Undercover in Poipet

What could an old man like me be doing in a karaoke room with two young Khmer men and four young Khmer women in their early to late 20's? Helping a friend by going under cover. My mission: to see if the karaoke ladies are actually technically sex workers or more bluntly, prostitutes, by posing as a 'regular' costumer, whatever that means. The friend is doing research on the effects of 'empowerment' on sexual behavior, specifically the reduction of risk in contracting HIV.
Where's Poipet? It's more than 400 kilometers west northwest of Phnom Penh and is the border town with Aranyathrapet on the Thai side and used to be a base of the Khmer Rouge that mined it before retreating. It is bustling with economic activity, linked in part to cross-border trade and the influx of tourists from prosperous Thailand, who flock to a special entertainment zone of hotel-casinos, modest duty-free shops, and restaurants. The workers in the zones are Khmers and the patrons are generally Thai, and ordinary Khmers are not allowed in.
Was the mission a flimsy excuse for voyeurism and worse? Not exactly, but you be the judge. My friend's study requires a sample of sex workers---direct and indirect---who have and haven't benefitted from anti-HIV programs. The problem is with the so-called indirect sex workers because one can never be sure that there may indeed be legitimate karaoke joints as there are in Manila. And very likely, these joints occupy a gray area. In addition, the friend was trying to determine how many of the 'peer leaders'---sex workers recruited into an anti-HIV program in the past, remained in the area. But that was the job of her assistant.
Lulled into a reverie and thinking how the Khmer woman in the music video looked like former Philippine tourism secretary Gemma Cruz, cavorting with a fully clothed old-fashioned Khmer whose idea of romance was staring into a woman's eyes and occasionally touching her face while strolling in the paddies, I suddenly felt the 25-year-old girl squeezing my left thigh and stroking the hair on the lower leg. I didn't really freeze, but then she started massaging my head and back and arms and telling the research assistant my legs were comparable in size to her arms, with a laugh. I was all skin and bones, she said, and the fact that the assistant tried to soothe my ego by telling me repeatedly that I had a resemblance to Manny Pacquiao didn't help my ego one bit. Then she leaned to rest her head on my left shoulder.
In the meantime, Phine the tall and dashing driver was James bonding with the 22-year-old and singing a love song. His phone rang and when he came back inside his demeanor had become somber. (It was only the morning after that I learned his wife had been taken to hospital for labor. She gave birth to their first child, a girl, at six in the morning.)
How not to break my cover? I said I had to go out for a cigaret and didn't want to inflict any secondary smoke on anyone. But the prettiest, the 29-year-old went out to insist that I should just smoke inside. At this point I felt I was already between a rock and a soft place, between being called a snob or a prude, for I am neither. Perhaps better to be thought of as gay?
The ladies were disappointed when we left shortly after ten, for we obviously weren't the type of customers they are accustomed to.
Mission accomplished. And one inescapable conclusion is that the sex workers here have much more dignity than the political prostitutes in the Philippines. Since she has not hacked being an economist and president, perhaps Gloria Macapagal Arroyo should consider a change in career as a karaoke girl in Poipet, but only after serving her time in jail.

The Trial of Nuon Chea (Khmer Rouge 2)

Last Monday, February 4, was the first public pre-trial hearing on the bail petition of Nuon Chea, the administrator of Tuol Sleng, where thousands were tortured and murdered systematically during the rule of the Khmer Rouge in 'Democratic Kampuchea' from April 1975 to January 1979.

Because one of the foreign lawyers (both Dutch) of Chea was not sworn in by the Cambodia Bar Association (and thus could not practice in the country), and the other allegedly could not book a flight from the Netherlands owing to 'short notice,' his local lawyer, and even Chea himself, pleaded with the pre-trial chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)---established especially for the leaders of the Khmer Rouge---for a continuance of the proceedings. Just so his rights would not be violated---the rules of the ECCC entitle the accused to at least one local and one foreign lawyer--- the pre-trial chamber granted the request, to the dismay and consternation of Cambodians and foreign observers who had flown in just to witness the start of the proceedings.

I myself was extremely disappointed, but if the move really was in respect of the rights of the accused, that was okay. I was the third person to arrive at the Central Rail Station in Phnom Penh, where, I had been told, a bus would ferry foreign and local observers to the ECCC buildings on National Road 4 about 30 kilometers away, between 7 and 7:30. The bus arrived past 8:30 a.m. but the trip was without incident.

To my knowledge, I was the only Filipino observer there. After getting my security pass, and having my electronic belongings and other banned items receipted (no cameras, phones, cigarets), and passing the metal detectors, I was stopped by the sentry who frisked me. He was looking at and pointed to my thighs. I wished that he had merely wanted to compliment me on my skinny legs, but no, he shouted “shorts!” and thereupon the foreign sentry who had already waved me in earlier suddenly said I should show some respect for the courts. I had asked members of foreign human rights organizations back at the rail station whether shorts were allowed and they replied sure, they knew of no dress code. After concluding that it was pointless to argue any further, I got my belongings back and hopped on a motodup to buy a pair of pants at the nearest public market. National Road 4 is notorious for its lawless driving and my situation was aggravated by a driver who neither spoke nor understood English. He was driving fast and furious merrily back toward Phnom Penh and I had to tap both his shoulders rather violently so he would stop. It was only after I had succeeded with sign language and other gesticulation that I wanted to buy a pair of pants at the local public market that I allowed him go forward again. It was just my luck that the market indeed had a dry goods section with men's pants (the pair I bought presumably fake for $8---I am retarded about such things---I put on shielded by a towel in front of the sales girl). Had I not found a suitable pants, it would not have been beyond me to buy a palda instead, and with hair down, insisted on being allowed in as a dignified cross-dresser, to skirt the issue altogether. So I made it back to the courts just a few minutes after the proceedings had started.

During the break when the judges had retreated to chambers to deliberate on Chea's plea, I had the chance to exchange some words with Helen Jarvis, with whom I had been acquainted way back in 2002 and now head of ECCC public affairs---on the comic affair. She was friendly but unsympathetic. “Are shorts allowed in Philippine courts?”, she asked. Well, I thought, I may not be an anarchist but I am not one for rituals and the visible signs of respect for institutions and individuals, and if they weren't, then they should be. Helen also joked about by pro-cannabis shirt and wondered why the guards allowed that to pass, In addition, I was wearing strapless leather slippers. Is it too much to ask for some respect for my irreverence? As far as I'm concerned, all respect for institutions and official positions need to be earned and should not be accorded automatically.

Move on? I've no objections

Phnom Penh---Saturday night some Filipinos here met to discuss recent events in the Philippines, especially the 'Lozada Affair'. After lunch today, they came out with the following statement for circulation and signatures among like-minded Filipinos here:

Move On and Move Out!
An Urgent Request to the Arroyo Administration
in Light of the Jun Lozada Abduction and the
continuing coverup of the ZTE-NBN and other scandals and abuses:

The abduction last week of Jun Lozada, resigned president of the Philippine Forest Corporation, to prevent him from testifying on the aborted $329 M ZTE-NBN contract before the Philippine Senate, could be just one more episode indicating the administration’s overriding principle of governance: criminal self-aggrandizement complexed with an almost unlimited capacity for self-preservation.

But it is not. In fact, the abduction and the subsequent coverup, the lie after lie after lie, big and small, the use of the bureaucracy, the national security apparatus, and the abuse of the state’s monopoly of force, to prevent the truth from coming out, represent by far the most painful insult to the people because of the brazenness and silliness of the acts, and the assumption by Malacanang that it can continue to bribe and spin and intimidate and to conduct business as usual despite the very public and very obvious unraveling of its conspiracies.

In the coming days, we anticipate a worsening of the crisis of confidence and legitimacy of the administration. As its lies grow bolder, it will become more and more difficult to sustain its aura of invincibility.

We, members of the Filipino Community in Cambodia---eking out an honest and decent living, and concerned about the standing of the country in the international community---alarmed, ashamed, and disgusted by the recent events, renew our call to Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and her top officials, civilian, police and military, to resign en masse to pave the way for new and clean snap elections and a smooth transition, and to prevent any new power grab by adventurist undemocratic elements.

We do not and cannot buy the argument or the illusion that only Mrs. Arroyo can propel the country’s economy forward. But even if that were true, we do not believe in a tradeoff between economic prosperity and social justice and human rights.

We say it is not too early for change. We should not wait for the 2010 elections. It is also not too late for Mrs. Arroyo and company to rediscover a modicum of decency and civility. She should not wait to be handcuffed in 2010; she can always turn herself and her husband in at the police outpost closest to the Palace. After all, as Joseph Estrada has shown, there is life after the presidency and there is life after prison.

Mrs. Arroyo, it is time to move on and to move out, so the country can finally move forward!


Pinoys in Cambodia
Phnom Penh, February 10, 2008

Pol Pot's ghost

t had been a tiring day in August sixteen years ago and I wanted to retire early. I could have but for a knock on the door before eleven.

It was the comrade from Bangkok next door. "I'm so Thai, damn." "I'm just so Thai," I heard again. So you are. You really really are, I should have said. The third time, I was awake enough to get the sense of his weariness from our day's journeys. So I had to open a few badly brewed bottles of Vietnamese beer.

It is difficult to recount all the details. But I remember that that day, we had been to Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, not so far from the border with Thailand. One of the world's wonders was being preserved and restored by Indian experts paid by Unesco even while it was under threat from mortar attacks from the Khmer Rouge. It was defended by youths, one of whom, not more than thirteen in my reckoning, had an RPG slung on his shoulder, had asked me for a cigaret. I even lit it up for him, perhaps because he was nursing an AK-47 with both hands besides.

Earlier, we had visited a farm where, our hosts claimed, the Khmer Rouge had tortured the more 'dangerous' threats to its rule. After extracting confessions, the so-called liberators of that Indochinese land would throw their captives into the pits filled with hungry crocodiles.

In Phnom Penh for two days, we visited the many torture chambers and mass graves. Pits filled with bones from which it was difficult to assemble even just a few skeletons.

I was a delegate to a 'solidarity' conference organized by a part of the international Left to lend or shore up legitimacy to the government of Heng Samrin, installed with the aid of the Vietnamese, in December 1979. At the time, the United States, with the active support of China, had succeeded in isolating the new government. But there were of course the independent-minded who thought that ideology and geo-politics should never get in the way of one's humanity.

There were various relief and project missions by the Swedish---I remember echoes of ABBA at the airport; Japanese delegations; Indian scientists. There was, too, Julie Andrews bringing goods for the children at an orphanage; we missed her by a few minutes. There was even a Boholana working for a religious mission---World Vision---who arranged for a meeting with me.

I cannot tell you now how I ever got there. Or how the Thai comrade managed to elude authorities in his country, who was not only harboring but also actively supporting the deadly triumvitate of Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan, and Pol Pot.

The story of the Khmer Rouge is not really unfamiliar in this century, full of mad men who wanted to do good to their fellows, even kind men who wanted some crude egalitarianism to reign forever. If not by transporting all of them to the countryside, by evening out opportunities for many six feet under.

At that time, the leftist sect that I belonged to, on the other side of the Sino-Soviet divide, had distanced itself from the nightmare of Pol Pot's dreams. But there are still people who have not even explained their support for that "revolutionary project" up to now.

As I write this, I am no longer even with the sect I was with. I was "expelled" after I had resigned more than seven years ago; and for that I have no regrets. I now know that the road to hell can look so idyllic, especially if one has ideological blinders on.

My Thai comrade, then in his fifties and writing for a Bangkok paper, could not sleep. He had been told by a room boy he was sleeping in the room Pol Pot used to occupy. The next morning, after confirming the allegation, I too, suddenly felt so Thai. Haunted by the man's ghost way before his death, we just couldn't sleep.

(The essay above was published in the Manila Times in May 1998 (when Malou Mangahas was chief editor, I'm back in Cambodia for the third time partly to update myself on efforts to take the remnants of the Khmer Rouge to account. I was here in 2002, 20 years after the first visit, when the land was still recovering from the ravages of Pol Pot.)