Editorial | Articles about Cambodia | Khmer

Sunday, February 07, 2010

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Friday, January 08, 2010

A Fresh Start

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Asian villages carve out a new life

Wildlife Alliance - The thick forest, winding streams and rivers and abundant wildlife around Chi Phat Commune, pictured, made it a natural spot for an ecotourism business

By STEVE MOLLMAN

The village of Tmatboey in the northern plains of Cambodia seemed to have little going for it. It lacked clean water; there were no real roads. The people toiled mostly at subsistence farming, barely scraping by.

The villagers didn't realize they had a valuable asset -- hiding in plain sight, so to speak: a tourist attraction that a niche group of international travelers would happily pay to see, even if it meant a stay in basic accommodations.

It's a bird. Actually, two: the long-legged giant ibis and the white-shouldered ibis, both among the rarest in the world. In the eyes of hard-core bird-watchers, they carry near-mythical status.

And now they're making money for Tmatboey. In 2004, the Wildlife Conservation Society, which credits itself with having saved the American bison a century ago, set up the Tmatboey Ibis Ecotourism Project to lure bird-watchers. During the most recent peak season, November 2008 to May 2009, providing services to bird-watching visitors brought in more than $12,000 all told, a fortune by local standards. About 30% went into a community fund for improving basics like education and plumbing; today, life in Tmatboey has been significantly improved by new wells, water pumps, roads and a new school.

In villages in many parts of Asia, nonprofit groups from around the world are putting into practice that time-worn proverb: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Rather than donating clothes or books, handing out mosquito nets or building schools, they're bringing money-making enterprises to rural Asian communities. Some involve training in activities such as sewing and bamboo craft; many are tourist-related.

Among environmental groups, there has been a shift in the past decade or so toward "a more integrated view of conservation and development," says Graham Bullock, a former ecotourism coordinator for the Nature Conservancy's China program. For instance, says Tom Clements, a technical adviser to the Wildlife Conservation Society's Cambodia program, the Tmatboey project works "by empowering local people to manage their own tourism enterprise, in a way that explicitly links revenue received to conservation outcomes."

The goals of each organization vary, of course, as do the circumstances of each village. "One size definitely does not fit all," says Mr. Bullock. But more organizations now seek "the participation and empowerment of local communities," he adds.

Below, a pair of projects aimed at helping villages help themselves.
Chi Phat Commune, Cambodia

The Chi Phat Commune -- a collection of four villages that's home to about 550 families, or nearly 3,000 people in all -- sits on the banks of the Piphot River in Cambodia's Cardamom mountains near the Thai border. Getting there from Phnom Penh takes four to five hours and involves two highways and a scenic ride upriver on a long-tail boat.

The villagers get by mostly on rice farming and fishing. To make extra money, some work as laborers on nearby plantations. Others sell livestock and other goods at the local market.

And some engage in illegal activities like poaching and logging -- which, along with land-clearing for farming, have exacted a heavy environmental toll. While large animals including elephants still roam the Cardamoms, their numbers -- along with those of scaly anteaters, wild pigs, deer, monkeys, bears and lizards known as Bengal monitors -- are dwindling. And so is their habitat, one of Southeast Asia's largest remaining tracts of rainforest.

After studying the Chi Phat village situation, the Wildlife Alliance, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit founded in 1994 with the goal of protecting wildlife, forests and oceans, concluded that poverty was the root cause of wildlife and forest loss in the Cardamoms. The alliance also saw that ecotourism -- the area's thick forest, winding streams and rivers and abundant wildlife make it ideal for mountain biking and trekking -- offered the possibility both of alleviating poverty and leading villagers to see value in the nature surrounding them.

Before Wildlife Alliance started to help develop Chi Phat as an ecotourism gateway (its Web site: www.mountainbikingcardamoms.com), though, it approached not only villagers, but also local authorities and tour operators to see if the project could fly. One challenge would be attracting customers; little has been written about the area. Another would be explaining ecotourism to the locals.

"Often throughout the world, NGOs enter a local community telling them that tourism is the answer to their problems and very much raising expectations, without any consultation with local tour operators to see whether there will actually be any market for what they are proposing," says Mark Ellison, who runs Asia Adventures, an independent tour operator. "Then one or two years down the line they sit back and scratch their heads wondering why after all the training, capacity building, meetings, and infrastructure development, no tourists are coming."

Today a handful of private companies make up the Friends of Chi Phat tour-operator group, which works with Wildlife Alliance to attract tourists. They market Chi Phat as a destination, handle reservations and bring guests to and from the village.

The "Friends" operators can charge tourists whatever they wish, but they pay upfront for services provided by the villagers, such as cooking, guiding, bike maintenance and lodging. About 80% goes to the villager providing the services; the remaining 20% goes into a community fund that improves the village's education, water supply, roads and so on.

Of course some training was needed at first: The villagers of remote Chi Phat were not accustomed to seeing tourists, much less catering to them. In fact, says Mr. Ellison, "until a few years ago many of the locals had not even seen a foreigner."

So in early 2008, Wildlife Alliance -- which established a permanent base in the village in January 2007 (after more than four years of research) -- and its tour-operator partners set up training programs in sanitation, hospitality, English, first-aid and waste management.

A bike mechanic, for instance, was brought in from Phnom Penh to teach villagers how to maintain a modern mountain bike. The hiking and biking trails were created by former hunters and loggers from the village, who now serve as trail guides. So far they've finished two mountain-biking trails (both there-and-back routes) and four circular trekking trails, including some night-camping sites. More trails are in the works.

Not surprisingly, old habits die hard. One villager who was asked to head the group for transporting guests on motorbikes was caught transporting something else instead: a wild pig. The local village council demoted him, with a warning that another transgression would get him kicked out of the project.

"People have been dependent on the forest for livelihoods and domestic needs for quite some time now -- and still are," says Oran Shapira, a 33-year-old Israeli working in Chi Phat for the Wildlife Alliance. "This will not completely change in one day or one year. It's a process."

Tourists stay in a handful of villager huts that have been converted -- with help from the Wildlife Alliance -- to accommodate guests. They're still rustic, but a little better-equipped than before. Squat toilets were added, for instance, so that guests didn't have to relieve themselves in the fields.

The first guests arrived early in 2008, and by year's end there had been about 200. Last year, the village received more than 670 guests, who biked, hiked, swam in the river and played volleyball with the locals.

Asia Adventures charges $250 a person for a three-day trip that includes a one-day mountain-biking excursion and transport to and from Phnom Penh. In 2008 the village collected about $7,000, says Mr. Shapira; last year, more than $19,200.

David Miller, who works for the Australian Taxation Office in Canberra, visited Chi Phat for three nights in December 2008. He wasn't expecting luxury: "You don't go visit a place in the middle of the jungle if you're expecting comfort all the way," he says.

He went on a guided hike one day and on a mountain-biking trip another. "Cycling through remote jungle, and not recognizing much of the flora, made it much more exciting" than biking back in Australia, he says. His tour guides were village men who didn't speak English but were friendly, communicated well with body language, and knew the forest like the back of their hands.

On his bike trip, he passed large swaths of burned land. (Fires not only clear land but also chase out animals, making them easier to catch.) "I don't know of many other ways to offer alternatives to these people so they will stop cutting down the rain forest," he says. "Action like ecotourism is better than no action at all."
Nawung, Indonesia

In 2006, an earthquake in central Java reduced many small villages to near rubble. But aside from some light damage to a few ramshackle buildings, the quake had little outward effect on Nawung, a rural village of about 500 people in the foothills near Yogyakarta. Below the surface, however, was a different story: Geological shifts caused the village's few natural wells to dry up.

It was a blow to farming, the village mainstay, already a challenge in the dry, hilly land. The village needed a new gig.

Enter Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund, a century-old German aid organization that bolsters rural communities through reconstruction, livelihood training and disaster-risk reduction. Some years ago in Kosovo, it reconstructed homes and taught returning war refugees to cultivate saffron as a cash crop.

At the time of the Java earthquake, more than half the people of Nawung earned less than $1 a day, says Sae Kani, an ASB program manager for Indonesia who specializes in disaster-risk-reduction education. Young villagers typically left to find work in retail, manufacturing, housekeeping or construction in places like Jakarta and Yogyakarta.

But in 2007, ASB noticed the village had something going for it -- a new road linking Nawung with Yogyakarta, 45 kilometers to the west, and other significant towns, including Sleman, to the northwest, and Wonosari, to the south. The road -- a scenic route through hills, forests and paddy fields -- significantly boosted the trade and tourism potential between Nawung and Yogyakarta, a hub for Indonesian arts and crafts, as well as other towns and villages.

Within this setting, ASB set out to help make the village self-reliant by teaching villagers to make crafts and foods that they could sell to nearby merchants and retailers.

The ASB team -- three field staff members and a project manager (plus, in the beginning, an architect and engineer) -- moved into the village and set up workshops to train villagers in four skills: bamboo weaving, stone carving, textile making and food preparation.

The food-preparation group is the largest, with about 50 members, all women. Tumiyem, a mother of two small children who like many Indonesians goes by a single name, is one of them. Through an interpreter she says that before the training, "we knew nothing about cooking snacks." Now, she says, the benefit is two-fold: The women can generate extra income and "we can gather with our friends regularly."

About 18 men studied stone craft; now nine of them churn out soap dishes, small statues and water fountains for gardens. The textile group -- three women and two men -- sew pillowcases and containers.

ASB helps with marketing and business connections, teaches bookkeeping and profit management, and provides a little start-up capital for each group. The food-preparation group, for instance, received about $550, part of which went to buy supplies.

Sales are climbing. Last year a woman named Atun who makes chips -- primarily from banana and cassava -- sold about $390 of her snacks from July to November, compared with $110 in the first six months of the year. The stone-masonry group, which sells most of its products to a pair of buyers from Yogyakarta, saw the biggest jump in sales: Between March and November, it pulled in nearly $900, up from about $110 for all of 2008.

ASB has spent about $100,000 on the project, along the way building things such as a small showroom to display the village's goods, production and storage houses for the bamboo-weaving and stone-masonry groups and a Web site (www.nawung.com). Its three staff members in Nawung will stay through the end of this year, when ASB plans to focus more on tourism development and improved marketing for village handicrafts.

The German nonprofit also set up a microfinance fund within each group so members can take out small loans. For instance in the food group, borrowers can obtain three-month loans at an interest rate of 5% a month. (The interest income is used to benefit the groups, such as for raw materials.) And villagers have a good track record of repaying the loans, which they've used for a variety of purposes. Last spring, for example, a member of the stone-craft group named Tukino borrowed $21 to buy fertilizer and pay his children's school fees.

Today, Nawung is on the upswing: New homes are springing up, streets are better paved and cellphones are a more common sight. More important, when ASB leaves, the skills it has taught will likely remain.
—Steve Mollman is a writer based in Asia.

Labels: The village of Tmatboey, Wildlife Conservation Society

Thursday, December 31, 2009

KHMER RICHE

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The huge Phnom Penh mansion owned by Victor's parents, General Meas Sophea. (Good Weekend Magazine)

Written by Andrew Marshall
Good Weekend Magazine for the Sydney Morning Herald

They live in one of the poorest countries on earth, yet they drive flash cars, dwell in mansions and scorn their impoverished brethren. Andrew Marshall meets the rich sons and daughters of Cambodia elite.

“I’m going to drive a little fast now. Is that Okay?” There is one place in Cambodia where you can hold a cold beer in one hand and a warm Kalashnikov in the other, and Victor is driving me there. We’re powering along Phnom Penh’s airport road with Oasis on his Merc’s sound system and enough guns in the boot to sink a Somali pirate boat. Victor is rich and life is sweet. His father is commander of the Cambodian infantry. He has a place reserved for him at L’Ecole Speciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr, France’s answer to Duntroon. And, in his passenger seat, there is a thin, silent man with a Chinese handgun: his bodyguard.

“His name is Klar,” says Victor. “It means tiger.”

Victor is only 21, but when reach our destination—a firing range run by the Cambodian special forces—the soldier at the gate salutes.

Devastated by decades of civil war, Cambodia remains one of the world’s poorest nations. A third of its 13 million people live on less than a dollar a day and about 8 out of every 100 children die before the age of five. But Victor—real name Meas Sophearith—was raised in a different Cambodia, where power and billions of dollars in wealth are concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite. This elite prefers to conceal the size and sources of their money—illegal logging, smuggling, land-grabbing—but their children just like to spend it. The Khmer Rouge are dead; the Khmer Riche now rule Cambodia.

I first met Victor at a fancy Phnom Penh restaurant called Café Metro. Outside, Porsches, Bentleys and Humvees fight for parking spaces. The son of a powerful general, Victor has his future mapped out for him. He went to school in Versailles, speaks French and English, and now studies politics at the University of Oklahoma. “My mother wanted us to get a foreign education so we could come back and control the country,” he says. The shooting range is where Victor and his friends go to relax. “I’ve grown up with guns and soldiers all around me,” he says, laying out a private arsenal on a table: two automatic assault rifles, two Glock pistols, one sniper’s rifle, one iPhone.

"My mother wanted us to get a foreign education so we could come back and control the country". Meas Victor Sophearith (above) is one of Cambodian's privileged elite.

Victor and his generation are Cambodia’s future. Will they use their education and wealth to lift their less fortunate compatriots out of poverty? Or will they simply continue their parents’ fevered pursuit of money and power? Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID), which gave almost $US30 million of its taxpayers’ money to the country in the last fiscal year, offered one answer in June, when it announced the closure of its Cambodia office by 2011. The official reason? “It was felt UK aid could have a larger impact … where there are greater numbers of poor people and fewer international donors,” said a DFID statement. But the development agency might also have tired of throwing money at a nation where so much poverty can be blamed on a grasping political elite—and their luxury-loving children. (Australia clearly has not: it has allocated $61.4 million in development assistance to Cambodia for 2009-10.)

Depressingly, the Khmer Riche Kids sometimes seem indistinguishable from the old colonial ruling class. They were educated overseas—partly because their families’ wealth made them targets for kidnapping gangs—and often speak better English than Khmer. They carry US dollars – only poor people pay with Cambodian riel – and live in newly built neoclassical mansions so large that the city’s old French architecture looks like Lego by comparison. And their connection to the Cambodian masses is almost non-existent.

Sophy, 22, is the daughter of a Deputy Prime Minister. Rich, doll-like and self-obsessed, she could be the Paris Hilton of Cambodia. She imports party shoes from Singapore, brands them “Sophy & Sina” (Sina is her sister-in-law), hen displays them in her own multistory boutique. It has six staff, no customers and a slogan: “It’s all aboutme.” Sophy’s name is spelled out in sparkling stones on the back of her car, a Merc so pimped up that I have to ask her what make it is. “It’s a Sophy!” she replies.

We meet at her hair salon, where she is prepping a model for a fashion shoot for a magazine she is starting up with her brother Sopheary, 28, and their cousin Noh Sar, 26,. All three were educated abroad and prefer to speak English together. Sopheary, who studied in New York state, seems both amused and slightly embarrassed by his wealth and privilege. “What can you do?” he asks. “Your parents give you all these things. You can’t say no. If someone gives you cake, you eat it.”

Talk to Sopheary and his friends, and Cambodia’s tragic history seems very far away. The genocidal Khmer Rouge blew up banks and outlawed money before being driven from power in 1979. Later came the 1991 Paris Accords, and the plunder of Cambodia’s rich natural resources—forests, fisheries, land –began in earnest. Cambodia’s official economy largely depend on garment, exports, but there is a much larger shadow economy in which only the ruthless and the well-connected survived and prosper. “If you’re doing business, you have to know someone high up, so he has your back,” says Victor.

The closer you get to Hun Sen, Cambodia’s autocratic Prime Minister, the better connected you are. Hun Sen staged a bloody coup d’etat in 1997 and has kept an iron grip on power ever since. Opponents have been silenced while loyalists have grown rich. This includes ministers, a handful of tycoons and generals. Cambodians are often driven from their land by soldiers or military police. Formerly a French possession, Cambodia has been colonized all over again, this time by its own greedy elite.

But the Khmer Riche have a problem. “None of them can answer a simple question: where does all your money come from?” says a Western journalist in Phnom Penh. Ask Cambodian ministers how they got so rich on a meager government salary, and they will reply, “My wife is good at business.”

When I ask Noh Sar, whose father is a senior customs official, why he is so wealthy, he gives me a slight variation: “My mother works a lot.”

Victor’s mother is also good at business, according to “Country for Sale,” an investigation into the elite published by the London-based corruption watchdog Global Witness in February 2009. “She is a key player in RCAF [Royal Cambodian Armed Forces] patronage politics, holding a fearsome reputation among her husband’s subordinates on account of her frequent demands for money,” says the report. “RCAF sources have told Global Witness that military officers sometimes bribe [her] in order to increase the chances of her “close connections” to a major timber smuggler.

It is only in the past few years that the children of Cambodian’s elite have grown confident enough to show off their family’s wealth. “If you want people to respect you in Cambodia, you must have a good car, good diamonds, a good cell phone,” explains Ouch Vichet, 28, better known as Richard. “It’s an I’m-richer-than-you competition.” Richard is quite a competitor: he drives a $US150,000 Cadillac Escalade and wears a $US2,500 Hermes watch and a $US13,000 2.5-carat diamond ring. He doesn’t have a bodyguard, although some friends keep them as status symbols.

"Crazy money": (above) Ouch "Richard" Vichet is surprisingly candid about his wealth. (Good Weekend Magazine)

Richard was sent to New Zealand to be educated after a gang tired to abduct his brother. He is a short, affable man with an impish grin. In a city where the elite have a tribal suspicion of outsiders, he is refreshingly candid about his wealth. “My money is from my parents,” he says, and then breaks it down. They gave him a villa, half a million US dollars, and a 400-hectar rubber plantation that will generate income for the rest of Richard’s life. His parents-in-law gave him $US100,000 in cash and another villa, worth $200,000, which he sold and invested in real estate. Richard also runs a busy Phnom Penh nightclub called Emerald – his parents made their first fortune in gems – which provides him with “pocket money”. A party of rich kids can spend $US2,000 on drinks in a single night, more than an average Cambodian earns in 3 years.

His parents’ second, much larger, fortune comes from real estate. A few years ago they bought about five hectares of land just outside Phnom Penh for $US14 a square metre, then sold it for $US120 a square metre two years later, making more than $US5 million in profit. “Where else can you make profits like that?” grins Richard. “It’s crazy money.” He has a daughter called Emerald and a son called Benz. (His other Benz is a GL450.) They all live with his parents in a newly built mansion.

Yet Richard’s house is modest by the operatic standards of Phnom Penh’s Tuol Kuok precinct, part of which was once a notorious red-light district. A taxi driver shows me the neighborhood – it’s like a “homes of the stars” tour in Beverly Hills, except that Tuol Kuok’s backstreets are piled with rubbish. My driver points out giant mansion after mansion, and tells me who lives there. Hun Sen’s son, Hun Sen’s daughter, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Labour. A Deputy PM—Sophy and Sopheary’s dad. A four-mansion compound with lots of razor wire, and a gate guarded by special forces soldiers – Victor’s family.

Tuol Kuok’s houses are well-guarded for a reason: until there was real estate to invest in, many wealthy Cambodians kept their money at home in bricks of cash. “We don’t trust banks,” says Richard. “The old generation kept their money under the bed. The new generation keep it in safes in their houses.” Victor says his family also stays away from banks, but for a slightly different reason. “If you put your money in a bank, everyone will know how much you have,” he explains.

I had also heard that rich Cambodians had repatriated hundreds of millions of dirty dollars from Singapore banks after a post-September 11 shake up of global banking, and that his money had helped fuel the land speculation.

For the children, the wealth comes with one big condition: they must do what Mum and Dad tell them. “I wanted to go to art school but my parents wouldn’t let me,” says Sopheary. Most kids dutifully join the family business—Richard translated for his father during overseas gem-buying trips. For some, that business is politics. Concept like nepotism and conflict of interest don’t count for much in Cambodia. Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh—whose giant house resembles an airport departure hall, one with its own jet-ski lake – gave a ministry position to his wife and made his daughter his chief of cabinet. Cambodia’s ambassadors to Britain and Japan are brothers, and their boss is also their father: Foreign Minister Hor Namhong. He says he hired his sons on merit. “It’s not nepotism,” he insists.

Their parents also expect them to marry young—men in their 20’s, women in their teens—and strategically, meaning to someone from a rich and influential family. These marriages are often arranged. “It’s like medieval times in France,” complains Victor, still a bachelor. This means that many high-society Cambodians soon find themselves trapped in loveless unions; affairs are common. Sophy was married off at 17 to the son of the rich and powerful Interior Minister.

The web of marriages binds together Cambodia’s political and business elite and ensures the ruling Cambodian People’s Party’s stranglehold on power. At the centre of the web sits Prime Minister Hun Sen. His three sons and two daughters are all married to the children of senior ruling party politicians or, in the case of his son Hun Manit, to the daughter of the late national police chief. Now in his 30’s, Hun Manit is being groomed to succeed his father. He graduated from West Point, the US military academy, in 1999, amid protests by members of the US Congress over his father’s human rights record. In July, Global Witness urged the British Government to revoke the visa of the Cambodian Prime Minister, who visited Bristol University to watch Hun Manit receive a doctorate in economics.

Senior Khmer Rouge figures such as Comrade Duch, the mass-murdering commandant of Tuol Sleng prison, are currently on trial at a United Nations-based tribunal in Phnom Penh. The Khmer Riche, on the other hand, remain above the law. Victor displays a military VIP sticker on the front dash of his Mercedes. “It means the police cannot touch me,” he says. Richard is an advisor to a military police commander, which also effectively grants him legal immunity.

Many of his generations abuse such privileges. Last August Hun Chea, a nephew of the Prime Minister, hit a motorcyclist with his Cadillac, ripping off the man’s leg and arm. Hun Chea tried to drive off but couldn’t because the accident had shredded a tyre. Military police arrived, removed the car’s license plates and, according to “The Phnom Penh Post”, told Hun Chea: “Don’t worry. It wasn’t your mistake.” Hun Chea walked away. The motorcyclist bled to death on the road.

Hun Sen has yet another bad-boy nephew, the widely feared and mega-wealthy Hun To (“Little Hun”). In 2006 a newspaper editor filed a lawsuit against Hun To for alleged death threats, then fled overseas to seek asylum with the United Nations’ help. Hun To was also once spotted sitting in his luxury speedboat, its sound system cranked up high, being towed around Phnom Penh by a Humvee. A few weeks before, Victor had been in Los Angeles, where he test-drove Hun To’s latest acquisition before it was put in a Cambodia-bound shipping container: a $US500,000 Mercedes McLaren SLR supercar.” He has already built a special garage for it,” says Victor.

Victor will not – dare not—criticize Hun To. But he is critical of Cambodian society. “From top to bottom, everyone is corrupt,” he says. He hopes to one day set up a foundation to help poor Cambodians send their children to study overseas. “We want to change things, but we’ll have to wait until our parents retire,” he says.

But older generation shows no sign of retiring – not when there’s so much cake left to eat. In January, foreign donors pledged $US1 billion to Cambodia, its biggest aid package yet. The Government relies on foreign aid for almost half its budget. It could break this reliance by exploiting its reserves of oil, gas and minerals: the International Monetary Fund estimates Cambodia’s annual oil revenues alone could reach $US1.7 billion by 2021. Could, but probably won’t. Why? Because the same elite who cut down the trees and sold off the land are now poised to extract the oil and minerals, with the help of their children.

Some Hun Sen loyalists have already been allocated exploratory mining licences. One of them is General Meas Sophea, the army chief. He recently hired a temp to act as his foreign liaison officer. The temp is his son. His son’s name is Victor.

Labels: Riche

Monday, December 28, 2009

Where Gods and Soldiers Tend the Border in Cambodia

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Visitors, including Buddhist monks, make their way along a stone-paved pathway at Preah Vihear Temple on a mountaintop in northern Cambodia.

By DANIEL ROBINSON
Published: December 27, 2009

IN the wet season, the roads through the northwestern region of Cambodia turn into an undulating sea of muck, with potholes the size of cars and ruts as deep as truck axles. To figure out which routes were least likely to leave me wet, muddy and stranded, I buttonholed a dozen long-distance taxi drivers before settling on the toll road from Dam Dek, which had the added attraction of passing by two out-of-the-way Angkorian temples, Beng Mealea and Koh Ker.

My destination was an even more remote Angkor-era complex: Preah Vihear Temple, awesomely perched 1,700 feet above Cambodia’s northern plains, near the country’s border with Thailand. Designated as a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2008 — not without some international controversy — it makes an adventurous alternative to far-better-known Angkor Wat. While several thousand foreign tourists visit the temples of Angkor on a typical day, Preah Vihear Temple gets, on average, just five.

I was traveling with my friend and driver, Hang Vuthy, in a 1991 Toyota Camry with a surprising New York past: according to a window sticker, it had once belonged to a member of the Yonkers Police Captains, Lieutenants and Sergeants Association. Imagining the car in a mid-Atlantic blizzard, it occurred to me that wet-season driving in outback Cambodia is not entirely unlike navigating unplowed snowy side streets. Indeed, for much of our journey we avoided the most treacherous stretches of mire and snaked around potholes of indeterminate depth by religiously following a single serpentine track rendered navigable by earlier cars and trucks.

Preah Vihear Temple — the name means Mountain of the Sacred Temple — is the most spectacularly situated of all Angkorian monuments. Built from the ninth to the 12th centuries atop a peak of the Dangkrek Mountains, it occupies a triangular plateau rising from the Thailand border to a prow-shaped promontory.

An ever-changing architectural, mythological and geological panorama unfolds as visitors progress along the temple’s 2,600-foot-long processional axis, up a series of gently sloping causeways and steep staircases through five gopura, or pavilions, each more sacred than the last.

I began my visit at the bottom of the Monumental Staircase, which, according to the Angkor scholar Vittorio Roveda, “symbolizes the laborious path of faith needed to approach the sacred world of the gods.” The 163 gray sandstone steps, partly carved into the living rock, are flanked by statues of lions and, near the top, two magnificent nagas (seven-headed serpents) facing north toward Thailand. Also intently watching Thai territory were several AK-47-toting Cambodian soldiers in camouflage.

The first structure I came to, called Gopura V by generations of archaeologists, was an airy cruciform construction once topped by wood beams and a terra-cotta tile roof. Many of the stones have tumbled over, but the delicately balanced eastern pediment has survived to become Preah Vihear’s most recognizable icon, appearing on publicity posters, patriotic T-shirts and the new 2,000-riel banknote.

In centuries past, this pavilion was where pilgrims from the plains of Cambodia, having just climbed the steep, mile-long Eastern Staircase (mined and inaccessible for decades but soon to reopen), met their counterparts from what is now Thailand, who had completed a rather less-taxing ascent from the Khorat Plateau.

Alongside a group of saffron-robed monks, I continued north on a majestic, sandstone avenue, 800 feet long, to Gopura IV. There, I came upon a particularly vivid bas-relief depicting the Churning of the Ocean of Milk, a Hindu creation myth in which gods and demons churn the primeval waters to extract the ambrosia of immortality.

Although most of the splendid decorative carvings at Preah Vihear, including this one, depict Vishnu, the temple was originally dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva. In later centuries, it was converted to use as a Buddhist sanctuary, and today many of the visitors are Buddhist pilgrims.

As I continued my ascent, I walked under exquisite lintels and tympanums depicting more scenes from Hindu epics like the Mahabharata, and beneath richly carved double pediments adorned with finials and upturned gable ends — calling cards of Cambodian and Thai architecture to this day. Ancient inscriptions in Khmer and Sanskrit, bearing cryptic details about the history of the temple and the Angkorian kings who built it, were hidden here and there under a patina of lichen.

The temple’s culminating point, geographically and symbolically, is Gopura I, whose mandapa (antechamber) and Central Sanctuary, now a jumbled pile of carved sandstone blocks, are surrounded by galleries that call to mind a French Gothic cloister, except that here the windows are rectilinear and the galleries covered by corbelled vaults. (The Khmers, for all their architectural genius, never mastered the keystone arch.)

The entire structure is inward-looking, its outer walls almost devoid of openings despite the sweeping views just outside. Scholars speculate that while the site was considered holy in part because of its spectacular situation, the ancient architects may have believed that picture windows would distract both priests and pilgrims from their sacred tasks.

As I approached the rocky tip of the promontory, just beyond Gopura I, a breathtaking panorama came into view. Cambodia’s verdant northern plains extended majestically toward the horizon, and in the distance I could just make out Phnom Kulen, about 65 miles to the southwest, where the Khmer Empire was founded in A.D. 802. (Angkor itself lay hidden in the haze, 88 miles away.)

To the east, toward Laos, and the west, the Dangkrek Mountains stretched into the distance in a series of serrated bluffs. Looking north, almost everything I could see was in Thailand, rendered remote and mysterious by its inaccessibility.

Thailand ruled much of northwestern Cambodia, including Preah Vihear Temple, from the late 18th century until 1907, when the French colonial administration forced the Thais to withdraw to the current international frontier; Cambodian sovereignty over Preah Vihear was confirmed by the International Court of Justice in 1962.

Thailand, despite unresolved land claims, initially supported Cambodia’s Unesco bid for World Heritage status, but the temple soon became a pawn in Thai and Cambodian domestic politics, unleashing nationalist passions in both countries.

In July 2008, according to Cambodian authorities, Thai soldiers intruded into Cambodian territory near the temple. The Thai government denied that any border violations had taken place. Since then, a total of at least seven soldiers from both sides have been killed in intermittent exchanges of fire, according to local news reports. At the time of my visit, though, the frontier had been quiet for several months.

Curious about what the standoff actually looked like, I asked my guide, conveniently a moonlighting army officer, if I could get a glimpse of the Thais. He took me to the bottom of the Monumental Staircase, where I could hear the distant sounds of war — air-raid sirens and shooting — but the combat was taking place on a tiny television, which off-duty soldiers were watching with rapt attention.

We walked along a forest trail past a volleyball court and trenches, passing soldiers in hammocks with their wives stealing a moment of intimacy in an encampment with little privacy, to a forest clearing with a bamboo table at the center.

About 20 yards in front of us stood a line of neatly built bunkers; uniformed men could be seen among the dark green sandbags. “So those are Cambodian soldiers?” I asked, trying to get my bearings. “No,” my guide answered, “those are Thais. Over there” — he turned 180 degrees and pointed to a line of bunkers 20 yards in the other direction — “are Cambodians.” The table, I realized, marked the midpoint of no-man’s land.

The Cambodians’ front-line bunkers, made of disintegrating sandbags sprouting grass, were shaded by blue and green tarpaulins and surrounded by orderly gardens. Their raised observation post, topped by a thatched roof, looked as if it might have been on loan from “Gilligan’s Island.” I was in the middle of a very un-Korean Panmunjom, a laid-back, tropical version of Christmas 1914 on the Western Front.

I soon learned that the Cambodian soldiers stationed there call the site Sambok Kmom, or beehive, because, they say, the area’s many wild bees leave Cambodians unmolested but set upon any Thai who encroaches on Cambodian land. Moved by national feeling, domestic tourists wearing krama (traditional checked scarves that serve as something of a Cambodian national symbol) wandered by, distributing cigarettes and other morale-boosting gifts to the soldiers who were deployed to help the bees protect Cambodian sovereignty.

Around the clearing, soldiers from both sides, unarmed and without body armor or helmets, were relaxing in front of their own front-line bunkers. Cambodian officers seemed to find the bamboo table, shaded by trees tall enough to let breezes through, especially congenial. A few paces away, the Thais had strung a hammock between trees, and one soldier, lounging in a white T-shirt, black combat pants and black military boots, was engrossed in a cellphone call.

Despite the apparent tranquillity, I knew that if the order were given, the men on both sides of the invisible line would not hesitate to shoot. In fact, many of the Cambodian troops stationed around Preah Vihear are battle-hardened former Khmer Rouge fighters. For now, though, relations are casual and, I was told, some wary friendships have developed.

The best staging point for a visit to Preah Vihear Temple is Sra Em (also spelled Sa Em), 19 miles by road from the temple. Two years ago, it was a sleepy crossroads hamlet with a single grimy restaurant and one rundown guesthouse. These days, in the wake of the area’s military buildup, it feels like a Gold Rush boomtown, with haphazardly parked four-wheel-drives instead of tethered horses; karaoke bars sporting pink fluorescent lamps and colored lights, instead of saloons; and the gleanings of Cambodia’s recently doubled defense budget, instead of gold nuggets glinting in the stream. Armed men in camouflage uniforms abound.

Sra Em’s accommodation options are rudimentary, to put it politely. My room’s star amenity was a cold-water spigot for filling the plastic bucket used both to bathe and to flush, and below the cheap plastic mirror and its public access comb, dust bunnies had formed around the hair of guests past. Each time I returned to my room, I found a dead cricket, a new one every day, hinting, perhaps, at the presence of some sinister insecticide.

Preah Vihear Temple is, obviously, not quite ready for mainstream tourism. During the two days I spent at the temple in October, I saw only four other Westerners, including an unhappy German couple whose day trip from Angkor Wat had been rather more trying than expected, and perhaps 50 or so Cambodian tourists. But intrepid travelers who brave the diabolical (though improving) roads, substandard accommodations and alarming government travel advisories are richly rewarded.

For 40 generations, Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims have trekked to this temple, seeking to ascend toward the holy and the transcendent. Today, the awe-inspiring nature of this Angkorian masterpiece, accentuated by the challenges of getting there, confer on every trip the aura of a pilgrimage.

NAIL-BITING TAXI TRIPS AND A VOLCANO AT YOUR TABLE

GETTING THERE

With the visa-free crossing from Thailand closed for the foreseeable future, getting to Preah Vihear Temple requires battling Cambodia’s famously potholed roads, which are at their worst during the wet season (about June to October).

Share-taxis, which have no set schedule and depart when full, link Sra Em with Siem Reap via the former Khmer Rouge stronghold of Anlong Veng ($7.50 a person; 130 miles; three hours) and with the provincial capital of Tbeng Meanchey ($6.50; 65 miles; two hours). The U.S. dollar is widely accepted.

The taxis, usually “jacked-up” Toyota Camrys, carry six or seven passengers in addition to the driver, so if you want the front seat to yourself you’ll have to pay two fares. Ante up six times the single fare and you’ve got yourself a private taxi.

From Sra Em, a ride to Kor Muy on the back of a motorbike will run about $3.75. Then the three-mile ride up the mountain to Preah Vihear Temple, on a concrete road whose gradients will impress even San Franciscans, is $5 by motorbike or $20 to $25 by four-wheel-drive pickup.

WHERE TO STAY

Glassless windows, sinkless bathrooms, towels with the absorptive capacity of a plastic bag, fans that run only when a generator is sputtering outside your window (usually from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.) and laissez-faire housekeeping are, alas, the norm in Sra Em’s guesthouses. I should have stayed at the 25-room Tuol Monysophon (855-99-620-757), which opened this year. A brown, barn-like structure topped with a red tile roof, it has basic rooms downstairs with private baths, mosquito nets and wood-plank floors, for $10; smaller upstairs rooms with shared facilities are $7.50. To get there from the triangular crossroads, head west (toward Anlong Veng) for 500 yards.

WHERE TO EAT

The Preah Vihear area’s best restaurant, hands down, is Sra Em’s Pkay Prek Restaurant (855-12-636-617), an unpretentious complex of open-air, fluorescent-lit pavilions with plenty of geckos. The specialty is phnom pleoung (hill of fire; $3.75), a meat and veggie feast you grill yourself at your table on an aluminum “volcano” suspended above glowing coals.

SAFETY

Before setting out to Preah Vihear Temple, check the Phnom Penh Post (phnompenhpost.com), the Cambodia Daily or other reliable sources to make sure that Thai-Cambodian tensions are not rising.

According to the Cambodian Mine Action Center (www.cmac.org.kh), the immediate vicinity of the temple is now safe, having been cleared in recent years of more than 8,800 anti-personnel mines. However, nearby areas are still heavily mined, so do not, under any circumstances, wander off the footpaths.

WHAT TO READ

The most useful guidebook in English (and Thai) to the temple’s architecture, symbolism and history is “Preah Vihear” by Vittorio Roveda (Bangkok: River Books, 2000), but it may be difficult to find.

Labels: Preah Vihear, Preah Vihear, Thailand

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Deported Uyghur Had Cambodian Visa

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Photo: Wikipedia Phnom Penh airport, Aug. 1, 2006

A legal visitor in Cambodia was apparently swept up in a mass deportation to China.

WASHINGTON—One of 20 ethnic Uyghur asylum-seekers deported from Cambodia to China as illegal migrants entered the country legally and on the advice of U.N. refugee officials, Radio Free Asia (RFA) has learned.

Aikebaerjiang Tuniyaz, 27, left China in March 2009 after serving a one-year jail term in Liudawan prison in Urumqi for allegedly “leaking secret information abroad.”

Tuniyaz, born in Aksu and a graduate of Shanghai Jiaotong University, spoke in 2007 with RFA’s Uyghur service about the shooting of a Uyghur man by Chinese security forces in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

Tuniyaz entered Thailand in early 2009 and sought asylum through the Bangkok office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), where a staff member suggested he might expedite the process by approaching the UNHCR office in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, instead, he said in an earlier interview.

He obtained a visa through the Cambodian embassy in Bangkok and entered Cambodia legally, he said. Tuniyaz was in Cambodia legally when deadly ethnic rioting erupted in Urumqi on July 5 this year.

The 20 Uyghur Muslims deported Saturday under intense Chinese pressure had fled to Cambodia in search of asylum after witnessing and documenting violent ethnic riots in the restive western Chinese region of Xinjiang this summer that left nearly 200 dead.

They had warned the UNHCR that they feared long jail terms or even the death penalty if they were sent back to China, according to statements obtained by The Associated Press.

Tuniyaz had been translating for and staying with the group of 21 Uyghurs in Phnom Penh—two are said to have fled—when the group was detained.

Cambodia said it expelled the Uyghurs because they had illegally entered the country. It has since been sharply criticized by Washington, which said the deportations would harm bilateral ties with the United States, though they may have strengthened relations with Beijing.

On Monday, China signed off on more than U.S. $1.2 billion in aid to Cambodia during a visit there by Vice President Xi Jinping. The assistance, including 14 agreements for grants and loans, ranges from help in building roads to repairing Buddhist temples.

More protests

The European Union said Monday it was "deeply concerned" about Cambodia's decision to return the group of Uyghurs to China and urged Beijing to respect the rights of the returnees.

On Tuesday, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak slammed the deportations.

“This is a blatant violation of Cambodia’s obligations under the principle of non-refoulement as stipulated in Article 3 of the U.N. Convention Against Torture,” Nowak said in a statement.

Nowak said that he had reports of “severe torture” in Xinjiang following the unrest and that recent executions there violated “the most basic fair trial guarantees.”

“I am calling on the Chinese authorities to treat the 20 persons humanely upon return in accordance with international standards, to grant access to them in case they are detained and to afford them due process guarantees, if charged with criminal offenses”, he added.

U.N. Independent Expert on Minority Issues Gay McDougall called on Beijing to allow U.N. rights envoys to examine ethnic tensions in Xinjiang after the deadly violence there.

Original reporting by Shohret Hoshur for RFA’s Uyghur service. Uyghur service director: Dolkun Kamberi. Written in English by Sarah Jackson-Han.

Labels: Uighurs, United States of America, US State Department

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Tribunal charges Khmer Rouge "First Lady" with genocide

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PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A U.N.-backed Cambodian war crimes court on Monday charged a fourth top Khmer Rouge cadre with genocide, broadening the scope of a long-awaited trial of the ultra-communist "Killing Fields" regime's top ranks.

Ieng Thirith, 78, had already been accused of "murder, imprisonment and other inhumane acts" for her role as social affairs minister in a regime blamed for the deaths of 1.7 million people.

The new charges relate to the slaughter of Cambodia's ethnic Vietnamese and Cham Muslim minorities during the 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge era. The tribunal on Monday also charged her with torture and religious persecution.

Ieng Thirith, a former Shakespeare scholar known as the "Khmer Rouge First Lady", was arrested in November 2007 with her 85-year-old husband and ex-foreign minister Ieng Sary.

The French-educated Communist revolutionaries had lived under a government amnesty granted to Ieng Sary in 1996.

They were the closest associates of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader who died in 1998. Ieng Thirith's sister, Khieu Ponnary, was married to Pol Pot.

The Khmer Rouge-era president, Khieu Samphan, was dealt an additional charge of genocide on Friday. Similar charges of genocide were also issued for "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea and Ieng Sary last week.

They have also been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, along with two other former leaders.

Experts on the Khmer Rouge have been critical of the additional charges, which they said would bog down a trial already criticized for taking too long.

Many of the defendants were in poor health and could die before they see a courtroom, while some cases were already so complex and politicized that they may not even go to trial, the experts said.

The first trial of a senior Khmer Rouge cadre, Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, came to an end three weeks ago. He was accused of overseeing the torture and murder of more than 14,000 people as head of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison.

A verdict in that case is expected by March.

(Writing by Jason Szep; Editing by Martin Petty)

Labels: Ieng Thirith, Khmer Rouge Tribunal

China, Cambodia and the Uighurs

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Just more than a year ago, Cambodia was praised by the United Nations for its work on behalf of refugees. It was one of only two nations in Southeast Asia to sign the 1951 international convention on refugees, and it opened a brand new office that seemed to suggest a new determination to protect refugees’ human rights.

That was then. Today, Cambodia has baldly violated its international commitments and put at risk the lives of 20 members of the Uighur minority — including two infants — who were forcibly deported back to China on Friday.

Poor, weak Cambodia is not the only villain in this piece. China shoulders even more blame for misusing its growing wealth and clout to force Cambodia to do its bidding. Already Cambodia’s largest foreign investor, China rewarded Cambodia on Monday with 14 deals, valued at an estimated $850 million, including help in building roads and repairing Buddhist temples.

The Uighurs, members of a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority who say the Chinese government discriminates against them, entered Cambodia about a month ago with the aid of Christian missionaries and asked for asylum. China has been cracking down on the Uighurs since the ethnic unrest in July, the worst in decades.

Beijing said that at least 197 people — mostly majority Han Chinese — were killed in that violence. Han Chinese retaliated and hundreds of Uighurs have since been detained. Several of the fugitive Uighurs told the United Nations in written statements that they had been involved in the unrest and feared lengthy jail terms or even the death penalty if they were returned to China.

Chinese authorities claimed the Uighurs were criminals but offered no proof. Such charges are often a specious excuse of repressive societies, but in any case the Uighurs had protected status while their asylum cases were being investigated by the United Nations’ refugee agency. China and Cambodia had a responsibility under international law to allow that process to be completed.

It is alarming that the United States, Europe and United Nations, despite making an effort, could not figure out a way to persuade Cambodia to do the right thing. They should make sure Cambodia pays a price for its behavior, but the focus must be on China, starting with an urgent demand for access to the 20 Uighurs to ensure that they are not mistreated. No Chinese refugee can feel safe if China is allowed to bully other countries into forcing them back to an uncertain and unjust future.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

After Expelling Uighurs, Cambodia Approves Chinese Investments

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By SETH MYDANS
Published: December 21, 2009

BANGKOK — China signed 14 deals with Cambodia on Monday worth approximately $1 billion, two days after Cambodia deported 20 ethnic Uighur asylum seekers under strong pressure from Beijing.

The deportation, in defiance of protests by the United States, the United Nations and human rights groups, came on the day before a visit to Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, by Vice President Xi Jinping of China.

The package of grants and loans was signed at the end of Mr. Xi’s visit. The Cambodian Foreign Ministry quoted Mr. Xi as saying: “It can be said that Sino-Cambodia relations are a model of friendly cooperation.”

The exact value of the agreements was not announced, but the chief government spokesman, Khieu Kanharith, said they were worth $1.2 billion. “China has thanked the government of Cambodia for assisting in sending back these people,” he said. “According to Chinese law, these people are criminals.”

Members of a Turkic-speaking ethnic minority living mostly in western China, the 20 Uighurs said they were fleeing persecution in a crackdown that followed riots in which the Chinese government said at least 197 people were killed.

Hundreds of Uighurs have been detained since then and several people have been executed for involvement in the rioting. At least 43 Uighur men have disappeared, according to Human Rights Watch.

Twenty-two Uighurs entered Cambodia about a month ago, aided by a Christian group that has helped North Koreans fleeing their country. Two of the Uighurs have disappeared, the Cambodian government said.

Before being deported, several of the asylum seekers told the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Cambodia that they feared long jail terms or even the death penalty, according to statements reported by The Associated Press. In the statements, which had been provided to the United Nations in support of asylum applications, the Uighurs described chaotic and bloody scenes during the rioting.

“If I am returned to China, I am sure that I will be sentenced to life imprisonment or the death penalty for my involvement in the Urumqi riots,” said a 29-year-old man.

Another man, a 27-year-old teacher, said: “I can tell the world what is happening to Uighur people, and the Chinese authorities do not want this. If returned, I am certain I would be sent to prison.”

China is Cambodia’s leading investor, committing hundreds of millions of dollars for projects including dams, roads and a headquarters for the government Council of Ministers in Phnom Penh. In October, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China met Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Sen, in Sichuan, China, and concluded a deal worth $853 million.

Editorials TagsArticles

• testing
• A Fresh Start
• KHMER RICHE
• Where Gods and Soldiers Tend the Border in Cambodi...
• Deported Uyghur Had Cambodian Visa
• Tribunal charges Khmer Rouge "First Lady" with gen...
• China, Cambodia and the Uighurs
• After Expelling Uighurs, Cambodia Approves Chinese...
• Saluting American Valor: Sarun Sar
• Does the US know who it's dealing with in Cambodia...

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Editorial | Articles about Cambodia | Khmer

Sunday, February 07, 2010

testing

Friday, January 08, 2010

A Fresh Start

Thursday, December 31, 2009

KHMER RICHE

Monday, December 28, 2009

Where Gods and Soldiers Tend the Border in Cambodia

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Deported Uyghur Had Cambodian Visa

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Tribunal charges Khmer Rouge "First Lady" with genocide

China, Cambodia and the Uighurs

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

After Expelling Uighurs, Cambodia Approves Chinese Investments

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