An article published yesterday by Reuters outlines the dreadful impact dengue fever is having on the people of Cambodia, and in particular the heavy toll on Cambodia’s children. So far this year, dengue has infected more than 38,000 people and killed 389, most of whom were children. The article highlights the challenges Swiss doctor - Dr Beat Richner (founder of the Kantha Bopha I, II & IV and Jayavarman VII children's hospitals) - is facing to help the Khmer population.

The article can be viewed here

More information on the work of Dr Beat Richner and the children's hospitals can be found here

Congratulations today go to Cambodian-born Rithy Panh on winning the Prix Arte Award for his documentary “Paper Cannot Wrap Up Embers” which focuses on Cambodia’s prostitutes.

This is the second time that Panh has won an EFA award; the first was in 2003 for his film “S21 : The Khmer Rouge Death Machine”.

A heartening article from a charity I greatly admire – MAG (Mines Advisory Group) – can be found here

Written by Chham Rivann, MAG Cambodia Project Officer, we hear the story of 49 year old Pen Kourm, who lives with his wife Phal and four children in the Malai district of Banteay Meanchey province.

Kourm and his family, like many others, were forced to live in suspected minefields, but thanks to the work of MAG Demining Team – ‘MAT 16’ – the land has now been cleared. In an area of 97,493 sq/m they found and destroyed 199 anti-personnel mines.

As a result of MAG’s work, the area is now safe to live in and Kourm and the rest of the community can now grow rice, produce, and run a small market. Children can also travel to school without the threat of landmines, and those needing medical help are able to safely visit the health centre 15km away.

For more information on the incredible work undertaken by MAG, please click here

One article which sparked my interest last week - because I am soon to work on the same project - can be found by clicking the following link

Courtesy of Guardian Unlimited, the article is about the former Labour Government speech writer and special adviser David Townsend’s ventures in Cambodia, volunteering on the ‘Cambodian Kids Project' with UK registered charity Globalteer

More information about the excellent work undertaken by Globalteer can be found here

Article Courtesy of AFP

http://afp.google.com/

The rolling thunder of an oncoming monsoon storm provided the appropriate soundtrack to Ratanak Akthun's entrance into the ring. The self-assured young fighter eyed his opponent, Puth Khemarak, who seemed less solid and a little dazed by the applause that greeted his own entrance into the gymnasium in Phnom Penh's Olympic Stadium. Their clash was to be the first full-contact fight of last month's National Bokator Championships, and the crowd, made up of students from opposing fighting schools, clapped and shouted itself into a frenzy.

Cambodia's ancient martial of 'bokator' is enjoying a sudden revival after centuries of neglect and its near extinction under the communist Khmer Rouge regime, which outlawed the practice and murdered its masters. But practitioners are struggling for legitimacy and purists say a younger generation's fascination with foreign martial arts is threatening this symbol of the country's past military might.

More an art form than a sport, bokator - which literally means "lion fighter" in Cambodian - has been somewhat derisively described as a dance with a little bit of fighting thrown in for effect. This is not entirely untrue. Those who have mastered the thousands of punches, sweeping high kicks, take-downs and feints have a fluid animal grace that lulls the spectator into forgetting that this is a seriously dangerous fighting form. But then erupts a violence that is found in few fighting rings. Like Saturday night brawlers, nearly bare-knuckled bokator fighters pummel, stomp and throttle each other into submission.

Ratanak Akthun's earlier cockiness could not save him from a crushing kick that broke ribs and sent him to a humiliating, semi-conscious departure from the ring. The next two full-contact matches ended just as abruptly in knock-outs. The September championships were only the second ever to be held and were the result of one man's singular crusade not just to return bokator to Cambodia, but also to introduce it to the rest of the world.

Sean Kim San, a bokator grandmaster and founder of the Cambodian Yuthkun Federation, returned from the United States in the 1990s and in 2004 opened a school to teach the craft to a new generation of Cambodians otherwise fed a diet of Thai kickboxing and Western professional wrestling. "We had been sleeping for 1,000 years but 2004 was the new birth for bokator," said the 62-year-old master. Speaking recently in the converted space above a parking garage that he shares with several other martial arts schools, Sean Kim San took out a few vinyl folders that he said are the sport's bible. Inside he is creating, in painstaking detail, an index of the hundreds, if not thousands of moves that must be mastered at each level of bokator. "Before there was nothing," he said, explaining that before he took up his quest to revive bokator, knowledge of the fighting form lay scattered across the country among its few surviving yet reluctant masters.

Scenes of bokator are carved into the walls of the Angkor temples, inextricably linked to a rich cultural heritage that goes back many hundreds of years. But the Khmer Rouge who seized control of the country in 1975 and unleashed one of the 20th century's most devastating upheavals, inexplicably sought to destroy Bokator along with every other vestige of modern Cambodia. Most of its practitioners were among the two million left dead by the time the regime was overthrown in 1979, and those still alive hid their talents out of fear, Sean Kim San said. "The Khmer Rouge - everything interesting they destroyed," he said, adding that after his return to Cambodia he unearthed about a dozen elderly bokator masters. "But they were still scared about the killings, about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge - they were afraid to speak the truth," he said. Still, he pieced together this puzzle, logging each swing or kick into his catalogue of bokator moves and slowly rebuilding interest in the ancient form. Three years ago, he said he had only seven students in one school. Now more than 1,000 practice Bokator in schools across 10 provinces. "We have about 400 or 500 students here, including some foreigners," he said of his own gym at the end of a ramshackle Phnom Penh side street. "This is how far we've raised up the sport."

Mathew Olsen, an Australian instructor of the Korean martial art hapkido and a bokator convert, said he had not known Cambodia had its own martial art. "I was surprised there was something with such a wide spectrum - the weapons, the punches, kicks, the ground fighting and pressure points makes it very lethal," he said during a recent training session. "Bokator is a very complete martial art, very interesting to foreigners," he said. "Basically I think there is more art in this martial art than a lot of other martial arts."

While one of Sean Kim San's hopes is to introduce bokator to the wider world - and eventual inclusion in international martial arts competitions - a larger and more immediate goal is to keep this very Cambodian tradition alive at home. "It is very important to pass this from generation to generation because this is our blood. This was passed down from grand masters and our kings," he said. He has a dream, he said, that bokator training will become a regular feature in Cambodian primary schools. "That means millions and millions of people know very well bokator," he said.

Article Courtesy of People’s Daily Online

http://english.people.com.cn/index.html

Pepper from Kampot Province is well on the way to becoming the first Cambodian product to get an origin-specific label, which attests to its quality and uniqueness, the Cambodia Daily newspaper reported today.

A government study has found that among Cambodian products, it comes the closest to fulfilling the criteria required for a Geographical Indications (GI) designation, the newspaper said.

"Kampot pepper meets almost all the requirements needed to become a GI," Van Roth San, intellectual property director at the Commerce Ministry, was quoted as saying.

The next step in the process will involve a geographical indications law to ensure exclusive rights to the Kampot pepper name, and then submitting a requirement application to an international committee for approval, he said.

Meeting GI standards would be a huge boost to the pepper industry, potentially leading to a 40-percent rise in value, he said, adding that pepper currently sells for $4 per kg at markets.

Source: Xinhua

Article By Robin Chen Delos

Courtesy of Voice of America

www.voanews.com

Prach Ly came to the United States as a child with his family to escape Cambodia's killing fields.  He grew up in Long Beach, California where he started rapping in English and Khmer about Cambodia's genocide, his community and life as an immigrant.  Then he became a star in Cambodia nearly overnight after he released a homemade CD.  The press dubbed him the first Khmer rap star and credited him with bringing hip-hop to Cambodia.

Prach Ly recently took a break from working on his latest album to perform at Freer Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., where he spoke to VOA's Robin Chen Delos. Here he tells his own story.

"I am a musician. I'm from Cambodia. My name is Prach. And I was born in a concentration camp during the killing field. Toward the end of the killing field our family escaped the war and went to the border of Thailand. And we stayed there at the border and we got sponsored to America,” Ly explains.

“And when I got to California in Long Beach everything wasn't all great or anything like that. It was poverty-stricken. There was gang activities. The back of our head was, you know, if you grow up past 18 years old you probably did pretty good because of all the activities there. We were ducking drive-by shootings and stuff like that. But then that's when the whole poetry, that's when the whole hip-hop, that's when the whole rap music came. I was surrounded by that. I used the karaoke equipment to record my music, my lyrics. I would go buy instrumental songs, and put my word over it. And I got a CD made. The CD was like an autobiography, coming from the whole killing field process, all the way to America and the struggle in America. And for New Year I just passed it out. And a DJ from Cambodia, DJ Sop, he was there at the New Year. He took the CD back to Cambodia, he played it over the radio and everyone was calling in to ask who's the artist. And then the government, they censored and they banned my music. And then some of the people who heard the music they argued, they said, 'Wait a minute, why are you banning his music? It's nothing in reference to the government - it's just talking about history.' So now the people are going to the markets and starting asking for it and buying the CDs. And then Newsweek and Time magazine and Asia Week, they located me and they contacted me and they like, 'We just want to ask you a question: how do you feel about having the number one album in Cambodia?' I go, "What?!' You know, I never sent it there. The important thing was the kids were asking the parents, it was more like an educational tool. They were asking the parents and asking the elders what had really happened during the killing fields,” he says proudly.

An article in this week’s National Geographic proves that Cambodia’s national animal – the Kouprey (pronounced “ko-prah”) – is indeed its own species.

A study shows evidence that the animal is not, as previously thought, a hybrid of two related species of ox. The Kouprey, a dark-coated ox with large, curling horns, was first identified as a species in 1937. Cambodia made it the country’s national symbol in 1960.

The full article – by Anne Casselman for National Geographic – can be read here

Article By Alexandria Shealy, Arts Editor

The Daily Tar Heel (Newspaper of the University of North Carolina)

www.dailytarheel.com

Sophiline Cheam Shapiro has come a long way from her days working in a field collecting cow dung in rural Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime. Now as the artistic director of the Khmer Arts Academy - a dance troupe specializing in Cambodian classical dance - Shapiro has travelled around the world both as a performer in other groups and as the head of her own company.

"Pamina Devi : A Cambodian Magic Flute" the company's classical dance rendition of Mozart's famed opera choreographed by Shapiro, will be performed at 8 pm today in the Memorial Hall of the University of North Carolina. It is presented in Khmer, Cambodia's national language, with English subtitles. While the performance includes the same characters and premise of the original opera, Shapiro incorporated into the dance her own experiences during the frequent transfer of political power in Cambodia. "The characters forget to provide the environment, the warmth and the nurture to Pamina Devi," Shapiro said. "This is reflecting through my own experience through the changing political system in Cambodia."

Shapiro, who incorporated the academy in 2001, said that while she didn't think she could be as expressive as Mozart, she was willing to try when renowned American theatre director Peter Sellars came up with the idea for "Pamina Devi." "With this work, people both in Cambodia and in international audiences appreciate it," Shapiro said. "It is a new production, and the costume is beautiful, and it represents both the preservation of the classical dance even though I choreograph new movements; it's still in the same frame of work."

Classical Cambodian dance takes dancers more than nine years of training to become qualified to perform. The form is traditionally a court dance that has been performed for the country's royalty for thousands of years. Dancers perform by bending back their limbs to express characters' emotions while wearing golden outfits that must be sewn onto the body. One of the reasons Emil Kang, UNC's executive director for the arts, chose "Pamina Devi" for performance was for its ability to teach audiences about Cambodia. "In any of these performances that are avant garde or international, all we're asking is that it gets you curious," he said. "I think many students don't know about Pol Pot or the Khmer Rouge, and these are important things to learn."

As far as the story of "The Magic Flute" - a classical German opera - being relayed by gold-clad Cambodian dancers goes, Kang said if something is lost in the translation, it's hardly worth the mention. "The story itself is well and good and the idea of gender it explores - all of those things are very important," he said, "but I think just to be able to experience the classical dance form is even more important and also this idea that the arts can help with cultural exchange." Kong Bonich, who plays Tamino, said classical dance has the power to transform the dancer. "The costume is tight, but it creates a sense of elegance," she said. "I feel beautiful when I dance in this movement. When you move, you feel a difference between the dance and the ordinary me."

While Shapiro said she hopes people find a connection to Cambodian history through her dance, she said there is much to appreciate just in the story itself. "If you don't connect it into Cambodian history, I hope you connect to Pamina Devi as a person," she said, "whether you see it in a greater perspective or in the Cambodian context or you see just a person who is trying to survive in this world."

Press Release by DNA Solutions PTY Ltd

Courtesy of Open PR

www.openpr.com

DNA Solutions based in London is pleased to announce that it has agreed to work together with Fauna & Flora International, the world's oldest conservation organisation, in using DNA fingerprinting to monitor elephant populations in Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains with the help of our scientists. Elephant dung is being collected by field biologists and trackers, and transported to DNA Solutions, an accreditated DNA testing laboratory, where the DNA will be extracted and analysed. Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains are blanketed by virtually undisturbed forest stretching over 10,000 square kilometres. Field biologists can spend weeks searching for elephants to record the vital data needed to properly monitor elephant populations. DNA analysis can yield this vital information much more quickly and efficiently. Estimating the size of elephant populations in Cambodia is extremely difficult, due to their habits and the size of their habitat. They are also extremely secretive animals. Joe Heffernan, an elephant biologist with Fauna & Flora International, has been playing hide and seek with the largest of all land mammals for years. "This is the first time a closed population has been surveyed, so the results stand to be the most sophisticated ever recorded. "In addition to the difficulties of observing elephants in the wild, their tracks and feeding signs can only reveal so much. DNA from their dung, however, can reveal the age, sex and health of the individual that produced it. Because each fingerprint is unique, the size of the population can be accurately estimated."

Vern Muir, director of DNA Solutions, said: "DNA Solutions is essentially a big team of biologists, so I can speak for everyone when I say we are all feeling proud to be able to help the cause of elephant conservation. "It is extremely rewarding to be able to use genetic techniques that for so many years have been used to solve other people's paternity issues, for something that instead gives all of us greater personal satisfaction." The information will be used to refine long-term elephant management strategies and identify future protected areas. The Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) also plans to use the data to monitor illegal elephant killing and forecast trends.

Cambodia is critical to Asian elephant conservation, but work is hampered by the scarcity of field data. Fauna & Flora International is leading surveys of remote forest areas and working with the Cambodian Wildlife Protection Office and Ministry of the Environment to ensure that these elephant strongholds are protected. Fauna & Flora International is also working with communities within the Cardamoms to understand their needs so that they do not harm elephants that stray close to their villages. The first batch of samples will arrive with DNA Solutions next month, with initial data projected to be processed by November.

DNA Solutions was established in January 1997. It is focused on providing reliable and confidential global DNA products, including ‘peace of mind’ testing for consumers and legal testing for courts and legal disputes. Services include paternity/maternity testing; sibling verification; DNA storage & preservation, ancestry, and profiling. As the first pioneering company to offer home testing kits it has established itself with over 30 offices worldwide, DNA Solutions is synonymous with advanced accuracy DNA analysis.