Cambodia: Details are Sketchy

Cambodia’s ongoing crackdown on pedophiles is having some wonderful knock-on effects.

Cambodian police said an American police officer accused of sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl killed himself Tuesday while in custody in the capital. Local and U.S. authorities said the death was under investigation.

Donald Rene Ramirez of San Francisco “committed suicide by firing two bullets into his mouth,” said Keo Thea, chief of antihuman trafficking police in Phnom Penh.

Reporters were not allowed into the police station to verify the official account, and it was unclear exactly how Ramirez shot himself, including how he would have fired twice. Police planned a news conference about the incident later Tuesday.

Keo Thea said a police guard left his small gun unattended while he went to a bathroom.

The American used a broomstick to pull the gun from under a woven mat on which the police guard had been sleeping and used the gun to shoot himself, Keo Thea told reporters.

Right.

VIA Khmer Intelligence: According to a Radio Free Asia story translated by Khmer Intelligence, Mondolkiri authorities have forced ethnic minorities from their homes to make way for an ethnic minority cultural center.

What, exactly, authorities mean by “cultural center” is not at all clear. But it seems incredibly likely that those authorities are being just a smidgen less than honest about accurately stating their intentions.

Mondulkiri is Cambodia’s least populated province, with something like one person for every two square kilometers. So the notion that there is no other suitable spot to develop somebody’s half-baked tourist scam is not just transparently stupid, but seems like a pretty clear indicator of what Mondolkiri authorities really think about the natives.

UNHCR gives the rundown on stateless people of Cambodian decent living in Vietnam.

We have many difficulties,” says Demontero. “I can’t even buy a motorbike, which is a very small thing. It’s normal for transportation but I can’t buy one. I had to buy it in the name of my wife,” who is a Vietnamese citizen.

Demontero is one of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians who sought refuge in Viet Nam in the 1970s when the brutal Khmer Rouge under dictator Pol Pot occupied the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, and turned the clock back to “Year Zero.”

By the early 1990s, most had been resettled to third countries, or had gone home. But some 9,500 people – including many Cambodians of Chinese ancestry – were disowned by Cambodia and were unable to return. In the chaos of being chased to the fields by the Khmer Rouge, these refugees, who today live in the countryside around Ho Chi Minh City, lost their papers and were unable to prove they were Cambodian citizens.

The problem of statelessness occurs on both sides of the border, to both Cambodian and Vietnamese people. Getting those people “papered up” is a priority of UNHCR. But government bureaucracy often gets in the way.

In Cambodia, many, if not most or all, of those recently relocated due to eviction are finding themselves in a similar position. Apparently, authorities have yet to update or reissue the identity papers of those families, leaving them unable to prove residency and thus register to vote.

What will ultimately become of this growing number of disaffected citizens remains to be seen, but it’s unlikely to be good.

The Happy Planet Index bills itself as “an index of human well-being and environmental impact.” A country’s HPI is calculated by averaging its scores for ecological footprint, life-satisfaction and life expectancy. Interpreting the results, however, aren’t nearly as simple as the name implies.

The Index doesn’t reveal the ‘happiest’ country in the world. It shows the relative efficiency with which nations convert the planet’s natural resources into long and happy lives for their citizens. The nations that top the Index aren’t the happiest places in the world, but the nations that score well show that achieving, long, happy lives without over-stretching the planet’s resources is possible.

In developing this novel idea, the folks at Happy Planet Index determined that the “reasonable ideal” for HPI should be 83.5. Rather interestingly, not one country on the planet makes the grade.

First place, if you can call it that, went to Vanuatu, a little country that no one has ever heard of, which is probably why they are so happy. Vanuatu scored 68.2, well short of the reasonable ideal. Last place went to the African country of Zimbabwe, which scored a paltry 16.6.

Cambodia scored 42.2, or 90th place on a list of 178 countries — not bad, all things considered — better than Laos (40.3), but not as good as Vietnam (61.2) or Thailand (55.4). (Clearly, the Happy Planet people have never actually been to Vietnam.)

You can even determine your own personal HPI, if you’re so inclined.

Carburetor kits that let petrol-based motorcycle engines run on liquid petroleum gas will soon be available in Cambodia.

A Cambodian motor company has signed an agreement to purchase hundreds of made-in-Vietnam liquid petroleum gas (LPG) motorbike conversion kits, said a scientist Saturday.

The inventor of the conversion kit, Bui Van Ga said that Global Impexs Motor Cambodia Co. Ltd has bought 400 carburetor kits to convert petrol engines to combust on LPG.

Ga, Director of central Da Nang University, said that using gas reduced environmental pollution by 30 percent and save 40 percent in fuel costs.

He added the agreement came after the company had purchased and tested 10 conversion kits, calling the innovative product economical, effective and viable for the local market.

Kits made for cars have long been available, but the overwhelming majority of drivers in the Kingdom drive motorbikes. With petrol costs running at roughly US$1 per liter, Cambodia could prove a lucrative market for both the maker and the importer of the kits.

From Vietnam Net Bridge:

A South Korean national was caught with a gun in his pocket as he tried to enter Vietnam at the Moc Bai border crossing on October 20.

Police say Park Jong-jun has entered Vietnam more than 20 times in the past ten months, coming through Moc Bai on several occasions. …

Jun told police he had bought the gun to ‘deal with’ some people who had cheated him in a business deal.

A search of his pockets also revealed a cartridge clip, some pornography, a small quantity of narcotics and a pile of photos of young Vietnamese and Cambodian women.

Not just a pistol, but a pocket full of smack and pornography too. Nice.

Ryan Zondervan, a mid-western American currently making his way through Cambodia, marvels at the Kingdom’s many “cultural disconnects,” such as the attraction to white skin, or the completely innocuous but otherwise culturally incongruous comment of “you’re so fat.”

Another cultural bit I like - if nature calls, you can go anywhere you want. Next to a bush, on the side of a building, anywhere! No one cares. Women even do this - they just wrap a towel around the waist, squat, and “ahhh - relief!”

At least in the cities, though, this kind of behavior should probably not be encouraged.

UPDATE: As Manur in comments keenly observes: the missing link.  Thanks.

VIA Khmer Intelligence: As always, it’s impossible to know what gets lost in translation, but at first blush, the former KR official who has come forward to lay responsibility for Khmer Rouge atrocities at the feet of Norodom Sihanouk sounds like a wingnut.

Sieng Sak, a close confidant of the former KR leader, who currently lives in Lowell, Massachusetts, and who entered Phnom Penh for the first time on 17 April 1975, is accusing two personalities as the responsible persons [in the genocide]: Former Cambodian Monarch Norodom Sihanouk and Khieu Samphan. …

He said that between 1975 and the beginning of April 1976, the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) regime was not yet formed. During that period, it was still the under GRUNC (French acronym for “Gouvernement Royal d’Union National du Cambodge,” Royal Government of the National Union of Cambodia) regime with Samdech Sihanouk as its leader.

Sieng Sak said: “One share of responsibility must go first to Samdech Sihanouk [for the period] between 17 April 1975 and 2 April 1976. Next, Khieu Samphan must bear the responsibility for the period between 3 April 1976 and 6 January 1979. On 17 April [1975], we worked and I worked with Samdech Sihanouk, and we already obtained the proof that they were the days he is responsible for.”

Likewise, Sieng Sak also seems to argue that Pol Pot unfairly gets blamed for the estimated 2 million deaths that occurred under the DK regime. The logic — or illogic, as the case may be — of this position seems to rest with Sieng Sak’s belief that Pol Pot “only held a position in the party,” and that ultimate responsibility remains with Khieu Samphan, although the story does not elaborate on the whys and wherefores of this argument.

Further, at least as far as the RFA story goes, Sieng Sak makes no attempt to reconcile the contradictory stance that Sihanouk, the symbolic head of state during Pol Pot’s first year of power, is somehow more responsible for the genocide than Pol Pot himself.

Despite the wobbly rhetoric, however, Sieng Sak does indirectly raise a rather intriguing point: Norodom Sihanouk played a relatively significant role in supporting the KR’s rise to power, and as the regime’s head of state during that first year, Sihanouk, perhaps not unfairly, might be considered a target of the Extraordinary Chambers.

But like the rest of Sieng Sak’s arguments, this one too will probably get dismissed as the rantings of someone with a head injury.

Cambodia makes Chuck Shepherd’s News of the Weird column this month, under More Spirits.

The grave of Pol Pot (one of the 20th century’s most prodigious mass murderers) near Anlong Veng, Cambodia, is revered by local villagers who believe his ghost protects them and also provides winning lottery numbers, according to an August International Herald Tribune report. In fact, the government is building a casino nearby to serve those who feel lucky.

If only Chuck knew …

It’s not exactly clear what half-clever, semi-literate nob came up with this spelling, but it’s the most annoying thing ever. For the love of Buddha, stop it already!

No doubt tipped off by a recent item in the Phnom Penh Post’s Gecko column, the Cambodia Daily this morning investigates the culinary challenges facing the Extraordinary Chambers. Until September, the concession to sell food at the Kandal province court was held by The Shop, a nouveau-trendy, post-colonial deli on Street 240.

Fine, perhaps, for the court’s foreign friends. But local staff found the food all but inedible, as tribunal spokesperson Reach Sambath so diplomatically explains: “Ask them to subsist on goat cheese salad, he said, and ‘the Khmer staff will die in two days.’”

So last month The Shop pulled out — or got kicked out, depending on who’s telling the story — and a company called Pkay Preak has been running the serving line in the court’s lunch room ever since.

Now the prahok is on the other plate, and it’s the court’s foreign friends who cannot get any culinary justice. Some were even spotted recently at the airport Dairy Queen practically begging Mr. Happy Herb for a pizza.

UPDATE: KI has the full story.

Writing for World Politics Watch, Luke Hunt profiles Craig Etcheson, the Johns Hopkins scholar currently working as an investigator for the co-prosecutor’s office of the Extraordinary Chambers. The most newsworthy passage is this:

[Etcheson] is the keeper of the coordinates, the secret locations of untouched mass graves in Cambodia’s remote eastern provinces, where thousands of men, women and children — those he now calls friends — were battered to death, dumped and buried.

“There could be hundreds or 10,000 there, or more, or less,” he said.

Known collectively as the Primary Site, these mass graves are untainted by human hands and weather. They will provide the stuff forensic scientists dream of: hard evidence that has the potential to withstand the rigid tests of international law.

“This is a nice little chunk of evidence that provides a snapshot of what happened in the east during the first and second quarters of 1978 when Ta Mok and Ke Pauk came in and killed everybody,” Etcheson said.

But the whole thing is worth a read.

Consolidation of power within Funcinpec continued Thursday with the suspension of four senior members loyal to recently ousted party leader Prince Ranariddh.

Cambodia’s royalist FUNCINPEC party has reportedly suspended four senior members loyal to the party’s ousted president, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, and is considering suspending 20 more.

FUNCINPEC’s secretary general, Nhiek Bun Chhay, says the members were suspended for three months because they opposed the party and did not respect its rules.

He says they can return to the party “when they change their attitudes”.

ABC News did not name the four members.

A couple of news briefs shamelessly stolen from today’s Cambodia Daily.

Acid Attackers Leave Woman, Nieces Blind

A 42-year-old Phnom Penh woman and her two young nieces were blinded by acid on Saturday night, police said. Unidentified attackers threw acid on Yen Thou, 42, and her nieces, aged 13 and 7, as they slept in their home on the Tonle Sap river in Russei Keo district. Tin Doman, Chraing Chumres commune chief, said the wife of a man who kept Yen Thou as a mistress may have been responsible for ordering the attack. Witnesses told police that the acid attackers escaped by swimming across the river under cover of the night. Yen Thou and her 13-year-old niece were blinded in the attack while her 7-year-old niece was left blind in one eye, police said.

Foreigner’s Body Found Sewn Inside Rice Sack

Villagers discovered the body of an unidentified man inside a rice sack that was found floating in a pond in Kandal province’s Muk Kampoul district on Monday, police said. Police believe the man was a foreigner who had been killed in Phnom Penh. “The body was very swollen,” said district deputy police chief Kang Siphal. “He had nothing to identify him.” The body had been sewn tightly inside the bag. “This killing was done very well and we think it might have been done by gangsters,” Kang Siphal said. The body, he added, was later buried in a pagoda in Roka Kang Pi commune.

VIA Mongkol: Regardless of where one might stand on the conscription issue, Sam Rainsy’s continued insistence that the new law is some sort of underhanded CPP ploy to mask the country’s slack job growth borders on ridiculous.

However, opposition leader Sam Rainsy warned that the new law would help the government hide one of its major failures - unemployment.

“Every year, around 300,000 young people reach the age of 18 and cannot find jobs,” he said.

“In order to control these young jobless people, they are forcing them to enrol in the army,” he told reporters.

The new military conscription law is expected to enlist between 5,000 and 10,000 new recruits per year. But even if it were double that — say 20,000 recruits — the notion that 280,000 is somehow magically better than 300,000 simply makes no sense. Implying that this constitutes some devious CPP plan to game the country’s unemployment numbers even less so.

Thom at Blogs by Khmer says that Prince Ranariddh should accept his fate, not just for the prince’s own benefit, but for that of his party.

The prince’s pride and the ego are so high. I wish he would just accept the fact. Humble himself. Rather than start a new party he should throw support to endorse the FUNCINPEC party. Be true to the party for he will win the people’s heart and mind. ‘Humble’ is the key word. Apologize to the people and his party that he had disappointed them. Come out clean !! I have a soft heart readily to forgive, forget and live on.

That sounds like infinitely reasonable advice, and almost certainly represents the views of many, not just Thom.

From the Cambodia Daily this morning comes this bit of food-related news you can use.

A man died on Friday and his two young daughters were poisoned after eating toad’s eggs in Kampong Cham province’s Kang Meas district, police said. Sarm Hou, 45, died, but doctors were able to save his daughters, aged 4 and 8, district police chief Cheng Sokhoeun said on Tuesday. “He ate a lot and his children ate less,” Cheng Sokhoeun said. People in the district dare to eat toad’s eggs even though they are poisonous, he said, adding that some may believe that they are similar to non-toxic frogs.

This short news brief doesn’t explicitly say so, but cane toads are poisonous from egg to adult. Don’t eat them. Or their eggs. Or soup made from their eggs.

The gratuitous humiliation of Prince Norodom Ranariddh continues.

PHNOM PENH Cambodian lawmakers approved the appointment to a ministerial post of the estranged wife of Prince Norodom Ranariddh on Tuesday, a week after he was ousted from his position as head of the royalist Funcinpec Party.The action served as a political jab at Ranariddh - who resigned as National Assembly president in March and has been abroad most of the time since then - and effectively publicizes the much-rumored split-up of Ranariddh and his wife.

The appointment of Princess Marie Ranariddh as a senior minister in charge of an unspecified “special mission” was requested by Prime Minister Hun Sen and approved by 83 votes out of 105 lawmakers.

Princess Marie must be dancing in her royal slippers.

The Cambodia Daily this morning revisits the story of Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun, the two men convicted three years ago for the murder of Free Trade Union leader Chea Vichea.

Supporters of the two men jailed for the 2004 killing of union leader Chea Vichea gathered in Phnom Penh on Monday to mark the 1,000th day that the pair have spent in detention and to call for their release.

Some 70 people, including rights workers and the parents and relatives of Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun, congregated at Wat Svay Popey on Sothearos Boulevard to pray for the pair.

“These two men, who no one believes are guilty, have already lost 1,000 days of their lives locked up behind bars,” Kek Galabru, president of local rights group Licadho, said in a statement. “They must be set free, so they can return to their families and to their normal lives,” she added.

Considering that disgraced police chief Heng Pov headed this investigation, the court really should release the two men on bail and reinvestigate the case. The court’s continued indifference only fuels suspicions that those at the very top of the heap have something to hide.

The Asian Development Bank will loan Cambodia $20 million to upgrade the electricity grid in Sihanoukville and surrounding areas.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES - ADB will help provide reliable and cheaper power supply to the province of Sihanoukville and its adjacent areas in southern Cambodia through a US$20 million loan.

Sihanoukville, a fast growing city, has Cambodia’s only deep-sea port and is a major export processing zone. It is currently being developed into an import gateway to the southern economic corridor. However, the city is not connected to the national power transmission grid, and gets its electricity from a small, isolated power system based on diesel generators.

“The present mode of power generation is expensive and inefficient, as it does not achieve economies of scale and cannot meet growing demand,” says Tianhua Luo, an ADB Energy Specialist.

Power supply in Cambodia is highly fragmented, with 24 isolated power systems centered on various provincial cities. The lack of an integrated high-voltage transmission system, coupled with the high cost of imported diesel fuel, has made electricity in Cambodia among the costliest (ranging between 17US cents/kWh and 50US cents/kWh) within the region.

ADB, together with other development partners, is helping the Government build the 230 kilovolt (kV) backbone transmission lines in the southern part of the country, which will allow the importation of cheaper electricity from Viet Nam (ranging between 6US cents/kWh and 8US cents/kWh) to meet rapidly increasing power demand in Cambodia.

In an apparent effort to curb the city’s burgeoning traffic-related death toll, the wise men at City Hall have decreed that, from this day forward, all motorcycles must have wing mirrors and indicator lights.

Phnom Penh (dpa) - Cambodian authorities in the capital have issued a decree warning the city’s half million-plus motorcyclists that they must use lights and wing mirrors in an effort to curb Phnom Penh’s growing road toll.

In a copy of the proclamation obtained from Phnom Penh City Hall Monday, authorities have told the city’s infamously anarchic motorists that they have until the end of the month to comply of face unspecified means of “correction.”

Cambodia has virtually no manufacturing base, meaning all vehicles are imported, and mirrors were long since abandoned by most motorcyclists as they are difficult to transport from overseas and once fitted make squeezing through small spaces in traffic more difficult.

Mirrors are sold separately as accessories, and traffic police monitoring roads around the capital’s bustling Daem Kor Market Monday said the concept may be difficult to reintroduce without hefty fines to back it up, because mirrors are often seen as something that real men don’t use.

“Most drivers with mirrors are women. Women use them to touch up make-up,” one skeptical officer, whose own private bike does not sport mirrors, said.

Clearly, something should be done to get a handle on Phnom Penh’s anarchic traffic. But requiring wing mirrors and indicator lights seems about as likely to work as, say, requiring drivers to have a working speedometer. Which is to say, not one bit. Because the real problem is not a lack of wing mirrors — or indicator lights, for that matter — it’s that people have nothing but contempt for traffic laws and the police officers that occasionally try to enforce them.

In a headline to a Cambodia Daily article about deportations, Socheata over at Khmer Intelligence says that 4 million Vietnamese nationals currently reside in Cambodia illegally. Clearly, that is preposterous.

According to the CIA World Factbook, the current population of Cambodia is estimated at 13,881,427. The Factbook also says that ethnic Vietnamese account for 5 percent of Cambodia’s current population, or approximately 694,000 people. That is not a non-trivial discrepancy.

Just for terms of reference, four million people is greater than the combined populations of Cambodia’s three largest provinces, Kampong Cham, Kandal and Phnom Penh (although Phnom Penh is technically a municipality) . The second largest city in the United States, Los Angeles, has an estimated population of only 3.8 million people.

So the insinuation is that the population of illegal Vietnamese nationals in Cambodia is greater than the population of each and every American city except for New York.

That is absurd.

Cambodia, long notorious for its inability to effectively tackle corruption, has also long been a playground for Interpol’s most wanted. So today’s news that a Sydney court has issued an arrest warrant for a former Victorian police officer, believed to be in Cambodia, should come as no surprise.

A Sydney court has issued an arrest warrant for a former Victorian police officer who is wanted on robbery and drugs charges.

The man is believed to be in Cambodia.

Former Victorian police officer James Anthony McCabe is charged with armed robbery and supplying a commercial quantity of drugs.

He was due to face a committal hearing in Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court today, along with a former New South Wales officer, Samuel Foster, who is facing 16 charges of corruption, drug supply and armed robbery.

Foster was present in court but McCabe was represented by a solicitor, who said that his client was still believed to in Cambodia.

Magistrate Pat O’Shane agreed to a request by the prosecutor to issue a bench warrant for his arrest, despite Australia not having an extradition treaty with Cambodia.

VIA Khmer Intelligence: In the latest edition of the Phnom Penh Post, Vong Sokheng says a social faux pas led to Prince Norodom Ranariddh’s demise.

Sources say one of the reasons Hun Sen became so embittered towards Ranariddh is that in December 2005, Hun Sen and Bun Rany attended the marriage of Ranariddh’s daughter, Princess Norodom Rattana. The gala affair was held at Ranariddh’s home down Route 1 on the Mekong. In part because it rained that night, Hun Sen spent almost three hours at the wedding dinner, a courtesy deemed highly significant in Cambodian social circles.

One week later, when Hun Sen’s eldest son Manit was married, Ranariddh and his wife, Princess Marie, attended the wedding dinner at Hun Sen’s. But halfway through the event Ranariddh was telephoned by his mistress and left the dinner party abruptly, forcing his wife to leave as well to avoid public embarrassment for the couple.

Hun Sen and his wife are said to have been terribly incensed by Ranariddh’s behavior and the loss of face he caused Princess Marie.

The sackings by Hun Sen of Funcinpec officials in the executive branch began after the wedding snafu.

That sounds incredibly childish and petty — but that’s diplomacy, and wars have been started over less. No matter. Even if the story is true, and really, there’s no reason to believe that it’s not, Ranariddh’s huge social gaffe just serves as more evidence of the man’s incompetence. If not for his royal lineage, he would have been sacked years ago.

It would appear that the humiliating ouster of Prince Norodom Ranariddh from Funcinpec did not completely satisfy those seated at the levers of power. Funcinpec Secretary General Nhiek Bun Chhay continued to twist the knife over the weekend with allegations of corruption and bribery.

The ties of corruption and bribes made former president of the co-ruling Funcinpec party, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, unable to solve the problems within the party and forced him to lose cooperation with Prime Minister Hun Sen, which therefore led to his removal from the top, said party Secretary General Nhiek Bun Chhay on Saturday.

Nhiek Bun Chhay made the announcement while declaring newly- elected President Keo Puth Rasmey’s soon-to-be appointment as the kingdom’s deputy prime minister.

After Funcinpec created the coalition government in 2004 with the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), Ranaridhh accepted bribes from many party members and I had all the documents in hand about the corruption, said Nhiek Bun Chhay at a press conference held at the party headquarters in presence of Funcinpec’s major senior officials including President Keo Puth Rasmey, First Vice President Lu Lay Sreng, Second Vice President Prince Sisowath Sirirath, as well as senior ministers Hong Sun Hout and Veng Serey Vuth.

Ranariddh has, of course, denied the allegations. But whatever. What he says really doesn’t matter. As secretary general of Funcinpec, Nhiek Bun Chhay has access to everything, which presumably includes records of all the payoffs that went down during the horse trading after the last elections. Such evidence dramatically increases the odds that Ranariddh’s career in politics really has come to an end, because while he says he will start a new party, the threat of criminal prosecution for corruption seems like a pretty effective deterrent.

This can’t be for real, can it? A web site called The Open Press is currently running a press release regarding Australian authorities tipping off Cambodian police to narcotic trafficking, and it’s not flattering.

(OPENPRESS) October 19, 2006 — Commander Moe Vimes of the Defence Security Squadron [DSS] and Senator Kerry Eliarson’s son, Jesus, today released details of another great success in the Australian government’s latest strategy in the drug war: a 16-year-old Australian sentenced to 13 years in Cambodian jail.

Vimes explained, “We encourage parents to come to us with their worries and concerns about their wayward and troubled children. Worried parents can count on us to listen carefully and sympathetically. Of course we won’t actually try to discourage the young man from doing the wrong thing. That’s exactly what happened when this young man went to Cambodia.”

Eliarson added, “We never said anything to anyone about anything ever.”

Vimes explained that as soon as the young boy had arrived in Cambodia, the DSS alerted Cambodian authorities to his parents’ fears.

“But we never alerted no-one about nothing never,” added Eliarson.

Read the rest of this entry »

Verghese Mathews, the former Singaporean ambassador to Cambodia, offers his two pence on the latest Funcinpec antics.

Speculation is that Ranariddh’s “ouster” and the selection of Rasmey were the brainchild of FCP secretary general Nhiek Bun Chhay, a former defense minister whose party faction is known to be on good terms with Hun Sen’s Cambodia’s People party (CPP). Two others closely associated with Bun Chhay are the wily politician and psychological warfare strategist, Lu Lay Sreng, and the urbane Prince Sisowath Sirirath, himself a former defense minister and ambassador to the UN. Both Lu Lay Sreng and Sisowath Sirirath were chosen as Rasmey’s deputies.

If Ranariddh’s removal as president comes to pass, as some anticipate, power inside FCP will shift from the president and chairman to the secretary general, effectively making Bun Chhay party leader. Political insiders say an important figure behind the scenes in all this is Princess Arun, Rasmey’s wife and Sirirath’s former wife, who is currently serving as Cambodia’s ambassador to Malaysia.

And that’s just the stuff that makes the newspapers. Imagine the treachery behind the scenes.

In the latest issue of the Phnom Penh Post, Charles McDermid and Vong Sokheng talk to Mak Sarath, head of the Youth Council of Cambodia.

A well-spoken scholar of Khmer literature, Mak Sarath is hardly the picture of an angry young man. Nor is he a brash Young Turk anxious to rail against the status quo.

But he is serious; and as head of the Youth Council of Cambodia (YCC), Sarath has a firm grasp on what Cambodia’s young people are seeking from their country - and he’s eager to sit down and start talking about his generation.

“Frankly, we think the government ignores the voices of young people. We feel like they don’t listen at all. We want three things: better education, health care and jobs,” said Sarath, whose YCC is a non-partisan NGO representing a coalition of five youth organizations.

The three things Mak Sarath lists as the main concerns of today’s Cambodian youth — education, health care and jobs — are all very much rooted in the same fundamental problem: Cambodia’s dire lack of education.

Creating a better education system takes time, at least a generation. So in reality, the youth of today are not fighting to improve their own educational prospects, but that of their children, although they may not realize it yet.

It is that dismal educational system that encourages a weak economy and anemic job growth. It’s virtually impossible to lure foreign companies to a country that cannot provide a skilled workforce.

No jobs, no money. No money, no education. No education, no jobs. The vicious cycle of poverty ad infinitum.

Crafting policies to solve such problems takes not only huge expertise but the ability to see things 20 or 30 years down the road. It takes unselfishness, the wisdom to sacrifice, and the ability to work for the greater good. Things no one is going to learn from those currently in power.

So if Mak Sarath and his generation want change, they have to do more than ask Hun Sen to make it happen. They need to pursue politics, get elected and push their agendas. Not because they stand to benefit, but because doing so helps repay the sacrifices their fathers made to bring the country this far. Because doing so is the only way to guarantee a better future.

Unfortunately, it seems that Cambodia’s current crop of politicians has managed to poison the well, and Mak Sarath himself admits he doesn’t like politicians. But if he is going to change Cambodia, that’s exactly what he will need to be.

Lindsay Pereira writing for Rediff.com turns in a story titled “Postcards from the Killing Fields.” Written from a outsiders perspective, the story comprises a dozen or so vignettes typical of the Cambodian experience: land mines, killing fields, Angkor Wat, the Siem Reap food scene, the Phnom Penh bar scene.

Each item gets a photo, or sometimes two, and its own page, giving the whole thing a kind of turn-the-page book-type quality — landmines, next, killing fields, next, Angkor Wat, next, and on and on.

The point is, that it really does look seem a “news feature” that has been custom-tailored for web reading, which is interesting.

The author over at datelinehk tells one of those tales that everybody loves to drink to.

The Gecko was set up on the footpath, so the cyclos could push right up to the tables. You could sit in your cyclo armchairs; drink steadily in the steaming heat, until enough was too much. You could then give the driver US$1 and be cycled seamlessly and safely home.
Or mostly safely. I remember an incident one night when we were heading back to the Cathay, a local one star much favoured by Australian freelancers, SAS hit men and the occasional drug merchant. (Intrepid Japanese and American journalists stayed at the Cambodiana, Phnom Penh’s only five star which not only had a swimming pool but which also sold bacteria free bottled water!)
We were with the other cyclists streaming down the main street, passing our bottle of Quantro from cyclo to cyclo, and savouring the scent of the Frangipanis, when a fellow got popped in the street in front of us. He was lying with his shattered head in a spreading pool of blood …

But read the whole thing. It get’s better.