Phnom Penh Post
Minority villagers
train with voice recorders at a session in Phnom Penh organised by the
Indigenous Community Support Organization. Photograph supplied
One hot day in June, 2009, Ven Samin, a member of the ethnic Suoy
minority in Kampong Speu province, grabbed her digital camera and headed
out of the house.
The 44-year-old arrived at a collection of damaged rice paddies in Oral district and began taking photos.
There are not many photographers or tourists in this part of the
country, so local authorities quickly took notice of the woman with the
fancy camera who was shooting pictures of empty fields.
Not long afterwards, Samin said, officials acting as representatives
for an agricultural company with which the ethnic Suoy villagers had
been feuding told her she was not permitted to photograph the sites
because she didn’t belong to an accredited news outlet.
“They threatened me and told me to stop. They said I wasn’t a journalist, so I couldn’t take photos,” she said.
Unimpressed, Samin continued shooting, before arranging to send the
snaps to the Indigenous Community Support Organization, based in Phnom
Penh.
Companies embroiled in land disputes with ethnic minorities will
likely find themselves dealing with more Samins before long. Her actions
represent changing attitudes among members of indigenous ethnic
minorities in Cambodia.
Once cut off from society and relegated to their remote homelands,
several groups have grown more media savvy in recent years, using
donated cameras, voice recorders, radio stations and connections with
news outlets to ensure their voices and complaints are heard.
“They have captured pictures of community problems,” said Sao Vansey,
executive director of the support organisation, which provided Samin
and members of several ethnic groups with cameras. He has co-ordinated
interviews with reporters and tried to let the people speak for
themselves, because “they have a right to talk”.
Indigenous groups, Vansey said, represent only 1.3 per cent of the
population. Their small numbers and off-the-beaten-path villages make
them especially vulnerable to land-grabbing. Moreover, their isolation
has made them targets of prejudice. Reaching out through the media is
one way of fighting both battles.
And it’s not happening just in Cambodia. The theme of last year’s
International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples – which minorities
have observed here for the past eight years – was “Indigenous Media,
Empowering Indigenous Voices”.
Vansey’s organisation has been following that credo. In 2011, they
set up a radio show initially hosted by the Voice of Democracy station
and which will move to another station this year. Who Are Indigenous
People? runs at least twice a month, for an hour, and takes calls on
everything from land disputes to language, spiritual beliefs and
traditional music.
“We have to publish our problems in public in order to maintain our
traditional way of life,” said Or Sothea, 38, a guest on the show and a
member of the ethnic Por minority in Pursat province’s Phnom Kravanh
district. “I think it’s important, because we can’t live alone.”
Some of the media efforts have resulted in small, but concrete,
change. After Chheang Vun, a Cambodian People’s Party lawmaker, provoked
outrage in November by calling Human Rights Party President Kem Sokha a
“Phnuong”, the name of an ethnic minority that, when used pejoratively,
implies the person is a backward savage, the public backlash and media
flurry resulted in an apology.
Dressed in traditional clothing, about 10 members of the Phnuong,
Jarai, Kreung and Suoy minorities then came to Meta House in Phnom Penh
to hold a press conference urging tolerance and acceptance of their
people.
But not everyone is sold on the marriage of media and ethnic minorities.
“There are a lot of initiatives like this, but somehow, it isn’t
working,” said Cambodia Indigenous Youth Association president Pheap
Sochea. “Sometimes they push so much, but the community does not always
see why it’s important to do it.”
“They [ethnic minorities] know how to write only a little, and even
when they take the pictures, they aren’t professional ones, and also,
they are [over]thinking about what to report. But step by step, I think
they are improving.”
Sochea also said because of a lack of internet connection in the
communities, by the time some pictures are taken and delivered to news
sources or rights groups, the “story” has lost its news value or
currency.
The problem has affected Samin in Kampong Speu. Because she doesn’t
use email, after she took the pictures of rice paddies in Oral district,
she took out her memory card and paid a taxi driver to deliver it to
the indigenous support group in Phnom Penh, which later published the
images on its website.
Threats to stop taking photos didn’t scare Samin, and she has
continued her work while fielding interviews from Voice of America’s
Khmer language service and other local news outlets. As long as she
keeps her camera, she plans to keep doing the same thing.
“I wasn’t afraid, I still documented the activity of the company that has our land and rice fields to keep, for proof.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Joe Freeman at
joseph.freeman@phnompenhpost.com
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