I may take in a match today but I have no idea who is playing (U.S. will be playing when I am playing basketball this evening).
Looks like Cambodia is the winner of the Globe Asian region today:
"Lowell monument marks Cambodians’ trials, arrival; New healing garden dedicated" by Dan Adams | Globe Correspondent June 09, 2014
As a 5-year-old boy living in Cambodia in 1975, he watched Khmer Rouge soldiers drag his father out the door of their family home; he never saw his father again. Four years later, on the eve of the Vietnamese invasion, he witnessed the execution of most of his friends while in a forced child labor camp.
No invasions are good; however, that one is about as close to humanitarian as they get.
Horrific stories like Kong’s are common in Lowell’s large Cambodian community, which was founded by refugees fleeing the indiscriminate killings, disease, and starvation that were hallmarks of life under the merciless rule of Pol Pot, or the chaotic years that followed the Vietnamese invasion. And so to preserve the community’s past and celebrate its progress, a group of activists and educators have erected a monument and “healing garden” in Lowell’s Clemente Park.
The memorials, which are dedicated to those who died or fled their homeland, serve as a way to ensure that generations of American-born Cambodians do not forget the struggles of the past.
Every day I blog is a testament to that.
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The healing garden was funded through a $37,000 grant from UMass. Patricia Fontaine, who helped organize the garden’s construction and is an associate professor in the University of Massachusetts Lowell’s Graduate School of Education who teaches graduate students preparing to become history teachers, became involved in Lowell’s Cambodian community when a friend who taught at a city high school called.
Only if I can tell the truth! No? Forget it.
“She was very worried because she thought a lot of the Cambodian-American kids were getting into gangs,” Fontaine recalled. “She didn’t really know why, but when she pushed them, they said they didn’t really know anything about their history.”
Here, too. They have been taught decades of distortions and lies.
Fontaine said she was surprised, considering witnesses to the Cambodian genocide live in many of the multigenerational Cambodian households in Lowell.
But many members of the older generation are reluctant to speak about those years, she said. Some struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder, others with alcoholism. Mental illness is prevalent but rarely treated because of cultural taboos, Fontaine said.
“These kids are caught between two worlds: a very traditional Cambodian world, and the American world they grew up in,” she said. “They don’t know their relatives, they don’t know their identity, and that’s so important.”
It's okay; I no longer recognize my nation, state, or newspaper. Not what they once were.
The problem was worsened because the intellectuals, artists, and monks who functioned as the “keepers” of Cambodian culture were especially targeted for killing by the regime, Fontaine said. They were among the 1.7 million to 2 million killed during the genocide, according to the United Nations and researchers.
Awww, that's nothing. Jews had it way worse, and even some African have been slaughtered more.
I hope the bitter sarcasm wasn't to badly placed. Every single life is precious no matter where it is.
“I think there’s a little bit of a moral compass that’s skewed, because they were the glue,” she said.
It's on the newsstand every day!
In response, Fontaine and her graduate students developed a 10-week after-school program to help teach Cambodian-American eighth-graders about Cambodian history, including the Khmer Rouge era. Assignments included interviewing family members about their own experiences, a process that helped break down walls in their families, she said.
Kong, who came to the United States as a Fulbright scholar in 1999, is familiar with the difficulties of relating a painful history to the younger generation. He recounted trying to explain to his son, who is 22, how the genocide happened.
“My son asked me, ‘Where were the police, where was the judge, where was the military? Why did they let people do that?’ ” Kong said. “I tried to tell him, because they were the ones who were killing people. But it’s too big a question to answer in one sitting.”
American are getting the Chinese water torture on that one, if I can mix my South Asian metaphors. Both teams in red.
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Related: Cambodian Sex Traffic Con
Also see: Rolls-Royce to sell luxury automobiles in poor Cambodia
They don't want their wealthy elite well taken care of?
Extremist leader arrested in Manila
It's "Al-CIA-Duh" everywhere you look!
Thai Buddhist temple dazzles in Raynham
Related: Thailand Happy With Its Junta
The lack of coverage is dazzling!
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
It's a draw!
"Cambodian exodus from Thailand grows to 160,000" Associated Press June 17, 2014
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The number of Cambodians who have returned home from Thailand this month after a threatened crackdown on foreigners working illegally has topped 160,000, a Cambodian official said Monday.
Cambodian Foreign Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong said the workers returned through several border crossings, with the one connecting the town of Poipet with Thailand’s Aranyaprathet accounting for 142,000.
Thai officials insist the cross-border movement is voluntary and is not forced repatriation. They say Thai military and government resources were used to transport workers who decided to return home after being laid off because they were working illegally.
Everyone has illegal immigration problems.
Other workers assumed they were being forced out and rumors arose they were being abused, triggering the mass exodus, they say.
The numbers rose last week when rumors — unsubstantiated so far — spread that Thai soldiers had killed as many as nine Cambodians and threatened and beaten others.
That horrible junta! I'm not dying it's right if it happened; I'm simply noting the agenda-pushing quality of my war-promoting propaganda pre$$.
Btw, a rumor, in the context of my propaganda pre$$, is only an "unconfirmed fact."
Thailand announced it would crack down on foreigners working illegally after the army took power in a May 22 coup.
The use of the word proves it was contrary to U.S goals.
Cambodian rights groups say Thai authorities are coercing the Cambodians to go home and abusing them. Considerably more than 200,000 Cambodians are estimated to be working in Thailand, most illegally.
Almost as if it were -- gasp -- ethnic cleansing!
Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman Sek Wannamethee said Monday that allegations that Thailand was deporting migrant workers were ‘‘unfounded’ and that they were leaving voluntarily, ‘‘facilitated by the Thai side in terms of transportation to the border checkpoints.’’
Thailand’s military government says it is working on a plan to create a systematic legal framework for foreign workers.
An immigration bill.
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I don't think they scored with my media.
