Nov 1, 2010 - The Town Hall Meeting with the honorable presence of the US Secretary of State, Madam Hilary Clinton, was held at the Chaktomuk Hall. This gave precious opportunity to hundreds of young Cambodians to meet her, ask her questions, get inspired, and learn a great deal from this meeting.
Upon her arrival in the Hall at 12 noon, she gave a brief opening speech and then welcomed questions, feeling amazed at how many hands put up representing many eager minds to ask her questions.
In her opening speech, he mentioned about her being inspired by the stories her husband brought back from his visit in Cambodia in 2006. Mrs. Secretary of State also highlighted the Khmer Rouge Tribunal as a "painful" but crucial for "lasting peace" in Cambodia. She went on to mention shortly about favorable factors about Cambodia, from having access to the Mekong River ("one of the great rivers") to being in this "thriving region" of Southeast Asia.
It was also compelling to hear about her hope for the younger generation of Cambodia to create and grab opportunities so that they can utilize their talents and find good jobs. The US contributed about 70 million US dollars this year to help make this possible and also focusing on other social issues such as tackling HIV/AIDS issues, the trafficking of illegal drugs and humans, and sex tourism.
Clinton also shared some of her experience of being in Cambodia for the first time. She visited Tuol Sloeng genocide museum, which she described as "a very disturbing experience," witnessing what is left of all the inhumane killing, emphasizing seeing children "being killed and doing the killing". Despite this bitter past, she was impressed at what this country had done and could now overcome it.
After the speech, many of the students in the audience showed their excitement of having her presence and asked a lot of interesting questions, and some of the remarkable ones are(in paraphrased sense):
- Has your gender ever been a challenge in your political career?
+ "Yes, but not often [...] Not a lot but enough to know that [Gender issue is] a real issue."
- One student was really enthusiastic and openly acknowledged her having Mrs Clinton as her idol. She asked Mrs. Clinton to briefly share her life stories before she's become the Secretary of State. + In response to this, Mrs. Clinton firstly picked the point that everyone was different, that everyone had different life stories to tell, which she saw as "the joy of being a human being," living in such a diversity. Then she went on to tell about her story, of having a mother that didn't get a chance of going to college, of how she was treated equal, with exact same expectations, to her 2 younger brothers, of how she went to law school, dated Mr. Bill Clinton, and got married, and of how important she considered her role was as a mother. With all her successes, she stressed her luck of having very supportive father and husband and suggested all the girls in the audience to find the husband that understood them and gladly support what they were doing.
This may be just an ordinary story, but to hear it from such an influential person was definitely inspiring and rewarding for us all.
- Another interesting question was about Cambodian debts of about 400 millions to the US, incurred during the early 1970s by the Lon Nol Government.
+ There wasn't any clear answer or solutions as to answering the question, but Mrs. Clinton kept stressing the importance of the matter and kept repeating her plan of bringing this into discussion to find the most suitable resolutions.
- The other question was about how to make media in Cambodia freer as the one in the US. However, because of some vagueness in the asker's speaking, Mrs. Clinton kind of misunderstood the question as how Cambodian citizens could be more independent. After all, she still gave a really nice response.
+ The keys to freedom, she said, were stable political system and good economic growth, the factors that played favorable to the people and gave benefits inclusive to the entire population.
- Among all the questions, 2 people in the audience stood up with courage and made 2 bold statements relating to our Prime Minister. One made a request to Mrs. Clinton to send his words to the PM requesting him to be "more close to his people," which asked for such opportunities for Cambodian people to talk and ask the Prime Minister. Another asked Mrs. Clinton to comment on our PM's "proposal to close down UN offices in Cambodia."
+ She very well convinced both askers with her insightful elaboration on the overall questions asked, although nothing about our PM was commented on at all. I think she of course could say something about these but, with her great skills of diplomacy, she tried to touch such sensitive matters as little as possible.
- In other questions, she was asked about her perspectives and opinions on such issues as corruption in Cambodia, which she responded with words of optimism and satisfaction. She showed her joy of seeing progress Cambodia has made so far, for example regarding passing corruption laws and laws on human rights.
Later in her speech, Mrs. Clinton also underlined the US’s intention in their continuing investment in exchange programs with Cambodian people, stretching it from more than just exchanges among students. In the future, the US government would also provide opportunities for Cambodian government officials to go work for some time in the US congress, for example.
This was definitely a good experience for us all. I had a great pleasure of joining this event, and I was really impressed with what I saw and heard.
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