Cambodian souvenir trade wounded by peace

Feb 15, 2007, 3:59 GMT

Kampong Speu, Cambodia - After the war, scrap metal was hard to find, until resourceful Cambodian artisans like Jay Ny found that spent copper bomb and bullet casings could be recycled to make their traditional musical instruments instead.

In doing so, they unwittingly created one of the country's more popular tourist curios - gongs and bells made from Khmer Rouge-era munitions.

But Cambodia's continued stretch of peace after 30-years of civil war has finally brought that industry to an end, according to the craftsmen and women. Ny, 36, said Thursday her family had run out of bombshells.

'I haven't seen a bomb casing for nearly four years,' she said from her modest home about 50 kilometers from the capital. 'The days of bombshell gongs are over.'

A second family in the bombshell gong capital of Batdung district also said the discarded waste of war had dried up. Their father, formerly the chief bombshell artisan of the family, had retired to pursue a career in music, they said.

A third family which had once made a living forging cow bells from M-16 casings said even when those could be found, they were now too rusted to be of use and they, too, had turned to more conventional scrap to work with.

Delicate bells and tuneful gongs are still sold as genuine at markets in the capital to tourists eager for a memento of the war, and at a mark-up of up to 500 per cent on the seven to 10 dollars Ny charges per 30-centimetre gong. Ny said it was possible, but highly unlikely, they were still genuine.

The genuine souvenirs had long fallen victim to the outbreak of peace and a successful campaign to curb small arms and weapons ownership in the community, she said, but few people besides the tourists would be sorry.

'I am the only person in the country still turning out these gongs to my knowledge, and I use copper off rolls that I buy in the capital. I have to say it is a lot easier to work with than bombshells. I don't have any regrets,' she said.

The ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge regime fell to Vietnamese-backed forces in 1979 but the movement conducted a protracted guerilla war from mountain areas such as Kampong Speu until as late as 1998.