Tim Page took some of the most confronting images of the Vietnam War. As a young photojournalist he spent six years covering the conflict for outlets including TIME-LIFE, UPI, PARIS MATCH and ASSOCIATED PRESS, and became one of a small group of iconic photographers whose arresting images of war woke the world up to what was going on. 

Page was also a man made mythical before his time, the inspiration for Dennis Hopper’s photojournalist in Apocalypse Now, he had a reputation for getting closer to the action than most of his colleagues. Embedded with the US military, he went everywhere, covering everything.  As a result, he was injured four times, once or twice almost fatally. 

Since then Page has spent decades covering events from Timor-Leste to Afghanistan and Cuba to Cambodia. His photographs are held by London’s Tate Gallery and Washington’s Smithsonian. He was recently named as one of The 100 most influential photographers of all time and has been the subject of many documentaries, two films and the author of ten books.  He now lives in Brisbane Australia and this is his first visit back to the UK in 14 years.

Tim will be talking to journalist Jon Swain about his work and career, focussing on Vietnam and Cambodia. A selection of his prints will be on sale following the event.

Marines coming ashore March ’65

Bangkok-based Patima Tungpuchayakul has committed her life to rescuing and returning home men from Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and other Southeast Asian nations who have been sold to Thai fishing companies by human traffickers.

Once at sea, these captive men go months, even years, without setting foot on land, earning little to no pay, trapped in a modern form of slavery on the boats and forced to endure horrific and often deadly conditions.

Patima and her small team of activists risk their lives on remote Indonesian islands to find these men, fight for their emancipation and seek justice for them. In the face of illness, death threats, corruption, and complacency, Patima’s fearless determination reveals stories of criminal conspiracy at the heart of the global seafood industry, as she calls on her nation and the world to wake up and take action.

“You and I have to work together to tell this story. If this is going to change, it’s going to take all of us.”
Patima Tungpuchayakul, film subject

For further information about the Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2019, click here.

In one of the last remaining wildernesses in South East Asia, Cambodian community activists are struggling to defend their forests. Rubber companies illegally cut down resin trees that the local population depends on, arguing the rubber industry is good for the area, providing jobs and development.

Environmentalist Chut Wutty, defies threats and intimidation and fearlessly investigates the corrupt logging syndicates. In April 2012 he travelled to the Cardamom mountains to investigate an illegal, military-controlled logging site, where he was stopped and shot dead.

Featuring exclusive footage of Wutty in the months leading up to his death, interviews with activists and family members as well as those benefiting from deforestation, I am Chut Wutty exposes the fierce battle against illegal logging.

Directed by Fran Lambrick
Duration: 57′
Year: 2014

By Nicole Hunt

European leaders gather in Brussels on Monday for an informal meeting of the European Council, during which discussions are set to focus on jobs and the new fiscal stabilisation treaty agreed at their controversial meeting last month. Leaders are planning to iron out the details of the treaty at the meeting, in hopes that it’ll be ready to sign by the time they meet again on 1 March.

While all eyes are on Brussels, two big trials are before the courts in South Africa. In Ventersdorp, Chris Mahlangu and an unnamed teenager are back on trial for the April 2010 murder of Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) leader Eugene Terre’Blanche, postponed from October to allow more time for hearings.

Meanwhile, Henry Okah, former Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) leader, goes on trial in Johannesburg on terrorism charges in connection with the October 2010 Independence Day bombings in Abuja, Nigeria, which killed 12 people.

Monday is also the 40th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

Spanish Magistrate Baltasar Garzon’s abuse of power trial resumes on Tuesday, with the judge himself expected to begin testifying if some preliminary matters are cleared up earlier in the day. There is speculation that the verdict for Garzon’s illegal wiretapping case – which was head on 17 January – could be delivered before Tuesday’s hearing.

The annual Herzliya policy conference kicks off in Jerusalem. Speakers throughout the three-day conference include Israeli President Shimon Peres, World Bank President Robert Zoellick, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, and German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.

Wednesday is all about Supreme Courts. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange begins a two-day hearing at the UK Supreme Court in London, appealing a 24 February, 2010 decision to extradite him to Sweden to face questioning on charges of sexual assault. The court is expected to reserve judgement after the hearing wraps up on Thursday, meaning the legal saga won’t quite be over yet.

In Islamabad, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is back before the Supreme Court, which is looking into his government’s decision not to investigate corruption among politicians after passing a controversial amnesty law in 2007 known as the National Reconciliation Ordinance. Gilani appeared before the court briefly on 19 January.

A North Korean prisoner amnesty begins on Wednesday, as part of celebrations to mark the 70th anniversary of the birth of recently-deceased Kim Jong-Il in February and the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-Sung in April.

NATO Defence Ministers begin a two-day meeting in Brussels on Thursday. Discussions are expected to focus on Afghanistan and security transition following the 20 January attack on French troops by an Afghan soldier, which killed four.

Kuwaitis go to the polls to elect 50 members to Parliament. Emir Sheikh Sabah al Ahmad al Sabah dissolved Parliament by decree on 6 December, 2011 citing ‘deteriorating conditions in the country’. 50 members are elected for four-year terms. Four women were elected for the first time in the country’s last elections, which took place in 2009.

On Friday, The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia hears the appeal for Khmer Rouge Special Branch Chief Kaing Guek Eav, aka Duch, who was convicted of crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions in July 2010. Duch, who was head of the infamous Tuol Sleng prison camp, was sentenced to 35 years in prison over the deaths of up to two million people during the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime.

The three-day Munich Security Conference begins Friday; though there’s no word yet on this year’s attendees, the guest list always features the great and good of international politics and defence (or at least the important). The MSC is often the site of important policy announcements, so is well worth looking out for.

Anti-Kremlin groups are scheduled to hold their latest protest in Moscow on Saturday, this one timed to coincide with the two-month anniversary of disputed parliamentary elections on 4 December, and with one month to go until presidential elections on 4 March almost certainly see Vladimir Putin return to the helm.

The month and a half long Rugby 6 Nations tournament begins, with France, Engand, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Italy hoping to end up in the 17 March final. England won the tournament in 2011.

The week closes with the runoff for the Finnish presidential race, following a first round vote on 22 January. Former Finance Minister Sauli Niinisto, who won 37 per cent of the first vote, faces off against Green party candidate Pekka Haavisto, who won 19 per cent of the vote.

Private Nolan vanished 40 years ago in mysterious circumstances from the Vietnamese border with Cambodia. The US military says he went native, joining the Viet Cong before being murdered by the Khmer Rouge, but it won’t release the files.

What’s known is that he did propaganda work for the Viet Cong and married a Vietnamese woman. But then it turns murky. Did he slip into Cambodia rather than face being returned to the US at the end of the war? Did he become one of the million victims of Pol Pot’s killing fields? Or was he the American who spoke to a retired US Army Lieutenant in 2006 during the veteran’s visit to Cambodia? 

Part thriller, part meditation on the brutality of war, the film follows Michael Nolan on a brother’s quest for new facts in a buried past. Did McKinley abandon America or did America abandon him?

Directed by Henry Corra
2011
88 mins

Please join us in celebrating the official launch of the Cambodian Children’s Fund UK.

With Scott Neeson, Founder & Executive Director of the Cambodian Children’s Fund and patrons of Cambodian Children’s Fund UK Michael Mansfield QC and Janet Templeman representing Miles Templeman.

The Cambodian Children’s Fund UK is dedicated to improving the lives of young people from Cambodia’s most destitute communities. We provide them with life-changing education, nutrition, healthcare and training. CCF aims to equip vulnerable children with the knowledge, skills and confidence that will allow them to play a positive and dynamic role in their own families and communities.

CCF-UK is a charity registered in England & Wales (NO. 1135214).

It’s been several weeks of what — granted I’m a newbie here — seems like completely abnormal weather for the season. And with the lack of rain comes unbearable heat, the kind we normally only suffer through in April-May and that is now dragging on. In June, I should have a raincoat permanently in my bag; I haven’t even bought one yet this year.

The rainy season started early actually, with downpours in April that had you wading through thigh-high waters. The meteorology services warned that that could mean an early drought in July and recommended farmers use fast-growing rice varieties. I wonder how they’re doing… I got a chance to go to northwestern Cambodia last week (around Battambang and Siem Reap), where there are large plains of rice fields, and fortunately, it’s much wetter and greener there. Hopefully, only us city folks are suffering.

Children in rice paddies, early June 2009, somewhere in Kompong Thom province, Cambodia

A reason for all this? I’m no scientist. It could be just a freak year as have existed throughout Earth’s history. It could be a consequence of Cambodia’s anarchic use of timber ressources: one theory for the demise of Angkor is that it got so big and deforested so much for its economic development that it disturbed its own rain patterns and fizzled from a lack of water. It could be just one more anecdotal evidence of global climate change.

Deforestation looks like this! The Bolaven plateau, in southern Laos, here photographed on a motorcycle trip last March, is famous for its coffee. To make way for Vietnamese-owned, industrial plantations, the little-developed plateau is being slowly stripped of its primary forest.

Slash-and-burn is the traditional method of culture on the Bolaven plateau. As traditional as it may be, it’s not very sustainable, and when it’s used on an industrial scale like here, it’s a vision of environmental apocalypse. Flames were coming right up to the road: an inferno of heat and smoke to drive through. And live in for all the indigenous population there.

If you’re not convinced, I recommend watching Home, a film granted a tad formulaic in its visuals (Yann Arthus-Bertrand sticks to his proven formula of graphic earth views from a helicopter… the same shot, albeit beautiful, repeated over and over for 90 minutes) but also a needed wake-up call. Tracing the history of earth, man and climate, it goes from science lesson to scary movie (images reminiscent of The Matrix, only it’s real Earth. Enough to bring tears to my eyes.) to inspiring conclusion. "It’s too late to be pessimistic." So go plant a tree and give us rain.

(Where was I? Let’s just say under a bit of a gag order for professional reasons. I am now in a new job, happily learning documentary film-making, and fully back to blogging. More coming soon from Cambodia…)

Frankly, I have a hard time believing it myself. Cambodia is ranked on par with Sudan, whose president was just indicted by the International Criminal Court (something our prime minister doesn’t like either), where aid workers get murdered by the dozen and Darfuris by the hundreds of thousands. In these rankings, Cambodia, which has been at peace for more than a decade, is only topped by Zimbabwe (its dictator, its inflation, its cholera), Chad (its border wars, its coups) and DR Congo (no list necessary). But are considered more stable than the Khmer kingdom: Iraq, which we’re told could fall back into violence any day now; Afghanistan, which we’re told never really got out of it; Pakistan, which we’re told is the next hotbed of terrorism; and the Central African Republic, where Cambodia happens to be sending peacekeepers. Moldova, Thailand and the Czech Republic, where governments are indeed wobbling, also rank much better. It’s simply hard to swallow.

To understand the outrage of pretty much everyone in Cambodia over what could, after all, only be another list compiled by a reader-hungry magazine, you must know two things.

Read the rest of this post on Isabelle Roughol’s blog.

A report by the Club of Cambodian Journalists (CCJ) catalogues a series of 22 attacks against journalists in the south-east Asian country between 2008-2009. In addition the report slates unethical practices among journalists including bribery and corruption and those pretending to be journalists who are not,

The press release urges the Ministry of Information to use more discretion in issuing press cards. Prach Sim, the secretary general of the CCJ, told the [Phnom Penh Post] Thursday that he believes too many press cards have been issued, including some to people who have no interest in actually producing journalism in any form.  "Some media pass holders are not journalists," he said. "And many journalists use media passes just to earn money." link

Hopefully Frontline blogger, the Phnom Penh-based Isabelle Roughol, will have something more to add on this when she gets back from assignment in Laos.

Photo 002144 by Sand Paper on Flickr

Gunnar Bergstrom reported from Khmer Rouge run Cambodia as a young reporter in 1978. He spent fourteen days in Democratic Kampuchea and filed glowing reports. Seven months after he returned to Sweden he retracted what had originally reported. This week, some thirty years later, he’s back in Cambodia to tell the Cambodians he was conned,

“I was at that time a member of a friendship association which was a remnant of the anti-Vietnam/Cambodia War movement in Sweden, which was very strong in the Western world,” Mr Bergstrom told the BBC. “Of course we didn’t want to believe that the liberators had become oppressors.” link story originally picked up via John Vink.