Cambodia: Details are Sketchy

In an article in World Politics Watch, Luke Hunt flashes back to August 1979 and the first Khmer Rouge trial. Widely dismissed as a farce at the time, that two-day trial convicted Pol Pol and Ieng Sary on charges of genocide and sentenced them both to death. By the time of their convictions, however, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary had already fled to the jungle.

Two decades later, under the auspices of national reconciliation, Ieng Sary would negotiate a royal pardon for his genocide conviction, and come in from the jungle. For the Khmer Rouge Tribunals just getting underway, that’s kind of a problem.

His defection was assured only after negotiating a pardon of the verdict from then-king Norodom Sihanouk. Thus from a legal standpoint the 1979 tribunal was legitimized, posing serious questions for the current trial, which is expected to get underway in earnest by early next year, and whether or not Ieng Sary can be tried for genocide.

In his own mind, Ieng Sary believed he had immunity from any future prosecution. However, advisors to the trial will argue that while a royal pardon may exempt Ieng Sary from being put in the dock again on charges of genocide, the ageing former foreign minister and Khmer Rouge power broker could still be charged with murder or crimes against humanity.

It’s a contentious issue no doubt. But seeing that Hun Sen himself shook hands on the deal, the chances of Ieng Sary facing the dock are virtually non-existent. Those paying for the big show, of course, will absolutely hate it. But the international community needs this trial more than Hun Sen does. And both sides know it.

A feature in the New Straits Times this week follows the crew members of the Malaysian “reality TV” show Explorace as they take on the mettle-testing journey that is Route 6 from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh.

SITTING in a crowded van driven by a kamikaze baguette-muncher pressing down on the horn every five seconds isn’t my idea of fun travel.

Especially not when we are racing against time to cover over 300km of dusty highway on a sweltering hot day and the driver doesn’t seem to understand a word of English, let alone speak it, setting the rest of the van’s occupants on a murderous edge.

Then again, this wasn’t a holiday. I was on assignment in Cambodia to cover the filming of TV3’s Explorace: The Extreme Journey, now into its third season.

As terrifying as it must have been to sit in a van, somehow it got worse.

If it wasn’t bad enough to suffer major communication problems with our transporter, one of the vans carrying crew and equipment had a tyre puncture, in the middle of nowhere, and without a spare tyre in the back.

Oh, the indignity.

But that’s not the point. The point is this: Siem Reap is not some intrepid, off-the-map destination. The town counts a million plus tourists arrivals per year. The average beggar speaks five languages. How did this lot manage to find a driver that couldn’t speak English? More importantly, why on God’s green earth did it matter?

It’s a minibus. It goes to Phnom Penh. What’s to talk about?

Today’s news about the passing of a new law that effectively criminalizes parliamentary debate makes yesterday’s gob-smacker about outlawing girlfriends look inconsequential by comparison. As the Cambodia Daily today explains:

The legislation states that lawmakers cannot use their immunity “to abuse an individual’s dignity, social customs, public order and national security.” The law does not define what would constitute such abuses.

The Assembly can still vote to lift a parliamentarian’s immunity, but if a lawmaker commits what the law calls an “obvious crime,” he or she can be charged, arrested and detained immediately.

“In this case, any lawmaker who commits flagrant offenses, the authorities can charge, arrest and detain [them]. Then the authorities must report to the National Assembly immediately for it to make a decision,” the law states. In the absence of a so-called “serious crime”—which the law does not attempt to define—a decision to hold a vote to strip a lawmaker’s immunity requires simply a request from a tenth of the Assembly’s 123 lawmakers, from the Assembly president or from the prime minister.

Opposition lawmakers have always worked under the threat of vague laws and a sensitive majority, but this new legislation turns the screws on assembly debate considerably tighter than anything ever before.

So tight, in fact, that it hardly seems worth the effort to play along with the illusion any longer. Although the debate probably should have moved years ago, now seems as good a time as any to officially change the argument from degrees of democracy to degrees of benevolence.

Hosted this year by AsiaPundit, the Asian Blog Awards today opened voting for several major categories. Although the awards do not include a category specifically for Cambodia, they do give a prize for Best Mekong Region Blog, which encompasses our humble little country.

In a coup of no small proportions, two of the category’s four finalists are native Khmer speakers: ThaRum and Wanna. Counting Gordon Sharpless at the Tales of Asia Blog, Cambodia takes three out of the four spots for category finalists.

The four finalist for the Best Mekong Region Blog are:

• Tales of Asia/Cambodia
• ThaRum
• Vietnamese God
• Wanna’s Diary

Mad props to Gordon, ThaRum and Wanna.

In related news, the Asian Blog Awards home page also gives readers a quick update on the previous round of voting, which included Cambodia’s own Phnomenon as a finalist for Best Asian Food Blog. Asian Blog Awards assures us that vote counting will be done shortly and results are expected to be made public next week.

The Cambodia Daily weekend edition had a really great story about the discovery of oil in Cambodia and its likely consequences on the country. The Daily, unfortunately, has no real web site, and the story — Pipe Dreams: How Would Cambodia Manage an Oil Boom — really was too complex to easily summarize and just plain too long to copy.

In a bit of serendipity, The Christian Science Monitor today runs a similar version of Adam Piore’s weekend Cambodia Daily piece. The nickel version:

By some estimates - according to the UNDP - it’s not unreasonable to believe that in the coming years, revenue from gas and oil deposits will more than double Cambodia’s GDP, which now stands at about $5 billion (much of that is from foreign aid). And that’s not even counting the disputed zones between Thailand and Cambodia, which could be the richest of all.

“I think that the oil and gas in the overlapping area is 10 times bigger than the oil [in] Block A,” says Men Den, director of exploration at the National Petroleum Authority.

So why then are development experts wringing their hands? The list of developing nations ruined by the “resource curse” is a long one, many say.

Over the past 35 years, per capita incomes in countries with a dominant, nonrenewable resource grew two to three times slower than those of resource-deficient countries, according to one paper prepared by the Overseas Development Institute.

Many diplomats and NGOs in Phnom Penh worry that the oil and natural gas - which could start flowing as soon as 2009 - could reverse more than a decade of poverty alleviation and transform Cambodia into a full-scale kleptocracy.

But read the whole thing, there are some points for optimism.

Not quite yet, actually. But if a law being debated on the National Assembly floor today passes, which it is expected to do, married people will be subject to criminal prosecution for consorting outside of their legal relationship.

If that seems a bit draconian, that’s because it is. As a tool to lean on uncooperative law makers, however, it should be extremely effective. One inside observer in the past has put the number of married assembly members with mistresses at 98 percent, although that may be slightly understated.

According to the story in today’s Cambodia Daily, several political observers question the timing of the law and suspect it is aimed at pressuring Funcinpec President Norodom Ranariddh. But Koul Panha, director of the Committee for Free and Fair Elections, suggests that wandering-husband syndrome threatens to undermine years of methodic intermarrying among powerful CPP family dynasties.

Prince Sisowath Thominco — now head of his own political party, too — found the news distressing. “We are going backwards,” he told the Daily.

UPDATE: The Daily reports Thursday that a vote on the law has been delayed, but probably by only a day or two.

VIA KhmeraOnline: Kyodo reported late yesterday that Jacques Verges, a French lawyer made famous by representing some of humanity’s worst criminals, has formally agreed to defend Khieu Samphan in the upcoming Khmer Rouge Tribunals.

Jacques Verges is not an uncontroversial figure. His client list includes former-Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie, terrorist Carlos the Jackal, Yugoslav Slobodan Milosevic and Iraqi Tarek Aziz. Michael Radu describes the 81-year-old lawyer as thus:

For those who believe that communism, and even more so, Stalinism, are long dead, Vergès is a living fossil, his ideology a Jurassic Park of 20th century criminal thought. Vergès’ biography is revealing of a certain trend in European, especially French, intellectual environment, where “justice” is a matter of ideology, fashion and politics rather than morality and law. It is only in such an environment that a lawyer who lost most of his cases (before France abolished capital punishment in 1984, Vergès was nicknamed “Monsieur guillotine,” in recognition of the fate of many of his clients) became famous, had his books published by the most prestigious editors, and is taken seriously in his relentless assaults against the very concepts of Western law and democracy.

Speaking with Kyodo and his new lawyer Sunday in Phnom Penh, Khieu Samphan said that he had the fullest confidence in Verges, whom he had met while studying in Paris during the 1950s.

Although he was quoted in the Cambodia Daily yesterday denying that the arrest of four Cambodian border patrol agents had ever happened, Kampot provincial governor Thach Khorn tells DPA a different story today.

Kampot governor Khorn said Tuesday he had already dispatched an investigative team to get to the bottom of the matter, saying that while it was still unclear if the coast guard officials were moonlighting as pirates, the allegations should not be ignored.

The reason for the discrepancy? It appears that Khieu Ba, the navy chief who had assured the governor that the whole affair was fiction, may have been less than forthcoming. The fact that his brother, Captain Khieu Be, was one of those detained probably had something to do with it.

Vietnam’s deputy commander of the southeastern coast guard, Nguyen Kim Hong, identified one of the Cambodian men arrested as Captain Khieu Be, 39, who said he was deputy head of the Kampot province’s Battalion Number 241 and also commander of Interdisciplinary Checkpoint Number 15.

The general conversation over at Khmer440 is seldom worthy of comment. A year’s worth of intimidation, harassment and death threats against a female blogger, however, goes far beyond the forum’s typical, mind-numbingly dull sex-tourist banter. That cops and lawyers are now getting involved seems more than appropriate.

That the humbly named Khmer440 moderator (who gives a version of events here) has started removing offending content from the Khmer440 web site is likely indicative of the legal situation in which he currently finds himself. But it’s probably too late to start feigning ignorance now.

Nor is his situation likely to get any better. In fact, it could get much, much worse. Along with Cambodia’s tiny expat blogosphere, all the commotion has apparently sparked the interest of local women’s groups, who are finding the overt sexual content of the Khmer440 web site just a wee bit disconcerting, perhaps even criminal.

But credit where credit is due. The whole affair really has demonstrated a fairly superhuman display of daftness on the part of Lord Playboy. By all tellings, the guy tried to pick a fight with a online stranger, and when the stranger dismissed his advances, he worked himself up into such a spittle-flecked rage that he now finds himself in intensive care due to self-inflicted wounds, with no one to blame for his troubles but himself.

Prak Chan Thul tells readers of the Cambodia Daily this morning about nutball university professor Tieng Narith.

A 30-year-old lecturer of political philosophy at Preah Sihanouk Raja Buddhist University in Phnom Penh has been fired for teaching his own textbook, a profanity-filled screed against the government, the university said.

Tieng Narith had taught at the university for four years, but in May began teaching from his self-published book “Political Philosophy,” which features a photo of himself on the cover along with images of prominent historical figures including Machiavelli, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.

Tieng Narith’s textbook is apparently founded on the professor’s personal opinions on many of Phnom Penh’s greatest political scandals, including the death of Piseth Peaklica and the 1997 grenade attack. Tieng Narith even weighs in on the Cambodian Freedom Fighters — a little know group responsible for an attempted coup in 2000 — a government plot, he says.

The reasoning behind Tieng Narith’s vulgar diatribe will surprise no one. He wrote the book to liberate Cambodia from domination by Vietnam. “I want to liberate the puppet regime in Cambodia because I don’t want to see Cambodia like Laos, which is all swallowed up except in its name,” he said.

As ill-informed and hate-filled as Tieng Narith sounds, it would appear that his sentiments about the Vietnamese are shared by many, if not most, of his countrymen.

So while the thought of university professor in Cambodia teaching racial purity from a book with Adolf Hitler on the cover should be shocking, sadly, it is not.

No doubt spending to win friends an influence people, China has just signed a deal with the government to build a country-wide fiber-optic network.

China’s leading telecommunications equipment supplier Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd on Monday signed a commercial contract with Telecommunication Cambodia (TC) to materialize an internet construction project which aims to provide the country with a digital information exchange platform to be shared with its neighbors.

Under the project, an optical telecommunication network will be laid all over the country to allow high-quality internet communication among Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and China.

This is a part of the Greater Mekong Subregion Information Superhighway (GMS-IS) Plan, for which the Chinese government will extend policy and financial support as well as 17.5 million U.S. dollars worth of preferential loans, said Duan Jinzhu, counselor at the Chinese Embassy.

The promise, of course, is true broadband at happy hour prices. The reality? Who knows? But ‘NGO’, ‘government’, ‘rich’ and ‘make’ are almost certainly somewhere in the small print.

No matter, it’s a ginormous step forward for the country’s networking capability, which is still mostly based on the carrier pigeon. It should even help facilitate an end to current Internet price-gouging. Or at the very least, make current gouging practices a little less pricey.

Despite indications by police officials otherwise, Singapore has not returned Cambodia’s erstwhile police chief Heng Pov to the much-awaiting arms of his accusers. This is, of course, not the least bit surprising.

Heng Pov’s Singaporean visa supposedly expired Saturday, and last week a “senior Cambodian police official” speaking to the Cambodia Daily on the condition of anonymity said that Singapore had pledged to return Heng Pov when his visa expired.

The Cambodia Daily, for their part, didn’t seem so convinced.

Asked if the return Sunday was definite, the official said this depends on Singapore.

“We are not sure,” he said. “This is the promise of Singapore. They will deport this man from Singapore to our country.”

“The CID [Criminal Investigation Department] of Singapore promised us if the visa is finished the law of Singapore can send this man back to his own country.”

Having a law is one thing, enforcing it quite another, as the senior Cambodian police official must certainly know. Given the rules governing applications for asylum, not to mention the appeals process, resolution of this whole sordid Heng Pov afffair could take months, if not longer.

Pass the popcorn.

The Cambodia Daily this morning follows up on the getting-weirder-by-the-day “Cambodian border patrol/pirates” story originally reported by DPA Hanoi.

Kampot provincial officials Sunday denied a news report that four Cambodian border-patrol officers were arrested in disputed waters Thursday by Vietnamese officials and accused of piracy. … Thanh Khorn, Kampot provincial governor, said the incident never occurred.

“I called the border commander. He said no such incident [occurred] and there were no arrests,” Thach Khorn said by telephone. He added that any allegations that Cambodian border officials were engaged in piracy would tarnish the nation’s image.

Khieu Ba, navy chief of Koh Ses island, which is located near the Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc, also denied that the incident had occurred. He added that border police from Cambodia and Vietnam jointly patrol the disputed waters between the two countries. “The news is not true,” he said.

So Cambodian officials say it never happened, which would imply none-too-subtly that DPA in Hanoi got it bad wrong.

That’s a possibility. The DPA story relies on a single source, deputy commander of Vietnam’s Southern Regional Coast Guard Nguyen Kim Hong. He could have either gotten the facts wrong or took them to a conclusion they did not support.

Which would be terrific news for Cambodia. Because the only other real option now is that the Koh Ses island navy chief is in on the fix, at least.

Kim Bah Lee relates this and other short quips from his Cambodia trip back in double-ought-five.

Sat in a pizza joint on the Phnom Penh riverfront, trying to persuade the waitress - through the medium of mime - that if she insisted on me tasting the “happy” herb topping I’d likely pass out and/or be sick, when I saw a monkey.

The monkey was on a lead and being fed rice and Red Bull by its owner, a local expat. Quite a crowd had gathered. One gentleman, who had only one leg and was selling knocked-off paperbacks, was quite smitten. He then produced a rather large and very hairy spider. For a dollar, the monkey’s owner bought the tarantula and placed it on the floor in front of the monkey. The monkey pushed it around with its feet for a bit, before picking it up, plucking the legs off one by one and eating them with an enormous monkey grin on its face.

It was a special moment.

Funny boy, that Kim Bah Lee.

From The People’s Daily Online comes this incredible news:

By this June, southwestern Yunnan Province has helped its bordering Cambodia and Laos to plant over 900,000 mu (60,000 hectares) cash-bearing crops to relieve their dependence on growing opium poppy, said sources with the local government.

Unbelievable! Cambodia actually impersonated being Burma so it could cash in on Chinese farming schemes. And got away with it. That is some hella-serious game.

Matt Dillon confesses that while in Cambodia shooting City of Ghosts he got drunk and beat up a backpacker.

Movie star MATT DILLON was left so stressed out after making his directorial debut with the critically acclaimed CITY OF GHOSTS, he fell into a boozy stupor that led to a frightening bar brawl. The CRASH star recalls returning to Cambodia, where he made the 2002 film, and finding himself hooked on local alcohol. But what started as a break from Hollywood led to a boozed-up Dillon picking a fight with a backpacker. He recalls, “I got into an altercation with some a**hole Australian backpacker.” The traveller reportedly headbutted Dillon in the fracas that followed and the actor admits he just went crazy. He adds, “I got up. I don’t talk about it much, because it’s kind of embarrassing. I started pounding him. He was trying to get away from me. I was out of my mind.” Dillon now tries to keep himself busy because he accepts beer and boredom do not sit well with him. He concludes, “I wasn’t used to being idle and just being alone with my thoughts and feelings.”

How is it that somebody mega-famous like Matt Dillon gets into a bar fight with a backpacker and nobody hears about it? In a gossip-mongering, trash-talking, one-horse town like Phnom Penh? That’s a little hard to believe, really.

UPDATE: The source for the above article is here. It appears they got it wrong, and that this actually happened in Laos, which is supported by this interview with Dillon in Details.

“Listen, man,” he explains. “Those are characters. I’m no tough guy. I’m not a violent person.” He concedes, though, that he scrapped with a backpacker after City of Ghosts wrapped in 2001. Dillon says he’d gone to Bali to decompress at a friend’s place, but it hadn’t worked. “I kept thinking, ‘All I want to do is be back in the gutter in Cambodia shooting scenes,’” he says. “It was a high in a way, and coming down, trying to be fulfilled in Bali, watching all of these Europeans with their beautiful homes, wasn’t working for me. So I went to Bangkok, and then I went to Laos.”

Then came the fight. At a bar, Dillon, still wound up, took a head butt from a backpacker that knocked him on his keister. His response? “I went after him pretty good. I don’t know if he was Australian or English, but I was kicking his ass, then he ran off.”

To the average gin-soaked, power-drinking college kid, a night like this would be considered legendary.

Phnom Penh - A Cambodian Buddhist monk who stripped naked and raced through suburban streets after a heavy night of drinking rice wine laced with toads has been asked to leave the monkhood, a religious official said Saturday.

Sim Soktriya, chief monk of Russei Keo district on the outskirts of the capital, said a woman discovered the naked monk Friday passed out on her doorstep.

Asked to leave the monkhood? Ya think?

What’s really amazing is that getting faceless drunk, streaking through the streets and passing out naked on the neighbors front porch is not considered unruly enough to actually get a monk thrown out.

For years fishermen working in coastal waters have feared attacks from pirates, who steal their catch and their equipment, and occasionally slaughter whole crews. In recent months as many as 40 boats have been attacked in disputed waters between Vietnam and Cambodia, an area notorious for few cops and lots of robbers.

Pirates working the disputed waters come from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and, as the recent arrest of four Cambodians shows, Cambodia too.

Vietnam’s sea police have detained four armed pirates of Cambodian nationality when they were escorting four Vietnamese fishing ships toward Cambodia, local media reported Friday.

The four men aged between 32 and 39 were arrested by the sea police in Vietnam’s southern Kien Giang province on Thursday noon when they, using guns, were forcing the Vietnamese ships to run toward Cambodia, said Young People newspaper.

The deeply cynical, no doubt, would proffer something along the lines of “Yeah, I bet those four Cambodian pirates were probably just some drunk guardsmen trying to save the Kingdom from the invading Vietnamese hordes.”

That, of course, would be wrong for many reasons. But mostly because, as it turns out, it would prove to be not nearly cynical enough.

Vietnam has released four Cambodian Sea Border Patrol officials arrested in disputed waters and accused of piracy, the Vietnamese coast guard said Friday. The four Cambodians were released late Thursday night on orders from the central Vietnam government, after confirming they were members of Cambodia’s border patrol.

But a Vietnamese official said the incident at sea on Thursday raises new questions about a series of pirate attacks on Vietnamese fishing boats.

“I think that these Cambodian coast guards were the ones thought to have been pirates who raided many Vietnamese fishing vessels before,” said Nguyen Kim Hong, deputy commander of Vietnam’s Southern Regional Coast Guard.

UPDATE: Vietnam.net Bridge is referring to those arrested as a “gang of Cambodian pirates” and suggests that their intentions were to kidnap and hold for ransom the victims. Add salt to taste.

This is, like, news from another planet:

Cambodian lawmakers on Friday called on Myanmar’s ruling military junta to stop oppressing its people and to deliver on its failed promises of democratic reforms.

Right. With Thomas Jefferson watching from the heavens, Cambodia and Burma sat down for a thoughtful debate on the relative merits of personal freedom and pluralistic democracy.

Shut. Up.

VIA Khmer Intelligence: With just a bit too much aloofness, Committee of the Victims of the Khmer Rouge president Chhay Hoc Pheng had this to say at Wednesday’s press conference announcing the committee’s good intentions.

The population is ill informed on their rights and their duties. A lot of people are scared to file complaints or to testify. This committee is here to support them and to encourage them. Our goal is not in any way to claim for compensations, but to incite the tribunal to work seriously to provide justice for the victims, to help them file complaints, and to protect them.

Save for the pompous rhetoric, the idea apparently at the heart of Chhay’s committee sounds like one of the better ones to come forth so far. Quite simply, the committee would collect written personal accounts of victims of the Khmer Rouge and submit them to the court as part of the official record.

In doing so, it would give everyone in the country a chance to tell his or her own story to the courts, anonymously if desired, with minimal fuss and costs. That alone would do much to quell criticisms of the trials’ limited inclusiveness.

Even more importantly, giving victims a voice in the process would help confer a sense of ownership in the trials. The more people are invested, the more likely they are to support any eventual outcomes. Ultimately, the final verdict on the tribunal’s success or failure rests with the victims. It is their trial, after all.

The only major hurdle is that a large part of the population does not read or write. But that is hardly insurmountable, and the alternative would be to do nothing, which could very well undermine all the money and hard work invested.

So why not?

The Cambodia Daily this morning picks up on the story of Ngov Seng Vannak, a Build Bright University student now infamous for writing the country’s first major computer virus.

Build Bright University student Ngov Seng Vannak has earned a rare distinction. In a perverse indication of progress, the 20-year-old has become the first Cambodian to gain infamy for designing a computer virus.

In July, CTN ran a news story about Ngov Seng Vannak’s “BBU Virus,” which had infected computers throughout Phnom Penh, and interviewed the student.

But days later, a CTN staffer who takes classes at BBU inserted his flash drive into a CTN computer and the BBU Virus subsequently infected the station’s computer system, crashing it for three days.

“I turned on my computer and the screen was black,” CTN senior program producer Chum Kosal, who is also an adviser to Hun Sen, recalled Thursday. “The virus destroyed all the station’s programs.”

Since the broadcast, CTN has received complaints from the public that the BBU Virus has also spread to the provinces, he said.

Ngov Seng Vannak, a native of Kompong Chhnang province, said he is proud of his virus, and that he is now studying all the textbooks he can to become a world-class computer hacker.

As Information Minister and government spokesman Khieu Kanharith suggests in the article, this young man should be sued until the proverbial cows come home, if not tossed into the clicker clinker. Probably both.

Recent allegations made against the government by disgraced police chief Heng Pov have prompted both Ron Abney and Sam Rainsy to ask the United States to reopen its investigation into the March 30, 1997, grenade attack in which Abney and more than 100 others were injured and at least 16 killed.

In a written request to the FBI Abney includes a transcript of Heng Pov’s recent statement and urges the Bureau to rededicate itself to finding justice for those injured and killed in the attack.

I urge you to read this transcript carefully as the facts are very similar to those of participants, bystanders and your own FBI report on what exactly happened that tragic day. The testimony leads directly to Hun Sen’s top police official, Mr. Hok Lundy and to the Prime Minister himself.

I am forwarding my request to you to Senators John McCain; Saxby Chambliss and Mitch McConnell. As the American who was injured that day by the Cambodian Government’s’ hand and on behalf of the families of the surviving Cambodians killed that day, I urge you to re-open your files regarding the investigation so all of us can begin to get some closure on this tragedy.

Other than as a symbolic act of protest against the Hun Sen government, it’s not exactly clear what either man hopes to gain by such a request. In terms of actually adding to the record of what was previously known about the attack, Heng Pov’s statement contributes virtually nothing of substance.

But even if it did, getting at the truth has never really been the problem — it’s what to do about it. As R. Jeffrey Smith put it at the time:

Hun Sen, 46, is the most powerful man in Cambodia today, with a military force of about 1,000 men at his personal disposal, and diplomats here say that even if the charges are proven, he will not leave office without a fight. The chance of obtaining a fair trial for those involved in the bombing is also considered slim, because Hun Sen’s party controls both the Interior Ministry and the judiciary.

That leaves Washington with few viable options for resolving the bombing case without destabilizing the Cambodian government.

That is why the FBI report in 1998 deliberately pointed no fingers and the whole bloody affair got quietly swept under the carpet. Political expediency, as usual, trumped any high-minded notions of truth and justice.

To think that things are that much different today than they were nine years ago seems a bit self-deluded, and is unlikely to end in anything but more disappointment.

Is this kind of stuff just the result of bad reporting and/or translations, or is the weight of the upcoming Khmer Rouge Tribunals starting to make people a bit loopy?

SRP legislator Keo Remy says that genocide is a very serious crime, and there should be more witnesses than the set number.

Cambodia Center for Human Rights’ director, Kem Sokha says that there are hundreds of other witnesses that can testify but are not invited, and that this is a human rights violation.

If Keo Remy wins the “Understatement of the Year” award, than Kem Sokha must win one for “Most Clueless Human Rights Defender.” But really, it seems extremely unlikely that that is actually what either man really said.

So what’s up with the Voice of America? All those kagillions of Dollars of America couldn’t hire an editor? ‘Cause making the country’s leading human rights activists look kind of clueless seems counterproductive to spreading democracy. That the damage comes self-inflicted just adds insult to the injury.

The Cambodia Daily today reports on a South Korean matchmaking company searching for Cambodian women interested in marrying South Korean men.

A South Korean company named “Plus Wedding” is seeking Cambodian women who want to marry South Korean men and settle in Korea, the firm announced in advertisements this week in a Khmer-language newspaper.

The firm is the second to emerge in recent months offering to help Cambodian women find partners and like its predecessor, Couple Service, government officials have already greeted it with hostility.

If in the eyes of the government Couple Service was an affront to Khmer culture, this must be a dirty shoe upside the head. As the Korea Times reports, tales of ‘happily ever after’ are few.

Seven out of 10 mixed marriages have problems of domestic violence and emotional abuse of migrant wives

“Why am I cursed with such a fate” Last month Jasmine, a 26-year-old woman from the Philippines, cried as she reflected upon her current situation.

Earlier that same day, her husband had taken the 100,000 won (C$122) she earned by doing side jobs, beat her and then threw her out of the house. She sought relief at the house of a neighbor, who called the Domestic Violence hotline.

But it’s not all bad news.

However, migrant wives in Korea do not need to feel that there is no support network available for them or for their children. At present, relief for abused migrant wives can be found at organizations such as the Women Migrants Human Rights Center in Seoul.

Apropos of pretty much nothing, a short and rather mindless list of things banned in Cambodia.

1. Porn fear sparks Cambodia 3G ban
2. Right-hand Drive Vehicles Banned in Cambodia
3. Swimsuits Banned in Miss Cambodia Contest
4. Although commercial logging has been banned in Cambodia, illicit cutting continues…
5. Global Witness banned from entering Cambodia
6. Cambodia: Police ban on Iraq death videos
7. Folidol is one of the most popular pesticides on the market even though it is formally banned in Cambodia …
8. Thai move ‘Ghost Game’ banned in Cambodia
9. Cambodia bans poultry imports from neighbors hit by bird flu …
10. TIME has been banned in Cambodia for most of the past five years
11. Government bans on all songs that refer to the second wife.

Bangladesh Open Source Intelligence Monitors has a rather long post up titled “Asia’s Coming Water Wars.” In it author Chietigj Bajpaee argues that even with current populations the planet’s water needs are unsustainable, and growing demands for water are all but certain to inflame rivalries if not spark all-out war between countries and between different factions inside of countries.

Bajpaee goes on to argue that Asia — with its poverty, surging populations and massive Chinese dam-building projects — is a likely candidate to lead the globe in water-related conflict. And in Asia, he argues, the Mekong River Delta is the likeliest flashpoint.

Mekong River Delta: Dams a Barrier for Cooperation

The Asian Development Bank launched the Mekong Sub-region in 1992 as an initiative aimed at promoting development, trade and integration through enhancing transportation, communication, and power networks between the six countries in the region. The Mekong region covers over 2.3 million square miles and is home to 240 million people. The 4,880 kilometer (3,032 miles) Mekong River begins in the Tibetan plateau, and makes its way through China’s Yunnan province, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and discharges out into the South China Sea. Close to 70 million people depend on the river for food, water and transport and the region accounts for 20 percent of all fish caught from the inland waters of the world.

[ ... ]

Following in the footsteps of China, other countries in the delta have also pursued a unilateral approach toward projects along the river system — Vietnam has engaged in several dam construction projects without consulting with Cambodia, as has Laos. Coupled with long-standing historical animosities between states in the region such as between China and Vietnam and Thailand and Myanmar, as well as internal frictions caused by poverty and a number of long-standing insurgencies, water disputes act as a potential catalyst for regional conflict.

That the Mekong River Commission is the regions best hope for deterring conflict between countries will comfort few.

While certainly disconcerting, today’s report in the Cambodia Daily about the CPP coercing villagers into joining the party really comes as no surprise.

When villagers sign up to join the CPP, they give their names, ages and the size of their rice paddies, said Leam Chea, chief of Thloak commune. Though he denied that CPP officials threatened to cut the water supply, Leam Chea said new members have to take a vow that includes supernatural punishment if they turn their backs on the CPP. “[The spirit] Tevada will punish them by separating their families and their happiness will be destroyed if they betray our party,” he warned.

The “supernatural punishment” thing, though, is a bit out there, not to mention thuggish and probably illegal. No doubt an independent prosecutor will be keen to right such gratuitous wrongs.

The Daily this morning follows up with the case of 15-year-old Lao Chamrong, who was recently convicted for the murder of British bar owner David Mitchell. Jane Nye, Mitchell’s girlfriend who was nearly killed in the attack, has expressed uncertainty that the police convicted the right man.

The moneyquote, however, comes from acting prosecutor Ngeth Sarath, who offers this insightful piece of free legal advice to would-be victims.

Acting prosecutor Ngeth Sarath defended the court’s decision Tuesday. “Police arrested him with blood on the shirt,” he said. “We found the knife that he threw away.” He added that the only discrepancy in the case was the difference between Cambodians and foreigners. “[The foreigners] were big but they were stabbed easily. But for us, we must fight till the death.”

The prosecutor’s implication here seems to be that when confronted in the middle of the night by a crazed, knife-wielding killer whacked out on yaba, one should fight till the death — presumably the attackers, not yours — which is to say kill the little vermin.

Duly noted.

With an illustrated depiction of Angkor Wat turned upside down, is the Phnomenon web site an example of a dumb foreigner too arrogant to grasp the complexities of Khmer culture? Or is it just a case of over-sensitive Khmers suffering from a collective inferiority complex getting their kramas in a wad over some imagined slight?

Is posing such a question just a cheap way for Vireak to juice the number of hits at Khemera’s Corner? Is rephrasing Vireak’s question to be even more incendiary and with the same hope of juicing hits to your own blog just as cheap? Or cheaper?

Who knows? But if the idea is to pose some incredibly inflammatory question with the hope of generating a comment war, requiring people to sign up for an e-mail-verified account before they can post seems like a poor way of fanning the flames.

Afterall, if you wanted to pour fuel on the fire and say something completely foolish, ill-informed and juvenile, you wouldn’t really want to sign your name to it, now would ya?

For some reason, today’s editorial in The Nation about the upcoming Khmer Rouge Tribunals rings a bit hollow.

Thailand, which turned a blind eye to the Khmer Rouge’s atrocities, must reflect on this horrible past. It was an open secret that top Thai military leaders had links to Khmer Rouge leaders like Pol Pot, Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea and Ieng Sary. They justified these ties on the grounds of national security. This explains why the Khmer Rouge was able to operate along the Thai-Cambodian border and even crossed over into Thailand at will. This part of the story has not been questioned clearly enough. Suffice it to say, the Thai people paid no attention to the genocide next door.

Actually, make that a lot hollow. The Nation here is trying to insinuate that Thailand really played no role in the Khmer Rouge years except to turn a blind eye.

If by “turned a blind eye” The Nation means served as Pol Pot’s primary buyer of gems and timber while at the same time making stacks of money and pretty much ensuring the Khmer Rouge remained flush with cash, then yes, Thailand “turned a blind eye.”

If by “turned a blind eye” The Nation means profited wildly by selling arms to the Khmer Rouge in support of their struggle for “national salvation”, then yes, Thailand “turned a blind eye.”

If by “turned a blind eye” The Nation means gunned down refugees as they tried to flee across the Cambodia-Thai border, then yes, Thailand indeed “turned a blind eye.”

But that’s probably not what The Nation meant, which would seem to indicate that a little more soul searching on Thailand’s part is still very much in order.