Language and National Identify in Asia: Cambodia by Dr. Steve Heder
Posted by: | Posted on: September 12, 2011Language and National Identity in Asia: Cambodia (by Steve Heder) – Democratic Kampuchea
Language and National Identity in Asia
Edited by Andrew Simpson
Oxford University Press, 2007
Chapter 13: CAMBODIA
by Dr. Steve Heder
13.6 Democratic Kampuchea, 1975-1978
Although Pol Pot and several of his senior ministers were French-educated Sino-Khmer, an important linguistic aspect of the DK regime was that it was more ethno-linguistically Khmer than any previous twentieth-century polity. The overwhelming majority of CPK local cadres and much of the top leadership spoke only Khmer, and insistently so, demanding that everyone talk in the political dialect originally devised by Tou Samut. For the first time in Cambodian history the speaking of foreign languages was also considered a dangerous political flaw and could result in the speakers’ execution. However, while pursuing violent linguistic Khmerization, DK was also the also the first regime since colonialism not to formally extol Khmer-ism, proclaiming instead that all its people were Kampucheans, the aim being transformation of the entire population into proletarianized, atheistic worker-peasants with no ethnic differences (Heder 2005).
Notoriously, DK’s spectacular acceleration of previous trends toward linguistic Khmerization was connected to a nationalist political project involving massive murder, including genocide and other crimes against humanity. This project was driven by Pol Pot’s ambition to restore Cambodian glory and its ‘national soul’ (Pol 1976: 13-14) by building a cosmically perfect example of universal communism, combining the most radical aspects of the Soviet, Chinese, and Vietnamese revolutions in order to surpass all of them by a ‘Phenomenally Great Leap Forward’ in economic development. Everyone became an Other of this imagined perfect Marxist Kampuchea: US imperialism, French colonialism, Soviet revisionism, Vietnamese expansionism, and Chinese Communist interference internationally, national minorities and the recalcitrant Khmer majority itself domestically. Estimates suggest that during the less than four years of Communist rule, between one and three million Cambodians out of a population of 7-7.5 million died by execution and from famines and illnesses resulting from conditions created by the regime. One estimate suggests the dead included one in seven of the country’s rural Khmer, a quarter of urban Khmer, half of ethnic Chinese, more than a third of Islamic Cham, and 15 per cent of upland minorities, while Vietnamese who had evaded the CPK’s not-to-be-refused offer of deportation after April 1975 were almost totally wiped out in an overtly genocidal campaign of targeted killings that began in 1977.
Cambodian boy suckles from cow after parents leave
Posted by: | Posted on: September 10, 2011The pictures of Tha Sophat, a 20 months old toddler living in Koak Roka Siem Reap province, is pitiful worldwide. In third countries, the child development is at the most important agenda for the government. Tha Sophat is just an emerging sample reflecting thousands or hundred thousands of other Cambodian children whose future is wholly depending on the capability of their parents in upbringing them. Upbringing children in Cambodia is considered experiencing back to ancient era in which children were left alone at home, or depending on their young siblings, or depending on grandparents etc. In rural areas, don’t mention about nutrition for children, only rice with salt on plate are hard to find for those children to eat.
Currently, I observe my 13 months old daughter is luckier than me when I was a toddler; but she seems share the same character like me as she picks and eats everything on the floor. Frankly, I ate every small piece picking up from the ground to including trunks and leaves of the trees till I was 11 years old.
Tha Sophat might be luckier than other street children who are making a living by scavenging. Tha Sophat has reserved a very compassionate cow who are not harming him but accepting him as her extra son by providing her fresh milk everyday!
In Canada, no children are left on the street. No children are left in home without adult attendance. No children are left in home without schooling if their ages are 5 years old up. Parents are arrested if they have violated such as leaving children alone or with minor without adult attendance, have not sent children to school at their schooling age, or feeding children without having sufficient nutrition food etc.
Personal Opinion
09/09/2011
The Associated Press
KOAK ROKA, Cambodia—A Cambodian man says his young grandson has lived partly on milk he suckles directly from a cow since the boy’s parents left their rural village in search of work.
Um Oeung says 20-month-old Tha Sophat started suckling the cow in July after he saw a calf do the same.
Um Oeung told The Associated Press he pulled the boy away at first. He relented after his grandson protested loudly and the boy has suckled the cow’s milk once or twice a day since then.
Tha Sophat has lived with his grandparents in Siem Reap province in northwest Cambodia since his parents moved to Thailand in search of work.
Um Oeung said Friday the cow doesn’t mind the young boy suckling but he is worried about his grandson’s health if he continues.
Tha Sophat, the little toddler who suckles on cow after his parents had to leave to work in Thailand
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| Tha Sophat, a 20-month-old boy, suckles from a cow in Koak Roka village, Siem Reap province, Cambodia |
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| Tha Sophat started suckling the cow after he saw a calf do the same |
Easy idea for Cambodian social entrepreneur to imitate
Posted by: | Posted on: September 8, 2011
Cambodian poors and their slums should learn from this initiative to avoid high cost of electricity, and the environmentalist entrepreneurs should imitate this initiative. In the Philippine, those poor slums living in shelters roofed by large pieces of zinc easily absorbed hot temperature and darkness including their unaffordable electricity expense, the use of bottle solar is imperative. Hence, this initiative not only helps saving expense for the poors on electricity, it also saves the environment which those dumped bottles have seriously affected this planet.
For for ideal, please watch below video clip: