Kulen Doomsday Cult, Scathing U.N. Rights Report, Breakthrough on Khmer Rouge PTSD
Good morning, Cambodia. It's Friday, September 2, and this is your Weekly Dispatch.
DOOM DELAY: The predicted biblical-scale floods never engulfed the world, leaving some 20,000 cultists with a more human problem, namely the police — who ordered them back to reality.
SIBLING RIVALRY: Is Hun Sen’s youngest son, Hun Many, locked in a dynastic family power struggle with his older brother, Hun Manet? Negative, said their dad, adding father knows best.
PIXELATED POSE: Is there really no bad publicity? Time will tell for the polarizing Miss Grand Cambodia Pageant and its ultra-risqué outfits. Authorities were aghast — but the internet exploded.
THE LEDE
Apocalypse Later
The end of the world never came — but the police did — forcing some 20,000 doomsday cultists to concede that the end of the world had apparently been postponed.
Thousands had gathered at a farm near Cambodia’s sacred Kulen Mountain — some coming from as far as Japan and Korea — to escape the world-ending floods predicted by the self-proclaimed “heavenly king,” otherwise known as Kem Veasna, leader of the pint-sized League for Democracy Party.
Organizers promised authorities they would stop offering food and shelter to followers and send everyone home by Monday, the police-ordered deadline.
Rights Watch
The truth was probably the last thing Cambodian authorities wanted from a visiting U.N. human rights investigator — but truth they got.
The U.N. special rapporteur, following an 11-day visit, submitted a long list of “severe” human rights issues, including longstanding concerns like employment scams, human trafficking and stifling of the free press. He urged the government to end political persecutions, open civic spaces, institute democratic reforms and dismantle the one-party state, all ahead of nation elections next year.
The government slammed the report, calling it “biased, prejudiced and unfounded.”
Bomb Squad
A long, jagged road cut into the hillside at Ream Naval Base looks a lot like the foundation for a Chinese surface-to-air missile battery, according to a U.S. defense expert.
The construction features a dozen large, roadside spaces, perfect for missile pads, vehicles or radars, said an analyst at the Center for a New American Security. The setup, he said, closely resembles the Yalong Naval Base on Hainan Island, where the Chinese military houses several HQ-9 missile batteries.
Beijing and Phnom Penh have long denied a Chinese military presence in the Kingdom, an assertion increasingly strained by growing evidence to the contrary.
TALKING POINTS
‘Broken Courage’
A Cambodian psychiatrist who specializes in Khmer Rouge survivors won the 2022 Ramon Magsaysay Award, considered Asia's Nobel Prize. Sotheara Chhim, 54, is credited with defining "baksbat" — or "broken courage" — a condition similar to PTSD but rooted in Khmer culture. Chhim is also a survivor of the genocidal Pol Pol era.
Rainsy Affair
Sam Rainsy’s defense attorney said the opposition figure’s allegations that Hun Sen ordered the murder of Hok Lundy, the notorious former police enforcer, were “founded on a solid factual basis." Hok Lundy died in a helicopter crash in 2008. Hun Sen and the ex-police chief’s son are suing Sam Rainsy for defamation in France. Expect proceedings to last months.
Brotherly Love
Hun Sen shot down rumors of a power struggle between his sons over who should be the next prime minister. An exiled political analyst told The Cambodia Daily that Hun Many, the Strongman’s youngest, was not-so-quietly jockeying for the top role as part of a long-simmering rivalry with his eldest brother, Hun Manet.
Public Displays
Members of a contentious youth group protested outside the Ministry of Women’s Affairs by re-enacting scenes of violence committed against labor union members. The activists said the Ministry had done nothing to discipline officers who were filmed assaulting NagaWorld strikers. The Ministry called the re-enactments “propaganda and slander.”
Busted Nets
Small-scale fishermen say Hun Sen’s highly publicized crackdown on illegal fishing had turned legitimate fisherfolk into criminals. The prime minister’s order was intended to stamp out commercial-scale illegal fishing, but enforcement has effectively outlawed fishing of any kind.
Too Sexy
The Miss Grand Cambodia pageant set social media on fire — again — with Miss Stung Treng’s provocative dress shown pixilated online amid pearl-clutching across the Kingdom. Her shiny, scarlet robe revealed less than the average swimsuit, but the Ministry of Women’s Affairs said it was enough to besmirch the honor and dignity of Khmer women around the world, and promised a formal review.
Big Ideas
Six Cambodian artists have turned more than 100 tons of Mekong trash into art — and it’s all for sale. Proceeds will go to fund river cleanup. The exhibit opens Tuesday at MetaHouse. At the Pi-Pet-Pi Gallery, Phare Ponleu Selpak is hosting “Reflections: Circus as an Art Form,” 33 black-and-white images of the Tini Tinou circus.
BACKPAGES: From The Cambodia Daily Vault
Chhouk Rin Verdict Due Next Week
August 29, 2002
An Appeals Court prosecutor on Wednesday said former Khmer Rouge chief Chhouk Rin should face prison for murder, kidnapping and leading an armed group in a train ambush that ended with the execution of three Western hostages in 1994.
Award-Winning Director To Shoot Feature Film in Siem Reap
August 29, 2002
Award-winning French director Jean-Jacques Annaud is preparing to shoot a $100-million feature film in Siem Reap province, a government official said Monday.
Cambodian Children Sent to Beg in Vietnam
August 28, 2002
In Ho Chi Minh City, the Khmer children seem to rise up out of the dust. Rarely seen and never heard, they clutch potato sacks with a few slices of bread, drifting through the throngs, occasionally approaching a tourist and raising their fingers to their mouths, mutely asking for food or money.
WEEKEND READS
Tim Page obituary
War photographer who served as a fearless witness to the escalation of hostilities in Vietnam in the 1960s.
Behind a Slave Rescue From a Cambodian Scam Operation
A Vietnamese family took out loans against their family home to help their son escape enslavement in Cambodia.
Mining the Mekong: Land and livelihoods lost to Cambodia’s thirst for sand
Sand mining by politically connected companies has been blamed for the collapse of riverbanks along the Mekong and Bassac rivers in Cambodia.
A new generation of female artists are challenging the status quo in Cambodia
As many young women move into creative professions, stigma and cultural norms are being shattered.
Images: Kem Veasna, via League for Democracy Party Facebook page. Miss Stung Treng, supplied.
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