Cambodia: Details are Sketchy

The primates at Wat Phnom are out of control.

Cambodian police have put a $US250 ($283) bounty on the heads of several monkeys who have been terrorising tourists at a key temple in the capital and destroying nearby residents’ laundry, officials said.

At least three of the large macaques, which have been biting tourists at the famed Wat Phnom pagoda and also tearing up internet lines are being targeted, deputy district governor Pich Socheata said. [...]

Authorities tried several times to get the unruly monkeys to eat eggs laced with sleeping pills, but had always been outsmarted, she said, hence the bounty.

Monkeys outsmarting the cops? Oh, my.

The FCC propaganda machine says the company has just purchased that gorgeous old French villa across from the National Museum.

The roughly 1,200-square-meter site is famous for the yellow-hued rococo palace that many Phnom Penh residents have at one time gazed at with appreciation, amazement or concern.

Complete with impressive Corinthian capitals and intricate sculptural designs, the building has sat in disrepair for decades — a gorgeous, crumbling mansion with an estimated worth of some $2 million.

Now, according to FCC management, the villa will be completely restored to its past glory and become a 24-room luxury hotel with a swimming pool, French bistro and a structural link to the adjacent FCC restaurant.

Rather conspicuously missing from the whole story, however, is from whom, exactly, the FCC bought the property. Surely that’s public record over at the Department of Land Management, right?

This album from Sublime Frequencies is a couple of years old now. But recent activities at the ECCC have spurred The Beiderbecke Affair to revisit the collection. The post seems worth pointing out because of the cool album cover, a photo composition with that crazy gun at the Chuoy Chongvar round-about, and the handful of Khmer music downloads that Beiderbecke graciously passes along, one of them from the sold-out Radio Phnom Penh album.

So sayeth Leepioo, who has instructions, keypad maps, links and everything else you need to know.

Transparency International yesterday released their 2007 Corruption Perceptions Index. So how did Cambodia do?

Cambodia scored fractionally worse in 2007 than it did in 2006. In 2006 Cambodia got 2.1 out of a possible 10 points. In 2007 Cambodia did slightly worse, scoring 2 out of 10. The 2007 survey included more countries than 2006. In 2006 Cambodia ranked 151 out of 163 countries. In 2007, Cambodia ranked 162 out of 180 countries.

In comparison to its regional neighbors, Cambodia stands solidly at the middle of the pack:

• Thailand, 84
• Vietnam, 123
• Cambodia, 16
• Laos, 168
• Myanmar, 179 (dead last)

UPDATE: Yes! As pointed out in comments, and widely circulated in Friday’s Cambodia Daily, in 2006 Cambodia scored 2.1 points, and in 2007 Cambodia scored 2.0 points, for a net loss of .1 point, not a net gain of .1 points, as originally stated. The post has been changed accordingly. Leave the reporting to the professionals. It’s harder than it looks.

Writer, teacher, linguist, and prolific letter-to-the-editor writer, Moeun Chhean Nariddh has joined the Cambodian blogging community with My Cambodian News. Diffusing the question of which language is better to blog in, English or Khmer, Nariddh blogs in both.

In 2002, Human Rights Watch awarded Nariddh a Hellman-Hammet grant for human rights defenders.

Cambodia Maps has been on the road, down to Kompong Trach and places beyond.

[S]ome of the limestone mountains at Kampong Trach are being sold to quarrying concessions, and, although this is a comparatively small scale operation, it’s damaging the landscape in a noticeable way. The approach and entrance to the swimming cave has already been spoiled, how long before the rest go the same way?

As this Asia Sentinel story answers, Kompong Trach and other places like it are only the beginning. Cambodia’s mineral deposits remain virtually untouched, and the government seems to view the idea of conservation as so much blabbering by  dumb foreigners who know nothing about Cambodia.

Environment Minister Mok Mareth said in a recent interview that a balance must be struck between conservation and development, hinting that the balance would fall on the side of development. “There are too many people worried that it may destroy all the resources, all biodiversity, all ecosystems,” he said. “Of course, it’s right. It destroys some part, not all. We have to understand that.”

Got that, Global-who-whatcha-call-it? Conservation destroys only some, not all. Capeesh?

Prince Sisowath Thomico’s second life in Cambodian politics came to an ignoble end yesterday when he resigned from Funcincpec, saying his recent demands to dissolve the ECCC had embarrassed his party.

Thomico’s run had been marked by loopiness from the start.

Viet Nam News says Phnom Penh in now plugged in to the Electricity du Viet Nam power grid.

From now to 2010, Viet Nam will supply Cambodia between 80-200 MW through a 220kV line linking the Thot Not station in the Mekong delta to Cambodia’s Phnom Penh.

Judging by recent EdC invoices, however, “now” doesn’t necessarily mean now. If it was now already, power prices would be way lower, more than 50% in some cases.
Faster, please.

The web is virtually chockers with colorful anecdotes from tourists who enter Cambodia through Poipet. This is but one.

We cross the border without too much trouble, but at the other side we have to wait for an hour for the bus that’s supposed to take us to Siem Reap. It’s not a favourable first impression of Cambodia - the border town Poipet is, frankly, a dusty shithole with lots of huge garish casinos and it’s a lot hotter than it was in Northern Thailand where we were the night before. When the bus finally arrives it turns out to be a very rickety one. My window doesn’t open, though that turns out to be rather fortunate as the road to Siem Reap is all dirt road and hence very dusty.

Maybe E-visa could turn this into a marketing campaign, too! Slogan suggestions welcome.

The woman that once fascinated the world has disappeared without a trace.

Cambodia’s mysterious “jungle girl” has disappeared back into the forests where she was found less than a year ago, police said Tuesday. The wild woman believed by the parents of Rochom P’ngieng to be their long-lost daughter melted back into the jungle about a month ago and searches for her have proven fruitless, said Ley Tom, O’Yadaw district deputy police chief in the remote north-eastern province of Ratanakiri.

VIA KI: The Wall Street Journal is unimpressed with the Khmer Rouge Tribunals.

The United Nations Development Program is already under scrutiny for gross irregularities in its programs in North Korea, from which it was forced to pull out earlier this year. Now there’s another scandal to add to the list: UNDP’s lack of oversight of the Khmer Rouge war-crimes tribunal, for which it oversees a significant share of the funding.

The complete details of an audit examining hiring practices haven’t fully come to light yet, thanks to the UNDP’s refusal to make the audit public or even share it with donors. But we’ve seen an early draft, and can start to fill in the outline of what’s going on. It isn’t pretty.

“It isn’t pretty” is an understatement. According to the Journal and others briefed on the report’s findings, the report, in so many words, says the hiring process for local staff was so completely lacking in transparency that the only wise thing to do now is sack them all and start over again.

For obvious reasons, that idea is slightly less than practical. But here’s the thing. Everyone, including the Wall Street Journal, knew from the very beginning that these Khmer Rouge Tribunals would be less than perfect, in some instances, far, far from it.

Some have argued that under such circumstances no trials would be better than flawed ones. The U.S. has so far refused to give one cent to the ECCC because of what it perceives as less than international standards of justice.

That’s a cop-out. Ninety-percent of the Cambodia population wants a trial to happen. If it’s less than perfect, so be it. If it falls to pieces, fine. The Khmer Rouge killed in excess of 1.7 million people. There are not enough lawyers or courts on planet Earth to ever truly redress Cambodia’s awful past. To not even try, however, would be unconscionable.

UPDATE: ECCC, UNDP vow to reform hiring process

Britney’s antics fuel swing back to Asian music in Cambodia [Earthtimes]

New book by Penny Edwards released, Cambodge : the cultivation of a nation, 1860-1945 [Indologica]

JSAC to hand over special monument to local government of Cambodia [People's Daily Online]

Bird, monkey species in Cambodia added to critically endangered list [CCTV]

Oil and Gas Dynamics in the Gulf of Thailand [PINR]

The Sunday Times has a story today titled “The world’s wildest delicacies.” Cambodia not only made the list, it made the list twice and got first place. Imagine that.

In audio and pictures, Australian radio picks up on the Mekong delta blues fable.

Virginia Madsen goes in search of Cambodia’s great musical traditions and find them against all the odds surviving on the streets and in the slums of Phnom Penh. We meet the remarkable Kong Nai, the ‘Ray Charles of Cambodia’ and one of few surviving masters of the chapei, which is both a musical instrument (an ancient two stringed guitar unique to Cambodia) and a style of music that sounds remarkably like the American Delta blues.

There’s even an MP3 download available of Kong Nai’s “Traditional Wedding Song for a Daughter,” a slow-moving, 9-minute call-and-response dialogue as authentic as anything with roots in the Mississippi delta, and spiritually just as powerful.

AP reports that Nuon Chea ain’t happy in jail.

Days after being indicted on crimes against humanity, former Khmer Rouge official Nuon Chea is finding plenty to complain about in prison. … He since has demanded a mattress, a new toilet and more fish in his diet, his lawyer Son Arun said Saturday (22 Sept). … Nuon Chea was especially upset with his squat toilet, which the frail, 81-year-old found difficult to use, the lawyer said. … He said Nuon Chea also complained about backaches from sleeping on a woven mat and has asked for a mattress.

Maybe someone could remind Nuon Chea about Rule Number 6:

6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.

Tharum interviews Vireak.

Q: For a couple of reasons, you don’t consider yourself as a blogger. But what do you see yourself in the next several years when more Cambodians find blogging as a norm in their Internet activities?
- To be honest, I don’t really care whether blogging will be a norm in Cambodia or not. I don’t see myself writing online for too long.

Q: Do you encourage your friends to start blogging and/or keep blogging?
- Not really. It’s not like I’ll make their lives happier if I ask them to come online and start blogging or keep blogging. I’m not a believer in online life. To me, the happiest form of life exists off line.

[...]

Q: Lots of people say blogging is taking off in Cambodia. Do you think so?
- In one of early post of 2007 http://www.vireak.net/2007/01/05/2007-predictions/, I made a bold prediction that blogging bubble in Cambodia will burst in 2007. Like many things that become popular, it will soon fade off. I’ll stick with my prediction. I don’t know. My instinct told me so.

Literally. Just like that. The blog is neither there, nor here. Ahh, but wait, yes — it is here. Most of it. Or at least the recent stuff, anyways. But probably not for long.

In the same week that AP reports about Cambodia’s blogging revolution, the New York Times tears down the wall, and NBC announces it will let viewers download television programs from its web site for free, Bernie Krisher, publisher of the Cambodia Daily, is working the local newspaper circuit in defense of his lawsuit against Radio Free Asia for, get this, copying and distributing Cambodia Daily news stories.

The saga began last September when Krisher ran a full-page advertisement accusing half a dozen prominent organizations of stealing copyrighted material from his newspaper. On top of the list was Radio Free Asia, and Krisher promised he would soon reveal examples of RFA’s “crimes” and “flagrant disregard of respecting the belongings of others.” (The witch hunt didn’t stop with RFA. In May of this year Krisher ran another full-page ad, this time asking readers to give up information on the people behind Khmer Intelligence.)

Two weeks ago Xinhua reported that Krisher had  finally made good on his original threats — not in print, but in court. Earlier this month Krisher filed copyright infringement suits against not only Radio Free Asia but Agence Kampuchea Presse as well. According to this vaguely attributed Cambodia Mirror story, Krisher on Wednesday spoke to local newspaper Kampuchea Thmey to “explain and defend” his actions.

An explanation, however, is hardly necessary. On the face of it there is virtually zero question that RFA is guilty. But the very fact that such a lawsuit is now making its way through the Cambodian court system defies all notions of reasonable human intelligence. Bernard Krisher’s compaints against RFA, and a growing list of others, all stem from one very simple fact: The Cambodia Daily web site sucks rotten eggs.

If Krisher gave half as much time to building a web site as he does to seeking and destroying copyright violators, there would be little need for anyone to copy anything. We could all happily read the Cambodia Daily online for ourselves, and Mr. Krisher could augment his massive piles of print-ad dollars with online ones, just like the rest of the industrialized world.

Instead, the old man seems content to vent his frustrations at the technocrats who would embrace technology. Homeless, glue-sniffing newspaper boys beware. Keep overcharging the tourists for their newspapers, and one day Bernie Krisher is gonna sue your ass too.

AP today puts Cambodia’s blogging revolution into perspective.

Cambodia became one of the most isolated countries in the world during the late 1970s, when the communist Khmer Rouge were in power and cut off virtually all links with the outside world as they applied radical policies that led to the death of 1.7 million people. The Khmer Rouge were ousted in 1979, but the country is still struggling to rebuild. Fewer than one-third of 1 percent of Cambodians have regular Web access.

If the Internet opened a path for news from outside Cambodia, blogging is turning the path into a two-way street.

The story ends with a quote from Tha Rum, who puts some perspective to Cambodia’s blogging revolution.

“Cambodia is not just about Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot,” said Bun Tharum, 25, referring to the now-defunct radical communist group and its late leader. “Now we have a tool to inform the outside world about how we are thinking and progressing.”

If only the world was smart enough to listen.

A group of concerned individuals from the Northwestern University School of Law’s Center for International Human Rights announced yesterday the launch of a new web site dedicated to tracking the plot twists at the ECCC.

The Cambodia Tribunal Monitor, now available at http://www.cambodiatribunal.org/, will serve as a leading source of news and information on the upcoming trials of senior officials of the Khmer Rouge regime for atrocity crimes.

Throughout the court proceedings, the Web site will offer news updates, video excerpts of the trials and guest commentaries by leading international experts on the recent history of Cambodia, politics, human rights and international law. … Once the trials formally begin, which is estimated for early 2008, Cambodia Tribunal Monitor will provide daily tape-delayed video of the court proceedings, as well as video of interviews with Cambodian citizens documenting their reaction to the events. … In the coming months, commentary and insight from more than a dozen additional contributors will be added to the site.

By virtue of the fact that no trials have yet to actually begin, Tribunal Monitor is thus far a bit thin in the monitoring department. The site offers a handful of terse legal documents relating to the creation of the court, a couple of noteworthy comment pieces from Youk Chang and David Scheffer, and probably most usable, an up-to-date list of news links regarding the Extraordinary court. For the desperately hopeless news junkie, all of it is available via RSS feed.

But that’s about it. For now, at least, the best bet for trial info is still the official court web site, and despite lacking a certain English-language polish, KR Trial dot info is still the leading source of trial-related news.

Authorities arrested Nuon Chea today at his home in Pailin.

After being educated in neighboring Thailand, Nuon Chea returned to Cambodia in 1950 where he became involved in the struggle for independence from French rule and joined the Indochinese Communist Party. He rose up through the ranks to become a senior leader of the murderous Khmer Rouge rule in the 1970s.

His transformation into a leader of the brutal Khmer Rouge began in 1975, just about a month after it took power. Joined by his late boss Pol Pot, Nuon Chea addressed a meeting of the movement’s leaders from across the country in Phnom Penh, according to a document from the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent group gathering evidence of the Khmer Rouge atrocities.

Known as Brother No. 2, Nuon Chea allegedly laid out the Khmer Rouge “master plan,” which called for the abolition of money, religion, monks, and the expulsion of ethnic Vietnamese.

“All efforts toward executing the general political guideline came from Nuon Chea,” the document said. It added that the word “smash” used during the Khmer Rouge to mean the killing of its internal and external enemies also “came from Nuon Chea.”

Reuters and AFP give some background, as well as more on the arrest:

A shaking, frail old man being helped to dress by police officers. That was one woman’s last glimpse of Nuon Chea, a former Khmer Rouge leader who allegedly devised the regime’s brutal machinery of death.

Peering through the window of Nuon Chea’s house moments before he was led away by authorities Wednesday, Sok Sothera, a neighbour in this tiny jungle hamlet in northwest Cambodia, told AFP “he was shaking.”

“His legs looked like they would collapse,” said Sok Sothera, who a year ago moved next door into the house once belonging to another regime cadre, former head of state Khieu Samphan.

“Two policemen had to hold him up” as they walked him to a waiting pickup truck, she said.

UPDATE: Mydans files for the NYT, and points to the political sensitivities in which the ECCC is unfolding.

Describing the killing of eight Westerners who were seized by the Khmer Rouge, Duch said, “Nuon Chea ordered me to burn their bodies with tires and leave no bones.”

On another occasion, he said, “My prison was full. Nuon Chea ordered 300 soldiers arrested. He called to meet me and said, ‘Don’t bother to interrogate them - just kill them.’ And I did.”

And then two paragraphs later:

Mr. Nuon Chea surrendered to the government along with the movement’s former head of state, Khieu Samphan, and was treated by Prime Minister Hun Sen to a beach holiday and a visit to the ancient temples of Angkor.

With the financial help of Uncle Sam, MTV Asia has produced a hard-hitting, high-production values news documentary on human trafficking.

Its high production values, driving musical score, and slick edits make the film, in the words of its producers, “very MTV.”

But don’t expect to see boy bands or risqué hip-hop. MTV’s “Traffic” is a hard-hitting, U.S.-funded documentary that is part of a campaign aimed at educating vulnerable youth in Asia about the risks of being trafficked illegally for exploitative labor.

The movie, which premieres Tuesday on MTV Thailand, is tailored for the U.S. broadcaster’s vast youth audience in go-getting East Asia. By raising awareness of the dangers, campaigners say they hope to address a practice that is akin to modern-day slavery.

Previews of the 24-minute program should soon be available at mtvexit.org, a web site dedicated to “Traffic.”

When Khem Sokha launched the Human Rights Party, Cambodia’s latest “opposition” political party, many questioned the sincerity of the man who not-so-quietly resigned from his previous position as head of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights under a tempest of graft allegations.

Yesterday, in a cunning ploy to quiet such doubters, Khem Sokha embarked on a journey to prove he is a serious Cambodian politician.

The HRP issued a statement on Sunday indicating that it will hold a protest demonstration if a Svay Rieng casino, located next to the Vietnamese border, forces its employees to wear Vietnamese dress. In its statement, the HRP said that the Las Vegas Sun Hotel and Casino, located in Bavet commune, Chantrea district, has abused the Cambodian custom, and the employees’ freedom by forcing them to wear Vietnamese dresses. Ly Korm, president of the HRP workers’ movement, told The Cambodia Daily that the HRP plans to hold a demonstration if this hotel issues an order for their employees to dress in this manner. However, an anonymous casino administrator told The Cambodia Daily that he did not order employees to wear Vietnamese dress. He said that, living in Cambodia, the Cambodian law is applicable. Chieng Am, the Svay Rieng provincial governor, said that he does not know about this case, he said that he will initiate an investigation into this case.

A casino making employees wear uniforms?  The horror!

Really, Khem Sokha should be grateful. He spends his efforts on such trivial matters only because Cambodia does not suffer from any real, major human rights violations, such as arbitrary arrest and detention, police torture, state-sanctioned kidnapping, extra-judicial killings …

Oh, wait.

As many may know, Diana at Cambodia Calling left the wage-slave world of Singapore publishing to set up a social enterprise in Phnom Penh. The honorable men of the Phnom Penh Fire Brigade, among others, are the happier for it.

Yesterday the fire police came again. I had already bought a fire extinguisher from them a few months ago. This happened after eight of them stood at my door the second day after I opened Bloom café. Sometimes I think the police are the most efficient people in Cambodia. They had asked that I buy four fire extinguishers for the café at USD45 each. [...]

After that purchase, a man from the fire police would visit once a month, always a different bloke, always with some excuse to get money from us. One time, one of the men stuck a piece of paper on the extinguisher, to certify it is safe or some other trivial reason and asked for money. I gave him a buck just so he would go away.

It’s not a good idea, because if they know you’re an easy hit, they’ll keep coming back for more.

Sage advice, indeed.

A big-time cartoon exhibit comes to Cambodia.

The 10th Asian Cartoon Exhibition opens in Phnom Penh on Monday with the theme of “Asian Environmental Issues”.

The exhibition is being held in the Cambodia-Japan Cooperation Center (CJCC) in Phnom Penh from Sept. 17 to 29, a CJCC press release said.

It displays 77 new cartoons of leading cartoonists from 10 Asian nations, namely China, Cambodia, Japan, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, it said. [...]

Cambodian cartoonist Em Sothya appeared Monday at the opening of the exhibition and explained his works about illegal logging to the audience.

Cambodia has just wrapped up the country’s second annual Bokator fighting tournament.

More than 200 fighters from all over the country have competed for gold, silver and bronze medals at three levels including 70 kg, 65 kg and 60 kg of weight, at the Olympic Stadium in Phnom Penh from Tuesday to Friday.

Meanwhile, there were also two performing martial art competitions, including martial art with long stick for men and martial art with short stick for woman.

Bo Chum Sary, under-secretary of state of the Cambodian Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, presided over the closing ceremony on Friday and handed over the gold medal to San Sovanara, the winner of the level of 70 kg.

Or so claims this new zoological study, which going by all the 10-cent words in the abstract sure sounds convincing.

The kouprey is a rare and enigmatic forest ox discovered by scientists in Cambodia only in 1937. Numerous morphological hypotheses have been proposed for the origin of the kouprey: that it is a species closely related to banteng and gaur, two other wild oxen of southeast Asia; a morphologically divergent species placed in a separate genus, named Novibos; a wild species linked to aurochs and domestic cattle; a vicariant population of banteng; a feral cattle; or a hybrid of banteng with either zebu cattle, gaur or water buffalo.In a recent paper, which gained a lot of media coverage, Galbreath et al. analysed mitochondrial DNA sequences and concluded that the kouprey never existed as a wild, natural species, and that it was a feral hybrid between banteng and zebu cattle.Here we analyse eight DNA markers-three mitochondrial regions and five nuclear fragments-representing an alignment of 4582 nucleotides for the holotype of the kouprey and all related species. Our results demonstrate that the kouprey is a real and naturally occurring species, and show that Cambodian populations of banteng acquired a mitochondrial genome of kouprey by natural introgressive hybridization during the Pleistocene epoch.

Unfortunately, the report is behind some massively cryptic web page, one that only someone who understands ‘natural introgressive hybridization’ could ever hope to negotiate. But if reaction to the last kouprey report is any guide, then this new report will fire up a fresh round of controversy, and with it a quantity of newspaper coverage befitting of Cambodia’s majestic ox-like bovine. Stay tuned.

AP reports on the power of love, as it unfolds in Battambang.

A Cambodian man was arrested after injecting a woman with his own blood in a bizarre scheme to win her affections, police said Wednesday.

The 22-year-old man is being held by police for allegedly causing injury to a 21-year-old woman, said Tan Sophal, a police officer in Battambang province where the attack occurred. It is about 155 miles northwest of the capital, Phnom Penh.

The man allegedly injected a syringe of his blood into the woman’s rib cage and waist as she walked home from school, Tan Sophal said.

The assailant fell in love with the woman when the two were classmates in 2004, Tan Sophal said. After the woman refused his advances, he came up with the scheme to inject her with his blood, he said.

“He thought that if he could not marry her, at least his blood can stay inside her body,” Tan Sophal said. “That’s why he injected her with his blood.”

Yesterday, the Voice of America spoke with Mark Lagon, the U.S.’s new anti-human trafficking czar. Mr. Lagon had nothing good to say about Cambodia’s national police chief.

In Cambodia, police officials, including National Police Chief Hok Lundy, have been implicated in the crime of buying and selling human beings for the sex trade.

Although some US agencies work with Hok Lundy, and he has denied involvement, Lagon, who’s former boss was a strong opponent of the police chief, said he has not seen satisfactory proof from Hok Lundy to clear him of the allegations.

“The burden of proof must always lie with officials who have been corrupt and who have been part of the problem and part of dehumanization of their fellow citizens,” Lagon said. “That will always be the case with Hok Lundy.”