Participants from the ten Member Countries

Back in October 2005, nineteen university students from ten ASEAN Member Countries started a two-week ASEAN Campus Journalists and Leadership Programme that spanned Cambodia, Philippines and Viet Nam. The budding writers were trained by professional journalists and learnt how to write and express social concerns through their own perspectives.

Fresh off their immersion in the media world, the youngsters launched the very first issue of the ASEAN Youth Network Newsletter (AYN News), putting their journalistic training to good use. Their work gives hope that this young generation in ASEAN is able to think critically and communicate their views confidently as they prepare themselves as future leaders of the region.

The programme is funded by the ASEAN Committee on Culture and Information (COCI) and aims to build an ASEAN Youth Network in the region. A second phase of the programme will take place in 2006 in Lao PDR, Myanmar and Thailand.

The ASEAN Secretariat welcomes the first issue of AYN News which includes several student-penned features. The following is an extract of a story by Philippine student Marc Eliemel Y. Tagub, in which following his visit to Cambodia and Viet Nam, he observes some common misconceptions about these two countries.

Viet Nam has been so misunderstood. Even its name is usually miswritten. (It is Viet Nam, not Vietnam.)  It is not Communist Republic of Viet Nam but Socialist Republic. Viet Nam is not autocratic, but democratic-the nation holds elections to choose their leader.  The country is certainly not under-develop but a developing one.

Perhaps the most common misperception of Viet Nam is that it is still a war zone.  How far could that be in the present Viet Nam?  A walk at night in their capital city is safer than a guarded tour in some other capital cities of the world at daytime.

The people in Viet Nam do not live under the fear of the government but they live under personal discipline.

The real story of Cambodia

Angkor Wat

The nations of the world are unquestionably awed but the magnificence of Cambodia’s Angkor Wat and her other thousand Angkor temples.  But sadly, the nations of the world may have failed to hear the real story of Cambodia’s darkest hours and may have believed (and still are believing) that the country is nothing but vast lands of killing fields.

As if Cambodia’s wounds from the dictator Pol Pot are not enough, what hurts Cambodians most is the wrong perception that the war which took place was a mere civil genocide of Cambodians versus Cambodians.

The real score is that Cambodia was divided because many were made to believe the wrong things.  Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, although only reigned for four years, brainwashed many Cambodians into believing that those in the City and the educated were capitalists who will just benefit from the fruits of the labor of the Cambodian masses.

People should understand that Cambodians were lead into believing the wrong things.  And along the way of telling the history of Cambodia, some things had been mistakenly documented.

To read the complete story and the rest of AYN Newsletter, please click here ……..