tagged w/ Khmer
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Tonight, Vanguard premieres The Forest of Ecstasy at 10pm ET/ 10pm PT on Current. Not too long before our trip, I’d bought myself a new digital SLR camera to satisfy my then-newfound passion for still photography. (Some photos below) As I go through the hundreds of photos I took during our trip, I’m reminded of all the moments and experiences my colleague Joanne and I experienced during our trip to Cambodia.
While the ecstasy trade, and its impact on Cambodia’s rainforest was one of the main focuses of our trip, this was just one of many many stories that caught our attention. In her blog entry, Joanne touches upon how the drug trade has overrun the heretofore vulnerable nation – today, mostly in the form of meth.
In the mid-late 70s, Cambodia was run by a genocidal regime, known as the Khmer Rouge. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge took over the country, and declared the beginning of Year Zero – and all cultural institutions and traditions were to be wiped. Essentially, the nation would hit the restart button, and only new revolutionary ideas would hold.
These guys were responsible for killing nearly 1/5 of the nation’s population, wiping out entire classes of intellectuals and professionals, and instituting an entirely socialized, agrarian society.
During the campaign of terror, the country was essentially hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world. This isolation would outlast the regime itself, which was driven from power in 1979. Ongoing violence and instability kept much of the rest of the world from wanting to engage, or do any business in this dangerous country.
Drugs, like many other legal products, are part of international business. Cambodia’s instability proved to be too risky for the drug traffickers, who steered clear. So even though the country sat in a region known for massive flows of drugs, Cambodia was entirely drug free.
In the years since the Khmer Rouge have lost power and melted away, Cambodia has begun to rejoin and re-engage with the world. This has meant increased trade with its neighbors. And now, the drugs are flowing in, in massive amounts.
Drug pushers are finding Cambodia to be rich, fertile ground for the proliferation and sale of drugs. Meth has proven to be particularly viral for this broken population. At the same time, those who are resource-hungry are also finding Cambodia ripe for exploitation. Like the forests full of the ecstasy precursors and the exotic animals deep inside.
Unfortunately for Cambodia, this is what democracy, the ideals of freedom, and trade have brought. Development has been extremely positive for Cambodia, and the nation is far better off than it was under the Khmer Rouge. But did liberty and freedom have to be so costly?
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- A Geologist’s Analysis of the War in Afghanistan - Kaj Larsen
- Everything is connected: ecstasy, rainforests, and beyond - Adam Yamaguchi
- Street Hustlers, Militants, and Vanguard’s Mission - Mitch Koss
- Cambodia’s Coming Drug Crisis - Joanne Shen
- Preparing for armageddon in the year 2012 - Adrian BaschukTonight, Vanguard premieres The Forest of Ecstasy at 10pm ET/ 10pm PT on Current. Not... more
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Those of us who have grown up in the U.S. have an ingrained understanding of what a drug is. We know that sometimes drugs can make you feel really good and sometimes they can make you feel really bad. We know that drugs alter your body chemistry, and affect your body and brain functions - for a short time or perhaps forever. Assailed from an early age with public service announcements, school drug education programs, and the diatribes of political candidates, we know about the dangers of addiction to the point at which "This is your brain on drugs" campaigns and "Just Say No" slogans have become the easy butt of jokes.
But Cambodia is starting from scratch. After decades of civil war, genocide and mass starvation, there is still too little understanding of what a drug is, in comparison to the amount of drugs that are quickly becoming available. This summer Adam Yamaguchi and I traveled to Cambodia to produce "Forest of Ecstasy" which will be airing this Wednesday at 10P/9C. In the program, we examine how the global demand for the club drug ecstasy is fueling the destruction of Cambodian rainforest as criminals try to get their hands on locally produced safrole oil, a key ingredient in the drug.
Ecstasy belongs to a category of drugs called Amphetamine Type Stimulants (ATS), and according to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, global demand for ATS drugs is on the rise and Asia is becoming a hotspot for global production. Cambodia's porous borders and inadequate law enforcement and border controls have made it an easy destination for drug traffickers and producers who manufacture ATS drugs, like ecstasy and meth, to feed the lucrative international trade. Consequently, there's a spillover effect when these illicit drugs pass through the country and locals get their first contact with them.
It's easy to see how local demand for these synthetic drugs could grow furiously. As a country like Cambodia, which was closed off from the rest of the world for decades, enters the fast paced 21st century, its population is increasingly curious about these meds that supposedly make you happier, stronger and more productive. While ecstasy is still too expensive for the average Cambodian, abuse of meth, is quickly becoming prevalent among working-class Cambodians. People like fishermen, truck drivers and agricultural workers, who have to work long, strenuous hours take meth-laced pills known in local slang either as yaba or yama. (It depends who is talking about it. We were told that "yaba" literally means "the pill that makes you crazy" but drug dealers call it "yama" which means "strong like a horse"). These little pills look like colorful, harmless candy and they're pushed onto unsuspecting, uneducated Cambodians as vitamins. In this clip of raw footage, Adam Yamaguchi looks at a handful of this popular form of meth:
Yaba (Video)
Meth in the form of yaba/yama is the gateway drug for many Cambodians. From yaba or yama, they move onto highly addictive crystal meth, which is already the drug of choice amongst Cambodian street kids. Natural curiosity about drugs, the growing available supply of drugs and a population in which more than a third of the population is under the age of 15, are all factors that collectively could lead to a national drug crisis. Time to bust out some catchy anti-drug slogans in Khmer, 'cause we've got a perfect storm brewing.
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- Preparing for armageddon in the year 2012 - by Adrian Baschuk
- There's no app for that - San Francisco's tough new trash law - by Tracey Chang
- Sustainable Sushi: Cooking with Vanguard's Christof Putzel - by Christof Putzel
- Mexico's narco war isn't ours - by Mitch Koss
- Celeb Oxy Watch: Sam Jones III of Smallville - by Mariana van ZellerThose of us who have grown up in the U.S. have an ingrained understanding of what a... more
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Here is a poetic journey through some heavily flooded areas of Phnom Penh, Cambodia after a short hard rain storm.Here is a poetic journey through some heavily flooded areas of Phnom Penh, Cambodia... more
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In a remote Cambodian village where her family had lived for generations, political unrest resulting in genocide forced Chandy, her family and thousands of Cambodians to be relocated to Thai refugee camps hundreds of miles away.
There appeared to be no future, but while living in the camp Chandy was given options she never would have had in her village - to be educated and trained as a midwife.
Twenty years later Chandy travels dangerous, rough and muddy roads leading a midwives’ outreach program. The program gives isolated village women a previously impossible option, which prevents life threatening complications.
Maternal Health Care
Chandy manages the Delivery Life Support Program, which is a project of Trauma Care Foundation and is modeled after a chain of survival network created for land mine victims in north-western Cambodia, where four-thousand villagers living inside the mine field were trained as trauma first helpers to stop bleeding and keep airways open on-site and during evacuations.
For more information please see, http://www.traumacare.no/In a remote Cambodian village where her family had lived for generations, political... more
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In a remote Cambodian village where her family had lived for generations, political unrest resulting in genocide forced Chandy, her family and thousands of Cambodians to be relocated to Thai refugee camps hundreds of miles away.
There appeared to be no future, but while living in the camp Chandy was given options she never would have had in her village - to be educated and trained as a midwife.
Twenty years later Chandy travels dangerous, rough and muddy roads leading a midwives’ outreach program. The program gives isolated village women a previously impossible option, which prevents life threatening complications.
Maternal Health Care
This is a trailer for a short documentary
Trailer cut by Bruno ToreIn a remote Cambodian village where her family had lived for generations, political... more
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A short film about a program for street kids in Phnom Penh, Cambodia called Mith Samlanh.
Mith Samlanh is Khmer for Friends.
Anyone who has traveled to Phnom Penh has seen the staggering number of street children in Phnom Penh. Someone once told me that handing money to a child on the street is equivalent to telling them that you agree to their lot in life. That's why I love what Mith Samlanh does for street children and their families
Mith Samlanh’s mission is to get children off the streets. The parents of street children are given an income generating project, Mith Samlanh agrees to buy the product and sell it in there shop with the agreement that the children stay in school, instead of being sent to beg on the street. The shop where the products are sold in Phnom Penh is called Friends n’ Stuff. The charming products are made from local, recycled and easily sources low-cost materials such as recycled newspapers and magazines. So much better than buying a souvenir that is probably made in China
I love Mith Samlanh’s mission, so I am including it below.
Mith Samlanh’s mission is:
1. Meeting the street children's immediate essential needs in accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child:
- the right to life: providing nutritional meals, shelter, a safe environment and medical care;
- the right to development: providing education and reintegrating them into public school and by developing their curiosity;
- the right to protection: fighting all forms of abuse against children including physical, sexual, family, and emotional abuse;
- the right to participation: making children aware of their responsibilities and promoting action within the center and in the community;
2. Reintegrating the children into their families, into society, into the public school system, into their culture;
3. and building the capacity of the staff so that
the Cambodian nationals are able to run the
program independent of foreign intervention in
the near future.
How great is that!!
A short film about a program for street kids in Phnom Penh, Cambodia called Mith... more
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