It is so difficult to experience joy when there is so much pain in our community. This week is Songkran New Year, the biggest Cambodian holiday of the year, a time to pray, rejoice, and celebrate. However, recently 2 Khmer-Krom people were killed in VN for speaking Khmer—

Then news recently surfaced of an American metal band that unapologetically uses the name Tuol Sleng, which was a concentration camp during the Cambodian Genocide. Cambodian Americans are outraged and condemned the band, and the band responded by saying “Go fuck yourselves”—

Then, news of a @VICE article surfaced that included recolored images of #KhmerRouge victims that were edited by Matt Loughrey to add smiles to the faces of these victims of the #CambodianGenocide. Not only did these edited photos falsify history, but they made the victims appear

—less like themselves or less ethnically Cambodian and more white or “mixed” with the colorization of their features, such as lightened eye colors and skin tones.
Here are more thoughts about this issue in this thread: https://twitter.com/vinkjohn/status/1380876964467249156