A military policeman stops Khmer survivor, author and activist Theary Seng and US actress Mia Farrow from making their way to lay flowers at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. (Reuters: Chor Sokunthea)ABC News
Baton-wielding police have barred Hollywood actress Mia Farrow from holding a rally in Cambodia's "Killing Fields" as part of her campaign to end atrocities in Sudan's Darfur.
Some 100 military police blocked Farrow, who fronts the Dream for Darfur pressure group, and her fellow activists from entering the compound at Tuol Sleng, the Phnom Penh high school that became Pol Pot's main torture centre.
"Darfur has nothing to do with Cambodia. Go protest in Darfur," Phnom Penh police chief Touch Naruth told reporters after the hour-long stand-off ended without incident.
The group, which had planned to lay flowers and light a symbolic Olympic torch in the compound, has held similar events in Chad, Rwanda, Armenia, Germany and Bosnia as part of a campaign to persuade China to push the Sudanese administration into ending the violence in Darfur.
"Our hearts are breaking for what happened in Cambodia today," Farrow later told a news conference, accusing China of putting pressure on Cambodian authorities.
"The Chinese Government was trying to prevent us from commemorating the genocide in Cambodia and denying survivors the opportunity to show solidarity with the people of Darfur.
"We wish Beijing to exercise a similar amount of diplomatic pressure on Khartoum [Sudan's seat of government] to end the genocide in Darfur."
Beijing is hosting the 2008 Olympic Games and human rights groups have targeted China in the hope of using the spotlight thrown on the country to influence Chinese foreign policy.
China, a major investor in Sudan's oil industry, has been accused of breaching international rules and fanning bloodshed by selling Sudan weapons that have been diverted to Darfur.
Cambodian government spokesman Khieu Khanarith had said Farrow's group would face "consequences", including deportation, if they pressed ahead with the rally.
"What they will be doing at Tuol Sleng is not to commemorate the victims of the Khmer Rouge, but to use Khmer skulls to pressure China," he said.
"This is an insult to the Cambodian people."
- Reuters
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