Khmer Voices Rising: Cambodian Freedom Writer Tararith Kho

Kho Tararith (Photo: Im Sothearith, VOA)

Friday, April 01 2011
Contributed by: Wei Lai
Infoshop News

“If letters disappear, the nation will disappear. If letters are brilliant, the nation is brilliant. The level to which a government clamps down on writers is a barometer of a nation’s freedom.” – Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, Vice President of International PEN (An advocacy group for the rights and freedoms of writers).

How, then does the wind blow in Cambodia? Here is the forecast from Tararith Kho, an International Writers Project Fellow at Brown University.

(The following is a paraphrased account based on my notes from a live translation by praCH)

“I come from a country where the government blocks foreign news sites and teachers instill fear on their pupils. When the group KI, an independent media group was founded, its writers were banned from Cambodia or banished to jail. Here are a few of their faces:”

Kho picks up a stack of papers from the table, and shows the faces of Cambodian writers who have gone missing. He solemnly reads their names and the room is silent.

“And where does the change come from? Outside NGOs can only do so much, sure they aim to alleviate poverty and improve social infrastructure. Phnom Penh is filled with foreigners, and we are grateful for their work, but they are foreign. Cambodians working on behalf of free speech and sharing their nation’s true history are squelched.

Moreover, it is very difficult to set up an NGO, as you have to befriend the right people. But who are the right people? Cambodia is filled with spies. It only takes the government 2 hours to find and arrest someone living in Phnom Penh. Our prime minister has 500 bodyguards and countless armies in the city and in the jungle.

These are armies that willfully attack not only the journalists or writers, but their families too. If you write about the true history of the Killing Fields, you face real death threats. But still I keep writing, I feel it is the right thing to do.”

prACH, #1 hip-hop emcee in Cambodia, with a political rhyme flow similar to that of Immortal Technique pauses the translation, and commends Kho, “This is my hero of the day right here.”

Kho produces a humble smile and continues,

“The corruption is real and the threats are real. In 2008 I accepted the PEN award with mixed emotions. When I return to Cambodia this May, I will be uncertain about my fate.”

Words from an afternoon panel shared with Vietnamese Writers:

“The Vietnam War brought truly bad things, the Khmer Rogue destroyed our history by burning national documents. We wanted to remain neutral but were pulled into war. There were not many written pieces on the war from the generation that lived through it. We lacked the choice to express our ideas and were choked by a growing influence from China and Vietnam. A reason why censorship is so powerful today is because Cambodia does not want to offend the Chinese giant. Look at a map from the war era, the whole Southeast Asia area was referred to as ‘Indo-China.

(Author’s aside. The false geographical term ‘Indo-China’ (as opposed to Southeast Asia) was pivotal in supporting Kissinger’s Domino Theory, its exaggerated claims lead the US into a sweeping war against Communism, at the expense of countless lives of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians.)

“My father was an American soldier who died before I could meet him. Growing up I listened to lots of Thai radio, heard their ideas and questioned our lack of freedom. I grew up in the countryside, in a very poor and remote province. I began writing as a teenager and realized that all prominent writers used pseudonyms to mask their true identity. Government screening meant that it took 3 years before any books or papers were published, even if they were apolitical. We were robbed of any current opinions aside from that of the Khmer Rogue. During the 1980’s I wanted to pursue an education and move out of my province but at this time we needed a government stamp to move from one town to the next. I wasn’t able to leave the countryside for quite some time.

As I later progressed as a writer in the 1990s and 2000s I took upon controversial subjects, as these were what had the most meaning for me. I wrote facts and feelings about forced evictions, land grabs and injustice. No one should say what you can/can’t do or to force you to do this/that. This is when the death threats came as phone calls, anonymous emails and website comments. But this did not stop me.

I was merely an artist exposing corruption; the law was not obeyed by those who made the laws. Cambodia is not the worst country for freedom on speech, but there are huge lurking threats. We could not have a gathering (5 writers on a literary panel with 20-30 audience members) like this today without going through the government ministry of culture’s ‘radar’.

I don’t hate the government; I’m just exposing the flaws in the system. In my poetry I write about how the rich are becoming richer and the poor are becoming poorer—this is reality why do we hide from it? Yet, in Cambodian society, even oral accusations against the government in day-to-day conversations are illegal. All I ask for is the freedom to write, I have no aspirations of wealth, the facts and personal opinions of Cambodians need to be shared.”