Ruom Ritt, known for years to Royal Palace followers as retired King Norodom Sihanouk’s elusive pen pal, may have recently visited Phnom Penh, a letter posted on the retired King’s Web site Thursday suggests.
The Bangkok Post’s “realtime” Web site first published an unsigned letter on July 9, entitled “Royal Festivities,” in which the author talked of meeting Norodom Sihanouk’s old friend and discussing the wines served at a diplomatic corps gala dinner that Ruom Ritt had just attended at the Royal Palace.
After reading this, Count Xavier d’Abzac, a special adviser to Prince Norodom Ranariddh, tried to track down Ruom Ritt at times rumored to be a pen name used by the retired King in Phnom Penh.
As he writes in his letter posted on the King’s Web site, d’Abzac’s inquiries at hotels, pagodas and airline companies failed to locate the mysterious Ruom Ritt.
Then a friend calling from Paris told d’Abzac that he had just met Ruom Ritt in Paris who told him about his recent trip to Cambodia. In his letter, d’Abzac gives Ruom Ritt’s trip information as told on the phone and asked Norodom Sihanouk whether his friend actually was in Phnom Penh.
The retired King replied in a handwritten letter posted on his site Thursday that his pen pal was in a hospital in France, which Ruom Ritt has not left since March 1970, and had not been to Cambodia.
“Ruom Ritt is witness to the history of Cambodia since the 1960s and even earlier, and has been close to the Father King,” d’Abzac said Thursday.
Ruom Ritt’s letters to Norodom Sihanouk were first published in the retired King’s monthly bulletin and more recently on his Web site.
His sharp comments on the political situation in Cambodia over the years led Prime Minister Hun Sen to say in March that Ruom Ritt would be better off dead. In June, Norodom Sihanouk said Ruom Ritt would no longer write.
No photo of Ruom Ritt has been publicly released, and the retired King refuses to divulge his address in France.
