the citizen-viewer

Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark of The Guardian report on the single most devastating phenomenon happening to Cambodians now in Country for Sale.

Sang Run was out in his boat at 7am when disaster struck his village. He arrived back at 11am to find bulldozers had flattened his home and those of the 229 families who lived beside him. He heard from neighbours that it had happened in an instant. Uniformed men, sent in by governor Say Hak, used electric batons to chase terrified residents from the burning ruins; three of Sang Run’s neighbours were knocked unconscious. Village Number One - a mundane name that failed to capture the beauty of its uninterrupted sea views and vegetable gardens that ran to the beach - had been erased.

Read the story

Chea Vichea, a top union leader in Cambodia, was professionally executed as he read the newspapers on a Phnom Penh sidewalk in 2004. Head shot, heart shot, done.

Convicted of the murder, Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun are serving 20-year sentences. The problem is that it’s hard to find evidence to support their guilt. Witness after witness placed both men far from the newsstand where Vichea was shot to death. The prosecution didn’t bother to present a case. But it was good enough for the judge. Two innocent men rot away in prison so the real killers can remain in the shadows.*

Now, after three and half years of Samnang and Sam Oeun’s imprisonment, Bradley Cox has produced a short but intense documentary about the case. Plastic Killers is packed with the kind of intrigues that make Cambodia a place where legal reformers and human rights workers never lack for challenging work.

This may be the most compelling documentation yet of the twisted version of justice served up in Cambodia — even as its government revels in increased international aid and loans. Oh yes, and empanels the majority of judges for the foreign-funded Khmer Rouge tribunal.

Cox writes:

This is not the big movie, but a smaller version that I rushed out to help the two guys in jail. It’s geared towards a Cambodian audience so it’s heavy on the detail.

Citizen-viewers who aren’t current on Cambodian events should still be able to follow the story—despite the detail—because it unfolds so dramatically. Cox seems to have followed up every lead and every witness. The truth is revealed piece by piece as the the official version falls in tatters in front of Cox’s lens. What becomes obvious is that the official version is not even intended to convince Cambodians. Rather it’s intended to let them know, once again, that any opponent of the regime can be killed…or framed.

Of course, Cambodia’s Ministry of Information is threatening to ban the film, which is already on sale in bootleg versions in Phnom Penh’s markets in addition to being on the Web.

This film, big or small, and the witnesses who appear in it honor Vichea’s memory. In Vichea’s words: “I need to fight—I not afraid. If I afraid, like I die.”

Watch The Plastic Killers in lo-res above, or in hi-res at http://plastic-killers.blip.tv/.

* Well, there’s a decent chance they’ve been killed too.

(photo by Darren Whiteside from Asiaweek)

Ten years later, the intellectual authors of the March 30 grenade attack are still not only at large, but in charge.

The girl sitting up in the photo is still dead.

Ray Kelly’s fascistic tendency is showing through again. Surely not, you say. Not fascism!

The New York City police department, of which he is commissioner, proposes to make it an offense subject to arrest for any group of pedestrians or bicyclists to violate any traffic law, rule or regulation. The arrest would be for parading without a permit.

The way they do this is to redefine the word “parade” to mean pretty much everything:

“any procession or race which consists of a group of two or more pedestrians, vehicles, bicycles or other devices moved by human power, or ridden or herded animals proceeding together upon any public street or roadway in a manner that does not comply with all applicable traffic laws, rules and regulations…” [continued here]

Literally, you and a friend step off the curb while the light is red and the nearest cop could arrest you and put you in jail.

This rule change would make literally millions of people subject to arrest every day — literally guilty, too. But don’t imagine that the police would be working overtime hauling in every suit and tie that jaywalks with his pals on the way to a three-beer lunch at Hooters.

What it is, is an effort to create a situation where the police can exercise selective enforcement of the most pernicious kind.

The last time I lived in a dictatorship, Cambodia that is, they had a similar rule (and still do).

The debate was over the wording. The opposition party types insisted that the law was that they only had to notify the police of their plan for a march or rally of more than X people, and that the police “permit” was merely an acknowledgment by the police that they had received this notice. The police position was that they could deny the permit and thereby illegalize the march or rally.

In other words, are you notifying them, or are you asking them for permission?

In the end, the firehoses and electric batons rule the day. And that is what we will see in New York. The police will have a new tool to turn citizen-viewers into criminals at will, and arrest them as soon as they express an opinion that Ray Kelly and Mike Bloomberg don’t like, and beat them down if they stand up for their rights. If you think I’m exaggerating, well, you weren’t there in 2004, 2003, 2001 and keep going.

One of the big differences, in theory anyway, between the US and places like Cambodia (and Mussolini’s Italy) is the presumption of legality. In other words, in the US any activity is presumed to be legal unless there is a law that specifically forbids it. In Cambodia, the premise that is widely accepted and often stated by authorities is that any activity can be illegal unless they, the authorities, have given prior permission.

Now, the NYPD is doing an end run around the presumption of legality by trying to cast the net of illegality over pretty much everyone. That way, they can pick and choose who to arrest.

Transportation Alternatives and the NYCLU are, as always, fighting the good fight against this creeping fascism.

And if the new rules go into effect, I propose the following: Apply, citizen-viewers, apply for a permit every time you plan to cross the street in a group of two or more. Flood the bastards with applications.

But when you want to make a political statement, just do it. You don’t need a stinking permit, you never did and you never will, so don’t ask for one.

Ta Mok has pulled a Slobodan. Or a Ken Lay, or a Pol Pot.

The “feared, one-legged commander” known as “the Butcher” is dead at age 80 or so. And with only a year to go before he presumably would have gone on trial along with other Khmer Rouge leaders for things they did 30 years ago, before most living Cambodians were even born.

Preceding Ta Mok to hell, if you believe in such things, were Ke Pauk and Pol Pot himself, not to mention others who didn’t survive the latter years of the Khmer Rouge mini-regime in northern and western Cambodia.

There ain’t going to be much left to put on trial at this rate, which means a raw deal for taxpayers in the donor countries who are putting up nearly the whole cost.

The whole thing is budgeted at about $56 million, of which Cambodia itself is reportedly ponying up about $3 million, a small price to pay out of the national coffers for such a large honeypot for Cambodia’s elite to dip their fingers into.

What we’ll likely see in the dock, if there ever is a dock, is going to be the B-team. A short roster of minor players anchored by Duch, who ran the S-21 torture center, though the press and the governments involved will all collaborate to present them as the worst of the worst. In fact the worst of the worst are living in comfort, some in mansions and others near the Thai border, and these are the ones who will escape justice through the good graces of Hun Sen, or Death, or both (they often work together).

The citizen-viewer goes on the record once again: There will never be a meaningful trial of Khmer Rouge leaders in Cambodia while Hun Sen is in power.

And by meaningful, the c-v means one in which

1. the standards for prosecution are applied fairly (no immunity for any particular people, namely Ieng Sary)

2. defendants are charged under actual laws

3. all relevant and available evidence is considered

4. judgments are based on that evidence and on the applicable law and nothing else

5. sentences are carried out according to the judgments.

To be specific, the c-v hereby guarantees that Ieng Sary will never be a convict in prison in a Cambodia ruled by Hun Sen, regardless of evidence, trial, sentencing etc. A grave, yes. Prison, no.

That’s because Hun Sen and Ieng Sary have a deal, and Hun Sen’s regime is built on such deals. He lives and dies by his word.

The problem for Hun Sen is not so much that he is obliged to prevent the trial from being meaningful. The financial sponsors of the trial will assuredly defend the legitimacy and value of the trial they are so generously financing — and which they hope will expiate their sins of the past. And the cable news will lead the foreign media in promoting the heck out it — after all, they want stories, not non-stories.

The problem is that once the trial, such as it is, is over, Hun Sen will have lost the main carrot he has been holding out in front of the foreign donkey for the past decade. Once the donkey has at last eaten that tiny, shriveled carrot, and pronounced it delicious, Hun Sen will be left holding only a stick.

The citizen-viewer is all in favor of a trial — a fair, legal, legitimate trial. This one’s set up to be a sham, and Cambodia has seen enough of those.

Nine years ago today, as I was eating breakfast in my house in Phnom Penh, several explosions sounded from the north. It was hard to tell if there were three or four, and they were some distance away. I didn't take too much notice at that moment -- I wasn't working for The Cambodia Daily any more, and I figured I would find out soon enough what it was.

Within the hour I found out. Grenades had been thrown into a rally in a park near the the National Assembly. I didn't go up there to see the carnage in person. I should have, but I didn't know.

Sixteen or more people were killed, and well over 100 were wounded. I didn't know that the police would prevent people from helping others get to the hospital, but that some foreigners who arrived soon after were able to transport some of the wounded by taxi, by motorbike and by cyclo.

I didn't know that it would take 35 minutes for ambulances to arrive, that bloody footprints would lead from the park to the locked gate of the nearby children's hospital, that nine years later the man whose bodyguard units were watching, and toward whose compound the assailants fled, would still be in charge, and that his government would still be receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid.

I didn't know that those four -- it was four -- exploding fragmentation grenades would help seal his grip on power, that I would play a role in the park's transformation into "Democracy Square" a year later, after the elections, or that two years after that the opposition party would erect a monument to the dead, or that this monument would be torn out and dumped in a sewage ditch by the police just a few hours later. I didn't know that nine years later, investigations by both the Cambodian police and the FBI would be long since abandoned, the files gathering dust, the dead purposely forgotten and their deaths shrouded in a web of diplomatic conveniences.

I didn't know that I would spend a large part of the next several years researching this event, and eventually publishing a lengthy article on it, or that this effort would yield no observable effect. I didn't know a lot of things then that I know now.

I did know that it was another sunny day. That's about all.

I lived in Cambodia for a few years and I've never felt I found the right words to capture the experience, the sound and texture of Cambodia, in anything more than a small way. So it's admittedly a little painful when a professional stops by and shows how it can be done.

Scott Carrier has done it in Mother Jones magazine, in a story about slavery, or human trafficking as it's often called, in Cambodia. It's called In a Brothel Atop Street 63. (And I'm pleased to note there is a link to A Tragedy of No Importance right next to it.)

Scott's story ranges from the personal to the global in easy strides, making connections that are not often often enough made. Much as I appreciate the attention that the Times's Nick Kristof brings to under-reported issues like modern slavery, his approach is sometimes shallow and his strategies counterproductive. Scott doesn't make that mistake.

I don't know how long he was in Cambodia, but I lived just off Street 63 -- on a few occasions actually -- and there, and elsewhere in Cambodia, I saw many things, some of which I wish I hadn't seen. He gets it right, without playing the savior. An example:

The political system in Cambodia is shaped like a pyramid, where the people on the top can commit unspeakable crimes and the people on the bottom have no rights at all. Money, in the form of bribes and extortions, flows upward through the pyramid, and violence comes back down. This is the cultural mechanism of impunity. It’s where the slaves come from.

The U.S. State Department has published in its 2004 report on human trafficking that high-ranking members of the Cambodian government are directly involved in, and profit from, the sale of human beings—among the aid workers monitoring the trafficking, this is a well-known fact. The names are known but they are not spoken.

There is silence in the face of evil, and under this silence the phrase “human trafficking” becomes a bullshit term, propaganda, a way of labeling something we don’t understand in order to throw a lot of money at it while loudly saying we are winning the war against it.

That very short excerpt doesn't do justice to the whole article, which you should read when you get a chance. It's a story I wish I'd written, or could write.

Information on sexual exploitation of children in Cambodia

The Associated Press sums up this past week's donor meeting in Cambodia:

Foreign aid donors have pledged US$601 million (euro500 million) in development aid for Cambodia this year, despite concerns that the government has done little to curb endemic corruption.

The donors said, however, that they were encouraged by what they described as conciliatory gestures made by Prime Minister Hun Sen toward his political opponents.

After all, you can't let them out of jail unless you put them in there first! Just a little lesson for any of you prospective dictators out there.

US Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli adds, "There's an increasing sense in Washington that things are going the right way in Cambodia, so we want to encourage that."

As expected, Cambodia's foreign donors, who met for the last two day in Phnom Penh, have come through once again, pledging $601 million for this year, up from $504 last year. The Cambodian government had only requested $514 million at the meeting, known as the Consultative Group, or CG to those of us that follow these things.

So far, there's no indication that the donors have required any specific reforms in order for Cambodia to collect the aid package. In fact there's no indication of a lot of things -- the substance of the discussion, which countries pledged how much, whether they each have their own conditions, whose aid has gone up and whose has gone down, um, who actually was in attendance, and so forth. It's very secretive.

Before the meeting, the World Bank issued a release that said, "Participants will also assess the Joint Monitoring Indicators adopted at the last CG Meeting in December 2004 and endorsed by the Government and development partners as action items on the reform agenda, and agree upon a new set of indicators for the upcoming year."

There is also no indication yet that this assessment took place at the CG and what it concluded if it did. (I posted the above quotation to see if it disappears as they are update the release.) In the meantime, Human Rights Watch has posted a very nice chart comparing the Cambodian government's pledges of past years with the real-life results.

Ian Porter, the World Bank's country coordinator for Cambodia, said the increase reflected "significant progress" in reforming Cambodia's economy. If anyone finds out what he cited as progress, let me know. He also said that "the government needs to accelerate its reform programmes, particularly in the areas I highlighted -- anti-corruption, legal and judicial reform and natural resource management."

(Needs to or else what? I first noticed this curious use of the term "needs to" years ago when I started to work with non-profit groups. People seem to use it when there is no requirement, but they want to imply that there is. What it usually means is "I wish they would but I have no power to make them.")

In the absence of any subtantive information about the meeting, I can only surmise that the Western donors were once again cowed by the dual threats of Cambodia's turning entirely to China for the financial support that keeps Hun Sen in power and of Cambodia's transformation into Myanmar II.

Cambodia is ranked 24th worst in Transparency International's 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index, in a seven-way tie with Burundi, Republic of Congo, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Papua New Guinea and Venezuela. 2005 was the first year Cambodia was included in the index.

As they do every year or so, representatives of the foreign donors who prop up Cambodia's government are meeting to talk about the aid package and make their pledges. This Consultative Group is meeting in Phnom Penh this week.

It's a familiar pattern to those who have watched Cambodia over the years. Hun Sen cracks down on his critics at will, and presides over one the most corrupt regimes in the world, but when the CG is coming, he rolls out the red carpet so the visiting dignitaries can't see the graves that lie beneath. Suddenly he's a champion of human rights and a master of political compromise.

This is a lovely time for his opponents and critics to return to Cambodia, or step out of jail as the case may be, and work as best they can ... until the new aid package is generously pledged, and the foreign representatives head home in a cloud of chatter about how "significant progress has been made" in this or that area, despite "some regrettable setbacks," but fortunately the government has "shown its commitment" to improving its record by agreeing to create some more commissions who will certainly look into the matter.

In the last few months Hun Sen went so far as to prosecute and imprison several of his critics, only to demonstrate his generosity by releasing them just before the CG (although all are still subject to future rights violations). Meanwhile other critics have been murdered. Many over the years. The rare prosecutions in these cases have put innocent men behind bars.

Past pledges on the part of his government to clean up corruption have gone unfulfilled, year after year. Claims that the judiciary is independent remain laughable: Hun Sen and his spokespeople are quite open about the fact that it is only Hun Sen who decides who is safe and who is not.

Some of the members of the Consultative Group are not concerned by these things. Take China for example. Others claim that they are. Take France, whose loyalty to Hun Sen through thick and thin shows no bounds.

It is time for those who claim to be concerned about human rights, democracy, transparency and judicial independence, to back up their claims. You know, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me"? How about "fool me eight times"? What then?

Hun Sen will not relinquish unitary power whether they keep funding as they have been or cut funding back. Threatening to cut funds, or worse yet, doing so, will push a reluctant Hun Sen into the arms of China, which will be only too happy to make up for what he loses in Western aid, in exchange for raising the red lantern over Hun Sen's doorway.

This is a bidding war, and donors will have to use their financial leverage to reward progress, not to punish failure. That means setting meaningful benchmarks for respecting rights and cutting corruption and seeing that they are met, and rewarding the government with increased funding if they are met -- after they are met.

The job the donors need to do cannot be done in Phnom Penh this week; it has to be done in their home capitals. But while they're in Phnom Penh, they can do one thing. Tell the truth. Don't cover for Hun Sen. When they claim that things have been improving, they are only deceiving their own citizen-viewers. The people of Cambodia know perfectly well what kind of regime they live under.

Human Rights First has put up a handy web page that sends your message to the donors who are meeting this week.