Cambodia: Details are Sketchy

Phil is in Australia. Being the incorrigible Cambodian food junkie that he is, he quickly made his way to the “local” Khmer restaurant. So what does Cambodia’s leading food critic think of Melbourne’s leading Cambodian restaurant?

Bopha Devi has had a fistful of favourable reviews in the Melbourne food press. If you hadn’t already gathered, this isn’t going to be one of them.

The fish amok (A$26.90, US$21.50) was an exercise in disillusionment. It bore a basic resemblance to fish amok in that it contained some sort of fish and a banana leaf. Apart from that I would hazard a guess that the other two ingredients were Mae Ploy brand green Thai curry paste and a full can of coconut cream. When you’re charging this much for an amok and have all the ingredients at your disposal only kilometres away, there really isn’t any excuse for obliterating the soul of the dish.

The masterplanned community is the new Chinese shop house.

A group of South Korean companies said it would spend US$2 billion (HK$15.6 billion) on building a new city in Cambodia, the biggest single investment in the impoverished country still recovering from decades of war.The residential, commercial, cultural and business complex would be built on 119 hectares on the northern edge of Phnom Penh, the group said Wednesday.

The group, which includes Busan Mutual Savings Bank and property development company Landmark Worldwide, had been wary of Cambodia because of the country’s violent recent history, marketing director Lee Yunyoung said.

“But actually when we came here we realized that it is really safe,” he said at the ground-breaking ceremony.

“So we want to start our project before others start.”

The home page of Need Magazine proclaims “We are not out to save the world, but to tell the stories of those who are.” For their premiere issue, Need put together a story with the International Justice Mission. IJM, among other things, rescues children caught in the sex trade.

For whatever reasons, all the Cambodian victims in the story are not Cambodian. They are Vietnamese, including the 6-year-old so often mentioned in news stories. There is shock value in 6-year-old sex slaves, for that is truly shocking.

But skimming over the news headlines, it’s relatively easy to dismiss such horror stories as so much news sensationalism. That is what makes publications like Need so important. CNN and other mainstream news media — with their sound-bite writing styles, small photos and rapid-fire news cycles — are simply too easy to ignore. But pictures, large and in color, seem not only so much more tangible, but so less subjective. Much more so than the printed word, the pictures are impossible to deny.

Razzbuffnik over at All the Dumb Things continues with his tales from backpacking through Cambodia back in the 70s.

Back in January 1975 during rocket season, the Khmer Rouge were on the offensive and getting close to Phnom Penh.  Rockets with a range of nearly 17km (about 11 miles) were regularly being fired into the city. In the mornings I used to have breakfast at a street side café (for the want of a better word as it was more of a street stall) a block away from the central market and it wasn’t unusual for several rockets a week to land within earshot.

So begins another great tale, complete with more beautiful photographs. Read the whole thing.

Writing for The Diplomat, Atlanta Colley takes a survey of the state of democracy in Cambodia. She is not impressed.

In Cambodia, the eve of the election is quietly known as “the night of the barking dogs”. The “dogs”; politicians and their henchmen; make their rounds, dispensing gifts and threats, winning votes through fear and favour.

This year, the night before Cambodia’s April Fool’s Day elections, the dogs barked in unison for Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). As the polling booths shut, so did Cambodia’s chance to rid itself of this ex-Khmer Rouge military dictator. Hun Sen and his faction marched to victory with 98 per cent of the vote. The only other “democracy” recorded receiving such compelling voter support for a single party was Iraq, under Saddam Hussein.

The rise and rise of Hun Sen’s Empire marks the fall of the great democratic experiment in Cambodia. The country remains a democracy in name only; a thin shell hiding the power and corruption of the CPP beneath its surface.

Over the next 1,200 words, Colley recounts the last 20 years of Cambodian history, from the poisoned outcome of the 1993 election to the commune council vote this past April.

Whatever. It hardly takes a brilliant mind to recount the country’s recent history or point out its flaws. Whatever its shortcomings, Cambodia suffers no lack of people willing to point out its problems.

What it does lack is people with the wisdom and courage and tenacity to tackle these problems. Rather inexplicably — and more than just a bit frustrating — Colley never gets around to proposing any solutions of her own. Which is a shame, because Colley is obviously an intelligent person, and it’s hard to imagine that she is without ideas on how the country might better address its imbalances of power and prosperity.

Everybody has a price, even the Boy Scouts.

Mark Tapscott, senior wingnut at the Washington Examiner, passes on this Khmer Rouge-era anecdote:

Using Babies to Shoot Skeet: If that headline throws you a bit, imagine being in the Cambodian school where Khmer Rouge soldiers actually threw infants up in the air to be shot by other soldiers. Such horror was commonplace in Cambodia during the reign of the communists who conquered that unhappy nation in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.

Nothing or nobody should ever make excuses for the horrors perpetrated on the Cambodian people by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. But as a matter of truth, this particularly wanton flavor of murder seems made entirely from whole cloth. It is much more likely the product of Mark Tapscott’s mind than any actual Khmer Rouge atrocity.

Most obviously, schools were one of the first things to go when the Khmer Rouge took power. So it seems rather unlikely that anybody was down at the schoolhouse, much less a bunch of infants. Bullets were also scarce. Many are the stories of KR henchmen killing the regime’s “enemies” by bashing their heads in with the butt of a rifle — as opposed to shooting them — in order to save ammunition.

But circumstantial evidence aside, the most convincing proof lies in the fact that there is a complete lack of evidence in the historical record of any such acts.

All of which makes it difficult not to conclude that the schoolroom scenario is a creation of Tapscott’s imagination. It’s a pretty sick idea to come from the mind of such a holy roller.

A few weeks ago, a group of Vietnamese military officials on an MIA mission in Kampot uncovered a long-overlooked mass gravesite. When a villager working with the group said she may have spotted some jewelry among the rubble, most everyone from the village nearby descended on the site with digging tools and hopes for a few dollars, if not a fortune.

So three weeks later, how are things going? Seth Mydans stops by and takes a look.

The digging has stopped and several people said they had been awakened at night by screams from the graves.

“People heard voices calling out, ‘Help me! Help me!’ ” said Svay Saroeun, 50, a deputy village chief. “Maybe they are angry at the villagers for digging up their graves. Or maybe they were tortured to death, and now they are being tortured again by people who are disturbing their sleep.”

Srey Noeun, 47, a farmer with four small children, said she could not sleep for three nights after digging two small gold earrings out of a grave.

“I’m afraid that the owner will take revenge on me because she died with nothing but her earrings and now I have taken them,” Srey Noeun said. “She’ll say, ‘Please give them back. They are all I had.’

As promised by the Prime Minister, starting next year everyone is gonna be rich [India E-news]

Wind up radios: the better to control the media with [Mission Network News]

Nevermind the Viets, we’re the Chinese [International Business Times]

Who needs prosperity? Let them eat racism [Rasmei Kampuchea VIA Khmer Intelligence]

Radio warfare: Brits reach out to Cambodia’s Muslims [Agence France Presse]

Phnom Penh is not for everyone.

We decided to spend on our 2nd day in Phnom Penh at a leisure way as there is nothing much to see & do in this laid back capital besides finding ways to steer clear of beggars and street peddlers. Gosh…. another 5 more days to go in this dreary place!! We simply cant wait to get out of Phnom Penh

The Cambodians are at it again, this time with the help of those wimpy, peace-loving Japanese.

PHNOM PENH — Cambodia destroyed about 2,400 small arms Thursday with help from the Japanese government in a joint project that began in 2003.

Some 2,428 small arms, including rifles and handguns, were burned with help from the Japan Assistance Team for Small Arms Management in Cambodia in Kompong Thom Province, about 150 kilometers north of Phnom Penh. Provincial Gov Nam Yum presided over a ceremony called “Flame of Peace” and more than 1,000 people, including government officers, police and local residents attended.

Khmer Intelligence reports:

All TV stations are controlled by the CPP (2)

All the seven TV stations operating in Cambodia are directly or indirectly, politically and/or financially controlled by the ruling CPP, which wants to make sure that no rival political parties have access whatsoever to the electronic media. CPP top leaders or their close relatives have a significant portion of the equity of most of the following television companies/stations: TVK (State-owned; channel 7); Phnom Penh Municipality (channel 3); Army (channel 5); Bayon (channel 27); Apsara (channel 11); Khmer TV (channel 9); CTN (channel 21).

Well, duh.

This is good news.

Cambodia and Burma have agreed to direct flights between their main tourist destinations.

The Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Nam Hong announced on Wednesday that flights will connect Burma’s top tourist destinations of Bagan and Mandalay to Cambodia’s Angkor temple town Siem Reap.

Speaking in Cambodia after returning from accompanying Prime Minister Hun Sen to the reclusive state, Hor Nam Hong said the two countries hope the agreement will boost tourism and attract more international visitors.

“We have the same culture because we are both Buddhist, so we have to attract more tourists to both countries,” he said.

According to this week’s edition of the Mirror, Keo Puth Rasmei says that even though Funcinpec kicked Prince Ranariddh out of the party and filed graft charges against him, you know, no hard feelings.

Funcinpec gave a green light again to Prince Norodom Ranariddh on Saturday last week, but it requested him to accept two conditions beforehand: he has to recognize the last congress of Funcinpec of 18 October 2006, and he has to agree to having been sentenced to 18 months in prison by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court.

So just as soon as Ranariddh does those 18 months, Funcinpec will be glad to join forces with him and his new party? That’s some deal. It’s a wonder that Keo Puth Rasmei didn’t injure himself laughing while making the announcement.

The casinos on the Cambodian side of the Bavet-Moc Bai border crossing are growing in popularity among Vietnamese punters. And it’s not just the gaming tables they are coming to see.

At the Moc Bai border gate in the southern province of Tay Ninh there are over ten groups of ‘brokers’ who bring Vietnamese gamblers to Cambodia’s casinos. Every weekend, 600-700 cross the border for gambling. [...]

Tuan said that ‘brokers’ like him know this border area like the back of their hand. Gamblers who have passports can cross the border by the official road and the others by tracks.

“Sometimes I bring up to 20 gamblers across the border without passports. You will be welcomed and picked up by cars at the other side of border. Food and accommodations are free. There are American style sexy-shows each Thursday,” Tuan said.

Just as long as “American style sexy-shows” don’t include a swimsuit contest, then Cambodia’s moral fabric is probably safe for a little while longer, and the country can continue to provide a safe haven for drinking, gambling and other morally righteous pursuits.

Sure, one guy living with a bullet in his head doesn’t mean that everyone in the country would be as lucky. But still, it’s quite a fitting commentary on the Cambodian character.

The International Federation of Journalists says that Keo Nimol, the RFA journalist that Hun Sen recently admonished as “insolent,” has gone into hiding.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has voiced its shock and outrage after Cambodia’s prime minister reportedly publicly dismissed a journalist as “insolent” and “rude” for asking questions.

Prime Minister Hun Sen attacked RFA radio reporter Keo Nimol on Thursday, May 17, after Keo questioned the future of the coalition between the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) and the Funcinpec party. [...]

Keo is now in hiding and fears for his personal safety. After he attacked both Keo and RFA as “insolent”, Prime Minister Hun Sen reportedly asked another journalist about Keo’s real name, background and political leanings.

While Hun Sen’s verbal lashing of Keo Nimol was unquestionably wrong and shockingly media unsavy, calling someone “insolent” could hardly be counted as threatening language. Sack up.

At the same time, hurling such abuse at reporters undeniably stifles the free press and intimidates journalists away from asking sensitive questions. That’s a pretty terrible example for the prime minister to set. But the real question is, will such tactics work? Does the press now just let this story fade away? Or does some other journalist with the cojones to take the heat step up? It seems obvious that Hun Sen would prefer the conversation to go away. Somebody should probably try to find out why.

Moody’s has recently given Cambodia marks for credit-worthiness.

The Cambodian government Monday welcomed its first-ever foreign currency and local currency government bond ratings from Moody’s, saying the B2 rating represented a milestone.

In a joint government press release with the government’s rating advisor Credit Suisse, Deputy Prime Minister Sok An said the rating represented a new era in financial transparency and foreign investment for Cambodia.

‘The ratings are a milestone in improving investor confidence in Cambodia and show Cambodia’s willingness to make public its financial health,’ Sok An said in the press release.

A milestone in improving investor confidence? Hardly. A B2 rating is not exactly what one might call investment grade. In fact, a B2 rating firmly places Cambodia into the kingdom of “junk bond” status, just two slippery steps away from dreaded “C” territory, a financial hell reserved for countries already in default or nearly so.

It’s also unlikely that financial transparency played any part in Moody’s decision.

Moody’s said the ratings at least partially reflected a favourable offset of Cambodia’s current account deficit against foreign-direct investment inflows and a build-up in official foreign exchange reserves to a level adequate in relation to the country’s near-term debt repayments.

The continued success of the country’s tourism and garment sectors as well as anticipated good returns from oil and gas reserves, on which commercial drilling is expected to begin within two years, were also contributing factors, it said.

‘Cambodia has recently attracted significant inflows of foreign- direct investment into sectors such as tourism, garments and energy, which should help to continue to boost the overall level of investment in the economy as well as to strengthen the balance of payments,’ Moody’s Vice President Thomas Byrne said in the release.

Dr. Lao Mong Hay takes a look at the ongoing land rights problem in Sihanoukville and concludes that Hun Sen is the only hope for a solution.

[Sihanoukville Governor] Say Hak has not stopped with this eviction though. His connivance with land-grabbers continued on May 11 when he issued another order of eviction to 18 families and gave them 20 days to vacate their land. Knowing his way of ending land disputes, these families face the same terror as those previous 107 families if they defy his order. Hun Sen needs to stop Say Hak’s abuses before other governors turn his “war against land-grabbers” into terror against powerless people in other towns and provinces if his “war” is to have any meaning.

Not unsurprisingly, Hun Sen is the last appeal for many people facing crisis, seldom to much result.

This is preposterous.

On the manicured lawn between the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh and the Tonle Sap River, a young couple sitting under a banyan tree offered me their 14-month-old son in exchange for my wrist watch.

“Angelina, yes! Angelina, yes!”

All of all the misinformed, parachute journalism that gets slung Cambodia’s way, this story from Earth Times is one of the worst to come along in quite some time. The lead about poor people trying to trade their babies for watches is just the beginning. The idea that they would do so while reciting the name of Angelina Jolie is just completely unhinged from reality.

For starters, the odds that such a couple would possess an English vocabulary beyond “hello” already pushes the limits of mathematical possibility. Further, Western personalities are virtually unknown in Cambodia. (Just ask Ronan Keating.) The chances of some random homeless couple knowing not just about Angelina Jolie, but also her proclivity toward adoption, are about the same as Sam Rainsy becoming Prime Minister.

Cambofest dates have been announced: June 16 & 17 at MetaHouse.

Lesley Stahl checks in on the current state of Nicholas Negroponte’s “One laptop per child” project. Actually, it sounds a lot less like reporting, and a lot more like she has just reprinted Negroponte’s bombast.

“The first English word of every child in that village was ‘Google’,” [Negroponte] says. “The village has no electricity, no telephone, no television. And the children take laptops home that are connected broadband to the Internet.”

When they take the laptops home, the kids often teach the whole family how to use it. Negroponte says the families loved the computers because, in a village with no electricity, it was the brightest light source in the house.

“Talk about a metaphor and a reality simultaneously,” he says. “It just illuminated that household.”

Once the computers were there, school attendance went way up.

Negroponte says that in Cambodia this year 50 percent more children showed up for the first grade because the kids who were in first grade last year told the other kids, “school is pretty cool.”

Attendance went up nationwide because one village got 50 laptops? Please.

The story also makes it sound like the OLPC project turned a remote, rice-farming village into an outpost of information technology. Anyone who has spent more than two seconds in a Cambodian village couldn’t help but be a little suspicious of such a claim. In the countryside, illiteracy is high, education levels are low, and English skills among the older generation are rare. All of which makes learning computer skills for adults in the village a rather involved process

The fact that the OLPC project has been so reticent to name the village seems to only underscores suspicions of meager success. Although mentioned once in the CBS story, the village name is often left out of press materials and news accounts. It is generally referred to simply as a “Cambodian village.” But if the pilot project in Reaksmy was everything that Negroponte claims, it seems unlikely that the project would be so conservative with promoting the fact.

What does an “£8,720 per week” private villa look like? It looks nice.

On E-bay! Or something like that.

MARK COLVIN: Angkor Wat is a huge and ancient city of palaces and temples that rise out of the Cambodian forests and whose history gives it a prised position on the world heritage-list.

Now, a vendor on the Internet auction site eBay says you can have your very own piece of it. [...]

TIMOTHY MCDONALD: For just under $6,000 you can have your own relief sculpture or statue to sit on the mantelpiece or next to the water feature in the back yard.

Of course, ABC didn’t really drop $6,000 in the name of investigative journalism. It did the smart thing and called E-bay, which did the legally responsible thing and took the ad down. So the item was never sold, or authenticated.

But really, what are the chances that collectors of black market antiquities shop on E-bay? Greater than the chances of some radio hack planting dubious products on E-bay and then writing about them? Or lesser?

Prime Minister Hun Sen is apparently unhappy with growing speculation over the demise of the government’s coalition. During an informal press gaggle outside the National Assembly yesterday, a journalist asked the Prime Minister if the recent sacking of Lay Prohas was evidence of a split between the CPP and Funcinpec. And Hun Sen let loose.

“What institution do you represent?” Hun Sen barked. “RFA is always like that. RFA’s name, the question, I use one word, go ahead and broadcast it.

“I am telling you, I have seen RFA’s face,” Hun Sen said. “Your radio station is insolent, and the one who asks questions is insolent too. You see for yourself; why do you need to ask? Funcinpec’s ministers, state secretaries, undersecretaries and deputy prime ministers are here. I am speaking here now so that Cambodian TV stations tell RFA, not only is RFA insolent, even the one who asks questions is insolent.”

That sounds like a “yes”.

That’s a lot of dead fish.

A factory spill outside the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh poisoned nearby fisheries and killed more than 50 tons of fish, officials said Wednesday.

The spill overnight sparked panic among farmers, who scrambled to rescue surviving fish from the stricken ponds, commune chief You Eng told AFP.

Farmers said their ponds are frequently polluted by factory run-off, but that they are rarely compensated.

This happens “frequently”? Apparently it does. Fisherman quoted elsewhere say it happens every year about this time. It’s not the deaths that are significant, it’s the tonnage. Even more frightening, at least some fishermen sell the dead fish in the markets.

VIA AP: In many, many ways, Cambodia is still a vast, unexplored territory.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A rare soft-shell turtle thought to be on the brink of extinction has been discovered in Cambodia in a former stronghold of the Khmer Rouge, conservationists said Wednesday.

A 24-pound female Cantor’s giant turtle - known for its rubbery skin and jaws powerful enough to crush bone - was captured and released by researchers in March, U.S.-based Conservation International and World Wildlife Fund said in a statement.  [...]

It also has long claws and can extend its neck with lightning speed to bite with jaws powerful enough to crush bone, the statement said.

According to Asia Media, when General Pol Sinuon ordered journalist Chim Chenda — at gun point — to get on his kness and apologize for addressing the general by his first name, the general was just having a laugh.

General Sinuon threatened to shoot local newsman Chim Chenda for addressing him by his name, but later said the statement was only a joke.

Chim Chenda of Kampuchea Thmey, or “New Cambodia,” was eating in a Battambang restaurant with several security officers when Gen. Sinuon arrived. After the officers and Gen. Sinuon exchanged greetings, Chim Chenda addressed the general as “Brother Nuon.” Angered, the general demanded Chim “get on his knees and apologize,” or he would kill him, according to the Cambodian Association for the Protection of Journalists (CAPJ).

Chim responded by filing suit against the general in the Battambang provincial court. CAPJ has refused to accept Gen. Sinuon’s claim that he was joking, while the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) are joining in CAPJ in demanding a full investigation into the situation.

That always gets a great laugh, doesn’t it, the old “point your gun at someone’s head and threaten to kill them” joke. A real knee-slapper, that one. It’s a real wonder why none of the journalists are laughing.

VIA Khmer News: I went to the pagoda and got robbed by a monk!

Battambang Province: A monk was defrocked immediately by Sovann Botharam Thmor Koul pagoda’s supreme patriarch in the morning of May 11, 2007 after the police found out that the monk had committed the crime by attacking a beggar man with a cleaver in order to robbed him of more than 2 billions Riel (about 500 U.S dollars), causing him serious injury in his head.

A beggar with $500 in his pocket?

Most peculiar. Over at the Mekong Mail, the latest story posted is titled “From battlefield to sport arena: the rebirth of bokator.” Credit for the article is given as “By Angello Traphinos, The Mekong Mail.”

In and of itself, that’s not so strange. What’s strange is this: that same story, word for word, appears on another web site, but with a different byline. The byline on that story belongs to Cat Barton, a journalist for the Phnom Penh Post.

Maybe it’s just a typo on the part of the Mekong Mail, but that seems unlikely. At least one other story, perhaps more, currently on the Mail’s site are also of Phnom Penh Post origin. Those too are also credited to “Angello Traphinos.”

So what’s up with that?