Benny Widyono and UNTAC

Tonight at Pannasastra University on Street 370 will be the next round of the panel discussions organised by Meta House and Konrad-Adenauer Foundation on the Legacy of the Khmer Rouge. It'll kick-off at 7pm, its titled 'Cambodia After UNTAC and a New Genocide Diplomacy' and the panel will include United Nations staffer Benny Widyono who has recently published his warts and all book on his time in Cambodia, called Dancing in Shadows. Benny was the UNTAC Siem Reap shadow governor in the early 90s and returned later in the decade as the envoy for the UN secretary general, so he knows the inside-story of the UN and Cambodia at that time. I'm in the middle of reading his new book and I'm kicking myself that I haven't managed to finish it before tonight's forum. Joining him will be two more very well-informed individuals, Tom Fawthrop, author, filmmaker and journalist, who knows Cambodia extremely well, having written Getting Away with Genocide with Dr Helen Jarvis, and the DC-Cam deputy director, Peou Dara Vanthan. Moderation will come from Ray Leos.

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Just heard some extremely worrying news. A very good friend of mine, who's been ultra helpful since I arrived in Cambodia, has just told me that her brother has been sentenced to five years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. He was giving a lift to a friend and a third person when the latter was involved in a street robbery. The police stopped and arrested her brother, and without the robber or anyone else in custody, charged and accused him of robbery and theft. Whether you are guilty or innocent doesn't really matter here and despite negotiations to offer the police and the judge an alternative way out of the situation over the last few months, he's been sentenced and will remain behind bars, where he's been for the last sixteen weeks pending the court case. I feel for him and his family but injustices happen the world over and Cambodia isn't any different.