My Reflection on the 3rd World Youth Conference

This year, on May 23rd, 2009, I had a chance to attend the 3rd World Youth Conference that was organized by the Khmers Kampuchea-Krom Youth Committee (KKFYC) at National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. It was an eye opening for

me to learn about my own identity and why I need to preserve it as the theme of the conference “The Power of Youth - Safeguarding the Khmer-Krom Identity”.

After hearing Serey Chau talked about the 4th Freedom that he related to what our Khmer-Krom people back home are facing, I could not believe that at this time, my people still doesn’t have a very simple basic rights, such as the right to freely to ordain to be a Buddhist monks without asking the permission from the Vietnamese government. I also impressed to hear Sothy Kien talking about how she has involved to seek justice for our Khmer-Krom back home. The KKFYC officers really show their passionate, capabilities and responsibilities to lead our youths around the world to speak up asking for the rights for our people to live freely and peacefully on their ancestral lands.

The speakers at the conference were awesome. I learned so much about our religion after listening to Venerable Thach Berong’s presentation. Mr. Son Hua’s presentation really empowered me to be proud of whom I am as a Khmer-Krom. Mr.

Thach N. Thach gave an informative presentation to educate our youths about how KKF leads a peaceful movement to seek justice for our people. Dr. Daryn Reicherter from Stanford University gave a wonderful speech to empower our youths to achieve higher education. He mentioned that, it doesn’t matter what fields that we pursue in our education, we still can use our knowledge to seek justice for our people. We don’t need to be a human rights expert or an international lawyer to be a human rights activist. Italian Senator, Mr. Marco Perduca shared wonderful experiences about how he was denied Visa to enter Vietnam. It was shameful to see how Vietnam used dirty tactics to stop the Italian Senators from going to its country. Dr. Joshua Cooper gave an imaging speech about how the Human Rights are being protected by the Universal Periodic Review to ensure that the member states of the United Nations respect the rights of its citizen.

This conference was opened and closed by the Chairman of KKF, Mr. To Kim Thong. It shows that the KKF leaders really support the youths because they believe that members of KKFYC would be the leaders of the KKF in the near future. At this conference, I also enjoyed watching the beautiful dances from our youths dance troop from New Jersey.

After attending this conference, I made more friends from around the world because I have an opportunity to meet them in person. Even if it was only first time we have met, it seems like we have known each other for long time because we are all share the same passion to help our people back home. I am looking forward to the 4th World Youth Conference next year.