Between 1975 and 1979, an estimated 2 million Cambodians — 20 percent of the country’s population at the time — died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge regime. Some 17,000 victims were held in the regime’s most notorious prison, a former high school known as Tuol Sleng (“Hill of the Poisonous Trees”) or S-21. […]
Cambodia
Last Saturday, in the Preah Vihear forest reserve in northern Cambodia, forest ranger Sieng Darong and police officer Sab Yoh confiscated some chainsaws from an illegal logging site. For them, it was routine work. Both had patrolled Cambodian forests for years, and were familiar with the country’s epidemic of illegal logging and wildlife poaching. That night, they […]
Late last year, during a reporting trip in Cambodia, I shared a car for a couple of days with Simon Mahood, a British ornithologist who works for the Wildlife Conservation Society in Phnom Penh. Mahood, a devoted birdwatcher since childhood, was full of stories about the rare birds and remote places of Southeast Asia. But […]