Cambodian police block Mia Farrow's Darfur rally

Sun Jan 20, 2008
By Ek Madra

"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" - Actress Mia Farrow

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodian police barred Hollywood actress Mia Farrow and other activists from laying flowers at a "Killing Fields" museum on Sunday, as part of a campaign to end atrocities in Sudan's Darfur.

Some 100 baton-wielding police blocked Farrow, who fronts the Dream for Darfur pressure group, and her fellow activists from entering the compound at Tuol Sleng, the Phnom Penh high school that became Pol Pot's main torture centre.

"Darfur has nothing to do with Cambodia. Go protest in Darfur," Phnom Penh police chief Touch Naruth told reporters after the brief stand-off ended without incident.

The group, which had planned to light a symbolic Olympic torch in the compound, 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.

The group, which included a survivor of the Rwandan genocide, were due to hold a press conference later in the day.

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 say the West has exaggerated the conflict.

Farrow said in an earlier interview that 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 told Reuters, tears welling up in her eyes. "I am sad because I think it's a good thing to do."

Cambodian government spokesman Khieu Khanarith had said Farrow's group would face "consequences", including possible deportation, if it pushed ahead with its plans.

"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.

The U.S. 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."

Government to Ban Darfur Torch Relay

By Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
16 January 2008

Government officials said Wednesday they would ban a US-based advocacy group from holding a ceremonial torch relay to raise awareness of rights abuses in Sudan’s Darfur region.

The group, Dream for Darfur, has held similar relays in other countries and is urging the Chinese government—host of the 2008 summer Olympics and friend of the Sudanese government—to stop the abuses in Darfur. Cambodia enjoys a close relationship with China.

The relay was to be initiated by US actress and activist Mia Farrow and joined by survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide and US Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli.

Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak said Wednesday the government would not allow the Olympics to be politicized.

If rights groups want to help Cambodian athletes go to the Olympics, he said, “we wish to very much welcome that.”

Seng Theary, executive director of the Center for Social Development, which was helping organize the relay, declined to comment on the ban.

Vann Nath, a survivor of the Tuol Sleng torture center under the Khmer Rouge, who was supposed to take part in the relay, said he hoped to use the event as a way to raise awareness of the suffering that takes place under genocidal regimes.

The US supports events that memorialize those killed during the Khmer Rouge regime and focuses attention on genocide, US Embassy spokesman Jeff Daigle said.

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.

Mia Farrow should also lead a protest against the Hun Sen's regime collusion with China

Actress Mia Farrow protests outside the Chinese embassy in Washington DC

Cambodia accuses actress Mia Farrow of hijacking its tragic past

Wed, 16 Jan 2008
DPA

Phnom Penh - Cambodian officials Wednesday accused a group spearheaded by American movie star Mia Farrow of hijacking the country's tragic past for politics and barred it from taking a symbolic Olympic torch through a genocide museum. The actress was planning to light an Olympic torch at the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum in the capital where up to 16,000 people were tortured or killed by the Khmer Rouge in order to draw attention to the war in Sudan and China's close ties to that government.

China, one of Cambodia's closest allies, is preparing to host the Olympics in August. It has been accused of failing to use its economic clout in Sudan to end violence in the Darfur region, where the United Nations estimates that at least 200,000 people have died so far in a protracted war.

The Olympic torch-style relay Dream for Darfur has so far visited five countries where genocides took place, including Germany.

"Toul Sleng is a place to come quietly with incense to respect our dead, not for torches and politics," Toul Sleng director Chey Sopheara said by telephone.

"Please don't plus our victims to other issues. To do what the foreigners want would disturb our dead. How can they compare Toul Sleng with a sporting event?"

Farrow's organization has partnered with German-funded local non-government organization Center for Social Development. Its American-Khmer director Theary Seng has denied the guesture is political, but Cambodian officials disagree.

"It's naive to say this action avoids politics. We cannot allow it. We would not allow them to make these sorts of displays about any embassy here," government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said.

"If they wanted to make a protest against the American bombing of Cambodia, we would not allow that too," he said in reference to Richard Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia from 1970 which many people blame for giving the Khmer Rouge the impetus to come to power.

Kanharith described Farrow, 62, and her local counterparts as "a group of foreigners lacking insight who do this for money" and warned against cheapening the memory of Cambodia's victims.

Up to 2 million Cambodians died under the Khmer Rouge regime.