08/09/2006
The Red Sense - a view from ‘down under’
A new film, called
The Red Sense, by first-time Khmer-Australian director Tim Pek, deals with the Khmer Rouge Regime, and the upcoming trials, from the perspective of younger Khmers living in a western country. Actress Sarina Luy (pictured), plays the role of Kong Jan Melear, a thirty-something Khmer woman living in Australia, who discovers that her father’s killer is living freely in a first world country - an opportunity her father was never given. The film deals with her personal struggle as she tries to decide what the correct course of action is. Sarina Luy arrived in Australia in 1995 from New Zealand, after having left a refugee camp in Thailand in 1991.
Filmed in Australia, with real Khmer actors and actresses, Director Tim Pek elected to have 80% of the dialogue in Khmer (with English subtitles). His hope is that the film will motivate Cambodians to forget the past and to focus on the future. The film is scheduled for an independent release in Australia in November 2006, along with a public release in Phnom Penh. You can see the film trailer and photos here.
08/07/2006
Cambodia destroyed thousands of smuggled eggs and mounted a campaign to warn people against buying illegally imported poultry products, in the wake of new reported bird-flu cases in neighbouring Thailand and Laos, authorities said Sunday.
Meach Son, the Agriculture Ministry chief in the northwestern province of Banteay Meanchey, said his department had destroyed 5,000 chicken eggs Friday to try to prevent outbreaks of avian influenza along its borders.
Thailand and Laos both reported new cases of the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus in recent weeks.
“We have also made a proclamation to all the people not to eat eggs and chicken brought illegally from Thailand and have warned people engaged in this trade that we will close them down,” Son said by telephone.
The Cambodian crackdown on cross-border poultry trade and new efforts to educate people about the virus followed Thailand’s confirmation of the second human death this year. Laos reported it had detected the virus on a farm last month.
Cambodia has recorded six confirmed human cases of bird flu, all of them fatal. Most of those occurred near its border with Vietnam.
However Thailand, traditionally an important supplier of poultry to Cambodia, has also been hard hit by the disease and Son said authorities on the country’s Thai border were taking no chances.
© 2006 DPA
08/06/2006
Cambodian Phnom Penh municipal court has sentenced a HIV-positive man to 10 years in prison for intentionally infecting his wife with the virus, local media reported on Friday.
Meas Mea, 40, was found guilty of forcing sex with his wife without wearing condom after he was confirmed as an HIV carrier, according to local Khmer newspaper Rasmei Kampuchea. The man also beat his wife when his sexual request was refused.
The man became the first person to be sentenced according to a 2002 law on AIDS prevention and control to punish those who knowingly spread the virus.
Cambodia has the highest HIV infection rate in Southeast Asia. Some 150,000 of Cambodia’s 13 million people are HIV-positive, which is equivalent to 1.9 percent of all adult aged between 15 and 49. Up to 90,000 infected people have died since the first case of HIV was diagnosed in 1993.
Source: Xinhua