Phnom Penh’s Puritans

On the face of it, Cambodia’s authoritarian government is sticking to script. In July, trade union leader Rong Chhun was arrested, sparking some pretty forceful counterprotests amid yet another crackdown. The move probably was intended as a finger in the eyes of the European Union, which in August cut trade privileges for Cambodia over its political deterioration. A defiant Phnom Penh’s rhetoric on its free trade deal with China signifies Cambodia’s fealty to Beijing, even though the deal’s limited benefits are seldom discussed. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Hun Sen’s gusto to shout down anyone who dares critique his regime (even when it comes to how much gold the state possesses in reserves) never wavers.

Then comes the draft Law on Public Order, which, the decree states, will create “a more civilized society.” To attain its high-sounding goals, it will employ some pretty draconian means (as is now customary with Cambodian law). Much interest has centred on puritanical bans preventing women from going out in public in clothes “too short or too revealing.” The misogynistic tones of the draft law are overt and obvious (as has been noted by a good many reports) but the draft law is more expansive than that. Other banned activities would include homeless people sleeping in the street, begging, people drying their clothes near the roadside, as well as vendors plying their trade on roadsides. The full list is voluminous and (again, as is now customary) intentionally vague.

The draft bill says these measures will ensure public order by “maintaining order, aesthetic value, sanitation, cleanliness of the environment, quietness, social stability, preservation of national tradition, and the dignity of citizens.” Can one see any sense in this? 

The COVID-19 pandemic has ruined Cambodia’s tourism industry, but as the government races through changes to its visa system, Phnom Penh is clearly trying to recalibrate the sector to welcome a “better standard” of tourist. The hope, as in any country, is for its tourism sector to welcome fewer tourists but attract those who pay more during their stay – a policy that should be welcomed given the problems of mass tourism in Cambodia. As such, a “better standard” of tourist might expect things to be a little cleaner and more regimented when they visit. So, too, might the average Cambodian. It’s a touchy issue of whether such activities as people drying their clothes next to the road (something that seems so natural in Cambodia, and can appear a charming feature of life for the outsider) should be accepted as a norm or not. I don’t imagine many people will protest if the authorities sweep up beggars and homeless from the streets, despite the obvious rights concerns. Other Southeast Asian countries, chiefly Thailand, have also attempted to “clean up” street life in recent years, including bans on street-side vendors and food markets.

But one ought to wary of any government that thinks its duty is to beautify society, especially when it’s done by such force and censure, and especially when conducted by an increasingly authoritarian government like Cambodia’s.

For instance, the draft law would also make it even harder for people to legally protest in public, since it requires yet another layer of bureaucracy if people apply to use public spaces to demonstrate. “This proposed law is a blatant effort by the Cambodian government to expand its arbitrary control over the everyday lives of ordinary people in Cambodia. It is littered with frankly ridiculous restrictions on people's freedoms,” Ming Yu Hah, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific deputy regional director, said in a statement. “It is also an assault on the poor, effectively criminalizing both homelessness and begging,” she added. 

There are also disquieting caveats in the draft law banning the mentally ill (which it ridiculously defines as “a change which results in the loss of the sense of right or wrong”) from going outdoors alone without chaperones.

Mens sana in corpore sano (“a healthy mind in a healthy body”) has worrying connotations to say the least when taken up by politicians. But there’s a distinct taste of something more fundamental afoot in this apparent bid to improve “public order.” Listen closely and all the reforms promised in the draft Law on Public Order have a parochial touch to them. “Preservation of national tradition” is expressly stated in the decree. The conditions of the draft Law on Public Order not only signify Hun Sen’s ruling party as the protector of Cambodia’s national traditions – indeed, politicians talk of the draft law as a way for “cultural protection” – they also speak to a rather anti-modernist tinge of nationalism. Note, if you will, that most of the targets of the decree’s prohibitions – from short skirts for women to begging and the homeless – can be (correctly or incorrectly) pointed to as outcrops of modernity, natural changes to society that come with progress.

For nationalists of a certain ilk, Cambodian identity is about simplicity and humbleness, about rural traditions and culture. In this thinking, the corrupting influence is found in the cities, where modernity mixed with foreign ideas and habits (democracy and short skirts) is leading ordinary people astray. This comes as government propaganda in recent weeks talks up a bucolic idea of society, with Hun Sen pictured riding on tractors and fishing in ponds. As the pastoral becomes parochial for Phnom Penh, tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of Cambodians have left the cities to return to their family homes in the countryside because of the collapse of urban economic sectors like tourism and manufacturing.

Throughout, Hun Sen has stressed a rural renewal could take place, with agriculture replacing manufacturing and tourism, at least in the short term. Yet, as I noted in Asia Times in August, the idea of a rural revival is wishful at best. The share of the rural economy’s contribution to national GDP collapsed from 33.5 percent in 2009 to just over 20 percent in 2019. More to the point, if Cambodia is to keep on developing as it has over the last two decades, the way forward quite simply is not by selling a few more bananas to China, the entire logic of the hyped Cambodia-China trade deal. It would be quite a few steps backwards, instead, if the government seriously thinks agricultural can be a replacement for manufacturing. And it’s more than a few steps backwards if Hun Sen now reckons his authoritarian government must have a say in the most minute parts of Cambodian life, down to what people can wear.