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Cambodia’s blogging revolution

Chak Sopheap surfs her blog during the Cambodian Bloggers Summit in the capital of Phnom Penh. Many young Cambodians embrace the blog as a medium for socializing and expressing themselves. Associated Press (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Ker Munthit Associated Press
Chak Sopheap surfs her blog during the Cambodian Bloggers Summit in the capital of Phnom Penh. Many young Cambodians embrace the blog as a medium for socializing and expressing themselves. Associated Press (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A Cambodian blogger asked recently whether former King Norodom Sihanouk should be considered the country’s founding father of blogging.

He got no definitive answer. Cambodian blog-watchers say the 84-year-old monarch may not have known he was blogging when he unveiled his Web site, updated daily by his staff since 2002 with his views on national affairs, correspondence with admirers and news about his filmmaking hobby.

But it is clear that young Cambodians are joining Sihanouk in embracing blogs. The trend is changing their lives and communication with people abroad — even as electricity remains an unreachable dream for most households in this poverty-ridden nation of 14 million.

“This is a kind of cultural revolution now happening here in terms of self-expression,” said Norbert Klein, a longtime resident from Germany credited with introducing e-mail to Cambodia in 1994. “It is completely a new era in Cambodian life.”

Cambodians with the skills and the means to blog are discovering a wider world and using the personal online journals to show off their personalities and views about the issues facing their country, from corruption to food safety.

“Blogging transforms the way we communicate and share information,” said 25-year-old student blogger Ly Borin.

To his surprise, a recent blog post on poor food safety in Cambodia drew a comment from a traveler. He said interaction with a stranger living perhaps half a world away was unimaginable in Cambodia just a few years ago.

Cambodia became one of the most isolated countries in the world during the late 1970s, when the communist Khmer Rouge were in power and cut off virtually all links with the outside world as they applied radical policies that led to the deaths of 1.7 million people. The Khmer Rouge were ousted in 1979, but the country still struggles to rebuild. Fewer than one-third of 1 percent of Cambodians have access to the Web. Internet penetration is among the lowest in the world, in part due to high electricity and connection costs. An hour of access at an Internet cafe here costs about 2,000 riel, or 50 cents, while 35 percent of Cambodians make less than the poverty-level income of 45 cents a day.

If the Internet opened a path for news from outside Cambodia, blogging is turning it into a two-way street.

“I can do social networking and contact other bloggers” around the world, said Keo Kalyan, a 17-year-old student whose nom-de-blog is “DeeDee, School Girl Genius! Khmer-Cyberkid.” She and three peers organized the Cambodian Bloggers Summit — the “Cloggers Summit” to the cognoscenti. Her team also has conducted 14 workshops for 1,700 students to share their knowledge of digital technology.

Raymond Leos, an American professor of communications and media arts at a Phnom Penh university, said Sihanouk showed his countrymen blogging’s broad potential. After seeing TV images of same-sex weddings in San Francisco in 2004, Sihanouk posted a statement expressing support for gay marriage. When a foreigner allegedly e-mailed him, criticizing his stance, Sihanouk shot back on his Web site, saying, “I thank you for insulting me” but “I am not gay.”