My MH flight landed at its new airport – Techo International Airport (KTI). It opened only last year. Apparently built with substantial Chinese involvement, it is a beautiful, massive airport, though traffic was light.
There was some nostalgia about the visit.
I had visited Phnom Penh before; it was in 1996. I couldn’t recall any familiar sight at all.
However, two incidents remained etched in my mind.
One of the richest men in the country then was Teng Boonma. He was a Thai-born Cambodian businessman and headed the Thai Boon Roong business group. He was building the InterContinental Phnom Penh then, the country’s premier luxury hotel.
There was an interesting incident involving him. Teng pulled out a pistol and shot one of an aircraft’s tyres when he became angry after Royal Air Cambodge apparently failed to deliver his luggage on a flight from Hong Kong. Contemporary reporting sometimes described him as the owner of the airline; however, he was not. He died in 2016 at the age of 75. The episode became emblematic of the extraordinary power enjoyed by Cambodia’s leading tycoons in that period.
He wanted to have a casino in the hotel and invited one of Genting’s children to start one for him. I was asked to evaluate its feasibility.
I remember him personally showing me around. What was memorable was the constant presence of his personal security guards armed with machine guns – before and behind us. He even took me to his house and introduced his beautiful daughter to me.
We did not take up the offer.
The second incident was even more “memorable”.
I was brought to visit the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. It was known by its Khmer Rouge designation, S-21 (Security Prison 21), and had originally been a secondary school. After the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh in 1975, the school was converted into a secret detention, interrogation and torture centre. Around 15,000 people are estimated to have been imprisoned there, with only a tiny number surviving.
Tuol Sleng (S-21) was principally a prison and torture/interrogation centre. Prisoners were subsequently transported to Choeung Ek, about 15 kilometres outside Phnom Penh, where many were executed and buried in mass graves. Choeung Ek is the site most commonly called “the Killing Fields”. In 2025, Tuol Sleng, Choeung Ek and the former M-13 prison were together inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List as the Cambodian Memorial Sites: From Centres of Repression to Places of Peace and Reflection.
I felt terribly sick after the visit. My stomach refused to work, and I was writhing in my Sofitel hotel room for three days. No amount of Western or Chinese medicine could help. I felt as though I was dying.
The first thing that came to my mind was this: Had I been condemned by the spirits there?
Fortunately, just a day before I was scheduled to fly out, my system returned to its proper state!
Upon reflection, I think it was the fresh salad I had at the Sofitel that created the havoc. Water was not clean at that time, and something I ate must have been contaminated.
After the conference, we organised a short city tour for some of the participants who were visiting Phnom Penh for the first time. Since I had nothing else to do, I decided to join them. S-21 was on the itinerary.
I must say that the feeling this time was completely different. I had seen the exhibits before and was no longer as overwhelmed by the sight, even though the grotesqueness of the Khmer Rouge’s cruelties was something I could never understand. The great perpetrator, Pol Pot, and his cronies had a much easier way of dying.
The Hyatt Regency is a beautiful hotel. The rooms are modern and very clean. Labour costs must be pretty low, as the hotel seems to employ far more workers than one normally sees elsewhere. They are very courteous, though.
One Cambodian guest left a strong impression on me.
He is HE Prof Dr Chhem Kieth Rethy, a Senior Minister of the Royal Government of Cambodia. Prof Rethy is a medical doctor, scientist, educator and historian with extensive experience and interests spanning digital technology and AI, nuclear technology, anthropology and philosophy of technology, geopolitics and foreign policy, the social history of Angkor Buddhism, medical ethics and professionalism.
He holds an MD, a PhD in Education and a
PhD in History. He has published more than 200 scientific articles and
co-authored 25 textbooks.
We invited Prof Rethy as our keynote speaker. Looking at his profile[1], you might wonder whether he is for real.
Yes, he is.
Our pre-conference welcome dinner was supposed to start at 7 pm. Being a Board member of the organisation, I thought I should arrive at the venue early. I got there at about 6:15 and saw a distinguished-looking man already there. I immediately knew that he was the keynote speaker.
True enough, sitting there alone was Prof Rethy. I introduced myself and welcomed him. He was generously engaging. He told me that he had lived in many countries.
We also talked about our heritage. To my
pleasant surprise, his forebears were from Quanzhou, like mine. And both of us
have grown our roots deeply in the countries with which we are identified – he
in Cambodia, and I in Malaysia. He had visited Malaysia many times and knew
many VIPs there.
In his speech, I was mesmerised by his intellect and wisdom. He spoke eloquently about Cambodia, which he described as a banyan tree – one that symbolises patience. Civilisation, to him, is a matter of memory. Just like Angkor Wat, it never ceases to exist. Excellence can come from good institutions, but it is through civilisational resilience that life goes on.
He also had a word or two for those chasing AI. He contends that AI by itself is not intelligent. Nor is it wise. AI, as it stands now, has no heart, no conscience and no compassion. “You don’t learn; you copy.” Whereas nuclear weapons are at least state-controlled, AI is in the hands of individuals.
Prof Rethy also talked about his restlessness – and hence his vast knowledge and multitude of achievements in so many fields. He says he is a product of war.
France was Cambodia’s colonial master,
but he was not bitter about the French. He said he had learned much from them.
And thanks to Latin, he found it easy to master medicine.
There was so much to learn from this great man. We need more leaders like him in this world.
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| With Prof Rethy, his son and my colleague Michelle |
You all know that China and Cambodia have had a long history of close relations, including during the Pol Pot era. Former Prime Minister Hun Sen is Khmer with Chinese ancestry on his father’s side – Teochew (潮州/潮汕). Of course, not everyone with Chinese ancestry is necessarily pro-China, but Hun Sen definitely is.
You can see Chinese signage everywhere. To my surprise, I even saw some Chinese hawking food near the hotel. They did not even have a cart – just some makeshift planks from which to serve their offerings. They did not look that poor, but their income must have been very meagre. Surely, I thought, they could have found an easier way to earn a living back home. Something is not quite right.
And then there is Xi Jinping Boulevard – on the way to the new airport. The driver proudly pointed it out to me.
Many Cambodians in Phnom Penh can speak Mandarin. I suppose they are learning the language out of necessity.
Regardless, I always harbour this concern at the back of my mind. The present prime minister, though Hun Sen’s son, was educated at West Point. There are already traces in his actions that might have made China nervous. We have seen how quickly relationships can change in the Philippines, and also in Indonesia.
Friendship between countries can be very fragile!
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| The road sign reads: Xi Jinping Boulevard |
End
[1]
He was
a Professor of Radiology in Canada (McGill), Singapore (NUS), Austria (Vienna
Medical University) and Japan (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Fukushima Medical
University) for 30 years. He was the Chair of the Radiology and Nuclear
Medicine, Department of University of Western Ontario. He was the Director of
the Division of Human Health at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
from 2008 to 2014.
From 2014 to 2019, he was the Executive Director of the Cambodian Development Resource Institute (CDRI), a leading think tank in the Kingdom of Cambodia, in the Top 100 of the University of Pennsylvania’s Global Think Tank ranking. He is the cofounder of the China Studies Center at CDRI. Currently, he is an Honourary Distinguished Fellow at the Asian Vision Institute and a member of the Advisory Board of the International Center for Higher Education Innovation (UNESCO) at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen. He is a distinguished visiting professor at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, the Atomic Bomb Disease Institute, Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Fukushima Medical University. He is an international advisor to the China Institute of International Studies in Beijing.
He also serves as an academic advisor to the Kirirom Institute of Technology (KIT). In May 2019, he was appointed Minister Delegate, attached to the Prime Minister. He was seconded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. In August 2020, he was appointed as Secretary of State at the newly created Ministry of Industry, Science, Technology and Innovation, in addition to his position at the Prime Minister’s Office. In these capacities, he oversees the National Institute of
Science,
Technology and Innovation (NISTI) and the National Institute of Diplomacy and
International Relations (NIDIR). He also serves as a member of the Board of
Trustees of the Cambodia Academy of Digital Technology, and he serves on the Leadership
Council of the UNSDSN.
Interesting
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