To prepare the groundwork for my next column, I would like to post a “historical perspective” and “two possible explanations” I wrote about a year ago. I apologize for the length.
1.How did a society that used to be seen as gentle and fairly moral become so materialistic and decadent?
2. Have the Pol Pot years and the subsequent extreme poverty traumatised people so much that they feel that yesterday's moral and Buddhist values don't seem so relevant any more?
Pre-1970 (specifically 1965-1970)- a Socialist country ruled by a "Socialist" playboy prince.
Cambodia was an underpopulated country of about 8 million people, an oasis of peace, according to Sihanouk but living in a fool’s paradise, from a political and economic point of view.
Politically, it was a supposedly neutral foreign policy that involved supporting implicitly the Communist cause (e.g. by tacitly allowing Chinese weapons to be shipped into Sihanoukville and secretly transferred to the VC, allowing the Ho Chi Minh trail to go through Cambodia and the Vietnamese communists to set up hospitals and training camps inside Cambodia, denying the frustrated US troops of “hot pursuit”.
Because of these leftist political leanings, the economy was not an open, free enterprise economy linking to the emerging capitalist economies of South-East Asia. As a result of the Socialist political scene and economy, Cambodia did not really know all the joie de vivre excesses e.g. girlie bars, massage parlors that were rampant in the R&R places frequented by the “swear like men, sc.rew like boys”(ref. The musical Miss Saigon lyrics GIs in Saigon and Bangkok.
Yes, corruption existed then, too but it was not institutionalised. Pol Pot’s latest biographer, Philip Short, provides evidence that school teachers, e.g., received good salaries and were able to support their families without having to ask for bribes or give private lessons. By and large, corruption was limited to high-ranking public servants who wanted to have the extra money to buy their Benz cars and, in some cases, support their mistresses.
The mentality at that time was discretely sexually permissive for men and mistresses were despised by the rest of society. Brothels did not really exist and the few that were operating were very discrete and similar to the ones that now exist in the West. Prostitutes were free-lancers and most joined the world’s oldest profession, not as a result of being sold by relatives but because they were poor and deceived by boyfriends and were deemed “unclean”.
1970-1975- a war-torn country in which life is cheap and anything could be bought
Cambodia and especially Phnom Penh joined the go-go scene of Bangkok, Saigon of the Vietnam War as soon as the fighting outside of the cities forced thousands of young orphaned or empoverished women to flee the countryside to seek refuge inside a Phnom Penh flushed with US dollars and full of brothels and gambling houses open to satisfy the lust of males, from the filthy rich and corrupt high-ranking army officers to stressed soldiers whose daily near-death experiences only made them even hornier.
The brothels were filled with young women who had been raped by the South-Vietnamese troops who followed (without being invited) the US GIs and/or by some of the undisciplined Khmer Republican troops who considered young peasant girls in the temporarily “liberated” zones as easy prey. Alternately, many of the young women were sold by relatives who did not have relatives in Phnom Penh to support them and were unable to support themselves and their families in a city with no respectable jobs and experiencing hyperinflation.
The young women were cannon fodder for many, if not most of the nouveau rich high-ranking and up of the Khmer Republican Army and the war profiteers. Coincidentally, during this period, some of Cambodia’s most famous singers were ditching their husbands to become the minor wives and mistresses of the rich and powerful.
Cambodia-from 1993 onwards- The Wild West of the 1970s without a civil war.
Today’s Cambodia is very much like the Phnom Penh of the 1970s, except for the incidence of rapes by foreign armies and the hyperinflation.
There are, however, several differences between this Cambodia and previous Cambodias.
(1)The political elite now consists mostly of the former KR leaders who have run off to bring the Vietnamese to kick out Pol Pot and their Sino-Khmer, Chinese or Vietnamese in-laws, i.e. people like Sok An, Cham Prasidh, Hok Lundy, etc.
(2)The business elite is now much, much richer than the people (e.g. the owner of the Thai san restaurant) who were close to Lon Nol.
(3)Thanks to the huge amounts involved in foreign aid, deforestation, land concessions, human and drug traf.f.icking, the wealth is beyond the limits of anything that could be imagined in the past.
(4)The potential for moral decadence is unlimited because Cambodia is now completely open to the outside world. As far as sex is concerned, the potential for kinkiness is also beyond the limits of anything that could be imagined in the past, thanks to chemical stimulants, porn videos, etc.
