Diplomat brings Cambodia insight to Long Beach

Saturday, December 19, 2009

The U.S. ambassador to Cambodia, Carol Rodley. (U.S. State Department)

LONG BEACH -- Carol Rodley didn't think the Long Beach community could come up with 90 minutes of questions about the country where she is stationed.
Obviously, the United State Ambassador to Cambodia didn't know Long Beach.
Even after the two-hour time slot had run out at the Town Hall meeting at Mark Twain Library between the new ambassador and the community had ended, people were still lining up to quiz the diplomat.
"It was great to come here," Rodley said. "This is a lively and engaged community."

Rodley's appearance in Long Beach Saturday was sponsored by the CambodiaTown community group and about 65 people crowded into the community room at the library to hear the ambassador speak and field questions.
A career officer with the Foreign Service, Rodley was sworn in as ambassador in October, 2008, after being stationed in Afghanistan as a counselor for political military affairs. She had been stationed in Cambodia in the late 1990s.
She said the Cambodia of today is far different from the one she left about 10 years ago.
"Compared to a place like Afghanistan, Cambodia doesn't look so bad," Rodley said. "It has a lot of problems, to be sure, but they're the usual problems in a developing, poor country."
Rodley gave a mostly positive report on the state of Cambodia, citing improvements in infrastructure, private sector economic growth and what she saw as a newfound confidence in the Cambodian 
people in her short speech before taking questions. And questions.
For the next 90 minutes, the audience taxed Rodley's knowledge on an array of issues from the environment, to fraud, to human trafficking, to land grabs and forced evictions, to the economy to culture and arts.
Rodley's harshest criticisms of the government in Cambodia related to the lack of democracy and freedom of expression, and the culture of corruption that seems to go to the core of the society.
Rodley said she received a lot of heat from the government when she cited a study that estimated that corruption cost Cambodia $500 million a year.
"I don't know if it's $500 million or $350 million or $200 million, but it's a big number," Rodley said.
And it trickles down to every level, so that even children have to pay money to teachers for tutoring or worksheets needed to succeed in school.
"That not a good thing for a country to be indoctrinating children at such a young age in corruption," Rodley said.
Among the positives Rodley saw, were the conclusion of the first Khmer Rouge War Crime Tribunal recently and the arrest of others for a second phase. She also said the inaugural group of Peace Corps volunteers to the country were an unqualified success and she was happy to find an arts community springing up in the country.
In fact, Rodley said the embassy had recently sponsored a creative writing contest for Cambodian high school students that it coincidentally named after Mark Twain.
"Now, here I am at the Mark Twain Library and I'm trying to figure out to weave in a Long Beach connection next year," Rodley said. "Keep posted."