Cambodian journalist shares experiences, views of America

It's 11:30 p.m. A man walks the streets of the small section in San Francisco called Chinatown. He is carrying a camera, hoping to capture some sort of violent crime on film. But he hears and sees nothing.

So goes Reach Sambath's night, as he tries to find out if the United States is as violent a country as portrayed by American television and newspapers.

Sambath, 27, is a reporter for Agence France-Presse, a wire service based in Cambodia, who visited Cal State Long Beach journalism Professor Dan Garvey's World Press class on Tuesday.

Sambath, who came to the United States as one of 15 students on a Freedom Forum international scholarship, is studying for one semester in the communications department at Cal State Fullerton.

Through his travels to various cities in the United States, the reporter said he has gained a broader perspective of America. He has gone to San Francisco, San Diego, Philadelphia, New York, Tijuana, Aspen, Washington, D.C., Richmond and Arlington, Va.

"Before I came here, I thought America was heaven," Sambath said. "But now that I have been here awhile, I see that it isn't so different than Cambodia. In America, there is also homelessness and crime. Every city has a different character to it."

Washington, D.C. was full of political activity because every day there was a press conference in the White House, Sambath said. In Cambodia, he said, the government gives one press conference a week.

"The government in America is different," Sambath said. "They give their press as much information as possible; they cooperate with the press. And if they don't, it can be investigated. The Cambodian government doesn't cooperate with us. My main goal is to make the Cambodian press as free as in the United States."

Sambath said that his parents died by the time he was 10, so he had to become a man a lot faster than other boys his age in Cambodia.

"I remember looking at the Vietnamese troops leaving Cambodia, and I saw a lot of the foreign journalists very free to do what they wanted to," Sambath said. "I couldn't do that, and I saw the press as freedom and that one day, I would be free like them."

Throughout his life, Sambath has faced some type of adversity, including the death of his parents, his five brothers and his own near-death experience that occurred while trying to investigate the Cambodian government.

For example, Sambath had published a picture of a soldier with a severed head in his hand. The following day, the Cambodian government was upset because the photo shed a negative light upon Cambodia.

In March and April of 1994, the Cambodian government said they had captured Pailin, the Khmer Rouge guerrillas stronghold in the western part of the country. Sambath and a few other journalists were skeptical, so they decided to go to Pailin to discover the truth.

But there was a problem, they had no means of transportation. The journalists walked to Pailin through the jungle, in heavy rains, with no food and water. When they finally reached Pailin, they found government soldiers there.

A month later, while investigating a government report that they had taken over Trang, a village near Pailin, Sambath and Kevin Barrington, an Irish foreign correspondent for the Agence FrancePresse, were shot at by Khmer Rouge soldiers. Sambath lost his camera while running but said it was worth the risk.

"Danger will happen, but we must maintain our strong commitment to the free press and to journalism," Sambath said. "You just can't listen to what the government says, you have to see for yourself."

Sambath said he has learned a lot in his short visit to the United States.

"I have learned what the real America is like," Sambath said. "It isn't so different from Cambodia but the people in the United States are misunderstood. People here do work real hard to get what they want. Also, America has the best education and technology."