US first lady Michelle Obama yesterday urged Cambodian students to stay in school and take advantage of their education to demand greater freedoms and more equality in their nation.
The nation has been ruled for 30 years by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, whose wife, Bun Rany, joined Michelle Obama on her visit to the northern city of Siem Reap.
Michelle Obama is on a five-day trip to Asia to promote the US-led education initiative, “Let Girls Learn,” which she and US President Barack Obama announced earlier this month. The community-based program, to be run by the US Peace Corps, is meant to help get 62 million girls in the developing world back into classrooms.
Michelle Obama spoke to students at a single-story red brick high school surrounded by dirt roads that unlike most schools in the rural region has running water.
After being welcomed by rows of children, who greeted her waving Cambodian and US flags, the first lady met with 10 girls, who shared tales of rising early to feed their families before heading off on long treks to school and studying late into the night.
“You are role models to the world,” Michelle Obama said, calling on the students to use their “voices to advocate for good things — whether it’s more education, better healthcare, more freedoms, more equality.”
“You now will have a voice and you will have the training and education to use it for good,” she said. “Not just here in Cambodia, not just here in Siem Reap, but in the world. I hope that you all will feel empowered to do that.”
Michelle Obama’s trip is the first by a sitting US first lady to Cambodia. Barack Obama became the first US president to visit Cambodia in 2012, and pressed Hun Sen in private on a variety of human rights and political issues during a meeting that White House officials described as tense.
Hun Sen is one of the world’s longest serving heads of state, and has been regularly criticized by political opponents and human rights groups for monopolizing power and brutally crushing all dissent.
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