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In January 29, 2003, Thai-anti riot broke out because of the involvement with the allegation that Thai actress, Suwanan Kongying, claimed Angkor Wat belonged to Thailand. Demonstration caused destroying Thai embassy and Thai-owned private companies in Phnom Penh.
Recently, Cambodian outrage was growing Wenesday over the new Thai flick ” Ghost Gam“, made by a Thai film production company, which was released on Thursday in Thailand, for any insult set in a fictionalised version of the Tuol Sleng genocide museum.
The film tells the fictional story of a group of 11 young Thai playing characters in a reality TV where the contestants spend time in a deserted prison and must confront its ghosts and the crimes that occorred there in order to win the prize money.
After reaction to ” Ghost Gam”, a Thai film production company apologized to Cambodia Tursday for any part or scene that effects Cambodian people and Khmer Rouge regime’s victimes. However, their expression of regret, the movie premiered in the Thai capital the same days as had been schelduled.
Youk Chhang, Executive director of The Document Center of Cambodia, said that he accepted the apology, but he added: ” I hope that they learned that you cannot capitalize on memory, and if you choose to capitalize on this memory it is dishonoring the dead” (Reported by Cambodia Daily).
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I personaly think that our people is taking this anti thai thing a bit too far. There are numerous american films (or other country for that matter) that fictionalize something like this. It doesn’t mean that they’re mocking us, it’s just something that many war prisoner experience sometime through out the world. As much as I feel sympathy for my people, I think we need to learn how to move on and can’t relate everything back to that horrible experience.
oops…i guess I should have found out more about the movie before replying….but still, I still stand with my point that we need to look at a brighter side….now more people are aware of the genocide and hopefully, nothing like that will have to repeat itself again….
For me, i did not see this movie yet. That is news publishing in Thailand. Recently, ministry of culture suggested film maker to cut some parts of sence relating to S21 (Tould Sleng).
South China Morning Post
Monday, May 8, 2006
http://khmerrougetrial.blogspot.com
By Anne Hyland
Phnom Penh — Imagine a television reality show set in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz, where ghosts of exterminated Jews haunt the contestants who are vying for prize money of about US$132,000.
In this reality show, the skulls and bones of the dead are smashed to invoke the wrath of supposedly spiteful ghosts to see if contestants can hold their nerve and stay.
While not set at Auschwitz, the producers of a Thai horror film Ghost Game have based their action in a genocide torture chamber similar to Cambodia’s S-21 prison.
Also known as Tuol Sleng, S-21 was a former high school used as a prison and interrogation centre during the brutal rein of the Khmer Rouge regime that murdered, tortured and starved to death 1.7 million Cambodians from 1974 to 1979. Tuol Sleng is now a genocide museum. Cambodia’s long awaited trial of the regime’s leaders begins next year.
The producers of Ghost Game, which started screening in Thailand last month, claim the film is a work of fiction but similarities are blatantly close to Tuol Sleng facts.
Observers said the name of the fictional prison, S-11, bore too close a resemblance to the S-21 prison where about 16,000 Cambodians were tortured and taken away for execution.
The trailer’s opening credits reveal that 17,000 people were registered prisoners at S-11 during a four-year war.
The film features piles of skulls and bones inside S-11 similar to those that can be found at Cambodia’s genocide museums.
The producers of Ghost Game wanted to film inside S-21 last year but were refused by the Cambodian government. Instead, they used a Thai prison, where signs were changed from Thai to Khmer.
Ghost Game’s production company, Tifa, initially denied the film had anything to do with the Khmer Rouge, but later issued a public apology if the film offended Cambodians. Producers NGR said a more detailed disclaimer has been placed on the movie to express “once again our heartfelt apology and express that all locations, activities and persons depicted in Ghost Game are fiction not fact”.
The film has outraged Cambodians and calls have been made to ban all Thai products. A leading Cambodian genocide researcher, Youk Chhang, has denounced the film as insensitive and a distortion of history for commercial purposes.
In 2003, Cambodian mobs burned the Thai embassy and destroyed Thai-owned businesses over unfounded rumours that a Thai soap actress had claimed Cambodia’s most famous temple, Angkor Wat, belonged to Thailand.