Kampuchea Crossings

Bump to baby on the beaten expat track

Phnom Penh

Forced evictions and land grabbing for the Chinese New Year

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From Phnom Penh Post 24Jan 2009, City, developer demolish Dey Krahorm.

Overseen by the military at 2am yesterday, the remaining residents’ houses at Dey Krahorm, a community in Phnom Penh’s Tonle Bassac neighborhood, were bulldozed by workers hired by 7NG, a private company who won the rights to develop the site. This is the final outcome of their 3 year struggle against the company, after rejecting the cash compensation and relocation offer to a site 16km out of the city because they felt their property values were vastly underestimated. During this time, their peaceful protests as well as efforts by human rights groups and organisations were met with violence and intimidation, with no action to either address their concerns or provide a platform for dialogue by the government.

Cambodia’s vast and rapid influx of foreign capital for economic development, especially in the capital, Phnom Penh, sadly has created opportunity for large-scale human rights abuses. The environment of inadequate legal and regulatory frameworks and lack of capacity to enforce them, fragmented development vision that is in discord with reality, the culture of impunity all set the stage for graft. The courts are often manipulated by the powerful and become tools to sanction violence and silence the weak and poor involved in land disputes. Despite instituting property rights in 1989, land grabbing and forced eviction remain the most widespread and systematic human rights violation today, with at least 30,000 in the capital forcibly removed from their land, and approximately 150,000 throughout the country at risk of being dispossessed.

Aid organisations, human rights groups and bi-/multilateral agencies have issued statements denouncing such practices. But the international response has not been coherent or unified, and with China matching dollar for dollar the cumulative aid and development funds across sectors, what little impact rights advocacy may have is severely eroded. 2008 saw an increase of human rights violations by 25% from 2007, according to legal aid and rights group Licadho. It is such a heated topic that my work in patients’ rights must necessarily exclude language, reference or affiliation with the greater rights agenda, or we risk political fallout. It’s an issue that’s hard to imagine will get better before it gets worse.

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Watching Obama’s Inauguration in Phnom Penh

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That was a pretty nice event.. Lots of energy and a huge crowd at the Gym Sports Bar: we had about 180 people throughout the night and well past 230am– was not a good idea to have an 8am meeting like some folks did! And here, our two most favorite things– ZULU and BARACK– we just found our theme for the Mardi Gras Madness event!

And on a side note, a hmmm moment… Bush will be the first ex-president not to get a lifetime security detail. [[cocking head to the side]]] ..of all the living POTUSes that’d need it most…!
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beyond Phnom Penh.. in Kampong Cham

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Photos courtesy of K Kelly

We just wanted to go for a walk to get some air, after two whole days indoors through several ceremonies. We attended a Buddhist ceremony in Kampong Cham for a friend’s grandmother who passed away 10 years ago. This is the province with the beautiful women, according to many Khmer men in Phnom Penh. It might somewhat be validated by the recent legislative crackdown on weddings to foreigners, to prevent trafficking of women. Apparently Korean men looking for a nice obedient wife tend to look for one to buy/marry in this province, until several miraculously escaped abusive relationships in S Korea and reported it upon return.

But I digress. This couple were guests at the event, and we inadvertently followed them home. When we indicated through various gesturing and mimings that we wanted to walk around the village a bit, they wouldn’t have that– “dangerous”, they said. “Come with us to our house.”


There they served us up some tea and cashew fruits. The lands to and around Kampong Cham are dedicated to farming cashews and rubber plantations. The soil is particularly good for growing very high quality cashews, but they are mostly grown for export to Vietnam and Thailand. The Khmer in turn imports Vietnam’s sub-par cashews to sell to its own people. Rubber is exported to China. It fetches high prices, but not high enough to compensate for the damage it renders the soil after a few years of high yield. The agriculture policy is still not effectively implemented, and besides, there’s very little regulatory capacity not to mention intense corruption when it comes to land and land use. Small farmers are pretty much left to their own devices and vulnerable to the demands of neighbors and subsequent market imbalances.

They eat the flesh of the cashew fruit here, not just the nut. The older folks especially love it (maybe cuz it’s soft?) dipped into a sauce of palm sugar and water.


We walked back to my friend’s house in the sunset..

A common sight

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Photos courtesy of H. Prytherch

This is a common sight along the roads of Cambodia– a patient riding on the back of a moto on the way home, hooked up to an IV. There’s large demand for IVs and injections in the country, and people seek it out whether or not it is medically necessary. The problem of overuse of drugs/IVs is more prevalent in rural areas where educational levels are much lower.

We asked some people in the communities when they typically get IVs, and we were told it’s good for making the body strong again after many days out fishing or working in the fields. We’re told they can be bought at any pharmacy or clinic, and the colored IVs are better because the medicine in it makes it more potent. (Unknown to them, oftentimes it is due to food coloring by unscrupulous drug vendors capitalising on the poor knowledge of drug use.)

…I can almost see the image of this in the bas reliefs of Angkor Wat!

How to catch sparrows

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A little bit of life in Phnom Penh…. I was sitting at a cafe overlooking Sisowath Quay (riverside), when I watched how they catch what’s nicknamed in the birding world as LBJs (Little Brown Jobbies), or the ubiquitous common sparrows. Keith told me how he’d watch them do this but it seemed like such a tediously unrewarding way to catch birds so I didn’t believe him.

Small Khmer kids with long thin bamboo sticks patiently waited at some short bushes by the river. When a sparrow came along, they poked it with their stick. On the end of the stick is a blob of glue which, when it gets onto the bird’s feathers, effectively renders them incapable of flying. As the bird hops away trying to get the glue off, the kids would poke it again with the glue, and again and again. Eventually the bird’s fate is sealed.


Fried, one can eat every single part of this little bird. It looks horrible, but for a country that doesn’t have many choices as far as food, especially the poor, anything that moves is fair game. Thus it became part of the culinary repertoire.


Along the river, in between all the fancy restaurants, bars and cafes catering to expatriates, are a smattering of food stalls with plastic chairs and tables. On any given night scores of young Khmers either on dates or just out with friends have this for dinner. A can of Black Panther (stout) was 3000Riel, or $0.75, in 2007. The plate of about 5 fried sparrows was 5000Riel, or $1.25, served with a pepper and lime juice sauce and a salad of green herbs and vegetables. (There is also another bird in there, a quail, cut in half).

Tourists would walk past the tables and the horrified look on their faces as they caught a glimpse of what was frying or served up were really funny to watch. Even funnier is their double-take and attempt to look non-chalant when they saw fellow foreigner Keith at one of the tables with his camera, putting away one of these delicacies.


This contraption is their barbecue grill. It’s essentially what we would have back home as a clay planter except ten times thicker, with a hole cut out of the base to stick in the charcoal, and set inside an aluminum casing. Shown here steaming are fertilised duck eggs. They are usually sold 3 for 4000Riel or $1.00.