Cambodia: Details are Sketchy

To the discerning palate of a guerilla soldier battle-hardened on decades of jungle war-fighting, modern Cambodian cuisine is comfort food. For most others, though, deep-fried spiders and soft-boiled duck embryos are not exactly 5-star dining.

So if it seems a bit bizarre that a food journal from Phnom Penh would make the finals for Best Asian Food Blog, that’s because it is. Nevertheless, that is what has happened.

Phnomenon is one of nine category finalists for this year’s Best Asian Food Blog award. Those nine finalists are:

• Eating Asia
• Chubby Hubby
• Masak-Masak
• Noodles and Rice
• Phnomenon.com
• Santap Something
• Sticky Rice
• Weird Meat
• Yummy Corner

Vote for you-know-who at Asia Pundit.

VIA Wild Sects: The story of AIDS in Cambodia is so common that it’s easy to stop listening to this number and that statistic about the dead and dying. Nevertheless, the people those numbers represent are real, and their stories are compelling, as this story in Lens Culture makes so easy to see.

As some may have noticed, the Cambodia’s Bloghers page has been updated over the weekend. The list has been reordered with the more active bloghers toward the top and the less active ones toward the bottom. (A few mistakes have been corrected, too.)

Chatter Box Baby has been deleted, but Vanndeth in Germany has been added in their place. Vanndeth is a student at the Royal University of Fine Arts currently in Cologne on an internship. New too since the page’s inception is Wattana, a university student blogging from Sydney.

Also of note, it looks like Loung Ung is back on her blogging game. After a relatively long spell of quietness, she has recently filed a slew of posts.

In related news, Theary Seng, author of Daughter of the Killing Fields, has a new web site. Tantalizingly, there is a link for “Web Log,” but it is not yet clickable. Her voice would be a powerful one in the community.

And in writing this update, a few more contenders for the list have come up, so those will get added here sometime soon, too. So y’all click back now, here.

Cambodia’s Bloghers

VIA Khmer Intelligence: Things are looking grim for Funcinpec.

UPDATE: Ok Socheat, public affairs adviser for Funcinpec, confirms in The Cambodia Daily on Monday that 52 “office staff” have defected to the CPP. “Only 52 doesn’t hurt Funcinpec at all,” he said. But an anonymous defector that spoke with the Daily put the number at 172, as reported Saturday by Radio Free Asia.

This blog can now reveal the shocking truth the government refuses to let you see. But be warned, by clicking the link below, you will unleash a tidal wave of wanton moral turpitude certain to destroy the foundation of Cambodian society.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rich Garella, who in the mid-1990s worked as a reporter an editor for the Cambodia Daily and later as a spokesperson for the Sam Rainsy Party, has this to say about the KR Trials.

There will never be a meaningful trial of Khmer Rouge leaders in Cambodia while Hun Sen is in power. … Ieng Sary will never be a convict in prison in a Cambodia ruled by Hun Sen, regardless of evidence, trial, sentencing etc.

Obviously, no one yet knows who, if anybody, will actually face the court. But Garella is certainly correct; The chances of Ieng Sary going to prison are about as good as Hunter S. Thompson coming back from the grave and taking that bet himself.

(In February, Sary was reportedly hospitalized in Bangkok with a “serious heart condition.” Some are skeptical, and his whereabouts today are unknown. Even in the unlikely event that Sary should resurface, he has been given amnesty by the government and is immune from prosecution.)

The argument that Garella gives for this conclusion, however, is anything but straight-forward.

The problem for Hun Sen is not so much that he is obliged to prevent the trial from being meaningful. … The problem is that once the trial, such as it is, is over, Hun Sen will have lost the main carrot he has been holding out in front of the foreign donkey for the past decade. Once the donkey has at last eaten that tiny, shriveled carrot, and pronounced it delicious, Hun Sen will be left holding only a stick.

An interesting point perhaps, but how the donor community and the government get on after the trial hardly seems relevant to anything.

Since the Khmer Rouge Trials opened in early July, news from inside the court has been virtually non-existent. That silence came to a close yesterday with the latest edition of the Phnom Penh Post and a front-page story titled Headaches for the Khmer Rouge Trials.

Recent events, as well as problems involving logistics, language difficulties and unresolved legal restrictions, are providing potential obstacles for the fledgling Khmer Rouge Trials (KRT), legal experts and KRT officials have told the Post.

Battered by the July 20 death of potential key Khmer Rouge defendant Ta Mok, and subsequent calls for an accelerated judicial process, officials of the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) are now balancing the weight of expectations with an impending sense of urgency and outcome.

[...]

One senior legal expert with ties to the ECCC told the Post on condition of anonymity that in three years “two or three cases are a realistic figure” and “it would be a great challenge to try more than three or four.”

Almost from the very beginning there has been talk of extending the three-year mandate, and although co-prosecutor Robert Petit gave no real indication when asked, it seems more than likely that the three-year term will be extended.

The two other major concerns currently facing the trial are a law barring foreigners from practicing law and language. Everyone the Post spoke with “expressed confidence that the legal requirement could be circumvented.” But as for the language problem, a solution for that may be a bit more elusive.

Khmer, English and French are all official languages of the court, making translations monumentally time-consuming. In terms of evidence, virtually all the documentation exists in Khmer — hundreds of thousands if not millions of pages – making complete translations unfeasible.

More mundanely, as Helen Jarvis, the chief of public affairs for the ECCC (who for reasons unstated is apparently still not talking to the Daily), points out, “The other aspect is just people working together. What language everybody is going to be using is unclear at this point.”

Kalyan Keo goes to Java Cafe. It’s interesting, but not at all surprising, that Java Cafe would be off the map for most Khmer students. Of course every foreigner in town knows about Java Cafe, even if they have never been there.

That divide is if not obvious at least apparent in Kalyan’s directions, “located above Sovatepheap driving school.” Really, how many foreigners would know that the place downstairs is a driving school, much less the name of it?

No doubt the opposite is true, too. There are probably hundreds of places that Cambodians living in Phnom Penh go to all the time, but that most foreigners don’t even know exist.

VIA Khmer Intelligence: In late June, police and military police officers removed dozens of homes from Ochheuteal Beach in Sihanoukville. In return, home owners allegedly pelted the officers with rocks and later burned down a warehouse owned by Thong Chamraeun.

As a result, Thong Chamraeun, a powerful business man with the title Oknha, is suing David Chhaynava, a U.S. lawyer of Cambodian descent, who Thong accuses of inciting the violence. The Sihanoukville court recently issued an arrest warrant and police are now searching for Chhaynava.

Chhaynava, you may recall, made a name for himself last year when he was arrested for joyriding his Hummer through Hun Sen Park.

David Chhaynava, a lawyer from the United States, is doing business with a number of foreign companies, particularly with a South Korean firm, making him a relatively well-off person. He also used to be close to a number of army commanders at Tuol Krasang. However, since he was sent to Prey Sar prison for driving his car into the Hun Sen public park in Phnom Penh, his relations with the soldiers at Tuol Krasang have somehow cooled down.

Police confiscated the Hummer and let Chhaynava sit in jail for weeks. But the whole affair is interesting because the Cambodia Daily reported at the time that the evictions went peacefully.

Apparently not.

Jim Welte at MP3.com has this to say about Dengue Fever’s show at the Independent in San Francisco on Saturday:

If Austin Powers and Dr. Evil decide to wage their next cinematic battle in Cambodia, Dengue Fever has the house-band slot on lock.

The Cambodian- and Ethiopian-influenced psychedelic pop band doesn’t sound — or look — like any other band. The Los Angeles-based sextet played to a packed house at the Independent in San Francisco Saturday night, showing off a truly inimitable sound.

Named for a terribly unpleasant tropical disease, Dengue Fever is fronted by Ch’hom Nimol, a pint-sized Cambodian woman who wears beauty pageant dresses and belts out lyrics in her native Khmer language with an unbelievably powerful, almost otherworldly voice. She sings over a band that draws from a wide range of influences, particularly ’60s-era pop and rock from Cambodia and Ethiopia, as well as American bands of that era such as the Doors.

The result on Saturday night was a bit hit or miss, but while the misses were jaw-droppingly odd, the hits were exhilarating and authentic, mostly driven by the funky guitar licks of Zac Holtzman and the Ray Manzarek-style organ playing of his brother Ethan.

Some of the tracks mimicked the Cambodian pop of ’60s singers such as Ros Serey Sothea and Huoy Meas, while others drew heavily from the Ethiopiques CD series, showing off the sax-driven sound of that country’s ’60s pop.

But the band’s best tracks, such as “Sni Bong,” “One Thousand Tears of a Tarantula,” and “We Were Gonna,” mixed both of those influences with straight-up American psychedelic rock, and the resulting stew was full of sinewy guitar, swirling saxophone, and blissfully psychedelic organ.

The band also attracted some hilariously rabid fans, a handful of whom joined them onstage for a stint of singing, dancing, and preening. It was quite a sight, with a one-of-a-kind sound to match.

More details at http://denguefevermusic.com/, including a downloadable version of the band’s latest and funkiest song to date, A Go Go.

As has been widely reported, the upcoming Miss Cambodia pageant will not include a swimsuit competition. This is apparently huge news. Why, however, is not exactly clear.

No matter, Miss Cambodia contestants would be wise to study up on previous Miss Universe controversy, specifically the 2002 scandal regarding swimsuits that didn’t reveal enough.

As always, from the Phnom Penh Post.

JULY 14: Police arrested four monks for assaulting a motodop driver after a game of cards at their wat in Robos Ankanh village, Kandal province. Police named the monks as Pich Sovannatuy, 20, Mao Pich, 23, Yu Yean, 25, and Seng Sovan, 19. A bystander said the monks became angry and struck motodop driver Meas Buntheng, 29, with a long stick then chopped him with a cleaver after he won 9,000 (US$2.25) riel from them and tried to walk away.

JULY 15: Vong Wai, 48, died in a Phnom Penh hospital after being stabbed and severely injured while sleeping outside his house at 11:15pm in Prey Sbart village, Kampong Speu province. Keat Tha, 45, told police that an unknown man opened the mosquito net and stabbed her husband in the chest with a knife then ran away

JULY 16: Police from the Ministry of Interior arrested the former Funcinpec provincial governor of Kampot, Put Chandarith, who is accused of cheating and grabbing land in Kampot province. Police said Chandarith fled to Battambang where he was arrested in his car in the early morning. Chandarith was brought to Kampot province, where he is alleged to have committed the offenses when he was governor.

JULY 19: A municipal police officer, Chea Borith, 33, was arrested for shooting and wounding a student, Song Veasna, 21, who fell off a motorbike making a getaway after a robbery. Borith said he shot Veasna three times with a K-59 handgun as he fled with two accomplices, who escaped, after they snatched a gold necklace from a passenger at 9:30am in Teuk Laak 1 commune, Phnom Penh. Police arrested Borith for questioning as Veasna denied stealing the necklace. Borith was later freed after he promised to pay Veasna $5,000 for medical treatment.

JULY 24: Nhep Oun, 65, was found in a river at 7am in Chruoy Dang village, Kandal province. Police lifted the body out of the water and said the woman was killed with a hatchet and her one-and-a-half damleung (56-gram) gold necklace stolen when she worked at a farmland with a stepdaughter, O Men, 26. Police arrested the stepdaughter for questioning because they suspected she was involved.

The Cambodia Daily reports today that Prince Sisowath Thomico has postponed the announcement of his new political party. Instead, Thomico used the ceremony held yesterday at Phnom Oudong to announce an alliance with what the Daily termed “fringe” parties under the banner Sangkum Cheat Niyum, or “national community.”

For all the new group may lack, however, it does not want for political ambition.

The participants, seated at two tables at the summit of the heavily symbolic Udong Mountain, the country’s former royal capital and last resting place of many Khmer kings, signed a document that proclaimed Prince Thominco the new movement’s leader and stated that its political objective is to replace Cambodia’s current leadership.

Replace the ruling party? Certainly that’s a mistake, right? Because that’s not even on the same planet as realistic.

To rule outright would require winning a full two-thirds of the seats in parliament. After nearly 30 years in power, and with near total control of the voting process, not even the CPP gets those kinds of votes.

Indiewire reports that the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund has granted support to an American filmmaker documenting the hunt for Cambodia’s unexploded ordinance.

Skye Fitzgerald, an independent filmmaker and director of Bombhunters, is one of 15 movie makers to receive a share of the $605,000 granted in the first round of 2006 by the institute.

The Documentary Fund supports film projects that “focus on current human rights issues, freedom of expression, social justice, civil liberties, and exploring critical issues of the time.”

More details from Asian Reporter.

VIA Khmer Intelligence: Opposition party leader Sam Rainy, a proud and tireless defender of human rights and democracy, had this to say about the latest crop of political adversaries.

[T]hey are bodyless ghosts … Bodyless ghosts are useless … they are like fireflies, they light up intermittently … People will not waste their vote on them. Voting for bodyless ghosts and fireflies is a waste.

Spoken like a true leader.

The Cambodia Daily today reports that Cambodia’s first-ever Slasher Cup will be televised. The cockfighting tournament, now at the semi-final stages, will culminate on August 5, when the bout for national champion takes place in Bati district, Takeo province. It appears that CTN will provide the coverage. Check your local listings.

Lichado today comments on the death of Duong Sopheap at the hands of police and the subsequent conviction of six Ministry of Interior officers.

A Phnom Penh court sentenced each of the six men to 12 years in prison, sentences Lichado called unprecedented. But in a judicial system where confessions guarantee convictions, torture is commonplace and practically never prosecuted.

“For the first time in years, if not decades, police officers have been convicted and sentenced to long prison terms for their involvement in torture,” said Kek Galabru, LICADHO’s president. “But one prosecution alone does not indicate a meaningful change in the official attitude toward the use of torture – the authorities must also prosecute other similar cases if they are serious about eliminating torture in Cambodia.”

That sounds like an imminently reasonable demand to make.

VIA AKP:

King-Father and Queen Grant Donations to Poor People from Banteay Meanchey Province

Phnom Penh, July 24, 2006 AKP — King-Father Norodom Sihanouk and Queen Norodom Monineath last week granted donations to 129 poor people from Banteay Meanchey Province at the royal palace in Phnom Penh.

Each person received 50kg of rice, 1 kg of salt, a pair of trousers, 2 shirts, 2 T-shirts, 10 pages of instant noodle, 10 of sardines, a mosquito, a sarong, a scarf, and 50,000 riel (local currency roughly worth US$12).

On the occasion, King-Father Norodom Sihanouk and Queen Norodom Monineath expressed their warm welcome and respect to the entire people, especially the poor people.

For their part, the people profoundly thanked the King-Father Norodom Sihanouk and Queen-Mother Norodom Monineath for having contributed to improving their living standard. They wished the King-Father and Queen the best of health and longevity.–AK

VIA Khmer Intelligence: The Cambodia Daily yesterday moved the Funcinpec-daytime-soap-opera story forward with this brief, buried on page 18.

Funcinpec’s Internal Rift Is Resolved: Spokesman

Funcinpec President Prince Norodom Ranariddh’s spokesman announced Sunday that the party has resolved its deep internal rift, after the party’s Secretary-General Nhiek Bun Chhay reached a truce with royalist Senior Minister Serei Kosal and Prince Norodom Chakrapong. Chea Chanboribo said the three men agreed to smooth out their differences for the good of the party at a Friday meeting at party headquarters. “We have finished the argument for the sake of the party and we will follow Prince Ranariddh,” Chea Chanboribo said. “We will focus on deep reform.” Funcinpec sources said Prince Chakrapong and Nhiek Bun Chhay left Cambodia on Sunday morning to meet with Prince Ranariddh in Malaysia. Neither they nor Serei Kosal could be reached for comment CPP lawmaker Cheam Yeap said he was pleased to hear the CPP’s troubled coalition partner was addressing its problems, adding that Funcinpec has plenty to offer. “The husband works hard so the wife must also work hard,” he said (Yun Samean)

XXX OOO XXX

It’s a certainty that this Reuters piece is not the only local wire story about Ta Mok to reach international markets. But of the dozens and dozens of stories written, it seems nearly impossible that any of them could contain more errors.

Getting it wrong, of course, has its degrees. There’s minor stuff, like typos and missed punctuation marks and such. Then there’s the more flagrant kind, like errors of omission and incorrect facts.

Then there’s getting it so wrong that words transcend mere accuracy to become truth.

“It hurt so much to get here from my village because of my legs,” said former guerrilla Hong Him, 54, who lost both limbs to a landmine blast in 1986. “But I had to come to say farewell. I could never forget that it was Ta Mok who gave me a wheelchair.”

Mr. Tha Rum is one of Cambodia’s most well-known bloggers, so somehow it only seems appropriate that this great idea is his: The Perfect Phnom Penh.

The group is just over a week old but already has some pretty outstanding photography in it. And while it’s still a bit thin on local talent, that will hopefully change as the group matures. So sign up already.

The Guardian ran an interesting comment piece yesterday written by Tom Fawthrop. The whole thing kind of hangs on the death of Ta Mok but from there it detours into a chronicling of Khmer Rouge history, including some interesting details of SAS operations during the 80s.

Perhaps most notably, though, the story points out something that has mostly been missed by the current coverage surrounding Ta Mok and his killing machine.

In trying to get to grips with the chain of command behind the mass killing Ta Mok would have been a key witness as well as a star defendant given his dual role - attending leadership and policy meetings presided over by Pol Pot, and also tasked with the implementation of Angkar’s orders (the top leadership).

There’s other good stuff too. Worth a read.

The Christian Science Monitor today offers a profile on Youk Chhang, the man behind the Documentation Center of Cambodia. Chhang is quite a public figure, and his name appears often in the press. By contrast, those actually involved in the Khmer Rouge trial are virtually forbidden to speak with the media.

So details of the trial’s preparations, when they do come, will often come in little drips and drabs, as details of other stories focused on different subject matter. Like this little firecracker in the Chhang piece:

Prosecution researchers have been asking for documents about the extermination of ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cham Muslims, according to Bunsou Sour, leader of the DCC’s “tribunal response team.” Targeting such groups would constitute genocide under international law.

That almost certainly means that some unfortunate international soul had the distinct displeasure of informing their Cambodian coworkers that, in fact, part of the meager resources available to the court were going to be used investigating Cambodian crimes against the Vietnamese.

That could not have gone over well.

Forever in Transit interviews Kalyan Keo, aka “DeeDee, School Gril Genuis!“

Speaking to the Phnom Penh Post a few weeks back, Prince Sisowath Thomico said he wanted to get back into politics and was studying the possibility of creating a new political party.

He had a few curt words for Funcinpec, too:

Funcinpec hasn’t shown any commitment to the monarchy. Funcinpec has always hoped to benefit from the popularity of King Sihamoni. They have done nothing to strengthen the monarchy.

Following up with that thought, a week ago Prince Thomico wrote to Funcinpec Party President Norodom Ranariddh — on sabbatical in France since March — and asked him to dissolve the Funcinpec party, saying it had become too factionalized to serve the country any good.

Read the rest of this entry »

In an attempt to answer the riddle of Angkor’s demise, noted researcher and archaeologist Roland Fletcher has spent the past few years excavating the waterways and landscapes of ancient Angkor.

The research, Fletcher says, points to climate change as the ultimate reason for the downfall of what he calls the “biggest single pre-industrial complex on the planet.”

“Our field work is leading us to conclude the city was abandoned when destabilised river flows, due to land clearing, and new monsoon patterns, due to climate change, made the site unsustainable,” he said in a statement.

“As the canals filled with sand, it appears water broke through their embankments, badly damaging this essential infrastructure.”

Fletcher first started formulating this theory a few years ago, and for all anybody knows it might be true. The stories so far from Fletcher’s employer, Sydney University, while not altogether unconvincing, are rather thin on detail and seem to be colored with some vague position on climate change as it pertains to modern-day politics.

Fletcher, however, presented his findings at a conference in Sydney over the weekend, so complete details will presumably be available soon.

The death of Ta Mok has catapulted Cambodia once again into the international media spotlight. But behind the quoted experts and ethereal notions of justice, Ta Mok left behind a badly scarred nation of survivors with real questions and anger.

Over at Cambodia Blog, Pisey speaks up, and by doing so helps give a voice to those left unquoted in the antiseptic media coverage surrounding Ta Mok’s death.

More please.

Via Radical Torah comes encouraging news from the provinces, as told by Hadassah Max.

Mart Prang told me that prior to Banteay Srei beginning work in her village, women were both verbally and physically abused by their husbands; men spent money on alcohol and karaoke while their families went hungry; husbands often accused wives who dressed nicely of looking for new husbands (while contrary to Cambodian law some men in the village had more than one wife). She also talked about how her own life had improved after so many people - women, men and the local police - were educated about preventing violence, and how villages were now cooperating in responding to cases of violence. In Mart Prang’s own words: “Women are no longer alone in solving this problem in their families.”

Current debate so often focuses on what’s wrong in Cambodia — granted, there’s plenty to talk about — that positive or promising developments get overlooked. But for all it’s perceived problems, and real ones, Cambodia really is trending in a positive direction.

To outsiders, Cambodia can be a strange place.

I was in a cafe this morning on the waterfront in Phnom Penh minding my own business and a little kid was asking me about postcards. I politely said “No thank you” but he persisted as they often do. I continued to politely refuse his offer of postcards and he went quiet for a bit. Then he said that he was going to kill me.

It get’s even weirder.

Khmer Intelligence this morning carries a Voice of America story that Holy Crap! They didn’t really say that did they?

U.S. Embassy officials Friday call the death of former Khmer Rouge commander, Ta Mok a reason for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal to go forward as fast as possible, to take aging former Khmer Rouge leaders to trial.

That is rich.