Our men in Phnom Penh

Pictures by Ann Bailey

In Phnom Penh the ceiling fans slowly stir the air. On the television are local soaps and Thai fight movies, and the Women's Affairs Minister Mu Sochua and Prime Minister Hun Sen inveighing against risque pop songs and rising hemlines. Down at the Foreign Correspondents' Club and Happy Herb's Pizza Place the expats gather to have a Tiger beer, a plate of spiced prawns and watch the sun set over the mountains beyond the Tonle Sap river.

But travel away from the broad boulevards (a legacy of French colonialism) and the roads quickly turn to dirt and potholes. This is land where children can be bought, where the forests are being indiscriminately felled, where you, the unworldly tourist, run the risk of kidnap - perhaps by bandits, perhaps by police, or perhaps, as in the case of atourist boat heading north towards Angkor Wat, by soldiers.

Welcome to the dissonance that is Cambodia. Welcome to the home turf of the Phnom Penh Post, a student placement for Massey's Wellington School of Journalism.

The Kiwi connection began in 1991 when Jason Barber, Matt Grainger and Peter Sainsbury, all formerly of the Dominion (and also alumni), took up employment with the Post. Matt would become the paper's editor, succeeded by Jason, then Peter - who remains the current editor.

Now the connection is being fostered by Asia 2000, which has chosen to sponsor an annual six-week work placement for a Massey School of Journalism student. Which student will get to go is being keenly contested.

The placement was brokered by journalism lecturer David Venables (pictured above), who had been a fellow journalism student with Peter Sainsbury. But before consigning a student, Venables determined to field test the placement himself. In January, 2000 Venables took himself off to become the Post's occasional copy editor and helper.

Beneath one of those slowly turning fans, Venables helped copy edit several issues of the 20-or-so page fortnightly Post. The tools of trade: several PCs and Macs using desktop publishing software powered from the mains (when the power works) or a generator (when it frequently doesn't). "You start the old generator up, and you have to shut all the computers down to make sure they don't get hurt. It's not the best technology," says Venables.

During his five-week stint, the Post's staff numbered two translators, three local reporters, and a mixed bag of foreigners. "There was a girl from Denmark, a guy from Kenya who'd spent ten years in Taiwan, and Steve, one of our former students," says Venables. The Post is not short on issues for investigative journalists. Cambodia is a nation still living in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and the subsequent genocide instigated by Pol Pot, during which the cities were emptied and people were forced to return to the land. Around 1.7 million people, including most of Cambodia's intelligentsia, were either worked to death or executed.

Disabled musicians.

A child selling bells outside the Bayon temple near Angkor Wat.

Today, though Pol Pot is dead and the Khmer Rouge disbanded, half the budget is still spent on defence and security. Cambodia is impoverished; its forests are being stripped; what health and education systems there are, are largely run by foreign aid agencies.

The Post's three Khmer reporters were teenagers during 'the Pol Pot time', says Venables. One lunch time - following a casual conversation about pork - one told Venables of his family's encounter with the Khmer in the 1970s. They had been preparing to cook a pig for a wedding feast when a Khmer Rouge unit emerged from the jungle and ordered them to leave. "They never saw their home again," says Venables. Another reporter, Cheat (pronounced chee-at), had been taken by the Khmer Rouge to plant rice near the Vietnamese border. "He remembered waking up and finding workers dead of hypothermia alongside him," says Venables. "Yet the day before our conversation I watched him interview two former Khmer Rouge with absolute professional detachment."

Alongside Cheat, Venables helped cover a story about Vietnamese virgin girls being sold to foreigners worried about catching HIV/Aids from older prostitutes. "He wanted to find out what the girls would cost, and, if possible to interview one or two. So he pretended to be my interpreter and I pretended to be a Westerner who hadn't got a clue - which was quite true," says Venables. The lurk worked, and Cheat and Venables managed to interview two girls. "One was a part-Chinese girl who had been sold by a relative," says Venables. "They'd got into debt. I think she'd only been there a few days and she was from the country and was very uncertain about what was going on. And we interviewed another girl who had been there a little while and was working. The first girl was obviously afraid, but she was also envious of the other girl who had gold bangles her clients had given her." Venables was badly shaken up. "I found it a very difficult thing to be part of. In the next few days I found myself asking how I felt doing that as a journalist. It was deeply upsetting." He wonders how Cheat, as the father of a 12-year-old daughter, felt.

 

The Asia 2000 Foundation is a non-profit organisation aiming to increase New Zealanders' understanding and knowledge of Asia. Set up in 1994, the Foundation is active in four key areas: business, culture and media, education and public affairs. Within these areas, the Foundation supports and initiates a diverse range of projects, scholarships, seminars, special events and exchanges that equip New Zealanders with first-hand experience of Asia and help to forge valuable links to the region. The Foundation is a source of information, research and analysis on developments in the region. Asia 2000 is funded by the Government, but also receives financial support from the private sector in and outside of New Zealand. For more information go to www.asia2000.org.nz