Cambodia's Curse (57 page)

That was just the first of several untruths he proffered, and Abney noted that “he’s done it to me two or three times, too.” In fact, foreigners with long experience in Cambodia find that lying is all too common. Cambodians, like most Asians, need first of all to save face, avoid shame and embarrassment. Cambodians also choose to shun conflict and confrontation. So if brash Westerners ask embarrassing or hostile questions, “they should not be surprised when they are told lies,” wrote Philip Short, author of
Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare.
Abney noted, “I had people look me in the eye and say, ‘No I never said that.’ And then I would tell them: ‘Well, I’m the one you said it to.’”

Aung San Suu Kyi was the Burmese opposition leader who had spent much of her life under house arrest.

When an American journalist produced a film named
Who Killed Chea Vichea?
in the spring of 2010, he showed it at the Cannes Film Festival, but the Cambodian government banned the showing of the film. When union members tried to show it in Phnom Penh, police stormed in and tore down the screen. The film concluded that highly placed members of the Cambodian government had to know about the killing.

Eyeglasses were another indication of wealth. In the provinces, no one wore them, no matter how poor their eyesight might be. No one could afford them. In fact, optometry was not a profession commonly pursued.

Funcinpec actually expelled Ranariddh in 2006 after he was found to have left the country, whereupon he sold the party headquarters to a developer and pocketed the proceeds. Later, the courts charged the prince with fraud, convicted him in absentia, and sentenced him to eighteen months in prison. But Cambodian court sentences are malleable. Hun Sen forgave him, so he returned to Cambodia and left politics.

It seemed odd that police were extremely reluctant to use new radar devices, donated by an NGO, to catch speeders or Breathalyzers to catch drunk drivers. Wouldn’t this equipment provide new opportunities to demand cash payments from drivers? But even after extensive training and public announcements that warned drivers, police simply refused to use the new devices. In Channy, the president of Acleda Bank, explained, “Cars are hard to recognize. Sometimes army officers or senior government officials will get caught,” and then the police would get in serious trouble. Better not to use the equipment at all.

Once in modern times, Cambodians did unite as one in fervent agreement on an issue. In July 2008 UNESCO listed Preah Vihear, a small, disputed nine hundred–year-old temple on the Thai-Cambodian border, as a World Heritage Site. Predictably, that led to an angry argument between Bangkok and Phnom Penh. The two states had argued over ownership of that temple for decades, and in short order both sides sent troops to the border. Though this did not exactly spawn a shooting war, a few soldiers died in short firefights. More interesting, the Cambodian people seemed to rally around their leader in support of this military standoff with their longtime foe, the Siamese. “For the first time in living memory, the entire Cambodian population was unanimously and fiercely united on a single issue,” wrote Michael Hayes, editor of the
Phnom Penh Post
.