Guns, art, rednecks, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Last week Micheal M. at Freshome.com wrote about the old Peace Art Project Cambodia. The project, no longer active, made furniture and art from “decommissioned” weapons.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the post sparked a flurry of critical comments, especially from American gun freaks who found the idea of using an AK-47 for purposes other than killing rather offensive. But it wasn’t just Budweiser-soaked rednecks who felt compelled to speak out. Dr. Kao Kim Hourn, secretary of state for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also felt that his perspective was worth adding to the debate, and rightfully so.

Cambodia goes to the polls

Midnight Friday marks the beginning of the 48-hour “cooling down” period ahead of Sunday’s commune council elections, when Cambodian voters will elect leaders for each of the Kingdom’s 1,621 communes.

According to the National Election Council, the Cambodian People’s Party is the only party to field candidates for all 1,621 communes. The Sam Rainsy Party comes second, with candidates running in 1,596 communes. Funcinpec will field candidates for 1,460 communes and the Norodom Ranariddh Party will field candidates in 1,431 communes.

Based on that breakdown, here are the official DAS Predictions for the 2007 Cambodian Commune Council Elections.

Cambodian People’s Party: 1,589 communes (98%)
Funcinpec: 16 communes (1%)
The Sam Rainsy Party: 0 communes (0%)
Others: 16 communes (1%);
The Norodom Ranariddh Party: 0 communes (0%)

Individual polling station results will be tallied and released the day of the vote, but the NEC is not scheduled to announce the official results until April 24.

Cambodia bans SMS

This is shockingly daft.

SMS text messaging has been banned in Cambodia over the weekend amid fears of political unrest as the country votes for local government administrators, election officials said Friday.

The announcement came on the final day of campaigning before the Sunday polls, as thousands of ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) supporters rallied in the capital Phnom Penh, snarling traffic for hours.

“Most people are using cell phones which can receive campaign messages from political parties. On these two days, the environment must be quiet, according to the law,” the National Election Committee said in a statement.

Not only is such a move patently undemocratic, it’s all but guaranteed to achieve nothing in the way of quelling social unrest or stifling political discussion during the “cooldown” period.

For starters, Khmer fonts for the average telephone are virtually unheard of. But, really, that’s besides the point. The fact is, an overwhelming majority of the Cambodian population is illiterate. And poor. So in practice such a ban would only effect registered voters who also own a telephone and can read English.

That’s a pretty small group. Significantly less than 1% of the population. It is, however, exactly the kind of people that vote for Sam Rainsy. Still, it hardly seems worth the effort.

UPDATE: The Cambodia Daily reported April 2 that COMFREL, the country’s election-monitoring group, had trained hundreds of its people to report on election problems to a central database via SMS.  Saorla has more.

Revisiting the grenade attack on Sam Rainsy

Ten years ago tomorrow, Sam Rainsy came this close to karking it. Instead, one of his body guards jumped in front of the grenade blast. Rainsy escaped unharmed. The body guard was dead at the scene.

A decade later, Human Rights Watch is still demanding that someone take the case seriously.

A New York-based human rights group urged the FBI on Thursday to reopen a probe into a grenade attack that killed more than a dozen Cambodians and wounded an American a decade ago.

The Human Rights Watch appeal came a day ahead of the 10th anniversary of the grenade attack on a peaceful demonstration led by opposition leader Sam Rainsy on March 30, 1997.

“This brazen attack carried out in broad daylight ingrained impunity in Cambodia more than any other single act in the country’s recent history,” Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch’s Asia director, said in a statement.

The statement also “urged the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to reopen its investigation of the attack.”

No one has been arrested over the assault that killed at least 16 people and wounded 114 others, when four grenades were tossed into a crowd of anti-government demonstrators outside the Cambodian National Assembly in the capital, Phnom Penh.

At the very least, it’s nice to see that somebody is still raising some Cain about this. Even if it is all for nothing.

The gods must be crazy

John Savage, Neanderthal Christian jackass and director of Bible Network, is apparently in Cambodia preaching fire and brimstone.

In Cambodia, a church might consist of 10 Christians gathered beneath a sugar palm, its trunk still bearing shrapnel scars from the battles that have been fought around it. Or it might be 40 worshippers who congregate in the house of a Bible trained church planter.

In either case, Cambodian Christians cannot erase the deep scars that have been left by decades of brutal violence.

Years of atrocities and political turmoil have gouged out a spiritual void in the hearts of Cambodians. It is a void that the national religion of Buddhism, with its unattainable path to enlightenment, has failed to fill.

Somebody feed this man to the lions.

Cambodian sex culture

Sexerati.com reporter Melissa Gira is headed to Cambodia, where she will be video-blogging on Cambodian sex culture for two weeks.

Judge and jury

Saorla at Foreign Affairs offers a moving vignette about the challenges Cambodian police officers face serving in the line of duty.

Yesterday I was on my way to lunch when a policeman held up his arm in the universal stop sign. A woman with a child on her motorbike continued around the policeman. He hit her with his baton …

In Cambodia, this is considered something approaching justice. She didn’t stop. He whacked her with a billy club. What’s not just about that?

Cambodian Y-chromosome binary polymorphisms

A propos of absolutely nothing:

A survey of the genetic ancestry of 125 Cambodian children resident in Siem Reap province was undertaken, based on eight Y-chromosome binary polymorphisms and sequencing of the mtDNA HV1 region. The data indicated a largely East Asian paternal ancestry and a local Southeast Asian maternal ancestry. The presence of Y-chromosomes P* and R1al* was suggestive of a small but significant Indo-European male ancestral component, which probably reflects the history of Indian, and later European, influences on Cambodia.

How hot is it?

Over at the Clear Path International blog, Pat Roe weighs in on the heat.

Well, I finally did it. I finally broke down and looked at the temperature. I had been avoiding it. I figured its really better not to know. At least not yet. Not in March when its only almost the hot season. At the very least, I should wait until April … My logic is that as long as I don’t know the actual temperature, it can’t be that bad. So, I avoid it. Except, suddenly people are talking about it all the time. Noting the weather forecasts, commenting on whether it will or won’t hit 42 today. So, I did it. I took out the handy little compass/thermometer tucked inside my backpack and checked the temperature. Only 35 degrees! That’s nothing.

Beautiful bloggers

In a post titled “Cambodian Bloggers More Attractive,” Vutha points out that the latest issue of The Cambodia Weekly features a cover story on Cambodian bloggers. The Weekly dubs it “The story of how a small group of friends are revolutionizing blogging and networking in the Cambodian corners of cyberspace and beyond.”

DeeDee has the lowdown.

Chutzpa watch

Cambodian Bar Association president Ky Tech, with all the grace and diplomatic suave of an angry three year old, lashed out yesterday at the Extraordinary Chamber’s international jurist for refusing to pay the association’s annual dues.

The Cambodian Bar Association said Monday foreign judges for the Khmer Rouge genocide trials were behaving like children and finding excuses to delay the long-awaited tribunal.

“This is a childish game the international judges with international reputations should not be playing,” said bar association president Ky Tech.

The tribunal’s four international judges have threatened to boycott preparations for the tribunal over the bar association’s decision to impose fees on foreign lawyers wishing to participate in the trials.

Got that? It’s the international judges who are delaying the court’s proceedings with their improper refusal to pay kickbacks to the Cambodian Bar Association! Karl Rove would blush.

Reservations for Angkor Wat

The number of tourists visiting Angkor Wat has reached such a massive scale that Cambodian officials are starting to think that maybe it’s time to start thinking about addressing the problem, before the whole place collapses or something.

Every day up to 5,000 people climb the steps, putting the site under the strain of wear and tear. Tourist numbers to the ancient Khmer ruins have grown faster than the town can keep pace, according to published reports. “Large tour groups often do a quick stop to see the temples, but do little else,” remarked a tourism official. “They hope to see everything within the one and a half day in their itinerary.”

“The large number of people wandering around by themselves has caused a lot of problems,” said Khin Po-Thai, spokesperson for the World Monuments Fund in Siem Reap. [ ... ]

Temple officials are thinking about limiting access to the temple compound on a daily basis using a reservation system. “If the tourist numbers go unchecked, Angkor Wat will be gone just because we want to please the tourists,” added Po-Thai.

Reservations? That will cut down on the number of tourists to Angkor Wat how, exactly? By making people wait for so long to get in that they give up in frustration?

No, if you were actually trying to help preserve the temples by reducing their number of visitors, it’s hard to imagine an idea more prone to catastrophic failure than a reservation system.

But too many visitors to the temples isn’t really the problem is it? Or rather, it’s not the problem “Cambodian officials” are trying to solve. Cambodian officials are trying to devise bigger and more ludicrous ways of scamming the tourists. To hell with Angkor Wat.

National Geographic on Dengue Fever

National Geographic jumps on the Dengue Fever bandwagon.

Cambodian rock, cont.

Hearing the delicious sounds of psychedelic 60s Cambodian rock inspired The Horse Drawn Zeppelin to make a compilation CD of his own, “Cambodian Swing Machine.”

I’ve been to Cambodia a couple of times and after hearing the original Cambodia Rocks CD I decided to pick up some similar music of my own. I then compiled it on to my own personal CD of 13 tracks which is available here. At least three of the tracks do appear on other compilation albums, but I don’t believe the others have been compiled. I’ve also included the artwork to my CD which utilizes the original artwork from the Cambodian cassettes. There’s no track listing because it was all written in Khmer. I hope you enjoy it!

At 52 megabytes, it’s no small download. But considering the trouble it is to get music from a cassette tape onto a computer, it’s surely worth it.

The fight for justice

The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star profiles Gregory H. Stanton, founder and director of the Cambodian Genocide Project at Yale. According to the story it was Stanton, more than any other American, who refused to be pacified by an American government that for decades — and arguably still — had no real stomach for getting at the truth of the Khmer Rouge holocaust.

Stanton served as Church World Service/CARE field director in Cambodia in 1980, where he heard the details of atrocities and saw mass graves firsthand.

The former law professor at Washington and Lee and American universities and the University of Swaziland was so determined to see the Khmer Rouge brought to justice he joined the U.S. State Department to push for a tribunal.

Early efforts to bring Khmer Rouge to justice bogged down in “Cold War” tensions between the United States and Soviet Union, he said. Until the Soviet Union dissolved, Stanton said, the U.S. State Department viewed going after the Khmer Rouge as indirect support of the communist government in Vietnam.

Vietnamese leaders supported Cambodian politicians opposed to the Khmer Rouge. U.S. officials, he said, saw Vietnam as a proxy for the Soviets.

In order to effect change in American foreign policy, he joined the State Department from 1992-1999, becoming part of a group of diplomatic officers pressing for justice in Cambodia and working to fund a tribunal.

The United States, of course, still has yet to give one freedom-loving nickel to the Extraordinary Chambers, and the court itself still very much faces the risk of collapse or worse, irrelevancy. But no matter. That it ever got this far is already a miracle, and Mr. Stanton deserves much of the credit.

Racism: Putting the “South” in Southeast Asia

This kind of blatant racial discrimination really should be shocking.

The manager did not hesitate in telling me that they do not allow people from Nigeria, Cameroon, and many other African states to stay in there hotel.  He went on to say that these individuals cause way more trouble than they are worth so when they try to check in they are told that the hotel is full.  He stated that the majority of the hotels feel this way.  I absolutely could not believe what I was hearing.  It was like I just stepped back in time to an era where this was common practice.

No doubt racism still pervades the U.S., England, and other self-professed first-world countries. But laws against such discrimination, and a common understanding that such beliefs are the mark of ignorance and fear, typically mean that even the most hard-boiled racist tends to keep his or her views quiet while in polite company. Certainly no sane hotel manager in London or New York would confide in a black man the hotel’s policy of refusing service to customers based on race.

That would be unthinkable. Yet when a Cambodian hotel manager makes the same sweeping assessments of a whole race based on the actions of a tiny few, it really doesn’t come as any surprise.

But it’s still racism. It’s still wrong. And somebody should say so.

Five mistakes

VIA Khmer Intelligence: Online travel rag Jaunted asked Phnomenon’s Phil Lees to answer the question 5 Mistakes Tourists Make in Phnom Penh.

Needless to say, Phil’s answer is a funny and entertaining read.

The Economist on Maha Ghosananda

The Economist offers a noble eulogy for Preah Maha Ghosananda.

Pov Panha Pich getting better

Thanh Nien News reports that Pov Panha Pich is recovering well.

She’s been in a Ho Chi Minh City hospital for one month, and Cambodian pop star and TV host Pov Panha Pich can speak and move her arms and legs, after a shooting nearly took her life. [ ... ]

The 23-year-old singer was transferred immediately to Cho Ray Hospital from Phnom Penh’s Calmette hospital for further treatment, after being shot twice in the neck and torso Feb. 23.

Doctors said her condition is improving, and that she could whisper to speak to those around her.

Anderson Cooper does Cambodia

CNN personality Anderson Cooper and his team are in Cambodia to do some shooting for Cooper’s CNN show “Anderson Cooper 360.” So what kind of stuff do you think they plan to cover?

He then intros into a piece he did on Cambodian sex slavery. We learn that in the capital alone there are 10,000 to 20,000 prostitutes and at least 25% are children. The prostitutes are often uneducated, poor, abused, and forced to work long hours. Nicholas Kristoff of the “New York Times” points out that there is a belief there that sleeping with a virgin can cure AIDS and Cambodia now has the highest HIV rate in Asia. We then move on to a Dan Rivers piece about how Cambodia is a pedophile haven. He introduces us to Amit Gilboa, an author who wrote a book about sex-crazed expatriates, or sex-pats as he calls them. One of these sex-pats is Graham Cleghorn, who was actually convicted in 2004 of raping five teenagers. Unfortunately conviction of sex-pats is rare.

Ugggh! This is maddening. Firstly, the number of prostitutes cited is wildly overstated, as this USAID study makes clear. Secondly, when it comes to combating the spread of HIV/AIDS, Cambodia is actually a case study of success. Sadly, though, the news media and NGOs make these same misleading claims week in and week out, so it’s not at all surprising that CNN would mindlessly parrot the same.

Dragging out Amit Gilboa, however, is proof positive of incompetence if not outright bad intentions. Gilboa, as Anderson Cooper may or may not know, partied and whored his way through Phnom Penh in the late 1990s and then wrote a book about it. Or more accurately, he wrote a book about what a bunch of pathetic losers his friends were, and how he was just an innocent observer, repulsed by the debauchery surrounding him but committed to his craft.

Out of fear for his life, Gilboa has refused assignments to Cambodia until, apparently, now. But even today, nearly 10 years after the publication of his book, many of Phnom Penh’s resident expatriates still consider Gilboa not just a wicked hypocrite, but a dirty rotten scumbag for selling out his friends.

Nice work, Cooper.

Deminer Aka Ra will retire

James Hathaway at Clearpath International relays the news that almost-famous “citizen deminer” Aka Ra plans to retire.

Aki Ra’s efforts were not without controversy in the demining community. Working wihout government or NGO backing, his efforts were widely condemned by mainstream ordnance removal organizations. Regardless, his landmine museum near Angkor Wat for many people was the first time they came face to face with the landmine problem. He became somewhat of a folk hero to many.

Aka Ra’s Cambodian Landmine Museum will move north to new facilities near Banteay Srey.

Drinking the country dry

The Financial Times reports today that Cambodia is “enjoying an unexpected economic flourishing.” The proof?

On the outskirts of Phnom Penh, the Cambodia Brewery is working at peak capacity 24 hours a day, seven days a week to slake Cambodians’ fast-growing thirst for beer.

So great is demand, the brewery – 80 per cent owned by Asia Pacific Breweries, a Singaporean company – is importing beer to fill a shortfall and eyeing a possible expansion. A US company has begun building the first aluminium can factory in Cambodia to end reliance on imported drink cans.

Peace and prosperity, baby.

Gameshow democracy

Writing for the online magazine Slate, Suzy Khimm says that “Youth Leadership Challenge” — a cheesy reality-TV show based on Donald Trump’s even cheesier “The Apprentice” — is a cunning ploy by the International Republican Institute to promote democracy and subvert the Strongman.

Under the guise of its competitive theatrics, the Youth Leadership Challenge makes an indirect but unmistakable challenge to a government that continues to censor broadcasts of unfavorable news items, miniskirted entertainers, and portions of congressional hearings that seem threatening to the ruling party. In one high-profile crackdown, the IRI-backed Cambodian Center for Human Rights hosted a public forum that led to the arrest of CCHR director Kem Sokha and four colleagues on charges of defaming Prime Minister Hun Sen in late 2005, provoking an international outcry.

The IRI, of course, is almost never responsible for things good in the world. That the institute produces the show, and not just funds it, is a pretty clear indication of who ultimately controls the shows content. So at some point the shows current happy talk about sex and condoms and other fun things will have to move toward more Republican-friendly topics.

Because the Republicans don’t give money for nothing, and the IRI is concerned about Cambodia’s interest only so far as those interests are the same as their own. Sooner or later, if not already, those interest are going to conflict, and Cambodia is unlikely to be the better for it.

UPDATE: As pointed out in comments, it’s the International Republican Institute, not the National Republican Institute. The post has been edited accordingly.

Deadly peanut butter

Phil at Phnomenon asks “Where do recalled products go?” According to a member of the Cambodia Parent Network, the answer is Lucky Market:

I need to write to warn you about a potentially dangerous product available at Lucky market and probably other grocery stores in town.  I am not sure if you have followed the news about Peter Pan peanut butter but there have been over 300 cases of salmonella poisioning in the US traced back to Peter Pan peanut butter with the product code begining with “2111″.

I was in Lucky the other day and noticed an overly stocked shelf of Peter Pan jars and checked the labels.  They all had the product code begining with 2111!  Therefore, please discard these jars if you have them and certainly don’t buy ANY Peter Pan products.

I would also like Lucky to pull all of these jars and send them back to the distributor (shame on them!) but am at a loss as to what to do.  I have already left a note with this information for the manager of Lucky as well as contacted a journalist from the Cambodia Daily, who investigated and found that the jars are, in fact, the ones in question.  However, I was in Lucky again yesterday and they are still there.  Any advice?

Phil says to eat Cambodian, but can’t remember the brand name of the locally made, all-natural peanut butter goodness that is Healthland Natural Peanut Butter.

We say crunchy!

Heng Pov beats kidnapping rap

Disgraced police chief Heng Pov was back in court today, this time to face kidnapping charges.

A Cambodian court Wednesday acquitted disgraced former police chief Heng Pov on a charge of kidnapping four South Korean businessmen. [...]

Police had alleged that Pov was responsible for the four Koreans being abducted and locked up in an extortion attempt gone wrong dating back more than two years.

Pov appeared in a blue prison uniform but looked jovial and relaxed throughout the hearing, telling the court in his final address to feel free to jail him for the maximum term if it felt the evidence warranted it.

For a guy who said he would be murdered if he went back to Cambodia, it sounds like Heng Pov is doing just fine.

Magic mushrooms

According to DPA, Chhouk Rin is exploring the limits of the government’s inmate health care program.

Rin, who is currently serving a life sentence in Phnom Penh’s Prey
Sar prison for a 1994 train attack in which three foreign backpackers
were taken hostage and later murdered and at least a dozen Cambodians
were killed, has been said to be severely ill with HIV/AIDS for some
years.

Rin had sent the request letter to Royal Cambodian Armed Forces
commander-in-chief Ke Kim Yan but had not yet received a reply,
according to the Khmer-language daily Kampuchea Thmey.

It said Rin, 53, had requested herbal “mushroom tablets” be
supplied to help control the virus and prolong his life.

The Khmer Rouge vs. Jesus

Along with some pretty glaring factual errors, this story in the Times Online about Christian pastors bringing the word of Jesus to Pailin is just plain queer.

Ten minutes’ bumpy drive from the border with Thailand, past a strip of gaudy casinos and brothels in a landscape of denuded hillsides, is a place where travellers fear to stop.

Throughout Cambodia the border town of Pailin is known — apart from its gemstones — as the last bastion of the Khmer Rouge, from where its remnants fought the Government until 1998.

The reputation is enough to send most travellers rushing through to the capital, Phnom Penh, eight hours drive away. Locals say that about 70 per cent of the area’s older men were fighters and that nearly all families have links to the regime blamed for the deaths of 1.7 million of their compatriots between 1975 and 1979.

Where travellers fear to stop? … border town … The reputation is enough to send most travellers rushing through to the capital, Phnom Penh … Taken together these statements leave the distinct impression that the author has confused Pailin with Poipet.

Whoops.

But read the whole story. It gets even weirder.

POSTSCRIPT: Just for the record, Ieng Sary defected to the “Government” in 1996. Any history that would suggest that KR “remnants” in Pailin were still fighting the government in 1998 is certainly false. Likewise, Anlong Veng is generally credited with being “the last bastion of the Khmer Rouge,” not Pailin.

UPDATE: The link to the Times Online article has been fixed.

Cambodian rock (revisited)

The San Jose Mercury News picks up on the story of John Pirozzi and his film “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten,” about 60s- and 70s-era Cambodia rock.

“It’s pretty incredible that somehow Cambodian musicians got rock ‘n’ roll right during the late 1960s and ’70s,” said documentary maker John Pirozzi, whose film “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten,” is about the emergence of Cambodian rock and the fate of some of its iconic stars.

The music is a mix of surf and psychedelic rock combined with the distinctive melodies and soaring vocal styles of Cambodian folk music.

“Outside of the United States and England, there was no good rock ‘n’ roll elsewhere in the world, but they managed to make it their own and make it into something unique,” Pirozzi said.

The story also touches on Pirozzi’s “Sleepwalking Through the Mekong,” Dengue Fever, and Greg Cahill’s movie about the life of Ros Sereysothea, “The Golden Voice.” Read the whole thing.

The political (sex) crimes of Norodom Ranariddh

So far the international community has remained relatively quiet in regards to Prince Norodom Ranariddh’s conviction and 18-month prison sentence for fraud. While the whole affair is obviously an attempt to get rid of Prince Ranariddh once and for all, no diplomat still in possession of his or her faculties would dare defend Ranariddh against charges of corruption.

So it would seem that the ruling party, after more than a decade of trying, has finally managed to not only get rid of Ranariddh, but to do so in such a way that the international community is incapable of mounting a defense on the defeated prince’s behalf.

Running virtually unopposed, the CPP could easily cruise to victory in this year’s elections and next. Thus winning the national poll in 2008, the global community could then declare Hun Sen and the CPP as rightful owners of the Cambodian democracy.

Or so it should have been.

Yet on the brink of finally having it all, the good fellas running the country appear incapable of acting like they belong at the table of legitimate world leaders. Instead of gracefully stealing a victory, those in power continue to pursue transparently illegitimate charges against Prince Ranariddh.

This is, of course, a really bad idea. Not only is the international community unlikely to remain silent in the face of such ridiculous charges, but such a patently obvious political hit severely threatens to undermine what tiny shred of credibility the original corruption charges had. Instead of getting a legitimate place on the world political stage, the government is just giving up more evidence that it remains a crooked third-world oligarchy run by thugs.

Deal nearly done on KRT rules

News this morning from several sources (Jurist, The U.N., AFP, AP) indicates that negotiations between foreign and local judges over the rules governing the Extraordinary Chambers are nearly complete.

Of the 113 draft internal rules, the only outstanding issue that remains unsettled after an intensive 10-day session involves — wait for it — money!

Specifically, it appears that the Cambodian Bar Association is concerned that foreign judges are making more money than the Cambodian ones. To resolve the economic disparity, the beautiful minds at the Bar Association have proposed that foreign jurists kick down about $5,000 per year per lawyer to the association.

Foreign judges argue that such an exorbitant fee would hinder a defendant’s access to legal counsel and violate international standards of justice. Bar Association president Ky Tech, for his part, seems unable to comprehend why rich foreigners don’t want to pay.

Presumably the $5,000 figure is a first price, and continued bargaining will ultimately produce an amount that both sides can live with. Because as much as everyone says they want justice, getting a fat paycheck is also pretty nice too. And neither the foreign judges nor their Cambodian counterparts are very likely to let a little bit of someone else’s money get in the way of making a whole lot of their own.