The Shay Rebellion

I haven’t been out of Cambodia since September. I’m not exactly roughing it out here;  thanks to a large NGO community, Phnom Penh is a comfortable city with all the important Western amenities: coffee shops, English-language bookstores and anti-perspirant.

But between missing my sister’s graduation, friends visiting the Northwest for the first time, and a slew of articles about Portland in the the New York Times and Wall Street Journal (here, here, here, and here), I’ve been a homesick for the first time in Cambodia.

I’ve been living vicariously my friends’ P-town restaurant choices and trail selections. I’m not in a hurry to move back to the States permanently, and I don’t imagine there are many American newspapers or magazines hiring at the moment anyways. But recently, I’ve found myself dreaming of dinners at Beast, evenings at Powell’s, and weekends hiking underneath waterfalls.

It’s been a while since I’ve spent real time in Portland—I haven’t lived through Portland’s 8-month drizzly season for six years—so my view of Portland would be a bit nostalgic regardless. But the media’s focus on the city’s mass transit,  restaurant-scene, and population of over-educated and underemployed white people with bicycles has reinforced certain memories of the city as a place where bikelanes lead to restaurants that list their local producers (and oh, isn’t that the lead singer from Spoon at bar?).

My fellowship in Phnom Penh is coming to an end soon, leaving me with difficult decisions about what to do next. Hopefully though, I’ll be able to sneak in a couple weeks in Portland for me to get my fix of Northwest food, forests and family before heading back out for more adventures. Right, I’m ready for a brief, boring American experience again.

A feral dog ran through the the Group 34 community with a used sanitary napkin hanging from his mouth while being chased by three naked, uncircumsized children.

After a suspicious fire, a poor but stable Phnom Penh community has become a squalid ghetto where fresh trash and the scorched remains of their belongings sit in heaps behind their temporary shelters.

But, the residents worry, their lives could become even worse once they are evicted.

The Group 34 community watched their community burn to the ground a month ago in a blaze that killed a child. Now, the government is not allowing them to rebuild their homes, a sure sign, they say, they will be forcibly evicted soon. Currently, they live in ramshackle shelters made from donated tarpaulins and the charred remains of their old homes. Even the land has transformed. The fire turned the community’s muddy, brown paths jet black.

The police version of fire that places the blame on an irate drug addict doesn’t quite add up, and no one I talked to believes he acted alone. When I asked one community member why they were being forcibly evicted, he told me, “We’re surrounded by rich people,” and refused to elaborate further.

The community in Tomnup Toek, Phnom Penh doesn’t mind moving. None of the villagers I talked to were particularly nostalgic about the place, especially now that 150 of their homes have been destroyed. They just don’t want to live 50 kilometers out of town, which is where the government says they will be moving them.

They told me they were “a community of market vendors and construction workers”. They needed to be in the city for their livelihoods.

“We eat what we work,” one person told me, meaning every dollar they get is immediately spent on food. They have no savings to support their families while they learn to cultivate rice, the main occupation at their relocation site.

So they did something as far as I know no Phnom Penh community has done before: They found an alternative site for the community’s 258 families. The owner is willing to sell the land to the city at a cheap rate.

The Group 34 community representatives wrote letters to the authorities with the proposal, and the government’s response has been a predictable silence.

This, they told me, is a chance for the government to finally get some good press when it comes to forced relocations.

Maybe, just maybe, if people and organizations make enough of a fuss, the government will spend that little extra to buy them an urban plot.

If not, some residents have vowed to fight back when the police come to evict them. People—who feel they have nothing left to lose—going up against armed police could lead to disaster.

Dressed in all black and sitting against the doorframe, Sok Chenda was crying. She had separated herself from the rest the group and plopped herself down in the darkest part of her neighbor’s apartment.

Her community had invited members of the French community to hear the stories of how they had been forced from their homes at the urging of French government.

Sok Chenda had been living in the building since 1979, but thanks to a 2001 agreement between the French and Cambodian governments, her family and at least 36 others have agreed to leave, but only after an organized regime of intimidation and misinformation.

In 2001, France paid Cambodia one million Francs for, among other things, the Cambodian government to relocate the families away from the Lycee Francais Rene Descartes, Cambodia’s oldest international school. France wanted the school to expand to fill the whole building just like it did before the Khmer Rouge.

The families, who had been ordered to live there by authorities in 1979, 1980 and 1981, were offered compensation by the Cambodian government, but the residents and civil society groups complained that the amount was woefully inadequate and so the community tried to hold out for better terms and a bit more time. After police threats and requests for French help were ignored, every family felt they had no choice and signed away their homes.

Most of the families are now being moved to plots on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, where they have not even had time to finish the construction of their homes.

Forced evictions are nothing special in Phnom Penh. One recent estimate says that since a 2001 land law, one in 10 families in Phnom Penh has been relocated by the government.

But the Lycee Francais Rene Descartes is different. The French government has a moral—if not legal—obligation to help.

According to the 2001 agreement, if there are problems with the eviction process—and I’d say there were some problems—the French government is supposed to be notified. To me, this implies that the French government acknowledges some complicity in the forced evictions. Yet, the French government has done nothing, at least not publicly, to help the community.

Sok Chenda came back to the room overflowing with students, parents, journalists and other residents. She sat in the corner with four other women residents, and as they heard their stories translated into French, they sat silently and cried.

Ronnie Simpson came home from Iraq in a coma, and shortly thereafter, his father died.

By the time he was 22, he owned a house, pulled in over $60,000 a year as a motorcycle salesman, and was a full-time student. From a distance, he’d recovered remarkably well from war and personal tragedy. But he would nonetheless find himself hitting 160 mph on his sport bike—a clear sign, he realized, that he didn’t care anymore whether he lived or died.

Then one day, his older brother asked if he wanted to sail around the world with him in five years.

Ronnie couldn’t wait; he needed change now. He put his house up for sale, and when it sold, he bought a yacht—even though he’d never sailed before.

After outfitting his 41 foot boat with solar panels and a wind turbine, Ronnie lived off the grid in a San Diego harbor until he taught himself how to sail.

On October 1st, he set off to sail around the world, but before he knew it, a hurricane had developed on top of him—hundreds of miles away from land. The storm went from a tropical storm to a category four in 16 hours. It was the most powerful storm in October in 26 years. Ronnie lost his rudder and ended up on a massive cargo frigate after a harrowing rescue effort.

His yacht is still floating somewhere in the Pacific, rudderless but in good shape.

Eventually he ended up in Hong Kong faced with a choice: go home or continue on, somehow. Not ready to return home, Ronnie bought a Cannondale and decided he would bike to England. And then—if he can find a publisher for his story to throw him some early cash—he’ll buy another boat and sail back to California.

When I met Ronnie, it was the night before his 24th birthday. He told me that he wanted to be an inspiration to people, show people that money wasn’t everything that anyone could go out there and experience the world. His dad had worked himself to death, and he wanted to demonstrate that there was another way.

In a few months, Ronnie will be biking through Iraq, a place where in 2004 he nearly died in a rocket attack. Since then, he’s become a peace advocate, and by biking through the Iraq again, he wants to describe the warmth of the Iraqi people. Americans, he said, don’t understand what it’s like there. Even in 2004, he was greeted with the astonishing generosity by the Iraqi people.

Biking alone across long distances you’re forced to rely and put your trust in strangers. And though he’s had a couple tense moments—mostly involving crazy Vietnamese drivers—he’s already experienced heart-warming kindness. In Guangdong province, old Chinese men biked 100 kilometers to make sure he found the correct road, and one story of a former translator for American soldiers during the Vietnamese made him tear up when he told me at the bar. A woman gave him a beat up canteen to give to his uncle, who had been a stationed in that very city, with a note thanking the American military for saving her life. These types of small but meaningful sacrifices highlight the good that he believes is exists all around the world.

And after circumnavigating the place, he’ll surely be in a position to know.

You can follow his adventures at www.openbluehorizon.com

We took a translator, Toro, to Koh Kang with us. He’d been a government soldier in the province in the 80s and befriended a local fisherman. Whenever one of them went hungry, the other would give him food. They ate, cooked, and kept each other company in a violent and unsure time. But, as can happen with all old friendships, they lost track of each other and hadn’t seen each other in more than 15 years.

We had a half day free, and we decided to go with Toro to his old friend’s fishing village for lunch. In the years apart, Toro’s friend had gotten married and had the nicest, cutest kid. Even though it’d been a long time, the two of them didn’t seem to miss a beat. When it was just the two of them talking, I couldn’t understand what they were saying exactly—but Toro was laughing his way through the conversation.

Now, you should always accept an invitation to dine with a fisherman. We had fresh shrimp, prawns and fish raw, barbecued and steamed—as much as we could eat. Toro’s friend engaged in bottom trawling, an incredibly destructive mode of fishing, and he complained how he’s been catching less and less these days. Like the Cambodian soldier accepting bribes, it’s hard to blame him for his fishing practices. He’s catching fish the way that he knows will support his family.

Marine Conservation Cambodia hopes to create what are basically sustainable fish farms by planting bamboo sticks woven with leaves in the water, creating a safe space for fish to breed that cannot be trawled. The result would hopefully allow for sustainable fishing and restock the oceans.

If things keep going the way they have, Toro’s friend—who, 20 years ago, could feed Toro when he was starving—will need all the help he can get just putting food on his own table. Here’s hoping Marine Conservation Cambodia’s plans work. Conservation isn’t just about the fish in water, it’s about making sure we still have fish on the table.

Despite (because of?) the fact that it’s poorly written, unconvincingly argued, and—judging by some egregious typos—not edited at all, this article has become the talk of the town, and by town I mean readers of the best website ever. The article focuses on the two topics that people seem to have the strongest opinions on: food and sex. Enjoy.

Addendum: George F. Will at the Washington Post’s take on Eberstadt’s article, and The New Republic’s response.

A few weeks ago, I headed to the Thai-Cambodian border to try and follow illegal migrants across the border (read about it here). I wasn’t able to smuggle myself across with the migrants. I only got as far the point where they bribe the Cambodian border authorities.

As we were waiting for more migrants to interview on the Cambodian side, we were hanging out with the Cambodian border patrol. All of them were middle-aged, ex-Khmer Rouge soldiers, and most of them had been in the army for over 30 years. As far as I could tell, their only source of income was accepting small bribes from illegal migrants. The cluster of about five buildings on the border is isolated from most of Cambodia by landmines. The land is dotted with thousands of them, and just the night before a small fire had broken out over a few acres and about 40 mines exploded. After hearing that, they didn’t need to remind us to stay on the path.

The soldiers and their families grow most of their own food, raise their own livestock, and—as I would found out—make all their own whiskey. Most of the rest of their supplies appear to come from Thailand.

Our translator, being a former government soldier in the 1980s, informed us he knew exactly what the soldiers wanted. Before I knew it, he had come back with a jug, and we’re all drinking home-made rice whiskey.

It was noon.

As middle-aged Cambodians, these men have surely seen a lot, and I can only begin imagine what they did as KR soldiers. The KR period was grim, and in this area of Cambodia, the KR era didn’t really end till the 1990s. But, as is often the case, you’d never guess their past. These soldiers were absolutely giddy by having two barangs (white people) drinking with them. One soldier in particular was constantly goading me to drink and laughed everytime I took a sip.

Without a regular salary, these men would have no choice but to turn to corruption. Before we can fault them for accepting bribes, the Cambodian government needs to at least pay them enough to live. Corruption in Cambodia runs all the way through from the poorest soldiers to richest generals, but in the case of some of the soldiers, they have no real choice so long as someone up the line is pocketing their income.

In stark contrast, the much younger Thai soldiers with their M-16s largely ignored us, and when they did talk, they were much more media aware, bragging about how much they helped Cambodians fight fires as their side had a firetruck and a road.

No one wanted to talk about the illegal migrants (which says something in its own right), but the Cambodians at least would were happy to drink with us.

“Snakes on a plane is a great concept. I mean you’re on a plane, where you gonna go? If it was snakes on a bus, you could just get off. That happens in Cambodia you know.” —Vanna

As of 2009, I became the Phnom Penh Post’s foreign news editor. I only reluctantly took the position. It’s neat being an editor at a daily paper, and the position looks cool on a business card. But it means fewer journalistic adventures to drug hotspots, tropical islands, or city dumps. It means less writing and photographing.

I’ll be stuck at my desk reading the wires and deciding what people will read (or ignore) the next day. Without any reporters under me, it’s just me making the decisions and a couple of subeditors fixing my screw ups. No more waking up and wracking my brain for a story; no more losing sleep over how to structure an article, and definitely no more hour long lunch breaks.

In college, I procrastinated by reading the news, and—like all college students—I procrastinated a lot.

On the brightside, my new job means that—finally—I won’t have to feel guilty about spending all my time reading the news.

Drug users take a hit as police raids force them into hiding

A drug user, who was shot in the stomach by the police ten days earlier, smokes yaba.

With a new police chief out to make his name, drug users in Phnom Penh once again live in constant fear of the authorities. I talked to four women for the article who had recently been picked up by the police, beaten and then released. What was most disturbing was not their graphic depictions of police brutality, but their nonchalant way of telling me about it—as if being kicked in the ribs by a policeman was no big deal to them. For them, police violence had become routine.

The women aren’t afraid of being beaten—they’ve gotten used to it—they’re afraid of being taken to a government-run “treatment” center. The police told them that the government was building a new facility, and once it was finished, they taken there and forgotten forever.

This is probably just an empty threat from corrupt police, but these women are terrified. They’ve all heard the rumors about of gang rape and detainees being beaten to death.

The police all know where the NGOs that do needle exchange are located, and these women believe that the police try to intentionally patrol those streets.

It should go without saying but this seriously undermines the abilt of drug users to seek services, and by forcing them underground, it makes it harder for NGOs to reach out and educate drug users about the dangers of injection drug use.

If the Ministry of Health institutes its pilot methadone maintenance program this summer and these brutal raids continue, no drug user will trust the government, ruining the chances of a humane and effective detox program.