by: Sotheary ( VODNews )

In the past, Cambodian doesn’t have knowledge of e-mail or internet, because Cambodian had civil war from 1975 to 1979. During that time, the communist Khmer Rouge or Pol Pot were in power and cut off virtually all links with the outside world as they applied radical policies that led to the death of 1.7 million people. The Khmer Rouge was ousted in 1979, but the country is still struggling to rebuild.

In 1994, a resident from Germany was introduced e-mail to Cambodia.So Cambodian can contact other people in the world.

Cambodians with the skills and the means to blog are discovering a wider world and using the personal online journals to show off their personalities and views about the issues facing their country, from corruption to food safety.However, at that time, it had a tiny Cambodian that can use the blog, because the computer and price of using internet was so expensive. Most Cambodian had no capacity to buy own Desktop or Laptop and doesn’t have money to connect to internet. Less than one-third of 1% of Cambodians has regular Web access.

In July 2005, the first blogging training in some provinces took place. As young people are at the forefront to embrace digital technology trend, a group of few local evangelists began to introduce them to ‘blogging'. The story of blogging in Cambodia began. In August this year, the group led by the blogger evangelist Mean Lux continues his community work with several other friends to spread out the word. They conducted the workshop at International University, a Phnom Penh-based higher education institution. In this event, Cambodian young people was joining the global conversation in the blogosphere and sharing their perspectives through different forms of grassroots citizen's media thanks to the efforts of a dedicated team of Cambodian bloggers.

Anyway, in recently, it have many blogs was created by Cambodian that live in Cambodia and overseas. So they can share their education to other people, criticize government by using blogs of independent media, express their ideas in their blogs, etc… They can create blogs by using Khmer Language (Cambodian language), but their growth is also hampered by the lack of standardized native fonts.

The blogs in Cambodia is increasing from day to day, because more of Cambodian generations have knowledge about how to use of new technologies (through their friend and study). One more thing the computer’s price was fall down a bit, so the middle class of people have capacity to buy it. Anyway, Cambodia's Internet penetration also is among the lowest in the world, in part due to high electricity and network connection costs. An hour of access at an Internet cafe here costs about 2,000 riel, or 50 cents, while 35% of Cambodians make less than the poverty-level income of 45 cents a day.

However, the blogs is increasing but most of bloggers was writing about new technologies, entertainments, social, culture…, only a tin bloggers that brave to wrote about serious politics or corruption or criticize government for change, because the blogger worry about their self of their own writing. The bloggers was fear because they see the step back of democracy in Cambodia. Most of people are afraid about express their opinion, some of rights was restriction by government. So they afraid that government’s official will arrest them if they said about corruption in Cambodia.

Anyway, in 10 years more, if democracy in Cambodia is better, the people have fully rights to express their opinion for change the situation in Cambodia, and if the internet’s cost and computer’s cost is cheaper than now, so most of Cambodian people will have capacity to buy their own computer, create their own blogs and after they can express their opinion by writing their views post to blog.