John Vink, born in Belgium in 1948, studied photography at the fine arts school of La Cambre in Brussels. He has been a freelance journalist since 1971. He received the W. Eugene Smith Award in Humanistic Photography in 1986 for a two-year documentary project on water management involving migrant and sedentary populations of the Niger, Mali, Burkina-Faso and Senegal. He joined Magnum in 1993.
First the rats: I wish you all a very happy New Year. A Khmer New Year that is... We're leaving the year of the pig for the year of the rat. I am a rat. 5th cycle. With some luck I 'll work my way through two more. It is one nice thing about Cambodia: if you forgot to celebrate Christian New Year, there is always the Chinese and the Khmer New Year to remind you that time passes by...
Now the squashed dogs. The French newspapers have a term for the 'Man Bites Dog' stories which reads: 'la rubrique des chiens écrasés' (the 'squashed dogs section'). These stories are always considered with some contempt by 'serious' news readers. Because well, according to the 'serious' news readers they are not important stories compared to the 'big' stories. You know the 'big' stories: the events you can see simultaneously on 80% of the television screens worldwide and towards which hundreds of journalist are flocking. Yes... But what is big for who? And who decides what is big? Is big 'big' because the majority says it is big? Or is big 'big' because the major media tell the majority what is big? Or is it a minority telling the media what is big?
There are many moments when an individual doesn't care about the 'big' events. For example the owner of the dog squashed by a runaway truck is convinced that the big story of the moment is his dead dog. He doesn't care if the Dalai Lama will have a discussion about Tibet with China. He cares about the disappearance of his dog. So do his children, his wife. The neighbours also think it is big news because they won't be disturbed by the barking at night. Another example are the 200 families who lost all their belongings in a fire this week in Phnom Penh. Hardly an event which will draw a crowd of foreign correspondents... Cambodia is far away.
And yet: about 1000 people who were living on the edge are now facing even harder times. If it isn't big news for Poughkeepsie (NY), for Fox News or the BBC, it is for them, their family, their friends (and for the real estate speculators).
That was it for the rats and the squashed dogs. Now you should ask: 'What has the getting published to do with squashed dogs and rats?'
I am going to talk about the Khmer Rouge Tribunal again. Sorry... But I believe important questions were raised recently. At the end of february the ECCC organised two days of on site investigations with Duch, one of the five former Khmer Rouge leaders under custody of the tribunal, at the Chhoeung Ek killing fields and at Tuol Sleng museum, the ex S21 KhmerRouge interrogation center.
Obviously and for confidentiality reasons the press was banned from this judicial investigation, a common and quite understandable procedure. No big deal: it's all taken care of in the internal rules of the court (rule 35/1/a, rule 35/2/a & c).
The police forces around Tuol Sleng were numerous and the inhabitants from the area were warned not to allow journalists peeking over the former school's walls from their rooftops. The photographers were told they would be blacklisted from the ECCC if they took pictures of Duch. One journalist in a house opposite the museum was held by police for a couple of hours and all her pictures were erased from her cards.
Ok, so there was not much left to take photographs of: some policemen blocking the road, the bench they were sitting on and the white car carrying Duch back to his prison flashing by... That was a fairly boring day for sure... But the Law is the Law: no pictures of the investigation, be it of historic value or not...
Well, think twice... The Law has rabbits in its hat (rule 56/2/b): it can "jointly grant access to the judicial investigation to the media or other non-parties in exceptional circumstances". And yes indeed: it soon leaked out that there was a camera team present at the on site investigation. Questions were asked as to who these people were of course. They are Jean Reynaud, a lawyer taking a sabbatical to make a movie on the investigation, and Rémi Lainé, a well known documentary filmmaker. They work under very specific conditions to make a "broader documentary project to describe the technical aspects of the investigation". The 3/03/2008 ECCC press release (download "OCIJ Statement on Reconstruction Recordings") about this issue boils down to:
Nuon Chea, Brother Nr 2 under the Khmer Rouge regime, had his first hearing at the pre trial chambers of the ECCC to examine his appeal for his provisional detention. The press officers of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, just to keep things orderly, and on request of the judges who felt that a mob of camera wielding journalists was intimidating for the elderly accused, decided to allow only 5 photographers, working for a pool, and two cameramen to take pictures inside the courtroom during 5 minutes, just before and during the entrance of the judges.
I was lucky, together with my khmer colleagues Tang Chhin Sothy, Chor Sokunthea, Mak Remissa and Heng Sinith, representing AFP, Reuters, EPA, AP, to be allowed in (was it because my permanent accreditation to the Chambers bears the number 001?). We know each other, have had each others elbows in our ribs on numerous occasions, bumped our lenses often and get along pretty well. Partly because we do help each other once in a while and partly because they know that Magnum is no real competition for them. Having their picture on the screen of the redactions one minute before the other agencies is vital whereas Magnum chugs along several hours later anyhow...
So what can one do to stand out? What difference can you make (in 5 minutes and with a 35mm only)? Well not much really... Especially because you're in a pool, so you HAVE to deliver or you will not be selected next time. The photographers outside are waiting to pick their choice in what's going to be available on the ECCC computer and they'd be more than willing to take your place.
Basically I start by making sure there is at least ONE usable picture. No risk taking... Autofocus, straight flash, no fancy composition, the accused smack in the middle of the frame, 5 or six shots. That's it... Switch to the M8, ambient light (the last firmware update finally delivers acceptable white balance results), 320 ISO (too much noise higher up), 2.8, 30th/ second and MOVE, change position, go to the back of the pack, slide to the right, push back into the pack again, move back and go to the left where the judges are, go straight back towards the accused, frame, focus and... finished. It's over. The 5 minutes are gone. We're politely asked by the security guards to leave the room... Hoping we didn't screw up and that there is something a little different to show. There are about 60 frames on my cards, 40 of which are really useless.
It has been seven years now that the area along the Bassac river in Phnom Penh has been under intense pressure from real estate developers. Seven years that I document the mutations of a territory where thousands of people were scraping a living thanks to the proximity of the center of town. They all have small jobs. They all have precarious living conditions. They make a couple of dollars a day collecting tin cans or scrap metal, selling shells, sugar cane or their virginity.
During rainy season the place is flooded, muddy. The people sleep with rats feeding on the pile of garbage thrown from the upper floors of the "Building", built by architect Vann Molyvann and once a showcase for modernity. But it is also the area where Kong Nay, the famous "chappey" player, the bluesman of the Mekong, is living.
E'Phutang, former heavyweight khmer boxing world champion, had his gym there, and most of the pictures in my book "Poids Mouche" were made there. Despite their resistance they all will have to move, clear the area, go and live 20 or 30km from the center of town to relocation sites designated by the authorities.
If they are lucky they get some kind of a compensation like a 3mx6m brick compartment (not really a house) or a few thousand dollars. That's today. A few years ago the whole slum would burn down in a couple of hours. How the fire started nobody would know for sure. Or people would be dumped in an empty rice field without sanitation, water, school, market, leaving NGO's to cope with the mess. My estimate is that over 15000 people will have been kicked out to allow the construction of what will become the new Phnom Penh, trying to catch up with Singapore, Hong Kong or Bangkok in terms of high rises...
It seems as if the lessons learned during all the social struggles over the last two centuries have still to penetrate the minds of Cambodians, those with power that is. Cambodia went straight from colonialism to a war, with a short intermission of prosperity, and then to plain horror. Today it is finally learning about development but also about 19th century paternalism...
It has been a busy month in Cambodia. Things around and at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal itself have taken an accelerated pace with the arrests of Ieng Sary and his wife Ieng Thirith, of Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea and probably others in the pipeline. But most of all the first public hearings took place regarding the appeal against his detention of Kang Guek Eav, alias Duch, in charge of the S21 interrogation center during the Pol Pot regime.
It is the first time Duch appeared in public since over 8 years, and there was a long line of people at the entrance of the courtroom. They filled the hall where two big screens showed what happened in the crammed pretrial chambers nearby. Press photographers and cameramen were alllowed five minutes at the beginning of two hearings. The first time we were about sixty and inevitably there was some pushing and shoving. Luckily it was in my back... The second time, before the judges would tell Duch he would stay in prison, things were better organised and only five photographers were allowed in, pooling for those who had to stay outside. The light in the pretrial chamber was kind of gloomy neon. It was a weird impression to stand two or three meters from someone who is tried for crimes against humanity and who is accused of being responsible for the death of some 15000 people. It is weird because he is just an old man, with glassy eyes looking at us, late at standing up when the judges come in, but seemingly healthier looking than eight years ago. It is as if the monster has disappeared with the system which created it...
At 5:30 am on 12/11/2007 special police units and representatives of the ECCC arrested KIM Trang, alias Ieng Sary, and his wife Ieng Thirith at their home on street 21 in Phnom Penh and transferred them to the Khmer Rouge tribunal's prison in Kambol in execution of an arrest warrant for Crimes against Humanity.
Ieng Sary, born in 1925 in Kampuchea Krom (a vietnamese province wich once belonged to Cambodia) studies in France in the 50ties, comes back to Cambodia in 57 and in 63, by then a member of the PTK and brother-in law of SALOTH Sar, alias POL Pot, he joins the maquis. He is deputy prime minister during the Khmer Rouge regime from 75 to 79 and flees to Thailand after the vietnamese invasion. He receives the death penalty in absentia during a trial set up by the PRK. After the Paris Peace Accords of 91 he settles in Pailin and in 96 is instrumental in the surrender of the Khmer Rouge controlled area which triggered the subsequent surrender of the other KR areas. King Norodom Sihanouk gratifies him with a Royal Pardon for that fatal blow to the Khmer Rouge movement.
Ieng Sary's house happens to be in my street, so at least I didn't have to get up too early. Unfortunately for us, security was very tight and all the 5 journalists who were present at that time were pushed back 200 meters near a garbage dump by the Anti-Terrorist squad who was in charge. We waited there until 8:30am, trying to spot any movement near the cars parked in front of the house, speculating which road they would leave through, chatting with the policemen or the defence lawyers who were blocked by the police just like us, and chasing away the flies buzzing on the garbage. By then the number of journalists had increased by at least 20 and the big telelenses were readied. My poor 135mm certainly was no match but in fact it didn't really matter because the car going to carry the former Khmer Rouge leaders was driven inside the courtyard, so at 9:00 it became certain we would not see the faces of those being arrested. It also became clear that they would leave through the other street, so most of us rushed over there, mingling with the people from the densely populated street. Many of them did not have a clue of who Ieng Sary is. Around 9:30 the motorcade cut through the little crowd and left some dust behind. None of us journalists has had even a glimpse of Brother Nr 3...
It seems there is not a day when something of Cambodia's past is up for grabs and available to the one with the highest bid. Lately, the land owned by the government on which was built the Suramarit theater was sold for an undisclosed amount and for an undisclosed period of time as a concession to a private company who doesn't seem to have precise plans. It is difficult to be less transparent with public property...
In Cambodia one often knows what he'll lose but not what he'll get in return. And here the loss is considerable. The theatre is one of architect Vann Molyvann's highest achievements. In the so-called "Golden Era" of the 60's the Cambodian architect has dotted the landscape of his capital Phnom Penh with landmarks of international standards like the School of Foreign Languages, Chaktomuk conference hall or the Olympic stadium. During the 80's the theatre was a point of convergence for the artists scattered by the Khmer Rouge regime. This was the place where one could assess who was left alive among the heirs of centuries old culture. Cambodian film director Rithy Panh has used the theatre as a pivotal point for his film "Le Theatre Brule" which precisely and quite humorously checks where exactly Cambodia stands today on a cultural level.
During its rehabilitation in 1994 the theatre was gutted by a fire and left crippled until today. Crippled but still alive. Some 300 artists, traditional dancers, members of the Royal Ballet, kept using the place for rehearsals, working under collapsing roofs or in the nearby exhibition grounds.
Except for a few rare occasions over the last thirty years John Vink arrives too late... Or does he? When he gets where he wants to be, the paroxysms of the crisis are gone. So are most of the media, on to another spot on Earth where violence and tension are mounting. John thinks it's starting to get interesting when no one is watching anymore...
In 1989 he spent one month in Cambodia. He came back in 1991. Then again in 1999. And in 2000 he stayed. More than six years later he is still there and hardly moves outside the Cambodian borders. He is somewhere else without having to travel.
A pawn in the cynical game of geopolitics, Cambodia was dragged into a war it initially didn?t belong to. It was left stunned and bloodless by the second genocide of the 20th century: an estimated 1,7 million people died during the 3 years, 8 months and 20 days of the Khmer Rouge regime. It was liberated/occupied by a foreign country for ten years and was ostracized by the West for that. After the 1991 Paris Peace Accords it was kept breathless by a civil war which lingered on until 1998 and by political unrest. Today it still has a heavy price to pay for its reconstruction in an unbridled market economy where literally everything, from governmental property to human dignity, seems to be for sale (Cambodia is ranked nr 151 out of 163 on the level of corruption according to Berlin based Transparency International)?
The destruction caused by all those years of turmoil was not only physical. It was moral as well. The very particular and intricate values which built Khmer society over the centuries were shattered by a constant urgency to survive. The country is far from having recovered the tissue of solidarity which binds a society and which provides protection to those weaker members of its community.
Khmer Chronicles proposes to give you a glimpse of that Cambodia. John Vink won't talk about himself right away but it'll tell you a lot about what he is interested in... And you can always ask him a question. Probably he'll answer...
These pictures were made during a local assignment for UNICEF.
Established in Cambodia since 1972, but interrupted by he Khmer Rouge regime ripping apart the country from 1975-79, UNICEF, today with a staff of about 140 people, has set up a widespread range of programmes in six provinces with its usual focus on children to support the government in rebuilding the country.
The country programme for 2006 to 2010 has a budget of 92,5 million$US which will be used for the Seth Koma (Child Rights in Khmer), the Child Survival, the Expanded Basic Education, the Child Protection, the HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care and the Advocacy and Social Mobilization programmes. These programmes cover an impressive array of topics ranging, among many others, from hand washing campaigns to the improvement of water quality or child-friendly classrooms, from dengue fever protection to supporting NGOs dealing with drug addiction or Buddhist monks doing HIV/AIDS prevention, from implementing a decent treatment of children caught up in the judiciary system to thorough immunization campaigns or avian influenza awareness campaigns.
The road ahead is still steep though, and several years of economic growth with double digits have by far not rendered the presence of UNICEF in Cambodia obsolete. In fact the rapid growth of the country and the ensuing increase in economic disparities among the population have made the presence of UNICEF and many other active international organizations in Cambodia even more indispensable.
Nearly 30 years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, evidence of their brutal rule is still being discovered. On May 5, villagers of Koh Sla, while digging the soil, stumbled upon a burial site dating from the regime. Some people started exploring the site, looking for jewelry which would have been left in the graves. About 120 corpses were unearthed.
On a small hilltop nearby, the remains of a separate body were found, wrapped in olive coloured plastic sheeting, which indicates this was not a civilian victim but more probably a Vietnamese soldier who died during the 1979 campaign by the Vietnamese army to push back the Khmer Rouge to the strongholds from where they would remain active until 1998. The bones were recovered by the Vietnamese on May 10th and repatriated.
First the rats: I wish you all a very happy New Year. A Khmer New Year that is... We're leaving the year of the pig for the year of the rat. I am a rat. 5th cycle. With some luck I 'll work my way through two more. It is one nice thing about Cambodia: if you forgot to celebrate Christian New Year, there is always the Chinese and the Khmer New Year to remind you that time passes by...
In Cambodia one often knows what he'll lose but not what he'll get in return. And here the loss is considerable. The theatre is one of architect Vann Molyvann's highest achievements. In the so-called "Golden Era" of the 60's the Cambodian architect has dotted the landscape of his capital Phnom Penh with landmarks of international standards like the School of Foreign Languages, Chaktomuk conference hall or the Olympic stadium. During the 80's the theatre was a point of convergence for the artists scattered by the Khmer Rouge regime. This was the place where one could assess who was left alive among the heirs of centuries old culture. Cambodian film director Rithy Panh has used the theatre as a pivotal point for his film "Le Theatre Brule" which precisely and quite humorously checks where exactly Cambodia stands today on a cultural level.
