BY ALLEN MYERS
PHNOM PENH — The Not In Our Name movement has been holding weekly gatherings here to express opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq. Two events have provided additional opportunities for opponents of the war to make themselves heard.
On April 3, a panel discussion held at the Foreign Correspondents' Club drew an audience of around 200 people, mostly expatriates (the panelists' presentations were in English). On the panel were the US and British ambassadors to Cambodia, the head of a local non-government organisation called the Centre for Social Development, a prominent Cambodian civil servant, who is a member of the Cham minority (most of whom are Muslim), and a member of Not In Our Name.
The presentations were brief and mostly tepid. The subsequent contributions from the floor, both pro and con, were considerably more heated. Most questions were addressed to the ambassadors and were clearly hostile to the US-British position.
Toward the end of the evening, a speaker from the floor asked how many in the audience felt they could support the war: only four or five hands were raised.
The following night, the Womyn's Agenda for Change, an offshoot of Oxfam Hong Kong, showed John Pilger's film Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq to an audience of 150.
The stage was decorated with oil barrels painted with anti-war slogans. The film was preceded by speeches organised by young Cambodians and expatriates; discussion followed. A large number of T-shirts, bumper stickers and other anti-war material was sold.
Proceeds of the evening are to be used to produce a Khmer-language version of Paying the Price. Last year, the Womyn's Agenda for Change produced a Khmer-language edition of Pilger's The New Rulers of the World.
Caption for photo: Speakers at the April 4 screening of John Pilger's Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq appeared before a shifting montage of the horrors of war. Photo by Peter Arfanis.
From Green Left Weekly, April 16, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.