Cambodia's Day in Court
2009-03-29
Five ex-leaders of the Khmer Rouge go on trial, and Cambodia's youth get a chance to learn the truth about an era kept secret for the last 30 years.
PHNOM PENH—On April 17, 1975, Khmer Rouge troops “liberated” Cambodia from the Khmer Republic led by president Lon Nol.
Huge crowds lined the streets of the capital, Phnom Penh, welcoming the Khmer Rouge army. Some waved white flags, expressing more enthusiasm than fear—believing that war in Cambodia was finally over.
“City-dwellers queued along the pavement, applauding the soldiers and expecting victory and peace. The soldiers smiled and didn’t take any actions against the people, so we trusted them,” one witness recalls.
“When they entered the city,” says another, “the people cheered, and Khmer National Radio broadcast songs of victory.”
Kem Sokha, now president of the Human Rights Party, in Cambodia, was 22 and a law student at the time.
He wanted a change of regime because he saw too much corruption in what was then the Khmer Republic. He says that he, along with countless other Cambodians, welcomed the Khmer Rouge soldiers.
“I was a student at the law school. At the time, I was demanding freedom and social justice and fighting against corruption in society. I wanted a change. So at that moment, I thought this new group would be for the better,” Kem Sokha says.
The welcome was short-lived.
Less than 24 hours after they marched through the city, Khmer Rouge troops began to evacuate Phnom Penh.
“The began forcing people to leave the capital,” one witness says. “Then we began hastily gathering up some belongings. They told us to take something with us and walk straight out without returning.”
“Many intellectuals were executed right away. We saw many dead bodies along the way as we marched out from the capital.
Pol Pot regime
More Cambodians were killed in the years that followed under a government that called the country Democratic Kampuchea—but that became known to the world as the Pol Pot regime.
“One of my children was killed in Prek Tamak and so was my husband,” one woman recalls. “My younger brother was accused of being a thief ... Then he was beaten every night."
"My mother was so fatigued ... She told me that she was dying and [said], ‘Go with your family, and try to go back to our hometown.’ We didn’t return home, and then my younger brother was executed.”
Swift destruction
From April 17, 1975 to Jan. 7, 1979, Cambodia was subjected to one of the swiftest and most destructive revolutions in world history. No one was untouched.
In less than four years, as many as 2 million Cambodians—or one in four—died from overwork, malnutrition, suicide, execution, or lack of medical care.
All the executions and most of the other deaths can be traced directly to the policies imposed on the people of Cambodia by the Communist Party of Kampuchea and led from the shadows, in the name of "Angkar Padevat," by Pol Pot.
And in tiny, impoverished Cambodia, the horror unfolded largely unnoticed by the outside world.
Not taught
Many young Cambodians now know little about the Khmer Rouge era, because the government hasn’t allowed Khmer Rouge history into the national curriculum.
Eng Sodavy, a student at Boeung Trabaek High School, says Khmer Rouge history was hardly taught.
“I was told little about the Pol Pot time. I knew about it not from my studies, but from elderly people,” Eng Sodavy says.
“I want to know more about what difficulties people encountered and how much struggle they endured. I seem [only] to have heard of killings during the Pol Pot regime.”
The exclusion of Khmer Rouge history from schools partly reflects political conflicts, says Sim Soriya, deputy director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia.
He says lessons about the Khmer Rouge were at first incorporated into textbooks but were later removed for political reasons.
Youths note tribunal
But students have taken note of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), which will try former Khmer Rouge leaders.
Teacher Sambo Manara said the creation of the ECCC to try former Khmer Rouge leaders has attracted his students’ attention.
“When the courts were established, there seemed to be some … momentum in the students’ curiosity,” he says.
“In particular, they became extremely interested because they had never before believed” accounts of what had happened during the Khmer Rouge regime, he says. “They began to learn.”
Five on trial
After years of negotiations, the United Nations and the Cambodian government agreed in 2005 to set up the ECCC.
On July 3, 2006, 17 Cambodian and eight international judges were selected to preside over the proceedings of former Khmer Rouge leaders.
The long delay saw Pol Pot himself die, in 1998, before he could face trial.
His lieutenant Ta Mok, known as “The Butcher,” died a prisoner in July 2006. Other top leaders of the regime—Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan, and Nuon Chea—are alive but elderly.
Only five top Khmer Rouge leaders are expected to face trial. First in the dock is Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch.
He has already admitted and apologized for his role in the deaths of thousands of Cambodians as head of Phnom Penh's notorious S-21 torture center.
His trial opens Monday, March 30.
This segment was first in a series by RFA's Khmer service, broadcast ahead of the trials that will bring to justice top leaders of the Khmer Rouge. Written by Sok Ry Som and Maly Leng with David Chandler as historical consultant. Khmer service director: Sos Kem. Executive producer: Susan Lavery.
31 March, 2009
It Takes a Village
It Takes a Village
An American Heiress Aims to Rescue Cambodia by Giving Orphans a Family
By ANNE HYLAND
Here on the banks of the Mekong River, a New York socialite is trying to fashion Cambodia's future.
Her vision: to help shape the next generation of leaders for this small, corrupt and poverty-stricken Southeast Asian country, still recovering from the 1970s genocide that wiped out a quarter of its population.
Elizabeth Ross Johnson, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune, has set up an orphanage, Sovann Komar, on the outskirts of Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.
"I've been very, very fortunate in my life and I always wanted to do something larger with the gifts I have been given -- and I don't mean just financial. I mean my own personal internal resources," says the 58-year-old Ms. Johnson, who has invested millions of dollars in the project and says she is in it for the long haul. "I thought there was a way for me to be useful here."
Today, Sovann Komar, which in Khmer -- the Cambodian language -- means Golden Children, is home to 56 children between the ages of 3 and 8. They come from all over the country; some are orphans, others abandoned. And they all share the surname Sovann, or Golden. (Children in government orphanages are given the surname Rorth, which translates loosely as "belonging to the government.")
Sovann Komar operates under a family-oriented concept. It recruits married, childless Cambodian couples in their 20s and 30s to act as foster parents for five or six children at the orphanage until all of them finish high school. There are 10 foster couples. Each foster mother (the husbands usually have jobs elsewhere) is paid a monthly salary of $175 to $200 plus living expenses such as food and medical care. The package includes free housing in the Sovann Komar compound of wooden homes, a library and elementary school. By comparison, a teacher or a policeman in Cambodia typically makes just $20 to $30 a month.
The foster parents agree not to have any children of their own for three years after they start at the orphanage, to give them time to bond with the foster children. After that, they are encouraged to have only two biological children, whose living expenses are covered by Sovann Komar. Additional offspring are the financial responsibility of the parents. Each couple also gets a trained full-time child-care worker to assist them.
Ms. Johnson wants the children at Sovann Komar to become honest politicians, business leaders, teachers and philanthropists. In an interview, the normally publicity-shy Ms. Johnson says, "I'm not a trained social worker, but I felt what we should give these children are loving parents, a safe environment, lots of opportunities, lots of ideas and an amazing education."
A petite blonde whom the children call "Aunty" or "Grandma," Ms. Johnson first came to Cambodia in 2002 on a holiday. She met Sothea Arun and Arn Chorn-Pond, who had grown up as orphans after their families were killed by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. The two men, who share a passion to rebuild their homeland, had established a nongovernmental organization, Cambodia Volunteers for Community Development, to provide such services as free English language lessons and computer classes to help young people get jobs.
Inspired by their personal histories, in 2003 Ms. Johnson founded Sovann Komar, which she calls a "children's village," setting it up as a registered U.S. charity. Ms. Johnson hired Mr. Sothea, now 37, to help manage the project. (Mr. Chorn-Pond isn't involved with Sovann Komar.)
"Elizabeth has a good heart for the children," says Mr. Sothea, a thin, soft-spoken man, who has a photograph of the heiress on the wall of his office. "When she saw the orphans she cried," he adds. "She really wants to help these kids and to give them a good beginning."
As for Ms. Johnson's ambitions for his homeland, Mr. Sothea, who was orphaned at the age of 4 when the Khmer Rouge killed 36 members of his extended family, says he believes Sovann Komar can produce a generation of Cambodians free of corruption, unlike the leaders of the past few decades. "If you look at some of our leaders they came from a background of killing and violence. They are corrupt. We hope this young generation will make the Cambodian society better," Mr. Sothea says. "We have a great plan for the future and we will teach them step by step how to be good people."
Foster parent Si Len, 34, says he and his 29-year-old wife, Meas Savin, came to Sovann Komar to help build the kind of "society that we want to have...by raising some of the children." Mr. Si, who works for Digital Divide Data, a nonprofit group that trains disadvantaged young Cambodians in business skills, likes to joke that he and his wife had six children in two months. The children range in age from 3 to 5.
It's unclear how many orphans or abandoned children there are among Cambodia's 14 million people. A 2005 survey by Holt International, a child-welfare agency, put the number of child-care facilities in Cambodia at least 204; the agency determined that the greatest need for child care arose from children born to single mothers, parents who died and poverty. According to the World Bank, a third of Cambodians live below the country's poverty line of less than 45 U.S. cents a day.
"Many of the children in Cambodian orphanages, whether good or bad orphanages, are not orphans. They are there primarily because of poverty, and their families are not able to provide adequately for them," says Jason Barber, a consultant with the Cambodian League for Promotion and Defense of Human Rights in Phnom Penh.
Mr. Barber argues that, except in cases of child abuse, investing in programs that provide small grants or loans to raise family incomes is a better long-term plan than creating child-care facilities, even family-oriented ones like Sovann Komar.
The idea of a family-oriented orphanage like Sovann Komar isn't new. In 1949, Austrian philanthropist Hermann Gmeiner founded SOS-Kinderdorf International, now the umbrella organization for SOS-Children's Villages around the world that provide a similar family environment.
SOS-Kinderdorf has three Cambodian orphanages where children live with surrogate mothers. The mothers aren't permitted to be married or have their own natural children. Each mother, who is paid $100 a month, rears as many as 15 children, although the average number is nine.
Geraldine Cox, a 62-year-old Australian who founded Sunrise Children's Villages in Cambodia about 15 years ago, runs two orphanages and hopes to open a third next year. The latter will be modeled on the family-oriented concept and cater to children orphaned by AIDS.
Finding surrogate parents is a challenge, Ms. Cox says: "It's very hard to get a Cambodian couple that doesn't drink, gamble, smoke and where the husband does not hit the wife."
Logistics aside, one of her biggest hurdles is more fundamental: instilling a moral compass in the next generation in a country that anticorruption advocate Transparency International ranks among the world's most graft-ridden.
"It's trying to make the children understand the difference between right and wrong in a country where people have done terrible things just to survive," Ms. Cox says. "It's a real challenge teaching the kids to understand that corruption isn't the way to be successful. The problem is they see corruption in Cambodia does make people rich and successful."
While Ms. Johnson, who has four children of her own and cares for a Cambodian boy, says her efforts to establish Sovann Komar have been "tough," she's optimistic about making a difference. "I think the families feel very fortunate to be here and that they are part of something that is going to really create some change for the better," says Ms. Johnson, who visits the orphanage at least once a year. "Maybe we're not going to change the destiny of Cambodia, but in our own little way I think it will have a wonderful ripple effect."
—Anne Hyland is a Bangkok-based writer.
An American Heiress Aims to Rescue Cambodia by Giving Orphans a Family
By ANNE HYLAND
Here on the banks of the Mekong River, a New York socialite is trying to fashion Cambodia's future.
Her vision: to help shape the next generation of leaders for this small, corrupt and poverty-stricken Southeast Asian country, still recovering from the 1970s genocide that wiped out a quarter of its population.
Elizabeth Ross Johnson, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune, has set up an orphanage, Sovann Komar, on the outskirts of Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.
"I've been very, very fortunate in my life and I always wanted to do something larger with the gifts I have been given -- and I don't mean just financial. I mean my own personal internal resources," says the 58-year-old Ms. Johnson, who has invested millions of dollars in the project and says she is in it for the long haul. "I thought there was a way for me to be useful here."
Today, Sovann Komar, which in Khmer -- the Cambodian language -- means Golden Children, is home to 56 children between the ages of 3 and 8. They come from all over the country; some are orphans, others abandoned. And they all share the surname Sovann, or Golden. (Children in government orphanages are given the surname Rorth, which translates loosely as "belonging to the government.")
Sovann Komar operates under a family-oriented concept. It recruits married, childless Cambodian couples in their 20s and 30s to act as foster parents for five or six children at the orphanage until all of them finish high school. There are 10 foster couples. Each foster mother (the husbands usually have jobs elsewhere) is paid a monthly salary of $175 to $200 plus living expenses such as food and medical care. The package includes free housing in the Sovann Komar compound of wooden homes, a library and elementary school. By comparison, a teacher or a policeman in Cambodia typically makes just $20 to $30 a month.
The foster parents agree not to have any children of their own for three years after they start at the orphanage, to give them time to bond with the foster children. After that, they are encouraged to have only two biological children, whose living expenses are covered by Sovann Komar. Additional offspring are the financial responsibility of the parents. Each couple also gets a trained full-time child-care worker to assist them.
Ms. Johnson wants the children at Sovann Komar to become honest politicians, business leaders, teachers and philanthropists. In an interview, the normally publicity-shy Ms. Johnson says, "I'm not a trained social worker, but I felt what we should give these children are loving parents, a safe environment, lots of opportunities, lots of ideas and an amazing education."
A petite blonde whom the children call "Aunty" or "Grandma," Ms. Johnson first came to Cambodia in 2002 on a holiday. She met Sothea Arun and Arn Chorn-Pond, who had grown up as orphans after their families were killed by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. The two men, who share a passion to rebuild their homeland, had established a nongovernmental organization, Cambodia Volunteers for Community Development, to provide such services as free English language lessons and computer classes to help young people get jobs.
Inspired by their personal histories, in 2003 Ms. Johnson founded Sovann Komar, which she calls a "children's village," setting it up as a registered U.S. charity. Ms. Johnson hired Mr. Sothea, now 37, to help manage the project. (Mr. Chorn-Pond isn't involved with Sovann Komar.)
"Elizabeth has a good heart for the children," says Mr. Sothea, a thin, soft-spoken man, who has a photograph of the heiress on the wall of his office. "When she saw the orphans she cried," he adds. "She really wants to help these kids and to give them a good beginning."
As for Ms. Johnson's ambitions for his homeland, Mr. Sothea, who was orphaned at the age of 4 when the Khmer Rouge killed 36 members of his extended family, says he believes Sovann Komar can produce a generation of Cambodians free of corruption, unlike the leaders of the past few decades. "If you look at some of our leaders they came from a background of killing and violence. They are corrupt. We hope this young generation will make the Cambodian society better," Mr. Sothea says. "We have a great plan for the future and we will teach them step by step how to be good people."
Foster parent Si Len, 34, says he and his 29-year-old wife, Meas Savin, came to Sovann Komar to help build the kind of "society that we want to have...by raising some of the children." Mr. Si, who works for Digital Divide Data, a nonprofit group that trains disadvantaged young Cambodians in business skills, likes to joke that he and his wife had six children in two months. The children range in age from 3 to 5.
It's unclear how many orphans or abandoned children there are among Cambodia's 14 million people. A 2005 survey by Holt International, a child-welfare agency, put the number of child-care facilities in Cambodia at least 204; the agency determined that the greatest need for child care arose from children born to single mothers, parents who died and poverty. According to the World Bank, a third of Cambodians live below the country's poverty line of less than 45 U.S. cents a day.
"Many of the children in Cambodian orphanages, whether good or bad orphanages, are not orphans. They are there primarily because of poverty, and their families are not able to provide adequately for them," says Jason Barber, a consultant with the Cambodian League for Promotion and Defense of Human Rights in Phnom Penh.
Mr. Barber argues that, except in cases of child abuse, investing in programs that provide small grants or loans to raise family incomes is a better long-term plan than creating child-care facilities, even family-oriented ones like Sovann Komar.
The idea of a family-oriented orphanage like Sovann Komar isn't new. In 1949, Austrian philanthropist Hermann Gmeiner founded SOS-Kinderdorf International, now the umbrella organization for SOS-Children's Villages around the world that provide a similar family environment.
SOS-Kinderdorf has three Cambodian orphanages where children live with surrogate mothers. The mothers aren't permitted to be married or have their own natural children. Each mother, who is paid $100 a month, rears as many as 15 children, although the average number is nine.
Geraldine Cox, a 62-year-old Australian who founded Sunrise Children's Villages in Cambodia about 15 years ago, runs two orphanages and hopes to open a third next year. The latter will be modeled on the family-oriented concept and cater to children orphaned by AIDS.
Finding surrogate parents is a challenge, Ms. Cox says: "It's very hard to get a Cambodian couple that doesn't drink, gamble, smoke and where the husband does not hit the wife."
Logistics aside, one of her biggest hurdles is more fundamental: instilling a moral compass in the next generation in a country that anticorruption advocate Transparency International ranks among the world's most graft-ridden.
"It's trying to make the children understand the difference between right and wrong in a country where people have done terrible things just to survive," Ms. Cox says. "It's a real challenge teaching the kids to understand that corruption isn't the way to be successful. The problem is they see corruption in Cambodia does make people rich and successful."
While Ms. Johnson, who has four children of her own and cares for a Cambodian boy, says her efforts to establish Sovann Komar have been "tough," she's optimistic about making a difference. "I think the families feel very fortunate to be here and that they are part of something that is going to really create some change for the better," says Ms. Johnson, who visits the orphanage at least once a year. "Maybe we're not going to change the destiny of Cambodia, but in our own little way I think it will have a wonderful ripple effect."
—Anne Hyland is a Bangkok-based writer.
Torture evidence presented at Khmer Rouge trial
Torture evidence presented at Khmer Rouge trial
Victims were slowly drained of blood, according to documents read at the trial of "Duch," head of the S-21 prison. He is accused of torture, murder and crimes against humanity.
By Brendan Brady
March 31, 2009
Reporting from Phnom Penh, Cambodia -- Medics working for Cambodia's former Khmer Rouge rulers at a notorious death camp slowly killed prisoners by draining their blood to be used for infusions for privileged cadres, according to allegations presented Monday at a hearing for one of the regime's leaders.
Kang Kek Ieu ran the S-21 prison, also known as Tuol Sleng, where more than 12,000 men, women and children were tortured before being executed in the nearby "killing fields" outside the capital, Phnom Penh. The rail-thin former teacher faces charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture and premeditated murder before the court, which is run by both Cambodian and international officials.
Kang, 66, known as Kaing Geuk Eav in tribunal filings but best known by the nom de guerre Duch, is one of five detained senior leaders believed to be the architects of the Maoist regime's fanatical rule in the late 1970s, under which an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians perished from overwork or starvation or were slain.
The regime's leader, Saloth Sar, better known as Pol Pot, and its military chief, Ta Mok, have died.
In custody and under investigation by the court are Khieu Samphan, the group's head of state; Ieng Sary, its foreign minister; his wife, Ieng Thirith, who was minister of social affairs; and Nuon Chea, or "Brother No. 2", the movement's chief ideologue. All four are old and ailing, and their trials are unlikely to begin until next year. They face a maximum of life imprisonment.
Unlike the other figures in detention, Kang, who is now a born-again Christian, has acknowledged his crimes and asked for forgiveness.
He is expected to make a full confession, but that will not end the trial. According to the tribunal's rules, he cannot plead guilty -- a confession will be treated as an element of evidence. Kang is also expected to argue in court that he was following orders and would have been killed had he not obeyed.
He spoke only briefly Monday, identifying himself with his name and aliases and giving the names of his wives and children.
While the trial opened formally last month, Monday marked the beginning of substantive hearings under the court's top judge, Nil Nonn. Prison guards, survivors and family members of those brutalized at Tuol Sleng will be called upon to testify.
A clerk read out the grisly allegation that about 1,000 prisoners died from having their blood slowly drained, along with an exhaustive list of alleged crimes by Kang.
Others who suffered were present at the packed courthouse to watch.
Orm Chanta's husband did not pass through Tuol Sleng but what he suffered was just as cruel. Orm, 69, said she witnessed her husband being buried alive by Khmer Rouge cadres after they shot him. His crime, they said, without elaborating, was being "a traitor to the regime."
Orm said that his education and profession -- he is a doctor -- made him suspicious to the regime, which particularly targeted those with money, an urban background and an education, the antithesis of the regime's vision of an agrarian peasant society.
"I have for a very long time been determined to come today to see if the pain in my heart can heal," she said, bursting into tears.
Van Nath, one of the prison's few survivors, said he witnessed prisoners being waterboarded, doused with battery acid or simply bludgeoned to force them to admit to imaginary crimes against the regime. He survived only because of his artistic skills, which he was forced to use to paint propaganda portraits of Pol Pot, who died in 1998.
Van, who did not attend Monday's hearing, said he had been "waiting for justice every day" since his captivity.
The court has suffered through years of political obstruction, judicial bickering, corruption allegations and funding shortages.
Observers have urged the Cambodian side of the court to allow further investigations to begin. Canadian prosecutor Robert Petit's move to add to the docket a handful of unidentified figures he describes as key enforcers was blocked by his Cambodian colleague, Chea Leang, a niece of the current deputy prime minister.
She has argued that additional prosecutions could prove destabilizing, overstretch the tribunal's limited resources and would run against the spirit of the 2003 U.N. treaty establishing the court, which called for only "senior leaders" of the regime and "those who were most responsible" to be tried.
Many senior Cambodian government posts are held by former Khmer Rouge, and experts say the government fears a wider roundup could expose them to scrutiny. Though facing stiff resistance, Petit has argued that expanding the court's reach would play a key role in validating its work.
Brady is a special correspondent. Special correspondent Keo Kounila contributed to this report.
Victims were slowly drained of blood, according to documents read at the trial of "Duch," head of the S-21 prison. He is accused of torture, murder and crimes against humanity.
By Brendan Brady
March 31, 2009
Reporting from Phnom Penh, Cambodia -- Medics working for Cambodia's former Khmer Rouge rulers at a notorious death camp slowly killed prisoners by draining their blood to be used for infusions for privileged cadres, according to allegations presented Monday at a hearing for one of the regime's leaders.
Kang Kek Ieu ran the S-21 prison, also known as Tuol Sleng, where more than 12,000 men, women and children were tortured before being executed in the nearby "killing fields" outside the capital, Phnom Penh. The rail-thin former teacher faces charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture and premeditated murder before the court, which is run by both Cambodian and international officials.
Kang, 66, known as Kaing Geuk Eav in tribunal filings but best known by the nom de guerre Duch, is one of five detained senior leaders believed to be the architects of the Maoist regime's fanatical rule in the late 1970s, under which an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians perished from overwork or starvation or were slain.
The regime's leader, Saloth Sar, better known as Pol Pot, and its military chief, Ta Mok, have died.
In custody and under investigation by the court are Khieu Samphan, the group's head of state; Ieng Sary, its foreign minister; his wife, Ieng Thirith, who was minister of social affairs; and Nuon Chea, or "Brother No. 2", the movement's chief ideologue. All four are old and ailing, and their trials are unlikely to begin until next year. They face a maximum of life imprisonment.
Unlike the other figures in detention, Kang, who is now a born-again Christian, has acknowledged his crimes and asked for forgiveness.
He is expected to make a full confession, but that will not end the trial. According to the tribunal's rules, he cannot plead guilty -- a confession will be treated as an element of evidence. Kang is also expected to argue in court that he was following orders and would have been killed had he not obeyed.
He spoke only briefly Monday, identifying himself with his name and aliases and giving the names of his wives and children.
While the trial opened formally last month, Monday marked the beginning of substantive hearings under the court's top judge, Nil Nonn. Prison guards, survivors and family members of those brutalized at Tuol Sleng will be called upon to testify.
A clerk read out the grisly allegation that about 1,000 prisoners died from having their blood slowly drained, along with an exhaustive list of alleged crimes by Kang.
Others who suffered were present at the packed courthouse to watch.
Orm Chanta's husband did not pass through Tuol Sleng but what he suffered was just as cruel. Orm, 69, said she witnessed her husband being buried alive by Khmer Rouge cadres after they shot him. His crime, they said, without elaborating, was being "a traitor to the regime."
Orm said that his education and profession -- he is a doctor -- made him suspicious to the regime, which particularly targeted those with money, an urban background and an education, the antithesis of the regime's vision of an agrarian peasant society.
"I have for a very long time been determined to come today to see if the pain in my heart can heal," she said, bursting into tears.
Van Nath, one of the prison's few survivors, said he witnessed prisoners being waterboarded, doused with battery acid or simply bludgeoned to force them to admit to imaginary crimes against the regime. He survived only because of his artistic skills, which he was forced to use to paint propaganda portraits of Pol Pot, who died in 1998.
Van, who did not attend Monday's hearing, said he had been "waiting for justice every day" since his captivity.
The court has suffered through years of political obstruction, judicial bickering, corruption allegations and funding shortages.
Observers have urged the Cambodian side of the court to allow further investigations to begin. Canadian prosecutor Robert Petit's move to add to the docket a handful of unidentified figures he describes as key enforcers was blocked by his Cambodian colleague, Chea Leang, a niece of the current deputy prime minister.
She has argued that additional prosecutions could prove destabilizing, overstretch the tribunal's limited resources and would run against the spirit of the 2003 U.N. treaty establishing the court, which called for only "senior leaders" of the regime and "those who were most responsible" to be tried.
Many senior Cambodian government posts are held by former Khmer Rouge, and experts say the government fears a wider roundup could expose them to scrutiny. Though facing stiff resistance, Petit has argued that expanding the court's reach would play a key role in validating its work.
Brady is a special correspondent. Special correspondent Keo Kounila contributed to this report.
Khmer Rouge Tribunal: Japan rushes to the Cambodian government’s aid
Khmer Rouge Tribunal: Japan rushes to the Cambodian government’s aid
By Stéphanie Gée
ka Set
21-03-2009
As March 30th will mark the opening of the first trial before the United Nations-backed Khmer Rouge Court, the Cambodian side of the hybrid jurisdiction finds itself short of funds. Japan, who stands as the biggest donor for the tribunal, announced on Friday March 20th in a communiqué released by the Japanese embassy in Cambodia, that they decided to urgently contribute US$200,000, “In response to the request from the Royal Government of Cambodia”. The contribution is surely a modest one, but will be used to pay for salaries on the Cambodian side of the Khmer Rouge tribunal at the end of this month.
This is however just a shot in the arm of the Court, still waiting for the lifting of the suspension, by international donors, of the payment of funds to the Cambodian side of the Court. The freezing was decided back in August 2008 after allegations of corruption were reported on the Cambodian side. The government and the UN should reach a final agreement before Monday concerning the setting up of anti-corruption mechanisms, as they committed to doing last month. The agreement will supposedly lead to the release of funds allocated to the Cambodian side of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), still confident to this day. Who could possibly imagine that after nearly three years up and running, the tribunal would suspend its activity days before the opening of the first trial of a former Khmer Rouge leader, torturer Duch?
By Stéphanie Gée
ka Set
21-03-2009
As March 30th will mark the opening of the first trial before the United Nations-backed Khmer Rouge Court, the Cambodian side of the hybrid jurisdiction finds itself short of funds. Japan, who stands as the biggest donor for the tribunal, announced on Friday March 20th in a communiqué released by the Japanese embassy in Cambodia, that they decided to urgently contribute US$200,000, “In response to the request from the Royal Government of Cambodia”. The contribution is surely a modest one, but will be used to pay for salaries on the Cambodian side of the Khmer Rouge tribunal at the end of this month.
This is however just a shot in the arm of the Court, still waiting for the lifting of the suspension, by international donors, of the payment of funds to the Cambodian side of the Court. The freezing was decided back in August 2008 after allegations of corruption were reported on the Cambodian side. The government and the UN should reach a final agreement before Monday concerning the setting up of anti-corruption mechanisms, as they committed to doing last month. The agreement will supposedly lead to the release of funds allocated to the Cambodian side of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), still confident to this day. Who could possibly imagine that after nearly three years up and running, the tribunal would suspend its activity days before the opening of the first trial of a former Khmer Rouge leader, torturer Duch?
Govt bails out textile sector with stimulus package
Govt bails out textile sector with stimulus package
March 26, 2009 (Portugal)
The Portuguese government has finally woken up to the fact that its textile and garment industry is in the deep throes of the recessionary trends prevailing across its key markets; countries in the European Union and needs emergency measures for survival.
The government has now announced a € 850 million stimulus package for the domestic textile and garment sector. This will help the sector access funds at cheaper rates, boost exports and ensure that jobs are not lost in the labour intensive sector.
The textile and garment industry in Portugal employs over 180,000 people and accounts for over 12 percent of export revenues of this European country. Exports fell by 6.5 percent in 2008, mainly due to reduced demand from its biggest market; Spain.
The government will also fund investment and give incentives for modernization of the textile units to upgrade themselves as well as provide support for availing of export credit insurance and faster access to European Union funds.
Fibre2fashion News Desk - India
March 26, 2009 (Portugal)
The Portuguese government has finally woken up to the fact that its textile and garment industry is in the deep throes of the recessionary trends prevailing across its key markets; countries in the European Union and needs emergency measures for survival.
The government has now announced a € 850 million stimulus package for the domestic textile and garment sector. This will help the sector access funds at cheaper rates, boost exports and ensure that jobs are not lost in the labour intensive sector.
The textile and garment industry in Portugal employs over 180,000 people and accounts for over 12 percent of export revenues of this European country. Exports fell by 6.5 percent in 2008, mainly due to reduced demand from its biggest market; Spain.
The government will also fund investment and give incentives for modernization of the textile units to upgrade themselves as well as provide support for availing of export credit insurance and faster access to European Union funds.
Fibre2fashion News Desk - India
In Bangladesh, Disasters Widen the Road to Slavery
In Bangladesh, Disasters Widen the Road to Slavery
By LISA FRIEDMAN, ClimateWire
Published: March 30, 2009
SATKHIRA, Bangladesh -- The stench of the kerosene lamp fills the space under the roadway overpass. Two girls and their nephew, mother and father make their home here. They sit on a wide slab of concrete covered with a cloth mat that serves as their bed.
Sheik Zapharula's face glows in the lamplight as he recounts how his 15-year-old daughter was lured off by an admiring stranger who had been coming by the family's rooti store. It was only years later that they learned the worst of it: that within days, the girl had been hustled illegally across the border into India and sold into slavery.
Zapharula's family is among the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh. Not only landless and jobless, they lack even the community structure of village life. Aid workers say it's families like this one in Bangladesh and elsewhere that are most vulnerable to exploitation. Climate change, meanwhile, threatens to thrust millions more families into desperate conditions.
"The more the climate changes, the more destitute people are becoming," said Ruhul Amin, who runs a nonprofit agency that builds awareness in villages about trafficking and works with local authorities to locate victims and prosecute traffickers.
"The poorer people are, the more vulnerable they are to trafficking," Amin explained. "With all this flooding, people can approach poor families and say, 'Look, you have nothing here,'" luring women and girls off with visions of a financially secure marriage or a well-paying job in Dhaka's garment industry.
The Human Security Network, a coalition of 14 countries that meets at the foreign minister level to raise awareness about a range of humanitarian issues, has warned that climate migration could cause still more trafficking.
"Women and children refugees created by natural disasters or conflicts caused by scarcity of resources are exposed to increased risks compared to male refugees," a 2007 Human Security report on climate change found, adding that girls in particular "are vulnerable to exploitation, trafficking and other forms of gender-based violence."
As Amin spoke, he handed over a booklet of handwritten pages. On each line were the meticulously recorded entries of the missing:
Shamina Parvin, 5. Nature of incident: trafficking. Rezia Khan, 14. Nature of incident: trafficking. Monira Khatun, 13. Nature of incident: trafficking.
Girls younger than 17 fetch the best prices, about 200,000 taka -- the equivalent of almost $3,000, Amin says. Women between the ages of 25 to 40 bring about half that. Meanwhile, widows -- vulnerable in the villages with no man to protect them -- are sold for their work skills, as well. They're worth about 60,000 taka, or $870.
Amin described what they know about the trafficking system. Outright kidnappings, he said, are less common than they were a decade ago, and he credits awareness programs like his for that change. But traffickers are just as often people who are known in the villages, and it remains common for young girls to be approached by a seemingly concerned neighbor.
Children from large families make particularly good prey, Amin said. So do the adventurous ones.
'A lot of women, they have no chance of coming back'
"They say, 'If you come with us, we can get you a job and you can help your father out.' But as soon as they give their trust to them, then they are trafficked. A lot of women, they have no chance of coming back," he said.
Those middlemen and women might get about 12,000 taka, or $175, for luring a victim. The border smugglers who get the girl to India across one of the region's 30 illegal crossing points, known as ghats, earn more. The predators rarely hit the same village twice.
Sophia, 37, whose home is a thatched hut by the side of the road near Satkhira, said she didn't think much of it when her teenage daughter told her a local woman was encouraging the girl to find a job in Dhaka's thriving garment industry. Sophia told her daughter to put that idea out of her head, and considered the conversation finished.
Then one day the girl said she was headed to find work at the fish processing factory and never returned. Sophia said she spent several months frantically trying to track down her daughter. Based on rumors and evidence she uncovered herself, Sophia said she is almost certain the child was taken to India. Local police were little help, and one afternoon a group of men offered her the equivalent of about $29 to stop her inquiries. She refused the money, but said she has run out of leads.
Like Zepharula, Sophia is among the poorest of Bangladesh's poor. Only a blue tarp protects her one-room home from the splatter of mud from the roadway. Her husband drives a van, and Sophia does a variety of odd jobs, from skinning fish at a factory to collecting water hyacinth for livestock feed.
Now she also is caring for her 6-year-old granddaughter. Sophia said that more than once, she has heard the girl say matter-of-factly, "My mother was sold in Bombay for 2 lakh [200,000 taka]," and it breaks her heart.
Just as scientists say no single storm can be attributed to climate change, aid workers say it is nearly impossible to connect any single incident of exploitation to environmental degradation. But there is widespread agreement that changing weather patterns and increases in natural disasters already are causing upheaval among the world's poorest communities.
Koko Warner, a leading climate migration researcher at the U.N. University, said a recent study of environmentally induced migration in 22 countries found strong evidence of increased trafficking in Vietnam and Ghana, as well.
Meanwhile, the Red Cross has estimated that about 50 million people will have fled their homes for environmental and climate reasons by 2010, putting themselves at increased risk of exploitation.
"It's just vulnerability," Warner said. "People are vulnerable after disasters or where there's environmental degradation. And traffickers know when people are vulnerable."
Copyright 2009 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
By LISA FRIEDMAN, ClimateWire
Published: March 30, 2009
SATKHIRA, Bangladesh -- The stench of the kerosene lamp fills the space under the roadway overpass. Two girls and their nephew, mother and father make their home here. They sit on a wide slab of concrete covered with a cloth mat that serves as their bed.
Sheik Zapharula's face glows in the lamplight as he recounts how his 15-year-old daughter was lured off by an admiring stranger who had been coming by the family's rooti store. It was only years later that they learned the worst of it: that within days, the girl had been hustled illegally across the border into India and sold into slavery.
Zapharula's family is among the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh. Not only landless and jobless, they lack even the community structure of village life. Aid workers say it's families like this one in Bangladesh and elsewhere that are most vulnerable to exploitation. Climate change, meanwhile, threatens to thrust millions more families into desperate conditions.
"The more the climate changes, the more destitute people are becoming," said Ruhul Amin, who runs a nonprofit agency that builds awareness in villages about trafficking and works with local authorities to locate victims and prosecute traffickers.
"The poorer people are, the more vulnerable they are to trafficking," Amin explained. "With all this flooding, people can approach poor families and say, 'Look, you have nothing here,'" luring women and girls off with visions of a financially secure marriage or a well-paying job in Dhaka's garment industry.
The Human Security Network, a coalition of 14 countries that meets at the foreign minister level to raise awareness about a range of humanitarian issues, has warned that climate migration could cause still more trafficking.
"Women and children refugees created by natural disasters or conflicts caused by scarcity of resources are exposed to increased risks compared to male refugees," a 2007 Human Security report on climate change found, adding that girls in particular "are vulnerable to exploitation, trafficking and other forms of gender-based violence."
As Amin spoke, he handed over a booklet of handwritten pages. On each line were the meticulously recorded entries of the missing:
Shamina Parvin, 5. Nature of incident: trafficking. Rezia Khan, 14. Nature of incident: trafficking. Monira Khatun, 13. Nature of incident: trafficking.
Girls younger than 17 fetch the best prices, about 200,000 taka -- the equivalent of almost $3,000, Amin says. Women between the ages of 25 to 40 bring about half that. Meanwhile, widows -- vulnerable in the villages with no man to protect them -- are sold for their work skills, as well. They're worth about 60,000 taka, or $870.
Amin described what they know about the trafficking system. Outright kidnappings, he said, are less common than they were a decade ago, and he credits awareness programs like his for that change. But traffickers are just as often people who are known in the villages, and it remains common for young girls to be approached by a seemingly concerned neighbor.
Children from large families make particularly good prey, Amin said. So do the adventurous ones.
'A lot of women, they have no chance of coming back'
"They say, 'If you come with us, we can get you a job and you can help your father out.' But as soon as they give their trust to them, then they are trafficked. A lot of women, they have no chance of coming back," he said.
Those middlemen and women might get about 12,000 taka, or $175, for luring a victim. The border smugglers who get the girl to India across one of the region's 30 illegal crossing points, known as ghats, earn more. The predators rarely hit the same village twice.
Sophia, 37, whose home is a thatched hut by the side of the road near Satkhira, said she didn't think much of it when her teenage daughter told her a local woman was encouraging the girl to find a job in Dhaka's thriving garment industry. Sophia told her daughter to put that idea out of her head, and considered the conversation finished.
Then one day the girl said she was headed to find work at the fish processing factory and never returned. Sophia said she spent several months frantically trying to track down her daughter. Based on rumors and evidence she uncovered herself, Sophia said she is almost certain the child was taken to India. Local police were little help, and one afternoon a group of men offered her the equivalent of about $29 to stop her inquiries. She refused the money, but said she has run out of leads.
Like Zepharula, Sophia is among the poorest of Bangladesh's poor. Only a blue tarp protects her one-room home from the splatter of mud from the roadway. Her husband drives a van, and Sophia does a variety of odd jobs, from skinning fish at a factory to collecting water hyacinth for livestock feed.
Now she also is caring for her 6-year-old granddaughter. Sophia said that more than once, she has heard the girl say matter-of-factly, "My mother was sold in Bombay for 2 lakh [200,000 taka]," and it breaks her heart.
Just as scientists say no single storm can be attributed to climate change, aid workers say it is nearly impossible to connect any single incident of exploitation to environmental degradation. But there is widespread agreement that changing weather patterns and increases in natural disasters already are causing upheaval among the world's poorest communities.
Koko Warner, a leading climate migration researcher at the U.N. University, said a recent study of environmentally induced migration in 22 countries found strong evidence of increased trafficking in Vietnam and Ghana, as well.
Meanwhile, the Red Cross has estimated that about 50 million people will have fled their homes for environmental and climate reasons by 2010, putting themselves at increased risk of exploitation.
"It's just vulnerability," Warner said. "People are vulnerable after disasters or where there's environmental degradation. And traffickers know when people are vulnerable."
Copyright 2009 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
Garment: Haiti’s Big Chance
Haiti’s Big Chance
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LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMy SpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy BAN KI-MOON
Published: March 30, 2009
It is easy to visit Haiti and see only poverty. But when I visited recently with former President Bill Clinton, we saw opportunity.
Yes, Haiti remains desperately poor. It has yet to fully recover from last year’s devastating hurricanes, not to mention decades of malign dictatorship. Yet we can report what President René Préval told us: “Haiti is at a turning point.” It can slide backwards into darkness and deeper misery, sacrificing all the country’s progress and hard work with the United Nations and international community. Or it can break out, into the light toward a brighter and more hopeful future.
Next month, major international donors will gather in Washington to consider further help for this unfortunate land, so battered by forces beyond its control. Outwardly, there seems little cause of optimism. The financial crisis has crimped aid budgets. Haiti’s own problems — runaway population growth, acute shortages of food and life’s basic necessities, environmental degradation — often appear insuperable.
Yet in fact, Haiti stands a better chance than almost any emerging economy, not only to weather the current economic storms but to prosper. The reason: new U.S. trade legislation, passed last year, throws open a huge window of opportunity.
HOPE II, as the act is known, offers Haiti duty-free, quota-free access to U.S. markets for the next nine years. No other nation enjoys a similar advantage. This is a foundation to build on. It is a chance to consolidate the progress Haiti has made in winning a measure of political stability, with the help of the U.N. peacekeeping mission, and move beyond aid to genuine economic development. Given the country’s massive unemployment, particularly among youth, that means one thing above all else: jobs.
My special adviser on Haiti, the Oxford University development economist Paul Collier, has worked with the government to devise a strategy. It identifies specific steps and policies to create those jobs, with particular emphasis on the country’s traditional strengths — the garment industry and agriculture. Among them: enacting new regulations lowering port fees (among the highest in the Caribbean) and creating the sort of industrial “clusters” that have come to dominate global trade.
In practical terms, this means dramatically expanding the country’s export zones, so that a new generation of textile firms can invest and do business in one place. By creating a market sufficiently large to generate economies of scale, they can drive down production costs and, once a certain threshold is crossed, spark potentially explosive growth constrained only by the size of the labor pool.
That may seem ambitious in a country of 9 million people, where 80 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day and half of the food is imported. Yet we know it can work. We have seen it happen in Bangladesh, which boasts a garment industry supporting 2.5 million jobs. We have seen it happen in Uganda and Rwanda.
President Clinton and I saw many good signs during our trip, both large and small. One day we visited an elementary school in Cité Soleil, a slum in Port au Prince long controlled by violent gangs before U.N. peacekeepers reclaimed it.
It did my heart good to see these children. They were well-fed, thanks to the U.N. World Food Program. Even better, they were happy and they were learning — as children should. It was a sign of more normal times.
We visited a second school, as well — this one for gifted students called HELP, short for the Haitian Education Leadership Program. With money raised privately in the United States, it provides scholarships to the very poorest Haitian children who could not otherwise dream of attending university. All these young people go on to lead productive careers. They make good salaries. They embark upon lives of promise — and virtually all of them stay in Haiti.
I told these young people that I thought of them as “seeds of hope,” for they represent a better tomorrow.
To an outsider, it is striking how modest the obstacles are in relation to Haiti’s potential. Visiting a clean and efficient factory in the capital, we met workers earning $7 a day making T-shirts for export — vaulting them into the Haitian middle class. Under HOPE II, the owner figures he can double or triple production within a year.
All this is why, in Washington, we will be asking donors to invest in Haiti, to step beyond traditional humanitarian aid. This is Haiti’s moment, a break-out opportunity for one of the poorest nations to lift itself toward a future of real economic prospects and genuine hope.
Sign In to E-Mail Print ShareClose
LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMy SpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy BAN KI-MOON
Published: March 30, 2009
It is easy to visit Haiti and see only poverty. But when I visited recently with former President Bill Clinton, we saw opportunity.
Yes, Haiti remains desperately poor. It has yet to fully recover from last year’s devastating hurricanes, not to mention decades of malign dictatorship. Yet we can report what President René Préval told us: “Haiti is at a turning point.” It can slide backwards into darkness and deeper misery, sacrificing all the country’s progress and hard work with the United Nations and international community. Or it can break out, into the light toward a brighter and more hopeful future.
Next month, major international donors will gather in Washington to consider further help for this unfortunate land, so battered by forces beyond its control. Outwardly, there seems little cause of optimism. The financial crisis has crimped aid budgets. Haiti’s own problems — runaway population growth, acute shortages of food and life’s basic necessities, environmental degradation — often appear insuperable.
Yet in fact, Haiti stands a better chance than almost any emerging economy, not only to weather the current economic storms but to prosper. The reason: new U.S. trade legislation, passed last year, throws open a huge window of opportunity.
HOPE II, as the act is known, offers Haiti duty-free, quota-free access to U.S. markets for the next nine years. No other nation enjoys a similar advantage. This is a foundation to build on. It is a chance to consolidate the progress Haiti has made in winning a measure of political stability, with the help of the U.N. peacekeeping mission, and move beyond aid to genuine economic development. Given the country’s massive unemployment, particularly among youth, that means one thing above all else: jobs.
My special adviser on Haiti, the Oxford University development economist Paul Collier, has worked with the government to devise a strategy. It identifies specific steps and policies to create those jobs, with particular emphasis on the country’s traditional strengths — the garment industry and agriculture. Among them: enacting new regulations lowering port fees (among the highest in the Caribbean) and creating the sort of industrial “clusters” that have come to dominate global trade.
In practical terms, this means dramatically expanding the country’s export zones, so that a new generation of textile firms can invest and do business in one place. By creating a market sufficiently large to generate economies of scale, they can drive down production costs and, once a certain threshold is crossed, spark potentially explosive growth constrained only by the size of the labor pool.
That may seem ambitious in a country of 9 million people, where 80 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day and half of the food is imported. Yet we know it can work. We have seen it happen in Bangladesh, which boasts a garment industry supporting 2.5 million jobs. We have seen it happen in Uganda and Rwanda.
President Clinton and I saw many good signs during our trip, both large and small. One day we visited an elementary school in Cité Soleil, a slum in Port au Prince long controlled by violent gangs before U.N. peacekeepers reclaimed it.
It did my heart good to see these children. They were well-fed, thanks to the U.N. World Food Program. Even better, they were happy and they were learning — as children should. It was a sign of more normal times.
We visited a second school, as well — this one for gifted students called HELP, short for the Haitian Education Leadership Program. With money raised privately in the United States, it provides scholarships to the very poorest Haitian children who could not otherwise dream of attending university. All these young people go on to lead productive careers. They make good salaries. They embark upon lives of promise — and virtually all of them stay in Haiti.
I told these young people that I thought of them as “seeds of hope,” for they represent a better tomorrow.
To an outsider, it is striking how modest the obstacles are in relation to Haiti’s potential. Visiting a clean and efficient factory in the capital, we met workers earning $7 a day making T-shirts for export — vaulting them into the Haitian middle class. Under HOPE II, the owner figures he can double or triple production within a year.
All this is why, in Washington, we will be asking donors to invest in Haiti, to step beyond traditional humanitarian aid. This is Haiti’s moment, a break-out opportunity for one of the poorest nations to lift itself toward a future of real economic prospects and genuine hope.
30 March, 2009
Julio A. Jeldres vs. Gilles Cayatte about “The Nine Lives of Norodom Sihanouk”
Julio A. Jeldres vs. Gilles Cayatte about “The Nine Lives of Norodom Sihanouk”
A Commentary about the film
“The Nine Lives of Norodom Sihanouk” produced and directed by Gilles Cayatte and Christine Camdessus
By Ambassador Julio A. Jeldres
In late May 2008, I was contacted by a trusted friend who informed me that a Mr. Gilles Cayatte, a French film producer was making a film about King Father Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia and wanted to interview me about my years as Private Secretary to the King in the 1980s.
My friend suggested that the interview could take place in either Bangkok or Phnom Penh but I replied that I had no plan to visit either city in the near future and that, therefore, unless the film producer flew me to Bangkok, it would be difficult to have the interview. My friend then advised me that Mr Cayatte himself and a cameraman would travel to Australia to interview Dr David Chandler and me.
There the matter rested for one month, until I was contacted again from Paris by the producers’ staff suggesting a date for a joint interview of Dr Chandler and myself. I declined and insisted on separate interviews because I know only too well that Chandler has nothing positive to say about Norodom Sihanouk and has written mostly negative judgements of the Sihanouk years in Cambodia ever since he served as Second Secretary at the US Embassy in Phnom Penh.
On 1st July 2008, I spent approximately six hours with Mr Cayatte and his cameraman. I even had to send away some workers that were repairing the roof of my house in order that the noise they were making was not heard on the film. During those six hours, I gave ample explanations to Mr Cayatte about King Sihanouk’s actions, his unique relationships with China’s Zhou Enlai and North Korea’s Kim IL Sung. I explained to him how His Majesty had put together in 1981 the Peace Plan to end through diplomatic negotiations and UN involvement the occupation of Cambodia by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. This draft Peace Plan, His Majesty had entrusted to US Congressman Stephen Solarz in early 1981, who in turn passed on to US and ASEAN authorities with whom it languished without major reaction, until Solarz communicated it to the then Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Gareth Evans, who saw its merits and adapted it for everybody’s taste and eventual acceptance. It was indeed, the most wide ranging interview I have ever given!
Yet, in the film, screened in France on the evening of 23 February 2009, none of the substantial explanations about Norodom Sihanouk I gave to Mr. Cayatte was shown.
Now, I do not wish to be misunderstood here, it is Mr Cayatte’s right to use or not to use the material I provided him during the extensive interview but, by the same token, Mr Cayatte cannot expect those of us, who are familiar with the record of Norodom Sihanouk to accept his “documentary” as a balanced, objective or impartial film!
Indeed as the thrust of this commentary shall demonstrate, I believe that “The Nine Lives of Norodom Sihanouk” is a crude exercise to paint as black as possible a picture of Norodom Sihanouk and that the historical record of Cambodia provided in the narrative of this film was seriously misleading and, at times, demonstrably untrue.
There can be little doubt that the subject matter, the many inaccuracies tendered by some of the interviewees and the timing of its broadcast – to coincide with the media circus descending over Phnom Penh for the first audition of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal assured that the film would be controversial.
But what really “impressed” me about this “documentary” was its archetypal qualities; its comprehensive awfulness and great arrogance which elevated it to the status of an agitprop classic unworthy of further screening.
In this commentary, I shall quote from some of the extensive documentation I have gathered for my biography of Norodom Sihanouk from sources in Australia, Canada, Cambodia, Czech Republic, China, France, Germany, Israel, Sweden, New Zealand and the United States.
JEAN LACOUTURE
The “documentary” begins with an interview of Jean Lacouture, a discredited guru of what the French call “La Gauche Caviar” or “The Left that eats Caviar”, insulting King Sihanouk by dismissing him as “a King of Operetta”! Viewers of the film are immediately stunned by this neo-colonial arrogance showed by Lacouture and also the film’s narrative.
Naturally, and in accordance with his deliberate agenda Mr Cayatte does not inform the viewer, who might not be familiar with Cambodian history, that the same King Sihanouk was behind the promulgation, on 6 May 1947, that is six years before achieving total independence for Cambodia from France, of a Constitution which transformed this ancient absolute monarchy into a constitutional monarchy. Not bad for a so-called “King of Operetta”!
SIHANOUK’S NEUTRALISM AND ANTI-AMERICANISM?
Then the narrative of the film tells us that at Bandung (Indonesia) in 1955, during the Afro-Asian Conference which led to the formation, years later, of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) “Sihanouk was introduced to neutralism and Anti-Americanism by the leaders of the Third World”, while pictures of Indian Prime Minister Nehru and Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai are shown and the narrative and comments by David Chandler suggest that the above-mentioned leaders made him (Sihanouk) feel “important”.
Here, it should be pointed out that what Nehru and Zhou Enlai did was to simply treat Norodom Sihanouk, the leader of small country, with due respect and on an equal footing, something which the Americans and others never did.
Furthermore, Cambodia, as a small and scarcely inhabited country, squeezed between big, powerful and rapacious neighbours, only too willing to take over her territory, could not afford other policy than neutrality and national unity to preserve and defend her independence, peace and territorial integrity while steadily improving the living conditions of her people. This is precisely what Norodom Sihanouk tried very hard to achieve. With an army of only 30,000 badly armed and equipped effectives, Cambodia was expected to take control of three frontiers with three different countries, when the United States with almost half a million extremely well armed men and all the necessary equipment to fight from the air and on land, it was unable to seal the frontier between South Vietnam and Cambodia.
In fact, Norodom Sihanouk has never been “anti-American” but he was anti-US policies that were counter-productive. Indeed, he condemned the policies successive American government followed in South East Asia during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, which basically consisted of supporting unpopular, undemocratic and dictatorial regimes in what amounted to a “holy war” against Asian Communism and which had the opposite effect of increasing support for Communist insurgencies in the region.
In December 1969 in a commentary entitled: “The United States and us”, Norodom Sihanouk wrote that “the efforts put forth by the United States to fight Communism have never been directed in the right direction, despite my many warnings. The latter, which were severe, made me, appear in the eyes of Uncle Sam as a spoilsport, since these were the opposite of the flattery which they were used to hearing from their Asian “clients”. Furthermore, these sacrifices were agreed to by the United States in Southeast Asia only to serve their interests as a great power and not to “defend the liberty” of the peoples of our region. If it were otherwise how could it be that we should see dictatorial, anti-popular governments in Taipei, Seoul and, especially, in Saigon and Bangkok”.1
The Cambodian Head of State added that “The armed, badly inspired, badly conceived interventions, and even the sacrifices – of the US have finally favoured the advance of Communism in the minds and on the ground – which brings Communism to the frontiers and even to the interior of Cambodia much more rapidly than would have occurred normally. The so-called war “against communism” carried on by the Americans has resulted in damaging or destroying a sizable part of the economic potential of Cambodia (plantations, cattle, buildings, fields and rice paddies). It has ruined numbers of our peasants and placed more than 400 of their families in mourning”.2
Subsequent events have amply corroborated that what Norodom Sihanouk wrote regarding the United States in Southeast Asia, and more particularly, in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia was eminently right.
In fact, at the US Embassy in Phnom Penh, prior to the break of diplomatic relations between Cambodian and the United Sates in May 1965, diplomats were often reminded that in the larger framework of American objectives “Cambodia was of no importance”.3
Some US diplomats in Cambodia behaved poorly towards Sihanouk, always belittling his actions to preserve his country’s neutrality and territorial integrity. Robert McClintock, the first US Ambassador resident in Phnom Penh (Oct. 1954-Oct. 1956), showed no respect at all for the Cambodian Head of State. It was McClintock who invented the nickname “Snooky” to refer to the Head of State of the country to which he was accredited as Ambassador. His arrogance and contempt for Cambodians was well known and forms part of the historical record of the two countries difficult relationship. Many in the United States blamed McClintock for the parlous state of the relationship with Cambodia.4
Curtis C. Cutter, a US foreign service officer posted to Cambodia from 1957 to 1959 has described vividly the way the US Embassy operated and how the attempts by Norodom Sihanouk to keep his country neutral were belittled, I request my readers’ indulgence but I feel that here I need to reproduce extensively what Mr Cutter has said about his posting in Cambodia in the years 1957-595:
“Question: Well, you were in Phnom Penh from 1957 to 1959. What was the situation there at that time?
Cutter: I felt that in many ways the U. S. position there was questionable. We had sent an ambassador named Carl Strom to Phnom Penh. He was a very fine, honourable gentleman, but he was an officer at the end of his career. He was a mathematician, a very precise sort of person. He had been mainly an administrative officer most of his career in the Foreign Service. He had absolutely zero rapport with Prince Sihanouk, who was, as you probably know, an entirely different kind of character, very open, outgoing, and very spontaneous. Strom was almost the direct opposite. He was almost introverted and a very serious, point by point kind of person. There was very little personal relationship between the two men, at a time when Prince Sihanouk was Cambodia.
Strom, I think, was also somewhat intimidated by both the Department and our Vietnamese policies at the time. He seemed to feel that in some way what he was doing in Cambodia was meant to support what was happening in Vietnam. He felt he could not take a different line than was being taken there.
Question: He was somewhat deferential?
Cutter: Deferential yes. I can give you an example. Carl Strom and I played a lot of bridge together. We even won the worldwide bridge tournament. So as a junior officer he gave me a lot of access which I would not have had otherwise. Even though, after a year, I had moved to be the consular officer, he let me sit in on lots of meetings of one kind or another and all of his staff meetings. So I had an interesting view of what was happening at the post, although, of course, as a junior officer, I wasn't in any way able to have much influence on what was happening.
But one incident occurred in, it must have been 1958. The Vietnamese were rather aggressively trying to realign the frontier between Cambodia and South Vietnam. There was an incident where they had moved some border posts five or six kilometres into Cambodia and then put them in again. Sihanouk wanted the missions in Phnom Penh to send representatives to see what had happened, because, obviously, the Vietnamese were encroaching on his territory. He wanted to document this for the international community.
When this request came to our Embassy, the Ambassador met with his staff, especially the military attachés, to decide what should be done about it. There were some strong opinions--mine amongst them--that if this were true, then Sihanouk had a legitimate case, and that we ought to go there and take a look. If there were real evidence that this had happened, obviously, the position that the U. S. ought to take was that this was unacceptable, and we should talk to our Vietnamese friends about rectifying the situation.6
But after some correspondence back and forth between the Embassy in Saigon and the Embassy in Phnom Penh, it was decided that, in fact, it would be very bad if we went down, if we made our presence at this event. The Ambassador refused to send anybody along. A number of missions did send people, and it was fairly clearly established that the Vietnamese were moving these border posts. This was the kind of thing we did. Actions in favour of the Vietnamese, which began to alienate Sihanouk7.
Question: Well, you said that you felt rather strongly. Obviously, you were a junior officer and carried little weight. But did others at the Embassy feel that way, too? I mean, was this sort of thing where maybe we should get out and be a little more active for "our" country, you might say?
Cutter: Well, at least it seemed that there was a question of equity involved here. There was a great possibility that the Cambodians, in fact, were the injured party. Of course, the whole pressure of U. S. policy at that time on Cambodia was to get them out of their neutral stance. The harder Sihanouk resisted that, which he did, the more pressure was exerted on him to do it, and the more entrenched our attitude became that Sihanouk's policy was really unacceptable. There were people in the Embassy who took a different line--for example, the political officer, Bob Barrett, subsequently an ambassador in Africa. Bob was, I think, one of the people in favour of our taking at least a more neutral position on this and trying to see where the facts lay. But the military and Agency [CIA] representations there didn't feel that this was in the US interest.
Question: They were trying to keep the Vietnamese content, I suppose.
Cutter: That's right. And Durbrow [Elbridge Durbrow], who was our Ambassador in Saigon at the time, was very strongly opposed to our doing anything that would upset his clients”8.
Lloyd Mike Rives, a US Foreign Service officer, who, in August 1969, re-opened the US Embassy in Phnom Penh after a break of four years and became for a year the United States Charge d’affaires in Cambodia. Regarding Norodom Sihanouk he says: “I just want to make one point clear here: Sihanouk was an interesting person, and I think we had misunderstood him for many years. He was a patriot. What he did was for Cambodia, not for himself and there were no real ulterior motives except for that”.9
In order to pursue and preserve Cambodia’s neutrality, it was essential for Norodom Sihanouk to be flexible and to zigzag when necessary and to change emphasis. He became a master tactician and used unpredictability as a weapon to disarm his foreign detractors. While there was much talk and discussion about the use of Cambodia as a sanctuary for North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces, for sixteen years, until 18 March 1970, Cambodia had been a sanctuary in another sense, quite remarkably preserving its neutrality and keeping the Indochina war beyond its borders. Sihanouk was able to contain a Communist presence in his country while working to remove it by diplomatic means, while at the same time ensuring a reasonable prosperity and gradual progress for the Cambodian people.
The former Australian Ambassador to Cambodia, the late Noel Deschamps, once told me that he felt that American policy towards Cambodia in the 1950-1970 period was heavily influenced by what Cambodia’s neighbours thought of Cambodia itself and, more importantly, of the policies and actions taken by Norodom Sihanouk to protect and keep his country and people out of the war ravaging Vietnam and parts of Laos.10
It is into this “anti-Sihanouk” ambience which existed among certain US diplomats in Cambodia that David Chandler settled, in 1960, to be the Second Secretary of the US Embassy in Phnom Penh. For reasons that until this day, I am unable to comprehend he became a determined critic of Norodom Sihanouk: nothing that the former King did was good, everything was bad, Sihanouk never had good intentions, his intentions were always bad. All the positive things that other US diplomats have recognized about Norodom Sihanouk have been dismissed disdainfully by David Chandler.
Thus, it should come as no surprise that Gilles Cayatte uses Dr. Chandler ad nauseam to advance his “anti-Sihanouk” thesis in his “documentary”. As it progresses so do the misinterpretations and falsehoods about Norodom Sihanouk’s so-called “Nine Lives”. For instance, General De Gaulle of France, another statesman, who understood what Norodom Sihanouk was trying to do in Cambodia and who offered his hand of friendship and respect to the former King, is also dismissed as a friend of no consequence.
The impression is falsely conveyed by the “documentary” that the sole aim behind Norodom Sihanouk’s friendship with Charles De Gaulle and Zhou Enlai was of a financial nature, i.e., to obtain assistance for the development of Cambodia.
Such an aim, in itself was not ignoble for a Head of State that really cared for his country and his people but the opposite. But there was more to it, faced with so much antagonism from the United States and attempts to subvert his regime by its rapacious neighbours, the friendship of these two statesmen, representatives of great powers, gave a certain assurance to Cambodia for its survival as a nation of its own, with its territorial integrity and independence protected.
A question that the Cayatte “documentary” did not raise and that it should have is: Did the United States have sufficient interests in Cambodia per se to treat it as a separate issue?
The answer is provided by Ambassador Robert V. Keeley, a former US Ambassador to Mauritius, Zimbabwe and Greece, who served at the American Embassy in Phnom Penh as Deputy Chief of Mission for approximately a year from 1974 until the closure of the US mission on 12 April 1975, he states:
“It was not a question of seeing it as a separate issue; it was a matter of dealing with it differently, in our opinion, and being handled on its own terms. That is, it should not have been viewed as something that is a bother because it affects Vietnam. There were different forces fighting in Cambodia than there were in Vietnam. There were indigenous forces in Cambodia on both sides; there were no Vietnamese involved at the time. The opposing sides had different interests from the Vietnamese and the war itself had a different history. In fact, there should never have been a war in Cambodia, but we had something to do with that. We should have done everything in our power to avoid this ‘spill-over’ effect.
In order to do that, we would have had, from the beginning, to respect Cambodian neutrality, which is what Prince Sihanouk had done throughout his career to the best of his ability until he was overthrown in 1970… We really brought the war to Cambodia. The overthrow of Sihanouk, which voided his policy of neutrality, also contributed to the war coming to Cambodia”.11
SIHANOUK, THE VIETCONG AND THE SECRET BOMBING OF CAMBODIA
The most outrageous allegation made in the film comes from Father Francois Ponchaud, a Jesuit missionary who had lived in Cambodia prior to 1975 and returned again to live in Phnom Penh after the 1991 Paris Agreements.
In the Cayatte “documentary” Ponchaud alleges that: “At that moment he changed camp and asked the American Army to bomb the Vietcong sanctuaries along the Cambodia-Vietnam border. Of course, on the radio he screamed as much as he could against this American Army that bombed Cambodia, but hold on, bombed on his orders”.
This allegation of Ponchaud is false and highly misleading but is immediately accepted by Cayatte, who adds “And there you have, Sihanouk in the untenable position of being the one who authorizes the Americans to secretly bomb the North Vietnamese positions which he had secretly authorized to establish”.
The question of the infiltration of Cambodia by North Vietnamese/Viet cong forces has been used and misused to justify the carpet bombing of Cambodia which took place from March 1968 to August 1973. It is, therefore, important to give here the historical background to this controversial issue.
In the early 1960s, Norodom Sihanouk saw the growing Communist insurgency in South Vietnam and the increasing US involvement with serious concern. Cambodia had declared its neutrality in 1953, thus Sihanouk saw in the growing conflict in Vietnam the possibility of Cambodia being caught in a squeeze between its two long-standing rapacious neighbours –Thailand and Vietnam. Consequently, Sihanouk became even more dedicated to protecting his country’s neutrality but, as explained above, with a small poorly armed army, in relation to the much modern, better equipped South Vietnamese and American armies, it was indeed a Herculean task.
On two separate occasions in early 1964, South Vietnamese forces shelled Cambodian villages, killing several Cambodians, wounding many others and destroying houses, a dispensary, animals and property. On 2 March 1964 during the second shelling incident, US advisors accompanied the South Vietnamese troops.
Norodom Sihanouk brought the matter to the United Nations Security Council, charging the US and South Vietnam with repeated acts of aggression against Cambodia. Both countries apologized but the United States assured the Council of its respect for Cambodian neutrality, adding that there was evidence of Cambodian collusion in provision of aid and safe haven to the Viet Cong.12
The former King stated on several occasions that even though Cambodia was neutral, as a signatory of the Geneva Accords of 1954 and the Bandung Summit Meeting of Afro-Asian Countries in 1955, “Cambodia had the duty to support the just struggle of the Vietnamese people for the liberation of South Vietnam” adding that “such support did not violate in any way the neutrality of our country, because it is not a military support but rather political, diplomatic and humanitarian”.13
Sihanouk also pointed out that certain facilities which were extended by Cambodia to the South Vietnamese resistance against US aggression and the dictatorial regime of Saigon, were given “on behalf of the Khmer people in order that future generations of Cambodians could avail themselves of the great appreciation and the respect of tomorrow’s Vietnam which surely will be unified and socialist and consequently very powerful. It would be pure folly for our country to confront militarily this neighbour which is capable of vanquishing the biggest and richest military power of all times, but our Cambodia could gain the respect of this neighbour”.14
But even the evidence about the presence of North Vietnamese/Viet Cong forces inside Cambodia was not clear cut. US officials still doubted the importance of the North Vietnamese/Viet Cong sanctuaries to neutral Cambodia. On 16 April 1964, the State Department’s Intelligence and Research Unit summarized the official position towards South Vietnamese claims that NV/VC forces were massing in Cambodia’s border region as follows:
“…there still no firm evidence to substantiate numerous official GVN (South Vietnamese Government) charges and reports the Viet Cong make extensive use of Cambodian territory as a base for operations in Vietnam; there is, nevertheless, no doubt that the Viet Cong make limited use of Cambodian territory as a safe haven for infiltrating cadres, supplies and funds”.15
The above statement was also shared by the Australian Foreign Minister, Sir Paul Hasluck, who in a highly classified telegram to the Australian Ambassador in Washington DC, stated:
“I was very interested in Rusk’s remarks on Cambodia. I am doubtful whether allegations of extensive Viet Cong use of Cambodia and of Cambodian complicity have been clearly established in the information at present available to us, or proved to the point when we can openly disregard official Cambodian denials. Our own intelligence assessments, although based on more limited sources than those available to the United States, generally accord with the State Department’s views described in your telegram No. 4332.
You reported the State Department views as saying that Cambodia has been used as a short term sanctuary and perhaps also as part of base or headquarters area, and as a minor infiltration route. You also reported the view of the intelligence community that the evidence was insufficiently conclusive to justify military action (even leaving aside political considerations)”.16
Even after the break of diplomatic relations between Cambodia and the USA, on 3 May 1965, the misunderstanding between the USA and Cambodia over the issue of NV/Viet Cong use of Cambodian territory continued for most the period of the Johnson administration, with the President, to his credit, resisting frequent requests by the US Army and the US Ambassador in Saigon, for military intervention in Cambodia. The Joint Chiefs wanted authority for both hot pursuit and cross border operations by the Vietnamese forces in order to pursue and destroy enemy elements fleeing into Cambodia.17
But in the years that followed Vietnamese Communist presence in Cambodia increased. Sihanouk was not happy about this and asked the great sponsors of the Communist forces, China and the Soviet Union, to help him by inducing the Communists to leave Cambodia’s territory and respect her territorial integrity.
At about this time Joint Chiefs obtained approval for the launching of a so-called “clandestine intelligence collection program” in North Eastern Cambodia. Nicknamed “Daniel Boone” then “Salem House” and later, “Thot Not”, the operations consisted of small teams of indigenous agents, mostly Khmer Serei elements operating from South Vietnam with the aim of overthrowing Norodom Sihanouk. They were led by US Special Forces personnel and infiltrated inside Cambodia to a depth of 20 kilometres with the help of helicopters and forward air control aircraft.18
With the active involvement of the Australian Ambassador in Cambodia, who had been charged by his government to also represent American interests in Cambodia, following a request by the US government, Norodom Sihanouk agreed in late 1967 to receive a US Presidential Envoy to discuss all these issues troubling the relations between the two countries. The task was given to the US Ambassador to India, Chester Bowles, who was known to Sihanouk from a previous visit to Cambodia.
On 31 December 1967, Sihanouk told the Australian Ambassador that he would welcome the visit by Ambassador Bowles to discuss Cambodian-American problems. He asked the Ambassador “how could he convey to Americans and the outside world the extent of Cambodian dislike and fear of all Vietnamese? The Communists more than the others, since the Communists were disciplined, organised and single minded”.19
Sihanouk added that “The United States would eventually withdraw its troops from Indo China but the Vietnamese threat would remain, probably in an accentuated form. Therefore aid or comfort given by Cambodia to North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, for moral or political reasons could under no circumstances extend to military assistance or toleration of a presence on Cambodian territory”. And that the Ambassador would know that “he based his action on a series of firm principles, among which Cambodian sovereignty was of primary importance”.20
Ambassador Chester Bowles visited Cambodia from 8 to 12 January 1968. At a meeting with Norodom Sihanouk, the question of hot pursuit by American troops based in Vietnam on Viet Cong elements infiltrating into Cambodia was discussed at length. There was no discussion about B-52s bombing Cambodia. Sihanouk agreed that he would “close his eyes” to American hot pursuit of Viet Cong forces, as long as this action took place in areas of the Cambodia-Vietnam border inhabited by Cambodians. He warned Ambassador Bowles that the moment a single Cambodian was killed he would scream and bring the matter up to the United Nations Security Council.21
Here again, I would like to emphasize that there was never any discussion, consultation or suggestion about the bombing of Cambodia during the discussions Ambassador Bowles had with Norodom Sihanouk or Prime Minister Son Sann. Australian Ambassador Noel Deschamps who attended all the meetings of the Bowles mission in Phnom Penh confirmed this to me in April 2005, just prior to his death.22
Furthermore, in his outstanding study of the US-Cambodia troubled relationship, Professor Kenton Clymer reaches the conclusion that:
“In sum, Sihanouk was never asked to approve the B-52 bombings, and he never gave his approval. He steadfastly insisted on respect for Cambodia’s integrity and sovereignty. He strongly protested American and South Vietnamese border incidents that resulted in injury to Cambodians and Cambodian property. He sought the American border declaration in part to limit border raids and attacks”.23
I should add that in his round-up telegram to the State Department on his mission to Cambodia, sent upon his return to New Delhi, Ambassador Bowles summarized:
“I came away deeply convinced, as on previous visits to Cambodia, that Sihanouk’s decisions and attitudes, however bizarre, are shaped by intense and deeply rooted nationalism in which ideology has little or no part. The Prince stressed again and again that his is a small country caught in the middle of an unpredictable international conflict and that Cambodia must strive to maintain maximum degree of goodwill not only towards its neighbours, but particularly towards great powers, USSR, China and USA”.24
SIHANOUK AND THE PEOPLE
In this “documentary” the most outrageous criticism of Norodom Sihanouk’s is by foreign “experts” on Cambodia, while the few Cambodians interviewed for the film are much more perceptive of what their former King did for their country and people. As Chak Sarik, a Cambodian of great resilience and wisdom, points out “For the first time, we had the feeling that a leader took care of the people and the country. And the people were happy”.
But this is not good enough for a hostile David Chandler who is given carte blanche to distort the unique relationship between Norodom Sihanouk and the Cambodian people. “He did not want to wake up the conscience of the small Khmer citizenry, because he knew that with US$ 200 per year, the people were poor!”
The “documentary” makes no mention of the numerous ‘’people’s audiences” given by Norodom Sihanouk every time he travelled in the provinces of Cambodia, which consumed a greater part of Norodom Sihanouk’s working schedule, or of his reports to the people every time he travelled on a mission outside Cambodia, made over the radio.
One of the most eminent attributes of Sihanouk, during the years he ruled Cambodia, was that he kept the Cambodian people informed of what was going on in all fields of Cambodian contemporary history, thus he made them feel involved, participating in the country’s national construction, even if they did not always understand the complexities of foreign affairs, they could differentiate which countries were helping Cambodia from those that were not.
Furthermore, there existed the National Congress which was established in 1958. Held twice a year in an open site next to the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh and chaired by the Cambodian Head of State, it lasted several days at each session. Thousands of people from all provinces of the country participated in the Congress and listened to government reports, presented by Ministers and senior officials, on domestic affairs. The people were encouraged to participate in the proceedings of the National Congress and to make suggestions for solving diverse problems. On several occasions, government officials that behaved badly towards the people lost their jobs, after their actions were reported by ordinary citizens to the National Congress.
SIHANOUK AND THE KHMERS ROUGES
On this issue the message that came through the narrative, with varying degrees of ham-fistedness, went something like this: Sihanouk allied himself with the Khmers Rouges after the 18 March 1970, he invited all Cambodian patriots “to join the Khmers Rouges to fight Lon Nol and his American allies”, Sihanouk was in competition with the Khmers Rouges, “by entering the Khmers Rouges’ unknown, Sihanouk definitively joined the conspiracy of silence”, “Sihanouk was jealous of Pol Pot and his capacity to draw such absolute loyalty”. I would submit that every one of those claims is either wrong or seriously misleading.
After the 18 March 1970, Norodom Sihanouk did not ally himself with the Khmers Rouges. Indeed it was the then public voices of the Khmers Rouges, Khieu Samphan, Hun Nim and Hou Youn, (also known as the “three ghosts” because according to certain “experts” on Cambodia, they had been executed on Sihanouk’s instructions) who conveyed a message to the former King through the North Vietnamese Embassy in Beijing, pledging their loyalty and support for Sihanouk’s struggle against Lon Nol and the Americans.25
Regarding the call by Norodom Sihanouk to “all Cambodian patriots to join the Khmers Rouges to fight Lon Nol and the Americans”, this is patently untrue. The message of 23 March 1970 does not mention the Khmers Rouges at all but calls on Cambodians to raise against the coup makers and its American sponsors.26
In his book “Will the Cambodian people survive!”, Jean Lacouture suggests that when on 26 March 1970 the Khmers Rouges (Khieu Samphan, Hu Nim and Hou Youn) proclaimed their solidarity and support for Norodom Sihanouk against the coup makers of Phnom Penh they turned upside down the basics of Cambodian politics and compares the alliance to the one that joined General De Gaulle with the French Communist Party between 1941 and 1945., because the country was in mortal danger”.27
With reference to the visit Norodom Sihanouk paid to the liberated zone of Cambodia in March-April 1973, the way the “documentary” portraits the visit induces the viewer to believe that Norodom Sihanouk was involved in a what the narrative suggests was “a silent conspiracy” with the Khmers Rouges. Such reading of Cambodian contemporary history is a somewhat misleading and tendentious one, construed in such a way as to blacken as much as possible Sihanouk’s image, to coincide, as I said before, with the beginning of the trials of certain Khmer Rouge leaders in Phnom Penh.
The facts are that throughout the period 1970-1977, hardly anyone, with the exception of the leaderships of the Communist parties of China and Vietnam, knew of the existence of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader responsible of the massacres that took place in Cambodia between 1975 and 1978. For all intents and purposes, the acknowledged leaders of the Khmer Rouge movement were Khieu Samphan, Hu Nim and Hou Youn. Later on, upon his arrival in Peking in 1971, Ieng Sary became known also as one of the leaders. During Sihanouk’s visit to the liberated zone of Cambodia, Saloth Sar (later to be known as Pol Pot), played a self-effacing role, leaving the leading role always to Khieu Samphan, Hu Nim and Hou Youn.
Here I would like to quote what David Chandler wrote regarding Sihanouk’s visit to the liberated zone in his political biography of Pol Pot: “At the Lao-Cambodian border the prince was greeted by the Three Ghosts –Khieu Samphan, Hou Youn and Hu Nim. They told him that they were in charge of the resistance. Two days later, at the party’s headquarters in the northern zone, Sihanouk also encountered Khieu Ponnary; Son Sen; the secretary of the northern zone, Koy Thuon and Saloth Sar, who mingled genially with his colleagues, giving the prince no hint of his high status. The charade probably amused Sar. He may also have been eager to observe Sihanouk at close range without being questioned or evaluated himself. He was probably beguiled by observing his subordinates and forcing them to act as if he were unimportant”.28
Yet in the “documentary” Chandler gives a completely different version of events, even though he was not present at the meetings between Norodom Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge leadership, Chandler suggests that Norodom Sihanouk was “terrified” during his visit and that he “behaved like Louis XVI, following the motions and did not understand anything about the Khmers Rouges”.
Chandler goes on to say that “regarding Pol Pot, Sihanouk was jealous of his capacity to inspire such absolute loyalty, absolute religion”. Thus, while in his biography of Pol Pot, published initially in 1992, Chandler tells how Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) self effaced himself and allowed Khieu Samphan and the others to play a charade of leadership with the visiting Norodom Sihanouk, in 2008 when he was interviewed for the Cayatte “documentary” the whole story has changed and Norodom Sihanouk “is jealous of Pol Pot’s capacity to inspire absolute loyalty…”.
What really disappoints me about the producers of this “documentary” is that they seem to put some notion of “academic expertise” above the commitment to objectivity, not to mention the crucial importance, of historical accuracy. Surely aren’t they, by their actions, forfeiting any claim to be taken seriously?
It is also, I believe, intellectually dishonest for the producer and director of this “documentary” not to present others views that are not anti-Sihanouk. But, again, it seems that the film’s main purpose was to tarnish as much as possible the image of Norodom Sihanouk, for whom the people of Cambodia, even today after years of savage bombings by the US Air Force, the corrupt Lon Nol regime, the murderous Pol Pot regime and the invasion and occupation of Cambodia, followed by a Potemkin democracy, have not changed their feelings of loyalty and love.
SIHANOUK AND CHINA
The “documentary” tries to convince the audience that China’s friendship was ideological and that Norodom Sihanouk “was a prince whom the Chinese Communists believed had been won to their cause” and that “the Chinese felt they had converted him to the virtues of Maoism”. Again, each of these allegations is demonstrably untrue. Norodom Sihanouk never became a Communist nor was he interested by Maoism.
Indeed, during the Cultural Revolution, hardliners at the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh tried to bring the Cultural Revolution to Cambodia but Norodom Sihanouk would have none of it and it was only the personal intervention of Zhou Enlai that prevented a break of diplomatic relations.
Norodom Sihanouk said, back in 1963, that Cambodia’s relationship with China was based on two actions resolutely taken by China:
“First, it has recognized and guaranteed our neutrality and territorial integrity. Moreover, it has appealed to other countries to approve our request to recognize our neutrality and territorial integrity – while other countries have declined to do so. Second, if imperialism’s satellites dare attack Cambodia, they will be destroyed because China and its 700 million people will be with us”.29
It seems that Gilles Cayatte and his team were not interested in the favourable aspects of the Cambodia- China relationship, as I recall spending a great deal of time explaining the same to him. I did point out to him that Zhou Enlai was worried by the Khmer Rouge policies to be implemented in Cambodia were they to win the war against Lon Nol and the USA. I also told him in great detail, I recall, how the late Chinese Prime Minister had contacted the Ambassadors in Peking from Australia, France, New Zealand, among others, to ask them to encourage the USA to entertain discussing the issue with Norodom Sihanouk in order to expeditiously put an end to the conflict ravaging Cambodia. All his attempts were rejected by Henry Kissinger.
SIHANOUK AND THE CGDK
One of the most bizarre assertions of the “documentary” takes place when the narrative takes the viewer to the formation of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK). To begin with the narrative says very little about the reasons that prompted Norodom Sihanouk to join the CGDK in June 1982.
The CGDK which had three components –the Party of Democratic Kampuchea led by Mr. Khieu Samphan, the Khmer’s People National Liberation Front led by former Prime Minister (in the Sihanouk years) Samdech Son Sann and FUNCINPEC led by Samdech Norodom Sihanouk. It was formally established in Kuala Lumpur in June 1982, following strong pressure from ASEAN, China and the United States on the three leaders of the above named Cambodian resistance movements against Vietnam’s invasion and occupation of Cambodia.
Between February 1979 and June 1982, Norodom Sihanouk refused to join any government in exile with the Khmer Rouge. He agreed to join the CGDK only after it was made clear to him that the thousands of Cambodian refugees at the Thai-Cambodian border who declared allegiance to him would not get any assistance unless he joined such coalition. At that time, FUNCINPEC, was the smallest component of the CGDK with few armed forces, while the PDK was composed of the remnants of the Khmer Rouge army and the KPNLF had also established an army which has attracted several of the leading generals of the fallen Khmer Republic of Lon Nol.
Once again, David Chandler, is asked to comment by Gilles Cayatte about the formation of the CGDK and here, sadly, Chandler seems to throw away all the years of research he had conducted about Cambodia’s history by asserting that in the CGDK “you had the Khmers Rouges who had condemned Lon Nol to death, you had Son Sann heir of Lon Nol, who had condemned Sihanouk to death and, you had Sihanouk who had condemned all the others to death. Every body among them had condemned their predecessor to death it was difficult to make a coalition”.
I have always respected David Chandler’s work documenting the history of Cambodia, even though we have strongly disagreed on Norodom Sihanouk’s actions and aims, but on this opportunity I cannot see what possessed him to make such an erroneous, even defamatory statement.
Yes, Lon Nol was condemned to death by the Khmers Rouges but with US assistance, and cash, he managed to retire to the serenity of Hawaii.
Son Sann, was never the heir of Lon Nol, in fact, he stayed away from joining the Lon Nol group and lived most of the time in Paris where he tried to put an end to the conflict ravaging Cambodia by urging dialogue between Lon Nol and Norodom Sihanouk. Yes, there were former Generals and officials from the Khmer Republic joining his KPNLF just as there some Republicans who joined Sihanouk’s FUNCINPEC, like In Tam, who had been one of the key conspirators in the 18 March 1970 coup d’etat in Cambodia against Norodom Sihanouk.
Certainly, Son Sann was never condemned to death by Sihanouk. This I have had verified with other historians and they all tell me they have never heard of such incident. I also checked it with Son Sann’s heir, Son Soubert, presently a member of the Constitutional Council of Cambodia, who expressed dismay by this “fabrication and groundless allegation about which I have never heard of nor did my late father ever mention it to me”.30
As for the allegation that Norodom Sihanouk had also condemned Khieu Samphan to death, there is no demonstrable evidence available to that effect.
It is true that Norodom Sihanouk had hinted, in one of his speeches over Cambodia National Radio that he may order the arrest of three left-wing deputies in the Cambodian National Assembly –Khieu Samphan, Hu Nim and Hou Youn over the growing insurgency problem in Battambang province, but in the event the three deputies disappeared from Phnom Penh in 1967.
In his book of memoirs of his political career, Khieu Samphan never mentions that he was condemned to death by Norodom Sihanouk and relates that he and the other two deputies decided to leave Phnom Penh for the jungle because at that time “there were many rumours circulating in Phnom Penh that a coup d’etat Indonesian style was about to take place with a Cambodian Soeharto or a Nasution taking over the leadership of the country”.31
All these facts were known to the producers of this “documentary” yet they choose not to provide their audience with the other side of the story, in so doing, they abandoned all the principles of objective, unprejudiced and accurate journalism.
My concluding remark is directed to an allegation made by Patrice de Beer, a former correspondent in Southeast Asia for the French newspaper Le Monde. According to Mr de Beer: “In December 1969, I was in Phnom Penh and called at the Embassy of France where I was told that Sihanouk is finished, he is a Communist, there will be a coup d’etat, he will get kicked out!”. This is an extraordinary allegation which should be replied to by the appropriate services of the French government.
After I watched the “documentary” for the first time, I was taken back in time to June 1995 when, in Paris, I interviewed the former French Ambassador to Cambodia, Mr. Louis Dauge, he was not very forthcoming with me but insisted, several times during the interview, that I inform King Sihanouk that “the French Embassy was not aware of the plot being organized against him in March 1970”. I was very surprised because in my almost 12 years working with Norodom Sihanouk I never heard him say anything about French complicity in the 18th March 1970 coup of Lon Nol.
But now in 2009, after watching the Cayatte “documentary”, I remembered also that the late Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai had suggested, at his first ever meeting with Henry Kissinger, that may be the French had been involved in the coup, after Kissinger had denied any US involvement.32
In conclusion, I would suggest that this “documentary” has done nothing to increase the general public’s knowledge about the personality of Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, which is sad, because the producers had access to more interviewees than previous documentaries on Cambodia and obviously had the financial means to produce an equitable film about Norodom Sihanouk.
Poor Cambodia! It seems to possess the unenviable distinction of all the countries of the former French Indo-China to bring out the worst prevarications of Western journalism and certain intellectual circles.
From Ambassador Julio A. Jeldres
Official Biographer to H.M. the King Father, Samdech Preah Upayuvareach Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia
Tel/Fax: 61-3-98887950
E-mail:Royal Biographer@gmail.com
* Ambassador Julio A. Jeldres is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Asia Institute of Monash University and the Official Biographer of His Majesty the King Father Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia.
Full Stop.
A Commentary about the film
“The Nine Lives of Norodom Sihanouk” produced and directed by Gilles Cayatte and Christine Camdessus
By Ambassador Julio A. Jeldres
In late May 2008, I was contacted by a trusted friend who informed me that a Mr. Gilles Cayatte, a French film producer was making a film about King Father Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia and wanted to interview me about my years as Private Secretary to the King in the 1980s.
My friend suggested that the interview could take place in either Bangkok or Phnom Penh but I replied that I had no plan to visit either city in the near future and that, therefore, unless the film producer flew me to Bangkok, it would be difficult to have the interview. My friend then advised me that Mr Cayatte himself and a cameraman would travel to Australia to interview Dr David Chandler and me.
There the matter rested for one month, until I was contacted again from Paris by the producers’ staff suggesting a date for a joint interview of Dr Chandler and myself. I declined and insisted on separate interviews because I know only too well that Chandler has nothing positive to say about Norodom Sihanouk and has written mostly negative judgements of the Sihanouk years in Cambodia ever since he served as Second Secretary at the US Embassy in Phnom Penh.
On 1st July 2008, I spent approximately six hours with Mr Cayatte and his cameraman. I even had to send away some workers that were repairing the roof of my house in order that the noise they were making was not heard on the film. During those six hours, I gave ample explanations to Mr Cayatte about King Sihanouk’s actions, his unique relationships with China’s Zhou Enlai and North Korea’s Kim IL Sung. I explained to him how His Majesty had put together in 1981 the Peace Plan to end through diplomatic negotiations and UN involvement the occupation of Cambodia by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. This draft Peace Plan, His Majesty had entrusted to US Congressman Stephen Solarz in early 1981, who in turn passed on to US and ASEAN authorities with whom it languished without major reaction, until Solarz communicated it to the then Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Gareth Evans, who saw its merits and adapted it for everybody’s taste and eventual acceptance. It was indeed, the most wide ranging interview I have ever given!
Yet, in the film, screened in France on the evening of 23 February 2009, none of the substantial explanations about Norodom Sihanouk I gave to Mr. Cayatte was shown.
Now, I do not wish to be misunderstood here, it is Mr Cayatte’s right to use or not to use the material I provided him during the extensive interview but, by the same token, Mr Cayatte cannot expect those of us, who are familiar with the record of Norodom Sihanouk to accept his “documentary” as a balanced, objective or impartial film!
Indeed as the thrust of this commentary shall demonstrate, I believe that “The Nine Lives of Norodom Sihanouk” is a crude exercise to paint as black as possible a picture of Norodom Sihanouk and that the historical record of Cambodia provided in the narrative of this film was seriously misleading and, at times, demonstrably untrue.
There can be little doubt that the subject matter, the many inaccuracies tendered by some of the interviewees and the timing of its broadcast – to coincide with the media circus descending over Phnom Penh for the first audition of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal assured that the film would be controversial.
But what really “impressed” me about this “documentary” was its archetypal qualities; its comprehensive awfulness and great arrogance which elevated it to the status of an agitprop classic unworthy of further screening.
In this commentary, I shall quote from some of the extensive documentation I have gathered for my biography of Norodom Sihanouk from sources in Australia, Canada, Cambodia, Czech Republic, China, France, Germany, Israel, Sweden, New Zealand and the United States.
JEAN LACOUTURE
The “documentary” begins with an interview of Jean Lacouture, a discredited guru of what the French call “La Gauche Caviar” or “The Left that eats Caviar”, insulting King Sihanouk by dismissing him as “a King of Operetta”! Viewers of the film are immediately stunned by this neo-colonial arrogance showed by Lacouture and also the film’s narrative.
Naturally, and in accordance with his deliberate agenda Mr Cayatte does not inform the viewer, who might not be familiar with Cambodian history, that the same King Sihanouk was behind the promulgation, on 6 May 1947, that is six years before achieving total independence for Cambodia from France, of a Constitution which transformed this ancient absolute monarchy into a constitutional monarchy. Not bad for a so-called “King of Operetta”!
SIHANOUK’S NEUTRALISM AND ANTI-AMERICANISM?
Then the narrative of the film tells us that at Bandung (Indonesia) in 1955, during the Afro-Asian Conference which led to the formation, years later, of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) “Sihanouk was introduced to neutralism and Anti-Americanism by the leaders of the Third World”, while pictures of Indian Prime Minister Nehru and Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai are shown and the narrative and comments by David Chandler suggest that the above-mentioned leaders made him (Sihanouk) feel “important”.
Here, it should be pointed out that what Nehru and Zhou Enlai did was to simply treat Norodom Sihanouk, the leader of small country, with due respect and on an equal footing, something which the Americans and others never did.
Furthermore, Cambodia, as a small and scarcely inhabited country, squeezed between big, powerful and rapacious neighbours, only too willing to take over her territory, could not afford other policy than neutrality and national unity to preserve and defend her independence, peace and territorial integrity while steadily improving the living conditions of her people. This is precisely what Norodom Sihanouk tried very hard to achieve. With an army of only 30,000 badly armed and equipped effectives, Cambodia was expected to take control of three frontiers with three different countries, when the United States with almost half a million extremely well armed men and all the necessary equipment to fight from the air and on land, it was unable to seal the frontier between South Vietnam and Cambodia.
In fact, Norodom Sihanouk has never been “anti-American” but he was anti-US policies that were counter-productive. Indeed, he condemned the policies successive American government followed in South East Asia during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, which basically consisted of supporting unpopular, undemocratic and dictatorial regimes in what amounted to a “holy war” against Asian Communism and which had the opposite effect of increasing support for Communist insurgencies in the region.
In December 1969 in a commentary entitled: “The United States and us”, Norodom Sihanouk wrote that “the efforts put forth by the United States to fight Communism have never been directed in the right direction, despite my many warnings. The latter, which were severe, made me, appear in the eyes of Uncle Sam as a spoilsport, since these were the opposite of the flattery which they were used to hearing from their Asian “clients”. Furthermore, these sacrifices were agreed to by the United States in Southeast Asia only to serve their interests as a great power and not to “defend the liberty” of the peoples of our region. If it were otherwise how could it be that we should see dictatorial, anti-popular governments in Taipei, Seoul and, especially, in Saigon and Bangkok”.1
The Cambodian Head of State added that “The armed, badly inspired, badly conceived interventions, and even the sacrifices – of the US have finally favoured the advance of Communism in the minds and on the ground – which brings Communism to the frontiers and even to the interior of Cambodia much more rapidly than would have occurred normally. The so-called war “against communism” carried on by the Americans has resulted in damaging or destroying a sizable part of the economic potential of Cambodia (plantations, cattle, buildings, fields and rice paddies). It has ruined numbers of our peasants and placed more than 400 of their families in mourning”.2
Subsequent events have amply corroborated that what Norodom Sihanouk wrote regarding the United States in Southeast Asia, and more particularly, in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia was eminently right.
In fact, at the US Embassy in Phnom Penh, prior to the break of diplomatic relations between Cambodian and the United Sates in May 1965, diplomats were often reminded that in the larger framework of American objectives “Cambodia was of no importance”.3
Some US diplomats in Cambodia behaved poorly towards Sihanouk, always belittling his actions to preserve his country’s neutrality and territorial integrity. Robert McClintock, the first US Ambassador resident in Phnom Penh (Oct. 1954-Oct. 1956), showed no respect at all for the Cambodian Head of State. It was McClintock who invented the nickname “Snooky” to refer to the Head of State of the country to which he was accredited as Ambassador. His arrogance and contempt for Cambodians was well known and forms part of the historical record of the two countries difficult relationship. Many in the United States blamed McClintock for the parlous state of the relationship with Cambodia.4
Curtis C. Cutter, a US foreign service officer posted to Cambodia from 1957 to 1959 has described vividly the way the US Embassy operated and how the attempts by Norodom Sihanouk to keep his country neutral were belittled, I request my readers’ indulgence but I feel that here I need to reproduce extensively what Mr Cutter has said about his posting in Cambodia in the years 1957-595:
“Question: Well, you were in Phnom Penh from 1957 to 1959. What was the situation there at that time?
Cutter: I felt that in many ways the U. S. position there was questionable. We had sent an ambassador named Carl Strom to Phnom Penh. He was a very fine, honourable gentleman, but he was an officer at the end of his career. He was a mathematician, a very precise sort of person. He had been mainly an administrative officer most of his career in the Foreign Service. He had absolutely zero rapport with Prince Sihanouk, who was, as you probably know, an entirely different kind of character, very open, outgoing, and very spontaneous. Strom was almost the direct opposite. He was almost introverted and a very serious, point by point kind of person. There was very little personal relationship between the two men, at a time when Prince Sihanouk was Cambodia.
Strom, I think, was also somewhat intimidated by both the Department and our Vietnamese policies at the time. He seemed to feel that in some way what he was doing in Cambodia was meant to support what was happening in Vietnam. He felt he could not take a different line than was being taken there.
Question: He was somewhat deferential?
Cutter: Deferential yes. I can give you an example. Carl Strom and I played a lot of bridge together. We even won the worldwide bridge tournament. So as a junior officer he gave me a lot of access which I would not have had otherwise. Even though, after a year, I had moved to be the consular officer, he let me sit in on lots of meetings of one kind or another and all of his staff meetings. So I had an interesting view of what was happening at the post, although, of course, as a junior officer, I wasn't in any way able to have much influence on what was happening.
But one incident occurred in, it must have been 1958. The Vietnamese were rather aggressively trying to realign the frontier between Cambodia and South Vietnam. There was an incident where they had moved some border posts five or six kilometres into Cambodia and then put them in again. Sihanouk wanted the missions in Phnom Penh to send representatives to see what had happened, because, obviously, the Vietnamese were encroaching on his territory. He wanted to document this for the international community.
When this request came to our Embassy, the Ambassador met with his staff, especially the military attachés, to decide what should be done about it. There were some strong opinions--mine amongst them--that if this were true, then Sihanouk had a legitimate case, and that we ought to go there and take a look. If there were real evidence that this had happened, obviously, the position that the U. S. ought to take was that this was unacceptable, and we should talk to our Vietnamese friends about rectifying the situation.6
But after some correspondence back and forth between the Embassy in Saigon and the Embassy in Phnom Penh, it was decided that, in fact, it would be very bad if we went down, if we made our presence at this event. The Ambassador refused to send anybody along. A number of missions did send people, and it was fairly clearly established that the Vietnamese were moving these border posts. This was the kind of thing we did. Actions in favour of the Vietnamese, which began to alienate Sihanouk7.
Question: Well, you said that you felt rather strongly. Obviously, you were a junior officer and carried little weight. But did others at the Embassy feel that way, too? I mean, was this sort of thing where maybe we should get out and be a little more active for "our" country, you might say?
Cutter: Well, at least it seemed that there was a question of equity involved here. There was a great possibility that the Cambodians, in fact, were the injured party. Of course, the whole pressure of U. S. policy at that time on Cambodia was to get them out of their neutral stance. The harder Sihanouk resisted that, which he did, the more pressure was exerted on him to do it, and the more entrenched our attitude became that Sihanouk's policy was really unacceptable. There were people in the Embassy who took a different line--for example, the political officer, Bob Barrett, subsequently an ambassador in Africa. Bob was, I think, one of the people in favour of our taking at least a more neutral position on this and trying to see where the facts lay. But the military and Agency [CIA] representations there didn't feel that this was in the US interest.
Question: They were trying to keep the Vietnamese content, I suppose.
Cutter: That's right. And Durbrow [Elbridge Durbrow], who was our Ambassador in Saigon at the time, was very strongly opposed to our doing anything that would upset his clients”8.
Lloyd Mike Rives, a US Foreign Service officer, who, in August 1969, re-opened the US Embassy in Phnom Penh after a break of four years and became for a year the United States Charge d’affaires in Cambodia. Regarding Norodom Sihanouk he says: “I just want to make one point clear here: Sihanouk was an interesting person, and I think we had misunderstood him for many years. He was a patriot. What he did was for Cambodia, not for himself and there were no real ulterior motives except for that”.9
In order to pursue and preserve Cambodia’s neutrality, it was essential for Norodom Sihanouk to be flexible and to zigzag when necessary and to change emphasis. He became a master tactician and used unpredictability as a weapon to disarm his foreign detractors. While there was much talk and discussion about the use of Cambodia as a sanctuary for North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces, for sixteen years, until 18 March 1970, Cambodia had been a sanctuary in another sense, quite remarkably preserving its neutrality and keeping the Indochina war beyond its borders. Sihanouk was able to contain a Communist presence in his country while working to remove it by diplomatic means, while at the same time ensuring a reasonable prosperity and gradual progress for the Cambodian people.
The former Australian Ambassador to Cambodia, the late Noel Deschamps, once told me that he felt that American policy towards Cambodia in the 1950-1970 period was heavily influenced by what Cambodia’s neighbours thought of Cambodia itself and, more importantly, of the policies and actions taken by Norodom Sihanouk to protect and keep his country and people out of the war ravaging Vietnam and parts of Laos.10
It is into this “anti-Sihanouk” ambience which existed among certain US diplomats in Cambodia that David Chandler settled, in 1960, to be the Second Secretary of the US Embassy in Phnom Penh. For reasons that until this day, I am unable to comprehend he became a determined critic of Norodom Sihanouk: nothing that the former King did was good, everything was bad, Sihanouk never had good intentions, his intentions were always bad. All the positive things that other US diplomats have recognized about Norodom Sihanouk have been dismissed disdainfully by David Chandler.
Thus, it should come as no surprise that Gilles Cayatte uses Dr. Chandler ad nauseam to advance his “anti-Sihanouk” thesis in his “documentary”. As it progresses so do the misinterpretations and falsehoods about Norodom Sihanouk’s so-called “Nine Lives”. For instance, General De Gaulle of France, another statesman, who understood what Norodom Sihanouk was trying to do in Cambodia and who offered his hand of friendship and respect to the former King, is also dismissed as a friend of no consequence.
The impression is falsely conveyed by the “documentary” that the sole aim behind Norodom Sihanouk’s friendship with Charles De Gaulle and Zhou Enlai was of a financial nature, i.e., to obtain assistance for the development of Cambodia.
Such an aim, in itself was not ignoble for a Head of State that really cared for his country and his people but the opposite. But there was more to it, faced with so much antagonism from the United States and attempts to subvert his regime by its rapacious neighbours, the friendship of these two statesmen, representatives of great powers, gave a certain assurance to Cambodia for its survival as a nation of its own, with its territorial integrity and independence protected.
A question that the Cayatte “documentary” did not raise and that it should have is: Did the United States have sufficient interests in Cambodia per se to treat it as a separate issue?
The answer is provided by Ambassador Robert V. Keeley, a former US Ambassador to Mauritius, Zimbabwe and Greece, who served at the American Embassy in Phnom Penh as Deputy Chief of Mission for approximately a year from 1974 until the closure of the US mission on 12 April 1975, he states:
“It was not a question of seeing it as a separate issue; it was a matter of dealing with it differently, in our opinion, and being handled on its own terms. That is, it should not have been viewed as something that is a bother because it affects Vietnam. There were different forces fighting in Cambodia than there were in Vietnam. There were indigenous forces in Cambodia on both sides; there were no Vietnamese involved at the time. The opposing sides had different interests from the Vietnamese and the war itself had a different history. In fact, there should never have been a war in Cambodia, but we had something to do with that. We should have done everything in our power to avoid this ‘spill-over’ effect.
In order to do that, we would have had, from the beginning, to respect Cambodian neutrality, which is what Prince Sihanouk had done throughout his career to the best of his ability until he was overthrown in 1970… We really brought the war to Cambodia. The overthrow of Sihanouk, which voided his policy of neutrality, also contributed to the war coming to Cambodia”.11
SIHANOUK, THE VIETCONG AND THE SECRET BOMBING OF CAMBODIA
The most outrageous allegation made in the film comes from Father Francois Ponchaud, a Jesuit missionary who had lived in Cambodia prior to 1975 and returned again to live in Phnom Penh after the 1991 Paris Agreements.
In the Cayatte “documentary” Ponchaud alleges that: “At that moment he changed camp and asked the American Army to bomb the Vietcong sanctuaries along the Cambodia-Vietnam border. Of course, on the radio he screamed as much as he could against this American Army that bombed Cambodia, but hold on, bombed on his orders”.
This allegation of Ponchaud is false and highly misleading but is immediately accepted by Cayatte, who adds “And there you have, Sihanouk in the untenable position of being the one who authorizes the Americans to secretly bomb the North Vietnamese positions which he had secretly authorized to establish”.
The question of the infiltration of Cambodia by North Vietnamese/Viet cong forces has been used and misused to justify the carpet bombing of Cambodia which took place from March 1968 to August 1973. It is, therefore, important to give here the historical background to this controversial issue.
In the early 1960s, Norodom Sihanouk saw the growing Communist insurgency in South Vietnam and the increasing US involvement with serious concern. Cambodia had declared its neutrality in 1953, thus Sihanouk saw in the growing conflict in Vietnam the possibility of Cambodia being caught in a squeeze between its two long-standing rapacious neighbours –Thailand and Vietnam. Consequently, Sihanouk became even more dedicated to protecting his country’s neutrality but, as explained above, with a small poorly armed army, in relation to the much modern, better equipped South Vietnamese and American armies, it was indeed a Herculean task.
On two separate occasions in early 1964, South Vietnamese forces shelled Cambodian villages, killing several Cambodians, wounding many others and destroying houses, a dispensary, animals and property. On 2 March 1964 during the second shelling incident, US advisors accompanied the South Vietnamese troops.
Norodom Sihanouk brought the matter to the United Nations Security Council, charging the US and South Vietnam with repeated acts of aggression against Cambodia. Both countries apologized but the United States assured the Council of its respect for Cambodian neutrality, adding that there was evidence of Cambodian collusion in provision of aid and safe haven to the Viet Cong.12
The former King stated on several occasions that even though Cambodia was neutral, as a signatory of the Geneva Accords of 1954 and the Bandung Summit Meeting of Afro-Asian Countries in 1955, “Cambodia had the duty to support the just struggle of the Vietnamese people for the liberation of South Vietnam” adding that “such support did not violate in any way the neutrality of our country, because it is not a military support but rather political, diplomatic and humanitarian”.13
Sihanouk also pointed out that certain facilities which were extended by Cambodia to the South Vietnamese resistance against US aggression and the dictatorial regime of Saigon, were given “on behalf of the Khmer people in order that future generations of Cambodians could avail themselves of the great appreciation and the respect of tomorrow’s Vietnam which surely will be unified and socialist and consequently very powerful. It would be pure folly for our country to confront militarily this neighbour which is capable of vanquishing the biggest and richest military power of all times, but our Cambodia could gain the respect of this neighbour”.14
But even the evidence about the presence of North Vietnamese/Viet Cong forces inside Cambodia was not clear cut. US officials still doubted the importance of the North Vietnamese/Viet Cong sanctuaries to neutral Cambodia. On 16 April 1964, the State Department’s Intelligence and Research Unit summarized the official position towards South Vietnamese claims that NV/VC forces were massing in Cambodia’s border region as follows:
“…there still no firm evidence to substantiate numerous official GVN (South Vietnamese Government) charges and reports the Viet Cong make extensive use of Cambodian territory as a base for operations in Vietnam; there is, nevertheless, no doubt that the Viet Cong make limited use of Cambodian territory as a safe haven for infiltrating cadres, supplies and funds”.15
The above statement was also shared by the Australian Foreign Minister, Sir Paul Hasluck, who in a highly classified telegram to the Australian Ambassador in Washington DC, stated:
“I was very interested in Rusk’s remarks on Cambodia. I am doubtful whether allegations of extensive Viet Cong use of Cambodia and of Cambodian complicity have been clearly established in the information at present available to us, or proved to the point when we can openly disregard official Cambodian denials. Our own intelligence assessments, although based on more limited sources than those available to the United States, generally accord with the State Department’s views described in your telegram No. 4332.
You reported the State Department views as saying that Cambodia has been used as a short term sanctuary and perhaps also as part of base or headquarters area, and as a minor infiltration route. You also reported the view of the intelligence community that the evidence was insufficiently conclusive to justify military action (even leaving aside political considerations)”.16
Even after the break of diplomatic relations between Cambodia and the USA, on 3 May 1965, the misunderstanding between the USA and Cambodia over the issue of NV/Viet Cong use of Cambodian territory continued for most the period of the Johnson administration, with the President, to his credit, resisting frequent requests by the US Army and the US Ambassador in Saigon, for military intervention in Cambodia. The Joint Chiefs wanted authority for both hot pursuit and cross border operations by the Vietnamese forces in order to pursue and destroy enemy elements fleeing into Cambodia.17
But in the years that followed Vietnamese Communist presence in Cambodia increased. Sihanouk was not happy about this and asked the great sponsors of the Communist forces, China and the Soviet Union, to help him by inducing the Communists to leave Cambodia’s territory and respect her territorial integrity.
At about this time Joint Chiefs obtained approval for the launching of a so-called “clandestine intelligence collection program” in North Eastern Cambodia. Nicknamed “Daniel Boone” then “Salem House” and later, “Thot Not”, the operations consisted of small teams of indigenous agents, mostly Khmer Serei elements operating from South Vietnam with the aim of overthrowing Norodom Sihanouk. They were led by US Special Forces personnel and infiltrated inside Cambodia to a depth of 20 kilometres with the help of helicopters and forward air control aircraft.18
With the active involvement of the Australian Ambassador in Cambodia, who had been charged by his government to also represent American interests in Cambodia, following a request by the US government, Norodom Sihanouk agreed in late 1967 to receive a US Presidential Envoy to discuss all these issues troubling the relations between the two countries. The task was given to the US Ambassador to India, Chester Bowles, who was known to Sihanouk from a previous visit to Cambodia.
On 31 December 1967, Sihanouk told the Australian Ambassador that he would welcome the visit by Ambassador Bowles to discuss Cambodian-American problems. He asked the Ambassador “how could he convey to Americans and the outside world the extent of Cambodian dislike and fear of all Vietnamese? The Communists more than the others, since the Communists were disciplined, organised and single minded”.19
Sihanouk added that “The United States would eventually withdraw its troops from Indo China but the Vietnamese threat would remain, probably in an accentuated form. Therefore aid or comfort given by Cambodia to North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, for moral or political reasons could under no circumstances extend to military assistance or toleration of a presence on Cambodian territory”. And that the Ambassador would know that “he based his action on a series of firm principles, among which Cambodian sovereignty was of primary importance”.20
Ambassador Chester Bowles visited Cambodia from 8 to 12 January 1968. At a meeting with Norodom Sihanouk, the question of hot pursuit by American troops based in Vietnam on Viet Cong elements infiltrating into Cambodia was discussed at length. There was no discussion about B-52s bombing Cambodia. Sihanouk agreed that he would “close his eyes” to American hot pursuit of Viet Cong forces, as long as this action took place in areas of the Cambodia-Vietnam border inhabited by Cambodians. He warned Ambassador Bowles that the moment a single Cambodian was killed he would scream and bring the matter up to the United Nations Security Council.21
Here again, I would like to emphasize that there was never any discussion, consultation or suggestion about the bombing of Cambodia during the discussions Ambassador Bowles had with Norodom Sihanouk or Prime Minister Son Sann. Australian Ambassador Noel Deschamps who attended all the meetings of the Bowles mission in Phnom Penh confirmed this to me in April 2005, just prior to his death.22
Furthermore, in his outstanding study of the US-Cambodia troubled relationship, Professor Kenton Clymer reaches the conclusion that:
“In sum, Sihanouk was never asked to approve the B-52 bombings, and he never gave his approval. He steadfastly insisted on respect for Cambodia’s integrity and sovereignty. He strongly protested American and South Vietnamese border incidents that resulted in injury to Cambodians and Cambodian property. He sought the American border declaration in part to limit border raids and attacks”.23
I should add that in his round-up telegram to the State Department on his mission to Cambodia, sent upon his return to New Delhi, Ambassador Bowles summarized:
“I came away deeply convinced, as on previous visits to Cambodia, that Sihanouk’s decisions and attitudes, however bizarre, are shaped by intense and deeply rooted nationalism in which ideology has little or no part. The Prince stressed again and again that his is a small country caught in the middle of an unpredictable international conflict and that Cambodia must strive to maintain maximum degree of goodwill not only towards its neighbours, but particularly towards great powers, USSR, China and USA”.24
SIHANOUK AND THE PEOPLE
In this “documentary” the most outrageous criticism of Norodom Sihanouk’s is by foreign “experts” on Cambodia, while the few Cambodians interviewed for the film are much more perceptive of what their former King did for their country and people. As Chak Sarik, a Cambodian of great resilience and wisdom, points out “For the first time, we had the feeling that a leader took care of the people and the country. And the people were happy”.
But this is not good enough for a hostile David Chandler who is given carte blanche to distort the unique relationship between Norodom Sihanouk and the Cambodian people. “He did not want to wake up the conscience of the small Khmer citizenry, because he knew that with US$ 200 per year, the people were poor!”
The “documentary” makes no mention of the numerous ‘’people’s audiences” given by Norodom Sihanouk every time he travelled in the provinces of Cambodia, which consumed a greater part of Norodom Sihanouk’s working schedule, or of his reports to the people every time he travelled on a mission outside Cambodia, made over the radio.
One of the most eminent attributes of Sihanouk, during the years he ruled Cambodia, was that he kept the Cambodian people informed of what was going on in all fields of Cambodian contemporary history, thus he made them feel involved, participating in the country’s national construction, even if they did not always understand the complexities of foreign affairs, they could differentiate which countries were helping Cambodia from those that were not.
Furthermore, there existed the National Congress which was established in 1958. Held twice a year in an open site next to the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh and chaired by the Cambodian Head of State, it lasted several days at each session. Thousands of people from all provinces of the country participated in the Congress and listened to government reports, presented by Ministers and senior officials, on domestic affairs. The people were encouraged to participate in the proceedings of the National Congress and to make suggestions for solving diverse problems. On several occasions, government officials that behaved badly towards the people lost their jobs, after their actions were reported by ordinary citizens to the National Congress.
SIHANOUK AND THE KHMERS ROUGES
On this issue the message that came through the narrative, with varying degrees of ham-fistedness, went something like this: Sihanouk allied himself with the Khmers Rouges after the 18 March 1970, he invited all Cambodian patriots “to join the Khmers Rouges to fight Lon Nol and his American allies”, Sihanouk was in competition with the Khmers Rouges, “by entering the Khmers Rouges’ unknown, Sihanouk definitively joined the conspiracy of silence”, “Sihanouk was jealous of Pol Pot and his capacity to draw such absolute loyalty”. I would submit that every one of those claims is either wrong or seriously misleading.
After the 18 March 1970, Norodom Sihanouk did not ally himself with the Khmers Rouges. Indeed it was the then public voices of the Khmers Rouges, Khieu Samphan, Hun Nim and Hou Youn, (also known as the “three ghosts” because according to certain “experts” on Cambodia, they had been executed on Sihanouk’s instructions) who conveyed a message to the former King through the North Vietnamese Embassy in Beijing, pledging their loyalty and support for Sihanouk’s struggle against Lon Nol and the Americans.25
Regarding the call by Norodom Sihanouk to “all Cambodian patriots to join the Khmers Rouges to fight Lon Nol and the Americans”, this is patently untrue. The message of 23 March 1970 does not mention the Khmers Rouges at all but calls on Cambodians to raise against the coup makers and its American sponsors.26
In his book “Will the Cambodian people survive!”, Jean Lacouture suggests that when on 26 March 1970 the Khmers Rouges (Khieu Samphan, Hu Nim and Hou Youn) proclaimed their solidarity and support for Norodom Sihanouk against the coup makers of Phnom Penh they turned upside down the basics of Cambodian politics and compares the alliance to the one that joined General De Gaulle with the French Communist Party between 1941 and 1945., because the country was in mortal danger”.27
With reference to the visit Norodom Sihanouk paid to the liberated zone of Cambodia in March-April 1973, the way the “documentary” portraits the visit induces the viewer to believe that Norodom Sihanouk was involved in a what the narrative suggests was “a silent conspiracy” with the Khmers Rouges. Such reading of Cambodian contemporary history is a somewhat misleading and tendentious one, construed in such a way as to blacken as much as possible Sihanouk’s image, to coincide, as I said before, with the beginning of the trials of certain Khmer Rouge leaders in Phnom Penh.
The facts are that throughout the period 1970-1977, hardly anyone, with the exception of the leaderships of the Communist parties of China and Vietnam, knew of the existence of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader responsible of the massacres that took place in Cambodia between 1975 and 1978. For all intents and purposes, the acknowledged leaders of the Khmer Rouge movement were Khieu Samphan, Hu Nim and Hou Youn. Later on, upon his arrival in Peking in 1971, Ieng Sary became known also as one of the leaders. During Sihanouk’s visit to the liberated zone of Cambodia, Saloth Sar (later to be known as Pol Pot), played a self-effacing role, leaving the leading role always to Khieu Samphan, Hu Nim and Hou Youn.
Here I would like to quote what David Chandler wrote regarding Sihanouk’s visit to the liberated zone in his political biography of Pol Pot: “At the Lao-Cambodian border the prince was greeted by the Three Ghosts –Khieu Samphan, Hou Youn and Hu Nim. They told him that they were in charge of the resistance. Two days later, at the party’s headquarters in the northern zone, Sihanouk also encountered Khieu Ponnary; Son Sen; the secretary of the northern zone, Koy Thuon and Saloth Sar, who mingled genially with his colleagues, giving the prince no hint of his high status. The charade probably amused Sar. He may also have been eager to observe Sihanouk at close range without being questioned or evaluated himself. He was probably beguiled by observing his subordinates and forcing them to act as if he were unimportant”.28
Yet in the “documentary” Chandler gives a completely different version of events, even though he was not present at the meetings between Norodom Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge leadership, Chandler suggests that Norodom Sihanouk was “terrified” during his visit and that he “behaved like Louis XVI, following the motions and did not understand anything about the Khmers Rouges”.
Chandler goes on to say that “regarding Pol Pot, Sihanouk was jealous of his capacity to inspire such absolute loyalty, absolute religion”. Thus, while in his biography of Pol Pot, published initially in 1992, Chandler tells how Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) self effaced himself and allowed Khieu Samphan and the others to play a charade of leadership with the visiting Norodom Sihanouk, in 2008 when he was interviewed for the Cayatte “documentary” the whole story has changed and Norodom Sihanouk “is jealous of Pol Pot’s capacity to inspire absolute loyalty…”.
What really disappoints me about the producers of this “documentary” is that they seem to put some notion of “academic expertise” above the commitment to objectivity, not to mention the crucial importance, of historical accuracy. Surely aren’t they, by their actions, forfeiting any claim to be taken seriously?
It is also, I believe, intellectually dishonest for the producer and director of this “documentary” not to present others views that are not anti-Sihanouk. But, again, it seems that the film’s main purpose was to tarnish as much as possible the image of Norodom Sihanouk, for whom the people of Cambodia, even today after years of savage bombings by the US Air Force, the corrupt Lon Nol regime, the murderous Pol Pot regime and the invasion and occupation of Cambodia, followed by a Potemkin democracy, have not changed their feelings of loyalty and love.
SIHANOUK AND CHINA
The “documentary” tries to convince the audience that China’s friendship was ideological and that Norodom Sihanouk “was a prince whom the Chinese Communists believed had been won to their cause” and that “the Chinese felt they had converted him to the virtues of Maoism”. Again, each of these allegations is demonstrably untrue. Norodom Sihanouk never became a Communist nor was he interested by Maoism.
Indeed, during the Cultural Revolution, hardliners at the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh tried to bring the Cultural Revolution to Cambodia but Norodom Sihanouk would have none of it and it was only the personal intervention of Zhou Enlai that prevented a break of diplomatic relations.
Norodom Sihanouk said, back in 1963, that Cambodia’s relationship with China was based on two actions resolutely taken by China:
“First, it has recognized and guaranteed our neutrality and territorial integrity. Moreover, it has appealed to other countries to approve our request to recognize our neutrality and territorial integrity – while other countries have declined to do so. Second, if imperialism’s satellites dare attack Cambodia, they will be destroyed because China and its 700 million people will be with us”.29
It seems that Gilles Cayatte and his team were not interested in the favourable aspects of the Cambodia- China relationship, as I recall spending a great deal of time explaining the same to him. I did point out to him that Zhou Enlai was worried by the Khmer Rouge policies to be implemented in Cambodia were they to win the war against Lon Nol and the USA. I also told him in great detail, I recall, how the late Chinese Prime Minister had contacted the Ambassadors in Peking from Australia, France, New Zealand, among others, to ask them to encourage the USA to entertain discussing the issue with Norodom Sihanouk in order to expeditiously put an end to the conflict ravaging Cambodia. All his attempts were rejected by Henry Kissinger.
SIHANOUK AND THE CGDK
One of the most bizarre assertions of the “documentary” takes place when the narrative takes the viewer to the formation of the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK). To begin with the narrative says very little about the reasons that prompted Norodom Sihanouk to join the CGDK in June 1982.
The CGDK which had three components –the Party of Democratic Kampuchea led by Mr. Khieu Samphan, the Khmer’s People National Liberation Front led by former Prime Minister (in the Sihanouk years) Samdech Son Sann and FUNCINPEC led by Samdech Norodom Sihanouk. It was formally established in Kuala Lumpur in June 1982, following strong pressure from ASEAN, China and the United States on the three leaders of the above named Cambodian resistance movements against Vietnam’s invasion and occupation of Cambodia.
Between February 1979 and June 1982, Norodom Sihanouk refused to join any government in exile with the Khmer Rouge. He agreed to join the CGDK only after it was made clear to him that the thousands of Cambodian refugees at the Thai-Cambodian border who declared allegiance to him would not get any assistance unless he joined such coalition. At that time, FUNCINPEC, was the smallest component of the CGDK with few armed forces, while the PDK was composed of the remnants of the Khmer Rouge army and the KPNLF had also established an army which has attracted several of the leading generals of the fallen Khmer Republic of Lon Nol.
Once again, David Chandler, is asked to comment by Gilles Cayatte about the formation of the CGDK and here, sadly, Chandler seems to throw away all the years of research he had conducted about Cambodia’s history by asserting that in the CGDK “you had the Khmers Rouges who had condemned Lon Nol to death, you had Son Sann heir of Lon Nol, who had condemned Sihanouk to death and, you had Sihanouk who had condemned all the others to death. Every body among them had condemned their predecessor to death it was difficult to make a coalition”.
I have always respected David Chandler’s work documenting the history of Cambodia, even though we have strongly disagreed on Norodom Sihanouk’s actions and aims, but on this opportunity I cannot see what possessed him to make such an erroneous, even defamatory statement.
Yes, Lon Nol was condemned to death by the Khmers Rouges but with US assistance, and cash, he managed to retire to the serenity of Hawaii.
Son Sann, was never the heir of Lon Nol, in fact, he stayed away from joining the Lon Nol group and lived most of the time in Paris where he tried to put an end to the conflict ravaging Cambodia by urging dialogue between Lon Nol and Norodom Sihanouk. Yes, there were former Generals and officials from the Khmer Republic joining his KPNLF just as there some Republicans who joined Sihanouk’s FUNCINPEC, like In Tam, who had been one of the key conspirators in the 18 March 1970 coup d’etat in Cambodia against Norodom Sihanouk.
Certainly, Son Sann was never condemned to death by Sihanouk. This I have had verified with other historians and they all tell me they have never heard of such incident. I also checked it with Son Sann’s heir, Son Soubert, presently a member of the Constitutional Council of Cambodia, who expressed dismay by this “fabrication and groundless allegation about which I have never heard of nor did my late father ever mention it to me”.30
As for the allegation that Norodom Sihanouk had also condemned Khieu Samphan to death, there is no demonstrable evidence available to that effect.
It is true that Norodom Sihanouk had hinted, in one of his speeches over Cambodia National Radio that he may order the arrest of three left-wing deputies in the Cambodian National Assembly –Khieu Samphan, Hu Nim and Hou Youn over the growing insurgency problem in Battambang province, but in the event the three deputies disappeared from Phnom Penh in 1967.
In his book of memoirs of his political career, Khieu Samphan never mentions that he was condemned to death by Norodom Sihanouk and relates that he and the other two deputies decided to leave Phnom Penh for the jungle because at that time “there were many rumours circulating in Phnom Penh that a coup d’etat Indonesian style was about to take place with a Cambodian Soeharto or a Nasution taking over the leadership of the country”.31
All these facts were known to the producers of this “documentary” yet they choose not to provide their audience with the other side of the story, in so doing, they abandoned all the principles of objective, unprejudiced and accurate journalism.
My concluding remark is directed to an allegation made by Patrice de Beer, a former correspondent in Southeast Asia for the French newspaper Le Monde. According to Mr de Beer: “In December 1969, I was in Phnom Penh and called at the Embassy of France where I was told that Sihanouk is finished, he is a Communist, there will be a coup d’etat, he will get kicked out!”. This is an extraordinary allegation which should be replied to by the appropriate services of the French government.
After I watched the “documentary” for the first time, I was taken back in time to June 1995 when, in Paris, I interviewed the former French Ambassador to Cambodia, Mr. Louis Dauge, he was not very forthcoming with me but insisted, several times during the interview, that I inform King Sihanouk that “the French Embassy was not aware of the plot being organized against him in March 1970”. I was very surprised because in my almost 12 years working with Norodom Sihanouk I never heard him say anything about French complicity in the 18th March 1970 coup of Lon Nol.
But now in 2009, after watching the Cayatte “documentary”, I remembered also that the late Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai had suggested, at his first ever meeting with Henry Kissinger, that may be the French had been involved in the coup, after Kissinger had denied any US involvement.32
In conclusion, I would suggest that this “documentary” has done nothing to increase the general public’s knowledge about the personality of Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia, which is sad, because the producers had access to more interviewees than previous documentaries on Cambodia and obviously had the financial means to produce an equitable film about Norodom Sihanouk.
Poor Cambodia! It seems to possess the unenviable distinction of all the countries of the former French Indo-China to bring out the worst prevarications of Western journalism and certain intellectual circles.
From Ambassador Julio A. Jeldres
Official Biographer to H.M. the King Father, Samdech Preah Upayuvareach Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia
Tel/Fax: 61-3-98887950
E-mail:Royal Biographer@gmail.com
* Ambassador Julio A. Jeldres is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Asia Institute of Monash University and the Official Biographer of His Majesty the King Father Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia.
Full Stop.
Khmer Rouge Court offers an opportunity for Cambodian would-be jurists to compete for eloquence
Khmer Rouge Court offers an opportunity for Cambodian would-be jurists to compete for eloquence
By Stéphanie Gée
Ka Set
27-03-2009
The Khmer Rouge tribunal found itself in the dock at the Royal University of Law and Economics in Phnom Penh. Depending on the side they were told to work on, students had to defend it or condemn it, as part of the first edition of their moot court. Debates were held in French – to celebrate the “Fête de la francophonie” – a detail which often added heaviness to the language of these would-be jurists, who stretched arguments they took here and there in the media, using relevant but also disturbing reasoning sometimes. We attended three of the sparring matches including the final, presided over in the jury by co-Investigating Judge at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal Marcel Lemonde.
The tribunal: useful or useless?
The usefulness of the court was roughly presented by young speakers who enunciated disjointed lists of arguments: “finding justice”, “seeking the truth”, “not leaving culprits wandering free and putting an end to impunity”, “strengthening the legal system”, “closing that dark chapter and writing it down in History for younger generations and for it to never happen again”, “catching national and international attention”, “healing the trauma of survivors”, asserting “the stability of Cambodia”, etc. One of the students points out the pragmatic advantage in the creation of the Extraordinary Chambers if the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). After quoting the names of two persons from the university of Law who found employment at the hybrid court, he declares, out of the blue and his face illuminated by a smile: “This is an employment opportunity for us jurists!”
Standing opposite, their opponents remain unruffled. “The ECCC will fail to put an end to impunity”, “political and legal obstacles are many”, “the court’s mandate is limited: it must happen in Cambodia, it only concerns the period going from April 17th 1975 to January 6th 1979 and has only prosecuted five persons!”, “the mixing of Cambodian and international judges together and the use of three official languages make the process more complex”, etc... “Do you believe that justice can be found in such conditions?”, a student asks, with the voice of someone who will not be fooled. “And why judge Duch [the former director of torture centre S-21] before all the other ones who are old and on the verge of dying in their prison cell?” “What about corruption? What about bad communication at the tribunal? Citizens are ill-informed... This is a disaster! “And what about problems of funding? And the slowness of the proceedings? Those who plead in favour of the tribunal sometimes find it hard to play opposite them. “How can you already say that that court is doomed to failure?”
Students keen to exercise their free will
With her tiny and piping voice, a student goes back over the question of the number of people under prosecution. “So you think there were only five of them leading the country? No, the other persons accountable must be found, and we must not push aside the request made by Mister... er... What’s his name again? Oh, Mister Robert!” In the opposite camp, everyone is laughing up their sleeve and someone reminds her of the international co-Prosecutor’s name: “Mr. Robert Petit!”. Not taken aback by the situation, she continues. “What if we arranged a sort of conciliation between victims and former Khmer Rouge leaders – it wouldn’t cost any money! We do that when it comes to labour law, between employers and employees, so why not do it in this case? Well, I prefer saying no more, since we haven’t studied conciliation in class yet!”
At the end of these duels for selection, students sitting among the audience assure us, placing their hand over their heart, that they would have opted in favour of the tribunal if they had been given the choice. However, after insisting, a few students plainly admit that they are more like detractors of the ECCC.
“Too much money has been spent on that tribunal when only a handful of people have been put under prosecution and the country is poor!”, third-year student Sambo says. “And why aren’t Civil Party lawyers paid by the tribunal like those for the accused?”, Keam adds in a reproving tone. Their fellow student Revatey, sporting a solid stature and expressing herself in clear French, does not beat around the bush. The 20 year-old, despite the outward appearances of a well-brought-up young woman who looks slightly timorous, strikes: “This is a political tribunal!”. She explains: “The United Nations encourage this tribunal because they want to make China lose face, but China does not want these trials as they supported the Khmer Rouge! And when China makes donations to Cambodia, the court encounters problems... It is like a game between big nations. But politics should not be mixed with law! The things that matter are the effectiveness of this tribunal and the good will of its protagonists”. Without any surprise, Revatey ends up in the final round... on the side of detractors of the tribunal.
Tie in the debates and advantage for the accused
For this moot court, which was organised this time in a lecture theatre at the University, Revatey and her colleague decided to stigmatise Cambodian magistrates at the ECCC, who according to them should not be there. “They are ill-trained, it is even said that one of them doesn’t have a degree, and they are affiliated to the ruling party, the CPP!” Without any inhibition whatsoever as to their critical reasoning, they persevere: “What is that tribunal for? Strengthening our legal system, they say, but there are other means to do so!”
The camp of supporters then defends the “unique and original” aspect of the tribunal and the respect of the “right to a fair trial”. “Peace and justice are indi.. indisss.. – the young woman is desperately stuck on the word. Her colleague comes to her aid: "In-di-sso-cia-ble"! She continues: “We cannot leave this trial in the hands of internationals when they don’t know our history and law well!” And to debunk any oncoming criticism from the opposite side, her colleague declares, learnedly and standing as stiff as a lamp post: “There is no such thing as absolute justice; it is all about relative justice!”
Revatey tries again and puts the United Nations in the dock: “The UN have long acknowledged Khmer Rouge as holders of the seat for the representation of Cambodia and now they are encouraging the holding of these trials. Why did they change their position? Are the United Nations truly independent?” And she goes back over the corruption charges staining the hybrid court. The opposite side retorts: “This is a serious accusation and as a jurist you should support it with evidence. Do you have any?”, the boy asks with the face of a primary school teacher who points out the errors of a pupil. “And if the UN have acknowledged the Khmer Rouge it is only normal since the latter fooled the whole world when they gave to their regime the name of Kampuchea Democratic”, he says, against all expectations.
Still too early to judge the tribunal
Judge Lemonde, as the president of the jury, intervenes and tells the disputants: “You have been harsh with Cambodian judges – bad reputation, lack of competence and independence, corruption... – but what do you think of international judges?” The two girls stand up to him. The first one utters a quiet “nobody’s perfect”, which generates laughter in the room, and the second one dispels all doubts: “We do not believe that the UN are independent and have good will in the creation of that tribunal!” Shortly after, she confidently asks the adverse party: “Do you believe that international judges are fair and effective?”. Her boldness entertains the audience. Marcel Lemonde negligibly slumps into his seat, smirking. He is the one who will have the final word to issue the “verdict”.
The co-Investigating Judge at the ECCC announces: “I am compelled to declare victors those who assert that the tribunal is unfair. This is heart-wrenching. But I think that it is easier to attack the tribunal than to defend it. Whether the tribunal is fair or not, what I would have said is: “Let’s see later! It is a bit too early to judge the justice it can render! [...] People will be able to call the trial fair if the rules of fair trial are respected and if it is understandable by all. “Justice is not perfect”, he admitted. “And besides, a court rarely provides satisfaction for everyone. The Judge, defending the holding of these trials in Cambodia – otherwise it would be meaningless - , reminded the audience of the fact that judges were not historians but were there “to deal out justice”. Marcel Lemonde then expressed his wish that “those who take part in the tribunal do their best for all Cambodians and for humanity”... And also that those who defend the tribunal win during the next debates.
By Stéphanie Gée
Ka Set
27-03-2009
The Khmer Rouge tribunal found itself in the dock at the Royal University of Law and Economics in Phnom Penh. Depending on the side they were told to work on, students had to defend it or condemn it, as part of the first edition of their moot court. Debates were held in French – to celebrate the “Fête de la francophonie” – a detail which often added heaviness to the language of these would-be jurists, who stretched arguments they took here and there in the media, using relevant but also disturbing reasoning sometimes. We attended three of the sparring matches including the final, presided over in the jury by co-Investigating Judge at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal Marcel Lemonde.
The tribunal: useful or useless?
The usefulness of the court was roughly presented by young speakers who enunciated disjointed lists of arguments: “finding justice”, “seeking the truth”, “not leaving culprits wandering free and putting an end to impunity”, “strengthening the legal system”, “closing that dark chapter and writing it down in History for younger generations and for it to never happen again”, “catching national and international attention”, “healing the trauma of survivors”, asserting “the stability of Cambodia”, etc. One of the students points out the pragmatic advantage in the creation of the Extraordinary Chambers if the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). After quoting the names of two persons from the university of Law who found employment at the hybrid court, he declares, out of the blue and his face illuminated by a smile: “This is an employment opportunity for us jurists!”
Standing opposite, their opponents remain unruffled. “The ECCC will fail to put an end to impunity”, “political and legal obstacles are many”, “the court’s mandate is limited: it must happen in Cambodia, it only concerns the period going from April 17th 1975 to January 6th 1979 and has only prosecuted five persons!”, “the mixing of Cambodian and international judges together and the use of three official languages make the process more complex”, etc... “Do you believe that justice can be found in such conditions?”, a student asks, with the voice of someone who will not be fooled. “And why judge Duch [the former director of torture centre S-21] before all the other ones who are old and on the verge of dying in their prison cell?” “What about corruption? What about bad communication at the tribunal? Citizens are ill-informed... This is a disaster! “And what about problems of funding? And the slowness of the proceedings? Those who plead in favour of the tribunal sometimes find it hard to play opposite them. “How can you already say that that court is doomed to failure?”
Students keen to exercise their free will
With her tiny and piping voice, a student goes back over the question of the number of people under prosecution. “So you think there were only five of them leading the country? No, the other persons accountable must be found, and we must not push aside the request made by Mister... er... What’s his name again? Oh, Mister Robert!” In the opposite camp, everyone is laughing up their sleeve and someone reminds her of the international co-Prosecutor’s name: “Mr. Robert Petit!”. Not taken aback by the situation, she continues. “What if we arranged a sort of conciliation between victims and former Khmer Rouge leaders – it wouldn’t cost any money! We do that when it comes to labour law, between employers and employees, so why not do it in this case? Well, I prefer saying no more, since we haven’t studied conciliation in class yet!”
At the end of these duels for selection, students sitting among the audience assure us, placing their hand over their heart, that they would have opted in favour of the tribunal if they had been given the choice. However, after insisting, a few students plainly admit that they are more like detractors of the ECCC.
“Too much money has been spent on that tribunal when only a handful of people have been put under prosecution and the country is poor!”, third-year student Sambo says. “And why aren’t Civil Party lawyers paid by the tribunal like those for the accused?”, Keam adds in a reproving tone. Their fellow student Revatey, sporting a solid stature and expressing herself in clear French, does not beat around the bush. The 20 year-old, despite the outward appearances of a well-brought-up young woman who looks slightly timorous, strikes: “This is a political tribunal!”. She explains: “The United Nations encourage this tribunal because they want to make China lose face, but China does not want these trials as they supported the Khmer Rouge! And when China makes donations to Cambodia, the court encounters problems... It is like a game between big nations. But politics should not be mixed with law! The things that matter are the effectiveness of this tribunal and the good will of its protagonists”. Without any surprise, Revatey ends up in the final round... on the side of detractors of the tribunal.
Tie in the debates and advantage for the accused
For this moot court, which was organised this time in a lecture theatre at the University, Revatey and her colleague decided to stigmatise Cambodian magistrates at the ECCC, who according to them should not be there. “They are ill-trained, it is even said that one of them doesn’t have a degree, and they are affiliated to the ruling party, the CPP!” Without any inhibition whatsoever as to their critical reasoning, they persevere: “What is that tribunal for? Strengthening our legal system, they say, but there are other means to do so!”
The camp of supporters then defends the “unique and original” aspect of the tribunal and the respect of the “right to a fair trial”. “Peace and justice are indi.. indisss.. – the young woman is desperately stuck on the word. Her colleague comes to her aid: "In-di-sso-cia-ble"! She continues: “We cannot leave this trial in the hands of internationals when they don’t know our history and law well!” And to debunk any oncoming criticism from the opposite side, her colleague declares, learnedly and standing as stiff as a lamp post: “There is no such thing as absolute justice; it is all about relative justice!”
Revatey tries again and puts the United Nations in the dock: “The UN have long acknowledged Khmer Rouge as holders of the seat for the representation of Cambodia and now they are encouraging the holding of these trials. Why did they change their position? Are the United Nations truly independent?” And she goes back over the corruption charges staining the hybrid court. The opposite side retorts: “This is a serious accusation and as a jurist you should support it with evidence. Do you have any?”, the boy asks with the face of a primary school teacher who points out the errors of a pupil. “And if the UN have acknowledged the Khmer Rouge it is only normal since the latter fooled the whole world when they gave to their regime the name of Kampuchea Democratic”, he says, against all expectations.
Still too early to judge the tribunal
Judge Lemonde, as the president of the jury, intervenes and tells the disputants: “You have been harsh with Cambodian judges – bad reputation, lack of competence and independence, corruption... – but what do you think of international judges?” The two girls stand up to him. The first one utters a quiet “nobody’s perfect”, which generates laughter in the room, and the second one dispels all doubts: “We do not believe that the UN are independent and have good will in the creation of that tribunal!” Shortly after, she confidently asks the adverse party: “Do you believe that international judges are fair and effective?”. Her boldness entertains the audience. Marcel Lemonde negligibly slumps into his seat, smirking. He is the one who will have the final word to issue the “verdict”.
The co-Investigating Judge at the ECCC announces: “I am compelled to declare victors those who assert that the tribunal is unfair. This is heart-wrenching. But I think that it is easier to attack the tribunal than to defend it. Whether the tribunal is fair or not, what I would have said is: “Let’s see later! It is a bit too early to judge the justice it can render! [...] People will be able to call the trial fair if the rules of fair trial are respected and if it is understandable by all. “Justice is not perfect”, he admitted. “And besides, a court rarely provides satisfaction for everyone. The Judge, defending the holding of these trials in Cambodia – otherwise it would be meaningless - , reminded the audience of the fact that judges were not historians but were there “to deal out justice”. Marcel Lemonde then expressed his wish that “those who take part in the tribunal do their best for all Cambodians and for humanity”... And also that those who defend the tribunal win during the next debates.
Long-delayed Khmer Rouge genocide trial to begin
Long-delayed Khmer Rouge genocide trial to begin
By GRANT PECK – 16 hours ago
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Human rights groups welcomed the long-awaited start Monday of Cambodia's first genocide trial, but urged the U.N.-backed tribunal to bring many more Khmer Rouge leaders to justice.
The tribunal is seeking to establish responsibility for the ultra-communist group's brutal 1975-79 rule, when an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died of execution, starvation, slave-like working conditions and medical neglect.
On Monday, prosecutors launch their case against Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, who is accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes, as well as torture and homicide.
Four other senior Khmer Rouge leaders are to be tried over the next year. The group's top leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998.
Duch commanded the main Khmer Rouge prison, named S-21 or Tuol Sleng, where as many as 16,000 men, women and children are believed to have been sent to their deaths after undergoing torture.
"The Cambodian people will finally see one of the most notorious Khmer Rouge leaders face trial," the human rights group Amnesty International said in a statement. "But many more need to face the court to really deliver justice to the millions of victims of these horrific crimes."
Critics of the tribunal charge that Cambodia's government has sought to limit the tribunal's scope because other potential suspects are now loyal to Prime Minister Hun Sen, and to arrest them could be politically awkward.
Brad Adams, Asia director at New York-based Human Rights Watch, also questioned why so few people were being tried in the mass killings.
"The successful start of the Duch trial ... does nothing to address the fact that only five people may be held accountable for the crimes that led to the deaths of as many as 2 million people," Adams said. "It's a ridiculous proposition that only five people should be held accountable."
The trial before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, as the tribunal is called, comes three decades after the Khmer Rouge was toppled by a Vietnamese invasion, 13 years after the tribunal was first proposed and nearly three years after the court was inaugurated.
Political wrangling, corruption scandals and inadequate financing contributed to the delays.
Amnesty International urged the United Nations and the Cambodian government to address allegations that Cambodian staff have been required to pay kickbacks to government officials for appointments.
The charges cast "serious doubts on the chambers' competence, independence and impartiality," it said.
"Any corruption allegations must be investigated promptly and thoroughly," said Brittis Edman, Amnesty International's Cambodia researcher. "A failure to do so risks undermining the credibility of the whole institution and what it is trying to accomplish."
The tribunal operates under both Cambodian and international law with Cambodian and foreign staff. It is under the joint administration of Cambodia and the U.N., which operate under separate budgets.
The court continues to be plagued by funding problems and cost overruns, and most of the international aid donors providing its budget have refused since last July to release new funds to the Cambodian side of the court because of the concerns about corruption.
However, on March 20, Japan injected another $200,000 to pay salaries for 251 Cambodian court employees. Tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath said the sum would carry them through March.
Duch is the only one of the defendants to express remorse for his actions.
"Duch acknowledges the facts he's being charged with," his French lawyer, Francois Roux, said last month. "Duch wishes to ask forgiveness from the victims but also from the Cambodian people. He will do so publicly. This is the very least he owes the victims."
Roux said Sunday that Duch was tense on the eve of going to court, but also looking forward to publicly presenting his side of the story after 10 years in jail awaiting trial.
Associated Press writers Susan Postlewaite and Sopheng Cheang contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
By GRANT PECK – 16 hours ago
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Human rights groups welcomed the long-awaited start Monday of Cambodia's first genocide trial, but urged the U.N.-backed tribunal to bring many more Khmer Rouge leaders to justice.
The tribunal is seeking to establish responsibility for the ultra-communist group's brutal 1975-79 rule, when an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died of execution, starvation, slave-like working conditions and medical neglect.
On Monday, prosecutors launch their case against Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, who is accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes, as well as torture and homicide.
Four other senior Khmer Rouge leaders are to be tried over the next year. The group's top leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998.
Duch commanded the main Khmer Rouge prison, named S-21 or Tuol Sleng, where as many as 16,000 men, women and children are believed to have been sent to their deaths after undergoing torture.
"The Cambodian people will finally see one of the most notorious Khmer Rouge leaders face trial," the human rights group Amnesty International said in a statement. "But many more need to face the court to really deliver justice to the millions of victims of these horrific crimes."
Critics of the tribunal charge that Cambodia's government has sought to limit the tribunal's scope because other potential suspects are now loyal to Prime Minister Hun Sen, and to arrest them could be politically awkward.
Brad Adams, Asia director at New York-based Human Rights Watch, also questioned why so few people were being tried in the mass killings.
"The successful start of the Duch trial ... does nothing to address the fact that only five people may be held accountable for the crimes that led to the deaths of as many as 2 million people," Adams said. "It's a ridiculous proposition that only five people should be held accountable."
The trial before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, as the tribunal is called, comes three decades after the Khmer Rouge was toppled by a Vietnamese invasion, 13 years after the tribunal was first proposed and nearly three years after the court was inaugurated.
Political wrangling, corruption scandals and inadequate financing contributed to the delays.
Amnesty International urged the United Nations and the Cambodian government to address allegations that Cambodian staff have been required to pay kickbacks to government officials for appointments.
The charges cast "serious doubts on the chambers' competence, independence and impartiality," it said.
"Any corruption allegations must be investigated promptly and thoroughly," said Brittis Edman, Amnesty International's Cambodia researcher. "A failure to do so risks undermining the credibility of the whole institution and what it is trying to accomplish."
The tribunal operates under both Cambodian and international law with Cambodian and foreign staff. It is under the joint administration of Cambodia and the U.N., which operate under separate budgets.
The court continues to be plagued by funding problems and cost overruns, and most of the international aid donors providing its budget have refused since last July to release new funds to the Cambodian side of the court because of the concerns about corruption.
However, on March 20, Japan injected another $200,000 to pay salaries for 251 Cambodian court employees. Tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath said the sum would carry them through March.
Duch is the only one of the defendants to express remorse for his actions.
"Duch acknowledges the facts he's being charged with," his French lawyer, Francois Roux, said last month. "Duch wishes to ask forgiveness from the victims but also from the Cambodian people. He will do so publicly. This is the very least he owes the victims."
Roux said Sunday that Duch was tense on the eve of going to court, but also looking forward to publicly presenting his side of the story after 10 years in jail awaiting trial.
Associated Press writers Susan Postlewaite and Sopheng Cheang contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Global Recession Hits South Asia's Apparel Industry
Global Recession Hits South Asia's Apparel Industry
By Anjana Pasricha
New Delhi
27 March 2009
South Asia's export based apparel industry is reeling under the impact of the global recession as demand for clothing from Western countries slows down. The industry is one of the biggest employers in this region.
For the last three years, 40-year-old Phekan sewed buttons on cotton shirts in a small factory in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of New Delhi earning about $100 a month. But she lost her job earlier this month after the European retailer buying the shirts slashed orders.
Phekan is worried how she will continue to live in the city while searching for another job.
Phekan says her landlord will demand rent on the first of the month, and she does not know how she will pay the money.
Garment workers at factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh (file photo)
She is among tens of thousands of workers in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh who have lost jobs as the recession in the West slows down orders for garments. These countries are among several Asian countries where the apparel industry boomed in recent years as demand in the United States and Europe grew steadily.
Raghav Gupta, President at India-based consultancy Technopak Advisors, says bigger manufacturers are able to absorb the impact of the slowdown, but many smaller units are badly hit.
"The bigger people, because economies of scale and cost pressures are important, are still going to grow, but it is small companies which don't have economies of scale, they might go out of business," Gupta said.
The industry is impacted slightly less in India, where strong domestic consumption is providing a market for manufacturers. But the export dependant industries in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have been impacted more severely by shrinking retail sales in the West.
According to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, an estimated 25 percent of orders have been cancelled by Western buyers.
The Association's Vice President, Shafiul Islam Mohiuddin, says the industry was hoping to exceed last year's exports which totaled over $10 billion, but is unlikely to meet the target.
"The export goal initial in this year was $13 billion, and we are little scared whether we will be able to achieve that goal," he said. "Buyers are delaying the goods because of falling demand. We are struggling for survival in these bad days."
The textile and garment factories in the region provide jobs to tens of millions of people, especially women, and are the biggest employers in the region after agriculture.
By Anjana Pasricha
New Delhi
27 March 2009
South Asia's export based apparel industry is reeling under the impact of the global recession as demand for clothing from Western countries slows down. The industry is one of the biggest employers in this region.
For the last three years, 40-year-old Phekan sewed buttons on cotton shirts in a small factory in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of New Delhi earning about $100 a month. But she lost her job earlier this month after the European retailer buying the shirts slashed orders.
Phekan is worried how she will continue to live in the city while searching for another job.
Phekan says her landlord will demand rent on the first of the month, and she does not know how she will pay the money.
Garment workers at factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh (file photo)
She is among tens of thousands of workers in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh who have lost jobs as the recession in the West slows down orders for garments. These countries are among several Asian countries where the apparel industry boomed in recent years as demand in the United States and Europe grew steadily.
Raghav Gupta, President at India-based consultancy Technopak Advisors, says bigger manufacturers are able to absorb the impact of the slowdown, but many smaller units are badly hit.
"The bigger people, because economies of scale and cost pressures are important, are still going to grow, but it is small companies which don't have economies of scale, they might go out of business," Gupta said.
The industry is impacted slightly less in India, where strong domestic consumption is providing a market for manufacturers. But the export dependant industries in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have been impacted more severely by shrinking retail sales in the West.
According to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, an estimated 25 percent of orders have been cancelled by Western buyers.
The Association's Vice President, Shafiul Islam Mohiuddin, says the industry was hoping to exceed last year's exports which totaled over $10 billion, but is unlikely to meet the target.
"The export goal initial in this year was $13 billion, and we are little scared whether we will be able to achieve that goal," he said. "Buyers are delaying the goods because of falling demand. We are struggling for survival in these bad days."
The textile and garment factories in the region provide jobs to tens of millions of people, especially women, and are the biggest employers in the region after agriculture.
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