ASIA-PACIFIC REGIONAL WOMEN’S HEARING ON GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE IN CONFLICT

A film by Sopheak SAO

In recent years, non-judicial truth-telling forums have taken place around the world. Often, these are in response to the inability or unwillingness of formal judicial mechanisms to deliver justice to survivors of gender-based crimes during armed conflict or under oppressive regimes. One example of such a forum was held on 10 and 11 October 2012 in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh.

The hearing was attended by participants from four countries: Bangladesh, East-Timor, Nepal and Cambodia. All countries went through periods of conflict with gross human rights violations affecting an extensive portion of the population. In the aftermath, each of them set up transitional justice mechanisms to deal with the crimes committed.

Only a very few of those mechanisms adequately addressed the gender-based violence that occurred during those conflicts.

Director’s statement:
As a female filmmaker, I support woman issue through my film.
As a young generation, I would like to know about my own history by my own people and help them to find justice.
However, I believe that by this film these were not minor crimes or secondary bi-products of a conflict but in some cases, a central part of war strategy and organized crimes against humanity. Please help the survivors to be empower.

Please find a film below:

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Once Khai Ly (61) was married with children in Vietnam. Nowadays she is a Buddhist nun. She lives in Stung Meanchey pagoda in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh since 12 years. Because of her Vietnamese origin she faces discrimination by other Cambodian nuns. Sao Sopheak’s THE QUIET MOVEMENT is the first Cambodian documentary, which approaches a sensitive issue by investigating the realities in a Cambodian pagoda today.

The Cambodian Buddhist Sangha was virtually annihilated by the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979). Of some 65,000 monks, nuns and novices in the country in 1969-70, no more than 3,000 are believed by all available accounts to have survived. Since the late 1980s, the number of monks and novices has risen to more than 60,000 again. However, low numbers of teachers and quality of education for monks and, as a consequence, the generally poor discipline of the monks in Cambodia today remain one of the great socio-cultural problems of the country and its recovery as a moral community.

Khai Ly uses advanced meditation skills to overcome her disappointment. She wishes that the Cambodian Ministry of Cult and Religion intervenes and stops the unacceptable behavior of some monks.

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A true story about two girls struggling hard for their love. This documentary won the first price at Meta House Phnom Penh for the Gay Pride Festival in May, 2012. This film was premier in South-East Asia festivals. Also screened in Berlin at the “Berlinale Panorama Film Festival” in February, 2013 which one of the biggest festival in the world. And now still going on in Europe & USA.

Here is the trailer:


They met during the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, when coincidence led them to live in the same mobile unit. After a year Soth Yun (57) and Sem Eang (58) realized that they loved each other.

Two million people died during the Khmer Rouge years. Yun and Eang survived.

Today the lesbian couple live in a village in Takeo province in southern Cambodia  like husband and wife. It has been a long fight to be respected by fellow villagers and their families. And the fight continues – now for their rights to marry.

The couple does not have children of their own, but have raised several nieces and nephew.

This 11 minutes long documentary was screened twice at Meta House in Phnom Penh in May and June, 2012.

TWO GIRLS AGAINST THE RAIN

(Cambodia, 2012, 11 mins)

by Sao Sopheak

After almost 30 years of civil war and the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia is still one of the poorest countries in the world. Traditional values and customs such as arranged marriages are upheld. Same-sex sexual activity is legal when it involves non-commercial acts between consenting adults in private. While traditional cultural mores tend to be tolerant in this area, even expressly providing support for people of an intermediate or third gender, LGBT rights legislation has not yet been enacted by the ruling government.

The short documentary TWO GIRLS AGAINST THE RAIN by Cambodian female filmmaker Sao Sopheak (30) is the first locally produced documentary, which gives a voice to members of the lesbian community.

It is s true story about two women struggling hard for their love. Soth Yun (57) and Sem Eang (58) met during the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, where more than two million people died. Soth and Sem survived. Today the couple lives in a village in Takeo province in southern Cambodia, approximately 40 kilometers away from the capital Phnom Penh. They do not have children of their own, but have raised several nieces and nephew. Theirs has been a long fight against stigmatization by fellow villagers and their family. And the fight continues – now for the right to marry legally.

The film was screened at:

-       Meta House Phnom Penh @ Gay Pride, May 2012 (Cambodia)

-       Yxineff short film festival, September 2012 (HCMC, Vietnam)

-       HANIFF film festival Asia Pacific, November 2012 (Hanoi, Vietnam)

-       Chop Shots South-East Asia, December 2012 (Jakarta, Indonesia)

-       Film Society Lincoln Center, April 2013 (New York, USA)

Director’s Statement

Discrimination towards the LGBT community in Cambodia is not on the same publicly homophobic and violent scale as in other countries. This is linked to the country’s official religion, Buddhism, which is more tolerant of homosexuality. Our constitution guarantees all citizens rights, to enjoy those rights no matter what your sexual orientation.

While political figures have generally been tolerant of homosexuality, there have been some notable exceptions, for instance, when Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen publicly disowned his lesbian daughter. This also suggests a less tolerant environment. Homophobia is also particularly pronounced within the family. For lesbians, there is no mechanism for them to come out and express what they are suffering. They are also committing suicide or running away from home because they are being forced to marry. Cambodian society is generally tolerant of male homosexual behavior if it does not affect the traditional family structure. Women, who are expected to marry young and have children, are faced with more family pressures.

One critical way to combat homophobia in the family in Cambodia, particularly for lesbians, is to focus on helping LGBT members become economically independent. Everyone, like most Cambodians, is poverty challenged. People just want to be able to have a decent life, so they need decent work. One hugely effective way of getting family acceptance in Cambodia is to have a job, to be able to help your family very practically.

Currently I am developing the script for the first feature-length-documentary about Cambodia’s LGBT scene, with the working title QUEER CAMBODIA: SOMEWHERE UNDER THE RAINBOW. I will continue to work with my two protagonists, whose niece has just given birth to a baby daughter, as well as follow the lives of a transgender prostitute-turned-street worker and a young queer activist. Their stories will be interwoven.

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Eight Khmer photographers and 16 international colleagues were exhibited together. Here is my film documenting the event.

Photo Phnom Penh Festival was sponsored by Institut Francais du Cambodge and held in Phnom Penh from November 26th until December 2nd 2011.

I was asked to direct a short documentary about the photo festival, including interviews with some of the visiting photographers.

Among the visiting photographers were the well-known French photographer Denis Darzacq and German photographer Dirk Broemmel.

One of the photos presented by French photograper Denis Darzacq

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16.000 people were killed. Only seven survived. One of them was Chum Mey.

S-21. Tuol Sleng.

Those are words that for Cambodian people more than anything else symbolize the horror of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime. Tuol Sleng was the prison where suspected traitors were brought for torturing before being shot at the Killing Fields.

No less than 16.000 people were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng from 1975 until 1979. Only seven of them survived. The rest were brutally killed.

The short documentary Survivor was made in cooperation with the Norwegian editor and former Asia correspondent John Einar Sandvand. Survivor tells the story about Chum Mey, a previous mechanic who was one of only seven survivors of the Tuol Sleng prison.

The Cambodian film maker Sao Sopheak  directed the film. For the last couple of years Sopheak has been studying film making at the Meta House (German Cambodian Cultural Center) in Phnom Penh.

In the twelve minute long video Chum Mey shows us the Tuol Sleng prison and tells in his own words how he was tortured and beaten.

The communist movement Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of Pol Pot, ruled Cambodia from April 1975 until January 1979. It was one of the most brutal regimes the world has known in modern history and it is estimated that up to two million people – one fourth of the population – died during the Pol Pot years.

Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh was the biggest of many socalled security centers where suspected traitors of the Khmer Rouge were sent after being arrested. For days they were tortured until they agreed to write a detailed report of how they supposedly had worked against the regime. Almost all of them were then sent to Choeung Ek – better known as the Killing Fields – to be killed.

Why did Chum Mey survive?

Because of luck. The prison needed a mechanic. Chum Mey had the necessary experience. It was decided to let him stay alive to perform necessary reparations at the prison.

But Chum Mey also witnessed the killing of his wife and newborn child at the end of the Khmer Rouge period. And he had to live with the gruesome memories of the torture and pain in Tuol Sleng.

Today he is dedicated to share his pain and experiences with anyone who wants to listen. Almost every day he travels to Tuol Sleng where he talks to visitors about what went on in the buildings. He was also a key witness when Tuol Sleng boss Duch went on trial in the international tribunal set up to try the senior Khmer Rouge leaders.

It is a story of meaningless torture and the darkest sides of human nature. I cried when I first heard him tell about how his nails were pulled out from his fingers and how he was given electric shocks through his ears.

This film was screened at Meta House in Phnom Penh in January 2011 with more than 200 people, including Chum Mey himself, present.

Enjoy watch a film SURVIVOR below:

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