The conditions raise awareness with the UN and the European Parliament, but when Hun Sen is easily persuaded to release the prisoners, good relations are restored. A special agreement is made with opposition leader Sam Rainsy who was convicted to jail in absentia. He is allowed to return to Cambodia, however he may no longer criticize the government.
This causes other members of the opposition to redefine their role. Rainsy falls from grace and is deemed toothless and a bad opposition.
The coalition partner – Funcinpec, the royal party – looses a battle in 2006 as well. The party, which is a gift from former King Sihanouk to his son Ranariddh, experiences internal complications and as a result, Ranariddh decides to leave the party and fund his own. That is a major blow to Funcinpec, though part of the voters choose to stay loyal to the party others follow Ranariddh to his new Norodom Ranariddh Party and thus the royalist voters are completely divided.
Hun Sen's party, The Cambodian People's Party (CPP), is untouched. They come out of 2006 stronger than they went in, well and ready for the national election to come in early 2008.
ECONOMY
But a united party with good chances of staying in power is not the only reason CPP has to be content. In July 2006, the country's Minister of Finance (CPP) predicted an economic growth of 7 percent in Cambodia and he was more than right. According to the World Bank, the country's economic growth rose with 8,9 percent, not as prosperous as 2005's 13 percent, but a significant growth.
And there is more to come. One of the hottest topics in Cambodia in
2006 is that oil is found just outside the shores of Cambodia. More precisely 500 million barrels of oil is expected to emerge from undersea come 2009, according to DCA collaboration partner, NGO Forum.
Combined with the current political situation, this drastically alters the relationship in between NGOs and the royal government of Cambodia.
- It means that the NGOs are now in the front line, because the opposition has gone. And it means that with the oil money, the government depends less on international financial aid, says Director of NGO Forum, Chhith Sam Ath and elaborates:
- It creates a challenge for us. Mainly it is important to monitor how the government intends to use the oil money, but at the same time, we need to be careful with how we approach the government, he says. He is referring to the fact that monitoring the government too much or too good could be taken as a sign of mistrust or hidden allegations of foul play. In other words, a possible defamation lawsuit of the same kind the government handed out generously in the beginning of the year.
Chhith Sam Ath feels the best way to go about that is diplomacy and concrete cases and research.
- Our position remains unchanged. But nonetheless more important, because we do not have the middleman anymore and are to negotiate with the government directly, he says.
LANDGRABBING
Negotiation in crucial when it comes to one of Cambodia's other major issues in 2006: Land grabbing. Land grabbing is basically the government selling of pieces of land to companies which then starts to exploit whatever they need to exploit on the land in question.
However, usually the land is not the government's to give, but belongs to farmers or villagers, who cannot defend their land, neither physical with their hoes and knifes against government military police nor with their paperless word in Cambodia's top corrupt courts. So they flee the land, which then falls into the hands of the company,
thus: Land grabbing.
- In 2006 the phenomena land grabbing increased, especially for the indigenous people, he says. He mentions that many of the pieces of land sold in 2006 were bigger than legal according to the 2001 Land Law.
In Phnom Penh, the capital, the best know case is the Tonle Bassac eviction. Tonle Bassac is an attractive strip of land downtown Phnom Penh, but also the home of several slum dweller villages. May 2006 sees more than 1000 families moved out of one of them, Sambok Chap and relocated to a rice field with no water, toilets and electricity.
Today, 1 year later, the families are still out there, waiting for the promised compensation.
WOMEN
Is it actually possible to disembowel a woman through her vagina?
Yes.
That happened to a 17-year-old woman in Kompong Speu province in 2006.
She was attacked by 41-year-old Lom Vet, who raped her multiple times and then killed her with his bare hands. Then he emptied her body of organs. He was sentenced to pay the girl's family $3,700.
In November 2006, three policemen raped a 12-year-old girl over a period of three days. First she was abused at the local police station in Siem Reap. Then the police officers took her out in the nearby jungle, where they continued to rape the girl. The case was investigated, but despite knowledge of all implicated parties, the case remains unsolved. The girl ran away from home.
Those two women are grim examples of an increasing problem in
Cambodia: Rape. The number of rapes increases in 2006 with 25 percent from the previous year and according to local NGO ADHOC, which is supported by DCA, it is young girls – very young girls indeed – that are most likely to fall victim to rape. 71 percent of the reported cases involves girls in between ages 5 and 18. In most cases, the victim knows the culprit.
However, unsurprisingly the explanation according to ADHOC is in many cases drug abuse and that pornography is getting much more widespread in the rural areas. Pornography in Cambodian can be a very violent affair indeed and is not to be compared with softcore midnight porn at all.
Several laws are underway in 2006. But the long anticipated – and strongly overdue – anti corruption law, which has circulated as a draft since 1991 yet again fails to meet a deadline. Might be all the same anyway, some say. The Law on the Prevention of Domestic Violence was passed in September 2005, but still the figure of domestic violence is 46 percent higher in 2006 than in 2005. Alarming says NGOs and explains the rise with jealousy and Cambodian tradition. In 2006
45 out of 531 reported cases were investigated, according to figures from ADHOC.
TRIBUNAL
It's not like nothing is happening in the courtrooms of Cambodia, though. Finally, 2006 was the year, where the legal prosecution of the top leaders of the Khmer Rouge began. From 1975 to 1979, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge held Cambodia in an iron grip, starved, tortured and worked the population to exhaustion, killing almost a fourth of it.
I June, the judges were appointed and during the next couple of months Cambodia is even at a point were names of potential candidates to be tried are openly discussed. The most important being Nuon Chea – chief ideologist and Brother Number 2. Brother Number 1, Pol Pot, died in 1998.
But in November, things go wrong. During a meeting between the international and the Cambodian judges of the tribunal, they prove to have very different opinions on how to conduct the internal rules of the tribunal So bad is the disagreement that there are talks of the possible withdrawal of the UN. After long and hard negotiations, the judges reach an agreement in May 2007. But there will be more hurdles, says Thun Saray, ADHOC's director. That is not the only remaining concern. The defendants get older and older, 2006 is also the year where Ta Mok – also known as "The One-legged Butcher"- dies of old age, before Cambodia gets a chance to prosecute him. Several of the old murderers are living free in Cambodia, while just one is under house arrest.
Saddam Hussein's execution in December 2006 is therefore widely discussed in the country that does not exercise death penalty.
Following the logic that the Khmer Rouge killed Khmers, thus they themselves should be killed, many Cambodians are dissatisfied that Cambodia does not arrange a similar exit for whoever is appointed responsible for the genocide. But one man in Cambodia does not believe in the death penalty, at least not these days: Nuon Chea.
-The way they treated Saddam Saturday was too extreme. I pity him, "
he said to the English-language local newspaper The Cambodia Daily after an Iraqi speeded-up trial. And that's how the year 2006 ends:
With a sizeable portion of war criminals outside of jail.
But on street 380 in Phnom Penh, just right across from the Boeung Keng Kang market lives a family, mom, dad and two daughters. They own a beauty salon, where Cambodian women – and sometimes men – come to get their nails done, their hair fixed or maybe just for a little chat at the busy salon. Above the front door hangs a big, yellow cardboard pig. It's got a big old smile on its face, because its still hanging there, even though it was put up for Asian New Year in the middle of April. It is the Year of the Pig this year, but 2007 is special. Not only is it the Year of the Pig, but it's the Golden Pig. That happens only once every 60. year and is supposed to bring good luck and fortune to all. Also in Cambodia.
By Anya Palm, journalist
Anya Palm lives in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and works at The Cambodia Daily.