Salon 21st | "E-mail is a real revolution"

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"I don't know if the Sam Rainsy Party could have survived the past year without the Internet," Garella says. "His strength is information -- getting the truth out there. Other political leaders in Cambodia, Hun Sen in particular, come from a political tradition that relies on obscuring the truth."
With an eye toward the next election and the climate of intimidation and media access limitations likely to accompany it, Rainsy's growing political network is hoping to better monitor remote regions so they can pass along clearer and more concise information to human rights groups, embassies and journalists through regular e-mail and Internet dispatches.
"We will be able to send e-mails quickly so that people like Amnesty International can read [them] instantly," Rainsy says. More information distributed in a timely, systematic and clear fashion will, he hopes, add up to fewer of the kind of illegal arrests that often turn into politically motivated murder. Better information could also mean fairer elections than last year's vote, which was marked by a climate of fear documented by the U.N. human rights office.
The Sam Rainsy Party Web site was developed by members of the large Cambodian diaspora following a murderous 1997 grenade attack on a Rainsy-led rally in Phnom Penh that took at least 16 lives. Since then, it has evolved from incendiary rantings against the government into a slightly more professional but still impassioned site that receives about 300 hits per day.
The site, which is updated three or four times weekly when things are slow, and the party's massive e-mail distribution list serve other crucial opposition needs as well: They bring in funds and keep hope alive through a virtually uncensorable link to the hundreds of thousands of Cambodians in the United States, France and Australia.
"Don't expect support if you don't give information," Rainsy said during his recent U.S. visit, which included numerous fund-raisers.
Until the advent of the Internet, quickly distributing key information abroad was prohibitively expensive for the opposition, given the astronomical cost of international phone calls in Cambodia. With direct Internet access, Garella was able to set up his own server at minimal cost. Now overseas supporters can print out e-mail and Web site information and photocopy it for acquaintances in places like the 50,000-strong Cambodian community of Long Beach, Calif.
"We don't have the money for faxing internationally," Garella explains. "We even scan documents to send them by e-mail."
The reliance on the Internet is so intense in the Rainsy camp that Garella says it is often easier for him to communicate with his workaholic boss through e-mail when he is abroad than it is to sit him down for a planning session in Phnom Penh.
Ironically, Rainsy had no idea of the Internet's potential during his early online ventures. "When I first showed it to him, he didn't realize the importance," says Lundi Seng, a Cambodian-American medical student in Long Beach who helps maintain the Web site.
Rainsy is the first to emphasize his change of heart. "I check my e-mails at least twice a day. I'm e-mail addicted. I surprise myself -- I actually spend hours in front of the screen. I think I am the only political leader in Cambodia doing that," he says with a smile. "E-mail is a real revolution."
SALON | March 15, 1999
Kyra Dupont is a Swiss journalist who worked in Cambodia for 18 months, mostly for CNBC Asia. Eric Pape, who spent the last two years working for the Cambodia Daily and the Phnom Penh Post, is a freelance journalist in Los Angeles.