SMD’s Representative in Pakistan

Mr. Ok Amry, a BoD member of Students Movememt for Democracy (SMD), was successful in participating with the Fourth Leaders Conference of Young Liberals and Democrats of Asia (YLDA) on the Promoting Progressive Education and the Role of Asian Youth. The YLDA Annual General Meeting (AGM) was also organized in order to make some constitutional amenments and elect YLDA new president, secretary general and other three members of executive committee. 

The conference and the AGM, which sponsored by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and hosted by the Future Youth Group-Pakistan (FYG), was taken place in Lahore, Pakistan from August 11-16, 2006.

As the result, the Liberal Educational Policy (LEP) is adopted and supported by the participants. LEP will represent majority of young’ s liberal ideology on education to interchange their experiences and views. Participants also have learned a wide variety of topics and shared their knowledge on educational systems in Asian, obstacles in the region and confrontations to those challenges. Predominantly, participants realized how significant use of technology like Blog to communicate each other.

                               

We committed for better Cambodia

It’s not different from other countries, Cambodian youth is considered to be not only the future of a nation, but also present important work forces for the development of the country. Youth can help their country in many ways, for instance, organizing youth groups or movements to enable young people to get involve in the social activities in order to enhance democracy and improve human hights condition in the country.

Students’ Movement for Democracy (SMD) has been trying to seek for the interest of youth and student as many ways as it can. SMD has actively participated in mobilizing young people to promote democracy and social justice since its inception in 1998. One important event that is still bearing in mind of many Cambodian is the massive and non-violent demonstration against national election in 1998. SMD had gathered thousands of students and youth from various educational institutions in Phnom Penh to hold peaceful demonstation against the fraud election result in 1998.

Besides focusing on improving democracy, SMD is also focusing on border issue which have been the sensitive issue among Cambodian both inside and outside country. SMD has launched many compaigns to lobby those who hold the decision-making power not to recognize the 1980s-treaties made under the control of Vietnam which all Cambodian considered as illegal treaties and gave a lot of advantage to Vietnam side. As a result, dozen of SMD activists were threatened and some of them were exiled abroad. Luckily, they were granted polical asylums in other countries. 

Eventhough we have been confronting those challenges, we still have a strong commitement to struggle in order to bring a genuine democracy to Cambodia. Hopefully, our achievement will be appreciated by our next generation so that they will follow our stance in order to find justice for disadvantaged and marginalized people and subsequencely lead to improve the quality of life and social justice.