Agrandir le plan

This small town, rather run down, sits by the Mekong at its widest spot. It is famous for its freshwater dolphins, which number less than 75 in that spot today from hundreds before. The Irrawaddy dolphins are recognizable by their bulging forehead and squashed nose, and rather whale-like appearance. They’re the pugs of the dolphin family, less conventionally handsome than their bottle-nosed cousins. Though the dolphins are no longer poached, at least not in this part of the Mekong, because locals found out they could make better money from ecotourism, the animals still suffer from accidental deaths in fishermen’s nets and from the ecological damage wrought by dams and industrial pollution further upstream. (Hello, China.)

Catching the dolphins on film comes down to luck since it is impossible to anticipate where they will break the water. By the time you hear the distinctive sound of one of them pushing water out of its blowhole and you turn around, all you catch in circles in the water. And in any case, these dolphins tend not to jump out of the water for fun and play with tourists’ boat as you might have seen bottle-nosed dolphins do. These trips to the surface are utilitarian. They come up, they breathe, they go under. The spectacle is rather in the majesty of the Mekong at sunset and in sitting quietly in a boat, slowly realizing that you are surrounded by discrete, beautiful animals. Anyways, this is what I saw.

Please bear in mind I’m standing at the front of a moving boat with only a digital zoom, hence the shaking. The buzzing is the camera’s microphone picking up the sound of the tape rolling: I really need better equipment.

… minus the Schubert soundtrack of course. (The audio track from the original recording was unusable.)

These gibbons are endangered. As is much wildlife in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. Here’s the reason why:

These photos of deforestation (most likely clearing the way for one of the Vietnamese-owned industrial coffee plantations that have been sprouting up in the area) were taken the same day, March 8 2009, maybe 20 kms away from the gibbons. Since the animals were singing, I’m assuming they were a male and a female, but sexually mature females of this species are all blonde, so maybe juveniles. In any case, they were most likely at least partly domesticated because this tree is right outside a guesthouse on the outskirts of the village of Paksong. The gibbons weren’t scared by humans watching or the sounds of the road nearby, nor did they seem unfazed by the lack of trees in this relatively ‘urbanized’ part of the plateau.

In fact, if you look at the point grade, a far less sexy but more accurate measure than rankings, with 0 being press freedom heaven and 115.50 being Eritrea, Cambodia got a 35.17 this year and 35.50 last — virtually the same grade. Last year, there was the murder of opposition journalist Khim Sambo (also reported as Kim Sambor and Khem Sambo) busting the numbers. That murder in broad daylight in the busy streets of Phnom Penh just before the elections last July is still unsolved, as are all 13 murders of journalists in the country since the 1990s. (Add to that unionists and other activists and the number climbs exponentially.) This year, it’s a slew of defamation suits and a worrisome new penal code that criminalizes undefined information-related offenses and includes in the potential sentences a lifetime ban on practicing journalism in the country.

I look forward to reading RSF’s detailed analysis of Cambodia. (Individual country analyses do usually come out one by one after the index is published). In the meantime, watch out for the meaning behind the stat: locals know full well media freedom isn’t improving one bit in Cambodia.

It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it what it feels like to see freedom of expression slowly degrade in front of you. Taken individually, each slight against the political opposition, each rebuff of the concerns of activists, each veiled threat made to a journalist is just that. You brush it off and keep doing your work. Then one day, you’re having lunch at a popular Phnom Penh restaurant, commenting on the news of the day and the latest offense of the Cambodian government against the rights of its people, and you get shushed. “You can’t say that in public,” my friend said. That’s when you know something’s gone awfully wrong.

Mind you, Cambodia’s not the kind of country where secret police watches over you as you eat your fried rice. But with systematic defamation suits, forceful intimidation of anyone trying to assert their rights against the powerful and an ingenious political strategy of constantly ridiculing the opposition, the Cambodian government is letting it be known, subtly but efficiently, that dissent will not be tolerated.

The number one tool of crushing opposition without a bloody massacre in a stadium that would attract unwanted attention is the defamation lawsuit. Anyone saying anything that might be construed as remotely negative about the government and its associates runs the risk of a lawsuit. And because courts are notoriously bought out to the powerful (they are the least trusted institution in a country ripe with corrupt institutions), being sued means being found guilty.

My former editor-in-chief and a former colleague were fined $1,000 each last month for defamation. Their crime? Quoting an opposition politician in a story as doubting the academic value of a Vietnamese university degree bequeathed en masse to 22 high-ranking officers of the Cambodian army. The opposition politician only escaped his own lawsuit after putting the blame on the journalists and accusing them of misquoting him. (Maybe I’m biased because I know the guys, but I don’t buy that one second.) This is what now constitutes defamation in Cambodia: expressing doubt about something the government is saying. Before that, it was opposition politician Mu Sochua, who sued Prime Minister Hun Sen for a circumstance that met all the legal standards of defamation and was sued back in turn by the PM for daring to sue him. Guess who won that one…

Earlier this month, the National Assembly passed new statutes that both criminalize defamation, insult, exaggeration of information, discrimination and invasion of privacy, and fail to clearly define any of those terms.

The new code defines public defamation as, “all exaggerated declarations, or those that intentionally put the blame for any actions, which affect the dignity or reputation of a person or an institution.”

The code also includes the criminal offense of public insult, which covers, “Any insulting expression, any scorning term or any other verbal abuses.” (from The Cambodia Daily as quoted in Details are Sketchy.)

No definition of what insult or defamation might be. No actual malice test. No higher standard for public officials. Worse yet — no truth as a defense.

The rest of the new penal code currently in discussion is in the same vein. (Articles related to freedom of expression are available here, as is a commentary by FOI advocate Article 19 right here. In all fairness, DAS notes that journalists are shielded from the law, but Article 19 says potential punishments include being banned from practicing journalism. Will settle that score when I’m more awake.)

Since the ruling Cambodian People’s Party has a more-than-two-thirds majority, discussion of this and other texts in Parliament is a mere formality. The assembly now only serves to rubberstamp the prime minister’s decisions. The opposition is fairly weak and the CPP likes it that way. Of course, it’s expected they’d disagree on many matters. But more than that, the government is content with having no opposition at all. There is no value given to the balancing role of opponents, to a political debate where two sides are weighed and considered. Opponents only exist to be systematically ridiculed in the prime minister’s speech, and their suggestions are shot down on principle.

Of course, this prime treatment is not just for journalists and opposition politicians. People who take a leading role in defending their communities, from land grabs for instance (the hot issue of the day), face harassment and arrests. And more than one NGO worker has declined my interview requests in the past because they felt they could only do their work if they did it quietly.

It’s getting to the point that people outside the country are actually starting to notice.

“The rule of law is weak in the country. The judiciary is not as independent as it should be. Some of the core political rights such as the freedom of expression and peaceful assembly have been undermined…”

… said Surya Subedi, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia, in his first report to the Human Rights Council earlier this month. Run that through the filter of UN talk and that’s pretty much what I’ve been saying.

As his predecessor Yash Ghai put it,

“One does not need expertise in human rights to recognize that many policies of the government have subverted the essential principles of democracy and due process…”

(That phrase was included in a US House resolution condemning the corruption of the Cambodian government.)

Human Rights Watch’s Asia director, Brad Adams:

“The Cambodian government is imposing its most serious crackdown on freedom of expression in recent years. Once again, Hun Sen is showing his true stripes by harassing and threatening to imprison peaceful critics of his increasingly authoritarian government.”

Or as the Council of Ministers spokesman and state secretary Phay Siphan often put it to me, (loose recollection of his exact words),

“Yes, you may criticize the government, but you may not insult it.”

Problem is, saying the government isn’t doing its job is an insult. Saying they’re corrupt is an insult. Saying things could be done differently is an insult. Saying the truth is an insult.

Part 2 – With one hand they keep down the opposition, with the other, they lure the masses: how political discourse and media structure work to maintain the status quo. (Coming soon, when I’ve got another night to spend writing…)

Note from the author: From May 2008 until last month, I lived in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, and worked as a journalist there. Amid the joys of discovering jasmine-scented temples and fermented fish sauce that smelled of something else, I also became familiar, by the very nature of my job, with Cambodian politics.

Others know more about Cambodia than I. Cambodian (and longer-term expat) journalists and activists likely have a deeper analysis. Unfortunately, they’re there and few dare express such analysis out loud. (For great, out-loud stuff, you need to read the Details Are Sketchy blog, which of course is anonymous.) Eighteen months don’t make me an expert, but they do give me more insight than most everyone outside the country, who never see Cambodia on their news.

If things are so dire, you might say, why didn’t I write this sooner? Rightfully or not, I’ll never know, I thought that writing this might have compromised my position as a reporter and later a documentary producer in Cambodia. Pressures on those exercising their right to free speech are not uncommon, and my own production was threatened in unequivocal terms. I considered the work I was doing there more important — and ultimately more resounding — than the release I might get from writing down my deep thoughts on this blog. But now I’ve left those jobs, I’ve left the country and I’m free to write.

(Photo: Prime Minister getting out of a plane at Pochentong International Airport, 26 october 2008)

My environmental conscience has grown tremendously over the past year or so. Maybe it had to do with being diagnosed with asthma and feeling the direct effect of hydrocarbon pollution on my ability to breathe without having to put effort into it. Maybe it was moving to Cambodia: there might be less pollution in poor countries but it’s more in your face, with mounds of trash everywhere you look and deforestation fires everywhere (I took the photo above in Laos this past March). Maybe it was the massive upsurge of media attention to global warming that had an impact. Whatever it was, it worked and apart from a few changes in personal habits (giving up my A/C unit in Cambodia not the least of them), I’m mulling over a switch to environmental journalism, if I could just find the job.

Much is being written now about causes and consequences of global warming, but I fear we’ve gotten to the point where everyone whose mind could be changed has been. For an even larger change to occur, we need to find living solutions that are more green without forcing people in developed countries to give up their comforts… because they won’t, you won’t, I won’t, at least not in a major way, let’s face it. And more importantly, we need to find solutions that allow people in poorer countries to improve their lot without worsening the planet’s. I’ve been educating myself about such solutions and found hope in the brand new field of biomimicry, which consists of getting inspiration from nature’s own design to engineer the future tools of human life: buildings that work like trees, trains like birds, textiles like butterflies, etc… It’s something engineers have certainly done before, but now there’s a systematic attempt to look to nature first. The website asknature.org has a catalogue of nature’s solutions to many problems under the sun, open to any inventor seeking inspiration. Our disconnect with nature is our downfall, and there’s a way to go back to it without moving back into caves and giving up centuries of progress.

So for this Blog Action Day, I ask you to set aside 17 minutes and 39 seconds to watch this inspiring talk by Janine Benyus, who’s doing much to raise the media profile of biomimicry these days. (Note: I’ve been trying to focus my work as a TED volunteer translator onto environmental topics, so I’ve translated this talk into French but it still needs a reviewer before TED publishes the subtitles. Anyone knowing French out there wanna help?)

This site will become primarily my portfolio, with occasional postings showcasing my work. All blog archives will remain here too.

I’d be happy to count you as my readers on Frontline at http://frontlineclub.com/blogs/isabelleroughol/. It’s been slow starting but should be going good from now on…