The Perfect Lob: A Story From My Year of Reporting in Cambodia

By STEW MAGNUSON

I have so many memorable days from my 15 months working at the Cambodia Daily.

One was April 1, 1998, the day after the return of Prince Ranariddh to Cambodia.

During the July 7-8 coup, he had fled the country but the next year he was allowed to return to run in the upcoming elections.

I was assigned to cover the crowds of his supporters who had gathered outside Le Royal Hotel, where he was staying. By the late morning, a few police showed up and began to move the crowd away from the hotel. By the time they reached the Wat Phnom traffic circle, the supporters gathered their motorbikes and signs, and began an impromptu motocycle parade/demonstration through the city.

The Funcinpec demonstration/parade

I paid some motodop to take me around and I snapped pictures and took notes as we made a grand tour of the Phnom Penh. They gathered more and more riders as they went, their numbers swelling to some 150 riders.

They stopped at CPP-run ministries, who had caught wind of the demonstration and were shuttered.

They shouted “youn” a slur for Vietnamese, at CPP headquarters and individuals walking down the streets.

At one point, they rolled into Funcinpec headquarters where they were given bottles of water, signs and a Prince Ranarridh portrait to parade around.

This went on for the better part of the day, with the riders eventually stopping back at the south end of Wat Phnom.

Unbeknownst to me — but known to other members of the staff back at our office — a counter protest organized by CPP supporters was making its way out of a squatter camp. The CPP supporters, some of whom were allegedly paid, were gathering makeshift weapons, rocks and loose concrete as they marched toward the riders. I went back to the office to file my story, but someone said I had better go back there. A photojournalist, Jerry Redfern, the husband of staffer Karen Coates, who had been taking pictures for us, came with, or was there, I’m not sure, as was Catherine Philp.

I arrived just in time for the battle.

The Funcinpec riders, way overconfident, rode their motorcycles toward the line of CPP protesters and were met with a barrage of rocks and cement.

Jerry snapped a photo that would end up on the front page portraying the moment the two sides clashed. It was a masterpiece. It showed one of the Funcinpec organizers fleeing, his motorcycle not quite hitting the ground yet, and a CPP thug trying to kick him, losing his shoe in the process. The shoe is suspended in mid-air. Did a better breaking news photo ever appear in the CD for the remainder of its run? It was much better in color, of course.

The moment I will never forget came shortly after as the two sides hurled projectiles at each other. One of the CPP organizers wearing a straw hat, carried a bullhorn and was shouting into it nonstop. I didn’t understand Khmer, but man was he annoying. Anyone shouting through a bullhorn is annoying, of course, but this guy was ratcheting up the tension with his incessant jabbering.

The victim

Then to my right, I saw a Funcinpec demonstrator lob a softball size hunk of concrete at bullhorn man’s direction.

It all unfolded seemingly in slow motion, as if I were watching an NFL replay of a Hail Mary pass. As I followed its arc, I thought, “By God, that’s got a chance!”

Indeed, it was the perfect lob. Bullhorn man had no clue it was coming and was yakking right up until the concrete landed square on his straw hat.

He staggered, completely stunned. He didn’t drop, but wobbled comically about until he was taken away, not to be seen again that day.

I confess that I laughed a bit. 

For the full story as reported that day by the Cambodia Daily staff, and some more pictures, see below.

Catherine Philp at the CPP-Funcinpec clash

Most of my photos are blurry. Here is one of my better ones. Gotta love the panda.

Twenty Years Later: Memories of the July 5-6, 1997 Coup d'etat in Cambodia

By STEW MAGNUSON
Twenty years ago today, July 5, 1997, I found myself in the middle of a coup d’etat in the Kingdom of Cambodia, where I played a small part in producing and distributing a newspaper in the middle of a city being torn apart by political factions waging street battles with guns, tanks and rocket-propelled grenades.
Earlier that year, I was working in Tokyo as a newspaper page designer and copyeditor, but I wanted to do more reporting and writing. I can’t remember how I heard about The Cambodia Daily, but its publisher Bernie Krisher lived in Tokyo, so I had lunch with him one day and he offered me a job on the spot.
Four years earlier, the United Nations had brokered a deal between the Cambodian Peoples Party — run for years by strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen — and the royalist FUNCINPEC party led by Prince Norodom Ranariddh. After a contentious election, they agreed to share power. I won’t go into details on this ill-fated plan, but by 1997 it wasn't going well.

As part of the UN-brokered deal, the parties agreed to allow a free press.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia, July 6, 1997. Credit: Stew Magnuson

Krisher — a longtime journalist in Asia and Japan who had become wealthy starting then selling a Japanese language version of a news magazine — in 1993 filled a longtime dream of being his own newspaper publisher — and started The Cambodia Daily. He staffed it with idealistic young Americans, Canadians and Brits, some fresh out of journalism school, and Cambodians who would both serve as assistant reporters and produce a Khmer language insert.
As I served my last months in Japan at the Asahi Evening News, I was wondering whether I would arrive in time. Reading the wires in the weeks prior to my departure, the country seemed like it was coming apart. Not long before my departure, someone threw grenades into a peaceful demonstration in a park near the National Assembly killing 17 and wounded 150.
About three days after my arrival, CPP and FUNCINPEC aligned bodyguards fought a small skirmish on the streets of Phnom Penh. The street battle took place blocks away from the Foreign Correspondence Club where I was stuck for an evening as gunfire continued through the night.
The crux of the issue was former Khmer Rouge fighters who had been holed up in a remote province were now ready to defect. Rumors that they would align themselves with FUNCINPEC would tip the balance of military power in favor of the Royalists. That was a move the CPP could not tolerate. While there was a power-sharing agreement, with two prime ministers Prince Ranariddh and Hun Sen, the CPP maintained its grip on real power.
Phnom Penh didn't have much in the way of movie theaters instead, it had little businesses and let you rent out video discs and sit in a small room with a sofa, have a drink and watch whatever you wanted.
That's what I was doing on Saturday, July 5 — a day off for the newspaper staff — in the early afternoon. After watching a movie in a dark room, I e,erged to the bright afternoon light to the sound of thunder coming from the direction of the airport. There was a small thundercloud in that direction, but mixed in with the rumbles was something else: the unmistakable sound of explosions. The Cambodians on the street were looking toward the airport with apprehension. With all the rumors swirling around and the political tension, I knew something big was happening.
There are many stories surrounding the fighting in the streets that day but I'm only going to recount what happened to me as best as I can recall after two decades.
I flagged down a motodop, one of the legions of young men who made their living taking passengers on the back of their 125cc motorcycles, and had him take me to the Cambodia Daily office, where several staff members had gathered.
I was very green. I had only been there a few weeks and had been  disappointed to discover that new staffers had to spend six months serving as copyeditors and page designers. That was exactly what I was doing when I left Tokyo. So I had not been doing any reporting up to that point.
At the office, I found that several other reporters and staffers had arrived. There was the editor-in-chief James Kanter, Joe Cochrane, Catherine Philp, Deborah Boyce, Marc Levy and Chris Fontaine, Guy Nicholson, Stephen Kosloff and probably some others I can’t remember (Possibly Jeff Hodson and Jeff Smith). I did whatever I could to pitch in and help.
Some of the more experienced reporters like Joe had me make calls to track down rumors. For example, we had heard that someone had taken over the power plant, or a factory, by force. I called there and found out that it wasn't true. I was disappointed that I couldn’t deliver this big piece of information. Throughout the day other people showed up including a Cambodian reporter Rathavary Duong, Sydney Schanberg the Pulitzer prize winning former New York Times reporter who was a main character in the movie The Killing Fields and his wife Jane. He was there on assignment to write a magazine article and found himself in the middle of this big coup d'état. Radio programs from all over the world were calling our office to find out what was happening.
I listened in as Joe Cochrane tried to reach a FUNCINPEC aligned general. He actually had his personal cell phone number and called it. Amazingly he picked up.
“Joe, Hello. Can't talk now. Busy fighting.” He then hung up. No one heard from we him for months and we feared that he might have been killed. He did turn up on the Cambodian-Thai border later and very much alive.
I remember James Kanter having an intense discussion with another editor, probably Chris Fontaine, as to whether we should describe this as a coup d'état or not. James wasn't so sure. Eventually we had a policy to call that weekend “the events of July 5 and 6.”
I also remember James blowing his top at a Canadian guy who was a well-known junkie. He'd been sidelined from the staff and given the job of writing copy for advertising. During the course of the coup, he was apparently taking the information we have gathered and calling a news organization in Canada to earn some money as a stringer. James caught him talking to the news organization on the phone and snatched it from him. He asked the people on the other line who they were and informed them that the person they were talking to did not represent the Cambodia Daily. He hung up the phone and screamed at the top of his lungs that we were all working very hard here and has doing nothing and to get the hell out of the office. He was literally red in the face. “You're crazy man!” was the junkie's reply as he beat a hasty retreat. (He would later that year abscond with some of the newspaper's advertising money).
As the day wore on and the battle grew closer, we put mattresses against the windows that we hoped would stop stray bullets or rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) shrapnel. Wishful thinking perhaps. It was growing apparent that we wouldn’t get back to the two group homes where the expatriate staff members lived.
One problem is that we didn't have any food. There was a popular restaurant nearby called The Mex that made an attempt to approximate Mexican food. We actually called them to see if they would deliver. “Oh no we're not delivering food today,” the man who answered the phone said.  Another complication was that the printing press was on the other side of the town. We would not be able to safely bring our pages there to be printed and the press operator was probably at home with his family anyway.
Instead we decided to put out a simple four-page newspaper. It would be printed on the largest size photocopier paper we had in the office and then folded to make a four-page Cambodia Daily that was pretty much packed with all the information about the coup that we knew. My contribution to the newspaper was basically doing what I had been tasked to do since of my arrival and that was to layout the paper and copyedit.
The office was actually a former brothel. The upstairs floor where I had rarely ventured actually had a series of very small rooms, which apparently was where the prostitutes would take their clients. They were in the inner part of the floor and away from windows, so this was the safest place to try and sleep. As gunfire and RPGs popped all around us, I found myself on the floor with a very thin rug. I slept fitfully.
The next morning, we printed hundreds of papers that we had printed up on the office photocopier. Now we would have to distribute them.
We divvied up where we're going to take the newspapers. Someone said they would take copies to the big, four-star hotels where many expatriates were holed up for safety.
I decided I would take mine to some of the lesser-known hotels where the backpackers and NGO workers stayed.
There was a lull in the fighting, but still some gunfire and RPGs popping above me as I found a brave motodop to take me around. I dropped the newspapers off in the no-star hotels and one with the gatekeeper of a Swedish woman with whom I had gone on one date. (She was later very appreciative that I had stopped by to give her a newspaper  —although my act of bravery wasn’t enough to earn me a second date.)
After dropping off all the newspapers, I went back to the group house that I shared with other reporters. I don't remember who else was there. I did have some instant ramen noodles stashed in my room, the first meal I had in a day.
I got so little sleep the night before, I tried to go to sleep again but the sound of gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades  grew closer. When I did sleep, my dreams were wild and tense. 
I slept maybe to 11 a.m. and went upstairs to the roof and took pictures of thick back smoke on the horizon. I learned later that this was from a gas station that someone had shot with an RPG. (See picture)
It was my intention to go back to the office for the second day but first I had to make an attempt to be a real war correspondent. I got my camera, my notebook, and walked out the gate of the house intending to get to the main road to see what was going on.
Several guards manning the gates at the other homes on the block watched  as I walked bravely up the street to the main drag. Just about then, a rocket-propelled grenade exploded right above my head — or at least it seemed like it. I thought better of my plan and turned around and started walking back to the house much too the amusement of the Cambodian guards.
I wanted to get back to the office. I did somehow manage to find a motordop who was willing to take me there. We only got a few blocks when I realized that something really really bad was happening ahead of us. The explosions and crackling AK-47 fire was intense. Little did I know that I had chosen the worst possible time to try to get to work. At that very moment CPP forces were attacking Ranariddh’s compound a block or two from the office. I wisely told the driver to turn around and go back.
I never did make it into the office the second day of the coup July 6. I heard the food situation was there was even more dire.
In my absence, the other staffers put out a six or eight page paper on the second day. I made it in for the third day and I believe that's when a picture was taken with myself Sydney Schamburg his wife and the staff members on hand. I don't remember if any of the Cambodian staff ever made it to the office July 5-6.
This is just one small piece of the story of that weekend. The fighting died down, leaving many combatants and some innocent bystanders dead. Ranariddh fled Cambodia.
I would go on to do more reporting later. I would write the one-year anniversary story about the March 30 grenade attack, the day when Prince Ranariddh returned to Cambodia, the violent elections, and its aftermath.
Hun Sen and the CPP have maintained their grip on power ever since the July 5-6 “events,” which has always been a coup to me.
A year later I wrote a novel based on that weekend. The manuscript is collecting dust. Maybe one day I'll publish it. 
Thanks to the miracle of Facebook I'm still in contact with many of the expatriate and Cambodia staffers I worked with during that year. Most of us have gone on to successful careers in journalism and in other pursuits.
Although my memories are starting to fade it really doesn't seem possible that 20 years have passed.
 

Stew Magnuson is Acting Editor of National Defense Magazine in Arlington, Virginia, and the author of several books, including three editions of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83, Wopunded Knee 1973: Stil Bleeding, and a novel, The Song of Sarin. His book The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder, winner of the 2009 Nebraska nonfiction book of the year award, was recently named one of the state's 150 most important literary works. Contact him at stewmag (a) yahoo.com