Sou Sdei and welcome to Campuccino, your fortnightly dispatch of key headlines in Cambodia with a dash of opinion.
To new subscribers, welcome! I’m Darathtey, a communication consultant, writer, and researcher. Learn more about my work here.
Hello from a gloomy and slightly cooler Phnom Penh. We’ve been experiencing this weather this past week, but I also noticed that I start having this pressure headache whenever it rains, especially in the evenings. It was every single day at the same time last week and I’m not sure why. So, if I seem a bit less verbal than usual, that’s the reason. Headache aside, I spent the weekend watching a lot of fights at the 2nd Asian Mixed Martial Arts Championship (AMMA). Key takeaway from that event: Cambodian fighters need to improve their grappling game, a lot. However, it was really nice to see athletes getting a lot of support from the audience. It felt very wholesome.
- Darathtey
One of the biggest news headlines here in the past two weeks is the prison sentence handed to Mother Nature activists. The court ruling came on 2 July when ten members of the environmental activist group were sentenced to between six and eight years in prison for charges of plotting against the government and insulting the king. Read a detailed report on the sentence here.
Nothing that I want to express in this case has not been said already. It is unjust, unfair, and outright cruel. Kudos to my government for such an innovative method to nurture the younger generation…
In other human rights-related news, the Center for Alliance of Labor Human Rights (CENTRAL) is under an auditing process from the National Auditing Authority following a request from the Ministry of Interior. Apparently, the ministry received complaints from various unions, federations, and associations that CENTRAL’s recently released report titled Barriers to Representation: Freedom of Association in Cambodia is allegedly “unfair and biased”. All I can say is that CENTRAL is in big trouble. I hope this is not the government’s pretext for shutting them down altogether. But hey, this is not something we have not seen before.
As Cambodia is pushing for groundbreaking of the Funan Techo Canal project early next month, more articles are coming out on how our neighbours perceive the projects. Here are two for you to read at your leisure:
Bangkok Post – Cambodia starts to flex its muscles (this title alone couldn’t make me click fast enough!)
Mongabay – Cambodia’s Funan Techo Canal project: A catalog of worries (analysis)
Visually Pleasing
Arts & Culture
📖 The Seven Colours Festival: Young People and Civic Participation in the Arts by Amenda Rogers and Say Tola explores how arts can be a tool for young Cambodians with limited arts experience to participate in civic life. It followed four interns who helped organise the Festival in 2023 for Cambodian Living Arts. By examining the interns' work and the festival itself, the project aimed to understand how the arts can connect to young people's social concerns and encourage their civic engagement.
🥊 At the opening ceremony of the 2nd AMMA, Prime Minister Hun Manet announced that Cambodia will organise an annual martial arts competition starting from October 2024. The tournaments will serve as a platform for those practising Khmer martial arts to showcase their skills. Both Cambodia and foreign nationals are welcome to compete.
🎙️Open Mind Podcast is a newly launched podcast hosted by Sam, a Ghanaian, and Sela, a Khmer-American, living in Phnom Penh. The podcast explores Cambodia’s growing industries, from music, art, culture, creators and other sectors through deep conversation with groundbreakers and rising talents in Cambodia.
Worth Reading
The $11 Billion Marketplace Enabling the Crypto Scam Economy | Wired
A massive crypto scam called "pig butchering" has become a huge criminal business, stealing billions. To support this scam, a whole system has sprung up. This system offers criminals tools to find and trick victims, ways to clean their stolen money, and even tools to keep people forced to work in the scam from escaping. New research shows that all this can be found on a single Cambodian online platform called Huione Guarantee, which is connected to Cambodia's ruling family.
Campuccino is a fortnightly dispatch of key headlines in Cambodia, written by @DarathteyDin.
I’d love to hear from you. If you have feedback or content ideas, please write to me at hello@darathteydin.com