November 8, 2009
Source: SRP
MESSAGE OF GRATITUDE TO ALL THE GENEROUS PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD WHO HAVE DONATED TO THE RECENT SRP KATHEN
The SRP Kathen organized on October 24-25, 2009, was a big success. We have collected some US$ 12,000 to help a dilapidated pagoda and countless indigent people in a remote area. A more detailed report of the Kathen is presented below under the form of three short video clips.
On behalf of all the Kathen organizers and ultimate beneficiaries, monks and laymen, I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to all the generous persons, especially SRP members and supporters all over the world, who have sent big and small contributions and helped make the last SRP Kathen a significant religious, social and political event serving Cambodia’s interest.
May all the donors fully receive the traditional Buddhist blessings.
Sam Rainsy
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Kathen is a Buddhist traditional procession and ceremony organized each year, towards the end of the rainy season, in order for the faithful to collect donations to make offerings to the monks at a chosen pagoda among thousands of them throughout the whole country. The 2009 SRP Kathen took place at Sam Rainsy’s house in Phnom Penh on October 24 and at Ang Romdenh pagoda (Koh Kban Kandal village, Samraong commune, Chantrea district) in Svay Rieng province on the following day. The Ang Romdenh pagoda was chosen because it is a most dilapidated pagoda in a most remote area on the border with Vietnam.
Villagers' grievances
During the Kathen religious ceremony at the above-mentioned pagoda on October 25, villagers living along the border with Vietnam complained to Sam Rainsy about the Vietnamese authorities grabbing their rice fields.
Uprooting of controversially planted wooden poles
Immediately after the Kathen ceremony at the pagoda, villagers who are victims of land confiscation led Sam Rainsy and other SRP National Assembly Members to visit nearby rice fields that had been recently grabbed from them. They showed the Kathen participants from Phnom Penh a number of wooden poles that had been recently, forcibly and controversially planted on their rice fields by the Vietnamese authorities assisted by their complacent Cambodian counterparts. Those wooden poles had been planted there to allegedly help delineate, through a very complex process that nobody understands, a “white zone” or no man's land which, in turn, would determine a new border line that would run deep inside Cambodia’s territory. With the moral support of their elected parliamentarians, the villagers uprooted and threw away six wooden poles to symbolically show their refusal to give up ancestral rice fields they had been cultivating since 1979 and to be deprived of their livelihoods.
SRP Kathen religious procession and ceremony in Svay Rieng province October 25, 2009
Kathen is a Buddhist traditional procession and ceremony organized each year, towards the end of the rainy season, in order for the faithful to collect donations to make offerings to the monks at a chosen pagoda among thousands of them throughout the whole country. The 2009 SRP Kathen took place at Sam Rainsy’s house in Phnom Penh on October 24 and at Ang Romdenh pagoda (Koh Kban Kandal village, Samraong commune, Chantrea district) in Svay Rieng province on the following day. The Ang Romdenh pagoda was chosen because it is a most dilapidated pagoda in a most remote area on the border with Vietnam.
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