12 December 2001--"Birds of a feather...?" An official of the Cambodian government has returned from South Korea with a request from Seoul that Cambodia's King Sihanouk and Prince Norodom Ranaridh intervene to help restart stalled talks between the two Koreas. It seems that Cambodia's king is a "close friend" of the reclusive North Korean leader and has a house in Pongyang. Given that King Sihanouk also has a house in Beijing and spends much of the year there, it is fair to ask just what the king's political leanings are. He enjoys unusual friends.
8 December 2001--More on Burning Out the Squatters A couple quotes from the Phnom Penh Post newspaper:
The fires coincided with the state visit of Vietnam's President Tran Duc Luong. The Agence-France Presse office in Hanoi reported December 6 that Western diplomats in the city believed the fires were deliberately lit to send him a message.....
Police said the first fire was caused by children playing with matches, while the second resulted from an exploding gas bottle in the shack of a man named Thanh, who died in the blaze. The Post spoke to Thanh's neighbors who said that explanation was impossible.
The residents of Chhbar Ampoe had an alternative answer. One said he watched as men in a boat shot "flaming torches" at the settlement. Standing in the ruins of the commune's Buddhist temple, the witness, whose name has been withheld, said he saw one fireball hit Thanh's hut.
30 November 2001--More on Burning Out the Squatters The United States and Britain intervened to stop hasty and ill-prepared resettlement of the 20,000 people burned out of two squatter areas this week. Recent newspaper articles had pointed out how the government had failed to live up to resettlement guidelines, especially the provision that resettlement is always to be voluntary. Now further movements of homeless people will be stopped for two or three weeks until they can be relocated properly. In another development, the Phnom Penh governor has said he will prosecute anyone spreading rumors that he was behind the burning of the squatter areas.
28 November 2001--Burning Out the Squatters Monday afternoon a huge fire burned out the Chamkar Mon squatter area along the river in Phnom Penh. 2,400 dwellings went up in flames leaving 8,000 to 9,000 really poor people with nothing but the clothes they wore. That is the second or third squatter fire since I've been here, and as before the government is suspected by many of setting the blaze to drive out the poor people--most of them Vietnamese--from prime real estate the city would like to develop. Then Tuesday night a second fire destroyed another squatter area along the river, making several thousand more poor people homeless. Official statements blame exploding gas stoves, etc. Within 24 hours, the government had a plan to resettle them in some rice fields far away from the city where there are no good roads, no industry, not even water. And now the squatters in the remaining slum areas along the river are deathly afraid that they are the next targets. Today in our Maryknoll meeting we discussed what kind of aid we might be able to provide to the burned out people. Some in the international NGO community are asking how to get the message to the government that it is not OK to burn people out.
26 November 2001--A Learning: Money Counts, Students Don't Bak Touk High School in Phnom Penh is the largest school in Cambodia, with 381 teachers and 8,400 students. Recently there was a confrontation there between some students and a security guard who tried to stop a student from kicking a soccer ball outside during class times because of the noise it was making. The school used to have a football field but it was sold to the Juliana Hotel.
25 November 2001--Improving Cambodian Society? At 6:00 PM yesterday all the bars and nightclubs in Cambodia were forced to close by a decree of Prime Minister Hun Sen. He is worried about the deleterious effect they have on Cambodian society and wants to see an improvement in the moral tone of the country. The newspapers are full of stories and pictures of establishments taking the word "bar" out of their names and signs so they can reopen as restaurants or massage parlors. The papers also note that Hun Sen didn't close the brothels or casinos. Many people don't expect the closures to last that long because too many government officials are reported to own or have a stake in the bars and nightclubs.
23 November 2001--Buddhism Enlists in the AIDS War A ten-day workshop is now in progress which aims at spreading Buddhist ideas to protect people from the spread of HIV/AIDS. More than 40 monks and nuns and lay people are gathered at a pagoda for the program which is sponsored by UNICEF and the Cambodian Ministry of Cults and Religion. One consultant explains that Buddhism's emphasis on pure deeds and actions could help combat the spread of HIV infection and that the monks could act as "morality doctors" to give hope to victims. Many non-Buddhists among the international NGO community have long pushed for a greater involvement of Buddhism in the social problems of Cambodia. Buddhism is often not greatly involved with the country's social ills because of its emphasis on personal fulfillment and withdrawal from the world and its concerns.
21 November 2001--Threat to Civil Liberties Two recent law changes have some civil liberties groups worried. In one instance the National Assembly voted to approve an amendment to Cambodia's penal code which gives police authority to detain a suspect without charges for three days instead of just two. Opponents argue that it could lead to more abuse and torture of detainees. In the second change, broad police powers were given to civil servants, putting them on the same level as the judiciary and blurring the lines between governing and law enforcement. Fears have been expressed of a developing police state.
20 November 2001--Tourism Decline Cambodia's tourism took a sharp downturn in the weeks after the events of September 11th. The tourists are already starting to come back but the government is trying to do more to attract visitors. One idea is to promote what they will call the "Emerald Triangle," a package that includes Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. A second initiative will be to develop former Khmer Rouge strongholds as tourist destinations, especially Pol Pot's home and the place where he died. New border crossings are being contemplated also.
17 November 2001--More Coincidence Coming back from my five weeks away for meetings and glancing through the old newspapers that had piled up, I find that two more opposition candidates contesting places in the February elections have been assassinated. One belonged to the Sam Rainsy Party and the other to the Funcinpec Party so now Sam Rainsy has lost four candidates and Funcinpec two. Funny how the revenge killers, robbers, and practitioners of black magic never go after the Cambodian People's Party candidates (that's the government party).
25 September 2001--Just a coincidence... This past week a fourth opposition candidate campaigning in the upcoming commune elections in Cambodia was shot to death. That makes five candidates, all from opposition parties, who have been shot; four have died. In addition, last week four commune administrators from opposition parties were arrested on charges of being involved in the shadowy Cambodian Freedom Fighters group which orchestrated some bomb attacks last November. It's interesting that it's always the opposition candidates who are targeted. But the government tells us that that is just coincidence and that all the dead men are victims of robbery, personal disputes, and black magic.
24 September 2001--More on Trafficking A recent two-day workshop on the trafficking of women and children noted that the practice is increasing in Cambodia partly because women and children are such easy prey among poor and vulnerable populations who have little hope of protection from the country's decrepit legal system. Another problem is that Cambodia has become a transition point for traffickers and their victims from Vietnam and China and other Asian countries. Internally a breakdown in family values contributes to the spread of trafficking in Cambodia. In the past family values were strong and parents wouldn't sell their children no matter how poor they were. Today some parents see their children like animals and are willing to sell them for profit, claiming "poverty" as an excuse.
9 September 2001--Trafficking Women and Children
Snaking around Phnom Penh this past week was a line of newly painted cyclos, the pedal-powered three wheelers used as a substitute for minibuses and pickups. Each was decorated with a poster and carried a woman protesting the trafficking of women and children in Cambodia. Trafficking is a very profitable business through much of Southeast Asia where the status of women and children is low, and poverty-stricken families all too readily conclude that they can sacrifice one of their daughters for the sake of feeding the rest of the family. The theme of this new three-month government campaign is "Women are precious gems" to counter the social perception that women are worth less than men.
7 September 2001--Catching up with the past When the Sorbonne University--Europe's first--was started in the 1100s, there were already two universities functioning at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Closer to our own times, in the 1960s, teachers in Singapore and Cambodia were the highest paid in Asia. Today teachers average $25-$30 a month in Cambodia, and the country has the highest illiteracy rate in Asia. 6 out of 10 Khmers are illiterate or semi-illiterate. The government's goal is to increase literacy to the 80% level, the same standard that was in place in 1975 before the effects of the Khmer Rouge were fully felt.
3 September 2001--Government Corruption in Garment Industry A new study by the Cambodian Development Research Institute found that 7% of garment factory operators' costs were attributable to "bureaucracy costs," the euphemism for corruption paid to government officials up and down the line in the clothing industry. That amounts to $70 million for the year 2000, the year considered in the study. The Commerce Ministry secretary of state acknowledged the corruption toll on the industry but seemed to justify it because salaries paid to civil servants are not enough to support households. The study warned that while the garment trade was Cambodia's only major industry and is one of the most dynamic sectors of the country's depressed economy, its future could be "seriously jeopardized" if the environment for conducting business is not improved.
2 September 2001--Cambodia's Weak Judiciary #4 Leaders working for much needed reform of Cambodia's judiciary warn that real reform will meet with real opposition, especially from the government. "Our leaders do not want to lose control of the judiciary. They fear their power base will collapse beneath their feet," said one reformer. The government maintains tight control over the courts, and one Western diplomat reported how a senior government official regularly meets with senior members of the judiciary to advise them on the outcome the government wants in certain cases.
One of the most obvious examples of the government's interference in the court system is the way that relatives of high-ranking officials avoid prosecution. Hun Sen's nephews several times have been caught red handed in illegal and criminal situations but have never appeared in court.
31 August 2001--Impunity? #5 In January 2000, Prime Minister Hun Sen removed Chhaom Bun Khan and another man from their posts as governor and deputy governor, respectively, of Ratanakkiri Province in Cambodia. They were fired because 400 truckloads of lumber from the province's forests were shipped illegally to Vietnam IN JUST TWO MONTHS (November and December) along roads built in the province to accommodate the trucks. Global Witness, an environmental watchdog group, had reported the illegal logging, and had noted about Chhaom's removal that it may have been politically convenient to get rid of him because he was from the Funcipec opposition party. Well, not to worry. Chhaom is back. Of course, he's only deputy governor now and it's a different province, but as far as he's concerned, the future probably looks bright. For him; not necessarily for the forests or the people of Kratie Province.
30 August 2001--Strong Words Back to the US Ambassador A week ago, US Ambassador to Cambodia Kent Wiedemann, speaking at an anti-corruption conference, blamed the Cambodian government for not doing enough to combat corruption. Now the Foreign Ministry has issued an unsigned but official letter to the foreign delegations here telling them to be careful of what they say. The letter said the ministry "deeply regrets that recently, certain ambassadors have performed their behavior like instructors teaching the Royal Government of Cambodia, or opposition parties....More seriously, the said ambassador has also used inflammatory words inciting revolt against the Royal Government of Cambodia." Wiedemann said that he finds the letter inappropriate and stands by his remarks. Good for you, Kent! It has been suggested that a letter of support be sent to him by the foreigners living here. Other ambassadors here have already voiced their agreement with his views.
28 August 2001--Cambodia's Media At a ceremony marking the one-year anniversary of the Club of Cambodian Journalists, one of five journalism organizations in the country, a UNESCO official commented on significant progress in the print media here in the past few years. "As far as the Cambodian press today is concerned, the general description is 'chaotically free' with all shades of opinion represented," he said, adding that Cambodia's free press "is one of the strongest and fastest growing in the region." There is now more balance and less emphasis on sex and profanity in the newspapers.
Other parts of the media did not receive such good marks. It was noted that due to low literacy levels, most Cambodian people get their information from broadcast media, the radio and TV, which emphasize entertainment and repeating official news from the government. The official lamented the lack of independent news which could be a balance and corrective to official positions, a dynamic that is essential in a properly functioning democracy.
27 August 2001--Book Banning Cambodia is relatively free of news censorship. The newspapers are generally unrestrained in printing articles and commentaries that are less than flattering to the government and administration officials. But now a book by Sam Rainsy, the main opposition political figure, has been banned by the government and the police instructed to confiscate all copies. The book, titled Light of Justice, is a small 48-page tome which the Ministry of Information says was banned because it could "stir controversy" and makes allegations against the government without any supporting evidence. According to the Sam Rainsy Party website, the slim volume outlines the party's ten-point political platform; discusses problems such as environmental degradation, corruption,and AIDS; and addresses the role of women. The book, in its Khmer version, is also available on the website but few Cambodians have access to the web. An English version is being prepared for the web.
24 August 2001--The check isn't in the mail! One of the things Cambodia lacks is a postal system. Oh, there's a system that gets international mail from overseas to post office boxes at two or three sites in the capital, but that's about it. There's basically no home delivery--buildings don't even have mailboxes--and when you want to send something to another city in Cambodia, you don't think of the postal service. Today at the CDPO office, some documents needed to get to a CDPO branch office in another province. One of the staff took the envelope, not to the post office, but to the taxi station where the inter-city taxi service took the documents north on their regular daily run. NGO people outside Phnom Penh have all mail delivered to a PO box here, and then some staff from their organization will pick it up and hand carry it to locations outside the city.
23 August 2001--Strong Words from the US Ambassador Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and his government acknowledge the presence of corruption in their administration but say it would be best confronted by foreign donors giving more money to combat the misdeeds. The US Ambassador, Kent Wiedemann, and other foreign officials rejected that approach at an anti-corruption conference this week. Hun Sen: "It takes a long time to build up institutions, drafting laws that are effective. Rome was not built overnight." Wiedemann's response was that the government's request for "technical assistance" or more time to draft corruption laws was "a bad excuse." He suggested that Hun Sen and his Council of Ministers could immediately require high-level officials to publish a list of their own personal assets and to account for the sources of their wealth. Good idea.
11 August 2001--Cambodia's Weak Judiciary #3 The executive and legislative branches of Cambodia's government both have their own rules of procedure and laws to determine their function and power. The judicial branch of government does not. The King is by law the chairman of the Supreme Council of the Magistracy which oversees the court system to propose new judges, discipline officials, etc. However, the king has never attended a meeting nor chaired the council, and the council does not meet regularly. Most of the king's duties have been delegated to the President of the Senate which itself creates a conflict of the separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches.
8 August 2001--Cambodia's Weak Judiciary #2 Many NGOs, encouraged by overseas donors, have been working for better legislation in various sectors of Cambodian life and society. They have helped draft new laws governing land, forestry, fisheries, and the environment. Some local NGO heads, though, feel that the foreigners often do not understand fully the situation in Cambodia. "A lot of foreign advisors take for granted that if there is a law, then it will be enacted, enforced, and accepted--that lawbreakers will be brought to justice and tried," one of them said. "But in Cambodia, this is not the case. How can you expect these laws to be enforced without a properly functioning law enforcement agency and judiciary?"
4 August 2001--Political Killings Cambodians as a whole are a brave lot, daily facing burdens and obstacles that we in the West can't even imagine. Particularly courageous are the opposition politicians, usually working quietly and determinedly in the villages and communies, in the face of threats, intimidation, and political killings. Last week the UN's special representative for human rights in Cambodia spoke of his "grace concern" over the recent killings of party activists and candidates for the upcoming commune elections.
Local elections are being held for the first time in Cambodia in February to select representatives to the local commune councils. (Communes are groups of villages.) For the past twenty years, commune administration has been done by political appointees of Prime Minister Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party, and obviously the CPP doesn't want to lose its hold. Of course, the CPP says that all the killings are the result of personal disputes, revenge, and black magic, but human rights monitors strongly disagree. And it IS a strange coincidence that all the politicians murdered recently just happen to be from the opposition parties.
30 July 2001--Cambodia's Weak Judiciary -- #1 Cambodia's weak judicial system is in desperate need of reform, but analysts fear one of the biggest obstacles to improvement is the lack of will on the part of the government. Corruption is a major problem in Cambodia, but it is impossible to combat the endemic corruption if there are no institutions to verify and adjudicate corruption cases, especially the law enforcement agencies and the judiciary, the judge system, itself. The director of one agency working for democracy in Cambodia says there is much talk of reform by the politicians but he is skeptical of their sincerity. "The more our rulers repeat their will and their 'commitment,' the less they act committed to the reform process. The more they talk about decentralization, the more they centralize power."
27 July 2001--Impunity? #4 The Working Group for Weapons Reduction sponsored a report on violence at gun point in Cambodia which was presented at the UN conference in New York on the illegal trade in small arms. The report noted that in one out of five cases in Cambodia, the assailants using the small arms were armed guards, soldiers, police, or military officers. "These uniformed men can go unpunished for the abuse they inflict due to their links to high-ranking government officials," the report states.
24 July 2001--A Significant Labor Victory Last week an agreement was signed by government, factory, and union officials which gives workers at garment and shoe factories half a day to four days off to travel to their home provinces to register for the commune elections which will be held next February. These commune elections, the first since the UN-organized nation-wide elections in 1993, will be an important step in the re-introduction of democracy into the political climate here. Opposition parties claim much support from the 200,000 factory workers in Cambodia so they were very anxious to conclude this agreement. Workers will be paid for their time off as long as they still have some of their leave time left, and the days missed will not count against their attendance record if, on their return, they bring their voter registration cards to show where they have been.
17 July 2001--Impunity? #3 Three weeks ago, the Landcruiser of one of Cambodia's generals, the First Deputy Director of the National Police, struck and killed a 13-year old boy when going through a village. The general didn't stop, and when his vehicle was eventually pulled over by pursuing police, he explained that he had to get to work quickly. A very important man, obviously.
14 July 2001--Impunity? #2 Som Rasmey, as a twenty-year old, was having an affair with Colonel Lim Sok Heng, the husband of Minh Rinath. In November, 1999, Rinath and four hired accomplices held Rasmey on the ground and poured two bottles of hydrocloric acid over her head, arms, and back. At the time of the attack, Rinath took Rasmey's infant daughter and has kept her ever since. A court convicted Rinath in absentia a year later, but she was given a suspended sentence that insured she would never go to jail. Rasmey has had to file a child-custody case to get her daughter back but so far it has been to no avail. A hearing last week was adjourned because Rinath didn't show up. She and her husband were up on the Thai-Cambodia border negotiating a logging contract. (An aside: Anyone want to bet on the legality of that contract?) An official of the Ministry of Women's Affairs has launched an appeal against the lenient sentencing of Rinath as "an abuse of power by the judge." In last week's hearing the judge got the mutilated Rasmey into his chambers before the aborted hearing and asked why she had invited all the Cambodian and Western observers, the representatives of legal NGOs who have taken up her case. One of these representatives reported: "Judge Sothy said he would not force (Rinath and her husband) to come to court because they were protected by the military."
12 July 2001--Impunity? #1 Two years after Piseth Pelika, a popular entertainer and "cultural icon," was gunned down in broad daylight on a Phnom Penh street, the police say they have no idea who murdered her although they are continuing their investigation. But Pelika's diary, authenticated by handwriting and fingerprint experts, related her sexual relationship with Prime Minister Hun Sen and her fears that Hun Sen's wife, Bun Rany, was planning to kill her. One entry relates a warning from the National Police Director that she had been targeted by Bun Rany. Two months later she was dead. Perhaps Bun Rany had nothing to do with Pelika's death, but lack of any progress in the case could indicate the problem of impunity from the law for well-placed people in Cambodia.
11 July 2001--Small Arms Clean-up In a report to be released this week to the UN conference in New York on small arms, the Cambodian government reveals that since 1988 it has collected more than 112,500 weapons from its citizenry. That's approximately 104 weapons a day, and includes assault rifles, handguns, and several tons of heavier arms and explosives and land mines. Cambodia is awash in small arms after 30 years of war, and in a country where the education and health-care systems are struggling and poverty is endemic, many people have turned to these weapons in frustration and disenchantment. In recent years, donors have applied more pressure on the Cambodian government to reduce the number of small arms in circulation, and many of the confiscated weapons have been destroyed in public ceremonies.
9 July--Letter from the King Last week the Cambodia Daily published an article quoting King Norodom Sihanouk in an apology "for his advancing age and declining health" which he said were keeping him from serving the people. Today in the Cambodia Daily there was a letter to the editor signed by King Sihanouk, saying that he did not say he has been kept from serving the nation, and that, in fact, "I have never ceased giving to the people...." If he had any apology to offer, it was only because age and physical weakness keep him from attending ceremonies and taking part in the work as he used to do in the past.
8 July--Ambitious Education Plans Cambodia has one of the lowest literacy rates in the region and its education system is barely functioning. At a conference on education last week, the government presented a five-year plan for reform. But donor groups, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, said the plan is overly ambitious and needs a more realistic time frame. At the same time, they applauded the Ministry of Education's work to reform education in the kingdom. Millions of dollars in international aid are possible if donors can be convinced of the government's political will and a commitment of its own funds.
3 July--"No more teachers, no more books...." The old end-of-the-school-year students' ditty could be sung year round here in Cambodia. Teachers are often absent because they often don't get paid. And books are hard to get and hard to keep. Many resource-starved schools in Cambodia have few or no books. And in some schools where books are provided by government programs, there are still problems such as schools requiring the books to be turned in one month before the end of the term! Other schools force the children to pay a book deposit--and then some just don't give the deposit back. To cover the cost of chalk and other similar supplies--we're not talking computers and microscopes here!--schools also often demand contributions from the students.
30 June--The UN and Human Rights in Cambodia Peter Leuprecht, the UN's special representative for human rights in Cambodia, has just concluded his third trip to Cambodia since assuming the post. The results have been rather discouraging. Prime Minister Hun Sen constantly rails against the UN, probably attacking their admittedly poor performance at the time of the Khmer Rouge regime in order to divert attention from the poor human rights situation in Cambodia. Leuprecht was scheduled to have talks about the trial of Khmer Rouge leaders; the demobilization of Cambodia's over-large army; land reform legislation to give peasants back their land stolen by powerful officials; and the re-establishment of the UN's human rights office in the kingdom.
22 June 2001--Target Practice One of Cambodia's somewhat unique tourist attractions has been the shooting range outside of Phnom Penh where tourists with thick wallets, often Japanese, could take target practice on live animals. Chickens, a goat, a cow, a buffalo--all were available for the right amount, normally $5 for a fowl and up to $300 for a big animal. And there was a choice of weapons, too, handguns, assault rifles, automatic weapons, machine guns, even rocket-propelled grenades. But now King Sihanouk has asked the government to ban the shooting of live animals there "because it damages the reputation of our nation in the international scene and which is opposite to our Buddha's merciful dhammar for the humanity and animals." A staff member said, though, that for the right price live targets would still be available.
15 June 2001--More Aid. Is It Deserved? The Consultative Group Meeting is held every year bringing together donor countries and officials from Cambodia to determine the level of funding the country receives. At issue is whether Cambodia has lived up to existing commitments and is actively pursuing reforms, elimininating corruption, etc. At this year's meeting, just concluded in Tokyo, Prime Minister Hun Sen's government was pledged $615 million, 20% more than they had requested even though little progress has been made in some areas like control of deforestation and stealing of land by government officials. The money was forthcoming after Hun Sen promised he would "try harder." One contentious issue has been a trial of Khmer Rouge leaders which the government is not keen to see happen because it could implicate many of them. Hun Sen said the law establishing the trial system could be enacted by August and the trials begin by the end of the year if there are no problems. No problems? He runs the government with an iron fist. He controls whether there will be any problems or not.
14 June 2001--Government Fears Cambodia has only one movie theater which opened just a few months ago. But there is a board of official watchdogs at the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts who screen videos, movies, and television broadcasting for content that could cause the populace to reflect badly on how the government is performing. Thus a recent Thai film showed an angry, newly landless peasant shouting to a powerful man and demanding: "Tell me what your relationship with the Member of Parliament is!" But in the translated and dubbed Khmer version, the reference to parliament is deleted. Could it be that, even though the film is set in another country, there are enough similar instances of government land-grabbing in Cambodia that the censors don't want anyone reminding the peasants of the practice? About seventy to eighty percent of movies shown in Cambodia are imported from abroad because that is cheaper than local production, although Hun Sen's government is keen to encourage local movie makers in order to better promote Cambodian culture.
30 May 2001--Squatter Fire
Last Friday a huge fire swept through a squatter community on the banks of the Mekong River in Phnom Penh. When it was over 2700 people in 550 families were homeless. Now the government has bought a rice field 20 kms away from the old squatter site for resettling the displaced people. There are no toilets, no water, no electricity and the nearest market is 10 kms away, but some of the squatters consider themselves lucky as they go about digging the hard dry dirt to make wells. The government had wanted to reclaim the earlier squatter site for several years, planning to create a public garden there.
27 April 2001--The Decline of Cambodian Science Science teachers in Cambodia--only two dozen of them survived the Khmer Rouge regime--say that every year students know less and less about physics, chemistry, biology, and even mathematics. They blame the decline on inadequate science laboratories--if they even exist. Few schools have any lab equipment--and there has been no money in the education budget for any since the early 1980s. The ADB did donate some money for equipping labs in 1997 but they didn't provide any funds for training the teachers so now a few schools have some equipment but no one who knows how to use it. And so most students remain ignorant of the basics of science. In a country where most people get their electric power from car batteries recharged at the neighborhood generator, most young people don't even understand how electricity works.
26 April 2001--The Start of Something? The first luxury cruise liner in 30 years came to Cambodia this month, docking at Sihanoukville with 200 passengers, most of them from the US. They split into three groups and dashed to Phnom Penh, Angkor Wat, and the beaches of Kompong Som during their 24 hours in the country. The docking fee for the ship was $10,000 and each tourist spent about $300 for a visa, tickets, and transportation in addition to meals. Tourism officials here hope this cruise is an omen of things to come and are planning improvements to the port and its facilities to make it easier for tourists to arrive by sea.
21 April 2001--Violence in Cambodia!? The United Nations' special representative for human rights has urged the government here to keep political violence under control as the country approaches its first commune elections. But Hun Sen, the prime minister, dismissed the request, expressing "the view that political violence does not occur in Cambodia." Ha! How quickly the PM forgets.
In perhaps the most outstanding example of political violence in the last few years, a group of people listening at an outdoor rally to an opposition party speaker were attacked with grenades. Thirteen people died and many more were injured. To add insult to the tragic deaths, a small memorial erected to honor the victims was destroyed several times. And the newspapers regularly report the murder of local politicians in the various provinces who dare oppose the government's grip on provincial politics.
20 April 2001--Visa Reaches Cambodia Cambodia's first credit card was launched this week by Cambodia Mekong Bank. The bank became part of Visa International in 1997, but it wasn't until this month that it was able to meet Visa's standards. And the bank still has not received full licensing from the government because it cannot meet the minimum capitalization requirement of $13 million. The bank will require card holders to have on deposit twice the amount of the card's credit limit and is aimed basically at rich business people. Only about 100 locations in all of Cambodia--hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops, and guest houses--accept credit cards.
18 April--Cambodia's Gambling Industry Thailand doesn't allow gambling, but neighboring Burma, Laos, and Cambodia have all established casinos on their border with more affluent Thailand to attract the Thai gamblers and their dollars. Cambodia has been most active in this regard building, in the last three years, six state-of-the-art casinos near the Poipet border crossing. More than 2000 Thais cross the border every day into Poipet to gamble. Other than providing some employment, it is questionable whether the casinos have benefitted Cambodia. The casinos are all owned by wealthy Thais so the profits go back across the border, and there are no Cambodian laws governing casinos so they only benefit a few politicians who hand out the licenses. And then there are the social costs of people wasting their meager income and life savings on gambling.
17 April 2001--Khmer Rouge Anniversary Today, 26 years ago, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh as liberators, driving out the last of the Vietnamese occupiers. The people welcomed them joyfully as Cambodia finally returned to the control of a Cambodian army. The next day the Khmer Rouge started driving the people out of the city in their attempt to start a new agrarian society at Year Zero. In the next few years, millions of people died of starvation, malnutrition, and over-work and were executed. And still no tribunal has been set up to bring the KR leaders to justice. The government ignores this liberation day but the opposition party today held a Buddhist memorial service at the Tuol Sleng Prison where prisoners were interrogated and tortured before being taken to the killing fields.
19 March 2001--Let 'em ride taxis Last Friday Prime Minister Hun Sen surprised his cabinet of ministers by piling them all into a bus and driving them for three hours over some of Cambodia's notorious excuses for roads while he lectured them on the deteriorating road system when hundreds of millions of foreign aid dollars have been available. (Actually they probably used a lot of that money, just for themselves rather than for the roads.) He then ordered the Minister of Transportation to have the road fixed by Khmer New Year next month...and then got in his helicopter to fly back to Phnom Penh.
What he should have done is confiscate all the ministers' Mercedes Benzes and make them ride seven or eight people to a taxi or 18-20 people in a pickup truck--like everyone else--until the nation's highways are passable.
28 February 2001--The Face of Poverty in Cambodia
Recently the Cambodian Ministry of Planning in conjunction with the Asian Development Bank conducted a Participatory Survey Assessment, a survey of poor people intended to help the government design its Socioeconomic Development Plan for 2001-2005. Approximately 3000 poor villagers in 154 villages nationwide were asked about their needs and concerns. The five key reasons most often noted for poverty in Cambodia were [1] the lack of food security, [2] the lack of draft animals and livestock, [3] the lack of land, [4] the lack of housing, and [5] the lack of proper clothing.
17 February--The Culture of Impunity
One of the most discouraging and frustrating parts of life in Cambodia for everyone, but especially for the Cambodians, is the culture of impunity, that is, the way officials and people with power commit crimes, rarely are arrested, and almost always walk out of the police station scot free if they are detained. Today's paper spoke of trouble surrounding a basketball tournament of two weeks ago, when some boys from the losing team went to the winner's school and attacked the students and staff with sticks, a baseball bat, and guns. One teacher was saved when a gun pointed at him did not fire. The attacking boys left in a car with government license plates and were stopped by police. And they were promptly let go when they identified themselves as children of high-ranking officials. Police and other officials then tried to play down the incident, making it sound as if practically nothing had happened. No one expects anything to come of this most recent incident. In another case, the nephew of Prime Minister Hun Sen is still on the run after assaulting three Japanese tourists last December. He has been getting away with all sorts of crime for years.
15 February 2001--Shoot the Messenger... In another "Kill the messenger!" response, the Cambodian government is reacting angrily to a report by a Japanese researcher who found that the Phnom Penh dump site contains high levels of dioxin in its soil, and that the young boys who scavenge in the dump have dangerously high levels of heavy metals in their body tissues. Instead of acknowledging that there might be a problem, the government instead tries to disparage the researcher, discount the research, and worry about the effect on tourism.
8 February 2001--Hunger in Cambodia The World Food Program's recent report on hunger and malnourishment estimates there are 830 million people in the world surviving on an inadequate diet because of natural disasters, armed conflict, and grinding poverty. In Asia the number of under-nourished is 525 million, 17% of the land mass's population. The worst situations of hunger in Asia are found in North Korea, Mongolia, Cambodia, and Bangladesh.
17 January 2001--What happens when he is gone?
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - King Norodom Sihanouk, a fixture in
Cambodian politics for more than 50 years, has revealed that he had
suffered a minor stroke in December and that his health is failing. The 78-year-old monarch's halting comments were broadcast on state
television. "Mine was a minor stroke and occasionally I feel a numbness in some parts of my body," he said, adding that he sometimes falls down. King Sihanouk, who reigns but has had little political influence since the monarchy was reintroduced in 1993, has long suffered from colon cancer and other illnesses. "I take more than 20 different kinds of medicine in order to combat these illnesses," Sihanouk said. The eventual successor to Sihanouk remains unclear.