Landmines are arguably the gravest threat to both humans and wildlife alike in almost 87 countries across the planet and with war times long behind us the ugly scars and the undetonated landmines still haunt those who wish to put the past behind them. In countries such as Sri Lanka over 20 elephants each year [...]
Phnom Penh has been developing at breakneck speed. Infrastructure dots the capital. The result of this property boom is the sad and sorry reality that the city’s poor are being displaced at an alarming rate. ‘Activists are calling it the largest epidemic of evictions since the Khmer Rouge emptied all of Phnom Penh in 1975.’ [...]
New colonialism in a globalized world is a curious thing. Countries buying vast parcels of farmlands in poor countries poses new emerging problems. In such cases, only the countries’ respective heads of state know the full details. It gets complicated when provincial governors have auctioned off their land to the highest international bidders such as [...]
A de facto AIDS colony in Tuol Sambo, Cambodia is a gross violation of human rights. The country’s government has been urged by more than 100 international organizations and experts to ‘immediately stop sending HIV-affected families there.’ These concerned groups have also asked the Cambodian government for immediate action on improving the living conditions of [...]
Thirty years after Cambodia’s worst nightmare and hell, the matter of the Khmer Rouge is now found in a secondary school textbook in the country. For the first time, the genocide will be taught. Unfortunately, its textbook entry is all of these few lines: “Between 25 and 27 April 1975, the Khmer Rouge leaders held [...]
The vicious Khmer Rouge fell from power 30 years ago. Vietnamese-led forces toppled the murderous regime in 1979. As more than 40,000 Cambodians celebrate the three-decade anniversary, they are overwhelmed with both collective relief and the pain of bitter memory. Nearly 2 million died in the 4 years that the Khmer Rouge ruled with genocide. [...]