Khmer Rouge killers weren't 'bad people'

[ Calgary Herald ] 6 Dec

Khmer Rouge leaders, under whose rule as many as two million people died, were not "bad people," the regime's "Brother No. 2" said Monday.

Nuon Chea, 85, told a UN-backed tribunal that Cambodia's neighbour Vietnam was to blame for the genocide.

"I don't want the next generation to misunderstand history," he told the trial of three former leaders of the communist movement that ruled from 1975 to 1979. "I don't want them to believe the Khmer Rouge are bad people, are criminal. Nothing is true about that."

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Sex Trafficking Survivor Fights Slavery And HIV/AIDS In Cambodia

Full Story: Huffington Post 30 Nov

At a time when the World AIDS Day is being observed around the world to create awareness about the deadly disease, let the voice of a sex trafficking victim and survivor be also heard, who years of abuse is helping others for a safe life.

Sold into prostitution at 12 by her grandfather, Somaly Mam was brutalized and raped -- sometimes up to 10 times a day -- throughout her teenage years. While Mam made an unlikely escape to France from the brothel in Cambodia, she couldn't tolerate the cushy life there knowing that thousands of girls were being tortured at home.

She came back in 1996 to the slums of Cambodia and has been fighting forced prostitution and the rampant transmission of HIV/AIDS ever since. Mam has saved more than 4,000 slaves since she started her advocacy work.

Read full story for details and struggle of this brave woman

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