Cambodian Bon Om Touk Stampede Highlights Preventable Tragedy

2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 481-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edbert B. Hsu ◽  
Frederick M. Burkle

AbstractThe tragic nature of the human stampede that took place in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on November 22, 2010 claimed the lives of 347 people during the three-day-long Water Festival, known as Bon Om Touk. Described as the greatest tragedy that Cambodia has experienced since the collapse of the Khmer Rouge, the Bon Om Touk stampede ranks among the deadliest human stampede disasters during the past 30 years, a Class IV event exceeding 100 fatalities according to a recently proposed scale.1 From the perspective of global health, the event shares many characteristics with preceding major crowd disasters and failures in event planning. It is essential for the international community to officially monitor human stampedes as it does other major disasters. Additional research on human stampedes is needed to improve our collective understanding of the causes of crowd disasters and how best to prevent them.HsuEB, BurkleFMJr. Cambodian Bon Om Touk stampede highlights preventable tragedy. Prehosp Disaster Med.2012;27(5):1-2.

2000 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 67-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Chandler

The scale of what happened under the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 is difficult to deal with (over one million Cambodians lost their lives), but efforts are now underway to bring at least some of the surviving leaders of the regime to justice. This essay explores the reasons for delay of the trials, citing:The absence of international precedents prior to the 1990s;The show trial of two Khmer Rouge leaders in 1979; andThe obstacles to a trial arising from geopolitical considerations in the 1980s (in which some powers now calling for a trial, including the United States, were effectively allied with the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese-imposed regime in Phnom Penh).In the 1990s, following the Paris Peace Accords and the brief UN protectorate over Cambodia, demands for a trial came from overseas and from Cambodian human rights groups. The Cambodian regime considered the show trials of 1979 sufficient, however, and in 1998 Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen urged his compatriots to “dig a hole and bury the past.” Eager to regain foreign support for his regime after several brutal incidents in which political opponents were killed, Hun Sen has more recently agreed to limited international participation in a trial. A procedure targeting a few Khmer Rouge leaders seems likely in 2000, but Cambodian government control of the proceedings means that nothing like a truth commission or a wide-ranging inquiry will result.


2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice Eisenbruch

This paper reports an ethnographic study of mass fainting among garment factory workers in Cambodia. Research was undertaken in 2010–2015 in 48 factories in Phnom Penh and 8 provinces. Data were collected in Khmer using nonprobability sampling. In participant observation with monks, factory managers, health workers, and affected women, cultural understandings were explored. One or more episodes of mass fainting occurred at 34 factories, of which 9 were triggered by spirit possession. Informants viewed the causes in the domains of ill-health/toxins and supernatural activities. These included “haunting” ghosts at factory sites in the wake of Khmer Rouge atrocities or recent fatal accidents and retaliating guardian spirits at sites violated by foreign owners. Prefigurative dreams, industrial accidents, or possession of a coworker heralded the episodes. Workers witnessing a coworker fainting felt afraid and fainted. When taken to clinics, some showed signs of continued spirit influence. Afterwards, monks performed ritual ceremonies to appease spirits, extinguish bonds with ghosts, and prevent recurrence. Decoded through its cultural motifs of fear and protest, contagion, forebodings, the bloody Khmer Rouge legacy, and trespass, mass fainting in Cambodia becomes less enigmatic.


1975 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 805-826 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edith Brown Weiss

In the past few decades we have been improving our understanding of the weather system and exploring ways to modify it. Over sixty countries have experimented with modifying the weather. The new technology of weather and climate modification will raise important political problems which will demand new responses from the international community. Whether states will be able to establish the cooperative measures necessary to develop and manage new technology depends upon whether there are sufficient incentives to do so. This article analyzes the historical patterns of international cooperation in meteorology, and then plots against several time horizons projected developments and capabilities in weather modification technology and the potential problems emerging from using the technology. It derives a tentative picture of the responsibilities demanded, compares the likely responses with those needed, and assesses whether they will be adequate for the problems projected.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Tyler S. Cole ◽  
Mark A. Pacult ◽  
Michael T. Lawton

OBJECTIVE Scientific productivity, as assessed by publication volume, is a common metric by which the academic neurosurgical field assesses its members. The number of authors per peer-reviewed article has been observed to increase over time across a broad range of medical specialties. This study provides an update to this trend in the neurosurgical literature. METHODS All publications from January 1, 1980, to April 30, 2020, were queried from four neurosurgical journals: Neurosurgery, Journal of Neurosurgery (JNS), JNS: Pediatrics, and JNS: Spine. Publication information was acquired from the National Center for Biotechnology Information Entrez database and reconciled with the Scopus database. Publication type was limited to articles and excluded editorials, letters, and reviews. The number of authors and affiliation counts were determined based on structured abstract fields provided in the two databases. RESULTS Between January 1, 1980, and April 30, 2020, the overall increase in author count for the four neurosurgical journals was 0.12 to 0.18 authors per year (p < 0.001). For Neurosurgery, the mean (SD) author count increased from 2.81 (1.4) in 1980–1985 to 7.97 (4.92) in 2016–2020 (p < 0.001). For the JNS, the mean (SD) author count increased from 2.82 (1.04) in 1980–1985 to 7.6 (3.65) in 2016–2020 (p < 0.001). The percentage of articles with more than 10 authors increased from 0.2% to 22.3% in Neurosurgery and from 1.9% to 17.5% in JNS. Only 28% of the author count variation was explained by an increasing number of institutional or departmental affiliations. CONCLUSIONS Author counts for peer-reviewed articles in neurosurgical academic journals have increased significantly during the past 4 decades, with large increases in the numbers of articles with more than 10 authors in the past 5 years. A total of 28% of the variation in this increase can be explained by an increase in multiinstitutional or multidepartmental studies.


INDIAN DRUGS ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (06) ◽  
pp. 07-18
Author(s):  
Ria Christine Siagian ◽  
◽  
Novilia Bachtiar ◽  
Prastuti Soewondo ◽  
◽  
...  

The past decade has seen an increasing number in production of newly-developed biopharmaceuticals, biosimilars and biobetters that can help contribute to improved global health. Global market growth in this industry was reported to increase and approach more than US$200 billion. As the industry matures, the growth is significantly higher in emerging markets than in developed countries. This shows a shift of biopharmaceuticals production outside of developed countries, thereby sending signals to emerg-ing countries the opportunity to become global leaders in new industries. This literature review seeks to identify the commercial levers in biopharmaceutical development in emerging countries. The study found that biopharmaceuticals industry was promising for emerging countries to compete in global mar-ket if it were supported by strong government involvement. This involvement revealed key strategies to improve poor pipeline productivity shaped by political, economic, technological and market fact.


Author(s):  
John Clifford Holt
Keyword(s):  

This is a study about how the killing of almost two million people by the Khmer Rouge brought about the great importance now attached to an annual ritual that emphasizes assisting the dead in their after-lives by transferring merit for their benefit. The chapter provides accounts of how ritual performances on behalf of the dead are performed at major Buddhist temples in Phnom Penh as well as in the rural areas of Cambodia. There are extensive interviews with the relatives of survivors.


2021 ◽  
pp. 104687812110351
Author(s):  
Jared M. Kutzin ◽  
Jenny E. Sanders ◽  
Christopher G. Strother

Escape room games have gained in popularity in both entertainment and education venues over the past several year. The global health pandemic put an abrupt end to in-person escape room programs due to the enclosed space in which they take place. In an attempt to continue to utilize the escape room concept we set about to create a virtual escape room using commonly available software and assessed its usability and participant feelings about the experience. The results indicated that the participants thought the escape room was engaging (88%), that they had to work as a team (95%), and that they overall enjoyed the experience (85%). Virtual experiences cannot completely replace in-person experiences, but there are ways to introduce important teamwork and communication concepts to participants and make online meetings and conferences more engaging.


2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Chapnick

In January 2019, a leading Canadian foreign policy blog, OpenCanada.org, declared that “[u]nder the government of Justin Trudeau, Canada has embraced a feminist foreign policy—gradually at first, and with fervor over the past year.” Although critics have debated the policy’s effectiveness, the embrace, if not also the fervor, was indisputable. By 2019, the Trudeau government’s second foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, was proclaiming Canada’s feminist approach to international relations openly and regularly. The international community had also noticed. This article investigates the origins of the new Canadian foreign policy “brand.” It finds that, contrary to popular thinking, the prime minister himself played at most a minor role in the initiation of what became a full-fledged transformation of Canada’s global image.


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