Editorial | Articles about Cambodia | Khmer

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Happy New Year, Year of the Ox 2553

Happy New Year
Year of the Ox 2553 Buddhist Era (B.E.)
Begins 1:36am Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Moha Songkran: Moha Songkran is the name of the first day of the new year celebration. It is the ending of the year and the beginning of a new one. People dress up and light candles and burn incense sticks at shrines. The members of each family pay homage to offer thanks for the Buddha's teachings by bowing, kneeling and prostrating themselves three times before his image. For good luck people wash their face with holy water in the morning, their chests at noon, and their feet in the evening before they go to bed.

Wanabat: Wanabat is the name of the second day of the new year celebration. People contribute charity to the less fortunate, help the poor, homeless people, and low-income families. Families attend a dedication ceremony to their ancestors at the monastery.

Tanai Lieang Saka: Tanai Lieang Saka is the name of the third day of the new year celebration. Buddhist cleanse the Buddha statues and elders with perfumed water. Bathing the Buddha images is the symbol that water will be needed for all kinds of plants and lives. It is also thought to be a kind deed that will bring longevity, good luck, happiness and prosperity in life. By bathing their grandparents and parents, children can obtain from them best wishes and good advice for the future.

Khmer New Year Games:

After performing all rituals and customs to welcome the New Year, it's time to have some fun. Some physical activities become part of New Year celebrations. Popular games played at the time of New Year in Cambodia are listed below:

Tres
In this game, a ball is thrown and caught with one hand while catching sticks (pens, chopsticks) with the other hand.

Chol Chhoung
Played on the night of day one by group of boys and girls standing opposite to each other. One group throws the Chol Chhoung (Khmer scarf ball) on the other and if someone gets hit by the ball then the whole group dances to get the Chhoung back while the other group sings.

Chab Kon Kleng
In this game, one imitates as a hen protecting her chicks from a crow. It is played on the first night of the New Year. The crow tries to catch as many chicks as possible while both the groups sing a song of bargaining.

Bos Angkunh
This game is played by the groups of boys and girls. Each group throws their angkunh (an inedible fruit seed) to hit the angkunh of the other group. The winners must knock the knee of the losers with the angkunh.

Leak Kanseng
It is mostly played by a group of children. They sit in a circle. Someone holds a kanseng (Cambodian towel) twisted in a round shape and moves around the circle. The child moving around the circle secretly keeps the kanseng behind one of the children. If the chosen child realizes the kanseng behind him then he must beat the person sitting next to him.

Bay Khom
It is a game of two children. Ten holes are dug into a board in the ground . 42 stones are required to start the game. Five stones are put into each of the two holes located at the tip of the board and four stones are put in the remaining holes. The first player takes all the stones from any selected hole and put them one by one in other holes. It must be repeated until the last stone is dropped into the hole besides the empty one. Then he must take all the stones into the hole next to the empty one. Similarly, second player starts playing the game and the game ends when all the holes are empty. The player with the maximum number of stones is the winner.

Labels: Cambodian New Year, Cambodian New Year Parade in Long Beach, Year of the Ox 2553 B.E.

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Tuesday, March 31, 2009

As trials begin, questions shadow Khmer Rouge war crimes tribunal.

By Brendan Brady - Special to GlobalPost

Reuters Pictures - A painting is seen at a "Killing Fields" memorial in Batey district in Kampong Cham province, 125 km (78 miles) east of Phnom Penh, March 28, 2009. Former Khmer Rouge torturer Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, will face his second trial for crimes against humanity on Monday. At least 40 witnesses are expected to testify against the former chief of Phnom Penh's S-21 prison, where an estimated 14,000 people were tortured and killed

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Thirty years after the fall of the ultra-Maoist regime known as the Khmer Rouge that ruled Cambodia in the late 1970s, trials are set to begin to hold a handful of its leaders accountable. Under their fanatical regime, an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died from overwork, starvation and murder.

After years of delays, testimonies begin Monday in the trial of Kaing Khev Iev, the chief of the Khmer Rouge’s notorious torture center, codenamed S-21.

Iev, better know by his nom de guerre, Duch, is one of five detained senior Khmer Rouge leaders believed to be the architects of the regime's reign of terror who are still living. They face a UN-backed war crimes tribunal and could receive a maximum of life imprisonment.

Court officials went to great lengths to frame last month’s procedural hearings for Duch as an historic moment of progress for the court and for the impoverished country’s healing.

But even as some degree of official accountability is materializing, a storm of criticism and controversy surrounds the war crimes court — a hybrid structure with both international and national judges, lawyers and administrators presiding.

The Cambodian side is struggling to keep financially afloat following a funding halt after allegations arose last July that national staff, in order to secure their jobs, were forced to pay sizable portions of their salaries to their bosses.

Donor countries have provided the bulk of funds to run the tribunal, and the bitter pill of backing a court associated with corruption has become more difficult to swallow as the court’s budget, originally set at $53 million for three years, has ballooned to $170 million for five years just one-and-a-half years into the process.

Cambodian court officials have denied the allegations. A review last September by a UN oversight body has yet to be made public.

However, a report from a German parliamentary delegation, written last November after its members met with the tribunal's deputy director of administration, Knut Rosandhaug, presents a bleak picture: Referring to “grave corruption” problems, Rosandhaug said that if “the national government continues to object to following up on the corruption allegations … the United Nations should withdraw from the tribunal” or else it will risk tainting its image.
But UN officials have yet to voice such stern words.

“The only real pressure can come from the donor countries and the UN — with one voice — but they have never done that,” said Brad Adams, head of the London-based Human Rights Watch in Asia, and an early member of the negotiations with the government to establish a war crimes court.

By failing to throw down the gauntlet, the UN has undermined the court’s entire mandate, he said.

“We thought we should have an international standard court,” Adams said. Instead, he continued, in this case "the government considers the UN an intruder.”

Indeed, Canadian co-prosecutor Robert Petit is being made to feel he overstepped his mandate.

Petit’s move to add more suspects to the docket — a handful of figures he describes as having been key to implementing the policies set by the regime’s top leaders — was blocked by his Cambodian colleague, Chea Leang, a niece of the current deputy prime minister.

She argued that additional prosecutions could prove destabilizing, overstretch the tribunal’s limited resources, and would run against the spirit of the 2003 U.N. treaty establishing the court, which called only for “senior leaders” of the regime and “those who were most responsible” to be tried.

Many senior government posts are currently held by former Khmer Rouge cadre, and experts say the government fears a wider roundup could expose them to scrutiny. For his part, Prime Minister Hun Sen made his position clear in 1998 when he recommended Cambodians “should dig a hole and bury the past.”

But Petit says casting a wider net would play a key role in validating the court’s work. “It would allow the court to achieve as much justice as possible even within its limited confines.”

For Adams, the move is more essential: “Unless there are more cases, it will not have done the minimum necessary for all of this to have even been worthwhile.”

The country is divided over whether additional high level cadre should be tried — with 57 percent in favor and 41 percent opposed, according to a recent poll. It is safe to say, however, that the decision will come down to politics between Cambodian and international officials, and have little to do with local public input.

As the court makes slow progress, old wounds fester.

“Thirty years later, the memories are still excruciating,” said Van Nath, who witnessed prisoners being waterboarded, doused with battery acid or simply bludgeoned to force them to admit to trumped-up crimes against the regime.

Nath, 63, is one of S-21’s few surviving victims. While he was electrocuted and faced constant threat of execution, he survived only by dint of his artistic skills, which he was forced to use to paint propaganda portraits of Pol Pot.

Unlike the other figures in detention, Nath’s former keeper, Duch, now a born-again Christian, has acknowledged his crimes and asked for forgiveness. He is, however, expected to argue in court that he was following orders from his superiors and would have been killed had he not obeyed.

Even if the rail-thin, seemingly benign former schoolteacher cuts a sympathetic figure on the stand, to Nath he remains “a man who gave orders with authority” while presiding over a prison where more than 12,000 men, women and children were brutally tortured before being executed in the “killing fields” outside the city.

Making more Cambodians with blood on their hands face trial would help the country’s healing, he said.

But, he added, “with the limited movement we have so far, that doesn’t seem possible … and I’m still waiting every day for judgment on these five.”

Brendan Brady is a reporter and editor at The Phnom Penh Post.

Labels: Kaing Guek Eav, Khmer Rouge Tribunal, Pol Pot

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Khmer Rouge trial: the British victim John Dewhirst

(Getty Images)
Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, the former Khmer Rouge prison chief of S-21, or Tuol Sleng prison, is pictured in the courtroom at the Extraodinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia in Phnom Penh on March 30, 2009. Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes tribunal on March 30 resumed the trial of the Khmer Rouge's prison chief, the first person to face justice at the court for the regime's atrocities, the chief judge said.

By Anne Barrowclough (Times Online)

As hundreds of Cambodians crowded into a courtroom today to see the chief torturer of the Khmer Rouge finally brought to trial, a lawyer in Britain quietly got on with her work. Only those closest to her know how, 30 years ago, Kang Kek Ieu, alias Comrade Duch, destroyed Hilary Holland’s family.

In 1978 Ms Holland’s brother, John Dewhirst, aged 26, was captured by the Khmer Rouge and sent to be tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng, the regime’s infamous prison. He was the only Briton among 17,000 Cambodians to die at the prison. Three decades on, as Cambodia watches the first trials of the Khmer Rouge’s leaders, his fate continues to devastate his sister.

"The horrific circumstances and the manner of how John was killed still makes it so difficult to cope with," Ms Holland told The Times from her home in Cumbria.

The young Newcastle teacher had been sailing through the Gulf of Thailand with two friends in July 1978 when their boat was intercepted by a Khmer Rouge patrol boat.

The boat’s skipper, Stuart Glass, a Canadian, was killed instantly. John and the other crew member, Kerry Hamil, a New Zealander, were sent to Tuol Sleng, a former school turned into a torture centre presided over by Duch.

They were tortured until they “confessed” to being CIA agents and taken to Cheong Ek, a pretty orchard on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. There they were bludgeoned to death with an iron bar.

Back in Britain Ms Holland was increasingly concerned at her younger brother's unusual silence, but it was not until she switched on the news one evening that she learnt he had become a victim of a regime she had hardly heard of. Shortly afterwards the Foreign Office called to tell her that John had been captured and imprisoned. He was almost certainly dead, they said.

The pain of that moment has never left her. "It was indescribable," she said. "I don't think I have got the words to explain how I felt. I used to think that if you could die from emotions like this I would have died.

"I have experienced death – I have experienced the death of my husband when I had two young children. But this is completely different."

Yesterday, in a wood-panelled courtroom on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital city, Duch identified himself quietly before charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes, premeditated murder and torture were read to a UN-backed war crimes tribunal.

He is the first of five former leaders of the Khmer Rouge to be brought to trial, 30 years after the fall of Pol Pot and his regime.

Nearly two million Cambodians died between 1975 and 1979 as Pol Pot pursued his ideal of an agrarian communist utopia. Tuol Sleng was the most notorious Khmer Rouge prison: of the 17,000 people sent there, only 15 are known to have survived.

Behind a bulletproof screen at the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia, the 66-year-old former maths teacher who presided over their suffering listened impassively as the court was told that the sole purpose of Tuol Sleng – known by the Khmer Rouge as S-21 – was to kill its inmates.

According to the thick file of charges read to the court: "Every prisoner who arrived at S-21 was destined for execution. The policy at S-21 was that no prisoner could be released... prisoners brought to S-21 by mistake were executed in order to ensure secrecy and security."

During his trial Duch’s brutality will be described in detail. On his orders, victims were plunged head first into tanks of water, often drowning; they were given electric shocks to their genitals and their ear drums. The strongest were hooked up to intravenous pumps and literally bled dry.

It was cruel fate that delivered John Dewhirst into Duch’s hands. The carefree, adventurous young man had taken a break from his teaching job in Japan to go sailing with his two friends on their motorised junk Foxy Lady. Their boat drifted into Cambodian waters but, to the Khmer Rouge, their presence had no innocent explanation.

Yet even after she had heard of his incarceration in S-21 his sister hoped his friendly nature would help him to survive. "I thought if anyone could develop a personal relationship with his jailers, it would be him," she said. "I thought he would charm his way out of there."

She had no way of knowing that nothing could have saved him – although the meticulous Duch, who catalogued the details of all his prisoners, described him as a "polite" young man.

Before he died John was forced to write a detailed confession explaining how he was recruited and trained to be a CIA spy.

The confession, in Cambodian and English, entitled “Details of my course at the Annexe CIA college in Loughborough, England”, claims that John was recruited into the CIA by his father and from 1972 to 1976 was taught CIA techniques, including photographic skills and weapons-handling, by retired agents at his teacher-training college in Loughborough.

The confession, a mixture of the dull and the ludicrous, claims that Loughborough was one of six CIA colleges in Britain. Others, John wrote, were in Cardiff, Aberdeen, Portsmouth, Bristol and Doncaster. His college, he said, was run by “retired Colonel Peter Johnson” while the bursar was a CIA major.

Among many bizarre admissions was a claim that his father was a CIA agent whose cover was “headmaster of Benton Road Secondary School”.

The confession is signed and dated 5/7/1978. John's thumbprint sits along his signature. Like those made by thousands of innocent inmates at S-21, the confession was probably dictated by his interrogators on Duch’s orders.

Hilary Holland wants answers. She wants the Khmer Rouge leaders to admit their guilt and to explain why they destroyed so many lives. "There must be a public accountability," she said. "I would like it to be seen that they understand what they did. We still seem to know so little."

It is too painful for Ms Holland to attend Duch's trial, but she is relieved that after all this time the leaders will finally be brought to justice.

"No one is going to undo the horrors, but bringing these people to account is important. I don't care what happens to them but I would like them to tell the truth, to explain their motivation."

Duch, who was arrested in 1999 after being tracked down by a journalist, is alone among the defendants in expressing remorse and has agreed to co-operate with the tribunal.

At a procedural hearing last month, he made it clear through his lawyer that he would use his trial to apologise to his victims, although he did not expect “immediate” forgiveness.

His French lawyer, Francois Roux, said: "After ten years of prison at last the day is coming where he can in public respond to the questions."

But Duch cannot expect no forgiveness from Ms Holland. "People like Duch, who ordered the atrocities, were the worst," she said.

Labels: Comrade Duch, John Dewhirst, Kang Kek Ieu, Khmer Rouge Tribunal

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Saturday, March 14, 2009

The long search for justice

Written by Andy Brouwer
The Phnom Penh Post
IN THEIR OWN WORDS

Beth Pielert's Out of the Poison Tree chronicles one woman's journey of self-discovery in pursuit of a beloved father and the reasons behind the tragedy that was Democratic Kampuchea.

In 1977, director and producer Beth Pielert was sitting in a Hebrew school class reading about Anne Frank, who perished in the Holocaust, and was told never to let anything like the Nazi's "Final Solution" happen again. Meanwhile, 21,000 kilometres away, genocide was happening in Cambodia.

Years later, Pielert met a former Nuremberg prosecutor who sparked a theme for a film - people who were creators of justice after a great injustice had occurred.

Pielert's film Out of the Poison Tree follows Thida Buth Mam and her sisters back to Cambodia to find out more about the disappearance of their father under the Khmer Rouge and to hear first-hand from Cambodians about the necessity for justice and forgiveness.

As the Khmer Rouge tribunal readies itself for the trial of Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, this film is aptly timed for the voice it gives to ordinary Cambodians and to well-known figures like Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam), or Aki Ra, an orphan raised by the Khmer Rouge who now runs the Land mine Museum.

The first screening in Cambodia of Out of the Poison Tree will take place at Meta House on Saturday at 6:30pm.

Where did the idea for the film come from?
Beth Pielert: I was visiting family on the East Coast [of the US] and I shared a ride to the airport with Henry King Jr, a former junior prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. Meeting Henry sparked an idea for a film about "right livelihood", where people who were exposed to great injustices like the Holocaust worked in careers that helped bring justice to the victims.

In the summer of 1999 ... my mother handed me an article from The New York Times that featured Craig Etcheson, [the co-creator of DC-Cam] and his work at the Yale Cambodian Genocide Studies Program.

I was able to meet Craig and interview him on camera. I learned more details about the Khmer Rouge regime and the long-overdue need for justice.

In 2000, I flew to Cambodia with my stepfather Robb, and together we interviewed survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime to better understand their desire for justice and what they had lived through.

Personal stories of healing and reconciliation for survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime were not yet prevalent at that time. I began production Out of the Poison Tree in earnest in 2001.

How did you and Thida meet?
BP: I met Thida Buth Mam in 2002. ... By [that time] I had already shot interviews with Youk Chhang and Aki Ra, in addition to a former Khmer Rouge soldier and smaller interviews, all of which made up the framework for the film. But I was in need of a contemporary component, an arc that could join stories from the past with the present. I always thought this would be the trial but ... that was taking forever to materialise.

I met with Thida, who had lived through the regime and who, I thought, could potentially serve as a consultant. Thida and her incredible family were so generous with their time and stories that Thida went from consultant, to translator to associate producer of the film.

When Thida phoned one day in late 2004 to say that she and her sisters were returning to Cambodia specifically to look for her father Buth Choen, I requested that I film her and their journey, and they generously agreed.

What do you hope people will take from the film?
Thida Buth Mam: For me, I want to tell the Khmer Rouge genocide story. If we look into the reasons the Khmer Rouge had, which led to the genocide, they were all reasonable, especially when a nation is under dictatorship or oppression. It can happen again, especially in Cambodia.

Cambodians must know themselves well to prevent this from ever happening again. Also, I was hoping to give a voice to the victims.... Cambodians should be fearful of the return of the Khmer Rouge the same way the Americans are afraid of another Vietnam War.

BP: There are several things that I hope people take away from the film, the foremost being understanding - understanding what it was like to be a country like Cambodia caught in the middle during a time of great political tension between the US and Vietnam.

The fallout from economic stress caused by the US bombings, starvation and military dominance helped enable the Khmer Rouge to gain power.

I also wanted to provide a sense of what it was like from the victims' point of view and how this unquenched justice spans the generations.

I wanted to provide a sense of the "choice-less choice" position many of the soldiers of the Khmer Rouge regime were in - for many of the Khmer Rouge soldiers, it was truly kill or be killed.

Thida, is the search for your father now complete? What did your mum think of the film?
TBM: No, I decided to stop. I don't think I can deal with finding out more details. Every time we found out a small fact about my father's fate, I went crazy in my head and in my heart. I think it is best that I don't know. Basically, I went searching for the truth about my father and found the truth about me. As for my mum, she is like me. She cannot handle the truth. She discouraged us from going and never asks me about it.

What are your hopes for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal?
TBM: [That] the Khmer Rouge admit to their crime, they apologise, they explain to us why they did what they did, they tell us what other countries were behind this - China? Vietnam? Thailand? That this practice of law or justice will make the Cambodian judiciary system better.

Also, acknowledgment of a brutal time in Cambodia and that my generation feel that we have done our best and that the genocide story stays alive.

BP: In many ways I wish that the Khmer Rouge tribunal had been created in the image of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. Granting amnesty to the perpetrators may have expedited the Trial and yielded more details about the "how and whys" of the Khmer Rouge.

Finally, Thida, will you return to live in Cambodia?
TBM: I have bought some land where I plan to build a home when I can afford it. I hope, in my retirement, to live in Cambodia most of the time. I hope I can contribute back to my homeland.

Labels: Khmer Rouge Tribunal

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Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Watch Video: Cambodia For Sale

Video Journalist David O'Shea reports from Cambodia, where locals are now faced with a new peril - rampant land developers literally smashing entire communities, leaving thousands homeless.

Watch Video: Cambodia For Sale
(SBS-Dateline)

TRANSCRIPT

These days, for better or worse, we don't hear all that much about that once basket-case nation even though, as we speak, a leading henchmen of the notorious Pol Pot is on trial in Phnom Phen finally charged with crimes against humanity. As if surviving the Killing Fields wasn't enough, hapless Cambodians are now faced with a new peril - rampant land developers literally smashing entire communities, leaving thousands homeless. And David O'Shea reports that all this is going on with a proverbial wink and a nod from Cambodia's powerful political elites.

REPORTER: David O'Shea

This is a story about power in Cambodia - those who have it and those who don't. It's also about the power of money and what some would call 'progress' in this impoverished land. Right across the country, the poor and powerless are being shoved aside in the rush for so-called development, and it's happening with the complicity of Cambodia's leaders.

The story begins here in Boeung Kak Lake in the heart of the capital, Phnom Penh. Two years ago, a little-known developer signed a 99-year lease with the council for this 133-hectare site. And they're filling 90% of the lake with sand to build a high-rise. The problem for people living around the edge of the lake is, as the sand goes in the water level rises and their houses go under. Since the beginning, there's been a total lack of transparency about the deal. Opposition parliamentarian Sam Rainsy is quite literally wading into the debate.

SAM RAINSY, OPPOSITION PARLIAMENTARIAN: We are here to support the people and to protest against these so-called development projects that cause so many problems for the people living here.

REPORTER: This is a ridiculous situation.

SAM RAINSY: Ridiculous. They don't take into account the environment. They ignore, or they pretend to ignore, that when they fill in lakes, this is going to cause floods. But they don't care - they want to make profits.

REPORTER: Who is this 'they' you're talking about?

SAM RAINSY: They're unscrupulous businessmen who have the support of corrupt political leaders.

People here tell Rainsy they have seen nothing like it in 30 years.

SAM RAINSY: They say this is directly related to the nearby lakes being filled in.

REPORTER: It's not that you've had more rain this year than usual?

SAM RAINSY: No, it is not due to rain.

REPORTER: So it's a pretty miserable existence here at the moment?

SAM RAINSY: Yes, everybody is complaining. Behind their gentle smile you can perceive the anger.

DAN NICHOLSON, CENTRE OF HOUSING RIGHTS AND EVICTIONS: This is the biggest forced relocation of people since Khmer Rouge times - over 4,000 families - and it's happening without proper information, without proper consultation.

Dan Nicholson is with the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, headquartered in Geneva. They're campaigning for the 4,000 families set to be evicted from villages around the lake. Families who have lived here for years, including many who settled here immediately after the horrors of the Khmer Rouge period.

DAN NICHOLSON: The whole contract under which it's being done is blatantly illegal but even though we've gone to court, we can't stop it. There's a total lack of involvement of the community and for the benefit for the community. Instead, the urban poor are just being shunted out of town while the elite take over with another badly thought out development.

The community's legal challenge was dismissed by the court on a technicality. And for those residents resisting threats and intimidation to leave, the flooding is making daily life extremely difficult. Nicholson believes the company, Shukaku, may be using it as a strategy to force them out.

DAN NICHOLSON: They've been pumping sand into the lake for the last couple of months, and so when the rains came, all this flooding is much worse than usual at this stage - kind of a way to force the community out, I guess - those who're staying.

REPORTER: You think? So, that could be it?

DAN NICHOLSON: Yeah, well, they've been told either to go now or your houses will be flooded, so...

This enormous development will completely transform this part of Phnom Penh, but finding out anything at all about the company behind it is almost impossible. Shukaku has no office, and they're not even in the phone book. What we do know is that the company director is senator Lao Meng Khin, a close ally of Prime Minister Hun Sen. The senator is also director of Pheapimex, one of the most powerful conglomerates in the country. According to this report released a fortnight ago by the London-based NGO Global Witness, the senator made his millions in logging.

‘NGO GLOBAL WITNESS’: “ In a forest industry dominated by illegal logging and conflict with local people, Pheapmex held the dubious distinction of being notorious amongst the concessionaires for its ruthlessness and the level of destruction inflicted on its concession areas.”

On the other side of Phnom Penh is the community of Dey Krahorm. It's a market area in a great location, and like the residents around the lake, people have lived here legally for decades. Land titles here are still a mess following the upheaval of the Khmer Rouge years, but under a 2001 law, if people can prove that they've occupied land for more than five years, they have possession rights. What's more, Prime Minister Hun Sen specifically earmarked this area as a social concession, to be developed in conjunction with the existing residents. But that promise was broken, and it's clear the government is now supporting the developer. Negotiations for adequate compensation have just hit a wall. And community leader Chan Vichet knows that this is the beginning of the end. Vichet is on the way to City Hall to see if he can salvage the stalled negotiations.

CHAN VICHET, COMMUNITY LEADER (Translation): Here in Cambodia they don’t respect the poor. If there are legal proceedings, we always lose. In court even if you are right you will lose against the rich. We live here legally, but the Council considers us to be illegal residents. They say we are anarchists.

With no-one to stop them, Vichet and the other delegates march straight into the Deputy Governor's office.

CHAN VICHET (Translation): I’m bringing this proposal to you because the people are very worried.

WOMAN (Translation): Please make it short, it affects my business. Do whatever is possible.

DEPUTY GOVERNOR (Translation): Okay, let’s go outside, yes I will do something. Let’s go.

WOMAN (Translation): Thank you very much.

The Deputy Governor says the company's offer stands - $US20,000 per family or a house outside the city at the relocation site. The residents complain that $20,000 is a fraction of the land value for prime real estate in the centre of the city and the relocation site offers inadequate housing too far from their livelihoods.

DEPUTY GOVERNOR (Translation): Vichet, you have to change son. You have to change your attitude. We are not at war, we are educated people. That’s all I can do, the company has offered you $20,000.

WOMAN (Translation): That won’t buy a home.

DEPUTY GOVERNOR (Translation): It’s your decision. We won’t talk further because you don’t act decently. You respond by making faces at me. Very rude! You are very rude. You must excuse me, I regret making time to talk to you.

REPORTER: Mr Deputy Governor, can you guarantee that these people will be safe or are they going to suffer some kind of attack in the next few days?

DEPUTY GOVERNOR (Translation): Have you seen anyone get hurt? Did anyone get even a slap?

CROWD (Translation): No, no, no.

DEPUTY GOVERNOR (Translation): When your husband hits you at home it’s worse than my words to you.

REPORTER: So far nobody hurt. What about tomorrow or the next day?

DEPUTY GOVERNOR (Translation): Tell him I am not the one who makes decisions. He has a right to ask but I have a right not to answer.

Rumours are swirling that tonight is eviction night. I find Vichet at home - a broken man.

CHAN VICHET (Translation): I don’t know what to do now, if they use force to evict us we have to protect our homes. If we can’t defeat them, we just have to watch them do it because we have no power.

At midnight, police set up roadblocks and hundreds of officers move into place. Colour coded T-shirts are handed out to the hundreds of workers the company have trucked in to do their dirty work. At 2am a car pulls up, and axes are handed out to the workers. Around the corner scores of trucks are standing by to haul away the rubble. In the pre-dawn, the colour coordinated workers take up positions and on the dot of 6am, they attack.

MAN (Translation): Get them out, get them out, get the camera out of here.

At every entrance I'm turned back.

REPORTER: So, what's happening? Tell me what's happening. What's happening?

POLICEMAN: I don't know. It's the order. I don't know.

REPORTER: What's the order?

POLICEMAN: I don't know. I'm sorry.

The demolition work is swift. Within a few hours, it's all over.
This is the ruins of Vichet's house. I spoke to him last night at midnight - or just before midnight. He was pretty resigned to losing his place, and here it is, gone.
When the bulldozer driver ploughs through people trying to save their possessions, they strike back. The company's fire extinguishers are used to disperse them. An injured woman is carried out as others salvage what they can.

WOMAN (Translation): We paid money for these blocks, thousand of dollars, look what they have done to us by bulldozing these homes. Some were still asleep, got hurt and were hospitalised.

WOMAN 2 (Translation): My childrens jewellery.. ring, earrings, all gone. Why can’t they let us move without force?

WOMAN (Translation): They won’t let us take anything we had to fight to get our belongings. The owner of that house was unconscious and was taken to hospital.

Human rights workers observing proceedings could point to several laws broken here today.

NALY PILORGE, HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGNER: What the company has done with the complicity of authorities - military police and local police - is illegal. This was designated a social concession and it was sold to a company, which is prohibited. And if you see those buildings behind you, this is next - all these people that have been watching, I'm sure they know they're next. This is a very valuable piece of land. It's a really sad, sad situation, and again, illegal and with the complicity of the authorities.

The workmen on the roof of Australia's new embassy also had a ringside view of the destruction. The building is going up right in the middle of the eviction zone. All around it communities have been forced out or will be shortly - even though they have a strong legal claim to be there.

AUSTRALIAN ANTHEM: Australians all let us rejoice for we are young and free. We've golden soil... Our home is girt by sea...

It's Australia Day at Ambassador Margaret Adamson's residence.

REPORTER: Are you concerned that violent and illegal evictions are going on on the doorstep of the new Australian embassy?

MARGARET ADAMSON, AMBASSADOR TO CAMBODIA: Well, Of course we have concerns about how the Cambodian Government manages the issue of land tenure. It's a long-standing issue in the country and we have concerns which we express to the Cambodian Government on a regular basis.

REPORTER: This was right on the doorstep of the new Australian embassy, so it must be... doubly embarrassing for you at this stage, no?

MARGARET ADAMSON: I'm conscious of the location. .. I don't find it embarrassing, no. I find it a matter as I've said before to you, that is a matter which is played out in different parts of the country, so I don't see find on the doorstep of the Australian embassy any less deserving of our attention than anywhere else in the country.

REPORTER: Under the 2001 law, don't they have residency rights or possession rights?

MARGARET ADAMSON: It's very difficult to prove, though, isn't it? It's very difficult to prove...

REPORTER: If they've been there for longer than five years noticeably without violence... I understand what you say.

MARGARET ADAMSON: Absolutely. Absolutely. No, I understand what the principles are, but it is difficult indeed to actually have the documentation, documentation that is accepted, to enable those claims to be respected.

Together the international community pledged $1 billion last year to the Cambodian Government. The Global Witness report 'Country For Sale' is scathing about the role played by donor countries like Australia.

‘THE GLOBAL WITNESS’: “ Cambodia’s international donor community has consistently failed to bring the government to book for blatant violations of its commitments to protect the human rights of Cambodians, fight corruption and ensure the protection of land and natural resources.”

The land grabbing frenzy is going on right around the country. Of them all, one case stands out for its brazen abuse of power. The village of Kong Yu is in the remote north-east of the country near the Vietnamese border. The indigenous Jarai people here are culturally and ethnically distinct from the Khmers and the Vietnamese. They live in tight-knit communities and practice shifting agriculture on their ancestral lands. But the traditional ways are under serious threat.
With a combination of lies, intimidation and financial incentives, a well connected woman is snapping up their land for a rubber plantation. Her name is Keat Kolney, sister of the Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. Her husband is Secretary Of State at the Ministry of Land Management, which is responsible for registration of indigenous lands. This footage shows the businesswoman in Kong Yu village handing out sarongs and cash.

DAN KING, COMMUNITY LEGAL EDUCATION CENTRE: The villagers in their mind on that particular day, they were not clear whether this was a donation by a rich state party official or whether this was, in fact, money for the purpose of selling the land, so in their minds they were clear. They were donating from the small, grassy hill called the Dombok, and it's approximately 50 hectares. Subsequently more has been cleared and Keat Kolney now claims 450 hectares of land.

Dan King is an Australian lawyer advising a team of Cambodian lawyers who've taken on the villagers' case. He says Cambodian law clearly states that indigenous land cannot be sold.

DAN KING: It's basically an open-and-shut case in terms of the documentation and the evidence. It's about the court having the courage to make a very difficult decision against a very high powered, connected individual to make sure that justice is done.

The villagers of Kong Yu have told their version of events on video. An American filmmaker helped them with the technology, but the villagers acted all the parts and filmed it themselves. The first scene shows the arrival of the company's brokers who want some land. The villagers declined, but were told that Prime Minister Hun Sen needed the land to house disabled soldiers, and if they didn't sell, it would be taken from them anyway. This was a blatant lie, but the villagers felt powerless to resist and agreed to hand over approximately 50 hectares. Then there's the party scene. The villagers killed a pig and the company supplied the beer, and in the middle of the festivities, out comes the inkpad again.
Men from the company even went around the village in the middle of the night waking people up to get their thumb prints. The villagers only realised what it all meant later.

WOMAN 3 (Translation): After we agreed to give the land to them, some time later the company came with trucks and bulldozers and started to clear the land beyond the boundary hill. They damaged our rubber trees and the villagers went to stop them from clearing the land. All of us, young and old, went to the boundary to stop them.

But they failed, and the authorities accused them of disturbing the peace and locked up seven people. I approached plantation owner Keat Kolney through her lawyer to request an interview, but was told she was too busy. And at Kolney's plantation office near Kong Yu village, I get a frosty reception.

GUARD (Translation): Didn’t you see the sign? Unauthorised entry prohibited. See? The sign is over here. Unauthorised entry prohibited.

Back in the village, the lawyers are discovering that the community is now divided - into those who want to sell more land and those who want to get the land they lost back.

DAN KING: For the first time that we have been working with the villagers, for the first time they are thinking about selling a large piece of land - the whole community, not just a few families, but half the community - wants to sell the land. That is a serious situation. We won't have a case. There won't be a Kong Yu case if they sell their land.

Crucially, the village chief has turned.

VILLAGE CHIEF (Translation): The company authorised me to sort out the land issue and the villagers gave me the authority to do that as well.

DAN KING: The current village chief was then appointed because he was one of the strongest and most vocal advocates for fighting the case and to be getting the land back. Since then I think he has not seen the case move forward in the courts. As I said, he's obviously been talking to the company and his position has changed. He no longer supports the case. He is advocating the sale of land, and it is very sad to watch.

While the lawyers try to get him to stay the course and fight the case, he's now a staunch supporter of the company.

VILLAGE CHIEF (Translation): I am afraid we will lose the case in court because the company is rich and we are poor. We have accepted their money, how can we win? The whole village has accepted the money by making a thumbprint.

Some of the villagers are suspicious as to why he changed his mind.

WOMAN 3 (Translation): In fact, the district and the village authorities do not support the people since there is nothing in it for them, I think that they support the company because they gain from it. The villagers have nothing, all they have is the land.

But the company is stepping up its efforts to get the community to sell their remaining land, and now the local authorities are offering them more cash and even a school if they agree to sell. Like their compatriots right around this country, the villagers are quickly learning the ways of the modern world - where money talks.

Reporter/Camera
DAVID O’SHEA

Fixer
SUY SE

Editor
WAYNE LOVE

Producer
ASHLEY SMITH

Subtitling
PHINY UNG
SABOUPHARY TUY

Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN

Labels: "country for sale", Cambodia for sale, eviction, Global Witness, hun sen

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Sunday, March 01, 2009

US: drug problems in Cambodia, Philippines

WASHINGTON (MSNBC) - The United States on Friday praised Beijing for its efforts to fight drug smugglers but said China remains a major transit point for international drug markets.

The State Department, in its annual survey of global counter-narcotics efforts, also described substantial drug problems facing Asia, including in Cambodia, the Philippines and Myanmar; progress was seen in Laos and Vietnam.

While Beijing recognizes drugs as a major threat to its security and economy, "corruption in far-flung drug-producing and drug transit regions of China limits what dedicated enforcement officials can accomplish," the report said.

North Korean drug activity, the report said, "appears to be down sharply. There have been no instances of drug trafficking suggestive of state-directed trafficking for six years."

But, the State Department said, not enough evidence exists to determine if state-sponsored trafficking has stopped. The State Department has previously raised suspicions that Pyongyang derived money from drug production and trafficking.

In the report, the United States also said that drug runners have increasingly looked to move their products through Cambodia because of Thai and Chinese crackdowns.

The report noted "a significant and growing illegal drug problem" in Cambodia. It praised the country for destroying seized drugs and stiffening penalties for drug use and trafficking but said corruption hampers government efforts.

The State Department called the scope of the drug problem in the Philippines "immense," despite law enforcement efforts to disrupt major drug organizations. Still, the report said, the government had some success enforcing counter-narcotics laws.

Laos has made "tremendous progress" in reducing opium cultivation, but, the report said, the country's momentum is "stalling, and gains remain precarious."

Vietnam was said to have continued making progress in fighting drugs, improving its pursuit of drug runners and its cooperation among state agencies and with the United Nations.

The report said that, in 2007, rising opium values pushed poppy cultivation into new regions of military-run Myanmar. The State Department did not receive 2008 U.N. statistics on Myanmar in time for the annual report.

___

Associated Press writer William C. Mann contributed to this story.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Labels: drug, US State Department

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Friday, February 27, 2009

Sam Rainsy Lost his Parliamentary Immunity

26 Feb 2009
By Leang Delux (Cambodge Soir Hebdo )

He challenges the decision of the Standing Committee of the National Assembly to lift his parliamentary immunity, and plans to write to the king asking him to pardon.

The Standing Committee of the National Assembly has shown a remarkable speed in deciding, Thursday 26 February, to lift the parliamentary immunity of Sam Rainsy, at the request of the Minister of Justice, Hang Vong Ratana. The leader of the opposition becomes a citizen like any other, although it has been condemned by the National Electoral Committee, to pay a fine of 10 million riels (U.S. $ 2 400), for having criticized the leaders of the PPC, during the legislative July 2008.

Chheang Vun, PPC member, member of the Standing Committee of the National Assembly and Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, confirmed that decision. "Under the Constitution, during the vacancy of the National Assembly, the Standing Committee can make that decision and inform the House plenary session," he said to "Cambodge Soir Hebdo." However, Article 80 of the Constitution provides an additional step: "The decision of the Standing Committee of the National Assembly must be submitted at the next plenary session for adoption by a majority of two thirds of its members. "

The Standing Committee plans to write to the Minister of Justice informing him of its decision to lift the immunity of Sam Rainsy.

Meanwhile, the leader of the opposition denies: "I have not lost my immunity because the Assembly has not yet decided in plenary session, the Standing Committee has no right to take this decision. "

Sam Rainsy criticized the process: "I take a while because I called the Constitutional Council to examine whether decisions condemning me are in accordance with the Constitution," he says.
The President of the PSR account out of this impasse by a spin: "I will write to the king gracie for me and I will pay 10 million riels to the Kanta Bopha Hospital. "

In 2005, Sam Rainsy had already lost his parliamentary immunity after defaming Norodom Ranariddh

Labels: Cambodia Parliament, Sam Rainsy, Sam Rainsy Party

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Monday, February 23, 2009

One big happy family in Cambodia

By Bertil Lintner (Asia Times)

PHNOM PENH - Cambodia's rough-and-tumble politics have long been bloody, marred by frequent political assassinations and violence. But never before have they been quite so blood-linked.

The English-language fortnightly Phnom Penh Post published without comment in late February a family tree it had compiled, revealing how the top leaders of the ruling Cambodia People's Party (CPP) have become more intimate through an old-fashioned Cambodian custom: arranged marriage. And the growing family ties run all the way to the top of Cambodia's political pyramid, Prime Minister Hun Sen, Southeast Asia's longest-serving leader.

For instance, there is Hun Sen's brother, Hun Neng, currently serving as governor of Kompong Cham, whose daughter, Hun Kimleng, is married to the deputy commissioner of Cambodia's National Police, Neth Savoeun. Meanwhile, Hun Neng's son, Hun Seang Heng, is married to Sok Sopheak, the daughter of Sok Phal, another deputy commissioner of the National Police. Hun Sen's 25-year-old son, Hun Manith, is married to Hok Chendavy, the daughter of Hok Lundy, the National Police commissioner.

Another of the premier's sons, Hun Many, 24, is married to Yim Chay Lin, the daughter of Yim Chay Li, secretary of state for rural development. One of Hun Sen's daughters, Hun Mali, 23, meanwhile, is married to Sok Puthyvuth, the son of Sok An, Hun Sen's right-hand man and minister of the Council of Ministers. The friendship between Hun Sen and Sok An dates back to the early 1980s, when Hun Sen was foreign minister and Sok An director of the office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Now those personal ties run blood deep as in-laws.

And that's just a sampling of the connections at the highest echelons. Heng Samrin, who was Cambodia's head of state from the Vietnamese invasion in January 1979 to the United Nations intervention in 1991, and now serves as president of the National Assembly and honorary CPP president, has a daughter named Heng Sam An, who is married to Pen Kosal, an adviser to Sar Kheng, deputy prime minister and minister of the interior - as well as brother-in-law of Senate and CPP president Chea Sim.

Heng Samrin's adviser, Cham Nimol, is the daughter of Cham Prasidh, minister of commerce. Another of Cham Pradish's daughters, Cham Krasna, is engaged to Sok Sokann, another of minister Sok An's sons. Sar Kheng's son, Sar Sokha, meanwhile, is married to Ke Sunsophy, daughter of Ke Kim Yan, commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. And Hun Sen's wife, Bun Ramy, currently serves as president of the Cambodian Red Cross, while its second vice president, Theng Ay Anny, aka Sok An Anny, is Sok An's wife.

Family traditions
There has been no official reaction to the Phnom Penh Post's revealing study. Intermarriage among members of the ruling political and business elites is not uncommon in Asia.

In neighboring Thailand, Field Marshal Phin Choonhavan's son, Chatichai Choonhavan, became prime minister of Thailand, while his daughter, Khun Ying Udomlak married Phao Sriyanond, director general of the Thai police. Another high-ranking Thai army officer, Thanom Kittikachorn, was the brother-in-law of fellow military dictator Praphas Charusathien, while his son, Narong Kittikachorn, also became a military strongman, while his sister Songsuda married Suvit Yodmani, who has served with several Thai governments.

Sino-Thai tycoons are known to have arranged their children's marriages to members of other top business families to progress their commercial interests. But in Cambodia's case, where many of the political elite were wiped out during Khmer Rouge-led purges between 1975 and 1979, the number of political marriages is extraordinary. And these new family ties between the children of ministers and top officials potentially set the stage for the CPP's grip on power to continue for generations.

Significantly, the CPP's family connection is emerging simultaneously with a waning of the royal family's influence over national politics. Ever since Hun Sen and his inner circle of friends and advisers ousted former prime minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh in a 1997 coup, the royalist Funcinpec party's political fortunes have waned.

Ranariddh was forced into exile after the bloody putsch that killed many of his party members, but later returned to Cambodia to become president of the National Assembly after inconclusive general elections in 2003, when the CPP was unable to garner enough votes to form a one-party government and after much squabbling joined with Funcinpec in a wobbly coalition.

One of the sons of former king Norodom Sihanouk and half-brother of the present monarch, Sihamoni, Ranariddh resigned that post last March and subsequently left the country again. While he was away, he was dismissed as co-chairman of the Council for the Development of Cambodia as well as the National Olympic Committee. He later returned to Cambodia - and was ousted as president of Funcinpec, the main opposition party, amid an internal power struggle in October that many political analysts believe Hun Sen had a hand in.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, several of Funcinpec's original leaders were also related. Ranariddh's uncle and former king Norodom Sihanouk's younger half-brother, Norodom Sirivudh, served as foreign minister in a Funcinpec-led government in 1993. Ranariddh's half-brother, Norodom Chakrapong, meanwhile, helped found Funcinpec but later defected to the CPP. Their half-sister and Sihanouk's eldest child, Norodom Bopha Devi, has served as minister of information and culture, while her latest consort, Khek Vandy, was elected to the National Assembly on a Funcinpec list in 1998.

But Funcinpec's family pride has waned considerably since it emerged as the biggest party in the UN-supervised elections in May 1993, when it captured 45% of the popular vote and outpaced the CPP, which came in a close second with 38%. Many political observers think Ranariddh's recent ouster from Funcinpec may represent his last political gasp.

His former Funcinpec colleagues recently sued him on allegations that he embezzled US$3.6 million from the sale of the party's headquarters last August. The Phnom Penh Municipal Court found the prince guilty and sentenced him - in absentia - to 18 years in prison. Ranariddh had recently set up a new party, aptly named the Norodom Ranariddh Party (NRP).

Funcinpec, the NRP and the opposition Sam Rainsy Party will be among 10 different political parties standing against the CPP juggernaut in upcoming commune council elections, which are scheduled for April 1 and widely viewed as a bellwether indicator for next year's general elections.

It may well be an April Fool's election, with the opposition fractured and vulnerable and the CPP allegedly pursuing a campaign of violence and intimidation against opposition candidates and their supporters in rural areas. Khieu Kanharith, CPP minister of information, predicted on February 22 that his party would win about 97% or 98% of the positions in the commune councils, and 95% of the vote in the general elections next year. That may well be the case, as Cambodia is fast morphing into a one-party state dominated by the CPP.

The Phnom Penh Post in its February 9 edition quoted a foreign diplomat as saying: "The CPP controls the government, the National Assembly, the Senate, 99% of the village chiefs, the provincial governments. Their influence goes through the judiciary, through the police ... Practically everything is controlled by one party."

That assessment would appear to jibe with 55-year-old Hun Sen's January 9 pronouncement that he does not intend to stand down from the premiership until he is at least 90 years old. By then, a third generation of CPP family-tied politicians and officials, if everything goes according to the apparent plan, will just be coming of political age.

Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review, where he reported frequently on Cambodian politics and economics. He is currently a writer with Asia-Pacific Media Services.

(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Labels: Corruption, Global Witness, Hun Mana, hun sen

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Saturday, February 21, 2009

Party factionalism looms behind Ke Kim Yan sacking

Party factionalism looms behind Ke Kim Yan sacking: observers

Photo by: HENG CHIVOAN
Kem Sokha, right, and Sam Rainsy at a press conference Wednesday.

Written by SEBASTIAN STRANGIO and THET SAMBATH (Phnom Penh Post)
Thursday, 19 February 2009

Analysts say allegations the deposed army chief was involved in shady land deals are being used to whitewash a purge of the military in line with decades-old internal party disputes

OVERWHELMING success in last year's national election set the stage for a reopening of long-standing factional disputes in the ruling Cambodian People's Party, culminating in the removal of Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) Commander-in-Chief General Ke Kim Yan last month, according to some political observers.

According to a leaked document from a January 29 meeting of the Council of Ministers, Ke Kim Yan's removal - which also saw the sacking of military police Deputy Commander General Chhin Chanpor - was "due to reforms in the military based on job performances" and "due to him using his military position to profit from land deals".

But political analysts and military sources say such pretexts are being used to paper over significant power shifts in the ruling party.

"None of these explanations can be taken at face value," said Carlyle A Thayer, a political science professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Sydney.

"The government says Ke Kim Yan's removal was a normal reshuffle, but this is belied by allegations he was involved in shady land deals and was not effective in support of [RCAF] troops during the border dispute with Thailand."

Cold War rivalries
Thayer said that internal disputes within the CPP - pitting one group loyal to Hun Sen against another loyal to party President Chea Sim - have plagued the party on and off for years, but that until recently the two factions had reached a stable modus vivendi.

However, with the defeat of its long-time foe Funcinpec at last year's national election, the party has begun to rearrange itself along the predominant factional fault lines.

"Hun Sen is set for another five years. He faces the problem of what to do with so many CPP deputies who have time on their hands, [which is] fertile ground for a revival of intense factionalism within the CPP," he said.

In the run-up to July's elections, historian David Chandler told the Post that an overwhelming victory of the CPP would be a double-edged sword for the ruling party, since it would "no longer [have] to look over its shoulder at opponents", and could be beset by "over-confidence".

Koul Panha, executive director of election monitor Comfrel, said it was possible that increased power had triggered fresh internal disputes but that it was "too early to say" how success would affect the CPP.

" FOR THE MOMENT, GENERAL POL SAROEUN IS HUN SEN’s STALKING HORSE, [but] GENERAL KUN KIM COULD PROVE TOMORROW’s man. "

But the trigger for the shake-up, according to Thayer, was the death of National Police chief Hok Lundy in a helicopter crash in November, which destabilised the status quo by diluting the power of the police force - a long-time bastion of support for Hun Sen.

"Hok Lundy's death removed one of Hun Sen's staunch loyalists. His passing means that the police may not be as strong a counterfoil to the military as it once was," he said.

"In this context, Hun Sen's move to capture the leadership of the military may be seen as an effort to gain control of another base of power within the political system."

Meanwhile, other observers said the emphasis on Ke Kim Yan's alleged land dealings was merely a way of detracting from the political motivations behind his removal.

Jacques Bakaert, a Belgian journalist who covered Cambodia during the 1990s, said the timing of the removal was a chance for the prime minister's faction to reassert control over the armed forces - previously dominated by Chea Sim loyalists - and that land was merely being used as an excuse.

"It was probably convenient, given the accusations against him, to get rid of him now when there are continuous questions about land grabbing," he said.

One RCAF general, who fought with the anti-Pol Pot resistance in the late 1970s but declined to give his name, told the Post that the removal of Ke Kim Yan for owning land was hypocritical, since "many" military commanders and government officials were involved in the land business.

"It is not right to accuse him alone of being involved in the land business. They have legal and illegal land ... [so] why are they still at the top?" the source said.

Sam Rainsy Party spokesman Yim Sovann agreed, saying that there were many - especially those "loyal to high-ranking officials" - who could potentially be charged with similar offences.

"This is an internal conflict in the CPP. When they are not happy with somebody in the party, they always accuse them of doing the wrong thing," he said. "The law should apply to everybody, not only those who oppose the ruling party."

Ke Kim Yan declined to comment when contacted Monday. Government officials, however, have consistently played down talks that the CPP is beset by factionalism.

Speaking at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs February 6, Prime Minister Hun Sen denied opposition claims of a split in the CPP, saying that "it is the right of the premier to manage and control the military, police and other public administration".
Bun Seng, RCAF commander of Military Region 5, also told the Post that it was not up to him to judge the reasons behind Ke Kim Yan's removal.

"Right or wrong is up to the top leaders to decide," he said.

Purging the military
What is certain, however, is that the replacement of Ke Kim Yan and the appointment of seven new deputy commanders-in-chief, has consolidated the prime minister's control over the upper echelons of the armed forces.

General Pol Saroeun, the new army head, has been a staunch Hun Sen loyalist since he took part in the eastern zone-led revolt against Pol Pot in 1978.

In the mid-1980s, he was appointed party secretary of Takeo Province, where he became an early supporter of Hun Sen's economic reforms and supported the removal of Heng Samrin as party leader.

The other new appointees - including Generals Chea Dara, Mol Roeu, Meas Sophea, Hing Bun Heang, Kun Kim, Ung Samkhan and Sao Sokha - are also known for their loyalty to Hun Sen.

Kun Kim in particular has long stood in the wings, acting in Ke Kim Yan's absence and carrying out personal orders from the premier.

A Phnom Penh source who declined to be named said that the conflicts between Ke Kim Yan and the prime minister began in 1997, during that year's fighting between army factions loyal to the CPP and Funcinpec.

"At that time Hun Sen wanted to use the national military to [fight] Funcinpec, but Ke Kim Yan refused. He didn't think it was the right thing to do," said the source, adding that Ke Kim Yan was "marked" from that point on by his refusal to toe Hun Sen's line.

Kun Kim, on the other hand, played an active role in the suppression of the royalists.

Subsequently, when the prime minister appointed Kun Kim to the RCAF general staff in 1999, observers cast it as a move by the prime minister to tighten his grip on the army, and in an October 2005 speech, Hun Sen pledged to replace Ke Kim Yan with Kun Kim if he did not follow orders to repress a future coup attempt.

"I have been patient for too long.... The armed forces are in my hands," the premier said.
"If Ke Kim Yan does not do it, I will use Kun Kim. Ke Kim Yan has to do it. If not he will be removed."
But Thayer said that the military leadership had not been definitively settled and that more upheavals could yet be in store.

"For the moment General Pol Saroeun is Hun Sen's stalking horse, [but] General Kun Kim could prove tomorrow's man," he said. But he added that the appointment of Meas Sophea, another Hun Sen loyalist, indicates that the PM is "keeping his options open".

"Both men will have to demonstrate their continued loyalty to Hun Sen," he said.

In the meantime, RCAF sources say the removal of Ke Kim Yan - a genuinely popular figure amongst soldiers - was still rippling through the military, where many former colleagues feared removal from their own posts.
"We are sorry for him because we have fought together since the 1980s," the anonymous general said.

"Most of the soldiers today still support Ke Kim Yan in their hearts. But what can we do for him? No one dares to comment about him because they are worried of removal and demotion. One was our commander and one is still our prime minister, so we all have to shut up."

Court denies KE KIM YAN land investigations

STUNG Treng provincial court says it is yet to receive requests to open investigations into land owned by General Ke Kim Yan, despite unconfirmed reports the former army chief owns thousands of hectares in the province. A leaked report from a January 29 meeting of the Council of Ministers revealed Ke Kim Yan had been removed from his post in part for “using his military position to profit from land deals”, recommending he be investigated for land investments in Phnom Penh, Stung Treng and Preah Vihear. But police and court officials denied local media reports that they had been ordered to launch inquiries.

"I am surprised to hear your question that officials and courts in the province are working to investigate land deals involving Ke Kim Yan," said court director Sor Savuth. “I did not get any requests… to investigate this case.” Ke Kim Yan is listed as an advisor on the website of YLP Group Co Ltd, which is developing the Grand Phnom Penh International City satellite as a joint venture with Indonesian firm Ciputra. YLP Group, headed by Ke Kim Yan’s wife Mao Malay, also has planned developments in Preah Sihanouk and Kandal provinces.

THET SAMBATH AND HOR HAB

Labels: CPP, Hu Sen, ke kim yan

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Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Khmer Rouge Trial Opens

Khmer Rouge Trial Opens In Cambodia

February 17, 2009
By Sopheng Cheang and Susan Postlewaite (AP)

Cambodian visitors watch portraits of victims displayed in the infamous Tuol sleng Khmer Rouge prison, also known as S21, where thousands of Cambodian died during the brutal 1975-79 regime, on February 16, 2009 in Phnom Penh.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The chief of a prison where some 16,000 men, women and children were tortured before being killed appeared Tuesday before Cambodia's genocide tribunal in its first trial over the Khmer Rouge reign of terror more than three decades ago.

Kaing Guek Eav _ better known as Duch _ is charged with crimes against humanity and is the first of five defendants scheduled for long-delayed trials by the U.N.-assisted court.

They were among a close-knit, ultra-communist clique that turned Cambodia into a vast slave labor camp and charnel house in which 1.7 million or more died of starvation, disease and execution.

Duch, who headed the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh for the Khmer Rouge, is the only defendant to have expressed remorse for his actions, and on Tuesday he again voiced regret for what he did and sought forgiveness.

"Duch acknowledges the facts he's being charged with," his French lawyer Francois Roux, said at a press briefing after Tuesday's court session. "Duch wishes to ask forgiveness from the victims but also from the Cambodian people. He will do so publicly. This is the very least he owes the victims."

This week's hearing establishes the schedule for the trial, which is expected to begin in late March. The prosecution said it will present 33 witnesses over 40 days, while the defense said it seeks to have 13 witnesses testify over 4 1/2 days.

Duch's professed sentiments have no direct legal ramifications, and seem unlikely to change public attitudes.

"It is not only me wanting justice today. All Cambodian people have been waiting for 30 years now," said Vann Nath, one of less than 20 survivors of S-21, who attended the hearing in a courtroom packed with some 500 people. "I look at Duch today and he seems like an old, very gentle man. It was much different 30 years ago."

Vann Nath, who survived by painting and sculpting portraits of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, described Duch as a "very cruel man."

Duch, 66, is accused of committing or abetting a range of crimes including murder, torture and rape at S-21 prison _ formerly a school _ where suspected enemies of the Khmer Rouge _ men, women and children _ were held and tortured, before being executed.

"This first hearing represents the realization of significant efforts to establish a fair and independent tribunal to try those in leadership positions and those most responsible for violations of Cambodian and international law," presiding judge Nil Nonn told the chamber.

But the tribunal has drawn sharp criticism.

Its snail-slow proceedings have been plagued by political interference from the Cambodian government, allegations of bias and corruption, lack of funding and bickering between Cambodian and international lawyers.

Some observers believe Prime Minister Hun Sen _ a former Khmer Rouge officer himself _ is controlling the tribunal's scope by directing the decisions of the Cambodian prosecutors and judges.

Duch has made no formal confession. However, unlike the other four defendants, he "admitted or acknowledged" in some of the 21 interviews by investigating judges that many of the crimes occurred at his prison, according to the indictment from court judges.

Duch has been variously described by those who knew him as "very gentle and kind" and a "monster."

"Duch necessarily decided how long a prisoner would live, since he ordered their execution based on a personal determination of whether a prisoner had fully confessed" to being an enemy of the regime, the tribunal said in an indictment in August.

In one mass execution, he gave his men a "kill them all" order to dispose of a group of prisoners, indictment said. On another list of 29 prisoners, he told his henchmen to "interrogate four persons, kill the rest."

After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Duch disappeared for two decades, living under two other names and converting to Christianity before he was located in northwestern Cambodia by a British journalist in 1999.

Taken to the scene of his alleged crimes last year, he wept and told some of his former victims, "I ask for your forgiveness. I know that you cannot forgive me, but I ask you to leave me the hope that you might."

The trial comes 30 years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, 13 years after the tribunal was first proposed and nearly three years after the court was inaugurated.

Many victims feared that all the Khmer Rouge leaders would die before facing justice, and getting even one of them on trial is seen as a breakthrough. But there are concerns that the process is being politically manipulated and that thousands of killers will escape unpunished.

The Cambodian side in the tribunal has recently turned down recommendations from the international co-prosecutor to try other Khmer Rouge leaders, as many as six according to some reports. This has sparked criticism from human rights groups.

"The tribunal cannot bring justice to the millions of the Khmer Rouge's victims if it tries only a handful of the most notorious individuals, while scores of former Khmer Rouge officials and commanders remain free," the New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a release Monday.

Others facing trial are Khieu Samphan, the group's former head of state; Ieng Sary, its foreign minister; his wife Ieng Thirith, who was minister for social affairs; and Nuon Chea, the movement's chief ideologue.

All four have denied committing crimes.

Labels: Duch, Kaing Guek Eav, Khmer Rouge Tribunal

» Read more!

Saturday, February 07, 2009

Chevron Silent on Bribery Allegations

CAMBODIA: Chevron Silent on Bribery Allegations

By Marwaan Macan-Markar (IPS)

BANGKOK, Feb 6 (IPS) - U.S. energy giant Chevron is under fire for failing to disclose the amount of money it allegedly paid to secure rights to drill for offshore oil in corruption-ridden Cambodia.

‘’It is yet to respond to our detailed questions in a letter written to the company in October 2008,’’ says Gavin Hayman, campaigns director for Global Witness (GW), a London-based anti-corruption watchdog. ‘’It is not in favour of supplying information about what it pays foreign governments to secure rights for oil exploration.’’

Chevron’s attitude towards disclosure ‘’will be telling,’’ he explained in an interview, since such revelations will help measure the scale of ‘’under the table payments’’ involved in a country where a small and powerful elite has ‘’captured the country’s emerging oil and mineral sectors’’ for personal gain.

But disclosure about money paid to access the resource is only one part of the transparency and accountability equation. GW activist insists that the oil companies should also disclose what they would pay Cambodia once the revenue starts flowing.

Hayman made the comments following a launch here this week of a report by GW which warns of a corruption disaster as the South-east Asian country ‘’appears to be on the verge of an oil, gas and minerals windfall.’’

‘’Cambodia today is a country for sale,’’ reveals the 68-page report. ‘’Having made their fortune from logging much of the country’s forests resources, Cambodia’s elite have diversified their commercial interests to encompass other forms of state assets.’’

‘’Financial bonuses paid to secure concessions [for oil and mining] - totalling millions of dollars - do not show up, as far as GW can see, in the 2006 and 2007 revenue reports from the ministry of economy and finance,’’ notes the report, ‘Country for Sale’. ‘’Oil company contracts and information on concession allocations are a closely guarded secret within the CNPA [Cambodian National Petroleum Authority].’’

Yet what is better known is the presence of Chevron among the companies from Australia, China, Indonesia, South Korea and the United States that have been competing to secure rights to explore oil in the six blocks off Cambodia’s western coast.

‘’With the exception of Chevron, the government of Cambodia has not publicly announced the names of those companies to whom it has awarded oil and gas exploration rights,’’ states the report. ‘’Block A was awarded to U.S. oil company Chevron in 2002. Chevron’s activities in Block A are the most advanced of all oil companies currently operating in Cambodia.’’

GW estimates that oil will start flowing in 2011 and peak in 2021. Proceeds range from 174 million US dollars in the first year to 1.7 billion dollars when extraction peaks.

But GW doubts that such income from Cambodia’s natural resources will flow to those who need it most - the country’s millions still mired in poverty following nearly two decades of a bloody conflict and a brutal rule by the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime.

Currently, over 35 percent of Cambodia’s 13.3 million people live in dire conditions, on less than one dollar a day. And U.N. reports have revealed that life expectancy is 58 years, while nearly a third of children under five years are malnourished.

Yet for a small cabal of political, military and economic elite, the period since the 1991 peace accords has been a journey on the road to immense - and ill-gotten - wealth. In 2007, for instance, GW revealed in a report that illegal logging in Cambodia by the elite raked in over 13 million dollars.

Such greed by the elite has not only raised the alarm that Cambodia is on the verge of becoming a kleptocracy, but it has been rated as among the most corrupt countries. In 2007, the global anti-graft watchdog Transparency International ranked Cambodia 162nd among 179 countries surveyed for corruption, making it the most corrupt country in Asia after Burma.

The ease with which the powerful few have filled their personal coffers stems from a lack of independent bodies backed by strong laws and resources to curb corruption. ‘’Any state that has weak anti-corruption institutions is not going to have proper level of oversight,’’ says Donald Bowser, head of the Cambodia office of the Mainstreaming Anti-corruption for Equity Project, funded by the development arm of the U.S. government.

‘’There are local concerns about the misuse of the country’s extractive industry for personal gain,’’ Bowser said during a telephone interview from Phnom Penh. ‘’A civil society coalition has been formed to campaign against this form of corruption.’’

But such campaigns face a daunting challenge. The Cambodian government under the grip of an increasingly authoritarian Prime Minster Hun Sen has yet to implement strong anti-corruption measures that have been called for by the country’s foreign donors, who fund nearly half the national budget.

Activists like Hayman of GW also point fingers at international financial institutions like the World Bank for being complicit in the corrupt culture of Cambodia’s rising kleptocrats. ‘’The World Bank is particularly bad,’’ he charges. ‘’They have a bad track record of forgetting civil society to monitor all steps of programmes in Cambodia to ensure accountability.’’

However, the Bank thinks otherwise. ‘’The World Bank shares many of the concerns NGOs (non-governmental organisations) have raised about the government’s management of extractive industry in Cambodia,’’ it said in a statement released to IPS from its Phnom Penh office.

‘’Although the Bank has not been directly involved in extractive industries in Cambodia, our dialogue with the government includes discussion of policy reforms that will help to ensure that any revenue generated through extractive industries benefit the people of Cambodia,’’ it added.

Labels: Chevron, Corruption, Global Witness

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Corrupt elite threaten Cambodia's development

Gavin Hayman, director of Global Witness

February 6, 2009
ABC Radio Australia

The anti-corruption ngo Global Witness says "a corrupt elite" in Cambodia is taking over the nation's emerging oil and mineral sectors, while international donors turn a blind eye.

In a report titled 'Country for Sale', Global Witness says Cambodia's future is being jeopardised by high-level corruption, nepotism and patronage in the management of public assets. This, it says, threatens Cambodia's potential to wean itself of foreign development aid.

Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Gavin Hayman, director of Global Witness

Listen to the audio program in English

HAYMAN: We've been working in Cambodia for the last 15 years looking at how illegal logging was being operating in the country and were able to show that it directly benefitted the ruling military and political elite. And our new report has showed that the self same people whose names are in our previous report as being involved in illegal logging have now effectively taken over the mining and also have oversight over the emerging oil industry in the country. And that's disastrous news for Cambodia because the money from oil and mining, which could actually really help Cambodia's development and lift Cambodia's citizens out of poverty, appears to instead be in severe danger of being wasted.

LAM: But you also say that international donors are turning a blind eye. What would you like donor countries to do?

HAYMAN: Well donor countries need to really get the Cambodian government to behave itself. They need to effectively declare a moratorium until there's basic governance and transparency framework in place to actually have oversight over what's going on. At the moment we've discovered that effectively the government doesn't have any way of giving out concessions, apart from patronage. So a particular kind of senators for example in the ruling party appear to have a beneficial possession of the mines, and they also needs to do a proper audit as to exactly how all those concessions be given out and whether they're equal and whether in fact the money is in the national budget. And there's about 60 or 70 different companies operating now, and we've written to all of them, also to ask about their behaviour, and we haven't had many responses back. What we did get was from BHP Billiton, the huge Australian mining company, and they actually told us they paid about a million dollar signature bonus to the government to explore for bauxite near the Vietnamese border. Now we congratulate BHP on being transparent about that. We're worried about the 79 companies that haven't been transparent, but also disturbingly we can't find information about that million dollars in the Cambodian budget. And that's very worrying, so where is this money in Cambodia's financial system? That's very concerning.

LAM: Indeed, it must be quite hard though, to extricate the ruling elite from these lucrative contracts. So what do you think can be done to change this culture, this culture of corruption?

HAYMAN: Well I think at the moment Cambodia's depends on foreign aid for about half its budget, and the donors have a very limited window of opportunity to use that influence on the Cambodian government to get a moratorium in place and a proper audit and future management provisions in place. To actually assure transparency, and that the money actually flows into the national budget and is properly spent. So they've got to use their leverage now and effectively really they shouldn't be lending into corruption and actually compensating a corrupt government that's stealing money that should be spent on development by actually putting taxpayer's money into development projects. So effectively they've got to play hard ball with the Cambodian government and get it to actually be fully transparent.

LAM: And just very briefly, can the Cambodian government itself do more or is the government itself the problem?

HAYMAN: The government itself as currently constituted by the ruling elite is the problem. So, as I said the military and political figures in Cambodia are direct beneficiaries and owners of some of these mines. And they may not actually own it on paper but if you turn up at the gate, which is one of the things we've done, the people guarding the mine they all know who's in power and they'll tell you who's actually in charge and who's the owner. Effectively, the donors have been very soft, some might even say spineless about addressing corruption in Cambodia for the last sort of 14 or 15 years. And to give you an example, Cambodia still hasn't passed an anti-corruption law despite the donors pushing for that for the last 14, 15 years.

Labels: "country for sale", Corruption, Global Witness, hun sen

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Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Tough choices for America's hungry

By John D. Sutter (CNN)

As Walter Thomas knows, it's hard to look for a job when your stomach is rumbling.

The 52-year-old from Washington, D.C., started skipping meals in early January when his savings account was running dry and his kitchen cabinets were almost empty.

Thomas at first didn't want to turn to the United States' food safety net, the food stamp program, for help.

But after being laid off in July from what seemed like a steady job in sales at a furniture store, Thomas swallowed his pride and applied for the monthly food aid.

"It lets me think, 'OK, well, tomorrow I'll be able to eat. If nothing else, I'll be able to eat,' " he said.

With the national economy in meltdown, more Americans than ever are relying on the federal aid program to keep from going hungry. In October, more than one in 10 people -- about 31 million -- were using the food stamp program to get by, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

More recent numbers are not available, but advocates for the poor say the number of those in need of aid probably has increased since then.

Stereotypes associated with food stamps abound, and recipients are often seen as prone to taking handouts, sometimes when they may not be needed.

But the profile of hunger in America is multifaceted, as diverse as the nation itself, especially in these times of economic hardship.

To get a better idea of what it's like to live on a food stamp budget, CNN correspondent Sean Callebs has decided to eat for a month on $176 and blog about the experience on CNN.com.

That's a situation many people, Thomas included, can relate to. Thomas, who said he had been working steadily since he was 13 years old, now receives $175 per month for food. That's about $5.83 per day -- less than $2 per meal.

Not that Thomas is complaining. After getting his first payment, which is added to an inconspicuous debit card to reduce the stigma associated with the program, Thomas went straight to the grocery store. He was hungry and grateful.

"It's definitely been a blessing to me," he said of the food stamp program, which, since October, has gone by the name Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Advocates for the poor, as well as those on federal assistance, hope President Obama's economic stimulus plan will increase food stamp payments. The average family on food stamps would receive $79 more per month if the stimulus bill passes in the U.S. Senate this week, according to The New York Times. iReport.com: How are you doing in this tough economy?

There is some debate about whether giving people money to spend on groceries is a valid form of economic stimulus.

Few are more hopeful the measure will pass than Crystal Sears, a 30-year-old mother in Germantown, Pennsylvania, who said she has been on food stamps for more than three years.

Sears said she sometimes skips meals so her three children can eat. Even with federal assistance, she said, she sometimes has to make a meal for herself out of crackers or food scraps.

She said she has been out of work for several years because all three of her children have medical conditions: Her 8-year-old son has a seizure disorder that requires frequent hospital visits and constant attention; her 2-year-old daughter was born with heart problems; and her 12-year-old daughter has scoliosis, a back condition that recently required two surgeries, she said.

Without much money, she's forced to make tough choices.

"If the kids needed sneakers and their sneakers are getting too small, or if my water bill is past due, I'd opt not to pay it and risk them sending me a shut-off notice just so my children can eat," she said.

Sometimes she chooses to buy more food instead of paying her gas bill to heat her home. When she does, the family sleeps huddled around their stove or an electric heater, she said.

Her monthly food stamp payment is $489, she said. That's sometimes sufficient. But some months, she said, she doesn't receive full payments because of mix-ups with paperwork. Until recently, she said, she received about $250 per month, which she said was far from enough to feed her family of four.

The SNAP program is meant to supplement a person's food budget, not cover all food expenses, said Jean Daniel, a spokesperson for the USDA, which administers the program.

Taking on part-time work would further complicate the application process, she said. Sears said she worked for seven years at a Salvation Army shelter before becoming unemployed.

"For me, I've always been a helper. And my thing is I don't like to help people to enable them. I like to help people so they can help themselves in the long run," she said.

Sears stretches her food budget by buying cheap and sometimes fatty meals. She said she doesn't like doing that but can't avoid it. With food prices high, she said, grocery shopping is stressful.

"We get like the mac and cheese, which is dehydrated cheese -- basically food that's no good for you health wise," she said. "Everything is high in sodium and trans fats ... and that's all we basically can afford. There's not enough assistance to eat healthy and maintain a healthy weight."

Advocates for the hungry say many people on the food stamp program opt to buy less-healthy foods because they can't afford fresh fruits and vegetables on such a tight budget.

Food stamp "benefits aren't really enough for a healthy diet," said Jim Weill, president of the nonprofit Food Research and Action Center.

Sears said she is grateful for the help she does get.

Maribel Diaz, a 36-year-old mother of three boys in Los Angeles, California, said her $319-per-month payment isn't always enough.

But she said she would starve herself before letting her boys go hungry.

"You're bringing home less bags [of food] now, because the milk is almost $5 a gallon and the bread is $3 a loaf. ... A chicken is, like, now $8," Diaz said. "If you're really breaking it down, you're not bringing a lot of groceries home."

All SNAP recipients are eligible for free nutritional counseling to help people stretch their food budgets, said Daniel, of the USDA.

Advocates for the hungry find flaws in the way the program is set up, but they praise it for being a safety net the government can't take away during tough times.

Unlike aid to soup kitchens, the food stamp program receives federal funding in times thick and thin, and has a $6 billion backup fund, Daniel said.

"The money will be found so people are not turned away," Daniel said.

All of the benefits paid to participants come from the federal government. States split the program's administrative costs.

Advocates see some flaws in SNAP but generally give it praise.

"I say about food stamps what Winston Churchill said about democracy: 'It's the worst possible system except all the others,' " said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York Coalition Against Hunger.

Berg said the program's benefits are too small and too difficult for people to obtain.

But the food stamp program is somewhat successful, he said.

"The main purpose of the program is to wipe out Third World starvation in America, and it's worked," he said, adding that he's optimistic about improvements that could come as part of the economic stimulus plan.

Thomas, the laid-off furniture worker in Washington, said he doesn't want people to feel sorry for him.

After being let go from his store, he stopped at an employment center before going anywhere else. He said he faxed about 20 résumés to similar companies on that very day.

None has resulted in a job yet, but Thomas said he has been to interviews for other types of work and hopes employment will come soon.

For now, he's just happy to continue the job search without the pain of hunger nagging at his stomach.

Labels: Hungry, United States of America

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Article Titles

» Australia joins UN condemnation of Cambodia but re...
» ICC widens remit to include environmental destruct...
» Cambodia Goes After Opposition Well in Advance of ...
» The Most Powerful American In Cambodia: The Unlike...
» “WE DON’T CARE, WE’RE STILL IN POWER.”
» Kem Ley’s murder puts Cambodia politics, economy a...
» Hun Sen Bodyguards Had Hand in Beating of Oppositi...
» Cambodia - Fractured politics and a culture of mon...
» Cambodia PM starts to 'like' Facebook as opponents...
» How Cambodian nationalism is driving border disput...

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Editorial | Articles about Cambodia | Khmer

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Happy New YearYear of the Ox 2553 Buddhist Era (B.E.)Begins 1:36am Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

As trials begin, questions shadow Khmer Rouge war crimes tribunal.

Khmer Rouge trial: the British victim John Dewhirst

Saturday, March 14, 2009

The long search for justice

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Sunday, March 01, 2009

US: drug problems in Cambodia, Philippines

Friday, February 27, 2009

Sam Rainsy Lost his Parliamentary Immunity

Monday, February 23, 2009

One big happy family in Cambodia

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Party factionalism looms behind Ke Kim Yan sacking: observers

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Khmer Rouge Trial Opens In Cambodia

Saturday, February 07, 2009

CAMBODIA: Chevron Silent on Bribery Allegations

Corrupt elite threaten Cambodia's development

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Tough choices for America's hungry

Article Titles

Happy New Year
Year of the Ox 2553 Buddhist Era (B.E.)
Begins 1:36am Tuesday, April 14, 2009