Meng So: A campus voice for the undocumented

Meng So, coordinator of the Undocumented Student Program at UC Berkeley, in his office in the Cesar Chavez student center. (Carol Ness / NewsCenter)

By Carol Ness, NewsCenter | September 18, 2012
UC Berkely News Center (California, USA)

BERKELEY — Meng So arrived in the Bay Area the way many children do — in the arms of parents fleeing strife in their homeland. Born in a refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border, he was not quite 2. The family settled in Hayward. So’s father and mother worked 15 hours a day or more and raised their kids, five boys and a girl.

Though they came as refugees from the Khmer Rouge genocide that devastated Cambodia in the late 1980s, the Sos lacked full legal status for about a dozen years. Watching his parents jump through hoops and hurdles trying to secure food, housing, health care — the basics of life — while seeking citizenship was tough, their middle son says.

“That informs my work — my parents’ struggles,” says So, who now, with a B.A. from UC Berkeley and a master’s in higher ed from UCLA, serves as Berkeley’s first Undocumented Student Program coordinator.

Cambodia: Twenty Years after Peace - Symposium at UC Berkeley

October 31, 2011

Dear Community Leader:

In collaboration with the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, the Human Rights Center, The Institute for International Studies, and International and Area Studies, the Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies Program will be hosting a symposium at Berkeley on November 19, 2011 to mark the 20th anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords.

The symposium will look at present day Cambodia, 20 years after this historic agreement. It brings together key “history makers”, academics and researchers, policy analysts, and rights advocates to discuss critical issues facing present day Cambodia in four critical areas, namely law and democracy,economic development and human security, human rights, and the role of diasporas in peace and democracy building and national reconstruction.

We hope that you can join us in this important convening.

Sincerely,

Professor Khatharya Um
Conference Chair
University of California, Berkeley

"Cambodia: Twenty Years After Peace" - A Symposium at UC Berkeley, California, USA

Preliminar​y Announceme​nt of Presentati​on Workshop on Attitudes about KRT, 8 June 2011

Dear Leaders of NGOs partners and colleagues,

On behalf of the orgnizers, CHRAC and Human Rights Center- University of California at Berkeley, I would like to inform that on 08 June 2011 from 7.30 am to 12. noon, we will organize a presentation workshop of a population-based survey on "Cambodians' Attitudes about the Khmer Rouge Tribunal" at Sunway Hotel, Phnom Penh.

You are invited to have lunch at the place after the closing of the workshop.

The invitation and agenda will be soon sent to you. Please find attached our preliminary announcement of the workshop.

Sincerely yours,

Oeung Jeudy
Program Officer

Click on each page of the announcements to zoom in

East-West Center gets grants for Khmer tribunal work

Friday, March 9, 2007

News Release
The Honolulu Advertiser (Hawaii, USA)

The East-West Center received two grants totaling more than $105,000 from the British Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, for two projects tied to the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.

Both projects are part of the Asian International Justice Initiative, a partnership between the EWC and the War Crimes Studies Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

"We certainly appreciate these grants in underwriting our efforts to support development of the rule of law in Cambodia and to help the Khmer Rouge Tribunal bring some closure to a horrific period in Cambodian history," EWC president Charles E. Morrison said in a news release issued today.

One project will include training workshops for Cambodian defense attorneys and prosecutors, focusing on legal issues that will likely play a central role in the Khmer Rouge trials such as genocide, crimes against humanity, and the doctrine of command responsibility.

The second project involves producing videos about the Cambodian court, its missions and its trials. The video-taped programs will be available for showing on national television in Cambodia and distribution to rural areas in the country.

Established by the U.S. Congress in 1960, the East-West Center is an education and research organization that aims to to strengthen relations among the peoples and nations of Asia, the Pacific, and the United States. Funding for the center comes from the U.S. government, with additional support provided by private agencies, individuals, foundations, corporations, and the governments of the region.