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APRIL 2012
EDITORIAL
By undervaluing its people, and misunderstanding the gravity of the situation, the authorities scored a massive own goal
EDITOR IN CHIEF Tassilo Brinzer DEPUTY EDITOR IN CHIEF Charlie Lancaster CREATIVE DIRECTOR Arne Deepen EDITOR Dene Mullen BUSINESS EDITOR Philippe Beco JUNIOR ART DIRECTOR Lim Mengkong editor@sea-globe.com CONTRIBUTORS: Victor Blanco, Sonny Chhoun, Annie Eagleton,
A
Mark Fenn, Sam Jam, Frédéric Janssens, Tim LaRocco,
city governor muscles his way into a workers’ demonstration, wounding three women after firing a gun into the crowd. A nation is shocked. Investors are horrified. The government is apathetic. Protected by the country’s culture of impunity, the politically-connected perpetrator is allowed to hide, offer bribes to the victims (via another civil servant), confess to the shooting one day (and claim memory loss the next) and, at the time of publication, walk free. Is this due to police incompetence or cronyism? While the authorities were busy protecting their own interests, the victims took their lead and did the same – refusing to accept the pay-off offered, they upped the stakes by asking for compensation up to 100-times higher than the measly $500 initially on the table. Is the public finally fighting back? By undervaluing its people, and misunderstanding the gravity of the situation, the authorities scored a massive own goal. While one public figure stated that investors care more about their assets than the security of their staff, the response of retail giants proved him spectacularly wrong – they urged a rapid investigation and prosecution of the rogue shooter. In an industry plagued with mass faintings and high electricity costs, investors don’t need another reason to exit Cambodia. Garment factory workers are the blood in the veins of one of Cambodia’s most prized exports, yet this incident shows the government has no interest in protecting one of its greatest resources: its people. This image is in stark contrast to the one it will present during its Asean Chairmanship – Cambodia: a destination of choice for investors. In a time when Myanmar emerges as a new investment darling, Cambodia would be well advised to protect its brand. 2012 is a year for the Kingdom to shine, yet a shadow hangs over the country. Some stains can’t be wiped clean. ¡
Douglas Long, Massimo Morello, Sacha Passi, Andrea Pistolesi, Laura J. Snook, Sebastian Strangio, Dave Walker WE THANK THE FOLLOWING ORGANISATIONS: AFP, Reuters, Corbis, AP, Germany Trade And Invest (GTAI), DPA, OnAsia, ImagineChina, Xinhua, Lobopress SUBSCRIPTIONS subscribe@sea-globe.com ADVERTISING & SALES marketing@sea-globe.com Hotline: +855 (0)93 999 000 BUSINESS MANAGER Chea Eak Muy MEDIA SALES Daisy Walsh DISTRIBUTION Chea Sam Oeun ACCOUNTING MANAGER Ngorn Bunchon ACCOUNTING Chry Sok Lay ONLINE Poeudore Sophan DIGITAL EDITION by Pressmart emag.sea-globe.com PRINTED BY Sok Heng Printing House PUBLISHED BY Southeastern Globe Communications Ltd. #6A Street 294, 12301 Phnom Penh, Cambodia Tel: +855 (0)23 223 747 info@sea-globe.com
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THINK FORWARD THINK FOCUS ASEAN
OUT NOW!
CONTENTS
32
SOCIETY 54 THE POOrEST maN
LIFE 72 LIFE VIEWS 74 SETH’S SCENE Cambodia: France’s celebrated graffiti artist lets his cans loose in Phnom Penh 78 graNdmaSTEr FLaSH
Cambodia: Saving lives during a genocide 58 THE darKEST HOUr
Cambodia: The forefather of DJing arrives in the Kingdom Singapore: Marking 70 years since the British defeat
4 5
EDITORIAL IMPRINT
26 dESTINATION UNKOWN Malaysia: Will deportation decisions backfire?
36 HUMAN COMMOdITIES
52 SPOTLIGHT Cambodia: Kyung Tae Han of Tang Yang Securities takes stock of the Kingdom’s bourse
30 MAId TRAdE CURRENT AFFAIRS 12 PHOTOS OF THE MONTH Vietnam: Families kidnapping and selling their women as brides
18 RETROSPECTIVE Pivotal events you might have missed
40 COMMENT: NAME GAME Myanmar: Let Burma be Burma
20 IN FOCUS The region’s best, worst and weirdest news
ECONOMY 22 IN SIGHT Malaysia: a decommissioned French submarine on show 24 PORTRAIT: Sri Mulyani Indrawati: a World Bank presidential hopeful?
8 April 2012
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Malaysia: Legal loopholes take their toll on Cambodian domestic workers 32 CLASS CLASH Thailand: Is Yingluck doing enough to bridge the gap?
48 IN NUMBERS SE Asia: Internet examined
42 MONEY TALK SE Asia: Financial tidbits 44 MEGA BITES Cambodia: Growing pains in the ICT sector
62 arCHITECTUraL aLLUrE Myanmar: Harmonising history with modernity ENVIrONmENT Photos: Sam Jam, Ryan Plummer, both for SEA Globe; Dave Walker, Mark Fenn
ISSUE 62 - APRIL 2012
66 LaST CHaNCE TO SEE SE Asia: The final in our series on the region’s most endangered animals 70 NO grEY arEa Cambodia: Bringing hope to the gentle giants’ survival prospects
80 TOP FIVE SE Asia: Music festivals 82 adVENTUrE TraILS Myanmar: Becoming an explorer, Kachin-style 88 rOamINg SE Asia: Top adrenalinefuelled activities 90 JET SET Thailand: Luxury camping in the Golden Triangle 92 OBJECT OF dESIrE Sora by Lito: the first step in electronic motorbikes 94 aNOTHEr dImENSION 3D printers bring plastic and concrete to new heights 98 LaST QUESTION Olivier Planchon celebrates the Institut Français’ 20th anniversary in Cambodia
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April 2012 9
PHOTOS OF THE MONTH
flash of inspiration photo: Ulan Ifansasti/Getty Images Armless professional photographer Rusidah, 44, takes a photograph in Purworejo, Indonesia. Rusidah shoots weddings and parties and has a small studio at her home in the village of Botorejo, central Java. She had her arms amputated after an accident at the age of 12, and has been in the photography business for nearly 20 years.
PHOTOS OF THE MONTH
Pit stoP Photo: Pawel Kopcynski/Reuters Supanara Sukhasvasti na Ayudhaya of Thailand jumps 7.43 metres while competing in the men’s long jump qualification during the world indoor athletics championships at the Atakoy Athletics Arena in Istanbul.
PHOTOS OF THE MONTH
little lifter Photo: Beawiharta/Reuters April Bernadika, 10, shows the strain as he lifts a pair of barbells during practice at the Gajah Lampung training centre in Indonesia. About 10 children aspiring to become weightlifters practice after school at the centre, which belongs to Imron Rosadi, a former Indonesian national weightlifter.
cambodia
IndonesIa
FIvE caNED FOR gaMblINg
FRIENDS ON TOP
Asylum seekers seek Answers
t Onlookers cheered as the men were lashed
Asylum seekers being held in Medan are demanding an immediate decision on whether they’ll be sent to a third country, having already spent years in detention. Scores of refugees, including women and children from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, are being held in an Indonesian detention house while they wait for the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to process their cases. Some families report existing in limbo for almost two years, living off food rations and a small monthly subsidy. ¡
malaysia
MINISTER IN ‘cOwgaTE’ ScaNDal RESIgNS Malaysia’s biggest political party will have to consider a reshuffle ahead of the Barisan Nasional elections after the minister for women, family and community development stepped down from her position. For months Shahrizat Abdul Jalil has been embroiled in an embezzlement scandal involving government funds meant for a cattle project. Malaysia’s BN elections are predicted to go ahead by June this year. ¡
thAilAnD to holD inquest into DeAths
cambodIa
protest shooting pressure mounts
laos
quote unquote
“At the time, I obviously trusted her [Lim]. She was like my best friend.” Mariam Aziz, the ex-wife of the Sultan of Brunei, has accused her former bodyguard of stealing and selling rare diamonds worth $18m to pay off gambling debts. However, Fatimah Kumin Lim says Aziz gave her the jewellery to pay off Aziz’s gambling debts. Aziz admits loaning the precious jewels to the bodyguard who is accused of replacing them with worthless replicas.
18 April 2012
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MONkEy MISERy Laos’ monkey trade has come under scrutiny from animal rights groups after the discovery of destitute conditions on overcrowded breeding farms were discovered. The country has exported up to 35,000 Long-tailed Macaques over the past eight years in response to the fast-growing use of the animals for scientific research. Insufficient regulations have also raised concerns that wild monkeys are being captured, rather than bred in captivity, to satisfy the high demands of companies in Vietnam and China. ¡
Photos: Reuters (1)
Grimace: the crowd watched and jeered as the gamblers were punished according to Sharia law
The attacker of a Malaysian student who was injured and robbed during last year’s London riots has been sentenced to a 7-year jail-term. Ashraf Rossli’s jaw was broken when he was punched in the face while helping a friend during the riots. Two men who had offered to help the 20-year-old before robbing him have also been found guilty of their crimes. ¡
Retail giants Puma, Gap and H&M have urged Cambodia to seek justice for garment workers wounded when a gunman opened fire at a rally by thousands of workers demanding better working conditions. The government has failed to arrest the sole suspect, the former Bavet City governor who was stripped of his title after the incident, putting the spotlight on Cambodia’s culture of impunity. Two of the victims have rejected a compensation offer of up to $2,500, seeking nearly $100,000 from Chhouk Bandith. ¡
Two years after 16 people were killed during a crackdown on Red Shirt anti-government protests, Thailand is to hold an inquest into the deaths. More than 90 people, mostly civilians, were killed and nearly 1,900 wounded during the 2010 rallies. The demonstrations came after years of political unrest. ¡ Class warfare, page 34
Angkor wAt repliCA Cambodia’s ancient Angkor Wat temple will no longer have claims to being the largest religious building in the world when India completes a replica of the structure in an estimated 10 years time. Cambodian officials have opposed the $20m duplicate, which is set to stand slightly taller than its Khmer counterpart. ¡
Arrive in Style
Five Indonesian men have been publically caned for breaking traditional Sharia laws in Indonesia’s Islamic Aceh province. Hundreds of onlookers cheered as the men were lashed six times as punishment for their involvement in a local lottery. Gambling has been outlawed in the province since 2001, when partial Sharia laws were introduced. Based on Muslim practices, Sharia also forbids the drinking of alcohol and enforces the wearing of headscarves by women. The five men were among 20 people convicted of violating Islamic law in January. ¡
Friends International has been recognised as one of the world’s top non-governmental organisations, according to the Global Journal’s top 100 NGOs of 2012. The charity ranked 76, taking its place among internationally renowned groups such as Oxfam, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Friends International has been aiding marginalised children and youths worldwide for the past 17 years. ¡
t Some refugees on reCorD have been detained for more than two lonDoner JAileD For AttACk on mAlAysiAn years
Phnom Penh office
indonesia
2nd Floor No. 246, Monivong Blvd., Sangkat Boeung Reang, Khan Duan Penh, Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia T : +855 (0)23 218 808 F : +855 (0)23 218 809 M : +855 (0)77 218 808 / 809
RETROSPECTIVE
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March 2012 19
in focus
PREAH SIHANOUK VILLAGERS HAVE BEEN SPARED EVICTION AFTER RECEIVING RARE SUPPORT FROM CAMBODIAN OFFICIALS. THE GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCED PROPER LAND TITLES WOULD BE GIVEN TO THE VILLAGERS AFTER REJECTING A PROPOSAL FOR AN ECOTOURISM SITE AND RESORT TO BE BUILT NEAR BOEUNG PREK TUB LAKE.
THE RECENT DEATH OF A 30-yEAR-OLD GIRAFFE AT INDONESIA’S SURABAyA ZOO HAS HIGHLIGHTED THE CONTINUING DEMISE OF THE ONCE RENOWNED ESTABLISHMENT. THE TOURIST ATTRACTION HAS BEEN PLAGUED By HIGH MORTALITy RATES, UNCONTROLLED BREEDING AND ACCUSATIONS OF ILLEGAL WILDLIFE TRAFFICKING IN THE PAST.
A warm welcome Bagan beauty: Myanmar is rushing to ready itself for an influx of foreign tourist arrivals
largely unmarred by tourist developments, making the nation a must-see destination for intrepid visitors. With the endorsement of the New York Times and Conde Nast Traveller, which both ranked the country as a top travel destination for 2012, the government
the good
M
alaysia has secured its place as the region’s most liveable country, ranking 19th on the Global Peace Index list of the world’s safest countries. Singapore and Vietnam followed closely behind, ranking 24 and 30 respectively on the scale.
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has predicted up to 1.2 million foreigners will visit the nation this year, forcing stagnant sectors to rethink their approach to tourism. In Yangon, one cooking school is taking steps to prepare underprivileged locals with skills to tap into the predicted tourism boom. About 14
young trainees at Golden Table are learning either French culinary skills or restaurant service. The accommodation sector is not so well prepared, however. Minimal investment during Myanmar’s years of military rule restricted the industry’s progress,
the bad
T
he Thai government’s struggle to bring peace to its insurgencyplagued southern provinces has been highlighted by another extension of the state of emergency in the area. The decree gives security forces the power to arrest and detain rebels.
limiting current accommodation options for foreigners. The government is now considering increased infrastructure and land development to meet demand, as well as legal reforms that would allow people to provide private accommodation. ¡
quote
thepeculiar peculiar the
R
esidents living in the Philippines will have access to nearly half a million cheap books until the middle of the year when a floating bookstore docks at its shores. The converted vessel provides access to affordable literature to poor communities worldwide.
unquote
“Ilham started smoking when he was four years old... his smoking habit grew day by day and now he can finish smoking two packs of cigarettes a day
Photos: Corbis, dpa
M
yanmar is breathing new life into local skills and sectors as the nation starts to prepare its burgeoning tourism industry for an anticipated influx of travellers. A wealth of natural beauty and cultural offerings has been left
The father of an 8-year-old Indonesian boy reveals his son’s addiction to tobacco. Child protection advocates are concerned the boy’s habit is a result of the Indonesian government’s failure to regulate the billion-dollar industry. More than 200,000 Indonesians die from smoking each year, but the government does not regulate age restriction for the purchase or smoking of cigarettes. Experts are concerned the economic benefits of the industry, which employs thousands of people, are more important than the health of the nation. The number of smokers in Indonesia has increased sixfold in the past 40 years.
Sea GLOBe
February 2012 21
IN SIGHT
A decommissioned submarine is expected to draw more tourists to Melaka Malaysia
O
n display in Malaysia, a 1,300 tonne decommissioned submarine is expected to draw more tourists to Malaysia’s historic port city Melaka. Late last year, in an agreement between the French and Malaysian governments, ownership of the 22 April 2012
Sea GLOBe
aging SMD Ouessant (Agosta 70 class) was transferred to Malaysia so it could be converted into a museum. The vessel was transported from Brest, France to the waters off Melaka where the Frenchmade Ouessant underwent a $4.1m refurbishment project to prepare it for visitors. The
commanding vessel measures 67.57 metres in length and 11.75 metres in height. Built in 1979, Ouessant served the French navy until she was decommissioned in 2001. For six years up until 2008, it was used for the training of up to 150 Malaysian officers and sailors who now serve
in the Royal Malaysian Navy submarine force. Earlier this year, the Melaka government announced it would continue to develop the Klebang area of the town to make it a popular Maritime Museum Complex for the world market, with a second smaller submarine to be added to the collection. ÂĄ
Photo: Mark Baker/AP
catch of the day
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April 2012 23
PORTRAIT
FINANCE
Taking a hard line
Once ranked by Forbes as the 23rd most powerful woman in the world, could Indonesia’s former finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati seize the top slot at the World Bank?
By Laura J. Snook
24 April 2012
Sea GLOBe
Her target is inequality – and it couldn’t have come at a more interesting time. Head of World Bank operations in Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, she represents the increasing clout that emerging economies are wielding on the international stage. And, she says, there’s rather more to success than simple GDP growth. “In middle-income countries, inequality becomes a problem because you can see there is a layer of people who are doing well, while the poor are still stuck there,” she recently told The Observer. It is the duty of politicians, she argues, to “make sure that not only a few
In the past, the Bank has had little choice but to deal with the governments in place in its client countries, but things are changing – thanks in no small part to the Arab Spring. It is a change that Sri Mulyani has publicly welcomed: “The Arab spring is actually giving us the underlying engagement with the country, which in the past has only gone through the government. Now, reaching out and communicating with the people is becoming very important and technology can facilitate that. In short, the way we engage with these countries has changed.” Whether such vision will be sufficient to
She represents the increasing clout that emerging economies are wielding on the international stage people can enjoy so excessively while the majority feel they have to work so hard”. One such middle-income country is China, and it has fallen to Sri Mulyani – the Sumatra-born daughter of two professors – to defend the World Bank’s continuing involvement in China against critics who point to the country’s record of human rights abuses and political corruption. China’s growing influence is providing a much-needed boost to inward investment in many developing countries, and Sri Mulyani cautions that traditional lenders and the West risk being outmanoeuvred. “There will be a new player who is very pragmatic, who will close their eyes to all these principles and will just give money.”
propel her to the World Bank presidency remains to be seen. When news first broke that she was joining the institution’s ranks, she was the target of an opposition campaign in Indonesia accusing her and Vice-President Boediono of abusing their authority during the $176m bailout of Bank Century in 2008. Nonetheless, her work in dismantling President Suharto’s crony capitalism, slashing public and private debt, and spearheading sweeping changes in customs and tax administration is testament to her achievements as a hardline reformist. But questioned by British journalists recently on whether it was time for a non-American to get the job, Sri Mulyani gave nothing but a steely smile. ¡
SRI MULYANI INDRAWATI
Illustration: Victor Blanco for SEA Globe
W
hen it comes to confronting financial austerity, Sri Mulyani Indrawati has seen it all. The most senior woman at the World Bank in Washington DC previously served as Indonesia’s finance minister from 2005 to 2010, and before that as an economic advisor to the Wahid regime between 1999 and 2001. Neither were easy tasks. At the time, heavily indebted Indonesia was struggling to extract itself from decades of dictatorship and economic repression. International markets were turning their backs on Asian tiger economies they had previously bankrolled, including that of notorious Indonesian dictator Suharto, and austerity measures put in place by the International Monetary Fund by way of a rescue package initially seemed only to add to the country’s misery. More than 10 years later, following extensive reform and reconstruction, Indonesia last year recorded growth of more than 6% – a sign the country is clawing its way back from a position that during the 1990s was far worse than that of Greece today, Sri Mulyani says. Her role in that recovery cannot be overstated: in 2005, Euromoney magazine awarded her the title of ‘world’s best finance minister'. Today, she is one of three managing directors serving under World Bank President Robert Zoellick, whose term ends this summer and who is unlikely to be reappointed by US President Barack Obama.
As Indonesia’s finance minister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati famously said the goal of government economic policies was for people “to develop, be prosperous, get enough income, be able to meet all their needs from the day they were born until the day they die: education, food, health, recreation, all at affordable levels”. During her tenure, Southeast Asia’s largest economy became a member of the G20 group of leading economies and one of the fastest growing in the region. Sea GLOBe
April 2012 25
CURRENT AFFAIRS
REFUGEES
destination: unknown As Malaysia continues to make a habit of dubious deportations, will its decisions affect its international standing?
L
ike a scene from a best-selling novel, the lawyers rushed to serve their habeas corpus writ on the powers-that-be. Alas, they were too late – their client was already on the plane, heading back to his home country where persecution and the threat of the death penalty awaited. But this race against time was not played out on the pages of a wellthumbed thriller. In February this year, the Malaysian authorities took the controversial decision to deport Hamza Kashgari to his native Saudi Arabia. This might have been an unremarkable event were it not for the fact that the 23-year-old journalist had recently fled the Middle Eastern country after posting tweets deemed disrespectful of Islam on Twitter – an offence that led to religious clerics calling for the death penalty, and instigated an online bloodlust from Saudi users of social networking sites. Despite the non-existence of any bilateral extradition agreement between the two countries, Malaysian authorities deported Kashgari – an action that Fadiah Nadwa of Lawyers for Liberty, who acted on behalf of Kashgari, said “openly flouted” the country’s obligation under international law not to return individuals to places where they would likely face persecution or torture (also known as the law of non-refoulement).
26 April 2012
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Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch (HRW)’s Asia division, added that the Malaysian government “took it another step by outright denying [Kashgari’s] right to apply for political asylum by refusing access to his lawyers and to representatives of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).” Andrej Mahecic, UNHCR senior communications officer in Geneva, ratified this view: “We very much regret that Hamza Kashgari was deported before UNHCR could verify if he had legitimate claims for asylum.” The legality of the Malaysian government’s actions on a national level remain in a murky no-man’s-land, with the country in the peculiar position of being a member of the UN’s Human Rights Council (UNHRC) without having any domestic refugee law or being party to the 1951 Refugee Convention. “It doesn’t make sense at all that a
Dissident in danger: Hamza Kashgari
government can become a member of the UNHRC but fail to ratify so many human rights treaties,” said Robertson. Daniel Lo, Malaysia country manager at the Coalition to Abolish Modern-Day Slavery in Asia (Camsa), pointed out that membership of the UNHRC “does not mean that a country’s human rights record is perfect” and that members are not required to enact all relevant domestic legislation for the protection of such rights. He did, however, add that signing the Refugee Convention and enacting the relevant legislation would be “a step in the right direction”. The Kashgari case is the latest in a series of Malaysian deportations in legally, and morally, dubious circumstances. In August last year, the government was accused of pandering to China by returning a group of Uighurs – an ethnic Muslim minority largely based in China’s Xinjiang region – despite evidence of widespread discrimination against them by Beijing. “Cases like the Uighurs and Hamza Kashgari are fleeting glimpses of the effects of Malaysia’s draconian immigration laws,” said Renuka Balasubramaniam, a human rights lawyer in Malaysia. Malaysian authorities maintained that the Uighurs’ detention and subsequent deportation were due to suspected involvement in human trafficking, according to the New Straits Times. q
Photos: AP Photo/Marcus Yam
By Dene Mullen
Hand of fate: an ethnic Chin refugee from Myanmar looks out from a detention truck in Kuala Lumpur
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April 2012 27
CURRENT AFFAIRS
Human resources: Malaysia hopes to be counted among the world’s high-income countries by 2020, but refuses to ratify the 1951 Refugee Convention
Malaysia's exaggerated projection of itself as Muslim through legalistic Islam has turned tourists from European countries away. Tourists have many options, just like investors and businessmen Dr Ooi Kee Beng, ISEAS 28 April 2012
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Committee (SFRC) investigation into the trafficking and extortion of Myanmar migrants in Malaysia and southern Thailand in 2009 concluded that there was strong evidence of collusion between Malaysian immigration officers and human traffickers operating on the Malaysia-Thailand border. “Burmese migrants are reportedly taken by Malaysian government personnel from detention facilities to the Malaysia-Thailand border for deportation… Upon arrival at the border, human traffickers reportedly take possession of the migrants and issue ransom demands on an individual basis… The committee was informed that on some occasions, the ‘attendance’ list reviewed by traffickers along the border was identical to the attendance list read prior to departure from the Malaysian detention facilities,” stated the SFRC report. The report also contains testimonies from as far back as 2005 from Myanmar refugees. One of them reported that female refugees “are sold at a brothel if they look good. If they are not beautiful, they might sell them at a restaurant or house-keeping job.”
A male refugee stated he had been arrested and sent to the border on three separate occasions: “On the third time, I was sold to Thai fishermen for 30,000 baht (approximately $750).” Despite this alleged involvement in human trafficking by government personnel over a number of years, one of the more significant hits to Malaysia’s international reputation came in 2011 when a proposed ‘refugee swap’ arrangement with Australia – whereby 800 asylum seekers who arrive in Australia would be exchanged for 4,000 refugees living in Malaysia – was overruled by Australia’s High Court. Daniel Lo said it was “embarrassing” that the court cited the fact that Malaysia could not offer guarantees for the safety and well-being of asylum seekers as required by Australian law. Lo added that Malaysia’s uncertain record on deportation and refugee rights had the potential to affect its international reputation. “The rule of law and the protection of human rights is fundamental to the success of any country,” he said. “Countries that do not recognise this principle rule embark down a slippery
Photos: dpa
However, Fadiah Nadwa said that Malaysia’s culture of impunity “is worsened due to the fact that the media is not free in reporting the true story”. Malaysia has long struggled to effectively control its porous borders, a dangerous situation considering that it does not formally recognise refugees. Worse, a US Senate Foreign Relations
On the run: women and children flee Myanmar, but Malaysia’s absence of domestic refugee law means they can easily fall prey to human traffickers
slide. History is littered with examples of failed nations where it becomes a matter of self-destruction.” Dr Ooi Kee Beng, deputy director of Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) said that the failure of the refugee swap showed “ignorance on the part of the government about where [Malaysia] stands in the eyes of the world, given its bad record on human rights and the handling of refugees”. “With every mishandling by the government of the country’s reputation… Malaysian pride is hurt at the individual level. That means a slow losing of credibility and legitimacy on the part of the government,” he added. But how important is a country’s reputation when it comes to international business, trade and other interests? According to Dr Kee Beng: “With the increase in information flow, and the increase in options for investors in the region, businesses have to consider public attitudes towards governments. “Aside from investment flows, what is more immediate is tourism. The country’s exaggerated projection of itself as Muslim through legalistic Islam has turned tourists
from European countries away. Tourists have many options, just like investors and businessmen. A country’s reputation as a safe and happy place for expats, tourists and businessmen is very important.” However, Barry Wain, also of ISEAS, and the author of Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times,
for action taken against Southeast Asian nations following human rights violations, however. The US suspended military aid to Indonesia in 1991 after the military shot and killed dozens of East Timorese. More recently, in 2010, the US also suspended a shipment of military trucks to Cambodia in response to
The rule of law and the protection of human rights is fundamental to the success of any country Daniel Lo, Camsa
a best-selling political biography of Malaysia’s former prime minister, is more sceptical of the international community’s reaction to Malaysia’s actions. “Foreign investors, for example, are focused on a whole range of other factors, from the cost of labour to taxation rates, to political stability and market opportunities,” Wain said. “The reality is that countries like the US, Australia and the UK desire close relations with a moderate, Muslim-majority country like Malaysia.” Recent history does provide precedents
Phnom Penh’s deportation of 20 Uighur asylum seekers to China in late 2009. Whether Malaysia chooses to heed such warnings, only time will tell. For the moment, a young man awaits his fate in Saudi Arabia. “The Malaysian government frequently prioritises bilateral relations with rightsabusing governments like China or Saudi Arabia over its commitments to respect human rights,” said Robertson. “If Hamza Kashgari is executed, the Malaysian government will have blood on its hands.” ¡ Sea GLOBe
April 2012 29
CURRENT AFFAIRS
HUMAN RIGHTS
maid trade
Migrant Cambodian domestic workers are paying the price for loopholes in Malaysia’s employment laws
By Sacha Passi
30 April 2012
Sea GLOBe
Plagued by inadequate regulations at both ends, the move has resulted in a string of human rights abuses and the death of three Cambodian domestic workers in the past year. Despite the Cambodian government’s temporary ban on the migration of domestic workers to Malaysia last year, once in the country maids have no minimum guarantees for their safety. The Malaysian legal system is riddled with
The Malaysian legal system is riddled with outdated laws that support and enable the exploitation of domestic workers outdated laws that support and enable the exploitation of domestic workers. Many workers are unfamiliar with their rights because of a limited ability to communicate beyond Khmer, but they are also afforded few civil liberties. Advocacy officer Natalie Drolet, from Legal Support for Children and Women (LSCW), explains that under Malaysian law, “domestic workers are not entitled
to the protections afforded to other workers, like the right to one rest day in a week, an eight hour work day, public holidays, annual leave, sick leave and maternity leave. “By excluding domestic workers from the Employment Act in this way, the government is essentially saying that domestic work is not work.” Under Malaysia’s labour law Cambodia’s domestic workers are defined as ‘domestic servants’, and employment conditions are left to the discretion of the employer. As a result, maids are routinely over-worked, physically abused, under-paid and burdened with inflated ‘handling’ fees and debts. Anti-human trafficking organisation, Tenaganita, has documented more than 300 cases where recruitment agencies have not only profited from the labour of domestic workers, but from their vulnerability too. Irene Fernandez, executive director of Tenaganita said: “more than 80% have their wages not paid for more than three months and this constitutes forced labour or human trafficking. All of them have their passports held, [and are] kept in isolation with little or no communication outside or to their families.” Malaysia’s rigorous enforcement of immigration laws is one of the biggest loopholes afforded to local authorities. Inadequate screening mechanisms
Maid aid: Sri Lestari Wagiyo was beaten by her Malaysian employer before being taken to a shelter at the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur
Photo: Bazuki Muhammad/Reuters
R
ape, starvation, exploitation and forced labour strike at the very core of human rights deprivation, but it is the price some Cambodian women and underage girls are paying for the chance of a better life. In the past three years up to 25,000 Cambodian domestic workers have migrated to Malaysia following promises of a better future, but the reality for these women and children is the risk of abuse at every step of the migration cycle. “The current framework for migrant domestic workers is completely inadequate… from access to information for prospective migrants, regulation of recruitment agencies and training centres, provision of embassy services and negotiations with the Malaysian government,” said Nisha Varia from Human Rights Watch. In 2009, Indonesia halted the migration of its domestic workers to Malaysia after reports revealed the extreme mistreatment of some Indonesian workers. Yet both source and destination countries have an invested interest in continuing the domestic worker trade. Malaysia’s growing middle class are accustomed to extra help running the family home, and remuneration opportunities are incentive enough for governments such as Cambodia’s to open the floodgates for its impoverished rural community to seek employment abroad.
fail to separate victims of abuse from undocumented migrants and it is common practice for agencies to keep possession of workers’ passports once in Malaysia. Undocumented women and girls who flee abusive employers are therefore at risk of being treated as immigration offenders. “The onus of proof is left to the worker to prove she is documented. The worker faces high risk of arrest, detention and even whipping,” Fernandez said. The nature of the unregulated industry also produces an environment rife with opportunity for an illegal trade in underage workers. Malaysia’s outdated antitrafficking policy fails to acknowledge forced labour into domestic servitude, and instead focuses on forced prostitution to guide anti-trafficking responses.
Slipping through the cracks of industry dealings are underage girls who, willingly or not, go abroad at the mercy of unscrupulous agencies. “The ease with which identity documents have been falsified in Cambodia has meant that many girls, some as young as 14, are able to get documents that show they are the legal age (21) for employment in Malaysia,” Drolet said. In 2011, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), adopted a historic set of international standards to improve the working conditions of tens of millions of domestic workers worldwide. The 189th Convention provides valuable guidance on minimum standards and is a binding consensus for member states that ratify the treaty, yet, despite being signatories to the ILO, neither the
Cambodian nor Malaysian governments have yet endorsed the accord. To agree to minimum standards for domestic workers would acknowledge their human value, their contribution to society and economies, and pave the way for ending the impunity of traffickers. As it stands, more vulnerable women and children will undoubtedly fall into the desperate cycle simply for the chance of a brighter future. “Governments have a choice – if they put in adequate protections, migrant domestic work can be a positive employment option that helps to change migrants’ families lives,” said Varia of Human Rights Watch. “If governments continue to neglect the legal gaps and fail to monitor for abuse, this sector becomes a breeding ground for exploitation.” ¡ Sea GLOBe
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THAILAND
Class Clash Given the Kingdom’s turbulent political history, how will Yingluck’s government handle one of the world’s most divided electorates?
Muddling through: the rural populace comprises Yingluck Shinawatra’s core constituency
By Tim LaRocco
32 April 2012
Sea GLOBe
Photos: Kerek Wongsa/Reuters, Thai Government House
Photos: AP Photo/Marcus Yam
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f a baht note blows out of your hand and down the road, for God’s sake don’t step on it,” the resident director of a nonprofit organisation advised a foreign volunteer, who had just arrived in the Kingdom, during a ‘dos and don’ts’ brief. “The King’s face is on the note. You cannot disrespect the King. You can go to jail.” The highly contentious issue of lèse majesté – a domestic law that prohibits anyone from criticising the monarchy – has returned with a vengeance this past year and has even gained international notoriety. In recent months, as Thailand’s King Bhumibol has become frailer, charges of lèse majesté have proliferated. Actors from both major parties, which represent two very different segments of the Thai population, have traded barbs and made accusations against each other and individuals from all walks of life. The laws are “used to attack opponents, silence dissent and questioning, and to deal with the fear of the succession issue”, said Joshua Kurlantzick, a Southeast Asia fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
In May last year, a Thai-American citizen was arrested after he translated parts of a banned biography of the King and posted them on the internet; he was sentenced to 30 months in prison. In November, a 61-year-old man was given 20 years for a series of controversial text messages that he allegedly sent the previous year. Now, the latest case revolves around a 20-year-old university student named Kanthoop who faces 15 years in prison for an alleged lèse majesté violation. “I know my case is symbolic,” she told The Guardian newspaper in March. “I’m happy about that. There is good that comes from somebody standing up and wanting to make change.” For a country defined by coups for the majority of its existence as a constitutional monarchy, it’s a little strange that it took so long for Thailand’s demonstrators to rise up and demand change and accountability from the country’s political leaders. However, since the bloodless coup which toppled Thaksin Shinawatra’s populist government in 2006, tens and even hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets
demanding change in a country where the poor and rich are often pegged against each other. Issues such as the controversial lèse majesté law have become politicised along that divide. The consequences have rendered Thailand one of the world’s most poignant modern-day examples of class warfare.
Power play The country can be divided roughly into two main groups: the poor, rural majority; and the Bangkok elite. Likewise, there are two main political parties which represent, in general terms, each interest: the former by the Pheu Thai party and its red shirt surrogates, and the latter by the Democrat Party, who too have their own group of cohorts known as the yellow shirts. “[Pheu Thai] supports some kind of populist economic policy to empower grassroots,” said Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a fellow at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Meanwhile, the Democrats “adhere closely to elitist-capitalist ideology”. q Sea GLOBe
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CURRENT AFFAIRS
Establishment: Thai pro-government (Abhisit) supporters counter anti-government red shirt protests in 2010
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people joining the demonstrations from 2008 through 2010.
Yo-Yo politics While Thaksin was out of the country, the military orchestrated a swift overthrow of his government. This set off a series of events that saw the removal of two additional pro-Thaksin governments on the heels of highly-organised yellow shirt protests. Airports were shut down and the tourism industry was crippled as any notion of the country’s ‘Land of Smiles’ moniker was quickly forgotten. In one infamous moment, Asean political leaders were evacuated from a resort in Pattaya after yellow shirt protesters stormed a summit meeting. The opposition Democrat Party capitalised on the situation and party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva became prime minister in December 2008. However, within two years, Abhisit was facing his own demonstrations from the pro-Thaksin red shirts. The National United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) – a group comprised mostly of farmers from the rural hinterland who
had felt forgotten and left behind by the country’s political process long before Thaksin – began organising and seemed determined to, quite literally, take their country back and to re-instate the policies which were so wildly popular under Thaksin’s administration.
Indeed, Abhisit quickly reversed Thaksin’s populist policies. For example, Thai agribusiness was widely expanded, including overtures to Charoen Pokphand Foods, already the country’s largest firm of its kind and whose success prevented poor farmers from realising tangible benefits from the increase in commodity prices. According to Oxfam International, when staple food prices soared in 2007 and 2008, Charoen Pokphand used
Two approaches Two of the hallmarks of the populist sets of policies dubbed ‘Thaksinomics’ were an economic stimulus for rural enterprises and a reform of the country’s healthcare system. Thaksin directed the government to subsidise healthcare under the guise of the ‘30 baht scheme’, which essentially covered all Thai citizens during visits to state-run hospitals for the cost of only 30 baht (less than $1). “There are big differences between the Pheu Thai and the Democrats, basically in almost all aspects,” said Pavin. “More clearly, the political standpoints between the two sides are different; whereas the former promotes more equal rights for the people, the latter aligns itself with the old establishment.”
Photos: Eric Gaillard/Reuters, Pornchai Kittiwongsakul/AFP, Bloomberg
An individual of the Bangkok elite is typically well-educated, economically conservative, vehemently pro-monarchy and financially well-off. The poor rural majority naturally earn their income from agriculture, have received very little education, and have rejected the fundamental tenants of neoliberalism – economic liberalisation, free trade and open markets. Both groups harbour a semblance of animosity towards the other, a reality adduced during the protests over the past several years. There has been no shortage of coups throughout Thailand’s history, but the overthrow of Thaksin Shinawatra’s populist government in 2006 seemed to mobilise large segments of the population to disrupt the inevitability that had surrounded the political system. “It’s always difficult to say why – after years when activism is slow, difficult and often below the radar – there are sometimes periods when resistance erupts on a mass scale,” said Mark Engler, a senior policy analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus. “There is a contagious element to protests, though,” he continued, remarking on the increasing number of
Colour connotation: (left) Thailand’s impoverished northeast is a red shirt stronghold; the growing divide between rich and poor fuels tensions in Thailand
valued resources,” said Dr Kenneth Bauzon, a professor at St. Joseph’s College in New York and an expert on the political economy of Southeast Asia.
Strategic moves Recent history has shown that blood and death are a byproduct of social revolutions, even for a place as normally tranquil as Thailand. Both sides are dug in and have
Red and Yellow shirts alike know that if they don't get what they want, the best tactic is to take to the streets and paralyse government and business their advantageous position to capitalise on the situation, attaining record profits while Thailand’s poor farmers slid ever closer into inescapable poverty. In this instance the government becomes “the final arbiter on behalf of the forces of globalisation, enacting and enforcing laws that facilitate their penetration into the domestic economy, and easing their control and domination over the country’s
exhibited a propensity to react violently when pushed to the brink. red and yellow shirts alike know that “if [they] don’t get what [they] want, the best tactic now is to take to the streets and paralyse government and business”, wrote the CFR’s Kurlantzick in a piece at Asia Unbound. Could Thailand’s current prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, Thaksin’s younger sister, do anything to prevent even more
unrest? “I think her government is too cunning, aiming for only its own political survival,” said Pavin. Indeed, this past autumn when Thailand was inundated with floods, Yingluck made a decision to sacrifice large stretches of fertile farmland in order to protect Bangkok. The poor peasant farmers who live in the country’s rural hinterland – and comprise Yingluck’s core constituency – felt betrayed by the government’s cost-benefit analysis. “The farmers say their land and their crops are being sacrificed to protect Bangkok, and they aren’t happy about that,” reported Luke Hunt, a journalist in Southeast Asia for more than 25 years, in The Diplomat. All things considered, Pavin believes observers should watch Thailand very closely over the coming weeks and months. “The politicisation of the lèse majesté law has reduced the space for frank expression of political views. The more they close this space, the more many Thais will resist. This could lead to a tension, especially as we are now heading toward the end of the current reign,” he said. “The possibility for another round of violent confrontation is real.” ¡ Sea GLOBe
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CURRENT AFFAIRS
TRAFFICKING
THE ULTIMATE BETRAYAL As Vietnam embraces the global market, in some households nothing is out of bounds for trade
By Luke Dale-Harris
36 April 2012
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Do, a 20-year-old woman of Hmong ethnicity, is a resident at the Peace House shelter for former victims of human trafficking in Hanoi. Talking of her home town in the border province of Lao Cai, she says that although poverty is no longer a problem, young women like herself live in fear of being trafficked. “In my village alone, quite a few people have been trafficked in recent
My cousin told me that if I didn't go, he would kill me and throw me into the river before killing my family years,” she said. “To me, this is a sign that society is in decline.” Official information and statistics on the subject of trafficking in Vietnam is limited and estimates vary greatly, the real figures largely lost in the huge amount of unregulated emigration (between 30% and 40% of all Vietnamese emigration). The Vietnam Ministry of Public Security offers the official figure of 2,935 Vietnamese q
Tears of injustice: it is estimated that, in Vietnam, more than 50% of trafficking victims are tricked into the situation by relatives, friends or neighbours
Photo: Bazuki Muhammad
T
he jagged line that falters its way across the map, weaving over and around the contours that connect Vietnam and China, universally represents the border between these two countries, yet it means distinctly different things to different people. To the traveller it’s a challenge, the trader an opportunity, the farmer an inconvenience and the politician a threat. However, for those who live amidst the mountains either side of it, the border holds less significance than you might expect. Largely from the same ethnic groups and speaking the same languages, the people of northern Vietnam and southern China carved their cultures from the mountains and valleys. Yet the ever increasing number of roads that cut through these mountains suggests something else: not a world that has shrunk, as the imperialist cliché tells us, but a world that has infinitely expanded. The expansion has brought money into these rural border zones, some of the poorest areas in Vietnam, through trade both domestic and international. However, with increased growth comes increased awareness, and the material inequality that lies at the heart of globalisation fuels desires less for social justice than personal wealth.
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Final destination: the mountains on either side of the Vietnam-China border are a gateway for human trafficking between the two countries
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and subsequently a shortage of girls available for marriage. In contrast to the global trend of trafficking for prostitution and labour, from the north of Vietnam the demand is for wives and sons. There are many similarities between the Chinese and Vietnamese family models. The Confucian values of authority and filial loyalty hold strong and the family remains the core social unit in both countries. Thuy suggests that the clash between familial tradition and the culture of opportunism inherent in modernisation heavily influences both the supply and demand of the trafficking industry of Vietnam and China.
A woman’s tale Born into a Hmong family and the sixth of eight siblings – seven girls and one adulated son – Do’s future was set early on. Although she dreamt of growing up to be a teacher, her parents pulled her
out of school to be married at the age of 14. Only her brother completed his education, going on to work as a local governmental officer. When Thuy mentions the trend that significantly fewer girls finish their education than boys, Do shrugs and begins to talk of the man she married. “At first I didn’t like my husband. I didn’t even know him. However, when we were married and living together I quickly came to realise
He told me that we had 15 minutes to leave. I had to come with him in secret without asking my parents' permission
Photo: Bazuki Muhammad
victims of human trafficking between 2004 and 2009, while Hagar International claim the drastically larger total of over 400,000 victims since 1990. Madam Thuy, the director of the Human Trafficking department in the Centre of Women’s Development, reinforces the general consensus that the problem is increasing and agrees that it cannot simply be explained by poverty. “There are many factors that contribute to the growth in trafficking, but most common across all cases is the disintegration of the family structure,” said Thuy. It is this, she argues, that lies at the root of trafficking in Vietnam, whether it results in kidnappings directly from home, the selling of one’s relatives or the susceptibility of young girls in being tricked to leave their homes. Ironically enough, in China it is often the demand for an ideal family model that fuels the industry. The one child policy results in a preference for male children
that he was a good man, just like my parents had told me. He always worked hard in the fields and never once did he beat or even shout at me.” Four years into their marriage, Do’s husband died from kidney disease. She was left with a three-year-old daughter, a half-built house and the bank pestering her for a debt repayment she couldn’t afford. “After my husband’s death his parents decided that they wanted to bring up my daughter on their own terms. They refused to let me take her back to my parents’ house.” Determined to become financially independent so she could look after her child, Do took a job in a nearby wood factory which paid 2,000,000 dong ($100) a month. After four months though, she fell sick and they fired her. She moved back into her parents’ home to work the field but, unable to save any money, she found herself separated from her daughter. It was at Tet, the Vietnamese New Year, when her cousin came back to visit from the provincial capital of Lao Cai, where he had moved to find work. “It was a terrible time for me as I couldn’t afford anything for the celebration. When my cousin came things changed. He was very sympathetic and he gave me 15,000,000 dong ($750) to help look after my child.” Inspired by his lifestyle, Do had been toying with the idea of emigrating when her cousin returned again and offered her a job as a shop assistant in Lao Cai. The only catch was that they had to leave immediately. “He told me that we had 15 minutes to leave. I had to come with him in secret without asking my parents’ permission. I agreed, taking nothing with me but a few clothes.” Arriving at the outskirts of Lao Cai they met with three Chinese men. Do was ordered to go with them. “Not knowing where or why, I refused. He [my Cousin] told me that if I didn’t
go, he would kill me and throw me into the river before returning to my village to kill my family. Of course I had to go with him.” From then on Do was treated like an illicit commodity. She was carted around, repeatedly moved from broker to broker, stored in small huts and put on sale at various markets. Every time she acted out, she was beaten back into submission. Eventually a 27-year-old Chinese man chose her for his wife. Three months later, Chinese police brought her home. In good health and still of stable mind, she is one of the luckiest.
Family ties It is estimated that in Vietnam more than 50% of victims are tricked into being trafficked by friends, relatives or neighbours, mostly promising work and a better lifestyle. They will make about $100 for the trade of a single woman. Despite the high risk nature of such a crime, the majority of perpetrators go unpunished. Most victims don’t go to police, afraid of the social stigma and aware that their testimony alone is often insufficient grounds for a prosecution. “In Vietnam the culture deems anyone who has been trafficked guilty,” Do said. “When I returned, I felt like it was me who had committed a crime.” Returning home to shame, alienation and insufficient legal support, female victims often find themselves living alone and in poverty, struggling within the margins of a society that emphasises the collective and abandons the individual. “When girls come back to a family that rejects them and a society that judges them unclean it has both personal and practical consequences,” said Thuy. “They often lose faith in themselves and in need of money they fall into crime, most commonly trafficking.” The United Nations estimates that as many as 70% of traffickers are women and that the majority of these are former victims. Even for those who don’t go into
the trafficking industry, social stigma normally stops them talking about their experience and raising the awareness that is so crucial in ending the trade.
Power of the mind After six months at the Peace House shelter, Do is considering leaving to rebuild her life on her own. Taking a break from her tailoring class to give the interview, she sits cross legged over a cup of tea on the floor of her shared bedroom. “The people here are my family now, and the saddest thing is seeing them go.” The residents usually leave after about a year, normally having learnt enough skills to find a new line of work. More importantly, they leave with the confidence to rejoin the world on their own terms, no longer a victim to anyone, least of all their own conscience. “I have learnt that I have nothing to feel guilty about. I am the victim, not the criminal. Now I know this I feel happy and positive about the future.” ¡
Side by side: Vietnamese and Chinese border guards at a joint anti-trafficking campaign
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COMMENT
Let burma be burma The subtleties of language in `Myanmar’ betray deeper political connotations
Sebastian Strangio, a freelance journalist based in Phnom Penh
In practice, however, the term `Myanmar' is also freighted with dubious political baggage
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attempt to erode assertions of ethnic identity. ‘Burma’, incidentally, was deemed suitable for the country’s early anti-colonial nationalists, who in the 1930s founded the Dohbama Asiayone (We Burmese) association. When you consider ‘Myanmar’ has been the Burmese-language name for the country since its independence in 1948, you begin to sense the childishness of the insistence that it be used in English as well. Writing of the renaming of Bombay to Mumbai in 1995, the Indian writer Shashi Tharoor noted similarly that its name was already ‘Mumbai’ in Marathi. “What has been gained by insisting on its adoption in English,” he asked, “aside from a nativist reassertion than benefits only sign painters and letter-head printers?” What indeed. English-speaking Burmese also tend to shift effortlessly from ‘Burma’ to ‘Myanmar’, just as Chinese use both ‘China’ and ‘Zhongguo’. When in Burma, of course, I often find it polite to say ‘Myanmar’. But this is not the point. If Burma’s government wants its democratic credentials to be taken seriously, it should drop its petulant insistence that English writers abandon a term that not only fits snugly into our language – compare the adjective ‘Burmese’ with the clumsy ‘Myanmar’ or ‘Myanmarese’ – but also possesses 150 years of cultural and historical significance. The legacy of British colonialism is indeed inscribed in this term, but so is the Burmese opposition to it, as well as the later democratic opposition to military rule. At best, acquiescing to the 1989 name changes will make no difference; at worst, we risk carrying water for two decades of military chauvinism and ethnic repression. As Shakespeare’s Juliet famously observed of roses, it’s not the name that matters. It’s the smell. ¡
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o, you’re about to jet off to Burma. Or is it Myanmar? The nation made famous to English-speakers by Kipling and Orwell was officially renamed by the junta in 1989, a move that has posed writers with a thorny dilemma. For years, the country’s pro-democracy activists, and Western governments and media outlets, opted for ‘Burma’ – a gesture of opposition to military dictatorship. Following a year of unprecedented political reforms in Burma, however, many are now making the switch. In January, US Senator John McCain publicly referred to the country as ‘Myanmar’, breaking with official US policy. Leading publications, including the Bangkok Post and London’s Financial Times, have now done the same. The FT noted in a recent editorial that “Myanmar” was adopted “on the grounds of neutrality” and because it “smacks less of domination by a majority ethnic group”. This line of thinking suggests ‘Myanmar’ is more ‘inclusive’ for a nation where around a third of the population are ethnic minorities. But this about-face betrays a basic misunderstanding of Burmese language and history. As Burma expert Bertil Lintner points out, the two names are basically synonymous, and are used in Burmese to refer to the country’s majority ethnic group, the Bama or Myanma. In practice, however, the term ‘Myanmar’ is also freighted with dubious political baggage. The junta ostensibly abandoned ‘Burma’ because of its colonial connotations, but there’s another form of ‘colonialism’ the government is less willing to credit: its own repression of Burma’s ethnic minority peoples. In addition to creating ‘Myanmar’ and ‘Yangon’, the 1989 name changes also ‘Myanmarified’ many minority place names, purging them of local meaning, a covert
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money talk
ThaIland
MyanMar
Flood fallout
Setting the kyat straight
I
nsurance companies are still feeling the heat from last year’s devasting floods. According to the latest assessment by Standard & Poor’s rating agency, the current gross losses for insurers stands at
between $16 billion and $18 billion, a much higher number than early indicators suggested. In response, both the manufacturing sector and the authorities have taken action in an attempt to minimise
of bulls and bears: power play Investment firm Trinity is raising a $30m fund aimed at reaping returns by taking over distressed businesses in Southeast Asia and selling their fixed assets for a gain. Trinity aims for a return of 15-20% and will first look for opportunities in Vietnam’s depressed property market as well as in Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand. Qantas halted talks to create a muchneeded joint venture Asian airline with competitor Malaysia Airlines. The in-crisis Australian carrier is trying to restructure its international network and reposition itself within the industry’s fastest growing region while Malaysian is in trouble after posting an $836m loss last year.
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the risk of flood-related disruptions in the future. Several carmakers have temporarily shifted their sourcing to lower risk areas within the country or are planning to develop other locations for
In brIef Expat managers have been barred from 19 posts in wholly Indonesianowned companies to favour the transfer of knowledge to Indonesian staff and give natives more chances in the jobs market following new rules edicted by the manpower ministry.
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province are set to lodge a complaint to suspend the construction of antiflood dykes, arguing the barriers will result in damage to nearby homes during future floods. The case has forced Yingluck Shinawatra to take a public stand. The prime minister, who last month paid a visit to Japan to reassure investors that is preparing itself against floods, explained the barrier policy was a short-term solution to keep investors happy. Yingluck said the government doesn’t “want to keep everyone on edge” by not implementing the barrier policy while a long-term solution is being found. ¡
yanmar is to introduce a unified foreign exchange rate aimed at totally eliminating the informal currency market. The decision marks the most substantial economic reform yet by Myanmar’s new government. The official foreign exchange rate against the US dollar is set at around six kyat, while on the streets, one could fetch between 780 and 1,100 kyat in recent years. The government has calculated the national budget for the fiscal year from April 1 using an exchange rate of 800 kyat. Following advice given by the International Monetary Fund, the central bank has implemented an auction system. Every day, 11 authorised private banks are invited to make sealed bids for a certain amount of US dollars. ¡
All bets are on
V
ietnam plans to legalise sports betting, according to its ministry of finance. The initiative is inspired by Singapore’s successful gambling industry and is intended to limit the social damage caused by underground gambling syndicates. Only foreign-passport holders can access the handful of casinos in the country, so many Vietnamese regularly cross the border to play at Cambodian casinos. ¡
number crunch
Business events in aPriL
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The number of Asean citizens who made the 2012 Forbes billionaire list, the US magazine’s annual survey of the world’s richest people. The highest concentration of billionaires is in Indonesia, with 17 billionaires, followed by Malaysia (9), Singapore (5) and Thailand (5). At the top of the Asean money pile is Malaysia’s Robert Kuok, who made his fortune in sugar, palm oil, shipping and property. Estimated to be worth $12.4 billion, Kuok ranks 64th in Forbes’ worldwide table.
Hanoi, 04-07 international trade fair PHnoM PenH, 06-08 iCt World expo Photos: Sukree Sukplang/Reuters (1)
Keep out: a wall is built at Rojana industrial park as a protective measure against flooding
alternative sourcing. Some manufacturers are helping suppliers rehabilitate their facilities and restart production. The government is adjusting its watermanagement plan to keep water levels behind dams artificially low. It has also established an ambitious $157m plan to build protective walls around the six low-lying governmentrun industrial parks located in the north of Bangkok, which serve as Thailand’s manufacturing hub. The project is not without controversy, however. The Stop Global Warming Association and residents of Ayutthaya
SingaPore 25-27 Cards & payments asia
Check out our website for more events in Southeast Asia: www.sea-globe.com
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By Philippe Beco
C
autiously optimistic” is a term often used by companies to describe their hopes for a market that is heading in the right direction, but where the road to success remains bumpy. It is a term that will likely pop up ad infinitum at the next ICT World Expo, due to take place in Phnom Penh from April 6 to 8. With a growing urban population keen to utilise the web and access new content, alongside the growing economic development of the country, it might seem that Cambodia is an ideal playground for ICT companies to set long-term plans and experiment with marketing strategies.
CAMBODIA
mega bites Despite the internet sector’s struggle for profitability, established players and newcomers are enjoying healthy competition
Photos: Ryan Plummer for SEA Globe (1)
The broadband industry as a whole will be worth $1.5 billion by 2015
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“Fixed line and 3G internet users certainly number in the hundreds of thousands. However, there is plenty of room to grow – we anticipate growth of 200% year on year over the next five years,” says Paul Blanche Hogan, CEO of Ezecom, one of Cambodia’s major Internet Service Providers (ISPs). He also expects that the broadband industry as a whole will be worth $1.5 billion by 2015. Despite such encouraging prospects, the Cambodian ISP sector remains a difficult world in which to survive. Last December, Clicknet was the latest in a series of players to suddenly shut down due to bankruptcy. According to Blanche Hogan, there are currently 20 active ISPs, of which very few are profitable. “Because of the small penetration of computers, smartphone has become the device of choice to access the internet,” explains Thomas Hundt, the CEO of Smart Mobile. Since the launch of their 3G network in July 2001, the company has seen the data volume it
carries increase more than twenty-fold. Hundt believes this surge is largely due to technology improvements. In a low-revenue country such as Cambodia, affordability is crucial to attracting new users. “We offer 100 megabytes per day for 10 cents, meaning three gigabytes costs $3 a month – which is enough for many users just browsing their Facebook page or their news page. There is no comparison with the rates for fixed-line internet,” Hundt says. However, he points out that telcos and fixed-line ISPs are battling on different fields. “In Cambodia, the two markets are not really competing as we see it. They are complementary. The typical user of an ISP is different to the typical user of mobile internet,” he says, adding that mobile technology platforms have certain technical limitations. Blanche Hogan confirms: “It is important to remember that 3G and 4G will not be used for everything. At home and in the office, customers will continue to require fixed-line services and the reliability and capacity this provides,” he says. The profitability problem for Cambodian ISPs is therefore not so much due to competition from telcos but rather the limited size of its original market, combined with heavy costs that negatively affect financial margins. Contrary to more developed countries, Cambodia lacks the basic infrastructure that allows the cheap deployment of fixed lines across the country. “For an ISP, reaching out to the provinces means a very big investment that you have to be able to cope with. It might be feasible in the very long term but in the short or medium term, the business case doesn’t look brilliant,” Hundt says. This cost issue places constraints on ISPs, who have little choice but to limit their network to the places with a concentration of viable customers – chiefly large cities. Places like Phnom q Sea GLOBe
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it shared in order to save money. Our company will be doing truly one-to-one. What we are getting from the upstream provider is what the end user is going to be getting,” he says, adding that the firm’s current provider is confidential, while the ISP is still negotiating its future supply. Mega, whose fibre-optic network runs throughout all major cities in Cambodia, and who will offer a dedicated 1mb connection for $168 a month, has set ambitious goals. “In the next 12 months we will solely focus on the SME [small and
For an ISP, reaching out to the provinces means a very big investment that you have to be able to cope with
“e-commerce will start, stimulating the digital economy” Pily wong presents the numerous benefits of universal internet access in Cambodia.
Member of Comin Asia Group
POWER & ENERGY ENGINEERING AIR CONDITIONING & REFRIGERATION WATER & FIRE FIGHTING
The number of entrepreneurs would increase, as the general population would get ideas on what products to import and new services to offer. n Products sold in Cambodia would become cheaper and increase in quality as businessmen would have a wider network to source better products at better prices. n Exporters would enjoy better margins and become more competitive, as they could easily check actual market prices. n When the number of potential customers reaches a certain level, e-commerce will start in Cambodia, stimulating the digital economy. n Many new jobs for qualified candidates would be created – providing the workforce with greater choice professionally. n More Cambodian internet content will be developed as it would finally make commercial sense. This would help preserve Cambodian culture and see off the invasion of digital culture from other developed countries. n
SECURITY, AUTOMATION & COMMUNICATION
Photos: Philippe Beco (2), Vinh Dao, both for SEA Globe
Thomas Hundt, CEO Smart Mobile
medium enterprises] market in order to prove ourselves in that space,” Weed says. “In terms of market share we’ll be very aggressive. We are shooting for 40% in 2012 and in three years we are looking to get near 100% [of the SME market]. I understand the battle we’re fighting but we are coming with something new in terms of service and pricing. We’ll see how the market reacts. It should be very interesting.” ¡
ar anm My
Ready to go: Spencer Weed, CEO of Mega, has big ambitions for the new ISP in Cambodia
Penh and Siem Reap have become a hotbed of intense competition. This multi-faceted quest for profitability has a predictable impact on prices offered to customers. A corporate 3mbps connection is billed at about $500 a month – far higher than in neighbouring countries. Pily Wong, president of the Information and Communication Technology Business Association of Cambodia, says that this makes the Kingdom a less competitive investment destination for any business that relies heavily on affordable connectivity. In search of new revenue, some ISPs have now launched cloud-computing and co-location services through which companies can outsource the management of their data and servers. Wong believes this kind of service is very appropriate for the Cambodian market. “IT maintenance is a real problem here because the dusty air makes machines very sensitive. There are also IT security issues and a lack of skilled maintenance technicians. By entrusting everything to data centres managed by ISPs, corporates don’t have to look after their server any more and can offload a big risk,” he says. That same corporate market is at the heart of new ISP Mega’s strategy. With initial capital of $2.5m coming from a group of private investors from the United States, Mega is clearly targeting what is likely to be the more profitable segment of the Cambodian market. The company will use GPON technology, a standard that is already used by others in the country, but seeks to differentiate itself from the competition in other ways. Spencer Weed, Mega’s young CEO, is betting on the quality of service and innovative products that the ISP promises to bring to the Cambodian market. “We understand this is a saturated space, a very competitive market,” he says. “But the service we are going to be selling will be pure dedicated access. Other companies… purchase a certain amount of bandwidth from their upstream provider and are able to slice it and dice it and use
• Turn-Key Projects • Service & Maintenance Pily Wong is president of the Information and Communication Technology Business Association of Cambodia (ICTBA)
• Equipment Supply • Total Facilities Management with PHNOM PENH OFFICE 8b, Down Town Road N°7, P.O. Box 28 Tel: (855) 23 885 640 - 6 Fax: (855) 23 885 651 E-mail: ckinfo@comin.com.kh www.cominkhmere.com
CURRENT IN NUMBERS AFFAIRS
S Internet users per 100 InhabItants
COMMUNICATIONS
S Internet censorshIp The censorship score (100 being the least free) is based on three indicators:
the social network
74.4
obstacles to access, limits on content and violation of user rights
56.3
Disparities in internet access remain high in the region, but its online population is breeding rapidly
47.6
34.7
29.1
27.2
Vietnam Europe
T
here is no denying it, internet use in Southeast Asia is booming. While countries such as Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore have long enjoyed high internet penetration, the region’s emerging digital economies have undergone a seismic shift in the numbers of users. Between 2006 and 2010, the netizen population of Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines grew three times over, while those in Vietnam and Indonesia
swelled to double their size. However, while the region has been quick to embrace the online revolution, data collectors lag behind. Though up-todate information on internet populations is limited, data on smartphone shipments and mobile broadband subscriptions isn’t, with results showing the revolution isn’t over yet. Smartphone sales in Southeast Asia recorded a 120% increase (4.7m units) in 2011, with phones set to supplant PCs as the
primary internet access points soon. While accessing information and social networks may rank among the priorities of Southeast Asian users, regional governments may not share the same enthusiasm. As connectivity increases, so does state control, charges of lèsemajesté, and the suppression of opposition activities and independent news reporting. Let’s hope the expansion of broadband will encourage a larger platform for freedom of speech. ¡
Americas
Central Asia
World
Arab States
Asia & Pacific
Source: International Telecommunications Union, 2011 – estimate
S ICT ChampIons
S TIme spenT onlIne – average user per week
22 hours
20 hours
17 hours
16 hours
14 hours
Singapore
Philippines
Malaysia
Thailand
Vietnam
Indonesia
10
Developing countries average
1
Singapore
19
Brunei
43
Malaysia
58
2,602,880
2008
Source: Nielsen, 2011
Fixed-broadband prices as a percentage of GNI per capita Laos
12,365,780
S Internet users In 2010
In the third quarter of 2011, smartphone penetration surpassed 29% globally
190.5%
Cambodia
92.5%
92
Philippines
12.8%
Indonesia
101
Indonesia
12.6%
Brunei
Malaysia
50%
56.3%
Vietnam
63%
51%
Europe
North America
19%
Asia-Pacific
18%
152
17%
Latin America
Africa and Middle East
Thailand
6%
Malaysia
3.3%
Brunei
2.3%
Singapore Source: International Telecommunications Union, 2011
Vietnam
Percentage of population using internet in 2010
S smarTphone peneTraTIon
Philippines
Sea GLOBe
2010
S Internet affordabIlIty
13.5%
48 April 2012
2009
Thailand
155,680
Source: socialbakers.com – 7/3/2012
Vietnam
Chad
Philippines
Source: International Telecommunications Union, 2011
89
121
Malaysia
43,523,740
27,720,300
Thailand
Laos
Laos
Singapore
81
117
Indonesia
6
Vietnam
Cambodia
Cambodia
491,480 104,503,100
Thailand
rank
Rep. Korea
234,060
14,235,700
Cambodia
8
Thailand
Brunei Vietnam
12
0
25 hours
3,173,480
per 100 InhabItants, 2008-2010 14
Myanmar
Source: Freedom House, 2011
S mobIle-broadband subscrIptIons
2
Ranking based on the ICT development index
Africa
S facebook members In asean
4
score
61
12.8
By Frédéric Janssens
Country
88
73
Source: VisionMobile, 2011
0.9%
Source: International Telecommunications Union, 2011
27.6%
Singapore
71%
Philippines
25%
Thailand
21.2%
Cambodia
1.3%
Indonesia
9.9%
Laos
7%
Source: International Telecommunications Union and World Bank
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SPOTLIGHT
CAMBODIA
building a bourse
Tong Yang Securities’ managing director Kyung Tae Han explains the driving forces behind the Kingdom’s first stock listing
By Philippe Beco
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than in Laos, where trading kicked off more than a year ago. However, he is quick to agree that building a trading house of international standards was no easy feat. Leaning on its vast experience as one of Korea’s largest investment banks, Tong Yang identified education – for both officials and the public – as an important area of focus and established a healthy relationship with the nascent regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission of Cambodia (SECC). “I wouldn’t say we advised or taught them but we constantly exchanged ideas
Regional investors could push the stocks up to impressive highs in the opening days and discussed – and sometimes debated – some particular regulations with them, based on the bank’s experience of market practices,” Han says. “It was part of an effort to introduce the global standards of IPO process to the country.” While it is common to only involve institutional investors in book building, in the case of Cambodia’s first IPO,
Open arms: Kyung Tae Han of Tong Yang Securities says Cambodia’s second Cambodian IPO is due to take place later this year
the regulator has ruled any individual is also entitled to make orders in a bid to ensure equal access for all investors. “The book building here is more like a pre-marketing phase where investors put their bid amount and bid a price that must be within a price range that we have determined. Based on these offers, we will then set up the final price,” Han says. “The actual subscription should follow about a month later.” While Cambodia’s stock exchange rules mimic the highest international benchmarks in advanced financial markets, Han stresses local regulations may change to ease future IPOs. “We have to find a middle way between high
Photo: Sam Jam for SEA Globe
F
ive-and-a-half years is a long time in the world of modern finance, where billions of dollars of stocks and bonds are traded in the twinkling of an eye. Yet that is how long it took the Cambodian stock exchange to open its doors for business. And it is a journey that Korean underwriter Tong Yang Securities has been a part of since the get-go. “We opened our representative office in 2006,” says Kyung Tae Han, Tong Yang Cambodia’s managing director. “We were the only investment bank in Cambodia at that time.” Responsible for the listing of the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA), the Kingdom’s first Initial Public Offering (IPO), due to be finalised in the coming weeks, the bank was in charge of purchasing all of the issuer’s securities, informing potential investors of the company’s prospects, advising on stock pricing and reselling securities. However, such groundwork necessitated the investment of time and expertise. “We have been taking a bit more time than people might have expected because we and the government wanted to make sure everything was well in place before the launch of the capital market,” Han says, adding the foundations of the stock exchange are more stable in Cambodia
standards, accepted market practices and the Cambodian reality,” he says. While PPWSA hopes to raise about $20.4m through the 15% of its shares on the market, Han acknowledges this figure is too small to attract the attention of global investors. However, enthusiastic regional investors could push the stocks up to impressive highs in the opening days, with successive plunges and climbs. “Volatility happened in the Laos market at the beginning. The same could happen here. It will clearly take some times to stabilise the market,” he says. “The free float [the part of a company’s shares that is traded] is very small,
which may also make it difficult for investors to exit,” Han says, pointing out similar situations occurred in other launch markets. This so-called liquidity issue happens when all the shares are acquired in big quantities by a small number of investors. As not enough shares are in circulation, any investor that sells his part will create an oversupply that would devalue his stocks, making the deal much less appealing. However, such issues didn’t prevent success during the IPO’s first phase, which ended in mid-March. “The response we have received so far from institutional investors and the interest from the wider public has exceeded our expectations.
The roadshows were very successful. We expected 200 people to attend and we actually doubled this number,” Han says. “To my knowledge, in the history of capital markets across the globe, the first companies to go public have always been the best state-owned companies. That is also the case here,” he explains when asked why the government identified the PPWSA as the first company to be listed. “It is in very good shape, well managed, profitable and has high potential to grow. It’s both a very stable and growth investment. And this may be the last opportunity to invest in a proper water supply company within a frontier market.” ¡ Sea GLOBe
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CAMBODIA
The pooresT man Meet Van Chhuon, who worked covertly against the Khmer Rouge to save the lives of his community
Text & Photos by Dave Walker and Sonny Chhoun
T
he dogs always knew when people were being killed,” explains Van Chhuon. “They would howl to each other, from village to village, a very spooky howl, unlike anything I ever heard before. I believe the dogs saw people’s ghosts. In Khmer we say, chakai lou.” Van Chhuon, 64, is a former Khmer Rouge village chief, yet the reverence with which he is treated is at odds with the usual perception of the regime. In the village of Kuok Snuol, close to Siem Reap airport, small groups of elders
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gather to greet him. Their respect for him is genuine, and moving. Some still call him may (boss). They have never forgotten how Van Chhuon saved this small village of about 100 families during the Pol Pot regime’s bloodiest purges. In 1970, like many peasants, Van Chhuon worked as a rice farmer and builder. He knew many of the Khmer Rouge guerrillas – local boys, recruited from the surrounding villages. As the war escalated, so did American B-52 bombing missions. Yet the havoc resulted in Van Chhuon meeting
his future wife, Yim Hoy, who had fled the shelling in her own village. Fighting drove the young couple from village to village, where they would hide in bomb craters, often having to supplement their diet with frogs, insects and lizards. Several times, Van Chhuon was forced by guerrillas to dig graves, and to carry the dead and wounded. In 1974, in the village of Dumbrai Goan, Yim Hoy gave birth to a son, Chen Heng, in a makeshift hut. But the following year, the Khmer Rouge took control of the country and began organising the villages into communes, called sangkats. Sangkat Siem Reap had 10 villages, each with a village chief. Van Chhuon was settled into the village of Kuok Snuol, where he took on the perfunctory role of scaring birds away from rice fields, while his wife served food in the communal kitchen. “The people requested that I work there because I always gave out fair portions,” she explains. “The Khmer Rouge did not allow anyone to possess rice, and hiding food was punishable by death. Sometimes we’d see arrested people being taken to the commune office. From there, they’d go to the old French prison in Siem Reap.” In September 1977, the Khmer Rouge regime turned on itself with q
One man standing: Van Chhuon stands in front of the Paradise Eco Resort, the location of the former Khmer Rouge office in Teuk Vil
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CURRENT AFFAIRS SOCIETY
Thankful: Ta Kuol (left) is grateful that Van Chhuon saved his brother’s life
increasing ferocity. Troops from Takeo province arrived and arrested the existing soldiers, village and commune chiefs, who were thrown into trucks and taken away to be killed. The new administration wanted new leaders, and only from the purest of the base people. Van Chhuon fit the bill, after the residents of Kuok Snuol identified him as the poorest man in the village. The Khmer Rouge appointed him village chief and his first job was to bring the former commune chief, Ta Khan, for a meeting at the commune office. “When I saw the soldiers, I knew they were going to kill him. There was nothing I could do,” remembers Van Chhuon. Obsessed with internal enemies, this aggressive new Khmer Rouge administration ordered village chiefs to report anyone suspected of disloyalty, hiding food or being pro-Vietnamese. Some chiefs reported people out of fear; if they didn’t find enemies, the regime 56 April 2012
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might suspect them. In the neighbouring village of Wat Svay, over 80 people were executed. “Their chief was not a bad man,” says Van Chhuon. “He was just easily led.” As village chief, Van Chhuon suddenly had the power over life and death thrust into his hands. Defying the Khmer Rouge for two brutal years, Van Chhuon ensured his villagers hid extra rice in the small amount of gruel they were allowed, and stashed any excess food outside their home. “Khmer Rouge spies would search houses while people were out working,” he says. “I knew if one of my villagers was arrested, they would be tortured into giving information, then more people would be arrested. They might also tell them we were hiding food, and then I would be arrested with my family.” His wife, Yim Hoy, recalls living “in constant fear. Every time my husband was called to a Khmer Rouge meeting, I never knew if he would come home, especially
Reverence: current Kuok Snuol village chief Nai Kong (right) is indebted to Van Chhuon, who helped free him from prison
When the Khmer Rouge came to arrest a villager, Van Chhuon risked his own life by lying if they came at night. Four times I thought I would never see him again.” To avoid suspicion, Van Chhuon kept up appearances. “I would tell my villagers that if they stole a potato, I would bury them in the potato field. Or if they stole a banana, they would be buried under the banana tree. I had to be a good actor.” One villager, Ta Kuol, 65, recalls how Van Chhuon’s diplomacy saved his brother’s life after he had become embroiled in a number of sexual relationships with local women. “My brother knew he would be
killed, so he climbed to the top of a palm tree, threatening suicide. We talked him down and went to see Van Chhuon. At a meeting, it was decided that no report would go to the commune office, because [my brother] would have been killed.” Another Kuok Snuol resident, Nam Van, 57, also remembers the liberal hand with which Van Chhuon ruled the village. “My job was to mill rice. Van Chhuon was always kind, and never reported anyone to the authorities. [Contrary to Khmer Rouge policy] marriages were never forced; both parents would agree to it and then the couples would be married at a village meeting.” When the Khmer Rouge came to arrest a villager, Van Chhuon risked his own life by lying. His usual smokescreen involved telling soldiers the person had already been taken, or that nobody by that name lived there. When fellow villager Nai Kong, now 58, was arrested for complaining about
the regime, he was taken to Siem Reap prison. Showing his many scars from that time, he recalls “there were 40 prisoners in one room, all shackled together. There was one cup of rice for all 40 people. I saw many people die, and thought I would die too.” Van Chhuon’s remit did not extend to the protection of prisoners, but he persistently argued for Nai Kong’s life. After two months of negotiation, he was granted permission to collect him. “When I saw Van Chhuon, I couldn’t believe it. He assigned a villager to take care of me. Today, I am alive because of Van Chhuon,” says Nai Kong, who has since become Kuok Snuol’s village chief himself. Another villager, named Heng, was also keen to share his story: “The village teacher lived here the whole time and Van Chhuon kept the teacher’s identity secret. Later, when the Khmer Rouge came for me, he sent me out to grow
vegetables. They never found me. Van Chhuon saved my life, and many others.” But when Vietnamese tanks rolled into town in 1979, signalling the beginning of the end for the Khmer Rouge regime, it was time for Van Chhuon to preserve his own life. “I ran into the jungle to hide,” he remembers. “People were taking revenge on the Khmer Rouge. Some village chiefs were hacked to pieces with machetes. Later, some elders came and convinced me to return. I did so but left Kuok Snuol after the rice harvest.” Years later, in 1992, Van Chhuon requested the help of two men to build a house in Siem Reap. A few days later, 45 villagers showed up. It was a showing of respect for a man who, in his time as a village chief during the Khmer Rouge period, lost only one person. That was Ta Khan, the former commune chief who was murdered on Van Chhuon’s first day in his new role. Says Van Chhuon: “I still regret his death to this day.” ¡ Sea GLOBe
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CURRENT AFFAIRS SOCIETY
WORLD WAR TWO
The darkesT hour
The fall of Singapore was more than just the largest capitulation in British military history; it sparked a region-wide nationalist movement that marked the beginning of the end for British imperial power in the Far East
By Mark Fenn
Resting place: more than 4,400 Allied soldiers, who died between 1942 and 1945, are buried in Singapore’s Kranji War Cemetery
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Photos: Mark Fenn
D
escribed by Britain’s wartime prime minister Winston Churchill as the “worst disaster and biggest capitulation in British history”, this year marks the 70th anniversary of British forces’ unconditional surrender to the Japanese in Singapore. In a spectacular fall from power, the ‘great’ British military in Singapore
was brought to its knees in early 1942 largely thanks to the incompetence and hubris of its commanders, as well as the efforts of a determined, resourceful and ruthless invader. The surrender of about 80,000 British, Indian and Australian troops in this corner of the British Empire in Asia was a coup for the 65,000strong Japanese contingent, which
had previously captured 50,000 Allied troops in the campaign for Malaya. As prisoners of war, some were imprisoned in camps in Singapore while many were sent to work on the notorious BurmaThailand railway, otherwise known as the ‘Death Railway’. Yet the fall of Singapore was more than just a watershed for the British military; it was an historic moment that q Sea GLOBe
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shattered the myth of white superiority and emboldened nationalist groups throughout Asia, and has continued to shape the political landscape of the region, as well as the thinking of its leaders. “The humiliating defeat of the British at the hands of an Asian power is felt today,” said Dr Kevin Blackburn, an Australian historian at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. “The event was a major watershed that helped produce the independence of Southeast Asia in the post-war world. “For the colonial ruling elite, it was the beginning of three-and-a-half years of degradation that would lead to selfdoubt and a lack of confidence as they were reduced to ‘white coolies’ at the beck and call of the Japanese. The colonial elite lost their self-confidence, and in the eyes of the colonial subjects lost their prestige. The last that the colonial subjects had seen of their white masters was of them fleeing the Japanese. When they returned, the days of empire were clearly numbered.” Before the invasion, ‘Fortress Singapore’ was a vital part of the British Empire and largely considered impregnable. With misplaced confidence, the British presumed an invasion would come by sea – not through the jungles
and mangrove swamps of Malaya – and underestimated Japan’s fighting abilities. This arrogance is perhaps no better evidenced than in the response Singapore governor Sir Shenton gave to news Japanese troops had landed in Malaya in 1941. He reportedly told the garrison commander: “Well, I suppose you’ll shove the little men off.”
The humiliating defeat of the British at the hands of an Asian power is felt today Dr Kevin Blackburn, historian
This complacency continued as the Japanese troops quickly overran Malaya and pushed south. While the innovative troops used bicycles to expedite their advance, killing anyone who stood in their way, cinemas and dance halls in Singapore remained open. “There was golf on the links, bridge and tennis in the clubs,” James Leasor wrote in Singapore: the battle that changed the world. “The
foolhardy optimism scarcely waned as the tide of Japanese murder, rape and devastation moved unchecked down the Malay peninsula.” Isolated, undersupplied and unprepared for jungle warfare, British military chiefs failed to construct the necessary defences in the island’s north. “My advisers ought to have known and I ought to have asked,” Churchill later wrote. “The reason I had not asked was that the possibility of Singapore having no landward defences no more entered my mind than that of a battleship being launched without a bottom.” When Britain realised the danger, it was too late; yet Churchill ordered the impending battle to be fought to the bitter end, with “no thought of saving the troops or sparing the population”. “Commanders and senior officers should die with their troops,” he commanded.“The honour of the British Empire and of the British Army is at stake.” However, honour could only carry the battle-weary Allies, who lacked antipersonnel ammunition, so far. The end, when it came, was quick. As the Japanese broke through the British defences, General Tomoyuki Yamashita offered “in a spirit of chivalry… the honour
walking through history
s
ingapore has rolled out a series of events to mark the 70th anniversary of the Japanese victory. These include exhibitions, the launch of new walking trails and historical markers at World War Two sites, a free ‘Battle For Singapore’ self-guided battlefield app, and even a war-themed model-making competition. The city-state’s National Heritage Board hopes these initiatives will raise public awareness of this poignant time among both locals and visitors. Its
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head, Michael Koh, said it is “committed to telling the Singapore story, of which the battle for Singapore is a very significant chapter”. He added: “We especially want to remember, and learn from, our forefathers’ sheer grit, strength and unity in surviving those hard times.” The themed walking trails are, on average, six to eight kilometres long. Three opened in February, taking in sites such as Bukit Chandu, where the Malay Regiment made its last stand against
the Japanese, and the Johor Battery. Also featured is Changi Museum, which documents the struggles of civilians and prisoners of war at Changi Prison during the occupation. Two more trails will open next year, including an epic 26km walk from the Padang – an open field in downtown Singapore – to Changi. This will follow the route marched by 10,000 Allied prisoners of war following the British surrender. singaporeheritage.org
How the mighty fall: Lieutenant-General A. E. Percival’s (left) surrender to the Japanese is ranked as the low point of British military history
of advising your surrender… From now on, resistance is futile and merely increases the danger to the million civilian inhabitants without good reason, exposing them to infliction of pain by fire and sword.” With the island fortress doomed, the British were defeated. “I felt a mix of emotions; there was some sadness,” said Malay nationalist Mustapha Hussein, who had accompanied the Japanese advance and witnessed the surrender. “I was a Malay privileged to witness a moment of humiliation that befell a world power whose slogans ‘Britannia rules the waves’ and ‘The Empire Where the Sun Never Sets’ had reverberated the world over. This power, once perceived impregnable and invincible, has bowed its head to an Asian race. This was the moment of destruction for the British Empire… [February 15, 1942] was a date I will never forget till my dying breath.”
“It is difficult for those born after 1945 to appreciate the full implications of the British defeat, as they have no memory of the colonial system that the Japanese brought crashing down,” Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of independent Singapore, wrote in The Singapore Story. “The British built up the myth of their inherent superiority so convincingly that most Asiatics thought it hopeless to challenge them. But now one Asiatic race had dared to defy them and smashed that myth.” It also “unleashed both horrendous suffering and exhilarating nationalism”, said Dr Blackburn of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. “The fall of Singapore enabled the Japanese to spread their propaganda of ‘Asia for Asians’. The period was a catalyst for nationalist movements throughout Southeast Asia. The Japanese gave administrative positions to nationalists and trained them in their volunteer armies, which in the case of Indonesia became crucial to resisting the returning
Dutch. However, they also treated the colonial populations brutally. Many became romusha, or coerced labourers working to death on places such as the Burma-Thailand Railway. But even this suffering under the Japanese increased nationalism. Thus when the people of Southeast Asia remember the fall of Singapore and the Japanese occupation, they often remember two things: common suffering, but also the impetus it gave to nationalism.” From Calcutta to Yangon, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Jakarta, Phnom Penh and Hanoi, a new generation of nationalists – hardened and militarised by the war, but with youthful optimism on their side – were inspired by the events of February 15. They drew up bold plans for the post-war world – plans which in a few short years would often come to fruition, though not without upheavals and, in some cases, much bloodshed. Their time, they knew, was about to come. ¡ Sea GLOBe
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MYANMAR
lost in time
Harmonising history with modernity is crucial to preserving Yangon’s stunning architectural past
By Sebastian Strangio
Photo: Chris Davy
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or the discerning visitor to British-ruled Yangon, the capital of what was then called Burma, deciding where to stay was a simple affair. The Strand Hotel, built in 1901 by the Armenian Sarkies Brothers, commanded a proud vista of the city’s waterfront, in the heart of the commercial district. With its marble floors, glasspanelled doors and liveried waiters, the Strand was widely regarded as the “the finest hostelry East of Suez” – a place where the likes of Rudyard Kipling,
George Orwell and Noël Coward sipped gin and rubbed shoulders with the cream of Yangon society. After the onset of military rule, the hotel was nationalised and fell into disrepair, but was rescued in the early 1990s by a $12m-refurbishment that returned it to its original state. Today, the Strand gleams amid the bustle of modern Yangon, a tiny enclave of high-tea hospitality and colonial chic. Across the city, hundreds more colonial-era buildings remain standing, looming out of the dirt and noise q Sea GLOBe
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like proud totems of a bygone era. Unlike many other Southeast Asian cities, where history has been covered with ugly urban sprawl, Myanmar’s decades of isolation have allowed Yangon to preserve a rich bounty of colonial architecture – the largest of any city in Southeast Asia. “Yangon is a city that has been stuck in time,” says Ian Morley, an urban historian at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “It’s been trapped in a bubble.” Today, visitors to Yangon marvel at the crumbling colonial buildings dotted across the downtown, and the small architectural details – the hundreds of spires, domes and towers – that lend the city a satisfying sense of aesthetic unity. But all this might be about to change. While the Strand was thrown a lifeline, many of its colonial siblings are in sorry shape, derelict and on the verge of collapse after years of neglect. And as the country’s isolation draws to an end, bringing an expected influx of foreign investment, Yangon has found itself in the grip of a “culture of demolition” fuelled by spiking real estate prices and the lure of easy profits. “Every year that nothing is done,” 64 April 2012
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Morley says, “there are more and more buildings being lost.” When it was laid out by British planners in 1852, Yangon’s downtown grid stood in stark contrast to the chaotic districts to the north: a cartographic expression, so the British thought, of the order and prosperity of colonial rule. And prosperous the city became: plugged into the Empire’s trade networks, Yangon grew rapidly in the late 19th century, from a population of around 63,000 in the
Visitors marvel at the crumbling colonial buildings dotted across downtown Yangon, and the small architectural details that lend the city a satisfying sense of aesthetic unity
1860s to more than 400,000 by 1931. Many of the city’s neoclassical Beaux Arts masterpieces were erected in the first decades of the 20th century. The best preserved of these are clustered around what was once Fytche Square, now Maha Bandoola Garden: the City Hall, an impressive edifice combining a garden-variety colonial style with Burmese idioms, and the nearby High Court, a crimson-bricked building topped with a six-story clock tower. However, the jewel in the crown of colonial Yangon was – and remains – the Secretariat Building. Occupying an entire city block, this sprawling complex, a riot of turrets, domes and shaded walkways set amid lush tropical gardens, was built in the late 1800s as the seat of the colonial government, an icon of imperial prowess as imposing as anything in London or Calcutta. It was here that General Aung San, the hero of Burmese independence, was assassinated along with most of his senior colleagues on July 19, 1947. After Myanmar gained its independence in 1948, most of these old buildings were used as government offices.
Jewel in the crown: Yangon’s Secretariat, now the Ministers’ Building, has been empty since 2005
Photos: Sebastian Strangio
White house: the recently repainted City Hall is one of the best preserved British colonial-era buildings in Yangon
In 2005, however, when the capital was shifted north to Naypyidaw, the offices were vacated, causing many to fall into further disrepair. The Secretariat has since stood empty, its brickwork discolouring and its windows opening onto musty, unlit passages. Weeds sprout from its towers and turrets, while a clock mounted on the east side of the building came to a stop years ago, frozen at twenty past one. The complex is now only inhabited by a squad of police, who bathe in the old cisterns on the grounds and hang their laundry from the old office windows. In 1999, the Yangon city authorities placed 189 buildings on a heritage list, but preserving old buildings is not the government’s top priority, given the constant challenges of ethnic insurgency, political reform and gradual economic opening. “I think the government has taken a policy to maintain these old buildings, but the main thing is that they don’t have the funding to do these things, and don’t pay attention enough to do this,” says Aung Soe Min, the owner of the Pansodan Gallery in central Yangon. “These buildings are
important for the image of Yangon,” he adds, “because these are the only things that [let you] see how the city experienced different eras.” Another hurdle is popular attitudes. Soe, a Yangon resident, says many of the city’s inhabitants are more focused on development than historical preservation. “Most people, they are really welldressed and they might have a really good hand-phone and good shoes,” he says, as we stroll past the Immigration Building, formerly the Rowe and Co. department store – once one of Asia’s largest. “They’re only thinking about money. They don’t care about anything like this.” This is only compounded by the fact that many of the city’s old apartment blocks have become dangerously unsafe. In March 2010, a 15-year-old girl was killed when an old building collapsed downtown, spurring calls for pre-emptive demolitions. With developers now lining up to develop central Yangon, Morley says it’s hard to be optimistic. The cityscape has already grown taller and more “disjointed” as old buildings have been replaced by skyscrapers, hotels and
apartment blocks, an almost inevitable process that has disfigured cities across the region. “Development will destroy the cultural heritage of the city,” he says, “and the quality that it has today will be replaced by the kind of international face that you find almost anywhere in Southeast Asia.” But if the current reforms bring threats in the form of rampant development, they also offer the hope that rising numbers of foreign visitors will encourage the government to kick-start preservation efforts. Indeed, a number of old buildings downtown have been given facelifts as of late, and the state-run New Light of Myanmar recently opined that “big cities are the image and glory of the nation”. But beyond a few basic repairs and a fresh coat of paint, it’s still uncertain where the fate of Britain’s colonial relics will rate for a country still emerging from a haze of isolation and economic backwardness. “There are changes definitely occurring in Myanmar,” Morley says, “but nobody’s really sure yet where conservation and preservation of buildings fits in with that picture.” ¡ Sea GLOBe
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ENVIRONMENT
high and mighTy The final installment of Southeast Asia Globe’s series on the region’s most endangered flora and fauna
By Laura J. Snook
T
wenty months behind bars: that is the price about to be paid by the perpetrator of one of the world’s most peculiar wildlife crimes. Miami-based taxidermist Enrique Gomez De Molina was sentenced in a Florida court at the beginning of March for creating bizarre works of art using bits of illegally imported endangered species. The doomed creatures – which included birds of paradise, orangutans and pangolins – were dismembered and then stitched back together in the wrong order to make ‘Frankenstein hybrids’ that De Molina sold through art galleries and online for up to $80,000 apiece – which probably says as much about the buyers as it does De Molina. Sadly, such weirdness is far from rare – a fact underlined by the ever-dwindling populations of Southeast Asia’s most exotic fauna and flora. Continuing our homage to the excellent conservation efforts of British author Douglas Adams, this month’s Last Chance To See profiles some of the rarest creatures in the region, brought to you by the people who devote their lives to protecting them – and preventing them from ending up hanging in a frame on some freak’s wall. 66 March 2012
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AmorphophAllus titAnium Freudian flower
i
n the 1880s, when the Italian Count Eduardo Beccari sent Kew Gardens' renowned botanist Joseph Hooker a description of a huge aroid flower he had discovered in Sumatra, no one believed him,” says wildlife photographer and field biologist Jeremy Holden, of Fauna and Flora International. “The plant he described seemed too fantastic to be true. A century and a half later, Amorphophallus titanum (titan arum) is still astounding people, at least those lucky enough to have seen one. Like many obscure tropical plants, until recently it had only a Latin name: Amorphophallus titanium, which translates as ‘titanic misshapen penis’. Sir David Attenborough felt nervous about using the name too often when he filmed the flower for The Private Life of Plants, and in the name of propriety he christened it ‘Titan Arum’. “It’s also known as ‘corpse flower’, and as such was the mascot flower of the Bronx in New York until once again it was deemed unseemly and ditched in favour of something more in line with the Bronx’s revitalised image. Notwithstanding human sensibilities, Amorphophallus is still an offensive thing, despite its preternatural beauty. Standing next to one in the forest is a strange experience: the plant seems unreal. Standing at up to three metres tall on occasion and a dark mysterious red, it appears as if it had fallen off a carnival float into the darkest depths of the rainforest. The observer will also be aware of the nauseating stench the flower emits in its attempt to attract flies and carrion beetles to pollinate itself. Descriptions of this smell vary, but ‘dead fish’ and ‘ammonia’ are often cited. “How to see and experience a flowering Amorphophallus? In the wild this is not easy. It’s endemic to Sumatra and flowers once about every ten years. The flower is open for only a single day. Thankfully, because its natural habitat is now seriously threatened by forest clearance, Amorphophallus has become a big draw in botanical gardens around the world, and it features in many collections. Kew and Berlin botanical gardens have flowers appearing every few years that attract thousands of visitors eager to see what all the fuss is about. If you ever get the chance, don’t miss this one.” q
Photo: Jeremy Holden
NATURE
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Photos: Safique Hazarika (1), Laurent Fevier/AFP (1)
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Australia found that villagers were harvesting more than 95% of all monitored nests. Thus it came as no surprise when wildlife police discovered more than 2,000 “crammed like sardines” into suitcases at an airport in Indonesia earlier this year. The turtles were concealed in plastic containers en route to Jakarta, a major hub for the illicit wildlife trade, many of them destined for the dinner table. “Authorities in Indonesia have all the legal tools at hand to put an end to this trade, yet it appears that protection for the pig-nosed turtle is often on paper only,” says Chris Shepherd, deputy regional director of Traffic. “A few significant seizures have been made in Marauke recently, yet no arrests leading to convictions. Why not? The people involved know full well that what they are doing is illegal. They are criminals, robbing Indonesia and the rest of the world of our wildlife, and need to be punished. Little by little, species by species, they’re dismantling and destroying our ecosystems. Imagine losing a species like the pig-nosed turtle. What an amazing animal.”
Hoolock gibbon: king of the swingers
t
t
he wonderfully named hairy-nosed otter (Lutra sumatrana) was thought to be long-extinct until 1997, when one of the elusive creatures was found killed by a car in the oil-rich kingdom of Brunei on Borneo Island. It was more than a decade later, in 2010, that experts were able to confirm that an image captured by a camera trap the previous year in Malaysia’s Sabah state was in fact a live specimen – the first seen there in more than a century. Once widespread throughout Southeast Asia, the hairy-nosed otter is today one of the rarest otters in the world. As is so often the case, the main culprits are poaching for meat and the traditional medicine market. Its habitat is also shrivelling in size thanks to a fatal combination of pollution and over-zealous fishing. “Asian otters are another group of animals that could do with a bit more awareness, interest and conservation,” says Annette Olson, of Conservation International. “Otters in Asia, particularly the hairy-nosed, have a tendency to be overlooked at the same time as being threatened by hunting for the skin trade, again mainly to China, and degradation of wetlands.” In 2008 Sabah launched a programme to study the state’s carnivores, including otters. The project is being carried out by the Germany-based Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, with help from the local forestry department. Experts said the discovery of the otter in 2010 showed that long-term forest management was pivotal to the “protection of some of this country’s most threatened species and of the unique biodiversity of the forests of Borneo.”
Pig-nosed turtle the missing link? nique among its freshwater brethren, the pig-nosed turtle (Carettochelys insculpta) is a rare creature indeed. As embryos, whether they become male or female is determined by the temperature of the ground in which their eggs are laid, and fully developed embryos have the extraordinary ability to delay their own hatching. This conservation icon also occupies a unique position in the turtle family tree: it’s the sole survivor of a once widespread family called the Carettochelyidae, and is today found only on Papua and in northern Australia. For how much longer has become a matter of growing concern: over the past 30 years, scientists have recorded a steep decline in their numbers. This turtle, which scientists hope might explain how turtles gradually evolved from land-lubbers into seafarers, is on the cusp of being eaten into oblivion. Demand for its meat and eggs mean it is being hunted in ever larger numbers by indigenous peoples. Recent research by the University of Canberra in
Hairy-nosed otter back from the brink
he hoolock gibbon, in its Western and Eastern varieties, is pretty much only found in Myanmar,” says Mark Grindley, a technical adviser with the People Resources Community Foundation, who can occasionally be found prancing about like a monkey to 'educate’ six-year-old Hmong kids about biodiversity. “Gibbons are remarkable animals that to some resemble humans, have complicated social behaviour, and live in some of the last and least disturbed forests in the region. They are all also endangered to some degree, usually by habitat loss (they need continuous forest canopy cover to move around, which makes it essential for their survival), and hunting (they also need not to be shot). “We’ve been studying hoolock gibbons in Myanmar since 2009. Our immediate aim was to establish the conservation status of the species: where it still survives, in what numbers, and under what threats. A secondary goal was to ensure we can prioritise where and how to protect it. Gibbons lend themselves particularly well to this approach because they are readily identified in the forest due to loud morning calls – whoops and other strange sounds that are specific to each species and which can't easily be confused with anything else. The calls also carry for up to a couple of miles.” For two years, PRCF used local knowledge to select 30 sites at which to do a few days of intensive surveys. “We're just writing up the results, which as usual takes 15 times longer than you plan for, and they’re mixed. The Western hoolock is confined to a relatively small range where the forest is patchy and threat from hunting is high, but the Eastern hoolock at least continues to survive and there are a number of areas with good populations and low levels of persecution. Large-scale threats remain the major long-term concern, whether from government policy, corruption or ongoing civil instability. But you have to start somewhere, and it’s important to have grassroots programmes that show how solutions can be found to environmental problems, hopefully empowering people to address problems themselves in the future.” ¡
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CURRENT AFFAIRS SOCIETY
CAMBODIA
no grey area
Worrying tourism practices have taken their toll on the Kingdom’s elephant population, but new initiatives give some hope to the gentle giants’ prospects
Open your eyes: Cambodia’s domestic elephant population is expected to die out in 10 to 20 years
By Annie Eagleton
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elephants, and thus the remaining captive elephants are gradually dying out.” In order to sustain the tourism trekking industry, aging elephants endure wounds, dehydration and malnutrition at the hands of carers who rely on logging and tourism for income. Jemma Bullock from the Elephant Valley Project explains: “If one gets sick or old, there is no real chance for them to rest or retire, as the owners are generally quite poor and have to keep working their elephants.” Experts also warn the price of tourist entertainment is particularly high for the gentle giants, who are not bred to endure heavy loads. “The weight in the same spot everyday pushes down on the endodermis until it is sitting right on the spine… also the ropes and chains cause scarring and abscesses on the flanks from chafing,” Bullock said. In Mondulkiri, access to secluded waterfalls is only an elephant trek away. The province is home to the largest concentration of domestic elephants in Cambodia. It is also the site of one man’s mission to find equilibrium between animal rights and the needs of local Bunong people who claim traditional ownership of the elephants. Jack Highwood first realised the hardship endured by the noble giants while learning mahout skills in Thailand. In 2006 the British expatriate founded the Elephant Livelihood Initiative Environment (Elie), a non-government organisation working
to improve the health and welfare conditions of elephants. With the help of a Cambodian veterinarian and a researcher, Highwood went into the villages armed with medical care and education about compassionate handling. He describes the work as difficult, slow, and in contradiction to the learned behaviour of centuries-old culture. One year into Elie’s fieldwork signs of progress began to appear, but so too did the desperate situation of the impoverished villagers. Jack retells the story of one elephant that had almost completely recovered from an injury caused by trekking. Abysses on the animal’s back were nearly healed when a local family used the elephant for logging, causing its wounds to rupture and resulting in its death. “It was just too late, these people had driven this elephant into the ground and the original family refused to stop the animal trekking, and I said, look, this elephant has to stop working, but they said: ‘No, we need to make money’,” Highwood remembered. The death was enough for Jack to alter the path of his future once again. “I decided, rather than going to the elephants, let’s build a place we can bring elephants to and at the same time try to get some visitors involved and try to generate some income,” he said. Mondulkiri’s Elephant Valley Project was developed in addition to Elie in 2007. In five years Elie’s budget has
increased from $1,000 to $120,000 per annum, largely funded by foreign volunteers who pay to work, live and learn at the sanctuary. Funds raised are used to run the sanctuary, but also to help sustain the local population with medical care, research and legal and technical support. The Valley Project provides a retirement home for old, overworked elephants. Months of negotiations with the Bunong people resulted in an agreement to rent 600 hectares of rainforest land for the sanctuary where nine permanent residents currently bathe, feed and roam in their natural habitat. Compensation of up to $15,600 has been paid to families willing to
Photos: Ants Spratt (1)
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lucked from the jungles of Kampong Speu 44 years ago, Sambo the elephant spent the past 30 years pounding Phnom Penh’s riverside in search of the tourist dollar. Her walk to freedom in January 2012 was welcomed after seven months of petitions advocating for her retirement from the extreme physical toll of carrying the load of an outdated tourism hook. “This is not a natural environment for an elephant. Sambo was walking through heavy traffic and had to cope with constant noise and pollution as well as severely deformed, abscessed feet,” Louise Rogerson from Elephant Asia Rescue and Survival foundation (Ears) said. While advocacy groups drew attention to Sambo’s declining health, the municipality’s tourism department was considering the future livelihood of the elephant’s owner Sin Sorn. An agreed remuneration package secured a comfortable future for both Sambo and Sin Sorn on the edge of the capital, but the settlement echoed trademarks of an industry with an unforeseeable future. Experts predict Cambodia’s current domestic elephant population, which is estimated to number less than 100, will die out in the next 10 to 20 years. Matthew Maltby from Flora and Fauna International explains: “Capture of new animals from the wild is illegal, breeding in captivity is often culturally taboo for the minority groups who traditionally keep
hand over care of their elephant to the project, but the majority of the animals are rented at a yearly price from their owners. In some cases negotiations with the indigenous people have proven to be tedious. It took two years to secure the rental of Ning Wan, an overworked elephant whose ownership is shared between 17 local families. Now, her owners take turns providing a mahout to provide care at the sanctuary for a daily wage of $3.50 – two thirds more than Cambodia’s average national daily wage of just over $2. Although Jack’s primary passion is ensuring the welfare of the elephants,
he has not lost sight of the co-dependency driving the industry. Elie currently employs 29 full-time Bunong staff to help run the organisation. For the indigenous people the work is sustainable, providing the security of long-term employment, independent of seasonal demands. Through his work Jack and his team have managed to find a middle ground for the rights of both man and animal. While the inevitable expiry date for elephant trekking in the Kingdom draws closer, it is evident that the concerted efforts of a few passionate animal advocates are paving the way for a comfortable end. ¡
Forever to serve: in some respects, the role of the Asian elephant has changed little over time
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LIFE
QUOTES
ART
Crazy for you
Come get Sum ªThe fox started circling me and then jumped up... I opened the bag and gave it a garlic loafº
Social satire: bui thanh tam’s “crazy people v” (above) and “welcome to vietnam”
V
ietnam’s recently born class of nouveau riche i=is firmly in the crosshairs of Hanoi artist Bui Thanh Tam’s latest solo exhibition, “Crazy People”, which will run from April 26 through May 17 at the Craig Thomas Gallery in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The Vietnam Fine Arts University graduate takes aim at his subjects’ increasingly bourgeois contemporary lives and contrasts them with his view of a more traditional Vietnamese existence. His oil on canvas works recall period-style photography but are charged with a certain twisted humour. ¡
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enTerTAInmenT
Englishman seb baker, agEd 29 and wEighing 95kg, tElls how hE was ‘muggEd’ by a fox, whEn it followEd him into an allEyway, cornErEd him, and forcEd him to hand ovEr his dinnEr whilE hE walkEd homE from a tEsco supErmarkEt.
ªThe concept is unoriginal, the scenarios aren't funny, and its message is banalº claudia puig of usa today givEs hEr vErdict on a thousand words, thE nEw eddie murphy comEdy. ratEd at 0% onlinE rEviEw aggrEgator, rottEn tomatoEs, somE arE calling it “thE worst rEviEwEd film of all-timE.”
Punk: Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley
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round the turn of the millennium it seemed, for just a short while, that Canadian rockers Sum 41 were the heirs apparent to the pop-punk throne vacated by Green Day. Their debut album, All Killer No Filler,
along with its associated singles, steamrollered them to the tops of charts all over the world. The adulation soon died down, with the band moving in a more serious direction on subsequent records, but they have remained a mainstream concern in the US, Canada and Japan. This month, lead singer, and former spouse of Avril Lavigne, Deryck Whibley, will front the band during shows in Jakarta and Singapore on March 10 and 12 respectively. ¡
Art checks in
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isitors arriving in Phnom Penh by air will be greeted by more than just a sour-faced immigration officer, following the opening at the airport of an art exhibition entitled Contemporary: Traditional: New: Modern: Cambodia. Curated by Phnom Penh’s Romeet Gallery and running
until April 23, the exhibition presents a collection of works by Cambodian artists exploring their country’s cultural lineage. One of the featured artists, Nov Cheanick, says he is excited because “I would like to show people who have just arrived that Cambodia is not only Angkor Wat and the Khmer Rouge – there is contemporary art too.” ¡
number crunch
783,000
The amount, in dollars, that the Black Eyed Peas front man, Will.i.am, will be paid by the BBC to be a judge on the British version of TV talent show The Voice. The fee has been criticised as a waste of licence-payers’ money.
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LIFE
ART
full
France’s graffiti king will be let loose in Cambodia this month. Ten walls in Phnom Penh will never be the same again
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Photos: Julien "Seth" Malland
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LIFE
Seth arrived in Cambodia to do what he does best: turn a dreary building block into a piece of art
Spray on: (clockwise from above) globetrotting graffiti artist Seth has transformed walls in France, Indonesia and Vietnam
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ringing drab concrete walls to life may seem a challenge too far for most mere mortals, but it’s one that Julian ‘Seth’ Malland has happily undertaken. Armed with no more than spray cans and his own imagination, graffiti artist Seth has travelled the world adding splashes of colour, humour and energy to otherwise dour environs in Chile, China, India, Mexico, Palestine, Vietnam and his home country, France, through his monumental personages. And in the year that marks the 500th anniversary of the completion of arguably the world’s most famous fresco, the iconic Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michaelangelo, Seth arrived in Cambodia last month to do what he does best: turn a dreary building block into a piece of art. With Phnom Penh as his canvas, the 40-year-old will paint 10 walls across the capital, including the Institut Français, which invited the street artist to Cambodia as part of its 20th anniversary celebrations. Drawing inspiration from Cambodian culture and life in the country, this is one time it won’t be boring watching paint dry. ¡ On April 4, Seth’s exhibition will open at Romeet Gallery. For more information on Institut Français’ 20-year celebrations, please go to: institutfrancais-cambodge.com Last Question: Olivier Planchon, page 98
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LIFE
By Dene Mullen
ENTERTAINMENT
Tracing the genesis of hip-hop’s original mixologist ahead of his first appearance on Cambodian soil this month
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id-1970s New York. The Bronx is ruled by ruthless street gangs, buildings burn, disorder rules. But once a week the violence stops, the borough coming together in a fragile truce. The reason is music; the legendary block parties of hip-hop progenitors Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa, to be precise. Among the throngs of gangsters, drug dealers and party-goers, a young man named Joseph Saddler looks on, watching the DJs at play. He resolves to do the same, but do it better. The term ‘living legend’ is often bandied around with reckless abandon. But consider the modern-day cult of the DJ. Then consider the fact that Saddler, better known as Grandmaster Flash, invented not only many of the techniques, but also much of the equipment, that a contemporary DJ takes for granted. You know how ‘mixing’ one record into another without losing the beat is pretty much a DJ’s raison d’être? Well, Grandmaster Flash started that. He was also the first DJ to manipulate vinyl in a back and forth motion while it was on the turntable. Nowadays, this is made possible by slipmats, but they didn’t exist in the 1970s. So Flash invented them too: hunting out some felt at a fabric store, rubbing it with spray starch and ironing it into a stiff wafer. Flash can also lay serious claims to being the first DJ to scratch, the first to use a drum loop at a live show, and the first to create a record made entirely of samples. But it took years of experiments and a youth lived out in the basements of friends, and his own bedroom, mercilessly practicing his art, for him to earn the appropriate moniker of Grandmaster. The young Saddler had an unerring interest in the mechanics of electrical goods. His mother, tired of finding household items dismantled, decided to enrol him at Samuel Gompers Technical
School, where his passion could be channelled. But after learning Ohm’s Law, the intricacies of a capacitor and the like, it was music, and its possibilities, that sparked the Flash. He set about finding a way to isolate the choicest cut of a song – be that a drum beat, a bass line, a hook – and repeat it over and over. The realisation had come to him while watching Kool Herc, who had already begun playing fragments of songs rather than the whole. It was Flash who melded them into a seamless flow, but only after using his electronics skills to create new technologies, such as a microphone mixer converted to modulate sound from his turntables, and a cue system that allowed him to pre-hear his mixes in his headphones. This revolutionary way of playing music, however, left many early audiences dumbfounded. Flash has famously said that he “cried for days” after his initial forays into the live arena, but he would soon break new ground again when he realised that an MC was required to complement his beats. Keith ‘Cowboy’ Wiggins was the perfect foil and soon the double act were turning parks all over the city into impromptu parties, often attracting crowds of up to 3,000. Within months, four other MCs joined this group of rapping park rangers. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were born. After becoming a Bronx staple, Flash and his crew signed a deal with Sugar Hill Records as the decade turned, but as hip-hop seeped evermore into popular culture, it was Flash who lost out – mainly due to his record deal. “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, released in 1982, is viewed by many as his peak (closely followed by “White Lines”), but Flash actually had very little to do with the record and didn’t receive a single royalty payment. As the 80s progressed and hip-hop became a mainstream concern, Flash
The masTer Live in se asia
Grandmaster Flash will play Pontoon in Phnom Penh on Wednesday April 25
was left hung, drawn and quartered by his deal with Sugar Hill and he descended on a swift downward spiral, forgotten by many. Soon, the likes of Ice-T and Public Enemy took hip-hop in a new, more confrontational direction, leaving Flash relegated to little more than a footnote to a music he had helped define. It took more than a decade but slowly, surely, as hip-hop turned into a polished caricature of itself, some audiences began yearning for a purer time. A time when disassembling a hairdryer could help create new musical technologies. A time when music was made for love, not for lucre. A time when one young man from the Bronx was able to redefine what it meant to be a DJ. Flash’s resurrection is complete and this month a Cambodian audience will get their first chance to witness his aural alchemy live. Phnom Penh’s Pontoon nightclub has hosted some impressive names in recent years but this will be something different. This time, Cambodia welcomes the original Grandmaster. ¡ Sea GLOBe
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TOP 5
music festivals The region’s biggest and best live experiences
by legendary UK tastemaker John Peel, and the originator of the undoubtedly enjoyable Kwasa Kwasa Dance.
future music festival
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Ladytron: due to appear at Zoukout 2012
zoukout
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ometimes, attending a music festival is more a feat of endurance than a hedonistic chance to suckle at the teat of popular music. And nowhere in Southeast Asia is this truer than at Singapore’s legendary dance music extravaganza. Partygoers rave on from 6pm until 8am the following morning through fair means or foul, with the action centred on the citystate’s Sentosa Beach. Up to 30,000 sweaty revellers, about 40% of them overseas visitors, have been turning out in skimpy, father-enraging outfits every December for over 10 years at one of the few events where Singapore’s cleaner-than-thou mantra is unapologetically shed. ZoukOut’s reputation has grown over the years and the festival is now able to attract the biggest 80 April 2012
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Feel the beat: the Rainforest World Music Festival welcomes acts from all corners of the globe
DJs in the world, with Roger Sanchez, Armin van Buuren, David Guetta and Carl Cox among the headliners in recent years.
PulP summer slam
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osmetics vendors in Manila likely experience a dramatic spike in revenues every April, with sales of eyeliner and black nail polish going stratospheric in preparation for Pulp Summer Slam, the Philippines’ heavy metal fest which takes place at Amoranto Stadium. Tickets are outrageously cheap at about $9 each for a 15-hour event, and the price even includes beer, pizza and mobile phone credit. Chomping down on a Pizza Hut slice might not be the most rock’n’roll behaviour but after discarding the crust, attendees, often
dressed in typically theatrical heavy rock costumes, are invited to join the crowd of 30,000 moshers, battering each other senseless to the likes of Anthrax, Lamb of God, Arch Enemy and a plethora of local rock acts.
rainforest world music festival
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hose in search of a more sedate atmosphere may feel at home at this three-day music festival celebrating the diversity of world music. Held every July in Sarawak, Malaysia, Rainforest features music workshops, crafts displays and performances from an eclectic range of performers. This year’s event will play host to: Le Trio Joubran, a Palestinian four-piece ensemble, all of whom are masters of the oud, a traditional north African stringed instrument; as well as
Tinie Tempah: played at Future in Malaysia
Khusugtun, an ethnic ballad group from Mongolia. It’s not all lentils and beard-stroking, however, with one performer in particular set to bring a bit of bounce to the stage this year. Kanda Bongo Man is a Congolese pioneer of African Soukous music, once championed
The crowd of 30,000 moshers batter each other senseless to the likes of Anthrax, Lambs of God, Arch Enemy and local rock acts
ALL THE NEWS WITHOUT FEAR OR FAVOR
ictoria Bitter, Crocodile Dundee, eating kangaroos. There’s nothing quite like a good Aussie export, and now Malaysia has been given the go-ahead to host yet another – the Future Music Festival. From humble beginnings in Sydney just six years ago, Future has morphed into a dance and electro colossus, striding across the country at various locations and, from last month, into Southeast Asia too. The festival served as the opening event for the F1 Grand Prix, with acts such as the Chemical Brothers, Tinie Tempah, Pendulum and Grandmaster Flash taking to the stage at Sepang International Circuit, just outside of Kuala Lumpur.
java rockin'land
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ho knows when this threeday indie rock spectacular will pop up again? In the last three years, Southeast Asia’s biggest rock festival has been held in August, October and July respectively. An estimated 47,000 attended in 2010, but that was dwarfed by last year’s crowd of 60,000 at the lakeside of Carnaval Beach, Ancol Dreamland, Jakarta. Those numbers are even more impressive considering the festival is just three years old. Java Rockin’land has received praise for its championing of local independent acts but, of course, the crowds turn out for the big names. Names like the Smashing Pumpkins, Wolfmother, 30 Seconds to Mars and the Happy Mondays. ¡
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LIFE
TRAVEL
ROUGHING IT IN
Fishermen still prowl the snow-fed rivers with small spears, and hunters stalk animals using crossbows and poisoned arrows
MYANMAR
Photo: Kyaw Zay Ya
Isolated Kachin State offers the adventure one might expect, but the available creature comforts are far more of a surprise
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Cross training: mountain bikers carry their aluminium steeds across the Namkan River in northern Kachin State
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By Douglas Long
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rare orchids and flowering rhododendron, as well as strange animals like the takin, which the botanist described as “half-goat, half buffalo”. Most visitors, however, never reach the high peaks, which require at least a week of expedition-grade trekking to penetrate. Shorter visits are generally limited to the broad valley south of the mountain range, whose main settlement is Putao at 457 metres above sea level. The town is the gateway to the region, its rudimentary airport served by three turbo-prop flights a week. But even in the valley, with the jagged white mountains shimmering on the
Owned by Tay Za, whose government connections have earned him a place on many international sanctions lists, Malikha Lodge does not come cheaply distant horizon, there is plenty to keep adventurous travellers occupied. The lowlands are ripe for exploration, home to the Lisu, Rawang and Kachin hill tribes that migrated from the Tibetan Plateau more than 400 years ago, as well as the original Hkamti Shan inhabitants who had settled in the area long before. Fishermen still prowl the snowfed rivers with small spears, and hunters stalk animals using crossbows and poisoned arrows. Despite its gateway status, even Putao would be considered ‘out there’ by most travellers – electricity is sparse, telephone landlines are rare, and mobile
service is spotty to nonexistent. The single ‘traffic light’ in town is actually a sign on which green, yellow and red circles have been painted. The town is the home base for Putao Trekking House, the less expensive of the two trekking tour providers in the area. ‘Less expensive’ is a relative term: A five day/four night trekking tour to ethnic Lisu villages in the valley will set travellers back about $900 each. As with all such tours, this excludes airfare from Yangon to Putao, but covers ground transport in jeeps or trucks, homestay accommodation, guides, porters, meals, water and required travel permits from the government. For those determined to make it into the mountains, a demanding 15 day/14 night expedition to the peak of Mt Phongran Razi (4,328 metres), usually covered with snow from November to May, can be enjoyed at a cost of about $2,000 per person. The reward? Full immersion in a pristine, pollution-free environment of sub-tropical lowland forests, deep evergreen woodlands, icy mountain streams and snowy alpine crags. The other main provider of adventure tours is the super-deluxe Malikha Lodge, located about 13 kilometres from Putao near the Lisu village of Mulashidi. Owned by businessman Tay Za, whose government connections have earned him a place on many international sanctions lists, Malikha Lodge does not come cheaply: A single night in one of the spacious, hot-tub-equipped bungalows costs about $600, and with limited flights available visitors must commit to at least two nights. This price excludes airfare, but absolutely everything else is covered: gourmet meals, beverages (10 shots of Blue Label, anyone?) and whatever adventure excursions visitors desire, from elephant rides, to rafting trips on the Namkan and Malikha rivers, to cycling excursions using the q
Slippery when wet: mountain biking along the Namkan River; a guide from Malikha Lodge portages a raft around a bamboo bridge while ethnic Lisu girls cross
Photos: Htein Linn/Douglas Long
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yanmar’s far northern Kachin State is one of those places whose reputation for wildness has achieved nearmythical status, a far-flung, unspoiled Shangri-La that would seem more at home in the pages of a Tintin comic than in the real world. It was here, in the foothills of the Himalayas, that British botanist Frank Kingdon-Ward embarked on 10 epically gruelling expeditions from 1914 to 1956, during which he catalogued dozens of unknown plant species. In the 1990s, American biologist Alan Rabinowitz, dubbed the “Indiana Jones of wildlife conservation” by Time magazine, followed local rumours to a mountain village and found the last 12 surviving Taron, a race of four-foot-tall (1.2 metres) pygmies who had mysteriously decided to stop propagating and will themselves into extinction. And Joe Slowinski, one of the foremost snake specialists in the United States, met his end at the village of Rat Baw, the victim of the bite of a many-banded krait. He had the double misfortune of dying on September 11, 2001, a day when newspapers had bigger events to report than the passing of an American herpetologist. Now a new type of adventurer is descending upon the far north, the sort who comes not to make scientific discoveries but to spend a holiday trekking in the proximity of the eastern Himalayas, which separate Myanmar from India to the northwest, and from China to the northeast. The name ‘Myanmar’ does not usually evoke images of snowcapped mountains, but they’re here in abundance, including 5,889-metre Hkakabo Razi, the highest peak in Southeast Asia. Characterised by Kingdon-Ward as one of the “richest regions” for flora and fauna in the world, the mountains of northern Myanmar are home to a dazzling array of
Community call: novice monks collect alms of rice in the early morning
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Hot to chop: ethnic Hkamti Shan men from the village of Kaung Mu Lon prepare to trek into the forest to gather wood
Endless wait: a sign at the main intersection in Putao – the town’s only ‘traffic light’
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common to see women washing clothes along the river, kids turning over rocks in the shallows in search of edible snails, and men using concave wooden trays to pan for gold. There is also abundant birdlife along the waterway, including crested kingfishers and great cormorants travelling solo, and colourful ducks floating in small groups or flying overhead in tight, arrow-shaped migratory formations. Malikha Lodge employs top adventure guides from Myanmar and Nepal, but they have it pretty easy: With prices so high, most guests are affluent Europeans in their 60s and 70s, who aren’t up for much more than a casual stroll through the countryside before retreating to the comfort of their rooms. Once through the front door they will find that the eerily attentive staff, having calculated the time of return to the minute, will have already built a fire in the wood-burning stove, filled the
hot tub with scalding water and flower petals, and left whiskey sours waiting on the sideboards. Frank Kingdon-Ward never had it so good. ¡ WHEN TO GO: October-April HOW TO GET THERE: Domestic airline Air Bagan makes the four-hour Yangon-Putao flight every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday ($388 return). Overland travel to Putao is not permitted for foreigners. ACCOMMODATION AND TOURS: Packages are offered by Putao Trekking House (putaotrekkinghouse. com) and Malikha Lodge (malikhalodge.net). Reservations should be made at least two weeks in advance to allow time for processing required travel permits.
Photos: Douglas Long
lodge’s fleet of $1,800 mountain bikes. And of course, treks. Visitors to the lodge would do well to take advantage of the opportunity to go rafting, as northern Myanmar is the only place in the country where such trips are offered. The rapids are quite tame, and rafters can expect a few pleasant hours of paddling and drifting on crystal-clear water past open rice fields, groves of bamboo trees and the occasional ethnic village. In the more populated areas it’s
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ROAMING
T
he art of pampering has been perfected in Southeast Asia over many centuries, ensuring a valuable draw card for tourism. Yet for some travellers, lazing on a pristine beach with a piña colada in hand simply will not do. They want more from their holiday – something different, exciting; an experience. Heeding their calls, adventure travel steps outside the mould of the standard holiday itinerary to reveal the region’s trump card. Located on the coast of south central Vietnam is Mui Ne, where sweeping sand dunes meet rows of palm trees. Touted as one of the country’s premier beach resorts, it offers boundless opportunities to unwind, but adrenaline junkies won’t be disappointed. The beach crescent is home to Southeast Asia’s strongest and most consistent cross-onshore winds, providing the region’s most constant conditions for kitesurfing. Described as a combination of wakeboarding, windsurfing and paragliding, kitesurfing has taken water sports to new heights since it was first popularised in 1990. A powerful kite is used to harnesses the strength of the wind, pushing the rider across water on a small board and propelling them into the air at top speeds. Mui Ne offers kitesurfing opportunities for beginners and the advanced, but it is difficult and can be dangerous. Once mastered, however, the sport offers an exhilarating ride. If the thrill of flying isn’t enough to quell the adventurous spirit then canyoning is a must-try. In the Philippines, Cebu Island’s majestic Montaneza Falls offer perfect conditions for travellers willing to take the 30-metre plunge down cliff faces and into the cool depths
of the rock pools below. This activity uses a variety of techniques including walking, scrambling, climbing, jumping, abseiling and swimming. It is both physically and mentally demanding, but perseverence brings the reward of a rare insight into the splendour of the island’s rocky ravines. For those hoping to keep their feet closer to the ground, quad biking might be on the right track. Scoring considerably lower on the adrenaline scale, the alternative mode of transport nonetheless brings new life to sightseeing. The rugged landscape of Siem Reap in Cambodia provides numerous opportunities for travellers wanting to see the rural heart of the Kingdom. The rider determines the pace of the journey, whether it be whizzing along a dirt track between rice fields to meet the sunset, or taking a slower pace to enjoy the countryside and villages. Taking a road less travelled to ancient Prasat Pre Monti adds an unexpected twist to temple trailing. Sometimes, it is necessary to view Southeast Asia’s varying landscapes from a different angle if one is to reap its endless rewards – all it requires is a leap of faith. ¡
Cebu Island's majestic Montaneza Falls offer perfect conditions for travellers willing to take a 30-metre plunge down cliff faces
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JET SET
THAILAND
TeNT temptation Luxury camping in the Golden triangle
By Massimo Morello
Photos: Andrea Pistolesi (1)
T
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he so-called 'Golden Triangle' is located in the area where the Mekong bends into Thailand, marking the border with Laos to the east and Myanmar to the west. The opium poppy grows well here and the flower is behind the area’s often-dubious reputation. In recent years, however, this region of drug warlords has undergone great changes as a result of foundations set up by the Thai royal family to encourage coffee, tea and fruit plantations. This has enabled the hill tribes in the area (Karen, Hmong, Akha) to return to more traditional lifestyles, including the craft of jewellery, silverware, textiles and embroidery. Thus the Golden Triangle has become a popular destination for tourists in search of adventure, for hikers and for sophisticated travellers. Right in the heart of the Golden Triangle, around 100 kilometres north of the Thai city of Chiang Rai, where the river Ruak merges with the great Mekong, the Four Seasons Tented Camp has pitched up. Built on the side of a hill, the camp can only be reached by river, between banks still thick with forest – a Conrad-esque scene only heightened by the fact that Myanmar begins its verdant expanse on the opposite bank.
The word ‘tent’, in reality, does not do justice to the accommodation. Fifteen pavilions (sleeping a maximum of 30 guests) are furnished in pure colonial style – a triumph of detail in leather and wood – and enjoy large terraces that overlook the river and the forest, providing an ideal spot for observing nature. In the near future, it might also be possible to see the boats of the Chinese navy patrolling the river for criminals – the Golden Triangle has not entirely lost its darkness. The communal areas are few, grouped together and elegant. The bar offers perfect views of the sun setting on the Burmese plain, an amazing swimming pool lurks amongst rocks. There is also a library, a sophisticated restaurant and an unexpected underground wine cellar with an excellent selection of wines. The main appeal is the feeling of having been hurled into an Asian safari from another era, like a character in an Amitav Ghosh novel. When walking along the forest paths surrounding the hotel, or discovering the ancient art of the mahout, it is easy to convince oneself that this is too perfect to be fact – such easy beauty should only exist in the world of fiction. ¡
Why Triangle?
The term 'Golden Triangle' was coined in 1971 by Marshall Green, the US assistant secretary of state, who wanted to represent a geographical area but also to emphasise for the US government that only three states were involved in opium trafficking: Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. China was not involved, meaning that, on July 15, President Nixon announced his historic trip to Beijing to meet Chairman Mao.
hall of opium
The Hall of Opium, one of the world’s foremost research and information centres on opium, is just over two kilometres from the tented camp. A visit to this museum, with its interesting postmodern architecture, is a trip into the mysterious world of narcotics. Using state-of-the-art multimedia, each section of the exhibition sheds light on more than 5,000 years of opiate use and abuse.
proTecTing The elephanTs
The Four Seasons Tented Camp is part of the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation (helpingelephants.org), which aims to save elephants that are used for touristic purposes on the streets of Thai cities. In the past 100 years, the Asian elephant population has declined by 90% and the extent of their available habitat has shrunk by 95% in the same period.
ruak riTual
The camp’s spa is a true oasis of well being in the heart of a bamboo forest. A symbol of longevity and strength, bamboo is also the basic element of the ruak ritual. This full-body massage uses a combination of specially blended local herbal oils and smooth, natural bamboo sticks to target deep-seated muscle tension.
informaTion
Tel: +66 53 910 200. Website: fourseasons.com/goldentriangle. Rates: (minimum two nights) from $2,600 per tent, per night. Rates include: half-day mahout training and Golden Triangle excursion; all meals and beverages (including house wines and spirits); and one spa treatment per person, per stay.
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OBJECT OF DESIRE
Black Beauty I
t’s time to unleash the beast. Albeit a beast that is, thanks to its electric engine, quiet, clean and efficient – not a combination too high on the average biker’s list of requirements. The Sora is produced by Lito, a Canadian team of engineers and industrial designers, and represents the first step in electric motorbikes’ evolution from lightweight pop-pops to snarling mega-beasts. The Sora’s aggressive style is combined with 300kmworth of battery life – hugely impressive for an electric steed – as well as a top speed of 200km/h. The techno wizardry is just as impressive, with the Sora sending an email to its owner when it has completed a charge, and GPS that is linked with a battery management system, meaning the bike can calculate how much power it needs to get the rider to their destination. ¡
Clean riding: the GPS unit on Lito’s Sora will calculate how much power you’ll need to take you where you want to go
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LIFE
for architectural models and car prototypes made out of cement or plastic. The other approach – rapid manufacturing – focuses on precison. “These are production quality objects. These are mass-produced items or custom-made individual pieces,” says Schwandt. But this kind of manufacturing is still in its infancy. “This is the newest development. It’s impossible to see what’s still coming.” Model cars, toys, pieces of art, dishes: entire runs of such products could one day be made with 3D printers instead of special manufacturing machines or tools. It sounds like science fiction and Schwandt admits “it’s partially still a dream”. Cost is one drawback. A professional 3D printer, like one used in the auto industry or by sports shoe manufacturers, costs “well into six figures”. “It’s only worth it if the printer is in use around the clock,” Schwandt says. Semi-professional versions cost between $54,000 and $135,000. They turn out good products, but the choice of materials is limited. There are also entry models for private individuals with the right level of interest. US company Desktop Factory produces one for about $4,700. “Our goal is to one day make 3D printing as common in offices, factories, schools and homes as laser printers are today,” says the company’s website. But experts like Schwandt remain sceptical: “That’s not foreseeable. I think it will remain an extreme niche product and stay that way for a while. But it is a fun toy.” And a really expensive one. On top of the printer costs are the costs of materials for each print job. A container of cement
TECHNOLOGY
Another dimension The humble computer printer has evolved. Leaving the dusty laserjet behind, the new breed can even produce usable body parts Touch of a button: the MakerBot produces ‘prints’ of objects such as this octopus from molten plastic
[3D printing] will remain an extreme niche product
P
lastic? Metal? Cement? Take your pick – 3D printers have leapt from the pages of science fiction to real production lines and are capable of manufacturing actual objects out of these materials. Some are even coming within the grasp of private customers, even if experts say the printers are likely to remain a specialty device for now. These printers are now spitting out replacement car parts, architectural models or simple salt shakers. “You can even print out body parts from organic materials,” says Hartmut Schwandt, head of the 3D laboratory at Berlin’s Technical University. Such a feature can come in handy in the case of a broken shoulder, for example. “If you’re missing a part of the bone, the patient goes into the CT scanner and the replacement part pops out of the printer.” The technology was developed in the 1980s and has been continuously refined over the years, with printing methods 94 April 2012
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dependent upon the material. Thus, plastic is melted and then sprayed through a nozzle to create the desired object, or it can be laid down layer by layer upon a frame. Schwandt’s printer is about as tall as a man and resembles an oven. A cement printer looks more like a washing machine. Before printing starts a vat is filled with cement powder. With the assistance of a binding agent the object is then created layer by layer. Upon its creation, the initial product has to be inserted into a machine that removes excess cement powder. The final product is then coated with a resin to keep it from breaking. There are two basic approaches to the 3D printing process. The first – rapid prototyping – creates a model that does not exactly meet parameters. “Today you’re just pushing something around the computer, but you need something that you can touch and that’s a lot easier with a 3D printer,” says Schwandt. This approach is favoured
Photos: Nasa/JPL Caltech
By Christina Horsten
for a 3D printer costs about $3,260. Per cubic centimetre, 3D printing costs cost from $4 to $5.25, says Schwandt. That means an architect who orders a small model of a house can expect to pay between $100 and $400. Then there’s the time it takes for the print job to complete: up to 40 hours. Schwandt advises hobbyists against buying their own printer, but to use drafting and printing services. For example, Sketchup helps customers to create a plan, while Fabberhouse and Sculpteo allow users to upload their plans for printing. Schwandt recommends professional assistance before taking that step, since planning a 3D print job can be intense: “The client has to provide useful 3D data. A lot of people are not able to do that and need help.” The process does have its advantages. For example, you can get your item printed in Schwandt’s favourite material: potato starch. “Theoretically, you could eat it after the printing.” ¡ Sea GLOBe
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9 7 5 F M
Olivier Planchon is the director of the Institut Français. The French cultural centre is celebrating its 20th anniversary of operations in Cambodia this year.
Olivier planchOn arts By Charlie Lancaster What events have you got lined up to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Institut Français? Many throughout the year, with a special focus this month. On April 6, we’ll open three exhibitions: one archive documentary, one with 20 1x1metre paintings imagined by 20 artists the Institut has worked with, and a the third exhibition that will be the first retrospective of KhmerFrench artist Sera. And last but not least, a performance by Seth, a young Khmer-French ‘grapheur’. We will also present a great fashion show by Lim Keo, a designer of impressive talent and a great link between Paris and 98 April 2012
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Phnom Penh. At the Chenla Theatre we will present a concert of innovative reggae music by Senegalese-born Naby and, later in the month, an amazing Opera show, L’enfant et les sortilèges, Maurice Ravel’s masterpiece by the children’s choir of The Opéra de Paris – one hundred people on stage. What have you got planned for graffiti artist Julien ‘Seth’ Malland? Seth will paint his sweet graphic improvisations in 10 spots in the city – one of them being the Institut Français. He will use plain common walls. Seth’s art is so elegant and funny, they are kind of things you want your children and friends to experience.
How does Naby’s concert reflect the evolution of the capital’s live music scene? Two years ago, a reggae event would have been a real challenge. It still is now, but the audience is more open and eager for discovery. That is making a difference. Phnom Penh has become a real and rich place for all kinds of music, welcoming cultural approaches from all horizons. Institute Français has changed its name three times in 20 years, why so many name changes? I think what is important is to work on a cultural and creative dialogue between France and Cambodia, whatever the name. The Institut has been achieving this objective for 20 years. What would a look through the Institute’s archive show? Passion. I think passion is the word that has guided our way through these years. Passion and curiosity for every kind of artistic expression, and people. How has the budget cut affected your event agenda? Yes, 2012 was not a great year from a budget point of view. We had to cancel some of our projects. The Lakhaon theatre festival for instance will be a little less important than we had imagined. But we will keep it, with the amazing creation in Khmer language of “Cambodge me voici” (Cambodia, I’m here), the wonderful text of Jean-Baptiste Phou, about nostalgia pains, cultural breaks and faithfulness to history and hope. To what degree does the Embassy and its political arm oversee the direction of the Institute Français? Oh, it’s not a matter of power. It’s a team job, we have a great embassy, which is very open to cultural projects – and with a total respect for our vision. What have been the highlights of the past 20 years? Brilliant moments like Les nuits d’Angkor and Phnom Penh Hip-Hop. But the best has been helping put local artists on the international stage. ¡ Julian ‘Seth’ Malland, page 74
Photo: Sovan Philong
LAST QUESTION
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