Word: phnom
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When the Khmer Rouge emptied the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh of human inhabitants in 1975, one of Pol Pot's soldiers murdered 4-year-old Theary Seng's father. Later, Theary Seng, her mother and siblings ended up in a prison in southeast Cambodia. One day, Theary Seng awoke to an empty cell - the prison population had been massacred overnight. In a rare act of mercy, the Khmer Rouge soldiers allowed the handful of children to survive. Theary Seng eventually escaped to a Thai refugee camp and then to the U.S. Her story is by no means unique in Cambodia...
Still traumatized by those years and subsequent decades of political instability, many Cambodians had hoped that the U.N.-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal, a hybrid Cambodian-international court, would help push the country toward reconciliation. In November 2007, Theary Seng, now a human-rights lawyer in Phnom Penh, applied to become the first civil party at the Khmer Rouge tribunal - whereby she and other Khmer Rouge victims are participating in the criminal proceedings with their own set of lawyers. On Friday, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) - the official name of the tribunal - finished hearing its first case...
About 28,000 people attended Duch's trial at the ECCC on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, and millions more Cambodians followed the tribunal on television and the radio. With about 70% of the Cambodia's 14 million people born after the Khmer Rouge regime, the trial enabled an entire generation to learn about their country's terrible past. Youk Chhang, the director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, says that the fact that the tribunal was held in Cambodia was key to sparking interest in the trial and knowledge about the period. In January, the University of California...
...Ironically, another nadir in Cambodian-Thai relations occurred back in 2003 when Cambodian protesters - armed with false information that a Thai actress had claimed Cambodia's national treasure, the ancient city and temple complex of Angkor Wat, as actually being Thai - burned down the Thai embassy in Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. The incensed Thai Prime Minister at the time? None other than Hun Sen's self-proclaimed "friend," Thaksin Shinawatra...
...That was December 2004. In less than five years, the organization has grown to reach more than 5,000 kids every year at its six sites, most in the heart of Phnom Penh's slums. Though Tiny Toones started off as a breakdancing group, it quickly expanded to include computer literacy, art, HIV/AIDS prevention, and lessons in English and Khmer, the local language. "We're using hip-hop," says Randy Sary, 28, who works at Tiny Toones. "After we get kids in, we have other programs like English and Khmer. You can't just be athletic. You have...