By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
Pacific Daily News
The conflict between Cambodia's proponents of development and of human rights continues, despite the 1991 Paris Peace Accords' stipulation that economic development and respect for human rights must go hand in hand.Surely a Cambodia in relative peace, with new roads and buildings, is better than the Khmer Rouge's Cambodia of forced labor, destruction and death.
Last month, even U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia Carol Rodley, who acknowledged Cambodia's continued problems with democracy and human rights, told a Long Beach audience that today's Cambodia has more roads, more buildings and more businesses; the people are more competent and more optimistic; Cambodia sends troops with U.N. peacekeepers abroad.
The Monivong Boulevard's Kentucky Fried Chicken, the 27-story Canadia Bank Tower with health club and restaurant, among others, are eye-catching. The third of Cambodia's 13 million people who live on 50 cents a day; the poor scavenging the city's dumps, eating rodent meat or who are evicted from their homes and their land to accommodate new development, aren't.
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