All due apologies to film-maker Rithy Panh, the government and the French
Cultural Center for this column's most recent foible. The Gecko has been
dutifully informed buy one and all that the recent cancelled showing of the
"People of the Ricefields" at the French Cultural Center was not due to the long
arm of the law but rather the result of a broken projector.
Untold tales
of UNTAC heroism. Some stories about UN bravado have taken a while to
surface-others may never be told. Here's the latest that's recently come to
light: Back in early '93 in Pursat a couple of Brits and their interpreters were
taken hostage by the Khmer Rouge. After stopping the two UN vehicles the KR
ordered all the Khmer to strip and then told one of them to drive. The
interpreter said he didn't know how but the "white guy" did. Off they went into
the jungle for two days, while some of the UN staff were left to hike it back to
Pursat town to tell the tale. On hearing the plight of his colleagues, a French
UNMO captain in Pursat decided to act-and his first response was not to ask
UNTAC HQ in Phnom Penh for advice on what to do. He corrals some Malaysian
pilots who just happen to have a helicopter at hand and they head off into the
bush following a dusty trail, looking for the jeeps. The vehicles were spotted
and the KR fired a few rounds at the choppers but the French UNMO had already
developed a shrewder plan. Armed to the teeth with 60 or so plastic, empty,
liter-sized Sprite bottles-still scented with the sweet smell of petrol-he
stuffed them all with the power of the written word and the KR were
carpet-bombed with messages in Khmer which said "Let them go, we're not here to
do something bad." The plan worked. The boys wwere released. The KR got some new
canteens which will last for decades, and UNTAC/HQ was, fortunately, still in
the dark - all though they've been chuckling ever since about one hostage crisis
that was solved without a lot of international fretting and local fizz.
Are Khmer-Thai relations strained? Just ask the flight manager for Thai
International in Bangkok who when asked what other alternatives there are to get
to Phnom Penh, says to passengers: "RAC? They have big problem. They've gone
bankrupt."
The latest mine awareness exhibition at the FCCC is catching a few
on-lookersw off guard. As a visual supplement to Tim Grant's striking photos,
the bar is filled to the gills with wheelchairs. Said one recent visitor: "I
thought there was a conference on the disabled going on. I looked at one guy's
legs twice to check and see if he'd lost one."
If you're at Calmette at night and the power goes off it seems that there is
more to worry about than just bumping into walls. Staff there have been known to
park motos in their offices and you might find yourself in the dark facing a
headlight coming at you down the hallway. Pedestrians beware!
Reports from northern Siem Reap province say that the KR are now taking
advantage of Thai plastic clothes pegs, with tin foil on the clip ends so they
can be used to remotely detonate artillery shells as above ground booby
traps.
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