Global News from Cambodia

I spent the last two days reading, playing guitar, and taking Kmer lessons, all very relaxing and enjoyable. A local paper that I try to read everyday is the Cambodia Daily; a paper with some of the best journalists in the world. Reading about current events that one would never even hear about in Canada, U.S., or Europe. It has been interesting to read everything from Canadian politics in Asia to local corruption in schools.

APLE's Good News
The donated money from Humans Being is in the hands of Action Pour Les Enfants and today I read about a recent arrest of an Australian Teacher. He is being convicted of child sex abuse and has admitted his offence. Of course he admitted his crime; they found hundreds of naked photos with young boys and some of him in sexual positions.

This is the 23rd foreigner arrested in Cambodia on the basis of einvestigations conducted by APLE.

As much as the information can be hard to understand or to even believe, it is important to know that the problem exists and that one person can make a difference.

I'm starting to see that every day here in Phnom Penh offers one beauty and one horror. As I am new to Cambodia, I am still only at the surface in understanding the people and the culture and I am very keen to learn more. I will soon be going to the outskirts and looking at the Cambodians way of 'urban development'. I have not been drawn to the tourist attractions but instead I have become so facinated in the way people are recovering from the genocide, civil war, and dictatorship. To read more about the genocide click here, or just google it.

Google - Not the only answer

"The biggest use of armed force against civilians since the Teananmen massacre in 1989 occured on Dec.6, 2005. Only now is news reaching the people in China. Why, you may ask? The Chinese government has learned to blackout not only the local media but also the internet search engines." - New York Times, Howard French

I guess, one can never really know what information is true. The only defense people have is to become more educated on their own. For me, I've started to take care in not only what I read but as well, in what I hear on the street. There are always two sides with many schools of thought.