Cambodia lifts marriage ban to foreigners

The Post reports:

A BAN on marriages between Cambodians and foreigners aimed at curbing human trafficking has been lifted, officials said Wednesday, adding that new regulations will seek to prevent internet websites from featuring mail-order Cambodian brides.

The suspension, begun in late March, was lifted on November 3, but the “new subdecree [regulating marriages] has not yet been widely publicised”, said Bith Kimhong, director of the Interior Ministry’s Anti-human Trafficking Department.

Foreigners, open your hearts — and your wallets.

Jeff says ‘Happy Thanksgiving’

In 3-part harmony. (Well, almost.) As well, he provides a link to the download, which, you have to think, would have made Mr. Guthrie happy. And if none of this makes any sense what-so-ever, go ahead and click the link, and learn yerself some American protest history.

Super rice

Some push back against the super rice story. GRAIN has more, including this rather bleak summary of the situation.

The main appeal of hybrid rice for private investors, however, is not its performance but the control it offers over farming. Farmers who plant hybrid rice have to return to the company every year to buy new seed, so it is ideal for locking them into contract production. Hybrid rice is also best suited to the kind of large-scale, high-tech, plantation-style agriculture that the foreign investors moving in on Cambodia’s rice lands are likely interested in pursuing. Landgrabbing and hybrid rice are indeed a perfect match.

The big sales pitch behind super rice is what has been dubbed the “Chinese miracle” — yield rates 15-20% greater than other high-yield Asian varieties — but research says duplicating that success beyond Chinese borders remains a dubious proposition.

The analysis indicates that the particular political system and other socioeconomic factors, and not the inherent economic superiority of this technology, were the driving forces behind the success of Chinese hybrid rice. Thus in other Asian countries, where these factors are not evident and where market forces operate freely (apart from Vietnam), it is unlikely that the success of Chinese hybrid rice will be replicated in toto. Although hybrid rice has a yield gain of about 15-20% over the existing high-yielding modern varieties outside China, it is not attractive to farmers because of higher input costs and lower market prices due to its inferior grain quality.

It really is hard not to be cynical about this. Far from being the great white hope, it sounds like super rice is merely the latest buzzword for “screw the little guy.” High-ranking government officials will make multi-million-dollar back-room deals with big foreign agri-business while pocketing phat sums of tea money for their troubles. Already struggling farmers will get locked into contracts for crappy rice that cost more to grow and no one wants to eat.

And the absolute rub of it all is that similar deals could be made to grow good rice, which would benefit  farmers and the country as a whole, but that would mean less profits for the deal-makers. So screw the little guy it is.

UPDATE: The first sentence in the second to last paragraph should have read “It really is hard not to be cynical about this,” not “It really is hard to be too cynical about this“. It has been corrected accordingly.

Freaking backpackers

Gary Arndt tells the Happy Hotelier that his trip to Preah Vihear was among his top 3 worst travel experiences.

I documented my trip there on my site, but it was 14 hours spent on the back of a motorbike over very rough roads. The destination was a war zone, with solders getting killed the day I was there. I was in so much pain from the trip when I got back, I could barely sit.

Bloody backpacker, to cheap to take a car, what do you expect? It’s a temple. On a mountain. In the jungle. That’s not on Piccadilly, you know. The rest of Arndt’s stories are here. Boy, is he clueless.

In addition to soldiers, there were also women and children near the temple area. Why they were there is beyond me. They were not visiting. Some appeared to work there. One girl tried to sell me a CD, which I thought was very odd given the circumstances. I think they non-soldiers are there either to support the soldiers (food, cleaning, etc) or to solidify the claims to the temple by having civilians.

Women and children selling things? At a temple? Bizarre. Where is this strange land of which Mr. Arndt speaks?

The fight against HIV

The battle is far from over.

At the end of each day, Lux, a construction worker in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, goes home for supper with his wife and young children. But at the weekend he leads a different life, cruising the city’s most notorious male brothels, where he regularly has group sex with men while watching pornographic videos.

“I think it’s pretty common. A lot of men I know do this in secret without their wives knowing,” he told IRIN/PlusNews. When asked about using condoms during sex, he said, “Sometimes, but never with my wife.”

Frightening.

Lux does not consider himself homosexual, or at a heightened risk of HIV. “I’m not a gay person. I just do this for pleasure, like a lot of men,” he told IRIN/PlusNews. “From the TV programmes I’ve seen that are run by NGOs, I think gay people spread AIDS, but not people who just do this on the side.”

Sexual labels are easy to reject, but the inability to face health facts is particularly alarming. HIV kills. Prevalance among Lux’s population group is nearly nine times the national average (8.7 versus .9, says the article). That he is not worried about infecting himself is disturbing enough, but the disregard for his wife is reprehensible.

Siem Reap Airways grounded

Safety first.

THE government has  slapped a temporary flight ban on domestic carrier Siem Reap Airways amid concerns over its safety standards, Chea Aun, director general of the State Secretariat for Civil Aviation, told the Post on Tuesday.

“The government has decided to stop flights temporarily and replace them with [flights from] its parent company, Bangkok Airways,” said Chea Aun.

It’s great to see the government stepping up and doing the right thing. More please.

The Preah Vihear map

Norbert Klein responds to Chan Veasna’s pleas that Thailand cease using maps drawn unilaterally.

Surprisingly, there is no reference at all [in Chan Veasna's letter] to the newest map, produced under the signature of Var Kim Hong, senior minister in charge of border affairs of the Cambodian Council of Ministers and attached to the Joint Communique of June 18, 2008, which was signed by Deputy Prime Minister Sok An and countersigned by Francoise Riviere, assistant director general for culture of Unesco and the then-Thai minister of foreign affairs.

[...]

The Cambodian nomination file referenced the 1904 and 1907 maps, so the Cambodian side clearly has agreed that these have been superseded and replaced by the map of June 18, 2008. If Thais should use “Cambodian maps”, so should Cambodians – that is: the newest, official map of June 18, 2008, submitted to Unesco under the signature of the Cambodian deputy prime minister.

That’s not right. For one, national borders are typically affirmed by treaty, not joint communique. For two, this sentence — “The map mentioned in paragraph 1 above shall supersede the [other] maps” — and to which Klein specifically refers, is not a reference to the original 1908 map; it’s a reference to the much later 2008 map.

Remember, Cambodia sought Thailand’s backing before going to Unesco. Without Thailand’s approval, Preah Vihear was all but certain to be denied. Cambodia’s original request was rejected by Thailand because Thailand was unhappy with the shape/size/existence of a western buffer zone in the map. So Cambodia redrew the map and resubmitted the proposal, and Thailand approved it.

Then all hell broke loose, and Thailand’s wacky government ruled the Preah Vihear agreement illegal and tore the document up. Which, for three, surely absolves Cambodia from using the superseding map, if in fact that’s what the communique said. But it doesn’t.

And, for four, point number five of the communique says so quite unequivocally:

The inscription of the Temple of Preah Vihear on the World Heritage List shall be without prejudice to the rights of the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Kingdom of Thailand on the demarcation of the Joint Commission for Land Boundary of the two countries.

WWF building eco-lodge in Mondulkiri

This sounds extremely cool.

From Table Mountain to Cambodia, Capetonian Stephen Lamb will be taking the skills and experience he acquired when building the Hoerikwaggo Trail camps to the remote forests of Asia where he will establish an eco-lodge for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

[...]

“This is apparently an amazing area, called the Srekop Wilderness, half a million hectares of forest which still has Bengal tigers, leopard and Asian elephant. It is still pretty much untouched, mainly because of the war.

“WWF Cambodia want to have an eco-lodge for responsible tourism, so the focus will be on establishing renewable energy at the camp, setting up systems for dealing with the disposal of waste and so on. It will also be on making conservation issues relevant to the livelihoods of the local people,” Lamb said.

The plan is to set up energy from a small-scale hydro-electric plant on a river. Before deciding where the camp will go, Lamb and Schroeder will explore the banks of the river by boat and by elephant to find the most suitable site. All the structures will be built off the ground and connected by elevated walkways.

Is it better to be a prostitute or a garment factory worker?

The Post has a great interview today with Minister of Women’s Affairs Ing Kantha Phavi, who seems like quite the firecracker. When asked “Are your male Cabinet colleagues interested in women’s affairs?”, here’s what she said.

Should I lie to you? I would be lying if I said they are all interested. They are not. But they are improving. In the past, they did not understand the meaning of gender equality, not even the prime minister. That’s changed and he is now our best champion, and others realise what must be done. But I wish I could say the same for some ministers who still don’t get it.

And, yes, Post writer Roger Mitton really did ask Minister of Women’s Affairs Ing Kantha Phavi this question: “For a vulnerable woman, is a job in a textile factory better than prostitution?”

Sar Kheng speaks up

Just a coincidence?

The economic police of the ministry of Interior (MoI) came under scathing criticism for being an entity that does not serve the people, and also of being involved in corruption.

In a speech given during the promotion of high-ranking national police officials in the afternoon of 21 November at the MoI, Sar Kheng, the vice-PM and minister of Interior, directly criticized and scolded leaders of the economic police for not fulfilling their duty to serve the nation and the people, to the contrary, this police department is involved in corruption by sending its forces to seek benefits and fulfill their personal interest only.

Sar Kheng said: “So, I am asking: How much did our economic police participated in the fight against economic offense? None! I never received any report from the economic police, all that I received were complaints brought up against them. There were no reports showing the achievements of the economic police.”

RFA obit of Hok Lundy

Khmerization has translated/transcribed the RFA obit on Hok Lundy: part 1 and part 2.

Cackling like a crazed motodope

When it comes to motodopes, nearly everyone has his or her own horror story to tell. Few are as disturbing as this one.

On the way back he kept yelling “At Loi, you know! At Loi!” This is Khmer for, at least as far as I know, ‘no money.’ But the phrase didn’t really seem to have any connection to the rest of the conversation which at this point had turned more into a monologue because I had given up the idea of trying to talk to him. He was laughing out loud most of the ride back except when we passed the police, standing on the corner of Sihanouk and 63, there he turned around and said: “If you ask me to stop here I kill you.”

Luckily, things turned out okay. It really can’t be said enough: take a moto you know.

Cambodia’s top 100 web sites

Alexa has a list of Cambodia’s top 100 web site.

92. The Phnom Penh Post

49. KI Media

32. The Bangkok Post

30. Voice of America

21. Radio Free Asia

19. BBC

10. Koh Santepheap

It’s an interesting list. Everyday.com, at number 6, is the highest ranking Cambodia-based site. Bong Thom is 15. Number 1 and 2 are Yahoo and Google, respectively. Unsurprisingly, there’s lots of “adult” sites on the list, as well as social networking, gambling and tech-related sites.

Street food unidentified

Does anybody know what this food is called? Evan Kleiman at KCRW in Santa Monica needs your help.

2008 Weblog Awards

Deadline for submissions is Friday Nov 21, 2008. A search for ‘Cambodia’ turns up nothing!

http://2008.weblogawards.org/

The Post gets suggestive

The Phnom Penh Post today suggests you visit the Celebrity Pictures web site, which features lots of photos of bikini-clad hotties. It’s great to see The Post continuing its commitment to journalism excellence under new management.

Hor Namhong vs. Sam Rainsy, cont

Khmerization passes along the latest in the ongoing saga.

The seven month-old defamation and disinformation law suit, derived from an article published by the opposition newspaper the Khmer Conscience and which was lodged by Deputy PM and Foreign Minister Hor Namhong against Opposition Leader Sam Rainsy, has been temporarily shelved by a prosecutor attached to the court, awaiting for the verdict of the French court first which will be decided on the 9th of December, 2008.

Sam Rainsy, remember, accused Hor Namhong of war crimes for his role as leader of the Boeng Trabek camp during the Khmer Rouge regime. Hor Namhong responded, as Hor Namhong is wont to do, with a lawsuit, not just in Cambodia but also in France. The decision is expected shortly. Stay tuned.

Clueless bloggers

Gary Arndt, who is chronicling his world travels in the “Internet’s most popular travelogue,” recently came to  Cambodia. As Gary himself tells us in a press release announcing his blogging endeavors, the cowards in the mainstream media could learn a lot from intrepid bloggers like himself.

On October 6, 2008, Gary traveled to Preah Vihear from Siem Reap, Cambodia to assess the border conflict first hand. He traveled through rural Cambodia on motorcycle to reach the disputed temple, which lies 250km from the world famous Angkor Wat.

“… My guide was also armed in case we ran into trouble.”

… Even though the conflict has gained international attention, very few members of the mainstream media have ventured into the area. Arndt, who writes for his own travel blog, was one of the few foreigners to travel to the conflict zone.

“Having been to over 40 countries in 20 months, I have a unique, independent perspective on the world. I hope more people come to realize that bloggers can provide unique perspectives that mainstream media cannot or will not offer”, concluded Arndt.

This is powerfully misinformed. The border dispute has been covered to death. The Post, The Daily, AP, AFP, Reuters, and VOA — that is, virtually every major English news organization in the country — have all reported from Preah Vihear on numerous occasions. In July the government organized a media junket to the temple. Seth Mydans has filed half a dozen reports for the New York Times since. John Vink was there just last week.

Not one of them needed an armed guard.

Monk arrested for raping tourist

Awfulness.

A 17-year-old Buddhist monk has been arrested and defrocked for allegedly raping a British woman at a tourist site in Cambodia’s northwest, police said Wednesday.

Thorn Sophoan, a monk for just one month, was held on Tuesday after a 39-year-old British woman accused him of sexually assaulting her in Battambang province, local police chief Mey Chhengly told AFP by telephone.

“While the monk was guiding the British woman to see caves on the top of Phnom Sam Pov mountain, he raped her,” Mey Chhengly said. The monk had allegedly confessed to the crime, he added.

UPDATE: Eric has more.

The charms of Phnom Penh

Another satisfied customer.

Phnom Penh.  In a word, “‘YUCK.”  In two – ”absolutely putrid.”  You want three?

Of course you do.

Killer tour guide

Talk about value-added.

While waiting for some friends to finish their [Tuol Sleng] prison tour, I sat down to chat to a tour guide at the gate named Phong who was strumming a broken down guitar.

After discussing what I knew of the prison’s history and sharing our view on why former leaders are still escaping justice, I asked how he had become a tour guide here.

He had a simple answer – he was a former S-21 prison guard.

[...]

Being a tour guide at his former workplace was his penance. But, despite being desperate for money, he could only manage one or two tours a day before the emotions became too much for him.

It’s quite a story, if it’s true.

Forced evictions continue

This time in Kampot.

Security forces, including police and military, continued forced evictions in Kampot province for a second day Tuesday, following the injuries of at least three villagers Monday.

The authorities destroyed an estimated 230 small homes in Ta Ken commune, Chhouk district, in two days of operations to oust residents from a national park, officials said.

[...]

Villagers say many of them have lived on the land since 2000, and they suspect the land is now being re-distributed to a private company for residential development.

Garment job cuts expected

Prospects for the sector are dim.

THOUSANDS of garment workers in Cambodia could be laid off in coming months if global markets, particularly the United States, continue to fall into deepening economic crisis, labour leaders and garment industry officials said Monday.

Chuon Momthol, president of the Cambodian Union Federation (CUF), a government-aligned union, said as many as 35 garment factories could be shuttered in November or December if dire international market conditions to not improve.

“So far, at least 20,000 workers have been laid off,” he said, adding that the 35 factories facing closure employ between 1,000 and 5,000 workers each.

That is roughly 105,000 garment jobs likely to vanish in the next 45 days — or about one third of all garment sector jobs. That would be in line with recent cuts in construction, which recently shed about 30 percent of its work force. It’s a good thing Cambodians don’t celebrate Christmas.

Scambodia part 4 & 5: save the children edition

VIA Diana: The orphans are fake. And the orphanage is run by thieving bastards.

AFESIP gets €1 million donation

It’s gut-wrenching to know that such a need exists. But exist it most certainly does.

The 1 million euro ($1.269 million) award to Somaly Mam from the Munich-based Roland Berger Foundation rivals in amount the Nobel Peace Prize, which includes a grant of 10 million Swedish kroner ($1.268 million). The Roland Berger Human Dignity Award was given to Somaly Mam _ who herself is a former sex trade victim “in recognition of her fight for a world without slavery,” the German Embassy said in a statement.

… “First she didn’t believe it and she went to confirm the story (with the foundation) about the donation,” [AFESIP spokesman Som Sophatra] said. “She was nervous and very happy at the same time because she never got such a big amount of money.”

He said the award could not have come at a better time as the group has been facing a shortage of funds since the beginning of the year.

The new intellectuals

VIA Mongkol: Writing in the Far Eastern Economic Review, notable Global Voices author Geoffrey Cain suggests that the current crop of tech-savvy Cambodian bloggers are picking up where their 1960s beat-generation brothers and sisters left off.

Yet today a brimming young movement of intellectuals resembling those of the 1960s is quietly — and sometimes anonymously — creating change in Cambodia. They mostly draw on the same inspirations and discuss the same topics of culture, politics and romance — the latter remains a highly taboo topic. Some even listen to the same music, writing about the classics of Simon and Garfunkel. Yet unlike their predecessors, these intellectuals do not mingle in French-style cafés and art galleries, but in the new wireless Internet cafés springing up in Phnom Penh.

Looking at them, one would think they are just a typical group of youngsters. During lunch breaks and on weekends, they can be seen in popular Monivong Boulevard hangouts wearing ripped jeans and headphones, clicking away on their quirky, stickered laptops, stopping sporadically for a sip of iced coffee. Virtually all are under 30, born during a 1980s baby boom that followed the Khmer Rouge genocide. They represent a small but growing tech-savvy middle class of students, lawyers, technology professionals and journalists, who only recently came of age in a society where little public discussion of issues exists.

[...]

With stilted shacks and slums lined along Phnom Penh’s dirt roads, and a populace of which 33% earn less that $0.50 a day according to optimistic government statistics, Cambodia is remarkably wired. After King Sihanouk, now King-Father, started Cambodia’s first blog in 2002 and the Cloggers began their educational tours of the country, blogging mania swept Phnom Penh; a blogosphere once numbering 30 bloggers spawned into a vibrant community of pundits, photographers and diarists now innumerable.

The whole thing is well worth reading. It’s also a jolting reminder that the largely self-indulgent navel-gazing that transpires among outsiders is largely irrelevant to the actual concerns of Cambodians. For real insight into the Cambodian zeitgeist, Mongkol, Kounila, Tharum, Seila, and others are the voices to heed.

UPDATE: The full text of the above article is available from Khmer Students.

So long, do-gooders

Prime Minister Hun Sen is taking aim at the country’s flourishing NGO business.

In late September [Prime Minister Hun Sen] called for the revival of a controversial [NGO] law which would require the country’s more than 2,000 associations and NGOs to complete a complex registration process and submit to stringent financial reporting requirements. The draft law is expected to be passed by Hun Sen’s Cambodia People’s Party (CPP)-dominated National Assembly in the coming months.

“Cambodia has been heaven for NGOs for too long,” he said in a speech broadcast on national radio on September 26, adding that he had given up hope of reading any positive reports written by international or local NGOs. “The NGOs are out of control … they insult the government just to ensure their financial survival.”

[...]

“In the 1980s, there was a popular T-shirt satirizing US Army recruitment commercials with the slogan, ‘Join the army. Travel to exotic, distant lands. Meet exciting, unusual people. And kill them’,” Brad Adams, executive director for Human Rights Watch’s Asia Program, was quoted saying to Action Aid in 2005. “In the new millennium, it could be rephrased, ‘Join the aid community. Travel to exotic, distant lands. Meet exciting, unusual people. And make a killing’.”

[...]

The NGO law, known formally as the Law on Organizations, was first written over a decade ago and aims to address such complaints. It would require NGOs to submit for government approval documents detailing their structure, goals, funding resources, properties and even logos. It also entails fines and imprisonment for any NGO which fails to submit annual reports to the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

The provocation for finally tightening the noose on NGOs, of course, comes from the country’s growing financial independence — fueled largely by Chinese generosity and rising government revenues via deep-pocketed South Korean construction firms. But the cushy cash situation is unlikely to hold. In the midst of a global economic downturn, China is planning to tighten its purse strings, and South Korean construction firms are disappearing like Funcinpec leaders circa July ‘97.

Such events will likely have Prime Minister Hun Sen rethinking his get-tough strategy, which is unfortunate. Because for all that NGOs give in short-term stability, they take from long-term growth. And with stability now firmly entrenched, what Cambodia needs more of is diverse economic expansion, something with which your average NGO wouldn’t have a clue.

Siem Reap Airways blacklisted

Not good.

Cambodia’s Siem Reap Airways International and all carriers from Angola have been added to the European Commission’s ‘blacklist’ of banned airlines.

[...]

Phnom Penh-based Siem Reap Airways does not operate directly to Europe, but the European Commission states that the carrier “does not operate in compliance” with Cambodian safety regulations, nor does it meet ICAO standards.

Quote of the day

Brad Adams on Neth Savoeun, the new police chief.

“[He] should be under investigation by the police, not be the National Police chief. He will almost certainly continue to politicise the work of the police,” said Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch.

“This is a very disturbing appointment.”

Human rights group leaders have little sense of pragmatism, do they. It was never as if Sam Rainsy or Kek Galabru was going to be a candidate to replace Hok Lundy.

Darith has more. So does VOA.

Paradise city

The Wall Street Journal visits the capital.

It’s no longer easy to purchase AK-47 assault weapons here. Vendors have stopped selling marijuana in public markets, and fun-seekers can no longer lob live grenades behind the military compound outside of town.

Once famous for being the most lawless city in Asia — a Wild West frontier of ex-soldiers, drug addicts and criminals — Phnom Penh is rapidly becoming the latest Asian tourist playground of spas, handbag dealers and boutique hotels.

Many in the city’s hardened expatriate community don’t like the changes, saying they’ve eroded much of the sense of adventure the capital once had.

Hardened expatriates be damned. Let peace, prosperity, and affordable spas reign.