LTO Cambodia: Land, Cops, the Rich and the Poor

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Land, Cops, the Rich and the Poor

The morning of Chinese New Year Day, on my way to the pharmacy, I happened up a street on which the owner of one of Cambodia’s controversial land development companies lives. The road was lined with cars and motorcycles and filled with uniformed police loitering about. Dozens of them, with more arriving by the minute. At first I thought there might be a problem of some sort, but soon realized there was a New Year party going on at the home of the land developer and these were the guests. I was ready for a caffeine break anyway so I stopped at a café a couple of doors down, ordered an ice coffee, went back outside and sat down with the parking guard to watch the happenings.

The uniformed men stood in small knots in the street in front of the party house, smoking and chit-chatting. The mood was light and festive. I couldn't see anything of the party for the tall walls surrounding the place but could hear the sounds of traditional lion dancing and then an enormous string of firecrackers going off. It went on continuously for several minutes, punctuated by gunshot-like M-80 blasts. Drawn by the noise and goings-on, a group of poor folk gathered across the street – kids, women, old men with walking sticks - country people, street people, (evictees?,) hard to say who they were exactly. Perhaps 40 or 50 in all, quietly gazing on at the activities from the sidelines.

The uniformed men took turns going into the party. When they reemerged through the front gate, each had a big smile and a bright red ung-bao envelope in his hand. (Part of the Chinese New Year tradition is to give ung-bao envelopes containing token gifts of money.) They stood in the street together, tearing open their envelopes, holding out the money and comparing gifts. The poor people watched and tittered amongst themselves. The parking guard next to me speculated that they were hoping for a hand-out from the house.

A couple of the party goers walked nearby, opened envelopes in-hand. The guard asked them how much they got. “Everybody got 50,000 Riel (US$12.50) each,” one said, adding, boastfully, that over 1300 police had attended the party. If he was correct about those figures, that’s more than US$16,000 in little red envelopes.

The party wound down. Within an hour most of the uniforms were gone and the street was clear again, except for dozens of torn and empty ung-bao envelopes blowing around in the road. As the last of the attendees left and the front gate snapped shut, it became apparent that the party was over.

Nothing was given to the poor.

The group of poor lingered briefly, then slowly thinned, moving off in different directions, disappearing. When I left, a few, maybe 4 or 5, were still there holding out. Perhaps hoping against hope that a few crumbs may still fall from the table. Or maybe they just didn't have anyplace else to go.

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Cambodia

Cambodia is Srok Khmer, the 'Land of the Khmer,' the primary ethnic group in the area since at least the Neolithic and an Indian influenced civilization with origins near 2000 years old. Centered on the lower Mekong and tributaries the Khmer people have dominated the region for millennia. From 2nd century AD Khmer kingdoms rose and fell, culminating in unification and the 500 year reign of the Angkorian Empire, the builders of the temples of Angkor near Siem Reap. The Empire stretched from Burma to the ocean. But by the 1400s Cambodia fell to centuries of change and decline squeezed between the expanding Siam and Vietnam. Colonized and by the French in the 1860s, independence 90 years later in 1954, a brief post-colonial 'golden period' under Sihanouk, coup in 70, civil war, fall to the communist Khmer Rouge in 75, 3 years 8 months 20 days of madness, Vietnamese rescue in 1979, occupation, low level war and international sanctions in the 80s, the UN, ostensive democracy and an adventure party destination in the 90s and now mainstreaming, tourism, rapid development, rapacious capitalism and NGOs, missionaries and other international busybodies aplenty.

Southeast Asia

As the term implies, Southeast Asia encompasses the southeastern corner of the Asian continent, loosely speaking, the area between India, China and Australia. It is made up of two distinct regions: the mainland zone, a bulbous peninsula jutting into the Pacific Ocean, bounded by China to the north and India to the west; and the insular (island) zone in the Pacific Ocean. The name 'Southeast Asia' is a comparatively recent invention, first coming into use into the 20th century and still a bit indefinite in definition. Mainland Southeast Asia is generally considered to include Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma (Myanmar) and peninsular Malaysia. The mainland is sometimes referred to as Indo-China though Indochina (Indochine) also designates the 19th/20th century French colonial conglomerate of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Sitting south of the Tropic of Cancer, most of mainland Southeast Asia lies in the hot, humid tropics and sub-tropics with a climate dominated by a monsoon cycle which divides the year into two distinct seasons: a dry season and an extremely wet monsoon season. Much of the mainland is mountainous and thickly jungled, with large river systems and wide, low-lying, flood-prone plains, much of which is, in modern times, deforested and blanketed with geometrical rice paddies. Several major river valleys including the Mekong River, the Red, Ma and Ka rivers and the group of rivers draining to the Chao Praya Delta played host to the rise of early civilization in the area. The Mekong River is one of the world's greatest rivers, the seventh largest on the planet, and since pre-history has been closely associated with the land of the Khmer.