In spite of the recommendation of travel agencies and
travel guides (all earning money from people traveling
to Cambodia), it has to be mentioned that Phnom Penh
is a very dangerous city, and Cambodia a very
dangerous country.
The prevention of "ordinary" crime is a very low
priority of the country's government, which is much
more concerned with guarding its "democratic" and
"human rights" credentials. (There is no capital
punishment in Cambodia.)
Briton murdered in Phnom Penh
Here is another newspiece about the same event,
apparently by Reuters. In ridiculously states:
"Despite its reputation for lawlessness, most violence
against foreigners in the impoverished southeast
nation, which is still recovering from decades of
civil war including the Khmer Rouge genocide, is
limited to street crime or assault."
Violence against foreigners is limited to street crime
and assault? What else should it be? Does that not
cover it all? It seems that an editor was involved who
was very concerned with political correctness and did
not want to undermine the country's tourism industry
by stating the obvious: there is a considerable
likelihood that a foreigner will become the victim of
violent crime in Cambodia.
The politically correct report
Photo: View of Phnom Penh's main traffic artery, Achar-Mean-Boulevard.
Phnom Penh
is situated at the confluence of the Tonle Sap and Bassac rivers
with the Mekong. It was founded as a small monastery in 1372
by the rich Khmer woman Penh, after she had found four
Buddha statues in a tree trunk on the banks of the Mekong.
She set up the monastery on a hill near the bank of the Mekong.
The Cambodian word for hill is Phnom. Therefore the name
of the town correctly translates as Hill of Penh.
|
More cruel murders in Cambodia
Below a reference to another story on a foreigner
murdered in Cambodia. The news story ends with the
claim: "While muggings are common in Cambodia, where a
sense of lawlessness and a gun culture remain after
decades of war that ended in 1998, serious attacks on
foreigners have been rare."
Indeed, I know many (and I do mean: many) foreigners
who have been mugged in Cambodia, and many have been
hurt physically, though not murdered). In Cambodia,
even if one surrenders all valuables to a mugger, one
gets a strike with a gun or another weapon as bonus.
So, is such a mugging not a serious attack on a
foreigner? Is it only serious when he or she is
murdered? News editors who go out of their way not to
treat a country "unfairly" by mentioning that crime is
not that bad, are fooling potential Western travelers.
French National fatally stabbed in Cambodian robbery
Many foreigners suffer from violent assault in
Cambodia. It's just that many do not bother to report
to the police, as nothing will come out of that
anyway. And the Western media has little interest in
"ordinary" crime that does not end in murders.
|
Rather significantly
Phnom Penh's history is founded on an episode, in which the Buddhist
religion played a part, contrary to the Khmer capital of that
time, Angkor, which was shaped, and literally so, by Hinduism.
Nevertheless, Buddhism had, since the beginning of the 13th century,
become the dominant religion. (In Southeast Asia both religions
are entwined to a much higher degree than first appears to be
the case. For instance, numerous Buddhist temples in Thailand
house altars of Hindu deities, especially Brahma, and the
details of the royal ploughing ceremony in Bangkok are
determined by Brahman, not Buddhist, palace priests... just like
Thai coronation modalities).
In 1434,
after the Siamese conquest of Angkor in 1431, the Khmer
nobility unwilling to submit to Siamese overlords fled from Angkor
and established Phnom Penh as the new Khmer capital, just 64 years
after the Buddhist monastery had been founded on Penh Hill. However,
the Khmer never succeeded in setting up a new kingdom to come
close to the glamour of Angkor.
In fact,
for long periods of time the Khmer kingdom centered in Phnom Penh
wasn't a sovereign country but alternatively a satellite state
of, or directly ruled by, the Vietnamese or the Thais.
For more than 400 years - until the French made Cambodia their
protectorate - the art of politics in Phnom Penh was just an exercise
of balancing between the two powerful neighbours.
On April
17, 1864, the Cambodian king Norodom accepted for his country
the status of a French protectorate. King Norodom expected
the French to protect Cambodia from the neighbouring countries
Siam (Thailand) and Vietnam.
Photo: French colonial architecture, though today much of it
in bad repair, dots the city.
However,
the French protectors did not prevent politically strong Siam
from temporarily annexing western parts of the country,
including the town of Battambang. Nevertheless, by recognizing
French rule, King Norodom preempted moves of Siam and Vietnam
to entirely divide his country between them. In past centuries
the loss of territory to Vietnam had been more significant.
The Mekong delta, or rather the entire present-day South Vietnam,
had been settled by Cambodians until well into the 18th century.
During almost
90 years of colonial rule the French reshaped and extended Phnom
Penh according to their architectural taste. They built broad
boulevards and the city received a touch of Mediterranean
atmosphere.
During the
Vietnam war the city grew to more than 2 Million inhabitants,
creating an atmosphere of an overcrowded refugee camp rather
than a French metropolis.
On April
17, 1975, 20 years after the end of French colonial rule,
the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh. Within weeks the
city was emptied, its population forced into provincial labour
camps; Phnom Penh became a ghost town.
After an
increasing number of incidents at the Cambodian-Vietnamese border,
Vietnamese troops move into Cambodia and on January 7,
1979, take Phnom Penh. Since then, many of the city's former inhabitants
have returned, and new folks have arrived. The city now, once
more, counts over a Million inhabitants.
Photo: Phnom Penh's Hotel Le Royal, where journalists have
been based during the Vietnam War, is closed since June 1994;
the hotel's swimming pool has been taken over by local children.
The owners of the Raffles Hotel in Singapur intend to renovate
and extend Le Royal to turn it into a luxury hotel of some 200
rooms.
Since the
signing of the Paris Peace Treaty in 1991, Phnom Penh experienced
a great economic boom, despite the civil war still smoldering
in far-off parts of the country. Although streets and canalization
- destroyed by the Khmer Rouge - are not yet fully repaired,
a large number of modern hotels have been built.
