First of a series of multi-media presentations on different walks of life in Cambodia. Here is a day with Moun who sells clay pots and vases from his ox driven cart through the streets of Phnom Penh.
“My name is Moun, I am 20 years old and I come from Kampong Chhnang. For two years now I have earned a living selling pots. I come to Phnom Penh to sell with my younger brother, my older brother, and brother-in-law. Every time we come to Phnom Penh we stay 15 to 20 days. I sell stoves, pots, jars, vases and other things. Some of it I buy, and some I make myself. We put the rice in the front of the cart to pray to the spirit that lives on the cart to take care of us and help us to sell.
200 000 riel (50 dollars) is the best I have been able to earn in a day. Every time I come I can go home with 100 or 150 dollars, maximum 150 dollars. I don’t enjoy this job if there was an easier job I would want to do it but I don’t have a good education and this job comes from my family, it is our heritage. The hardest problem is selling, and asking for water. It is hard to go inside the city; police don’t want us to go down the main roads, or to the city centre, we create traffic jams so we are only allowed in the outskirts. We never come alone; we have to have 3 or 4 carts so we can sleep. We can’t stay alone. In the daytime we can stay alone, at night we don’t dare to.
In the future, for my brothers, I would like to make this business bigger. I would like to ask everyone to come and buy my products so that I can go home quickly.”
This religious festival marks the emergence of monks from retreat. A large festival is held on the last day of this month long ceremony. The evening ceremony at the local pagoda starts off with a prayer followed by games and a theatre performance, market vendors set up stores, karaoke, and game stalls. Early the next morning villager’s head back to the pagoda bringing robes and other items to offer to the monks.
On Friday the 16th of October 2009 Siem Reap Globe Magazine Eagles beat Kampong Speu Global Giving Scorpions 3-0 in the Cambodian National Volleyball League Disabled (CNVLD) finals. Siem Reap Globe Eagles swooped to victory to become the Cellcard National Volleyball League Champions for the first time. Olympic Stadium, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
With funding from USAID, CARE Cambodia provides supports for people living with HIV/AIDS and orphans/vulnerable children (PLHA&OVC) in Koh Kong. Aid includes home-based care services, referral transportation support, monthly food rations, shelter assistance and capacity building for PLHA and health officials. View the media presentations click here
On the 19th of September 2009 Thai PAD supporters were expected to protest at the border temple
demanding that the Thai government take over the disputed area.
Cambodian troops and riot police were ready to prevent Thai protesters from crossing the border. They waited but Thai riot police prevented the protesters from reaching the conflict zone.
Regardless of the rise in tensions and risk of an escalation in the conflict, Cambodian tourists flocked to the temple. They picnicked on the frontline, chatted with soldiers, posed for photos with rocket launchers and guns, and received guided visits from the soldiers.
Later in the afternoon Thai soldiers wondered into the no mans land to talk with Cambodian soldiers and take photos with foreign tourists.
Was once a community of 70 families living near the Bassac River in central Phnom Penh.
- Several days before an eviction deadline set by the Phnom Penh Municipality a majority of families accepted $8000 in compensation, packed up their homes and moved out of the community. A Compensation offer condemned as inadequate by human rights groups and international organizations.
- A day before the eviction deadline, a 100 red shirt demolition workers moved in to dismantle homes belonging to residents who had accepted the compensation offer.
Friday the 17th of July 2009.
Before dawn, armed police and military forces in full riot gear surrounded the community.
As the sun rose, some 200 red shirt demolition workers moved in to demolish what was left of Group 78.
Three of the four resisting families were left with little choice but to accepted compensation and watch their homes dismantled.
The last resisting family had their home destroyed by the authorities anyways.
On Thursday, June 28, Cambodian police evicted 20 HIV-affected families from their homes in Borei Keila, a poor neighbourhood near the Olympic Stadium in Phnom Penh. Authorities forced families to relocate to six corrugated iron sheds in Toul Sambo district, about kilometres from the city centre.
Families, without resisting, loaded their belongings into about 10 pick-up trucks and climbed aboard for the long, dusty drive to the relocation site. “I don’t know what to do because we are forced to go,” said one 70-year-old resident.
Upon arrival, local authorities lined up 50-kilogram bags of rice, packs of fish and soy sauce as well as two plastic buckets. Ex Borei Keila residents were told to kneel on the bags of rice—“gifts” from the municipality. A small ceremony was held and residents received envelopes containing $250 USD. With the municipality’s video camera rolling, families were reminded of local authorities’ generosity. Shortly after the ceremony, families desiring to cook lunch found that the relocation site had no clean water for cooking.
The long-expected eviction came after several months of protests by residents who complained about the relocation sites’ small houses, its exposure to heat and the distance from health care and jobs. “It is like sending us to die” said one former Borei Keila resident. “It will cost us 15,000 riel (about $3.50 USD) just to go get medicine.” Future prospects look bleak for these families, who according to local NGOs live on a daily income of 5,600 riel, or about $1.40 USD.
One resident, 34-year-old Heng Srei Huoch, was in the hospital the day of the eviction due to HIV-related illness. She and her 9-year-old daughter are both seriously ill and must visit the hospital several times per month, she said. Currently, an NGO, Friends International is paying for transport. Heng Srei Huoch hopes its support will continue.
Another resident, Chieng Toma, 40, pulled out a worn plastic bag advertising men’s cologne containing dozens of medicines required to fight his HIV. He hopes the NGO will pay for his twice-monthly trips to refill his prescriptions in Phnom Penh. As he spoke, he rigged a shelter outside his new, three-square-metre home. The government had promised to give residents with more than three children two rooms, he said. This did not happen, and now, with six children inside, he and his wife must sleep outside, on a wooden palette underneath the tarp.
Human rights group condemned the eviction as discriminatory. “It is often referred to as ‘the AIDS village’” said Brittis Edman, Amnesty International’s Cambodia researcher. In Toul Sambo, he said, “the inhabitants live with no access to clean water, electricity or proper sanitation.”
Three days after the first eviction, another 11 families were moved from Borei Keila to temporary rental homes in a nearby community. These families have been guaranteed permanent housing in a new building being constructed on the site, although officials said the likelihood of them receiving apartments was “90 percent” after the eviction occurred, according to The Cambodia Daily.
“I don’t believe government officials, they always change what they say,” said one wary resident, 48-year-old Prak Sopheap, about her housing guarantee.
The remaining residents were relocated the following day. Workers moved in early Monday morning to dismantle the corrugated iron sheds, preventing access to local media.
Some 20 people gathered to celebrate Aung Sen Suu Kyi’s 64th birthday in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The small group of Burmese, Khmer and foreign participants were prevented by monks and local authorities, from conducting the ceremony at Phnom Penh’s Wat Lanka. Instead the buddhist celebration was hosted in the court yard of a local Non-Government Organization. Posters were hung, and candles were aligned spelling the words “Free Suu”. The group sang happy birthday, a Burmese pro democracy song, and chanted “Free Suu Kyi”.
