John Vink

Choun Vann, 33 yrs, at the gym. Having fled Cambodia for the U.S. during or right after the Pol Pot regime, he is one of hundreds of American-Khmers who have been deported to their native country because they were convicted of a crime committed in the States and had not filed for American citizenship. He was convicted for sexual battery and was deported in December 2004, leaving behind a wife and three children.

In Cambodia he struggled to hold down a job working at a mechanical repair shop and a travel agency. He is currently unemployed. 1,400 more former convicts will be flown over to Cambodia in the near future. The vast majority has no more ties with Cambodia and barely speak the language.

Engagement ceremony organised by the Khmer-American middleman of Shawn Washington, Califonian truckdriver, with Nary. Shawn went back to the U.S. after the ceremony, and the wedding never took place.

If America as an influential power in Cambodia is not what it used to be (and probably for the better when taking into consideration what turmoil it left behind defending its conception of freedom and democracy) one must not forget that there are some 240,000 Khmer Americans in the U.S., living mainly in Long Beach, Calif., and Lowell, Mass. Most of them arrived in the U.S. after the Indochina war, escaping the Khmer Rouge regime and the subsequent Vietnamese invasion/liberation, and have been an important financial support for the family members who remained stuck in the homeland. I remember that hotel lobby in Phnom Penh in 1989, where a Cambodian with many golden rings on his fingers, and obviously a Khmer American, was distributing envelopes filled with greenbacks to shy elderly queuing up at the reception and taking a picture of them with the money as proof of safe delivery.

The second generation, born in the U.S. or at least who grew up there, is 20-25 years old now, and they begin to question their roots. They don’t speak Khmer or very little, even when many older Khmer-Americans barely speak English. Some still have difficulties blending in properly into American society (although you might consider that being a member of a street gang is a perfect example of integration into American culture). Their cultural background is very strong. The connections with the homeland are still very strong: from sending money back there, to producing Khmer karaoke songs to sell on the market in Phnom Penh (for a Cambodian singer it is considered as the top to perform in the U.S.), to finding a young wife in the countryside who will not be as fussy and complicated as a Western girl. Some Khmer Americans, because they still have the connections, even make a business arranging weddings between Americans and daughters of relatives in the Cambodian countryside.

I spent some time at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Cambodia, a very popular venue with international tourists, where the Democrat militants set up a screening of the 3d Obama-McCain debate, so that American citizens, be they Democrat or Republican, could cast their vote. It seems Americans abroad have to do it that way, so that they can get a postage stamp on their ballot, certifying they were not in the U.S. at the time of the vote.

Anyhow, there were some 60 or 70 people there, eating French (Belgian?) fries and drinking beer, watching the debate and casting their vote. Out of these 60, it seems, I met only 2 who were openly Republican. If that is a representative poll, I think America is in for a Azerbaidjanese surprise.

America is not having the influence on the world anymore that it thinks it has. The decline in influence of the U.S. is a matter of absence. Absence is hard to picture. But when influence by one part dwindles, the void is filled by others. In this case China, South Korea and Japan are replacing the U.S. here in Cambodia.

These are garment factory workers returning home after their shift. They work for $50 per month, share $25 rooms with three or four other co-workers and manage to send home some money to their family even after having been hit by a 20% to 25% inflation in the last year (the price of rice has nearly doubled). They work for Chinese or South Korean companies, which make clothes for American brands they will never wear, unless they are fake.

Just a few days ago, your Deputy Secretary of State, Mr. J. Negroponte, promised a first contribution of $1.8 million to the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Thanks, but Japan has contributed over $50 million over the past years.

The U.S. Department of State will give some $55 million in aid in 2008 to Cambodia, half of which is meant to strengthen its economy. Great, but China is giving $600 million, is doing a lot more business and is not asking questions. (The U.S. is not asking that many questions either, mind you.)

America is not really part of the conversation over here.

And yet, America’s ghost is felt in the English that is often the common language of these energized trading partners. So factory workers still manage to spend a few hours each week learning the modern lingua franca.