From Killing Fields to Tennis Courts

STILL PLAYING: Former champion Yi Sarun.
NEXT GENERATION: Tennis is slowly making a comeback in Cambodia as the survivors of the Khmer Rouge get back teaching young people the sport they love.
BASICS: Cambodia still lacks courts and equipment, but not enthusiasm.
DEDICATED: Many give their time to coach young people.

Cambodia's tennis playing survivors of the Khmer Rouge are trying to pick up the pieces and rebuild a once proud tennis nation

19/04/2009
By Robert Davis
Bangkok Post

Former champion Yi Sarun reaches into his tennis bag, takes out an old wrinkled plastic bag filled with black and white photographs and sets the stack on the table. He carries them everywhere he goes, for they are reminders of when life was good to be a Cambodian tennis player.
In one photograph Yi is seen wearing a coat, tie and trousers and carrying an armload of wood tennis racquets while disembarking from a plane. Another one shows him on the court at the Cambodian Sports Club right after an epic five-set match against a Vietnamese opponent. Yi's arms are raised in victory and an exhausted smile spreads across the face of a young man in the prime of his life. One after another, Yi passes photos around, studying each one as if he were seeing it for the first time. Suddenly, the photographs stop. For it is 1975, the year the Maoist group of soldiers called the Khmer Rouge came to power. And then all hell broke loose.

Phnom Penh was once considered one of the most beautiful cities in Southeast Asia. Now with the Khmer Rouge in power it would become a town of terror. It was the upper class who would pay the heaviest price; doctors, teachers, lawyers, and even tennis players. Throats were slit, skulls crushed with a whack of a shovel and babies tossed from windows. Those who were not killed or tortured to death were force-marched to the countryside to develop an agrarian utopia immortalised by the film The Killing Fields.

Life as Cambodians knew it stopped. A new era began and Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot called it "Year Zero". In Year Zero, marriages were dissolved and families were banned. Parents were separated from their children. Even children's toys were thrown away, because there would be no time to play.

Two popular slogans of the new regime were "To spare you is no profit. To destroy you is no loss". And, "Better to kill an innocent person, than to leave an enemy alive". With that mantra, the Khmer Rouge went on a blood-thirsty hunt for anyone associated, even remotely, with the bourgeois. Some was just plain ridiculous, like anyone wearing eye-glasses were considered intelligent and must be executed. And if you happened to play tennis, you must be an elitist and were marked for death. From 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge would go on to commit one of the worst genocides of the twentieth century, killing an estimated 1.7-2 million people.

Rewind a few years earlier, on a sunny spring day in Phnom Penh where a young Prince Sihanouk is sitting by the tennis courts at Le Cercle Sportif, an exclusive country club. He is watching the national champion of Cambodia and Davis Cup player Tep Kunnah train. Children are gathered around too, all watching the man called affectionately "Mr Tennis". It was not unusual for the Prince to regularly attended Tep Kunnah's matches.

"In the '60s and early '70s, tennis was considered as an elitist sport worldwide and Cambodia was no exception," explains Rithi Tep, the Secretary-General of the Cambodia Tennis Association and a son of Tep Kunnah. "Cambodian tennis at the time was at its prime, dominating all regional countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Burma and Laos."

Little could anyone imagine then that those neatly manicured lawns and private tennis courts of the Le Cercle Sportif would be the setting for political executions carried out by the Khmer Rouge. Most notably that of Lon Nol and other government figures. In 1968, Yi Sarin - a team-mate of Yi Sarun - was the number one junior ranked player in Cambodia. Like Yi Sarun, he was ordered to Takeo province to labour in the fields.

"I was so scared that they [the Khmer Rouge] would find out I was a tennis player," Yi Sarin admits. "So many tennis players were killed because they were considered upper-class. I refused to even think about tennis."

Both Yi Sarun and Yi Sarin survived the Khmer Rouge, but at least 37 other tennis players did not. Cham Prasidh, the present Minister of Commerce and President of the Tennis Federation of Cambodia, is a survivor of the killing fields. He remembers when they were forced to eat anything that crawled.

"We were allocated only one kilo of rice per 50 people," Cham Prasidh recalls. "I remember counting the number of rice grains in my bowl. Obviously, with the impossible hours and workload each day we could not survive with only that. So we ate whatever we could. Even earthworms were dug up and pounded into a paste to mix with mother's milk to try and keep the babies alive. We thought the protein would help them survive."

After Vietnamese forces removed the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979, slowly life began to resume some sort of normalcy. It would take a few years for tennis to return to Cambodia, as all the equipment had been destroyed. But thanks to expats and diplomats, racquets, balls and nets were donated to the former players and clubs. Then goodwill sporting tours inspired by the Soviet Union sent athletes all over the world to play games.

Tennis was back again. Yi Sarin must have thought his life something of a wild roller-coaster ride. Now he is on a flight rumbling over the Aral Sea en route to Moscow. There he will board a train and back track for 17 hours in the freezing snow where he will eventually arrive in Lithuania to play tennis.

He and Yi Sarun would travel to other parts of the Soviet Union like Estonia and Kiev to play tennis matches. Today, Yi Sarin is the national coach of Cambodia.

But the driving force in the effort to return Cambodian tennis to glory is Rithi Tep.

"It is a legacy that I feel I have to perpetuate on behalf of my family," he says. "Because of not only what tennis meant to my father and uncle, but also what they did for tennis too. My family believes that such a legacy has to be carried on by my children to continuously remind of the greatness of a Cambodian athlete and their grandfather and uncle."

With only eight public courts and a handful of private ones in the entire country, tennis has a long way to go in Cambodia before it regains its former status. But at the 2007 Southeast Asia Games in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, Cambodia showed it is ready to challenge again.

When Nyssan Tan captured the bronze medal in the men's individual singles category his team-mates and coaches erupted in celebration as if he had just won the gold, not the bronze. For a country that has seen so much death and destruction, and suffered so many hardships, any medal is something to be cheered. A visibly shaken, but jubilant Rithi Tep, is crying tears of joy.

"We have waited over 30 years for this," he says while hugging the kids and coaches. "Finally!"

Suresh Menom, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) Development Officer for Asia, feels Cambodia only needs a little help to get going again. Already the ITF has sent equipment and is considering an Olympic Solidarity Fund financial grant to Cambodia for coaching expertise.

"Despite their lack of facilities and tennis infrastructure development," Mr Menom says, "Cambodia has managed to achieve some remarkable success in the Southeast Asian tennis arena in recent years. The SEA Games bronze medal and 14 and under juniors that were selected on the ITF teams is a demonstration of the tenacity and determination of the Cambodian players in achieving success despite facing insurmountable hardships.

"If the Tennis Federation of Cambodia can have a centre of its own to develop players, the future is going to be much brighter for Cambodian tennis."

At 63, former champion Yi Sarun still gets paid to play tennis. People working for NGOs and expatriates slip him a couple of dollars per hour to play a set or two at Phnom Penh's VIP Club. Yi Sarun's skin is sunburned a dark walnut colour and his face is gaunt with high cheekbones.

A hearing aide dangles from his ear and a shy smile reveals that only a few teeth remain. While his strokes have become as stiff as his stride, he can still beat most of his younger clients, although he lets them win just enough to keep them coming back. From a nearby court, Yi Sarin is watching him play.

"Still, after all these years he never learned to volley," he says with a laugh, just as Yi Sarun dumps a backhand into the net.

Yi Sarun might not have learned to volley, but just like other tennis playing survivors and their descendants of the Khmer Rouge, he has not given up trying to improve either.

Read more!

Thailand's bloody Muslim insurgency deeply rooted

Saturday, April 18, 2009
By DENIS D. GRAY

PATTANI, Thailand (AP) — While Thai authorities are preoccupied with riots in the capital, a five-year-old Muslim uprising in the south of the country is intensifying, and Thailand's troubled government and army are at odds about how to deal with it.
The bombings, shootings and beheadings show no signs of quieting. Machine-gun mounted Humvees scour for roadside bombs, soldiers sweep through villages suspected of harboring the insurgents and helicopters clatter above an idyllic, tropical landscape over which authorities have cast a security net more dense in terms of area and population than in Iraq.

The toll has risen to more than 3,400 dead and some 5,600 injured as the shadowy rebels pursue an ill-defined agenda that sometimes seems to call for an Islamic state separate from Buddhist-dominated Thailand, but is mostly a reaction to a history of discrimination.

Last month, in a surge-style operation, 4,000 more soldiers were added to a security force of 60,000 already in the three southern provinces.

But stalked by years of failed military efforts, the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva is considering less military-focused options including lifting martial law and emergency decrees in the restive provinces, and reviving councils that once allowed Muslims more say in local matters.

But Abhisit is hamstrung. His energies have been absorbed by the mass demonstrations in Bangkok that are unrelated to the insurgency, and his political future is far from assured. And to an extent, he owes his premiership to a military that doesn't want to cede such powers as holding of suspects for up to 30 days without trial.

"Even if Abhisit knows exactly what he ought to do in the south he hasn't got a lot of power over these (military) guys. To move to a political situation you need to reduce the military's dominance and demilitarize the problem to some degree. But he isn't strong enough to launch a civilian-political offensive," says Duncan McCargo, author of the recent book on the insurgency, "Tearing Apart the Land."

Critics of government policy say causes of the southern crisis are too deeply rooted to be destroyed militarily, stemming from a history of governments that distrust the Muslims and don't regard them as "real Thais."

"The way they deal with us, press down on our youth, just makes young men more anti-government. They become more violent and go into the jungle to fight," says Nomee Yapa, whose father, a village imam, died in military custody. A court ruled last December that he had been tortured to death.

The complaints, even from moderate Muslim leaders, range from search patrols barging into homes to officials sneering at them for speaking their dialect of Malay, rather than Thai.

"We can't be ourselves anymore. Anything we do is suspect — a meeting among four or five friends, or just games. They even come into Quran classes for children to take photographs," says Nomee. The schoolteacher says that virtually every young man in Ko To village has been taken into temporary custody for questioning.

The military has been under intense pressure to take whatever measures necessary to suppress the violence, which includes terror tactics like beheadings and attacks on temples widely seen as intended to drive Buddhists from the area. Queen Sirikit, wife of the constitutional monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej — who usually keeps clear of public remarks about matters of state — spoke out several times of the need for protection.

Now, the military says it is adopting less aggressive tactics.

"We are doing much more to reach the people, to get closer to them. We are trying to forge more bonds with the villagers. We use martial law power only when necessary to deal with the insurgents." said Maj. Gen. Saksin Klansnoh, the Pattani task force commander.

He estimated the insurgents numbered only 3,000-6,000 out of a population of 1.8 million, more than 70 percent of them Muslim, in the provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat. These border Malaysia and are about half the size of Israel or New Jersey.

Saksin said violent incidents in Pattani dropped by 40 percent from October 2008 to March 2009, and independent analysts agree that attacks subsided overall last year as the military rounded up suspects and arrested some bomb makers.

But Srisompob Jitpiromsri, who tracks the numbers at Pattani's Prince of Songkhla University, said violent incidents began to rise again this year with some 100 in March — the highest monthly figure since 2007.

Remotely detonated road side explosives, drive-by shootings and, more recently, car bombs target both Buddhist authorities and Muslims suspected of siding with the state, along with innocents of both sides. There were nine beheadings in February.

"This indicates that the military approach failed to win hearts and minds," the political scientist said. "The military can disrupt the insurgents, block their movements, but it cannot fully control the situation. The insurgents can pick and choose their targets at any time, any place."

Even a superb military — and Thailand's southern forces have been widely criticized for incompetence — would find the insurgency a formidable challenge.

Into its fifth year, the insurgency has yet to reveal either its leaders or concrete aims. It appears to operate in small, fluid cells which have little direct contact with leaders of several shadowy organizations, principally the BRN-C, or National Revolutionary Front-Coordinate. Out of either sympathy or fear, the local population rarely points out the rebels to authorities.

"Sometimes we know who the leaders are but we don't have the evidence to bring them in. We have the same problems as the Americans in Iraq — to identify the insurgents from among the majority of people who are good," said Saksin.

Although some of their leaflets are couched in the rhetoric of holy war, the insurgents don't launch suicide bombers, stage attacks outside the south or target foreigners. Their goals appear local and limited.

McCargo cautions against linking the insurgency to al-Qaida and global jihad. That could happen, he says, "but it hasn't happened until now."

Attempts at negotiations have been halfhearted at best. Some Muslims suggest foreign mediation. Others suggest a form of autonomy, noting the region was an independent sultanate until it became part of Thailand in 1902.

Srisompob sees a hope that young, upwardly mobile southerners will moderate the crisis, provided they are allowed to maintain their Islamic traditions.

Worawit Baru, a prominent Muslim senator from Pattani, says the government simply doesn't understand the region's problems.

"This part of Thailand is so very different from all the others," he says. "You cannot deny history, culture. You cannot ignore 100 years, but this they don't understand."

Read more!

Remembering a shadowed April

Kruy Nop, left, and Pang Thoerm pray during an April 17 vigil at Wat Vipassanaram in Long Beach. The annual observance commemorates the Killing Fields genocide. (Carlos Delgado/For the Press Telegram)

04/17/2009
By Greg Mellen Staff Writer
Long Beach Press Telegram (California, USA)

Download a copy of the poem by Nop on the Cambodian genocide

LONG BEACH - Many years ago, April was a happy month for Chantara Nop. Now it comes with shadows.
The Cambodian New Year in the middle of the month with its spring blossoms and spirit of renewal has forever become colored by the memories of April 17, 1975, for Nop and many other Cambodians.

That was the last day Nop saw his five brothers alive. That was the day darkness came to his home with the onset of the Killing Fields genocide, that would leave millions dead in less than four years under the brutal Khmer Rouge reign.

Nop, a small, thin, unimposing man, is one of the pre-eminent poets of his country. And every April 17, he pours out his soul and his tears onto the page as he remembers.

The small, frail survivor of the atrocities of 34 years ago recited one of his newest poems, titled simply "April 17, 2009," to a gathering of fellow Khmer Rouge victims and younger Cambodian-Americans on Friday night.

The event, in its fifth year, is an annual occurrence started by the Killing Fields Memorial Center to commemorate the dead, remember the past and teach the young about the darkness that enveloped Cambodia.

At Wat Vipassanaram, where Friday's event was held, monks prayed for the dead, with the venerable Kruy Nop, no relation to Chantara, reciting the requiem.

Kruy Nop, who recently returned to the temple, said the memorial prayers are important.

"This is a problem we all share," Kruy Nop said of survivors, including himself. "It's something we have to do because a lot of people died in this regime."

By praying and doing good deeds, Kruy Nop said the living can send good wishes to the lost souls of family members and other victims.

In addition to the prayers, there were testimonials by victims and a candlelight vigil.

While the memorial was held, the United Cambodian Community was staging its first commemorative day with a dinner, prayers and talks.

Sara Pol-Lim, executive director of UCC, also invited a number of members of the Jewish community to her event to highlight their shared histories with holocausts.

This week also marks Yom HaShoah, when Jews remember the Nazi holocaust.

Deborah Goldfarb, executive director of the Jewish Federation in Long Beach, said it is important for communities that have experienced genocide to have dialogue, "so we can learn from each other and heal together."

For Chantara Nop, who has written more than 4,000 poems and has been published and translated worldwide, the process of "throwing my feelings onto paper" as he calls it, is not without cost.

"Most of the time in April I'm sad," Chantara Nop says. "It used to be fun - the New Year, spring. Now it's really mixed."

In his newest poem, Nop writes about April 17 being written into his heart and the hearts of all Cambodians and about "the darkness, the devilish darkness" it brings.

In the poem he remembers how Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, killed people with any implement he could find. Nop remembers the screams of his people at dusk when the killings occurred, of mountains of bones and not being allowed to cry, of becoming a human ox who had to carry a cart around town and of an all-encompassing hunger.

The tale is all the more harrowing because it is true. Chantara Nop says it is vital that young people understand what their forbears endured and to never forget.

Rabbi John Borak of Amud Ha-Schachar looked to the future when he spoke at the UCC event.

"What matters most is what we do with our freedom," Borak said, adding that it is important not to live in the past or let it dictate a course. "Once we are free of tyranny, who do we become?"

greg.mellen@presstelegram.com, 562-499-1291

Read more!

April 17 Memorial for the victims of the KR regime in Choeung Ek

April 17 Memorial for the victims of the KR regime in Choeung Ek

Cambodian Buddhist monks sit at Choeung Ek memorial complex on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, April 17, 2009, during a ceremony marking the 34th anniversary of the start of the Khmer Rouge regime. Hundreds of Cambodians joined the ceremony, bringing foods for monks, to dedicate to those who died during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-1979 regime, Kampuchea Democratic. On Monday, April 20, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as 'Duch,' will go on trial for crimes against humanity. 'Duch' was a commander of the Toul Sleng prison under the Khmer Rouge where thousands were tortured and killed. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Cambodian Chan Kim Soung, 63, weeps as she talks about her history during the Khmer Rouge time at Choeung Ek memorial complex on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, April 17, 2009, in a ceremony marking the 34th anniversary of the start of the Khmer Rouge regime. Hundreds of Cambodians joined the ceremony, bringing foods for monks to dedicate to those who died during the Khmer Rouge 1975-1979 regime, Kampuchea Democratic. On Monday, April 20, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as 'Duch,' will go on trial for crimes against humanity. 'Duch' was a commander of the Toul Sleng prison under the Khmer Rouge where thousands were tortured and killed. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
A Cambodian woman prays Buddhist monks at Choeung Ek memorial complex on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, April 17, 2009, in a ceremony marking the 34th anniversary of the start of the Khmer Rouge regime. Hundreds of Cambodians joined the ceremony, bringing foods for monks, to dedicate to those who died during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-1979 regime, Kampuchea Democratic. On Monday, April 20, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as 'Duch,' will go on trial for crimes against humanity. 'Duch' was a commander of the Toul Sleng prison under the Khmer Rouge where thousands were tortured and killed. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
A Cambodian man and a boy walk in front of human skulls that are displayed in a stupa of Choeung Ek memorial on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, April 17, 2009. April 17 marks the 34th anniversary that the Khmer Rouge defeated the Cambodian government in 1975. On Monday, April 20, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as 'Duch,' will go on trial for crimes against humanity. 'Duch' was a commander of the Toul Sleng prison under the Khmer Rouge where thousands were tortured and killed. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
A Cambodian Buddhist nun, left, reads a sign for a grave at Choeung Ek memorial on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, April 17, 2009. April 17 marks the 34th anniversary that the Khmer Rouge defeated the Cambodian government in 1975. On Monday, April 20, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as 'Duch,' will go on trial for crimes against humanity. 'Duch' was a commander of the Toul Sleng prison under the Khmer Rouge where thousands were tortured and killed. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Cambodian Buddhist nuns contribute their donations in front of the human skulls that are displayed in a stupa of Choeung Ek memorial on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, April 17, 2009. April 17 marks the 34th anniversary that the Khmer Rouge defeated the Cambodian government in 1975. On Monday, April 20, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as 'Duch,' will go on trial for crimes against humanity. 'Duch' was a commander of the Toul Sleng prison under the Khmer Rouge where thousands were tortured and killed. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Cambodian Buddhist monks walk through the former Khmer Rouge victim graves with a stupa in the background, are loaded hundreds of the human skulls of Choeung Ek memorial in outskirt of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, April 17, 2009. On Monday, April 20, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as 'Duch' will go on trial for crimes against humanity. 'Duch' was commander of the Toul Sleng prison under the Khmer Rouge where thousands were tortured and killed. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Read more!

[O]peratives had for the past two years funneled arms through Cambodia to Thaksin-aligned supporters...": Report

[O]peratives had for the past two years funneled arms through Cambodia to Thaksin-aligned supporters...": Report

A Thai soldier inspects the damaged vehicle of Sondhi Limthongkul, founder of the People's Alliance of Democracy (PAD), in Bangkok. The Thai activist, who led a blockade of the kingdom's main airports last year, was shot and wounded in the head Friday morning in an assassination attempt the government said was aimed at inciting fresh unrest. (Pairoj / AFP/Getty Images)

Thailand extends state of emergency

After Bangkok street violence that claimed two lives and injured up to 100, the Thai prime minister also calls for a probe of the attempted assassination of a protest leader.

April 18, 2009
By Charles McDermid and Jakkapun Kaewsangthong
Los Angeles Times (California, USA)

Reporting from Bangkok -- The prime minister of Thailand extended a state of emergency Friday and pledged to launch an investigation into the assassination attempt on a prominent protest leader that occurred here earlier in the day.

The early-morning ambush of media mogul Sondhi Limthongkul, founder of the movement that toppled the previous government, could dash hopes that Thailand will return to normal soon in the wake of violent street battles Monday that left at least two dead and as many as 100 wounded.

"We will continue applying the state of emergency, but for as short a period as possible, in order to restore peace and normalcy in Bangkok and its vicinities," Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said in a televised address.

Gunmen in a pickup truck without a license plate opened fire on Sondhi's vehicle with automatic weapons about 5 a.m. as he was heading to work to host a television program. Jinttana Damrong, 56, a food vendor, was setting up her stall when the brazen attack took place.

"I went out to prepare food as usual. Suddenly, I heard the sound of a car speed up and then they started shooting. It was like an action movie -- they kept shooting nonstop. I told my son to hide, then I ran to hide."

Maj. Gen. King Kwangvisetchaichai said the assailants first aimed to shoot out the car's tires before riddling it with as many as 100 bullets. Sondhi, who founded the protest movement known as the People's Alliance for Democracy, or PAD, was shot in the shoulder and had a bullet surgically removed from his skull, according to reports.

Sondhi's secretary and driver were also injured. Sondhi has been moved from Vajira Hospital to an undisclosed facility under police protection.

Police say they recovered 84 bullet casings from AK-47 and M-16 assault rifles. A dud M-79 shell was also found, according to local media.

"I have already ordered authorities to check how it is that war weapons emerged and were used in the capital," Abhisit said in his address.

Battlefield weapons were seen across downtown Bangkok on Monday as government troops dislodged red-shirted anti-government forces from sites they occupied around the capital, including their last redoubt at Government House, the office of the prime minister.

The street battles capped a week of violent protests in which the "red shirts" -- supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra -- stormed a key regional summit, forcing its cancellation and the airlift evacuation of several Southeast Asian leaders. About 3,000 remaining protesters surrendered to the government Tuesday morning even as some of the movement's chiefs vowed to intensify their struggle from underground.

Thaksin-aligned lawmaker Worawut Ua-apinyakul was quoted in the local press Thursday as saying that the protesters would unleash a "covert struggle."

Sondhi's PAD movement has been instrumental in toppling two Thaksin-aligned governments, most recently in late 2008 when his "yellow shirts" overran Bangkok's two international airports. One of the demands of the red shirts, in addition to the resignation of Abhisit, has been the prosecution of the ringleaders of the airport seizures. Sondhi and Thaksin are former business partners and, according to reports, onetime friends.

Thaksin, a billionaire telecom tycoon who is in hiding after being sentenced to jail on corruption charges, has given a spate of interviews in international media in recent days. He has called for a "people's revolution" to overthrow the Abhisit government and has also promised to return to Thailand.

According to a report Tuesday by analyst Shawn Crispin, "operatives had for the past two years funneled arms through Cambodia to Thaksin-aligned supporters in the country's northeastern provinces, where his grass-roots support runs strongest."

PAD has thus far remained silent in the escalating political crisis.

"As far as I know, at this time we won't move yet. The leaders have said we will move when it is the right time," said Pattama Deemee, a 48-year-old Bangkok business owner and PAD supporter. "In my opinion this is the beginning of underground activity meant to make us feel unsafe. This is a hard game for Abhisit and the Thai people. We will never know what will happen next."

McDermid and Kaewsangthong are special correspondents

Read more!

Cambodia's New War

Apr 17, 2009
By Katrin Redfern
The Daily Beast

The Nobel-nominated opposition leader of Southeast Asia’s saddest, bloodiest country has brought a message for Hillary Clinton: Our democracy needs your help.

Cambodia is at war again. This time, the battles surround who will control resources—land, timber, fisheries, oil—with a corrupt elite taking over the nation’s emerging export economy, while international donors turn a blind eye and 14 million Cambodians suffer.

“Cambodia is a democracy on paper but in reality a dictatorship. Our party activists are murdered because they fight for justice—life is still cheap in Cambodia.”

A new American president, many Cambodians hope, might change all that. Sochua Mu, an opposition leader and founder of the women's movement in Cambodia, recently returned to the U.S., lobbying Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to take a firmer line on democracy and human rights in her long-suffering country. “I needed to see the people in the new administration to urge them to re-assess U.S. foreign policy,” says Sochua in an interview with The Daily Beast. “Cambodia is a democracy on paper but in reality a dictatorship. Our party activists are murdered because they fight for justice—life is still cheap in Cambodia. Human trafficking, drug trafficking, land grabbing, and forced evictions are all carried out under the nose of the government.”

Sochua Mu’s story is uniquely Cambodian. Forced to flee for her life at 18 in the early 1970s as the Vietnam War spilled over the border, she left behind her parents, who vanished, as did one-quarter of the country’s population during the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror. Sochua wound up in America, won a scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley, and worked as a counselor and translator for the Cambodian refugees who began to trickle over. She eventually became a U.S. citizen.

During the 1980s, she returned to Southeast Asia, organizing schooling for children and social services for women in the refugee camps set up by the U.N. on the border between Thailand and Cambodia. In 1989, she was finally allowed to re-enter her homeland, “a country in ruins.” “I would take my young children on walks in streets where I learned to bike, where I wandered with my childhood friends, where I went to school, all the years of joy, of happiness, of deep feelings of comfort came back to me,” she says. “I came back to help rebuild a nation. The war and genocide also changed my people. They have lost their sense of trust for each other, they have become hard inside and desperate for just daily survival.”

Sochua started the first women’s organization in Cambodia, Khemera, designed to help poor urban women earn a better living. She campaigned to include women’s rights and concerns into the country’s new constitution, drafted in 1993, and became involved in efforts to rescue girls caught in Cambodia’s thriving sex trade. In 1998, Sochua ran for election and won a seat in parliament, taking over the women’s affairs ministry, which had previously been run by men. In a country that considers women inferior, Sochua mobilized 25,000 female candidates to run for commune elections in 2002. It was a first for Cambodia, and 900 of them were elected.

She negotiated an agreement with Thailand that allowed Cambodian women trafficked as sex workers to return to their home country instead of being jailed. She pioneered the use of TV commercials to spread the word about trafficking to vulnerable populations. Her work in Cambodia also supports campaigns to end domestic violence and the spread of HIV/AIDS, as well as women’s workplace conditions. In 2005, she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for her work against sex trafficking of women.

Her position in high government put her in direct conflict with Cambodia’s long-ruling prime minister, Hun Sen. Rather than participate in the corruption she saw around her, Sochua Mu renounced the leadership and joined the primary opposition party in parliament. Last week, Sochua announced that she is considering legal action against the prime minister for allegedly using derogatory and threatening language against her in a speech he made last month during a visit to her parliamentary district. The speech, widely reported on Cambodian TV and other media, warned villagers not to seek help from members of the opposition party, but to approach the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, and allegedly referred to Sochua using a Khmer term cheung kland—a gangster or unruly person, which has an especially insulting connation for women.

Her most frequent public disagreement with Hun Sen surrounds what she sees as a failure to prevent people in her district from suffering loss of property and livelihoods at the hands of powerful investors, often with the backing of local authorities and the military. Most Cambodians still depend on small-scale agriculture, forest exploitation, and fishing for their livelihoods but, because of the country’s turbulent recent history, land ownership is generally undocumented and often contested. As a result, it is easy for the powerful to acquire land to develop. More than 150,000 Cambodians, according to Sochua, were victims of forced evictions and land-grabbing in 2007 alone. Studies have estimated that such concessions cover as much as one-third of the entire area of Cambodia.

“It is now common practice for powerful corporations and government officials to utilize armed forces to push citizens off their rightfully and legally held land,” says Sochua. “These evictions are often violent, with soldiers wielding guns, tear gas and Tasers and burning houses to the ground, while citizens are beaten, maimed and arrested.”

Cambodia's economy relies on three principal sources of income: tourism, agriculture, and textiles. The United States is the largest overseas market for the latter. As former U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia Joseph Mussomeli put it, "Levi Strauss or the Gap could destroy this country on a whim."

George W. Bush's policy, as Sochua saw it, focused on military and security-centered aid. According to the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. provided Cambodia $54 million last year and $700 million total since the agency opened an office in the country in 1992. Other international donors, meanwhile, have done little better in holding the Cambodian government accountable on human rights, preferring “closed-door diplomacy,” as she calls it, to public criticism. “This practice has yielded next to no reforms,” she says, “and donors continue to be satisfied with token actions taken by the government to give a façade to democracy and social justice.”

Even that oversight is at risk. Chevron discovered oil offshore several years ago, and the Cambodian government says it hopes to begin pumping oil in 2011. The IMF estimated last year that the country could earn as much as $1.7 billion from oil within 10 years of the date that pumping begins—a big deal for this poor country, which relies on donors for half of its annual budget, but also more money that won’t carry any accountability.

Some aid agencies have called for a moratorium on aid until basic governance and transparency frameworks are in place. Sochua says that won’t happen until there’s a new regime. “That can only happen when we have a real election that is free and fair,” she says. “The West should insist on that, otherwise all the aid they have poured into Cambodia will not work”.

Katrin Redfern is a writer and editor at The Indypendent in New York City.

Read more!

Donations flow in for Cambodian orphans

17/04/2009
Wellington Times (Australia)

Fifteen Cambodian orphans will have a chance at a better life, thanks to generous donations by members of the community.

Former St Mary’s primary and Wellington High School student, Clare Holman, 21, recently challenged the community to sponsor one of the 49 orphans at the Chres Village Orphanage in Siem Reap, Cambodia, where she volunteered for two months.

After an article in the Times, The Daily Liberal and an interview on ABC radio, many people have decided to sponsor the orphans and a number of others have opted to donate money towards buying items for the children.

“I just deposited the money from donations today and that will buy the children mosquito nets, shoes, food and toiletries,” Miss Holman said.

The sponsorship program has been set up by Miss Holman, where sponsors donate $30 a month and one hundred per cent of all money goes directly to the child to feed them.

The non-government funded orphanage, which also operates as a free English school for 400 local village children, survives off donations and the work and goodwill of volunteers.

“Once again thankyou so much, I really appreciate it and so do the orphans,” Miss Holman said.

Anyone interested in sponsoring a child can do so by contacting Clare on 0413 303 569 or via email at clarehol_87@yahoo.com.au

Read more!