Wes­ley Gib­bings

?From Ph­nom Penh, Cam­bo­dia

The emo­tion­al wounds here run much deep­er than the bruis­es of even the most ex­treme Caribbean po­lit­i­cal brawl. There are trees at the Choe­ung Ek "Geno­cide Cen­tre" against which the heads of ba­bies were crushed near crude, shal­low holes dug for tiny corpses.

The word "de-min­ing" re­quires no elab­o­ra­tion on the front page of the Eng­lish-lan­guage Ph­nom Penh Post as an en­dur­ing lega­cy of land mines costs the Cam­bo­di­an gov­ern­ment close to US$30 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly, ac­cord­ing to es­ti­mates brought be­fore the an­nu­al Na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Mine Ac­tion in April.

The man sell­ing pi­rat­ed DVDs at the Cen­tral Mar­ket rests his stump of a left leg against a crutch and us­es it to brace his box of mer­chan­dise while he speaks Eng­lish to strangers.

Bar­tender, "Khmer Cousin" has a sign over his es­tab­lish­ment which reads: "Dis­abil­i­ties Smil­ing Restau­rant run by war vet­er­an and land mine sur­vivor" while chess is played in the mid­day heat by wait­ing tuk-tuk dri­vers.

The of­fi­cial fig­ure over a pe­ri­od of an­oth­er six years is for an­oth­er US$580 mil­lion in ex­pen­di­ture to re­move the per­va­sive, lethal threat of land mines and un­ex­plod­ed mu­ni­tions. It's a cost over-shad­owed by in­creas­ing­ly im­pres­sive eco­nom­ic sta­tis­tics but al­so by the low-hang­ing clouds of a rel­a­tive­ly re­cent past.

By the 1979 fall of the mur­der­ous Pol Pot regime, lead­ing hu­man rights ac­tivist Vi­rak Ou's fa­ther, a mil­i­tary of­fi­cer, had been among the close to three mil­lion Cam­bo­di­ans starved, hacked or shot in the name of an agrar­i­an rev­o­lu­tion which pro­duced more death than food.

Ou heads the Cam­bo­di­an Cen­tre for Hu­man Rights (CCHR) in Ph­nom Penh and thinks the coun­try's "chang­ing de­mo­graph­ics" are do­ing much to match eco­nom­ic progress with dif­fer­ent at­ti­tudes to­ward democ­ra­cy and re­spect for hu­man rights.

"The post-geno­cide gen­er­a­tion is now in the late 20s/ear­ly 30s so at that age you are am­bi­tious and de­mand­ing lead­er­ship roles and more say in the run­ning of this coun­try," he told T&T Guardian.

"I think change is in the air," he said, "the old guard, the regime, is try­ing all it can to sup­press and to pre­vent this change."

"I don't think they will be suc­cess­ful."

It was, for ex­am­ple, pub­lic opin­ion bol­stered by in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure which brought a pre­ma­ture, al­beit ten­ta­tive, end to a 20-year pris­on­sen­tence be­ing served by ra­dio pro­pri­etor/jour­nal­ist, Mam So­nan­do for os­ten­si­bly lead­ing an "in­sur­rec­tion" against the long­stand­ing reign of prime min­is­ter, Hun Sen.

So­nan­do, a spright­ly 72-year-old broad­cast vet­er­an, met with in­ter­na­tion­al free ex­pres­sion ad­vo­cates over lunch just weeks af­ter his re­lease.

He joked that some­times he thought he was more com­fort­able in prison dur­ing his eight-month stay as a vir­tu­al celebri­ty among fel­low in­mates than "out here" where he had a dis­com­fit­ing oblig­a­tion to con­tin­ue high­light­ing what he saw as in­jus­tice and wrong-do­ing.

Few be­lieve the ride for some will be easy in the run-up to elec­tions in Ju­ly. Im­pres­sive macro-eco­nom­ic in­di­ca­tors come up against the claim that too much of the pol­i­tics of the trou­bled past con­tin­ues to pre­vail.

"The old guard can­not keep up with the pace of the so­ci­ety," Ou said, "be­cause of that I think they are be­com­ing out­dat­ed."

Along the bustling streets of Ph­nom Penh, how­ev­er, it is easy for any con­ver­sa­tion to re-di­al to the pe­ri­od 1975-1979. Tuk-tuk dri­vers who spend their lives ma­te­ri­al­is­ing traf­fic con­tor­tions and mir­a­cles in the midst of what ap­pears by vis­i­tors to be a state of ab­solute chaos, eas­i­ly join his­tor­i­cal dots back to the days of ter­ror if giv­en the chance.

The tourist chan­nel on ho­tel tele­vi­sions re­minds ca­su­al re­searchers of the coun­try's trou­bled past that the word "geno­cide" has mean­ing be­yond the pages of mod­ern texts.

In the open-air food court along Mao Tse Tung Road in the mid­dle of town, teenaged wait­ress­es and young male cooks grilling riv­er fish and clams are serv­ing cus­tomers who dri­ve shiny, new ve­hi­cles.

In pin-stripes in the swel­ter­ing heat are young pro­fes­sion­als who 40 years ago would have been bound for one of many "killing fields". On April 2, news that lawyers for for­mer Khmer Rouge se­nior of­fi­cial, Khieu Sam­pan, are re­quest­ing his re­lease from de­ten­tion pend­ing a tri­al, ap­pears on page two of the "Post".

Page one is de­vot­ed to a sto­ry about the im­pacts of cli­mate change and an in­ves­tiga­tive piece about a failed telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny.

Ou's "chang­ing de­mo­graph­ics" ap­pear to be oc­cu­py­ing spaces once dom­i­nat­ed by a lin­ger­ing past.