Mia Farrow in Cambodia, visiting Tuol Sleng ... and trailed by Hun Sen's plainclothe cops

American actress Mia Farrow inside a cell at a former Khmer Rouge prison at the Tuol Sleng genocide museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Saturday, Jan. 19, 2008. Farrow visited the former Khmer Rouge prison, which is now a genocide museum, Saturday where she plans to hold a ceremony spotlighting the crisis in Sudan, despite a ban imposed by the Cambodian government. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
American actress Mia Farrow looks at a painting depicting torture at the Tuol Sleng genocide museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Saturday, Jan. 19, 2008. Farrow visited the former Khmer Rouge prison, which is now a genocide museum, Saturday where she plans to hold a ceremony spotlighting the crisis in Sudan, despite a ban imposed by the Cambodian government. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
American actress Mia Farrow, center, looks at photos of former Khmer Rouge prisoners at the Tuol Sleng genocide museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Saturday, Jan. 19, 2008. Farrow visited a former Khmer Rouge prison Saturday where she plans to hold a ceremony spotlighting the crisis in Sudan, despite a ban imposed by the Cambodian government. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
American actress Mia Farrow takes pictures of human skulls during her visit at Choeung Ek killing field in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Saturday, Jan. 19, 2008. Farrow visited a former Khmer Rouge prison Saturday where she plans to hold a ceremony spotlighting the crisis in Sudan, despite a ban imposed by the Cambodian government. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
U.S. actress Mia Farrow speaks during an interview at the Center for Social Development in Phnom Penh January 19, 2008. Cambodia has barred Farrow and a group campaigning for an end to atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region from lighting a symbolic Olympic torch at a "Killing Fields" memorial site. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea

Mia Farrow to ignore Khieu Kanharith's deportation threat

Mia Farrow vows to defy Cambodian Darfur rally ban

Sat 19 Jan 2008
By Ek Madra

PHNOM PENH, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Hollywood actress Mia Farrow says she will ignore a deportation threat and pursue plans to light a symbolic Olympic torch in Cambodia's "Killing Fields", as part of a campaign to end atrocities in Sudan's Darfur.

"We will pass the flame, the flame to honour those have perished, to celebrate the courage of those who survived," Farrow, who fronts the Dream for Darfur pressure group, told Reuters in an interview.

The group has held similar events in Chad, Rwanda, Armenia, Germany and Bosnia as part of a campaign to persuade China to push Khartoum into ending the violence in Darfur.

Beijing is hosting the 2008 Olympic Games and human rights groups have targeted China in the hope of using the spotlight thrown on the country to influence Chinese foreign policy.

China, a major investor in Sudan's oil industry, has been accused of breaching international rules and fanning bloodshed by selling Sudan weapons that have been diverted to Darfur.

International experts estimate 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million others have been driven from their homes in years of fighting. The Sudanese authorities put the death toll at 9,000 and says the West has exaggerated the conflict in Darfur.

Cambodian government spokesman Khieu Khanarith said Farrow's group would face "consequences" if it continued with its plan to light another torch at Tuol Sleng, the Phnom Penh high school that became Pol Pot's main torture centre.

"What they will be doing at Tuol Sleng is not to commemorate the victims of the Khmer Rouge, but to use Khmer skulls to pressure China. This is an insult to the Cambodian people," he told Reuters.

"If they insist on organizing the rally inside the museum's compound, their visas will be cancelled and they will be expelled from Cambodia," he said. "Even if you are American or a movie star, you have to follow the rules of your host country."

Farrow said Phnom Penh was putting the interests of Beijing, one of its biggest donors, above the memories of the estimated 1.7 million victims of Pol Pot's 1975-79 reign of terror.

"We came here with the deepest respect," Farrow said, tears welling up in her eyes. "I am sad because I think it's a good thing to do."

Cambodia's cultural ministry has barred Farrow and her supporters from holding a rally at Tuol Sleng, where they have pledged to lay flowers, she said.

The American actress called on China to use its influence to push Khartoum to halt the violence in its western Darfur region and admit international peace-keepers.

"Please, China, do everything in your considerable power to persuade Khartoum to admit the peacekeeping force," she said.

"They can effectively provide security for the people of Darfur and the innocent civilian population that is being ripped apart."

(Editing by Ed Cropley and Jon Boyle)

Hun Sen's regime: Don't touch our benefactor, the almighty People's Republic of China

Cambodia may expel China protestors

Sat, 19 Jan 2008
Press TV

Mia Farrow plans to hold a ceremony at Tuol Sleng prison.
Cambodia threatens to expel activists who plan a ceremony at a Khmer Rouge prison to increase pressure on China over the crisis in Darfur.

Cambodian Information Minister Khieu Kanharith condemned the event, led by American actress Mia Farrow, as 'insulting' to victims of the communist regime which devastated Cambodia during the late 1970s.

"They want to use Tuol Sleng Prison to attack China, not to commemorate the souls of Cambodian people," said Khieu Kanharith, threatening to expel those who insist on holding the ceremony.

The group of activists, Dream for Darfur, has started a torch relay through nations that have suffered genocide to draw attention to China's close ties with Sudan, while Beijing is to host the Olympic Games in August.

Farrow's group had planned to hold a ceremony Sunday outside Tuol Sleng, formerly a torture center turned into a genocide museum.

The government on Wednesday said it would not allow the event, accusing the group of attempts to politicize the Olympic Games. But organizers said on Friday that they would still rally at the prison despite the ban.

China--which has been under pressure to use its economic ties with Sudan to stop the violence in Darfur-- was also a close ally of the communist Khmer Rouge, which accounted for up to two million Cambodians' deaths between 1975-79.

China absorbs almost two thirds of Sudan's oil output and is the most influential ally of the African country where violence has claimed thousands of lives since it erupted in volatile Darfur region in 2003.

Cambodia Tells Mia Farrow: No Ceremony [because they have a political agenda against China]

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — The Cambodian government said Wednesday it will not allow Mia Farrow to hold a ceremony at a former Khmer Rouge prison as part of her efforts to draw attention to the crisis in Sudan.

The 62-year-old actress, working with the U.S.-based Dream for Darfur advocacy group, had planned to light an Olympic-style torch Sunday at the Khmer Rouge's infamous Tuol Sleng torture house to urge China to press Sudan to end abuses in Darfur.

The group claims China, host of the 2008 Olympics, has protected Khartoum at the U.N. Security Council and sold weapons to the Sudanese government, while making Sudanese oil purchases that have helped fund genocide there.

"We will not allow them to hold the ceremony because they are not doing this for humanitarian reasons but because they have a political agenda against China," government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said.

China is one of Cambodia's major trading partners and was also the biggest backer of the Khmer Rouge's communist regime in the 1970s, which led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians.

Thousands of Khmer Rouge prisoners were tortured at the Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh before being executed outside the capital at the site known as "the killing fields."

Theary Seng, head of the Cambodian Center for Social Development, which was to host the event, said the group was trying to negotiate with the government in hopes the ceremony could still take place.

The event was intended to "commemorate past victims of genocide and to remind us what happens when the world looks away, as is happening in Darfur currently," Dream for Darfur said in a statement.

The torch has toured countries that have suffered genocide and has so far been lit at the Darfur-Chad border, Rwanda, Armenia, Germany and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Cambodia was to be the last stop before it heads to China.

Cambodia bans Mia Farrow from holding Darfur ceremony [-Hun Sen's regime issued this ban most likely to please China]

January 16, 2008
From correspondents in Phnom Penh

ACTOR Mia Farrow has been barred from holding a ceremony at a notorious Khmer Rouge prison as part of a campaign to pressure China to end abuses in Darfur, a Cambodian official said.

The American actor has started an Olympic-style torch relay through countries that have suffered genocides to draw attention to China's close ties with Sudan, as Beijing prepares to host the Games in August.

The campaign aims to push Beijing to pressure Sudan into ending the violence in Darfur, where the United Nations estimates that at least 200,000 people have died in five years of war, famine and disease.

Her group, Dream for Darfur, had planned to hold a ceremony on Sunday outside the Khmer Rouge's former prison, Tuol Sleng, which is now a genocide museum.

But interior ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak said the event would not be allowed.

"The Olympic Games are not a political issue. Therefore, we won't allow any rally to light a torch," he said.

"We will not support the activity. We will not allow them to politicise the Olympic Games," he said, warning the group could face prosecution if they try to go ahead.

Farrow's group said the ceremony aimed to call attention to the constructive role that China could play in the Darfur crisis.

"The symbolic Olympic torch relay is urging the Chinese Government, as both Olympic host and Sudan's strongest political and economic partner, to use its special influence with the Sudanese Government," the group said in a statement.

In the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, China - which is by far the largest foreign investor in Sudan and absorbs almost two-thirds of its oil output - has been under mounting pressure to use its clout on Khartoum.

Cambodia would be the sixth stop for the group's relay, which began in Chad near the Sudanese border and continued to Rwanda, Armenia, Germany and Bosnia.