Aid Freeze Spells Crisis for Needy in Cambodia

Friday was a day of reckoning for Sebastian Marot.

The 32-year-old Frenchman, who feeds 500 Cambodian street children each day, has been informed that the Australian aid agency that funds his program is freezing aid to this beleaguered country in the wake of last weekend’s coup.

Unless other donors rally to the rescue, Marot said, his money will run out within three months. Other aid groups were also reeling Friday after the U.S. announcement of a 30-day suspension of foreign aid to determine what kinds of humanitarian relief should continue and what funds would merely serve to bolster the new Hun Sen regime.

In Washington, ousted First Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh praised the United States for its decision to suspend aid but declared, “That is not enough.

“I want a clear, constant signal to Phnom Penh that the United States won’t accept any government that derives from a coup d’etat,” the prince told a news conference after meeting with Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering. “We’ve got to call a cat a cat and a coup a coup.”

The United States has refrained from declaring Hun Sen’s takeover a coup because it would mean an automatic suspension of assistance. Ranariddh also praised the regional political and trading group, the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations, known as ASEAN, for its decision to postpone Cambodia’s admission, originally planned for later this month.

The deposed prince also denied again Hun Sen’s accusations that he had tried to forge some kind of alliance with elements of the Khmer Rouge and said he would be willing to return to Phnom Penh, the capital, to negotiate with his opponent about an interim “administrative arrangement” to take the country to new elections planned for next year.

Ranariddh stopped short of urging his supporters in Cambodia to take up arms against Hun Sen.

“The priority must be the diplomatic struggle and then economic sanctions,” he said. “If those two don’t work, then we’ll have to think about fighting.”

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While Ranariddh was in Washington pleading for economic and political sanctions against the government now controlled by Hun Sen, his former coalition partner and the second prime minister, Phnom Penh residents braced for a recession as thousands of Cambodians and foreigners continued to leave.

More than 4,000 people are believed to have fled the country, leaving behind fearful and grieving friends, employees and clients. For some here, the exodus has revived haunting memories of the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975 and the Vietnamese invasion in 1978.

“All the old stresses are coming out,” Marot said. “The men are afraid of being forced into the army. The women are afraid of their families being separated. They all want to reach [refugee] camps somewhere, and there are no camps.

“They’ve been through so much, and they’re beginning to get their heads out of the mud when a few cannon shots put them back 20 years,” he said. “We gave a lot to this country, and in two minutes [they’re] taking everything away.”

The adrenaline that sustained this city through fierce fighting last weekend has drained away, leaving residents exhausted, apprehensive and depressed.

“Everybody’s sad--like me,” said Pung Chhiv Kek Galabru, president of a human rights group, as she boarded an Australian evacuation plane to take her 2-year-old grandson abroad to safety. Galabru insisted that she would be back but couldn’t say when. “Everyone is expecting something bad,” she said.

Traffic has been unusually light during the day, but along the road to the airport there are thriving markets for goods that were looted during the fighting. Car dealerships and many other stores were cleaned out, as were the homes of prominent politicians from Ranariddh’s FUNCINPEC party. Stolen motorbikes are now on sale on city sidewalks.

“The prices started at $50, and now it’s down to $20 because no one wanted to buy them,” Marot said. “They’re making a fortune selling passports now for $250,” he added. “Real or really fake, I don’t know.”

Another hot item is fake membership cards for Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party, or CPP. They are selling for $20, according to an official of FUNCINPEC who has been in hiding in the city since the takeover.

The official, who spoke Friday on condition of anonymity, said he sleeps in a different place every night and bought a fake party card to help ease his way through police checks. CPP commanded the allegiance of most of the police force and the military before the coup; now Hun Sen’s control is reportedly complete.

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However, heavy fighting between Hun Sen’s troops and holdout forces loyal to Ranariddh was reported for a second day Friday outside Siem Reap in northwestern Cambodia. The city is the gateway to the famed temples of Angkor Wat, Cambodia’s leading tourist attraction.

Tourism is expected to be a major casualty of this conflict.

“Cancellations come by the ream now,” said Pierre Bernard, manager of the landmark Hotel Sofitel Cambodiana, which gave refuge to hundreds of frightened foreigners during the fighting last weekend. “This morning I received 12 pages from a Japanese group” canceling reservations through the end of this year, Bernard said Thursday.

The departure of the aid workers who have been trying to help Cambodia lift itself out of political chaos and abject poverty since the U.N.-sponsored peace accords of 1991 came as a major psychological blow.

“My staff are worried that I might leave and abandon them,” said Lao Mong Hay, executive director of the Khmer Institute of Democracy.

Lao is not budging. He said that he owes a debt of gratitude to his country for having given him a scholarship to study abroad--and still feels tremendous guilt because he spent the Khmer Rouge years safe in Britain while more than a million fellow Cambodians perished.

But Lao was unsure of the continued funding of his institute and gloomy about Cambodia’s political future. He said that Hun Sen’s forces continue to use the search for Khmer Rouge troops as a pretext for arrests of political opponents.

“If he is in charge, he should stop it now,” Lao said.

Meanwhile, the survival of the more than 130 nongovernmental groups, or NGOs, that have attempted to foster democracy was in doubt as many of Cambodia’s donor nations, including the United States, Australia, Germany and Japan, said they were reviewing their aid programs.

The NGO movement “started out as seeds, now it’s saplings, and the hope was that it would grow into a lively civil society,” said Joan Libby, spokeswoman for the U.N. Development Program. “One of the poignant contradictions here is these little saplings may whither if international aid is withdrawn.”

Late Friday, the U.N. Security Council called for an end to the fighting but avoided any explicit condemnation of Hun Sen for ousting Ranariddh.

Times staff writer Tyler Marshall in Washington contributed to this report.