Chhouk claims the ambush was an act of war, and not a breach of the law. ‘It was a war, not a kidnap or a robbery,’ he said.

As a feared Khmer Rouge warlord, Chhouk Rin was renowned for his charisma and battlefield prowess. But those days are gone. Now his time is spent battling illness and trying to overturn his conviction for a crime of which he says he is not guilty. Gone are the military fatigues, as he stepped from the darkness of his wooden home in the southern Cambodian province of Kampot, his hands held together in traditional Khmer greeting.

Pulling up a plastic chair on his concrete porch, he huddled slightly to protect himself from the relative cold. Reportedly a fan of karaoke and cock fighting, Chhouk appeared thin and fragile, with an abscess on his lower lip.

‘Some were starved to death, some died of disease, and some were shot,’ he recalled when asked about the Khmer Rouge. ‘All is different now as AIDS kills a lot of people.’ Clad in a loose green and white striped shirt, a toeless foot exposed through cheap plastic sandals, he said he is no longer well enough to drink alcohol and opts for tea instead.

Last November, Phnom Penh appeals court upheld Chhouk’s conviction for a 1994 train ambush, in which ten Cambodians were killed and three Western backpackers were taken hostage and later executed. Chhouk had previously been convicted for murder, terrorism and illegal detention, relating to the events. He arrived at the appeals court too late to hear that his November appeal had been rejected, he said, and remains free despite his life sentence.

The conviction, Chhouk says, has left him ostracised by the Cambodian government, which contains numerous Khmer Rouge defectors, including the Prime Minister, and reduced his stature in Kampot. ‘I’m like a bad smelling fish. If [politicians] touch me they will become bad smelling too.’ He said. ‘I used to be a leader. . . Nowadays I depend on the people in the [Phnom Voar] area.’

Chhouk was convicted for his role in the train attack after he confessed to sending 200 of his soldiers to participate in the ambush, and delivering the three backpackers – Briton Mark Slater, Australian David Wilson and Frenchman Jean Michel Braquet – to his Khmer Rouge superior. The three men, all in their 20s, were found buried in shallow graves several months later.

Chhouk does not accept the charges against him. ‘There is no evidence to charge me,’ he said. He claimed the ambush was an act of war, and not a breach of the law. ‘It was a war, not a kidnap or a robbery,’ he said.

Chhouk filed his final appeal at Phnom Penh Supreme Court December 15 but does not believe Cambodia’s notoriously corrupt legal system is able to deliver justice. ‘Foreigners and local people think the Cambodian court is not reliable at all,’ he said. ‘Even a simple person thinks it’s not reliable.’

Gary Benham, Vice Consul at the British Embassy, declined to comment on whether or not the Cambodian legal system was sufficiently thorough to achieve a just result for Chhouk. ‘We are just hoping that the case proceeds in a correct manner,’ he said. The embassy has been following the case and will be present for Chhouk’s final hearing.

Although Chhouk rejects his conviction, he said he would be happy to defend the Khmer Rouge at the UN tribunal, which he hopes will happen later this year. ‘I don’t worry even if I am summoned to the tribunal,’ he said. ‘I would be happy to stand in front of the court to explain the Khmer Rouge to foreigners.’

‘Yes, sometimes there were mistakes,’ he said of the regime, under which 1.7 million people died. ‘But [the Khmer Rouge] were right most of the time. ‘Some countries didn’t want the Khmer Rouge to be independent, so the Khmer Rouge said, “we don’t need you.” We wouldn’t follow anyone or serve anyone… But now our country has to beg money from other countries otherwise our country will die.’

The Khmer Rouge also protected the country form neighbouring Vietnam and Thailand, he argued. ‘You dared not come in.’ Chhouk called for the UN tribunal to be televised, and stressed the need for international monitoring to ensure justice.

But asked about the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge, he distanced himself from the regime, and called for the leaders to be called to account. He pointed the finger at Khieu Samphan, the president of Democratic Kampuchea, who is also living in freedom. ‘I want to know why Khieu Samphan killed three or four million Cambodians,’ Chhouk said.

Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which collects records on the Khmer Rouge regime to be used during the tribunal, dismissed Chhouk’s defence of the regime. But he voiced a measured defence for Chhouk’s views, arguing that he was a product of rigorous indoctrination. ‘Most of the Khmer Rouge of his age joined at an early age,’ Youk Chhang said. ‘They are heavily influenced by Khmer Rouge ideology and he spent most of his life in the jungle.’

In the wake of his court case, Chhouk has been attempting to keep a low profile, and a wide berth from Nuon Chea, Brother Number 2 in the Khmer Rouge regime. Associating with the former Khmer Rouge leader could bring him further trouble, Chhouk said. ‘If I meet him, people will accuse us of doing something bad again’ he said.

Chhouk still maintains some popular support amongst Khmer Rouge defectors, many of whom object to seeing their leader charged with murder. But he does not plan to resist arrest if the authorities come for him. When the Supreme Court summons him for his final hearing, Chhouk is determined that this time he will arrive on time. ‘You have to believe that when [the appeal] begins, I will be there for sure.’

by William Shaw and Sam Rith

It is often said that first impressions count, and leaving Senegal behind for The Gambia this was never more poignant. The friendly checking of passports by Senegalese policeman took place whilst buried under a sea of groundnut vendors screaming in French. This was to be replaced by suspicion and fear at a primitive, burnt-out shed, twenty metres walk across no-man’s-land in Karang. The initial gauntlet was what passed for customs. Three rotund men, sporting western baseball shirts and mountains of gold jewellery, inspired no confidence that I would be leaving this border with anything more than the clothes I was wearing. This initial phase completed, I found myself fielding a barrage of accusatorial questions from several sultry looking women, wearing uniform that was anything but uniform.

The final stage at any African border crossing is always the money traders. Groups of these suspicious men invariably lurk around the first corner to be found in the country with several bricks of worthless, filthy notes, hidden from view in shopping bags. Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the more surprising of the world’s successful integrated economic zones. The majority of former French colonies use the same currency, the West African Franc, which until the introduction of the Euro was pegged against the French Franc. What makes it all the more surprising that the currency works is the delicate care with which the notes must be handled. With the high temperatures and exhausting humidity they take the form of a dirty, sweat ingrained pulp.

Summer in Sub-Saharan Africa is rainy season. The same summer that saw Charles Taylor reluctantly relinquish power in Liberia was in the main dry and unforgiving for me. On one of the few days in which this norm was violently broken I happened to be destined for the far eastern tip of The Gambia. Morning in Basse-Santa-Su saw me trudging through rivers of mud and rubbish, which had to be negotiated in order to reach the bus station. This was stocked with a surprising number of the battered white Peugeots found throughout Africa.

The rain had broken the fragile crust that had previously existed on the surface of the mud track. Each metre saw the truck lurch into another hole, covering me and my bag with more watery silt. The vehicle floundered, and from time to time the gang of children hanging onto the roof jumped down and struggled to push us out of another hole. The water brought the land to life. Trees became a vibrant green and glistened in the morning sun. The barren earth was a deep burnt red. Ten kilometres from the town we reached the border, a single thatched hut without even so much as a gate. Having answered the customary questions I waited for the cheerful guards to fill in their dog-eared logbook. A poster on the wall sang the praises of the currency, the Dalasi, and promoted the mint which, to my bemusement, was apparently in Wales.

In recent years Mali and Senegal have been linked by an African Highway that in Britain would pass for a minor A road. This route is impassable in the rainy season, leaving the train as the only option for crossing the border safely and away from the bandits in the north. Two trains run each week from Dakar in Senegal to Bamako in Mali, taking a nominal sixty hours. In practice this is rarely the case, the engines setting their own pace as they chug peacefully though the undulating plains of eastern Mali.

The train screamed to a halt at the border, providing a much needed opportunity for breakfast. Passports and identity cards were gathered and taken away for checking, and the passengers flooded onto the barren plains lining the track. Opportunistic locals had set up a bazaar of stalls, and frenetic bartering and trading commenced. I settled for a tot of sugary instant coffee and freshly baked bread, heavily infused with sand. We stopped for an hour and throughout this period a constant chain of muscular men loaded the already heavily laden train with countless bags of grain and vegetables, and even more plastic buckets. This worried me slightly as the previous night had been sleepless, with little room for my cramped legs, and did not bode well for the next. Suddenly my thoughts were shattered. It was time to retrieve documents and in no time a large crowd was swarming like flies around the officials.

The Gare Routiere in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, is considerably quieter than those in other capital cities in the region. Despite this I still encountered the usual hustle and bustle and soon found each of my limbs being dragged towards numerous dilapidated vehicles. I managed to fight my way through the crowds and eventually settled down for the long wait for the departure of my chosen car. The procedure is always the same. Find a car, haggle over the price, load the bags on the roof, and then wait for the remaining places to be filled, sometimes for hours. This time I was lucky and soon on the road. The driver shared the front with two men on the passenger seat. Immediately behind them sat three more men and a colourful lady nursing a baby. I was squashed in a poorly welded seat in the boot with two others. During the journey the baby also found its way back into this tight space and spent most of the journey on my knee.

Some borders are pompous affairs, with all the regalia and importance of halcyon colonial days. In stark contrast to the extensive no-man’s-land separating The Gambia and Senegal, Ghana is announced with arches and new administrative buildings. The people of Ghana are some of the more fortunate in region. Known as the Gold Coast during colonial times it was the richest of the African colonies, fostering a thriving press and boasting the best schools and civil service in the region. Since gaining independence it has suffered a modest three coups, making it one of the most stable of the fledgling democracies.

I was travelling across the border into Ghana, and a small town called Bolgatanga. Before long I wished I had chosen another of the cars. The rickety frame was suffering on the poor roads, and an hour into the journey we found ourselves pulling over for the third time to tend to the engine. By this stage we had also passed five accidents, having driven no more than a hundred kilometres. All involved trucks of various sizes, one of which had driven into a village. The road was strewn with bales of straw, gallon drums with unidentifiable contents and scrap metal. Eventually we passed under a ‘Welcome To Ghana’ arch and with it the relative safety of the border. Looking back it was unclear whether driving into Burkina Faso takes the driver under a sign that reads: ‘Bye-Bye. Safe Travel’, or the more appropriate: ‘Bye-Bye Safe Travel’.

For me the final border to be crossed was that between the free-for-all front of Cotonou airport and the quiet, clean and heavily sedated international interior. Cotonou is the capital of Benin in all but name. Ministries line Avenue Jean Paul II and a single railway line snakes tortuously to the north of the country, the birthplace of Voodoo. The roads are clotted with a sea of mopeds and almost impossible to cross. The streets and buildings are littered with rubbish and caked in mud and a fine dust that infiltrates every pore. Myriad Beninese seep from every corner, and unlike many African towns and villages the people all seem to be on urgent business. The airport is not finished. Only the lounges are complete, fostering in weary arrivals a false sense of security. The exterior is a building site, with steel bars protruding from heavily amputated columns. The final sermon on Africa, a radio plays at ear-splitting volume in the left ear, local television vies for attention in the right.

Although my mother is American, my impression of the USA has mainly been formed by the media, and until this summer, I didn’t really feel I had anything to add to the debate. The USA clearly deserved the negative perceptions of the rest of the world due to its aggressive economic and foreign policies, its people were naïve and corpulent, and that part of my heritage might as well not have existed. But after 4500 miles, driving across 11 states in three weeks, meeting over 40 of my mother’s friends and relatives, I was forced to acknowledge a more three dimensional USA.

One of my favourite things about America is its quirky optimism. Not only is this the country that stubbornly and successfully markets aerosol cheese, it is also the nation that once endorsed the foot-bellow-operated air conditioned suit, and still supports the Vegas Drive Thru wedding chapel initiative (free chips an incentive). I even discovered this trait in my own ancestry. Apparently my grandmother, raised in Mid-Western Nebraska, ended up in LA by flipping a coin to decide which big city to head for. Then she and my grandfather got married on a whim in Las Vegas because they wanted to go on holiday together to see (of all things) the Hoover Dam. And I always thought our gene pool was rather staid.

There’s quirky and then there’s just plain bizarre. There was the steak restaurant in Texas whose employees wore t-shirts proudly emblazoned with the dubious aphorism ‘BBQ makes everybody somebody.’ Beating this only slightly was the orange San Francisco sports car whose owners had splashed out on a generous sprinkling of fake bullet holes in the bodywork, complete with painted ricochet marks. But the clear winner for out and out nuttiness came from a phonebook in Arizona in which one of the local handymen had entered the following advertisement: ‘Jesus is coming: drilling and plumbing’.

Evangelism, it seems, is just one of the many aspects of American society that we simply do not understand. But while in Europe we tend to focus on the heinous nature of the major religious output from the US – televangelism – we tend not to understand the related phenomenon: that middle America is deeply religious; possibly more so than anywhere in Europe. When I visited Ground Zero I was impressed by the number of messages scrawled on the walls calling for peace and forgiveness. This wasn’t the irrational and vengeful America that the Bush administration purports to represent, and I found myself having to re-evaluate my simplistic assumptions.

This isn’t to say that I completely reversed my opinions during the trip. In fact I saw many troubling things that substantiated the dim view taken by the international community. Guns on sale in WalMart and myriad strip malls blighting the landscape evoke the dysfunction portrayed in recent works such as Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine and Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. Particularly noticeable are the social divisions in the first world country with the biggest gap between its richest and poorest citizens. Increasingly, the rich hide away from the resulting social problems by locking themselves in gated communities, often resulting in de facto segregation.

Particularly salient is the example set by the capital city, Washington DC. The city is not part of any state, and consequently it is not represented by voting members in either the Senate or the House of Representatives. Its predominantly black population only obtained the right to vote in general elections in 1960; and that was under intense international pressure. Most states’ car license plates have slogans extolling the American Way or America’s natural beauty: New Hampshire’s ‘Live Free or Die’ and New Jersey’s ‘The Garden State’ spring to mind. Pointedly, Washington DC has chosen ‘Taxation without Representation.’

But it is not only the citizens of DC who are under- and mis-represented. Within the international community the American’s ideology is automatically equated with that of a president whom no-one is sure actually got elected, while the fat, stupid American stereotype is gleefully expounded. Now especially, people may ask why this should change. With the threat of terrorism still at the forefront of every American’s mind, and the decision to introduce more stringent visa regulations even for the citizens of the nation’s ‘closest ally’, it seems that the distance between ordinary Americans and the rest of the world is only set to increase, and by their own choosing. However, in true Hollywood style, if I learned anything from my trip, it’s that many of the generalisations I had accepted started to ring false. But if we must satirise the Americans (as it is almost our patriotic duty to do), we can take heart from the fact that ceasing to generalise gives us many more ways in which to do it. Oh, and I also learned that after the sixth service station hamburger you reach some kind of Nirvana and start to crave lettuce.

Although Vietnamese responses to the America of today are generally less bellicose than this, memories of the war with the US are still very prominent and animosity still lingers. It’s only been a few months since the government organised large scale commemorative celebrations for the 30th anniversary of the twelve day battle of Dien Bien Phu, when the North Vietnamese troops shot down 34 B52s over Ha Noi. Official posters appeared all over the city showing Vietnamese fists pounding the American bombers.

The war in Iraq has inevitably stoked up old memories; the North Vietnamese may be proud of their resistance to the American forces, but it was not something they wanted, and is certainly not something they want to see inflicted on anyone else.

Asked his opinion on the invasion of Iraq, one farmer in Thuong Tin district just outside Ha Noi pulls up his sleeve to reveal a deep scar running down the length of his forearm, which he says he sustained during an American bombing raid on the village. ‘Peace is good,’ he says. Condemnations of the invasion of Iraq have come from all sections of Vietnamese society, from elderly veterans to schoolchildren, who have shown their disapproval in both State-endorsed and spontaneous protests.

The ruling Communist Party have dubbed the war a ‘gross violation’ of international law, calling for international conflicts to be ‘settled peacefully on the basis of equality and mutual respect,’ and demanded that the invasion be terminated.

Anti-war demonstrations were taking place all over the country before the war began, though they were initially rather more orderly affairs than were seen in the rest of the world. Orchestrated by the Fatherland Front – an organisation that aims to ‘propagandise and mobilise people’ into performing the will of the State – protestors formed orderly lines and carried sombre banners handed to them by the authorities, proclaiming Iraq’s right to sovereignty. There were even rumours amid student circles that State universities were offering cash incentives to those who attended.

But as the war picked up pace, few would have doubted the sincerity of the protests. Shirts came off and the official banners disappeared, to be replaced with bare chests daubed with fake blood, peace slogans such as ‘Son of a Bush’ and skulls and cross bones as students chanted and beat drums and cymbals. One girl, who I shall name Hoanh Anh, studies just over the road from the American embassy where some of the non-State demonstrations have been taking place. Asked for her views on the war in Iraq, she doesn’t hesitate: ‘Bush is evil.’

Hoanh has attended every demonstration so far outside the embassy, where she shouted ‘Say no to war’ in Vietnamese and ‘Bush-dog’ in English until she lost her voice. She said she hoped Iraq wouldn’t lose the war.

By turning up at the embassy – an undesignated protest site – students are potentially taking a very big risk. The Vietnamese government may agree with their cause, but it has little tolerance for the unendorsed public airing of political views. Tran Van Luong learned this the hard way in 2001, when he was caught distributing human rights leaflets in the street. The government sentenced him to death, though this was later reduced to twenty years in prison after a human rights protest campaign.

This was not an isolated incident; The International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development reports that the Vietnamese government frequently imprisons and tortures people who raise their voices on domestic political issues.

Predictably, it didn’t take long for the State to crack down on the demonstrations outside the embassy. Protests will continue to be tolerated, but as a police spokesperson said, students are advised to keep their activities to ‘parks, stadiums and cultural palaces.’ In case the students had any other ideas, security police were stationed outside the US embassy with large electric batons that crackled when they flicked the switches.

The protestors didn’t need telling twice – here in Vietnam at least, regime change does not begin at home.

He is hard to believe when you meet him, too – formidably committed to his principles, overwhelmingly hospitable, envelopingly charismatic. When I went to Georgia last summer with the charity Travelaid, I wasn’t quite sure what I was expecting, but I don’t think I could have imagined Nika. Even after spending two weeks in his community in the foothills of the Caucasus, I was still intrigued and almost baffled by him.

He has the most powerful vision I have ever personally encountered. This is probably a necessity for a man who, at the end of the Communist years in Georgia, fought to be allowed to work in a state orphanage, and, when this was refused him, opted out of the ‘system’ that he felt had failed. He opted out to start Prometheus, a rather grand and official name for a huge farmhouse in the village of Gremi, surrounded by fields and filled with orphans, single mothers and their children, the mentally handicapped, all those whom the ‘system’ would reject and has rejected.

Gremi is still a work in progress: the summer’s big improvement was a cowshed with a proper roof and concrete floor, for the community’s small herd of cattle. Next will come further loft conversions to provide new and better-equipped rooms for the community members. Also on the list is the purchase of more land in the village, to build on one day.

And it doesn’t stop there. Ideally, Nika would like to start a network of communities, all over Georgia and then all over Europe. His ideal is a mix of orphans, mentally handicapped children and adults, the elderly, and students needing lodgings for university, all united under one roof, and all contributing something to the life of their own community. Gremi itself is an example of this ideal organic system: those who can, cook, clean, build, educate and fundraise for the ‘temi’ (the Georgian word roughly meaning community). The more able support the less able, and take joy in it rather than resenting it. It sounds like an unachievable utopia, but it works surprisingly well.

It nurtures an open-minded, welcoming group of people, for whom learning about and experiencing new cultures is a genuine excitement. Gremi receives visitors from Switzerland and the UK, and the people delight in extracting from those visitors as many details about life in their countries as they possibly can. Even the children are accepting of strangers: in Gremi you are taught early, it seems, to look outward as well as inward. This is true of other Georgians, too – there is a real hunger to hear about and understand other cultures, despite the strong sense of a Georgian culture that is fundamental to the country and its people. Though national identity and multiculturalism might seem incompatible, this does not seem to be so in Georgia.

Nika Kvashali might be called an idealist trapped in a country still isolated by its past. His aspirations to change the system all over Europe are awe-inspiring, but they do not seem feasible to us, given the weak links Georgia currently has with powerful western European nations. Most UK residents do not even know where it is or that it exists. It does not seem right to tarnish Nika’s vision with weary worldly ‘wisdom’, but it is almost impossible not to do this just a little.

Are the circumstances that seem to restrict Nika exactly those that sustain his idealism? Could he really remain faithful to his grand plans if he lived in Germany, Italy or the UK? Would he even have them there? Is the idea of a harmonious, inter-cultural society one that can survive in western Europe today, or is there something about Georgia that nurtures it rather better? Perhaps it is because Georgians are so desperate to rehabilitate their country that they have the courage to dream big – almost as if they were starting from a blank canvas. Perhaps it is just something indefinable in the Georgian spirit, or that Nika Kvashali is a very special man.

Whatever the answer, there is much to learn about what charity and tolerance genuinely mean from visiting Georgia – here’s hoping that its particular brand of multiculturalism makes it big.