Monday, 11 February 2008

Amnesty International slams Cambodian government for forced evictions of poor people

The Associated Press
Published: February 11, 2008

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: The Cambodian government is actively involved in the unlawful and forcible evictions of thousands of poor people whose land is taken for commercial development, Amnesty International alleged Monday.

Instead of protecting the victims, "the authorities have been instrumental in demolishing villages, setting homes ablaze and making poor people homeless without due process and at the behest of those who wield economic and political power," said Catherine Baber, director of the group's Asia-Pacific Program.

Her allegation was made in a statement marking the Lond-based human rights group's release of a report titled "Rights Razed - Forced evictions in Cambodia."

The evictions are in "sharp contrast to the rhetoric of the government's pro-poor policies and in breach of international human rights laws and standards," Amnesty said.

The government's poverty reduction agenda rings hollow unless the government urgently puts an end to all forced evictions, Baber said.

The report examined cases of land and housing rights violations that have affected poor Cambodians in both rural and urban areas in recent years.

At least 150,000 Cambodians across the country now live at risk of being forcibly evicted due to land disputes, land-grabbing and development projects, Amnesty said.

The government has often opted for eviction long before all other alternatives have been explored, Amnesty charged.

The victims, it said, have been ejected from their homes and land with little or no advance notice, no access to adequate alternative housing and no recourse to justice.

Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak, asked by The Associated Press about the allegations, said the Cambodian government respects human rights. He noted that if the government did not respect human rights, it would have expelled Amnesty's representatives from Cambodia already.

Khmer Rouge war crimes suspect back in ECCC custody after hospitalization

Sunday, February 10, 2008

[JURIST] Former Cambodian Foreign Minister Ieng Sary [JURIST news archive], accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the Khmer Rouge [JURIST news archive] communist regime of the 1970s, has returned to ECCC custody after his hospitalization [JURIST report] last week, an official for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) said Sunday. In addition to a urinary tract problem which led to the most recent hospitalization, his second in 10 days, the 82-year-old has a history of heart problems. He appealed his detention [JURIST report] on grounds of ill health in December 2007. The ECCC's pre-trial chamber has not yet heard the appeal. Concern over the age and health of former Khmer Rouge officials has led to protests [JURIST report] by those that fear the genocide suspects will die before they face justice. Former head of state Khieu Samphan suffered a stroke [JURIST report] in December 2007, and dictator Pol Pot [BBC profile] died in 1998 before facing any charges. AP has more.

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia [official website; JURIST news archive] was established by a 2001 law [text as amended 2004, PDF] to investigate and try surviving Khmer Rouge officials. The Khmer Rouge is generally held responsible for the genocide of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians [PPU backgrounder] who died between 1975 and 1979. To date, no top Khmer Rouge officials have faced trial. Ieng Sary and his wife Ieng Thirith are two of five former Khmer Rouge leaders in custody of the court. Sary is suspected of perpetrating and facilitating murders as well as coordinating Khmer Rouge's policies of forcible transfer, forced labor and unlawful killings. Thirith allegedly directed and planned widespread purges and the killings of members within the Ministry of Social Affairs. Both have maintained their innocence.

Trip to Cambodia life-changing

nelsonmail.co.nz
By MARCUS STICKLEY
The Nelson Mail
Monday, 11 February 2008

A group of Nayland College students say a two week trip to Cambodia visiting aid projects in the struggling country has changed their lives.

"The poverty never leaves you," says Alison Paton, the teacher who accompanied 13 Nayland students, and one from Taranaki, on the two week trip.

Several students had never been outside of New Zealand before they left last month.

Each student had to raise $3500 to go on the trip and the group donated a further $1600 to seven different aid projects including schools, an orphanage and a hospital which they visited.

The students also helped build a house for a family whose father had fallen ill.

They saw the extreme poverty in Cambodia, visiting people living in a rubbish dump in the capital Phenom Phen and others living in a village where they struggled to grow rice.

Some poor Cambodians they met had copper streaks in their hair from malnutrition.

Paige Bowler-Brendt, 16, said the trip made her appreciate "what we've got compared to what they've got".

The group visited Teuol Sleng, a former school turned into a prison by the Khmer Rouge to torture intellectuals and others who opposed them.

Since the regime was deposed in 1979 the building has been left as a museum complete with faded splatters of blood on the walls.

Most students left the museum with tears running down their faces, having heard the personal story of one of the museum's guides who had lived through the horror of losing family during the Khmer Rouge's reign.

The students said the country was still recovering from that period but they were impressed by Cambodians' resilience.

Bronwyn Ewers, 17, said Cambodia had something that New Zealand had lost.

"They've got that closeness of community."

For may of the students the trip has changed or reinforced what they want to do when they leave school.

Kayleigh Shaw, 18, had planned to go to Europe when she finished school but she now wants to return to South East Asia to do volunteer work.

Money went further in helping other people there, she said.

Cambodian Gov Accused of Forced Evictions


By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Monday, February 11, 2008

The Cambodian government is actively involved in the unlawful and forcible evictions of thousands of poor people whose land is taken for commercial development, Amnesty International alleged Monday.

Instead of protecting the victims, "the authorities have been instrumental in demolishing villages, setting homes ablaze and making poor people homeless without due process and at the behest of those who wield economic and political power," said Catherine Baber, director of the group's Asia-Pacific Program.

Her allegation was made in a statement marking the London-based human rights group's release of a report titled "Rights Razed—Forced Evictions in Cambodia."

The evictions are in "sharp contrast to the rhetoric of the government's pro-poor policies and in breach of international human rights laws and standards," Amnesty said.

The government's poverty reduction agenda rings hollow unless the government urgently puts an end to all forced evictions, Baber said.

The report examined cases of land and housing rights violations that have affected poor Cambodians in both rural and urban areas in recent years.

At least 150,000 Cambodians across the country now live at risk of being forcibly evicted because of land disputes, land-grabbing and development projects, Amnesty said.

The government has often opted for eviction long before all other alternatives have been explored, Amnesty charged.

The victims, it said, have been ejected from their homes and land with little or no advance notice, no access to adequate alternative housing and no recourse to justice.

Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak, asked by The Associated Press about the allegations, said the Cambodian government respects human rights. He noted that if the government did not respect human rights, it would have expelled Amnesty's representatives from Cambodia already.

'They all had to be eliminated'

Kang Khek Ieu was known as 'Cambodia's Himmler', a torturer who oversaw the deaths of 17,000 people. As he prepares to go on trial, he gives a chilling insight into the Khmer Rouge – the most detailed account yet from a top henchman

Exclusive by Valerio Pellizzari,
Phnom Penh
Monday, 11 February 2008

He was Pol Pot's trusted henchman, the brilliant mathematician who calmly fashioned an efficient apparatus of torture and death out of a Phnom Penh high school and who oversaw, during the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror, the interrogation and cudgelling to death of some 17,000 Cambodians.

In the West he has been called "Cambodia's Heinrich Himmler"; since Pol Pot himself and his lieutenant Ta Mok cheated justice by dying, he is the most vivid symbol of the Khmer Rouge left alive. His name is Kang Khek Ieu, but he is better known by his nom de guerre, Duch (pronounced "Doik"). This spring, 28 years after fleeing Cambodia ahead of the Vietnamese army, his trial for mass murder may finally get under way.

Now, in the first interview he has given since his capture more than eight-and-a-half years ago, he talks freely about how and why he sent 17,000 Cambodians to their deaths in the killing fields.

And even as he waits to confront the proof of his crimes, it is clear that, for him, there was never any choice: anybody who was thought to pose a threat to the revolution had to be tortured and killed. Asked whether he had any moments of uncertainty, any doubts or feelings of rebellion while he set about wiping out his country's entire intellectual class, he answered: "There was a widespread and tacit understanding.

"I and everyone else who worked in that place knew that anyone who entered had to be psychologically demolished, eliminated by steady work, given no way out. No answer could avoid death. Nobody who came to us had any chance of saving himself."

The command had come from above, he said. "All the prisoners had to be eliminated. We saw enemies, enemies, enemies everywhere." He could not have rebelled or fled, he insisted. "If I had tried to flee, they were holding my family hostage, and my family would have suffered the same fate as the other prisoners in Tuol Sleng. If I had fled or rebelled it would not have helped anyone."

Between 1975 and the beginning of 1979, under Pol Pot, two million men and women, almost a third of the Cambodian population, were brutally eliminated by the Khmer Rouge – an extreme Marxist movement that aimed to take Cambodia back to "Year Zero", cutting it off from the outside world and imposing their leaders' vision of an "agrarian utopia".

Of its two million victims, more than 17,000 – party officials, diplomats, Buddhist monks, engineers, doctors, teachers, students, musicians and dancers, were brought to a former school in the heart of Phnom Penh that had been converted into a torture centre. Only six came out of it alive.

Codenamed S-21, the centre was run by Duch, a former maths teacher who had become the head of the regime's secret police. In the former classrooms, over a period of 40 months, Duch oversaw the extermination of the entire Cambodian intellectual class with mathematical rigour.

Confessions were extracted by primitive torture: prisoners were strapped to iron beds, suspended upside down from ropes, threatened with drowning, tormented with knives and pincers, locked in tiny cells. Then, at night, they were taken by lorry to the outskirts of Phnom Penh and killed in the rice fields. The Khmer Rouge were obsessed with killing by night.

Now at last, after years of argument between the Cambodian government and the United Nations, the surviving members of the Khmer Rouge hierarchy are finally being brought to justice. They will be tried under a hybrid UN-Cambodian tribunal known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia; the pre-trial hearings began in November and are still going on. Pol Pot, of course, is long dead, having died under house arrest before he could be tried in 1998. The bloodiest of his comrades, Ta Mok, died in 1996. But five senior leaders including Khieu Sampan, the Khmer Rouge president, await trial.

Duch made his first appearance in court in November when his lawyer asked for him to be let out on bail because his "human rights had been violated, even if he was not beaten or tortured". A ripple of ironic laughter ran round the courtroom. The request was rejected.

My quest to interview Duch had begun nearly three years ago. I first visited S-21, soon after the fall of the Khmer Rouge. Since his arrest more than eight years ago, nobody from the outside had even clapped eyes on him. Now, finally, I was looking at this frail, 66-year-old man with his protruding, irregular teeth, bug eyes and washed-out grey clothes. I was confronting the mystery of the banality and the innocence of evil.

Throughout our interview, his voice was low, respectful like a mantra, a Buddhist prayer, rather than what it really was; the soundtrack of a nightmare still freighted with questions. His mild-mannered almost frail appearance in no way suggested the role of a mass murderer.

For the interview, the rules were strict: no tape recorder, no camera, no talking to him directly in French or English but only through a Cambodian interpreter. General Neang Phat, Cambodia's Secretary of State, and other generals were sitting in the same room, listening to and scrutinising this indefinable and unfathomable man. Some of them, too, have evil memories of the Khmer Rouge years. But Duch was the exact picture of the banality and innocence of evil.

Duch, the nickname he assumed when he was young and joined the guerrillas, told me that the torture centre at Tuol Sleng was set up in August 1975, four months after the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh, and began work two months later.

"I was given the task of creating it and starting it up, although I never found out why they chose me. Before 1975, when the Khmer Rouge lived in hiding, in the jungle, or in the liberated zones, I was the head of Office 13, I was the chief of police in the special zone bordering on Phnom Penh."

He described a routine of bureaucratic monotony. "Every day I had to read and check the confessions. I read from seven in the morning until midnight. And every day, towards three in the afternoon, Professor Son Sen, the minister of defence, summoned me. I had known him since my time as a high school teacher. It was he who had asked me to join the guerrillas.

"He would ask me how my work was going. Then a messenger would arrive, an envoy, who collected the confessions that were ready and took them to Son Sen. These messengers were the only links between one office and another."

I wanted to know if Duch had any moments of uncertainty, doubts, feelings of rebellion while he was wiping out his country's entire intellectual class.

He admitted the idea had crossed his mind. "When the work started at Tuol Sleng, I asked my bosses now and then, 'Do we really have to use all this violence?' Son Sen never answered. Nuon Chea, the No 2 Brother in the power structure, who was above him, told me: 'Don't think about these things.'

"I personally had no answer. Then with the passing of time, I understood. It was Ta Mok who had ordered all the prisoners to be eliminated. We saw enemies, enemies, enemies everywhere.

"I was cornered, like everyone in that machine, I had no alternative. Pol Pot, the No 1 Brother, said you always had to be suspicious, to fear something. And thus the usual request came: interrogate them again, interrogate them better."

Sometimes Duch was tempted to be merciful, he claimed – and his superiors began to mistrust him. He recalled the time a cousin was brought to S-21.

"I knew him well, we had formed sincere family ties but I had to eliminate him anyway. I knew he was a good person but I had to pretend to believe that confession extorted with violence. So in order to protect him I didn't analyse those statements too rigorously. And on that occasion my superiors began to lose full trust in me. At the same time I didn't feel safe any more."

But the moment of official doubt passed. The interrogations and executions continued, remorselessly until the end.

"You kept your post until the end," I said. "Did you always carry out your orders thoroughly?"
Duch answered: "I obeyed. The work carried on until 7 January 1979, when the Cambodian liberation forces, supported by the Vietnamese, conquered Phnom Penh. There was no escape plan, no pull-out plan ..."

But, after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, the executioner blended back in among his countrymen, and disappeared, as so many did in the post-war chaos, swallowed up by the void.

Many years later he was converted to Christianity by American missionaries. His true identity was discovered in 1998 and soon afterwards he was arrested. He remains the most disquieting witness of the political madness planned by the Khmer Rouge, after the death of Pol Pot and Ta Mok, the one-legged "butcher".

I asked him how he converted to Christianity and why that happened. "I became convinced that Christians were a force, and that this force could beat Communism. At the time of the guerrilla war, I was 25 years old, Cambodia was corrupt, Communism was full of promise and I believed in it. But that project failed completely."

So if Duch has repented now, what is his attitude to all those thousands of victims of his violence? There was no alternative for people like himself, trapped inside the machinery of the Khmer Rouge, he said.

"If someone goes looking for guilt, and the various degrees of guilt, I say that there was no way out for anyone who entered the power system conceived by Pol Pot. Only at the top did they know the real situation in the country, but the intermediate functionaries did not know. And then there was that obsession with secrecy.

"Of course, you are asking me whether I could have rebelled, or at least fled. But if I had tried to flee, they were holding my family hostage, and my family would have suffered the same fate as the other prisoners in Tuol Sleng. If I had fled or rebelled it would not have helped anyone."

A celebration of Cambodian culture

By Michael Lafleur
02/10/2008

NORTH ANDOVER -- It may seem odd to some that an elite boarding school in leafy North Andover would shed light on the efforts of Lowell-based Cambodian-American artists.

But Marie Costello, director of the Robert Lehman Art Center at the Brooks School in North Andover, said the private high school's location made it a perfect fit for an exhibition like "Celebrating Cambodia."

Costello is aware of the plight of Cambodian artists, who suffered mightily under the genocidal, communist Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to '79.

The Khmer Rouge targeted and killed most of that Southeast Asian nation's artisans in their disastrously failed attempt to remake Cambodia into an agrarian utopia.

With Lowell nearby and home to so many Cambodian immigrants, Costello said she wanted to help keep that artistic culture alive.

"After the brutal attempt to destroy the culture by the Khmer Rouge ... it should be counteracted by gathering together these artists to celebrate both the traditional art forms and the contemporary arts of Cambodia," she said. "We are so near to this community, and it's just important to keep it on our minds."

The show began Jan. 4 and runs through Saturday. It features the work of Lowell-based painter Chantha Khem and Lowell-based sculptor Yary Livan, as well as that of Cambodian artists Duong Saree and Thhim Sothy, and Eleanor Briggs, a New Hampshire photographer.

Costello said Saree is one of only a handful of female professors at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. She has been at the forefront of preserving traditional art forms there.

Sothy is a former student of Saree's. His earlier paintings are done in the traditional Cambodian style of concrete images and scenes, Costello said, while his newer work adds abstraction.

"It's sort of a swirling mystical feel to the work, which is really exciting," she said.

Khem, 40, hails from Phnom Penh. He has been living in Lowell for the past two years and currently resides in the city's Highlands with his wife and two daughters. He has been in the United States for five years.

Trained at the Royal University of Fine Arts, he is a full-time painter. Most of his work focuses on everyday life in Cambodia, particularly that of rural peasant farmers.

In an interview last week translated by his 16-year-old daughter, Linda, a Lowell High School sophomore, Khem said Cambodia's countryside is "how an everyday life should be, and it still is right now, especially for regular people."

He said his goal is "carry the culture of Cambodia to continue on to other generations."
Meanwhile, Livan, in an interview translated by his wife and fellow artist, Nary Tith, said he prefers the challenge of working with clay.

Livan, 54, and Tith have four children ages 13, 20, 21 and 23.

"Working with clay, you need water. You need fire. You need oxygen," he said.

"It's the same as our lives. Also, because we take a lot of time and energy to work with the clay, sometimes when you're finished, the piece did not come out what we expected. It's like ... life, too. Sometimes, we try all the best but it doesn't work out."

When life throws you an Angkor, hang on, enjoy


Temple fatigue really does comes with the territory
Chris Gray, McClatchy Tribune
Sunday, February 10, 2008

Frequent travellers call it "temple fatigue," the wave of exhaustion that sets in when you've seen one (or five) ruins too many.

It comes with the territory here. Not only is Siem Reap home to Angkor Wat, one of the world's largest religious monuments; the area also houses more than 300 other monuments, all beautiful and significant, in various stages of decay. If you take in too many at once, even the most intricate carvings can seem mundane.

But there's nothing like immersion to understand the complex history of the Khmer people. At one time, their empire spread from modern-day India to Vietnam, encompassing both Buddhist and Hindu faiths. One king, Jayavarman VII, commissioned hundreds of stone structures throughout the country, all within 30 years (although Angkor Wat, which graces Cambodia's flag and currency, was built by a predecessor, Suryavarman II).

Here are a few of the must-see sites at Siem Reap, all covered by a $40 US three-day pass:
- Angkor Wat. The early-12th-century structure is as immense and awe-inspiring as it looks in pictures. Both a capital and a temple honouring the Hindu god Vishnu, Angkor Wat is too large to take in all at once. We toured in the morning and then returned at dusk to see the iconic three stone towers bathed in golden-hour light. Definitely a See-You-Before-You-Die sight.

- Angkor Thom. Just up the road from Angkor Wat and built almost a century later, is almost as impressive. A former royal city, the Angkor Thom complex is most famous for the Bayon, a Buddhist temple that features enormous faces carved from stone. There are plenty of other monuments here, too; we especially liked the South Gate, with a row of stone angels and demons holding a large naga (snake) on either side of the road.

- Ta Prohm. If you've seen Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, you're familiar with Ta Prohm, also known as the "jungle temple." Here you can see what happens when nature goes unchecked: Huge trees have engulfed the buildings and crushed the walls with their roots. It's eerily romantic; Don and I picked this one as our favourite.

- Banteay Srei. Off the beaten path, Banteay Srei is the oldest of the temples we visited (one guidebook placed its consecration date at 967 A.D.). It was also tinier and perhaps the most beautiful, because of the intricate carvings of Aspara dancers and Hindu gods. We particularly loved how the red sandstone appeared pink in the morning light.

Eyes open to world

08/02/08 n19696c Kylie Stephenson will travel to Cambodia to make an audio documentary on the work of the Fred Hollows Foundation. Photo: Che Chapman

The Sunshine coast Daily
11 February 2008

University student one day, international documentary maker the next.

After winning a worldwide competition, Mooloolah Valley’s Kylie Stephenson is taking off to Cambodia this week to produce a documentary about the eye surgery work of Fred Hollows Foundation.

The 26-year-old University of the Sunshine Coast Master of Communication student, who also works as a medical and veterinary and scientist with QML Laboratories at Noosa, will create a 10-15 minute audio report to be streamed on the websites of World Nomads, Lonely Plant, the Fred Hollows Foundation and ABC Online.

She also wins a six-day tour of Cambodia.

With still a year of study remaining, and aspirations of becoming a broadcast journalist and documentary maker, Ms Stephenson said she was excited about future opportunites.

“I’m over the moon about getting to have this experience, and the implications it will have for my career took a week to sink in,” she said.

She will be mentored in the process by ABC Radio National journalist Tim Latham.

To enter the competition run by travel insurance company World Nomads and travel guide publishers Lonely Plant, Ms Stephenson prepared a three-minute podcast (audio report) and a 300-word essay relating to the theme “It opened my eyes”.

Her interview subject was Caloundra real estate agent Robert Webber who had seen first-hand the plight of Ugandan children living in constant fear of being kidnapped and used as child soldiers or sex slaves.

“What Robert said opened my eyes to how, in Australia, we are so lucky that we have choices and opportunities that we take for granted,” she said.

Sacravatoons: La Foret Enhantee, by Prince of Golden Bones

Courtesy of Sacravatoon : http://sacrava.blogspot.com/

Khmer Rouge leader fit to face Cambodia's genocide tribunal

ABC, Radio Australia
10/02/2008

Detained Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Sary, one of five top cadres facing Cambodia's genocide tribunal, has returned to custody after being hospitalised for about a week.

The 82-year-old former Khmer Rouge foreign minister was sent to hospital on Monday after he began urinating blood, but was back in custody on Saturday. said .

Reach Sambath, spokesman for the UN-backed tribunal, says Ieng Sary "is now in good health".

Ieng Sary has suffered from deteriorating health since his arrest last November, together with his wife Ieng Thirith.

The pair were charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity for their alleged roles in the Khmer Rouge's brutal 1975-79 rule.

Up to two million people died of starvation and overwork, or were executed by the Khmer Rouge, which dismantled modern Cambodian society in its effort to forge a radical agrarian utopia during its ultra-communist rule.

Chinese premier visits former Cambodian King

chinaview.cn
2008-02-10

BEIJING, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited former Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk on Sunday, during the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday.

Wen extended the new year greetings to Sihanouk, and praised Sihanouk's outstanding contribution to promoting China-Cambodia friendship.

He thanked Sihanouk for his donations to China for disasters relief in snow stricken areas. Wen said this indicated the profound friendship to the Chinese people.

The premier expressed his confidence that the Chinese people could win the fight against the snow disasters.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations and is a year of China-Cambodia Friendship. China would work with Cambodia to carry forward traditional friendship and increase bilateral cooperation to benefit the two peoples, Wen noted.

Sihanouk expressed appreciation for China's achievements, and thanked China for offering support to Cambodia's development. He hoped that the Cambodia-China friendship would achieve constant progress.

President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen had visited the snow stricken areas to instruct the disasters relief work, and people there had shown the utmost fortitude to combat disasters. Sihanouk said he was deeply moved.

Sihanouk said he believed the Chinese people would definitely win the fight against the snow havoc.

Editor: Yan Liang

Rural Cambodian Temple

I take a trip with a Buddhist monk to the temple where he was taught as a boy and became a monk.

A celebration of Cambodian culture

By Michael Lafleur
02/10/2008

NORTH ANDOVER -- It may seem odd to some that an elite boarding school in leafy North Andover would shed light on the efforts of Lowell-based Cambodian-American artists.

But Marie Costello, director of the Robert Lehman Art Center at the Brooks School in North Andover, said the private high school's location made it a perfect fit for an exhibition like "Celebrating Cambodia."

Costello is aware of the plight of Cambodian artists, who suffered mightily under the genocidal, communist Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to '79.

The Khmer Rouge targeted and killed most of that Southeast Asian nation's artisans in their disastrously failed attempt to remake Cambodia into an agrarian utopia.

With Lowell nearby and home to so many Cambodian immigrants, Costello said she wanted to help keep that artistic culture alive.

"After the brutal attempt to destroy the culture by the Khmer Rouge ... it should be counteracted by gathering together these artists to celebrate both the traditional art forms and the contemporary arts of Cambodia," she said. "We are so near to this community, and it's just important to keep it on our minds."

The show began Jan. 4 and runs through Saturday. It features the work of Lowell-based painter Chantha Khem and Lowell-based sculptor Yary Livan, as well as that of Cambodian artists Duong Saree and Thhim Sothy, and Eleanor Briggs, a New Hampshire photographer.

Costello said Saree is one of only a handful of female professors at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. She has been at the forefront of preserving traditional art forms there.

Sothy is a former student of Saree's. His earlier paintings are done in the traditional Cambodian style of concrete images and scenes, Costello said, while his newer work adds abstraction.

"It's sort of a swirling mystical feel to the work, which is really exciting," she said.

Khem, 40, hails from Phnom Penh. He has been living in Lowell for the past two years and currently resides in the city's Highlands with his wife and two daughters. He has been in the United States for five years.

Trained at the Royal University of Fine Arts, he is a full-time painter. Most of his work focuses on everyday life in Cambodia, particularly that of rural peasant farmers.

In an interview last week translated by his 16-year-old daughter, Linda, a Lowell High School sophomore, Khem said Cambodia's countryside is "how an everyday life should be, and it still is right now, especially for regular people."

He said his goal is "carry the culture of Cambodia to continue on to other generations."

Meanwhile, Livan, in an interview translated by his wife and fellow artist, Nary Tith, said he prefers the challenge of working with clay.

Livan, 54, and Tith have four children ages 13, 20, 21 and 23.

"Working with clay, you need water. You need fire. You need oxygen," he said.

"It's the same as our lives. Also, because we take a lot of time and energy to work with the clay, sometimes when you're finished, the piece did not come out what we expected. It's like ... life, too. Sometimes, we try all the best but it doesn't work out."

Vietnam-Cambodia investment and trade set to rise

10/02/2008

VietNamNet Bridge - Vietnam’s investment in Cambodia has steadily increased to 115 million USD in 2007 and more investment from the country is expected in 2008, said a recent report from the Cambodian Ministry of Trade.

According to the ministry, the main areas for Vietnamese investment include construction of hydropower plants, mining and telecommunications, with projects valued at hundreds millions US dollars by well-known Vietnamese businesses such as the Army Telecommunications Corporation (Viettel), the Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam), the Vietnam National Coal Mineral Industries Group, and the Electricity of Vietnam (EVN).

Robust investment from Vietnam has helped a lot to boost up trade between the two countries. Two-day trade between Vietnam and Cambodia increased eight folds to 940 million USD in 2006 from 184 million USD in 2001, and made a record high of 1.1 billion USD in 2007.

Vietnam exported close to 1.1 billion USD worth of commodities, mainly textile facilities, plastics, home alliance, vegetables and fruits, confectionaries, cigarettes and detergent to Cambodia last year. It imported from the neighbour more than 180 million USD worth of farm produce, furniture, rubber and salt.

Cambodia’s Ministry of Trade said cross-border trade with Vietnam is expected to hit 2.5 billion USD by 2010.

(Source: VNA)

Cambodia to host part of ASEAN Football Confederation Cup Tournament

chinaview.cn
2008-02-10

PHNOM PENH, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia will host part of the ASEAN Football Federation Cup Tournament in October for Laos, Brunei, The Philippines, East Timor, and Cambodia, said a sports official here on Sunday.

Three winners out of the five countries will then go to Thailand or Indonesia to vie with Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Myanmar, said Keo Sarin, deputy secretary general of the Football Federation of Cambodia (FFC).

"We are trying to be successful in hosting part of the tournament," he added.

The ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asia Nations) Football Confederation Cup Tournament derived from the Tiger Cup soccer match and is currently one of the most important sports events in the region.

Editor: An Lu

Cambodia to hold Premier League Football Tournament in May

chinaview.cn
2008-02-10 21:37:58

PHNOM PENH, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia will hold its Premier League (CPL) Football Tournament from May to September, said a sports official here on Sunday.

"This year we have 10 footballs clubs to play for CPL and they are the strong clubs of the country," said Keo Sarin, deputy secretary general of the Football Federation of Cambodia (FFC).

The strong clubs can always attract more spectators and sponsors, he said.

CPL is the most important annual soccer event of Cambodia.
 
Editor: An Lu

Fighting to be remembered

[Photo by Tracey Shelton]
THE COURTROOM: Millions of dollars have been spent - and misspent - for the trial of Khmer Rouge leaders.


[Photo by Tracey Shelton]
Sophal Stagg points toward holding cells during a tour of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal compound in Cambodia.


A SURVIVOR: Sophal Stagg tours the Khmer Rouge Tribunal compound in Cambodia. A survivor of the mass killings in that country in the 1970s, she now works to educate the public there about the nation's grim history. [Photo by Tracey Shelton]

By Elena Lesley,
Times Staff Writer
February 10, 2008

Sophal Stagg stopped in front of the villa built to house former leaders of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime and yanked a long weed from the ground. - "This is what I ate to survive," she explained to fellow members of a group touring the Khmer Rouge Tribunal compound in Cambodia. "I thanked God I had this."

They listened quietly as Stagg explained how she sneaked weeds, mice and bugs into the watery rice porridge that was her only sustenance under Pol Pot's notorious regime.

"And these five criminals are living in a luxury house," she continued, angrily pointing toward the villa where five former leaders wait to be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

"They have three meals a day - their choice - TV, one even has a special toilet. What kind of justice is this?"

Decades have passed since the fall of the Khmer Rouge. Stagg, who now lives in Palm Harbor and goes by "Sophie," thought she and other survivors would never see justice. Yet even though a United Nations-backed tribunal is set to try key leaders this year, she is still unsure what effect it will have on her home country.

Stagg distributes goods in Cambodia every year as part of her work for the Southeast Asian Children's Mercy Fund, the charity organization she founded. But this January marked her first visit to the tribunal complex. Construction on land outside of Phnom Penh, the country's capital city, started several years ago.

In the past, Stagg always bypassed the site. She thought the government would never allow the tribunal to happen and she didn't want to be disappointed.

But now that the country appears determined to try Pol Pot's henchmen, Stagg still has misgivings.

"I can't believe the world has poured so much money into this," she said, referring to tribunal funding she believes has been misused. "It's like an elaborate stage for a two-minute show. Are the international donors blind?"

Stagg said she was shocked by the number of sleek buildings constructed especially for the trials, the inflated salaries of tribunal staff and the "pampering" of defendants.

Each of the aging leaders has a personal doctor. A bulletproof Land Cruiser transports them the 50 yards from their villa to the courthouse, she said.

"I got very sarcastic on the tour," she said with a wry smile. "I said I was surprised they didn't have a red carpet for the Land Cruiser."

After visiting the compound, Stagg said she is more convinced than ever that many involved in the tribunal are "trying to drag it on as long as they can, suck out as much money as possible."

She isn't the first to notice the perceived waste. Allegations of corruption, mismanagement and political interference have long plagued the tribunal.

Negotiations for a court to try leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime, which is responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7-million Cambodians from 1975 to 1979, got off to a slow start in 1997.

Though Pol Pot died of natural causes in 1998, the United Nations and Cambodian government reached an agreement in 2003 outlining a process to try other Khmer Rouge figures.

Fundraising efforts lagged for years, but in July 2006, Cambodian and foreign judges were finally sworn in. A year later, prosecutors submitted a list of suspects to tribunal judges and since that time five people have been taken into custody.

But no one has stood trial, and the tribunal has eaten up most of its $56.3-million budget. Organizers are lobbying for more funding. And they have a good case.

"It is very, very important to put these people on trial as an example to other dictators," said Paul Chuk, a Pinellas Park resident who lost both his parents to the Khmer Rouge. "You cannot abuse people this way and get away with it."

But with all the emphasis on the trappings of justice, Stagg worries the message may not get through to actual Cambodians. She'd like to see less money squandered on construction and salaries, and more devoted to educating the public.

Cambodian schools teach little about the Khmer Rouge regime, and many who lived through it are too traumatized to discuss their experiences, Stagg said. As a result, most young Cambodians know strikingly little about that period.

"Some young people don't even believe it happened," she said.

The lack of information is especially disturbing to Stagg, who has spent much of the past decade trying to raise awareness about the Khmer Rouge. Her memoir, Hear me now: Tragedy in Cambodia, is part of the curriculum in many local schools, and she has given numerous lectures about the Cambodian holocaust.

"I fight to teach about this in American schools," she said. "But I can't believe I have to do it in my own back yard, in Cambodia."

Yet she is now considering doing just that. While she has long brought much-needed goods to the country, Stagg now hopes to raise money for books and a Khmer Rouge curriculum.

The tribunal, she fears, won't be enough.

"They say they want to leave a legacy, but what kind of legacy is that?" she asked. "There will be no justice without education."

Sacravatoons: FBI's Gift

Courtesy of Sacratoons; Please click on link here to see full article http://sacrava.blogspot.com/

Searching for the truth

Filmmaker Socheata Poeuv's documentary to be shown at CSULB genocide forum

By Phillip Zonkel, Staff writer
02/09/2008

Socheata Poeuv's family was living in Dallas, but in some ways, her parents never left Cambodia.
"My father pruned our trees in a sarong with a kitchen cleaver, and my mother stored stinky fermented fish under the sink," says Poeuv, 27, who migrated with her family to Texas in 1982.

"I thought everything about my parents was 'old country,' but in fact, they were desperately trying to forget their past," she says.

Poeuv's parents - in fact, her whole family - are survivors of the genocide of the Khmer Rouge, which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 and orchestrated the death of 1.7 million people through starvation, disease or execution.

Poeuv is called "the lucky one" - she was born on the Cambodian New Year in a Thai refugee camp.

But her parents never told her how she got there.

"New Year Baby" is Poeuv's personal documentary, a search for the truth about how her family survived the Khmer Rouge genocide and why they buried the truth for so long.

The film will be screened Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at Cal State Long Beach in the University Student Ballroom. The film is part of CSULB's "The President's Forum on International Human Rights: Modern Genocides and Global Responsibilities," a three-day event beginning Monday that consists of a series of lectures, art exhibits, panel discussions and film screenings exploring topics such as the meaning of genocide and the role of governments in preventing it.

Monday's schedule looks at the magnitude of genocide and Tuesday focuses on talking with survivors and the horrific impact genocide has had on them. The final day on Wednesday explores what responsibility the global community has to cooperate and eradicate racial and ethnic intolerance, which are some of the catalysts to genocide.

All events are free and open to public. Registration is not required, but seating is on a first-come basis.

Francis Deng, the United Nation Secretary General's Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide to the Secretary General of the United Nations, will deliver the keynote address on Monday night at 7 p.m.

"So much time and resources go into debating, 'Is it genocide or isn't it?' My job is to stop these atrocities before they reach the 'g' word," Deng says. "If we get involved in the beginning, before letting situations escalate to the point of accusing people of genocide and then people get defensive and aggressive, we can do enormous amounts to help people."

Genocide defined

In 1944, lawyer Raphael Lemkin published a comprehensive account of Nazi actions and defined them with a new word - genocide, formed from the Greek "geno," meaning race or tribe, and from the Latin "cide," meaning killing. The United Nations adopted the term in 1948 at the "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide," establishing genocide as an international crime.

Taking that definition into account, in the last 108 years, 36 examples of genocide have taken place around the globe (Pakistan, El Salvador, Guatemala, Rwanda, Nigeria, etc.) resulting in the mass killings of more than 87 million men, women and children, according to a 2006 National Geographic magazine report.

Mariana Xuncax Francisco, from the Maya Kanjobal tribe, is a survivor of genocide in Guatemala. She will be part of a survivors' panel discussion at 11 a.m. Wednesday in the University Student Union Ballroom.

Since the Spanish Conquest, the Maya have been subjected to discrimination and repression at the hands of the fair-skinned Spanish and ladinos (people of mixed heritage), which often has resulted in great poverty for the Maya and great wealth for the ladinos.

In 1960, a genocide campaign was initiated to exterminate the Maya. The war lasted 36 years and killed 200,000 and displaced 25 percent of the country's population. In addition, more than 45,000 people "disappeared," according to the United Nations' Historical Clarification Commission.

In 1999, the commission released an explosive report, accusing the Guatemalan government of genocide against the Maya and also implicated the United States, CIA and subsidiaries of several American businesses of being accomplices to the genocide.

Witness to killings

During the early 1980s, at the height of the government's genocide, Francisco was a nurse administering inoculations in the town of San Marcos Barranca de Galvez. Once, she arrived at the vaccination center, but government soldiers prevented her from entering. She heard gunshots and watched waiting patients flee as the soldiers left.

Inside, Francisco saw three dead people, two adult men and a 5- or 6-year-old boy. They had been strangled. Their necks - with dark purple scars - showed signs of torture, and they had been shot.

"Things like that happened every week," says Francisco, 50, who recounts another incident at another clinic where 22 patients were shot and killed.

Francisco says the violence, murder and torture subsided for a short time in the mid-1980s, but then escalated in the late 1980s.

In 1990, Francisco migrated to Los Angeles and was granted political asylum five years later.
Gabriel Estrada, assistant professor in the American Indian Studies program, selected Francisco for the panel not only because of her testimonials but also her Maya heritage.

"The history books in the U.S. and Latin America don't teach about contemporary indigenous people," Estrada says. "They leave them in the past, like something that disappeared 500 years ago. But they're still living with us today. The majority of the Guatemalan population is Maya."
Startling revelation

Poeuv's parents also are genocide survivors, but they almost never talked about it. Almost never.

On Dec. 25, 2002, Poeuv's parents called a family meeting and revealed 25 years of secrets to Poeuv and her siblings.

Poeuv's two sisters are her nieces, orphaned when the Khmer Rouge killed their parents. Her older brother is her half-brother, the surviving child from Poeuv's mother's first marriage.

In November 2003, Poeuv's parents took Poeuv and her brother to Cambodia for the first time. The revelations from Poeuv's parents raised more questions than they answered, which motivated Poeuv to document the family story.

In Cambodia, Poeuv learned her family's struggle and sacrifice and how they survived hideous acts of human cruelty.

Says Poeuv: "My parents are inspirations for me of what humans can endure."

Ex-Khmer Rouge minister out of hospital

The Associated Press
Sunday, February 10, 2008

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) A former Khmer Rouge foreign minister returned to detention under Cambodia's U.N.-assisted genocide tribunal after spending nearly a week hospitalized for a urinary tract problem, officials said Sunday.

Ieng Sary was discharged from the hospital Saturday evening and returned to his cell at the tribunal's custom-built compound, said tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath.

Ieng Sary is one of five former high-ranking members of the Khmer Rouge who were taken into custody last year, and are now awaiting trial in connection with the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people through execution, overwork and starvation when the group held power from 1975-79.

Many victims of the Khmer Rouge have long feared some of the defendants, now aging and infirm, could die before facing trial.

"Doctors have told us he is fine, and he is now back in detention" at the tribunal, Reach Sambath said.

Ieng Sary's lawyer, Ang Udom, said his client's health condition "has improved."

Ieng Sary was hurried to Calmette Hospital - Cambodia's best medical facility - on Monday last week after urinating blood. It was the second hospital visit in 10 days by the 82-year-old former Khmer Rouge foreign minister, who also has a history of heart trouble.

Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith, who was minister for social affairs in the Khmer Rouge government, are both held pending trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The couple have appealed against their detention, but the tribunal has not yet set dates for hearings.

Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge main ideologist, was confronted by a genocide survivor last week in a hearing on his appeal against pretrial detention. Judges are expected to announce a ruling on his appeal in coming days

Ahearn: A restaurateur’s American success story

Credit: H. Scott Hoffmann/News & Record
Marie Peng's hard work in the Asian restaurant business has made her a classic American success story.

By Lorraine Ahearn
Staff Writer
Sunday, Feb. 10, 2008

Just hired, the young Vietnamese dishwasher watched the petite, middle-aged woman pull on heavy-duty rubber gloves and start scrubbing the stainless steel kitchen as if her life depended on it.

The dishwasher had to ask.

"How long have you worked here?"

This sent a roar of laughter through the kitchen staff at Phoenix Asian Cuisine, the city's first top-drawer Chinese restaurant, as owner Marie Peng composed her reply: "Since Day One."
I guess this is your classic American success story, the moral being that enough elbow grease can move mountains.

Even so, the place where this story begins — an escape on foot from genocide in Cambodia — is hard to reconcile with where it's ended up. That is, this quick, savvy matriarch of a businesswoman, sitting at the marble bar of her own bistro, with fine wood paneling, linen napkins, a long wine list and Frank Sinatra playing.

They are one and the same, she and the teenager who fled Cambodia with only the clothes on her back as the reign of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge rose like a bloody tide.

It's a story that predates "Day One," but began in the spring of 1975, a moment of unfathomable and cold horror. It was, in the words of the despot who was about to execute, march to death or slowly starve to death 2 million of his countrymen, "The Year Zero."

***
When the capital at Phnom Penh fell, it was celebration for the communist soldiers, like the Chinese New Year all over again. Marie Peng, traveling near the Thai border with her aunt, thought it was a good omen.

"We can go home now," Peng, then 16, told her aunt. "The war is over. Everything is OK."
"No," the older woman answered. "It's not OK."

At the head of a teenage guerrilla army, Pol Pot renamed Cambodia the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea, which he decreed would be a Utopian peasant society. First, it had to be "purified" of, among other things, family and parental authority, churches, health care, education, money, newspapers, radio, TV, foreigners, bicycles, even — for some reason — eyeglasses.

But all Peng and her aunt knew was, the roads and bridges were closed. And so they crossed into Thailand on a pedestrian catwalk, making their way to a refugee camp where they lived for six months, sleeping in a tin-roofed barracks, bathing in a muddy river.

As world opinion drowsily awakened to the Pol Pot nightmare, makeshift consulates opened in the camp, and the lines formed. Like playing the lottery, the refugees applied to go anywhere, everywhere — France, Germany, Switzerland.

Peng and her aunt found themselves on the way to the U.S., arriving at the Greensboro airport one night, then on their way out of Greensboro, where there were few lights and a lot of trees. The two women spoke in Cambodian the whole way.

"Uh-oh," Peng whispered to her aunt, as she watched the scenery from the sponsor's car window get farther from town. "They must be dropping us off somewhere in the jungle."

In fact, the destination was Asheboro, and a house with a well-stocked kitchen. They were thankful, but with no English, no friends and no news out of Cambodia, all Peng had to do for the first weeks was wait for word from home.

"I cried. I was so alone," recalled Peng, who finally got a letter from her mother. "My mom said I was very lucky to get away. They were making them work in the fields and the rice paddies. They were from the city. They weren't used to this. She said I might have been first to die."

It was happening everywhere in Kampuchea. Young, ruthless, trigger-happy soldiers had forced the city dwellers out to collective farms, where they worked slave labor, 4 a.m. until 10 p.m., and were fed only a small bowl of rice every other day.

Peng, realizing she now had to fend for herself — and might be her family's only hope to follow her to America — went to work at a hosiery mill, packing socks for $2.34 an hour.

After that was a succession of waitress jobs — the Bamboo Palace, Beijing Restaurant. Learning English on her feet instead of in a classroom, Peng quickly picked up on local customs such as the "free refill" and a grayish concoction with crunchy noodles that Americans called "chow mein."

Her fortunes would change after she was hired as a waitress at Lin's Garden on East Bessemer Avenue, and eventually bought the place when the owner moved back to New York. The same year, 1981, she finally got a second letter from her mother.

The news was part sweet, part bitter. Most of the family had survived the four years under Pol Pot. But her father and two brothers had not, the restaurant owner learned. The brothers had starved and the father had literally been worked to death.
***
The children called it "lucky money," pocket money enclosed in little red envelopes and given out on the Chinese New Year by grandparents, aunts, uncles. These were the only gifts, and on New Year's Eve, amid firecrackers and the traditional Lion Dance, the children would gleefully tally up their take.

It was one tradition Peng always kept in her new country, with her two sons — the lucky money. And a full 15 years after locating her lost family, she finally used her savings to bring them here, one by one, 24 people including siblings, nieces, nephews, and Peng's mother.

After 26 years on her feet in the kitchen, in the dining room, doing the prep and cleanup herself to keep the payroll down, Peng decided to retire a few years ago, after a relative took over Lin's Garden. Peng wanted to travel the world.

"All those years, I was like a bird in a cage. I wanted to go here, go there," she said. "I did, for a while. Then I said, 'I have to go back to work.' "

Just not a buffet. Never again. The sight of all that wasted all-you-can-eat food always made her ache.
So she and her grown sons, Tommy and David Peng, decided to open a first-class Asian restaurant. The upfit at what used to be a golf store behind Carrabba's Italian Grill on New Garden Road was a thing to behold: 2,200-square-foot kitchen, remodeling by Design One, hand-painted peacock mural over the bar.

Not the kind of place where you get to keep the chopsticks. No chop suey to be found. And on New Year's Eve last Thursday, the Year of the Rat, Peng emerged from toiling over sauces in the kitchen to greet customers at the packed dinner hour and watch the Lion Dance.

Beforehand, servers offered diners little red envelopes embossed with gold Chinese characters. They look decorative, like holiday ornaments, but the savvy businesswoman circulating among her well-heeled clientele knows better.

She knows what a 16-year-old girl crossing out of Cambodia knew. The red envelopes represented luck, a future, and life, if she could only imagine it, beyond The Year Zero.

Cambodia takes spotlight Asia comes to Tacoma

PHOTOS BY PETER HALEY/THE NEWS TRIBUNE
Denise Yin peeks through the curtain as Daravy Oum, Melinda Oum and Amie Yin, from left, wait for their troupe, Cambodian Classical and Folk Dance of Tacoma, to be called to the stage Saturday at the Asia Pacific Cultural Center’s annual New Year Celebration at the Tacoma Dome.


STEVE MAYNARD
February 10th, 2008

Pat Walton enjoyed a plate of Korean kimchee and fried pork Saturday and watched Indian dancing, surrounded by hundreds of other people celebrating the Asian New Year in Tacoma.

Taking in the celebration for the first time, the 48-year-old Tacoman called it “spectacular.”
“I really enjoy the culture – and the food,” he said. “That’s part of the culture.”

A multicultural array of food, dance and music was among the attractions at the 10th annual New Year Celebration, organized by the Asia Pacific Cultural Center.

At least 4,000 people attended the all-day celebration at the Tacoma Dome Exhibition Hall, said Phil Chang, executive director of the Asia Pacific Cultural Center in Tacoma.

They helped celebrate the new year, which began Thursday. This Asian New Year, based on the Chinese zodiac cycle, is the Year of the Rat.

Before sampling the Korean cuisine, Walton tried pot stickers and noodles prepared by members of the Chinese Christian Church of Tacoma.

Church member Ming Alwin of Fircrest watched the dancing with her 2-year-old daughter, Danni. Alwin said the celebration is a way for non-Asians and Asians to get to know the diversity of Asian cultures. Youths from her church demonstrated tai chi.

“We want to export our Chinese culture to the society,” Alwin said.

Asians make up 5.9 percent of Pierce County’s population, according to data from the U.S. Census and a 2006 survey cited in the celebration’s program.

The exhibition hall was lined with booths for non-Asian and Asian businesses. Up front, the backdrop for the stage was a giant image of Angkor Wat, the ancient temple in Cambodia.

Each year’s celebration highlights a different culture, and Cambodians enjoyed the spotlight this year.

At least 500 Cambodians attended from as far away as Everett, said Rong By of Olympia. The celebration included Cambodian bands and Cambodian folk and classical dances.

Cambodians want to make themselves known to the general population, said By, who helped emcee.

“The most important thing is that people over here know Cambodians exist as part of the melting pot,” he said.

That ethnic diversity was demonstrated when the Samoana Dancers from Stafford Elementary School in Tacoma took the stage.

The 45 girls, ages 5 to 11, include Cambodian, Russian, Korean, Latino, black and Samoan dancers, said teacher Ala Talo, who started the group four years ago.

They wore Samoan dresses with bright pink and blue flower prints. In four lines on stage, they swayed and stepped, performing Samoan dances and singing in Samoan before their largest crowd ever and for the first time at New Year Celebration.

Nadia Yun, a 9-year-old third-grader, said she likes Samoan dance.

“It’s nice and graceful,” she said.

Talo said the dance is “teaching them how to respect somebody else’s culture.” It also instills positive messages, “empowering the girls that they can do anything if they put their hearts into it,” she said.

“We are so nervous because this is our first year,” Talo said. “But they did good.”

Earlier, Mary Ohno presented Japanese dance and music from her Kabuki Academy for the 10th straight year.

Ohno’s seen the event expand and grow.

“The people start understanding,” she said, “and they’re more interested in other cultures.”