For Poland, plane crash in Russia rips open old wounds

Saturday, April 10, 2010

A firefighter examines wreckage of the plane that carried Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and some of the country's most prominent military and civilian leaders. (Associated Press / April 10, 2010)

The 97 aboard a Soviet-era plane were heading to Katyn, site of the 1940 massacre of Polish prisoners of war. Now Poland, which never forgot its tragic past, must grieve the loss of its key leaders.

April 10, 2010
By Megan K. Stack
Reporting from Moscow
Los Angeles Times (California, USA)


With a single swipe, the plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski on Saturday gutted a nation's leadership and silenced some of the most potent human symbols of its tragic and tumultuous history.

It was, literally, a nation colliding with its past: They ran aground on a patch of earth that has symbolized the Soviet-era repressions that shaped much of the 20th century, near the remote Russian forest glade called Katyn where thousands of Polish prisoners of war were killed and dumped in unmarked graves by Soviet secret police in 1940.

The toll cut a swath through Poland's elite. Along with the president, the 97 dead included the army chief of staff, the head of the National Security Office, the national bank president, the deputy foreign minister, the deputy parliament speaker, the civil rights commissioner and members of parliament.

But also aboard the plane were war veterans and surviving family members of Poles killed by the Soviets. There was 90-year-old Ryszard Kaczorowski, Poland's last "president-in-exile" during the Soviet years. And Anna Walentynowicz, the shipyard worker whose dismissal sparked the Solidarity union protests that eventually led to the collapse of Polish communism.

And, of course, Kaczynski himself -- a former Warsaw mayor imprisoned in the 1980s for his opposition to communism.

"The contemporary world has not seen such a tragedy," said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who called for two minutes of silence at noon Sunday.

Flying on a 26-year-old, Soviet-designed plane, these iconic Polish figures were headed to a Catholic Mass to honor the 70th anniversary of the deaths at Katyn. It was to be a tribute to long-smothered truth.

The massacre was denied for decades by the Soviet Union, and even today, Russian reluctance to open the investigation files on the Polish prisoners remains a deeply sensitive topic between the two countries. To many Poles, the very name Katyn is shorthand for decades of secret grief and impotence in the face of Soviet power.

"I just have this feeling that Katyn is a sort of diabolical place in Polish history," said Tomasz Lis, a prominent Polish journalist and author. "It's just unimaginable; it's horrible."

As the news spread, a shiver of repulsion ran through a shocked country.

"This is unbelievable -- this tragic, cursed Katyn," Kaczynski's predecessor, Aleksander Kwasniewski, said on Polish television. "It's hard to believe. You get chills down your spine."

The historic freight of the crash was so eerie that it seemed destined for conspiracy theory. Russian officials were careful to vow in the earliest hours to closely involve Poland in the investigation.

Poland was invaded by the Soviet Union during World War II, and lived for decades under Moscow's domination. Long after the fall of the Berlin Wall, ties with Russia remain strained by old anxieties over independence.

As the presidential plane, a 26-year-old Tupolev, winged toward the western Russian city of Smolensk on Saturday morning, thick cords of fog wrapped the city. On the ground, air traffic controllers urged the crew to land either in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, or in Moscow rather than risk navigating the fog, Russian officials said.

But time was pressing. The crew decided to risk the landing, and ignored instructions from the air traffic controllers, the Russian air force said.

"The Polish presidential plane did not make it to the runway while landing," Smolensk region Gov. Sergei Anufriyev told reporters. "Tentative findings indicate that it hit the treetops and fell apart. Nobody has survived the disaster."

On the ground, about 1,000 people, many of them Poles, were milling around the memorial site. A Polish priest was to say Catholic Mass once the presidential delegation arrived.

"We were getting ready for the Mass and everybody was expecting the president to arrive any minute," said Yan Rachinsky of Russia's Memorial human rights group. "Suddenly people started talking quietly about something. There were many concerned faces. . . . Soon people started running around and talking to each other. Everybody was wondering what was going on. It was an atmosphere of tension."

The priest led a prayer. Then the Polish ambassador stepped up to break the news. The presidential plane had crashed, he told the crowd. There were no survivors.

"It was a moment of complete shock," Rachinsky said. "We were standing there speechless. We couldn't believe it."

Tears wetting nearly every face, Rachinsky said, the group went ahead with the Mass.

By late afternoon, 97 bodies were being packed into coffins and flown to Moscow for identification. The flight recorders had been found, and investigators were studying them for clues.

In an address shortly after the crash, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was careful to emphasize recent improvements in relations between the two countries.

"These days we conducted memorial events in Katyn together grieving over the victims of totalitarian times," Medvedev said. "All Russians share your grief and mourning."

Earlier in the week, Prime Minister Tusk traveled to Katyn to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the massacre. In what was regarded as a turning point in the two countries' often frosty relations, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin also attended the ceremony.

Kaczynski, a frequent and outspoken critic of the Kremlin, was not invited to the ceremony earlier this week.

Unlike Tusk's visit, which was given prominent coverage in Russian media, Kaczynski's plans to attend Saturday's commemoration were all but unmentioned. A few weeks ago, the Russian foreign ministry publicly griped that Kaczynski had not sent official word of his planned visit. The ministry had heard of his arrival from press reports, officials said.

On Saturday, Putin announced that he would personally head the investigation. He rushed to the scene of the crash, where he was to meet again with Tusk.

The crash throws Polish politics into uncertainty. Kaczynski was to run for reelection in October; the vote is now likely to be moved to June.

The leading left-wing candidate, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, was believed to have been aboard the plane. And Polish law calls for another of the candidates, speaker of the lower chamber of parliament Bronislaw Komorowksi, to take over as head of state after the president's death.

Kaczynski, 60, was elected to the presidency in 2005. He and his twin brother, Jaroslaw, were Soviet-era child actors who grew up to cut a prominent path through Polish politics. Kaczynski rose from the ranks of the Solidarity trade union before falling out bitterly with the group's leader, Lech Walesa, who went on to become the country's first post-Soviet president.

From 2005-2007, in the early years of Kaczynski's presidency, his twin served as prime minister.

The circumstances of Kaczynski's death carry a particular irony because of his long-standing interest in shedding light on some of the more painful moments of Poland's past. As mayor of Warsaw, he championed the construction of the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising, a tribute to the crushed resistance to the Nazis in 1944.

During his presidency, too, Kaczynski frequently hailed back to the heroic days of Solidarity's struggle against communism.

"Poland needs to reconsider its mistakes," he said in 2005. "But more than that, it needs a consensus based on truth."

megan.stack@latimes.com

Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report
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"Chhoung Snaeh Chhoung Kamm" a Poem in Khmer by KC


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Happy New Year 2010 By KKF President



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Cambodia's political problem is a social cancer - Opinion by Kuch Ly

Opinion by Kuch Ly
email: kuchlyydv@yahoo.com

"I’d rather live as a simple Cambodian citizen with freedom and true independence than being a king, or a government official or an oknha (rich businessman) living under Vietnamese colonialism."

Click on the article in Khmer to zoom in

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Dancing in the New Year

Dancers toss flower petals toward the crowd during last year’s Cambodian New Year Celebration at Clark College. (Photo by Steven Lane)
The Cambodian New Year Celebration at Clark College this weekend will feature elaborate costumes. (By Troy Wayrynen, The Columbian)
Jennifer Kourn, then 6, from Vancouver, peeked through the stage curtain to check the crowd before dancing at last year’s Cambodian New Year Celebration. This year Jennifer, now 7, will dance again. (By Steven Lane, The Columbian)
If you go
  • What: Cambodian New Year Celebration, feting the year of the tiger with traditional dance and music.
  • When: 6:30-11:30 p.m. April 10. 6:30-7:30 p.m. is a social hour, followed by a performance by the Khmer Angkor Dance Troupe from 7:30-8:45 and a social dance from 8:45-11:30.
  • Where: Clark College’s Gaiser Student Center, 1933 Fort Vancouver Way, Vancouver.
  • Cost: $14, free for children 12 and younger. Refreshments will be available for purchase.
  • Information: 360-944-9025 or 360-882-3646.
Cambodian-American troupe continues local celebration

Friday, April 9, 2010
By Mary Ann Albright
Columbian staff writer (Washington State, USA)


Organizing the community’s Cambodian New Year festivities runs in the family for Connie Mom-Chhing. Her late mother, Vann Hem, once a member of the Cambodian Royal Ballet and founder of the Khmer Angkor Dance Troupe in Vancouver, began putting together local Cambodian New Year events in 1987. Now, oversight for the annual celebration, as well as the dance troupe, has fallen to Mom-Chhing. It’s a way of helping the area’s small but growing Cambodian-American community keep traditions alive.

This weekend will mark the third year Mom-Chhing’s volunteer-run Cambodian New Year Celebration has taken place at Clark College. The Khmer Angkor Dance Troupe will perform a new routine, as well as revive a dance shelved for the past two decades. The event will feature classical and folk Cambodian dance demonstrations, social dance time, music and traditional Cambodian foods as it celebrates the year of the tiger.

The Chinese New Year goes by the lunisolar calendar, so the date varies from year to year. The Cambodian, Thai and Laotian New Years are always celebrated for three days on April 13, 14 and 15, said Mom-Chhing. But really, the entire month of April is a celebratory time, added the 40-year-old Vancouver resident, administrator for the Clark County Regional Support Network.

Dance is an important part of the celebration. Khmer, or Cambodian, classical dance is an art form dating back 2,000 years and was traditionally performed in the royal court and at sacred rituals as a sacrifice to gods, goddesses and spirits of dance teachers departed. The dance uses highly stylized hand movements to tell a story.

Women perform classical Cambodian dances, taking on the male and female roles. Both men and women participate in Cambodian folk dances.

Mom-Chhing’s been dancing since age 9 and teaches Cambodian dance at Firstenburg Community Center through Vancouver-Clark Parks and Recreation.

She will solo Saturday in Robam Apsara, or Celestial Dance, which she hasn’t performed in more than 20 years. The dance, which also features four of Mom-Chhing’s advanced students, is a classical routine inspired by the more than 1,500 apsara, or celestial dancers, carved throughout Angkor Wat, a Cambodian temple complex built in the 12th century.

Another classical dance the Khmer Angkor Dance Troupe will perform is Robam Boung Soung, or Pray Dance.

“It’s asking for peace, happiness and prosperity for the upcoming New Year,” Mom-Chhing said.

Five of Mom-Chhing’s young students, including her 7-year-old daughter, Charmony Chhing, will perform Robam Chhma — Cat Dance — for the first time this weekend.

“It’s depicting a group of cats chasing a mouse, and at the end, they catch it,” Mom-Chhing said.

In addition to children’s and classical dances, the New Year Celebration will include the Cambodian folk dance Robam Koah Trah Lauk, the Coconut Shell Dance.

This playful, flirtatious dance features 10 performers and “is very fast-paced, very rhythmic,” Mom-Chhing said.

The dance makes use of actual coconut shells, which the troupe imported from Cambodia.

Beyond dance, the April 10 event will feature traditional Cambodian wedding songs, both sung and played on the tro sau, a two-stringed instrument.

After the performances, a disc jockey from All-Star Music & Events will kick off the social dance portion of the evening. There will be karaoke, as well as several different styles of Cambodian social dance.

Continuing the immersion into various aspects of Cambodian culture, volunteers are preparing traditional dishes for sale at the event. Items available will include papaya salad, beef satay, egg rolls, a Cambodian version of pad Thai and a dessert made from sweetened sticky rice, Mom-Chhing said.

Mary Ann Albright: maryann.albright@columbian.com, 360-735-4507.
READ MORE - Dancing in the New Year

 
 
 

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