Last of the elephant riders

A mahout pauses for a smoke. Once used for heavy lifting in the jungle, now most elephants haul tourists.

A typical wooden Jarai house on stilts. The Jarai, like many ethnic minorities, are very poor.

A Jarai man plays a traditional musical instrument. Not only the instruments, but also the people that know how to make or even play them are all becoming scarce.

The elephant named "elephant" grabs a snack. Sadly, this fellow appears to be undernourished.

In Cambodia, amidst exotic wildlife and temple ruins, hill tribes still tame and work with elephants. But for how long?

26 September, 2011

By Adam Bray

CNN Go

It's early in the morning and my motorbike guide is driving me two hours northeast from Ban Lung, the capital of Ratanakiri, toward the Vietnamese border.

My quest is to find the last of Cambodia's elephant riders.

These indigenous highlanders have captured, tamed and worked with wild elephants for 2,000 years, but their traditional ways -- and the elephants at the heart of their culture -- are quickly disappearing.

From an estimated wild population of around 500 elephants in this area in 2001, this has now halved to about 250. There were known to be 162 domesticated elephants in 2002, and this is likely to have significantly fallen too.

Thai authority is sending 75 Khmer and Khmer Krom people back

15 March 2007
By Lim Pisith
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Heng Soy

A group of 74 refugee families out of 80 who were seeking political asylum in Thailand, and arrested by the Thai authority, have been sent back to Cambodia on Tuesday 14 March morning. The group includes both Khmer Krom SRP activists, and Jarai ethnic minority people. The group arrived at the Poipet International gate on Wednesday morning.

One of the Khmer Krom man in the group, told RFA at the arrival in Poipet that the group include 12 Khmer Krom SRP activists, and 62 Jarai ethnic minority people. 29 children under the age of 8-year-old are also in the group which was sent back by the Thai authority from a Bangkok jail. The group arrived in Poipet at midnight on Wednesday morning. “There are many of us coming back, more than 70 people, the Thai authority said they will send us back and they will hand us over the Khmer authority.”

Sao Vannarith, the deputy immigration police chief also said that his department received 90 Cambodian people arrested for illegally entering Thailand to look for work on 14 March morning: “About 90 of them… we educate them and allow them to go back home.”

According to Thach Tey, the group of Khmer Krom SRP activists and Jarai ethnic minority people who went into hiding in Pak Kret district, Nonthaburi province, Thailand, and returned back to Cambodia, have all dispersed to look for their relatives in Banteay Meanchey and Battambang provinces.

Another group of 8 people who have also been arrested by the Thai authority have not yet been returned back to Cambodia with the other 72 because they do not have documents showing that they are Cambodian, and they only have letters indicating that they are Vietnamese. The group of 8 includes a man by name of Kheang Son, his wife, and his four children, as well as two other men.

Khieu Kanharith, the government spokesman, welcomes the return of the group back to Cambodia. He said that the returnees can live in their native villages because the government did not bring any charges against them in court: “… on this issue, the government did not charge them yet.”

Khmer Krom SRP activists fled to Thailand at the end of 2004 in search for political asylum because they were scared by the threat issued by Prime Minister Hun Sen who declared that he would arrest all those involved in the formation of a shadow army led by SRP MP Cheam Channy.