Sounding on Cambodia for March 10, 2010

• The Cambodian government has started paying some (minor) attention to bloggers!  Whoo-hoo!  Of course, the form that attention has come in is the banning and blocking of specific blogging services. DAS has the sketchy details.
• You may remember a little group called Amnesty International.  They’ve recently been pissed off at the government of Cambodia for kicking out a bunch of Uighur asylum seekers, including a guy who had a legitimate visa, in exchange for a pantsload of aid from the People’s Republic of China.
• Today, Amnesty International is pissed off that, while the government keeps trumpeting their ‘win-win’ strategies and economic development, rape against (primarily poor) women in the kingdom has become so widespread that gang rape is a common, collective form of social bonding among middle-class urban boys.  See also story reported in The Mirror. How do we get this point to receive the attention it deserves?  Allow me to point again to Siliva Federici’s excellent work, Caliban and the Witch.
• Anne Elizabeth Moore, formerly of the Harpswell Dormitory in Cambodia, has an excellent article over at TruthOut on the garment factories of Cambodia. Go. Read. Now.
• Over at her personal Cambodia blog, Moore points out Guy DeLauney’s BBC video piece on cyclos in Phnom Penh.
• Khmer Krom need defense from the UNHCR to have the right to speak their language, and practice their culture, in Vietnam.  The lack of international attention to this issue is deeply distressing, as is the way in which those few groups who do pay attention to the issue attempt to use it.
• Meanwhile, the US government has promised to return a load of looted Khmer art.  About time.