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A photo of the winner of Miss Landmine Cambodia, Miss Battambang Dos Sopheap, is presented in Oslo on Saturday. The pageant was held in exile, as it previously was forbidden in Cambodia. (Photo by: GORM K GAARE/EUP-IMAGES)By Chhay Channyda
The Phnom Penh Post
A CONTROVERSIAL beauty pageant for Cambodian land mine victims found its winners on Saturday at a “final-in-exile” ceremony in Kristiansand, Norway, hosted by Norway’s Association of Cambodians and its Khmer Buddhist Council.
Miss Battambang, 18-year-old Dos Sopheap, was crowned Miss Landmine Cambodia 2009 in absentia, followed by first runner-up Miss Takeo, 30-year-old Thou Chorn, and second runner-up Miss Kompong Cham, So Yeu, 35.
The contest, organised by Norwegian land-mine survivor advocates, was banned from taking place in Cambodia by a July 31 government decree, which also forbade the 20 contestants to leave their hometowns to participate in the pageant elsewhere. The decree said that the pageants “made a mockery” of Cambodia’s disabled. The contestants were represented at the ceremony by photographs carried down the catwalk by Cambodian-Norwegian women.
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