Cambodia on The Huffington Post

Peter Clothier: Breathing in the Buddha

2009-12-23T13:14:08Z

Here's a fine new publication by the documentary photographer Alan Brigish. Breathing in the Buddha is "a photographic exploration of Buddhist life in Indochina," and it documents a journey that takes Brigish through thee major cities in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, and at greater length through city and countryside in that elusive country, Burma. (The old name has a resonance for me personally that the new one, Myanmar, seems to lack. Perhaps it's the bad old British Empire genes, but I go with Burma.)

Brigish sets out with his camera, "curious about how Buddhist daily life works" in these four Indochinese countries. His lens is then appropriately directed toward two points of interest: the faces and activities of the people--most of them living in states of economic deprivation--and the serene beauty of the Buddhist temples and the stunning artifacts that grace their often opulent interiors.

It is, frankly, at once a compelling and an uncomfortable contrast. The photographs are absolutely gorgeous, reflecting the beauty of their subjects--first and foremost the faces, young and old. The young are fresh-faced, bright-eyed, their emotions close to the surface, whether in child-like joy or, sometimes, pain, suffering and sadness. The old reflect the hardness of lives lived in circumstances far less comfortable that those in which we live here in the West; and, in the case of Burma, in a society repressed by a tyrannical regime. In this context, the aesthetic opulence of the temples reminds me inevitably of the disparity between the architectural grandeur of the medieval church and the real lives of people living in the shadow of the great cathedrals. The monks, saffron-robed and smiling, seem a bit removed from the social circumstance, protected in their spiritual cocoon; and yet their omnipresence clearly provides solace, along with their reminder of values that transcend the suffering of the daily grind.

What Brigish is anxious for us to see, I think, is that human beings can find fulfillment and contentment in their lives, a kind of happiness, without those things that have come to seem essential to the Western mind; property, convenience, comfort--material well-being. The text of his book is the narrative of his journey and his observations along the way. Its subtext, importantly, included at intervals throughout the book in font that mimics the handwritten word, is the Buddha's fundamental teaching of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. It's a point-counterpoint strategy, image and text, narrative and teaching, that creates the rhythm that moves the reader through the book.

Brigish is wise to have hewed to the photo-documentary format here, and to have insisted as much on text as on image to convey his story, as well as on a modesty of scale. I'm sure it could have been tempting to go for a large-format, coffee table book replete with the kind of full-page, sumptuous images his photographs could have lent themselves to; but that would have been to introduce another, more damaging contradiction--the condescending Romanticization of hardship, the beautifying of the deprivation and suffering of others. Brigish has managed to avoid this trap with the commendable restraint of his presentation, a desire to share his observations without fanfare or eclat.

In the same context, I was happy that Brigish kept his story personal. It reads like a journal, the intimate record of a journey and of the meanings he himself discovered. His inclusion of the Buddhist teachings feels more like an act of personal realization than a need to preach some pre-established dogma or illustrate a point. Rhyming with his images, they offer themselves for reflection and establish a perspective through which the reader/viewer is invited to share the experience in a meaningful way, to "breathe in" the pages as they turn.

Not having visited any of the countries through which Brigish leads us, I am grateful for the opportunity of this glimpse into a world that was previously unknown to me--which is, after all, the familiar pleasure of all good books.

Cambodia Deports 20 Uighurs To China, Gets $1.2 Billion

2009-12-22T00:23:07Z

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Visiting Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping thanked Cambodia on Monday for deporting 20 Muslim asylum-seekers while handing the country $1.2 billion in aid , the government spokesman said.

The 20 ethnic Uighurs deported Saturday were sought by China in connection with violent anti-government protests. Human rights activists are concerned that they will face persecution in China.

Cambodia May Send Uyghurs Back

2009-12-18T19:01:20Z

A group of ethnic Uyghur asylum-seekers may be headed back to China.

Cambodia To Send Uyghurs Back

2009-12-18T14:46:20Z

A group of ethnic Uyghur asylum-seekers may be headed back to China.

Jim Luce: Only in America: Ambassador Sichan Siv - From the Killing Fields to the White House

2009-12-10T17:26:11Z

I first met Ambassador Sichan Siv in 2004 when I was invited to hear him speak at the imposing Women's Republican National Club, just north of Rockefeller Center. What a speech!

He spoke on surviving Pol Pot's Killing Fields in Cambodia, then making his way to America where he earned a degree in International Relations at Columbia. He ended up working in the White House and then the United Nations.

Others have graduated from Columbia's prestigious business school, but few have done so after arriving at JFK with only $2, a scarf from their mother, and an empty sack for rice as their total life possessions.
Ambassador Sichan Siv went on to become a U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

There are fewer than ten speeches I have ever heard in my life that have stuck with me. His was one of them. Hearing a man recount how every member of his family - 15 in all, including his mother - were killed during genocide -- that sticks in one's mind for a long, long time.

After the war, Sichan learned that his mother had gone up to the Khmer Rouge and said, 'Why do you leave me alive? You have killed my daughter and my son already. Why don't you kill me as well?" So they did.

This man -- who suffered so much, and yet went on to accomplish so much -- impressed me greatly. I was delighted to be invited to his New York City home last week to meet with him and his lovely wife Martha. They now reside in Martha's home state of Texas, but visit the East Coast regularly.

I was particularly pleased to do an on-camera interview with Sichan about his harrowing but ultimately triumphant life - and his best-selling book, Golden Bones. The title means "Very lucky, very blessed."
"An extraordinary Journey from hell in Cambodia to a new life in America."

A few days later, I heard the Ambassador speaking at Columbia Business School, at a symposium sponsored by my friends at Global China Connection, and wrote about that event last spring.
Hon. Sichan Siv with the leadership of Global China Connection at Columbia University.

We have all seen the heart-breaking footage of the fall of Saigon with the last helicopter leaving the U.S. Embassy, leaving Vietnam. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge entered neighboring Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh. Once again, America evacuated key personnel and locals.

Sichan had been selected for U.S. evacuation because he had helped manage the U.S. relief agency CARE. He had one hour to get to the embassy - but he did not make it. Thus began his dark brush with death that somehow led him to the corridors of power in Washington and New York.

No one knows how many were executed by the Khmer Rouge -- at least 200,000 by the lowest counts. Estimates of the total number of deaths resulting from Khmer Rouge policies - including disease and starvation - range from 1.4 to 2.2 million out of a small population of around 7 million. Sichan should have been among them.

To escape notice as a pariah "intellectual," he had thrown away his glasses. None the less, he was immediately captured by the Khmer Rouge and placed in a labor camp.

Ambassador Sichan Siv, a Buddhist, revisited Angkor Wat in 1992.

Last spring he journeyed back, and in a poignant essay in the New York Times, "Last Breakfast in Cambodia," wrote about his return. Cambodians, like most Theravada Buddhists, celebrate their New Year in mid-April.

He reminisced about how his family held their reunions every year to mark both the New Year and his mother's birthday. "In 1975," he wrote, "we had no idea that it would be our last."

The Ambassador visiting orphaned Cambodian children playing with masks in Takeo.

For a year he was imprisoned in a succession of slave-labor camps in Cambodia, toiling 18 hours a day, digging ditches, hoeing weeds, fixing roads. He would then stagger back to the huts, gag down a bowl of rancid soup, and fall into a nightmarish sleep.

After a year he escaped to Thailand and became a Buddhist monk. His escape will one day be the subject of a Hollywood movie. Sichan arrived in Thailand, where he eventually made it via a refugee camp to New York's JFK. His powerful book has all the riveting details, a must-read.

There is also an incredible piece on the Ambassador's life by Voice of America, in Mandarin.

Sichan's marriage to Martha Pattillo, a Presbyterian from Texas who had once worked for the U.N. in Bangkok, is the Buddhist Ambassador's greatest blessing. They were married in the Lone Star State on Christmas Eve 1983.
Sichan's marriage to Texan Martha Pattillo has made him a Cambodian cowboy.

Are names destiny? His slaughtered mother named him "Sichan," which means "Beautiful Moon" in Khmer. She instructed him, "Remember, Sichan, whatever happens, never give up hope."

Jim Luce (Orphans International), Ambassador Sichan Siv, Jean-Michel Tijerina

(The Cambodia Project), and Gavin Newton-Tanzer (Global China Connection).

He never has. He continues to inspire young leaders across the U.S. and world, such as his friends Jean-Michel Tijerina, founder of The Cambodia Project, and Gavin Newton-Tanzer, founder of Global China Connection.

Ambassador Sichan Siv is a thought leader on the miracle of Making It In America, and a global citizen with a deep understanding of human nature, learned during his unlikely journey from his Buddhist temple to the White House.

He has never given up hope - which inspires my friends and me, and the entire world.

Related Stories by Jim Luce

Cambodian Children's Hospital Benefits In New York and Los Angeles (Huffington Post)

Bleecker Street Bar Crawls for Kids in Cambodia and Haiti (Huffington Post)

New York's GreenSoul Shoes Tours Southeast Asia (Huffington Post)

Global China Connection: From Columbia to Stanford and McGill (Huffington Post)

Edited by Ethel Grodzins Romm.

Eve Blossom: Thailand: Identity Crisis?

2009-12-10T01:01:29Z

This week marks the 82nd birthday of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who is loved and revered highly by many Thais. With ailing health and a short leave from the hospital, the King gave a brief speech December 5 stating that his happiness and prosperity would be assured if Thailand flourished and was in a normal and stable situation. The question is will Thailand be an anchor in Southeast Asia or a hot spot of insecurity?

In recent history, Thailand found itself as a hub in Southeast Asia for business, foreign relations and tourism. It's neighboring countries, such as Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, were closed to business development and tourism. The region has changed dramatically over the last twenty years with these communist countries embracing market economy.

Vietnam's business acumen has escalated, establishing strong service and manufacturing businesses as well as development of beach resorts and tourism throughout the country. Cambodia, with its architectural wonders of Angkor Wat complex, is now a major tourist destination as well as Laos with the city of Luang Prabang.

Thailand has competition now with its neighbors as well as continuing internal strife. The country is politically divided, corruption is rampant, economy is significantly down due to lower exports, human trafficking is escalating, recent border disputes with Cambodia are ongoing, drug issues in the North continue and the growing Muslim insurgency in the South bordering Malaysia is troubling.

As the region shifts and relationships change, Thailand needs to define a new role. It starts with stabilizing the government but must go way beyond that. Throughout history when countries feel weak, they tend to lash out, become defensive and chaos ensues. Thailand has acted in a predictable manner. But instead of feeling weak, Thailand can seize this as an opportunity to reassess and reflect on its future, find its identity and forge ahead confidently. And in doing this, would ensure a better position. Of course, this is a tall order for where Thailand is today. True leadership and direction is needed; hopefully, Thailand has visionaries among its people that can heal the divide and set a course for a stable future.

Angelina Jolie Narrates Story Of Cambodian Sex Slave

2009-12-05T13:04:52Z

Angelina Jolie has joined Ben Affleck and Demi Moore in an effort to highlight the plight of desperate women in Third World countries by narrating a video about a teenage Cambodian sex slave.

Uyghur Asylum Bid in Cambodia

2009-12-03T14:16:39Z

Ethnic Uyghurs flee China through Vietnam to seek asylum in Cambodia.

Read more: Vietnam, China, Cambodia, Home News

Kaing Guek Eav, Khmer Rouge Prison Chief, Could Get 40 Years

2009-11-25T10:29:53Z

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The prison chief being tried for running a Khmer Rouge torture center apologized but said he was only following orders and couldn't stop the abuse and the thousands of killings there, as prosecutors sought a 40-year prison sentence.

Defense attorneys in Cambodia's first genocide tribunal continued their closing arguments Thursday. Kaing Guek Eav, 67, is charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes, murder and torture, which carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

Cham Muslims Homeless After Fire

2009-11-20T18:31:21Z

A fire in Cambodia's capital leaves hundreds of ethnic Muslims homeless.

Khmer Rouge Trial: Television Helps Spread Word To Nation

2009-11-20T11:04:05Z

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- When the former Khmer Rouge prison chief, Kaing Ghek Eav, first took the stand eight months ago, most Cambodians had scarce knowledge of the tribunal that was trying him.

CNN Heroes: Bartender's Nonprofit Turns 'Wine Into Water' For Developing Countries

2009-11-06T13:37:46Z

You can get your cabernet and pinot from North Carolina-based bartender Doc Hendley, but you'll also get a side of water and some sobering news.

Wine to Water, Hendley's nonprofit, raises funds through wine tasting events in order to bring clean water to people in developing countries. It was after traveling the world and learning about the global water crisis that the 30-year-old realized he could combine his bartending and people skills by hosting eye-opening wine tastings at the venues where he worked.

The wines are paired with information about the global water crisis to inform and educate participants that at least one in six people around the world do not have access to safe drinking water, which translates to 1.5 million preventable deaths from diarrhea every year.

Hendley's group has traveled to five developing countries since 2004, working to build clean water wells and sanitation systems with local communities. Wine to Water's projects span the world from Peru to Cambodia, training individuals to construct bio sand-filters, drilling wells and constructing water and sanitation centers to teach locals. The organization has brought safe drinking water to more than 25,000 individuals in orphanages, refugee camps, schools and hospitals.

These efforts have earned Hendley the distinction of being one of CNN's Top Ten Heroes of 2009.

Here are all the tools you need to host your own Water to Wine fundraiser.

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Abigail Pesta: Diary of an Escaped Sex Slave

2009-11-06T12:58:50Z

You think slavery went out with Abraham Lincoln? Ask my friend Sreypov Chan about that. She's a cute young Cambodian woman with a love for Kelly Clarkson songs and Tom & Jerry cartoons. But when she was seven years old, her mom sold her into sexual slavery.

This past summer, I had the privilege of traveling to Phnom Penh to report and write Sreypov's life story. Her brave choice to speak out finally puts a human face on human trafficking -- a $32 billion global business, according to State Department figures, but one that exists in the shadows.

Sreypov described to me her childhood in rural Cambodia. At age seven -- when most girls are going to second grade -- her mother sold her to a wealthier family to be their housekeeper. Two days later, she spent her first night in a brothel.

For years, Sreypov's owners forced her to have sex with as many as 20 men a day. If she didn't meet her quota, she faced unthinkable punishments -- she would be burned, whipped, covered with biting insects. And worse. "I wanted to die," she said.

Yet Sreypov is among the lucky ones. After years of this, she managed to escape. Today, at age 20, she is doing something extraordinary. Quite literally risking her own life, she's going back into the brothels to rescue other children from the fate she suffered.

This month, Marie Claire published Sreypov's story, along with a photo essay of her work inside one of Phnom Penh's most notorious brothels. See more photos from Sreypov's life here.

-----

Abigail Pesta is a journalist who has lived and worked around the world. Currently she is the deputy editor of Marie Claire. Previously Abby worked at Glamour, where she launched Mariane Pearl's award-winning column profiling the women who are changing the world. She is a former editor at The Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong, and before that she worked in London for an international wire service. She has traveled the world -- climbing the ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, motoring across Wales, bar-hopping in Shanghai with a minor-league Mafioso. She writes short stories for her website, Fine Words Butter No Parsnips.

Today: Abbas vows to step aside, Saudis on the offensive

2009-11-06T12:30:04Z

Stories compiled by Gizem Yarbil, Connie Kargbo, Channtal Fleischfresser, Christine Kiernan, Ivette Feliciano, and Mohammad al-Kassim, and edited by Rebecca Haggerty.

CAMBODIA/THAILAND: Cambodia recalled its ambassador from Thailand hours after Thailand recalled its ambassador from Phnom Penh. Diplomatic relations between the two countries took a blow after Cambodia offered an advisory position to the controversial former Thai prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra.

INDIA: A crowded bus plunged down a steep mountain gorge in northern India, killing 32 people and injuring at least 30 others.

SOUTH AFRICA: South Africa is moving to enlist men in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Through a series of recent ads catering to men, local organizations are hoping that men will play a greater role in addressing South Africa’s most pressing medical battle.

ZIMBABWE: Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister, has once again agreed to work with President Robert Mugabe, ending the three-week boycott of the unity government.

KENYA: 750,000 Kenyans could be affected by flooding as heavy rains hit the East African nation, according to the United Nations. Six people have already been killed in floods and landlsides.

GERMANY: The European head of General Motors has quit his job “in disgust” after GM decided to abandon plans to sell its European unit, Opel.

UK: British Airways will be cutting 1,200 additional jobs, after posting a six-month loss of $361 million.

RUSSIA AND CIS: Russia’s health minister has warned the media not to spread panic over swine flu, claiming that the situation is under control and that H1N1 mortality rates do not exceed that of seasonal flu.

Neighboring Ukraine is taking extraordinary measures to combat the H1N1 outbreak there. The mayor of Kiev wants to impose a quarantine on the capital city, and authorities there are organizing the free distribution of gauze masks to prevent the virus’ spread. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan has confirmed its official first case of swine flu.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warned against a new wall of hostility and mutual distrust in Europe, adding that old stereotypes and mistrust had yet to be banished. He made the comments in an interview published today in the newspaper Rossisskaya Gazeta.

In the latest development in the PR war between Russia and Georgia, Georgia is launching a Russian-language television station to reach ethnic minorities across the Caucasus.

Human rights worker Arbi Khachukayev has been abducted from Moscow and flown to Chechnya. Khachukayev, who works for the human rights group Memorial, had recently fled Chechnya, fearing for his personal safety.

Russia’s leading search engine Yandex has decided to stop ranking popular blog posts–a move that critics have derided as pandering to Kremlin censorship.

BRAZIL: Israeli President Shimon Peres and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are both set to visit Brazil next week — part of Brazil’s strategy as it hopes to cement its larger global role is to mediate the conflict in the Middle East.

HONDURAS: Honduras’ ousted president, Manuel Zelaya, says a U.S.-brokered pact has failed to end the country’s political crisis.

VENEZUELA: President Hugo Chavez has ordered 15,000 troops along the country’s border with Colombia after months of political tensions.

SAUDI ARABIA: The Saudi newspaper Al-Watan is reporting that scores of Yemeni Houthis fighters have been killed in new Saudi Arabia’s air attacks in the remote mountainous regions along the the borders between Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

ISRAEL: Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon has said that Israel is not bluffing in its threats to take military action against Iran’s contentious nuclear program. In the news regarding the UN General Assembly endorsing the Goldstone report, Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that the vote shows Israel has the moral majority.

PALESTINE: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced in a televised speech yesterday that he would not seek reelection. The announcement dealt a huge blow to the Obama administration efforts to revive Middle East peace negotiations. In another story, the United Nations General Assembly voted to endorse the Goldstone report which accused Israel of war crimes during its military offensive on the Gaza Strip last winter.

IRAN: Press TV reporting that the US has called on Iran to accept an IAEA-backed proposal for nuclear cooperation as proposed, reiterating that the draft deal would remain unchanged.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced in a televised speech yesterday that he would not seek reelection. And the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan is reporting that scores of Yemeni Houthis fighters have been killed in new Saudi Arabia’s air attacks in a remote mountainous region.
http://worldfocus.org/files/2009/11/th_palestine_abbas.jpg

Cambodian Youth Program Leader Awarded $25,000 Peace Prize

2009-10-29T14:37:25Z

Phalen Lim fled Cambodia at the age of 2 in 1975, during the regime of the Khmer Rouge, and has never forgotten what it was like to start over as an immigrant in a new country. Now, the community leader is being awarded with a $25,000 California Peace Prize, reports The Orange County Register.

Lim and her family initially sought out help from the service agency The Cambodian Family (TCF) when they arrived in Santa Ana, California. Now, as the director of youth programs for the organization, Lim's job is to support and inspire young people to become balanced, healthy leaders. Serving refugees and immigrants, The Cambodian Family's emphasis is on community health, such as trauma resolution and stress reduction, employment services and youth programs.

The California Wellness Foundation, a private group whose mission is to improve the health and wellness of Californians, will present the peace awards tonight in San Francisco. It applauded Lim as an "integral leader in an agency that combats gang violence and promotes cultural pride and understanding in Santa Ana."

Lim mentors around 60 Cambodian and Latino youths, and impresses upon them the importance of working with what they have. She plans to put some of the prize money towards her son's education, and allocate a portion of it to the youngsters at The Cambodian Family.

Despite these accomplishments, she remains humble:

"I must have done something good to deserve it," she says now. But she's quick to add: "It's not just about me. It's about the work that I did and about the people that I serve."

You can donate to The Cambodian Family here.

Aaron Cohen: My Latest Tweets From The Field: Cambodia

2009-10-23T20:01:49Z

Aaron Cohen travels undercover around the world attempting to rescue victims of sex trafficking. His organization, Abolish Slavery, seeks to restore dignity to victims of human trafficking the world over.

While on his missions, known as "night frights," Cohen often tweets his experiences from the field. His book Slave Hunter chronicles these missions. The series of tweets below were posted on October 21 and 22 from Cambodia. Don't forget to read them from the bottom up. Follow Aaron Cohen on Twitter @AaronCohen777.

Deaths in Cambodia ferry disaster

2009-10-11T01:46:00Z

Pilgrims on way to Buddhist festival drown when vessel capsizes in Mekong river.

Typhoon Ketsana batters Southeast Asia

2009-10-03T16:01:30Z

Typhoon Ketsana struck several Southeast Asian countries leaving hundreds dead and millions homeless. It triggered the worst flooding in the Philippines which affected 3 million people as of this writing. It displaced hundreds of thousands of residents in central Vietnam, Cambodia and southern Laos.

“Ketsana” destroyed more than 300,000 homes, schools and other structures in Vietnam:

Since the ferocious storm struck the central coast on Tuesday, it has killed at least 92 people, left 19 missing, and injured 199, according to the latest statistics from the national flood and storm control committee.

Floodwaters from the torrential rain accompanying the ninth storm from the East Sea this year have submerged or destroyed nearly 337,000 homes, schools and other man-made structures.

It also forced the evacuation of more than 350,000 people:

The storm destroyed or damaged nearly 170,000 homes and flattened crops in six Vietnamese provinces, officials said, while more than 350,000 people were evacuated from the typhoon's path.

Residents describe “Ketsana” as “the most serious typhoon that’s hit here in four or five years.” They also fear that the “floods could reach the historic highs of 1964.”

Twitter reactions in Vietman about the storm:

jjlechau: Despite Typhoon Ketsana hitting central Vietnam, the southern part remains eerily calm. Just cloudy and a little windy.

quangdieu911: Storm devastating Quang Nam, Quang Ngai, do something good for they, please… South Vietnam is raining allnight, can't go anywhere in SG.

EmilyPham: The storm that brought heavy flooding to the Philippines, now ugraded to a typhoon, has battered Vietnam.

sereneyee: @mykelism Ketsana hasn't been to visit on this end yet. For now, it is state emergency at the central provinces of the country.

Flooding in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Photo from blog of Cambodia Calling

“Ketsana” also pummeled Cambodia which led to the flooding in many areas. Cambodia Calling notes that this is the first time that floods have been so bad in Siem Reap:

…it is the first time the floods have been so bad in Siem Reap.

The floods near the Siem Reap International School were bad and Thyda had to get off her motocycle and push it for 500m. Water got into the engine and it wouldn't start. She said the cars drove fast because drivers did not want to get stuck in the waters. When that happened, the ripples made it harder to push her motocycle.

Andy Brouwer mentions other flooded areas:

Overnight rain in Siem Reap has left the old market area under water including pub street and other areas including Wat Bo road and the roads in front of Hotel De La Paix, Amansara and La Residence Hotels. National Road 6 out towards the airport is also under water. In Angkor, the roads around Prasat Kravann and Banteay Kdei are flooded and the level of the water in the moat surrounding Angkor Wat is at its peak. At the moment Phnom Penh hasn't really been affected.

Church World Service lists the urgent supplies needed by Cambodians in evacuation centers:

Church World Service Cambodia reports that in one province, Kompong Thom, 223 villages–some 14,744 families–have been flooded out.

CWS Cambodia has conducted assessments and reports first priority needs in affected regions include food, shelter (plastic sheeting to protect family from the rain and heat), clean water, mosquito netting, and water and sanitation unit

(To view pictures of the damage caused by “Ketsana” in Vietnam and Cambodia, visit Vietnam Net Bridge and KI Media)

The southern part of Laos was damaged by “Ketsana.” There is widespread flooding in Xekong and Attapeu provinces. Authorities also reported that 50 hectares of agricultural land is flooded.

Accoridng to KPL Lao News Agency:

Road No.16 , bridges, villages, communication and electricity systems were cut and flooded immediately by the overflow of the Sekong River in Sekong Province since Wednesday’s morning.

At the same time, the water level of the Sedon River, under the influence of the storm, further swelled and submerged rice fields and some villages in two districts of Khongsedon and Vapy, Saravane province.

Thailand was not directly affected by “Ketsana” but the typhoon brought some rains in Bangkok. The Bangkok Bugle writes:

It's a wet and gloomy morning in Bangkok as the remnants of Typhoon Ketsana pass over the city.

There's been consistent, but not heavy, rain since around 8pm last night. The small canal in my soi (street) is high but not close to flooding, and my journey to the office this morning was uneventful. There was a noticeable wind in the city yesterday and this morning I'd estimate it is several degrees cooler than normal right now.

Ketsana is a Lao name, and referred to a tree that resembles agarwood.

To read more about the flood situation in the Philippines, Global Voices offers these articles: Flooding documented on citizen videos, Worst flooding in 40 years, 2.5 million people affected by flooding.

Flooded village in the Philippines. Photo courtesy of Migrante

The Power of Twitter

The role of social media in aiding flood rescue teams in the Philippines has been cited here in Global Voices. A specific case can further clarify the important role of microblogging sites like Twitter and Plurk in times of disaster.

A Twitter user asks for volunteers to deliver supplies to a relief center:

RT @tjmanotoc: 300 hard boiled eggs & 20 loaves of bread in Rockwell, Makati need help in delivery 2 Katipunan/Aurora drop-off point tonight

A few minutes later, the tweet received positive replies:

RT @tjmanotoc: Thanks for the RTs and offers. We have a volunteer na to deliver the eggs. :) once again, I love you Twitter

Several parts of Metro Manila are still flooded

Read more: Laos, The Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Home News

Stephen Macfarlane: The Vanderbilt Republic Foundation: Something Old, Something New

2009-09-25T14:09:57Z

The VRF is not comprised of Luddites. The VRF believes in communicating digitally, quality contemporary graphic design, audacious new concepts for philanthropy, and exploring new and neglected items of interest for viewers, photographers, activists and working creative professionals.

The VRF is not comprised of Luddites except, of course, when it comes to photography.

Here on The Periodical, the only discourse given to digital media has been (somewhat paradoxically) in the area of information exchange. The way people consume and digest information is different from what it was five years ago, which was in turn a watershed difference compared to the early beginnings of the public-consumption Internet in the early 90s - but you knew that already.

So how about images? The VRF hinges on a notion some might consider draconian, which is that a picture taken on film has advantages - for viewer and subject alike - that simply don't exist in the world of digital photography. George Del Barrio recognizes (thrives on, really) the miniscule moment of tension that occurs when the photographer pours all of his brain through his viewfinder and stakes it all on what will become the image. It's not "documentary", it's a document.

These moments probably add up to a few minutes of cumulative time on a shoot, but they're what professional film photographers are paid for. (In a grave and terrible irony, this also adds considerably to the power of the one-off photographs by Nhem En discussed earlier.)

Back in the midcentury glory days of American plastic arts, this wasn't such a big deal, of course - film was cheaper and paper publications still dominated the information markets. Out of this period emerged a set of photographer archetypes: fashion photographers, travel photographers, "documentary" photographers. As the industry became better-organized and stratified, broader unspoken rules dictated how certain types of subjects were photographed. These rules have given rise to a kind of photograph we can call the contextualized Other.

The intentions behind the trend are not particularly racist or insidious. The operant assumption is merely that a reader in Kansas City wouldn't be able to connect directly with the face of a Maasai warrior unless said warrior were shrouded in traditional garb, clearly exposed & focused, and properly situated in a frame that included perhaps other Maasai warriors, cows, maybe the surrounding terrain, and was maybe conjoined with a concise explanation of all the photograph's contents. (See Walker Percy's "Loss Of The Creature" for a literary explanation.)

It makes enough sense when you break it down - but the product has been volumes upon volumes of photographs that get closer to Frank Sinatra than to the majority of the world's population. Stereotypes are reinforced rather than reduced, and icons are determined less by stories or cultures than by advertising executives and magazine editors. Without being overly PC, it's safe to say: if world culture is supposedly globalizing, Western media is largely yet to catch on.

Given the current media situation of the world, our norms of "content" have continued to suffer. But reciprocally, the potential today for a corrective is vast - and the way many of these communities have begun to make their own myths can be fascinating. In the coming weeks, Del Barrio will be posting some of his photographs - old and new alike - to better explain just why the VRF is the best team to help Cambodian Living Arts recast their own national myths.

Stephen Macfarlane: Why a Small Team of Americans is Going to Spend November in Cambodia

2009-09-17T14:43:11Z

While the massive flexibility of digital media has taken a sledgehammer to the 20th century's hierarchy of information control, a more subtle philosophical risk has appeared: we live in an era of ever-cheapening information and modes of "seeing". Our old tools for enriching our worldview -- including well-shot, exposed, framed and arranged photographs designed to be deeply considered -- are at an incrementally greater risk on the daily.

No mistake, the explosion of media since the early 1990s has empowered communities; see Twitter in Guatemala or Iran, Facebook in Colombia, radio station B92's internet outreach during the Milosevic days, or the ongoing battle royale between Chinese hackers and their government censors. But by the same token, intercultural understanding is often imperiled for the sake of growth. Thailand's tourist-addicted economy doesn't bat an eyelash for military coups; the most popular part of Mexico for international travel is still Cancun, far removed from the country's widespread corporate fraud and civic drug wars.

Consider South Africa: given the remarkable and unique power shift in the early1990s and the unimpeachable visage of a Nelson Mandela, mainstream world opinion went on autopilot for the rest of the decade and looked the other way as his successor Thabo Mbeki pushed an AIDS epidemic aside, claiming it was little more than a neocolonialist scare tactic. While the "Rainbow Nation" population was decimated, the rich-poor divide grew wider as oligarchs (both white and black) dominated Johannesburg business.

The idea is not to blame Mandela for being such an inspiring, heroic figure, but to stress the bottom line: icons matter. The world is an ever-more competitive market for myths, and perception is as important -- if not, in the case of societies rebuilding themselves, moreso -- as reality.

Cambodia poses a particularly paradoxical challenge, then; for a regime hellbent on eradicating modernity, the Khmer Rouge took special pains to archive and catalog their victims. Nhem En's roughly 6,000 portrait photographs taken in the Tuol Sleng/S-21 detention facility form, beyond a doubt, the strongest visual mark Cambodia has left on the world. Ever.

Each photograph reeks of death; En was given a few seconds with each prisoner to get their image down before their execution, and prepared the prints himself. On the one hand they serve as an invaluable document; on the other, they have solidified Cambodia's reputation for too long as a demolished country. Some hang in Western galleries, some are neatly tucked in the national archives. Commentators have never resolved to anyone's satisfaction whether En deserves to be locked up or honored for his role in the civil war.

This is where the Vanderbilt Republic Foundation comes in: compared to En's insurmountable records of "before", the "after" is anyone's guess. The ongoing national recovery is, for most, a mystery. Do the extreme circumstances prevent the photographs from forming a body of "work"? Can any Cambodian claim the luxury to refute -- rather than mourn -- the circumstances that brought the photos into being? Have any of Cambodia's post-civil war years yielded more powerful imagery? The notion of a national photographic morgue becoming the face of a country for decades is deeply macabre, but the realistic answer has to be no.

The flip question could be posited to the VRF creatives visiting Cambodia this fall: does helping an entire culture pick up where it left off constitute a "work" or "deed", with all those words' voluntary implications? Is it entirely accurate to discuss the VRF/CLA mission as anything less than an act of cultural humanitarianism, a kind of private-sector Marshall Plan?

The argument is strong. A burgeoning international interest in the war crimes tribunal of Kaing Guek Eav (aka Duch, who ran Tuol Sleng and other camps like personal fiefdoms) forces attention back to the photographs; En may have been the photographer, but this was Duch's - as well as Pol Pot's - work. As the masters of the traditional, existentially-threatened culture slip away, the project is less about "advocacy" and "human rights" and more about helping Cambodians set the record straight both for themselves and their global image. As CLA founder Arn Chorn-Pond says: "We do not want any more killing fields."

Only a globalized world could have produced the VRF's first mission, but in every Cambodian who takes advantage of new media tools to testify against the now 66-year-old Duch, we can see the country's growing rebirth of spirit. Rather than rejecting or wallowing in the legacy of Pol Pot and the Tuol Sleng photographs, the resilience of the Cambodian people has already guaranteed it: the VRF will arrive not as cultural interventionists, but as collaborators. Our timing might never be better.

Suspected American Sex Predators Tracked In Cambodia (VIDEO)

2009-09-16T13:47:10Z

ABC News "Nightline" investigated American pedophiles living in Cambodia for a special news report that will air tonight. ABC News traveled to Cambodia to see how a local nonprofit group is working to arrest suspected foreign pedophiles. The nonprofit has been building a case against Harvey Johnson, a failed real estate developer from Arizona, who is accused of using his position as an English teacher to molest several underage girls.

Cambodia has long been a magnet for sex tourists due to extreme poverty and rampant corruption, ABC News reports.

Watch a sneak preview here:

Watch "World News" at 6:30 p.m. ET and "Nightline" TONIGHT at 11:35 p.m. ET for the full report.

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Cambodian Soldiers Use Tattoos To Protect Them From Bullets

2009-09-03T12:06:26Z

John Maloy I GlobalPost

Cambodian soldiers believe certain tattoos can protect them from bullets and landmines, and even make them invisible.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Magic tattoos begin with a magic man. Typically a Buddhist monk or adjar (essentially a deacon) and known for great piety, this Khmer magic man can draw scripts and images into another's skin, granting with the person supernatural armor against all kinds of harm. Understandably, such body art became popular with soldiers.

Reut Hath is one such magic man. He first learned the art of inking magic from his father, a farmer and martial arts trainer in northwestern Cambodia who was himself a "powerful magic man," according to the 52-year-old former soldier.

"Many people came to [my father], so he gave some of the work to me," Reut Hath said. "So, I had to learn magic."

Wherever Cambodian soldiers cluster, charms and amulets abound, from cloths scrawled with protection spells to bags of Buddha figurines to boar tusks -- anything to gain a magically endowed edge over the enemy. And there is perhaps no more explicit display of belief in mystical powers than magic tattoos, geometric patterns of written spells and images that crisscross the bodies of many older soldiers.

The list of powers that supposedly come with the tattoos is long and includes: imperviousness to bullets, anti-landmine protection, invisibility, an amplified voice to address troops and "great gravity" magic to make one's fists into heavier, deadlier weapons.

The intricate arrangements of some tattoos and the folk-like quality of others are often beautiful artworks in their own right. However, it's also a fading art, a system of belief that is disappearing from a military looking to recruit younger soldiers in place of aging veterans of the country's recent decades of civil war.

Reut Hath started tattooing soldiers in 1977 after himself fleeing executioners from the murderous Khmer Rouge to join the resistance against the Pol Pot regime. (In its effort to create a Maoist agrarian utopia, that regime was ultimately responsible for the deaths of more than 1.7 million people. In early 1979, the Vietnamese military toppled the Khmer Rouge government, sparking a 20-year civil war in Cambodia.)

Reut Hath joined the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF), one of the main resistance groups that battled it out with the Vietnamese-backed Phnom Penh government throughout the 1980s. It is mostly former fighters from resistance groups like the KPNLF that have the magic tattoos.

The method

Magic men punch tattoos into the skin by hand, using a thin handle about 30 centimeters long with two syringe needles at one end. According to Reut Hath, any old ink will suffice, but during the civil war, when ink was often in short supply, he would create his own by mixing the material inside alkaline batteries with rice wine.

It only takes a few seconds to punch a single letter into the skin, though some soldiers have veritable essays written on their bodies, which require days of painful prodding.

Casting the spell

The spells are written in two ancient Indian languages -- Sanskrit or, more commonly, Pali, which is the liturgical language of Cambodia's dominant religion, Theravada Buddhism. Reut Hath admits he can't actually understand any of the spells because they aren't written in his native tongue of Khmer.

"I cannot read the Pali, but I know what letter is what letter, so I know what to write according to the formula," he said. "I learned it, but even I don't understand why the magic is so powerful."

The soldiers' stories

Sgt. Maj. Boung Thoeun is covered from head to toe in protective tattoos, his arms almost black from the dense web of Pali spells running up and down them.

The 50-year-old soldier, a former KPNLF captain, said that his tattoos twice saved him from landmines, which merely fizzled when he stepped on them. He also recalled getting caught in a nighttime ambush that should have meant certain death, but he came away unscathed.

"The enemy sprayed a lot of bullets at us," he said. "It was a dark place but there were so many [tracer bullets] flying about that it looked like the daytime."

Cambodian army Maj. Gen. Lay Virak, formerly a KPNLF senior commander, said he knows of magic that prevents a person from getting lost in the forest. He also met a monk who knew magic that allowed one to walk through fire.

"During the war, we believed in the magic. We knew a lot, including magic that prevents you from being tied up or hurt by torture," Lay Virak added.

With so much power supposedly at their fingertips, it would seem like a half-dozen tattooed soldiers could take on an army. But when it comes to magical tattoos there's still a catch -- several, actually.

"It is a question of your belief, your nationalism and your devotion to the rules," said Reut Hath of how one keeps their magic potent.

The basis of belief

These rules are typically based on morality and religiosity: Do not murder, do not steal, do not commit adultery, regularly burn incense and pray, recite magical mantras, etc. The rules establish a Buddhist grounding for the magic, taking what could be thought of as a selfish act to empower oneself and changing it into a promotion of moral behavior and faith. Of course, to the more cynical-minded, the rules also provide reasons why a man covered in protection spells might be killed on the battlefield: "If only he hadn't been so forward with his neighbor's wife," for example.

However, some of the rules might appear more arbitrary. Reut Hath forbids the men he tattooed from eating dog meat. In addition to dog, Lay Virak must also shun snake, turtle and pork, and in perhaps the most unusual limitation, he will sacrifice his protection if he urinates and defecates at the same time.

In addition, former resistance fighters say, the end of warfare in Cambodia has done much to reduce both the strict morality and magical potency associated with the tattoos -- with easy living comes temptation.

"During the fighting, most of the fighters were powerful -- the magic worked," Reut Hath said. "But with peace, many came to the cities and starting drinking, sleeping with girls and the magic has faded away."

This perceived decline in morality has driven Reut Hath to vow to never tattoo anyone ever again. "I decided to stop giving the tattoos because I cannot trust the young people these days. If they had tattoos they'd probably fight. Before, we thought about the liberation of our country. We had a good spirit."

He said he does know of some magic men who continue to tattoo people, but their numbers are dwindling. "Many soldiers have [tattoos] but they don't know how to pass them on," he added.

Though not in any way prohibited, tattoos are now an increasingly rare sight in the Cambodian military. Even among those who fought in the 1970s and '80s, it was only in the resistance groups based along the Thai border that it remained a prominent tradition. Resistance fighters who joined the military after the war have also typically found themselves relegated to positions with little authority or influence.

"Usually it's the fighters from the border that have tattoos," said Maj. Gen. Chap Pheakdei, commander of Brigade 911, the army's elite paratrooper unit, adding that few of his soldiers have sought the protection of magical body art.

"On the Phnom Penh side during the [civil] war maybe two out of 100 would have [tattoos]," said one Brigade 911 officer who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the press. "Some guys go out with tattoos all over them and get killed, and a guy with nothing comes back fine -- I believe in luck, not magic."

"But maybe," he added, "that's because our side has tanks."

For more stories from GlobalPost, click here.

José Ramos-Horta: In Support of the Struggle for Democracy in Burma

2009-08-19T11:57:36Z

The horrors of World War II should have shocked humanity into rejecting violence and wars forever, and ushered in an era of peace. Yet we continue to see countless abuses and crimes, in some instances, amounting to genocide because those who can prevent these crimes did little or nothing.

The "Killing Fields" of Cambodia in the 70s, the genocide in Rwanda in '94, the ongoing barbarities in Darfur (Sudan), Somalia and Democratic Republic Congo are just some examples reminding us that human beings, though endowed by God with intelligence and sentiments, so often behave in most inhuman cruel manner towards each other.

There comes a time when those who oppose violence and tyranny must rise up. Throughout history from Africa to Asia to Europe, millions of people have risen up against tyrants and brought them down thereby paving the way for freedom and democracy.

On August 5th, I was in Manila to pay tribute to an Asian hero, Corazon Aquino, who led the "People's Power" movement that toppled the Marcos' dictatorship in 1986. Millions of Filipinos paid tribute to the discreet and humble housewife turned international stateswoman and hero.

In 1998, students in Indonesia led a movement that brought down the Suharto dictatorship -- and contributed to our own freedom. Today, Indonesia and the Philippines are examples of tolerance and democracy in the region, maybe still imperfect like our own in Timor-Leste.

Greater powers have succumbed to people's will and sustained international pressure. The former Soviet Union and the Apartheid regime in South Africa are just some examples of this truth.

Burma and North Korea stand out among the few remaining outposts of tyrants, monuments of shame and embarrassment, in a world that has changed in the last 50 years. Tyrants who ruled with arrogance and incompetence, from Eastern Europe to Africa, Asia and Latin America, have mostly been blown away by the winds of change.

The time has come for more forceful and creative ways of fighting for democracy in Burma.

I am opposed to trade embargoes and economic sanctions against developing countries. While sanctions might be politically correct and satisfy our conscience, they are morally less defensible as they impose a harsher burden on an already desperately impoverished people.

However, I do not oppose efforts to freeze public and private assets held by the military and their associates in the region.

If the international community can freeze funds and assets held by individuals allegedly linked to violent extremist groups, there must be an equal moral and political will to target those who hold hostage an entire nation and have committed mass rape and murder against innocent people.

If it proves not possible to secure a binding UN Security Council Resolution on freezing funds and assets linked to the Burmese military that are held in accounts abroad, then the US, Europe, Japan, and other like-minded countries should on their own initiate such measures.

Police agencies, such as Interpol, must be instructed to identify funds and assets held anywhere in the world by the military and their associates, divulge the existence of such accounts, and the names of banks holding them. The tools used to intercept and dry up funding for terrorist groups must be used to choke the Burmese military and punish any financial institution that shelters their wealth.

The Obama administration has brought fresh air and new hope to the world and offered a window of opportunity for dialogue with regimes such as Burma's which may have allowed them to grab the olive branch and find an honorable way out of a situation they have dug themselves into through fear, arrogance and incompetence. However, the Burmese military rulers who have mismanaged and ruined a prosperous nation seem to have misread the Obama Administration's pragmatic and conciliatory approach as weakness.

I propose that Burma's membership in the UN and all UN Agencies and ASEAN be suspended; further, all countries must downgrade their diplomatic relations with Burma and allow for no more than one junior official to mind the embassy wherever there is one; Burmese diplomats wishing to defect should be granted asylum; likewise civilian and military personnel wishing to flee Burma should be supported.

Throughout the Cold War era, the US, Europe and Canada offered shelter to political refugees from the defunct Soviet Union and its Eastern European vassal states. So why not offer similar support for Burmese dissidents and defectors?

Major broadcasting institutions like Voice of America, BBC, and others should significantly expand their Burmese language programmes.

A significant number of the members of the Burmese army are unhappy with the situation, especially after they were ordered to beat up and shoot revered Buddhist monks in September 2007.

Every available means of communication must be used to inspire the officers' corps and soldiers to save the honor of the army and the country. They must be told of their tarnished prestige and the harm done to their country by a few decrepit and corrupt generals who are involved in mass murder and the plundering of their country.

The Burmese soldiers and officers must be told of their complicity in such crimes and must not turn their guns on their own people; they must rise up against the decrepit and corrupt generals.

Senior officers in Hitler's army displayed great courage and patriotism in trying to rid their country and the world of a seemingly omnipotent tyrant. Portuguese young army officers were the architects of the peaceful "Carnation Revolution" in 1974 that brought down the 50 year old Salazar dictatorship and paved the way for democracy in Portugal and independence of its overseas colonies. So the younger Burmese officer corps can be inspired to save their country trough simple acts of patriotism and honor.

The World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund and UN agencies should, without delay, initiate studies and draft a blue-print for Burma's economic recovery and rebuild its financial system.

When freedom comes, and it will, the road to recovery and political stability will be a very rough and long one. Burma is a country much fractured along ethnic fault lines and plagued by armed drug warlords.

There is no denying that the military will continue to play an indispensable role in maintaining unity and stability in the country. So the new officer corps emerging in Burma should know that they have a historic opportunity to save their country and, together with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, restore Burma's place in the world.

But the Army and Police will have to be reformed and modernized and Burma's neighbors and friends must stand ready to assist in this regard.

Having followed developments in Burma for well over 20 years and seen numerous failed attempts at politely and pragmatically couching the ruling military to show restraint and engage its own people in meaningful dialogue, I believe this is the next practical escalation in making the generals pay the price for the war they have imposed on their own people.

The doors for diplomacy should remain open. If and when wisdom prevails and the military rulers decide to free Suu Kjie and other political prisoners, they must hear a heartfelt appreciation from the international community; and if they take a step further by engaging Suu Kjie and other leaders in meaningful dialogue, the international communicate must offer immediate concrete support; if and when the military and Suu Kjie reach an agreement on steps towards free and democratic elections and the military have abided by the election outcome, then a major international pledging conference should be held where the world community should commit to assist Burma's economic recovery and in what we can anticipate to be a very complex and long road to peace, stability and prosperity.

Johann Hari: The Unnoticed War Where Millions of Children's Lives are at Stake

2009-08-11T18:29:13Z

On the border between Thailand and Cambodia, a mighty battle is taking place - and the outcome will determine whether millions of people live or die. If the right side falters and fails, the long list of the dead will consist overwhelmingly of children and pregnant women. But this fight is passing virtually unnoticed in the outside world. Why? Because the lives at stake are - initially, at least - "only" those of Asians and black Africans.

The war is against a tiny parasite that is suddenly - and rapidly - stripping away our ability to treat one of the deadliest diseases known to man. If the war fails, we will be left defenceless before it.

Malaria is already the biggest killer in the world after AIDS and tuberculosis. It infects 250 million people a year - the vast majority in Africa - and kills 1.5 million of them. In the Central African Republic last year, I met a woman the same age as me, thirty, who was stalking her village, howling and ripping at her hair. She stopped long enough to tell me she had given birth to four children, and three had died spasming and shrieking of malaria. Now her youngest baby had all the symptoms, and she couldn't bear it. "Why is this happening? Why?" she kept yelling, to herself, to the sky, to no-one.

It is caused by a parasite carried in the salvia of female mosquitoes. Once they inject it into your blood with a bite, the parasite heads for your liver and slows your blood flow. Within a few days, your organs fail. This happens to an equivalent of seven jumbo jets full of children every day.

The great Polish war correspondent Ryszard Kapuscinski described what it feels like. "The first signal of an imminent malaria attack is a feeling of anxiety, which comes on suddenly and for no clear reason. Something has happened to you, something bad," he wrote. Then comes "the dullness, the weakness, the heaviness... Everything is irritating. First and foremost the light; you hate the light. But you don't have a lot of time for these loathings. For the attack arrives quickly. It is a sudden, violent onset of cold. Someone has taken you naked and thrown you into the icy highlands of Greenland."

At this point, "You begin to tremble, quake, thrash about. You immediately recognize, however, this is not a trembling you are familiar with; these tremors and convulsions tossing you around are of a kind that at any moment now will tear you to shreds." He said it is like being imprisoned "inside a mountain of ice" and slowly crushed.

Up until this year, the world was making remarkable progress in whittling down this disease. Since the year 2000, seven of the worst-afflicted countries in sub-Saharan Africa have slashed malaria-deaths by 50 percent. It has a great knock0on effect too: for every £1 spent on malaria prevention, Africa gains £12 in economic growth, because people can work instead of lying sick and dying. It was a sign that aid, matched by good African government, can produce inspirational results.

But then something began to change - at first imperceptibly - in the forgotten forests of Western Cambodia, where the Khmer Rouge held their last stand-off. The drug that is most effective at treating malaria is called artemisinin: it shocks the parasite out of your system and saves your life. But in South-East Asia, horrified doctors have discovered that the malaria parasite is becoming resistant to it. In a Darwinian arms race, it has begun to evolve a way to beat the treatment. It is taking twice as long to work - and soon it will have defeated the medicine altogether.

We have been here before. In exactly the same place in the 1960s, the malaria parasite outraced the best available treatment of its day, choloroquine, and rendered it useless. The new super-parasite then spread rapidly to Africa. Across the map of the world, the ability to treat malaria was blacked out, region by region. Nick Day, Professor of Tropical Medicine at the Mahidol Oxford Clinical Research Unit working on the ground, says: "It caused millions of deaths. If we let it happen again, we will face a major public health catastrophe."

It took twenty years for another medicine as effective as choloroquine to be developed. Millions of Africans died waiting. If we lose artemisinin, we will face another deadly interlude - and given that pharmaceutical companies are doing virtually no work on diseases that afflict poor countries because there is no profit in it, it could last indefinitely. Professor Day says: "There are no new malaria drugs coming down the pipeline. There is nothing to replace them for the foreseeable future." The broken mother I saw in Central Africa would then be one of many, many more.

Nobody knows why Cambodia's malaria parasites are such buffed-up hyper-Darwinian winners - the Mr Universe of the parasite world. They have in the past rendered other treatments like SP and DDT far less effective by evolving resistance to them too. Some scientists think it is because the treatments have been used there longer than anywhere else, giving their parasites a head-start.

But it is not inevitable that this super-malaria will spread to Africa and cull millions. The scientists on the ground say we can contain them in Cambodia and prevent a disaster - if we act fast.

The scientists' plan is simple. It is to first of all massively suppress the spread of malaria in this area by a vast distribution of insecticide-treated mosquito nets, which have been shown to cut transmission by 80 percent. Then it is to ease the "drug pressure" on the parasite. At the moment, heavy doses of artemisinin are pushing the malaria parasite to evolve fast. So the scientists are drastically slashing the doses of artemisinin in the area, and complementing it with a cocktail of weaker malaria drugs that in combination can have some compensatory effect. They calculate that this will reduce the evolutionary pressure on the parasite and make it revert back to type.

But Cambodia is a desperately poor country recovering from a genocide. It is impossible for them to do it alone. The World Health Organization has stepped in with funding - but scientists are warning this project will require large and sustained funds.

The cost of not acting will be catastrophic for Africa - and, in time, we would all live to regret it. One of the most frequently anticipated effects of global warming is a spreading of the parts of the world vulnerable to malaria. The World Health Organisation has advised European governments and the Southern states of the US to take "urgent action" to prepare for "the spread of malaria" to its territory as warming accelerates. If we are going to make the planet tropical, we had better start paying attention to tropical diseases.

But this is a moment for excitement as much as despair. This is a chance to save the most precious medicine humanity has from destruction. This is a chance to save millions of people from dying "in a mountain of ice." This is a chance to do something heroic - for Africa, and for our own future. If we make this happen, we can be energized to keep on eradicating malaria, step-by-step, from the human condition: Dr. Robert Koch has shown that for just $10bn over five years, we could reduce deaths from the disease to a few thousand a year.

So will we seize the opportunity - or will we stand by, limp and passive, and wait for the advance of a super-charged killer?

POSTSCRIPT: There is a hard-right myth that environmentalists "banned DDT in Africa" and "killed Africans". It is possible some people will try to revive it in response to this article.

It is not true. There is no ban. African governments can still use DDT as much as they like. Many use it in moderation for indoor spraying. But they do not see it as a magic bullet, because it is less effective than other options, like insecticide-treated bednets, because mosquitoes have developed a significant degree of resistance to it, and because it can have dangerous side-effects, like contributing to premature births and killing off local fish populations.

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here . You can email him at johann -at- johannhari.com

Read more: HIV/AIDS, Thailand, Malaria Deaths, Health, Aids, Malaria, Cambodia, Malaria Vaccine, Tuberculosis, Fighting Malaria, Eradicating Malaria, Advocacy, World News

Eve Blossom: Cambodia: Collaboration is Needed

2009-08-11T13:14:34Z
Since last December, I have been following the impact of the economic downturn in the Southeast Asian countries where I have worked for almost two decades. The deep recession quickly affected developing countries, even countries such as Laos and Cambodia, who are less tied to the financial sectors of the economy.

During my trip last week to Cambodia, I saw firsthand just how hard hit the country is -- worse than anything I had seen reported. Since the mid-1990s, Cambodia has had many apparel factories open and a substantial number of jobs created, with more than 90% of Cambodia's exports from the garment sector. But due to the recent decrease in consumer buying worldwide, there is a fall in the demand for goods. Garment factory after garment factory in Cambodia have closed, and many others have greatly downsized. It is estimated that 70,000 jobs have recently been lost. Most of these workers are women between the ages of 18-26; and without these jobs, they are in serious trouble. Majority of these women come from villages and are the primary earner for the family, sending money back every month for their families and communities.

These rural communities rely on family members working at urban factories for their food, housing, education and health care. With a lack of employment in the villages, women are forced to look for alternative work in the city. The problem is that there is no other work.
Economic options for these women are bleak. Many end up in the sex trade or migrating illegally, where some fall prey to human trafficking. Official reports of migration are approximately 200,000 but many believe that the actual number is higher. According to the World Bank, more than 200,000 people in Cambodia may drop back into poverty this year alone due to the economic crisis, with the potential of hundreds of thousands more if the downturn continues.

The good news is that many groups, including large international brand-name apparel companies, non-profit organizations and international institutions, such as the International Labor Organization, are already in Cambodia. They are all concerned and interested in helping with this situation and what is needed is a collaborative effort. If all these organizations could come together and agree on what roles to play, the best initiatives to create and to act quickly, we could possibly stop the job losses and hopefully regain some of the 70,000 jobs lost.

The long-term outlook for Cambodia in regards to the apparel industry is good. Its competitiveness and past performances make it a sound investment for a collaborative initiative. Nonprofits could assist in education and health care. Apparel companies, in partnership with other organizations, could cover minimum salaries and training programs for future skills. And since bank lending has tightened, trade finance groups could help with cash flow for garment companies.

But the time is now. Every month a woman is out of work and has no salary, she is pushed into a more difficult economic situation. And once entering the sex trade industry, few women leave. Service programs to help sex workers rehabilitate and train for other work currently fail at very high rates.

Many see the results of human trafficking and want to get involved; but more importantly, the focus should be on empowering the mechanisms to prevent it. It may seem obvious but supporting and training women for vocational work is not just an economic engine for the country but a deterrent from the cultural and community destruction that trafficking creates. And prevention and sustainable jobs is the key.

Read more: Unemployment, Economic Crisis, Collaboration, Southeast Asia, Cambodia, Jobs, Sustainability, Business, Human Trafficking, Women's Rights, Garment Industry, Sex Workers, Garment Workers, Sex Work, International Labor Organization, World News