http://www.searchmagazine.org/November-December%202008/full-politicalbrain.html
Political speech can frame elections, but how does it work in the brain?On the sweltering summer afternoon of August 28, 1963, under the watchful eye of the Great Emancipator himself, Martin Luther King, Jr., ascended the stage near the Lincoln Memorial and faced a crowd of two-hundred thousand.
It was his “I Have a Dream” speech, and for sixteen minutes King held the crowd transfixed. He spoke simple words and short phrases, delivered with a trance-inducing, soft-then-loud cadence. The speech was emotionally riveting, and when King was through, an entire people’s struggle and a vast nation’s hypocrisy were exposed. Civil inequality had nowhere to hide.
Henry Marsh, the first African-American mayor of Richmond and now a State Senator from Virginia, was in Washington that day. “When Dr. Martin Luther King spoke,” said Marsh, seventy-four, “it was a feeling of vindication. It was emotional because of the many sacrifices that led to Dr. King’s march.”
Almost exactly forty-five years later, Marsh felt those feelings again — vindication, hope, optimism. This time he was at Mile High Stadium in Denver, and Barack Obama was speaking.“They both grasped the moment,” said Marsh of Obama and King.
Great speech can move nations and change history. It can ignite revolution, spread peace and reconciliation, and even inspire hatred and war. It also wins elections.But why are some politician’s messages so powerful, so persuasive? And why do some messages excite, invigorate, and endure, while others are forgotten as soon as the microphone drops?
It turns out that there’s science behind persuasion, and recently, with modern techniques, scientists have actually seen what is happening in the brain. What they’ve found is surprising, even counter-intuitive. Effective persuasion — the ability to convince — has little to do with facts. What changes minds in politics is far more basic.
Luke Conway, a professor of psychology at the University of Montana, studies complexity in political speech. Conway found that politicians’ ideas get simple when they are running for election. His conclusions come from studies including an examination of the four State of the Union addresses of forty-one presidents in their first terms. Conway found a pattern. American presidents’ ideas are most complex in their first State of the Union address. In other words, their ideas are nuanced and often open to others’ points of view. Subsequent addresses, however, are less complex. The last address — the one prior to potential reelection — has the simplest ideas. Conway’s studies, though still underway, suggest a relationship between simplicity and persuasion. “This could be why candidates typically get simpler as elections approach,” said Conway. “Because simplicity sells.” Likewise, Conway’s research suggests that complexity and ambiguity don’t inspire. “No one marches to rallying cries that say ‘I may be right, I may be wrong, let’s dialogue,’” said Conway.
It turns out that simplicity is a common trait in the messages of other successful historical leaders. Peter Suedfeld is a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia and has studied revolutionary leaders in China, Great Britain, Cuba, Russia, and the United States. Suedfeld’s research shows that successful revolutionaries are often those with the simplest message. “Those that were straightforward and put things in simple language were successful,” he said. Suedfeld is careful not to imply that simplicity leads to political success — his data doesn’t show that directly. But, his research does suggest that simplicity usually does precede success.But it’s not all about brevity. Successful persuasion is also dependent on framing, says George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. According to Lakoff, facts by themselves have little ability to persuade. Rather, it’s the way politicians frame facts that leads to persuasion.
To explain framing, Lakoff discusses the government’s recent $700 billion deal with Wall Street. Some politicians framed the deal as a “rescue,” others, a “bailout.” But there’s a big difference in the two terms. A “rescue” is positive, implying heroics, bravery, and benevolence. A “bailout,” on the other hand, is negative; it feels like a reward to those who screwed up.Done right, framing injects values into issues. The two examples above generate the conflicting values of benevolence and self-sufficiency. Do we value rescuing fellow Americans in financial need? Or do we value the free market and leave failing businesses to fail?
Both candidates in the 2008 presidential race used framing. McCain used his foreign policy experience to frame himself as a protector of America. Obama, like Sarah Palin, used his “outsider” image to frame himself as the candidate for “change.”Framing is not a bad thing — at least not usually. Voters should focus on values, said Lakoff in a Huffingtonpost.com blog. “Since they don’t know what the situation will be in a couple of years, it is rational to ask if a candidate shares your values, if he’s saying what he believes, if he connects with you, if you trust him, and if you identify with him.”
But, though framing and simplicity are important, they are really a means towards the most powerful tool of political persuasion: emotion.Drew Westen, a professor of political psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, is the author of The Political Brain, which examines the role of emotion in American politics. Westen’s message is simple. “If you want to win hearts and minds, start with the heart.”
Westen and his colleagues conducted studies of the brain to examine how partisanship influences reasoning. To do this, Westen gathered a group of devoted Democrats and a group of devoted Republicans prior to the 2004 presidential election. He showed each group contradictory statements made by John Kerry and contradictory statements made by George W. Bush. Then, subjects rated the degree to which they saw a contradiction.
It’s important to note that the contradictions that Westen chose were glaring. Anyone not under the spell of partisanship could easily see them. The partisans, however, were blinded. For the most part, Democrats only saw the contradictions of Republicans and Republicans only saw the contradictions of Democrats. Westen conducted similar studies about partisans’ opinions on the impeachment of President Clinton and the 2000 election controversy.
From his studies, Westen found a few things. First, partisans don’t listen to facts, and their opinions are difficult to change even with hard evidence. Second, political opinions are generally not based on fact at all, they are based on emotions. In The Political Brain Westen writes: “The results showed that when partisans face threatening information, not only are they likely to ‘reason’ to emotionally biased conclusions, but we can trace their neural footprints as they do it.”By “trace,” Westen means using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to see what’s happening in the brain. The researchers found that subjects confronted with negative information about their party or candidate initially feel the unpleasant emotion of distress. It doesn’t last long. Very quickly, the brain uses faulty reasoning and false beliefs to counteract the negative feeling by reaching a false conclusion. The brain then produces positive emotion — a reward for having reached an illogical decision.
The bottom line, according to Westen is that the “the political brain is an emotional brain.”
Westen and his colleagues are not the only ones to study the relationship between emotion and persuasion. Russell Granger is the president and chief executive of ProEd Corporation, a Maryland-based productivity-improvement firm that offers lessons in persuasion. He also has a degree in psychology from Lafayette College and authored The 7 Triggers to Yes, in which he discusses persuasion methods.
According to Granger, the study of persuasion started with the ancient Greeks. “They realized it was needed in that crazy new form of government called democracy,” said Granger. “You couldn’t get anything done without having the power to convince others.”
Granger knows his history. In the fourth century BCE, Aristotle wrote his Rhetoric, a collection of three books on persuasion. Aristotle knew that emotion and the appeal of the speaker were part of persuasion. But, according to Granger, Aristotle thought the best path to persuasion was though logic and reason, which he called logos.
Aristotle didn’t have the convenience of twenty-first century science. For nearly two thousand five hundred years his theory went unchallenged.
Then came neuroimaging.“Now we can see live, in real-time, blood, neurons, and oxygen flow in the brain,” said Granger. “Aristotle had it backwards. Emotional triggers give us persuasion.”
According to Granger, it all involves the amygdala, an almond-shaped mass in the brain’s limbic system that’s responsible for emotion. It’s here that sensory input goes first for requests for decisions or actions. If we are emotionally connected to a topic, a decision might be made immediately. The process is called cognitive heuristics, or a cognitive shortcut. You might call it a gut reaction. Regardless, it’s a process where emotions — not facts — are used to make quick and painless decisions.
Robert Cialdini, a professor of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University and author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, also studies cognitive heuristics. According to Cialdini, the phenomenon helps humans with daily functioning by letting us make decisions with our emotions when we don’t have all the facts. “It allows us to make good choices without having to get smart,” said Cialdini.
Decisions, however, are not always made in the amygdala. If we don’t have an emotional gut reaction, the information passes to the prefrontal cortex for logical evaluation. According to Granger, using logic to make decisions is literally painful, producing the same brainwaves as are produced when we immerse our hands in cold water or solve math problems. It’s so strenuous, said Granger, that the brain uses 300 percent more calories than when making decisions in the amygdala.
Here’s the point: Whether they know if or not, politicians should appeal to the emotions of voters. Once they do so, voters will form emotional connections with candidates, and voters’ decisions will be made in the amygdala, not the churning prefrontal cortex. Such connections are so strong they can last a lifetime.That brings us back to the 2008 U.S. presidential election and how candidates courted voters.
From Westen’s studies, we know that partisans already have emotional ties to their party and their candidate. For these voters, it’s too late to change: Republicans can’t convince Democrats, nor will Democrats convince Republicans. For one thing, this means that candidates should never fear offending those with whom they will never agree. Candidates should concern themselves, however, with making emotional connections with undecided voters. That means avoiding complexity and nuance, using facts and statistics sparingly, and, above all, showing humanity.
Republicans have historically excelled at emotion. That’s part of the reason, says Lakoff, that both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were elected. More than their opponents, Reagan and Bush were emotional, charismatic, and likable. They led with values. McCain followed the same path, evoking emotion by framing himself as a war hero, Washington maverick, and protector of America.
Despite all the science, however, Democrats have historically struggled with emotion, running campaigns instead that are based on policies, issues, statistics and facts. According to Lakoff, that’s largely the reason Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale lost to Reagan, and why Bush beat Al Gore and Kerry.
As Westen explained, “When Democrats make an appeal to a small strip of cortex in the front of our brain, they are ceding the emotional circuits.” Obama, however, has been different. He has authenticity, sincerity, and can connect and communicate with voters. There’s no better example than Obama’s nomination speech, the one that gave Senator Marsh the same emotion he felt when he heard Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s also, by Lakoff’s analysis, how Obama beat Hillary Clinton in the 2008 nomination race.But, according to Westen, Obama focused on issues after that speech. Westen saw it in the first presidential debate. “You could have grafted Dukakis’ face over Obama’s,” he said. “Only two times in 90 minutes did he refer to real people.”Lakoff agrees. “Obama needs to be Obama again, the inspiring figure who gives us hope, not the dull policy wonk.”
If Obama does that, it will seem the Democrats have finally learned what Republicans have known for decades. It’s a lesson that Westen summarizes best: “Sometimes leadership isn’t about moving to the left or moving to the right, it’s about moving the electorate.”
Jonathan Hemmerdinger is a journalist and reporter from Arlington, Va.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Arlington Provides Refuge for Cambodian Culture
Arlington Provides Refuge for Cambodian Culture:
http://www.sungazette.net/articles/2008/10/01/arlington/news/nw915.txt
For Cambodian-Americans in the Washington, D.C., area, keeping traditional culture alive is a fight against long odds. The battle's fought, however, week after week at the Arlington Mill Community Center, where Cambodian-born parents bring their American-born children for lessons in their ancient heritage.The children come midday Sunday, shuffling into the center in richly colored, sequin-studded Av Noay, a traditional Cambodian dress. They're here to take classical Cambodian dance and music lessons and to understand their roots.Jonathan Dos, a fifth-grader at Carlin Springs Elementary, patiently holds two mallets above the dark hardwood bars of a curved wooden instrument known as a roneat ek. It's like a xylophone but has a rich eastern tone that fills the room as Jonathan plays. It's a simple tune, like a Cambodian version of “Chopsticks.”The instructor, Ngek Chum, watches his pupils while bowing a violin-like instrument called a tro.There's not a musical sheet in the room. “I use my ear,” Chum said.Most of the adults here arrived in the United States between the late 1970s and early 1980s - during or after the dark, genocidal era of Pol Pot's regime. In an effort to create a classless society, the Khmer Rouge directly or indirectly killed nearly 1.7 million Cambodians, one-fifth of Cambodia's population, between 1975 and 1979.Upon arriving in the United States, the refugees established “Khmer” communities throughout the country. Some 4,000 Cambodians live in the Washington, D.C., area.In a larger room across the hall from Chum's music lesson is Devi Yim, the Dance Master. Yim stands on tiptoe at the head of the class, her outstretched arms moving gracefully in large circles to music played from a stereo.Facing Yim for this demonstration of the Coconut Dance are 30 girls, some no more than five years old.Like the others, Yim has seen hardship.“They gave us three days to leave,” Yim said, referring to the Khmer Rouge order to evacuate Phnom Penh in 1975. Yim and thousands fled to the countryside on foot and at gunpoint.Yim, 5 years old at the time, was separated from her family and forced to tend rice fields in the countryside. Her brother was killed.
In the early 1980s, after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Yim completed her education and graduated from the Royal University of Phnom Penh. She first performed dance in the United States in 1990 on the invitation of the U.S government.“My country was still at war,” she said. “I decided to stay here.”Now she teaches the children what she learned in her homeland. “I want to keep my culture alive. That's why I do it every weekend.”Sara Say agrees. A former second lieutenant in the Cambodian Special Forces, Say has been performing in America since arriving in the early 1980s.Afraid their culture would be lost in the relocation, Say and 30 other refugees brought their dance heritage with them.Say, now a writer, drummer, and singer, lives and performs at local venues.“We must show them that we are from somewhere else in the world,” Say said referring to the children. “They have to learn what is their background.”It's a refrain heard again and again among the parents: It's important that the children know their heritage.Kathy Rafferty sits in a plastic chair in the community center while her adopted daughter, Grace, practices dance moves. Grace was born in Cambodia and brought to the United States by Rafferty at six months of age.Rafferty's not Cambodian, but she understands the importance of culture and identity.The dance lessons teach culture and help with identity, Rafferty noted. Her daughter “wailed at first,” she said, “but when the kids get older they really start to appreciate the lessons.”Another mother, Nalen Smith, watches Meghan, her 5-year-old daughter, perform. “My kids don't know the culture yet,” said Smith, who spent five years at the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp on the Thai border and lost her sister to a border-guard's bullet.“I bring Meghan to dance because I want to keep the culture alive,” she said. “It's not easy.”The littlest ones, like Meghan, are too young to understand. But they eventually learn. “After a while they realize that they have their own origins,” said Say.Victoria Yap, a Chinese-Cambodian-American, passes out four-foot peacock feathers to twenty children in the break room. They're about to practice the “Peacock Dance.”“They become the peacock,” Yap said, explaining the meaning of the ancient dance.Dance and music lessons, however, require lots of free time. And in America, free time comes at a premium.“We try to maintain our identity. But, we're busy,” said Poly Sam, 42, a Cambodian immigrant and survivor of the Khmer Rouge. Sam now is a broadcaster at Radio Free Asia in Washington.Circumstances don't always allow for culture to come first, he said.But though Sam embraces his heritage, he is also grateful for the opportunities America has offered him and his three children.“Being American is a good thing,” he said. “My kids will be successful.”
http://www.sungazette.net/articles/2008/10/01/arlington/news/nw915.txt
For Cambodian-Americans in the Washington, D.C., area, keeping traditional culture alive is a fight against long odds. The battle's fought, however, week after week at the Arlington Mill Community Center, where Cambodian-born parents bring their American-born children for lessons in their ancient heritage.The children come midday Sunday, shuffling into the center in richly colored, sequin-studded Av Noay, a traditional Cambodian dress. They're here to take classical Cambodian dance and music lessons and to understand their roots.Jonathan Dos, a fifth-grader at Carlin Springs Elementary, patiently holds two mallets above the dark hardwood bars of a curved wooden instrument known as a roneat ek. It's like a xylophone but has a rich eastern tone that fills the room as Jonathan plays. It's a simple tune, like a Cambodian version of “Chopsticks.”The instructor, Ngek Chum, watches his pupils while bowing a violin-like instrument called a tro.There's not a musical sheet in the room. “I use my ear,” Chum said.Most of the adults here arrived in the United States between the late 1970s and early 1980s - during or after the dark, genocidal era of Pol Pot's regime. In an effort to create a classless society, the Khmer Rouge directly or indirectly killed nearly 1.7 million Cambodians, one-fifth of Cambodia's population, between 1975 and 1979.Upon arriving in the United States, the refugees established “Khmer” communities throughout the country. Some 4,000 Cambodians live in the Washington, D.C., area.In a larger room across the hall from Chum's music lesson is Devi Yim, the Dance Master. Yim stands on tiptoe at the head of the class, her outstretched arms moving gracefully in large circles to music played from a stereo.Facing Yim for this demonstration of the Coconut Dance are 30 girls, some no more than five years old.Like the others, Yim has seen hardship.“They gave us three days to leave,” Yim said, referring to the Khmer Rouge order to evacuate Phnom Penh in 1975. Yim and thousands fled to the countryside on foot and at gunpoint.Yim, 5 years old at the time, was separated from her family and forced to tend rice fields in the countryside. Her brother was killed.
In the early 1980s, after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Yim completed her education and graduated from the Royal University of Phnom Penh. She first performed dance in the United States in 1990 on the invitation of the U.S government.“My country was still at war,” she said. “I decided to stay here.”Now she teaches the children what she learned in her homeland. “I want to keep my culture alive. That's why I do it every weekend.”Sara Say agrees. A former second lieutenant in the Cambodian Special Forces, Say has been performing in America since arriving in the early 1980s.Afraid their culture would be lost in the relocation, Say and 30 other refugees brought their dance heritage with them.Say, now a writer, drummer, and singer, lives and performs at local venues.“We must show them that we are from somewhere else in the world,” Say said referring to the children. “They have to learn what is their background.”It's a refrain heard again and again among the parents: It's important that the children know their heritage.Kathy Rafferty sits in a plastic chair in the community center while her adopted daughter, Grace, practices dance moves. Grace was born in Cambodia and brought to the United States by Rafferty at six months of age.Rafferty's not Cambodian, but she understands the importance of culture and identity.The dance lessons teach culture and help with identity, Rafferty noted. Her daughter “wailed at first,” she said, “but when the kids get older they really start to appreciate the lessons.”Another mother, Nalen Smith, watches Meghan, her 5-year-old daughter, perform. “My kids don't know the culture yet,” said Smith, who spent five years at the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp on the Thai border and lost her sister to a border-guard's bullet.“I bring Meghan to dance because I want to keep the culture alive,” she said. “It's not easy.”The littlest ones, like Meghan, are too young to understand. But they eventually learn. “After a while they realize that they have their own origins,” said Say.Victoria Yap, a Chinese-Cambodian-American, passes out four-foot peacock feathers to twenty children in the break room. They're about to practice the “Peacock Dance.”“They become the peacock,” Yap said, explaining the meaning of the ancient dance.Dance and music lessons, however, require lots of free time. And in America, free time comes at a premium.“We try to maintain our identity. But, we're busy,” said Poly Sam, 42, a Cambodian immigrant and survivor of the Khmer Rouge. Sam now is a broadcaster at Radio Free Asia in Washington.Circumstances don't always allow for culture to come first, he said.But though Sam embraces his heritage, he is also grateful for the opportunities America has offered him and his three children.“Being American is a good thing,” he said. “My kids will be successful.”
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Apple fans get set for iPhone upgrade
Apple fans get set for iPhone upgrade
Jonathan Hemmerdinger, Correspondent
Last Updated: July 07. 2008 11:13PM UAE / July 7. 2008 7:13PM GMT
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080707/FOREIGN/746320401/1014/NEWS&Profile=1014
WASHINGTON //
Ever since Ray Basile bought his first Macintosh computer in 1999, he has been a self-described Applehead, a member of a cultish group of devotees of just about anything that Apple and its chief executive officer, Steve Jobs, think up.
And like the others in the “Cult of Mac”, Mr Basile can hardly wait for Friday, when Apple begins selling the second-generation version of one of the most celebrated pieces of technology to come along in years – the iPhone.
He will brave the crowds bound to show up at Apple stores nationwide to be among the first to upgrade.“I’ll be there in line,” said Mr Basile, who in his spare time runs a blog devoted to the iPhone, iPhoneSavior.com. “It’ll be like a worship service.”
When the first iPhone hit the market amid hoopla last year, Appleheads rejoiced. It was the Macintosh computer of the mobile-phone world: different in looks and operation than competing products, complete with a touch-screen, built-in iPod and internet browser. It was, in the eyes of those who bought it, and even many who did not, cool – a kind of anti-Blackberry.
“Think back to high school,” Mr Basile, 48, said in an interview, speaking on his first-generation iPhone. “All you really were after was inclusion. As soon as you have an iPhone, anyone will include you.“Everyone who walks by asks, ‘Is that an iPhone?’”
It took just 74 days for Apple to sell one million of the first model. Four million more were sold in the first half of the 2008 fiscal year, according to the company. Those sales – paired with the enormous success of the company’s music business, in the form of the iPod and iTunes – have contributed to the remarkable rebirth of a company that has long existed in the shadow of Microsoft and the dominant PC. Apple posted a record US$9.6 billion (Dh35.2bn) in revenue in the first quarter of 2008, the highest quarterly revenue in its history.
For all the hype surrounding the phone’s release, not all of it was good. The phone launched last summer with an initial, and exorbitant, $599 price tag, and could only be used on a single mobile telephone network, AT&T. Within a few months, however, a 17-year-old tech-savvy boy from New Jersey “unlocked” it for use on other domestic networks, and networks overseas, and soon iPhones were being used in China and Russia. The Washington Post reported that Russia’s new president, Dmitry Medvedev, was using one.
The 3G iPhone will be available in 22 countries on Friday. By the end of the year, Apple plans to offer models with eight gigabytes and 16 gigabytes of memory in close to 70 countries, although according to Apple’s website, the UAE is not among them. As in the United States, iPhones will work over only certain mobile networks.To believers, the iPhone is more than a phone. It, and other Apple products, evolved into symbols of fierce individuality, perfection of design and the potential of technology to improve the world. What is more, the iPhone elevates the “personal cool factor”, according to one blogger, and signifies membership of an exclusive club. Some have labelled the following a cult.
“It may have all of the nasty features of other cults,” Michael Malone, a technology journalist
who writes the Silicon Insider column for ABCNews.com, said last year. “But on the positive side, the Apple cult isn’t destructive. It’s a bit creepy … but look what we get in exchange.”
Which is why the launch of the new iPhone comes as something of an American event.
Mr Jobs confirmed the launch at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco last month, outlining a slew of new features. The iPhone’s new slogan is on Apple’s website: “Twice as Fast, Half the Price.” The eight-gigabyte model sells for $199 with a contract.
That is good news for Marissa Noel, who said outside the Apple Store in Arlington, Virginia, that she plans to upgrade her current model. It turns out she spends a lot of time there: in addition to her iPhone, she has purchased five Apple computers in the past year.“On every other cellphone to get e-mail you need to hit 10 buttons,” said Ms Noel, 28, of Washington, DC. “On the iPhone, it’s just one. It’s amazing.”
Since Mr Jobs’s announcement about the official launch, the online world has been abuzz with iPhone chatter. Bloggers discuss everything about the devices, including price plans, sales forecasts, the phone’s functionality, even whether to stick with the original colour, white, or the new black.
Other blogs are less serious, especially Mr Basile’s, which pokes fun at Apple fanaticism (despite being a part of it himself). “New York to Honor Steve Jobs with Historic Tribute for iPhone,” reads one of the latest postings by Mr Basile, a vice president of new media for a digital music and visual imaging company in Issaquah, Washington, a suburb 26km east of Seattle. The attached picture shows the Statue of Liberty cradling an iMac laptop computer over New York Harbor, the Apple logo atop its torch.
Apple’s success and cult following has bred a backlash too among those who find its devotees overly dogmatic and Mr Jobs something of an egomaniac. There is also some frustration among the so-called “early adopters”, those who bought iPhones in 2007 – at full price. Now, with a cheaper price tag, the phone’s reach will grow, and the club will become decidedly less exclusive.
Mr Basile suggests on his blog that the “elite status” that early iPhone users enjoyed will be threatened come Friday. Suddenly, anyone with an old iPhone will be “fatally out of fashion”. But not him.
Jonathan Hemmerdinger, Correspondent
Last Updated: July 07. 2008 11:13PM UAE / July 7. 2008 7:13PM GMT
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080707/FOREIGN/746320401/1014/NEWS&Profile=1014
WASHINGTON //
Ever since Ray Basile bought his first Macintosh computer in 1999, he has been a self-described Applehead, a member of a cultish group of devotees of just about anything that Apple and its chief executive officer, Steve Jobs, think up.
And like the others in the “Cult of Mac”, Mr Basile can hardly wait for Friday, when Apple begins selling the second-generation version of one of the most celebrated pieces of technology to come along in years – the iPhone.
He will brave the crowds bound to show up at Apple stores nationwide to be among the first to upgrade.“I’ll be there in line,” said Mr Basile, who in his spare time runs a blog devoted to the iPhone, iPhoneSavior.com. “It’ll be like a worship service.”
When the first iPhone hit the market amid hoopla last year, Appleheads rejoiced. It was the Macintosh computer of the mobile-phone world: different in looks and operation than competing products, complete with a touch-screen, built-in iPod and internet browser. It was, in the eyes of those who bought it, and even many who did not, cool – a kind of anti-Blackberry.
“Think back to high school,” Mr Basile, 48, said in an interview, speaking on his first-generation iPhone. “All you really were after was inclusion. As soon as you have an iPhone, anyone will include you.“Everyone who walks by asks, ‘Is that an iPhone?’”
It took just 74 days for Apple to sell one million of the first model. Four million more were sold in the first half of the 2008 fiscal year, according to the company. Those sales – paired with the enormous success of the company’s music business, in the form of the iPod and iTunes – have contributed to the remarkable rebirth of a company that has long existed in the shadow of Microsoft and the dominant PC. Apple posted a record US$9.6 billion (Dh35.2bn) in revenue in the first quarter of 2008, the highest quarterly revenue in its history.
For all the hype surrounding the phone’s release, not all of it was good. The phone launched last summer with an initial, and exorbitant, $599 price tag, and could only be used on a single mobile telephone network, AT&T. Within a few months, however, a 17-year-old tech-savvy boy from New Jersey “unlocked” it for use on other domestic networks, and networks overseas, and soon iPhones were being used in China and Russia. The Washington Post reported that Russia’s new president, Dmitry Medvedev, was using one.
The 3G iPhone will be available in 22 countries on Friday. By the end of the year, Apple plans to offer models with eight gigabytes and 16 gigabytes of memory in close to 70 countries, although according to Apple’s website, the UAE is not among them. As in the United States, iPhones will work over only certain mobile networks.To believers, the iPhone is more than a phone. It, and other Apple products, evolved into symbols of fierce individuality, perfection of design and the potential of technology to improve the world. What is more, the iPhone elevates the “personal cool factor”, according to one blogger, and signifies membership of an exclusive club. Some have labelled the following a cult.
“It may have all of the nasty features of other cults,” Michael Malone, a technology journalist
who writes the Silicon Insider column for ABCNews.com, said last year. “But on the positive side, the Apple cult isn’t destructive. It’s a bit creepy … but look what we get in exchange.”
Which is why the launch of the new iPhone comes as something of an American event.
Mr Jobs confirmed the launch at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco last month, outlining a slew of new features. The iPhone’s new slogan is on Apple’s website: “Twice as Fast, Half the Price.” The eight-gigabyte model sells for $199 with a contract.
That is good news for Marissa Noel, who said outside the Apple Store in Arlington, Virginia, that she plans to upgrade her current model. It turns out she spends a lot of time there: in addition to her iPhone, she has purchased five Apple computers in the past year.“On every other cellphone to get e-mail you need to hit 10 buttons,” said Ms Noel, 28, of Washington, DC. “On the iPhone, it’s just one. It’s amazing.”
Since Mr Jobs’s announcement about the official launch, the online world has been abuzz with iPhone chatter. Bloggers discuss everything about the devices, including price plans, sales forecasts, the phone’s functionality, even whether to stick with the original colour, white, or the new black.
Other blogs are less serious, especially Mr Basile’s, which pokes fun at Apple fanaticism (despite being a part of it himself). “New York to Honor Steve Jobs with Historic Tribute for iPhone,” reads one of the latest postings by Mr Basile, a vice president of new media for a digital music and visual imaging company in Issaquah, Washington, a suburb 26km east of Seattle. The attached picture shows the Statue of Liberty cradling an iMac laptop computer over New York Harbor, the Apple logo atop its torch.
Apple’s success and cult following has bred a backlash too among those who find its devotees overly dogmatic and Mr Jobs something of an egomaniac. There is also some frustration among the so-called “early adopters”, those who bought iPhones in 2007 – at full price. Now, with a cheaper price tag, the phone’s reach will grow, and the club will become decidedly less exclusive.
Mr Basile suggests on his blog that the “elite status” that early iPhone users enjoyed will be threatened come Friday. Suddenly, anyone with an old iPhone will be “fatally out of fashion”. But not him.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Where crime is considered history
This story is my first real piece of freelance work. It's about the Crime and Punishment Museum in Washington, written for a Middle East daily newspaper called The National. I wrote the piece for the Washington Bureau. Click here to view the original: http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080604/FOREIGN/302438501/1014/ART&Profile=1014
Where crime is considered history
Jonathan Hemmerdinger, Correspondent
Last Updated: June 05. 2008 12:06AM UAE / June 4. 2008 8:06PM GMT
A patron fires off a few rounds in the "Old West" shooting gallery at the National Museum of Crime and Punishment. Jacquelyn Martin / AP
WASHINGTON // The original court docket of Ted Bundy, the infamous serial killer, shouts its verdict at visitors: “To be sentenced to DEATH BY EXECUTION”.Nearby is the gibbet-chain, a medieval torture device used to hang offenders. Also present is the “Old West” shooting range. A dollar will get you five shots – and sinister fun for the whole family.This is Washington’s newest tourist attraction, the National Museum of Crime & Punishment, a 2,600-square metre facility filled with historic artefacts and pop-culture memorabilia that illuminate America’s national preoccupation with its criminal past.
“People are fascinated with crime and punishment,”said Janine Vaccarello, the museum’s chief operating officer. “It’s about the chase. We want to be detectives too.”The museum – whose motto is “So Much Fun It’s a Crime” – boasts the 1851 revolver of James “Wild Bill” Hickok, the gun-toting icon of America’s Wild West, and the bullet-ridden Ford from the classic Hollywood movie Bonnie and Clyde, about the bankrobbing couple that terrorised the central United States in the 1930s.
Visitors can try outsmarting the lie detector, practice robbery in a game of “Crack-a-Safe” and feel the thrill of high-speed pursuit in the police chase simulator.In a country that is more violent than anywhere in the West, where prisons are overflowing with offenders, the museum leaves itself open to criticism that it glamourises crime.Museum officials dispute that. And the museum is in partnership with John Walsh, the host of the television show America’s Most Wanted, which has aided in the return of missing children and the capture of nearly 1,000 dangerous criminals.
Mr Walsh’s six-year-old son Adam was kidnapped and murdered in 1981.Since then, Mr Walsh has dedicated his life to protecting children. The museum houses the new set of America’s Most Wanted, where the programme will be taped monthly.Despite Hollywood’s influence, crime does not pay, according to the museum. “If you’re ever tempted by crime,” goes a recording of Frank Abaganale Jr, the legendary con man, “trust me, you’ll never win”.
Mr Abaganale, the subject of the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can, passed US$2.5 million (Dh9.2m) in bad cheques before serving time in French, Swedish and US prisons. His taped “lecture” is enforced by the stark, full-sized prison cell mock-up, a collection of crude prison shanks and “Old Smokey” the electric chair.Dennis Sobin, 64, a collector of prison art whose business card reads “Fine Art by Imprisoned Artists”, has a unique perspective on why Americans are so beguiled by crime. From 1992 until 2003 Mr Sobin was locked in a federal penitentiary for racketeering.
“We live in a society that was built on freedom,” said Mr Sobin, who learnt to play guitar in prison and now performs annually at the Kennedy Center’s From Prison to the Stage show. Mr Sobin answered questions on the museum’s opening day last month about its prison art display, which includes paintings by John Wayne Gacy, renowned serial killer.“People who violate laws epitomise the quintessential meaning of freedom,” Mr Sobin said. “We thumb our noses at power. That’s one reason the museum will do so well.”
Mr Sobin’s theory seems to make sense. Many criminals from America’s past have evolved into pop-culture symbols of romantic living, no matter how heinous their crimes.“At the time, people were afraid of them,” Ms Vaccarello said of Bonnie and Clyde. “But they were playful and in love and they carried a camera to photograph themselves.“There’s an attraction there,” Ms Vaccarello said.Which is why visitors are willing to pay the US$17.95 to get in the front door.
“I like the serial killer stuff,” said Lisa Doughty, 24, of Fort Belvoir, Virginia, on a recent visit. She was referring to the museum’s exhibit on America’s most heinous criminals – mass-murderers with such nicknames as “Zodiac”, “Son of Sam” and “The Killer Clown”.She and her mother, Faith Hudson, 41, also fancied the prison cell.“Get in there,” shouted Ms Hudson, pointing her camera as her daughter scrambled on to one of the cell bunks. “Look like you’re trying to escape,” she said.
* The National
Where crime is considered history
Jonathan Hemmerdinger, Correspondent
Last Updated: June 05. 2008 12:06AM UAE / June 4. 2008 8:06PM GMT
A patron fires off a few rounds in the "Old West" shooting gallery at the National Museum of Crime and Punishment. Jacquelyn Martin / AP
WASHINGTON // The original court docket of Ted Bundy, the infamous serial killer, shouts its verdict at visitors: “To be sentenced to DEATH BY EXECUTION”.Nearby is the gibbet-chain, a medieval torture device used to hang offenders. Also present is the “Old West” shooting range. A dollar will get you five shots – and sinister fun for the whole family.This is Washington’s newest tourist attraction, the National Museum of Crime & Punishment, a 2,600-square metre facility filled with historic artefacts and pop-culture memorabilia that illuminate America’s national preoccupation with its criminal past.
“People are fascinated with crime and punishment,”said Janine Vaccarello, the museum’s chief operating officer. “It’s about the chase. We want to be detectives too.”The museum – whose motto is “So Much Fun It’s a Crime” – boasts the 1851 revolver of James “Wild Bill” Hickok, the gun-toting icon of America’s Wild West, and the bullet-ridden Ford from the classic Hollywood movie Bonnie and Clyde, about the bankrobbing couple that terrorised the central United States in the 1930s.
Visitors can try outsmarting the lie detector, practice robbery in a game of “Crack-a-Safe” and feel the thrill of high-speed pursuit in the police chase simulator.In a country that is more violent than anywhere in the West, where prisons are overflowing with offenders, the museum leaves itself open to criticism that it glamourises crime.Museum officials dispute that. And the museum is in partnership with John Walsh, the host of the television show America’s Most Wanted, which has aided in the return of missing children and the capture of nearly 1,000 dangerous criminals.
Mr Walsh’s six-year-old son Adam was kidnapped and murdered in 1981.Since then, Mr Walsh has dedicated his life to protecting children. The museum houses the new set of America’s Most Wanted, where the programme will be taped monthly.Despite Hollywood’s influence, crime does not pay, according to the museum. “If you’re ever tempted by crime,” goes a recording of Frank Abaganale Jr, the legendary con man, “trust me, you’ll never win”.
Mr Abaganale, the subject of the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can, passed US$2.5 million (Dh9.2m) in bad cheques before serving time in French, Swedish and US prisons. His taped “lecture” is enforced by the stark, full-sized prison cell mock-up, a collection of crude prison shanks and “Old Smokey” the electric chair.Dennis Sobin, 64, a collector of prison art whose business card reads “Fine Art by Imprisoned Artists”, has a unique perspective on why Americans are so beguiled by crime. From 1992 until 2003 Mr Sobin was locked in a federal penitentiary for racketeering.
“We live in a society that was built on freedom,” said Mr Sobin, who learnt to play guitar in prison and now performs annually at the Kennedy Center’s From Prison to the Stage show. Mr Sobin answered questions on the museum’s opening day last month about its prison art display, which includes paintings by John Wayne Gacy, renowned serial killer.“People who violate laws epitomise the quintessential meaning of freedom,” Mr Sobin said. “We thumb our noses at power. That’s one reason the museum will do so well.”
Mr Sobin’s theory seems to make sense. Many criminals from America’s past have evolved into pop-culture symbols of romantic living, no matter how heinous their crimes.“At the time, people were afraid of them,” Ms Vaccarello said of Bonnie and Clyde. “But they were playful and in love and they carried a camera to photograph themselves.“There’s an attraction there,” Ms Vaccarello said.Which is why visitors are willing to pay the US$17.95 to get in the front door.
“I like the serial killer stuff,” said Lisa Doughty, 24, of Fort Belvoir, Virginia, on a recent visit. She was referring to the museum’s exhibit on America’s most heinous criminals – mass-murderers with such nicknames as “Zodiac”, “Son of Sam” and “The Killer Clown”.She and her mother, Faith Hudson, 41, also fancied the prison cell.“Get in there,” shouted Ms Hudson, pointing her camera as her daughter scrambled on to one of the cell bunks. “Look like you’re trying to escape,” she said.
* The National
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
New Year Celebration Continues Ancient Traditions and Unites Dispersed Community
On Sunday morning last April, thousands of Cambodian Americans with bowls of white rice gathered around the ornate Buddhist temple in Silver Spring, waiting to donate food to five red-robed monks. They were here, at the Vatt Buddhikarama, for the Dak Bat Lok.
Nearby, on a stage above the temple lawn, musicians in starched-white, brass-buckled jackets and black slacks struck the first Eastern chords of the roneat ek and tro. The music flowed gracefully over the temple grounds.Along the driveway leading to the monastery, marinated meats sizzled on open grills, fish soup bubbled under flame, and bananas fried in deep steel cauldrons. Rich, sweet-smelling smoke shrouded the property.
The occasion was the annual Cambodian New Year celebration, held here, at the Cambodian Buddhist Society on New Hampshire Avenue in Silver Spring. The New Year, which marks the 2552nd year since the Buddha's day of enlightenment, unites a dispersed community.
According the 2006 American Community Survey, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that some 4,500 Cambodian Americans live in the Washington area. There are roughly 200,000 nationwide. The largest communities are in Long Beach, Calif., Seattle, Wash., and Lowell, Mass.
The Cambodian Buddhist Society, said to be one of the largest Cambodian Buddhist temples in the United States, is one of the few in the Mid-Atlantic region. That's why the New Year celebration draws crowds from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York.
“I don’t see that many Cambodians in school,” said Vorith Phlong, 16, of Damascus, Md. “This brings us together in one place.”
Others agree.
“Cambodians are scattered everywhere,” said Sam Man, 53, of Springfield. “In D.C. or at the mall or the store it’s hard to recognize who’s Cambodian.” This event, said Man, brings the community together.”
The Cambodian American community was formed in the early 1980s, when Cambodian refugees fled their homeland to escape a country ruined by the rule of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Between 1975 and 1979, the Communist regime directly or indirectly killed an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians—one-fifth of the country's population.
"No Cambodian alive was not affected by the war," said Sovan Tun
According to a 2005 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 90% of Cambodian Americans report having lost a family member or friend during the Khmer Rouge years.
“They gave us three days to leave,” said Devi Yim, 38, referring to the Khmer Rouge order to evacuate Phnom Penh in 1975. Yim and thousands fled to the countryside on foot and at gunpoint.
Yim, five at the time, was separated from her family and forced to tend rice fields in the countryside. Her brother was killed.
Poly Sam, a radio broadcaster, lists the members of his family that were killed.
One dead brother. Two dead brothers-in-law. One dead nephew. "That’s just my immediate family,” he said.
Like many of the other immigrants, Sam escaped Cambodia shortly after the Khmer Rouge were driven from power.
“It’s a sad place to be because you were there,” Sam said of his homeland.
“I was sent to a prison camp called Tuek La-aok,” said Hassan Kasem, a Cambodian immigrant, former Huey pilot, and also a broadcaster at Radio Free Asia. “Male prisoners were ankle-cuffed at night,” he said. “We were not given enough food. No medicine was provided.”
Kasem lost his father, mother, two brothers, and two sisters to the Khmer Rouge.
Once the Khmer Rouge were driven from power, thousands of Cambodians came to the United States. Most came by way of Thailand, where refugee camps were established. The journey was a long and dangerous trip by bus, motorcycle and on foot.
“It took us 10 days,” Sam said. “We walked through mine fields both days and nights.”
Sam described other threats too: hostile government troops, angry remnants of the Khmer Rouge, trigger-happy Thai border guards.
“It was my nightmare on the way to the border,” said Nalen Smith, 38, of Vienna, who left Phnom Penh for Thailand in 1984.
But the camps weren’t open to all the refugees; many had to sneak in.
“The U.N. left at night,” Sam explained as he sketched the Khao I Dang camp on scratch paper. He drew a square surrounded by two circles. "Refugees caught between these fences," he said, "were shot at night by Thai guards."
Nalen Smith and her sister, Naly, hired guides.
Nalen’s sister crossed first.
“There were three guiders,” Nalen said. “One walked ahead, the second one walked with my sister, the third one carried her baby…It was too late for my sister and her guide. They both were shot immediately. The one with the baby ran away and hide in the forest.”
Nalen crossed next.
“I was very scared, frightened, and painful. I was told to crawl and to use the leaves of the tree to cover my body when I came close to the gate. My body shook. Finally, I got into the camp and found out that my sister got shot.”
Once in the camps, refugees filed for entrance into countries that would take them, including the United States.
The Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC) estimates that nearly 139,000 Cambodian refugees came to the United States in the 1980s, based upon data from the Office of Refugee Resettlement. In 1981 alone 38,000 Cambodian refugees resettled in America.
Though the ordeal ended for most more than 20 years ago, few Cambodian Americans speak of returning. The country has still not healed from the wounds of the past.
"There's lots of bribery, corruption,” explained Sam, the radio broadcaster. “It’s very chaotic because of lack of enforcement of laws. You get crooks, child molesters, murderers. Children are imported from Vietnam,” he said. “It's unsafe. You can't go out after eight pm.”
“Cambodians here get over the hump,” he explained. “Others in Cambodia have a survivor mentality. People are just trying to survive”
“It’s not that I don’t like my country,” said Waddanak Sem. “If I go back I have no opportunity. There’s none for my kids, either.”
According to the United Nations website, Cambodia is among the poorest nations in the world, with an estimated 36% of the population living in poverty. In rural areas of the country, the U.N. estimates the number is 40%. The country’s per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is just $438, also one of the world’s lowest.
"You'll see a $60,000 Lexus next to someone walking barefoot," said Sam of the income inequalities in Phnom Penh. "A five-star hotel next to shack”
Many Cambodian Americans also resent the current government of Cambodia, which is a Constitutional Monarchy with a King and Prime Minister.
“The King has the title of Head of the Country, but he does not have any real power,” said Jiahn-Yih Wuu, the 2nd Minister of Religious Ceremony at the Cambodian Buddhist Society. Wuu arrived in the United States six months after the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975.
"The current government is run by a mixture of Hanoi-leaning former Communist officials, former Khmer Rouge soldiers and cadres and former royalist fighters," said Kasem, the former Huey pilot. "All of them were at one point of another in the same Communist school of thought.”
In recent years, with United Nations assistance, Cambodia has established courts to prosecute former Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes against humanity.
But the process has been slow and frustrating. The trials have been over-budget, delayed, and hampered by procedural slowdowns. And there’s a heavy dose of hypocrisy: the current Cambodian government includes former Khmer Rouge leaders.
"The Khmer Rouge trial is a joke endorsed by culprits," Kasem said. "There are many more who are as guilty as the current leaders and who will never have to face their victims. This is a trial of selective prosecution."
America is home now, and community leaders work to keep the traditional Khmer culture alive, particularly among the younger generation.
"Our goal is to provide the younger generation with the knowledge of our culture in hopes that this carries on the tradition," said Sovan Tun, the President of the Cambodian Buddhist Society.
The children, some as young as three, come to the Arlington Mill Community Center and the Cambodian Buddhist Society every Sunday for dance and music lessons.
Jonathan Dos, a fifth-grader at Carlin Springs Elementary, patiently held two mallets above the dark hardwood bars of a curved wooden instrument known as a roneat ek, a xylophone-like instrument with a rich eastern tone.
He plays a simple tune, like a Cambodian version of “Chopsticks.”The instructor, Ngek Chum, watches his pupils while bowing a violin-like instrument called a Tro. There’s not a musical sheet in the room. “I use my ear,” Chum says.
In a room across the hall, Devi Yim, the Dance Master, stands on tip-toes, her outstretched arms moving gracefully in large circles to the music. Facing Yim for this, the Coconut Dance, are 30 girls clad av noy, a multi-colored, sequent-studded Cambodian dance dress.
“I want to keep my culture alive,” Yim said. “That’s why I do it every weekend.”That’s also why the parents bring their children here.
From a plastic chair on the side of the dance floor, Kathy Rafferty watched her adopted daughter, Grace, practice. Grace was born in Cambodia and brought to the United States by Rafferty, who is not Cambodian.
The dance lessons teach culture and help with identity, Rafferty explains. “She wailed at first, but when the kids get older they really start to appreciate the lessons.”Another mother, Nalen Smith, watches Meghan, 5, perform.
“My kids don’t know the culture yet,” said Smith. “I bring Meghan to dance because I want to keep the culture alive. It’s not easy.”
The children have practiced for months in preparation for recitals in April, including the big New Year celebration.
Step inside the massive Buddhist temple towering over New Hampshire Avenue and you'd think you landed in Southeast Asia: Massive painted murals. Brass Buddha’s. Ancient texts. A pictorial lineage of Cambodia's Supreme Patriarchs. And Buddhist monks.
It’s here that the New Year festival, a three day event, is held.
“It’s the biggest celebration of the year,” said Sovan Tun, the President of the facility. “We expect two to three thousand,” Tun said of Sunday’s crowds.
Each day of the festival starts with the Dak Bat Lok, or the "feeding of the monks."
Tun explained: “They put the rice in the rice bowl...the alms in the alms bowl,” he said. "Buddhist monks were beggars. They must beg for food from the people."
Bhante Sopheak Ngove, wrapped in a flowing red robe, moved slowly through the crowd, taking a spoonful of rice from the gatherers. "Bhante" means "Venerable," and is Ngove's title.
"People offer food to the monks to pray to the Buddha," said Sowattey Sem, 26, of Sterling. "In return, people get back all the good wishes, happiness, and protection."
Sem and her family, some of whom came from New York to attend the celebration, spent the weekend celebrating and preparing traditional Cambodian food.
"I cooked fried noodles and steamed fish," Sem said. "My family cooked a Cambodian salad with duck's foot called Ngoim Choeng Tea, and desert called Tape."
Saturday night, Sem and her family attended a fundraising dinner and late-night dance party in Falls Church.
Usually we don’t sleep on the night before, Sem said. “We’re up all night talking. It only happens once a year.”
Sunday morning, Sem and her family arrived at the temple early to feed the monks and prepare the food.
“On the Cambodian New Year it’s tradition to cook for the group,” said Chantha Beng, 47, of Silver Spring.
Beng and his extended family manned a trailer-size grill hissing with marinated beef ribs. A hungry line wrapped around Beng's booth. In other tents, families served noodles, rolls, soup, chicken, pork, rice, and fried bananas. Visitors meandered from tent to tent, tasting all that was offered.
As is tradition, the food is free to the community. “We’re not selling it,” Beng said.
“It’s pretty cool,” said Jasper Carr, 7, who was at the celebration with his brother, Bandith, 6, and their parents.Both boys were born in Cambodia and adopted by Arthur and Libby Carr, 51 and 49.
Bandith is still learning to speak English, so Jasper spoke for them both: “There’s lots of things that look so good that we don’t have at home," he said. "It’s way better than McDonalds.”
In addition to the food, venders sell Cambodian goods from overflowing display tents: Sequent-studded, elephant-embroidered pillows. Traditional Cambodian shirts and dresses. Stacks of DVD’s in Khmer, the Cambodian language.
And snow cones and ice cream for the kids.
By noon, the crowd gathered in the auditorium on the bottom-floor of the temple. Backstage, young girls wearing sparkling gold necklaces over bright-yellow Av Noy, a tradition Cambodian dance dress, waited excitedly to perform.
When the music started, the girls gathered in a circle on stage, perfectly choreographed. They moved in perfect unison to traditional the music under the bright stage lights. The audience cheered.
Despite events like these, keeping foreign culture can be difficult.
“We try to maintain our identity,” says Sam, who has three boys.. “But, we’re busy.” Circumstances don’t always allow, he says.
And, sometimes the culture feels foreign to the younger generation.
“It’s awkward because I’m not that used to celebrating this culture,” said Michelle Choeung, 17, of Falls Church.
“I’m pretty Americanized. It comes at you really hard.”
Nearby, on a stage above the temple lawn, musicians in starched-white, brass-buckled jackets and black slacks struck the first Eastern chords of the roneat ek and tro. The music flowed gracefully over the temple grounds.Along the driveway leading to the monastery, marinated meats sizzled on open grills, fish soup bubbled under flame, and bananas fried in deep steel cauldrons. Rich, sweet-smelling smoke shrouded the property.
The occasion was the annual Cambodian New Year celebration, held here, at the Cambodian Buddhist Society on New Hampshire Avenue in Silver Spring. The New Year, which marks the 2552nd year since the Buddha's day of enlightenment, unites a dispersed community.
According the 2006 American Community Survey, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that some 4,500 Cambodian Americans live in the Washington area. There are roughly 200,000 nationwide. The largest communities are in Long Beach, Calif., Seattle, Wash., and Lowell, Mass.
The Cambodian Buddhist Society, said to be one of the largest Cambodian Buddhist temples in the United States, is one of the few in the Mid-Atlantic region. That's why the New Year celebration draws crowds from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York.
“I don’t see that many Cambodians in school,” said Vorith Phlong, 16, of Damascus, Md. “This brings us together in one place.”
Others agree.
“Cambodians are scattered everywhere,” said Sam Man, 53, of Springfield. “In D.C. or at the mall or the store it’s hard to recognize who’s Cambodian.” This event, said Man, brings the community together.”
The Cambodian American community was formed in the early 1980s, when Cambodian refugees fled their homeland to escape a country ruined by the rule of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Between 1975 and 1979, the Communist regime directly or indirectly killed an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians—one-fifth of the country's population.
"No Cambodian alive was not affected by the war," said Sovan Tun
According to a 2005 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 90% of Cambodian Americans report having lost a family member or friend during the Khmer Rouge years.
“They gave us three days to leave,” said Devi Yim, 38, referring to the Khmer Rouge order to evacuate Phnom Penh in 1975. Yim and thousands fled to the countryside on foot and at gunpoint.
Yim, five at the time, was separated from her family and forced to tend rice fields in the countryside. Her brother was killed.
Poly Sam, a radio broadcaster, lists the members of his family that were killed.
One dead brother. Two dead brothers-in-law. One dead nephew. "That’s just my immediate family,” he said.
Like many of the other immigrants, Sam escaped Cambodia shortly after the Khmer Rouge were driven from power.
“It’s a sad place to be because you were there,” Sam said of his homeland.
“I was sent to a prison camp called Tuek La-aok,” said Hassan Kasem, a Cambodian immigrant, former Huey pilot, and also a broadcaster at Radio Free Asia. “Male prisoners were ankle-cuffed at night,” he said. “We were not given enough food. No medicine was provided.”
Kasem lost his father, mother, two brothers, and two sisters to the Khmer Rouge.
Once the Khmer Rouge were driven from power, thousands of Cambodians came to the United States. Most came by way of Thailand, where refugee camps were established. The journey was a long and dangerous trip by bus, motorcycle and on foot.
“It took us 10 days,” Sam said. “We walked through mine fields both days and nights.”
Sam described other threats too: hostile government troops, angry remnants of the Khmer Rouge, trigger-happy Thai border guards.
“It was my nightmare on the way to the border,” said Nalen Smith, 38, of Vienna, who left Phnom Penh for Thailand in 1984.
But the camps weren’t open to all the refugees; many had to sneak in.
“The U.N. left at night,” Sam explained as he sketched the Khao I Dang camp on scratch paper. He drew a square surrounded by two circles. "Refugees caught between these fences," he said, "were shot at night by Thai guards."
Nalen Smith and her sister, Naly, hired guides.
Nalen’s sister crossed first.
“There were three guiders,” Nalen said. “One walked ahead, the second one walked with my sister, the third one carried her baby…It was too late for my sister and her guide. They both were shot immediately. The one with the baby ran away and hide in the forest.”
Nalen crossed next.
“I was very scared, frightened, and painful. I was told to crawl and to use the leaves of the tree to cover my body when I came close to the gate. My body shook. Finally, I got into the camp and found out that my sister got shot.”
Once in the camps, refugees filed for entrance into countries that would take them, including the United States.
The Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC) estimates that nearly 139,000 Cambodian refugees came to the United States in the 1980s, based upon data from the Office of Refugee Resettlement. In 1981 alone 38,000 Cambodian refugees resettled in America.
Though the ordeal ended for most more than 20 years ago, few Cambodian Americans speak of returning. The country has still not healed from the wounds of the past.
"There's lots of bribery, corruption,” explained Sam, the radio broadcaster. “It’s very chaotic because of lack of enforcement of laws. You get crooks, child molesters, murderers. Children are imported from Vietnam,” he said. “It's unsafe. You can't go out after eight pm.”
“Cambodians here get over the hump,” he explained. “Others in Cambodia have a survivor mentality. People are just trying to survive”
“It’s not that I don’t like my country,” said Waddanak Sem. “If I go back I have no opportunity. There’s none for my kids, either.”
According to the United Nations website, Cambodia is among the poorest nations in the world, with an estimated 36% of the population living in poverty. In rural areas of the country, the U.N. estimates the number is 40%. The country’s per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is just $438, also one of the world’s lowest.
"You'll see a $60,000 Lexus next to someone walking barefoot," said Sam of the income inequalities in Phnom Penh. "A five-star hotel next to shack”
Many Cambodian Americans also resent the current government of Cambodia, which is a Constitutional Monarchy with a King and Prime Minister.
“The King has the title of Head of the Country, but he does not have any real power,” said Jiahn-Yih Wuu, the 2nd Minister of Religious Ceremony at the Cambodian Buddhist Society. Wuu arrived in the United States six months after the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975.
"The current government is run by a mixture of Hanoi-leaning former Communist officials, former Khmer Rouge soldiers and cadres and former royalist fighters," said Kasem, the former Huey pilot. "All of them were at one point of another in the same Communist school of thought.”
In recent years, with United Nations assistance, Cambodia has established courts to prosecute former Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes against humanity.
But the process has been slow and frustrating. The trials have been over-budget, delayed, and hampered by procedural slowdowns. And there’s a heavy dose of hypocrisy: the current Cambodian government includes former Khmer Rouge leaders.
"The Khmer Rouge trial is a joke endorsed by culprits," Kasem said. "There are many more who are as guilty as the current leaders and who will never have to face their victims. This is a trial of selective prosecution."
America is home now, and community leaders work to keep the traditional Khmer culture alive, particularly among the younger generation.
"Our goal is to provide the younger generation with the knowledge of our culture in hopes that this carries on the tradition," said Sovan Tun, the President of the Cambodian Buddhist Society.
The children, some as young as three, come to the Arlington Mill Community Center and the Cambodian Buddhist Society every Sunday for dance and music lessons.
Jonathan Dos, a fifth-grader at Carlin Springs Elementary, patiently held two mallets above the dark hardwood bars of a curved wooden instrument known as a roneat ek, a xylophone-like instrument with a rich eastern tone.
He plays a simple tune, like a Cambodian version of “Chopsticks.”The instructor, Ngek Chum, watches his pupils while bowing a violin-like instrument called a Tro. There’s not a musical sheet in the room. “I use my ear,” Chum says.
In a room across the hall, Devi Yim, the Dance Master, stands on tip-toes, her outstretched arms moving gracefully in large circles to the music. Facing Yim for this, the Coconut Dance, are 30 girls clad av noy, a multi-colored, sequent-studded Cambodian dance dress.
“I want to keep my culture alive,” Yim said. “That’s why I do it every weekend.”That’s also why the parents bring their children here.
From a plastic chair on the side of the dance floor, Kathy Rafferty watched her adopted daughter, Grace, practice. Grace was born in Cambodia and brought to the United States by Rafferty, who is not Cambodian.
The dance lessons teach culture and help with identity, Rafferty explains. “She wailed at first, but when the kids get older they really start to appreciate the lessons.”Another mother, Nalen Smith, watches Meghan, 5, perform.
“My kids don’t know the culture yet,” said Smith. “I bring Meghan to dance because I want to keep the culture alive. It’s not easy.”
The children have practiced for months in preparation for recitals in April, including the big New Year celebration.
Step inside the massive Buddhist temple towering over New Hampshire Avenue and you'd think you landed in Southeast Asia: Massive painted murals. Brass Buddha’s. Ancient texts. A pictorial lineage of Cambodia's Supreme Patriarchs. And Buddhist monks.
It’s here that the New Year festival, a three day event, is held.
“It’s the biggest celebration of the year,” said Sovan Tun, the President of the facility. “We expect two to three thousand,” Tun said of Sunday’s crowds.
Each day of the festival starts with the Dak Bat Lok, or the "feeding of the monks."
Tun explained: “They put the rice in the rice bowl...the alms in the alms bowl,” he said. "Buddhist monks were beggars. They must beg for food from the people."
Bhante Sopheak Ngove, wrapped in a flowing red robe, moved slowly through the crowd, taking a spoonful of rice from the gatherers. "Bhante" means "Venerable," and is Ngove's title.
"People offer food to the monks to pray to the Buddha," said Sowattey Sem, 26, of Sterling. "In return, people get back all the good wishes, happiness, and protection."
Sem and her family, some of whom came from New York to attend the celebration, spent the weekend celebrating and preparing traditional Cambodian food.
"I cooked fried noodles and steamed fish," Sem said. "My family cooked a Cambodian salad with duck's foot called Ngoim Choeng Tea, and desert called Tape."
Saturday night, Sem and her family attended a fundraising dinner and late-night dance party in Falls Church.
Usually we don’t sleep on the night before, Sem said. “We’re up all night talking. It only happens once a year.”
Sunday morning, Sem and her family arrived at the temple early to feed the monks and prepare the food.
“On the Cambodian New Year it’s tradition to cook for the group,” said Chantha Beng, 47, of Silver Spring.
Beng and his extended family manned a trailer-size grill hissing with marinated beef ribs. A hungry line wrapped around Beng's booth. In other tents, families served noodles, rolls, soup, chicken, pork, rice, and fried bananas. Visitors meandered from tent to tent, tasting all that was offered.
As is tradition, the food is free to the community. “We’re not selling it,” Beng said.
“It’s pretty cool,” said Jasper Carr, 7, who was at the celebration with his brother, Bandith, 6, and their parents.Both boys were born in Cambodia and adopted by Arthur and Libby Carr, 51 and 49.
Bandith is still learning to speak English, so Jasper spoke for them both: “There’s lots of things that look so good that we don’t have at home," he said. "It’s way better than McDonalds.”
In addition to the food, venders sell Cambodian goods from overflowing display tents: Sequent-studded, elephant-embroidered pillows. Traditional Cambodian shirts and dresses. Stacks of DVD’s in Khmer, the Cambodian language.
And snow cones and ice cream for the kids.
By noon, the crowd gathered in the auditorium on the bottom-floor of the temple. Backstage, young girls wearing sparkling gold necklaces over bright-yellow Av Noy, a tradition Cambodian dance dress, waited excitedly to perform.
When the music started, the girls gathered in a circle on stage, perfectly choreographed. They moved in perfect unison to traditional the music under the bright stage lights. The audience cheered.
Despite events like these, keeping foreign culture can be difficult.
“We try to maintain our identity,” says Sam, who has three boys.. “But, we’re busy.” Circumstances don’t always allow, he says.
And, sometimes the culture feels foreign to the younger generation.
“It’s awkward because I’m not that used to celebrating this culture,” said Michelle Choeung, 17, of Falls Church.
“I’m pretty Americanized. It comes at you really hard.”
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
New Year Celebration Continues Ancient Traditions
On Sunday morning, thousands of Cambodian Americans with bowls of white rice gathered around the ornate Buddhist temple in Silver Spring, waiting to donate food to five red-robed monks. They were here, at the Vatt Buddhikarama, for the Dak Bat Lok.
Nearby, on a stage above the temple lawn, musicians in starched-white, brass-buckled jackets and black slacks struck the first Eastern chords of the roneat ek and tro. The music boomed over the temple grounds.
Along the driveway leading to the monastery, marinated meats sizzled on open grills, fish soup bubbled under flame, and bananas fried in deep steel cauldrons. Rich, sweet-smelling smoke shrouded the property.
Over the weekend, the Cambodian Buddhist Society on New Hampshire Avenue in Silver Spring hosted the annual Cambodian New Year celebration, a three-day religious event traditionally held in April. The New Year, which marks the 2552nd year since the Buddha's day of enlightenment, is a cultural and religious event that unites a dispersed community.
Sunday, the second day of the New Year festival, draws the biggest crowds.
“We expect two to three thousand,” said Sovan Tun, 68, President of the Cambodian Buddhist Society, which runs the monastery and temple. “It’s the biggest celebration of the year. These are our friends—our American friends.”
Each of the three days begins with the Dak Bat Lok, or the "feeding of the monks."
“They put the rice in the rice bowl...the alms in the alms bowl,” Tun said. "Buddhist monks were beggars. They must beg for food from the people."
"People offer food to the monks to pray to the Buddha," said Sowattey Sem, 26, of Sterling. "In return, people get back all the good wishes, happiness, and protection."
The Cambodian American community was formed in the early 1980s, when Cambodian refugees fled their homeland to escape a country ruined by the rule of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Between 1975 and 1979, the Communist regime directly or indirectly killed an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians—one-fifth of the country's population.
Refugees settled throughout the United States.
According the 2006 American Community Survey, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that some 4,500 Cambodian Americans live in the Washington area. There are roughly 200,000 nationwide. The largest communities are in Long Beach, Calif., Seattle, Wash., and Lowell, Mass.
The Cambodian Buddhist Society, said to be one of the largest Cambodian Buddhist temples in the United States, is also one of the few in the Mid-Atlantic region. That's why the New Year celebration draws crowds from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York.
“I don’t see that many Cambodians in school,” said Vorith Phlong, 16, of Damascus, Md. “This brings us together in one place.”
Others agree.
“Cambodians are scattered everywhere,” said Sam Man, 53, of Springfield. “In D.C. or at the mall or the store it’s hard to recognize who’s Cambodian.” This event, said Man, brings the community together.
For many Cambodian Americans, the New Year weekend a whirlwind of activity.
Sowattey Sem, a graduate student at Southeastern University, spent the weekend with her two cousins, Chanthou and Chettra, her nephew, Jonathan, and her sister-in-law Vantha. They spent much of Saturday preparing traditional Cambodian dishes.
"I cooked fried noodles and steamed fish," Sem said. "My family cooked a Cambodian salad with duck's foot called Ngoim Choeng Tea, and desert called Tape."
Saturday night, Sem and her family attended a fundraising dinner and late-night dance party in Falls Church.
Usually we don’t sleep on the night before, Sem said. “We’re up all night talking. It only happens once a year.”
Sunday morning, Sem and her family arrived at the temple early to feed the monks and prepare the food.
Serving food to the community on the New Year is part of the culture.
“On the Cambodian New Year it’s tradition to cook for the group,” said Chantha Beng, 47, of Silver Spring. Beng and his extended family manned a trailer-size grill hissing with marinated beef ribs. A hungry line wrapped around Beng's booth.
In other tents, families served noodles, rolls, soup, chicken, pork, rice, and fried bananas. Visitors meandered from tent to tent, tasting all that was offered.
As is tradition, the food is free to the community. “We’re not selling it,” Beng said.
“It’s pretty cool,” said Jasper Carr, 7, who was at the celebration with his brother, Bandith, 6, and their parents.
Both boys were born in Cambodia and adopted by Arthur and Libby Carr, 51 and 49.
Bandith is still learning to speak English, so Jasper spoke for them both.
“There’s lots of things that look so good that we don’t have at home," he said. "It’s way better than McDonalds.”
In addition to the food, venders offered traditional Cambodian goods from overflowing display tents: Sequent-studded, elephant-embroidered pillows. Traditional Cambodian shirts and dresses. Stacks of DVD’s in Khmer, the Cambodian language.
And snow cones and ice cream for the kids.
By noon, the crowd gathered in the auditorium on the bottom-floor of the temple. Backstage, young girls wearing sparkling gold necklaces over bright-yellow Av Noy, a tradition Cambodian dance dress, waited excitedly to perform.
When the music started, two dancers in ornate animal masks and blue and white sequent-studded costumes appeared under the lights. These were warrior monkeys, and this was the Monkey Dance. A well-choreographed battle ensued as the band bellowed from stage-right.
These ancient dances are taught by Cambodian American Heritage, an organization that provides cultural lessons in Arlington and Silver Spring.
According to Tun, the organization has 40 language students and 35 dance and music students. This is their biggest performance of the year.
For many Cambodian Americans, the New Year is more than a celebration, religious ceremony, or gathering of the community. It's also an opportunity to keep the ancient Khmer culture active with the next generation.
"Our goal is to provide the younger generation with the knowledge of our culture in hopes that this carries on the tradition," said Tun, the President of the society.
Devi Yim agrees.
"I want to keep my culture alive," said Yim, one of the Dance Master's who teaches dancing with the Cambodian American Heritage. "That’s why I do it every weekend.”
And many of the parents appreciate the cultural exposure.
“My daughter is dancing and learning to speak Khmer,” said Alice Alexander, 54, who's daughter, Anna Pidor, 3, performed on Sunday. “It’s a wonderful community,” she said.
Some of the young adults, however, have mixed-feelings.
“It’s a good gathering because people come from all over the East Coast,” said Chanmany Bam, 24, of Wheaton, MD. “But I don’t understand why. It’s a long way to travel to come to a temple, I think.”
Michelle Choeung, 17, of Falls Church, was more blunt.
“It’s awkward because I’m not that used to celebrating this culture,” she said. “I’m pretty Americanized. It comes at you really hard.”
Nearby, on a stage above the temple lawn, musicians in starched-white, brass-buckled jackets and black slacks struck the first Eastern chords of the roneat ek and tro. The music boomed over the temple grounds.
Along the driveway leading to the monastery, marinated meats sizzled on open grills, fish soup bubbled under flame, and bananas fried in deep steel cauldrons. Rich, sweet-smelling smoke shrouded the property.
Over the weekend, the Cambodian Buddhist Society on New Hampshire Avenue in Silver Spring hosted the annual Cambodian New Year celebration, a three-day religious event traditionally held in April. The New Year, which marks the 2552nd year since the Buddha's day of enlightenment, is a cultural and religious event that unites a dispersed community.
Sunday, the second day of the New Year festival, draws the biggest crowds.
“We expect two to three thousand,” said Sovan Tun, 68, President of the Cambodian Buddhist Society, which runs the monastery and temple. “It’s the biggest celebration of the year. These are our friends—our American friends.”
Each of the three days begins with the Dak Bat Lok, or the "feeding of the monks."
“They put the rice in the rice bowl...the alms in the alms bowl,” Tun said. "Buddhist monks were beggars. They must beg for food from the people."
"People offer food to the monks to pray to the Buddha," said Sowattey Sem, 26, of Sterling. "In return, people get back all the good wishes, happiness, and protection."
The Cambodian American community was formed in the early 1980s, when Cambodian refugees fled their homeland to escape a country ruined by the rule of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Between 1975 and 1979, the Communist regime directly or indirectly killed an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians—one-fifth of the country's population.
Refugees settled throughout the United States.
According the 2006 American Community Survey, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that some 4,500 Cambodian Americans live in the Washington area. There are roughly 200,000 nationwide. The largest communities are in Long Beach, Calif., Seattle, Wash., and Lowell, Mass.
The Cambodian Buddhist Society, said to be one of the largest Cambodian Buddhist temples in the United States, is also one of the few in the Mid-Atlantic region. That's why the New Year celebration draws crowds from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York.
“I don’t see that many Cambodians in school,” said Vorith Phlong, 16, of Damascus, Md. “This brings us together in one place.”
Others agree.
“Cambodians are scattered everywhere,” said Sam Man, 53, of Springfield. “In D.C. or at the mall or the store it’s hard to recognize who’s Cambodian.” This event, said Man, brings the community together.
For many Cambodian Americans, the New Year weekend a whirlwind of activity.
Sowattey Sem, a graduate student at Southeastern University, spent the weekend with her two cousins, Chanthou and Chettra, her nephew, Jonathan, and her sister-in-law Vantha. They spent much of Saturday preparing traditional Cambodian dishes.
"I cooked fried noodles and steamed fish," Sem said. "My family cooked a Cambodian salad with duck's foot called Ngoim Choeng Tea, and desert called Tape."
Saturday night, Sem and her family attended a fundraising dinner and late-night dance party in Falls Church.
Usually we don’t sleep on the night before, Sem said. “We’re up all night talking. It only happens once a year.”
Sunday morning, Sem and her family arrived at the temple early to feed the monks and prepare the food.
Serving food to the community on the New Year is part of the culture.
“On the Cambodian New Year it’s tradition to cook for the group,” said Chantha Beng, 47, of Silver Spring. Beng and his extended family manned a trailer-size grill hissing with marinated beef ribs. A hungry line wrapped around Beng's booth.
In other tents, families served noodles, rolls, soup, chicken, pork, rice, and fried bananas. Visitors meandered from tent to tent, tasting all that was offered.
As is tradition, the food is free to the community. “We’re not selling it,” Beng said.
“It’s pretty cool,” said Jasper Carr, 7, who was at the celebration with his brother, Bandith, 6, and their parents.
Both boys were born in Cambodia and adopted by Arthur and Libby Carr, 51 and 49.
Bandith is still learning to speak English, so Jasper spoke for them both.
“There’s lots of things that look so good that we don’t have at home," he said. "It’s way better than McDonalds.”
In addition to the food, venders offered traditional Cambodian goods from overflowing display tents: Sequent-studded, elephant-embroidered pillows. Traditional Cambodian shirts and dresses. Stacks of DVD’s in Khmer, the Cambodian language.
And snow cones and ice cream for the kids.
By noon, the crowd gathered in the auditorium on the bottom-floor of the temple. Backstage, young girls wearing sparkling gold necklaces over bright-yellow Av Noy, a tradition Cambodian dance dress, waited excitedly to perform.
When the music started, two dancers in ornate animal masks and blue and white sequent-studded costumes appeared under the lights. These were warrior monkeys, and this was the Monkey Dance. A well-choreographed battle ensued as the band bellowed from stage-right.
These ancient dances are taught by Cambodian American Heritage, an organization that provides cultural lessons in Arlington and Silver Spring.
According to Tun, the organization has 40 language students and 35 dance and music students. This is their biggest performance of the year.
For many Cambodian Americans, the New Year is more than a celebration, religious ceremony, or gathering of the community. It's also an opportunity to keep the ancient Khmer culture active with the next generation.
"Our goal is to provide the younger generation with the knowledge of our culture in hopes that this carries on the tradition," said Tun, the President of the society.
Devi Yim agrees.
"I want to keep my culture alive," said Yim, one of the Dance Master's who teaches dancing with the Cambodian American Heritage. "That’s why I do it every weekend.”
And many of the parents appreciate the cultural exposure.
“My daughter is dancing and learning to speak Khmer,” said Alice Alexander, 54, who's daughter, Anna Pidor, 3, performed on Sunday. “It’s a wonderful community,” she said.
Some of the young adults, however, have mixed-feelings.
“It’s a good gathering because people come from all over the East Coast,” said Chanmany Bam, 24, of Wheaton, MD. “But I don’t understand why. It’s a long way to travel to come to a temple, I think.”
Michelle Choeung, 17, of Falls Church, was more blunt.
“It’s awkward because I’m not that used to celebrating this culture,” she said. “I’m pretty Americanized. It comes at you really hard.”
Friday, April 4, 2008
Why Dith Pran and The Killing Fields Matter
This piece was published in the Cape Cod Times on April 11, 2008, and can be viewed at: http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080411/OPINION/804110349/-1/OPINION0310
Last weekend, Dith Pran, a photojournalist with the New York Times, passed-away. Though many Americans may not know him, Cambodian American immigrants do. To them, Dith Pran and the movie about his life represent the Cambodian people and the uncomfortable truth of Cambodia's past.
In the early 1970s, Dith Pran worked with Times foreign-coorespondent Sydney Schanberg covering events in Cambodian. At the time, Cambodia was a Cold War hot-spot, caught between the pull of Washington, Hanoi, Moscow, and Beijing. Though the government was largely aligned with the United States, North Vietnamese troops and a Communist guerilla group called the Khmer Rouge ruled much of the Cambodian countryside.
In 1975, the Khmer Rouge overran Phnom Penh and embarked on a plan to transform Cambodia into an agricultural-based, utopian society. Immediately, citizens were dispersed to rural work and prison camps, and all potential enemies of the regime were eliminated. By the time Vietnamese forces drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979, some 1.7 million Cambodians—one-fifth of the country’s population—was dead.
Dith Pran and Sydney Schanberg were in Phnom Penh when the city was taken. Though Schanberg escaped to the French Embassy, Pran endured years of torture and forced labor. He escaped to Thailand in 1979 and then came to the United States where he was reunited with his family. He continued working for the Times.
I first learned of Cambodia's “forgotten genocide” about fifteen years ago when I watched the 1984 film, The Killing Fields. The movie, which stars Sam Waterston and Haing Ngor, portrays the experiences of Schanberg and Pran during the Khmer Rouge years. It’s a true story.
The film stayed with me long after I watched it. Mostly, I was disturbed that such a monumental world event had escaped my attention. I wanted to know more.
Therefore, when asked to cover an immigrant people in my first year at journalism school, I chose Cambodian Americans.
I soon learned that the community, which numbers some 4,000 in the Washington area, are largely eager to tell their stories. Through my reporting, I was introduced to a strong and resilient people who've endured astonishing atrocities. Torture, murdered siblings, missing parents, death camps, and ethnic cleansing are common elements in the lives of adult Cambodians. So are endurance, self-reliance, inner-strength, and optimism towards the future.
It must have been obvious to those I interviewed that I had trouble comprehending their stories. To help clarify a few suggested that I watch The Killing Fields.
So I watched it again.
It’s not often that a movie accurately portrays reality, but The Killing Fields comes close. It recreated in me the same uncomfortable feeling I had when interviewing survivors.
Though that was only a few weeks ago, it wasn't until I heard of Dith Pran's death that I understood the significant of his life and the movie about him.
Cambodia's genocide has been largely forgotten. As one of my friends at the community center explained, "Every day it fades more and more."
But because Pran's experience was recreated in The Killing Fields, the story of Cambodia's past will never be completely lost. To Cambodians, Pran was more than a survivor of the Khmer Rouge: he was a New York Times reporter and the subject of a movie that tells their story.
Pran is gone, but The Killing Fields survives and can be found in any video rental store. Do yourself a favor and rent it. I warn you that it's a bit uncomfortable, mostly because it's true.
But it's also true that the world is a dangerous place and insulation from the truth is false security. Our best protection against mankind's worst deeds is the acquisition of knowledge.
And that's exactly what Pran's story in The Killing Fields delivers.
Last weekend, Dith Pran, a photojournalist with the New York Times, passed-away. Though many Americans may not know him, Cambodian American immigrants do. To them, Dith Pran and the movie about his life represent the Cambodian people and the uncomfortable truth of Cambodia's past.
In the early 1970s, Dith Pran worked with Times foreign-coorespondent Sydney Schanberg covering events in Cambodian. At the time, Cambodia was a Cold War hot-spot, caught between the pull of Washington, Hanoi, Moscow, and Beijing. Though the government was largely aligned with the United States, North Vietnamese troops and a Communist guerilla group called the Khmer Rouge ruled much of the Cambodian countryside.
In 1975, the Khmer Rouge overran Phnom Penh and embarked on a plan to transform Cambodia into an agricultural-based, utopian society. Immediately, citizens were dispersed to rural work and prison camps, and all potential enemies of the regime were eliminated. By the time Vietnamese forces drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979, some 1.7 million Cambodians—one-fifth of the country’s population—was dead.
Dith Pran and Sydney Schanberg were in Phnom Penh when the city was taken. Though Schanberg escaped to the French Embassy, Pran endured years of torture and forced labor. He escaped to Thailand in 1979 and then came to the United States where he was reunited with his family. He continued working for the Times.
I first learned of Cambodia's “forgotten genocide” about fifteen years ago when I watched the 1984 film, The Killing Fields. The movie, which stars Sam Waterston and Haing Ngor, portrays the experiences of Schanberg and Pran during the Khmer Rouge years. It’s a true story.
The film stayed with me long after I watched it. Mostly, I was disturbed that such a monumental world event had escaped my attention. I wanted to know more.
Therefore, when asked to cover an immigrant people in my first year at journalism school, I chose Cambodian Americans.
I soon learned that the community, which numbers some 4,000 in the Washington area, are largely eager to tell their stories. Through my reporting, I was introduced to a strong and resilient people who've endured astonishing atrocities. Torture, murdered siblings, missing parents, death camps, and ethnic cleansing are common elements in the lives of adult Cambodians. So are endurance, self-reliance, inner-strength, and optimism towards the future.
It must have been obvious to those I interviewed that I had trouble comprehending their stories. To help clarify a few suggested that I watch The Killing Fields.
So I watched it again.
It’s not often that a movie accurately portrays reality, but The Killing Fields comes close. It recreated in me the same uncomfortable feeling I had when interviewing survivors.
Though that was only a few weeks ago, it wasn't until I heard of Dith Pran's death that I understood the significant of his life and the movie about him.
Cambodia's genocide has been largely forgotten. As one of my friends at the community center explained, "Every day it fades more and more."
But because Pran's experience was recreated in The Killing Fields, the story of Cambodia's past will never be completely lost. To Cambodians, Pran was more than a survivor of the Khmer Rouge: he was a New York Times reporter and the subject of a movie that tells their story.
Pran is gone, but The Killing Fields survives and can be found in any video rental store. Do yourself a favor and rent it. I warn you that it's a bit uncomfortable, mostly because it's true.
But it's also true that the world is a dangerous place and insulation from the truth is false security. Our best protection against mankind's worst deeds is the acquisition of knowledge.
And that's exactly what Pran's story in The Killing Fields delivers.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Classical Cambodian Dance and Music Help Children Embrace Heritage
Holding a three-foot wood dowel, Madame Sam-Oeun Tes studied the children as they practice thier poses.
"My kids don't know the culture yet," said Nalen Smith, 38, who arrived in the United States in 1988 after spending five years in the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp on the Thai border. "I bring Meghan to dance because I want to keep the culture alive. Also, I want her to behave herself as Cambodia woman."
Cambodian musical lessons are also part of the cultural education held on Sunday's in Silver Spring and Arlington.
Jonathan Dos, left, a fifth grader at Carlin Springs Elementary, practices playing the roneat ek, a xylophone-like instrument with a rich eastern tone.
The instructor, Ngek Chum, closed his eyes and listened to Jonathan play.
"I use my ear," Chum said.
Many of the children are unaware of their parent's past.
"I've not really been told about it," said Paula Chea, 12, a dancer in the advanced class.
Most of the parents think the children should be older before they hear the stories. Others want to forget about the past altogether.
"Straighten!" shouted Oeun, touching the small of young girl's back with the dowel.
Oeun founded the Cambodian American Heritage group, which teaches and performs Cambodian classical dance. She and the other Dance Masters teach Cambodian dance to second generation Cambodian American children at the Cambodian Buddhist Society in Silver Spring and the Arlington Mill Community Center in Arlington. (for more information about the group, go to http://www.cambodianheritage.org/masterdancers.html)
Ouen's job, and that of the other Dance Masters, is to keep alive a culture that was nearly erased by Cambodia's forgotten genocide.
The Washington area has some 5,000 Cambodian Americans, many of whom immigrated to the United States during or after the fall of the Communist Khmer Rouge government in 1979. They left their homeland to escape a ruined society in which some 1.7 million people were murdered by Pol Pot's regime.
The refugees brought with them vestiges of Cambodian culture, which they now pass to the children.
"My kids don't know the culture yet," said Nalen Smith, 38, who arrived in the United States in 1988 after spending five years in the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp on the Thai border. "I bring Meghan to dance because I want to keep the culture alive. Also, I want her to behave herself as Cambodia woman."The youngest children, such as Meghan, 5, (pictured left) and Grace, are in the beginner's classes. The oldest students are in their mid-20s. Nearly all are second-generation Cambodian Americans.
"Grace wailed at first because she doesn't understand the importance," said Kathy Rafferty of her daughter, 5. Rafferty adopted Grace in Cambodia in 2003. Now she brings Grace to classes on Sundays to learn Cambodian dance.
"Ninety percent of dancers were killed," Rafferty said of the Khmer Rouge slaughter of artists in the mid-to-late 1970s. That's what makes these lessons so important, Rafferty said. "Passing it on to this generation."
Cambodian musical lessons are also part of the cultural education held on Sunday's in Silver Spring and Arlington.
Jonathan Dos, left, a fifth grader at Carlin Springs Elementary, practices playing the roneat ek, a xylophone-like instrument with a rich eastern tone.The instructor, Ngek Chum, closed his eyes and listened to Jonathan play.
"I use my ear," Chum said.
Many of the children are unaware of their parent's past.
"I've not really been told about it," said Paula Chea, 12, a dancer in the advanced class.Like most adult Cambodians, the parents here—with the exception of Rafferty—have seen unthinkable hardship. Many lost mothers, fathers, siblings and friends to the Khmer Rouge labor camps, prisons, and execution squads. It seems to some parents that the past has been forgotten.
Most of the parents think the children should be older before they hear the stories. Others want to forget about the past altogether.
"Day by day it fades away," Smith said of her people's hardship. "People don't pay attention anymore."
"Some parents are fed up," said Victoria Yap, whose children learn dance on Sundays. "They say, 'I don't want my kids to know or speak the language.'"
Yap and Smith, however, disagree.
"We want them to know," Yap said. "We are the bridge."
And some of the children, particularly the oldest, are starting to understand. "I know that all of my grandfathers and grandmothers died. All my mom's brother and sisters died," said Chea. "I like to dance because I don't want to lose my Cambodian identity."
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Cambodian Dance Keeps Traditional Culture Alive in Arlington
The piece below was my first published piece since starting Journalism school at Georgetown. It was published on 03/13/08 by the press service Radio Free Asia, which predominantly provides news (radio and internet) to politically-repressed Asian nations.
The piece was translated in Khmer (Cambodian) and posted on the Khmer page. Here is the link: http://www.rfa.org/khmer/batyokka/2008/03/13/Khmer_Americans_vs_Ancient_Culture/.
Here is the full text in English:
For Cambodian Americans in the Washington area, keeping traditional culture alive is a fight against long odds. The battle’s fought, however, week after week at the Arlington Mills Community Center, where Cambodian-born parents bring their American-born children for lessons in ancient heritage.
The children come midday Sunday, shuffling into the center in richly-colored, sequent-studded Av Noay, a tradition Cambodian dress. They’re here for classical Cambodian dance and music lessons and to understand their roots.
Jonathan Dos, a fifth-grader at Carlin Springs Elementary, patiently holds two mallets above the dark hardwood bars of a curved wooden instrument known as a roneat ek. It’s like a xylophone but has a rich eastern tone that fills the room as Jonathan plays. It’s a simple tune, like a Cambodian version of “Chopsticks.”
The instructor, Ngek Chum, watches his pupils while bowing a violin-like instrument called a Tro. There’s not a musical sheet in the room. “I use my ear,” Chum says.
Most adults here were born in Cambodia and have seen hardship. The majority arrived in the United States between the late 1970s and early 1980s—during or after the dark, genocidal era of Pol Pot’s regime. In an effort to create a classless society, the Khmer Rouge directly or indirectly killed nearly 1.7 million Cambodians—one-fifth of Cambodia’s population—between 1975 and 1979. Particularly targeted were intellectuals: professors, engineers, doctors, and artists.
Above: the violin-like Tro
Upon arriving in the United States, the Cambodian refugees established “Khmer” communities throughout the country. Some 4,000 live in the Washington area.
In a larger room across the hall from Chum’s music lesson is Devi Yim, the Dance Master. Yim stands on tip-toes at the head of the class, her outstretched arms moving gracefully in large circles to music played from a stereo. Facing Yim for this, the Coconut Dance, are 30 girls, some no more than five years old. The children, clad in yellow, green, and blue outfits, sway to Yim’s lead. All eyes are upon the teacher.
Like the others, Yim has seen hardship. “They gave us three days to leave,” she says, referring to the Khmer Rouge order to evacuate Phnom Penh in 1975. Yim and thousands fled to the countryside on foot and at gunpoint.
Yim, five at the time, was separated from her family and forced to tend rice fields in the countryside. Her brother was killed.
In the early 1980s, after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Yim graduated from the Royal University of Fine Arts. She first performed dance in the United States in 1990 on the invitation of the U.S government. “My country was still at war,” says Yim, “I decided to stay here.”
Now she teaches the children what she learned in her homeland. “I want to keep my culture alive,” Yim says. “That’s why I do it every weekend.”
Sara Say agrees. A former 2nd Lieutenant in the Cambodian Special Forces, Say has been performing in America since arriving in the early 1980s. Afraid their heritage would be lost in the relocation, Say and 30 other refugees brought dance with them.
Say, now a writer, drummer, and singer, lives and performs at local venues. In March he’ll be at Washington College. “We must show them that we are from somewhere else in the world,” says Say about the children. “They have to learn what is their background.”
It’s a refrain heard again and again among the parents: it’s important that the children know their heritage.
Kathy Rafferty sits in a plastic chair in the community center while her adopted daughter, Grace, practices dance moves. Grace was born in Cambodia and brought to the United States by Rafferty at six months old. Rafferty’s not Cambodian, but she understands the importance of culture and identity.
The dance lessons teach culture and help with identity, Rafferty explains. “She wailed at first, but when the kids get older they really start to appreciate the lessons.”
Another mother, Nalen Smith, watches proudly as her 5 year old daughter Meghan performs. “My kids don’t know the culture yet,” says Smith, who spent 5 years at the Khao-I-Dang
refugee camp (pictured at right) on the Thai border and lost her sister to a boarder-guard’s bullet. “I bring Meghan to dance because I want to keep the culture alive,” she says. “It’s not easy.”
The littlest ones, like Meghan, are too young to understand. But they eventually learn. “After a while they realize that they have their own origins,” says Say, the former 2nd Lieutenant.
Today, and for the next few months, the children are practicing for a recital in April for the Cambodian New Year. It’s one of the community’s biggest events, and the children will perform at Gunston Middle School in Arlington.
Victoria Yap, a Chinese-Cambodian American, passes-out four-foot Peacock feathers to twenty children in the break room. They’re about to practice the “Peacock Dance” for the New Year festival, and the excitement is palpable. “They become the Peacock,” says Yap, explaining the narrative of the ancient dance.
Dance and music lessons, however, require lots of free time. And in American, free time comes at a premium.
Poly Sam, a US-educated Cambodian immigrant, found refuge in the United States in 1983 after spending five years in a refugee camp. Before that the Khmer Rouge forced him to tend water buffalo in the countryside. Though he escaped Cambodia, 5 five members of his family did not.
Sam, a broadcaster for Radio Free Asia in Washington, juggles the demands of a modern lifestyle. Though he’d like his children to learn more, there are limits. “We try to maintain our identity,” says Sam. “But, we’re busy.” Circumstances don’t always allow, he says.
Sam is pragmatic, and although he embraces his past, he is also grateful for the present. “Being American is a good thing,” he says. “My kids will be successful.”
Others agree, but some more reluctantly. “I don’t want them to be too Americanized,” says Seng Chao, a Cambodian immigrant whose two children perform at the center.
It’s hard for the children not to be Americanized. Unlike the first generation, these kids speak perfect English. They also eat pizza between lessons and remove new Michael Jordon Nike’s upon entering the center.
It’s a tough balance to strike: new versus old, near versus far, American culture versus ancient traditions from a land 9,000 miles away. And there’s also the unchallengeable fact that these children, as much as any, are American.
But they’re also Cambodian, something that the parents at Arlington Mills Community Center don’t want forgotten. That’s why they wear the Av Noay. That’s why they come every week.
The children seem to understand: when the music starts, the playful bantering stops. The girls grow quiet, deep in concentration, anticipating their next dance move. For a few minutes, time stands still and Khmer culture comes to Arlington.
But when the music stops, the laughter and whispering in perfect English begin. It’s an American classroom again, and Cambodia seems as far away as it is.
The piece was translated in Khmer (Cambodian) and posted on the Khmer page. Here is the link: http://www.rfa.org/khmer/batyokka/2008/03/13/Khmer_Americans_vs_Ancient_Culture/.
Here is the full text in English:
For Cambodian Americans in the Washington area, keeping traditional culture alive is a fight against long odds. The battle’s fought, however, week after week at the Arlington Mills Community Center, where Cambodian-born parents bring their American-born children for lessons in ancient heritage.
The children come midday Sunday, shuffling into the center in richly-colored, sequent-studded Av Noay, a tradition Cambodian dress. They’re here for classical Cambodian dance and music lessons and to understand their roots.
Jonathan Dos, a fifth-grader at Carlin Springs Elementary, patiently holds two mallets above the dark hardwood bars of a curved wooden instrument known as a roneat ek. It’s like a xylophone but has a rich eastern tone that fills the room as Jonathan plays. It’s a simple tune, like a Cambodian version of “Chopsticks.”
The instructor, Ngek Chum, watches his pupils while bowing a violin-like instrument called a Tro. There’s not a musical sheet in the room. “I use my ear,” Chum says.Most adults here were born in Cambodia and have seen hardship. The majority arrived in the United States between the late 1970s and early 1980s—during or after the dark, genocidal era of Pol Pot’s regime. In an effort to create a classless society, the Khmer Rouge directly or indirectly killed nearly 1.7 million Cambodians—one-fifth of Cambodia’s population—between 1975 and 1979. Particularly targeted were intellectuals: professors, engineers, doctors, and artists.
Above: the violin-like Tro
Upon arriving in the United States, the Cambodian refugees established “Khmer” communities throughout the country. Some 4,000 live in the Washington area.
In a larger room across the hall from Chum’s music lesson is Devi Yim, the Dance Master. Yim stands on tip-toes at the head of the class, her outstretched arms moving gracefully in large circles to music played from a stereo. Facing Yim for this, the Coconut Dance, are 30 girls, some no more than five years old. The children, clad in yellow, green, and blue outfits, sway to Yim’s lead. All eyes are upon the teacher.
Like the others, Yim has seen hardship. “They gave us three days to leave,” she says, referring to the Khmer Rouge order to evacuate Phnom Penh in 1975. Yim and thousands fled to the countryside on foot and at gunpoint.
Yim, five at the time, was separated from her family and forced to tend rice fields in the countryside. Her brother was killed.
In the early 1980s, after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Yim graduated from the Royal University of Fine Arts. She first performed dance in the United States in 1990 on the invitation of the U.S government. “My country was still at war,” says Yim, “I decided to stay here.”
Now she teaches the children what she learned in her homeland. “I want to keep my culture alive,” Yim says. “That’s why I do it every weekend.”
Sara Say agrees. A former 2nd Lieutenant in the Cambodian Special Forces, Say has been performing in America since arriving in the early 1980s. Afraid their heritage would be lost in the relocation, Say and 30 other refugees brought dance with them.
Say, now a writer, drummer, and singer, lives and performs at local venues. In March he’ll be at Washington College. “We must show them that we are from somewhere else in the world,” says Say about the children. “They have to learn what is their background.”
It’s a refrain heard again and again among the parents: it’s important that the children know their heritage.
Kathy Rafferty sits in a plastic chair in the community center while her adopted daughter, Grace, practices dance moves. Grace was born in Cambodia and brought to the United States by Rafferty at six months old. Rafferty’s not Cambodian, but she understands the importance of culture and identity.
The dance lessons teach culture and help with identity, Rafferty explains. “She wailed at first, but when the kids get older they really start to appreciate the lessons.”
Another mother, Nalen Smith, watches proudly as her 5 year old daughter Meghan performs. “My kids don’t know the culture yet,” says Smith, who spent 5 years at the Khao-I-Dang
refugee camp (pictured at right) on the Thai border and lost her sister to a boarder-guard’s bullet. “I bring Meghan to dance because I want to keep the culture alive,” she says. “It’s not easy.”The littlest ones, like Meghan, are too young to understand. But they eventually learn. “After a while they realize that they have their own origins,” says Say, the former 2nd Lieutenant.
Today, and for the next few months, the children are practicing for a recital in April for the Cambodian New Year. It’s one of the community’s biggest events, and the children will perform at Gunston Middle School in Arlington.
Victoria Yap, a Chinese-Cambodian American, passes-out four-foot Peacock feathers to twenty children in the break room. They’re about to practice the “Peacock Dance” for the New Year festival, and the excitement is palpable. “They become the Peacock,” says Yap, explaining the narrative of the ancient dance.
Dance and music lessons, however, require lots of free time. And in American, free time comes at a premium.
Poly Sam, a US-educated Cambodian immigrant, found refuge in the United States in 1983 after spending five years in a refugee camp. Before that the Khmer Rouge forced him to tend water buffalo in the countryside. Though he escaped Cambodia, 5 five members of his family did not.
Sam, a broadcaster for Radio Free Asia in Washington, juggles the demands of a modern lifestyle. Though he’d like his children to learn more, there are limits. “We try to maintain our identity,” says Sam. “But, we’re busy.” Circumstances don’t always allow, he says.
Sam is pragmatic, and although he embraces his past, he is also grateful for the present. “Being American is a good thing,” he says. “My kids will be successful.”
Others agree, but some more reluctantly. “I don’t want them to be too Americanized,” says Seng Chao, a Cambodian immigrant whose two children perform at the center.
It’s hard for the children not to be Americanized. Unlike the first generation, these kids speak perfect English. They also eat pizza between lessons and remove new Michael Jordon Nike’s upon entering the center.
It’s a tough balance to strike: new versus old, near versus far, American culture versus ancient traditions from a land 9,000 miles away. And there’s also the unchallengeable fact that these children, as much as any, are American.
But they’re also Cambodian, something that the parents at Arlington Mills Community Center don’t want forgotten. That’s why they wear the Av Noay. That’s why they come every week.
The children seem to understand: when the music starts, the playful bantering stops. The girls grow quiet, deep in concentration, anticipating their next dance move. For a few minutes, time stands still and Khmer culture comes to Arlington.
But when the music stops, the laughter and whispering in perfect English begin. It’s an American classroom again, and Cambodia seems as far away as it is.
A Piece of Southeast Asia Thrives Amidst Washington’s Suburbs
Jiahn-Yih Wuu was an early arrival to America.
The 2nd Minister of Religious Ceremonies at the Cambodian Buddhist Society fled his home in Cambodia just three days after the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. From Thailand, he applied for refugee status anywhere he could find it.
"France, Australian, Canada, the U.S.,” he says, ticking-off the countries to which he sought entry.
His story is not unique for Cambodian immigrants in the Washington area. Escape is a common theme.
Wuu ended-up in the US, and is now at the ornate Buddhist temple and monastery in Silver Spring.
Step inside and you'd think you landed in Southeast Asia: Massive painted murals. Brass Buddha’s. Ancient texts. A pictorial lineage of Cambodia's Supreme Patriarchs. And Buddhist monks.
The monastery and temple are a sanctuary, and it's kept authentic. "Our society is more conservative," says Sovan Tun, the President of the facility. "America has a lot of temptations, distractions."
Metropolitan Washington has a small but distinct Cambodian-American Community. Based upon the 2006 American Community Survey, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that some 5,000 Cambodian Americans live here, mostly in Montgomery County, Maryland, and Fairfax County, Virginia. Nationwide are some 200,000 Cambodian-Americans. The largest populations in California, Massachusetts, and Washington State.
Like other "Khmer Communities," as they call themselves, this one is tightly-bound by tradition and the legacy of Cambodia’s troubled past.
From 1975 to 1979, Pol Pot and the Communist Khmer Rouge (French for "Red Khmer") wrecked Cambodia and directly or indirectly killed an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians. After 1979, when the Khmer Rouge was toppled, Cambodians fled their shattered nation in droves.
The Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC) estimates that nearly 139,000 Cambodian refugees came to the United States in the 1980s, based upon data from the Office of Refugee Resettlement. In 1981 alone 38,000 Cambodian refugees resettled in America.
Though the immigration slowed after the 1980s, it never stopped. According to the Office of Immigration Statistics, about 5,000 Cambodian immigrants came to America in 2006.
Today's immigrants, unlike the earlier generation, come to the United States for work, education, and to reunited with family. The temple and monastery in Silver Spring is a gathering site.
Bhante Sopheak Ngove stands barefoot in the temple wrapped in a flowing red robe, his hands folded at his waist. Though he is silent, his eyes are wise. "Bhante" means "Venerable," and is Ngove's title.
Like the other four monks at the Cambodian Buddhist Society, Ngove has only been in this country a few months. With Tun's sponsorship, he and the others were granted legal, permanent residency in the United States as Religious Workers' under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Within five years they'll have the opportunity to apply for American citizenship.
The rules are strict in the Silver Spring monastery: No alcohol. No entertainment. No movies. No woman. "I force my mind stay in neutral," Ngove says through broken English.
Ngove is from Kampot, Cambodia, a province south of Phnom Penh along the Gulf of Thailand. Though his parents are farmers, Ngove studied philosophy and became a monk. He arrived in the United States in Feb. 2007. And though he avoids American temptations, he's eager to assimilate: "I want to learn English," he says.
In a room next-door, two other recent immigrants, Waddanak and Sowattey Sem, pose for a photograph. They're here with their parents, who are visiting from Phnom Penh. Both siblings came to the United States for an education.
Waddanak came first, arriving in 1997 to study at Fullerton College in Orange County, Ca. Like for other immigrants, the transition was difficult for Waddanak, made worse by poor English.
"I couldn't find my class," said Waddanak of his first day at Fullerton. "I couldn't even make a phone call to get a ride because I had no change."
There were also financial troubles. Fullerton was more expensive than the family expected and Waddanak was forced to work nights. "It's lucky they have bumps in the road," he jokes, referring to the highway lane dividers that kept him awake while driving to class.
The burden eventually proved too much. Waddanak moved to Northern Virginia and transferred to Northern Virginia Community College. He then dropped-out in favor of lucrative work as an automobile mechanic.
In 2006, Waddanak was joined by his sister, Sowattey, who came to the United States to study for her MBA at Southeastern University.
The distance from home challenges Sowattey and she worries about her parents in Cambodia. "The war is over, but the country still has lots of rivalry," said Sowattey. "Cambodia society is not that safe."
She also struggles with the cultural challenges. "Life here is not that easy and sometimes so painful," she said. "It's such a fast growing and challenging society."
Despite the challenges, the two are forming roots in America. Waddanak is married to another Cambodian immigrant and has two boys. He takes the U.S. citizen test next month. As for Sowattey, she's getting good marks at Southeastern and has made American friends.
Still, there's homesickness and a desire to keep Cambodian culture alive in American. That's why they come to the temple and monastery in Silver Spring.
On Sunday, the basement of the temple hums with activity. Children wearing Av Noay. a traditional Cambodian dress, dance to classical Cambodian music. Families and neighbors gather to laugh and chat. Some snap pictures. It's a happy scene—a mixture of Cambodian and American cultures and identities; a blend of American-born youngsters and adults still assimilating.
But there's also pain here—shared pain from a difficult past that permeates the place. It's a pain that the children don't yet understand; a pain that the adults can't forget.
It's quite next door in the monastery. Wuu, the 2nd Minister, recalls his past and his homeland, which he hasn’t seen in 35 years. "Very sad," he mutters, deep in thought.
The 2nd Minister of Religious Ceremonies at the Cambodian Buddhist Society fled his home in Cambodia just three days after the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. From Thailand, he applied for refugee status anywhere he could find it.
"France, Australian, Canada, the U.S.,” he says, ticking-off the countries to which he sought entry.
His story is not unique for Cambodian immigrants in the Washington area. Escape is a common theme.
Wuu ended-up in the US, and is now at the ornate Buddhist temple and monastery in Silver Spring.
Step inside and you'd think you landed in Southeast Asia: Massive painted murals. Brass Buddha’s. Ancient texts. A pictorial lineage of Cambodia's Supreme Patriarchs. And Buddhist monks.
The monastery and temple are a sanctuary, and it's kept authentic. "Our society is more conservative," says Sovan Tun, the President of the facility. "America has a lot of temptations, distractions."
Metropolitan Washington has a small but distinct Cambodian-American Community. Based upon the 2006 American Community Survey, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that some 5,000 Cambodian Americans live here, mostly in Montgomery County, Maryland, and Fairfax County, Virginia. Nationwide are some 200,000 Cambodian-Americans. The largest populations in California, Massachusetts, and Washington State.
Like other "Khmer Communities," as they call themselves, this one is tightly-bound by tradition and the legacy of Cambodia’s troubled past.
From 1975 to 1979, Pol Pot and the Communist Khmer Rouge (French for "Red Khmer") wrecked Cambodia and directly or indirectly killed an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians. After 1979, when the Khmer Rouge was toppled, Cambodians fled their shattered nation in droves.
The Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC) estimates that nearly 139,000 Cambodian refugees came to the United States in the 1980s, based upon data from the Office of Refugee Resettlement. In 1981 alone 38,000 Cambodian refugees resettled in America.
Though the immigration slowed after the 1980s, it never stopped. According to the Office of Immigration Statistics, about 5,000 Cambodian immigrants came to America in 2006.
Today's immigrants, unlike the earlier generation, come to the United States for work, education, and to reunited with family. The temple and monastery in Silver Spring is a gathering site.
Bhante Sopheak Ngove stands barefoot in the temple wrapped in a flowing red robe, his hands folded at his waist. Though he is silent, his eyes are wise. "Bhante" means "Venerable," and is Ngove's title.
Like the other four monks at the Cambodian Buddhist Society, Ngove has only been in this country a few months. With Tun's sponsorship, he and the others were granted legal, permanent residency in the United States as Religious Workers' under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Within five years they'll have the opportunity to apply for American citizenship.
The rules are strict in the Silver Spring monastery: No alcohol. No entertainment. No movies. No woman. "I force my mind stay in neutral," Ngove says through broken English.
Ngove is from Kampot, Cambodia, a province south of Phnom Penh along the Gulf of Thailand. Though his parents are farmers, Ngove studied philosophy and became a monk. He arrived in the United States in Feb. 2007. And though he avoids American temptations, he's eager to assimilate: "I want to learn English," he says.
In a room next-door, two other recent immigrants, Waddanak and Sowattey Sem, pose for a photograph. They're here with their parents, who are visiting from Phnom Penh. Both siblings came to the United States for an education.
Waddanak came first, arriving in 1997 to study at Fullerton College in Orange County, Ca. Like for other immigrants, the transition was difficult for Waddanak, made worse by poor English.
"I couldn't find my class," said Waddanak of his first day at Fullerton. "I couldn't even make a phone call to get a ride because I had no change."
There were also financial troubles. Fullerton was more expensive than the family expected and Waddanak was forced to work nights. "It's lucky they have bumps in the road," he jokes, referring to the highway lane dividers that kept him awake while driving to class.
The burden eventually proved too much. Waddanak moved to Northern Virginia and transferred to Northern Virginia Community College. He then dropped-out in favor of lucrative work as an automobile mechanic.
In 2006, Waddanak was joined by his sister, Sowattey, who came to the United States to study for her MBA at Southeastern University.
The distance from home challenges Sowattey and she worries about her parents in Cambodia. "The war is over, but the country still has lots of rivalry," said Sowattey. "Cambodia society is not that safe."
She also struggles with the cultural challenges. "Life here is not that easy and sometimes so painful," she said. "It's such a fast growing and challenging society."
Despite the challenges, the two are forming roots in America. Waddanak is married to another Cambodian immigrant and has two boys. He takes the U.S. citizen test next month. As for Sowattey, she's getting good marks at Southeastern and has made American friends.
Still, there's homesickness and a desire to keep Cambodian culture alive in American. That's why they come to the temple and monastery in Silver Spring.
On Sunday, the basement of the temple hums with activity. Children wearing Av Noay. a traditional Cambodian dress, dance to classical Cambodian music. Families and neighbors gather to laugh and chat. Some snap pictures. It's a happy scene—a mixture of Cambodian and American cultures and identities; a blend of American-born youngsters and adults still assimilating.
But there's also pain here—shared pain from a difficult past that permeates the place. It's a pain that the children don't yet understand; a pain that the adults can't forget.
It's quite next door in the monastery. Wuu, the 2nd Minister, recalls his past and his homeland, which he hasn’t seen in 35 years. "Very sad," he mutters, deep in thought.
Monday, March 24, 2008
For Cambodian Americans, Returning Home is Unlikely
Though Cambodia's worst years are past, many Cambodian Americans who fled the tattered nation still aren’t ready to return. They may never be.
The reason is that Cambodia has still not healed from the wounds of the past. The mass-murder has ended, but poverty, corruption, crime, and memories continued to haunt the small Southeast Asia nation.
"When you live here you get a value," explained Poly Sam, 42, a Cambodian immigrant in Washington and survivor of the Khmer Rouge. "It's not a good time to take that value to Cambodia."
Others agree.
“It’s not that I don’t like my country,” explained Waddanak Sem, 32, a Cambodian-American living in Sterling. "If I go back I have no opportunity. There’s none for my kids, either. It’s just not a country for opportunity.”
Based upon the 2006 American Community Survey, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that some 5,000 Cambodian Americans live in the Washington area. There's some 200,000 nationwide. Most arrived in the United States between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s, fleeing a country wracked by five years of Khmer Rouge rule.
Between 1975 and 1979, an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians were murdered, starved to death, or worked to death in the Communists’ efforts to create an agriculturally-based society. Particularly targeted were doctors, artists, intellectuals, teachers, and those with affiliations to the previous government. One-fifth of the country’s population perished.
"No Cambodian alive was not affected by the war," said Sovan Tun, the President of the Cambodian Buddhist Society in Silver Spring.
According to a 2005 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 90% of Cambodian Americans report having lost a family member or friend during the Khmer Rouge years.
As a result, many Cambodian immigrants in the United States don't have living relatives in Cambodia.
“Many have lost their family members and relatives,” said Hassan Kasem, 55, a Cambodian immigrant and broadcaster at Radio Free Asia in Washington. “There’s no reason to go back.”
Kasem is a former Huey pilot with the Khmer Republic, the U.S. backed government that preceded the Khmer Rouge. He’s also a Muslim Cham, a Cambodian ethnic minority that was particularly targeted by the Khmer Rouge.
Kasem lost his father, mother, two brothers, and two sisters to the Khmer Rouge. Ninety-thousand other Cham Muslims died during the period—over one-third of the Cambodian Cham population. The rest were dispersed.
Even those with family in Cambodia have a tough time returning.
“It’s a sad place to be because you were there,” said Poly Sam, also a broadcaster at Radio Free Asia.
Sam lost his brother, two brothers-in-law, and two nephews during Pol Pot’s rule. He arrived in the United States in 1983 after spending 3 years in a Thai refugee camp.
“Cambodians here get over the hump,” he explained. “Others in Cambodia have a survivor mentality. People are just trying to survive”
Victoria Yap, a Chinese Cambodian and U.S. citizen, said that there’s anger, too. “Some parents are fed-up,” she said. “They say, ‘I don’t want my kids to know about the past or speak the language.’”
Yap is one of the “boat people.” She and her family escaped Cambodia in 1975 to Vietnam, where five years later they sailed to Indonesia. Yap wants her kids to learn about the past.
“We want them to know,” she said of the children. “Unless they see it they won’t understand.”
The continued social problems in Cambodia also keep some refugees from returning.
“It’s very chaotic because of lack of enforcement of laws,” said Sam of current-day Phnom Penh. "There's lots of bribery, corruption. You get crooks, child molesters, murderers. Children are imported from Vietnam,” he said. “It's unsafe. You can't go out after eight pm.”
Sowattey Sem, 26, is studying for her MBA at Southeastern University on student visa. She fears for her parents back home in Phnom Penh.
"I miss them and worry about them," Sem said. "The big war is over, but the country has lots of rivalry; shootings. Cambodian society is not that safe."
According to the United Nations website, Cambodia is among the poorest nations in the world, with an estimated 36% of the population living in poverty. In rural areas of the country, the U.N. estimates the number is 40%. The country’s per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is just $438, also one of the world’s lowest.
"You'll see a $60,000 Lexus next to someone walking barefoot," said Sam of the income inequalities in Phnom Penh. "A five-star hotel next to shack. Factory workers get $50 per month and they send $10 to $15 to their parents in the countryside.”
Cambodia is also a difficult place for outsiders to do business.
Kasem, the former Huey pilot, returned to Cambodia in 1995 looking for business opportunities. He didn’t stay long. “I was not a successful businessman because I just can’t bribe everyone when I want to deal with them on business issues,” he explained.
Many Cambodian Americans also mistrust the Cambodian government, which is a Constitutional Monarchy with a King and Prime Minister.
“The King has the title of Head of the Country, but he does not have any real power,” said Jiahn-Yih Wuu, the 2nd Minister of Religious Ceremony at the Cambodian Buddhist Society in Silver Spring. Wuu arrived in the United States six months after the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. He hasn’t returned.
“The Prime Minister, Hun Sen, sold the wood from the country," he said, referring to the government’s plunder of Cambodia’s natural resources. “I'm very sad about that.”
There's also disgust among survivors over current government officials.
"The current government is run by a mixture of Hanoi-leaning former Communist officials, former Khmer Rouge soldiers and cadres and former royalist fighters," Kasem explained. "All of them were at one point of another in the same Communist school of thought.”
In recent years, with United Nations assistance, Cambodia has established courts to prosecute former Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes against humanity.
But the process has been slow and frustrating. The trials have been over-budget, delayed, and hampered by procedural slowdowns. And there’s a heavy dose of hypocrisy: the current Cambodian government includes former Khmer Rouge leaders.
"The Khmer Rouge trial is a joke endorsed by culprits," Kasem said. "There are many more who are as guilty as the current leaders and who will never have to face their victims. This is a trial of selective prosecution."
Despite the reasons not to return, the draw of home is strong. Some hope to go back.
“I may go back when I retire,” said Sam, the radio broadcaster. Sam wants to give something back to the country that took so much. “Open a school. Teach English,” he said.
But many of the immigrants will likely not return. They’ve built lives and communities in the United States.
“Many have called the U.S. home—the place of rebirth—and to some degree are successful in life,” Kasem said.
And, many are American Citizens.
"Being American is a good thing," said Sam.
The children make it hard to leave too.
Kasem has two daughters, 22 and 27.
“My older daughter, a GMU grad, is working in D.C. with a lawyer placement firm,” Kasem said. “My younger daughter is on a short deployment—before a longer one—on USS Ronald Reagan.”
The reason is that Cambodia has still not healed from the wounds of the past. The mass-murder has ended, but poverty, corruption, crime, and memories continued to haunt the small Southeast Asia nation.
"When you live here you get a value," explained Poly Sam, 42, a Cambodian immigrant in Washington and survivor of the Khmer Rouge. "It's not a good time to take that value to Cambodia."
Others agree.
“It’s not that I don’t like my country,” explained Waddanak Sem, 32, a Cambodian-American living in Sterling. "If I go back I have no opportunity. There’s none for my kids, either. It’s just not a country for opportunity.”
Based upon the 2006 American Community Survey, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that some 5,000 Cambodian Americans live in the Washington area. There's some 200,000 nationwide. Most arrived in the United States between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s, fleeing a country wracked by five years of Khmer Rouge rule.
Between 1975 and 1979, an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians were murdered, starved to death, or worked to death in the Communists’ efforts to create an agriculturally-based society. Particularly targeted were doctors, artists, intellectuals, teachers, and those with affiliations to the previous government. One-fifth of the country’s population perished.
"No Cambodian alive was not affected by the war," said Sovan Tun, the President of the Cambodian Buddhist Society in Silver Spring.
According to a 2005 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 90% of Cambodian Americans report having lost a family member or friend during the Khmer Rouge years.
As a result, many Cambodian immigrants in the United States don't have living relatives in Cambodia.
“Many have lost their family members and relatives,” said Hassan Kasem, 55, a Cambodian immigrant and broadcaster at Radio Free Asia in Washington. “There’s no reason to go back.”
Kasem is a former Huey pilot with the Khmer Republic, the U.S. backed government that preceded the Khmer Rouge. He’s also a Muslim Cham, a Cambodian ethnic minority that was particularly targeted by the Khmer Rouge.
Kasem lost his father, mother, two brothers, and two sisters to the Khmer Rouge. Ninety-thousand other Cham Muslims died during the period—over one-third of the Cambodian Cham population. The rest were dispersed.
Even those with family in Cambodia have a tough time returning.
“It’s a sad place to be because you were there,” said Poly Sam, also a broadcaster at Radio Free Asia.
Sam lost his brother, two brothers-in-law, and two nephews during Pol Pot’s rule. He arrived in the United States in 1983 after spending 3 years in a Thai refugee camp.
“Cambodians here get over the hump,” he explained. “Others in Cambodia have a survivor mentality. People are just trying to survive”
Victoria Yap, a Chinese Cambodian and U.S. citizen, said that there’s anger, too. “Some parents are fed-up,” she said. “They say, ‘I don’t want my kids to know about the past or speak the language.’”
Yap is one of the “boat people.” She and her family escaped Cambodia in 1975 to Vietnam, where five years later they sailed to Indonesia. Yap wants her kids to learn about the past.
“We want them to know,” she said of the children. “Unless they see it they won’t understand.”
The continued social problems in Cambodia also keep some refugees from returning.
“It’s very chaotic because of lack of enforcement of laws,” said Sam of current-day Phnom Penh. "There's lots of bribery, corruption. You get crooks, child molesters, murderers. Children are imported from Vietnam,” he said. “It's unsafe. You can't go out after eight pm.”
Sowattey Sem, 26, is studying for her MBA at Southeastern University on student visa. She fears for her parents back home in Phnom Penh.
"I miss them and worry about them," Sem said. "The big war is over, but the country has lots of rivalry; shootings. Cambodian society is not that safe."
According to the United Nations website, Cambodia is among the poorest nations in the world, with an estimated 36% of the population living in poverty. In rural areas of the country, the U.N. estimates the number is 40%. The country’s per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is just $438, also one of the world’s lowest.
"You'll see a $60,000 Lexus next to someone walking barefoot," said Sam of the income inequalities in Phnom Penh. "A five-star hotel next to shack. Factory workers get $50 per month and they send $10 to $15 to their parents in the countryside.”
Cambodia is also a difficult place for outsiders to do business.
Kasem, the former Huey pilot, returned to Cambodia in 1995 looking for business opportunities. He didn’t stay long. “I was not a successful businessman because I just can’t bribe everyone when I want to deal with them on business issues,” he explained.
Many Cambodian Americans also mistrust the Cambodian government, which is a Constitutional Monarchy with a King and Prime Minister.
“The King has the title of Head of the Country, but he does not have any real power,” said Jiahn-Yih Wuu, the 2nd Minister of Religious Ceremony at the Cambodian Buddhist Society in Silver Spring. Wuu arrived in the United States six months after the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. He hasn’t returned.
“The Prime Minister, Hun Sen, sold the wood from the country," he said, referring to the government’s plunder of Cambodia’s natural resources. “I'm very sad about that.”
There's also disgust among survivors over current government officials.
"The current government is run by a mixture of Hanoi-leaning former Communist officials, former Khmer Rouge soldiers and cadres and former royalist fighters," Kasem explained. "All of them were at one point of another in the same Communist school of thought.”
In recent years, with United Nations assistance, Cambodia has established courts to prosecute former Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes against humanity.
But the process has been slow and frustrating. The trials have been over-budget, delayed, and hampered by procedural slowdowns. And there’s a heavy dose of hypocrisy: the current Cambodian government includes former Khmer Rouge leaders.
"The Khmer Rouge trial is a joke endorsed by culprits," Kasem said. "There are many more who are as guilty as the current leaders and who will never have to face their victims. This is a trial of selective prosecution."
Despite the reasons not to return, the draw of home is strong. Some hope to go back.
“I may go back when I retire,” said Sam, the radio broadcaster. Sam wants to give something back to the country that took so much. “Open a school. Teach English,” he said.
But many of the immigrants will likely not return. They’ve built lives and communities in the United States.
“Many have called the U.S. home—the place of rebirth—and to some degree are successful in life,” Kasem said.
And, many are American Citizens.
"Being American is a good thing," said Sam.
The children make it hard to leave too.
Kasem has two daughters, 22 and 27.
“My older daughter, a GMU grad, is working in D.C. with a lawyer placement firm,” Kasem said. “My younger daughter is on a short deployment—before a longer one—on USS Ronald Reagan.”
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