A second unauthorized karaoke resort opened in Siem Reap, near Angkor Wat, stands on land owned by Nhiek Bun Chhay, the second vice president of the Senate.
UN official Tamara Teneishvili said Sunday the main agency charged with protecting Angkor would take swift action.
“There is no place in the protected area for this kind of thing,” said Teneishvili, of the International Coordinating Committee for the Safeguarding and Development of the Historic Site of Angkor.
She said the World Heritage Center, the legal arm of the body that for years has provided money and people to protect the temples, would be notified immediately. “This never received special authorization.”
Nhiek Bun Chhay said Sunday if the authorities want him to tear it down, he will.
“I will follow what they say [although] I am not the owner of the karaoke, only the owner of the land,” he said.
Nhiek Bun Chhay said he does not remember the name of the Cambodian-American to whom he has leased the property for more than a year at a monthly rate of $1,200. But he said it is not he, but the tenant who built the Khmer Karaoke and Resort and erected new signs advertising it along the road to Angkor Wat.
“If the authorities want to stop the karaoke, please do it, but I heard [his tenant] had permission from the Ministry of Tourism,” he said.
Tourism officials could not be reached for comment Sunday.
But officials at both the Apsara Authority and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization said the Khmer Karaoke and Resort violates a number of rules governing development near the temples.
Nhiek Bun Chhay, deputy secretary-general of the Funcinpec party, is the second high-ranking official to make headlines in recent months for building unauthorized karaoke parlors.
General Chea Morn, commander of Region 4, provoked angry complaints from Unesco headquarters in Paris over a karaoke complex he built on the shore of the Western Baray, a vast ancient reservoir within the borders of the Angkor Archeological Park.
The situation with with Nhiek Bun Chhay’s land is a bit different, Unesco officials said Sunday. The international agencies and Apsara Authority share responsibility for controlling development within and around the park, which contains Cambodia’s most sacred monuments.
Nothing is supposed to be built either in the park or near it without the approval of Apsara Authority, the UN agencies and provincial officials.
But while Chea Morn’s karaoke stands within the park itself, the Khmer Karaoke and Resort is built in a buffer zone between the park and the town of Siem Reap.
UN officials say the land has been protected since 1992, when the area was designated a protected zone as a condition of Angkor being added to the World Heritage List. A zoning subdecree added further protections in 1994.
But military officials say the buffer zone includes land that was a military base until 1993, when it was divided up among soldiers. In 1993, when he received his lot, Nhiek Bun Chhay was a deputy commander and Funcinpec’s highest-ranking military officer.
