Wednesday, April 23, 2008

In brief

Cambodian football is suffering a lull in fortunes, in fact, they've never yet experienced a high! Their team of labourers, security guards and policemen have conceded 21 goals in their last 4 matches. In a drive to improve their fortunes, the national team have recruited 30 new players, who'll each be paid a princely sum of $250 a month. The football federation president, Sao Sokha said yesterday that he was looking for "bigger and taller players, of at least 1.7 meters tall, who are young, strong and can run fast," in order to challenge their more physical opponents. He also said, "I urge all parents to let their children play football so that it will help us to find good players - players who can attract spectators like rock bands do." There's nothing like having a serious nationwide youth development policy to uncover promising players for the future is there!

There are changes afoot at the Phnom Penh Post newspaper. For a few years I subscribed to this paper when I lived in the UK to give me the best English-language news coverage and now the PPP are soon to move to much more regular editions from their current twice-monthly stance. They've recently upgraded their website and now they are archiving all their editions back to 1992. That is simply a mammoth task. I wish them well. Read the archive here.

DC-Cam's head Youk Chhang recently announced that the USA will fund, to the tune of $2million, the building of a new genocide museum, research and training facility that will be the new home of DC-Cam. For more than a decade DC-Cam have been documenting the crimes of the Khmer Rouge and they've been looking for a new home for much of that time. Their plans have finally borne fruit and the new museum should be up and running in Phnom Penh in a couple of years. They were initially given land next to Tuol Sleng but squatters moved in and wouldn't move out so they've now identified a new site. DC-Cam

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Congratulations to both the new PPP and the DC-CAM. I really liked the new PPP website as well as keeping up with news from cambodia via your site and the PPP, etc. Thank you for your/their great work and interest in Cambodia. May God Bless you and them as well. a fan.

April 23, 2008 9:15 AM  
Blogger Andy Brouwer said...

Documentation Center to Buiild Genocide Institute
by Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer

The Documentation Center of Cambodia, which for more than a decade has worked to catalogue crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge regime, plans to build a genocide research facility beginning next year.

The institute will include a museum, library, research center and classes for national and international genocide experts to study, Youk Chhang, director for the Documentation Center said.

“This institute will be built across 5,600 square meters on the former Khmer Rouge detention camp of Boeung Trabek,” he said.

The Cambodian government provided the land, and the US government has contributed $2 million for the construction of the institute, he said.

“We will particularly focus on the study of the genocide in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979, genocide in Africa, in Europe, and in the other places in the world,” he said.

The institute will be a center of study for all facets of the Khmer Rouge: its build-up, armed struggle and take-over, evacuation of cities, administrative power and control, internal power struggles and purges and its collapse, Youk Chhang said. It will also be a place to study the movement’s continued battles with government forces through the 1991 peace accords.

“This institute is for the participation of genocide prevention and to reduce violations of human rights in Cambodia,” he said. “This institute is very important for one individual, one human, one country, and for victims’ children to fulfill their duty to build up the rule of law and human rights promotion.”

Chum Mey, a survivor of the regime’s infamous Tuol Sleng prison, said the institute would be of “historical importance.”

“I feel very happy for the construction of the genocide institute, because it’s a very valuable thing for the Cambodian young generation and to prevent the loss of concrete history of the Khmer Rouge regime,” he said.

April 25, 2008 8:35 AM  

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