It is not often that I give space on my Blog to another writer, but this seems to be a theme this week !
In late 2002, Christopher G. Moore, the author of the Vincent Calvino series of novels set in Southeast Asia, returned to Phnom Penh at the behest of his editors. His assignment was to visit and share his impressions of Cambodia today. His piece below gives a feel for the undoubted change that has occurred in Cambodia in the last decade but also for some of the contradictions that is Cambodia today.
*** *** ***
Digesting mass murder has no clear time frame. In the case of Cambodia, between April, 1975 until August 1979 when the Vietnamese arrived, the Khmer Rouge managed to kill about one-third of the population. A bullet, a shovel or hoe were killing tools. Starvation and disease added significantly to the piles of bodies accumulated during Khmer Rouge rule. By any standards, there had been a lot of murder. Tensions between those who supported the Khmer Rouge and those at the receiving end of their wrath were still strongly felt when UNTAC forces were sent to Cambodia with the mission to bring democracy, free elections, and a fresh start where both sides could reconcile themselves with the past and each other. In March 1993 I was in Phnom Penh as a journalist covering the UN venture into Cambodia. Drawing upon this experience, I wrote Zero Hour in Phnom Penh - the only novel that has emerged from this period.
Almost ten years later, I returned to Cambodia to explore the changes that had intervened in a half a generation. “Time walks fast,” said the young Khmer woman DJ with a breezy California accent. She might have been in a shopping center in Los Angeles. But she had never been outside of Cambodia. And she was young; broadcasting in English to the generation of Cambodians born after the Khmer Rouge had been defeated. “Time walks fast,” she said again.
“It seems like Monday but already it is Thursday. I like the fastness. But I don’t want to grow old. Do you want to grow old? Of course you don’t. Like me, you want to stay young forever.
And I have been thinking about how much I like Santana. He wrote a song called Black Magic Woman. I wish I knew his nationality. I mean, he’s not American and he’s not black or Asian. I don’t know where he’s from. But I really think he’s cool.”
On the 7-dollar ride from the airport, the driver had tuned to an English language station in Phnom Penh. He understood English. The whole country was studying the English language. The bookshops stocked Madonna, an intimate Biography and John Grisham’s Summons. Study and How to do tapes for Chinese, French, and Japanese were displayed on the shelf.
A generation before the Khmer Rouge had been killing anyone who spoke a foreign language or read foreign books. Now the streets were filled with students in their white shirts and black trousers carrying books and dreaming of riches.
The Monorome Hotel had been famous in 1993. Journalists on fat expense accounts stayed there, as they had done since the 1970s, preferably in one of the balcony rooms. It had been renamed the Holiday Villa, and had the look of an aging hooker with too much makeup. The old Royale had buckets in the main lobby catching water from the ceiling in 1993. A room could be had for $18 and the swimming pool was packed with weeds and mud. Today, the Singaporeans had transformed the hotel into a world class five star Raffles hotel with $300 rooms and offered a Champagne dinner for New Years at $70 per head.
At the old Russian market, in 1993 Khmer soldiers with amputated limbs hobbled after UNTAC soldiers who roamed the market which sold AK-47s for $75 and marijuana cigarettes in packs for 40 at $2. A decade later, the UNTAC soldiers had been replaced with tourists in their twenties looking through pirated DVD titles such as Die Another Day, 8 Mile, and Spiderman.
The AK-47s and marijuana had vanished. The instruments of war and the drugs to fight pain and terror had given way to the new age of consumption. The images were not of the recent past but of the cartoon worlds churned out by moguls in Hollywood who couldn’t find Cambodia on a map.
That night was a full moon. The reflection shone over the Tonle Sap as I walked along the quay.
I had witnessed a part of a procession, which between one and two million Khmers had participated in. On the forty-five kilometer journey, Khmers lined the street. In spots they were stood ten deep. They had come out wearing their finest clothes. I stood along the quay, a military vehicle with red light flashing and siren blaring slowly led a procession of a half dozen floats. Monks sat in rows on several of the floats.
On one float was a large glass case and inside were Buddha relics - hair, teeth and bone - and the procession was taking the relics to a new stupa built in the old capital of Odong. The new temple had been built on a mountain in Ponhea Leu district in Kandal Province.
The King and Prime Minister and princes and officials were at Odong waiting. What we witnessed had historic meaning. It had been over three decades since the relics had been moved. Thirty years was a lifetime in Cambodia.
Later in my room, I watched the procession on TV. The truck with the cameraman outside of Phnom Penh captured people stepping forward, handing lotus flowers, incense sticks and Cambodian flags to the monks. Some of the trucks overflowed with such offerings.
Looking at the vastness of the crowd - one to two million - one couldn’t help think they nearly equaled the victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide. All people and all factions had, however, come together in a bond of faith and belief. Had they put their differences aside for this procession or was this evidence of healing taking place?
That same Thursday evening a one-star general killed a nineteen-year-old who had allegedly beaten up his son. The new threat to the social order were the children of the ruling class who had formed gangs and roamed Phnom Penh, claiming turf, fighting each other, and other wise raising hell as untouchables. In this case, the general had been arrested.
A day later another general, a former aging Khmer Rouge commander, was sentenced in a Phnom Penh court to life imprisonment for ordering the murder of three young tourists in 1994.
The Australian, British, and French Embassies applauded the sentence. Like the movement of the relics, a general’s arrest for murder and another general carted off to prison on a murder conviction appeared as once in a life time incidents. The local papers covered the UN Secretary-General’s call for the trial of Khmer Rouge leaders in accordance with internationally recognized standards of justice. It was one thing to imprison one general who ordered the murder of foreign tourists, but what about his accountability for and participation in genocide, Cambodian killing Cambodian? No one raised the issue. There was only silence. Will true justice ever be brought to Cambodia? Will those responsible for the genocide be brought before such a tribunal? Or is it still the reality, that justice and truth are too threatening and divisive? A decade later after UNTAC, no one can answer these questions.
The Foreign Correspondent’s Club had just opened in the spring of 1993. As a journalist covering events on the ground, I found it a place to meet colleagues. A decade later, if there were any foreign correspondents in Phnom Penh, they had found a new watering hole.
The FCC was overrun with tourists and NGOs with their toddlers and teenagers running around with the arrogance of a Khmer general’s son, racing among the tables with their pool cues and eating hamburgers. The FCC as a day-care-center, a tourist trap, a place to write postcards showed the distance between the days when UNTAC land cruisers roamed the streets, and the threat of war remained real, the possibility of genuine elections uncertain.
The new generation of tourists sat in internet cafes intermingled with restaurants where they had a communication connection with the outside world that we never dreamt of in 1993. While they were more connected in one way, in another they were more isolated, in their small booths, never giving them a chance to find that being cut off, being isolated brings advantages and insights into your location and also into oneself. Being connected gives a sense of certainty and safety. The tourists had never left home, family, friends, or colleagues. Physically they were in Phnom Penh but inside their minds they had gone nowhere. It is unlikely they would have heard of the Briton, Australian and Frenchman -all in their 20s - who in 1994 had been dragged off an upcountry train, held for two months, then killed.
In 1993, when Calvino arrived in Phnom Penh, he explored the back streets; he sought out the places where there might be a story - or a body.
Sipping a latte at the Pink Elephant Restaurant with a half-dozen fellow travelers was not his way of understanding Cambodia. The old Lido was a place where the UNTAC soldiers rolled up in their white land cruisers, and with their $168 daily allowance, were a welcome sight for the mainly Vietnamese hookers who waived from the balcony. The Lido is no more. Recently, the government cracked down on prostitution in Phnom Penh in advance of hosting several regional conferences. But have the working girls disappeared from the scene or have they only faded away waiting until the guests leave? Only time will tell.
Meanwhile, in Phnom Penh women in green frocks work under a hot mid-day sun sweeping the main streets. The vast complex of slums in the heart of town has been knocked down and replaced with a sprawling shopping center and office complex. Next door to his complex is a park named after the Prime Minister Hun Sen.
At the end of the day, Zero Hour in Phnom Penh is a unique crime novel as the private eye Vincent Calvino finds himself seeking to solve a private crime in the midst of a society that has suffer the trauma of mass murder. He comes to realize that any individual crime pales when compared to what happened to more than one million people at the hands of the Khmer Rouge.
If Calvino were to return to Phnom Penh today, he would find many things unchanged - such as the fear of using justice and truth to resolve the past - and many things on the surface much changed - internet cafes, hordes of tourists, five-star hotels, and a new airport where the menu includes melted tuna au gratin, cheese cake, and latte.
In Cambodia, the human conditions continues to stretch the void - from the horror of genocide to the vulgar ostentatious travelers who, in their own way, seek to have their cake and eat it, creating the illusions they have never really left home.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Letter from Phnom Penh
Thoughts from the front lines of US Immigration
The two young men sporting hip hop clothes and gang tattoos wander easily among the tourists.
There are so many people visiting the ancient temples of Angkor that no one in particular draws much attention. These two are Cambodian American, visiting the temples that represent the glory of the Khmer empire, icons which they have known all their lives only through the stories of their parents. The two kneel in front of a statue of Buddha, heads bowed in prayer. Boxer shorts sprout out of their sagging pants, and the tattoos running down their arms end in hands with palms pressed together, sticks of incense cradled in their fingers.
They are not tourists and this is not a vacation. They are “returnees,” deported from the United States where they have grown up, back to the country they fled as young children with their families. While there are currently 67 returnees in Cambodia, there are another 1,500 awaiting deportation in the U.S.
They have all been ordered deported, mostly on the basis of having been convicted of a crime. Changes to U.S. immigration law have largely eliminated defences to their “removal,” as deportation is now called, even though most of them have lived in the U.S. for 20 years or more and many, like these two young men, came as young children and have grown up as “Americans.”
Kimho Ma left Cambodia in 1979 as a sick baby tied to his mother’s chest with a scarf. They were among the tens of thousands of Cambodians fleeing the murderous Khmer Rouge. In the regime’s attempts to rid the Cambodian population of all traces of Western and intellectual thought, close to two million Cambodians—almost one-third of the country’s population—died between 1975 and 1979, victims of starvation, sickness, and arbitrary execution. When the Vietnamese army “liberated” the country in 1979, survivors flooded across the border into Thailand.
The Ma family travelled on foot to Thailand without food, with Kimho sick and lifeless, wrapped in a krama. His mother walked hand-in-hand with Kimho’s brother and sister, with his oldest brother in the lead taking the place of the father who stayed behind, too ill to make the trek. Throughout their difficult journey, skirting land mines and Khmer Rouge soldiers, his mother would periodically check to see if the baby was still moving, ready to leave him for dead by the side of the road. He managed to breathe just enough to convince them not to abandon him.
When they made it to the Thai border, his sister remembers, “We knew then he would live a long life because he was so strong to survive that trip.”
They spent five years in refugee camps on the Thai/Cambodian border, waiting for sponsorship to a third country and for international immigration policy and laws to embrace the waves of refugees from Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. The Ma family came to the U.S. in 1985 when Kimho was seven, along with his mother’s sister’s family.
The family came as part of the large wave of Cambodian migration between 1975 and 1985, when some 127,000 Cambodian refugees arrived in the U.S. They were war refugees, without plans or suitcases, carrying only a few photographs taken in the refugee camps, the memories of the atrocities they had experienced, and a desire for freedom. Rural dwellers mostly, they had few skills and little education. The cities where they settled were not ready to take on whole populations of strange refugees without job or language skills. They were poor in a United States that would become increasingly hostile to the poor over the next 20 years.
The struggles they experienced in adapting to their new culture were exacerbated by psychological distress. Close to 50 percent of adult Cambodian refugees were ultimately diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a 1999 report by the office of the U.S. Surgeon General, while many more exhibited some of the symptoms. Most adults were unwilling to talk about their experiences under the Khmer Rouge, either with aid workers or with their young children, who had no memories of the atrocities. Children feeling isolated from their peers, both socially and at school, were reluctant to bring their troubles to their parents, who were struggling with the demons they carried from Cambodia, while trying to feed their families on low paying jobs.
English quickly became the language used by the younger generation to describe their experiences in an English speaking world. Children became the translators for their parents, interacting with social services, doctors, lawyers, and schools. Older sons took the place of fathers who had been lost to war or the Khmer Rouge. One refugee remembers answering a phone call from the police in the middle of the night, looking for the father of the family to come pick up his younger brother. “There is no father,” he told them. “I am the father. I will come get him.”
As family roles reversed, elders lost the respect of their children and the control they traditionally had in the family. Teens felt estranged from their Cambodian families because of their language and cultural differences and marginalized at school for the same reasons. Many found security with others in the same situation, groups that sometimes grew into street gangs. The breakdown in traditional family structures is considered by many to be a root cause for the growth of Asian gangs. A worker with the Khmer Community of Seattle-King County admitted, “Most kids join a gang because of the loss of power as a parent.”
Kimho Ma described the reasons he and his friends joined gangs. “Many of the Asian youths were looking for a place of acceptance. A lot was very young, some was in their early teens, and they had no understanding of their culture. Many came from poor living conditions and most were undereducated. Gangster life was a chance for them to build status in post- modern America.... I spoke some English but not good enough, so I would get teased at school. Most of us got mocked for being different, taunted for being poor, and battered for being foreign.... We saw the gang as a congregation for strength and unity...there was no more intimidation at school.”
There was also antagonism among the many immigrant, refugee, and ethnic groups living together in housing projects and attending the same schools. Kimho explained, “...members of the early year join for the sole purpose for protection against out-side attack from different ethnic group. One of the biggest rivalries in the street of America is the Latino gangs and the Asian gangs. Many blame the problem on the ethnicity, but I see it as a poverty issue…. Here we were, young Khmer men living in the ghetto of America. So was it wrong for us to stand up for ourselves? Was it wrong for us to be free of harm?”
Kimho was 17-years-old when he was arrested for participating in a gang shooting in 1995. Throughout the 1990s, many minors who ran afoul of the criminal justice system were being charged as adults, bringing younger and younger lawbreakers into the adult system where they could be charged with more serious crimes and sentenced to longer sentences in adult prisons.
At the same time, many refugee adults didn’t or couldn’t apply to naturalize themselves and their minor children because of a lack of English skills, lack of low income legal assistance for refugees and immigrants, and a lack of understanding among social service providers of how important citizenship was for ensuring the stability of immigrant and refugee families. The psychological baggage that many refugees carried with them also created real fear of government officials. An incompetent immigration service made things difficult for those who did apply—stories abound of lost paperwork, wrong forms, incorrect information, and utter indifference on the part of the bureaucracy for the families whose lives were permanently affected by its inefficiency.
This left family members exposed to increasingly draconian immigration laws. But most refugee children who were growing up here assumed they were no different than U.S. citizens, or at least that their parents had taken care of whatever legal manipulations their immigration to the U.S. had required. Even if they did understand their immigration status and the severity of not naturalizing, as minors they were not able to apply for citizenship on their own. Along with many others, Kimho’s parents did not naturalize, nor did they understand the significance of the clothing and “colours” he wore, the music he listened to, or the places where he hung out with his friends—until he was arrested and charged with a gang-related murder.
Charged as adults, a jury found Kimho and three of his co-defendants guilty of manslaughter. After serving a 22-month sentence, he was released from state prison only to be incarcerated by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). That was when he discovered he was not a U.S. citizen and faced extremely punitive immigration laws. The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) required that anyone convicted of a dizzying array of felonies must be deported, and eliminated any discretion for immigration judges to grant waivers no matter how compelling the individual circumstances. For Kimho Ma, there was no defence to deportation.
Before he and his family understood what was happening, Kimho was ordered deported. He remained behind bars, in INS “detention,” but Cambodia had not accepted the repatriation of any of its citizens since the Vietnam War decades earlier and refused to accept him. With deportation pending, but not possible, the INS insisted on holding Kimho in detention, even if it was for life.
He found other Cambodians like himself in the various INS jails. There were Vietnamese and Laotian detainees in the same situation, since U.S. relations with all three countries were cut off after the wars in Southeast Asia. Nationally, there were estimated to be close to 5,000 Southeast Asians being held in INS limbo indefinitely, the “lifers” waiting to be deported.
The INS argued that these former criminals, who had all served their sentences, were a danger to society. The government also claimed that because they had been ordered deported, they had been stripped of their constitutional right to freedom. Kimho and the others fought back, filing handwritten petitions for writs of habeas corpus from their cells. These jailhouse litigants ultimately came to the attention of lawyers who would take on their cases and fight the detentions. Kimho’s case became the focus of appeals through the federal courts, finding their final victory in a 5 to 4 decision at the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2001 in the cases of Ashcroft v. Ma and Zadvydus v. Davis. The decision allowed the release of thousands of detainees, some of whom had been in INS detention for five years or more. Kimho Ma had spent two and one-half years in INS detention after completing his sentence in state prison.
But the win at the Supreme Court left the deportation orders of all of these people untouched. As anti-immigrant policies intensified in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, U.S. officials pressured the Cambodian government to sign an agreement in March 2002 that would allow Cambodian nationals in the U.S. with deportation orders to be sent back to the country they had fled decades earlier.
Kimho was among the first groups to be sent back. In early October 2002, his family gathered at the shabby gas station across the street from INS headquarters in Seattle where he was to turn himself in. As his mother watched the door to the immigration building swing shut behind him, she sank to the sidewalk, as if all of her spirit and strength had disappeared along with her son.
Kimho’s trip across the Pacific retraced the journey his family had taken 17 years earlier. Except this time he was in shackles and handcuffs, guarded by INS officers on a U.S. government jet.
Arriving in Phnom Penh for the first time in his life, Kimho Ma was struck by how beautiful the country was and how friendly the people. After an initial period of detention by Cambodian immigration, he now lives as a Cambodian in Phnom Penh. Along with the several dozen men who have been deported to Cambodia, so far, he has found himself in a country unlike anything he could have imagined from his parents stories.
Cambodia overflows with the unfortunate. Limbless land-mine victims fill the streets of Phnom Penh, swarming foreigners for handouts that will allow them to eat for another day. They share street corners with clusters of street kids, many abandoned by families too poor to care for them, sniffing glue to cut the constant hunger and heat. HIV positive babies, acid attack victims missing parts of their faces, 12-year-old prostitutes, orchestras of amputee musicians, all vie for the limited services offered by privately funded non-governmental organizations. Raw sewage flows into the Mekong and Tonle Sap Rivers and power lines routinely collapse in the winds and rains of the annual monsoons, falling into flood waters in the streets below and electrocuting anyone wading through at the time.
Still, one of the first impressions Kimho had of Cambodia was that, for the first time in memory, he was in a place where everyone looked like him. The racism that dogged him in the United States was gone. Many of the returnees experienced the same sense of familiarity, along with relief at being free of the U.S. immigration system.
But they also find that they stand out. While most of them speak Khmer, their accents give them away as non-native. Some try to dress like locals so they won’t look different, but many of their mannerisms—the way they walk, the way they look at someone while conversing—all give them away as “foreign.” They are often asked where they come from, and are usually requested to pay the more expensive foreigner rate for public services and activities. “To start off we already look different, then we all speak in English and just act different,” writes Kimho. “My Cambodian is still questioned by a lot of locals.... It’s a trip how so many people think [I] am not Khmer. But, then again maybe that’s a good thing. Almost everybody I meet thinks [I] am a tourist. If they only knew.”
Kimho writes frequently of the confusion of not knowing in which world he belongs. “All I know is [I] am here and that it’s for a while.... When you wake up and you hop on a motodup [motorcycle taxi] and you see the struggle of the country again. Only then you realize that this is a part of my world now. It ain’t Bush, Backstreet Boy, or MTV no more. Now it’s the CPP [the ruling Cambodian People’s Party] or the Sam Rainsy Party, the dusty road, and the traffic of Cambodia.”
Talking to his mom, he says “Hearing her voice really make me homesick. It’s funny how I also say home sick. Shit. This is home.”
How does someone who’s spent a short lifetime building a bridge from Cambodian to U.S. culture, turn around and recross the bridge? The term acculturation describes the process of adapting from one’s old culture to the new. But what about “reverse acculturation,” where someone must relearn—or learn for the first time—their old culture and shed the adopted one? While supporters of the INS policies argue that Kimho and the others never were U.S. citizens, so never earned the rights of citizens, they are clearly U.S. citizens by their upbringing, their way of looking at the world, their sense of themselves. Kimho understands this: “...my mind is caught up in two different worlds and it’s hard to forget where you use to come from. I mean it’s hard to erase 20 years of living.
“I had been thinking a lot about life and what is going on in my life. It rain yesterday and I like it a lot. I was just sitting in front of the house and listening to the rain fall. And it got me thinking how much I miss the Seattle rain. It been so hot over here it was nice having a break from the heat. I mean I can remember when I was a kid running the street with my friend and how we use to get caught up in the rain. We would be walking and all of a sudden the rain would come down and hard. Then we would find a little shelter and just hide until the rain went away. But, what cool is that while we were waiting for the rain to go away we would talk about everything.
And that what I remember most. I remember how innocent we were under the rain and here we are now, most of my friends are lock up or dead and some on their way back to Cambodia.”
Most of the returnees are leaving family behind in the United States. Many, like Kimho, have elderly parents who they are expected to be able to care for. Many also leave behind U.S. citizen children. One returnee leaves 6-year-old twins; another has a 3- year-old daughter. One has two young girls and was working and taking care of his family as his wife finished her MBA when INS wrenched him from his home.
The cost to U.S. society of breaking up these families is significant. The loss of the breadwinner from families living in borderline poverty will push many more people onto public assistance. Mental health issues also appear to be rising among family members affected by deportation, with depression and stress contributing to an increasing level of dysfunction. The U.S. legal system promised freedom and justice to these families, but now many Cambodians feel betrayed by the U.S. and its laws that destroy rather than protect.
Members of the Cambodian American community are fighting back. Looking for recognition that refugees are different than economic immigrants, they are hoping to convince Congress that refugees deserve a waiver to harsh immigration laws. The history of Cambodian refugees—their survival and flight from the Khmer Rouge and their struggle in the United States—argues for some form of particularized relief from the present, cruel U.S. immigration policies.
But the impact of these deportations on this single community illuminates more universal truths: that deportation destroys families and is a punishment of grossly unjust proportions. Even if deportation may be warranted in a handful of cases, more often than not it is a policy that creates more problems than it solves. At a time when government policies increasingly restrict who is considered “American”—and who, as a consequence, falls within or without the protections of our celebrated democratic institutions—the U.S. also needs to acknowledge that healthy families and communities are essential for our own security and enact policies that preserve rather than destroy our communities. Then maybe the people who are being sent to Cambodia can come home to their families.
Waiting for visitors to arrive in Phnom Penh, Kimho writes, “I wonder when I be on that flight heading back to America. I guess it’s just a dream...but, then again dreams do come true.”
*** *** ***
Jay Stansell is an attorney who argued the case of Kimho Ma, a subject of this article, at the U.S. Supreme Court. Dori Cahn is an adult educator working with immigrants and refugees. The article is based on a chapter in a collection entitled Race, Culture, Psychology and Law (forthcoming from Sage).
The two young men sporting hip hop clothes and gang tattoos wander easily among the tourists.
There are so many people visiting the ancient temples of Angkor that no one in particular draws much attention. These two are Cambodian American, visiting the temples that represent the glory of the Khmer empire, icons which they have known all their lives only through the stories of their parents. The two kneel in front of a statue of Buddha, heads bowed in prayer. Boxer shorts sprout out of their sagging pants, and the tattoos running down their arms end in hands with palms pressed together, sticks of incense cradled in their fingers.
They are not tourists and this is not a vacation. They are “returnees,” deported from the United States where they have grown up, back to the country they fled as young children with their families. While there are currently 67 returnees in Cambodia, there are another 1,500 awaiting deportation in the U.S.
They have all been ordered deported, mostly on the basis of having been convicted of a crime. Changes to U.S. immigration law have largely eliminated defences to their “removal,” as deportation is now called, even though most of them have lived in the U.S. for 20 years or more and many, like these two young men, came as young children and have grown up as “Americans.”
Kimho Ma left Cambodia in 1979 as a sick baby tied to his mother’s chest with a scarf. They were among the tens of thousands of Cambodians fleeing the murderous Khmer Rouge. In the regime’s attempts to rid the Cambodian population of all traces of Western and intellectual thought, close to two million Cambodians—almost one-third of the country’s population—died between 1975 and 1979, victims of starvation, sickness, and arbitrary execution. When the Vietnamese army “liberated” the country in 1979, survivors flooded across the border into Thailand.
The Ma family travelled on foot to Thailand without food, with Kimho sick and lifeless, wrapped in a krama. His mother walked hand-in-hand with Kimho’s brother and sister, with his oldest brother in the lead taking the place of the father who stayed behind, too ill to make the trek. Throughout their difficult journey, skirting land mines and Khmer Rouge soldiers, his mother would periodically check to see if the baby was still moving, ready to leave him for dead by the side of the road. He managed to breathe just enough to convince them not to abandon him.
When they made it to the Thai border, his sister remembers, “We knew then he would live a long life because he was so strong to survive that trip.”
They spent five years in refugee camps on the Thai/Cambodian border, waiting for sponsorship to a third country and for international immigration policy and laws to embrace the waves of refugees from Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos. The Ma family came to the U.S. in 1985 when Kimho was seven, along with his mother’s sister’s family.
The family came as part of the large wave of Cambodian migration between 1975 and 1985, when some 127,000 Cambodian refugees arrived in the U.S. They were war refugees, without plans or suitcases, carrying only a few photographs taken in the refugee camps, the memories of the atrocities they had experienced, and a desire for freedom. Rural dwellers mostly, they had few skills and little education. The cities where they settled were not ready to take on whole populations of strange refugees without job or language skills. They were poor in a United States that would become increasingly hostile to the poor over the next 20 years.
The struggles they experienced in adapting to their new culture were exacerbated by psychological distress. Close to 50 percent of adult Cambodian refugees were ultimately diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a 1999 report by the office of the U.S. Surgeon General, while many more exhibited some of the symptoms. Most adults were unwilling to talk about their experiences under the Khmer Rouge, either with aid workers or with their young children, who had no memories of the atrocities. Children feeling isolated from their peers, both socially and at school, were reluctant to bring their troubles to their parents, who were struggling with the demons they carried from Cambodia, while trying to feed their families on low paying jobs.
English quickly became the language used by the younger generation to describe their experiences in an English speaking world. Children became the translators for their parents, interacting with social services, doctors, lawyers, and schools. Older sons took the place of fathers who had been lost to war or the Khmer Rouge. One refugee remembers answering a phone call from the police in the middle of the night, looking for the father of the family to come pick up his younger brother. “There is no father,” he told them. “I am the father. I will come get him.”
As family roles reversed, elders lost the respect of their children and the control they traditionally had in the family. Teens felt estranged from their Cambodian families because of their language and cultural differences and marginalized at school for the same reasons. Many found security with others in the same situation, groups that sometimes grew into street gangs. The breakdown in traditional family structures is considered by many to be a root cause for the growth of Asian gangs. A worker with the Khmer Community of Seattle-King County admitted, “Most kids join a gang because of the loss of power as a parent.”
Kimho Ma described the reasons he and his friends joined gangs. “Many of the Asian youths were looking for a place of acceptance. A lot was very young, some was in their early teens, and they had no understanding of their culture. Many came from poor living conditions and most were undereducated. Gangster life was a chance for them to build status in post- modern America.... I spoke some English but not good enough, so I would get teased at school. Most of us got mocked for being different, taunted for being poor, and battered for being foreign.... We saw the gang as a congregation for strength and unity...there was no more intimidation at school.”
There was also antagonism among the many immigrant, refugee, and ethnic groups living together in housing projects and attending the same schools. Kimho explained, “...members of the early year join for the sole purpose for protection against out-side attack from different ethnic group. One of the biggest rivalries in the street of America is the Latino gangs and the Asian gangs. Many blame the problem on the ethnicity, but I see it as a poverty issue…. Here we were, young Khmer men living in the ghetto of America. So was it wrong for us to stand up for ourselves? Was it wrong for us to be free of harm?”
Kimho was 17-years-old when he was arrested for participating in a gang shooting in 1995. Throughout the 1990s, many minors who ran afoul of the criminal justice system were being charged as adults, bringing younger and younger lawbreakers into the adult system where they could be charged with more serious crimes and sentenced to longer sentences in adult prisons.
At the same time, many refugee adults didn’t or couldn’t apply to naturalize themselves and their minor children because of a lack of English skills, lack of low income legal assistance for refugees and immigrants, and a lack of understanding among social service providers of how important citizenship was for ensuring the stability of immigrant and refugee families. The psychological baggage that many refugees carried with them also created real fear of government officials. An incompetent immigration service made things difficult for those who did apply—stories abound of lost paperwork, wrong forms, incorrect information, and utter indifference on the part of the bureaucracy for the families whose lives were permanently affected by its inefficiency.
This left family members exposed to increasingly draconian immigration laws. But most refugee children who were growing up here assumed they were no different than U.S. citizens, or at least that their parents had taken care of whatever legal manipulations their immigration to the U.S. had required. Even if they did understand their immigration status and the severity of not naturalizing, as minors they were not able to apply for citizenship on their own. Along with many others, Kimho’s parents did not naturalize, nor did they understand the significance of the clothing and “colours” he wore, the music he listened to, or the places where he hung out with his friends—until he was arrested and charged with a gang-related murder.
Charged as adults, a jury found Kimho and three of his co-defendants guilty of manslaughter. After serving a 22-month sentence, he was released from state prison only to be incarcerated by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). That was when he discovered he was not a U.S. citizen and faced extremely punitive immigration laws. The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) required that anyone convicted of a dizzying array of felonies must be deported, and eliminated any discretion for immigration judges to grant waivers no matter how compelling the individual circumstances. For Kimho Ma, there was no defence to deportation.
Before he and his family understood what was happening, Kimho was ordered deported. He remained behind bars, in INS “detention,” but Cambodia had not accepted the repatriation of any of its citizens since the Vietnam War decades earlier and refused to accept him. With deportation pending, but not possible, the INS insisted on holding Kimho in detention, even if it was for life.
He found other Cambodians like himself in the various INS jails. There were Vietnamese and Laotian detainees in the same situation, since U.S. relations with all three countries were cut off after the wars in Southeast Asia. Nationally, there were estimated to be close to 5,000 Southeast Asians being held in INS limbo indefinitely, the “lifers” waiting to be deported.
The INS argued that these former criminals, who had all served their sentences, were a danger to society. The government also claimed that because they had been ordered deported, they had been stripped of their constitutional right to freedom. Kimho and the others fought back, filing handwritten petitions for writs of habeas corpus from their cells. These jailhouse litigants ultimately came to the attention of lawyers who would take on their cases and fight the detentions. Kimho’s case became the focus of appeals through the federal courts, finding their final victory in a 5 to 4 decision at the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2001 in the cases of Ashcroft v. Ma and Zadvydus v. Davis. The decision allowed the release of thousands of detainees, some of whom had been in INS detention for five years or more. Kimho Ma had spent two and one-half years in INS detention after completing his sentence in state prison.
But the win at the Supreme Court left the deportation orders of all of these people untouched. As anti-immigrant policies intensified in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, U.S. officials pressured the Cambodian government to sign an agreement in March 2002 that would allow Cambodian nationals in the U.S. with deportation orders to be sent back to the country they had fled decades earlier.
Kimho was among the first groups to be sent back. In early October 2002, his family gathered at the shabby gas station across the street from INS headquarters in Seattle where he was to turn himself in. As his mother watched the door to the immigration building swing shut behind him, she sank to the sidewalk, as if all of her spirit and strength had disappeared along with her son.
Kimho’s trip across the Pacific retraced the journey his family had taken 17 years earlier. Except this time he was in shackles and handcuffs, guarded by INS officers on a U.S. government jet.
Arriving in Phnom Penh for the first time in his life, Kimho Ma was struck by how beautiful the country was and how friendly the people. After an initial period of detention by Cambodian immigration, he now lives as a Cambodian in Phnom Penh. Along with the several dozen men who have been deported to Cambodia, so far, he has found himself in a country unlike anything he could have imagined from his parents stories.
Cambodia overflows with the unfortunate. Limbless land-mine victims fill the streets of Phnom Penh, swarming foreigners for handouts that will allow them to eat for another day. They share street corners with clusters of street kids, many abandoned by families too poor to care for them, sniffing glue to cut the constant hunger and heat. HIV positive babies, acid attack victims missing parts of their faces, 12-year-old prostitutes, orchestras of amputee musicians, all vie for the limited services offered by privately funded non-governmental organizations. Raw sewage flows into the Mekong and Tonle Sap Rivers and power lines routinely collapse in the winds and rains of the annual monsoons, falling into flood waters in the streets below and electrocuting anyone wading through at the time.
Still, one of the first impressions Kimho had of Cambodia was that, for the first time in memory, he was in a place where everyone looked like him. The racism that dogged him in the United States was gone. Many of the returnees experienced the same sense of familiarity, along with relief at being free of the U.S. immigration system.
But they also find that they stand out. While most of them speak Khmer, their accents give them away as non-native. Some try to dress like locals so they won’t look different, but many of their mannerisms—the way they walk, the way they look at someone while conversing—all give them away as “foreign.” They are often asked where they come from, and are usually requested to pay the more expensive foreigner rate for public services and activities. “To start off we already look different, then we all speak in English and just act different,” writes Kimho. “My Cambodian is still questioned by a lot of locals.... It’s a trip how so many people think [I] am not Khmer. But, then again maybe that’s a good thing. Almost everybody I meet thinks [I] am a tourist. If they only knew.”
Kimho writes frequently of the confusion of not knowing in which world he belongs. “All I know is [I] am here and that it’s for a while.... When you wake up and you hop on a motodup [motorcycle taxi] and you see the struggle of the country again. Only then you realize that this is a part of my world now. It ain’t Bush, Backstreet Boy, or MTV no more. Now it’s the CPP [the ruling Cambodian People’s Party] or the Sam Rainsy Party, the dusty road, and the traffic of Cambodia.”
Talking to his mom, he says “Hearing her voice really make me homesick. It’s funny how I also say home sick. Shit. This is home.”
How does someone who’s spent a short lifetime building a bridge from Cambodian to U.S. culture, turn around and recross the bridge? The term acculturation describes the process of adapting from one’s old culture to the new. But what about “reverse acculturation,” where someone must relearn—or learn for the first time—their old culture and shed the adopted one? While supporters of the INS policies argue that Kimho and the others never were U.S. citizens, so never earned the rights of citizens, they are clearly U.S. citizens by their upbringing, their way of looking at the world, their sense of themselves. Kimho understands this: “...my mind is caught up in two different worlds and it’s hard to forget where you use to come from. I mean it’s hard to erase 20 years of living.
“I had been thinking a lot about life and what is going on in my life. It rain yesterday and I like it a lot. I was just sitting in front of the house and listening to the rain fall. And it got me thinking how much I miss the Seattle rain. It been so hot over here it was nice having a break from the heat. I mean I can remember when I was a kid running the street with my friend and how we use to get caught up in the rain. We would be walking and all of a sudden the rain would come down and hard. Then we would find a little shelter and just hide until the rain went away. But, what cool is that while we were waiting for the rain to go away we would talk about everything.
And that what I remember most. I remember how innocent we were under the rain and here we are now, most of my friends are lock up or dead and some on their way back to Cambodia.”
Most of the returnees are leaving family behind in the United States. Many, like Kimho, have elderly parents who they are expected to be able to care for. Many also leave behind U.S. citizen children. One returnee leaves 6-year-old twins; another has a 3- year-old daughter. One has two young girls and was working and taking care of his family as his wife finished her MBA when INS wrenched him from his home.
The cost to U.S. society of breaking up these families is significant. The loss of the breadwinner from families living in borderline poverty will push many more people onto public assistance. Mental health issues also appear to be rising among family members affected by deportation, with depression and stress contributing to an increasing level of dysfunction. The U.S. legal system promised freedom and justice to these families, but now many Cambodians feel betrayed by the U.S. and its laws that destroy rather than protect.
Members of the Cambodian American community are fighting back. Looking for recognition that refugees are different than economic immigrants, they are hoping to convince Congress that refugees deserve a waiver to harsh immigration laws. The history of Cambodian refugees—their survival and flight from the Khmer Rouge and their struggle in the United States—argues for some form of particularized relief from the present, cruel U.S. immigration policies.
But the impact of these deportations on this single community illuminates more universal truths: that deportation destroys families and is a punishment of grossly unjust proportions. Even if deportation may be warranted in a handful of cases, more often than not it is a policy that creates more problems than it solves. At a time when government policies increasingly restrict who is considered “American”—and who, as a consequence, falls within or without the protections of our celebrated democratic institutions—the U.S. also needs to acknowledge that healthy families and communities are essential for our own security and enact policies that preserve rather than destroy our communities. Then maybe the people who are being sent to Cambodia can come home to their families.
Waiting for visitors to arrive in Phnom Penh, Kimho writes, “I wonder when I be on that flight heading back to America. I guess it’s just a dream...but, then again dreams do come true.”
*** *** ***
Jay Stansell is an attorney who argued the case of Kimho Ma, a subject of this article, at the U.S. Supreme Court. Dori Cahn is an adult educator working with immigrants and refugees. The article is based on a chapter in a collection entitled Race, Culture, Psychology and Law (forthcoming from Sage).
Monday, August 01, 2005
T on Holiday in Cambodia :-)
Sunday the 10th
Teresa arrives for a holiday
09:00 out at PP International Airport (again) waiting for Thai Airways to land and deposit the first of my visitors this month…
having half an hour to kill I treat myself to a café latte and a chocolate croissant at the airport café. The coffee is virtually undrinkable and cost roughly EIGHT times the price one would normally pay in a Khmer restaurant – only double what one would pay in a western restaurant bar… the choc croissant though is fabulous, although that may only have been because I have not had one in a couple of years !?!?
T arrives and we head home so that she can unpack and catch her breath after the long journey out.
Not wishing to risk going native completely on the first night, T opts for an opening night meal of good old Indian Curry :-)
So it is off to Shiva Shakti – On Sihanouk Boulevard. The finest Indian curry house in Southeast Asia! With dishes ranging from classic Indian to Moghul specialities. Slightly boring I know, but the best Tandoori dishes I have had in a very long time.
Having dined, we decide to call in at the Peace Café for a nightcap, only to find that Dave has closed the bar a couple of days early, citing to much work to do one the new premises and their big re launch party on Saturday in the new space. So , down this end of town our only options are now; a Khmer beer garden, or Martini’s.
Heading over to Martini’s we find it almost empty, well it was early and the place rarely gets going before 10 o’clock at the earliest.
Monday the 11th
Day one of my short holiday
I am in work 07:00 to 09:30 for a meeting that I could not get out of, back home at 10:00, wake T up and start to give her the tour of the city.
Stroll along the riverbanks – Tonle Sap – stop off for an ice cold drink or two.
Lunch at the ‘Mary Bubble Tea Euro Gratin Restaurant’ on Monivong Boulevard: Spaghetti in a cream mushroom sauce au gratin.
After which I get Thou to pick us up in his tuk-tuk and it is off to P’sar toul tom poung - The Russian Market
Although Toul Tom Poung is primarily a residential area at the southern edge of Phnom Penh, P’sar (Market) Toul Tom Poung (i.e. Russian Market) at streets 155 and 50 is perhaps the most important market for expatriates and many would claim, myself included, a must see on any good tourist itinerary. This is where we buy our US$2 DVD’s and Gap T-shirts, our Ralph Lauren workshops and Birkenstock shoes.
For the visitor to Cambodia this is possibly the best market in Phnom Penh to buy souvenirs; with a large range of antiques both real and fake. Carvings, statues and Buddha’s are but a few of the items you will find here, along with a large variety of beautiful silks and other fabrics.
T buys assorted ‘Cambodia: Danger Landmines’ T-shirts for Dick – classic traveller purchase for Cambodia :-) I particularly like the one with diagrams of various pieces of ordinance on the back !?!
Then it is time for us to visit Wat Phnom
Set on top of a tree-covered knoll 27m high, Wat Phnom is the only hill in town. According to legend, the first pagoda on this site was erected in 1373 to house four statues of Buddha deposited here by the waters of the Mekong and discovered by a woman name Penh. The main entrance to Wat Phnom is via the grand eastern staircase, which is guarded by lions and naga (snake) balustrades.
Nowadays people come here to pray for good luck and success in school exams or business affairs. When a petitioner's wish is granted, he or she returns to make the offering (such as a garland of jasmine flowers or bananas, of which the spirits are said to be especially fond) that they promised when the request was made.
The vihara (temple sanctuary) was rebuilt in 1434, 1806 , 1894, and, most recently, in 1926.
West of the vihara is an enormous stupa containing the ashes of King Ponhea Yat (reigned 1405 to 1467) . In a small pavilion on the south side of the passage between the vihara and the stupa is a statue of the smiling and rather plump Madame Penh.
A bit to the north of the vihara and below it is an eclectic shrine dedicated to the genie Preah Chau, who is especially revered by the Vietnamese. On either side of the entrance to the chamber in which a statue of Preah Chau sits are guardian spirits bearing iron bats. On the tile table in front of the two guardian spirits are drawings of Confucius, and two Chinese-style figures of the sages Thang Cheng (on the right ) and Thang Thay (on the left). To the left of the central altar is an eight-armed statue of Vishnu.
Down the hill from the shrine is a royal stupa sprouting full-size trees from its roof. For now, the roots are holding the bricks together, but when the trees die the tower will slowly crumble. If you can not make it out to Angkor, this stupa gives a pretty good idea of what the jungle can do (and is doing) to some of Cambodia's monuments.
Curiously, Wat Phnom is the only attraction in Phnom Penh that is in danger of turning into a circus. Beggars, street urchins, women selling drinks and children selling birds in cages (you pay to set the bird free locals claim the birds are trained to return to their cage afterwards) pester everyone who turns up to slog the 27m to the summit. Fortunately it is all high-spirited stuff, and it is difficult to be annoyed by the vendors, who after all, are only trying to eke out a living.
After boiling in the midday sun on top of the hill, we wander down to the Coyote Ugly Bar just off from the hill. As the only customers in there we are subjected to a huge amount of attention from the 10 barmaids, they turn the air-conditioning on, redirect fans towards us, top up our complementary bowl of popcorn every few minutes and giggle frantically when I am able to chat to them in Khmer - although they may just have been laughing at my bad pronunciation…
Thou and his tuk-tuk turn up after an hour there to take us over to Café Freedom on the lake, where we relax and watch the skies darken – we are hoping for rain, but it does not seem to come. After a while we stroll down the lane and call into a few more places, until we stop off in the imaginatively named ‘The Pub Crawl Bar’ where we have an ice cold glass of beer, or two. The promised rain finally comes and you can feel the temperature dropping as it falls.
Home to shower and change then
18:00 out to the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) for dinner. Love it, or loathe it, the FCC is a place you have to drop into at least once if you are visiting Cambodia, while these days you do not have to be an intrepid reporter to enjoy the French colonial ambiance of this beautiful restaurant and bar. Tourists, business travellers, expatriates and even a few locals enjoy drinks on the first floor or rooftop bars overlooking the Tonle Sap River. The menu is a mixture of Western and Asian, with Khmer curry sitting on the menu next to pasta dishes, pizza, Caesar salad and desserts. Beer is a little more expensive than in other bars at USD1.50 and upwards, but for a piece of classic Phnom Penh charm, it is worth it; well, once in a while.
Tuesday the 12th
Day two; the depressing stuff you have to do with visitors
Khmer breakfast – rice~pork, fish and beef broth, pickled vegetables and chilli dipping sauce; standard stuff for us ex-pats but Teresa was not impressed!
10:00 Thou picks us up in his tuk-tuk and takes us out to The Killing Fields Memorial – Choeng Ek
This memorial is on the site of a Khmer Rouge extermination camp where almost 9,000 bodies were exhumed from mass graves after the fall of the regime. The real number of victims is estimated to be twice as many, as the dead were not exhumed from all the graves discovered. The centre piece of the memorial is a solitary stupa in which the bones of the dead are displayed along with many personal possessions buried with them.
Lunch at the Bodhi Tree restaurant with its lush garden setting being bombarded by torrential rain. A virtual oasis in the otherwise barren suburban neighbourhood near the genocide museum.
Among the highlights on the menu are mixed tapas in authentic Spanish style and a spicy vegetable curry served with coconut and long rice noodles.
Once the rains stopped we were at last able to visit the former S21 concentration camp –the Toul Sleng genocide museum. Now to be honest, I have already been there a couple of times with various visitors and I was not looking forward to going again.
When Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, this former high school was converted into the detention and interrogation centre known as Security camp 21 (S-21). Political enemies suspected of treason were brought here and tortured for confessions. Very few detainees survived S-21, but the brutal history of Toul Sleng was documented by the Khmer Rouge themselves in the post-mortem photos of many of the victims. The tragedy of S-21 is almost too much to bear
A couple of beers at the Gecko Bar while waiting for Thou to return from his afternoon airport run.
Back home for shower and change before…
18:00 off to Raffles Hotel for cocktails in The Elephant Bar – well, it is nice to do this sort of thing once in a while :-)
The thing about the Elephant Bar in Raffles is that you are unlikely to forget it. The paintings on the ceiling of this famous watering hole lend it its name. Colourful elephant motifs catch the eye as the legendary signature cocktails capture the taste buds.Here you can enjoy a Femme Fatale, a cocktail named in honour of Jacqueline Kennedy’s visit here; an Airavata, a cocktail of secret ingredients; or the Million Dollar Cocktail which gained notoriety in Sommerset Maugham's bedsite tale, The Letter. The hotel itself originally opened in 1929. It was completely refurbished in 1997 and is now both a modern hotel and a historical landmark. Architecturally stunning, the hotel is spread out in a series of low-rise wings interconnected by courtyards and gardens, which surround a pair of swimming pools. There are a variety of rooms and suites, all luxurious, ah to be rich !
Wednesday the 12th
Parting of the ways
07:00 - I am back in the office, breakfast with the usual crowd and a meeting ?!
09:15 – I nip back home so that I can lock up after T leaves
09:30 - a car picks T up to drive her up to Siam Reap for 3 days. I have booked her a trip up there with the Speed~King to Siam Reap taxi driver, a friend of Thou’s (only Glen and Paul will know, which taxi driver I am talking about here…) have also booked her into a hotel that is owned by a Heng’s family up there, knowing that her and her husband will look after her, sort out temple tour guides, taxis, boat tickets back to Phnom Penh, et cetera.
Back to work for me for a few days, boo hoo.
Friday the 14th
The return of T
Not being too sure of T’s itinerary, I arrange to be ‘working at home’ on the Friday afternoon…
As it turns out, she gets the bus back from Siam Reap with one of Heng’s cousins, Nong, who helps her deal with it all :-)
I then get a phone call from Nong saying that T is at her house, so I head up there on the bike to pick her up.
Saturday the 15th
Off we go to Kampot town, Kampot province
08:00 the taxi is here to drive us down to Kampot town
The Boroy Bokor Hotel: US$15 for a twin room with air-con and cable TV, not the cheapest, but far from the most expensive, and a nice hotel to boot.
11:00 an early lunch / late breakfast in a Khmer restaurant which extends out into the Mekong River, the view opposite is back dropped by the Bokor Mountain range
12:00 our car turns up for the arduous journey up the mountains to the top.
Now the Bokor mountain resort was the site of protracted fighting during the Khmer Rouge which destroyed the French built hotel~casino on the top, as well as the other outlying buildings up there
The road up there is bad, in fact using the word ‘road’ in any connection to it is misleading, potholes, craters, gravel sand, sheer drops, eroded cliffs and the odd bit of tarmac protruding up like black icebergs ready to take out an axle from an unwary driver. Built in 1917 by the French colonists using conscripted labour it took many years to finish and cost the lives of many Cambodians.
After two arduous, jarring and spine fusing hours up this mountain ‘road’ we reach our first stop, the Black Panther Palace, built by former Khmer King Monivong in 1912. Now it is little more than a concrete shell, riddle with bullet holes and bad graffiti – in Khmer and English – the view from the balcony does however give an indication of why it was built; sweeping down the hill bellow are acres and acres of forest / jungle, which joins into the flat land below, further out still are the fields and rice paddies of Kampot province, past them you can see the coast and the Gulf of Thailand, in which several large islands sit like emeralds. The islands in question no longer belong to Cambodia, they are currently owned by Viet Nam as part of some border deal that the French cut. One of the many boundary disputes that are currently being argued over here in Cambodia.
After our break here, it is back in the car for the slightly better road across the flat(ish) top of the mountain (and I do mean only slightly better)
Twenty minutes later we are driving past the burnt out (bombed out?) shell of the French post-office that was built up here to service the hotel and casino guests, we do not stop, all that is left to be seen, can be seen from the 5 minute drive by.
Reaching a fork in the road we have a choice to decide what to see next, we decided on a visit to The Waterfalls, more properly known as Popokvil Teuk Cheu which translates as Swirling Clouds Waterfall. Half an hour, jostled again along a very rough road, we reached them. Or rather we reached to point where we parked the car and walked through the thicket to the top of a double waterfall. In a country as flat as Cambodia mountains are few and far between, waterfalls like wise. So this double fall was quite impressive after a year and a half of flat plains, flat rice paddies and rivers.
At last we reach the ‘highlight’ of this little tour, the former Bokor Palace Casino Hotel. This French folly opened in 1925, when it must have been truly spectacular. Unfortunately the strategic location of the building and the hill made its capture critical during may periods of fighting – independence from the French, the Lon Nol coup, the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese invasion/liberation. In fact, at one point the Khmer Rouge were barricaded in the Church, while the Vietnamese were barricaded in the Hotel (500 metres away) and they spent months hurling bombs and bullets at each other!
The hotel has been pretty much stripped of everything walls, ceiling and oddly enough some rather nice ceramic floor tiles? Graffiti adorns every wall in the place, in both English and Khmer, with random bullet holes punctuating it.
One of the ‘better known’ guide books for Cambodia draws allusions to the hotel in ‘The Shining’ and the former Bokor Palace is just about as creepy as any building I have been in.
As we reached the Hotel a thunderstorm was just starting, within 10 minutes of us being there it had become a full blown storm, with booming claps of thunder and lightning striking the grounds around the hotel, holed up in the grand ballroom, along a few other visitors, we watched the rain being driven through the open window spaces, jumped as the thunder echoed around this ghost hotel and jumped as one when lightning exploded only metres away from us. Dark and primal; as elemental an experience as much as a historic journey into Cambodia’s past.
Then it was time to start the equally hairy decent back down the road from hell – only this time in the rain…
Somehow we made it back to Kampot town in one piece, although I did feel like my internal organs had been rearranged, but that is not an uncommon feeling after travelling any distance on a provincial Cambodian road.
Back just in time for Dinner at the Little Garden Bar, one of Kampot’s few foreign bar / restaurants ran by an Englishman called Norm
Roast Pork coated with rosemary, roast potatoes, carrots turnip and red wine/onion gravy!
Surprisingly enough T opts for an Asian dish – sweat and sour pork with rice.
Sunday the 16th
Off to the beach
I am awake and up at 06:00. T is still feeling ill, so I head off for a stroll on my own and to see if I can find a Pharmacy that stocks anything useful for her.
Breakfast in the Khmer pavement café opposite – Rice and Bacon with the usual trimmings, scrummy ! after which I call into the Little Garden Bar for a coffee with Norm and to ask him [his Khmer staff] where to find a Chemists
10:00 car and driver turns up for the trip to Kompong Som – Sihanoukville
12:00 and we are checking into the Sokha Beach Resort – the only 5 star hotel at this beach town, once we cleared the roadworks on the edge of Kampot town, the road was only a few months old, easy, smooth and comfortable, a nice change from yesterday!
www.sokhahotels.com
Having done so much travelling over the last few days we just had a lazy afternoon; the pool, the beach, the sea – damn that sun is hot, thankfully plenty of trees, sun loungers and bamboo beach umbrellas are provided :-)
Only leaving the resort for half an hour to visit the local ‘western-style, luxury supermarket’ after which it was back to the hotel, all the while our drivers were trying to find out when we were going back to Phnom Penh and could their ‘friend’ drive us there in his car – cheap, cheap!
After this very restful afternoon, we decided to head into town for dinner, leaving the hotel by chance we ended up with the same motodops to town, which involved more taxi haggling for the following day. The earlier attempt by them having been thwarted by the hotel concierge who also had a ‘friend’ who could take us to Phnom Penh - basically they were fighting over who would get the commission on trip!
Dinner at the Sri Lankan restaurant ‘Bamboo Lights’. Having eaten here a couple of times before I was looking forward to it. The Lamb Rosti with spicy vegetable curry was excellent, after which a few drinks at the ‘British Pub’ – The Angkor Arms, ran by a slightly strange Swedish guy who spent half his life in Australia and for the last 10 years has been running this British pub in Cambodia?!?
Monday the 17th
Ho hum, back to Phnom Penh
The taxi driver managed to set a new world record for driving from the beach to Phnom Penh, this journey takes the bus over four hours, we did it in two and a half – although the speed run did cost the life of one puppy who was foolishly trying to cross the main road, as well as us having a couple of near misses with various herds of cows and water buffalos…
After which, purely to recuperate and for medical reasons, it was time for Gins and Tonic at DV8, then over to the new Peace Café to see Dave and his new bar. I missed the opening night party on Saturday because we were in Kampot, so I really wanted to see how it had turned out, the last time I had seen it was a couple of weeks ago and it was still a building site.
Have to say, it is looking good.
Tuesday the 18th
Ow, last day of holiday
A late breakfast at the Rising Sun – sausage, bacon, eggs, chips and beans, wonderful, I am starting to forget what rice for breakfast tastes like (although not for long I suppose!)
The afternoon at the Royal Palace and then onwards to the FCC for Happy Hour cocktails.
Followed by dinner at the Pon Lok Restaurant, which offers some of the best Khmer/Thai/Chinese food in town – although not at the best prices :-)
Rounding it all of with a nightcap – or three – at the recently relocated Peace Café.
Wednesday the 19th
Ho Hum, back to work
At 08:00 Thou the tuk-tuk driver turns up at my house to take T to the airport, we say goodbye and I head off to the office. In my absence not much had changed, some new reports needed my attention, some meetings had been planned that I needed to attend and some more reports from VSO needed to be filled in by me.
Back to the grind for a bit I guess.
Teresa arrives for a holiday
09:00 out at PP International Airport (again) waiting for Thai Airways to land and deposit the first of my visitors this month…
having half an hour to kill I treat myself to a café latte and a chocolate croissant at the airport café. The coffee is virtually undrinkable and cost roughly EIGHT times the price one would normally pay in a Khmer restaurant – only double what one would pay in a western restaurant bar… the choc croissant though is fabulous, although that may only have been because I have not had one in a couple of years !?!?
T arrives and we head home so that she can unpack and catch her breath after the long journey out.
Not wishing to risk going native completely on the first night, T opts for an opening night meal of good old Indian Curry :-)
So it is off to Shiva Shakti – On Sihanouk Boulevard. The finest Indian curry house in Southeast Asia! With dishes ranging from classic Indian to Moghul specialities. Slightly boring I know, but the best Tandoori dishes I have had in a very long time.
Having dined, we decide to call in at the Peace Café for a nightcap, only to find that Dave has closed the bar a couple of days early, citing to much work to do one the new premises and their big re launch party on Saturday in the new space. So , down this end of town our only options are now; a Khmer beer garden, or Martini’s.
Heading over to Martini’s we find it almost empty, well it was early and the place rarely gets going before 10 o’clock at the earliest.
Monday the 11th
Day one of my short holiday
I am in work 07:00 to 09:30 for a meeting that I could not get out of, back home at 10:00, wake T up and start to give her the tour of the city.
Stroll along the riverbanks – Tonle Sap – stop off for an ice cold drink or two.
Lunch at the ‘Mary Bubble Tea Euro Gratin Restaurant’ on Monivong Boulevard: Spaghetti in a cream mushroom sauce au gratin.
After which I get Thou to pick us up in his tuk-tuk and it is off to P’sar toul tom poung - The Russian Market
Although Toul Tom Poung is primarily a residential area at the southern edge of Phnom Penh, P’sar (Market) Toul Tom Poung (i.e. Russian Market) at streets 155 and 50 is perhaps the most important market for expatriates and many would claim, myself included, a must see on any good tourist itinerary. This is where we buy our US$2 DVD’s and Gap T-shirts, our Ralph Lauren workshops and Birkenstock shoes.
For the visitor to Cambodia this is possibly the best market in Phnom Penh to buy souvenirs; with a large range of antiques both real and fake. Carvings, statues and Buddha’s are but a few of the items you will find here, along with a large variety of beautiful silks and other fabrics.
T buys assorted ‘Cambodia: Danger Landmines’ T-shirts for Dick – classic traveller purchase for Cambodia :-) I particularly like the one with diagrams of various pieces of ordinance on the back !?!
Then it is time for us to visit Wat Phnom
Set on top of a tree-covered knoll 27m high, Wat Phnom is the only hill in town. According to legend, the first pagoda on this site was erected in 1373 to house four statues of Buddha deposited here by the waters of the Mekong and discovered by a woman name Penh. The main entrance to Wat Phnom is via the grand eastern staircase, which is guarded by lions and naga (snake) balustrades.
Nowadays people come here to pray for good luck and success in school exams or business affairs. When a petitioner's wish is granted, he or she returns to make the offering (such as a garland of jasmine flowers or bananas, of which the spirits are said to be especially fond) that they promised when the request was made.
The vihara (temple sanctuary) was rebuilt in 1434, 1806 , 1894, and, most recently, in 1926.
West of the vihara is an enormous stupa containing the ashes of King Ponhea Yat (reigned 1405 to 1467) . In a small pavilion on the south side of the passage between the vihara and the stupa is a statue of the smiling and rather plump Madame Penh.
A bit to the north of the vihara and below it is an eclectic shrine dedicated to the genie Preah Chau, who is especially revered by the Vietnamese. On either side of the entrance to the chamber in which a statue of Preah Chau sits are guardian spirits bearing iron bats. On the tile table in front of the two guardian spirits are drawings of Confucius, and two Chinese-style figures of the sages Thang Cheng (on the right ) and Thang Thay (on the left). To the left of the central altar is an eight-armed statue of Vishnu.
Down the hill from the shrine is a royal stupa sprouting full-size trees from its roof. For now, the roots are holding the bricks together, but when the trees die the tower will slowly crumble. If you can not make it out to Angkor, this stupa gives a pretty good idea of what the jungle can do (and is doing) to some of Cambodia's monuments.
Curiously, Wat Phnom is the only attraction in Phnom Penh that is in danger of turning into a circus. Beggars, street urchins, women selling drinks and children selling birds in cages (you pay to set the bird free locals claim the birds are trained to return to their cage afterwards) pester everyone who turns up to slog the 27m to the summit. Fortunately it is all high-spirited stuff, and it is difficult to be annoyed by the vendors, who after all, are only trying to eke out a living.
After boiling in the midday sun on top of the hill, we wander down to the Coyote Ugly Bar just off from the hill. As the only customers in there we are subjected to a huge amount of attention from the 10 barmaids, they turn the air-conditioning on, redirect fans towards us, top up our complementary bowl of popcorn every few minutes and giggle frantically when I am able to chat to them in Khmer - although they may just have been laughing at my bad pronunciation…
Thou and his tuk-tuk turn up after an hour there to take us over to Café Freedom on the lake, where we relax and watch the skies darken – we are hoping for rain, but it does not seem to come. After a while we stroll down the lane and call into a few more places, until we stop off in the imaginatively named ‘The Pub Crawl Bar’ where we have an ice cold glass of beer, or two. The promised rain finally comes and you can feel the temperature dropping as it falls.
Home to shower and change then
18:00 out to the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) for dinner. Love it, or loathe it, the FCC is a place you have to drop into at least once if you are visiting Cambodia, while these days you do not have to be an intrepid reporter to enjoy the French colonial ambiance of this beautiful restaurant and bar. Tourists, business travellers, expatriates and even a few locals enjoy drinks on the first floor or rooftop bars overlooking the Tonle Sap River. The menu is a mixture of Western and Asian, with Khmer curry sitting on the menu next to pasta dishes, pizza, Caesar salad and desserts. Beer is a little more expensive than in other bars at USD1.50 and upwards, but for a piece of classic Phnom Penh charm, it is worth it; well, once in a while.
Tuesday the 12th
Day two; the depressing stuff you have to do with visitors
Khmer breakfast – rice~pork, fish and beef broth, pickled vegetables and chilli dipping sauce; standard stuff for us ex-pats but Teresa was not impressed!
10:00 Thou picks us up in his tuk-tuk and takes us out to The Killing Fields Memorial – Choeng Ek
This memorial is on the site of a Khmer Rouge extermination camp where almost 9,000 bodies were exhumed from mass graves after the fall of the regime. The real number of victims is estimated to be twice as many, as the dead were not exhumed from all the graves discovered. The centre piece of the memorial is a solitary stupa in which the bones of the dead are displayed along with many personal possessions buried with them.
Lunch at the Bodhi Tree restaurant with its lush garden setting being bombarded by torrential rain. A virtual oasis in the otherwise barren suburban neighbourhood near the genocide museum.
Among the highlights on the menu are mixed tapas in authentic Spanish style and a spicy vegetable curry served with coconut and long rice noodles.
Once the rains stopped we were at last able to visit the former S21 concentration camp –the Toul Sleng genocide museum. Now to be honest, I have already been there a couple of times with various visitors and I was not looking forward to going again.
When Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, this former high school was converted into the detention and interrogation centre known as Security camp 21 (S-21). Political enemies suspected of treason were brought here and tortured for confessions. Very few detainees survived S-21, but the brutal history of Toul Sleng was documented by the Khmer Rouge themselves in the post-mortem photos of many of the victims. The tragedy of S-21 is almost too much to bear
A couple of beers at the Gecko Bar while waiting for Thou to return from his afternoon airport run.
Back home for shower and change before…
18:00 off to Raffles Hotel for cocktails in The Elephant Bar – well, it is nice to do this sort of thing once in a while :-)
The thing about the Elephant Bar in Raffles is that you are unlikely to forget it. The paintings on the ceiling of this famous watering hole lend it its name. Colourful elephant motifs catch the eye as the legendary signature cocktails capture the taste buds.Here you can enjoy a Femme Fatale, a cocktail named in honour of Jacqueline Kennedy’s visit here; an Airavata, a cocktail of secret ingredients; or the Million Dollar Cocktail which gained notoriety in Sommerset Maugham's bedsite tale, The Letter. The hotel itself originally opened in 1929. It was completely refurbished in 1997 and is now both a modern hotel and a historical landmark. Architecturally stunning, the hotel is spread out in a series of low-rise wings interconnected by courtyards and gardens, which surround a pair of swimming pools. There are a variety of rooms and suites, all luxurious, ah to be rich !
Wednesday the 12th
Parting of the ways
07:00 - I am back in the office, breakfast with the usual crowd and a meeting ?!
09:15 – I nip back home so that I can lock up after T leaves
09:30 - a car picks T up to drive her up to Siam Reap for 3 days. I have booked her a trip up there with the Speed~King to Siam Reap taxi driver, a friend of Thou’s (only Glen and Paul will know, which taxi driver I am talking about here…) have also booked her into a hotel that is owned by a Heng’s family up there, knowing that her and her husband will look after her, sort out temple tour guides, taxis, boat tickets back to Phnom Penh, et cetera.
Back to work for me for a few days, boo hoo.
Friday the 14th
The return of T
Not being too sure of T’s itinerary, I arrange to be ‘working at home’ on the Friday afternoon…
As it turns out, she gets the bus back from Siam Reap with one of Heng’s cousins, Nong, who helps her deal with it all :-)
I then get a phone call from Nong saying that T is at her house, so I head up there on the bike to pick her up.
Saturday the 15th
Off we go to Kampot town, Kampot province
08:00 the taxi is here to drive us down to Kampot town
The Boroy Bokor Hotel: US$15 for a twin room with air-con and cable TV, not the cheapest, but far from the most expensive, and a nice hotel to boot.
11:00 an early lunch / late breakfast in a Khmer restaurant which extends out into the Mekong River, the view opposite is back dropped by the Bokor Mountain range
12:00 our car turns up for the arduous journey up the mountains to the top.
Now the Bokor mountain resort was the site of protracted fighting during the Khmer Rouge which destroyed the French built hotel~casino on the top, as well as the other outlying buildings up there
The road up there is bad, in fact using the word ‘road’ in any connection to it is misleading, potholes, craters, gravel sand, sheer drops, eroded cliffs and the odd bit of tarmac protruding up like black icebergs ready to take out an axle from an unwary driver. Built in 1917 by the French colonists using conscripted labour it took many years to finish and cost the lives of many Cambodians.
After two arduous, jarring and spine fusing hours up this mountain ‘road’ we reach our first stop, the Black Panther Palace, built by former Khmer King Monivong in 1912. Now it is little more than a concrete shell, riddle with bullet holes and bad graffiti – in Khmer and English – the view from the balcony does however give an indication of why it was built; sweeping down the hill bellow are acres and acres of forest / jungle, which joins into the flat land below, further out still are the fields and rice paddies of Kampot province, past them you can see the coast and the Gulf of Thailand, in which several large islands sit like emeralds. The islands in question no longer belong to Cambodia, they are currently owned by Viet Nam as part of some border deal that the French cut. One of the many boundary disputes that are currently being argued over here in Cambodia.
After our break here, it is back in the car for the slightly better road across the flat(ish) top of the mountain (and I do mean only slightly better)
Twenty minutes later we are driving past the burnt out (bombed out?) shell of the French post-office that was built up here to service the hotel and casino guests, we do not stop, all that is left to be seen, can be seen from the 5 minute drive by.
Reaching a fork in the road we have a choice to decide what to see next, we decided on a visit to The Waterfalls, more properly known as Popokvil Teuk Cheu which translates as Swirling Clouds Waterfall. Half an hour, jostled again along a very rough road, we reached them. Or rather we reached to point where we parked the car and walked through the thicket to the top of a double waterfall. In a country as flat as Cambodia mountains are few and far between, waterfalls like wise. So this double fall was quite impressive after a year and a half of flat plains, flat rice paddies and rivers.
At last we reach the ‘highlight’ of this little tour, the former Bokor Palace Casino Hotel. This French folly opened in 1925, when it must have been truly spectacular. Unfortunately the strategic location of the building and the hill made its capture critical during may periods of fighting – independence from the French, the Lon Nol coup, the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese invasion/liberation. In fact, at one point the Khmer Rouge were barricaded in the Church, while the Vietnamese were barricaded in the Hotel (500 metres away) and they spent months hurling bombs and bullets at each other!
The hotel has been pretty much stripped of everything walls, ceiling and oddly enough some rather nice ceramic floor tiles? Graffiti adorns every wall in the place, in both English and Khmer, with random bullet holes punctuating it.
One of the ‘better known’ guide books for Cambodia draws allusions to the hotel in ‘The Shining’ and the former Bokor Palace is just about as creepy as any building I have been in.
As we reached the Hotel a thunderstorm was just starting, within 10 minutes of us being there it had become a full blown storm, with booming claps of thunder and lightning striking the grounds around the hotel, holed up in the grand ballroom, along a few other visitors, we watched the rain being driven through the open window spaces, jumped as the thunder echoed around this ghost hotel and jumped as one when lightning exploded only metres away from us. Dark and primal; as elemental an experience as much as a historic journey into Cambodia’s past.
Then it was time to start the equally hairy decent back down the road from hell – only this time in the rain…
Somehow we made it back to Kampot town in one piece, although I did feel like my internal organs had been rearranged, but that is not an uncommon feeling after travelling any distance on a provincial Cambodian road.
Back just in time for Dinner at the Little Garden Bar, one of Kampot’s few foreign bar / restaurants ran by an Englishman called Norm
Roast Pork coated with rosemary, roast potatoes, carrots turnip and red wine/onion gravy!
Surprisingly enough T opts for an Asian dish – sweat and sour pork with rice.
Sunday the 16th
Off to the beach
I am awake and up at 06:00. T is still feeling ill, so I head off for a stroll on my own and to see if I can find a Pharmacy that stocks anything useful for her.
Breakfast in the Khmer pavement café opposite – Rice and Bacon with the usual trimmings, scrummy ! after which I call into the Little Garden Bar for a coffee with Norm and to ask him [his Khmer staff] where to find a Chemists
10:00 car and driver turns up for the trip to Kompong Som – Sihanoukville
12:00 and we are checking into the Sokha Beach Resort – the only 5 star hotel at this beach town, once we cleared the roadworks on the edge of Kampot town, the road was only a few months old, easy, smooth and comfortable, a nice change from yesterday!
www.sokhahotels.com
Having done so much travelling over the last few days we just had a lazy afternoon; the pool, the beach, the sea – damn that sun is hot, thankfully plenty of trees, sun loungers and bamboo beach umbrellas are provided :-)
Only leaving the resort for half an hour to visit the local ‘western-style, luxury supermarket’ after which it was back to the hotel, all the while our drivers were trying to find out when we were going back to Phnom Penh and could their ‘friend’ drive us there in his car – cheap, cheap!
After this very restful afternoon, we decided to head into town for dinner, leaving the hotel by chance we ended up with the same motodops to town, which involved more taxi haggling for the following day. The earlier attempt by them having been thwarted by the hotel concierge who also had a ‘friend’ who could take us to Phnom Penh - basically they were fighting over who would get the commission on trip!
Dinner at the Sri Lankan restaurant ‘Bamboo Lights’. Having eaten here a couple of times before I was looking forward to it. The Lamb Rosti with spicy vegetable curry was excellent, after which a few drinks at the ‘British Pub’ – The Angkor Arms, ran by a slightly strange Swedish guy who spent half his life in Australia and for the last 10 years has been running this British pub in Cambodia?!?
Monday the 17th
Ho hum, back to Phnom Penh
The taxi driver managed to set a new world record for driving from the beach to Phnom Penh, this journey takes the bus over four hours, we did it in two and a half – although the speed run did cost the life of one puppy who was foolishly trying to cross the main road, as well as us having a couple of near misses with various herds of cows and water buffalos…
After which, purely to recuperate and for medical reasons, it was time for Gins and Tonic at DV8, then over to the new Peace Café to see Dave and his new bar. I missed the opening night party on Saturday because we were in Kampot, so I really wanted to see how it had turned out, the last time I had seen it was a couple of weeks ago and it was still a building site.
Have to say, it is looking good.
Tuesday the 18th
Ow, last day of holiday
A late breakfast at the Rising Sun – sausage, bacon, eggs, chips and beans, wonderful, I am starting to forget what rice for breakfast tastes like (although not for long I suppose!)
The afternoon at the Royal Palace and then onwards to the FCC for Happy Hour cocktails.
Followed by dinner at the Pon Lok Restaurant, which offers some of the best Khmer/Thai/Chinese food in town – although not at the best prices :-)
Rounding it all of with a nightcap – or three – at the recently relocated Peace Café.
Wednesday the 19th
Ho Hum, back to work
At 08:00 Thou the tuk-tuk driver turns up at my house to take T to the airport, we say goodbye and I head off to the office. In my absence not much had changed, some new reports needed my attention, some meetings had been planned that I needed to attend and some more reports from VSO needed to be filled in by me.
Back to the grind for a bit I guess.
Safari World fined over apes
Safari World fined over apes
The Forestry Administration has fined a business owned by one of Cambodia's most powerful tycoons nearly $57,000 for illegally importing 36 orangutans from Thailand to Koh Kong Safari World.
The administration made Heng San, the deputy director of Koh Kong Duty Free Shop, responsible for the fine on behalf of the company owned by Ly Yong Phat, who also owns Koh Kong Safari World.
Ty Sokun, director general of the Forestry Administration (FA), levied the fine on July 15 at the direction of the Council of Ministers and Prime Minister Hun Sen, according to documents obtained by the Post.
The zoo was charged under Article 96 of the Forestry Law with illegally importing the orangutans, which are classified as endangered under Article 49 of the same law.
San was given 15 days to pay the fine and must also pay for DNA testing to determine whether the orangutans were bred in captivity or taken from the wild. While the Forestry Administration recommended seizing the endangered apes, the final decision letter did not mention confiscation and no date was set for DNA testing.
If testing reveals that the orangutans were taken from the wild, Cambodia will be obliged under international conventions to confiscate and return the apes.
On July 19 a representative from Koh Kong Duty Free Shop traveled to Phnom Penh to pay the 227 million riel ($56,746) fine into the state budget held at the National Bank of Cambodia, according to a receipt from the bank.
Many view the breakthrough in the long-running controversy over the orangutans as a positive step for the government and a welcome improvement in the enforcement the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES).
"This decision alerts present and would-be dealers in the wildlife trade that smuggling will not be tolerated by the government, and perpetrators of this crime will face prosecution," wrote Michelle Desilets, director of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation.
"If Cambodia can successfully close its doors against international smuggling of wildlife, it will be a significant break in the chain," Desilets wrote in an e-mail.
The importation of the orangutans to Koh Kong was described at a major CITES meeting in Bangkok in October 2004 as a "very serious incident of illicit trade", and was raised again during a top-level gathering of CITES officials in Geneva from June 27 to July 1.
"This is the first occasion that the Secretariat has brought such an incident in Cambodia to the attention of the Standing Committee," wrote John Sellar, from the CITES's anti-smuggling, fraud and organized crime department, by email on July 26.
"We are aware that the matter has been brought to the attention of the Prime Minister," wrote Sellars. "The Secretariat will report formally on this subject at the next meeting of the Standing Committee, which takes place in late 2006.
" A receptionist at Koh Kong Safari World who identified himself as "Para" said on July 28 that park manager Amphoun Phan, a Thai national, was "absent" and there was no other manager available. When asked whether orangutan shows were continuing, he hung up the phone.
However, another receptionist said by phone later in the day that the orangutans were still being displayed to the mostly Thai tourists who visit the zoo. The controversy over the apes dates back to early 2003, when Koh Kong Duty Free Shop requested permission from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishers (MAFF) to import 22 orangutans from Thailand.
Minister of MAFF, Chan Sarun, agreed, but only on the provision that the company cooperate with CITES and FA to ensure the transfer was legal.
The 22 orangutans cost between $487 for a 6 year old and $1,097 for a 10 year old, according to receipts.
It is unclear when the additional 14 orangutans were imported. The orangutans were brought in without consulting FA or CITES and put to work at Koh Kong Safari World entertaining tourists in daily shows that included boxing, bicycle riding and skateboarding.
Similar shows involving orangutans have been banned at the Bangkok Safari World. In November 2004, Thai police confiscated about 150 illegally acquired orangutans from the zoo and returned them to Indonesia.However, the wealth and connections of Ly Yong Phat caused some Cambodian government officials to proceed gently with investigations in Koh Kong.
The orangutan issue simmered until November 2004, when the CITES Secretariat wrote to its Cambodian office requesting an investigation. CITES also asked Interpol to investigate, because of concerns the illegal importation was authorized by a government agency, according to minutes from the October 2004 CITES meeting in Bangkok.
Lobbying from conservationists added to the mounting pressure on the government to act, according to a source involved with the issue, with Chan Sarun reportedly receiving 36 separate appeals and King Norodom Sihamoni receiving nine appeals from concerned groups and individuals.
The paperwork that forced the breakthrough in Cambodia's orangutan saga began on June 15 when Chan Sarun wrote to Prime Minister Hun Sen asking for his advice on how to proceed with the case. A June 23 letter from the Council of Ministers advised MAFF to go ahead with the penalty and order DNA testing.
It was signed by Bun Uy, secretary of state at the Council of Ministers, and noted that the PM had seen and approved the letter.
"[It is] proposed that Okhna Ly Yong Phat cooperate on related work as soon as possible," the council of Ministers letter stated. On July 12 and 13, a four-person team from FA and CITES visited the zoo.
They were accompanied by Heng San, according to a source who was at the meeting. The team reported their findings to the FA and on the next day, July 15, Ty Sokhun issued the letter penalizing Koh Kong Safari World.
The move to prosecute illegal wildlife traders is seen as a boost to conservation efforts in Cambodia. A new sub-decree on the International Trade in Wild Animal and Plant Species is currently being drafted by the local CITES office with funding from conservation group TRAFFIC Southeast Asia-Indochina.
The sub-decree will be part of a plan to implement the CITES convention that will be assessed in September by Marceil Yeater, head of the legislation and compliance unit of the CITES Secretariat.
The Forestry Administration has fined a business owned by one of Cambodia's most powerful tycoons nearly $57,000 for illegally importing 36 orangutans from Thailand to Koh Kong Safari World.
The administration made Heng San, the deputy director of Koh Kong Duty Free Shop, responsible for the fine on behalf of the company owned by Ly Yong Phat, who also owns Koh Kong Safari World.
Ty Sokun, director general of the Forestry Administration (FA), levied the fine on July 15 at the direction of the Council of Ministers and Prime Minister Hun Sen, according to documents obtained by the Post.
The zoo was charged under Article 96 of the Forestry Law with illegally importing the orangutans, which are classified as endangered under Article 49 of the same law.
San was given 15 days to pay the fine and must also pay for DNA testing to determine whether the orangutans were bred in captivity or taken from the wild. While the Forestry Administration recommended seizing the endangered apes, the final decision letter did not mention confiscation and no date was set for DNA testing.
If testing reveals that the orangutans were taken from the wild, Cambodia will be obliged under international conventions to confiscate and return the apes.
On July 19 a representative from Koh Kong Duty Free Shop traveled to Phnom Penh to pay the 227 million riel ($56,746) fine into the state budget held at the National Bank of Cambodia, according to a receipt from the bank.
Many view the breakthrough in the long-running controversy over the orangutans as a positive step for the government and a welcome improvement in the enforcement the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES).
"This decision alerts present and would-be dealers in the wildlife trade that smuggling will not be tolerated by the government, and perpetrators of this crime will face prosecution," wrote Michelle Desilets, director of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation.
"If Cambodia can successfully close its doors against international smuggling of wildlife, it will be a significant break in the chain," Desilets wrote in an e-mail.
The importation of the orangutans to Koh Kong was described at a major CITES meeting in Bangkok in October 2004 as a "very serious incident of illicit trade", and was raised again during a top-level gathering of CITES officials in Geneva from June 27 to July 1.
"This is the first occasion that the Secretariat has brought such an incident in Cambodia to the attention of the Standing Committee," wrote John Sellar, from the CITES's anti-smuggling, fraud and organized crime department, by email on July 26.
"We are aware that the matter has been brought to the attention of the Prime Minister," wrote Sellars. "The Secretariat will report formally on this subject at the next meeting of the Standing Committee, which takes place in late 2006.
" A receptionist at Koh Kong Safari World who identified himself as "Para" said on July 28 that park manager Amphoun Phan, a Thai national, was "absent" and there was no other manager available. When asked whether orangutan shows were continuing, he hung up the phone.
However, another receptionist said by phone later in the day that the orangutans were still being displayed to the mostly Thai tourists who visit the zoo. The controversy over the apes dates back to early 2003, when Koh Kong Duty Free Shop requested permission from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishers (MAFF) to import 22 orangutans from Thailand.
Minister of MAFF, Chan Sarun, agreed, but only on the provision that the company cooperate with CITES and FA to ensure the transfer was legal.
The 22 orangutans cost between $487 for a 6 year old and $1,097 for a 10 year old, according to receipts.
It is unclear when the additional 14 orangutans were imported. The orangutans were brought in without consulting FA or CITES and put to work at Koh Kong Safari World entertaining tourists in daily shows that included boxing, bicycle riding and skateboarding.
Similar shows involving orangutans have been banned at the Bangkok Safari World. In November 2004, Thai police confiscated about 150 illegally acquired orangutans from the zoo and returned them to Indonesia.However, the wealth and connections of Ly Yong Phat caused some Cambodian government officials to proceed gently with investigations in Koh Kong.
The orangutan issue simmered until November 2004, when the CITES Secretariat wrote to its Cambodian office requesting an investigation. CITES also asked Interpol to investigate, because of concerns the illegal importation was authorized by a government agency, according to minutes from the October 2004 CITES meeting in Bangkok.
Lobbying from conservationists added to the mounting pressure on the government to act, according to a source involved with the issue, with Chan Sarun reportedly receiving 36 separate appeals and King Norodom Sihamoni receiving nine appeals from concerned groups and individuals.
The paperwork that forced the breakthrough in Cambodia's orangutan saga began on June 15 when Chan Sarun wrote to Prime Minister Hun Sen asking for his advice on how to proceed with the case. A June 23 letter from the Council of Ministers advised MAFF to go ahead with the penalty and order DNA testing.
It was signed by Bun Uy, secretary of state at the Council of Ministers, and noted that the PM had seen and approved the letter.
"[It is] proposed that Okhna Ly Yong Phat cooperate on related work as soon as possible," the council of Ministers letter stated. On July 12 and 13, a four-person team from FA and CITES visited the zoo.
They were accompanied by Heng San, according to a source who was at the meeting. The team reported their findings to the FA and on the next day, July 15, Ty Sokhun issued the letter penalizing Koh Kong Safari World.
The move to prosecute illegal wildlife traders is seen as a boost to conservation efforts in Cambodia. A new sub-decree on the International Trade in Wild Animal and Plant Species is currently being drafted by the local CITES office with funding from conservation group TRAFFIC Southeast Asia-Indochina.
The sub-decree will be part of a plan to implement the CITES convention that will be assessed in September by Marceil Yeater, head of the legislation and compliance unit of the CITES Secretariat.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Cambodian family’s row over roast dog dinner
A Cambodian man who brought a dog to roast for the main course of a family dinner slashed his brother-in-law with a machete after asking for a second helping and being told the dish was finished, police said on Monday.
The deputy police chief of Sa'ang district just outside Phnom Penh, Un Savuth, said that farmer Uch Oeurn (22) had arrived at his sister's home last Friday with a dog in a bag, which he invited brother-in-law Pon Ty (25) to roast.
"But when Oeurn had finished eating his first dish of dog, he asked for more and was told there was none, so he became angry and accused his brother-in-law of being stingy," Savuth said.
"He was very drunk, and when someone passed him a machete, he chopped his brother-in-law Ty in the leg, the head and the neck before running away. We are seeking him now," he said.
However despite being badly wounded, Ty jumped up and badly beat Oeurn's brother Uch Chan, whom he accused of suppling the weapon, before being sent to hospital, Savuth added, causing further family tensions.
"They were very drunk, and Oeurn was angry because it was his dog and he was hungry, but we don't think he had known the dog for long -- we think he stole it on the way to the party," Savuth said.
Dog is traditionally eaten as a drinking snack with copious amounts of rice wine by some groups of Cambodians.
Oueurn faces 10 years in jail if convicted.
The deputy police chief of Sa'ang district just outside Phnom Penh, Un Savuth, said that farmer Uch Oeurn (22) had arrived at his sister's home last Friday with a dog in a bag, which he invited brother-in-law Pon Ty (25) to roast.
"But when Oeurn had finished eating his first dish of dog, he asked for more and was told there was none, so he became angry and accused his brother-in-law of being stingy," Savuth said.
"He was very drunk, and when someone passed him a machete, he chopped his brother-in-law Ty in the leg, the head and the neck before running away. We are seeking him now," he said.
However despite being badly wounded, Ty jumped up and badly beat Oeurn's brother Uch Chan, whom he accused of suppling the weapon, before being sent to hospital, Savuth added, causing further family tensions.
"They were very drunk, and Oeurn was angry because it was his dog and he was hungry, but we don't think he had known the dog for long -- we think he stole it on the way to the party," Savuth said.
Dog is traditionally eaten as a drinking snack with copious amounts of rice wine by some groups of Cambodians.
Oueurn faces 10 years in jail if convicted.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Chicken and Melon Soup
Cambodian chicken and melon soup (Machu Angkor)
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Yield: 6 servings
The authentic version of this soup calls for winter melon, a large mild Asian muskmelon--this recipe offers substitutes that are easier to find—and prahok, Cambodia's fermented fish paste, for which we have substituted the more widely available fish sauce. Look for condensed tamarind juice in Asian food markets. Serve this soup with a bowl of hot rice, to be mixed in at the table.
5 cups water
3 whole chicken breasts, skin on, bone in
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 Crenshaw melon, cubed, or 1 medium cucumber or zucchini, peeled, seeded,coarsely chopped
1/2 cup pineapple chunks
1 tablespoon each: condensed tamarind juice or lime juice, fish sauce
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon peanut oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
8 cherry tomatoes, halved
2 tablespoons minced basil
Heat water, chicken and salt to boiling in large saucepan. Reduce heat; cover. Simmer 1 hour. Skim off any fat. Remove chicken from broth; let cool enough to remove meat from bones. Discard skin and bones. Shred chicken meat; return to broth. Add melon, pineapple, tamarind juice, fish sauce and sugar to broth; heat to boiling.
Meanwhile, heat oil in small skillet over medium heat. Add garlic; cook until soft, about 1 minute. Remove soup from heat. Add tomatoes and basil to soup; stir in garlic.
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Yield: 6 servings
The authentic version of this soup calls for winter melon, a large mild Asian muskmelon--this recipe offers substitutes that are easier to find—and prahok, Cambodia's fermented fish paste, for which we have substituted the more widely available fish sauce. Look for condensed tamarind juice in Asian food markets. Serve this soup with a bowl of hot rice, to be mixed in at the table.
5 cups water
3 whole chicken breasts, skin on, bone in
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 Crenshaw melon, cubed, or 1 medium cucumber or zucchini, peeled, seeded,coarsely chopped
1/2 cup pineapple chunks
1 tablespoon each: condensed tamarind juice or lime juice, fish sauce
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon peanut oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
8 cherry tomatoes, halved
2 tablespoons minced basil
Heat water, chicken and salt to boiling in large saucepan. Reduce heat; cover. Simmer 1 hour. Skim off any fat. Remove chicken from broth; let cool enough to remove meat from bones. Discard skin and bones. Shred chicken meat; return to broth. Add melon, pineapple, tamarind juice, fish sauce and sugar to broth; heat to boiling.
Meanwhile, heat oil in small skillet over medium heat. Add garlic; cook until soft, about 1 minute. Remove soup from heat. Add tomatoes and basil to soup; stir in garlic.
Cambodian Food
Yes, yes, I know, another article about food...
Tourists who venture into Cambodia are usually so focused on the ethereal carvings of Angkor Wat and surrounding ancient temples that the country's food gets scant attention.
Some travellers fly in just for the day from Bangkok, allowing barely enough time to a quick lunch between temple visits.
Guidebooks are terse on the subject. Frommer calls Cambodia "a difficult destination," and like other travel books, yields no specific details about dining experiences.
Perhaps Cambodian cuisine is overshadowed by the food of its neighbours, the more popular, fiery dishes of Thailand and the French-Chinese fare of Vietnam.
And yet, a Cambodian renaissance is under way. A recent issue of Travel and Leisure magazine proclaimed Cambodia "the next hot spot." Tourist hotels are sprouting on the road between Siem Reap and Angkor Wat, 6 miles away. Markets display plentiful food and tourists can eat very well in restaurants and hotels. The adventuresome, seeking a true taste of Cambodia, can visit the night markets and eat cheaply.
Chef Luu Meng of the Sunway Hotel here defines Cambodian food by comparing it to its neighbours:
"We are not too spicy like Thai cooking, and we don't use fish sauce to cook as do the Vietnamese."
Instead, Meng said, Cambodian food is flavoured with herb pastes, ground fresh daily, or with make-your-eyes-water prahok, a fermented fish paste. Prahok can enliven anything, from a dip for fresh vegetables to a fragrant soup.
The herb paste combines the ever-popular lemon grass, galangal root, turmeric, lime zest, garlic, shallot and dried chilies, though expert cooks tailor the blend to the dish they are making. The paste especially stars in a classic Cambodian soup made with king prawns.
As Cambodia emerges from years of isolation, cooks, Meng among them, are fusing local dishes with the flavors of their Southeast Asian neighbors, adding some Thai and Vietnamese characters. That's the newest trend, he says, speaking of restaurant food.
On his own menu, favorites include grilled king prawns with tamarind sauce and roast chicken with lemon grass. All dishes strive to achieve and balance the four basic Cambodian flavor elements: sweet, sour, salty and bitter.
Home cooking is simpler, with pork, chicken and fish as the flavoring agents. A typical Cambodian family dinner includes three dishes: soup, grilled meat or fish and a vegetable.
Dessert is the same everywhere, for tourists and locals alike: a plate of fresh fruit, usually including watermelon, pineapple and dragon fruit (like a soft, sweet apple speckled with black).
The Tonle Sap, is one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world, is critical to the Cambodian diet. Up to 75 percent of the country's protein comes from fish, and the lake supplies more than 300 species. Probably a few frogs, too: One of the country's signature dishes is barbecued stuffed whole frog.
Like the Vietnamese, most Cambodians begin their day with noodle soup, unless they are breakfasting on rice soup similar to Chinese congee.
"Some people like fried noodles in the morning," said Chhenglay Meas, chef-owner of Cheng Heng, a restaurant in St. Paul, Minn. Meas fled Cambodia with her husband and two daughters to escape the Khmer Rouge.
Meas cooks chha kuy teiv, noodles with bean sprouts, green onions, bits of meat, and a topping of roasted peanuts.
One-pot meals are popular with Cambodian home cooks, particularly samlor kakau, which blends tiny eggplants, green papaya, long beans, leaves from young peppers, bitter melon, lemon grass and roasted ground rice. Fish or chicken might be added to this Khmer stew, she described.
"Cambodians like the contrast of sweet and sour. The sour cleans up the tongue and is refreshing," says Meas, whose hometown is Kampong Cham, "where the real Cambodian food is still cooked."
Raised in a family of educated and professional people, she remembers eating very well on dishes such as river lobster with "burning sugar," the caramelized sauce that appears on finer menus.
At holidays, her family would enjoy a Cambodian version of hot pot, immersing meats and vegetables in a boiling broth.
"We would eat, laugh and joke while cooking," she recalls of happier times in her country.
Meas' daughter, Kunrath Lam, who manages Cheng Heng, described how to make a family-size batch of fragrant machu Angkor, from their soup entree list. An aunt who had just traveled to St. Paul from Cambodia for a family wedding brought the secret ingredient, ma orm, an herb grown in the rice fields.
Though a waitress said she had seen a fresh version of the basil-like herb in a nearby Rainbow grocery store, the dried version is difficult to find, even in Asian grocery stores. Home cooks can substitute fresh Thai basil.
Condensed tamarind juice, also available in Asian markets, adds the sour element to compliment the sweetness of pineapple. It also keeps the vegetables crisp in the soup, Lam said.
Tourists who venture into Cambodia are usually so focused on the ethereal carvings of Angkor Wat and surrounding ancient temples that the country's food gets scant attention.
Some travellers fly in just for the day from Bangkok, allowing barely enough time to a quick lunch between temple visits.
Guidebooks are terse on the subject. Frommer calls Cambodia "a difficult destination," and like other travel books, yields no specific details about dining experiences.
Perhaps Cambodian cuisine is overshadowed by the food of its neighbours, the more popular, fiery dishes of Thailand and the French-Chinese fare of Vietnam.
And yet, a Cambodian renaissance is under way. A recent issue of Travel and Leisure magazine proclaimed Cambodia "the next hot spot." Tourist hotels are sprouting on the road between Siem Reap and Angkor Wat, 6 miles away. Markets display plentiful food and tourists can eat very well in restaurants and hotels. The adventuresome, seeking a true taste of Cambodia, can visit the night markets and eat cheaply.
Chef Luu Meng of the Sunway Hotel here defines Cambodian food by comparing it to its neighbours:
"We are not too spicy like Thai cooking, and we don't use fish sauce to cook as do the Vietnamese."
Instead, Meng said, Cambodian food is flavoured with herb pastes, ground fresh daily, or with make-your-eyes-water prahok, a fermented fish paste. Prahok can enliven anything, from a dip for fresh vegetables to a fragrant soup.
The herb paste combines the ever-popular lemon grass, galangal root, turmeric, lime zest, garlic, shallot and dried chilies, though expert cooks tailor the blend to the dish they are making. The paste especially stars in a classic Cambodian soup made with king prawns.
As Cambodia emerges from years of isolation, cooks, Meng among them, are fusing local dishes with the flavors of their Southeast Asian neighbors, adding some Thai and Vietnamese characters. That's the newest trend, he says, speaking of restaurant food.
On his own menu, favorites include grilled king prawns with tamarind sauce and roast chicken with lemon grass. All dishes strive to achieve and balance the four basic Cambodian flavor elements: sweet, sour, salty and bitter.
Home cooking is simpler, with pork, chicken and fish as the flavoring agents. A typical Cambodian family dinner includes three dishes: soup, grilled meat or fish and a vegetable.
Dessert is the same everywhere, for tourists and locals alike: a plate of fresh fruit, usually including watermelon, pineapple and dragon fruit (like a soft, sweet apple speckled with black).
The Tonle Sap, is one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world, is critical to the Cambodian diet. Up to 75 percent of the country's protein comes from fish, and the lake supplies more than 300 species. Probably a few frogs, too: One of the country's signature dishes is barbecued stuffed whole frog.
Like the Vietnamese, most Cambodians begin their day with noodle soup, unless they are breakfasting on rice soup similar to Chinese congee.
"Some people like fried noodles in the morning," said Chhenglay Meas, chef-owner of Cheng Heng, a restaurant in St. Paul, Minn. Meas fled Cambodia with her husband and two daughters to escape the Khmer Rouge.
Meas cooks chha kuy teiv, noodles with bean sprouts, green onions, bits of meat, and a topping of roasted peanuts.
One-pot meals are popular with Cambodian home cooks, particularly samlor kakau, which blends tiny eggplants, green papaya, long beans, leaves from young peppers, bitter melon, lemon grass and roasted ground rice. Fish or chicken might be added to this Khmer stew, she described.
"Cambodians like the contrast of sweet and sour. The sour cleans up the tongue and is refreshing," says Meas, whose hometown is Kampong Cham, "where the real Cambodian food is still cooked."
Raised in a family of educated and professional people, she remembers eating very well on dishes such as river lobster with "burning sugar," the caramelized sauce that appears on finer menus.
At holidays, her family would enjoy a Cambodian version of hot pot, immersing meats and vegetables in a boiling broth.
"We would eat, laugh and joke while cooking," she recalls of happier times in her country.
Meas' daughter, Kunrath Lam, who manages Cheng Heng, described how to make a family-size batch of fragrant machu Angkor, from their soup entree list. An aunt who had just traveled to St. Paul from Cambodia for a family wedding brought the secret ingredient, ma orm, an herb grown in the rice fields.
Though a waitress said she had seen a fresh version of the basil-like herb in a nearby Rainbow grocery store, the dried version is difficult to find, even in Asian grocery stores. Home cooks can substitute fresh Thai basil.
Condensed tamarind juice, also available in Asian markets, adds the sour element to compliment the sweetness of pineapple. It also keeps the vegetables crisp in the soup, Lam said.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
A Khmer History, not yet finished.
With thanks to the Cambodian Documentation Centre, additional reporting by DC
*** *** *** ***
He looks back and he does not know how he did it - how he survived the Khmer Rouge.
You would wonder too.
Mr Youk Chhang was just 14 when Khmer Rouge soldiers chased him and thousands of other Cambodians from Phnom Penh to the countryside in April 1975.
It was the start of 'Year Zero' according to the Khmer Rouge regime led by Pol Pot, who wanted Cambodia to become an agrarian communist utopia.
For Mr Chhang, it was the start of four long years under the regime and many brushes with death.
Now 44, he spoke to academics and diplomats at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies recently. He spoke about how Asean can help with the tribunal set up to bring the killers to justice.
It is all about finding answers for the country and humanity - and himself, he said.
'My sister died. I want some answers. Otherwise, who do I forgive?'
And he has much to forgive.
DUG CANALS, ATE SNAKES
He spent the Khmer Rouge years digging canals as part of a youth mobile unit, away from his family, which had been moved to Battambang province, 250km north-west of Phnom Penh.
He had to learn to swim so that he could dive into the flooded rice fields and cut sugarcane.
He also had to steal food, find edible leaves in the jungle and kill and eat snakes and rats.
His communist masters may have trumpeted atheism, but food became his god, he said.
'I never thought of dying. Instead, I hoped for a good night's sleep and to have enough to eat one day. That hope encouraged me to fight for life.'
He was thrown into jail for weeks once, after trying to steal food for his pregnant sister.
MUM AFRAID TO CRY
'They hit me with an axe, pushed me to the ground, tied me up with rope and put me in jail.
My mother was afraid to cry in front of them while they were torturing me. Crying was also a crime under the Khmer Rouge, ' he said.
Ten of his family members died for various 'crimes'.
A brother-in-law caught stealing garbage to feed his three children was beaten and died from his injuries.
His wife - one of Mr Chhang's five sisters - kept his body and did not report his death for a week so that she could collect his food ration for her kids.
SISTER SPLIT OPEN, KILLED
She was later accused of stealing rice from a communal kitchen, and when she denied it, a Khmer Rouge cadre slashed opened her belly and killed her, said Mr Chhang.
His family members were among the 1.7 million to two million Cambodians - about a quarter of the country's population - who died of starvation, or by forced labour or execution by the time the Vietnamese invasion in early 1979 toppled the Khmer Rouge.
That is when a 17-year-old Mr Chhang walked across the Thai border to a refugee camp.
'I had no fear. Not even of landmines. I just walked. Looking back, I do not know how I did it,' he said.
Two years later - with '$10 and just one pair of jeans' - he found his way to Texas and a new life.
He worked and went to university in the US before returning to Phnom Penh in 1992 to work for the United Nations.
'I wanted to do something for Cambodia and for my mother,' he said.
His mother, who had remained behind in Cambodia, is still alive.
'My mother was lucky. And I was lucky,' he said.
'There're so many other families who were not so lucky.'
As director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia for the past 10 years, he is documenting the Khmer Rouge years.
His centre has mapped more than 19,000 mass graves and 167 prisons (or extermination centres).
DEATH THREATS
In a country yet to bury the past, it is no wonder he has received death threats because of his work, he said.
But the father of two added: 'I am prepared to trade my life for truth... I believe in the truth... being sincere and honest... the truth will set you free.'
During the seminar, Mr Chhang spoke passionately on the need to find closure.
'You ask the rank and file Khmer Rouge now why they killed and they say they do not know.
Yet the leaders say they did not give orders to kill. So how did two million people lose their lives?
'I do not have the answer. You have to search for your own truth.'
His work is also a struggle against historical amnesia.
Already, young Cambodians are finding it hard to come to terms with their parents' experience.
'They can't believe there was a time when there was no money, no video games, no ice-cream, no school,' Mr Chhang noted.
And while youngsters think black is 'cool', that - for their parents - was the colour of death, the colour the Khmer Rouge cadres dressed in.
A whole generation of Cambodians still needs to find ways to deal with the memory of what happened between 1975 and 1979, he said.
His niece, who was 5 or 6 when her parents and sister died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, still believes a tale relatives told her at the time: Her family had just gone away for a while and would come back for her.
STILL WAITING FOR MUM and DAD
'We told her: 'See, they even left you a bowl of water to drink'. And she stopped crying. She's now 31, married with three kids, and that bowl - she's kept it in a safe deposit box in the Bank of Maryland,' said Mr Chhang.
She's struggling to hang on to that story even as her own children ask her: 'Where are your parents? Why do not they visit us in the holidays?'
Mr Chhang said: 'She couldn't answer. She told the kids: 'Your uncle knows. I'll send him an e-mail. He'll tell you.''
Mr Chhang hasn't answered that e-mail.
To date, no Khmer Rouge leaders have been brought to justice.
SURVIVING LEADERS
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998.
Surviving leaders likely to be tried are
· Nuon Chea, former chief ideologue;
· Khieu Samphan, head of state;
· Ieng Sary, foreign minister;
· Ta Mok, army chief; and
· Kang Kek Ieu, who headed the notorious S-21 prison, which is now the genocide museum in Phnom Penh.
Mr Chhang said data collected by the Documentation Centre of Cambodia will be offered to both the defence and the prosecution at the tribunal.
*** *** *** ***
He looks back and he does not know how he did it - how he survived the Khmer Rouge.
You would wonder too.
Mr Youk Chhang was just 14 when Khmer Rouge soldiers chased him and thousands of other Cambodians from Phnom Penh to the countryside in April 1975.
It was the start of 'Year Zero' according to the Khmer Rouge regime led by Pol Pot, who wanted Cambodia to become an agrarian communist utopia.
For Mr Chhang, it was the start of four long years under the regime and many brushes with death.
Now 44, he spoke to academics and diplomats at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies recently. He spoke about how Asean can help with the tribunal set up to bring the killers to justice.
It is all about finding answers for the country and humanity - and himself, he said.
'My sister died. I want some answers. Otherwise, who do I forgive?'
And he has much to forgive.
DUG CANALS, ATE SNAKES
He spent the Khmer Rouge years digging canals as part of a youth mobile unit, away from his family, which had been moved to Battambang province, 250km north-west of Phnom Penh.
He had to learn to swim so that he could dive into the flooded rice fields and cut sugarcane.
He also had to steal food, find edible leaves in the jungle and kill and eat snakes and rats.
His communist masters may have trumpeted atheism, but food became his god, he said.
'I never thought of dying. Instead, I hoped for a good night's sleep and to have enough to eat one day. That hope encouraged me to fight for life.'
He was thrown into jail for weeks once, after trying to steal food for his pregnant sister.
MUM AFRAID TO CRY
'They hit me with an axe, pushed me to the ground, tied me up with rope and put me in jail.
My mother was afraid to cry in front of them while they were torturing me. Crying was also a crime under the Khmer Rouge, ' he said.
Ten of his family members died for various 'crimes'.
A brother-in-law caught stealing garbage to feed his three children was beaten and died from his injuries.
His wife - one of Mr Chhang's five sisters - kept his body and did not report his death for a week so that she could collect his food ration for her kids.
SISTER SPLIT OPEN, KILLED
She was later accused of stealing rice from a communal kitchen, and when she denied it, a Khmer Rouge cadre slashed opened her belly and killed her, said Mr Chhang.
His family members were among the 1.7 million to two million Cambodians - about a quarter of the country's population - who died of starvation, or by forced labour or execution by the time the Vietnamese invasion in early 1979 toppled the Khmer Rouge.
That is when a 17-year-old Mr Chhang walked across the Thai border to a refugee camp.
'I had no fear. Not even of landmines. I just walked. Looking back, I do not know how I did it,' he said.
Two years later - with '$10 and just one pair of jeans' - he found his way to Texas and a new life.
He worked and went to university in the US before returning to Phnom Penh in 1992 to work for the United Nations.
'I wanted to do something for Cambodia and for my mother,' he said.
His mother, who had remained behind in Cambodia, is still alive.
'My mother was lucky. And I was lucky,' he said.
'There're so many other families who were not so lucky.'
As director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia for the past 10 years, he is documenting the Khmer Rouge years.
His centre has mapped more than 19,000 mass graves and 167 prisons (or extermination centres).
DEATH THREATS
In a country yet to bury the past, it is no wonder he has received death threats because of his work, he said.
But the father of two added: 'I am prepared to trade my life for truth... I believe in the truth... being sincere and honest... the truth will set you free.'
During the seminar, Mr Chhang spoke passionately on the need to find closure.
'You ask the rank and file Khmer Rouge now why they killed and they say they do not know.
Yet the leaders say they did not give orders to kill. So how did two million people lose their lives?
'I do not have the answer. You have to search for your own truth.'
His work is also a struggle against historical amnesia.
Already, young Cambodians are finding it hard to come to terms with their parents' experience.
'They can't believe there was a time when there was no money, no video games, no ice-cream, no school,' Mr Chhang noted.
And while youngsters think black is 'cool', that - for their parents - was the colour of death, the colour the Khmer Rouge cadres dressed in.
A whole generation of Cambodians still needs to find ways to deal with the memory of what happened between 1975 and 1979, he said.
His niece, who was 5 or 6 when her parents and sister died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, still believes a tale relatives told her at the time: Her family had just gone away for a while and would come back for her.
STILL WAITING FOR MUM and DAD
'We told her: 'See, they even left you a bowl of water to drink'. And she stopped crying. She's now 31, married with three kids, and that bowl - she's kept it in a safe deposit box in the Bank of Maryland,' said Mr Chhang.
She's struggling to hang on to that story even as her own children ask her: 'Where are your parents? Why do not they visit us in the holidays?'
Mr Chhang said: 'She couldn't answer. She told the kids: 'Your uncle knows. I'll send him an e-mail. He'll tell you.''
Mr Chhang hasn't answered that e-mail.
To date, no Khmer Rouge leaders have been brought to justice.
SURVIVING LEADERS
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998.
Surviving leaders likely to be tried are
· Nuon Chea, former chief ideologue;
· Khieu Samphan, head of state;
· Ieng Sary, foreign minister;
· Ta Mok, army chief; and
· Kang Kek Ieu, who headed the notorious S-21 prison, which is now the genocide museum in Phnom Penh.
Mr Chhang said data collected by the Documentation Centre of Cambodia will be offered to both the defence and the prosecution at the tribunal.
Cambodian Cricket
The country turned to the insects during famine, but now the bugs are fine dining.
PHUM THUN MONG, CAMBODIA -- By day, the emerald rice fields look like ordinary, peaceful paddies. But when dusk falls, sheets of plastic unfurl from bamboo frames, electric-blue neon tubes flicker on, and hordes of Cambodian crickets are lured to untimely, watery deaths.
The humble chirping cricket became a part of Cambodians' diet during the famine years of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s and has remained a part of Cambodia's cuisine since.
But this year, huge numbers of Cambodians in central Kampong Thom province have jumped in
on the business as demand has spiked, leading to innovative ways of catching the critters.
Roadside at the village of Thun Mong, 40-year-old Soun Sang smokes a cigarette in the violet light cast by some of his lamps, awaiting the night's haul with some trepidation as an unusual drizzle sets in.
"Some nights only a few come, so it's really not reliable," he says, gesturing to the horizon, where blue lights zigzag as far as the eye can see. "But when there are a lot, there might be 3,000 kilograms collected in this area."
Like many in this village, Mr. Sang started catching crickets this year when he noticed his neighbours setting up newfangled traps and doing well. They earn 2,000 to 5,000 riel (between 60 cents and $1.50) a kilogram.
The traps, devised only a season or two ago, consist of a rectangular bamboo frame hung with a sheet of plastic, topped by a blue fluorescent tube to attract the insects, and powered by a car battery or diesel generator. A pond is dug to catch the crickets after they hit the plastic and hurtle to the ground.
They seem simple but still cost about 170,000 riel to put together, a serious investment in impoverished Cambodia, where more than a third of the population gets by on under a dollar a day.
Mr. Sang recalled how he began eating crickets in desperation during the 1975-79 ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge regime, which oversaw the deaths of up to two million Cambodians, many from starvation.
"We started eating them during Pol Pot's regime, but back then we caught the crickets by digging holes. We didn't have these lamps," he said. "We had to play hide and seek [to avoid capture and punishment] and at that time we toasted them over a fire. Now we can fry them up in oil and they have a better taste. And now I'm not worried at all about being caught."
Mr. Sang lost an arm and several fingers when he stepped on a land mine in 1988. He now keeps cows and draws a monthly pension of 100,000 riels.
"If the crickets come, I can make a really good profit. Some nights I collect up to 30 kilograms," Mr. Sang, a father of two, said.
At Arunras restaurant -- considered the best in Kampong Thom city -- manager Nari, who declined to give her surname, demonstrated how to eat the insects, selecting from a tray of crickets fried with green onions, garlic and salt.
She sells about 20 kilograms a day but first offered the insects, until recently seen as unsophisticated street food in Cambodia, only a month ago as her customers started demanding them.
The 45-year-old entrepreneur used her ruby-polished nails to pluck a dewinged and gutted carcass off the pile. She snapped off and discarded two thick hind legs before biting into the head with a crunch. A plate of about 50 costs 5,000 riel.
"People eat them with beer or just about anything at all.," she said, popping the rest of the insect into her lipsticked mouth.
Ou Bossphoan, director of the provincial Department of Agriculture, is taking the upsurge in demand seriously.
"People need extra income and this provides Kampong Thom people with a new income," he said in his office, a stone's throw from the market where sellers were offloading the disappointing haul of the night before.
And the senior official confirmed that the cricket obsession is going upmarket.
"Our officials here in the past were not interested in crickets, but this year, we are eating a lot.
When I go to a restaurant, I too order crickets."
PHUM THUN MONG, CAMBODIA -- By day, the emerald rice fields look like ordinary, peaceful paddies. But when dusk falls, sheets of plastic unfurl from bamboo frames, electric-blue neon tubes flicker on, and hordes of Cambodian crickets are lured to untimely, watery deaths.
The humble chirping cricket became a part of Cambodians' diet during the famine years of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s and has remained a part of Cambodia's cuisine since.
But this year, huge numbers of Cambodians in central Kampong Thom province have jumped in
on the business as demand has spiked, leading to innovative ways of catching the critters.
Roadside at the village of Thun Mong, 40-year-old Soun Sang smokes a cigarette in the violet light cast by some of his lamps, awaiting the night's haul with some trepidation as an unusual drizzle sets in.
"Some nights only a few come, so it's really not reliable," he says, gesturing to the horizon, where blue lights zigzag as far as the eye can see. "But when there are a lot, there might be 3,000 kilograms collected in this area."
Like many in this village, Mr. Sang started catching crickets this year when he noticed his neighbours setting up newfangled traps and doing well. They earn 2,000 to 5,000 riel (between 60 cents and $1.50) a kilogram.
The traps, devised only a season or two ago, consist of a rectangular bamboo frame hung with a sheet of plastic, topped by a blue fluorescent tube to attract the insects, and powered by a car battery or diesel generator. A pond is dug to catch the crickets after they hit the plastic and hurtle to the ground.
They seem simple but still cost about 170,000 riel to put together, a serious investment in impoverished Cambodia, where more than a third of the population gets by on under a dollar a day.
Mr. Sang recalled how he began eating crickets in desperation during the 1975-79 ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge regime, which oversaw the deaths of up to two million Cambodians, many from starvation.
"We started eating them during Pol Pot's regime, but back then we caught the crickets by digging holes. We didn't have these lamps," he said. "We had to play hide and seek [to avoid capture and punishment] and at that time we toasted them over a fire. Now we can fry them up in oil and they have a better taste. And now I'm not worried at all about being caught."
Mr. Sang lost an arm and several fingers when he stepped on a land mine in 1988. He now keeps cows and draws a monthly pension of 100,000 riels.
"If the crickets come, I can make a really good profit. Some nights I collect up to 30 kilograms," Mr. Sang, a father of two, said.
At Arunras restaurant -- considered the best in Kampong Thom city -- manager Nari, who declined to give her surname, demonstrated how to eat the insects, selecting from a tray of crickets fried with green onions, garlic and salt.
She sells about 20 kilograms a day but first offered the insects, until recently seen as unsophisticated street food in Cambodia, only a month ago as her customers started demanding them.
The 45-year-old entrepreneur used her ruby-polished nails to pluck a dewinged and gutted carcass off the pile. She snapped off and discarded two thick hind legs before biting into the head with a crunch. A plate of about 50 costs 5,000 riel.
"People eat them with beer or just about anything at all.," she said, popping the rest of the insect into her lipsticked mouth.
Ou Bossphoan, director of the provincial Department of Agriculture, is taking the upsurge in demand seriously.
"People need extra income and this provides Kampong Thom people with a new income," he said in his office, a stone's throw from the market where sellers were offloading the disappointing haul of the night before.
And the senior official confirmed that the cricket obsession is going upmarket.
"Our officials here in the past were not interested in crickets, but this year, we are eating a lot.
When I go to a restaurant, I too order crickets."
HUN SEN’S GOVERNMENT HAS FAILED TO ACHIEVE GOALS
From the
Cambodia Daily Monday, July 18th, 2005
After reading “PM Sings Own Praises, Critic’s Views Diverge” I feel funny about Prime Minister Hun Sen’s speech.
I really feel funny that he cares only about Cambodian people and the nation. Under his leadership for almost 25 years he performed much worse than what Cambodian people expected that he would.
More than 25 years have passed since the Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown.
Millions of Cambodians survived from starving or overwork. Unfortunately, we still suffer from corruption, bureaucracy and an unfair judiciary system, which is led by an incapable prime minister who does not want to give up power.
Every year, apart from begging money from donor countries, what can Hun Sen’s government do? If he is a capable prime minister, he should restore and develop the country by himself without depending on aid from the international community.
Roughly $500 million per year in international aid has been given for reducing Cambodian people’s poverty by improving the living standards, health and education and to reform the judiciary system.
Where has the money gone?
Under his government, he has brought down the land area of the country. In addition, Hun Sen’s government has set out strategies included in Cambodia’s National Poverty Reduction, Cambodia’s Millennium Development Goals and other planning and policy documents, as well as reform programs. The all sound like great goals. But he and his group just beat around the bush.
Cambodians are living under the poverty line (the povertyline being 60 cents a day income!?!)
They are trying to go out of the country to find jobs in neighboring countries that accuse of illegal entry and often shoot at us. Cambodian people are dying of hunger, there are thousands of cases of their land being grabbed by powerful people. The prime minister used to declare that he wouldn’t let any Cambodians starve to death, as in the Khmer Rouge regime.
Moreover, he would give up power if land grabbing issues continued to go unsolved.
Now it has been revealed that Hun Sen’s government is unlikely to achieve many of it goals. But he never gives up. If the UN arranges free and fair national elections, he will be a shameful loser as we now need a revolution.
Cambodia Daily Monday, July 18th, 2005
After reading “PM Sings Own Praises, Critic’s Views Diverge” I feel funny about Prime Minister Hun Sen’s speech.
I really feel funny that he cares only about Cambodian people and the nation. Under his leadership for almost 25 years he performed much worse than what Cambodian people expected that he would.
More than 25 years have passed since the Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown.
Millions of Cambodians survived from starving or overwork. Unfortunately, we still suffer from corruption, bureaucracy and an unfair judiciary system, which is led by an incapable prime minister who does not want to give up power.
Every year, apart from begging money from donor countries, what can Hun Sen’s government do? If he is a capable prime minister, he should restore and develop the country by himself without depending on aid from the international community.
Roughly $500 million per year in international aid has been given for reducing Cambodian people’s poverty by improving the living standards, health and education and to reform the judiciary system.
Where has the money gone?
Under his government, he has brought down the land area of the country. In addition, Hun Sen’s government has set out strategies included in Cambodia’s National Poverty Reduction, Cambodia’s Millennium Development Goals and other planning and policy documents, as well as reform programs. The all sound like great goals. But he and his group just beat around the bush.
Cambodians are living under the poverty line (the povertyline being 60 cents a day income!?!)
They are trying to go out of the country to find jobs in neighboring countries that accuse of illegal entry and often shoot at us. Cambodian people are dying of hunger, there are thousands of cases of their land being grabbed by powerful people. The prime minister used to declare that he wouldn’t let any Cambodians starve to death, as in the Khmer Rouge regime.
Moreover, he would give up power if land grabbing issues continued to go unsolved.
Now it has been revealed that Hun Sen’s government is unlikely to achieve many of it goals. But he never gives up. If the UN arranges free and fair national elections, he will be a shameful loser as we now need a revolution.
Food in Viet Nam - for a change...
Okay, a non Cambodia article for you all !
Dining in Viet Nam - thanks to The Economist
*** *** ***
As communism crumbles, a great cuisine revives
IN VIETNAMESE, simple tasks are not as "easy as pie"-they're "like eating dog's brain". But until recently, eating dog's brain was not easy at all. Vietnam's old communist regime frowned on bourgeois excesses, such as eating out. The few restaurants that survived were drab, soulless spots reserved for party grandees and visiting dignitaries. Anyway, there was not much food on offer. Thanks to a disastrous attempt to force all the country's small family farms to merge into giant collectives, Vietnam flirted with famine in the 1980s. A decent portion of rice, let alone a dog's brain, constituted a feast.
Faced with desperate food shortages and a growing exodus of "boat people", the government undertook tentative market reforms. Its first step was to give peasants secure tenure over the land they farmed, and freedom to sell their crops at a profit. Gradually, other forms of private enterprise won freer rein. The ensuing revolution was not just agricultural, economic and social, but also gastronomic. Ten years ago, there were only three restaurants serving dog along the dyke that protects Hanoi from the Red river; now there are 25. Hungry Hanoians can feast not only on dog's brain, but also sausages of dogmeat with beans and bitter herbs, grilled dog with ginger and shrimp sauce, boiled dog with lemongrass and steamed dog's liver with chilli and lime.
Geography determined the basics of Vietnamese food. The vast deltas of the Red river and the Mekong provide the staple, rice, while the strip of coast that connects them supplies abundant fish. Every other aspect of Vietnamese cuisine, however, has changed along with the country's tumultuous history. Chinese invaders introduced chopsticks and soy sauce. French colonists brought coffee, now the country's biggest cash crop. Pressed rice cakes became popular during the war with America, as a durable and lightweight ration. American ice-cream, which had been sidelined by Russian slush, has made a comeback since America and Vietnam re-established diplomatic ties in 1995.
Nowadays, free-market reforms are having a profound effect on Vietnamese food, most obviously in terms of the quantity available. In 2000, Vietnam produced some 32m tonnes of rice: more than twice the output of 1987. That huge increase has transformed the country from a net importer of rice to the world's second-largest exporter (after Thailand). Over the same period, production of chicken and pork-and much else-more than doubled.
But this plenty is unevenly distributed. A third of Vietnamese children are underweight, and even more are stunted. Ethnic minorities living along Vietnam's mountainous borders with Laos and China are the hungriest, and the north is hungrier than the south. The weather in the Mekong delta (in the south) is warm and wet all the time, allowing farmers to churn out three rice crops a year. The chilly northern winters, by contrast, limit their counterparts in the Red river valley to two. The war's legacy plays a role, too. The south was only subjected to collectivisation for about a decade after reunification, compared with some 40 years in the north, so agriculture suffered less disruption.
Many Vietnamese still have to eat whatever they can lay their hands on. Pet birds and dogs are kept indoors to save them from the cooking pot. In 1998, the government tried to reduce the consumption of snakes and cats by banning their sale, since the exploding rat population was damaging crops. Instead, peasants simply took to eating rats as well. The dwindling number of rats, in turn, has caused an explosion in the numbers of another tasty
treat: snails.
Meanwhile, in nearby Ho Chi Minh city, the country's commercial capital, a recent survey found that 12.5% of children were obese-and the figure is rising. Local restaurants vie with one another in expense and luxury. Hoang Khai, a local businessman, recalls how his family always celebrated at home when he was young, because there was nowhere to go out. He decided to change all that, by ploughing the returns from his textile business into a restaurant lavish enough to suit the city's business elite. The result is Au Manoir de Khai, a colonial villa smothered in gilt and silk where a meal with imported wine can set you back more than most Vietnamese earn in a year.
Mr Khai's humbler compatriots are also learning to enjoy their food again. Take Lan, who has been cooking Hanoi's famous beef-noodle soup, pho bo, for over 20 years at a hole-in-the-wall stand in the city's old quarter. She learned the trade from her parents, she says, but never bothered to put any effort into it since the shop belonged to the state. In the 1990s, however, it was sold to an entrepreneur as part of the government's economic reforms. Now she uses only the softest noodles, and stews her beef broth for eight hours before serving-twice as long as before. People are fussier now, she explains, and won't tolerate slapdash service.
Of silkworms and goats' testicles
Indeed, Vietnam's culinary renaissance is helping to revive traditions lost during the years of war, famine and repression. Didier Corlou, a French chef who has married into a Vietnamese family, explains how his in-laws eagerly contributed old recipes for his recent book on Hanoian cuisine. Several new restaurants in Hanoi have helped to popularise old-fashioned medicinal wine. Diners at the inexpensive Highway 4, for example, merrily knock back shots flavoured with silkworm, snake, crow or goat's testicles. The food, too, is a souped-up version of traditional mountain cuisine, complete with rural treats such as eel or frog. Even street food is being
gentrified: at Quan An Ngon in Ho Chi Minh city, bejewelled ladies wash down their stuffed pancakes and hot-and-sour soup with sips of chardonnay.
There are innovations as well as resuscitations. Highway 4 serves spring rolls containing foreign ingredients such as wasabi paste and mayonnaise. These are so popular that several other local restaurants have copied the recipe. Mooncakes, a delicacy sold in the autumn, now come stuffed with chocolate as well as the standard beans and egg. Bars-a foreign concept in Vietnam, where food always accompanies drink-are beginning to spread.
Unlike the cheap pubs that draw only men, the comedy acts, raffles and bands at the new nightspots attract both men and women. But the biggest new craze of all is the ubiquitous com, a sort of Vietnamese fast-food joint. Whereas traditional street stalls serve only one dish, com stands offer a wide choice of ready-made toppings to accompany a bowl of rice. Poor Vietnamese, delighted by the variety and convenience, are flocking to them.
Not everyone is happy about these changes. Cha Ka Le Vong, a Hanoi restaurant which only serves a thick stew of fish and herbs, has survived three wars, two famines, several attempts at nationalisation, hyperinflation, and the dramatic boom and bust of the 1990s. But the old lady who runs it considers current culinary trends a tougher challenge than any of that. Coms, new-fangled foreign ingredients, and even well-entrenched French imports, such as bread or French fries, are "a threat to our tradition", she rails. To this day, Vietnam has no McDonald's.
But most Vietnamese are adapting to commercial pressures all too readily. Farmers, suddenly paid according to what they produce, are slathering their crops in pesticides to increase their yields. Many Hanoians fear that this may damage their health; the market stalls that advertise "clean vegetables" are doing a roaring trade, even though their wares cost as much as 25% more. Eating pho probably poses a more serious threat, since some unscrupulous merchants try to preserve perishable noodles with formaldehyde or boric acid. Indeed, food scares have become common enough that the World Health Organisation is helping Vietnam to set up a food-safety agency.
Other dodgy tradesmen make a fortune serving endangered species to superstitious diners. The menu of the Lamrice restaurant in Hanoi offers a whole roast civet cat for 120,000 dong ($8) or porcupine steamed with ginger for 50,000 dong. Liquor bottles filled with bear paws and tiger penises decorate the walls. In Ho Chi Minh city, sea-turtle meat goes for 300,000 dong a kilo, while one enterprising salesman offers to produce a bear and draw its bile on the spot for $400.
He also sells tiger meat, he says, to "men whose flags are drooping". All these animals are protected by law, but as Pac Bo, the owner of Lamrice, puts it, he has "good relations" with the authorities, so no one bothers him. The unabated trade in wildlife is all the more alarming since half of the big new mammals discovered worldwide in the past century were found in Vietnam.
Piracy, too, goes entirely unchecked. La Vie, the country's most popular mineral water, contends with a host of blatant knock-offs with names like La Vi, La Ve and La Viei. Vietnam's best fish sauce comes from the island of Phu Quoc, off the southern coast-so every fish-sauce producer with initiative slaps a "Phu Quoc" label on his inferior swill. Despairing of official help, the islanders have entered a joint venture with Unilever, an international consumer-goods firm, which may have enough cash and clout to pressure the authorities to curb the counterfeiters.
There could be no better sign of the free-market turmoil to which Vietnamese food is suddenly being exposed. Fish sauce is the basic condiment for all Vietnamese food, and Phu Quoc its finest incarnation. Imagine French vintners granting Coca-Cola distribution rights over their grandscrus. In fact, one impassioned Vietnamese argues, the comparison is inadequate, since fish sauce is a more sophisticated product than wine: only a tiny number of wines survive longer than 50 years, whereas fish sauce continues to grow in flavour and complexity indefinitely. The wood of the barrels in which it ferments, the quality of the anchovies and salt from which it is made, the weather and temperature during the fermentation process-all these factors, he explains with a faraway look in his eyes, affect the flavour of the finished product. The producer, he continues, knows that the sauce is ready for bottling when the flies have stopped swarming over the rotting brew.
Unilever has promised not to alter this challenging flavour for foreign palates. Nor will it need to. Given Vietnam's new wealth and interest in its culinary heritage, making money out of Phu Quoc fish sauce should be like eating dog's brain.
Dining in Viet Nam - thanks to The Economist
*** *** ***
As communism crumbles, a great cuisine revives
IN VIETNAMESE, simple tasks are not as "easy as pie"-they're "like eating dog's brain". But until recently, eating dog's brain was not easy at all. Vietnam's old communist regime frowned on bourgeois excesses, such as eating out. The few restaurants that survived were drab, soulless spots reserved for party grandees and visiting dignitaries. Anyway, there was not much food on offer. Thanks to a disastrous attempt to force all the country's small family farms to merge into giant collectives, Vietnam flirted with famine in the 1980s. A decent portion of rice, let alone a dog's brain, constituted a feast.
Faced with desperate food shortages and a growing exodus of "boat people", the government undertook tentative market reforms. Its first step was to give peasants secure tenure over the land they farmed, and freedom to sell their crops at a profit. Gradually, other forms of private enterprise won freer rein. The ensuing revolution was not just agricultural, economic and social, but also gastronomic. Ten years ago, there were only three restaurants serving dog along the dyke that protects Hanoi from the Red river; now there are 25. Hungry Hanoians can feast not only on dog's brain, but also sausages of dogmeat with beans and bitter herbs, grilled dog with ginger and shrimp sauce, boiled dog with lemongrass and steamed dog's liver with chilli and lime.
Geography determined the basics of Vietnamese food. The vast deltas of the Red river and the Mekong provide the staple, rice, while the strip of coast that connects them supplies abundant fish. Every other aspect of Vietnamese cuisine, however, has changed along with the country's tumultuous history. Chinese invaders introduced chopsticks and soy sauce. French colonists brought coffee, now the country's biggest cash crop. Pressed rice cakes became popular during the war with America, as a durable and lightweight ration. American ice-cream, which had been sidelined by Russian slush, has made a comeback since America and Vietnam re-established diplomatic ties in 1995.
Nowadays, free-market reforms are having a profound effect on Vietnamese food, most obviously in terms of the quantity available. In 2000, Vietnam produced some 32m tonnes of rice: more than twice the output of 1987. That huge increase has transformed the country from a net importer of rice to the world's second-largest exporter (after Thailand). Over the same period, production of chicken and pork-and much else-more than doubled.
But this plenty is unevenly distributed. A third of Vietnamese children are underweight, and even more are stunted. Ethnic minorities living along Vietnam's mountainous borders with Laos and China are the hungriest, and the north is hungrier than the south. The weather in the Mekong delta (in the south) is warm and wet all the time, allowing farmers to churn out three rice crops a year. The chilly northern winters, by contrast, limit their counterparts in the Red river valley to two. The war's legacy plays a role, too. The south was only subjected to collectivisation for about a decade after reunification, compared with some 40 years in the north, so agriculture suffered less disruption.
Many Vietnamese still have to eat whatever they can lay their hands on. Pet birds and dogs are kept indoors to save them from the cooking pot. In 1998, the government tried to reduce the consumption of snakes and cats by banning their sale, since the exploding rat population was damaging crops. Instead, peasants simply took to eating rats as well. The dwindling number of rats, in turn, has caused an explosion in the numbers of another tasty
treat: snails.
Meanwhile, in nearby Ho Chi Minh city, the country's commercial capital, a recent survey found that 12.5% of children were obese-and the figure is rising. Local restaurants vie with one another in expense and luxury. Hoang Khai, a local businessman, recalls how his family always celebrated at home when he was young, because there was nowhere to go out. He decided to change all that, by ploughing the returns from his textile business into a restaurant lavish enough to suit the city's business elite. The result is Au Manoir de Khai, a colonial villa smothered in gilt and silk where a meal with imported wine can set you back more than most Vietnamese earn in a year.
Mr Khai's humbler compatriots are also learning to enjoy their food again. Take Lan, who has been cooking Hanoi's famous beef-noodle soup, pho bo, for over 20 years at a hole-in-the-wall stand in the city's old quarter. She learned the trade from her parents, she says, but never bothered to put any effort into it since the shop belonged to the state. In the 1990s, however, it was sold to an entrepreneur as part of the government's economic reforms. Now she uses only the softest noodles, and stews her beef broth for eight hours before serving-twice as long as before. People are fussier now, she explains, and won't tolerate slapdash service.
Of silkworms and goats' testicles
Indeed, Vietnam's culinary renaissance is helping to revive traditions lost during the years of war, famine and repression. Didier Corlou, a French chef who has married into a Vietnamese family, explains how his in-laws eagerly contributed old recipes for his recent book on Hanoian cuisine. Several new restaurants in Hanoi have helped to popularise old-fashioned medicinal wine. Diners at the inexpensive Highway 4, for example, merrily knock back shots flavoured with silkworm, snake, crow or goat's testicles. The food, too, is a souped-up version of traditional mountain cuisine, complete with rural treats such as eel or frog. Even street food is being
gentrified: at Quan An Ngon in Ho Chi Minh city, bejewelled ladies wash down their stuffed pancakes and hot-and-sour soup with sips of chardonnay.
There are innovations as well as resuscitations. Highway 4 serves spring rolls containing foreign ingredients such as wasabi paste and mayonnaise. These are so popular that several other local restaurants have copied the recipe. Mooncakes, a delicacy sold in the autumn, now come stuffed with chocolate as well as the standard beans and egg. Bars-a foreign concept in Vietnam, where food always accompanies drink-are beginning to spread.
Unlike the cheap pubs that draw only men, the comedy acts, raffles and bands at the new nightspots attract both men and women. But the biggest new craze of all is the ubiquitous com, a sort of Vietnamese fast-food joint. Whereas traditional street stalls serve only one dish, com stands offer a wide choice of ready-made toppings to accompany a bowl of rice. Poor Vietnamese, delighted by the variety and convenience, are flocking to them.
Not everyone is happy about these changes. Cha Ka Le Vong, a Hanoi restaurant which only serves a thick stew of fish and herbs, has survived three wars, two famines, several attempts at nationalisation, hyperinflation, and the dramatic boom and bust of the 1990s. But the old lady who runs it considers current culinary trends a tougher challenge than any of that. Coms, new-fangled foreign ingredients, and even well-entrenched French imports, such as bread or French fries, are "a threat to our tradition", she rails. To this day, Vietnam has no McDonald's.
But most Vietnamese are adapting to commercial pressures all too readily. Farmers, suddenly paid according to what they produce, are slathering their crops in pesticides to increase their yields. Many Hanoians fear that this may damage their health; the market stalls that advertise "clean vegetables" are doing a roaring trade, even though their wares cost as much as 25% more. Eating pho probably poses a more serious threat, since some unscrupulous merchants try to preserve perishable noodles with formaldehyde or boric acid. Indeed, food scares have become common enough that the World Health Organisation is helping Vietnam to set up a food-safety agency.
Other dodgy tradesmen make a fortune serving endangered species to superstitious diners. The menu of the Lamrice restaurant in Hanoi offers a whole roast civet cat for 120,000 dong ($8) or porcupine steamed with ginger for 50,000 dong. Liquor bottles filled with bear paws and tiger penises decorate the walls. In Ho Chi Minh city, sea-turtle meat goes for 300,000 dong a kilo, while one enterprising salesman offers to produce a bear and draw its bile on the spot for $400.
He also sells tiger meat, he says, to "men whose flags are drooping". All these animals are protected by law, but as Pac Bo, the owner of Lamrice, puts it, he has "good relations" with the authorities, so no one bothers him. The unabated trade in wildlife is all the more alarming since half of the big new mammals discovered worldwide in the past century were found in Vietnam.
Piracy, too, goes entirely unchecked. La Vie, the country's most popular mineral water, contends with a host of blatant knock-offs with names like La Vi, La Ve and La Viei. Vietnam's best fish sauce comes from the island of Phu Quoc, off the southern coast-so every fish-sauce producer with initiative slaps a "Phu Quoc" label on his inferior swill. Despairing of official help, the islanders have entered a joint venture with Unilever, an international consumer-goods firm, which may have enough cash and clout to pressure the authorities to curb the counterfeiters.
There could be no better sign of the free-market turmoil to which Vietnamese food is suddenly being exposed. Fish sauce is the basic condiment for all Vietnamese food, and Phu Quoc its finest incarnation. Imagine French vintners granting Coca-Cola distribution rights over their grandscrus. In fact, one impassioned Vietnamese argues, the comparison is inadequate, since fish sauce is a more sophisticated product than wine: only a tiny number of wines survive longer than 50 years, whereas fish sauce continues to grow in flavour and complexity indefinitely. The wood of the barrels in which it ferments, the quality of the anchovies and salt from which it is made, the weather and temperature during the fermentation process-all these factors, he explains with a faraway look in his eyes, affect the flavour of the finished product. The producer, he continues, knows that the sauce is ready for bottling when the flies have stopped swarming over the rotting brew.
Unilever has promised not to alter this challenging flavour for foreign palates. Nor will it need to. Given Vietnam's new wealth and interest in its culinary heritage, making money out of Phu Quoc fish sauce should be like eating dog's brain.
Cambodia unveils Phnom Penh development plan
The Bureau of Urban Affairs of Phnom Penh Municipality has made a plan to expand the city and build major new infrastructures by 2020 to accommodate Phnom Penh's growing economic activities and population, local press reported on Monday.
Chhay Rithisen, chief of the Municipality's Department of Basic Construction and Land Planning, said on Friday that the Phnom Penh area will be broadened north, south, east and west, with Wat Phnom as the central point and city limits forming a radius of 30 km, the Chinese-language newspaper The Commercial News reported.
The area opposite Chaktomukh River will be developed into a ' new' area and some urban zones will become Phnom Penh affiliated towns. Growing annually by 3.2 percent, the capital's 1.3-million- strong population is expected to reach 2.5 million by 2020. Necessary infrastructure to be built includes roads, boulevards, canals and a railway system to link the city's growing and dispersed areas, according to The Cambodian Press Review. High-rise buildings, which are absent from Phnom Penh's skyline, will be built at the entrances of the city and by the river and lake.
To fund the future boom of the city, the Phnom Penh Municipality will promote investment in the construction of buildings and apartments. Phnom Penh Governor Kep Chuktema, on a visit to Bangkok last week, has said that the capital has 569 poor communities with 25 percent living on public land, which he said is a problem that needs to be solved, reported khmer newspaper Island of Peace. To reduce the number of poor communities, the city is seeking partners to improve the capital's urbanization. The Phnom Penh 2020 plan has already been approved by the Ministry of Land Management and now it needs to be ratified by the government.
Chhay Rithisen, chief of the Municipality's Department of Basic Construction and Land Planning, said on Friday that the Phnom Penh area will be broadened north, south, east and west, with Wat Phnom as the central point and city limits forming a radius of 30 km, the Chinese-language newspaper The Commercial News reported.
The area opposite Chaktomukh River will be developed into a ' new' area and some urban zones will become Phnom Penh affiliated towns. Growing annually by 3.2 percent, the capital's 1.3-million- strong population is expected to reach 2.5 million by 2020. Necessary infrastructure to be built includes roads, boulevards, canals and a railway system to link the city's growing and dispersed areas, according to The Cambodian Press Review. High-rise buildings, which are absent from Phnom Penh's skyline, will be built at the entrances of the city and by the river and lake.
To fund the future boom of the city, the Phnom Penh Municipality will promote investment in the construction of buildings and apartments. Phnom Penh Governor Kep Chuktema, on a visit to Bangkok last week, has said that the capital has 569 poor communities with 25 percent living on public land, which he said is a problem that needs to be solved, reported khmer newspaper Island of Peace. To reduce the number of poor communities, the city is seeking partners to improve the capital's urbanization. The Phnom Penh 2020 plan has already been approved by the Ministry of Land Management and now it needs to be ratified by the government.
Friday, July 15, 2005
Short Break !
Right,
Am off now for a long weekend; Kampot(Bokor), Kep and Sihanoukville – well possibly, planning is always a little hit and miss here !
Back in the office on Thursday the 21st
D
Am off now for a long weekend; Kampot(Bokor), Kep and Sihanoukville – well possibly, planning is always a little hit and miss here !
Back in the office on Thursday the 21st
D
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Things Can Only Get Wetter
We have now reached the dog days of theyear’s; the temperature has risen to its
yearly zenith. Like a tidal rhythm the heat has roared and surged upwards for one last punishing blast prior to the arrival of the monsoon rains which will kiss of Cambodia sometime soon, please, please.
This last, wilful blast from the furnace has pushed the temperature up into the bragging zone which is all very cheery if your mission in life is to sip coconut juice on a beach but it can be a morose and wearying struggle here in Phnom Penh.
Last week we had a couple more 42 degree days and I had the quite astonishing experience of Khmers telling me that it was just ‘too hot to work.’ This is rather like an Eskimo phoning up his boss and saying that he’s not coming out of the igloo today because the weather is a bit nippy. Of course this has to be balanced by the happy sight of other Khmers braving the searing heat in their best woolly fleece lined jackets.
For barangs, this kind of heat can have an enfeebling effect, making one either want to die or fall asleep and Phnom Penh last week seemed to full of bedraggled and humiliated whities rushing around from one air-conditioned pod to the next whilst trying not to get their pink skins toasted in the insufferable heat.
My theory around this sudden change in temperature is that it is not wholly unconnected to the sharp rise in the number of NGO types to be seen feeding from the Cambodian lentil trough. It is quite possible that the sheer volume of bullshit coming from them has gradually burnt a hole in the ozone layer.
Whilst wilting in my favourite watering hole last week I got into conversation with a friend much admired for his observation of, and keen insight into the follies of Western NGO’s and he regaled me with a story which, I feel, sums up the relationship International NGO’s have with Cambodia.
Firstly, we have a project (with seemingly laudable aims) being initiated between a Khmer Government Ministry and a bank well known for its involvement in development issues. A figure of around $11 million for the two year project is arrived at. Even at this stage however, the bank wants rewarding for its involvement in initiating the scam and a few million dollars are therefore shaved off in various fees.
Next, an expensive base needs to be found in Phnom Penh and this has to be kitted out to Western standards.Then a dozen or so ‘consultants’ and ‘advisors’ need recruiting from North America and Europe. All of these ladies and gentlemen will be on high end Western salaries. They will all need housing in luxury colonial properties for the duration of their two year contracts and will obviously receive a sparking new land cruiser and chauffer each. And we have not even begun to talk about expenses and ‘per diem’ yet.
So the budget is shaved by a few more million dollars.
Now all the whities are sitting comfortably at the lentil trough, the local staff can be recruited.
Obviously, these guys don’t cost $400 per hour (plus expenses) but there are a hundred of them on the payroll and they all have to be provided with a motor scooter each.
Lastly we need to buy our specialised equipment which does not come cheap and has to be shipped over from Europe which means that the somewhat diminished figure of about $1 million is left over to actually ‘do the work’ for the duration of the contract. And all this is assuming that no local corruption has taken place at any level.
This leads me to an inescapable and apocalyptic conclusion.
It has become clear that most of the supposed aid money coming into Cambodia merely passes through the country before finding its way back to the USA and Europe and whilst local corruption quite obviously does take place (or how else would that civil servant on a salary of $300 per month be able to throw a $10,000 birthday party for his 12 year old son…) it only happens after the banks, consultants and advisors have calmly but forensically skimmed the pot of its cream.
And we now reach the finale. It transpires that the $11 million provided for this project is actually a loan. Every single cent of it is added to the national debt and will have to be paid back with interest by the Khmers.
It is a bit like inviting somebody into your house, giving them free board and lodgings, letting them loaf around on your sofa drinking your beer and channel hopping all day and then giving them a hefty monthly paycheque. In return, they kindly agree to pay your cleaner's local salary each few weeks.
So next time you see a fat air conditioned Land Cruiser pulling up outside Java Café, remember that the $500 dollar an hour 'consultant' inside is being sponsored and paid for in full by a provincial rice picker earning $1 a day. And it all makes perfect sense.
yearly zenith. Like a tidal rhythm the heat has roared and surged upwards for one last punishing blast prior to the arrival of the monsoon rains which will kiss of Cambodia sometime soon, please, please.
This last, wilful blast from the furnace has pushed the temperature up into the bragging zone which is all very cheery if your mission in life is to sip coconut juice on a beach but it can be a morose and wearying struggle here in Phnom Penh.
Last week we had a couple more 42 degree days and I had the quite astonishing experience of Khmers telling me that it was just ‘too hot to work.’ This is rather like an Eskimo phoning up his boss and saying that he’s not coming out of the igloo today because the weather is a bit nippy. Of course this has to be balanced by the happy sight of other Khmers braving the searing heat in their best woolly fleece lined jackets.
For barangs, this kind of heat can have an enfeebling effect, making one either want to die or fall asleep and Phnom Penh last week seemed to full of bedraggled and humiliated whities rushing around from one air-conditioned pod to the next whilst trying not to get their pink skins toasted in the insufferable heat.
My theory around this sudden change in temperature is that it is not wholly unconnected to the sharp rise in the number of NGO types to be seen feeding from the Cambodian lentil trough. It is quite possible that the sheer volume of bullshit coming from them has gradually burnt a hole in the ozone layer.
Whilst wilting in my favourite watering hole last week I got into conversation with a friend much admired for his observation of, and keen insight into the follies of Western NGO’s and he regaled me with a story which, I feel, sums up the relationship International NGO’s have with Cambodia.
Firstly, we have a project (with seemingly laudable aims) being initiated between a Khmer Government Ministry and a bank well known for its involvement in development issues. A figure of around $11 million for the two year project is arrived at. Even at this stage however, the bank wants rewarding for its involvement in initiating the scam and a few million dollars are therefore shaved off in various fees.
Next, an expensive base needs to be found in Phnom Penh and this has to be kitted out to Western standards.Then a dozen or so ‘consultants’ and ‘advisors’ need recruiting from North America and Europe. All of these ladies and gentlemen will be on high end Western salaries. They will all need housing in luxury colonial properties for the duration of their two year contracts and will obviously receive a sparking new land cruiser and chauffer each. And we have not even begun to talk about expenses and ‘per diem’ yet.
So the budget is shaved by a few more million dollars.
Now all the whities are sitting comfortably at the lentil trough, the local staff can be recruited.
Obviously, these guys don’t cost $400 per hour (plus expenses) but there are a hundred of them on the payroll and they all have to be provided with a motor scooter each.
Lastly we need to buy our specialised equipment which does not come cheap and has to be shipped over from Europe which means that the somewhat diminished figure of about $1 million is left over to actually ‘do the work’ for the duration of the contract. And all this is assuming that no local corruption has taken place at any level.
This leads me to an inescapable and apocalyptic conclusion.
It has become clear that most of the supposed aid money coming into Cambodia merely passes through the country before finding its way back to the USA and Europe and whilst local corruption quite obviously does take place (or how else would that civil servant on a salary of $300 per month be able to throw a $10,000 birthday party for his 12 year old son…) it only happens after the banks, consultants and advisors have calmly but forensically skimmed the pot of its cream.
And we now reach the finale. It transpires that the $11 million provided for this project is actually a loan. Every single cent of it is added to the national debt and will have to be paid back with interest by the Khmers.
It is a bit like inviting somebody into your house, giving them free board and lodgings, letting them loaf around on your sofa drinking your beer and channel hopping all day and then giving them a hefty monthly paycheque. In return, they kindly agree to pay your cleaner's local salary each few weeks.
So next time you see a fat air conditioned Land Cruiser pulling up outside Java Café, remember that the $500 dollar an hour 'consultant' inside is being sponsored and paid for in full by a provincial rice picker earning $1 a day. And it all makes perfect sense.
CAMBODIA The Legacy and Lessons of UNTAC
The UN peacekeeping operation in Cambodia in 1992-93 was unique. It was the first occasion on which the UN has taken over the administration of an independent member state, organised and run an election (as opposed to monitoring or supervising), had its own radio station and gaol, and been responsible for promoting and safeguarding human rights at national level. As the most comprehensive 'second-generation' UN peace operation to date, it is replete with lessons for the future.
The United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) was set up in February 1992 to implement the Paris Peace Accords of October 1991, the product of intense diplomatic activity over many years. Its job was to restore peace and civil government in a country ruined by decades of civil war and neglect, to hold free and fair elections leading to a new constitution and to 'kick-start' the rehabilitation of the country. It was to exercise 'supervision' or 'supervision or control' over all aspects of government, including foreign affairs, national defence, finance, public security and information, and to supervise, monitor and verify the withdrawal and non-return of foreign military forces; to canton, disarm and demobilise Cambodia's fighting factions, confiscate caches of weapons and military supplies, promote and protect human rights, oversee military security and maintain law and order, repatriate and resettle refugees and displaced persons, assist in mine clearance and the establishment of training programmes in mine clearance and mine awareness, rehabilitate essential infrastructure and assist in economic reconstruction and development.
Headed by Yasushi Akashi, with Lieutenant-General John Sanderson as the head of the Military Component, UNTAC involved 15 900 military, 3 600 civilian police, 2 000 civilians and 450 UN Volunteers, as well as locally recruited staff and interpreters. It cost over $1.5 billion, and was carried out within budget and on time.
UNTAC's most notable success was the preparations for and conduct of the elections. An estimated 89.5 per cent of the population voted in the first real elections ever held in the country. UNTAC also succeeded in isolating the Khmer Rouge, beginning the tortuous process of national reconciliation and giving the Cambodian people for the first time in almost 40 years the opportunity to choose their government in a comparatively free, fair and democratic manner. A new constitution was written, a new government formed, and an integrated national army was established. In addition UNTAC repatriated all Cambodian refugees from the Thai border and closed the camps there, freed the press, alleviated conditions in the prisons, started the gargantuan task of mine clearance, imparted new skills to thousands of Cambodians, fostered the rapid growth of human rights consciousness and other civic values and began restoring Cambodia's shattered infrastructure. UNTAC achieved immense success in its 'hearts and minds' campaign and in its use of civilian volunteers.
Important lessons from the Cambodia operation:
Intense efforts should be made to reduce the delay between a negotiated settlement and deployment of a peacekeeping force and its associated mechanisms and infrastructure. UN peacekeeping operations should 'hit the ground running' and be prepared to take control immediately. UNTAC's late deployment was one of the biggest flaws of the Cambodia mission.
The UN Secretariat lacked the experience, resources and qualified personnel to organise a mission of such complexity, magnitude and novelty at short notice. The negotiators of the peace accords and the UN Security Council apparently gave little thought to how the Secretariat might cope or whether it might need additional resources to organise and maintain UNTAC.
The inadequacy of its advance planning affected UNTAC for the whole of its life cycle. Apart from the lack of capacity at UN headquarters, advance planning was hindered by a disjunction between the negotiation of the Paris Accords and their implementation. All the senior leadership-designate of a peacekeeping mission should be involved, where possible, in the negotiation and planning phases leading up to deployment.
The Paris Peace Accords had set the UN a seemingly impossible schedule. The Cambodia operation has been called by some critics a race against time.
The usual practice in UN peacekeeping missions of handing over the entire mission to the force commander to manage was seriously inadequate in the case of the Cambodia operation. Contact with UN headquarters was spasmodic. The secondment of dedicated mission liaison officers to New York on a short-rotation basis should be standard procedure for the duration of such complex missions in future.
UN financial and administrative procedures were complex and time-consuming. Greater delegation of financial authority and faster and more flexible procurement procedures would all have helped the functioning of UNTAC's administration.
Criticism of the UN Secretariat alone for its organisational lapses in the Cambodian operation is, however, unfair. It should also be directed at the international community and the Security Council for not equipping the UN with the requisite capacity before entrusting it with such a mission.
UNTAC's loose strategic co-ordination arrangements resulted in waste, duplication of effort and lack of synergy. Better strategic co-ordination is needed between the components of large multi-purpose UN missions. Proper co-ordination between the military and civilian personnel of peacekeeping missions is essential and the UN must develop a more sophisticated conception of the operation of multifunctional missions. The improvisation that characterised much of UNTAC's performance, noble though it may have been, cannot be the basis for future UN exercises in nation building.
A complex organisation like UNTAC, which needs to be established quickly and to operate efficiently from the outset, should have among its leadership someone with the requisite high-level managerial training and organisational experience, perhaps with a background in a multinational corporation. UN bureaucrats may not have such skills.
Future such operations involving control of a civilian administration will need to take into account the possibility of both active and passive opposition to UN supervision and control.
The use of force in any future operations to deal with violations of a cease-fire or with threats to a UN peacekeeping operation must be backed up by the proper military capacity, and the UN should be more prepared to capitalise on its political advantages. Future missions must also be prepared to wrest control promptly and confidently from the local authorities when they are mandated to do so. UNTAC was not equipped for enforcement, nor was it part of its mandate, and to make it so would have been politically impossible. In the event, it did not need to defend itself. It was able to maintain a strict definition of 'self-defence', minimum use of force and neutrality; Akashi opted for a 'low-key administrative approach' consistent with his general handling of Khmer Rouge defiance and intimidation of voters, and the 'worst case'--a major Khmer Rouge attack on polling day--in fact never happened--fortunately. The case could have been very different.
The mixed experience of the military contingents from some countries probably indicates that the use of reservists and conscripts for peacekeeping operations is not appropriate and that it is more efficient to restrict the number of countries from which contingents are drawn. The UN in future should be more selective about the countries from which forces are made up.
The civil police element in any comprehensive peacekeeping mission is critical to good relations with the local populace and must be the subject of more careful UN attention. In Cambodia they were seriously under-prepared, confused about their role and lacking in essential support.
Human rights should be a paramount concern in cases where government authority has collapsed or when a neutral political environment is required for electoral purposes. The UN should develop 'justice packages' comprising all the elements of a model legal system which can be employed when the UN is required to take over the administration of 'failed states' or those otherwise needing temporary international tutelage.
The UN should be more conscious of the possible undesired economic consequences of its intervention in a country and be prepared to offset them, using its own economic weight in creative ways.
Subsequent political developments in Cambodia have not been encouraging, but the passage of time has made it clear that they do not constitute an indictment of the UNTAC operation.
No international operation can guarantee the continued peaceful democratic development of a country. In this case, as in others, it is up to the Cambodians themselves.
The United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) was set up in February 1992 to implement the Paris Peace Accords of October 1991, the product of intense diplomatic activity over many years. Its job was to restore peace and civil government in a country ruined by decades of civil war and neglect, to hold free and fair elections leading to a new constitution and to 'kick-start' the rehabilitation of the country. It was to exercise 'supervision' or 'supervision or control' over all aspects of government, including foreign affairs, national defence, finance, public security and information, and to supervise, monitor and verify the withdrawal and non-return of foreign military forces; to canton, disarm and demobilise Cambodia's fighting factions, confiscate caches of weapons and military supplies, promote and protect human rights, oversee military security and maintain law and order, repatriate and resettle refugees and displaced persons, assist in mine clearance and the establishment of training programmes in mine clearance and mine awareness, rehabilitate essential infrastructure and assist in economic reconstruction and development.
Headed by Yasushi Akashi, with Lieutenant-General John Sanderson as the head of the Military Component, UNTAC involved 15 900 military, 3 600 civilian police, 2 000 civilians and 450 UN Volunteers, as well as locally recruited staff and interpreters. It cost over $1.5 billion, and was carried out within budget and on time.
UNTAC's most notable success was the preparations for and conduct of the elections. An estimated 89.5 per cent of the population voted in the first real elections ever held in the country. UNTAC also succeeded in isolating the Khmer Rouge, beginning the tortuous process of national reconciliation and giving the Cambodian people for the first time in almost 40 years the opportunity to choose their government in a comparatively free, fair and democratic manner. A new constitution was written, a new government formed, and an integrated national army was established. In addition UNTAC repatriated all Cambodian refugees from the Thai border and closed the camps there, freed the press, alleviated conditions in the prisons, started the gargantuan task of mine clearance, imparted new skills to thousands of Cambodians, fostered the rapid growth of human rights consciousness and other civic values and began restoring Cambodia's shattered infrastructure. UNTAC achieved immense success in its 'hearts and minds' campaign and in its use of civilian volunteers.
Important lessons from the Cambodia operation:
Intense efforts should be made to reduce the delay between a negotiated settlement and deployment of a peacekeeping force and its associated mechanisms and infrastructure. UN peacekeeping operations should 'hit the ground running' and be prepared to take control immediately. UNTAC's late deployment was one of the biggest flaws of the Cambodia mission.
The UN Secretariat lacked the experience, resources and qualified personnel to organise a mission of such complexity, magnitude and novelty at short notice. The negotiators of the peace accords and the UN Security Council apparently gave little thought to how the Secretariat might cope or whether it might need additional resources to organise and maintain UNTAC.
The inadequacy of its advance planning affected UNTAC for the whole of its life cycle. Apart from the lack of capacity at UN headquarters, advance planning was hindered by a disjunction between the negotiation of the Paris Accords and their implementation. All the senior leadership-designate of a peacekeeping mission should be involved, where possible, in the negotiation and planning phases leading up to deployment.
The Paris Peace Accords had set the UN a seemingly impossible schedule. The Cambodia operation has been called by some critics a race against time.
The usual practice in UN peacekeeping missions of handing over the entire mission to the force commander to manage was seriously inadequate in the case of the Cambodia operation. Contact with UN headquarters was spasmodic. The secondment of dedicated mission liaison officers to New York on a short-rotation basis should be standard procedure for the duration of such complex missions in future.
UN financial and administrative procedures were complex and time-consuming. Greater delegation of financial authority and faster and more flexible procurement procedures would all have helped the functioning of UNTAC's administration.
Criticism of the UN Secretariat alone for its organisational lapses in the Cambodian operation is, however, unfair. It should also be directed at the international community and the Security Council for not equipping the UN with the requisite capacity before entrusting it with such a mission.
UNTAC's loose strategic co-ordination arrangements resulted in waste, duplication of effort and lack of synergy. Better strategic co-ordination is needed between the components of large multi-purpose UN missions. Proper co-ordination between the military and civilian personnel of peacekeeping missions is essential and the UN must develop a more sophisticated conception of the operation of multifunctional missions. The improvisation that characterised much of UNTAC's performance, noble though it may have been, cannot be the basis for future UN exercises in nation building.
A complex organisation like UNTAC, which needs to be established quickly and to operate efficiently from the outset, should have among its leadership someone with the requisite high-level managerial training and organisational experience, perhaps with a background in a multinational corporation. UN bureaucrats may not have such skills.
Future such operations involving control of a civilian administration will need to take into account the possibility of both active and passive opposition to UN supervision and control.
The use of force in any future operations to deal with violations of a cease-fire or with threats to a UN peacekeeping operation must be backed up by the proper military capacity, and the UN should be more prepared to capitalise on its political advantages. Future missions must also be prepared to wrest control promptly and confidently from the local authorities when they are mandated to do so. UNTAC was not equipped for enforcement, nor was it part of its mandate, and to make it so would have been politically impossible. In the event, it did not need to defend itself. It was able to maintain a strict definition of 'self-defence', minimum use of force and neutrality; Akashi opted for a 'low-key administrative approach' consistent with his general handling of Khmer Rouge defiance and intimidation of voters, and the 'worst case'--a major Khmer Rouge attack on polling day--in fact never happened--fortunately. The case could have been very different.
The mixed experience of the military contingents from some countries probably indicates that the use of reservists and conscripts for peacekeeping operations is not appropriate and that it is more efficient to restrict the number of countries from which contingents are drawn. The UN in future should be more selective about the countries from which forces are made up.
The civil police element in any comprehensive peacekeeping mission is critical to good relations with the local populace and must be the subject of more careful UN attention. In Cambodia they were seriously under-prepared, confused about their role and lacking in essential support.
Human rights should be a paramount concern in cases where government authority has collapsed or when a neutral political environment is required for electoral purposes. The UN should develop 'justice packages' comprising all the elements of a model legal system which can be employed when the UN is required to take over the administration of 'failed states' or those otherwise needing temporary international tutelage.
The UN should be more conscious of the possible undesired economic consequences of its intervention in a country and be prepared to offset them, using its own economic weight in creative ways.
Subsequent political developments in Cambodia have not been encouraging, but the passage of time has made it clear that they do not constitute an indictment of the UNTAC operation.
No international operation can guarantee the continued peaceful democratic development of a country. In this case, as in others, it is up to the Cambodians themselves.
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