Cambodia: Details are Sketchy

As Cambodia’s flourishing middle class learns to embrace its perceived inadequacies, the cosmetic surgery industry is booming right along with the rest of the economy. The capability of those doing the beautifying, however, not so much.

Srey Mom lies on a bed, covered in white tissue, in a room of a Phnom Penh cosmetic salon. The 50-year-old keeps still, as a beautician anesthetizes old tattoo marks under both eyebrows.

[...]

“Because I want to be beautiful, and because I’m getting older,” Srey Mom gives as explanation, once the procedure is done. “My eyes were drooping, so I wanted to have an operation. And my natural nose was too big. And I want these to be more beautiful.”

Srey Mom, who comes from Siem Reap, says she has had to run from one salon to another, because the first two did a bad job. This is her third attempt.

Sigh.

ECCC prosecutors on Saturday submitted more evidence to the court supporting charges of crimes against humanity against the ECCC Five.

Prosecutors at Cambodia’s genocide tribunal called for a new investigation into claims of torture and killings committed under the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime, in a statement Saturday.

Prosecutors asked investigating judges at the UN-backed tribunal to examine allegations of crimes committed at a Khmer Rouge security centre, said the statement dated Friday.

[...]

Prosecutors asked that senior regime leaders Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Thirith and Kaing Guek Eav — all currently in the court’s custody — be investigated for their involvement in these crimes.

The request was accompanied by more than 30 supporting documents totalling around 1,500 pages of analytical reports, witness statements and documents from the period.

It’s not immediately clear what purpose these extra charges might serve. The cases against the E5 already look pretty solid. Piling more cases — and work — onto the already resource-strapped court hardly seems necessary. What most Cambodians want are not more charges, but more defendants.

AP reports:

Dith Pran, the Cambodian-born journalist whose harrowing tale of enslavement and eventual escape from that country’s murderous Khmer Rouge revolutionaries in 1979 became the subject of the award-winning film “The Killing Fields,” died Sunday, his former colleague said.

Dith, 65, died at a New Jersey hospital Sunday morning of pancreatic cancer, according to Sydney Schanberg, his former colleague at The New York Times. Dith had been diagnosed almost three months ago.

UPDATE: The NYT interviewed Dith Pran a few weeks ago.

Stuart Franklin offers a tribute to Philip Jones Griffiths.

VIA KI: The International Herald Tribune gives a rundown of the latest auctions in the art world.

Two days later, at Christie’s, things differed only in nuances. A Khmer statue of the 11th century in the Baphuon style had surfaced in the market in 1968, two years before the Unesco cut-off line of 1970, after which goods of uncertain provenance are deemed less kosher. At $2.11 million, it now holds the world record for Khmer sculpture. How nice!

KI has photos.

Latin singing sensation Ricky Martin is in Cambodia.

SIEM REAP, Cambodia: Pop star RICKY MARTIN met victims of sexual exploitation yesterday during a visit to Cambodia to promote the fight against human trafficking. Martin held toddlers and listened to a 14-year-old rape victim’s song during his visit to a shelter in the northwestern city of Siem Reap, home of the famed Angkor temples. “She sings like an angel,” Martin said after the girl finished a song she composed about the plight of trafficking victims.

The U.K. Press Association has more.

Ever wonder how filthy the Tonle Sap might actually be?

Lach Mean, a 72-year-old who lives in a shack in which some of her grandchildren sell batteries to the surrounding villagers, shouts over the roar of a motorboat which has become entangled in the anchoring rope of a nearby house. She says that three generations of her family have lived here, but admits to defecating directly into the water because there is no access to a latrine. That is the way it’s always been done, she says. But this takes its toll. She adds: “Our life is very difficult. Often our skin is itchy and this can become infected for days.”

Indeed, while hygiene is being taught by the local school through the simple message of “don’t swim in the lake,” it is doubtful how much is sinking in.

It’s toxic.

Everyday VIA KI: As if more evidence was needed, Sam Rainsy Party member Son Chhay provides further reason to rage against Cambodia’s electricity machine.

Son Chhay indicated that the price of electricity in Cambodia is the highest in the region by at least threefold. He also indicated that experts claimed that there is no reason for EDC to incur any loss, even at the current oil price. He said that if EDC was properly administered without corruption, it can only make an even higher profit.

It’s not just poor people getting shaved here either, although they are certainly taking the worst of it.  The filthy rich crooks in charge of the EdC, with their extortionately high electricity rates, stand as a boot on the neck of proper economic growth. So instead of creating a legitimate business environment, the country gets stuck working with the Chinese government and foreign gangsters. And NGOs. All of which amounts to a pretty sad excuse for a proper economic policy.

Proceeds from the sale of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy in the nude will go to the Kantha Bopha Foundation, reports Bloomberg.

The sale of a nude photograph of France’s first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, is to benefit charity and not its owner, Christie’s International said today.

Art collector Gert Elfering has decided the proceeds from the picture’s sale at a New York auction on April 10 will go to the Fondation Kantha Bopha, a Swiss charity that supports sick children in Cambodia, Christie’s said.

The gelatin silver print was taken in 1993 by photographer Michel Comte and consigned for sale by Elfering when the former Italian model was not even engaged to President Nicolas Sarkozy, Christie’s spokeswoman Milena Sales said in an e-mail.

Unruly Malaysians arrested for harassing fight staff.

Six drunken Malaysian men were arrested and set to be deported from Cambodia on Friday, after they shouted at flight attendants and scared passengers on a flight from Kuala Lumpur, officials said.

The six men were arrested as soon as the AirAsia Airbus A320 landed in Phnom Penh, airport police chief Chhour Kimny told Agence France-Presse.

“They are drunk and demanded services that air hostesses don’t provide. They made trouble on board the flight,” he said.

VIA SEAArch: Resident archaeologists extraordinaire Alison has the lowdown on Banteay Chmar.

There is a guest house in nearby Thma Puok (which also has some pretty decent restaurants). The rate was $5/night and it was definitely one of the least appealing places I have stayed. Dirty and hot rooms, rats wandering freely, and unfriendly staff.

The good news is that the temple is awesome.

VIA KI: The Economist has some words for Samdech Hun Sen and his ban on rice exports.

Such curbs may be politically expedient, but they are economically self-defeating. They demotivate farmers, push them into growing the wrong crops and jeopardise their future access to markets. Moreover, the restrictions on supply send prices even higher on world markets. As David King, secretary-general of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers, puts it, governments are choosing to “starve their neighbours”, rather than allowing higher prices to encourage their farmers to invest in greater production.

It gets worse, of course.

The more prices rise, the greater the incentive to hoard, which creates an upward price spiral. Across Asia, restrictions on the export of rice have helped increase its cost on world markets by about 75%. On March 26th Cambodia became the latest country to ban rice exports. Thailand, the world’s largest rice exporter, is also considering restrictions. Meanwhile, there is talk that importers, like China and Japan, are stockpiling rice to safeguard supplies.

Norwegian officials tell Cambodia about the warm and fuzzy effects of striking it rich with oil.

Oil could turn Cambodia into Asia’s Norway, a UN-sponsored conference to discuss strategies to deal with the country’s expected offshore petroleum reserves heard Wednesday. Bangkok-based Norwegian ambassador extraordinary Merete Fjeld Brattested told the international conference aimed at discussing how to use the as-yet untapped reserves to fuel poverty reduction said Norway had once been the poor cousin of Europe.

“When oil was discovered off the Norwegian coast in the 1960’s, Norway was blessed,” she said.

Now oil and gas revenue makes up about 15 per cent of the Norwegian government’s income and has brought prosperity, she said, but not without the Norwegian government facing difficult decisions about how to distribute and calculate that wealth.

Cambodian officials said they will use the country’s oil wealth to fight rampant corruption and poverty, tackle the country’s culture of impunity, and rebuild its education and justice systems.

In addition to the Phnom Penh Post, whose new web site launched on Monday, Ka-Set, a new online French and Khmer publication,  has just hit the interwebs as well. Rejoice!

Well, except if, you know, you’re Bernie Krisher, in which case you should start figuring out how to stem the inevitable Sam Rainsy-like exodus of Khmer reporters to the opposition papers.

Vutha says Bill Gates & Co. is setting up shop in Cambodia.

 Yesterday, the Global Software giant Microsoft Corp launched the operation of its new Brand in Cambodia in order to fight against the intellectual property rights, and to sell its products and service in Cambodian market. Microsoft Development Program (MDP) will be responsible for coordinating local marketing program, finding new partners, and the supporting the development of Microsoft’s overall business base in Cambodia. In addition, MDP will distribute its information about how to teach the benefit of using non-pirated software and instruct users and local distributors how to use its systems.

So what’s the price of “genuine” XP software in Cambodia. In comments Ijajaja suggests a whole $3.

The new web site of the Phnom Penh Post is up and running:

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/ 

Friends don’t let friends slaughter innocent civilians. Friends make up conspiracy theories.

Cambodia says the unrest in Tibet was elaborately plotted and organised by a small group of people with ulterior motives.

China’s official Xinhua news agency has quoted a secretary of state in Cambodia’s ministry of foreign affairs saying the distorted news coverage by the western media was aimed at disturbing the ongoing sessions of the National People’s Congress, and to undermine the Bejing Olympic Games.

Cambodia’s Long Visalo is also quoted as saying the Lhasa incident was not a peaceful demonstration but a serious riot.

Was lesser Cambodian politicians continued humiliation part of China’s no strings $650 million aid deal or what? ‘Cause Cambodians going to bat for China, and making fools of themselves in the process, seems to be happening with discomforting regularity.

Human Rights Watch today calls a spade a spade.

Politically motivated criminal charges against at least three opposition party officials are part of a ruling party campaign to weaken political rivals prior to national elections in July 2008, Human Rights Watch said today.

The authorities last week arrested Tuot Saron, an official of the opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP), and sought the arrest of at least two other SRP officials. Human Rights Watch fears that additional SRP officials may also be arrested imminently.

“Dubious arrests of opposition officials months ahead of an election should set alarm bells ringing,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “This divide-and-conquer strategy is a well-known tactic of Prime Minister Hun Sen to subdue his opponents.”

Is anybody listening?

This is beyond outrageous.

Sok Pheng, a recipient of Hun Sen’s nomination reward as government advisor for his defection from the SRP, issued a warning to human rights organizations in Cambodia not to provide help to SRP officials accused by the CPP of illegal detention of Tim Norn, a former SRP commune councilor from Kampong Thom who defected to the CPP with Sok Pheng. The Cambodia Daily reported that Sok Pheng’s statement was read on local Cambodian TV stations, calling human rights organizations not to help Men Vannak, SRP Sralao commune councilor, and Thorn Rithy, deputy chairman of the SRP Kampong Thom province council. The Cambodia Daily quoted Sok Pheng as writing: “If the human rights groups protect [the SRP officials] it means that they have actively participated in the abuse against the people’s rights.”

Cat Barton and Vong Sokheng investigate the growing Korean marriage tourism business.

Like many Cambodian girls, Monika had always dreamt of marrying her very own Prince Charming. So after hearing an advert on the radio, she registered with the Chanthin Group, a Korean marriage brokering company. Almost immediately, Monika found herself in Phnom Penh, being introduced to a selection of South Korean men, one of whom picked her to be his future bride.

After three months of studying Korean culture and language every Saturday, Monika went to Korea in June 2007 and lived with her husband and his family.

No prizes for guessing how that turned out.

“I went to Korea to earn money, not for marriage,” she said, hinting at why the marriage lasted only a matter of months. She is now divorced and back in Cambodia.

At the national level, relations between Cambodia and South Korea are moving nearly as fast. South Korea is Cambodia’s number one source of tourists. South Korean money is largely responsible for Cambodia’s current real estate boom. Many of Phnom Penh’s largest construction projects — Camko City, Golden Tower 42 — are products of Korean-Cambodian partnerships.

Although there is no evidence yet to suggest that these partnerships are as unstable as their mail-order-bride counterparts, it seems at least a little likely that they too could be marred by overly optimistic expectations. After all, what kind of Korean man shops for a mail-order bride?

Brides often believe the Korean men they will be marrying are rich, successful businessmen.

But according to the IOM in Seoul, the men looking for Cambodian brides are often poor, badly educated or even mentally handicapped and have usually had difficulty finding a wife among the ranks of South Korea’s ambitious younger female generation.

A U.K. coroner has ruled on the death of a 23-year-old traveler who died at the Okay Guesthouse.

A CORONER has recorded a verdict of accidental death on a 23-year-old man who died while travelling in Cambodia.

An inquest at Hertfordshire Coroner’s Court on Thursday heard that Lewis Newbury, 23, of Stamford Avenue, Royston, died at the Okay Guest House in Daun Penh, Cambodia, on October 12 last year.

A post-mortem examination showed that he died of acute cardio-pulmonary failure.

[...]

[A friend of Lewis'] said that on the day of Lewis’s death they had spent much of the afternoon and evening drinking beer and vodka with another friend, Richard Sergeant.

The U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia on torture:

More than a quarter of Cambodian court defendants surveyed reported being tortured or coerced into confession and ordinary people lacked faith in the justice system, US ambassador to Cambodia Joseph Mussomeli said Thursday.

Who you going to believe, those criminals?

From the IHT:

Philip Jones Griffiths, a crusading photojournalist whose pictures of civilian casualties and suffering were among the defining images of the war in Vietnam, died Wednesday morning at his home in London. He was 72.

The cause was cancer, said Richard Hughes, an actor and activist who befriended Griffiths in Vietnam.

[...]

“I saw myself as producing a historical document,” he said in 2002 interview on the Web site Musarium.com, adding: “Journalists should be by their very nature anarchists, people who want to point out things that are not generally approved of.”

“It’s by criticizing that society that humanity has made progress,” he said.

A legend in every sense of the word. He will be missed.

Barbara Crossette unloads on the Hun Sen government.

In 1992-1993, the United Nations led a multimillion dollar effort to remake this Southeast Asian nation, which in barely two decades had been whipsawed into the American war in Indochina, brutalized by the Khmer Rouge and ground down and isolated by a Vietnamese occupation.

Fifteen years later, the country is among the world’s most badly governed and politically corrupt. The State Department’s report summarized it concisely: “Corruption was considered endemic and extended throughout all segments of society, including the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.” It is made all the worse, the report added, by a “culture of impunity.”

[...]

The corruption and violence in the countryside should be a warning. During the Khmer Rouge years, as discussion around the tribunal is making ever more evident, Cambodians suffered most at the hands of local zealots and barely thought about a national movement or knew its name. The level of horrors that killed about 1.7 million Cambodians - through slave labor, dislocation, disease, starvation and execution - varied from place to place. In the eyes of most Cambodians there was no central government then. There is little more now.

Sensational.

Michel Dauguet, the Phnom Penh Post’s new CEO, spoke to the British Business Association last week. He said the Post’s new Web site will debut sometime next week.

While the number of print readers may be down, Dauguet divulged to his listeners that figures indicate the internet has actually increased the overall quantity of readers across the globe. And this is why, as of next week, the Post is going online. Influenced in design and content by the BBC and the Guardian websites, the Post’s website will deliver breaking news while maintaining a ‘community’ feel by offering community features and services such as a classified section. Encouraged by ‘citizen journalism’ the Post plans to incorporate non-journalists in their news reporting through mediums such as blogs that allow readers to offer opinion and insight into global, regional or local issues.

According to those who have seen it, the new site looks okay. Compared to what the Post has now it’s a phenomenal improvement, although that’s not saying much. The real measure of success, however, will be the content.  The Post plans to go daily inside of three months, and the new Web site is an integral part of the strategy — break stories on the Web, develop them in the paper. For Cambodian news junkies that means a legitimate online news source. Finally.

As if there were ever any doubt.

Cambodia’s genocide tribunal rejected an appeal Thursday by a former Khmer Rouge leader against his pre-trial detention on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The five-judge panel ruled that Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge’s former ideologist, must remain in custody ahead of trials scheduled to begin later this year.

Nuon Chea faces charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He has been detained since Sept. 19 by Cambodia’s U.N.-backed court. Nuon Chea is one of five former Khmer Rouge leaders detained for their involvement in the group’s brutal 1975-79 rule.

RFA reports that villagers in former red zones live in fear of the KRT.

People living in the former area occupied by the KR, are concerned about the news that there would be an additional arrest of 3 former high ranking cadres of the Democratic Kampuchea (KR) regime.

[...]

A anonymous former deputy commander of the KR 404 army brigade based on the western zone, who now lives in the Sampov Loun commune, Sampov Loun district, expressed his concern, saying that: “I want all these issues to end, they should be all gone, if it remains, there will be hatred towards each other, there’s no end, and the war will continue on.”

A former KR soldier declared that the situation for the group of KR should not be underestimated: “The war cannot start by a single a person, if a single person can instigate a war, then the danger would come from that person.”

Who wouldn’t want justice for their murdered family members?

Eric at Buddhism Adjunct recently got hold of a graphic outlining the links between ECCC judges and the politicized judicial decisions that got them made men. Nothing in the chart represents new information. It just organizes the facts in easy-to-digest, colorful chart form, which makes it easy to see just how hopelessly compromised the ECCC bench really is.

The chart itself has been in circulation for months. Although its creators prefer to stay anonymous, ostensibly they are pushing it now in an effort to influence the current round of decision making going on regarding extra funding for the court. Specifically, many people would like to see financial pledges tied to reforms. Not promises of reform, mind you, but actual reform, with transparent accounting of published benchmarks. It’s a novel idea.

It’s hard to get too worked up over this jack-booted authoritarian misogyny yet again. But still, it’s jack-booted authoritarian misogyny.

Representatives of the entertainment industry have issued an open letter to try and curb the worrying moral decline of live and TV performance in Cambodia, which they believe is encouraging “sexiness” and vice.

The Khmer Arts Association (KAA) and the Television Association released the letter Monday at a conference to increase moral awareness among performing artists and presenters for both TV and live performance.

“The letter is not meant to pressure artists,” said KAA President Ieng Sithol at the conference. “Its main point is that our national tradition is being adversely affected by certain negative things which artists do and which are then seen by audiences.”

Hypocrisy at its absolute finest: Pay off your family’s debt as an indentured sex servant and the men in power say nothing. Look good on television, and it’s an outrage against Cambodian culture. Don’t believe it. It’s a pack of lies designed to keep women down. It’s working and it’s got to stop. Starting with Ieng Sithol — what people wear is none of your business, you effing tool. So, shut up.

Andy B got his blog stolen.

 If you are reading this message, then you have most likely already located the home of my new Blog. You are very welcome.

About 3 weeks ago my passwords were stolen by a computer hacker who hijacked my Blogger.com identity and took control of the Blog that I have been updating daily for the last 21 months. As you can imagine I was distraught.

I have now set up this new Blog under the umbrella of my website and will cut & paste the last 21 months worth of postings over the next few weeks.

The new site is here, http://www.andybrouwer.co.uk/blog/.