Monthly Archives: February 2009

What kind of culture is this?

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I sleep, I get up, I eat, I become full. I study, I go to work. I get tired,I have time to fall my body down the floor and fall asleep. I laugh, I cry, I even prattle.

What about dump site dwellers? No human being wishes to get near to de dump, let alone living there.
The living conditions are so traumatising, health-eroding and dangerous.I have been there many times for school assignments, personal interest and work. Several villagers there told me local and international visitors come and go for their own sake,taking photos,promisng this could help and getting away as soon as they finish off.

I happened to meet a boy from a family whose life is exactly dependent upon de boy’s earning from de dump.My heart stood still when I was looking at the small body rushing to get the most needed thing, thrown-away rubbish.It seems like everyone there falls ill every day, not because there are not NGO clinics there but they are not well informed. Strangely enough,de boy’s mom i sent to a clinic half a kilo metre away said she never knew there were clinics around there. The whole family is sick. They live with rubbish but are very struggling pp. Choosing not to beg on streets,they end up here.

Besides this story, there are countless anecdotes of children hit by rubbish trucks and refused to be treated by doctors. Just for $200 they cant afford now,they are not allowed to live. Last Sunday, a friend told another story of this. A 17 year old girl big earner was run over by a rubbish truck,refused entry to hospital since the truck driver got no money, and left bleeding to death. The other NGOs who could help ran too late. Sadly,people seemingly are not well informed the organisations around there can lend a hand!!!From Nila To the world…

Joke for today

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Working on a new trick, a magician turned his wife into a couch and his kids into chairs, but he couldn’t turn them back. What have I done? he wondered. How can I bring back my family? Out of ideas, he loaded everybody into his van and rushed to the hospital. He explained the situation, and his family was whisked off to surgery.Hours later, the surgeon emerged. “How are they?” the magician asked. “Comfortable.”

Intial Hearing of Duch’s Trial at ECCC

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I remember about a year ago, I contributed a post about the throught of the first hearing of Duch. This year, this hour, Duch has been detained for 9 years, 9 months and 27 days, as Francios Roux said at the beginnig of the trial after the presiding judge allowed all the defense lawyers to speak. After hearing this, I evaluated that it was very nice to see it now because Duch could have a chance to taste legal procedures while about two millions of Cambodians didn’t. Of coures, I did agree that this past brutality should be settled in the court of law rather than by the natural law or mob justice.
The night before, I did sleep late. I was still pondering over the next day, the first day of Duch trial. Athough I was not related to Duch in any way, I still felt excited and eager to know how his fate will follow him. I was lying down, thinking if anybody thinks the trial is going to give more justice than now. It’s that I have visisted Tuol Sleng where Duch ruled once, many times I start to have too many questions to ask him. But what I found out after mentally struggling to question the reality, is that it seems to me death or killing is addictive. When you kill one, you just feel it easy to kill more. And to kill more under the regime means that you are more loyal to the regime. And for Duch, he believed that at the time, he had to behave very strongly in front of his superior.
As a math teacher, he should not have ended up here. That means, the education at school is never enough. That means, there’s something completely wrong everywhere– As a born-again Christian, before being baptised by a foreign pastor, he said to him that he had killed “many brothers and sisters”. At this point, I just don’t know what God really thinks. I am really asking myself if I myself can forgive such a person who has killed so many people without blinks. I’ve thought about this because as a Cambodian, I was too overwhelmed to believe this surreal past of my country— that not many countries in this world experience. Once great, once bleak, once rise, once fall.
One teacher puts it, “You never understand injustice until it hurts you.”