PHNOM PENH â Cambodia said yesterday nearly all of the 28 Islamic teachers and their families due to be kicked out in a crackdown on militancy had already left of their own accord.
| "I'm gettin' outta here, Mahmoud! Those guys in the sarongs are crazy!" |
Interior Ministry information chief Sok Phal said 44 people â teachers, their wives and children â had flown out of the country. The remaining three deportees would be leaving as soon as their air tickets were sorted out. âThey should be leaving today or tomorrow,â he told Reuters.
| "But... But... Do I have to fly Ukraine Mediterranean?" |
The teachers are mostly from Thailand, Yemen, Egypt, Sudan and Pakistan. The predominantly Buddhist Southeast Asian nation last week shut down the Om Al-Qura Islamic school and charged three of its teachers â two Thais and an Egyptian â with suspected links to the militant group, Jemaah Islamiah.
| The "wink-wink" routine doesn't work when the guy on the receiving end is a Buddhist, does it? |
Although authorities said on Thursday they did not have any evidence linking the schoolâs other teachers to militancy, they were no longer welcome in the country and had 72 hours to leave, a deadline which expired on Saturday morning.
| It's the scratching, you know. It's distracting. But they laid down with dogs... |
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has confirmed the crackdown was ordered on the basis of intelligence operations with the United States, which has long been concerned at Cambodiaâs growing number of Islamic schools, mostly funded from the Middle East.
| When the Vietnamese kicked the Khmer Rouge out, with Hun Sen in their wake, I was just as suspicious of him as most everyone else (the Chomsky-Streisand set excepted, of course). The guy had been a Khmer Rouge himself, albeit in the days before Pol Pot's rule. I thought he was just a figurehead. The way he dumped Prince Ranarridh was particularly sleazy, but about typical of what I'd have expected â I knew there was going to be no co-existence and no royal family presence of any import. But he's actually turned out to be a pretty smart fellow, and for all his communist roots he's been doing a decent job running Cambodia. Dumping all the Islamist teachers is the sort of pragmatic move that strongmen can make, but the U.S. or Britain or Australia can't. |
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