[NYTr] Cambodians Set Up Casa Cuba (Frienmdship with Cuba House)

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

GreenLeft Weekly - Sep 14, 2007
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/724/37581

Cambodians set up Casa Cuba

by Allen Myers, Phnom Penh

Eighty mostly young Cambodians and a smattering of resident foreigners
gathered on September 12 for the opening of the House of Friendship
with Cuba (Casa Cuba). Casa Cuba is the initiative of the Association
of Cambodians Graduated in Cuba.

After the overthrow of the horrific Khmer Rouge regime in 1979, Cuba
contributed to the rebuilding of Cambodia by providing scholarships for
education in Cuba. Through the 1980s and 1990s, more than 100
Cambodians completed university degrees in Cuba.

Hem Chanly, who studied in Cuba in the 1980s, told the meeting that
many Cambodians at that time thought of Cuba “as a communist country
with dictatorship, violation of human rights and poverty”.

The reality was quite different. “This communist country and its people
spend a lot for students from many other countries. The people of Cuba
give us the support we need and consider us as part of their own lives.”

The meeting also heard from San Seidarong, who also studied in Cuba and
is the president of the local committee seeking the freedom of the
Cuban Five — unjustly jailed in the United States for the “crime” of
seeking to prevent terrorist attacks. Ivette, a moving short film about
the daughter of one of the five was also shown.

Casa Cuba is establishing a library and planning cultural performances.