Feature
Mich. town helps Cambodian man get US citizenship
UNION CITY, Mich. - When Keo Sok, a custodian at Union City Middle School, traveled to Detroit to take his U.S. citizenship exam in July, it wasn’t just the 100 history and government questions running through his head.
He had hopes of this small town riding on him.
“Keo mentioned how much pressure he felt because the [...]
Witness to Cambodia’s birth pangs
Among his childhood memories, Sam Rainsy recalls sitting with his father on the rooftop terrace of their beautiful house in Phnom Penh, watching pelicans land next to their water tank. “In Cambodia, which is full of superstitions, friends and neighbours kept telling us that these pelicans would end up by bringing us bad luck,” he [...]
JOEL BRINKLEY: In Cambodia, government watches as developers evict poor from their land
Well past the city limits, beyond the sign that says “Bon Voyage; See You Again,” after the paved roads end, down a rutted dirt track, Un Thea sits in the mud outside her shanty house, peeling bamboo shoots - and seething.
Two years ago, soldiers and police showed up in the middle of the night to [...]
Cambodian people must reject poll results
Cranston City, RI, United States, — The full implementation of the 1991 Paris Peace Agreement is the only alternative to lead Cambodia toward freedom and democracy.
Presently, Cambodia is a police state just as were Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria during their occupation by the Red Army of the Soviet Union. The elections in Central Europe [...]
With help, Montrose man dousing Cambodian fires
Cambodia doesn’t have much, and what little they do have keeps burning down, because that beautiful and battered country doesn’t have enough fire fighting equipment or fire stations to keep up.
The whole country, in fact, has far fewer fire stations than the Western Slope.
In the capital, Phnom Penh, for example, there is only one fire [...]
Rights & Wrongs: China, U.N. Peacekeepers, Cambodia and More
CONTINUING CONCERNS ABOUT CHINESE HUMAN RIGHTS — The spectacular Olympic picture China has sought to paint for a world audience continues to be marred by human rights abuses, as media outlets, human rights groups and international diplomats put pressure on the Olympic host to ease controls on the Chinese people.
U.S. President George W. Bush made [...]
CAMBODIA: Questions over legality of evictions in name of development
PHNOM PENH, 18 August 2008 (IRIN) - Vanndy Sambath had lived next to Phnom Penh’s lush Boeng Kak lake for years, peacefully growing vegetables and accommodating tourists to support his family.
That all changed in 2006, when a contractor arrived and announced government-sponsored plans to fill in the lake, forcing his neighbourhood to relocate in the [...]
Oil trumps pressure for fair elections in Cambodia
Unlike most other countries holding elections in transition to democracy, including our own Guyana, Cambodia in East Asia held imperfect elections on July 27 to choose a National Assembly of 123 seats. Like Guyana, Cambodia has a PR electoral system but with a bicameral parliament that has 61 Senators in the Upper House appointed [...]
In Cambodia, a rock ‘n roll revival
PHNOM PENH - Grainy black and white newsreel footage of B-52 bombing raids and fierce fighting are the images most frequently associated with Cambodia in the 1960 and early 1970s - not rock and roll, hot pants and wild dancing.
But when the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, emptying the cities and [...]
Hun Sen enters 34th year in power in Cambodia
With yet another election victory in the bag, Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Sen, is now entering his thirty-fourth year in power.
Hun Sen draws his inspiration not from south-east Asia’s more democratic leaders, but from Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, who used dictatorial methods to build a modern, prosperous but tightly-controlled island city-state. Still only 57, [...]
