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Monday, 31 May 2010
Border problems rage from Svay Rieng to Takeo
Hun Xen cheers Nguyen Tan Dung during the inauguration of border post 171 in Svay Rieng (Photo: Sovannara, RFI)20 May 2010
By Pen Bona
Radio France Internationale
Translated from Khmer by Oss Dey
Click here to read the article in Khmer
The lawsuit case against the uprooting of border post in Svay Rieng province did not even conclude yet and now the border problem is raging into Takeo province already. The opposition criticized the planting of border post 270 located in Borey Chulsa district, Takeo province, which led to the loss of several dozens of hectares of rice fields belonging to Cambodian farmers. However, the Cambodian government claimed that these lands are merely grass fields and that they do not belong to anybody. Nevertheless, opposition MPS asked the government to delay the planting of border posts to allow time for a proper evaluation.
Internal disputes in Cambodia on border problems are raging all over again, this time in Takeo in province. This problem is taking place when the lawsuit case against the uprooting of a border post in Svay Rieng has not even concluded yet.
During these last few days, the opposition criticized the loss of rice fields in Takeo province stemming from the planting of border post no. 270 in Chey Chauk commune, Borey Chulsa district. The local population protested, indicating that a border post was planted on top of their rice fields which they have worked on for a long time now.
On Thursday, a group of about 20 SRP MPs signed a petition sent to Hun Xen asking the government to delay the planting of border posts in Takeo province temporarily to allow a clear evaluation before new work can be proceeded. According to the SRP MPs’ petition, several dozens of hectares of rice field lands belonging to Cambodian farmers are lost from the border post planting.
However, the Takeo authority, as well as the government border committee, rejected this information, claiming that the land where the border post is planted is a grass field along the border and it does not belong to anybody. Government border experts accused the opposition of inflating the information to incite people to demonstrate against the government.
The problem in Takeo province is reminiscent of the problem in Svay Reing, there, opposition leader Sam Rainsy was sentenced by the Svay Rieng provincial court to 2-year of jail time for destruction of public properties after he uprooted border stakes in Samrong district. Two Cambodian farmers who were involved in the uprooting with Sam Rainsy were sentenced to 1-year of jail time each. Currently, Sam Rainsy is also being sued at the Phnom Penh municipal court for falsifying public document after he published maps showing the loss of Cambodian territories. The government sued Sam Rainsy, accusing him of publication of maps that do not show appropriate coordinates.
SRP MPs plan to visit the location of the border post in Takeo in the near future. Meanwhile, opposition leader Sam Rainsy is conduction a campaign overseas to fight against the government in regards to the planting of border posts with Vietnam
Government Bolsters Efforts Against Squatters
Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer
Phnom Penh Friday, 28 May 2010
“This [order] is good, but we worry about the concrete implementation of it, because the government has not provided fair compensation to people in exchange for their removal.”The Council of Ministers on Friday approved a legal circular that instructs provincial and municipal authorities to seek resolutions to illegal settlements on state property.
The order tells authorities to first meet with community representatives on state land to inform them of development projects and to then discuss compensation for residents.
The circular creates a regulation for measures already practiced by authorities, critics said Friday, and it does not address situations where residents refuse to leave.
Cambodian officials have steadily found themselves at odds with squatter communities, where land values have boomed and development projects are springing up.
The order is to “inform all provinces and municipal authorities to solve illegal construction on state land through discussion with residents,” according to the draft pass by the Council on Friday.
The order is meant “to solve the anarchic construction [done] without order on the state land, where the occupier has come to settle illegally and to construct a house without order [creating] a lack of road passage and lack of hygiene.”
The order now gives officials more authority to act against squatter communities who may not be getting enough compensation, opponents said Friday.
“This [order] is good, but we worry about the concrete implementation of it, because the government has not provided fair compensation to people in exchange for their removal,” said Yim Sovann, a spokesman for the opposition Sam Rainsy Party. “If there are effects to the people because of the [order] we would like the government to respect the constitution and to fairly compensate people through the market price.”
The measure is not clear about compensation, leaving room for authorities to offer low prices to residents, which can lead to conflict, said Thun Saray, president of the rights group Adhoc.
Thai Navy, a 39-year-old resident of the Boeung Kak lake community, which has been locked in a dispute with Phnom Penh over a giant development project since 2008, said representatives were not happy with the measure.
“The resolution to remove houses is the same as before,” he said.
The city’s policy is to pay Boeung Kak residents $8,500 per family or to offer lots of land on the outskirts of the city. Residents have said that is not enough, but there has been no forced eviction in the area to date.
The order comes as Cambodia faces increased criticism of forced evictions of the urban poor.
In an annual report issued Thursday, Amnesty International said “a wave of legal actions against housing rights defenders, journalists and other critical voices” had “stifled freedom of expression in Cambodia.”
In Modern Stoneworks, an Echo of the Past
A Cambodian sculpture, a naga-protected Buddha. (Photo: Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer)Pich Samnang, VOA Khmer
Phnom Penh Friday, 28 May 2010
“If the sculptures showed us clearly what they were about, we would just have a look and then walk away. But with these abstract pieces, we have to spend time and think about what they want to tell us."Though the temples of Angkor Wat have some amazing stone carvings, contemporary sculpture in the country has not been widespread.
But a group of 14 young Cambodian sculptors wants to change that. They currently have 26 pieces of modern stone sculptures on display at a new exhibition hall at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh.
The sculptures, whose meanings can be hard to decipher if not for the display tags, are the result of more than a year of hard work for the artists.
Sasha Constable, the curator of the first exhibition of its kind in the country, said the show is aimed at encouraging more young Cambodian contemporary artists and the Cambodian public to better support this kind of art.
“There is not really a market for contemporary Cambodian art within the Cambodian community,” she said in an interview at the opening session of the exhibition on Thursday night. “I really hope that will change soon, because it’s a shame really that the elder are not supporting the younger generations of artists when there is so much talent here.”
The sculptures depict animals, like fish, and forms of the human body, such as the clasped hands of a woman in front of a headless torso.
Ouk Chimvichet’s work includes “Wonder,” the carving of a male face with earrings and long hair curled into a question mark.
“The meaning of the sculpture is to have transsexual individuals consider thoroughly whether they should get their sex organs and identity changed,” the 30-year-old sculptor told VOA Khmer.
Chhea Bunna, another sculpture graduate from the Royal University of Fine Arts, brought seven of his pieces to the show. He said his efforts were to move Cambodian sculpture toward the international trend in modern art.
“When I was at school, I was taught only how to make traditional sculptures, so I want to leave these artworks of mine for the younger generations,” he said. “If we do not make something new and the next generations have to learn the old ones, we cannot move forward. The art of other countries is updated, so I want our art to go forward as well.”
Khmer traditional stone sculptures are internationally acclaimed for their detail and beauty, as shown on the walls of thousands of ancient temples across the country, especially at Angkor Wat, a national icon.
So Chenda, dean of the Royal University of Fine Arts, said the young sculptors’ work taught them about the efforts of their ancestors in building the famous temples and also showcased Cambodian ideas and imagination.
“These young sculptors are full of innovative ideas,” he said in an interview. “And they not only preserve our traditional artwork, but they also help develop our art as well.”
The exhibition is supported by Friends of Khmer Culture, a public charity registered in the US. Visitors can purchase individual pieces, and a percentage of the sales will be used for equipment and material for the university. The exhibit runs through June 6, after which it will move to the Hotel de la Paix in Siem Reap, through Aug. 8.
Culture Minister Him Chhem said Cambodia needs such artwork to help push local art onto the international stage.
“We want to see our artists and their work recognized overseas,” he said.
Taket Meta, an university student who was attentively examining a stone sculpture, said this kind of art made him think and try to read the mind of its creator.
“If the sculptures showed us clearly what they were about, we would just have a look and then walk away,” he said in an interview at the exhibition. “But with these abstract pieces, we have to spend time and think about what they want to tell us.”
For seven years, monks have had no peace
Monks living at the Buddhist Support Society in Rochester had to replace their mailbox after vandals damaged it. They own a 10.5-acre site they bought for tranquil reflection. (Jim Gehrz, Star Tribune)
Monks Chhan Aun, left, and Sim Ouk (Jim Gehrz, Star Tribune)Vandalism has plagued a Buddhist temple near Rochester for seven years. Neighbors and police are outraged and baffled.
May 29, 2010
By CURT BROWN
Star Tribune (Rochester, Minnesota)
VANDALISM MEETINGA chorus of chirping crickets and the smashed shell of a mailbox greet Chhan Aun when he steps out the door of his monk's residence at the hilltop Buddhist temple southeast of Rochester.
- What: Prompted by a string of vandalism at the Cambodian Buddhist temple in Rochester, monks, neighbors, city leaders, youth groups and members of police neighborhood watch program will gather to discuss the issue.
- When: 4 p.m., Thursday
- Where: Buddhist Support Society Address: 4462 29th St. SE, Rochester
"We are quiet and peaceful; we try to pray for good things, not bad," he said, wrapped in his orange robe, as a former monk translates his Cambodian words. "We don't understand why people are doing things like this."
This month's busted mailbox is the latest in a seven-year string of vandalism that has jarred the four monks who live on the grassy, rolling, 10.5-acre site they chose for tranquil reflection.
Someone sprayed-painted "Jesus Saves" and a cross on their driveway last May. Dozens of lights have been broken and stolen. Flowers and trees have been yanked from the earth. Instead of studying the teachings of Buddha, the monks have been installing motion-detecting lights and asking the Postal Service to approve moving their mailbox down from 29th Street and closer to their house.
"One night at 2 a.m., a group of four or five people were outside and I shined my flashlight in their face," said Aun, 63. "They never confront us face to face; they just run away."
Neighbors and police are outraged and baffled at what would motivate the vandals to harass such gentle men, some of whom, including Aun, lived through the Cambodian genocide of the late-1970s Khmer Rouge killing fields.
"They believe in peace and tranquility, and they sure don't deserve this," said Glenda Bale, who moved into the quiet residential area in 2003, just as the temple construction was completed and the monks moved in next door from their former downtown location.
Back then, her place was an overgrown "jungle," and as she worked to clear the lot, the monks would bring with food offerings. They invite Bale to all their celebrations.
Her friend's unlocked car was broken into once and papers were scattered. The monks say they've been struck three or four times a year since they arrived.
"For this stuff to only happen to them is totally uncalled for," said Bale, 47. "You couldn't ask for better neighbors, honestly."
Police cite six documented cases of criminal damage to property since last May, but the monks say the harassment dates to a group of aggressive opponents speaking out against the temple at city zoning meetings before the two temple structures were built. Opponents' concerns about increased traffic congestion have proven to be completely unfounded, Bale said.
"We have absolutely no idea as to why these people are doing this," said Sgt. Scott Behrns of the Olmsted County Sheriff's Department. "We're confident we'll catch the people doing it; it's just a matter of how long it takes."
Deputies have stepped up patrols in the neighborhood, and if arrests are made, Behrns said prosecutors will be asked to use state laws that target bias-motivated crimes. That could mean elevating misdemeanor charges into gross misdemeanors or felonies.
"Based on the way the crimes are occurring, one would think it's the same" person or people behind the vandalism, said Behrns, who thinks a baseball bat was used to destroy the mailbox earlier this month.
Community meeting slated
Rochester's Buddhist Support Society serves roughly 500 people, mostly Cambodian refugees who fled during the Vietnam War era and emigrated to Minnesota. The group owns the temple and recruits monks from Cambodia who make minimum five-year commitments to study, pray and teach at the hilltop temple.
Aun said that the destroyed mailbox, in itself, is not a big deal.
"But if they try to set fire to our buildings or hurt the monks, that would make us upset," he said.
He's speaking out despite some concerns that the vandals will relish the publicity.
"We want to show the community that we are doing something," he said. "It is 98 percent positive to get the word out and maybe two percent negative."
About 20 concerned citizens, mostly members of Rochester Meditation Center, met at the temple last Sunday, and a larger meeting is scheduled for June 3 at 4 p.m. Members of Rochester's Diversity Council, teenage youth groups, local church members and representatives of the police-sponsored Neighborhood Watch program will look for ways to enhance understanding about Buddhism and curb the vandalism.
Until then, Aun and his fellow monks will do what they came to Rochester to do. They will sit on pillows on the floor, surrounded by colorful paintings of Buddhist scenes, and recite prayers of loving kindness to the perpetrators of the vandalism.
"They know what they are doing is not right," Aun said. "We will pray for them to do good things instead of bad."
Meet opposition leader Sam Rainsy and Mr. Sean Pengse in the US West Coast
Sunday 30 May in San Jose, California (mid-morning and afternoon)
Sunday 30 May in San Jose, California
Sunday 30 May in San Jose, California
Click on each announcement to zoom inOpposition leader Sam Rainsy and Mr. Sean Pengse visit Long Beach, California
Opposition leader Sam Rainsy addressed the audience. Mr. Sam Rainsy stressed that he is not fighting against the Hun Sen's regime, but rather the Hanoi regime which is pulling the string behind the scene. He indicated that the Hun Sen regime did not take any action against him after the uprooting of border stakes in Koh Kban Kandal village, Chantrea district, Svay Rieng province, but it only came after him after Nguyen Tan Dung, Hanoi's PM, voiced his displeasure against Mr. Sam Rainsy. (All photos provided by P. from Long Beach)
Mr. Sean Pense (L) sits next to Mr. Sam Rainsy (C) who was giving his speech about the border situation and the political situation in Cambodia.
Mr. Sean Pengse provided additional details on the various treaties concluded between Heng Samrin/Chea Sim/Hun Sen's People Republic of Kampuchea and the occupying Vietnamese force.
The audience packed the Sea Dragon restaurant in Long Beach to listen to Messrs. Sam Rainsy and Sean Pengse.
The audience included Cambodians from all walk of life: women, men, young and old. All listened attentively to the discussions on border issues and the Vietnamese encroachments in Cambodia.
A few month ago,the pro-CPP DAP newspaper wrote that it couldn't understand why overseas Cambodians are willing to pay for their own food just to listen to opposition politicians. Well, not only are Cambodian-Americans willing to pay for their own food to listen to the politicians they support, almost everybody in the audience even financially contributed to the SRP. One attendant contributed as little as $5, yet the announcer proudly announce his contribution and indicated that the amount, small or large, is not what matters, what's important is the fact that the contributor freely and willingly contributes to the party he/she supports.
Land dispute: Eating not allowed for the protesters?
Friday 28 May 201
By P.M. and A.L.G.
Cambodge Soir Hebdo
Translated from French
The cops were not successful, but later that day, the demonstrators were disbanded by the police anyway.
Thursday, 27 May 2010
"Today, it's not the state who owns the old properties, but the ruling party, the CPP": Vann Molyvann
Independence Monument; Vann Molyvann, architect (All photos: Luke Duggleby for The Wall Street Journal)
A lone figure walks the stands of Vann Molyvann's Olympic Stadium.
The Chaktomuk Conference Hall, one of Mr. Molyvann's earliest designs, was built in 1961.
The library at the Institute for Foreign Languages, now part of the Royal University of Phnom Penh
More of Mr. Molyvann's work at the Institute for Foreign Languages
Yet more of the instituteModern Masterpieces
MAY 28, 2010
By TOM VATER
The Wall Street Journal
Vann Molyvann, Cambodia's greatest living architect, recalls that the night his Olympic Stadium in Phnom Penh was completed, in 1964, "I took my wife to see the work." Sitting in the top tier of the stands, they listened to Dvorák's "New World Symphony" over the stadium's speaker system. "It was one of the great moments of my life."
In the years after Cambodia won independence from France in 1953, Mr. Molyvann—then scarcely in his 30s—set out under the tutelage of King Norodom Sihanouk to transform Phnom Penh from a colonial backwater into a modern city. But in the late 1960s the country was drawn into decades of war and terror, including years under the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, and Mr. Molyvann's vision was virtually forgotten. The architect himself had to flee the country.
And while he returned in triumph after more than 20 years abroad, it was to find that grand titles didn't translate into influence in today's Cambodia. His legacy—structures in a style dubbed New Khmer Architecture—lives on, contributing significantly to the flair of the city, but even that is in danger as Phnom Penh, like other Asian capitals, clears historic buildings to make room for skyscrapers.
Cambodia is best known for its magnificent temple ruins at Angkor, remnants of a great Southeast Asian empire that covered the country's current territory as well as parts of Vietnam, Thailand and Laos. After Angkor fell to the Siamese in the 15th century, a new Cambodian capital was founded on the banks of the Tonlé Sap River. That city, Phnom Penh, remained an unstable settlement, caught up in the geopolitical ambitions of Cambodia's more powerful neighbors, until the French arrived in the 1860s. The colonial administrators drained the neighboring swamps and created a grid street plan, dotted with sumptuous villas, Art Deco markets and impressive government structures.
Even then, Phnom Penh was modest, small-town colonial France—and when Mr. Molyvann received a scholarship from the colonial government and set off for the Sorbonne in Paris, it wasn't with the dream of returning to remake it. He was a law student. But as he pursued his degree, and struggled with the compulsory Greek and Latin, he had an encounter that changed his life.
"I met Henri Marchal, the curator of Angkor for the École Française d'Extrême-Orient [the French School of Asian Studies]," Mr. Molvyann remembers, "and suddenly I knew I wanted to be an architect, so I changed to the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, where I studied until 1950 under Le Corbusier." He regards that modernist architect and designer as his greatest teacher.
After that, Mr. Molyvann stayed on in Paris for several more years, studying Khmer art. While he looks back fondly on the period, he is also keenly aware that some of Cambodia's later traumas had their origins in the Paris of that time.
"The Khmer Rouge was born in the Latin quarter of Paris," he says. As they debated their country's postcolonial future, Mr. Molyvann says, the city's 400 or so Cambodian students split between nationalists and Marxists. Khieu Samphan, whom he knew as a fellow Sorbonne student, would go on to become head of state in the Khmer Rouge government.
By 1956, Mr. Molyvann was back in Phnom Penh. Independence had broadened Cambodia's horizons, in part thanks to the efforts of King Sihanouk, who at various times officially dropped his title to serve as prime minister, head of state or president, though Cambodians continued to refer to him as king. With tremendous energy and not a little royal eccentricity, the young monarch—also politician, artist, filmmaker, womanizer and host to a series of foreign heads of state and celebrities—worked to create a modern nation with an eye on the past. The leading members of an emerging urban elite, many of whom, like Mr. Molyvann, had returned from Paris, sought to create architecture, music, films, literature and art that married Cambodian tradition with modernist thinking.
Nowhere was this more apparent than in new administrative, public and private building projects that sprang up all over the capital—transforming Phnom Penh, within little more than a decade, into one of Asia's most dynamic cities.
"It was difficult at the beginning, as Cambodians had never heard of architects," Mr. Molyvann remembers. "All they knew were engineers and builders. There was a real dearth of qualified Khmer experts, as the French had used Vietnamese to administer my country. But within 10 years of independence the management of the country and its capital was Khmer. It was incredible."
Mr. Molyvann was made chief architect for state buildings and director for urban planning and habitat in 1956 and given a number of ministerial posts in the following years. "I was designing the Independence Monument and was asked to present the king with a selection of marble," he recalls. "I was too afraid to speak to him personally, but he made some suggestions and we got on perfectly after that." Shaped like a lotus flower, the monument tower, completed in 1960, remains one of Phnom Penh's landmarks.
Mr. Molyvann had part of the floodplain south of the Royal Palace drained and filled, and on this "Front de Bassac" constructed the country's first high-rises, initially for visiting athletes for the 1966 Ganefo Games, a short-lived Asian alternative to the Olympics.
"We built the stadium for 60,000 people and surrounded it with a moat, so that the waters could run off in the rainy season," he says.
Stefanie Irmer, whose KA Tours focuses on New Khmer Architecture, sees the relation between water and city as crucial to the architect's vision for Phnom Penh. "Besides creating the 'Front de Bassac' area from wetlands," she says, "almost every building Vann Molyvann designed was surrounded by water—to keep the termites out, but also to integrate the buildings into the flood plain."
Many of Mr. Molyvann's buildings are traditional in one sense—they are shaped like familiar objects. Chaktomuk Conference Hall, one of his earliest designs, is like an open palm leaf. The library of the Institute of Foreign Languages (now part of the Royal University of Phnom Penh) was inspired by a traditional Khmer straw hat. The lecture halls of the institute rest on sharply angled concrete pillars that give them the appearance of animals, about to jump. They are still in use today, as is the library.
By the early 1960s, for the first time in almost 800 years, Cambodia was blooming. The Angkor ruins were the region's biggest tourist draw, and Phnom Penh had doubled in size and become a city others in the region admired.
But the politics were turning ugly. Norodom Sihanouk, serving as prime minister, began to suppress dissent. By the mid-1960s, the U.S. had combat troops in Vietnam; as American planes began bombing North Vietnamese positions in Cambodia, the country's policy of neutrality became a farce. The former king's repressive policies alienated the political left and some rural Cambodians, who began to join a shadowy communist movement, the Khmer Rouge. Meanwhile, the right and military had become fed up with his capriciousness and nepotism. When he left to visit China in 1970, a coup replaced him with army general Lon Nol. The Swinging '60s, the meteoric rise of a young nation, the building boom in the "Pearl of Asia"—it was all over.
Mr. Molyvann remembers days with hard choices. "Shortly after Lon Nol came to power, the Israeli ambassador advised me to take my family out of the country," he says; the ambassador, a friend of his, warned him about the crumbling security and the increasing persecution of those connected with the previous government. So when Mr. Molyvann left for a conference in Israel, with his wife, Trudy, and their six children, they didn't return. Instead they moved on to Switzerland, his wife's home country.
Five years later, the Khmer Rouge marched victoriously into Phnom Penh. The new rulers immediately emptied the cities, and for almost four years Phnom Penh was a ghost town. At least 1.5 million Cambodians, nearly a quarter of the population—Mr. Molyvann's father among them—lost their lives in the killing fields. The fledgling intellectual elite was snuffed out.
"I had no contact during those years," says Mr. Molyvann. "I had to give my children a new life, so we stayed in Lausanne." He continued to work as an architect in Switzerland, Africa and Laos, for the United Nations and the World Bank. The Vietnamese pushed out the Khmer Rouge in 1979, but Mr. Molyvann "could not think of going back." The new rulers "were still communists."
"It was not until 1993 that I returned—with the U.N.," he says. Initially, his homecoming was triumphant. He was appointed minister of state for culture and fine arts, territorial management and urban planning and contributed to the application for Angkor's successful recognition as a Unesco World Heritage site.
But he soon realized that the Cambodia he had left behind in 1970 no longer existed. Cambodian People's Party leader Hun Sen, who had been installed by the Vietnamese and who continued as prime minister after the U.N.-organized elections, gave Mr. Molyvann back his villa, but the architect's plans for Siem Reap—the province in which Angkor is located—were unappreciated. He had called for a "tourist village" set apart from both the temples and the old town of Siem Reap, integrated into the environment and with water conservation as a key goal.
"The government wanted to use the resources of Angkor to develop Siem Reap without the participation of the local people," Mr. Molyvann says. "In 1998, I became president executive director of Apsara (Authority for the Protection and Safeguard of Angkor), the government body created to look after the temples. Three years later, I was fired." Unchecked development in Siem Reap has led to a dramatic drop in groundwater levels, causing subsidence that has put the Bayon, one of the main temples in the Angkor area, in danger of collapse, according to experts from the Japanese Conservation Team for Safeguarding Angkor. Development has also driven up property prices and the cost of living, a hardship for the locals in a province that remains one of the poorest in the country.
But it was not just the government and developers standing against Mr. Molyvann and his vision. Bill Greaves, director of the Vann Molyvann Project, a nongovernmental organization engaged in recreating the lost plans of the remaining New Khmer Architecture sites, thinks postwar Cambodia is simply not aware of its past.
"Right now, Singapore and Shanghai are models for forward-looking cities, both for the government and the people," he says. "Hence Phnom Penh's different stages of history are likely to be discarded."
In the past decade, as investment has begun to pour into the Cambodian capital once more, colonial and 1960s buildings have been replaced by chrome-and-glass edifices, floodwater lakes have been drained, local media have reported almost daily evictions and ministers have gushed over the need to build skyscrapers in order to keep up with the neighbors.
The government frequently declares that preservation has to go hand in hand with development. In practice, it seems to walk well behind. Beng Khemro, deputy director general at the ministry for land management, urban planning and construction, says his department's hands are tied. "Many historical properties are in terrible condition," he says. "The people who own them don't understand the value of the past and would rather demolish them and build high-rises to make a profit. The past is not appreciated. Without a change in attitude amongst the population, we are fighting a losing battle."
Cambodia has preservation laws, and Dr. Khemro says he is trying to pass a regulation to get them applied in particular instances. He'd like to try a pilot preservation project away from Phnom Penh, he says, noting that Cambodia's second-largest city, Battambang, has many buildings from the French period.
"Also," he adds, "there's less pressure."
Molyvann advocate Mr. Greaves is skeptical about the survival of the architect's legacy. "The old buildings disappear at an alarming rate—even public edifices like the National Theatre, which was knocked down a couple of years ago, are not safe. We try and get there before the demolition crews arrive."
A drive around town with Mr. Molyvann illustrates his curious position in this free-for-all scramble for change. At the Independence Monument, guards at first refuse him entry. Only after his driver reveals the distinguished visitor's identity is the master architect, old and frail, allowed to climb the steps he designed half a century ago.
Passing the stadium, Mr. Molyvann looks at the haphazard development around his favorite creation. Appropriated by developers with government connections, the moat has been partly filled in to make space for shops and an underground car park; the result is annual flooding that threatens the entire sports complex.
With equal shades of sadness and anger in his voice, Mr. Molyvann says, "Today, it's not the state who owns the old properties, but the ruling party, the CPP."
—Tom Vater is a writer based in Bangkok.
In the years after Cambodia won independence from France in 1953, Mr. Molyvann—then scarcely in his 30s—set out under the tutelage of King Norodom Sihanouk to transform Phnom Penh from a colonial backwater into a modern city. But in the late 1960s the country was drawn into decades of war and terror, including years under the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, and Mr. Molyvann's vision was virtually forgotten. The architect himself had to flee the country.
And while he returned in triumph after more than 20 years abroad, it was to find that grand titles didn't translate into influence in today's Cambodia. His legacy—structures in a style dubbed New Khmer Architecture—lives on, contributing significantly to the flair of the city, but even that is in danger as Phnom Penh, like other Asian capitals, clears historic buildings to make room for skyscrapers.
Cambodia is best known for its magnificent temple ruins at Angkor, remnants of a great Southeast Asian empire that covered the country's current territory as well as parts of Vietnam, Thailand and Laos. After Angkor fell to the Siamese in the 15th century, a new Cambodian capital was founded on the banks of the Tonlé Sap River. That city, Phnom Penh, remained an unstable settlement, caught up in the geopolitical ambitions of Cambodia's more powerful neighbors, until the French arrived in the 1860s. The colonial administrators drained the neighboring swamps and created a grid street plan, dotted with sumptuous villas, Art Deco markets and impressive government structures.
Even then, Phnom Penh was modest, small-town colonial France—and when Mr. Molyvann received a scholarship from the colonial government and set off for the Sorbonne in Paris, it wasn't with the dream of returning to remake it. He was a law student. But as he pursued his degree, and struggled with the compulsory Greek and Latin, he had an encounter that changed his life.
"I met Henri Marchal, the curator of Angkor for the École Française d'Extrême-Orient [the French School of Asian Studies]," Mr. Molvyann remembers, "and suddenly I knew I wanted to be an architect, so I changed to the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, where I studied until 1950 under Le Corbusier." He regards that modernist architect and designer as his greatest teacher.
After that, Mr. Molyvann stayed on in Paris for several more years, studying Khmer art. While he looks back fondly on the period, he is also keenly aware that some of Cambodia's later traumas had their origins in the Paris of that time.
"The Khmer Rouge was born in the Latin quarter of Paris," he says. As they debated their country's postcolonial future, Mr. Molyvann says, the city's 400 or so Cambodian students split between nationalists and Marxists. Khieu Samphan, whom he knew as a fellow Sorbonne student, would go on to become head of state in the Khmer Rouge government.
By 1956, Mr. Molyvann was back in Phnom Penh. Independence had broadened Cambodia's horizons, in part thanks to the efforts of King Sihanouk, who at various times officially dropped his title to serve as prime minister, head of state or president, though Cambodians continued to refer to him as king. With tremendous energy and not a little royal eccentricity, the young monarch—also politician, artist, filmmaker, womanizer and host to a series of foreign heads of state and celebrities—worked to create a modern nation with an eye on the past. The leading members of an emerging urban elite, many of whom, like Mr. Molyvann, had returned from Paris, sought to create architecture, music, films, literature and art that married Cambodian tradition with modernist thinking.
Nowhere was this more apparent than in new administrative, public and private building projects that sprang up all over the capital—transforming Phnom Penh, within little more than a decade, into one of Asia's most dynamic cities.
"It was difficult at the beginning, as Cambodians had never heard of architects," Mr. Molyvann remembers. "All they knew were engineers and builders. There was a real dearth of qualified Khmer experts, as the French had used Vietnamese to administer my country. But within 10 years of independence the management of the country and its capital was Khmer. It was incredible."
Mr. Molyvann was made chief architect for state buildings and director for urban planning and habitat in 1956 and given a number of ministerial posts in the following years. "I was designing the Independence Monument and was asked to present the king with a selection of marble," he recalls. "I was too afraid to speak to him personally, but he made some suggestions and we got on perfectly after that." Shaped like a lotus flower, the monument tower, completed in 1960, remains one of Phnom Penh's landmarks.
Mr. Molyvann had part of the floodplain south of the Royal Palace drained and filled, and on this "Front de Bassac" constructed the country's first high-rises, initially for visiting athletes for the 1966 Ganefo Games, a short-lived Asian alternative to the Olympics.
"We built the stadium for 60,000 people and surrounded it with a moat, so that the waters could run off in the rainy season," he says.
Stefanie Irmer, whose KA Tours focuses on New Khmer Architecture, sees the relation between water and city as crucial to the architect's vision for Phnom Penh. "Besides creating the 'Front de Bassac' area from wetlands," she says, "almost every building Vann Molyvann designed was surrounded by water—to keep the termites out, but also to integrate the buildings into the flood plain."
Many of Mr. Molyvann's buildings are traditional in one sense—they are shaped like familiar objects. Chaktomuk Conference Hall, one of his earliest designs, is like an open palm leaf. The library of the Institute of Foreign Languages (now part of the Royal University of Phnom Penh) was inspired by a traditional Khmer straw hat. The lecture halls of the institute rest on sharply angled concrete pillars that give them the appearance of animals, about to jump. They are still in use today, as is the library.
By the early 1960s, for the first time in almost 800 years, Cambodia was blooming. The Angkor ruins were the region's biggest tourist draw, and Phnom Penh had doubled in size and become a city others in the region admired.
But the politics were turning ugly. Norodom Sihanouk, serving as prime minister, began to suppress dissent. By the mid-1960s, the U.S. had combat troops in Vietnam; as American planes began bombing North Vietnamese positions in Cambodia, the country's policy of neutrality became a farce. The former king's repressive policies alienated the political left and some rural Cambodians, who began to join a shadowy communist movement, the Khmer Rouge. Meanwhile, the right and military had become fed up with his capriciousness and nepotism. When he left to visit China in 1970, a coup replaced him with army general Lon Nol. The Swinging '60s, the meteoric rise of a young nation, the building boom in the "Pearl of Asia"—it was all over.
Mr. Molyvann remembers days with hard choices. "Shortly after Lon Nol came to power, the Israeli ambassador advised me to take my family out of the country," he says; the ambassador, a friend of his, warned him about the crumbling security and the increasing persecution of those connected with the previous government. So when Mr. Molyvann left for a conference in Israel, with his wife, Trudy, and their six children, they didn't return. Instead they moved on to Switzerland, his wife's home country.
Five years later, the Khmer Rouge marched victoriously into Phnom Penh. The new rulers immediately emptied the cities, and for almost four years Phnom Penh was a ghost town. At least 1.5 million Cambodians, nearly a quarter of the population—Mr. Molyvann's father among them—lost their lives in the killing fields. The fledgling intellectual elite was snuffed out.
"I had no contact during those years," says Mr. Molyvann. "I had to give my children a new life, so we stayed in Lausanne." He continued to work as an architect in Switzerland, Africa and Laos, for the United Nations and the World Bank. The Vietnamese pushed out the Khmer Rouge in 1979, but Mr. Molyvann "could not think of going back." The new rulers "were still communists."
"It was not until 1993 that I returned—with the U.N.," he says. Initially, his homecoming was triumphant. He was appointed minister of state for culture and fine arts, territorial management and urban planning and contributed to the application for Angkor's successful recognition as a Unesco World Heritage site.
But he soon realized that the Cambodia he had left behind in 1970 no longer existed. Cambodian People's Party leader Hun Sen, who had been installed by the Vietnamese and who continued as prime minister after the U.N.-organized elections, gave Mr. Molyvann back his villa, but the architect's plans for Siem Reap—the province in which Angkor is located—were unappreciated. He had called for a "tourist village" set apart from both the temples and the old town of Siem Reap, integrated into the environment and with water conservation as a key goal.
"The government wanted to use the resources of Angkor to develop Siem Reap without the participation of the local people," Mr. Molyvann says. "In 1998, I became president executive director of Apsara (Authority for the Protection and Safeguard of Angkor), the government body created to look after the temples. Three years later, I was fired." Unchecked development in Siem Reap has led to a dramatic drop in groundwater levels, causing subsidence that has put the Bayon, one of the main temples in the Angkor area, in danger of collapse, according to experts from the Japanese Conservation Team for Safeguarding Angkor. Development has also driven up property prices and the cost of living, a hardship for the locals in a province that remains one of the poorest in the country.
But it was not just the government and developers standing against Mr. Molyvann and his vision. Bill Greaves, director of the Vann Molyvann Project, a nongovernmental organization engaged in recreating the lost plans of the remaining New Khmer Architecture sites, thinks postwar Cambodia is simply not aware of its past.
"Right now, Singapore and Shanghai are models for forward-looking cities, both for the government and the people," he says. "Hence Phnom Penh's different stages of history are likely to be discarded."
In the past decade, as investment has begun to pour into the Cambodian capital once more, colonial and 1960s buildings have been replaced by chrome-and-glass edifices, floodwater lakes have been drained, local media have reported almost daily evictions and ministers have gushed over the need to build skyscrapers in order to keep up with the neighbors.
The government frequently declares that preservation has to go hand in hand with development. In practice, it seems to walk well behind. Beng Khemro, deputy director general at the ministry for land management, urban planning and construction, says his department's hands are tied. "Many historical properties are in terrible condition," he says. "The people who own them don't understand the value of the past and would rather demolish them and build high-rises to make a profit. The past is not appreciated. Without a change in attitude amongst the population, we are fighting a losing battle."
Cambodia has preservation laws, and Dr. Khemro says he is trying to pass a regulation to get them applied in particular instances. He'd like to try a pilot preservation project away from Phnom Penh, he says, noting that Cambodia's second-largest city, Battambang, has many buildings from the French period.
"Also," he adds, "there's less pressure."
Molyvann advocate Mr. Greaves is skeptical about the survival of the architect's legacy. "The old buildings disappear at an alarming rate—even public edifices like the National Theatre, which was knocked down a couple of years ago, are not safe. We try and get there before the demolition crews arrive."
A drive around town with Mr. Molyvann illustrates his curious position in this free-for-all scramble for change. At the Independence Monument, guards at first refuse him entry. Only after his driver reveals the distinguished visitor's identity is the master architect, old and frail, allowed to climb the steps he designed half a century ago.
Passing the stadium, Mr. Molyvann looks at the haphazard development around his favorite creation. Appropriated by developers with government connections, the moat has been partly filled in to make space for shops and an underground car park; the result is annual flooding that threatens the entire sports complex.
With equal shades of sadness and anger in his voice, Mr. Molyvann says, "Today, it's not the state who owns the old properties, but the ruling party, the CPP."
—Tom Vater is a writer based in Bangkok.
Cambodia in yet another bribe scandal: No surprise there with Hun Xen in power!!!
Hun Xen and the late Hy LundokThursday, 27 May 2010
David Boyle
The Phnom Penh Post
CAMBODIA has been potentially implicated in an international corruption scandal involving an Australian company accused of procuring prostitutes for foreign officials and offering them bribes in order to secure contracts to print bank-notes, an Australian senator said Tuesday.
Securency – a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Australia, which has a 50 percent stake in the company – manufactures polymer bank notes that are used in nearly 30 countries.
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) is already investigating whether the company’s commissioning agents offered huge bribes to officials in Malaysia, Vietnam, Nigeria and Indonesia.
At a federal senate committee hearing on Tuesday, Senator Bob Brown, leader of the Australian Greens party, indicated that Cambodia could be another country where agents employed by Securency have engaged in bribery.
“In the matter of Securency, government officials have been flagged as being involved in Vietnam, in Indonesia, in Nigeria, potentially in Nepal and South Africa and Cambodia, and a number of other countries,” he said.
At a meeting of the Australian federal senate’s economic reference committee last October, Brown identified Melbourne lawyer Daryl Dealehr as Securency’s commissioning agent in Cambodia.
“Dealehr has ties to the families of Cambodia’s late and notorious national police chief Hok Lundy and Cambodia’s controversial Prime Minister, Hun Sen,” he said.
Dealehr, who could not be reached Wednesday, is the treasurer of the Cambodia Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (CAMEC), and the owner of the mining company Cambodian Resources Ltd.
Neav Chantana, vice governor of the National Bank of Cambodia, said Wednesday she was unaware of any corruption allegations against Securency, and that the bank had no dealings with the company.
AFP said in an emailed statement Tuesday that it would not be appropriate to comment on any potential expansion of its investigation to incorporate Cambodia, explaining it could “jeopardise the integrity of the investigation”.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY NGUON SOVAN
Tuesday, 25 May 2010
Sericulture Project to Increase Silk Yarn Production
By Chhun Kosal & Sam Campbell
Economics Today
As the decline of Cambodia’s millennial silk industry continues, its demise seems ever more inevitable. But Economics Today can reveal that Cambodia’s silk industry is in metamorphosis, hopefully to emerge stronger than ever.
Reliant on adding value by weaving and almost completely dependent on imported silk thread, Cambodia’s silk industry has been touch and go for some time. While some organizations continue to run workshops producing tiny amounts of high quality silk for export, it is clear these artisans can offer little to the thousands of Cambodian weavers staring unemployment in the face. Read the rest of the article at: Economics Today.
