Before you leave for your well deserved week-end, how about participating in the funding of the documentary movie ‘The Cause of Progress’? There are only 4 crowdfunding days left (see here) so it is kind of NOW if you don’t want to miss the opportunity of getting that film by Chris Kelly about land issues on a screen near you soon.
I know Chris. Trust me, he is a good guy and a good filmmaker. We were shoulder to shoulder many times during the evictions in Cambodia. We had to… Otherwise we would be in each other’s frame.
You can read an interview (here) about his endeavour.
CAMBODIA. Phnom Penh. 3/11/2010: Chris Kelly, documentary filmmaker, filming the filling of Boeung Kak Lake by development company Shukaku Inc.
I was reminded that 4 years have passed since the violent Dey Krahom eviction (see here) took place here in Phnom Penh. Has anything changed since? At Dey Krahom things for sure are not different: since the eviction the land still stands empty, so I guess the speculation didn’t really work out as planned for the 7NG company which kicked the families out. As for the evictions, a common characteristic to developing nations, they still take place elsewhere in Cambodia (see here) in the same cynical and greedy way. There is one emerging difference though: some communities in Cambodia are organising their resistance more effectively. Boeung Kak Lake is one example, the Prey Lang forest community another.
This is a follow-up post on the ‘Quest for Land‘ story which is available as an iApp on iTunes.
Boeung Kak Lake community entangled in a 4-year long land issue (see here, here and here) went to the Council of Ministers to check on a hypothetical response to the petition they delivered earlier this month. 17 other communities were supposed to join but I couldn’t spot any.
(sorry only one photograph today…)
CAMBODIA. Phnom Penh. 23/01/2013: Boeung Kak Lake community member explaining their situation to the police and the press in front of the Council of Ministers, while expecting news about the petition they handed over several days ago.
It doesn’t happen often, but once in a while I get a reaction on some of my photographs decades after they were taken. It can be a man who recognizes himself with one of his ex-girlfriends or future wife and who will ask for a print of that photograph. It can be a Kurd who years later is remembered the hardships he had to endure in the internally displaced camps in Iraq (see here). Or it can be a Romanian refugee I followed for several days in Budapest (see here), who ended up running a gym in California, and who wants to write a book about his fate. Or, just a few days ago, it can be a woman who finally sees some images of what her father went through when he was shot at when staying in a Honduran refugee camp (see here), a story she only had heard about.
Photographs connect dots, lift veils, blow away fog. Photographs have a stronger life after they were taken than we can imagine.
Posted Tuesday Jan 22, 2013, in
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Every statement, every word will be heard by the Boeung Kak Lake community entangled in a 4-year struggle to keep their land (see here, here and here): Kep Chuktema, Governor of Phnom Penh, stated on television that those left without a land title at Boeung Kak have no right to claim rightfull ownership. So the Boeung kak Lake community fired up the photocopy machines and demonstrated yet again in front of the Municipality building with cardboard signs carrying copies of the legal documents they have in their possession. Later they went to the Ministry of Interior to file a complaint.
This is a follow-up post on the ‘Quest for Land‘ story which is available as an iApp on iTunes.
A first rehearsal for the ceremonies which will take place for the cremation of King Norodom Sihanouk (see here for the tribute paid by the public to the King after his death last October) was organised today in front of the Royal Palace and the nearly completed 1.2 million dollar funeral pyre building. Kong Sam Ol, Minister at the Royal Palace, and Tea Banh, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for National Defence, held an inspection round. Another rehearsal will be held on January 26th. The actual ceremonies will be held between February 1st and 4th and some 1.5 million people are expected to attend.
If everything works out as planned I will make a photography iBook about King Norodom Sihanouk available on the iTunes Bookstore soon after.
If you are escaping the rigours of a European or North American winter or if for whatever other reason you happen to be in Chiang Mai (Thailand) between February 8th and 14th, you might drop by at the Chiang Mai Arts Festival (haven’t got a clue as to where exactly in Chiang Mai that might be). ‘Emaho Magazine‘, in collaboration with ‘Documentary Arts Asia’, organises an exhibition about Kashmir (see here) with photographs by Ami Vitale, Danish Ismail, Gary Knight, Robert Nickelsberg, Sami Siva, Showkat Nanda, Sumit Dayal and yours truly.
The Boeung Kak Lake demonstrations (see here, here and here) are beginning to look like flashmobs. 7 to 8 tuk-tuk’s crammed with Boeung Kak residents show up at their target, deploy banners, distribute copies of petitions, discuss with the traffic police and/or the ‘undercover’ policemen (unmasked by their beeping and squeeking icom), guards, people supposedly in charge and then leave again. All in 30 minutes time, giving us less opportunities to take pictures. Today they went to the CPP headquarters.
