Hayes leaves the building

Today marks the end of Michael Hayes’ tenure at The Phnom Penh Post.

• The end of an era as Hayes bows out
• A changing of the editorial guard

Mr Hayes, who founded The Post in 1992, sold controlling interest in the newspaper to two Australian businessmen in 2008. The end of his role as editor-in-chief represents the full, final hand over to the new owners.

Miss Landmine 2009, revisited

Vutha has the dish.

There will be the total of 21 contestants who are representing all provinces, except Ratanakkiri, Koh Kong, and Kratie are set to participate in the contest.

The contestants will launch a photo exhibition and a fashion magazine that uses land mine survivors as models at Meta House on August 7, and the public will be able to vote for the winner on the project’s Web site beginning on August 1.

The web site is http://www.miss-landmine.org/.

Press under attack

Sebastian Strangio and Sam Rith recently took an informal survey of media people. To a one, journalists agree that things now are as bad as they were in the country’s 1980s communist heyday.

PRESS freedom is in its worst state in Cambodia since the early 1990s, say reporters for the country’s independent and opposition newspapers, who argue that the current crackdown against government critics risks bringing the country full circle to the repressive environment of the 1980s.

Despite having a press that is freer than Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar, journalists say the current campaign against “disinformation” – which has already forced the closure of one paper and imprisoned the publisher of another – could set the country back 15 years.

“I used to write 100 percent of the truth, but now I’ve reduced it to about 30 percent,” said Tes Vibol, the publisher of Khmer Student News, an independent and self-funded weekly newspaper.

Freer than Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar?! That’s funny.

‘Duality of Youth,’ from the Al Rockoff collection

Best Cambodian t-shirt ever.

Flying in the face of common sense

This could really backfire.

Up in smoke

Rumors on the Internet.

Rumor has it that Cambodia has become very popular as a destination for marijuana-aficionados to vacation in South East Asia. One of my friends from the U.S. has been traveling there each winter for years and speaks highly of the friendly people and relaxed attitude towards marijuana, plus he tells me that the weed has gotten much better in recent years. Evidently Cambodia has become a weekend get-away hot-spot for expats living in Bangkok, Singapore or other SEA cities, partly due to guest-houses and resorts that cater to stoners.

Rumors not on the Internet say the Ministry of Interior is not at all happy about this state of affairs.

The swine flu hoax: conspiracy theories and corporate hustlers

Vutha recently got an SMS alerting him to three swine-flu victims at Olympic Market. The message read:

Bad news, today in the Olympic market, there are 3 ladies lost consciousness, because they got H1N1 while they came back from Thailand. Now they stay in the Calemet Hospital. So please, share this information to your family, friends and Cambodian people, be careful! To protect this virus, when you go out, please wear a mask and clean hand with soap. Please forward this SMS to everyone to protect our Cambodian people.

It was a hoax, of course, and Ministry of Health officials quickly debunked it as such. But who would start such a rumor, and why?

I used to get message from friends and acquaintances to help forward message to other friends and families in order to get bonus from mobile phone service providers when 5 or 10 messages were forwarded. And later, I got this secret information from friend of mine who was working for Phone Companies by saying that it is trick of companies in order to make profit.

Considering that the average text message cost about three cents, it’s hard to see million-dollar phone companies bothering with such trifle amounts of money. Even if the message got forwarded 100,000 times, that’s still, at best, just $3,000. That’s not profit; that’s a rounding error.

Bad news, today in the Olympic market, there are 3 ladies lost consciousness, because they got H1N1 while they came back from Thailand. Now they stay in the Calemet Hospital. So please, share this information to your family, friends and Cambodian people, be careful! To protect this virus, when you go out, please wear a mask and clean hand with soap. Please forward this SMS to everyone to protect our Cambodian people.”

A not-about-Cambodia post

Apropos of the “insanitary” AIDS colony below, is it insanitary or unsanitary? Insanitary sounds like a place for mental patients, but MW says they are both correct.

These synonyms were both coined about the same time: unsanitary was first recorded in 1871, insanitary in 1874. In the early part of the century, the notion that unsanitary was “not a word” existed in the minds of some people. Their reason for thinking so (as stated in letters to the editors of newspapers in which unsanitary had appeared) were somewhat variable, but they typically pointed out that unsanitary was not in the dictionary while insanitary was. In fact, both words were first entered in Webster in 1909, but one was easier to find than the other. Because the prefix in- can have more than one meaning, insanitary was entered with a full definition. The meaning of unsanitary is self-evident, however, and for that reason it was not given a definition but was included instead in a list of self-explanatory words, printed in small type as a means of saving space.

People still sometimes express uncertainty about which of these words is the “correct” one, but nobody seems to be writing letters to the editor about it anymore. They are both correct, they are both common, and they are both used in the same way.

Now you know. Still, for clarity’s sake, unsanitary seems the better choice. Now back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

Tuol Sambo ‘AIDS’ colony

It’s going to be pretty hard to pass this one off as “economic development.”

AIDS campaigners and rights groups protested on Tuesday at Cambodia’s shunting of sufferers of the virus into an insanitary “AIDS colony” outside the capital.

Over 100 international and domestic pressure groups told Prime Minister Hun Sen and Health Minister Mam Bunheng in a letter they were “deeply disturbed” by the government’s treatment of 40 HIV-affected families.

[...]

“By bundling people living with HIV together into second-rate housing, far from medical facilities, support services and jobs, the government has created a de facto AIDS colony,” said Shiba Phurailatpam, of the Asia-Pacific Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, in a statement issued by the groups.

Rebecca Schleifer of New York-based Human Rights Watch said: “The housing conditions in Tuol Sambo pose serious health risks for families living there.

“People living with HIV have compromised immune systems and are especially vulnerable. For them, these substandard conditions can mean a death sentence or a ticket to a hospital,” she added.

Who is responsible for this decision? The media should find out. And prosecutors should start preparing a case. Because it’s all but certain that at least one of those 40 HIV-positive people will die as a result of the move. That’s negligent homicide, at least, if not outright premeditated murder.

Three-wheeled software

RealWat Inc., a Montreal firm with offices in Phnom Penh, this week  announced the release of some new-fangled computer gizmo named after the tuk-tuk. It’s called “Ti-Took.”

Ti-Took is a safe web browsing software solution that integrates minimalist design with innovative technology to deliver a fast, safe, easy and personalized web experience.

Named after the tuk-tuk vehicles that carry riders anywhere all day long in east Asian cities and towns, Ti-Took is a simple, trustworthy way of navigating the complex and often dangerous world of the internet.

Fear merchants. File here.

Thai wingnuts at it again

Protesters demand Thailand withdraw from Preah Vihear agreement.

A group of Thai people following up the Preah Vihear dispute rallied in front of the Government House Monday morning, calling on the government to withdraw from a joint Thai-Cambodian statement issued on June 18, 2008.

The joint statement, which supports Cambodia’s unilateral listing of the ancient temple as a world heritage site, was signed by then Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama without prior consent of the parliament, according to the Bangkok Post’s website.

The government should formally inform the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the world community about the Thai withdrawal from the joint-Thai-Cambodian statement, said the group led by Walwipa Jaroonroj, an academic at the Institute of Thai Studies at Bangkok’s Thammasat University.

Jebuz. What  lunatics.

Soul-searching at 30,000 feet

Borin is curious about the name of the Kingdom’s new national carrier, Cambodia Angkor Air.

Why can’t Cambodia airline just Cambodia Airline? or something like that?

Considering the whole thing is financed by Vietnam, even calling it Cambodian seems like a pretty big stretch.

Leading by example

Traffic accidents kill five people everyday.

Student Chhin Sothea found out the hard way that it’s not enough just to take care when crossing the street in Phnom Penh—a motorcycle ploughed into him from behind as he strolled down the sidewalk.

“Now I keep an eye on street traffic all the time and when I get on a fast motorbike, my stomach turns,” says the 23-year-old, who spent most of his savings recovering in hospital.

Stories like Chhin Sothea’s are common in Cambodia, a rapidly developing country where traffic fatalities have more than doubled over the past five years, becoming the second-biggest killer after Aids.

Nearly everyone blames sloppy police work for Cambodia’s deadly streets. But the truth of the matter is that lax law enforcement is merely a symptom of a much greater illness. Leadership comes from the top. The country’s rulers have never shown anything but contempt for the rule of law. The rest of the country is just following in their footsteps.

Bullish on Cambodia

Ignored by the investor classes for months, frontier markets are back in vogue, says Barron’s.

The latest market to get attention is Cambodia, where a handful of investors familiar with Vietnam and Thailand are trying to set up funds. Cambodia is very poor, with rampant corruption and crony capitalism. But economic growth is robust, even if the economy is just $8 billion. Douglas Clayton, managing partner of Phnom Penh-based Leopard Capital, has raised just under $30 million and is trying to raise more; sitting on his board is markets commentator and Barron’s Roundtable contributor Marc Faber.

Cambodia doesn’t have a stock market yet, but Clayton believes it could by year’s end. There are numerous foreign-sponsored companies, including banks and cellphone operators, though the economy is largely agricultural. The median age in Cambodia is 21, the lowest in Asia. Clayton reckons that about 70% of the population, which numbers 14 million, wasn’t yet born during the horrific regime of the Khmer Rouge, estimated to have killed two million Cambodians.

“Cambodia is back open for business,” says Clayton, who is applying for citizenship. “This is a failed state that’s back on its feet.”

Not everyone sounds so giddy.

Conservative investors aren’t impressed. Says Peter Newell, managing director of Vontobel Asset Management: “We look for a $50 million bottom line, low leverage, high ROA [return on assets]. Can you find that in a frontier market? No. Not even in China, not easily.”

David Wilton of the International Finance Corp. agrees: Investing in Cambodia may be, as he delicately puts it, “a wee bit nascent,” and there are few deals to support private-equity funds. Still, Wilton concedes that the IFC is very close to seeding a fund to invest there.

A wee bit nascent is right. Cambodia’s GDP is still in the single digits, far, far behind its neighbors.

Challenging the Strongman

Opposition parliamentarian Son Chhay gives some perspective to Mu Sochua’s fight with Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Son Chhay, another outspoken opposition parliamentarian, says the recent crackdown is a symptom of a government that is trying to address the issues facing the country, such as corruption, land seizures and economic stagnation.

“Like many dictatorial regimes in the region, because they are unable to solve the problems, they resort to measures to control the people and shut them up,” he said.

“If he allowed Mu Sochua to challenge him, other people might go down the same path,” said Son Chhay.

Yep.

Mu Sochua case postponed

Judgment has been delayed until at least August 4. Radio Australia has the latest.

Miss Landmine Cambodia Pageant 2009

VIA PPP: The Miss Landmine Cambodia 2009 pageant will apparently begin in August.

The competition will not follow a traditional beauty pageant model with contestants parading across a stage.  Instead the 20 contestants will appear in a photo exhibition, and an official internet voting campaign will follow where anyone can vote for their favorite candidate.  A specially selected jury will then choose the winner in December and she will take home the top prize — a custom-made prosthetic leg.

Beauty pageants have been illegal in Cambodia since 1993.  However, the Cambodian government and the Cambodian Mine Action Authority fully support the Miss Landmine competition.

August is next week, and The Miss Landmine web site is still mum on the Cambodian pageant. Funny that.

Tropical-flavored funk

The Trash Menagerie stumbles across what is believed to be the only “U.K. house” music from the motherland.

The amount of bedroom electro producers that clog my inbox are nearly enough to screw in a disco-ball, nearly. I thank the progressive work of Bok Bok & L-Vis 1990 for inspiring a few fresh young things to get their UK Funky on and holler at a brotha. This tune from The Phantom out of Cambodia, yes, Cambodia, and is entitled “Cambodia.” As far as I know, this is the only Tropical flavored Funky tune to arise from another part of the world besides the UK, and is indeed the most exciting.

Save for the bad 80s synthesizers, it’s not a bad spin. So, peep it. Or something.

Strange victories

Everyday steals the latest news on the Mu Sochua saga.

Mr. Sam Rainsy, president of the eponymous Sam Rainsy Party, said his party will pay the fines for Ms. Mu Sochua if she is found guilty of defaming Mr. Hun Sen by the court in a hearing today (Friday 24th).

Mr. Sam Rainsy added that he can predict the outcome of the court hearing today and that is Ms. Mu Sochua will be found guilty. Mr. Sam Rainsyy told the Cambodia Daily that his party will pay the fines for Ms. Mu Sochua because it does not want to engage in a lengthy legal war because it is a waste of time. Mr. Sam Rainsy also said that his party will not appeal the court’s verdict if Mu Sochua is found guilty.

The likelihood that Sam Rainsy caved all by himself seems remote. Surely the ruling party leaned on him. It’s hard to count that as anything but a massive victory for Mu Sochua.

For all his efforts, The “Strongman” Hun Sen could not make the member from Kampot knuckle under. He stripped Mu Sochua of her parliamentary immunity, sued her and threatened her with prison, then coerced her lawyer into resigning. Still, Mu Sochua refused to cower.

So Hun Sen did about the only thing he could do. He went to Mu Sochua’s boss Sam Rainsy, who collapsed like a cheese soufflé.

Xenophobia

From the Mirror. Prime Minister Hun Sen is unhappy with foreign influences corrupting Cambodian culture. As a remedy for this, the prime minister has called on the government to train traditional Khmer wisemen.

“Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday urged both the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts and the Ministry of Cults and Religion to train traditional Khmer wisemen. These respected and revered semi-mystic figures are experts in Khmer culture and folklore, and are an integral part of the many religious ceremonies that form much of the practice of Khmer Buddhism.

“This is not the first time the premier has asked authorities to train Wisemen, known in Khmer as Ajar [ អាចារ្យ ]. He also raised the topic recently during a speech in Kandal province.

[...]

“‘In one year, if we have 5,000 weddings, we also need 5,000 wisemen, so our need for these people is very crucial,’ the PM stated. Criticizing the influx of foreign influences into traditional Khmer ceremonies, the premier remarked that ‘the cake cutting ceremony held at wedding parties is not our traditional manner, it is foreign culture and manners.’

“At the same time, the premier urged Cambodian artists, especially writers, to hone their craft and to try to use more locally relevant themes. ‘If they are able to do so, copying foreign stories should not be allowed – like two stories shown on Bayon Television which were not Cambodian themes, they were foreign themes.’

Save the prime minister’s mathematical logic for another day. Promoting the country’s arts and culture, both traditional and modern, should be encouraged. The white-devil paranoia, however, reeks of Pol Pot-era xenophobia. The ruling elite gladly embraces the tools of Western extravagance — foreign cars, foreign money, foreign bank accounts– so why not the people a little cake?

POSTSCRIPT: The Post has more.

Prime Minister Buttinsky

In France, Hun Sen allegedly told the French president that five is enough.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is trying to prevent the United Nations-backed Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal from expanding prosecutions of former regime officials and undermining its independence, Human Rights Watch said.

Hun Sen told French President Nicolas Sarkozy last week the court’s efforts to prosecute more Khmer Rouge officials than the five in custody threaten stability, the New York-based group said, citing a senior Cambodian aide who attended the meeting.

“The UN and international donors need to put their foot down,” Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement e-mailed today. “Hun Sen has no role in this court” yet keeps trying to interfere.

Angry Brad is hardly an impartial source of information. A lot more than his word should be required before printing criminal allegations against a sitting head of state. What were Bloomberg editors thinking?

Yashodharapura

In conjunction with the geniuses at Monash University, National Geographic this month gives us Angkor Interactive. The feature includes an interactive timeline depicting the rise and fall of Angkor, animated scenes of ancient Angkor civilization, and background on some of the main temples, as well as a story and lots of photos. From the time line we learn that:

The name “Angkor,” from the Sanskirt for “city,” was given to the capital in the 16th century. Temple inscriptions during imperial times call it Yashodharapura, “glory-bearing city.”

Angkor Interactive is part of a larger NatGeo package on Angkor. It’s probably a lot more enjoyable if you have Internet that doesn’t suck. But even in its Cambodian-slow, herky-jerky form, it’s still pretty loy.

POSTSCRIPT: CyArk is working on Angkor too.

Thai fantasy

Hilarious! Sisaket businesses plead for Thai government to open Preah Vihear.

The government should consider quickly reopening Phra Viharn national park, the entrance to Preah Vihear temple, to help the ailing economy of the border province of Si Sa Ket, the provincial chamber of commerce chairman, Sriwan Kiatsuranont, said on Wednesday.

Trade and tourism  in the northeastern city had suffered severely  since the park was closed because of the tensions over the old Preah Vihear temple and surrounding areas, he said.

“The  national park is the only tourism selling point of Si Sa Ket and the southern part of the northeast region. The park’s closure has driven tourists away,” he said.

By contrast, Cambodia had continued to open Preah Vihear temple to foreign tourists and local travellers.

The government should reopen the national park as soon as possible.

Thai cluelessness simply has no limits, does it.

First person

Mei, a 19-year-old-prostitute in Phnom Penh, tells her story.

At the time, I was living in a room with other factory workers, and one of them had a friend who worked in a beer bar. My friend said she was earning good money from this and that I could do it too, so I went there to work. At first things were OK as I earned more money. I would sit outside the bar and ask men to come in and drink. The men would ask me for sex but I always said no, I wouldn’t sell my body. Sometimes they’d grab me or fondle my breasts, which I hated, but if I complained the boss would shout at me.

A man called Sothy used to come to the bar a lot. He was so nice to me, he spoke to me romantically. One night, he offered to walk me home. I went with him, and he asked me to his room. I really liked him so I said I would, we sat and talked. When I wanted to go, he wouldn’t let me. He pinned me to the bed and raped me. I was a virgin and the pain was huge and I bled a lot. He told me he would beat me if I told anyone and that no-one would care anyway as I was a beer girl.

I was so scared after this and so ashamed that I wasn’t a virgin anymore. The owner of the bar said he had a friend I could stay with, somewhere safe, and he took me to a guesthouse in the Toul Kork area. I realised it was a brothel when we arrived, but he said I didn’t have to sell sex but could work as a cleaner. He lied.

Mei was talking to writer Claire Colley, who elsewhere offers a few numbers.

Historically, the UK has failed to deal with the human rights implications for women involved in prostitution (WIP). However, the realitites of prostitution evidence that women involved are chronically vulnerable. 75% of women become involved in prostitution under the age of 18, 70% of WIP have spent time in care as children, 80% are involved to fund drug addiction and 68 % of WIP meet the criteria for suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

That’s in the U.K. Similarly shocking numbers, if not worse, seem likely for Cambodia. That’s not the kind of life anyone chooses.

Failure to explore the widely held contention that prostitution is the oldest ‘profession’ has served to prevent investigations into its exact nature. This has occured because of notions of choice, that is that men have a right to buy sex, and that the women who are involved in prostitution do it out of ‘choice’. However, most WIP do not ‘choose’ to become involved in a life of addiction and abuse, routes into prostitution are awash with sexual and physical violence and it is the very lack of choice which results in women selling sex.

Regrets the error

The Post seems to have hit a rough spot lately. The other day it mispelled “Los Angeles” in a photo credit. Yesterday there was another photo-related blooper and a hilarious-but-nonetheless misplaced modifier in a subhead, as well as just flat-out crap journalism.  What’s going on?

Editors who blog

This is a goldmine. There’s enough material here to blog for weeks. The story about the ladyboys is surreal.

Two days ago I was the subject of an attempted robbery by a gang of ladyboys on mopeds. It all started innocuously enough, when a young man and what appeared to be a genuine female coasted past me on their moto late one night.

“Hello!” the man said as he passed me.

… He told me he was a hairdresser and was showing around his sister, from Sihanoukville, while she was in town visiting. Of course, what with it being 2 a.m. and all, I figured it was about 90 percent more likely that he was her pimp (which didn’t rule out his being her brother), and that they were going to eventually proposition me to take her home.

… At that point, three motos with two occupants each zoomed up behind us, weaving dangerously. The couple I was talking to cried out and sped ahead (with a freedom I lacked on my bicycle). The three motos pulled up around me, one in front and one on either side. Suddenly, the one on the left, swerved into me, knocking me off balance, but not off my bicycle. The one on the right followed, and a horribly bewigged ladyboy on the passenger seat swung for my pocket. It took me a second to process the audacity of the attack, but only a second, and I batted her hand away and slammed my brakes. The trio of motos sped away, and the couple with whom I had been talking pulled alongside me again.

Weird. Very weird.

Tuol Sleng shooter

Peter Maguire, author of the 2005 book “Facing Death in Cambodia,” revisited his four interviews with Tuol Sleng photograpger Nhem En.

I tried to get En to reflect more broadly on the work he had done for the Khmer Rouge. “If I look at the years 1977 and 1978, the situation now is quite different,” En said. “It was like being a frog in a well that can only see the sky.” En continued to deflect the blame onto his superiors. “Most of the Khmer Rouge leaders are educated people,” he said. “They learned in France, but could not lead the country at all. Contrary to Hun Sen, who knows nothing but how to lead the country well, the Khmer Rouge leaders who were well educated led the country crazily. Hun Sen is not well educated, but he can lead the country.”

The material is a bit dated, but still significant. The New York Times Lens Blog calls it must see. Read the whole thing.

The power to protect

Seth Mydans takes stock in the government’s efforts to strengthen the rule of law. He finds Prime Minister Hun Sen less than persuasive.

Mr. Hun Sen dismisses, and even appears to parody, his critics, declaring earlier this month that he was acting in the interests of democracy by stripping the two lawmakers of their parliamentary immunity so that they could face prosecution in the courts.

“From now on we are strengthening democracy and the rule of law,” he said. “This is not an anarchic democracy. Democracy must have the rule of law.”

The leaders of Cambodia’s single-party democracy have long been prone to authoritarian fits. In previous outbursts, politicians and journalists from opposition parties have been swept away, sometimes to jail, sometimes to the afterlife. Eventually, once everyone is sufficiently terrified, The Strongman will lighten up.

Totally blackened

Reuters has the latest on Prime Minister Hun Sen’s visit to France

Cambodia’s government is drawing up an agreement to give France’s Total (TOTF.PA) rights to look for oil in its offshore block 3 in the Gulf of Thailand, officials said on Monday.

A provisional agreement was reached last week when Prime Minister Hun Sen was in Paris.

“Hun Sen told the French prime minister that Cambodia had decided to award block 3 to the French company, Total, for oil drilling after lengthy consideration,” Prak Sokhon, a senior government official who was in the delegation, told reporters.

What does a backroom oil deal with Total look like? It’s not pretty.

Court watchers

What do you think the government thinks about this?

Former [Philippine] Senate President Franklin Drilon said he was chosen by the International Parliamentary Union (IPU) as an observer in the defamation trial of a Cambodian opposition member of the parliament.

Drilon said the IPU, a worldwide organization of parliamentarians, designated designated him as its representative and observer in next week’s trial of Cambodian opposition MP Mu Soncha for a defamation suit filed by strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen.

The United Nations, of course, is a politically biased organization driven by shameful self-interest. Its attempts to slag off Cambodia’s notoriously honorable courts are just a cynical ploy to raise money for their own jet-setting gangster do-gooders. Blech.