Damn dirty lies

Last issue of the "Phnom Penh Post" had an article on the 1997 grenade attack at a KNP opposition rally. More than a dozen were killed and more than 100 wounded. Ten years on, the investigation continues but no evidence was ever found. Some of the wounded were taken to Kantha Bopha II children's hospital where that the hospital director refused entry, according to the article.

Today's "Cambodia Daily" has a double page spread written by the hospital director, Dr Beat Richner. He demands compensation, to the tune of one million dollars, from the Phnom Penh Post for this "ugly lie" - his alleged rejected of the wounded. Dr Beat claims that he was not at the hospital when the grenade exploded and so could not have refused to treat.

If he could prove that he is correct or insinuate it enough, he could sue for defamation which is a criminal offense - it's most often used to dispose of the opposition leaders. There is no other way be could get $1 million. There is no compensation culture here, although bribery is very much part of the culture. $1 million is an unreal sum of money in this country where around 80% of the population live on $0.50 a day. And it would not be the first time Cambodian hospitals have turned away the sick and injured.

Dr Beat attacks not only the PP Post but he takes a swing at international organisations in the country too, particular those concerned with health. He capitalises every instance of "who". Can anyone guess what that stands for? He rejects that "medical standard should correspond to the economical reality of the country" which he claims is the attitude of international organisations.

It's all very well to say that every country should have first world medical care but rather difficult in implement. Over half the national budget of Cambodia is given by donor countries. That money trickles away through corrupt Government departments and nobody is accountable and nothing changes. Corruption undermines everything but it does not help to throw more money at the Government. Perhaps Dr Beat's rant is a little misdirected.

Hope you don't need to send an urgent text message

Cambodia is having commune elections on 1st of April. No violence is really expected but the political wrangling is intense, as it is everywhere before an election. The Cambodian National Election Committee has taken the somewhat radical step of banning all text messages for over 36 hours before the election to eliminate political messages that may influence voters.

... in Cambodia the information technology is modern now and most of people are using cell phones which can receive campaign messages from political parties. On these two days, the environment must be quiet, according to the law... in order to prevent the use of SMS for the election campaign ... block SMS through cell-phone from March 31st, 2007 to April 1st, 2007 at 3.00pm.

I understand the need to have an election-free zone before polling. Even at home the party political broadcasts do not go out the day before or the day of the election. I do think, though, that banning an entire country from texting is a tad extreme. Oh well at least it's better than imposing a curfew. Don't forget to buy credit for your calls.

Everyone is connected

Click on the image for a bigger version
Source: Phnom Penh Post

Vignettes

Yesterday I was on my way to lunch when a policeman held up his arm in the universal stop sign. A woman with a child on her motorbike continued around the policeman. He hit her with his baton, catching the child at the same time. Luckily, although she wobbled, she did not crash or fall off. The policeman had us wait for a couple of minutes and then a very fancy car with a government reg pulled into a driveway. The road we were stopped on was the main boulevard in Phnom Penh

If a Cambodian is unlucky enough to get in an accident here they are taken to Calmette hospital, where they will wait, often covered in blood for someone to guarantee payment of their treatment. Indeed a friend just told me about a mother and daughter who had acid thrown on their faces during the night, were taken there and left in agony because they could not pay. Luckily an NGO found out about their situation and relocated them.

Finally, attitudes towards domestic violence are changing. According to the Phnom Penh Post:

Before, a daughter would complain to her family about spousal abuse and they'd do nothing. They'd say it's 'your problem'... but now we're seeing fathers and brothers accompany the victim.

And some statistics from Licadho - a Cambodian Human Rights NGO...

% increase	Domestic violence	Rape	Gang rape
2005	24	30	25
2000	193	207	no data

There is a decrease in the increase, which is encouraging if not out and out good news. Women are becoming more aware of their rights. It also helps that if they report violence or rape they are not automatically sent on to the streets or summarily divorced and left destitute. Progress is slow but it is a shuffle in the right direction.

TB Day

Today is Tuberculosis Day. it's one of the lesser celebrated days. It's a disease that been around for as long as we have recorded history. According to the WHO

• Someone in the world is newly infected with TB bacilli every second.
• Overall, one-third of the world's population is currently infected with the TB bacillus.
• 5-10% of people who are infected with TB bacilli become sick or infectious at some time during their life.
  

It's one of the world's most infectious diseases and although there are vaccines and treatments, it is making a comeback due to compromised immune systems, especially in people living with HIV/AIDS.

Happy TB Awareness Day.

Sidesaddling and modesty

Talking to one of the Cambodian women I work with, I finally asked why women sit "sidesaddle" on motorbikes in this country. I thought it must have something to do with perceived modesty and I was right, for the most part. Apparently girls who straddle are consider bad and are mocked by society. My colleague told me how much she wanted to straddle - makes her feel safer and she resents the smears straddling would provoke but reputation is everything. Being considered a whore is not a good look here, especially where marriages are commonly arranged without the woman's consent.

(photo nicked from Di - thanks girl!)

I have never ridden sidesaddle because I live in the 21st century and because it looks bloody dangerous. Well, according to our security expert, someone is ten times more likely to have an accident or fall off when sitting sidesaddle so it is bloody dangerous. The sheer number of accidents in this country would, I think, encourage a person to adapt as many safety protocols as possible, as long as the "death before dishonour" mentality can be preserved. It is more important for woman to show false modesty than to be safe.

Nobody wears helmets either.

Raindrops keep falling on my head

In Cambodia in March/April the weather is normally hot and humid - almost unbearably. Over the past week its been, not cool, but certainly cooler. I even wore a long sleeved shirt to work.

On Tuesday there was an almighty downpour. The heavens opened, much like last year. It was a relief. The temperature had been climbing steadily and it was nice to get a reprieve. I finished watching an episode of House - love that series - and was exhausted. It was very late. Brushed my teeth, headed to bed. I woke up about half an hour later because I could feel water on my feet. The roof was dripping in two places. I am a tad overprotective when it comes to my computer so I packed it up and left it downstairs even though the drips were no where near my desk. I put a towel on the floor and when back to bed.

Wednesday I notified the landlady and had a non-verbal conversation with my housekeeper regarding the leaky roof. It's fun miming a leaky roof in a conservative culture!

Thursday/ Yesterday I had a work dinner as my boss is leaving for pastures greener, and so got back late. It was lashing rain again - the rains here feel like I should gather up two of every animal. I was knackered and headed up to bed, only to find that the two drips turned into a veritable deluge. Thank God for my over protectiveness because my laptop would not have survived. The bed was sodden. The floor was a lake. I spent the next hour cleaning out my dressing room/spare bedroom so as to have somewhere to sleep - clear the bed, change sheets, spray insecticide, wait for insecticide to be ventilated and eventually hit the hay around 2am.

This morning when I left for work, I left the extended family in my flat. Who knows what I'll find when I get home. BBC is predicting rain so I hope something is fixed soon or else I'm going to sleep in B's house while he's out of the country!

This may all stem from a crisis in Thailand. In the north there is an environmental disaster of smog caused by a dry winter and forest fires. It's causing respiratory distress in Chiang Mai. As a result, the government has been trying to induce rain for a while now. Perhaps the results of their efforts are dripping onto Cambodia.

Organs for sale - come to India

BBC news did a report, available here (text) and here (vid), on Tsunami victims. They have yet to be compensated by the government for their losses and their debts are mounting. As a result, women are selling their kidneys. They are selling their organs to ensure that their children have enough the eat.

"The doctor told me I will have breathing problems and back pain. If I lift heavy objects I will be breathless," Lata says, "but I agreed to it because I have debts and I have kids. Who will feed my children?"

They are promised $2000 for a kidney which will keep the family for around 3 years, but are more often cheated by organ dealers. What happens when the money runs out? Will the women start selling their eyes? Yet there is no mention of men selling organs. I wonder why.

He slapped me

I was going to a meeting on Communications and the neighbourhood was not the most salubrious so I asked the security guard should I bring my motorbike onto the grounds. He said yes, so I went to move it. He slapped my hand and pushed me aside and brought my motorbike into the compound himself. I could not complain as his English was less than fluent. What am I, some weak little female who is incapable of moving the bike that I drive every day? It makes me so mad.

Women's rights = threat to national security?

This item comes from "Feminist Daily News" can can be found in its entirety there.

Prominent Iranian women's rights leaders Shadi Sadr and Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh remain in jail after being arrested for peacefully protesting on March 4. The women, who were arrested with some 30 feminist activists for protesting the detainment of four other Iranian feminists, have been charged with being a "threat to national security," the Campaign to Free Women's Rights Defenders in Iran reports.

It is literally incredible to think that a peaceful protest by 30 women is considered a threat to national security. In what possible way to they constitute a threat? Perhaps their actions will encourage more women to revolt and demand equality and this is the threat?

Fear is the best control mechanism. Bush has reinforced that idea time and time again in the US. A population in fear will sacrifice their rights and freedoms for security. The sacrifice is never worth it and security does not significantly improve.

In this case the rights and freedoms are those of the Iranian women. What is the government so afraid of when it comes to women's rights and gender equality? You can protest the Iranian governments actions by signing the petition here. It might or might not change anything but think about if you or you sister, mother, daughter were in that position. Just think that there but for luck of location go I.

Recuiting students

Headmasters are recruiting students to join the governing political party - the Cambodian Peoples Party. It is not seen as an educational issue because all canvassing takes place outside of school hours. The Cambodia Daily reports that one high-school headmaster said he convinced 300 of his students to register with the CPP in exchange for books, pens and other educational resources.

Leaving aside the ethics of promoting partisan politics in the classroom, it is important to remember that schools outside Phnom Penh are extremely ill equipped. Politicians are buying loyalty by providing the basic materials that should be in the school anyway. To attend these school, students bribe their teachers, who themselves receive less than garment factory workers, to teach.

A garment factory worker earns $40-50 a month
A rural teacher earns $20 a month

The illegal school fees vary between communes but regardless the expense of bribing the teacher, buying uniforms, books, transport costs etc., limits the number of children able to attend school. Add to this, headmasters providing school necessities just to join a political party and the insinuation that academic results may be affected and students are signing up in droves. Considering many students sells flowers and newspapers to tourists to pay for their school fees, any reduction in costs would be welcome.

Also partisan politics in the classroom is unethical.

Human Rights

The Special Representative of the Secretary-General for human rights in Cambodia has published a new report and it is quite the hot topic. Yash Ghai describes how the laws, courts and constitution are routinely bent to suit the powerful. He describes human rights abuses as not inefficiency or misrule but instruments of power in themselves. It is not a new topic in Cambodia. Corruption is in each part of society.

However the Government has decided that Ghai is motivated by bitterness and is blaming the government for doing things right. They call him the laziest staffer of the UN. This is, of course, rubbish. The Government has a history of pouring scorn on Special Representatives including Mary Robinson who was accused of exaggeration in her reports and Peter Leuprecht who was deemed stupid. The last time Ghai visited the PM accused him of rudeness and longterm tourism.

With the accusations of corruption in the Khmer Rouge Tribunal and the now the savagery that the PM attacks the UN Special Representative, Human Rights are taking a beating in Cambodia.

International Women's Day

Happy International Women's Day. What does it mean to you? Probably nothing. It's just another day when you go to work and try not to fall asleep on your desk. Well I'm at work as usual, reading press releases with compelling statistics. For example,

Violence against women is rightly termed the most common but least punished crime in the world. A recent World Health Organization study found that 23 to 49 per cent of women suffered violence at the hands of their intimate partners in most of the 71 countries surveyed. UNICEF has reported that 130 million girls and women alive today have undergone female genital mutilation. According to the United Nations Population Fund, 5,000 women die every year in “honour” killings perpetrated by family members. And it is estimated that less than 5 per cent of rape prosecutions lead to convictions globally, partly because the majority of cases place emphasis on the conduct of the woman and not on that of the perpetrator.
- Message of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour

and

Yet we are still so very far from turning this understanding into universal practice. In almost all countries, women continue to be under-represented in decision-making positions. Women’s work continues to be undervalued, underpaid, or not paid at all. Out of more than 100 million children who are not in school, the majority are girls. Out of more than 800 million adults who cannot read, the majority are women.
- Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General

Women in Cambodia have little power. Whether in domestic, sexual, political or legal affairs, women are a lesser gender. A Khmer proverb is "women are precious gems". How nice, let's put them on a pedestal and get on with the business of life. They are precious but cannot make their own decisions, or be alone in a foreigner's company, or in control of their reproductive rights, or be out after dark even when their job requires it. How very sexist.

Certain women rise to be the "power behind the throne" but they tend to crush other women and let men off the hook because men are seen in this country as incapable of self control.

• I have mentioned the adultery law before - commit adultery and you go to prison. The PM's wife is apparently responsible because she was pissed off with greeting lowly mistresses instead of the wives of her husband's colleagues. The law is applied selectively and has now surpassed defamation as the primary means of ejecting the opposition.
• Remember the hullabaloo about 3G mobile phones. Evil and immoral women might use them to send provocative pictures of themselves to innocent moral men and corrupt them and so Cambodia retreats from the 21st century.
  
• Husband-to-wife is the primary mode of HIV transmission in Cambodia. It is impossible to determine how many men visit sex workers but studies have shown that it is a majority. Although there is plenty of safe sex education, woman do not have the power to request their husbands' to wear condoms due in part to the high level of domestic abuse and rape.
• Generally Cambodia is a safe place for foreign women - Cambodian men aren't interested and foreign men are otherwise occupied. It came as quite a shock when an Australian volunteer was abducted and gang raped. The story varies in the telling but a couple of things remain constant. It was her own fault - she was drunk, that she was on drugs, that she shouldn't have gone home alone. That attitude is disgusting and judgmental. Apart from the fact that almost every foreign woman in Cambodia has come out of the same bar, been accosted by moto drivers (half of them who know your name and address) and gone home alone, nobody asks to be raped. Think about what it's like to walk in fear, to sit behind a stranger on a motobike because it is the only mode of transport, being pulled off by a gang, your driver leaves you and the final insult is to be judged by people who can let their minds' wander while walking down the street at night. Drink and drugs do not alter the crime. The criminals are at fault not the victims.
  

Happy International Women's Day

Tolls

Yesterday evening, M and I were going shopping after work and went the wrong way down a one way street. That is not unusual here. Nobody cares what side of the road you drive/walk/cycle on. For the first time we were stopped by the police. Now they stopped us but there were cars passing along beside us. There was even a tourist bus meandering its way down the same road, same way. But we are whiteys and whiteys gotta pay.

Once they pull you over you have a choice - you can bribe the policeman who pulled you over or go to the police station and pay your fine. The fines are usually between $0.50 and $1.50, so it doesn't break the bank. We were advised to avoid the police station by our security man. If you go and settle your fine legally you end up having to grease the palms of every person in the station. At $1 a person, you could be out quite a few dollars if you take that option.

In our situation there were five policemen and M gave the leader five dollars and that was it. We drove off the wrong way down the one way street and the police happily waved to us.

It was the first time I've been in that situation - B gets pulled over or pulled off his bike on a regular basis. I had an irrational fear that we would be arrested for bribing a police officer. It's irrational because the only reason they pull people over is to get cash. Given that the police are paid $20 it's understandable.

World Heritage?

UNESCO's World Heritage Centre wants to designate the Tonlé Sap Lake as a World Heritage Site. The lake provides a living for nearly three million people and represents much of Cambodia's annual fish catch. There are several floating villages that move according to the season. They call it the Heart of Cambodia.

Now the esteemed PM is not having any of it. He said soon there will be oil underground - not only in the sea. When we admit it in World Heritage we have to discuss it will others. It is ours - why do we need to consult with them if it is ours. Oil is corrupting before anyone draws a drop. Drilling for oil in the Tonlé Sap would be an ecological disaster. The lake feeds into the Mekong Delta so Cambodia would not be the only country affected. Three million people depend on the lake for industry, water and fishing. Yet the government will not accept the Heritage label just in case there is oil.

The second issue is fishing. His take on that is Khmer people have been catching fish since Angkorian times. They are used to getting fish for eating and they would not be able to if the Tonlé Sap area became a World Heritage site.

While that is true, the most common fishing method at the moment is to build a small dam and dynamite the fish. Obviously that method kills everything - fish, eggs, plants, insects. Many NGOs and international organisations have programmes to educate fishermen on how to fish in an ecologically-friendly manner. But education takes time and most fishermen follow the path of least resistance. As a World Heritage site UNESCO may be able to ban dynamite fishing, while others continue to teach.

Home life

It seems like every time I come home, for lunch or after work, my house is full of my landlord's family. One of the women of the house cleans and does laundry for me and so has a key. I know they are changing a light blub or cleaning the air con but it means that there are several little kids running around my apartment. It drives me nuts but of course I can't show it. Showing any emotions that are not positive, leads of a loss of face so I grit my teeth and smile and say "hello" twenty times - each child says it at least twice. They are lovely and sweet but I need my space.

Women and sports

I am Catholic and that means I'm a Christian - a tautology I know. But according to this I nor any other Christian women should engage in sports for the following reasons

• Sports greatly hinders (sic) the development of godly, Biblical, feminine character
• Christian women are often ill-prepared to be Biblically obedient wives and mothers
• They instead develop a competitive and contentious spirit that will cause them to have great difficulty in their marriages
• Hinder (sic) the development of wifely duties around the home
• Even worse is when a man has to compete against his own wife in the workplace and community
• We have a nation filled with weak men and disorderly women ... from feminist influences and activities like competitive sports
• They make young women very unfeminine
• The masculine uniforms and sweaty bodies aren’t very attractive, either
• The young girls are trained in sports right along with the boys ... this can only be degrading to the boys
• The longer they play, the more likely it is that their femininity will be degraded
• Given that sports may very well foster pagan and humanistic attitudes, I urge parents to think deeply about this issue and about whether or not any members of their families should participate in organized (sic) sports programs. As a minimum, I hope you will agree with me that we should keep our daughters away from competitive sports and spend our time training them how to be Biblically feminine women, wives and mothers

It's as if the 60s never happened. This ideology casts aspersions on both genders and is frankly sickening. Are all women supposed to be Stepford wives - willing machines to cook, clean, never have an opinion and if one does is she never to express it? The article is written by a man. Perhaps he would like to be able to sell his daughter like what happened in Pakistan, as permitted in Exodus 21:7 or his wife Exodus 21:4. The women embracing that ideology are worse. It's disgusting.

People complain that in certain areas Islam will not modernise but this Christianity is just as backward looking.