Le Phnom

H.D.S. Greenway reminiscences about the old days.

During the war in Cambodia, the Hotel Le Phnom was where the journalists and NGO workers filled rooms after the tourists fled in the early 1970s and the war began in earnest.

At the Le Phnom, before and after known as Le Royal, there was a sense of camaraderie and a somewhat hysterical relief in the feeling of comparative safety when you came back from harrowing days of reporting in the field.

Vignettes are frozen in the mind’s eye like scenes from a play. There was Sydney Schanberg of the New York Times standing on his balcony playing badly on an old French bugle that the Khmer Rogue armies had left on the battlefield. There was the curt note in formal French asking that the photographer Al Rockoff — later to be played by John Malkovich in “The Killing Fields” — remove the hand grenade from his bedroom. And I can still see, while tip-toeing by the front desk upon returning late at night, the hotel staff sleeping cocoon-like beneath mosquito nets in the lobby.

Great stuff.

Sam Rainsy pays

Sam Rainsy has paid the 10 million riel fine levied against him in August by the National Election Committee. That should end the current immunity standoff.

Goverment to Sam Rainsy: Shut up

In a move widely perceived as unconstitutional, the government today suspended Sam Rainsy’s parliamentary immunity.

A Cambodian parliamentary committee has suspended the immunity of opposition leader Sam Rainsy, a move he condemned on Friday as unconstitutional and intended to silence criticism of Prime Minister Hun Sen.

The French-educated former finance minister, who leads a party named after himself, was stripped of his immunity for refusing to pay a $2,500 fine for defaming Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party during last year’s election.

[...]

When stripped of his immunity in the past, he has often fled Cambodia shortly afterwards, normally to France.

The ruling party abuses its power to silence critics. What else is new?

Seperate but equal

A fair bit of back and forth has emerged in the last week over monitoring the ECCC. Despite all the hand-wringing, nothing substantial appears to have changed.

UNLESS the UN reverses the Khmer Rouge tribunal’s latest anti-corruption plan, they risk “lowering the bar for all future efforts to try international crimes”, international watchdog the Open Society Justice Initiative said Wednesday.

Referring to a new agreement by the two sides of the court to work separately to protect the court against corruption, the New York-based monitoring group said there were no real changes made to the existing system, which had allowed for graft allegations to arise last year.

“Taken together, these provisions do nothing to alter the de facto Cambodian government veto, which has stymied genuine investigations of corruption to date,” a press release Wednesday said.

It’s not exactly clear what the new agreement entails, but judging by explanations in the press, it looks like Cambodia will be responsible for investigating claims of impropriety on the Cambodian side, and the UN will be responsible for investigating claims of impropriety on the international side. Neither side will have the power to investigate the other.

It hardly needs pointing out that this is not a solution. You cannot investigate yourself. And until the Cambodian side agrees to independent monitoring, the court will remain plagued by allegations of corruption and illegitimacy.

Of course, the Cambodian side will never agree to independent monitoring. So what to do?

There really is only two choices: walk away; or be part of the show trial.

God smack

Two British tourists are dead.

Two British tourists have been found dead at a hotel in Cambodia after mistakenly taking heroin.

The bodies of university graduates Mark Ganley, 34, and David Hunt, 36, were found in a hotel room in capital city Phnom Penh.

Mr Ganley and Mr Hunt, a sports journalist, had bloodied noses and it is thought they died of overdoses after inadvertently snorting a form of heroin, believing it to be cocaine.

Sad.

Taxi, taxi

Jennifer Gregory makes a top 10 list of “Worst Cities in the World to Hail a Taxi.” You’ll never guess which city comes out on top.

The way of The Strongman

Without warning, Prime Minister Hun Sen demanded Tuesday that authorities shut down Cambo Six. On Wednesday police moved in and by Thursday morning the nation’s largest bookmaker, with offices in every major city, was effectively shuttered.

Say what you want about the evils of gambling, but the Prime Minister should not be able to shut private businesses at his whimsy. By creating  uncertainty, such moves do immeasurable damage to the country’s business environment and reinforce beliefs that Cambodia is an outlaw nation.

And rather obviously, there is no rule of law. If the PM wants you closed, you will be closed. That you are a legally licensed business with rights for which your company paid millions, no matter.

That said, the unwritten story line so far in all this is that the local partner of Cambo Six is Okhna Kith Meng, whose offices at Mobitel were inexplicably surrounded by police two weeks ago. There are little doubts the two events are unrelated. Somebody, it seems, may no longer be on the ascendancy.

Oliver Kamm vs John Pilger

Oliver Kamm responds to John Pilger’s recent comment on the KRT.

KR in pictures

“The Rise and Fall of the Khmer Rouge,” a photo essay from Time.

Resettlement law

Cambodia is working on a law governing the destruction of poor people’s lives and homes.

Cambodia has started drafting a sub-decree on addressing social-economic impacts caused by the development projects on implementation of involuntary resettlement, a government official said here on Monday.

“In the current context of Cambodia, we are lacking legal norms and legislations to support resettlement implementation, including limited awareness of people on law and weak enforcement of land law and other regulations,” said Chhorn Sopheap, deputy secretary general of the Supreme National Economic Council and director of the resettlement department of the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

[...]

“There were some problems occurring during the project implementation due to lack of adequate policy measures as well as experience, but we have to maintain a balance between people’s rights of interest and general or public interest represented by prerogatives of public power,” he said.

The sub-decree is expected to go into effect sometime in July 2034.

Short, poor, ill and corrupt

Ka-set  passes on a few predictions for 2009 GDP.

1. Prime Minister Hun Sen, 6 percent.
2. The World Bank, 4.9 percent.
3. The IMF, 4.8 percent.
4. The Asian Development Bank, 4.7 percent.
5. The Economist Intelligence Unit, 1 percent.

Inexact science, indeed.

The Post goes local

Post Media, the publishing company behind The Phnom Penh Post, says it will launch a Khmer Language version in July.

Ieng Thirith loses plot

AFP reports:

The former Khmer Rouge “First Lady” launched an angry tirade at Cambodia’s UN-backed genocide tribunal on Tuesday, telling her accusers they would be “cursed to the seventh circle of hell.”

Ieng Thirith, 76, facing trial for crimes against humanity under the communist regime, at first told the court that defence lawyers would speak on her behalf during her appeal against detention, saying: “I am too weak.”

But she later erupted at the prosecution’s suggestion that she was aware of atrocities at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison while she served as social affairs minister during the Khmer Rouge’s 1975-1979 rule.

“Don’t accuse me of being a murderer, otherwise you will cursed to the seventh circle of hell,” Ieng Thirith said in an 15-minute outburst.

“I don’t know why a good person is accused of such crimes and I have suffered a great deal and I cannot really be patient because I have been wrongly accused,” she said.

KRT faces money problems

The Cambodian side of Khmer Rouge Tribunal is once again staring at bankruptcy.

DONOR countries to the Khmer Rouge tribunal have commended the war crimes court for beginning its first trial on Tuesday, a step it claims moves Cambodia much closer to achieving justice and national reconciliation.

But as congratulatory messages flood in, donors remain silent on further pledges to the financially troubled chambers, failing to allay fears by officials that the court’s Cambodian side looks set to become bankrupt by the end of the month.

In a press statement  Wednesday, the French Foreign and European Affairs Ministry said they would continue to support the tribunal, but made no further pledges.

This is not the first time the Cambodian side of the ECCC has faced a funding crisis. In fact, every cycle of funding inevitably ends with the need for more money, which is inevitably reported as some sort of financial crisis for the Cambodian side of the court. Looking at the small picture that might be true. But after coming this far, it would be nothing short of a tragedy to see the KRT go under for lack of funding. The world knows this. The money will come from somewhere. It always does.

At the moment all eyes are on the Japanese, who enjoy making the Chinese look bad.

Problems of the KRT

John Pilger weighs in on the KRT.

I love Kean Svay

VIA MONGKOL: You Know You’re Cambodian When…

A misinformed press

Brendan Brady interviews Raul Jennar.

You had written that the number and status of those who are prosecuted will be a major indication of the trial’s credibility, and in an online editorial you identified current Finance Minister Keat Chhon as a Khmer Rouge leader. According to your interpretation of the court’s mandate, should he and others be tried in a second submission of suspects?
Since I wrote what you bring up, certain people who should have been tried, according to the mandate of the ECCC, have passed away.  I never identified Keat Chhon as a “Khmer rouge leader”.  His name appears on the organisational chart of the government Pol Pot presided over. We know this government was not effectively real, and that the permanent members of its central committee governed the country alone. In reality, we know from the memoirs of Laurence Picq that Keat Chhon essentially performed the duty of translator and, like many, feared for his life.

People have spent decades investigating the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. Never have they found credible evidence linking any current serving member of the government — Hun Sen, Keat Chhon, Hor Namhong, or anyone else — to crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge. Conspiracies to the contrary are paranoid.

Foreign ownership law on the way

From today’s Cambodia Daily, dead-tree edition.

The government is actively taking steps to allow foreign nationals to own property in Cambodia, with the Ministry of Land Management now drafting the legal framework, Information Minister and government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said Tuesday.

In a move Khieu Kanharith said will increase the ease of doing business in Cambodia, foreigners will be allowed to purchase the title for 100 percent ownership of apartments and condominiums. Land, however, will remain off limits to foreign buyers, he said.

The story suggests the law will go into effect in the next few months. The belief seems to be that with the real estate market in the doldrums — currently just one sale per day compared to 100 to 120 per day one year ago — the law will seduce cash-flush foreigners to rush into the Cambodian market. Many people are hoping the move will help revive a nearly flat-lined real estate market. Given the state of the global economy, such hopes seem irrationally optimistic.

Nineteen 50¢ beers: The dead Canadian saga continues and other dead foreigner news

Kamploops This Week, the hometown newspaper of Jiri Zivny, the humanitarian aid worker who was reportedly clubbed to death by evil poor people in Sihanoukville, continues to delve into the final hours of the Canadian’s life. Far from helping orphans, Dale Bass reports that Mr Zivny was “making new friends” with underage bar girls.

[At the Savery Guesthouse, Beergarden and Restaurant] he met Long, a Vietnamese girl who had arrived at the Savery three days before, looking for work.

Long told KTW she was hoping to find work there, as had another girl from her village, explaining she could not afford to go to school and, because her family is poor, she needed a job.

Long said she met Zivny at the bar, where they “had a lot of fun together with other girls from my village.” She said Zivny drank “19 glasses of Angkor draft beer,” while she drank 17 glasses of a coconut rum and Coke mixture.

By the time the pair decided after midnight to head to the Blue Storm disco, Long said Zivny’s bar bill was $100.

Long said she and Zivny continued drinking and partying at the Blue Storm, a disco on Ekareach Street just a few blocks from the Savery.

Zivny decided to go to an ATM machine at the Canadia Bank on Ekareach Street, about a block away.

The pair was returning to the Blue Storm on a motorcyle Zivny was using when they swerved to miss a car and crashed head-on into another motorcyle with two riders.

In other dead foreigner news, Deum Ampil has a front page story today about a dead Englishman who died in the Royal Highness. He was not believed to be affiliated with any humanitarian aid organizations.

Big Sister

First Lady Bun Rany Hun Sen hates you because you’re beautiful.

“The Ministry of Information has to close magazines that have pornography in order to avoid letting them have a bad impact on readers,” [BunRany] said at the annual meeting of the National Committee on the Promotion of Morality, Women and Family Values in Phnom Penh.

“If we all cooperate, we can reduce problems in our country such as rape and banditry.”

The suggestion that women provoke rape by wearing revealing clothes is wrong. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a more destructive outlook. Not only does such thinking blame the victim, it absolves the rapist. The problem is not beautiful women, its ignorant leaders.

Experiencing technical difficulties

Internet not so good recently. Back as soon as possible. DAS.

Country for sale

Ka-set has the latest.

KRT opens tomorrow

Tomorrow is the day many said would never come.

A Cambodian math teacher who turned a school into a torture chamber goes on trial tomorrow in the first hearing involving leaders of the Khmer Rouge movement that tried to slaughter the nation’s intellectual class 30 years ago.

Kang Kek Ieu, 66, also known as Duch, oversaw Tuol Sleng prison in the capital, Phnom Penh, where only about a dozen of at least 12,000 inmates survived. He is the youngest of five Khmer Rouge leaders who will face trial before a United Nations-backed tribunal accused of genocide.

Will the four others ever make it?

Justice for 7NG

Kafka had no idea.

On Wednesday February 11th, three residents of the Dey Krohom community – which last homes were destroyed on January 24th by the 7NG company – appeared before the Municipal Court of Phnom Penh to answer charges of destruction of private property and assault.

The courts are a billy club wielded by the rich to abuse the poor. If Okhna Srey Sothea had the slightest sense of decency, he would have these charges dropped.

‘Flying motos’

This looks awesome. How much?

‘Progress’ at Dey Krahom

Peter Frankental, Economic Relations Programme Director for Amnesty International, blogs about the price of progress at the Telegraph.

What price “progress”? It is a question that has plagued politicians for generations. Do government policies which aim to create jobs and stimulate economic growth make some abuses of people’s rights along the way acceptable?

… Amnesty International’s line is solid. Economic progress is fine with one caveat – human rights should never be compromised.

… Take the case of a construction and mining company and its collaboration with the country of Cambodia. It is a collaboration where so-called “economic progress” has led to thousands of residents of Dey Krahom in central Phnom Penh losing their homes.

Frankethal questions whether this is really true progress. But that seems to miss the point. Progress or not, people had their homes and other personal property destroyed. That is illegal and a violation of human rights treaties to which Cambodia is a signatory.

In reality, the answer is yes, this is progress. In years past jack-booted corporate and government thugs just showed up out of the blue with guns and torches and wantonly burned people’s homes to the ground. At Dey Krahom, 7NG made moderate attempts to pacify the community before uprooting the lives of the people who lived there. Many got cash or a new house, which is a lot more than victims of other evictions ever got.

AngkorNet refutes censorship claims

In The Cambodia Daily this morning, AngkorNet spokespeople deny claims that the company is blocking access to the Global Witness web site.

AngkorNet CEO Sok Channda denied the report and said the company had not confirmed it to the media.

She said any blockages was likely due to the fact that a proxy server maintained by Angkor Net — through which Internet customers access information such as Web pges and e-mail — had been “blacklisted” as a source of bulk, unsolicited e-mail, or “spam,” causing the server housing the Global Witness website to deny access to AngkorNet subscribers.

The Phnom Penh Post reported yesterday that AngkorNet had deliberately blocked access to the Global Witness site.

Thailand reopens Phra Viharn National Park

Cambodian side still closed.

A long-popular park along a disputed stretch of the Thailand-Cambodia border known for its cliffs and vistas reopened Tuesday after being closed for months.

Tourists hadn’t been able to take in the scenery of Pha Mor E-Daeng cliff and the rest of Khao Phra Viharn national park in Si Sa Ket since last July. Cambodia’s ancient Khmer temple ruins of Preah Vihear remain closed, however.

Kalayani Thammajari, chairwoman of the Si Sa Ket tourism association, said the reopening was widely welcomed by local businesses, the Bangkok Post reported.

“We are ready for tourists as we have waited for months for this,” Kalayani said. “We expect massive tourist arrivals. Many of them are likely to come for a glimpse of the disputed area.”

The Post reports this morning that Cambodia is in the process of considering whether it will decide to reopen the Cambodian side. The Daily says the opposite. Go figure.

Admitting the obvious

PM says economy is not well in the Land of Wonders.

As key business sectors, including garments, tourism and construction, all show signs of weakness, the premier finally said the government must do more to stave off a crisis.

“It is clear that if the [government fails] to take timely and appropriate measures to manage the crisis, the effects of the global financial crisis and economic downturn will become a real cause for Cambodia’s financial system and economy to fall into a dangerous crisis,” Hun Sen said during an address to the Cambodian Economic Forum.

At this point crisis appears unavoidable. What can the government do? Not much, unfortunately. Cambodia’s economy is largely dependent on outside forces — American clothes buyers, Asian and Western tourists, etc. And outside in the real world the economic situation is grim and getting grimmer. Desperation is the new new. Get used to it.

Global Witness report censored

Add another to the list.

UPDATE: Full story from the Post.