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Some 100 armed Cambodian police and military
police were deployed Sunday to block an
eight-person rally on
Darfur in Phnom Penh
led by U.S. movie actor Mia Farrow.
Seng Theary, executive director of the
Center for Social Development, a group that
has been conducting dialogue with Khmer
Rouge victims and perpetrators, said she was
ashamed of the way the Cambodian authorities
acted.
After her tiny group had been dispersed,
Seng Theary asked, ''What does it mean when
a troop of military and police with heavy
arms pushes and prevents a group of eight
individuals, six women and two men, (from
carrying on)?''
The eight were led by Farrow, also a human
rights activist, and they were joined by
about a dozen other people.
All were pushed away by police when they
tried to enter the Tuol Sleng Genocide
Museum in central Phnom Penh to lay flowers
for the victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide.
Other participants in the rally included
Omer Ismael, a Sudanese from Darfur and a
human rights advocate, and Freddy Mutanguha,
a survivor of the Rwandan genocide and
director of the Kigali Memorial Center.
Farrow said Sunday's goal had been to offer
lotus flowers in ''deepest respect'' to
honor those who died in Cambodia, in Sudan's
Darfur region and anywhere else genocide
occurred.
The surprisingly overwhelming government
response to the mini-rally apparently
stemmed from fears the group might try to
carry a replica Olympic torch during their
march to draw attention to China's apparent
lack of interest in ending the Darfur
crisis.
Last week they said they wanted to urge the
Chinese government, as Olympic host and
Sudan 's strongest political and economic
partner, to use its influence with the
Sudanese government to ensure a civilian
protection force is in place in Darfur
before the Beijing Olympics begin in August.
Farrow has traveled to Darfur seven times
and is scheduled to return next month, she
said.
She added she was disappointed by the
Cambodian reaction Sunday and suggested the
Cambodian government may even have felt
pressure from China to stop the mini-rally.
Cambodia was to have been the sixth stop on
a symbolic Olympic torch relay that began in
August near the Darfur border and has since
been to Rwanda, Armenia, Germany and
Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Farrow said the symbolic relay is not meant
to call for a boycott of the Beijing
Olympics.
Rather, the organizers say, China's
''complicity'' in the humanitarian
catastrophe in Darfur and its extensive
economic interests in Sudan mean China's
leaders are in an ''unrivaled'' position to
persuade Sudan to consent to a U.N.
peacekeeping operation.
China claims the relays run counter to the
Olympic spirit and politicize sports events. |
