This whole Somaly Mam fiasco has really opened a can of worms regarding NGO's that massage the truth or outright lie to push their own agendas and a local English language press that legitimises and perpetuates those lies by blindly printing quoted facts and figures without any fact checking.
Credit to the Cambodia Daily and Simon Marks for breaking the story, but it also mustn't be forgotten that it's the very same newspaper that used to frequently print many numbers and statistics that are now being called into question and in many cases ridiculed after this story broke. Human trafficking used to be their favourite subject before land grabbing got hot in the NGO world, now it's natural resources and political activism.
The problem is that many read stories and take them as gospel. There are other facts that are printed over and over again which are also incorrect, an example is related to forced evictions. Time and time again we read how the communities of Koh Pich, Borei Keila and Boeng Kak were there since 1979 which is incorrect. In the same way being critical of Somaly Mam doesn't mean we are on the side of human traffickers being critical of the misinformation perpetuated by NGO's and the press regarding evictions doesn't mean that we are siding with the land grabbers.
Truth and justice go hand in hand, you can't have one without the other. These lies are damaging because they create popularization with both sides truly believing they are right.
For example here's a story from the Phnom Penh Post in 2010 about the eviction of villages. The villager says that he arrived in 1979 when the island was nothing but jungle:
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/k ... ream-greed
We hear this line about being there since 1979 over and over again, the aim is to prevent the villagers from being classed as squatters. Here's a map with low-res satellite imagery of Koh Pich in 1975, as you can see at that time the Island didn't even exist. Did that Island form in four years and sprout a jungle? Of course it didn't, layer images from 1983 also show the island was just beginning to form.
http://mgo.ms/s/dkhx4
This is not a difficult thing to fact check, you can basically ask anyone older than 50 who was a Phnom Penh resident either before or after the Pal Pot period.
Here's another article from the Phnom Penh Post where a resident says that he's had his house in Borei Keila since 1979.
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/r ... on-housing
Here map that shows satellite imagery of Borei Keila from 1992 and 2005. As you can see no houses had been built on this site in the 1992:
http://mgo.ms/s/qmk9c
Using this 1992 image you can see that most of the slums in Phnom Penh were formed after this date and the arrival of UNTAC and the return of refugees from the border.
The bottom line is to take everything you read with a pinch of salt. We like black and white stories with hero's and villains because they are simple, not because they are necessarily true.
Somaly Mam, NGO's, English Language Press - Trust Worthy?
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Somaly Mam, NGO's, English Language Press - Trust Worthy?
Last edited by starkmonster on Thu Jun 12, 2014 4:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Excellent post!!
I came, I argued, I'm out
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Good post, that map is excellent.
Here's Boudeng in 1991.
I've pointed out before that Boeung Kak had a park beside it in 1990. You can see where it probably was on the 1992 map, just north of the mosque.Time and time again we read how the communities of Koh Pich, Borei Keila and Boeng Kak were there since 1979 which is incorrect.
Here's Boudeng in 1991.
Romantic Cambodia is dead and gone. It's with McKinley in the grave.
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Fascinating the effect of Cambodia mainstreaming and the exponential growth in the availability of information is having. It used to be possible to make almost any wild claim about what's happening here in this dark corner of the world, and the media and NGOs could be fairly confident that nobody could or would check their claims and that the reader's Orientalism would prop up anything that seemed too fantastic. Now you can go out to the village and find the doctor who did Pros' eye operation, you can check the online reports of the Chhay Hour raid and see there was no mention of murdered girls until years later, you can access old sat photos to see if there really were settlements where people claimed. Times are changing.
Now that is a great post !
Thanks StarkMonster
Thanks StarkMonster
K440 : Lucky cheese for the gentry; poultry and death for the peasants.
"Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad."
"Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad."
Here I go again... I always loved the Cambodian daily. In fact it was my favorite newspaper in the world for several years running. No adverts, mainly only Cambodian news, articles that made you wonder how it didn't get shut down.
Then I left Cambodia (2006) When I got back 4 years later I discovered that The Cambodian Daily had changed greatly as also had the facts and figures to related themes week by week . Even day by day sometimes; furthermore, it was also printing a lot more international news. Could it be possible that with the advent of 75% more NGO's / western professionals that the Daily changed its theme and its views to suit its new wealth base?
Then I left Cambodia (2006) When I got back 4 years later I discovered that The Cambodian Daily had changed greatly as also had the facts and figures to related themes week by week . Even day by day sometimes; furthermore, it was also printing a lot more international news. Could it be possible that with the advent of 75% more NGO's / western professionals that the Daily changed its theme and its views to suit its new wealth base?
K440 : Lucky cheese for the gentry; poultry and death for the peasants.
"Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad."
"Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad."
One example; http://www.cambodiadaily.com/date/2004/02/ picked at random from 2004.The Daily has never been "mainly only Cambodia(sic) news." If anything there is a bit more Cambodia news than there used to be.
Here's the link to the archives; http://www.cambodiadaily.com/archives/
K440 : Lucky cheese for the gentry; poultry and death for the peasants.
"Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad."
"Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad."
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From your link there were 6 Cambodia stories on Feb 27 and 4 on Feb 28, 2004. In today's Daily there were 16 Cambodia stories. It's apples an oranges anyway. Whatever is online is not a comprehensive list of the articles in the print version of the Daily, which was all that was available in 2004.SCC wrote:One example; http://www.cambodiadaily.com/date/2004/02/ picked at random from 2004.The Daily has never been "mainly only Cambodia(sic) news." If anything there is a bit more Cambodia news than there used to be.
Here's the link to the archives; http://www.cambodiadaily.com/archives/
Starkmonster, you said it all. Can't agree more with you!
The Daily was much thinner then , although its pretty thin at the moment too. True that its just a cut down of the actual paper, but its the best i can do to try to prove my point.SCC wrote:
The Daily has never been "mainly only Cambodia(sic) news." If anything there is a bit more Cambodia news than there used to be.
One example; http://www.cambodiadaily.com/date/2004/02/ picked at random from 2004.
Here's the link to the archives; http://www.cambodiadaily.com/archives/
From your link there were 6 Cambodia stories on Feb 27 and 4 on Feb 28, 2004. In today's Daily there were 16 Cambodia stories. It's apples an oranges anyway. Whatever is online is not a comprehensive list of the articles in the print version of the Daily, which was all that was available in 2004.
As I was writing the above post I realized that reading all the back issues is probably a good way to be introduced to Cambodia. Were you around in 'the good old days' yourself?
K440 : Lucky cheese for the gentry; poultry and death for the peasants.
"Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad."
"Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad."
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At best the Daily has a miserly three pages of Cambodia news and a third of that is normally translations of local crime reports from the previous day's Khmer papers.
The rest of the paper is padded out with syndicated pieces from national left-liberal newspapers like the UK Guardian, The US NY Times and the French Le Monde - a strategy that may have made sense a few years ago, before everybody had a mobile device in their pockets enabling them to read those articles the day before from the source newspaper's own mobile apps.
The rest of the paper is padded out with syndicated pieces from national left-liberal newspapers like the UK Guardian, The US NY Times and the French Le Monde - a strategy that may have made sense a few years ago, before everybody had a mobile device in their pockets enabling them to read those articles the day before from the source newspaper's own mobile apps.
Twitter: Not my circus, not my monkeys - I sold #K440
Yes, I think it turned into an 'NGO' rag. Nowadays, I read the Post.Re: Somaly Mam, NGO's, English Language Press - Trust Worthy
Unread postby keeping_it_riel » Fri Jun 13, 2014 8:06 am
At best the Daily has a miserly three pages of Cambodia news and a third of that is normally translations of local crime reports from the previous day's Khmer papers.
The rest of the paper is padded out with syndicated pieces from national left-liberal newspapers like the UK Guardian, The US NY Times and the French Le Monde - a strategy that may have made sense a few years ago, before everybody had a mobile device in their pockets enabling them to read those articles the day before from the source newspaper's own mobile apps.
K440 : Lucky cheese for the gentry; poultry and death for the peasants.
"Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad."
"Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad."
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