Cambodia: Details are Sketchy

The U.S. ambassador to Cambodia recently announced that America has lifted her decade-long ban on direct foreign aid to Cambodia.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) Direct U.S. aid to support Cambodian government projects will resume following the lifting of a decade-old ban by Washington, the U.S. ambassador said Tuesday.

President Bush signed a congressional appropriations resolution for the 2007 fiscal year on Feb. 15 that “contains no restrictions on direct U.S. government funding of Cambodian government activities,” Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli said in an e-mailed reply to questions from The Associated Press.

He said Congress had maintained the ban in previous resolutions.

The United States cut off direct funding to Cambodian government projects in 1997 after Hun Sen ousted Prince Norodom Ranariddh, then his co-premier, in a coup. Hun Sen has since remained the prime minister.

As any C-minus student of Cambodian politics will point out, Hun Sen still rules the country with all the grace and authoritarian effectiveness as he did back in 1997. In fact, in a set of transparently similar circumstances, Prince Norodom Ranariddh has once again fled the country for fear of arrest. Then it was for collaborating with the Khmer Rouge, now for graft.

Not all that long ago a growing chorus of Republican wingnuts were calling for “regime change” in Cambodia, and the Americans were openly singing the praises of political gadfly Sam Rainsy. Rather than realize his “Nelson Mandela” potential, however, Rainsy too, not all that long ago, fled the country for fear of arrest on what most people agreed were politically trumped-up charges of libel. Rather than rot in prison — or worse, France — Rainsy cut a deal. The result is that America’s erstwhile poster boy for Cambodian democracy had effectively been neutered.

All of which makes it rather unlikely that the United States would point to any recent reflourishing of liberal democracy in the Kingdom as a catalyst for reversing its position on direct foreign aid.

So what was it?

The last decade of peace and prosperity has been so good to Cambodia that the country now has more than US$1 billion in the bank, according to Prime Minister Hun Sen.

That’s not bad for a country with per capita income of just $500.

But more impressively, US$1 billion represents only the government’s take of the action, which current wisdom puts at about 25 percent of what it really should be taking. So it’s pretty certain that along with the US$1 billion that the government pocketed, the country’s legions of blood-sucking politicians collectively helped themselves to another US$3 billion or so.

VIA AP: King Norodom Sihamoni is apparently unpleased that his name is being used online to hawk such unroyal services as Las Vegas casinos and cheap airfares.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: Cambodia’s royal palace has condemned four Web sites that use the name of King Norodom Sihamoni to promote Las Vegas casinos, discount airfares and dating services.

The palace called for those behind the sites to be prosecuted for slander.

“The royal palace condemns vigorously all persons usurping (the king’s name) for their personal use or to slander the sovereign,” said a statement from the palace dated Feb. 23.

The King’s official web site is http://www.norodomsihamoni.org/. The sites in question use the King’s name with the .info, .com., .net and .gov domains, although the last two do not appear to be working.

While it’s not exactly clear who registered the .info., .com and .gov versions, according to WhoIs entries, norodomsihamoni.net is registered to none other than Sisowath Thomico.

So is the King really calling for Prince Tico’s prosecution?

A day after singer Pov Panhapich was shot in Phnom Penh, a second high-profile shooting added to the uneasiness on the streets of the capital.

Free Trade Union (FTU) leader of Cambodia Hy Vuthy was shot dead on Saturday, making the third murder of FTU senior officials in the past three years, local media reported on Monday.

Two unidentified assailants on a motorcycle shot at 36-year-old Vuthy for three times, FTU leader at the Suntex Garment Factory, shortly after 05:00 am, as he drove home from the factory, the Cambodian Daily quoted police source as saying.

Over at Cambodian Insight, the author(s) plead with the Prime Minister to get a grip on the situation before it is too late. (”Prime Minister Must Exert Political Will in Tackling Social Ills”)

Mr. Prime Minister, you do not have the luxury of time. You have to act fast and rapidly to put down all crimes and social decay before they become a plague and thus uncontrollable. The Cambodians are counting on you to complete the job with success!

Unfortunately, Cambodian Insight’s optimism is almost certainly misplaced. When it comes to solving the shootings of pop singers and union leaders, the local police have an especially abysmal track record.

In a blog post on Foreign Policy’s Passport, Henry Bowles wonders just exactly for whom Hun Sen is stalling the Khmer Rouge Tribunals process. For an answer, Bowles takes a cue from this Spigel Online article, which points the finger at Communist China.

[Hun Sen's] delay tactics may not just be a function of his powerful friends. The Khmer Rouge had support from China, and current Chinese leaders have made it clear to their tiny neighbor that Beijing’s role in the 1970s bloodbath shouldn’t be revisited.

China, however, is not the only country in the world with an interest in seeing the court fail. The U.S., Great Britain, Thailand, Singapore, and no doubt a few others all bear some measure of responsibility for the Khmer Rouge madness. For obvious reasons, none of those countries have ever shown much stomach for investigating their own culpability.

So it seems the height of absurdity for those countries to try and insist now — after three decades of their own judicial stonewalling — that the court’s current titanic momentum is somehow the sole responsibility of Prime Minister Hun Sen.

In an opinion piece on Oped News, a former defense industry consultant raises the “red flag” on continuing human rights violations by the Vietnamese government. While the piece focuses mainly on the suppression of the Hmong in Laos, it also touches on the Montagnards and Khmer Krom, two groups acutely connected to Cambodia.

The Montagnard Foundation reports that they hold evidence that bounty hunters capture the Montagnard refugees in Cambodia, and sell them back to the Vietnamese for $20 to $100.

Twenty dollars is a month’s pay for a policeman in this part of the world.

“Why does the mainstream media ignore the plight of the Montagnards, the Khmer Krom, and their cousins, the Hmong in Laos for over 30 years, and still continue to do so?” asked Chue Chou Tchang, from the Special Guerrilla Units (SGU) Veterans. SGU Veterans is a U.S.- based Hmong human rights organization organization.

The answer, unfortunately, is this: nobody cares. The history of the world is rife with paranoid, murderous regimes. Virtually none of them have ever been dealt with while it still mattered. And as heartbreaking as it may be, the status quo seems unlikely to take a turn for the better now.