice for the ghosts of the Cambodian Killing Fields, but Dith Pran speaks barely above a whisper now.

The man who survived starvation, torture and Pol Pot’s murderous children’s brigade is now fighting a new war from a hospital bed in New Jersey. This time the enemy is even more relentless: pancreatic cancer.

Friends and family say that if anyone can win this battle, it is Pran, 65, once described as a survivor “in the Darwinian sense,” whose story was the basis for the Academy Award-winning 1984 movie, “The Killing Fields.” (more…)

Mud houses give shelter
to Svay Rieng’s poor

By Moeun Chhean Nariddh

            Banteay Kraing, Svay Rieng: In 1936, Pailin’s heart of love was revealed when Cambodian writer Nhok Them published his novel The Rose of Pailin that tells the story of two lovers: Chao Cheth and Khun Neary.

In the then gem-rich town on the Thai border, an impoverished young man, Chao Cheth, was lucky enough to marry Khun Neary, the daughter of a millionaire, despite the fact that they were from different social classes.

Five hundred kilometers away on the Vietnamese border, the residents of Banteay Kraing village say Chao Cheth would not have been so lucky had he been born here. His advances might well have been rejected had he lived in a mud house and wanted to marry a girl from a large wooden house with a tiled roof. (more…)

UNDERSTANDING TRAUMA IN CAMBODIA
by Matthias WITZEL
CSD-DED consultant, Psycho-therapist, clinical psychologist

Fear stems from lack of information During our outreach activities and research, we quickly realized that fear is one of the most evident symptoms in Cambodia today, blocking a creative, engaged and healthy life of many people.

Fear is a lack of information (or knowledge, understanding).

In response to fear, the first step is to get control and ownership of one’s own life in or after threatening situations, to get knowledge about the structure and content of the destructive circumstances. The second step is to seek new skills, and/or to reactivate earlier developed skills in order to cope and to reorganize life in a healthy way.

Step one is only a precondition; it does not give enough skills to deal with damaged self esteem, destructive behavior, lack of trust, or lack of ownership according to a self-actualized, creative, robust living.

For example, if family members do not understand that trauma can lead to an outburst of anger, panic or sudden grief (common symptoms) or that traumatized people change their communication pattern, are more suspicious and afraid, and tend to withdraw from society, how can they understand their suffering relatives, how can they appreciate them in their life struggle. Instead, oftentimes, they are labeled as “ch’kuet”, crazy. (more…)

In Memory of Chea-Sor Phanachonon

(15 Nov 2006-19 Nov 2007)

Internews staff and IMMF family would like to extend our condolences to journalist Chea Kimsan and his family for the loss of their beloved baby son, Chea-Sor Phanachonon, and a 4-year-old niece, Deth Yariza, to a recent traffic accident in Kompong Cham province, Cambodia. We pray that Phanachonon and Yariza be reborn in a happy world.

Opinion

The Nation, Thailand

Thailand should give migrant labourers a break once in a while

Re: “Illegal Cambodian immigrant miscarries inside cell”, News, November 28.

Published on November 29, 2007

        It’s sad to hear that a fellow Khmer woman miscarried in a Pattaya Police Station detention room after she was arrested along with 21 other Cambodians.

        This might be seen as a tragedy in the civilised world. But such a sad thing is just one of a million miseries found in the resource-rich but impoverished nation of Cambodia. Decades of civil war, genocide, foreign occupation, land grabbing by rich and powerful people, rampant corruption and mismanagement of the country’s resources have left the poorest Cambodians with few options and means to survive.

        Like their Burmese brothers and sisters, many Cambodians have decided to leave the country for Thailand in the hope that they can make some money as a labourer or even a beggar. (more…)