SAMBATH MEAS'S BLOG

SAMBATH MEAS'S BLOG: Random Memories of Lok Oam Has Salorn

2012-01-14T22:30:00.000-05:00

SAMBATH MEAS'S BLOG: Random Memories of Lok Oam Has Salorn: The curly haired man in a white suit, shaking the maracas, is oam Lorn. Whenever my parents and I sit down for breakfast, lunch, a...

"Heart of Darkness" and "Everyday Use" Are Relevant to Khmer People

2011-12-10T13:51:00.013-05:00

Image borrowed from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:In_Darkest_Africa_forest_clearing.jpg

Stereotypes in Heart of Darkness and “Everyday Use”

By

Sambath Meas

Because I’m black and I’m a woman and because I was brought up poor and because I’m a Southerner … the way I see the world is quite different from the way many people see it.
--Alice Walker

The whole point of reading literature, it seems to me, is to learn to have sympathies, imaginative relationships with people who are different from one's self.
--Irving Howe

Although they were written almost a century apart, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” reflect on the stereotypes and prejudices of black people of their time. Readers who are highly sensitive to the negative portrayals of Africans might find the former the work of a racist white man, and the latter the work of an African-American woman who is an equal rights activist, representing justice and benevolence. Though the scholar Chinua Achebe might take offense to such a characterization, Conrad, in a way, is an activist, too. For a white man who lived in the late nineteenth century, whose world was dominated by an imperial view and attitude, he was ahead of his time, in showing the moral conscience to expose hypocrisy, greed and brutality of Europeans through Heart of Darkness. Both stories are plagued with stereotypes and racial issues.

In Heart of Darkness, one of Conrad’s main characters, Charles Marlow, has an exciting opportunity to make a living in an unnamed place in Africa. His fascination with maps and his childhood dream of exploring uncharted territory in Africa (which mirror the author) bring about this excitement. Before his arrival, his mind has already been fraught with prejudices and stereotypes of the country and people, expressed in terms such as “darkness,” “wilderness” and “savages.” He believes he is there to “civilize” the “savages.” He sees himself as “one of the Workers, with a capital—you know. Something like an emissary of light, something like a lower sort of apostle” (Conrad 27). He is proud to see the amount of red, the color of England, on “a large shining map” at the Company’s offices. It means “some real work is done in there”(24). To his disappointment, he is sent to the place marked in yellow instead.

Upon his arrival, Africans appear to him “black and naked” and he perceives the “deadlike indifference of unhappy savages” (Conrad 29, 30). He would be unhappy too if he were chained like an animal by foreigners who invaded his country, exploited his land, and enslaved him. But later, in reference to Africans abandoning their villages, he acknowledges, “Well, if a lot of mysterious n----s armed with all kinds of fearful weapons suddenly took to traveling on the road between Deal and Gravesend, catching the yokels right and left to carry heavy loads for them, I fancy every farm and cottage thereabouts would get empty very soon” (34). Any reader with a conscience would further ponder how they would feel if the shoe were on the other foot, in this business of empire.

In the Outer Station, Marlow begins to notice the inefficiency and the greedy materialism of the colonists. Africans are chained together and perform useless tasks from which they drop from exhaustion. They are left to die in pain, abandonment, and despair (Conrad 31). He sees a native savagely beaten nearly to death for purportedly starting a conflagration. As if teaching a lesson to a dog, without communicating to this native about guarding against future accidents, the aggressor justifies his barbaric beating of the poor man. The victim moans, hauntingly, in pain before he recovers, after many days, and takes to the depths of the forest.

Marlow sees dead bodies of the natives wherever he goes. He hears about “a middle-aged negro” with a bullet-hole in his head (Conrad 35). Dead bodies, in skins and bones, amass on the earth like animals that have been claimed by famine and drought. Instead of dying from natural disaster, they died from the savagery of the men who came to “enlighten” them. Meanwhile, the Company’s chief accountant walks around in immaculately pressed clothes, completely oblivious or thoughtless of his surroundings.

Although Marlow sees and thinks about these things, real enlightenment has not yet come to him. He still views Africa and Africans as impenetrable, primitive and dangerous. “We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet” (Conrad 50). These stereotypical fantasies are repeated throughout the novella. Another example is the narrator’s description of going up the river, which is akin to “traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings.”

An empty stream, a great silence, and impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once—somewhere—far away—in another existence perhaps. There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. (49)

Like men of his time and place, Marlow is devoid of the humanity of Africans—that is, their individualities, their feelings, their emotions, their spirits, their customs, their histories, and languages. Their language to him is just a “grunt” and “noise.” As for the people, they remain nameless, faceless, voiceless, and miserable. He views them, just like the country, as shadow and darkness, as if they were creatures from another world. “The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there—there you could look at a thing monstrous and free.” Besides calling them creatures, monsters, and savages, much of the time he refers to them by the n-word.

He regards white men as superior, even god-like, in the words of Kurtz, and thus they should not be spoken to, let alone in an unmannerly way. “He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, ‘must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings—we approach them with the might as of a deity,’ and so on, and so on. ‘By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded,’ etc. etc.” (Conrad 65). One must wonder what kind of deity would invade and enslave others, and to force the natives by fraud into submission of their conquest? With such an attitude of superior arrogance, Marlow is taken aback by the general manager for allowing “his boy,” a young African who appears to him to be overfed, to “treat the white men, under his very eyes, with provoking insolence” (37). Yet, it is okay for white men to treat Africans with contempt, hatred, and violence.

At the Central Station, Marlow meets a nephew and uncle who plot to squeeze out all the wealth in Africa and want to delay the trip to the Inner Station to pick up Kurtz—the hollow-to-the-core man who is revered and feared by both Africans and Europeans. They want to leave him to die, since he is already gravely ill. They want the ivory for themselves, because they see him as competition. After all, Kurtz high-handedly controls the natives and dominates the ivory trade surrounding his station. On the way to find Kurtz, they enlist some of the twenty cannibals for a crew. Marlow admires them for their work and their restraint from hunger by not eating the pilgrims, for throwing their hippo meat into the river. He sees these white men as flabby and scared, while the cannibals—broad-chested and strong—can easily overpower them. This is one of the few instances where Marlow thinks somewhat highly of the natives.

Marlow also becomes sentimentally attached to the helmsman, but he only sees this after the man is hit by a spear and dies when the steamboat is under attack by one of the African tribes, which ordered by Kurtz, who, in one of his mad moments, does not want to leave his compound. Now that Marlow has to steer the boat all by himself, he misses the poor chap. Still he manages to blame and denigrate him for having no restraint by opening the shutter. “The fool-n----- had dropped everything, to throw the shutter open and let off that Martini-Henry” (Conrad 61).

Another person he is somewhat in awe of is the mistress of Kurtz. He bestows great details upon her, which sets her apart from other Africans he sees. “She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress” (Conrad 76). His lavish praises say, in effect, “For a savage, she is gorgeous.” Contrary to Kurtz’s fiancé, the Intended, she does not have a voice. This does not sit well with Chinua Achebe because 1) she is in her place and 2) she fulfills a structural requirement of the story: a savage counterpart to the refined, European woman with whom the story will end. According to Achebe, “It is clearly not part of Conrad’s purpose to confer language on the ‘rudimentary souls’ of Africa. They only ‘exchange short grunting phrases’ even among themselves, but mostly they were too busy with their frenzy” (6).

By the third part of the novella, though Marlow is in awe and admires Kurtz, he sees the man has succumbed to darkness. Kurtz’s life is plagued with violence and greed. He has abandoned his civilization, “gone native,” butchered those who oppose him, and profited from the ivory business for himself, not the company he works for. He has become the true colonizer or the true tyrant of Africa—his part of Africa, anyway. Marlow calls him hollow—hollow to the core. He believes that since Kurtz has been away from the eyes of civil society and authority, especially for so long, he can do whatever he wants and no one can stop him. Besides, no one in the civilized world knows about his violent and corrupt ways. Marlow gives the “between the butcher and the policeman” speech to his listeners:

You can’t understand. How could you?—with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbors ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums—how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man’s untrammeled feet may take him into by the way of solitude—utter solitude without a policeman—by the way of silence—utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinion? These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness. Of course you may be too much of a fool to go wrong—too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of darkness. I take it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the devil: the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too much of a devil—I don’t know which. Or you may be such a thundering exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place—and whether to be like this is your loss or your gain I won’t pretend to say. But most of us are neither one nor the other. The earth for us is a place to live in, where we must put up with sights, with sounds, with smells, too, by Jove!—breathe dead hippo, so to speak, and not be contaminated. (Conrad 65)

This denouement, that “Africa is merely a setting for the disintegration of the mind of Mr. Kurtz,” infuriates Achebe (9). He eloquently attributes this kind of rationale to “the desire—one might indeed say the need—in Western psychology to set Africa up as a foil to Europe, a place of negations at once remote and vaguely familiar in comparison with which Europe’s own state of spiritual grace will be manifest” (2). However, this is not the message that Marlow or his string-puller, Conrad, wants to convey. Regardless of the location of the setting, the message remains the same—that men, without law and order and judgment of others, will let go of their restraint or inhibition to act on their urges, desires, lusts, greed, and primal instincts. And knowing that no one is there to stop them or that they will not suffer the consequences of their actions, they run wild and free. They will continue to rape, plunge, and destroy others and the world in which they live.

At the opening of the story, as he and four other men sit in the yawl called the Nellie, waiting for the tide to turn, Marlow points out the Thames as a place where 1900 years earlier the Romans had similarly stared into its darkness. He says it “has been one of the dark places of the earth” (Conrad 19). He realizes that “the conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much” (Conrad 21). In essence, he is saying that empire building is an ugly business. And at the ending of the story, the first narrator adopts Marlow’s word and braces himself as they head out to wherever they are going, perhaps the unknown. “The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness” (94).

Marlow, as an enlightened person, reveals that Europeans have a heart of darkness. After all, “all Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz” (Conrad 65). The stereotypes, prejudices, dehumanization, denigration, and violence against Africans are manifestations of people with dark hearts. Heart of Darkness remains one of the greatest or “genius” works of art for this moral lesson. If literature or arts were to have a moral lesson, this is it, contrary to Achebe’s outrage. In An Image of Africa, he writes, “I am talking about a story in which the very humanity of black people is called in question. It seems to me totally inconceivable that great art or even good art could possibly reside in such unwholesome surroundings” (11). Yet this is the mindset of Europe back then; otherwise, Heart of Darkness would not exist. It shows that Conrad is ahead of his time.

Sadly, stereotypes and prejudices of black people continue, in life and in literature. Almost a century later, after Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” authors like Alice Walker continue to reflect on these issues, especially the portrayal of women. In “Everyday Use,” an oral story like Heart of Darkness, Walker confronts the stereotypes of black Southern women in the time of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements.

In the wake of these movements, educated young African-Americans try to separate themselves from the “mammy” type of representation and even degrade or ridicule those older Africans who fit such a description. Alice Walker takes notice. Further inflamed by the negative portrayal in historical representations of slave mammies whose existence is seen as “only to enhance her white folks’ lives,” as in the case of William Faulkner’s character of Dilsey in The Sound and the Fury, and black women who are voiceless, as portrayed by black men writers such as Jean Toomer, Walker has to illustrate her own idea of black women and heroines and elaborate on their positive qualities (Walker and Christian 9).

In “Everyday Use,” not only does Mama have a voice—an eloquent and expressive voice—but she is also a well-rounded character. While she still fits the stereotypes of the historical slave mammy who is a “larger, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands” and wears “flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day,” she has no shame in these things, because, in her own right, she is a strong and independent woman who “can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man.” Her “fat keeps [her] hot in zero weather.” She can “work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing … can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog.” She “knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall” (Guerin 406). She is aware she is uneducated—that society or her daughter would prefer her to be “a hundred pounds lighter, skin like “uncooked barley pancake,” and with hair that “glistens in the hot bright lights,” but this is her, take it or leave it. She makes no apologies. She is an individual with feelings, values, emotions, and spirituality, and she works hard to attend to her children and her everyday living. She finds the means, through the help of her church, to provide an education, which she did not have, for her older daughter. She actively participates in her community. Moreover, she represents the “creator” and the “guardian” of the culture, and her legacy will live on (Walker and Christian 14).

Similar to Mama, Maggie represents the uneducated and “backward” woman who is left behind while the lucky ones go off to better themselves and advance in life. In contrast to Dee, she is mentally slow, dark, and has burn scars down her arms and legs.

It is ironic in light of the critique of Conrad as racist, that Walker, through the character of Mama, compares the way Maggie walks to a “lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to him” (Guerin 406). She does not say much, and when she sees her sister and her male companion, she lets out an “Uhnnnh” sound. Mama describes the sound like “when you see the wriggle end of a snake just in front of our foot on the road. ‘Uhnnnh’ ” (Guerin 408). Achebe crucifies Conrad for depicting Africans’ speech and movements as wild-like. But because Walker is an African-American woman, such comparison or analogy probably would not offend him. In spite of scars and physical and mental inferiority to her sister, Maggie understands something that her brighter sister does not understand, the real value and honor of her heritage in the creation and appreciation of quilts, which she puts into everyday use. She gets her gratification from knowing that her mother and matrilineal ancestors will live within her, her children, and grandchildren.

Walker bestows, through the narrative of Mama, social awareness, education, and middle-class status to Dee/Wangero. The older daughter also possesses beauty and fine taste in material things: clothes, arts and other luxury. “Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure,” says her mother. “Her feet were always neat-looking, as if God himself had shaped them with a certain style” (Guerin 407). Just like Maggie, Mama admires and is in awe of her older daughter—the way she speaks her mind, the way she dresses, and the way she carries herself.

Dee represents the new generation of black people, educated and successful. Education gives her courage, a new outlook on life, and a sense of liberation. Recognizing their individual rights, she and others of like mind unite under the banner of nationalism in the roots of Africa, to combat the stereotypes and prejudices against African-Americans by white or Euro-Americans. She abandons her given name, Dee, which she feels represents oppression by white men. Instead, she opts for Wangero, an African name, to affirm her identity. Her knowledge of Africa, Africans and their culture are as limited as that of Marlow and other white people in “Heart of Darkness.” Unfortunately, it turns out that she is shallow and does not see the real connection between herself and her ancestry. She only appreciates art, in this case her family’s quilts, in aesthetic ways. She does not have the same connection that Maggie has with their ancestors, because she does not know how to make quilts.

In response to the stereotypes and the prejudices of the older, poor, and uneducated black women, Walker gives them a voice and assigns a positive attribute to them. Barbara Christian affirms that Walker reacts to these stereotypes and prejudices when she shapes her characters. This kind of focus might limit the development of the characters. E. Shelley Reid writes, “Knowing, as one of Morrison's characters explains, that ‘definitions belonged to the definers’ (Beloved 190), a generation of writers focused intently on helping their black women characters learn to define themselves positively instead of just reacting against others' stereotypes, and gave them the power to speak their own names and stories” (Reid 315).

Black women have a strong presence and voice in Walker’s writing. However, the presence and the voice of black men are missing. In her attempt to cast the women in positive light, she excludes black men or reduces them to just shadowy images.

Regardless of race, human beings and writers are still evolving. From “Heart of Darkness” to “Everyday Use,” stereotypes and prejudices remain societal problems. But, in the words of Irving Howe, “the whole point of reading literature, it seems to me, is to learn to have sympathies, imaginative relationships with people who are different from one's self” (Bloom 155). How one interprets such a depiction of different peoples is another story. The case in point is Chinua Achebe’s interpretation and many other interpretations of Heart of Darkness. The problem is, Achebe treats the novella as if it were written in today’s society, ignoring the fact that Europeans back then did not have the same mind-set as today. The stereotypes, prejudices, and racisms expressed in Heart of Darkness are based on ignorance, and on a colonial or imperial view. “Conrad could probably never have used Marlow to present anything other than an imperialist world-view, given what was available for either Conrad or Marlow to see of the non-European at the time” (Said 375). Conrad and Walker, though they represent a different race, gender, and time, they are morally conscience artists who care about what happen in their societies. Their works address the same issues and they will continue to inspire readers.

Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. “An Image of Africa. Research in African Literatures.” Vol. 9, No. 1, Special Issue on Literary Criticism. (Spring, 1978), pp. 1-15. Indiana University Press. .

Bloom, Harold. Alice Walker. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2007. Print.

Guerin, Wilfred L. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. Print.

Reid, E. Shelley. "Beyond Morrison And Walker." African American Review 34.2 (2000): 313. Academic Search Premier. Web. 9 Dec. 2011.

Rice, Philip, and Patricia Waugh. Modern literary theory: a reader. London [u.a.: Arnold, 2001.

Walker, Alice, and Barbara Christian. Everyday use. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1994.

SAMBATH MEAS'S BLOG: Alice Walker's "Everyday Use"

2011-12-03T23:37:00.001-05:00

SAMBATH MEAS'S BLOG: Alice Walker's "Everyday Use": Image borrowed from http://www.csd509j.net/staff/carricp/ Alice Walker is one of my favorite contemporary authors. I would love to emulate her w...

Alice Walker's "Everyday Use"

2011-11-02T10:01:00.020-04:00

Image borrowed from http://www.csd509j.net/staff/carricp/

Alice Walker is one of my favorite contemporary authors. I would love to emulate her writings.

The Quilt Maker

By

Sambath Meas

In “Everyday Use,” a short story written from the perspective of a mother about her two radically opposite daughters, Dee and Maggie, Alice Walker conveys the significance of quilts, class differences, and her own self-depiction or self-projection in the characters of Mama, Dee/Wangero, and Maggie. The major conflict in this story is the quarrel, between the aggressive Dee and the submissive Maggie, over the ownership of the family's “priceless” quilts. While the two daughters value them differently, Mama has the final word. She decides to snatch the quilts from Dee and give them to Maggie not because she sides with her, but because it is the right thing to do. Her action represents the middle path between the two extremes of aggressiveness and passiveness. Here, Mama is not only giving herself a voice, but she is also giving Maggie a voice. This middle path represents Walker's own thought about the right path to take to combat hatred, prejudice, and violence, during the complex time of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. Tragically, “Despite the [Civil Rights] Movement, in 1970 the United States continued to be racially divided and violent against black people” (Hendrickson 112).

The quilt is a recurring theme and metaphor in Alice Walker’s writings. She references it in her poems, short stories, essays, and novels. It has become a symbol of class, creativity, and legacy. As the daughter of sharecroppers in the South, she can identify with the poor and the uneducated class and knows the value of handmade goods. According to her, quilting signifies one of the many creative attributes of her hard-working mother. In “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” Walker recalls how her mother worked tirelessly “along side” her father and selflessly took great care of her and her seven siblings. “She made all the clothes we wore, even my brothers’ overalls. She made all the towels and sheets we used. She spent the summers canning vegetables and fruits. She spent the winter evenings making quilts enough to cover all our beds” (238). Walker continues:

And yet, it is to my mother—and all our mothers who were not famous—that I went in search of the secret of what has fed that muzzled and often mutilated, but vibrant, creative spirit that black woman has inherited, and that pops out in wild and unlikely places to this day.

For example: in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., there hangs a quilt unlike any other in the world. In fanciful, inspired, and yet simple and identifiable figures, it portrays the story of the Crucifixion. It is considered rare, beyond price. Though it follows no known pattern of quilt-making, and though it is made of bits and pieces of worthless rags, it is obviously the work of a person of powerful imagination and deep spirit feeling. Below this quilt I saw a note that says it was made by “an anonymous Black woman in Alabama, a hundred years ago.”

If we could locate this “anonymous black woman from Alabama, she would turn out to be one of our grandmothers—an artist who left her mark in the only materials she could afford, and in the only medium her position in society allowed her to use.” (Walker 238, 239)

A quilt is “priceless” not only because it showcases a poor and uneducated woman’s “creative spirit”; it is also a legacy that connects African-American women with their matrilineal ancestors. The art of quilting has been passed down to Walker from her mother. Though she admits, “I'm really more of a piecer, actually, than I am a quilter,” she has shown her own “powerful imagination and deep spirit feeling” through literature (Freeman 70). She has contributed tremendously to African-American studies and the Civil Rights Movement. History sees her as both a “piecer” and a “quilter” when it comes to writing and working as an activist. David Cowart says it best when he writes, “Self-chastened, Walker presents her own art—the piecing of linguistic and literary intertexts—as quilt-making with words, an art as imbued with the African American past as the literal quilt-making of the grandmother for whom Wangero was originally named” (Cowart 172).

It is apparent that Walker pays homage to her mother and other African-American women through the character Mama in “Everyday Use.” Mama is a poor and uneducated black woman who lives somewhere in the South with her younger daughter Maggie. She may not have any education or accolades, but her legacy and creative spirit can be seen in her everyday living.

The readers are left to assume Mama’s husband is deceased. She only references him when talking about Dee/Wangero. “Everything delighted her. Even the fact that we still used the benches her daddy made for the table when we couldn’t afford to buy chairs” (Guerin 409). Like many black women, Mama is both a mother and a father to her children. With the assistance of the church, she was able to raise money to provide education for her older daughter Dee. She has done her best to provide for both of her children, even if she has to perform both feminine and masculine chores. Mama does not pity herself. She actually sounds proud when she describes herself:

In real life I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands. In the winter I wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day. I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing; I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog. One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall. (Guerin 406)

Her posterity may not remember these amazing things about her, but her memories will be forever stitched on the quilts, which her mother and big sister had left their own marks on.

They had been pieced by Grandma Dee and then Big Dee and me had hung them on the quilt frames on the front porch and quilted them. One was in the Lone Star Pattern. The other was Walk Around the Mountain. In both of them were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn fifty and more years ago. Bits and pieces of Grandpa Jarrell’s Paisley shirts. And one teeny faded blue piece, about the size of a penny matchbox, that was from Great Grandpa Erza’s uniform that he wore in the Civil War. (Guerin 410)

Mama has given the hand-stitched quilts to Maggie to carry on this legacy. She will not only put them to “Everyday Use,” but she will also continue the legacy by adding to the quilts and by passing on this creativity to her own daughters. On the contrary, Dee/Wangero will only hang them on the wall for aesthetic purposes. Though Wangero sees this as a way of connecting, honoring, and remembering her ancestors, this is not how Walker, through the characters of Mama and Maggie, values quilts. In contrast, Dee/Wangero is pushing herself away, making the objects impersonal, using them only for hanging and collecting dust.

Here, Walker is exploring another conflict between the poor, uneducated mother and the educated, middle-class daughter. Instead of appreciating her mother’s sacrifices in giving her a better life, Dee/Wangero turns her back on her family and looks down on the very hands that feed her. She turns her back on her immediate ancestors by changing her name to “Wangero” and adapting herself to African custom and culture, which she does not know anything about. The message here is that she does not have to look to Africa to affirm her identity, when she could find it in her own given name and family. In actuality, she distances herself from her ancestors, in turning her back on her mother and Maggie. Mama sees this and does not appreciate it. Though Mama projects Maggie’s feelings of “envy” and “awe” of her sister, it appears that Mama herself possesses similar sentiments. Actually, Mama resents Dee/Wangero treating her, Maggie, and the house like objects and subjects of her research, in her distorted attempt to embrace her humble roots.

Dee’s new interest in her roots stems from her new awareness that aspects of her history can be used as accessories of style and as elements of interior decoration to elevate her in other people’s eyes and to solidify her middle-class status; she can appear more intelligent, more compassionate, more thoughtful, more in touch with her heritage. She has brought Hakim to visit her family in order to use Mama and Maggie and the house she hates and the quilts she didn’t want earlier to show him her humble roots. (Bloom 160)

When she arrives at the house, “Out she peeks next with a Polaroid. She stoops down quickly and lines up picture after picture of me sitting there in front of the house with Maggie cowering behind me. She never takes a shot without making sure the house is included. When a cow comes nibbling around the edge of the yard she snaps it and me and Maggie and the house. Then she puts the Polaroid in the back seat of the car, and comes up and kisses me on the forehead” (Guerin 408). Just as with the quilts, she is treating her family like objects. She is cold, condescending, and distanced from them.

However, Mama does recognize the value of education. She sees education as empowerment. In contrast to her shy and secluded daughter Maggie, Mama sees that education gives Dee/Wangero confidence and courage. It makes her aggressive. She speaks her mind without hesitation and is not afraid of looking people in the eyes when talking to them. This is an admirable quality. Mama cannot imagine herself having such a “quick tongue” and looking at someone in the eye, especially a white man. “Who ever knew a Johnson with a quick tongue? Who can imagine me looking a stranger white man in the eye? It seems to me I have talked to them always with one foot raised in flight, with my head turned in whichever way is farthest from them” (Guerin 406). Mama is strong and courageous when it comes to her household chores and other physical labor, but she realizes her lack of education makes her and Maggie passive with people outside her realm, specifically white people. She admits, “I had never had an education myself. After second grade the school was closed down. Don’t ask me why: in 1927 colored asked fewer questions than they do now” (Guerin 407). Such passive acceptance is what makes a poor person remain poor and miserable. “Dee inspires in Mama a type of awe and fear more suitable to the advent of a goddess than the love one might expect a mother to feel for a returning daughter” (Farrel 180). Hence, Mama does have admiration for Dee/Wangero with her education; however, this, alone, cannot replace a mother¬–daughter bond.

Education and class can be divisive, but the moral lesson of “Everyday Use” is: the poor and uneducated have a voice, too. At the end, Mama’s voice speaks the loudest. Just like Walker’s empathy towards the ordinary Southern black women who are “not famous,” Mama’s compassion for Maggie’s purity and good-heartedness prompts her to snatch the quilts from Dee/Wangero and put them on Maggie’s lap—a statement that an educated person is not the only one with entitlement. Maggie is entitled to the quilts just as much as her sister, because she has a “deepseated understanding of heritage. Most readers agree that when Mama takes the quilts from Dee and gives them to Maggie, she confirms her younger daughter's self-worth: metaphorically, she gives Maggie her voice” (Tuten 125).

Alice Walker wrote “Everyday Use” in 1973. This was a complex time for the Civil Rights Movement, because it was competing with the many factions of Black Power Movements. These other factions, the gun-toting Black Panthers and the nationalist men who were influenced by the ideology of the Nation of Islam, were seen as divisive. They undermined the Civil Rights Movement of nonviolent struggles for racial justice and equality. Unfortunately, many blacks grew impatient and gave up on the nonviolent approach. Many activists, including Walker herself, questioned the right path to take to combat the continued inequality, racism, and violence against African-Americans. Just as in her other essays, short stories, and novels, Walker here uses “her experience in the Movement and the experience of others of her generation to deal with the social, political and philosophical issues raised by the Movement, issues that continue to engage us today” (Hendrickson 111).

In “Everyday Use,” Walker creates two extreme characters—one who is aggressive and one who is passive—to demonstrate an ideological clash and a moral lesson. After weighing all options, at the end, she chose the middle path—the practice of nonviolence, which was influenced by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and which characterized the Civil Rights Movement. On the one hand, violence would only beget violence; on the other, passivity would only lead to a life of toil. One must not be extreme in one or the other of these responses. As if having an epiphany, Mama speaks up by giving the quilts to the more deserving daughter and in turns gives her a voice. The middle path is the way, and Mama represents this middle path.

Lastly, Walker projects herself into all three characters of “Everyday Use”: Mama, Dee, and Maggie. Mama is a poor and uneducated black woman who lives in the South. Her legacy is quilting. Walker was poor and had lived in the South. She also practices the art of quilting, in a literary sense as well. Mama and Alice Walker are both quilters, and they are both creators.

Walker depicts herself also in Dee, the woman who breaks away from ignorance and poverty. Unfortunately, her newfound education puts a strain on her relationship with her family, just like what happened between Walker and her father.

Walker’s relationship with her father became strained as she grew into adolescence and showed a proclivity for intellectual pursuits. Although her father was an intelligent man, his educational opportunities had been limited, and he feared that education would place barriers between him and his children. When Walker left her home for Spelman College in Atlanta, her relationship with her father effectively ended, but over time she has re-evaluated the relationship and has resolved many of her conflicted emotions toward this parent. (Johnson 1)

“Everyday Use” shows that no matter how educated you are, you should embrace your humble beginning by actively participating in the community and in your own family’s creativity. Education should not be a cause of divisiveness. It should enlighten a person to understand others better.

Walker also identifies with Maggie, who is ashamed of her “burn scar down her arms and legs.” She can identify with this physical scar. As a young girl one of her brothers accidentally shot her in the eye with a BB gun. The scar left her feeling “ugly” and “ashamed.” It destroyed her self-confidence. She turned into a completely different person then when she was a little girl. She stopped looking up, just like the character of Maggie. She always felt self-conscious about her scar.

These conflicts over interpretation of ancestry and heritage, class differences, and ownership of the quilts are central to identity. It is ironic that Mama sounds more educated and well-rounded while Dee, the learned and sophisticated daughter, appears clueless. It is as if, in her attempt to value the poor, unknown African-American women, Walker is making Mama more articulate and profoundly knowledgeable than the educated daughter.

WORKS CITED

Bloom, Harold. Alice Walker. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2007. Print.

Cowart, David. "Heritage and deracination in Walker's `Everyday Use.'" Studies in Short Fiction 33.2 (1996): 171. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 22 Oct. 2011.

Farrell, Susan. "Fight vs. Flight: A Re-evaluation of Dee in Alice Walker's “Everyday Use”." Studies in Short Fiction 35.2 (1998): 179. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 22 Oct. 2011.

Freeman, Roland L. "Quilting a Legacy." New Crisis (15591603) 106.4 (1999): 70. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 24 Oct. 2011.

Guerin, Wilfred L. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. Print.

Hendrickson, Roberta M. Remembering the Dream: Alice Walker, Meridian and the Civil Rights Movement. MELUS , Vol. 24, No. 3, Varieties of Ethnic Criticism (Autumn, 1999), pp. 111-128
Published by: The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468042

Johnson, Yvonne, “Alice Walker”. The Literary Encyclopedia. First Published 29 February 2004
[http://litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4945,accessed 30 October 2011.]

Tuten, Nancy. "Alice Walker's Everyday Use." Explicator 51.2 (1993): 125. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 22 Oct. 2011.

Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose. Orlando: Harcourt, 2003. Print.

Our language is alive and well

2011-08-28T10:32:00.004-04:00

THURSDAY, 25 AUGUST 2011 15:00 SAMBATH MEAS

“Teh. Khnhom ott hoab teh. Khnhom ott khlean. Arkoun yeay,” I responded to my childhood friend’s grandmother. The woman stood aghast at the sight of me, an 11-year-old Khmer girl. I scoured the stored information in my brain to locate the cultural faux pas that I had committed.

How could she be offended by my response: “No. I’m not eating. I’m not hungry”? I did say “Thank you.” I couldn’t understand why she reacted so strongly.

"Hoab is a Khmer Rouge word!” she lashed out at me.

Granted that the Khmer Rouge was a demonic regime, I couldn’t understand how she could be so offended by this simple Khmer word: hoab (eat). Her look of horror and disgust remained in the back of my mind, and it wasn’t until I reached adulthood that it became apparent to me.

Like many Cambodians of Chinese descent, especially city dwellers who weren’t immersed in, or assimilated into, Khmer culture, my friend’s grandmother was deeply ignorant of the common Khmer language.

Tragically, these outsiders only came into contact with the everyday language after the murderous Khmer Rouge forced them out of the cities and dumped them in the countryside. They were threatened with torture and death if they were found using city words or demonstrating a city mentality, attitude or culture.

This is why I find Ms Theary Seng’s opinion about the Khmer language, which was published in The Phnom Penh Post on August 16, 2011, appalling and shameful. She reminds me of that grandmother; she probably doesn’t even know that she is out of touch and wrong about it until this day.

With the majority of city people using incorrect grammar, or misspelling, mispronouncing and misusing Khmer words (not to mention speaking the language in a lazy, slurry, and foreign accent), she is wrong to the people who actually speak it correctly.

Based on her “general observations”, she finds the following words “crude”, “earthy” and “offensive”: aign (it should be anhn); haign (it should be a-heing or ah-heing); veer (it should be vea); and phoeum. There is nothing crude, rude, impolite or dehumanizing about them.

Anhn (I/me), a-heing (you), vea (he/she/it, depending on the subject) and phoeum (pregnant) are familiar and common words. The beauty of the Khmer language is that we have formal and informal words to address ourselves, religious and political figures, the royal family, older and younger individuals and elitists.

For those of us who are familiar with each other, there are down-to-earth, neutral and intimate words, such as anhn, a-heing, vea and phoeum. They connect us together. To remove these words is to crush and destroy the Khmer spirit of closeness. Of course, you would have to be close friends, family members or relatives to use them. They are familiar words for the same class and the same age groups. Therefore, a younger person should not use anhn, a-heing and vea towards elders.

The irony is that the Khmer Rouge forced people to stop using city and elitist words. Now, as the “genocide activist” or “the daughter of the killing fields”, as Ms Seng calls herself, she is barring us from using common Khmer words, the language of our ancestors. It is similar to the situation when the UNTAC tried to ban, and even punish us, for using the word Yuon for “Vietnamese”. The cycle of ignorance continues.

Secondly, the Khmer written language already has a strong foundation: grammar (veyeakar), spelling (akharavirouth) and the art of writing (aksar selb) etc. There is no limitation to being creative.

Everything is there.

We have 33 consonants (pyunhchanak), 23 vowels (srak), 16 complete or independent vowels (srak penhtour) and 18 diacritics (vannakyuth or sanha samkual). Khmer has the longest alphabet and can make a vast variety of sounds. All you have to do is learn these things well, be creative and build from there. Being poorly informed of the language doesn’t mean that the language is dying.

In a nutshell, Ms Seng is a social and political activist. Her job is to raise awareness and help people learn how to help themselves. In order for her to do so effectively and efficiently, she must understand and possess the mentality of Khmer natives and our sophisticated language.

The saddest part about all of this is that the indigenous Khmers are less active in Cambodian society. They are the ones who know our language best.

Sambath Meas,
Chicago, Illinois

THE KHMER LANGUAGE IS ALIVE AND WELL; THE BRAIN IS IN CRISIS

2011-08-23T20:41:00.004-04:00

The artwork is meant to be sarcastic. It represents the world in which the character lives, even though it looks wrong to everyone else.

A nice review from a colleague

2011-08-16T21:18:00.005-04:00

Here is a nice compliment from a colleague who said that he doesn't normally read and that his mind wanders when he does. It is so awesome of him to order my book, read it, and actually finish it. The icing on the cake is, he genuinely likes it. Awww. Thanks so much, Paul.

On 08/15/11 7:50 AM, Paul Astras wrote:
--------------------
Ok, I finished your book this morning! Excellent book, "Sros." Immortal is an understatement. Not only can I barely believe that your immediate family all survived, but that you were able to always reunite with each other when split up, and many times with extended family, too.

Wow, that must have taken a long time for you to get that information second-hand from your parents, and to do your own personal research.

Great job, and my deepest sympathy to all family and other Khmers who didn't make it.

"You Can Keep Your Designated Quiet Cars!"

2011-07-27T19:12:00.055-04:00

Remember The Cat That Hated People, a 1948 cartoon directed by Tex Avery? The premise is: he can't stand people and chooses to relocate to the moon. There, he finds characters that make him realize people aren't so bad after all. Just like that Cat, I had to learn the hard way.

"People are no darn good. I hate people," said the Cat.

I hated people -- inconsiderate people.

They swirled from the back of the line and cut in front you as the train pulled in.

They flipped over another seat to face them, so they could put up their stinking feet and their belongings. It didn't matter that the conductor announced, "Please don't put your feet on the seat or the rail." It didn't matter if other people were looking for a place to sit.

They blasted their songs or video clips from their cell phone, as if they were sitting in the living room of their house. And if they had headphones, they turned the volume up so high that their music spilled out.

They talked loudly and laughed thunderously. What ever happened to using their "inside voice"?

They cackled into their smart phone about how they were at the top of their game; how they closed the biggest deal of their life; or how they screwed other people over. Admonished looks would only make them scream and laugh louder.

They made me want to move to one of the quiet cars. So I did. Ahh. This is more like it. I sat back, relaxed, and read my slush pile.

A young man made his way to the upper level of the train. He sat behind a dark haired woman, probably in her sixties, with a bob haircut and reading glasses. He spoke softly into his earpiece. The woman turned around and gave him the dirtiest look. He kept on talking. She turned around again to tell him, "This is a quiet car."

"Really?" he responded, sarcastically. He said to the person on the other end that he needed to get off the phone, because some old lady told him he was in a quiet car. The woman turned around to give him another dirty look. He finally hung up, but didn't sit for too long. He descended the stairs and walked to the back car.

Moments later, a pretty, young brunette woman with an alabaster skin ascended the stairs with a 5 month baby in tow and sat in the seat in front of the old lady. The cute baby had bronze skin and curly brown hair. What an adorable boy! He reached out to grab his mother's cell phone. She pulled it away from him. He let out a brief cry. Other passengers stirred. Just then the conductor passed by. "Keep it down. This is a quiet car," he looked up and admonished her.

"What the f--- do you suggest I do?" said the young mother, in a soft voice. She stood up and carried her baby down the stairs, uttering, "This is the second f---ing car I'm in. I can't help it if he cries."

"You can get off this train," someone said, vindictively. I couldn't tell if it was the young woman downstairs who was scrolling her iPhone or the old lady from the upper level.

The young mother was right. He was just a baby. How could they be so callous?

I can appreciate the peace and tranquility, but not at the expense of an innocent child. So what if he randomly cries? Kids do that.

How could we chide this young mother and her baby? We were supposed to be mature adults and good role models. How could we act this way? Shame surged inside of me.

When I walked down the stairs, to get off at my stop, I saw the mother, with her child on her lap, sitting on the stair of the vestibule. I wanted to apologize to her, but I just stood there like a dummy. A tall and handsome man with a briefcase, standing in the back of me, said to her, "Miss, forget what that conductor said. Your baby doesn't bother me at all." She flashed him a sweet smile and said, "Thank you." Why couldn't I say all these comforting things to her? Why couldn't I let her know that we weren't all heartless?

That's alright. You can keep your designated quiet cars. I wanted to shout at them.

The next day I was back with the rest of the freaks, in the middle car, and loving it. I belong here.

Apparently, I can tolerate inconsiderate people more than callous people. If that even makes sense.

SAMLOR KORKO (Stirred Soup)

2011-07-19T21:20:00.060-04:00

My parents are great cooks. Here is one of my favorite Khmer dishes that I would like to share with you. Actually, they just made this last week and I forgot to take some pictures. When they get around to making it again, I will definitely be ready with my camera. For now I hope you can follow these instructions.

Samlor Korko for three? Here is one of my parents' recipes.

INGREDIENTS

Meat (Pick your choice of cat fish, chicken or pork. If you pick catfish, you can combine it with pork fat that has pink flesh on it):
1 table spoon of prahok (fish paste, remove all bones)
1 skinless, boneless chicken breast and cut into cubes
or Catfish and pork fat with some meat on it (according to desire)
or Pork (according to desire)

Remember, prahok and fish sauce are salty (mind your salt intake)

Kroeung (herb paste):
1 fingertop of Romiet (Turmeric)
1 slice of Rumdeng (Galangal)
3 Sleuk Kroch Soeurch (Kaffir lime leaves)
2 glovers of Khtoeum (Garlic)
1 diagonally sliced Derm Sleuk Kreiy (Stalk of lemongrass)
2 tablespoons of ankor ling (long-grain rice that had been sauteed dry)
1 table spoon of fish sauce (if you don't like it, you can use salt; however, it won't taste as good)

Vegetables:
1/2 pound of grazed Lahong (Green Papaya)
1 peeled and cut Trop Veng or Trop Kdar Ko (Long purple Eggplant)
3 Trop Srouy that are cut into four pieces each (Khmer eggplant)
1/2 pound of cut Lpoeu (Kabocha)
1/2 pound of cut Sondaek Kuor (String beans)
5 oz of baby spinach (thoroughly cleaned) since it is hard to find Sleuk Bas (Ivy-Gourd) in the states
1/2 cup of sauté pea-eggplants (Trop Puth Nhorng)

DIRECTIONS

1. Here's how you make ankor ling. Take 2 tablespoons of uncooked-rice and stir it in a hot iron-clad pan until it is crispy, golden brown, and then put it in the blender with the rest of the herbs listed under "Kroeung." Pulsate them until they are paste-like. In Cambodia, people use mortar and pestle to pounce until these herbs turn into paste.

2. Heat your pot. Put in your prahok, paste, and meat. Stir until the meat is cooked. Put in one tablespoon of fish sauce. Stir. Pour in four cups and a half of hot water. Stir. If the water evaporates, pour in some more.

3. Make sure the meat is well cooked to your liking and put in all of the vegetables, except for the baby spinach. Save that for last. Stir. Finally, put in your spinach and 3 or 4 chili peppers, if you like it spicy. Stir. Taste your soup. If it needs more fish sauce, add accordingly. After three minutes of putting in the spinach, turn off the stove. Do your final stir and it's ready to be served with steamed Jasmine rice.

Obviously, the reason why it is called stirred soup is because you're constantly stirring. Enjoy.

Prahok image is courtesy of Ediblyasian.com

Kroeung

Romiet image is courtesy of Cambodia-Cooking-Class.com

Rumdeng image is courtesy of Cambodia-Cooking-Class.com

Sleuk Kroch Soeurch is courtesy of Cambodia-Cooking-Class.com

Derm Sleuk Kreiy image is courtesy of foodsubs.com

Vegetables

Papaya image is courtesy of lavidalocavore.org

Trop Veng image is courtesy of SatreyKhmerOnline.com

Trop Srouy image is courtesy of SatreyKhmerOnline.com

Lpoeu image is courtesy of SatreyKhmerOnline.com

Sleuk Bas image is courtesy of SatreyKhmerOnline.com

Trop Puth Nhorng (Pea-like eggplant) image ediblyasian.com

ICJ's Order re Cambodia vs. Thailand

2011-07-18T21:39:00.039-04:00

This order is fair. Thank you to all judges of the ICJ. Peace and harmony for Khmers and Thais, always. Granted that there are ignorant and belligerent people in Thailand and Cambodia who ascribe to the tough-mindedness and saving-face mantra, this is a fair order; especially for those of us who want peace and harmony. Sadly, there are already bullies ignoring the decision, just like they ignored the verdict on June 15, 1962. If there is justice, like the decisions of June 15, 1962 and July 18, 2011, peace and harmony will prevail.

Article from the The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/world/asia/19temple.html)

U.N. Court Orders Troops From Temple on Thai-Cambodian Border

By THOMAS FULLER

Published: July 18, 2011

BANGKOK — The top judicial body of the United Nations on Monday sought to defuse tensions at a Southeast Asian flash point, ordering Cambodia and Thailand to withdraw troops from a disputed temple and establishing a demilitarized zone along their mountainous border.

The two countries have fought each other numerous times in recent years near Preah Vihear, an ancient hilltop temple that stirs nationalist sentiments in both countries.

The court order to “immediately withdraw” military personnel from around the temple was an international legal obligation “with which both Parties were required to comply,” according to a statement released by the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Judges at the United Nations court ruled, 11 to 5, in favor of the withdrawal and established a demilitarized zone approximately 4.5 miles by 2.5 miles.

Thailand’s acting foreign minister, Kasit Piromya, told reporters in The Hague that the Thai government would comply with the order. “We are satisfied that the withdrawal of troops is applicable to both Cambodia and Thailand,” he said, according to the Reuters news agency.

Cambodia’s foreign minister, Hor Namhong, praised the decision, Reuters reported. “This map means there will be a permanent cease-fire,” he said. “It will be tantamount to the cessation of aggression of Thailand against Cambodia.”

Despite the ruling, a resolution to the conflict still seems far off.

The long-running border dispute has been poisoned by domestic politics in both Thailand and Cambodia. One political faction in Thailand accused the other of selling out to Cambodia, a historical rival.

Yet protests by Thai nationalists failed to gain traction and petered out earlier this month. And Suwit Khunkitti, a Thai government minister who had based a recent election campaign on Thailand’s rights to the temple, failed to win a seat in the July 3 election.

Mr. Suwit, the acting minister for natural resources and the environment, said Monday that he disagreed with the verdict and that Thailand did not “have to follow it if it is a violation of the country’s sovereignty.”

The court on Monday also said it would pursue a “request for interpretation” on a previous judgment over the crucial question of who controls the temple and, possibly, the surrounding area. In the meantime, the court said, observers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations should be allowed into the demilitarized zone.

Thailand’s July 3 election has held out hope for a détente between the two countries. The victory of the party allied to Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister, were welcomed by the Cambodian leader, Hun Sen, who once hired Mr. Thaksin as his economic adviser. But that election result has yet to be confirmed by Thailand’s election commission and is being challenged in the courts.

The dispute over the temple has its roots in the period when French colonizers controlled what is modern-day Cambodia. In the early 1900s, French surveyors traced the border line along the watershed of the Dangrek mountain range, but deviated from the watershed at Preah Vihear, placing the temple inside Cambodia. It was an awkward demarcation because of the temple’s location on a bluff more easily accessed from Thailand.

But Thailand’s government made no protest at the time and used the French maps as their own, according to a judgment by the International Court of Justice in 1962. That judgment established that the temple should be inside Cambodian territory. But the ruling did not address the sovereignty of the land surrounding the temple, which is the subject of the ongoing dispute.

Conquest and Lawlessness

2011-06-18T15:49:00.030-04:00

What would you do when your own government takes away your land, which is your only source of self-preservation, to give to owners of companies from China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore, and Korea? They don't even compensate you. Instead, they push you out of your own properties with the reinforcements of policemen and soldiers (your fellow Khmers), causing you to defend yourselves against each other. The government (with PM Hun Sen as the indigenous face) and foreign faced okgnas have soldiers who are armed with guns and batons while you only have sticks, stones, axes, knives, and seething rage. These opportunists are probably sitting in their comfortable mansions, puffing their cigars and laughing at your tragedy.

Now the government puts out an arrest warrant on you, for daring to protest and voice the gross violation and malfeasance against you. How would you feel?

The government is supposed to uphold the law and protect your rights and dignity, but they and foreigners come and rob you. They are killing you mentally, emotionally, and physically. Who do you turn to for help? Where is the justice? Where is your government? What is the point of having a government when it is there to serve and protect those with deep pockets? In that case, why build a civilization? Why have Buddhism as a religion when greed, corruption, and violence run wild in the country?

When the government needs you for war, they come to you and call upon you to serve. The Khmer population was manipulated to help those handful of callous leaders to win seats and revolutions. Now that they have their power, they degrade and kill you. Isn't it time that the Khmer population, including soldiers and policemen, come together and do something for themselves and their nation? Protect your rights, liberty, and your pursuit of happiness; your commonwealths or shared interests.

Since the mass population is still ignorant, we must educate them to avoid another Khmer Rouge's tragedy.

Khmer must unite and protect each other.

IMAGE IS EVERYTHING

2011-06-05T23:29:00.017-04:00

Map from the New World Encyclopedia

Bordered to the west by the sea, to the north by Thailand and Laos, to the east and the south by Vietnam, Cambodia is far smaller today than it was during its golden age, between the 10th and the 13th century, when Angkor was the capital of the most powerful and opulent empire in Southeast Asia.
--Khmer: The Lost Empire of Cambodia by Thierry Zéphir

The country plunged into darkness when the newly arrived tribes from Southern China relentlessly overwhelmed and engulfed the area. Don’t expect people like Jean-François Baré and Joel Brinkley to sympathize. To them, there’s no one to blame but the Khmers themselves.

Regrettably, today’s Cambodia (a bastardized name) is synonymous with the Khmer Rouge and the Killing Fields. Some young Cambodians are sick to death, AS THEY SHOULD BE, of the country’s stigmatization: Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Duch, Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge, and the Killing Fields. They want the country to be known for something more--something positive. Hallelujah! The younger generation does have a conscience.

Even the so-called government of Cambodia would like to “dig a hole and bury the past,” to use Samdech Hun Sen’s idiom.

The ministry of tourism tries to revamp the country’s image by proudly introduces Cambodia as the Kingdom of Wonder, “a rising star.” It took out a nine-minute video ad, showing Khmer smiley faces, festivities, and scenic sites, while an uplifting and melodic song plays in the background, enticing potential tourists to visit this enchanting place.

A young man named Santel Phin, who claims his blog about Cambodia (http://khmerbird.com) ranks no. 1, expresses his disappointment in those who spew negativities on Cambodian people and country. He devotes his time and energy to promoting the opposite.

It’s fantastic; it’s great to see someone who is so passionate about his homeland that he’s willing to do something about it. It’s about time!

However, is it beneficial to mask a decomposed odor with scented flowers?

Let’s take this willingness or action a step further. If we want the outside world to cast a shining light on us, shouldn’t we do something about these problems that rip the people and country apart? Aren’t these the reasons why outsiders view and treat us with contempt in the first place?

Our agenda should be, change our destructive behavior and learn how to use reason or logic that is beneficial to Khmer people as a whole. In a nutshell, we should all aspire to be Khmer Chet Chea, NOT Khmer Chet Kmao.

In order for Khmers or “Cambodians” to rise out of this hellhole, all of us should take some serious actions – that is, we must all take our education seriously and study diligently.

Khmer elders often joke and deride a certain prince for having a wit of a fool when it comes to education. “The purpose of going to school is to become king,” this prince supposedly said or thought. “Why should I go to school when I am heir to the throne?”

Corruption, Cronyism and Nepotism (CCN) are our greatest vices and downfall. They have been destroying Cambodian people and country for four decades.

For instance, when the wind of change swept through Cambodia in the 1970s, the country was not equipped to handle it. The United States had pumped the Lon Nol’s regime with large sum of money and weapons, but it’s soldiers (lacked hardcore training and cheated out of their salary by higher officials or their superiors) were no match for the more disciplined, flip-flop-black-pajama-krama-wearing and AK-47-toting Khmer Rouge soldiers.

Tragically, under the Democratic Kampuchea, the educated and the cream of Khmer crops were exterminated like vermin, leaving ignorant people and children to rule and fend for the country. An estimated 1.7 million lives were lost and the country has yet to fully recover. Yes, the high-rise buildings and the villas may have grown like weeds, of course, at the expense of the poor and defenseless citizens, but the country is still way behind neighboring countries when it comes to education, infrastructure, health, job and decent income for the working population.

Why are we recovering at the speed of a turtle? Is it CCN or is it our small mindedness for keeping other Khmers down? Either way, it has delayed the country from moving forward. A more educated population makes the country stronger and our livelihood longer. And maybe, just maybe, our motherland wouldn’t be a puppet to more powerful countries.

Here is what bribery in school or lack of real education has produced:

• Dumb teachers and students: As manifested on televisions and the Internet social forums, most Cambodians can’t even speak, read, or write grammatically correct Khmer; let alone English. People speak, especially those in Phnom Penh, gibberish. That is not a language; that’s a display of ignorance.

If you can’t even master the Khmer language, then how are you supposed to inform the outside world about true Khmer history, politics, tradition, culture, and religion? Cambodia’s Curse is a perfect example.

Apparently, someone told Joel Brinkley to govern (soy reach) in Khmer literally means “to eat the Kingdom.” Mr. Brinkley is not going to blame himself for this stupid mistake. He’s going to point his finger directly at that Cambodian person for misinterpreting the word. Heck, he’s not the one who speaks Khmer. Regardless, someone must be really stupid that he or she couldn’t even open a dictionary.

In another example, no disrespect to Mrs. Mu Sochu, but she told westerners that PM Hun Sen harassed her by calling her “cheung klang.” She interpreted it to mean “strong leg.” She claimed it has a sexual overtone. Actually, cheung klang is an informal way of saying someone is either brave or well-known or infamously known for something. The word "cheung," as explained to me, refers to a group or a part of something. For example, Troop Cheung Teuk means Marine or Troop Cheung Damrey means Elaphant Troop. If you want to refer to a person or group as bad, it is called cheung khoch. More importantly, the word cannot be used in a sexual content. It doesn't have that association. Here is another example. I was waiting for a boat to go to Tragnel, and the owner told me either I could go this cheung (trip) or the next cheung (trip). Again, all it takes is for someone to crack open a dictionary. But then again, if a person doesn’t have common sense or a good grasp of the language they speak, a dictionary will not do him or her any good.

Don’t even get me started about someone supposedly told Joel Brinkley that in Khmer culture, men beat up women. Oh my lord! “Theravadist monks advised the people to be content with the status quo, and having no other option, they complied,” wrote Mr. Brinkley about Buddhism. In the future, I will blog about Theravada Buddhism and Chbab Srey and Chbab Pros (Code of Conduct for Women and Code of Conduct for Men), which Mr. Brinkley incorrectly used to justify his negative views about Khmers. It will require a bit of research and interviews.

• Ignorant attitude and behavior: An uneducated person, without the proper guidance from parents and teachers, will treat other fellow Khmers with hatred, animosity, and hostility. For instance, a person complained on his facebook that some “so-called Khmers” didn't like his food and restaurant. He received outpouring supports from his friends. They went something like this: “I hate Khmers. Thank goodness, I don’t live near them.” Of all the outpouring supports, only one person reasonably told him to accept good and bad criticisms. If the criticism is reasonable, work harder to improve your food, restaurant, and services. If the criticism is unreasonable, then ignore it. Also, I find it hilarious when people interpret criticism as a form of jealousy of their beauty and success. Possibly, in the case of unreasonable ones.

• Perpetual Ignorance

• Inferiority

Here is what CCN has produced:

• Vicious, destructive, and a backward society

• Inferior and psychopathic people. Hence, the outside world will treat Cambodian government and people with hatred and
hostility

• Hatred and mistrust of each other

• Traitors

The world operates like a gang. The winning aggressor (against other countries) is respected, feared, and put on a pedestal. It gets away with anything. Vietnam has proven itself, twice, against France and the United States. No one bothers to condemn the country for its human rights violations against the ethnic minorities and Buddhist monks. Thailand has never been colonized and it has been trained and armed to the teeth by the United States and supported by Great Britain. The international community refuses to condemn the country for its human rights abuses against refugees and minorities. With its big-budgeted arm force, sophisticated weapons and fighter jets, it continues to bully Cambodia. As Brinkley reminds us, who cares about this “irrelevant” country? Moreover, except for Michael Hayes of the Phnom Penh Post, no one dares (journalists as well as the UN) to admonish Thailand for disrespecting the decision of the ICJ regarding Preah Vihear.

As we can see, no one respects a tiny and powerless country where its government hunts and guts its political opponents. No one respects a government that tortures, douses acid, shoots, hacks, seizes lands without proper compensation and lets outsiders abuse its own people. Lastly, no one respects barbaric or docile people either. Like the teaching of Lord Buddha, “Walk the middle path.”

Which country doesn’t have the same problems as Cambodia? Fortunately for other countries, their issues are not blatant and rampant. Criminals (politicians or not), if found guilty in the court of law, will be jailed and fined.

If we want others to cast a positive light on us, then we must aspire to be good people, skilled linguists, scientists, lawyers, doctors, astronomers, engineers, historians, journalists, novelists, musicians, entrepreneurs, good leaders, etc.

Don’t be a smorgasbord of crap. If you’re going to learn multiple languages, make sure you speak and write them fluently. You can’t claim you speak English when this is how you communicate: “u,” “ur,” or “hih a u?”

A well-educated society and economically independent and powerful country will be revered. Please be reasonable and patient with each other. And remember, image is everything.

A Caricature Portrait of My Family

2011-06-04T23:58:00.007-04:00

"Mom. Dad."

"What is it?" asked my father.

"Say I‘m three years old. We live in Cambodia. Time is tough. You and mom are destitute, hungry, and desperate. Would you force me to beg on the street or sale me to a human trafficker?"

"What?" asked my mother.

"What story are you reading now?" asked my father.

"Many, actually, but that’s not the point. Would you force me to beg people for money or sale me to god-knows-who?"

"What kind of question is that? No time was tougher and more desperate than when we lived under the Khmer Rouge. How could you ask that kind of question? I snuck out, bartered, and stole from the organization, willing to die to provide for you and your mom. You would cry when you see the last few pieces of food. Your mother and I would refrain from eating so you'd have enough to eat. I dodged bombs and bullets to rescue you and your mother. I slept with a long blade knife, at the ready, should they [the Khmer Rouge] come for us. In Khoa I Dang I snuck out of the refugee camp and meandered through the village to find more food for you; instead, I got my ass kicked by Thai soldiers. Whenever, wherever, I’ll always find a way to protect and provide for my family."

"Awww. That's touching, Dad," I said, restraining my amusement. I knew it couldn’t possibly be easy for him to say all that, knowing Asian parents, especially him, don’t normally express sentiment and love to their children.

My father is right. He and my mother have always been protective and nurturing parents. They work hard, make sacrifices, and put their children first. And now they put their grandchildren first.

From the moment of conception, we are helpless and vulnerable being; therefore, who you are born into could inspire or damage you.

My parents are not perfect. They didn’t necessarily know what was best for my younger sister and me. They couldn’t give us wealth and luxury, but they did their best to put a roof over our heads, give us clean clothes, keep us warm at night, and feed us.

After having read about those who force their children to beg for a living, sale them to human traffickers, rape them, leave them in garbage dumpsters, and literally drive them into rivers, I know my mother and father are GREAT PARENTS!

--------------------------------------

My Review of Cambodia's Curse by Joel Brinkley

2011-05-22T17:48:00.013-04:00

Cambodia’s Blessed
by
Sambath Meas

In his foreword to Marie Alexandrine Martin’s Cambodia: A Shattered Society, Jean-François Baré wrote, “At the head of the list of vanquished, I would obviously be inclined, as would Marie Martin, to place the Khmer people, a martyred people. But the Khmer people also produced the Pol Pots, the Ieng Sarys, the Khieu Samphans, the barely adolescent yothea who, under their leaders’ directions, used methodical and murderous obstinacy in applying Bertolt Brecht’s sorrowful aphorism: ‘If something about a country is wrong, you have to change the people and choose another one’ –this same Khmer people, imbued among other interacting factors with a concept of hierarchy (neak chuo, knowing one’s place) that worked both to help make Cambodia so peaceful and to make the Khmer revolution so terrible when ‘the children were in power,’ through an astonishing and terrible structural reversal.”

So forget about the tribes (whose countries are now called Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam) that migrated from their ancestral home in southern China to Southeast Asia and engulfed the lands of Mon, Khmer, and Malay. Forget about Thailand and Vietnam tug-of-war for supremacy in this region, using Cambodia as a rope, the French ironclad colonization, the American bombing, or Vietnam and China’s influences. Disregard the fact that the Khmer Rouge leaders consisted of ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese and studied Marxism in Paris, France. What Jean-François Baré is driving at in his foreword is, there’s no one to blame for Cambodia’s weakness and demise but the Khmers themselves.

No one revels in this sentiment more than Joel Brinkley. He devotes his entire book to show how the Khmer leaders (psychopathic, autocratic, and kleptocratic) and people (ignorant, stupid, lazy, foolish and gullible) are a hopeless case and therefore, can’t be saved. Basically, the donors should not give Cambodia’s government any more money and should pack up and go home.

In fact, the premise of Cambodia’s Curse is to debunk those who attributed the American bombing to the rise of the Khmer Rouge regime, which ultimately killed almost two millions of its own people and destroyed its entire nation.

Brinkley reflected, “In this climate William Shawcross, a British journalist, wrote his seminal book, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia. It concluded that the American bombing of Cambodia, intended to destroy Vietcong sanctuaries there, drove the peasantry to the Khmer Rouge and ensured their victory. The liberal media (and I was a card-carrying member; I read and admired his book while flying to Cambodia in 1979) heaped adulation on Shawcross.”

Brinkley has come to a realization that “now, thirty years later, with passions cooled, it is quite clear that his conclusion was wrong.”

In this tragedy, he points his finger directly at King Grandfather Norodom Sihanouk for the rise of the Khmer Rouge. He retorts King Grandfather acquiesced to the bombing, which began a year before the Lon Nol coup; and thereafter, under the mediation of China, called out, via the radio, to the peasants to join the Khmer Rouge to fight the corrupt Lon Nol regime. Brinkley claims that majority of Khmers, unlike their neighbors, couldn’t read nor write, still lived primitive lives since ancient time, and owned no televisions or radios. Therefore, how could they know about the King’s call to join the revolution? Secondly, he misses or ignores the reports about King Grandfather’s outrage over the bombing that indiscriminately killed his people, and even severed ties with the United States due to this issue. Plus, when he was in power he diminished the communist rebels.

Moreover, Brinkley accuses King Grandfather of spending a decade “cultivating” the Chinese leadership, Mao Tse-tung and Zhou Enlai, since the late 1950s. “They grew to be Sihanouk admirers and friends—at a time when China had very few friends. Mao gave Sihanouk a magnificent mansion on Anti-Imperialist Street in Beijing and feted him every time he came to town—which was often.” Again, Brinkley must be wearing blinders. Didn’t Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger try to “cultivate” their own long-term vision or relationship with China? Dr. Kissinger even wrote a book about it called On China.

King Grandfather did turn to western leaders for help but to no avail. Their disparagement and cold-shoulder pushed him to the only country that was receptive.

… like every American official then, Rostow regarded Cambodia as an irrelevant little country.

As representative Tip O’Neill said during the floor debate, “Cambodia is not worth the life of one American flier.”

Given such attitude, not that China had Cambodian’s interests at heart, who and where could Brinkley possibly expect the King of Cambodia to turn to for help? He doesn’t even mention Mr. Nixon and Dr. Kissinger’s contempt for this “insignificant” ruler of this “irrelevant” country.

Crediting the American bombing for delaying “the Khmer Rouge’s ultimate victory,” he refers to Marshall Lon Nol as “a different animal with different motivations.” He blames him for giving “the Americans carte blanche to bomb wherever they pleased,” citing his love for the U. S. dollars more than the love for his own people. “The Lon Nol government supported a large expansion of the target area for American bombers more or less in exchange for cash. The U. S. Embassy in Phnom Penh wasn’t interested in the victims. And among the other Westerners in town, undoubtedly some of them agreed with Gen. William Westmoreland, the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. ‘The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does a Westerner,’ he said in 1974. ‘Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient.’”

This is to say that Khmers don’t even value each other’s life, so why should Westerners?

To support his argument that Khmers have no one to blame but themselves, in accordance with the views of Cambodia’s biased neighbors, journalists, and chroniclers before him, Brinkley points to the barbaric nature of Khmer people, which he says has not changed since ancient time. However, he doesn’t have to reach far back into history to show such examples.

Whether out of guilt, pity, or true sympathy, the United Nations spent three billion dollars to give Khmer people a fresh start, to bring peace and democracy to Cambodia, only to be undermined by the Cambodian’s leaders, especially Prime Minister Hun Sen and Prince Norodom Ranariddh themselves. Brinkley writes, “Cambodia’s leaders, all of them, were plotting, scheming, bribing, and backstabbing to come out on top, as if the election had never taken place.”

Even the elitist and United States’ golden boy, Sam Rainsy, who only looks to score political points, loses touch with the common folks and his own party members. Moreover, Brinkley holds Mr. Rainsy accountable for sabotaging the FBI’s investigation of the 1997 grenade attack on demonstrators, which was only inquired into because an American official was hurt. Mr. Rainsy is now seen as nothing more than a whiner or a complainer.

Currently, only one party, Hun Sen’s CPP, rules Cambodia, killing, exploiting, and destroying its own people and country for its own gain. Officials sell titles, positions, forests, and lands to the highest bidders and foreign companies while they dehumanize and truck their own people out of their homes and lands. The country is corrupt from top to bottom. The bigger guys get the bigger piece of the pie while the police and military officers and teachers get the smaller piece. The peasants are the victims in all of this. They get squeezed from every direction. They have no one to turn to, because the judicial branch of government is not independent and it’s corrupt, just like all public and private sectors in the country.

CPP’s motto is, at least they don’t kill people in massive numbers as Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. They like to think that Cambodia only has one choice: pick the lesser of the two evils.

All in all, Brinkley finds Khmers as unreasonable, stubborn, and uncompromising people. In a debate or argument, instead of agreeing to disagree, the loser gets defensive and turns to hostility and violence, as a way of “saving face.” In accordance to studies done by Raoul-Marc Jennar, a Belgian who worked for the United Nations in Cambodia, Brinkley concludes that, “killing was an automatic tactic for eliminating differences of opinion.” Therefore, political opponents are threatened, stabbed, hacked, mutilated, and killed. Servants or subordinates are abused, killed, or tortured to death, as the case of colonel Ou Bunthan, who accused his employee, Leang Saroeun, of stealing from him without reason or proof, poured gasoline on his victim and set him on fire, alive. The corrupt system in Cambodia caused the doctor to violate his oath (possibly there is no such thing as a doctor’s oath in Cambodia, not these days anyways) by refusing to treat this tragic victim, because the wife didn’t have money to pay him. Heartbreakingly, the charred man died at home, in unimaginable physical and mental pains, as his poor and distressed wife attended to him.

Given the situation they’re in, Brinkley is also harsh on the Khmer people for not rising up and for enduring such misery. Considering that over fifty percent of the population is under twenty-five, they would rise against such oppression. However, he sees that they inherited complacency and fear of authorities from their parents. According to Brinkley, Khmers don’t trust each other. They lack unity and want to be left alone. Eighty percent of them are illiterate.

Khmer people are supposed to be protected and served by their government, but instead, they are abused and killed with impunity by said administration. Peace and democracy will not work in Cambodia, because psychopaths, suffering no consequences of their evil actions, run the country and the people remain docile and complacent. Their only hope is to wait for these butchers/torturers to die from old age (like the Khmer Rouge leaders); their bad health to catch up with them, as a result of their over indulgence or gluttony; and if the people are really lucky, these monsters will be caught in mother nature’s fury and die from lightening strike, as it was the case for the most barbaric police chief in Cambodia, Hok Lundy.

Moreover, because people buy their ways into government, positions, and schools, no one is educated or competent enough to run the country, run sophisticated networks, and compete with their neighbors and the outside world. They can’t even outsmart their neighbors’ aggressions against their country.

Brinkley reminds the readers that no one is at fault but the Khmers themselves. If foreign pedophiles rape young boys and girls, he blames the Khmers themselves (parents and authorities taking bribes and payments) for allowing it to happen.

Brinkley sees no hope for Cambodia. He sees no courageous and adept leaders rising out of this small kingdom. All he sees are fools looking out for themselves. According to him, Darfur, North Korea, Haiti, Rwanda, etc. are way better than Cambodia. Ouch!

Cambodia’s Curse is painfully engrossing. Granted that Joel Brinkley knowledge of Khmer history, language, tradition, religion, and culture are as limited as the Chinese chronicler, Zhou Daguan or Chou Ta-Kuan (1296 -1297), resorting to hearsay and misinterpretations by misinformed individuals, just like the bigoted Chou Ta-Kuan, but his findings and observations of Khmer’s problems, attitude and behavior are not too far off.

Lastly, Brinkley may have been sarcastic about seeing change coming to Cambodia in his epilogue, but it was change that brought Khmers out of the Dark Age to become known as one of the most powerful empires in Southeast Asia for thousands of years. That power lies in education and knowledge. With knowledge Khmers built a strong social and religious institutions and reigned supreme. The Khmer presence still remains through out Southeast Asia.

Eleanor Mannikka, the scholar and author of Angkowat Wat: Time, Space, and Kingship, said it best when she wrote, “The architects of Angkor Wat were brilliant and well educated—true sages whose knowledge ranged from architecture to Sanskrit poetry to astronomy to religious rituals. They were extraordinary human beings for any society, in any era.”

That power was removed when newly arrived groups of people invaded the country, looted it, killed its people and scholars, and captured those extraordinary ones to build their own civilizations. Khmers lost that power and plunged back into the Dark Age, but the good news is, Khmers are survivors. It will take us a long time to gain new and old knowledge, but we are struggling to get it back. Khmers, like the Mayans and Aztecs, are one of the oldest groups of people in the world, but contrary to them, we are struggling against internal and external negative forces to stay alive. If anything, Cambodia is blessed. Let's educate and help improve the lives of the 80 percent of Khmers who are illiterate and poor.

Is Cambodia Hopeless?

2011-05-08T15:15:00.003-04:00

Having read this article and Cambodia's Curse by Joel Brinkley, which I am doing a full review on, I can't help but wonder if the people and country are doomed. Why can't Cambodians love and respect each other and their country?

ASIA PACIFIC NEWS

Top UN official leaves Cambodia amid rights concerns
Posted: 08 May 2011 1418 hrs

Photos 1 of 1

Christophe Peschoux, head of the UN office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia, works from his office in Phnom Penh.(AFP PHOTO/TANG CHHIN SOTHY)

PHNOM PENH: Sad and relieved. That is how the director of the United Nations human rights office in Cambodia said he felt about leaving the country after effectively being forced out of his post by the government.

Christophe Peschoux, who headed the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for four years, left Phnom Penh on Saturday after admitting it had become "impossible" to work in the country following numerous run-ins with the leadership.

The 52-year-old Frenchman angered officials by speaking out on controversial issues, prompting Prime Minister Hun Sen to demand the UN remove him and the foreign ministry to issue a letter ordering officials to freeze him out.

"Human rights are tolerated to the extent that they do not challenge the political, economic and financial interests of the ruling elite," Peschoux said.

"That's where the red line runs. If you cross that line, trouble starts," he told AFP days before heading to Geneva to take on a senior UN role.

Rights groups say his departure comes as the ruling Cambodian People's Party is curbing freedoms and silencing critics in a bid to consolidate power ahead of local elections in 2012 and a 2013 general election.

"What is so worrisome about Christophe's departure is that he was one of the few UN agency heads who publicly stepped up to oppose (Prime Minister) Hun Sen's intensifying campaign to muzzle critical voices," said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

Peschoux incurred the wrath of officials after speaking out on a range of issues last year, including land-grabbing by the rich and powerful and crackdowns on government critics.

His remarks prompted the government to call for his removal and accuse him of "unacceptable interference" and "acting as a spokesman for the opposition" -- charges Peschoux vehemently denied.

"I have tried to be as diplomatic as possible but sometimes you have to speak out," he said.

Tensions reached boiling point in October when strongman Hun Sen -- who has vowed to rule until he is 90 -- used a high-profile visit by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to demand the removal of Peschoux.

The UN hierarchy reiterated its support for Peschoux, but in November the Cambodian foreign ministry sent out a confidential letter, seen by AFP, urging government officials "to cease working relations" with him.

The move had "a very negative impact", Peschoux said.

While he stressed that his recall to Switzerland coincides with family obligations in Europe and the end of a standard four-year term, he admitted that his presence was "an obstacle to the re-establishment of a normal working relationship" with the government.

"Of course I'm leaving because it has become impossible for me to continue to operate in this environment," he said, adding that he felt "sad and relieved" about moving on.

Peschoux, who investigated human rights abuses in Cambodia for the UN in the 1990s and is an expert on the Khmer Rouge, remains well-respected among the diplomatic community in Phnom Penh.

"There is no doubt that the issues that he has raised have created animosity towards him personally within the government," said Tom Barthel Hansen, the head of the Danish representation in the Cambodian capital.

"What we should remember is that Mr Peschoux has only raised issues that most development partners are in total agreement with."

Government spokesman Khieu Kanharith refused to comment on Peschoux's departure and its implications for the UN office when contacted by AFP, saying only that he wished him well.

Deputy representative James Heenan will take over the role on an interim basis.

Peschoux's exit comes as the very existence of the UN's human rights office in Cambodia is up for debate.

The government is set to discuss an extension of a memorandum of understanding with the UN at the end of this year on whether the office will be allowed to stay open.

"It's the crux of the conflict with the government because (it) would like this office to be a pure technical, cooperation office providing support to the government and not speaking out. But it's a part of our mandate that we cannot compromise," Peschoux said.

Robertson urged Cambodia's donors and the international community to defend the office.

"There are regretfully few other checks against Hun Sen's increasing domination and authoritarianism, which has been expanding like a dark cloud over Cambodia's politics and society," he said.

As Peschoux prepared to quit Cambodia, he said the "total control" by the ruling party was one of the country's main challenges.

"When there is no more limit to executive power... it becomes arbitrary and abusive. This is what is happening today. How far it will go remains to be seen. But I think this is a serious concern."

-AFP/ck

Why Do I Write for Free?

2011-05-07T00:11:00.004-04:00

An author, just like a pastry shop or restaurant owner, gives her potential customers a free sample of her creation. If they like it, they'll come back for more. As an aspiring author, first and foremost, I write to hone my skills. Therefore, I blog about hot topics, hoping to connect with followers and fans. And maybe, at the end, my work and my name would be recognized in well-known publications.

I had spent two years looking for an agent and a publisher to represent and print my first book. After one of them told me my writing was not of the highest caliber to compete in the industry, I just wanted to crawl under a rock, stay there, and never come out. Then I picked myself up and dusted myself off to continue pouncing on the keyboard. I even bought books and perused through blogs and websites to absorb all I could about literature.

Not satisfied, I decided to apply and register for classes with one of the best schools in Chicago. Disappointingly, when my professor graded my papers, she consistently told me, "you don’t write in standard idiomatic English." Whatever that means, OUCH! “Do I write like a person who is fresh off the boat from a foreign country?” I asked myself. I just wanted to jump into Lake Michigan right then and there. None of my friends and professionals I asked knew what “standard idiomatic English” meant. They probably lied to spare my feelings. Whatever the case, it will not deter me from fulfilling my dream as a professional writer. I appreciate her candor.

British Royal Wedding

2011-04-28T23:09:00.015-04:00

It is once in a life time to witness a fairy tale wedding, even if it is via a television screen. My family came to the United States on September 1981, a few months after Princess Diana's and Prince Charles' wedding. We missed it. I was eight years old and now, thirty-years later, the world and I are witnessing their son's wedding. I wish Prince William and Catherine Middleton a long and a happily ever after marriage.

PICTURES ARE FROM FASHIONBOMBDAILY.COM

Is the current government perpetuating animosity and revenge?

2011-04-22T13:15:00.014-04:00

Pictures are from RFA

If a firm or a company is developing an area and if it wants the people to move out, then it must fairly compensate them. Fair trade is the bottom line.

Personally, I don’t know what the arrangement is between the Cambodian government and the firm it is wheeling and dealing with, but we know for sure that the Khmer people are violated against, monetarily, emotionally, and physically.

Whose fault is that: the government, the businessmen/businesswomen, or the armed forces? Or all of the above?

Every time I am in Cambodia, I witness the same scene at the many restaurants I frequent: high-ranking police officers, high-ranking military men, and governmental officials meeting up with businessmen and businesswomen to discuss their tactics in screwing someone over or in gaining more wealth and seeking the upper hand. It is disgusting how these governmental officials nearly knock their chairs and table over when they unanimously get up to greet and obsequiously bow to these women and men. These business people always make a scene when entering a room: their noses point up high in the air and their chests puff out like a blowfish.

This is one of the many factors that caused the peasants to join the Khmer Rouge and indiscriminately brutalize and murder city people. All it takes is another force to recruit these victims. We need to stop perpetuating animosity and the cycle of dehumanization, hatred and revenge.

Sambath Meas

Human Rights and Dignity

2011-03-28T13:11:00.017-04:00

Asia Sentinel Reports (click on title):

According to a 2009 ILO report, "People with disabilities are among the most vulnerable groups in Cambodian society. They lack equal access to education, training and employment. While many workers with disabilities have considerable skills, many have not had the opportunity to develop their potential."

Sadly, the disabled Cambodians are not the only ones being discriminated against in this so-called Cambodian society. Khmer people in general are being denigrated and discriminated against.

Cambodian authorities, without proper notification and compensation, evict Khmers from their homes and their lands (their only source of self-preservation) to make ways for the constructions of condos, villas, commercial buildings, and playgrounds for the "superior" people. This is modern conquest at its fineness.

Corruption flaunts itself in all branches of government; elitism rears its ugly head in all major cities.

The evil force has a strong alliance. What will the good force do to save Khmer people and land? They are crying and begging for your help. Lady justice, where are you?

Sambath Meas

*****************

FROM THE PHNOM PENH POST

MONDAY, 28 MARCH 2011 15:03 CHHAY CHANNYDA AND KHOUTH SOPHAK CHAKRYA

Photo by: Sovan Philong
Residents threatened with eviction from the Boeung Kak lake area protest outside City Hall in Phnom Penh on Friday.

Boeung Kak lake residents will once again seek a meeting with Phnom Penh Governor Kep Chuktema today, after being forcibly turned away by police during an attempt on Friday.

Lakeside residents submitted a written request for a meeting on Friday through the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, seeking to discuss their proposal to set aside 15 hectares of the 133-hectare development for local villagers, and said City Hall had returned the letter with an official stamp.

Tep Vanny, a representative for more than 1,500 households facing eviction, said villagers would come to City Hall today seeking a response.

“This is the last chance for [Kep Chuktema] to demonstrate whether he is willing to meet and settle our problem or not,” Tep Vanny said.

“We will continue to ask for intervention from Samdech Prime Minister [Hun Sen] and relevant institutions if he still uses the excuse that he is busy resolving other affairs,” she said.

Kep Chuktema declined to comment yesterday.

On Friday, police armed with riot shields and electric batons subdued a protest by villagers, and hit and temporarily detained one woman.

Protester Kong Chantha said she nearly lost consciousness after a policeman elbowed her in the forehead and forced her into a police car.

She said three trucks of police, lead by Daun Penh district deputy governor Sok Penhvuth, had descended on the protesters, dispersing the crowd.

“Sok Penhuvuth’s subordinates arrested me as a weak woman protesting to ask for land and a house for my children. They seemed to think I was a prisoner because they caught me and put me into a prisoner car,” she said. “I didn’t rob anyone’s land. They are cracking down on me daily.”

Kong Chantha said she would file a complaint against the police over the incident. Sok Penhvuth declined to comment.

OHCHR staff, present to monitor the event on Friday, helped secure the release of Kong Chantha.

Christophe Peschoux, OHCHR country representative, said his office had written to city officials and the company developing the area, urging them to find a solution by meeting with villagers.

“Two weeks ago, we wrote to the mayor of Phnom Penh, Kep Chuktema, and we wrote to the head of Shukaku and encouraged them to meet with the community on the basis of the options opened by the municipality – either financial compensation, relocation, or on-site upgrading,” Peschoux said. “My understanding is that the community has opted for on-site upgrading.”

He said he has not yet received a response from city officials.

Additional reporting by Thomas Miller

History of Khmer Royal Ballet (Khmer Robaim)

2011-03-13T04:13:00.003-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyqTU4iPnnI&feature=related

I love watching Khmer robaim. It clears up my writer's block. Now if only I stop spending time on the Internet and actually start writing.

Monks and Khmer Youths Must be Productive Members of Society

2011-03-06T17:31:00.005-05:00

Video is from Khmercity.net, courtesy of CTN television.

One of the monk's duties is to guide the youth to have gratitude for one's parents (not to forget the hard work and the good things they do for them), to be educated, and productive members of society. I would like to see more monks be involved in their community.

My interview with Citizenreporter.org re Letter to UN & ASEAN

2011-02-26T01:11:00.006-05:00

I meant to say 41 years ago, Khmer people plunged into a civil war and then a communist regime. When I said 30 years, I meant it has been 30 years now since my family arrived in the United States of America.

Oops. I also mispronounced ASEAN. Sorry.

Please click on the Title for a link to citizenreporter.org. Thank you.

Can Khmers Sue Sdech Thai (King Bhumibol Adulyadej), Thai Prime Minister Abhisit, and the PAD Thais?

2011-02-24T17:35:00.019-05:00

Picture of Phum Srol village chief Virayut Duangkaew from the Bangkok Post. Here is the news from the Bangkok Post, which was reported by Wassana Nanuam on February 23, 2011:

Border village to sue Hun Sen in ICJ
Phum Srol villagers in Si Sa Ket's Kantharalak district plan to file a lawsuit with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for damage to property and loss of lives against Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, Phum Srol village chief Virayut Duangkaew said on Wednesday.

Mr Virayut said the lawsuit will demand three billion baht in damages from Prime Minister Hun Sen, who was in charge of the Cambodian army during the border clashes earlier this month.

He said a 59-year-old villager was killed, six other villagers were injured, and 177 houses and 664 rai of plantations in Phum Srol destroyed by Cambodian fire during the fighting.

"We Thais have always helped the Cambodians ,but Hun Sen in response decided to hurt us.

"Now we cannot make a living because we are afraid to go out to work on our farms," the village chief said.

Mr Virayut said he will submit the lawsuit to the government through the provincial governor.

***************************************

First of all, isn't Phum Srol (It means Evergreen Village) a Khmer village? Why is it under the Thai sovereignty? When did Thailand seize this territory? What has this world turned into when a thief, holding a diamond necklace with the name of the owner on it -- in this case, Phum Srol, filing a lawsuit? The land is obviously freshly stolen. They still haven't even bastardized the Khmer name, Phum Srol, to a Thai version, like all of the other territories Thailand took from Khmer.

Secondly, how wacky is it that the PAD Thais and their government don't even respect the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) by claiming that the Preah Vihear Temple and the 4.6 square-kilometers of land belong to them and threatening to use their Sweden and United States weapons to destroy the poor, defenseless Khmer people; yet, this buffoon is "to sue Hun Sen in ICJ"?

If the ICJ acknowledges this lawsuit, then we should sue King Bhumibol Adulyadej and his military troops for the rapes, murders, and abuses they committed against thousands of Khmer refugees and get all of our territories back. We should sue the PAD Thais and Thai Prime Minister Abhisit for starting and instigating this war that killed and injured Khmer soldiers and villagers. We would like 35 trillion dollars and all of our territories back. Heck, the ethnic minorities around the world should file their lawsuits to get their lands back and compensations for the massacres of their ancestors.

In all seriousness, if you are or if you know former Khmer, Laotian, and Vietnamese refugees who suffered under the hands of the Thai soldiers, please e-mail me at meas.sambath@gmail.com. I am collecting stories for my research book. Thanks so much.

RESPECT THE ICJ'S DECISION. PREAH VIHEAR AND THE 4.6 SQUARE-KILOMETERS OF LAND BELONG TO CAMBODIA!

My Appeal to ASEAN and the UN

2011-02-15T00:36:00.007-05:00

SAMBATH MEAS
XXXX XXXXX XXXX
XXXXXXX, XXXX XXXXX
meas.sambath@gmail.com
February 14, 2011
The Honorable Ban Ki-Moon
Secretary-General of The United Nations
760 United Nations Plaza
New York, NY 10017 USA

H. E. Marty M. Natalegawat
Marty@aseansec.org

Dear Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and H. E. Dr. Marty Natalegawat:

I would like to express my concern about Thailand-Cambodia’s clashes, which destroy no one but the lives of poor and innocent Khmer soldiers and villagers, including innocent people in bordering Thailand.

Thailand’s government refuses UN intervention, and warns the representative of Unesco not to assess the damages at Preah Vihear; but according to the Bangkok Post, dated February 11, 2011, “Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is calling on Unesco to help defuse the border conflict between Thailand and Cambodia by delisting the Preah Vihear temple as a world heritage site and scrapping a Cambodian management plan.”

If this statement is true, Prime Minister Vejjajiva is basically threatening that, if Preah Vihear and the “disputed” 4.6 square-kilometers of land are not handed over to Thailand, then it will continue to create chaos and hostility until it gets its way. It has the military might to do so. This is an example of a big country bullying a poor, defenseless country.

Whatever sparked this conflict, whether it’s the pressure by the PAD Thais, also known as the “Yellow Shirts” or a business discord between the Thai and the Cambodian fat cats, Khmer soldiers and people cannot and must not die over this feud.

Legally, Preah Vihear doesn’t belong to Thailand, and the 4.6 square-kilometers of land is included on the map that the International Court of Justice used to render its verdict in favor of its rightful owner, Cambodia, on June 15, 1962. Thailand’s government continues to create misunderstanding among its people and the world by claiming that the temple and the land belong to them. They don’t. Therefore, Thailand has no right to have its say in the delisting of Cambodia’s temple.

Khmer Empire once covered modern day Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. It has now decreased to the size of the state of Missouri, USA. Thailand’s history is stained with invasions, lootings, and annexations of neighboring countries (Cambodia, Laos, and Malaysia).

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when Khmer people faced their darkest history, military armies of Thailand raped, buried alive, and dumped Khmer refugees in the landmine-infested areas of Dangrek Mountain. The survivors looked to Preah Vihear for guidance when they trekked through the dangerous jungle to safety. Moreover, those who escaped to America had gone back to their birthplaces only to find their original lands now under the sovereignty of Thailand.

Khmer people have been very unfortunate to have weak leaders who only put themselves before their people and nation. Please don’t punish the small population of Khmers by allowing Thailand’s military force to wreak havoc on them.

Conquest is ancient history. That is why we have ASEAN, the EU, and the UN to promote brotherhood and maintain peace and prosperity among nations. Thailand is the original member or known as the founding father of ASEAN and it is touted as a civilized kingdom. Please appeal to Thailand to stop the aggression and help maintain social harmony in the area.

Khmer soldiers and people have suffered long enough. Please give them a chance to experience peace, development, and stability by curbing the conflict between Thailand and Cambodia.

Thank you, His Excellencies.

Sincerely,

Sambath Meas
A refugee-camp survivor

Letter re Preah Vihear

2011-02-14T23:52:00.006-05:00

Hi friends. Please show your support for the lives and dignity of Khmer soldiers and villagers by writing letters to the U.N. and ASEAN. This war will not benefit anyone but the fat cats in Cambodia and Thailand. They live comfortably in the air-conditioned mansions and drive their Lexus or Range Rover while they send poor and defenseless Khmers to the frontline. Please help save the Khmer race and nation. We are doing this for our fellow Khmer, not the corrupt governments of Cambodia and Thailand. Thanks.