Dear Mr. S.Sophoan,

Good youth in Canada but in Cambodia every single person were not allow to talk 
KHMER politics, if any one KHMER not listening this brainwash ordered Hun Sen 
police will arrest them and put them in Prey Sar prison.  Very said for every 
KHMER who are living inside Cambodia.

Regards,



Kulen Monorom

Ta Ruos Village, 

Krabey Real Commune,

Krong & Khet Siem Reap,

Cambodia

Tel: +61 469 345 567

Email: [email protected]

Skype: woodhyapdg

--- On Wed, 5/6/13, S. Sophoan <[email protected]> wrote:

From: S. Sophoan <[email protected]>
Subject: Youths and the Politic in Cambodia
To: "Cambodian Community of Canada" <[email protected]>
Received: Wednesday, 5 June, 2013, 12:12 PM


Youths and the politic in Cambodia
Posted on June 3, 2013 by Sophan

[ A+ ] /[ A- ]

Youths have been worldwide recognized as the young seed of the bamboo. Youths 
are the strongest force in society to shape, change and improve society in 
which they are residing with. Cambodia at the present has been outstandingly 
emerging youth bulk in which under age of 25 years old is representing majority 
of Cambodia’s 14 millions population. Those youths are actively working to 
sustain their family economy. Their bulks are crowding at the garment 
factories, migrations to work outside Cambodia, educational institutes and rice 
paddies.
Unfortunately, Cambodian youths are likely not crowding at the political rally 
or actively participate with the politic. This shortfall possibly stems from 
two factors: the freedom of expression in Cambodia has been curtained by the 
political monopoly of the ruling party and the embedded tradition of youth’s 
parents on the scary repercussion if one actively participated with the politic.
After googling about Cambodian youths and their participation with the politic, 
I found these three phenomenon extremely speak something differently from that 
traditional thought.
1. Watching video clip on “Next Generation Program or កម្មវិធីអ្នកបន្តវេន”, 
many speakers spoke proudly on the collective effort to tackle lingering issues 
challenging Cambodia such as life improvement, justice, human rights, equity, 
democracy and political participation etc. The program is sponsored by USAID, 
and the last 10th episode was voted by SMS by the audience, the winners are 
represented by those four selected candidates. Remarkably, Mr. Hing Soksan, a 
youth from Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) won landslide of the 1105 
votes in total.
 From this result, I wish to compare it with the release of poll survey 
conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI) on January-February 
2013 in which the Ruling Party or Cambodian People Party (CPP) and opposition 
party or Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) each has their own 
interpretation on the result of the poll. Note that, in Cambodia we have never 
had independent poll on the popularity of each rival political party in each 
national election. For other countries, polls have played important role on the 
change of vote popularity and it could predict the winner efficiently. Hence, 
the sampling strategy is in the state of error, and the survey result has 
likely been skewed by: one-sided or dominant mass media controlled by the 
ruling party, respondents’past trauma, scary mindset of the people in involving 
with the political affair, and the level of education etc. Cambodian people 
have been traumatized by the killing field, foreign
 occupation, civil war and intractable injustice of the court system in this 
country. Each Cambodian is hardly disclosing their favor or disfavor towards 
political parties or political figures.

The IRI collected sampling randomly and dispatched its workers to interview 
verbally with the target population. The question on “Is Cambodia generally 
heading in the right direction or the wrong direction?” is indicating as the 
intimidating questionnaire for the interviewee to disclose their opinion to the 
public. They are scared of their freedom would be used by the interviewer(s) or 
worker(s) as it possibly could become reprisal for their life, family and daily 
activities. The result shows that 81% responded as the country is heading the 
right direction or 1578 respondents, and 21% or 413 respondents said the 
country is heading in the wrong direction.

Cambodian Poll 9 Final PUBLIC (Jan 2013)
In conclusion, the way of polling can be taken in different approaches. The 
survey of more than 2000 respondents randomly selected and the SMS on the 
political debate of youths from both the CPP and CNRP are also considering a 
polling. With this matter, the sending SMS helped the respondents to be worry 
free contradicting to the direct contact which give them strong belief on bad 
consequences. The outcome produced differently and yes this comparison is also 
in the stage of skewing as well.
2. The Cambodian youths of their virtual life throughout Cambodia have 
expressed their political opinion very different from youths who are having and 
using their accounts on facebook. Last time, I observed on the youth bulk 
actively engaged in political debate in facebook in responding to the group of 
students protested the presence of Prof. Dr. Surya Subedi, the special envoy 
and rapporteur of the UNs in Cambodia and my article was posted on ki-media 
outlet which I read the comments very interestingly.
Further to the facebook movement, many youths have appeared to show their 
actual face, actual voice and actual genuine love in their country. Their voice 
for change has been constantly speaking out loud. Their voice for political 
involvement for a better Cambodia has been shouted loudly from the stream. 
Their voice for their better future, their inquiries and the responsibility 
they must bear on their shoulder as the young seed of the bamboo of this nation 
has been indicating publicly and clearly.
3. Recent visit of Sam Rainsy, the exile well-known politician of Cambodia and 
the president of CNRP at Seoul of South Korea has suppressed my thought on 
youth voice in comparing their habit inside the country and outside the 
country. While those youths are living in Cambodia, they behaved silently or 
moderately on the issues relating to the politic. This illustrates something 
true about Cambodian youths who are living inside Cambodia that their inner 
heart is not silent on things injusticely happening around them; but they might 
not be able to speak out as the surrounding environment is not open or giving 
them prowess to speak out of their concern. The youths inside the country are 
possibly clouded by fear and unsafe feeling in using their freedom to involve 
with the politic. But when they are out of the country, majority of those 
youths dear to speak out loudly and express themselves without limit on the 
concern of political movement, political
 culture, political economy and political change for a better future.
 
These three observations illustrate optimistic on Cambodian youths who are the 
young blood, successors and the young lineage of their ancestors, the builders 
of Angkor Watt the Great, will never succumb or surrender to political threat, 
injustice, ill treatment, long life learning, hard working, relentless 
exploring for change, and struggling for justice etc.


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