The Perils of Activism and Critical Media in Cambodia

Freedom of press country by country. Some maps vary, for example, one shows
Canada as on par with Sweden, while another shows Burma as being on par
with Thailand.

There is no doubt that Cambodia does not boast the same freedom of speech laws that I, living in the United States, can benefit from. I can write critically about Barack Obama and ObamaCare, and not worry that someone will come after me for doing so. This, needless to say, is not the case in Cambodia. Cambodian journalists live in constant fear of saying or writing something wrong, especially because much of the media in Cambodia are owned by Hun Sen's ruling party, the Cambodian People's Party (CPP). In fact, "spreading false information or insulting public officials," is cause for imprisonment (Cambodia Profile). It is important to note, however, that those media do not wholly include the internet, seeing as only a reported 663,000 Cambodian had access (even if inconsistent) to the internet in June 2012 (Cambodia Profile). This is not to say that government defamation on the internet is free game, but that the internet is not a widely used tool in Cambodia as of late. That being said, the BBC reports a 2012 decree banning any internet cafes from opening up near schools, and that committing crimes that might threaten national security or tradition on the internet is forbidden. The fear behind any freedom of speech spreads beyond journalists and into other activism sectors of Cambodian society.

The pro-government daily Koh Santepheap newspaper
homepage screenshot.

The most famous recent case of an imprisoned Khmer journalist is Mam Sonado, a land rights activist, the president of a pro-democracy movement, and radio host on of the only station that criticized Hun Sen's government. He was charged for supposedly starting a rebellion and accused specifically of instigating villagers in Kratie, Cambodia, to form their own state independent of Cambodia--an accusation that Sonado denies. Although there were clashes between the government and Kratie villagers due to the government taking away their land, Sonado was not involved (Cambodia Jails Journalist Mam Sonando over 'Plot.'). The protests in Kratie escalated because the police shot and killed a fifteen-year-old girl protesting. From what I have read and seen about Cambodia, this is not an uncommon occurrence. Sonado was sentenced to twenty years in prison, something that human rights groups call outrageous, yet as he left the court, he told press: "I am happy that I have helped the nation" (Cambodia Jails Journalist Mam Sonando over 'Plot.'). In March, however, he was released after  indirect pressure from the United Nations. But not all of the journalists and activists in Cambodia have the U.N. at their side.

In September 2012, an environmental activist and journalist named Hang Serei Oudom was brutally killed (at the mercy of axe blows to his head) and found in the trunk of his car by police (Gleensdale). Oudom was known to write stories about the illegal logging of Cambodian timber for luxury corporations--stories the the government would prefer that people do not know about.  Western journalists are not exempt to the government's watchful eye either. There have been reports of harassment at English language newspapers, and in 1997, a Khmer-Canadian photographer was killed. A Canadian journalist was with Oudom when we was brutally killed as well; however, she was spared.

Memorial Service advertisement for Chea
Vichea

Bradley Cox's film Who Killed Chea Vichea? discusses the human rights abuses in Cambodia in relation to the injustice of Chea Vichea's murder and trial. Vichea, Cambodia's former Free Trade Union president, was assassinated in 2004 on Chinese New Year in broad daylight. Six months before he received a text message that he would be killed, but he persevered in his political and activist work. Vichea protected garment workers and promoted strikes and demonstrations to increase minimum wage and improve worker conditions. Today, the U.S. receives $2 billion in garments from Cambodia, while the 250,000 Cambodians working in the garment industry make $0.28 an hour on average, leading to a $45 monthly salary. The 250,000 Cambodians working in the industry support an estimated 750,000 other Cambodians, meaning that the garment industry in Cambodia buttresses one million people (7% of the population). Sam Rainsy, the politician in stark opposition to Hun Sen and the CPP, supported Vichea and human rights (although, Joel Brinkley's book Cambodia's Curse is more critical of Rainsy than the film). The CPP today have a lock on power and control basically everything about the police, military, and public expenditure (or rather, lack there of).

After Vichea's death, nobody was arrested. The government did not do anything. In fact, Hun Sen was astonished that people wanted him to resign because when 9/11 happened in the United States, George Bush was not immediately ousted (of course, the contexts were completely different as only a few people believe Bush was at fault for the attacks--which he was not. This only proves Hun Sen's madness). Human rights groups and international donors--the latter on which Cambodia relies heavily--pressed for justice in the Vichea case. The police then released a drawing of the man they said the one witness, a Phnom Penh shopkeeper named Va Sothy, described as the murderer (after seeking asylum in Thailand and then the U.S., Sothy denies ever speaking to the police). 48 hours later, the police had arrested two men, Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun, arrested. But these men did not commit the murder, and as Rainsy said, the government just "had to arrest somebody for the show."

Who Killed Chea Vichea?

A few days before Vichea's murder, Samnang's mother brought a photo of Samnang to the police station to claim she was disowning him because he owed some money to a pharmaceutical company, and she did not want her house taken from her to repay her son's debt. Oeun had a one-time-business-partner Din Doeun who reported him for stealing money, around the same time Vichea was killed as well. Thus, both of the names and photo were easy for the Cambodian police to use to arrest somebody. The head police said they admitted to the crime and were guilty; however, footage shows both men crying, screaming "Let the earth swallow me whole," "Shoot me in the mouth and let me die if I did it," and about the Cambodian police, "They can make white black." Later, former police officials admitted that there were two undercover police on the scene directly after the murder acting as journalists, and the police were not strict about protecting potential forensic evidence from the public.

Who Killed Chea Vichea? Poster

Watching these men crying in unfathomable amounts of distress was inexplicably heart-wrenching. They were arrested without proof. Although he said that he was threatened and coerced into it, Samnang signed a confession saying he was guilty. Samnang actually had dozens of alibis that he was in a village, Neak Long, forty kilometers outside of Phnom Penh. Oeun maintained his innocence, and friends at the Chinese New Year party he claimed to be attending would not come forward with any alibi information unless they were allowed to leave the country, because "in Cambodia, if you know things, you can die." At court when both Samnang and Oeun were sentenced to twenty years in prison, they screamed and cried when leaving, asking, for the "King Father" (the late King Sihanouk) or "international guests" to do something becuase "this is injustice." Relatives and friends screamed as the police van took the two away--that they should be given poison so they can kill themselves, and one of the mothers asked for the police to just let her son "die tomorrow." Human rights groups insisted that the wrong men had been convicted. In Cambodia, only the police and military have guns, meaning it was the police or military, controlled by the government, that killed Vichea.

According to an old police officer living France, Cambodia's police force is "as powerful as God." They are also known to torture prisoners, similar to S-21 and the political prisoners of the Khmer Rouge. In fact, one officer (filmed privately through a wall) said that feeding corpses to crocodiles was a common practice. Indeed: "A Cambodian's life is worth the same as a chicken's...a French dog is worth more."A former judge told Cox that not only are many judges not properly educated in the legal systems (part of the Khmer Rouge's educational legacy), but also that "there isn't a single judge who is innocent" from the CPP.

On the part of the elite, there is no want to change the current Hun Sen dominated system--while many activist groups believe there might be. The CPP and its high ranking members can do whatever they want, including quash any opposition. Before the 2003 elections, there were a lot of high profile killings: a judge, a politically active monk, and an opposition advisor. Shortly after the highly contested elections (that were not resolved for nearly a year), a journalist was killed. And then Vichea. According to Rainsy, the government "will kill any secondary target." The message: accept Hun Sen or die.

Vichea's brother in part of the film castigates the U.S. and U.K. governments for not caring about human rights abuses, and in fact claiming that human rights in Cambodia have improved. But at the end of the day, as one of the international workers put it: The U.S. just does not care enough, and they have more important things attending to their interests than a small country. It does not bother them that they ravished the country in the 1970s leading Cambodia to disarray, genocide, and injustice (and a host of other problems).

Samnang (left) and Oeun at their appeals trial on
November 7, 2012.

At the end, the filmmakers tell where the main players are today. In fact, some of the policemen involved in the case have died (Hok Lundy in 2008 in a "mysterious" helicopter fire) or are in prison themselves (such as Heng Pov, once Hun Sen's "right hand man" is a victim of "political infighting"). Both Oeun and Samnang were provisionally released on December 31, 2008, but then on December 27, 2012 were re-sentenced even after King Sihanouk said they were innocent, and Heng Pov said so also. It is a widely held belief that Samnang and Oeun are the unfortunate scapegoats. No one knows for sure who killed Chea Vichea, but the killing is almost certainly (although I will not say 100% in a legal case as such) connected to Hun Sen.

And what about the activists who did not attract this much media attention?

Works Cited:
"Cambodia Jails Journalist Mam Sonando over 'Plot.'" BBC. 1 Oct. 2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19783123

"Cambodia Profile." BBC. 21 Feb. 2013. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13006543 Web.

Gleensdale, Roy. "Cambodian Journalist Murdered." The Guardian. 12 Sept. 2012. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/sep/12/journalist-safety-cambodia Web.

Who Killed Chea Vichea? Cox, Bradley Dir. Independent Television Service, 2010. Film.

A Circle of Torture

In preparation for my time in Cambodia this summer, I am taking not only this independent study course, but also a 0-credit Human Rights seminar in which we just finished the book Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction by Andrew Clapham. I also just finished The Lost Executioner by Nic Dunlop for my independent study course, and found both books to touch on the aspect of torture, its legitimacy, and fights to accept or reject it. Although my project this summer does not focus on torture or the Khmer Rouge trials, it is vital to learn about in order to better understand the country.

Photos and confessions at Choeung Ek's visitor center (a
killing field about 15km from Phnom Penh). Taken by
your truly in December 2009 (as are all of the photos in
this post).

Clapham's book was a good very short introduction to human rights. He spends one chapter discussing torture. The U.N. has a complete prohibition on torture, stating that in "no exceptional circumstances" is it okay (Clapham 81). Regardless of this, is it okay, at least, in some cases? How do we define "how far can you go?" (87). Clapham gives the scenario of a ticking bomb, and the only way to stop it is to torture somebody for information, questioning "might some incidents of torture or ill-treatment be justified to avert a terrorist attack?" (87). He also mentions, however, that the information given under torture cannot always be trusted as it is often unreliable (87). This is especially true in the "confessions" of those sought out and killed by the Khmer Rouge. Many of them admitted they were part of the CIA to hopefully avert being tortured, although in the end were tortured and killed anyhow (Dunlop 275). Dunlop cites the "confession" of a British man who was caught by the Rouge while sailing off of the coast of Cambodia, accidently drifting from Thailand (275). He writes that he was a member of the CIA, and so was his father (275). This is completely untrue, proving that torture does not actually lead to factual confessions.

Clapham gives an example of a kidnapping case in Germany where the son of a senior bank executive was kidnapped from his family apartment (88). I will be honest: if my kid was missing and this one man knew where he was, I would want him to be tortured to release information. But this is just the problem. Perhaps to Pol Pot: "if this person is against the best ideology of returning Cambodia to Year Zero, I want him to be tortured because he is against it and he can release information about others who might be against the ideology also." Obviously, we can all see the difference, but allowing torture in some cases while prohibiting it in others creates an incredibly, to put it colloquially, "sticky situation." 

Ten rules for the prisoners at Tuol Sleng Museum.

Dunlop is attempting to find Comrade Duch, the head of S-21 Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge. S-21 was a former high-school-turned-prison-torture-house during the Khmer Rouge where only 7 victims survived. Dunlop points out in the first chapter that contrary to popular belief, Tuol Sleng was often not for civilians, but rather was "created for rooting out enemies from within the party" (23). This meant that Duch crossed paths with many of his former teachers, mentors, and supervisors.

Tourists at Tuol Sleng Museum.

Like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge kept immensely detailed records of all of the prisoners including photographs and written accounts of confessions, for example being part of the CIA (the latter on which Duch took notes or commented on the interrogation process). Dunlop throughout his book, which reads in some areas more like a personal narrative, contemplates his role as a professional photographer and when / why / where it is okay to take photos and what they do in the public. The photographs of Tuol Sleng, he says, haunt him because by viewing them and taking photos of the photos, we are exploiting the victim's memories even more without letting them speak (316). 

Dunlop describes his quest for Duch and the people he meets en route to helping authorities capture Duch--the first Khmer Rouge officer to be put on trial and found guilty for torture and murder during the Khmer Rouge. Dunlop describes Duch's time as a prisoner at Prey Sar Prison (S-24) for his communist activities. In this prison, Dunlop concludes, Duch was likely tortured, and used techniques he learned (or rather, were inflicted on him) there and applied them to S-21, suggesting that he certainly had knowledge of the inner workings of Cambodian prisons (76). Duch was able to use the horrors from his own time in prison and apply them to the victims of S-21 (126). He knew that "the threat or anticipation of violence, reinforced by the screams of other prisoners, was often harder to bear than the violence itself" (126). Because Duch was tortured, he knew how to torture and felt okay doing so. This proves Clapham's claim that the use of torture inevitably spreads and becomes a "'slippery slope' where mistreatment is seen as normal, even expected" (87). Duch is also an example how how violence can be internalized and normalized.

Torture creates a domino effect, a positive feedback loop with negative implications. As Clapham says, "No judges today are ready to find arguments to justify torture" (89). Torture can easily expand, and it seems there is not stopping point. Torture can in turn generate further violence in a society--making it not okay under any circumstances. Although many were and still are wary of the trials (and there are problems with the trial, one of many being that they are only concentrating on the Rouge from 1975-1979), it important to recognize the past.

Works Cited
Clapham, Andrew. Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction. New York, New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2007. Print.

Dunlop, Nic. The Lost Executioner. New York, New York: Walker & Company, 2005. Print.

#thattypicalintropost

A young me at the Angkor Wat Complex, December 2009

I am so excited to announce that NYU Gallatin picked me (yes, me!) as one of the Gallatin Global Human Rights Fellowship award winners. This means that I am receiving $5,000 this summer to work on human rights initiatives with the Trailblazer Foundation in small villages outside of Siem Reap. And I couldn't be more excited!! Having been to Cambodia already in 2009, I cannot wait to return and help the local communities in a self-sustaining way. Although my duties with the Trailblazer Foundation are not set in stone yet, I will likely be working on clean drinking water initiatives and sustainable agriculture. And again.....I am SO excited!

Throughout spring semester, I will be taking an independent study class to help prepare me academically for this summer. Every week (er, hopefully...) I will be posting something class related or on my mind pertaining to Cambodia, development, drinking water, human rights, etc. Rather than write short response papers that will soon be recycled, I am posting everything on this blog--similar to how assignments worked in my "Environmental Communication" class last semester. This summer, I will also be posting at least weekly (and this promise I need to keep!) on the field. Enjoy, y'all!