beads, silk = GENDER

Trying to not stare but there was a young man stooping over beautiful beadwork on a bodice of a silk dress. He was sewing the tiniest beards into a design that was drawn onto the silk. There were 2 other women in the timber hut at sewing machines. He greeted me but then a woman came over to speak with me about my new cotton casual trousers I wanted made. He continued to sew beads. I tried not to stare!

It raises a number of gender role questions

Is he just filling in for the day cos his sister or wife is ill and they have a rush order? Or is he a kindly manager helping out just once?

I think not due to his complete familiarity in his space and with his nimble finger work. He looked like a young man very used to and happy with his employment.

And I wish him well in this role of his. He is simply sewing beads. For me it’s an indicator of flexibility and personal individual choices that might be opening up. Wonder if he can also repair a moto like all men are fully expected to be able to do?

Gender roles are very strict in Cambodia, with any child who gets an education even taught 'law of men' and 'law of women' prescribing specific gender roles; the expected women as baby-makers and masculine men in narrow role of strong, uncaring and uncreative

UN investigates racism in USA

and about time too, many liberals will be saying!

UN targets US on human rights

From correspondents in Geneva

February 21, 2008 02:14am

Article from: Agence France-Presse

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• US guilty of "systematic" racial discrimination
• Different standards at Guantanamo for non-US citizens
• African-Americans suffer harsher sentences

THE United States is guilty of "persistent and systematic" racial discrimination across all aspects of society from Guantanamo Bay to the justice and school systems, rights groups said.

"The persistent and systematic issues of racial discrimination have not been addressed" by the US government despite its adoption in 1994 of the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, said Ajamu Baraka, executive director of the US Human Rights Network.

"Unfortunately since 1994 we have found that the Government has not lived up to its obligations," Mr Baraka said, citing issues such as the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the black population of New Orleans, the treatment of immigrant workers, police brutality and housing.

"These issues have escaped the scrutiny" by Government officials that they deserve, he said.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) will examine Washington's record later this week.

The US Human Rights Network (USHRN), along with a host of other rights and lobby groups including Human Rights Watch, has prepared its own "shadow report" highlighting what it says are serious cases of racial discrimination.

Human Rights Watch cited the different legal standards applied to non-US citizens detained at the Guantanamo Bay military prison camp.

"The US policy of detaining non-citizens without judicial review over their detention constitutes discrimination that violates CERD," said Alison Parker, deputy director of the US program of HRW.

She noted that US citizens were transferred from Guantanamo into the regular US justice system that afforded them more rights.

Ms Parker also cited the disproportionate impact on African-Americans and other minorities of both corporal punishment in schools, and the handing down of life sentences without parole for juveniles who commit murder.

The experts said both Democrat and Republican administrations had failed to implement the convention in full since 1994, but voiced some hope that November's presidential elections could bring progress.

"We have seen some interest on the Democratic side in at least engaging around issues of human rights," said Lisa Crooms, co-author of the USHRN report and a professor of law at Howard University in Washington DC.

On the Republican side, Ms Crooms noted that current frontrunner John McCain "at least knows of international law" and had campaigned prominently against torture while in the US Congress.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23250261-401,00.html

Brilliant dot painting Khmer style!

Snow on the Tonle Sap

When Australian Aboriginal art meets Angkor, the result is stunning. From
within a myriad of perfect dots, a jumble of Hanuman monkey warriors emerge
in the shape of a sacred elephant storming to battle, its feet floating on
a carpet of flowers and stars. Each flower alone is formed from at least
four tiny dots of brightly colored paint. Ian 'Snow' Woodford's work is
even more remarkable because the working class Australian boy from Sydney
is colorblind.
http://www.expat-advisory.com/cambodia/phnom-penh/snow-on-the-tonle-sap.php