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Cover
story Young and searching in Cambodia
By DENNIS CODAY
Special to the National Catholic Reporter Phnom Penh,
Cambodia
Although the school year had
recently ended, about 20 university students sat cross-legged on a tile floor
in heated discussion. Books and note pads were scattered about, and a plan of
action was sketched out on newsprint pinned to a board in front of the
group.
While many of their peers were flocking the same day to the
citys first all-enclosed, air conditioned shopping mall, this group was
preparing a trip to a rural village where they were to host a day of activities
and education on the theme of community environmental health.
These students are, in the words of organizer Chea Mouy Kry, the
future of Cambodia, a country trying desperately to emerge from three decades
of war and isolation from the international community, an era punctuated by the
horrific genocide by communist rebel forces of more than 1 million of its
citizens. That episode was captured for the rest of the world in the 1984
movie, The Killing Fields.
The scene of the students organizing the trip captures many of the
tensions, ironies and obstacles faced by those left to do the work of
resurrecting a culture. So much has been destroyed that it is difficult to know
where to begin. It was clear in interviews conducted here last fall, and in
subsequent correspondence by e-mail, that if openness to the wider world brings
new opportunities, it also means increased consumerism, materialism and the
influences of other cultures that some see as new threats to Cambodias
survival.
While most of the students were born after the communist Khmer
Rouge massacres of the mid-1970s, they face the legacy of those times -- fear,
poverty and a deep suspicion of any organized group activities. They are the
bridge between the horrors of the past and the promise of a future. In some
sense, too, their link to the outside world could be an example for other
regions -- Sudan, the Balkans, Rwanda, Ethiopia, areas of Latin America --
where massive death has been caused by political disputes, wars, natural
disasters and genocide.
Their lives are clearly divided between two distinct
periods, said Maryknoll Sr. Maria Leonor Montiel, who assists Chea in
running the Youth Resource Development Program. Chea, a secondary school
teacher by training, has been with the program since its inception and also
spent time in a Fellowship of Reconciliation course in nonviolence in South
Africa. Maryknoll is a U.S.-based mission order whose men and women members
traditionally minister to the poor and marginalized throughout the world.
Reminders of the past
Though too young to have memories of Khmer Rouge rule, the
students in the program have been raised by survivors of that regime. They
constantly run into reminders of that brutal period, in the museums dedicated
to memories of the massacres and in public kiosks where glass cases are filled
with skulls and bones, testament to the Cambodian genocide.
Most of the students spent 10 years of their lives in the
Vietnamese isolation, when a Vietnamese-installed government held
power and fought a jungle war. Chea sums up the effect this early period had on
youth in a single word: stifling.
The second period came after the Vietnamese withdrew from
Cambodia, and the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1991. What followed was a
two-year period during which the country was administered by the United Nations
in preparation for general elections. It was a period that ushered in
modernization with all of its pluses and minuses. Many re-entered the world of
commerce and made enough money to purchase modern consumer goods --
televisions, cell phones and motorbikes. But the new age also ushered in
exploitative tourism, AIDS and prostitution, uncontrolled capitalism, the
exploitation of natural resources (especially unrestricted logging and mining)
and impunity from the rule of law.
The significance of the students becomes more evident when one
realizes they are now the majority in a culture that traditionally gave little
voice to children. Young people have very little status in Khmer culture, Chea
explained. A person has no voice until after beginning a career, getting
married and beginning a family. Even then deference is always paid to
elders.
However, in Cambodia at the turn of the millennium, the World
Health Organization estimates that 40 percent of Cambodias 11.5 million
people are under 15 years old. Fifty percent are under 17. University students,
then, are in a unique position. They are members of an elite class that will
quickly become business and government leaders.
Youth do not think enough, Chea said, adding that
university studies, which emphasize rote learning of facts and figures, do
little to build critical thinking. That is why students in Cheas program
use small-group discussions, role-playing and other group activities to explore
concepts like trust, duty, responsibility, freedom and expression.
Here we value their opinions. They feel trusted and are
treated as equals, she said. They are given the opportunity to talk
for themselves and act for themselves. It is a big deal for them to arrange an
appointment and visit an NGO [nongovernmental organization] or a
foreigner, she said.
Four graduates of the Youth Resource Development Program have
taken that training in critical thinking and founded Youth for Peace, a program
that teaches active nonviolence and conflict resolution to high school
students.
Culture of violence
The youth of Cambodia have lived in a culture of violence
for a long time, so their spirits are trapped by that world, said Outh
Renne. Most young people, he said, do not know that Khmer culture, rooted as it
is in Buddhism, is a peaceful and tolerant culture.
Violence seems to follow a loss of tradition and cultural values.
Fr. Verachai Sripramong, a member of the Thai Mission Society now stationed in
Cambodia, works mainly with youth. He meets with 260 youth every Sunday
afternoon for catechism and activities. Among the Khmer youth, he sees many
parallels with young people in his native Thailand. Mostly he worries about the
loss of the good traditions.
The young people of his parish, he said, are poor and know
they are poor. They know they have been isolated for so long. This makes them
eager to learn about all new things. They want their country and themselves to
develop very fast. They have electricity, TV, karaoke and discos. They see many
things and want to copy fashions and ideas.
Bishop Émile Destombes of the Paris Foreign Missions,
agreed, saying Cambodia today is a society built on a culture of guns and
money, so different from the past, but he adds that when people do not have the
means to eat more than once a day the situation is ripe for families to
disintegrate. Ponchaud said, [Cambodia] is a state without law. The law
is the gun.
Thun Saray, a lawyer and president of the Cambodian Human Rights
and Development Association (commonly known as ADHOC), documents the sentiments
the church people express. Through its 16 provincial offices, his group
monitors cases of land disputes, extrajudicial killings and violations of
security rights and freedom of association and assembly. Because of the
problem with impunity and corruption in Cambodia today, we cannot put these
people in jail, Thun said. Since ADHOC was founded in 1993, Thun has seen
improvements in the police, the military and politicians, but he also concedes
powerful people still kill, intimidate and bribe to get their way.
One of the biggest and oldest divides in both the Cambodian
Catholic church and the wider culture is between the Khmer and the
Vietnamese.
Maryknoll Fr. Jim Noonan, who directs a health program for people
with AIDS in Phnom Penh, proudly points to a sign above the door to the
programs clinic. In all seriousness, he said, I think that is the
only sign like it in Phnom Penh, maybe in all Cambodia. The sign is
unique because it presents side by side the name of the place and a greeting in
Khmer and Vietnamese.
The Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia in the 1980s was just one of
several over the last thousand years. The two countries have been fighting for
centuries. Vietnamese have lived in what is now Cambodia for generations. The
Vietnamese are a minority of a couple of million in Cambodia today.
Fr. Françios Ponchaud, also of the Paris Foreign Mission,
speaks frankly: Usually the Vietnamese look down on the Cambodians, and
the Cambodians hate the Vietnamese. So we have to build a bridge. It is not
easy. I teach Vietnamese [catechists] in Cambodian so they can speak to
Cambodians about their faith. When I teach seminars to Cambodian Catholics, I
take two or three Vietnamese with me so the relationship between Vietnamese and
Cambodians will build. We [Catholics] are a small community. Very few people.
We want to help the Vietnamese and Cambodians to be together.
Outh, 25, started the peace group as part of his training in the
Youth Resource Development Program. It spun off as a separate entity in 1997
and became an official nongovernmental organization in 1999. Outh supports
himself by working as a freelance translator and helps coordinate an annual
peace walk through Cambodia.
Those who join may not realize at first the purpose of the group.
They are not interested in social problems when they come here,
Outh said, but they are interested in activities.
The students are quickly linked up with groups involved with AIDS
education, street people, rural development and reforestation and other
work.
Over the course of the program, the students are led through
modules on personal, moral, social and cultural development. They look at
themselves and Cambodian society and try to identify elements of violence and
nonviolence in themselves and others.
We want them to have peace in their hearts, Outh said.
We want to tell them to know the violent culture is from [within]
ourselves and not just from the outside.
Cambodia time line |
1954. France withdraws from Cambodia. Prince Norodom
Sihanouk rules for 16 years. He tries to keep the country from getting into the
neighboring Vietnam War by balancing off the communist and capitalist blocs. He
is unsuccessful. 1970. Sihanouk is ousted by Gen. Lon Nol, his
pro-American military chief. April 1975. Days before the fall of
Saigon, Phnom Penh falls to the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot. The Khmer Rouge
empties the capital and other urban areas at gunpoint and starts trying to
transform Cambodia into a Maoist year zero agrarian utopia. Over
the next four years, the Khmer Rouge reign of terror leaves more than 1 million
Cambodians dead. 1978. Vietnam, incensed by cross-border raids by
its former Khmer Rouge allies, invades in December, ousts Pol Pot and replaces
the government with a puppet government of Khmer Rouge
defectors. 1979-91. The Khmer Rouge, joined by two noncommunist
factions, fights a guerrilla war against the Vietnamese-backed Phnom Penh
regime. The United States, other Western powers and China back the guerrillas
by funneling arms and other supplies through Thailand to their favored
factions. September 1989. Vietnam announces the withdrawal of its
troops from Cambodia. October 1991. Phnom Penh, the resistance
factions and their international backers sign a peace accord in Paris calling
for the dismantling of the Phnom Penh regime and installing a caretaker
government until United Nations-supervised elections. 1993. U.N.-run
elections produce a victory for Prince Norodom Ranariddhs royalist party,
one of the former guerrilla factions. But he is obliged to share power in an
uneasy coalition with Hun Sen, whose peoples party still controls the
government bureaucracy. At the last minute, the Khmer Rouge refuses to
participate in the election. The new government continues battling the Khmer
Rouge in the countryside. May 1997. After years of dwindling outside
support and severely weakened by defections, the Khmer Rouge is desperate and
divided. July 25, 1997. Khmer Rouge leaders denounce Pol Pot during
a peoples trial. An ailing Pol Pot is sentenced to life
imprisonment. April 15, 1998. Pol Pot dies at age 73. |
National Catholic Reporter, June 30,
2000
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