Actress Mia Farrow visits Khmer Rouge prison, site of banned Darfur ceremony

Actress Mia Farrow standing in front of the photos of Khmer Rouge victims at Tuol Sleng prison.


PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - American actress Mia Farrow visited a former Khmer Rouge prison Saturday where she plans to hold a ceremony spotlighting the crisis in Sudan, despite the Cambodian government's ban on the event.
Several plainclothes police trailed Farrow and took pictures of her during a two-hour visit to the Khmer Rouge's infamous Tuol Sleng Prison, which is now a genocide museum in the capital, Phnom Penh.
Farrow, who is working with the U.S.-based advocacy group Dream for Darfur, came to Cambodia to hold a mock Olympic torch-lighting ceremony at the former prison. The ceremony aims to send a message to China - the next Olympic host and one of Sudan's major trading partners - to press Khartoum to end abuses in Darfur.
China, host of the 2008 Olympics, has strong economic ties with both Sudan and Cambodia.
The Cambodian government said days ago it would prevent the 62-year-old actress from holding the ceremony because the group had "a political agenda against China" and was holding the event for political rather than humanitarian reasons.
Farrow herself has not commented on the matter, but a Cambodian rights group that is helping to organize the event has said they plan to proceed with the ceremony.
Dressed in sunglasses, jeans and a black T-shirt, Farrow took a guided tour of the prison, where thousands were tortured during the Khmer Rouge's genocidal rule over Cambodia in the 1970s. An estimated 1.7 million deaths have been blamed on the regime.
Farrow took pictures of the gruesome photographs of torture that fill the former prison's walls as a Cambodian member of her entourage explained the exhibits.
When a reporter asked her about the planned ceremony, Farrow smiled and replied "Hello!" A waiting car whisked her away.
She was accompanied by Theary Seng, director of the advocacy group Center of Social Development, which is helping organize the event planned for Sunday.
"Our resolve is still the same, which is to go forward" Theary Seng said Friday. "It's really difficult how anyone can be against honoring survivors of genocide, particularly as Cambodians."
Dream for Darfur has taken its torch-lighting campaign to other places that have suffered mass killings - the Darfur-Chad border, Rwanda, Armenia, Germany and Bosnia-Herzegovina - to honor genocide victims and call attention to the violence in Darfur. The group plans to head to China following its Cambodia visit.
Dream for Darfur claims China has sold weapons to the Sudanese government and has defended Khartoum's actions in Darfur at the UN Security Council, while Chinese oil operations in Sudan have helped fund genocide there.
China, the biggest backer of the Khmer Rouge's communist regime in the 1970s, is a major donor to Cambodia and has been described by current Prime Minister Hun Sen as Cambodia's "most trustworthy friend."