True Crime, Murder, Overshadow Cambodia's Economic Growth

It is puppy season in Cambodia (and Vietnam) right now; so ‘filthy and cute,’ they are everywhere after the big-wet of a three-month rainy season.

Oh and this, Near the boutique Skyline hotel I favor, a lone gunman popped a construction tycoon — six or so bullets. Assassinations these days are rare in this booming Cambodia city of almost 2 million people. 

The murder of Ung Meng Chue within minutes made it onto a local ex-patriate Web site. Here it it is on YouTube. Please don’t view the 22 seconds if you do not have to. http://youtu.be/qAR7Tqjt3yI  It is explicit.

Ung Meng Chue was getting out of his Lexxus to buy fruit right on Sihanouk Boulevard, a main drag. 

Everything makes it onto video in S.E. Asia. Gory car crashes, embarrasing moments, explosions — a store camera filmed the still unsolved murder of this tycoon. Police only say they think the hit stems from a business transaction engineered by this fellow, a Hong Kong Chinese man.

On my way out of town. my driver, whom I trust and have spent time with, told me the shooter already was dead — killed apparently by the tycoon’s connections. I do not know if that is true. I have yet to see further news of the murder probe.

Cambodia’s economic growth is running 7 percent or so yearly and has been on a tear for most of the past 15 years, It’s a wild, beautiful and I believe peaceful place.

The city sometimes can pulse, but as I said, rarely with danger. At least in the six or so visits I have made to visit a company’s gold projects in the northeastern part of the nation.

Lately, I am seeing flares of activity that stand out against the fabric of a largely Buddhist nation. In the city especially, incidents of arson, of fire, of theft and of murder are accelerating in number.

One of the more publicized ones was in April. That was when a 35-year-old computer and bicycle thief allegedly killed a Dutch national in her apartment and savaged her 19-month-old infant, both with a screwdriver. The woman was a United Nations worker. The infant later died.

Human trafficking also is on the rise. Neighoring nations “raid” their poor neighbor, Cambodia, for children and women they then turn into servants, to put it blandly.

Car crashes are on the rise. But then, Toyota is experiencing a parabola of sales in Cambodia, in Vietnam and across S.E. Asia’s developing nations.

Also: kidnappings for various reasons, mostly for ransoms, are picking up in popularity.

Government ministers here tell me Cambodia is better off than the other 9 ASEAN nations on the subject of crime. The prize thus far goes to Philippines on the violence meter.

Hidden in all of these nations is the matter of family violence. Andrea Aasen, one of Phnom Penh’s most active missionaries on behalf of XP Ministries, tells me the police and social agencies have a challenging time tracking spousal and child abuse.

“But it is there all the time,” says Ms. Aasen, a brilliantly blue-eyed Arizona woman who shelters children and other victims of trafficking in Phnom Penh and on the Thai border with Cambodia — at Poipet.

Andrea lives full time in Cambodia and manages her XP Ministries team.

We videotaped an interview with Ms. Aasen recently at a Phnom Penh riverside slum. The young woman is a wonder, and deeply devoted to her XP Ministries team, to slum dwellers across Phnom Penh and to her missions in the city and in Poipet.

See video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZgXHp2aa3I.

Ms. Aasen recently underook what she called a rescue mission of a Poipet family trafficked into the infamous Thai beach town of Pattaya. A three-block stretch there is said to have more than 20,000 sex workers, some of them from families that willingly “lease” their children for prostitution.

All of this reminds me of Mongolia in the early 2000s.  

Gold, copper and coal powered the Mongolia boom until just recently, when the blush came off the booming rose at Oyu Tolgoi –   out there in fields of southern Gobi steppe-lands.

I’LL CONTINUE TO REPORT on Cambodia and the community challenges that a big-rush economy brings. In The Calandra Report, a subscriber service for investors and lifestyle aficionados.

TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS: Another of the organizations in Cambodia that seek to educate and enhance the welfare of local people is Advance & Nurture Khmer.  It is a non-profit foundation focused on Ratankiri Province in NE Cambodia, near the border with Vietnam. 

The same folks who run Cambodia’s leading minerals miner, a Canada company called Angkor Gold, keep the non-profit funded separately — largely from the same deep-pocket Alberta, Canada, investors who back the company.

I am an investor in Angkor Gold and a supporter of the non-profit foundation. Please see these TCR photos and descriptions. ​   

PHOTO: ANGKOR GOLD CEO MIKE WEEKS,THE AUTHOR, & ANGKOR’S MIKE HIGBEE AT GUARDED ENTRANCE TO  PHUM SYARUNG MINE IN N.​E​.​ CAMBODIA.

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