ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

THE FOLLWING IS ONE OF GREATEST EPISODES OF MODERN CAMBODIA

EXTRAORDINARY JUSTICE, a book by Craig Etcheson, 400+ pages, 10 chapters, published by Columbia University Press. If you order the book directly from Columbia University Press using the code CUP30, you can get a 30% discount.

On the 21st of September, I sent out my partner Run and her daughter Jolie to pick up the book at Marine Bookstore and I read it from cover to cover and often returned to the pages I had read to get a good grip of the story.

By the end of the first week of October, I finished the book while I was bedridden with an attack from the residuals of my past stroke, causing severe itching and horrible skin condition.

In view of the story of the Khmer Rouge atrocities and the skillful organization by the writer, himself the chief investigator for the prosecuting team of the court, I advise those of you who do not necessarily have to read and digest the content of a book from your sickbed, to pick up a copy of EXTRAORDINARY JUSTICE and commit yourselves to explore how justice for the Cambodians has been obtained by the international justice.

In EXTRAORDINARY JUSTICE, vivid, unprecedented, and, of course, extraordinary, Craig Etcheson has achieved splendidly his purpose of archiving for the public readers, how justice has been so tediously explored over the past ten years over the massive killings of the Cambodian people by the Khmer Rouge. END

Now, I know how to post at this site. I will do it later as we has several posts to handle.

Performance
LETTERS FROM HOME,
Irvine, CA, 13 February 2020 -- It's scary when we think of something that could end. We usually don't want to see the end of things, but at least the jet lag which afflicted me as the result of my long cross-Pacific Ocean return trip from Cambodia has ended. It has ended just to give me enough time to attend this week the performance of LETTERS FROM HOME, at the Humanity Center of the University of California at Irvine.
I was very concerned about our trip to Irvine. I'd heard of the famous name of the school, but I did not know where it was. Luckily, by five o'clock, our friend OLARY YIM drove my caretaker and me from our home in Long Beach, some 45 minutes away, then navigated the UCI campus traffic signs and reached the theater where LETTERS FROM HOME would be performed at 7 pm. We felt very relieved when we located our host Professor CHINARY UNG already sitting comfortably right in the middle of the large audience.
It was something that enchanted my mind. Professionals and academics directly contributed to the production of LETTERS FROM HOME, but the audience which filled up the theater to capacity was sustained for the entire two hours by the brilliant performance of KALEAN UNG that one could hear a pin drop.
KALEAN UNG is an award-winning actress, singer, and inter-disciplinary artist, based in Los Angeles. She said that LETTER FROM HOME was her journey of navigating through her family stories, the depth of her sub-consciousness and the inter-generational trauma of the Khmer Rouge. She performs LETTERS FROM HOME solo tonight, with music by her father, Professor CHINARY UNG, the internationally renowned musicologist and a Cambodian-born composer whose music incorporates Eastern characteristics into a Western classical setting.
LETTERS FROM HOME was directed by MARINA McCLURE.
The letters, collected by Prof. CHINARY UNG, that inspired the creation of Letters from Home, are on view at UCI's Orange County and Southeast Asian Archive, Gateway Study Center across from the Langson Library.
Open Monday-Friday, 1-5 pm, until 1 April.
Photo, Left to right: Susan and Chinary Ung, Olary Yim, Chhang Song, and Run Sum gathered at the balcony after the performance of LETTERS FROM HOME.

Southeast ASIA DAY,
By Chhang Song,

Long Beach, CA, Saturday, 5 October 2019 -- Today is a hot but pleasant day in Long Beach, CA where I live. The continued need for me to study the language nuance in the news reports from Cambodia has finally exhausted me mentally.

I am very familiar with the way Western correspondents report news and, as a whole, I trust these reports to be fairly accurate and fairly credible. However, we, the Cambodians use complex nuance in the language we speak and often truth is yet to be discovered by intuitive experience.

What RUN and I saw when we arrived at the Aquarium was completely different than what we had expected. It was not a solemn commemoration during which people would recite an incomprehensible mantra or an offering of foods to the monks, but a gorgeous multi-national exhibition and presentation. The Aquarium of the Pacific serves as host to the fabulous Day with a splendid help from Long Beach's weather.

Five hours later, we still could hardly leave the Aquarium which in itself plays the great role of the world's ocean life center.

Have we all noticed the Chinese massive settlement in Cambodia? This seems to be a new historical trend we'll have to follow. It's blatant colonization worth a serious study.

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