STEPHEN LONG: Cambodia is one of the world’s poorest nations. At least 30 per cent of the population live on less than a dollar a day.
The Australian Government gives over $64 million in aid to Cambodia every year – the world, more than a billion. But how much of that actually gets to the Cambodian people?
Joel Brinkley is the author of a new book called Cambodia’s Curse. He says Cambodia’s leaders are murderous kleptocrats who pocket most foreign aid, while selling the nation’s rice crop for the own gain, and leaving their people to starve, as the world turns a blind eye.
Joel Brinkley spoke to me from his home in California.
JOEL BRINKLEY: Cambodia is an oddity in that 80 per cent of people who live in the country live in the countryside with no electricity, no clean water, no radio, not television. They live more or less as they did 1,000 years ago.
Occasionally somebody might have a cell phone or a motorbike and some people have televisions powered by car batteries but they live in very primitive conditions and that’s 80 per cent of the population.
No comments:
Post a Comment