starts page 11 N U MB E R 2655 ssue I friday, april 7, 2017 Intelligent . In-depth . Independent 4000 RIEL

Fourth annual duterte sends nocc calls for bonn phum fest troops to the unesco nod kicks off today south china sea for l’bokator post weekend – page 11 world – page 21 sport – page 26 A ‘crime’ Uber against gears up local to enter history market

Post Weekend Matthieu de Gaudemar and Hor Kimsay Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon and Kong Meta REPRESENTATIVES from global ride-hailing behemoth In Russian Market, among Uber confirmed the compa- the variety of trinkets hawked ny’s interest in starting oper- to tourists as souvenirs, are ations in Cambodia during a items whose cultural impor- meeting this week with tance seems to have gone Transportation Minister Sun unnoticed by buyers, ven- Chanthol, according to one dors and indifferent law of the minister’s aides. enforcement. Ken Ratha, deputy director In the same stores where of cabinet of the Ministry of you can find cheap Buddha Public Works and Transpor- statues, amulets and other tation (MPWT), told The Post kitschy items are traditional yesterday that Uber execu- Khmer manuscripts, etched tives visited the ministry on in palm leaf or wood bark Tuesday to explain their paper, which carry unique business model to the min- written records of Cambo- ister and Phnom Penh dian history, religion and municipal officials. culture from the fall of Ang- “They are interested in our kor to the beginning of the market so they came to seek French protectorate. the minister’s support by Despite decades-long explaining Uber’s business efforts and international Researcher Leng Kok An shows one of the few model to him,” he said. “The funding to catalogue and remaining wood bark paper manuscripts, known minister showed his strong preserve these documents, as kraing, at his office in Wat Ounalom’s library in support for the company’s Phnom Penh. alessandro marazzi sassoon many still end up being sold illegally – mostly to unwitting Continued – page 7 customers with no knowl- edge of their origin or the meaning of the text. Scholars, meanwhile, say that the theft and sale is tantamount to the destruction of invaluable cul- tural knowledge. Posing as buyers at Rus- Residents told to vote CPP sian Market last week, Post Weekend reporters readily found palm leaf manuscripts Officials link speedy deal for White Building dwellers to election success – commonly known as sleuk rith – for sale simply by ask- Sen David and Ananth Baliga find a quick solution to the resi- two villages, said the process of firmed asking the villagers to refusing to comment further. ing for them. dents’ impending eviction – if finding a solution for residents support the ruling party, and However, advocates yester- When the first vendor day before Land the ruling Cambodian People’s of the White Building – which maintained that there was day begged to differ, saying the didn’t have any, she eagerly Management Minis- Party fared well in the upcom- is slated for demolition – was nothing unusual about it. remarks inappropriately politi- fetched a long-format palm ter Chea Sophara was ing commune elections, that is. complicated, but noted that “Related to telling [the villag- cised what should be a non- leaf manuscript – called a scheduled to meet At a meeting with residents of re-election of CPP representa- ers] to vote for the CPP in order partisan bureaucratic process. sastra – from another stall. residentsA of Phnom Penh’s the building yesterday, chiefs tives in the June ballot would to find a solution for the build- The White Building is slated iconic White Building, the lo- Hun Sarath and Ngem Sovan, help quicken that process. ing, I think it is not wrong and Continued – page 12 cale’s village chiefs promised to who represent the building’s In an interview, Sovan con- it is normal thing,” Sovan said, Continued – page 2 P.12 / friday, april 7, 2017 National

Leng Kok An holds up an example of a vean, or short-format palm leaf manuscript. Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon

and re-purposed the cupboards they of a modest building in the pagoda continued from / P.1 were stored in. complex just off Street 19, Trent A few monks and officials at Walker, a PhD student in Buddhist that time began to take manu- Studies at the University of Califor- A ‘crime “It’s a history of Buddhism,” she scripts wherever they could – to the nia-Berkeley, works alongside two says, adding that she obtained it National Museum, Wat Ounalom, Cambodian research assistants study- from monks in Siem Reap before and the Buddhist Institute. But the ing the 150 or so remaining kraing asking for $80. “It’s older than a largest collection of some 3,400 manuscripts, which are written on a decrepit man who can’t walk.” manuscripts was amassed by Preah bark-based paper. Vanarat Ken Vong, the head monk Walker explains the significance of A monumental task at Wat Saravan. the three types of documents, which against In a small office overlooking the Before Ken Vong died, the French are written in Pali or Khmer script: main vihear, or central structure, of School for Far Eastern Studies (EFEO) short form (vean), which tend to be Wat Ounalom, Kun Sopheap, 61, and began funding work to restore, manuals; long format (sastra), which Leng Kok An, 52, shuffle through preserve, document and research are most associated with sermons, palm leaf and bark documents. The the collection, as well as to seek out legal writing and literary texts; and pair have dedicated more than two manuscripts elsewhere. the bark paper manuscripts (kraing), decades to the preservation of Cambo- Established in 1990, the mas- which often carry particular religious intelligence’ dian manuscripts all around the coun- sive project Fonds pour l’Édition des significance. try, recovering them from the pagoda Manuscrits du Cambodge (Fund for For Walker, the FEMC’s work is libraries where they were held. As Manuscript Publication in Cambo- invaluable. Despite decades of efforts to preserve much as 80 percent of all manuscripts dia, or FEMC) – headed by profes- “This is an extraordinarily impor- were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge sor Olivier de Bernon, Kok An and tant collection – not just this one the Kingdom’s historic manuscripts, in their attempt to create a communist Sopheap – hoped to solve what was but all the collections the FEMC has utopia free from the feudal and “para- at the time described as “a crisis curated,” he says. “What they’ve cu- the majority have disappeared – lost sitic” influence of religion. situation”. rated represents the vast majority of “You’ll find the most in Kam- According to a FEMC survey of what survives today . . . The work that to neglect, war and now a black market pong Cham, but very few in Takeo, 1,200 monasteries in Phnom Penh they’ve done is inestimable in terms because under the Pol Pot regime the and Kandal, four out of five were of the patrimony they’ve preserved catering to tourists Khmer Rouge most devastated this found to have completely lost their for future generations and extremely province,” Kok An explains. “Almost collections, and in those where important for future researchers in all the Khmer manuscripts were documents were found, roughly Cambodia and beyond to understand destroyed there when pagodas were two-thirds were incomplete. Sur- Cambodia’s literary, religious and burned or demolished.” veys in other provinces suggest a cultural past.” After the Khmer Rouge regime similar rate of loss throughout the For Kok An, the manuscripts are collapsed in 1979, surviving manu- country. part of the legacy of Cambodian scripts were often left to rot as a At the FEMC’s Wat Saravan col- civilisation, proving the existence desperate population entered pagodas lection, housed on the second floor of advanced and complex legal and friday, april 7, 2017 13

Kun Sopheap in his office overlooking Wat Ounalom. Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon

Researcher Trent Walker unfolds an accordion-folded (or leporello) kraing astrological manuscript at Wat Saravan . Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon A sastra sleuk rith for sale in Russian Market. A mARAZZI SASSOON

From left to right: kraing, vean and sastra. A Marazzi Sassoon Manuscripts were often left to rot after 1979. SUPPLIED/FEMC Kraing manuscripts sometimes contain illustrations. A marazzi Sassoon social systems. even more devastating, because we knows how to etch sastra. But if you would look into the alleged thefts. “Both pretend not to know about “These are the laws with which we cannot understand the meaning cannot even appreciate the remain- Khim Sorn, the chief monk of the vandalism they are actively ran the country, and it not only cov- anymore,” he says. ing old things how can you treasure Phnom Penh, said that while the participating [in],” he writes, adding ers religion but also culture [and] tra- Some monks buy the scrolls in the creation of new things?” he monkhood has been instructed to that – perhaps – there is some instant dition,” he says. “Everything is there markets and bring them to him, but questioned. preserve manuscripts, the old genera- karma for such perpetrators. and was developed before America generally “authorities don’t trouble According to professor de Bernon, tion generally failed to do so, and the “There is some sad and bitter jus- was even a country.” themselves to find them or track the lack of continued support for the new generation’s lack of interest in tice to punish the sin of most tour- The FEMC project continued down those who steal the manu- FEMC has had devastating conse- them means that only a few pago- ists foolishly buying manuscripts. through 2012 when the EFEO ran out scripts”. quences. das with passionate monks actually Most of the time, what they pay of funding. Luckily, UNESCO con- While Kok An praised Prime Min- “Let us put it this way: more than ensure the safety of texts. [for] . . . is just worth nothing,” he tinued to fund the project for a few ister Hun Sen’s pledge of patronage thirty percent of the manuscripts Even in his own pagoda, he said, writes, not because the manuscripts more years, until 2015. But Kok An last month to Phoeun Phavy, one of that we have restored, microfilmed “We used to see a few of them but aren’t “original” or “authentic” but and de Bernon say the preservation the few remaining crafters of sleuk and inventoried since the 1990s have now it got lost.” because often they are a haphazard of manuscripts is incomplete, and rith, Kok An couldn’t help but point disappeared,” he wrote in an email “I never heard or saw with my bundling of incomplete texts, which increasingly under threat. out a certain irony. last week. own eyes that the monks or achar de Bernon describes as “a crime “The project is finished. Because “Hun Sen is interested in the “It seems that nobody is offended: take these things and sell it at the against intelligence”. there’s no budget, the work is incom- woman [Phavy] in Siem Reap who not the monks in the pagodas, not pagoda, but I think it possibly could What’s more, de Bernon has noted plete,” Kok An says. “The govern- the lay people around, not the local be,” he said. that beyond the markets, higher-end ment does not care or pay attention.” religious authorities, not the Buddhist Back at the market, one vendor tourist boutiques have taken to fram- Part of the problem, he says, is institute, not UNESCO. It is nobody’s pulled out a short-format vean man- ing pages or turning them into fans. that local people are not concerned concern.” uscript from a drawer. Asked why “It is ridiculous because it is the about the preservation of the scrolls. Inquiries over the past week to she doesn’t display them publicly her denial of what is a text,” De Bernon They view them as the domain of ” the UNESCO office in Phnom Penh demeanour turns cold: “Because it’s writes. monks, which poses a conundrum: went unanswered. Meanwhile, Seng old.” “Because it is sometimes very “What can we do if the monks don’t It seems that nobody Somony, the spokesman for the At the next stall an eager vendor expensive, when [it is actually] worth care?” Ministry of Cults and Religion plead pulled out her collection of both absolutely nothing!” is offended: not the ignorance. sastra and vean, but said she was Those wishing to learn more The black market “I never heard of the monk or out of the third kind of manuscript about the EFEO’s work and view a According to Kok An, the pagodas monks in the pagodas, achar [religious lay people] stealing – the rarest and most expensive, the partial selection of digitised micro- are being pilfered from the inside by not the lay people these old things to sell at the mar- accordion-folded kraing. films of the preserved manuscripts their residents. kets. I never received such informa- “Come back another time when in the online searchable archive can “They steal scrolls and sell them in around, not the local tion,” he said. I find some and I’ll get you a good visit http://khmermanuscripts.efeo. the markets, such as Tuol Tom Poung “It is not that I don’t believe you deal,” she says. fr/en/home.html. The EFEO’s Preah [Russian Market],” he says, though religious authorities . . . about the stealing. It’s not like it’s De Bernon says that merchants Vanarat Ken Vong Library at Wat he said he did not know of specific well maintained at the pagoda – 100 that sell manuscripts and the tourists Saravan and Wat Ounalom is open perpetrators. It is nobody’s concern. percent – but the monks are the who buy them as souvenirs usually to researchers on Monday through “Vendors chop up scrolls, some- ones who are accountable for the have no knowledge, or at least no Friday from 8am-11:30am and times into three parts, and that is Olivier De Bernon / professor manuscripts.” Somony added that he sense of culpability, for their actions. 2pm-5pm.