By May Titthara & Sebastian Strangio

Published in the Phnom Penh Post, July 27, 2010

KAMPONG THOM PROVINCE–IN the cafes of Stoung district, yesterday’s verdict in the case of Kaing Guek Eev, alias Duch, proved a hard sell. At one cavernous establishment on National Road 6, a broadcast of the proceedings vied for attention with a cheaply made Chinese action film. As soon as the music swelled and the credits began to roll, the mostly young crowd thinned, leaving a handful of elderly patrons to watch the Khmer Rouge tribunal on a second small screen in the back. And by the time the wiry Tuol Sleng commandant stood to attention and the verdict was read out, the room was empty save for two waitresses, who ferried away empty plates and glasses.

Interest was greater, though, in nearby Chaoyot village, especially among those who knew the prison chief when he was a schoolboy. Although most village elders did not watch the verdict – choosing instead to attend ceremonies marking Buddhist lent at Svay Romeat pagoda, where Duch studied as a child – the outcome provoked spirited discussion. Among one group of old women, dressed in flowing black gowns and white blouses, reactions to the verdict ranged from cold anger to forgiveness to pity for the convicted jailer.

Hi Hor, 72, who has lived in Duch’s village since she was born, said she was livid at the length of the sentence, which she said did not match the crimes he committed. “I will kill him and eat his meat if I meet him,” she said as she sat on a woven mat in the pagoda’s flag-draped dining hall. “The court should have sentenced him to his whole life in prison.”

At Kdey Doeum pagoda, located close to Chaoyot, village elders also gathered to mark the three-month lenten period, sitting on the floor of a half-constructed dining hall on the temple grounds. Pich Doeun, a 73-year-old layman, described his own experience under Democratic Kampuchea, when he was sent to a remote part of Stoung district to toil in communal rice paddies and construct irrigation dams. When asked if the verdict against Duch was fair, Pich Doeun expressed ambivalence. On one hand, 30 years was a just sentence, he said, but part of him wanted to see Duch executed and cremated, his bones placed in a stupa and never again removed. “I survived until today because of fate,” he said. “From my point of view, the court should kill him and bring his bones back and lock them up.”

Others, however, were able to separate their anger with the Khmer Rouge from their positive memories of the young Duch. “Even though I was tortured and did not get enough food to eat during that time, I pardon him. Everything passed over 30 years ago,” said 71-year-old Chhum Oeun, sitting at Svay Romeat pagoda.

Despite the evidence presented against him at trial, she said she would always remember Duch as “good and intelligent”, not the cruel ideologue convicted of overseeing the deaths of as many as 16,000 people at Tuol Sleng. Some of Duch’s relatives, too, said they did not view Duch as a monster, and condemned the court for a sentence they said was too strict. “I really pity my nephew,” said one 71-year-old who claimed to be Duch’s aunt, and who gave her name only as Tob. “The court should have charged him for a shorter time because he is too old, and let him live together with his family in his old age. “I don’t know what happened to him to make him become a Khmer Rouge during that time because his parents were good people,” she added.

A few hundred metres down the muddy village road, Brak Chlam, 67, one of Duch’s cousins, said he hoped to see the prison chief again. “I don’t care about the court charging him. What I care about is his life – I want to see him survive,” he said. Brak Chlam said he planned to visit Duch in prison if he could find the money. “I always see his face on TV. I want to see his real face,” he said. “I was so happy when I got news that he survived, because I wanted him to survive. I don’t know what he did in Phnom Penh. I only know that he was a good and intelligent boy.”

While the verdict divided opinion among those old enough to have detailed memories of the regime, younger observers seemed more or less indifferent to the verdict handed down yesterday. At another roadside cafe, the patrons were focused instead on playing chequers and watching kickboxing. Meas Rith, 41, who sat among a group of men watching the fight, said he had not been following the tribunal closely, but that he did not think it fair that Duch could potentially die in prison.

“The court should have sentenced him to about 10 years to give him some chance to spend time in the pagoda in his old age,” he said, before turning his attention back to the television. A cry went up as the two combatants pummelled each other onscreen.

“The people in the rural areas are not as interested about what has happened in the past as people in the city,” said Chai Lign, the owner of the café. The sinewy 29-year-old said he had heard of Duch but knew little of life under the Khmer Rouge, and that many his age were the same way. “They don’t want to know about the pain,” he said. “Some people don’t even know Duch’s face, what he looks like.”

By Sebastian Strangio & May Titthara

Published in the Phnom Penh Post, July 26, 2010

KAMPONG THOM PROVINCE–THESE days, life in Chaoyot village, a collection of stilt houses nestled along the banks of the Stoung river, proceeds in much the same way it did 68 years ago, when Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, was born to parents of Khmer-Chinese extraction. It was here, in a small concrete home shaded by bamboo groves and mango trees, that Duch spent his childhood years, cycling each day the short distance to the local primary school.

The rustling palms and rutted village track are worlds away from Tuol Sleng, or S-21, the secret Khmer Rouge facility that Duch moulded into an efficient machine of interrogation, torture and death. As head of the prison, Duch is thought to have overseen the torture and killing of as many as 16,000 people, creating a nihilistic whirlwind from which only 14 or so emerged alive.

Kong Suon, 85, the oldest resident of Chaoyot village, was enraged when Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, asked to be set free. (Photo: Sebastian Strangio)

As the Khmer Rouge tribunal prepares to deliver its verdict against the 68-year old today – perhaps the only one it will ever issue – the proceedings have not gone unnoticed in Chaoyot. But the desire to see justice served means different things to different residents; whereas some are unsure how to relate Duch’s crimes to the abuses they personally endured during the regime, others seem to feel their effects acutely.

More than six decades since his birth, Duch has left only a faint trace in Chaoyot. His neat family home, currently occupied by his nephew Kim Luon, still stands, surrounded by a well-tended yard that abuts the road. Dy Thy, 63, one of Duch’s old neighbours, said she heard nothing from him during the 1975-1979 rule of the Khmer Rouge, and that she found it hard to square the quiet young student she remembers with the horrors of Tuol Sleng.

“I supposed that the Khmer Rouge were people from abroad,” she said. “I didn’t know they were Cambodian people – especially not a person born in this village.”

An exceptional student

Duch lived in Chaoyot until about the age of 14. Residents recall that from his earliest years, the boy who went by the nickname “Kiev” stood out as an exceptional student. Sem Thuon, now 69, regularly shared a table with Duch at Wat Svay Romeat primary school between the first and third grades. “I always copied from him during the exams, and he allowed me to copy,” she said. “I never thought that he would become a strong Khmer Rouge leader.”

In many ways, however, Duch’s intellectual journey epitomised that of the Cambodian communist movement. Like other regime leaders, he was a beneficiary of the sweeping educational reforms Prince Norodom Sihanouk introduced in the late 1950s. Intended to modernise the country and expand opportunities in the countryside, the reforms instead created a class of educated but underemployed young men and women who helped pry apart the country’s centuries-old system of patronage. As the 1960s wore on, Sihanouk – the God-King himself – came under stronger attack from the growing ranks of the left.

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Is a war crimes tribunal being used to settle political scores? If so, it may unleash social chaos, reports Sebastian Strangio.

Published in The Diplomat, July 22, 2010

DHAKA – BANGLADESH’S Liberation War Museum sits on a quiet street in central Dhaka, shaded by trees and fronted by an austere barbed wire fence. The small building commemorates the country’s 1971 liberation struggle, a fierce war of independence from Pakistan that cost an estimated 3 million lives. An eternal flame in the museum’s courtyard marks it out as a site of martyrdom—a reminder of the bloody star under which the country was born. Almost fittingly, dozens of small Bangladeshi flags are intertwined on the rusting barbs of the museum’s front fence.

Last week, Bangladesh’s government arrested two leading politicians from the country’s main Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, on charges of committing mass murder during the liberation struggle. The arrests, which followed the detention of the party’s president, Motiur Rahman Nizami, and other top Jamaat officials in late June, mark the first stage of a tribunal established in March to address war crimes committed during the 1971 conflict.

A nationalist mural in Motijheel, the commercial heart of Dhaka. (Photo: Sebastian Strangio)

But even though the tribunal has no scheduled start date, it has already whipped up controversy in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. The government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, which was elected in a landslide in 2008 in part on promises of a trial, says it has evidence proving the involvement of senior Jamaat members in the 1971 atrocities. Critics, however, say the tribunal is being used to settle domestic political disputes and runs the risk of unleashing social chaos and compromising Dhaka’s relationship with Muslim allies in the Middle East.

The tribunal comes after nearly four decades of inaction in Bangladesh. The 1971 conflagration, which erupted when Pakistan attempted to prevent the secession of its eastern wing, included the systematic execution of leading Bengali intellectuals and the rape of by some estimates 200,000 women. Although the process of putting collaborators on trial began after the defeat of the Pakistani army on December 16, 1971, the tribunal process was derailed after the assassination of independence icon Sheik Mujibur Rahman in August 1975. Ahmed Ziauddin, an advisor to Bangladeshi rights group Odhikar, says that for the following three decades, a succession of military administrations has swept aside all attempts at justice, fearing it could implicate many within their own ranks.

‘The current process is, if you like, unfinished business that started in 1972,’ he says.

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As Cambodia and the United States celebrate six decades of diplomatic ties, the Post looks back at a  relationship that has moved from alliance to alienation and back

By Sebastian Strangio & Neth Pheaktra

Published in the Phnom Penh Post, July 16, 2010

Prince Norodom Sihanouk and his wife Monique fete Jacqueline Kennedy at Chamkarmon Palace during her visit to Cambodia in November 1967. (Photo: Private collection of Ambassador Julio A. Jeldres)

WHEN the United States and Cambodia celebrate six decades of diplomatic ties next week, they will look back on a relationship that has seen its fair share of ups and downs. Launched at the beginning of the cold war in 1950, the relationship has been fraught with ideological passions, experiencing periods of intimacy, violent disagreement and chilly silence.

It remains young: Less than two decades have passed since diplomatic ties were re-established at the end of the cold war, and barely 10 years since the end of the ensuing civil war. For 20 years out of 60, there was little or no relationship at all. Observers and officials from both countries, however, say the current bond – which they describe as built on solid foundations and enduring mutual interests – anticipates a long-term US presence in Cambodia.

Koy Kuong, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said this week that since the re-establishment of relations in November 1991, the two countries had rebuilt strong political, commercial and military ties. “Our diplomatic relations are developing, and we hope that after the 60th anniversary, Cambodia-USA relations will progress again,” he said.

The administration of US President Barack Obama has identified Southeast Asia as a focal point of a foreign policy that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a speech last year, described as “neither impulsive nor ideological”. Instead, that policy was geared towards creating “dynamic and productive partnerships that can address both the challenge and the promise of this new century”.

US Ambassador Carol Rodley said last week that since 1950, Phnom Penh and Washington have oscillated between close cooperation and periods in which they “were seriously at odds” with each other. “For some significant amount of time”, she said, “we looked past each other or we saw each other through lenses that confused rather than clarified the picture for both sides.”

Rodley, who first served in Cambodia as US deputy head of mission between 1997 and 2000, said that “dramatic” changes during her first posting, including the end of the decade-long civil war and Cambodia’s entry into ASEAN, had fostered a more lasting relationship. “We’ve come to a more mature relationship and a more mature understanding of each other, which I think is a good thing,” she said.

Past troubles

At the time Ambassador Donald Heath, a career foreign serviceman, presented his credentials to then-King Norodom Sihanouk on July 11, 1950, US policymakers saw Cambodia as both a potential ally and a potential threat. A bastion of Western influence, the country – like the remaining French territories in Indochina – was also seen as a domino teetering on the edge of a red abyss. Sihanouk, who skillfully courted all sides of the growing Indochina conflagration from 1955 until his overthrow 15 years later, was perhaps the prime embodiment of this relationship. In the mid-1960s, he broke off and then restored diplomatic relations with the US as part of his delicate dance between the cold war superpowers.

On March 18, 1970, it became clear, however, that Sihanouk had overplayed his hand. Amid increasing anger over what many viewed as the prince’s tacit approval of Vietcong encroachments into Cambodian territory, he was overthrown by a US-supported general and close adviser, Lon Nol, in a right-wing coup d’etat. For the next five years US-Cambodia relations during the Cold War era reached their high-water mark.

This period of cooperation was premised on a relationship of patronage with the US government, which provided military, economic and political support to the government. But this relationship also came at a steep price. As it poured military and economic aid into the country in a bid to stave off a communist victory, the US also executed a bombing campaign that some historians say aided the Khmer Rouge in their rise from a ragtag jungle insurgency to the country’s iron-fisted rulers.

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By Sebastian Strangio

Published in Asia Times Online, July 7, 2010

Chhun Yasith, pictured at the CFF’s Long Beach headquarters in 2001. (Photo: Jeff Gritchen/Long Beach Press-Telegram)

PHNOM PENH – EARLY on November 24, 2000, about 70 gunmen slipped into the center of Cambodia’s capital city. After drinking and singing traditional songs at a karaoke bar, one unit of men moved towards a series of government buildings armed with AK-47 rifles, grenades and B-40 rocket launchers. After seizing control of the city’s railway station, they sprayed bullets at the Ministry of Defense and Council of Ministers and lobbed a grenade as a nearby gas station. The Cambodian military engaged the attackers in a firefight, scarring many nearby buildings with bullet holes. They quelled the ragtag militia, leaving eight dead and around 14 wounded, after an hour of fighting.

In the wake of the attack, an obscure group calling itself the Cambodian Freedom Fighters (CFF) took credit for the violence. The group’s ethnic Khmer leader, Chhun Yasith, a Long Beach, California-based accountant, at the time made no attempt to hide his intent to overthrow the government of Hun Sen, Cambodia’s long-serving prime minister. Despite the failure of the “coup” attempt, Yasith boasted that he would continue working to topple the “tyrannical” regime by force. “Next time,” he told a journalist in 2004, “we will attack the whole country.”

The 53-year-old Yasith’s threat came to an abrupt legal end last month, when a US district court judge sentenced him to life in prison for his role in the attempted coup. In a hearing at the court on June 22, prosecutors said the CFF was ordered to carry out “popcorn” attacks on soft targets such as karaoke bars and nightclubs before launching the all-out assault to overthrow the government on November 24. The CFF leader was charged with violating the US Neutrality Act, a 200-year-old law banning military operations against nations with which the US is at peace.

A tearful Yasith told the court he felt he had to do something for his native country and that he formed a rebel militia to avenge the murder of his father by the communist Khmer Rouge. “I’ve been punished because I failed, that I’m not good enough to overthrow that government,” the Los Angeles Times quoted him as saying. Chhun Yasith’s attorney, Richard Callahan Jr, said he would appeal the sentence.

Cambodian officials welcomed the sentence, describing the November 2000 coup attempt as a “clear terrorist act”. “We applaud the decision taken by the US government to prosecute Chhun Yasith,” Foreign Minister Hor Namhong told reporters after signing an agreement with Japan for the construction of a new bridge across the Mekong River. “We welcome the elimination of terrorism and not just terrorism in Cambodia and the US, but in all regions where it threatens people’s security.”

The decision comes at a time of warming US-Cambodian relations after years of open antagonism and follows on a similar court action against another California-based group that threatened to overthrow by arms Laos’ communist regime. President Barack Obama has initiated policies to counter-balance China’s rising commercial influence in the region, including last year’s reclassification of Cambodia and Laos as no longer Marxist-Leninist states that opened the legal way for US Ex-Im Bank loans and financing. Later this year, the US is scheduled to hold its first joint military exercises with Cambodia, in an operation to be known as Angkor Sentinel. Earlier, the two sides enhanced security-related cooperation after high-profile terror suspects were found to have traveled freely in Cambodia.

Accountant cum rebel

Some have long questioned whether the CFF had the capacity to carry out the attack on its own. Opposition leader Sam Rainsy, the president of the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP), charged that Hun Sen orchestrated the “coup” as a pretext to crack down on government critics. He told the Phnom Penh Post in December 2000 that the reaction to the coup had “killed many birds with one stone”. About 200 people were detained in the 12 days following the attacks, many without warrants as required by Cambodian law, US rights lobby Human Rights Watch reported in December. Yasith was tried in absentia in Phnom Penh in June 2001 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Richard Kiri Kim, a fellow US citizen who directed the CFF forces in Phnom Penh, was captured following the attack and remains in prison on a life term.

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By Sebastian Strangio

Published in the Phnom Penh Post, July 7, 2010

RCAF Soldier Noun Sarun, 21, rests at the top of the stairs to Preah Vihear temple on July 6. (Photo: Heng Chivoan)

THOUSANDS are expected to turn out for a celebration at Preah Vihear temple today marking the two-year anniversary of its listing as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The July 2008 listing of the 11th-century Angkorian temple, the ownership of which has long been a point of contention between Cambodia and Thailand, sent bilateral relations into a tailspin from which they have barely recovered.

In Thailand, Foreign Minister Nappadon Pattama was forced to resign after the Thai constitutional court ruled he had acted illegally in supporting Cambodia’s bid. The ensuing spat – kept constantly tense by a series of small-scale border clashes – hit a new low in November last year, when Cambodia announced it had appointed Thailand’s former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra as a government adviser. Thailand immediately withdrew its ambassador in protest, prompting Cambodia to return the favour.

Relations have remained at a stalemate so far this year. Foreign Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong said yesterday that any decision to improve diplomatic relations would have to come from Thailand. “It is up to the Thai side. If the Thais want to upgrade [the relationship], they have to declare first that they are sending back their ambassador,” he said. He pledged that if Thailand were to dispatch its envoy, Cambodia would reciprocate within 15 minutes “at most”.

Cambodia’s handover on Monday of two Red Shirt activists suspected of involvement in an attempted bombing in Bangkok has prompted some observers to speculate that ties might be on the mend. On Monday, Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva thanked Cambodia for the handover, and said he hoped the move would pave the way for closer collaboration between the two governments.

Springtime for Abhisit

Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a fellow at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, said the deportation was the most recent demonstration of a thaw in relations that began at a Mekong River Commission summit in April. The change had been marked, he said, by a moderation in Prime Minister Hun Sen’s provocative stance towards the Abhisit government, as well as a recognition that Abhisit had consolidated his position since antigovernment Red Shirt protests were violently dispersed in May.

“It doesn’t seem that the Bangkok elite in the Democratic Party will give up power easily,” Pavin said. “Hun Sen must have realised that it’s no good for his long-term interests if he does not change his stance on the current government.”

According to one line of thinking, Bangkok took Hun Sen’s pro-Thaksin stance a little too seriously: their political relationship, which led relations to a new low last year, was purely pragmatic – and therefore subject to change. “It was partly a domestic political game, and partly just a way of having fun at Thailand’s expense,” said Duncan McCargo, a Southeast Asia expert based at the University of Leeds. “The history of relations between Thaksin and the CPP elite suggests that this is a very pragmatic relationship, rather than the robust and threatening alliance imagined by the Democrat Party.”

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By Cheang Sokha & Sebastian Strangio

Published in the Phnom Penh Post, July 6, 2010

CAMBODIA has deported two anti-government Red Shirt activists to Thailand, where they are accused of involvement in an attempted bomb attack in Bangkok last month. Kobchai Boonplod and Varisareeya Boonsom, both 42, were handed over to Thai officials at Phnom Penh International Airport yesterday, a move Long Visalo, secretary of state at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said symbolised Cambodia’s commitment to fighting “terrorist” acts.

“In the spirit of combating terrorism everywhere, we arrested the two people because they committed terrorist acts in your country and are handing them over to you now,” he told Suwat Kaewsook, charge d’affairs at the Thai embassy in Phnom Penh. “Our principle is to oppose terrorism, even if there is no request from your embassy.” Suwat said Thailand welcomed the government’s deportation of the two suspects. “On behalf of the Royal Thai Embassy, we would like to express appreciation on your cooperation about this matter,” he said.

Red Shirt activist Varisareeya Boonsom, 42, tearfully awaits her deportation to Thailand at Phnom Penh International Airport on July 5. (Photo: Heng Chivoan)

The suspects were arrested on Saturday in Siem Reap province in connection with the attempted bombing of the Bangkok headquarters of the Bhumjaithai party, part of the Thai government coalition, on June 22. The attack, which apparently failed after a makeshift bomb detonated prematurely, followed two months of Red Shirt protests in Bangkok that sparked outbreaks of violence and left 90 people dead and about 1,900 injured. Long Visalo said the two had confessed to Cambodian police that they were involved in the bombing. “They accepted that they made the bombs in Thailand,” he said.

As he was escorted by police to the plane, however, Kobchai denied allegations that the pair was involved in the plot, and pledged to fight the charges. “We are Red Shirts, and if we are sent back to Thailand the government will kill us,” he told the Post. “We will get a lawyer and fight the government. We didn’t do anything, but the government has killed a lot of people.” A tearful Varisareeya said that sending her back to Thailand meant she was “going to die”.

Cambodia’s cooperation with Thailand could mark a thawing of relations between the two countries, which each withdrew their ambassadors after Phnom Penh appointed fugitive former Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra as an economic adviser in October and then refused to extradite him. Following yesterday’s deportation, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva announced that he was grateful to Cambodia for returning the two suspects. He also pledged to “seek further cooperation” with Phnom Penh. On Sunday, Chheang Vannarith, executive director of the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, predicted “positive developments in the bilateral relationship” as a result of the extradition.

But Cambodian Foreign Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong said the handover stemmed purely from the Kingdom’s counterterrorism policy. “We don’t take into consideration the improvement of diplomatic ties between Cambodia and Thailand,” he said. “If Thailand wants to improve Cambodian-Thai relations, it is up to the Thai side to make the decision. Cambodia will follow.”

Michael Montesano, a visiting fellow at Singapore’s Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, said Phnom Penh’s decision to give up the suspects was a textbook example of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s “shrewd” handling of Vejjajiva’s government. “Should the Thais be interested in better relations with Cambodia, Hun Sen will have opened the door,” he said. “Should Bangkok again take an anti-Phnom Penh line, Cambodia will be able to say that it had made an important gesture of friendship to Thailand, only to find itself spurned.”

Thai government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn was unavailable for comment yesterday.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY AFP

Community fishing patrols in the waters around Koh Rung Sangleum island have taken a bite out of a once-rampant trade in coral and other resources

By Sebastian Strangio & May Titthara

Published in the Phnom Penh Post, June 22, 2010

Two illegal fishing boats are towed ashore by a community fishing patrol off Koh Rung Sangleum in October last year. (Photo: MCC)

PREAH SIHANOUK PROVINCE—THE shallow aquamarine waters around Koh Rung Sangleum island, lined with coral reefs and rich with marine life, have long provided the island’s few residents with resources and livelihoods. At the small wooden dock at the island’s Village 23, fishermen bring in fresh catches of squid, the surface of the creatures still alive with electric pulses of colour. Outside beachside homes in the village, a small cove ringed with coconut palms, residents set racks of squid out to dry, where they wither in the sun like rows of miniature deployed parachutes.

Despite the appearance of abundance, fishermen on this horseshoe-shaped island, 25 kilometres off the country’s south coast, are only just recovering from a wave of illegal poaching that, with the blessing of unknown local authorities, wreaked havoc on marine ecosystems and the age-old rhythm of life on the island. But community fishing patrols – established last year by the provincial government – have allowed locals to fight back against illegal poachers and reclaim some of the marine area.

Lawless region

Residents of Koh Rung Sangleum say laws have always been weakly enforced. Following the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979, the island existed in near complete isolation from the mainland, with only sporadic contacts with authorities. In around 2002, locals say, fishermen from Vietnam and Thailand arrived in the area and quickly came to dominate the local fishing trade with their use of more modern – and often illegal – fishing methods. “Before we had the fishing community [area], the illegal fishermen came to fish here anarchically,” said Lay Thai, the chief of Village 23. “They also used modern materials, destroying fish, seahorses, coral reefs and squid.”

The renegade operators plied the loosely policed waters around Koh Rung Sangleum and nearby Koh Rong at will, plundering the local reefs. At one point, fishing boats from neighbouring Vietnam became so commonplace that villagers began to refer to a small cove near the island as chhak yuon (Vietnamese Bay). The effect on local livelihoods, villagers say, was devastating. “Before, in one day we could catch about 30 to 50 kilogrammes [of fish], but now we can only catch around one, so this has caused a lot of fishermen, around 80 percent, to start working as construction labourers to support their living,” said Van Da, a 49-year-old fisherman from Village 23.

Paul Ferber, the founder of Marine Conservation Cambodia (MCC), which operates conservation projects on Koh Rung Sangleum, said the poachers – photographed and monitored by the patrols – displayed recklessness and daring in their search for underwater riches. They dived from small boats with the aid of home-made weight belts and a simple hose to supply air, he said, capturing sea horses, abalone and other marine resources from the seabed. A highly prized item was whip coral – a thin coral species worth hundreds of dollars per bundle – which fishermen removed with hacksaws.

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Int’l, national sides disagree on timing of future investigations

By Sebastian Strangio

Published in the Phnom Penh Post, June 10, 2010

THE Khmer Rouge tribunal has released letters documenting a disagreement concerning the timing of investigations into five additional regime suspects, continuing a long-standing pattern of disputes between Cambodian and international officials over the issue. Documents made public Wednesday showed that Cambodian co-investigating judge You Bunleng reversed an earlier agreement with his international counterpart Marcel Lemonde to open investigations into the five unnamed suspects. “For the sake of transparency, they have decided to make public the letters they exchanged recently on this issue,” the judges’ office said in a statement Wednesday.

In the first of the letters released by the court, dated June 2, Lemonde called on You Bunleng to sign a rogatory letter authorising preliminary investigations in Cases 003 and 004. He said that investigation teams were ready to be deployed “without delay”, and that if the order was not signed by June 4 he would conclude that the two disagreed on the issue, “with all the negative consequences this might entail”. “I hope we can avoid reaching this point,” he added. In a response dated June 8, You Bunleng stated that he initially signed the order Friday, but then reversed his decision, saying the issue should be considered in September after the closing order for Case 002 – the “core” of the tribunal’s mandate – is finalised. He said his decision was based on his consideration of the court’s purpose and the “current state of Cambodian society”.

UN court spokesman Lars Olsen said Lemonde will pursue the investigations on his own, pursuant to court rules. He added that investigators will not yet focus on specific individuals, but rather try to establish “whether or not crimes described in the submissions from the prosecutors took place at certain locations”. “The results from this part of the investigation will form some of the basis for the decision of whether or not to start investigations against individuals” at a later date, he said. Despite disagreement on the timing of the new investigations, Lemonde and You Bunleng are still working closely together on Case 002, which will provide a “good basis for future cooperation”, Olsen said.

The disagreement is consistent with an apparent pattern of government reluctance to prosecute any former regime leaders beyond those five already indicted by the court. In September 2009, the court’s acting international co-prosecutor William Smith announced he had filed submissions for investigations into five additional, unnamed regime suspects, overriding the objections of national co-prosecutor Chea Leang, who had argued that additional prosecutions could prompt ex-Khmer Rouge cadres and their allies to “commit violent acts”. After the announcement, Prime Minister Hun Sen echoed this warning in a speech, saying, “If you want a tribunal, but you don’t want to consider peace and reconciliation and war breaks out again, killing 200,000 or 300,000 people, who will be responsible?”

Anne Heindel, a legal adviser for the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, said the rift echoed earlier disagreements, but said that such disputes are to be expected in a tribunal combining local and international officials. She expressed concern about delays that might result, but added that it is not feasible to wait for the conclusion of Case 002 before the third and fourth cases move ahead. “If they don’t get started on Cases 003 and 004 while they’re still on Case 002, there’s probably going to be donor fatigue and unwillingness,” Heindel said. The fact that You Bunleng signed the letter before reconsidering showed “some willingness on his part to consider a third and fourth investigation”, she added.

Under the tribunal’s internal rules, either investigating judge may bring the disagreement before the Pre-Trial Chamber within 30 days. The rules also hold that while the dispute-resolution process is in motion, “the subject of the disagreement shall be executed”. Only in the case of arrests, it adds, does there need to be full consensus between the two judges.

You Bunleng could not be reached for comment.

While the rest of the world debates climate change, Bangladesh has started living the reality of a warmer, more volatile world.

By Sebastian Strangio

Published in Foreign Policy, June 7, 2010

DHAKA—EARLIER this year, a small island in the Bay of Bengal vanished, taking with it a long-running territorial dispute between neighbors India and Bangladesh. The uninhabited sandbar, known variously as South Talpatti and New Moore Island, had been hotly contested since the 1980s. But in March, as the island was submerged by rising sea levels, the dispute quietly resolved itself. The rising waters were “definitely attributable” to climate change, oceanographer Sugata Hazra at India’s Jadavpur University, told the Associated Press. “What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking has been resolved by global warming.”

While the world’s capitals debate the reality and impact of climate change, Bangladesh is already living it. According to recent projections, the sunken island’s fate foreshadows low-lying Bangladesh’s broader future: to be overcome by rising waters. A 1-meter rise in sea levels could put 17 percent of the country underwater by 2050, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates. (The capital, Dhaka, lies at the center of a flood plain and could be engulfed by even a “slight rise” in sea level, according to another report by U.N.-Habitat.) Meanwhile, on the land that does remain, this country of 162 million will face cyclones, droughts, and floods with increasing frequency and intensity as the effects of climate change begin to bite.

But if the coming temperature rise spells disaster for Bangladesh, it has also transformed the country into the world’s biggest experiment in how to minimize the impact of climate change. The reason for preparedness, however, is less intentional than accidental. Bangladesh began preparing for climate change long before the term was ever known — simply because the country’s geography has always subjected it to frequent flooding and cyclones. No wonder this is one of the few countries that has accepted the inevitability of global warming. As Munjurul Hannan Khan, deputy secretary of the Bangladeshi Ministry of Environment and Forests, told a Dhaka conference in April, “For the North[ern Hemisphere], [climate change] will mean a compromise with lifestyle. For us, it’s about future survival.”

Bangladesh’s environmental measures began in the 1970s, when the country started developing saline-resistant varieties of rice and other crops. The country built flood embankments to prevent low-lying arable land from being flooded with salt water. And as a result, grain production rose from 9 million tons in the mid-1970s to 28 million tons today, according to government figures. Today, agriculture in Bangladesh is as “climate proof” as anywhere. And more recently, the British-backed Chars Livelihood Program has funded the construction of flood-resistant infrastructure on Bangladesh’s riverine islands, or chars, where some 3.5 million people reside.

Further changes were prompted by a 1991 cyclone that left 140,000 dead. In the wake of disaster, Bangladesh leapt at the opportunity to put in place community-based early-warning systems and emergency evacuation plans that have since saved countless lives. The Bhola Cyclone, for example, killed as many as half a million people in 1970, but the recent Cyclone Sidr was detected in the Bay of Bengal ahead of time, and as many as 2 million people were evacuated before it hit. Death tolls — cited at 3,447 by one official — were correspondingly lower.

With its massive head start, today Bangladesh is embracing its newfound role as a living laboratory. In November, the country is opening an International Center for Climate Change and Development at Dhaka’s Independent University. The aim, says the institute’s incoming director, Saleemul Huq, is to use Bangladesh as a classroom for researchers and policymakers from around the world, offering short courses (and perhaps later a master’s program) to study tactics for adapting to climate change.

Last October, the country became the first to create a National Adaptation Program of Action, a provision recommended by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2005. The proposed 10-year plan includes steps for bolstering infrastructure such as flood embankments and cyclone shelters, strengthening disaster-management systems, improving food security and sanitation in vulnerable areas, and bolstering climate research. Bangladesh has even created a climate change “trust fund” to serve as a repository for donor money, and the country has put in $100 million of its own funds.

Getting these future projects off the ground may yet face hiccups, not least the country’s endemic levels of corruption and a lack of coordination between government agencies. But if the past is any test, Bangladesh will keep on adapting — by environmental imperative. As Huq told The Diplomat, “Bangladesh has always lived on the edge of an apocalypse, but somehow it doesn’t ever fall over the edge.”