Forum 2000 launches 'A Life in Democracy' series with Senator Mardi Seng

Forum 2000 has launched A Life in Democracy, a conversation series devoted to people who have given their lives to building and defending open societies. The first edition features Senator Mardi Seng.

The conversation was recorded at the Forum for Democratic Cooperation in Taipei, held from 26 to 28 May 2026 — the first Forum 2000 conference convened in the Indo-Pacific.

Senator Mardi Seng speaks about surviving the Khmer Rouge as a boy and losing both parents to the regime, about the rise of strongman politics and the weakening of democratic institutions across Asia, and about the imprisonment of his sister, the Cambodian-American human rights lawyer Theary Seng. He describes democracy as the air that we breathe, and returns throughout to the task he considers most urgent: preparing a new generation of democratic leaders so that the movement outlasts any one person.

Watch the full conversation below.

Read the announcement on forum2000.cz