I talk to Catherine Louise Geach on the Peace Projects.

 I talk to Catherine Louise Geach on the Peace Projects.

Catherine Louise Geach was born in England and began playing the violin at the age of 4, performing her first concert a year later. When she was 15 she won a scholarship to study violin at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Between July and September of 1990, she went to Cambodia at the age of 18, in order to compile a report on the violation of human rights by the Khmer Rouge and the devastating effect this was having on the civilian population of Cambodia.

The “Aid and War Report” was sent to the UN, British Government and organisations concerned with peace and development. The report highlighted the suffering of people in Khmer Rouge zones and showed why the international community should not be supporting the Khmer Rouge, as well as the negative effect the International Aid and Trade embargo had on Cambodia. For the “Aid and War Report”, she was awarded the Bernard Brett Peace Bequest in 1991.

During her research in Cambodia in 1990, she performed a concert for the Royal University of Fine Arts and was asked by the Dean of the Music Faculty to return to the University to help teach.

From 1990 -1991 she studied Khmer as a private student at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies in London.)and Kompong Speu hospitals with civilians maimed by mines and rocket fire. She also did research on the Kreung and Tampuan ethnic minorities and their music in Ratankiri Province, she wrote an article for the Tablet about them and presented her research at the European Seminar of Ethnomusicology in 1992.

She was a United Nations Election Observer in Ratanakiri Province for Cambodia’s first democratic elections in 1993.

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