Word: cambodian
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...appetite for such relics has sparked a lawless gold rush across Asia. In the past year alone, Indian police busted a smuggling ring that allegedly stripped hundreds of temples and monuments of sculptures and frescoes, then sent them on to be sold to collectors in the U.S. and Europe; Cambodian cops seized several truckloads of priceless Khmer sculptures crudely ripped from archaeological sites in Banteay Meanchey province; and Chinese officials uncovered the theft of 158 pieces of religious statuary from a collection lent to a museum in Chengde by the Forbidden City's Palace Museum in Beijing. Over the past...
...continues unabated. In 1999 entire slabs of bas-relief from Banteay Chhmar, a magnificent temple in western Cambodia, were loaded onto trucks and driven to Thailand. Roads were bulldozed through the jungle to carry out the sandstone chunks, leading Thai police who later intercepted the load to charge the Cambodian military with complicity. This March looters trekked upriver to Kbal Spean, a distant jungle enclave where elaborately carved bas-reliefs from the 11th century decorate the riverbed and surrounding rocks. It was nighttime, and they found the site unguarded because of the lack of funds. Using an electric...
...After the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, Cambodia's Muslims, who make up 5% of the population, turned to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to help rebuild their mosques and schools. Accompanying the aid were teachers from those countries, with the result that today 10% to 15% of Cambodian Muslims are Wahhabis. Many go to Saudi Arabia to study. "They come back and are filled with fire and want to change the way we do things," says Soi Ponyamin, a commune chief in the village of Svay Khleang...
...Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is a man used to getting what he wants. When he lost the country's first post-war elections in 1993, he rejected the results and insisted on being named co-Prime Minister. When that partnership with Prince Norodom Ranariddh didn't work out, he ousted the prince in a blood-soaked coup in 1997 and won the next round of elections a year later. Last week, Hun Sen received a far more orderly mandate in elections that were deemed the cleanest and most peaceful yet, though still marred by intimidation and vote-buying...
...rivals continue to try. The Cambodian People's Party (CPP) won a majority of seats in the National Assembly, but Hun Sen needs a two-thirds vote in the assembly for a government to be sworn in. Last week, two other main parties announced they will join a coalition on one condition: that the CPP dump Hun Sen and choose someone else to be Prime Minister If the deadlock persists, Hun Sen has only himself to blame. After the CPP lost the 1993 elections, it was he who pushed through the constitutional provision requiring a two-thirds National Assembly vote...