Corruption may undermine Khmer Rouge justice
ON 17 February, a gaunt former school teacher walked into a packed courtroom in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, flanked by lawyers and lit by the flashes of the international press corps. Amid the procedural banalities of the ensuing hearing, an observer could be forgiven for mistaking the momentous nature of the event: more...
Minority tongues face grim future
DEVELOPMENT and economic integration are pushing the languages of Cambodia’s highland ethnic minorities towards extinction, according to language specialists, who are concerned some native tongues may be beyond the reach of government programs aimed at reversing the slide. “You could compare it with burning down a library. When it disappears, centuries of experience are just...
Lao dams muddying the waters
Environmentalists say regional forums have proven themselves inadequate to address the cross-border impacts of a slew of hydropower dam projects planned for southern Laos. Sebastian Strangio and Sam Rith report.
Ethnic minorities lose land, livelihoods to rampant land grabs
RATANAKKIRI PROVINCE—THE Toyota Landcruiser arrives in the village just as the morning sun breaks through the trees, casting long shadows across the rust-coloured earth. After exchanging a few quiet words with the driver, half a dozen young villagers – no more than teenagers – get into the vehicle, which pauses for a moment and then...
Proselytising amid the poverty
Cambodia’s relative religious freedoms have encouraged Christian groups to set up shop in the Kingdom, but they risk creating ‘rice Christians’ when they preach to the poor
CAMBODIA: Freshwater fish resources under increasing pressure
PHNOM PENH – Each year, between July and October, Cambodia’s Tonle Sap river, swollen by monsoon rain and excess flow from the nearby Mekong River, reverses its course. As water pours back into Cambodia’s Great Lake, swelling its size by over four times, the flood-plain is transformed into a vast breeding ground for over 250...
Prasat Preah Vihear
This week brought the news that UNESCO has finally decided to list the country’s Preah Vihear temple as a world heritage site, implicitly recognising Cambodia’s sovereignty over the Angkor-era ruin. The announcement came amidst a wave of mewling and sabre-rattling from the anti-Thaksin People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) party in neighbouring Thailand, where zealots from...
Kampot
Since arriving in Phnom Penh, I’ve already managed two short trips down to Kampot, a somnolent town 150km south of the capital. Although both were work trips, I was struck by the charm of the town’s riverine setting and have planned a dedicated weekend of reading and indolence at the French-run Les Manguiers guesthouse, whose...
Lon Rith
The nights now are cool and humid, alive with the whisper of insects and the chk-chk of tiny geckos. I am sitting on my balcony after a long spell of wine-induced sloth, staring down at the pin-pricks of moto headlights and the tumult of the fountains in Hun Sen Park. After just sixty days, fragments...
Pisah Khmer
After two months, my Khmer is coming along like a dry-season slum fire. I now have a tutor named Sokha, a former journalist, who comes to my apartment on Sundays to guide me through a fairly solid textbook course. Speaking Khmer is not too difficult in comparative terms — I’ve met a lot of people...
Khmer New Year
Khmer New Year and the stifling heat of mid-April have conspired to cast a smothering blanket over Phnom Penh. Just about everything is shut: even the roadside barbers have folded up their chairs, unhooked their mirrors, and scattered back to the provinces to pursue the cycle of binge-eating, Buddhist offerings and family activities that marks...
Time running out for Khmer Rouge justice
THE crimes of the Khmer Rouge are well known. Between 1975 and 1979, Pol Pot’s regime of ‘Democratic Kampuchea’ turned Cambodia into a ‘land of blood and tears’ — a vast agrarian social experiment that enslaved the population and led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians. After nearly three decades of legal...
