Cambodia, the center of world news? You may laugh, but there have been at least three things lately that have brought Cambodia to the center of world news.
First – Cambodia has been on the brink of war with Thailand for over a month since the United Nations declared the Preah Vihear temple site a world heritage site… the problem is that Thailand believes that the temple is in Thai territory and Cambodia asserts that it is not. The end result is that near the temple there are groups of Thai soldiers on one side and groups of Khmer soldiers on the other… neither side wants to fight each other, and it would be rather surprising if they actually did… nevertheless, neither side wants to back down either. The UN committee that recognized the site says that it lies within Cambodia, but Thailand says that the maps are wrong. As of yesterday, both countries agreed to back off from the 'border' to help alleviate the tension.
Second – Cambodia had their national elections last month… official campaigning is only two weeks! (Maybe the US could learn something from that)… unlike the US though, the final result of the election is determined before the campaigning begins… the three major opposition parties have lodged complaints against the ruling party (and when I say ruling, I mean with a fist of iron) that about 200,000 people were kept from voting in the election… apparently these people went to the polls only to find that their names had disappeared from the rolls of voters… since the Cambodia’s People Party (the ruling party) controls the national election committee, it is not hard to connect the dots here… the 200,000 that were kept from voting represented all of the different political parties, but it seemed obvious that tampering had been done… nonetheless, Hun Sen once again emerges as the leader (some would say dictator) of Cambodia, somehow with 70% of the vote… so for the next five years, his reign of keeping a woefully governed country locked into corrupt practices will continue…
Third – The trial of several of the highest ranking officers in the Khmer Rouge (the political leaders of the country from 1975-1979 that were responsible for the genocide of 1.7 million people), seems to have finally done something… the man that was in charge of Toul Sleng Prison where over 16,000 people were tortured and killed has finally reached the trial stage… it is hard to know what they have been doing for the last few years as he has been sitting in prison… I have not read the complete story, but Duch (his name), became a Christian and had founded a human rights organization before he was arrested… unfortunately, as is common in Cambodia, corruption has derailed much of this trial… the human rights watch group Open Society Justice Initiative made public several accusations that prompted the UN to stop funding of the trial…(essentially people who were appointed to the trial were being made to give kick backs to the government officials that gave them the position... I am sure it was more than $10)... so from an outsiders perspective, I guess that the Cambodians thought “the well of free money has just dried up, maybe if we actually do something, it may start of flowing again…” who knows? Welcome to Cambodian politics…
Here is the funny (?) thing… many Cambodians don’t even know that these things are happening…
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