Chinese DM meets Cambodian deputy PM

China on Friday said it is willing to be a peaceful neighbor, trusty friend and sincere partner to Cambodia.

China will work with Cambodia to continuously strengthen the friendship and cooperation between the two nations and the two armed forces, said Chinese Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan in a meeting with visiting Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Tea Banh.

Cao, also vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and state councilor, said leaders of the two countries have maintained frequent mutual visits. Bilateral economic and trade cooperation has made progress. military exchanges have enhanced.

Tea Banh said Cambodia-China friendship has weathered the test of time and history and has taken root in the hearts of the two peoples, adding he believed the Cambodia-China friendly and cooperative relationship would achieve greater development in the 21st century.

Source: Xinhua Read more!

Cambodia's cyclo drivers pedalling towards extinction

Phnom Penh's crowded streets have become the loneliest of places for the city's cyclo drivers as peddle-power is making way for a faster pace of life in the Cambodian capital.

Increasingly lost amid a sea of cars and scooters known as motor-taxies, these symbols of perhaps a more genteel era are struggling to remain relevant as Phnom Penh leaps towards modernity.

But that struggle appears to be a losing one, as cyclos -- pedal-driven rickshaws that were ubiquitous across what was once French Indochina -- fall out of favour and their drivers turn in greater numbers to more lucrative work.

"Modern things are coming, so out-of-date things like the cyclo will be gone," complains Khat Soeun, a wiry 43-year-old, as he squats next to his cyclo, bolting a leafspring to his broken vehicle.

On the best days Khat Soeun can make two US dollars -- half what he says he took home only a few years ago.

More often, though, he comes home with less after hours of grinding through the city's streets for just a few cents a ride.

"I cannot make as much money now as I did in the past because there are so many motorcycles and tuk-tuks," he says, referring to the large motor-driven carts that first appeared a few years ago and have begun to dominate public transport.

"We can't compete with them -- they are machines and go faster," he adds.

"Many drivers have changed from pedalling cyclos to driving motor-taxies instead."

Roughly 2,500 cyclos plied the streets of Phnom Penh in 2004, according to a survey conducted by the Cyclo Centre, which opened in 1999 to help drivers cope with their changing world by providing English lessons, healthcare information, free haircuts and laundry facilities.

That figure was down from 10,000 reported more than a decade ago.

"But nowadays there are only some 800 to 900 cyclo drivers pedalling the streets," says Im Sambath, the centre's project director.

"We are really worried about the future of cyclos," he tells AFP.

First introduced to Cambodia in 1936, the cyclo soon became a iconic part of Phnom Penh's city-scape. They still have a small, loyal following of mostly elderly customers who are put off by the sometimes hair-raising driving of motor-taxi drivers, known locally as "motodops".

Cyclos also remain popular with foreigners seeking a slow turn around the capital's tourist spots, but the drivers remain among the poorest city residents.

"It's my family's rice bowl, what I can make allows us to survive, but just day-to-day," Khat Soeun says.

In recent years the Cyclo Centre has tried to re-ignite the love affair with cyclos, advertising them to tourists as cheap, environmentally-friendly transport and organising fund-raising "rallies" from Phnom Penh to distant provincial capitals.

"Our main target is to help the poor drivers to make a better living -- give them better information about health, urge them to quit smoking or inform them about issues like domestic violence," Im Sambath says.

The centre also offers drivers a rent-to-own plan that allows them to acquire their own second-hand cyclo for roughly 50 dollars after leasing it for about six months.

Drivers are otherwise forced to pay 50 cents a day to rent their cyclos from other operators, or borrow the 120 dollars it costs to buy a new one.

Cyclos "help poor and illiterate people feed their families," Im Sambath says, adding: "The cyclo is very important to us -- it's part of our culture."

But the number of cyclos on the road is still "decreasing every day," says 41-year-old driver Va Thorn, a regular at the centre for three years who frequently uses his welding talents to fix broken cyclos for other drivers at discounted prices.

"The cyclo is really under threat, I'm afraid they'll disappear from Cambodia," he warns.

But better roads and a middle-class preference for motor vehicles has perhaps made their disappearance inevitable, says Chuch Phoeurn, a secretary of state with the Ministry of Culture.

"Cyclos are disappearing because society is changing," he says, adding: "When people have easier ways to get around, they'll abandon cyclos."

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DPRK supports Cambodia's request for further role in UN

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has expressed support for Cambodia's request of non-permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council from 2013 to 2014, local media said on Friday.

Rin In Sok, DPRK Ambassador to Cambodia, told this to Hor Nam Hong, Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation here on Thursday, local newspaper the Rasmey Kampuchea reported.

The membership will be voted in 2012, the paper quoted Ros Simara, head of the Information Department of the foreign ministry, as saying.

Both countries have good relationship and close cooperation since long time ago, she said.

The Cambodian side always supports the six-party talks and the peaceful reconciliation of the Korean Peninsula, she added.

In recent months, a number of countries, including Luxembourg, have expressed support for this request of Cambodia.

Source: Xinhua Read more!

Vietnam, Cambodia see need to tighten legislative rapport

VietNamNet Bridge - Vietnamese National Assembly Chairman Nguyen Phu Trong and his Cambodian counterpart Heng Samrin have called for a bolstering of ties between the two legislative bodies, the two countries and their people.

The two NA leaders held talks right after the Vietnamese leader’s arrival in Phnom Penh on April 26.

At the talks, the two sides expressed their satisfaction with the development steps of the traditional and comprehensive cooperation between the two countries and the two NAs.

They also agreed to further cooperate with each other at international and regional inter-parliamentary forums as well as other international ones.

After the talks, Chairman Trong and his Cambodian counterpart signed an agreement to boost cooperation between the two NAs. They agreed to further exchange delegations, information and experiences between Vietnam’s NA Official and Cambodia’s NA Secretariat.

Later, Chairman Trong met with Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni, who said he was delighted at the closer ties between the two NAs and the two countries.

The King pledged to follow his father to boost the two countries’ rapport.

Chairman Trong congratulated Cambodia’s achievements over the recent time and expressed thanks to the Cambodian people for their support and assistance to the Vietnamese people.

In the afternoon, the Vietnamese leader met with Cambodia Senate Speaker Chea Sim.

The Cambodian leader said the two peoples have been standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the past struggle for national liberation as well as the present national construction and defence. He stressed the Cambodian people are forever grateful for the support and assistance of the Vietnamese people and army.

Chairman Trong said the development of the rapport between Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia was originated from their long-standing friendship and the requisite need of neighbouring countries.

He said he wished the friendship and cooperation between the NA of Vietnam and the Senate of Cambodia would be further reinforced.

The same day, Chairman Trong and his entourage laid floral wreaths at the Independence Monument and the Vietnam-Cambodia Friendship Monument in Phnom Penh.

In the evening, Senate Speaker Chea Sim and NA Chairman Heng Somrin co-hosted a banquet in honour of Chairman Trong, his wife and other members of the Vietnamese delegation.
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Where Elephants Weep

By Andrea Shea

LOWELL, Mass. - April 27, 2007 - Two million Cambodians died during Pol Pot's genocide campaign in the 1970s, including 90 percent of the country's artists.

Since then, Cambodia's artistic culture has suffered. But this weekend the first known contemporary Cambodian opera previews in Lowell, home to the United States' second- largest Cambodian population.

The love story, which fuses traditional Cambodian music with rock and roll, will eventually head to Phnom Penh next year. WBUR's Andrea Shea dropped in on a rehearsal at Lowell High School and has this story.

The audio for this story will be available on WBUR's web site after 10 a.m. on Friday.

TEXT OF STORY

ANDREA SHEA: The new opera is called 'Where Elephants Weep.' It opens with the bleating of an ancient elephant horn. On stage right a raised platform supports 5 Cambodian musicians. They wield a variety of exotic, ancient-looking instruments: wood winds, gongs, drums, a long-necked lute. The show's Executive Producer John Burt says he jumped through hoops to get this ensemble into America for the performance. And, he says, it was tough to track them down in Cambodia.

JOHN BURT: Everything is on the grass roots level in Cambodia and there's extraordinary talent living right underneath the surface.

SHEA: Burt is also co-founder of the Lowell based preservation organization 'Cambodian Living Arts.' He says he started the group with Arn Chorn-Pond, a well-known human rights activist and flute player who survived Pol Pot's rampage.

BURT: One of the things that happens with the devastation of a genocide period when so many people perish who hold the history of those traditions is that it diminishes the possibility of new ideas to emerge.

SHEA: And what could be newer than a Cambodian opera hybrid that fuses traditional music with the most Western of music forms: rock and roll. A Cambodian rock band warms up stage left. At this recent rehearsal American Librettist Catherin Filloux goes over some changes to the script. Sam is the main character in the opera. He was raised in the United States after his family fled Pol Pot, but Burt says he goes back to Cambodia to seek his cultural identity, his roots, and his soul.

BURT: And in his return he is confronted not only with not only the ancient traditional world of Cambodia but the modern world that he is in conflict with.

SHEA: Once home Sam falls in love with a pop singer name Bopah. Burt says the Romeo and Juliet-style plot line represents the conflict between East and West. And the musical mashup does, too. For the opera's composer, Him Sophy, incorporating rock and roll works conceptually and artistically.

HIM SOPHY: Because Sam he grew up in US he got big influence from American culture, especially rock music, I think the best in the world is American rock music...important that you need to compose good music for rock for traditional, for classical, western whatever that's no problem.

SHEA: Him Sophy one of 3 classically trained composers in all of Cambodia. He usually writes for Western-style orchestras, not rock bands or traditional Cambodian musicians.

SOPHY: They play together with the rock band sometime separately sometimes soloists only rock sometimes only traditional, and then they come together and they have a different sound that you never heard before.

SHEA: But it's also risky to make something new by marrying musics from two very different cultures, according to Mark Rossi. Rossi is a professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston. He's a composer, Jazz pianist and world musician with an expertise in Indian-Jazz fusion.

MARK ROSSI: It's got to work on it's own terms and that it's got to say something new in a way that's never been said before. And it's very doable in the hands of a good composer with a good imagination and a good sense of balancing the musical forces and helping to find the differences and helping to find common ground to unify them.

SHEA: Composer Him Sophy is thrilled to have a chance to work on a synthesis such as 'Where Elephants Weep' because he says there are noopportunities to create something like this at home in Cambodia. The artistic environment there is grim and hasn't recovered since the time of the Killing Fields. Sophy himself almost died in a labor camp in the mid-1970's.

SOPHY: I was only a teenager but I worked so hard to survive myself my body looked as skeleton and no energy. After the genocidal regime I thought I was a person who lost very much, I lost my youth, I lost my time but I think my brain still worked very well so I needed to work very hard in my studies.

SHEA: He continued his musical studies in Russia. And now...years later...Sophy is working with electric guitars and Cambodian-American rap artists...such as Lowell-based Tony Real. Real plays a guard in the opera and says as a second-generation refugee he's deeply connected to his homeland.

TONY REAL: We want Cambodia to be known for its arts and culture, not just for the killing fields, and now its beginning.

SHEA: And with 'Where Elephants Weep' composer Sophy hopes to push Cambodian culture forward.

SOPHY: Because Rock and Roll is music right now, not long time ago, and traditional ensemble in Cambodia exists a very long time ago...you can say 100 years ago or 1000 years ago and now we combine with the Rock and roll because we live for the future.

SHEA: But, Him Sophy adds, we should never forget the past. For WBUR I'm Andrea Shea. Read more!

Cambodian Rangers Trained to Help Bears

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - Park rangers in Cambodia are being trained to survey wild bears to help protect them from being hunted for their bile which is used in traditional Chinese medicines, a conservationist said Thursday.

Wild bears, known as Asiatic black bears and Sun bears, continue to be hunted in Cambodia to meet a growing demand in China and Vietnam, said Matt Hunt, the Southeast Asia Program Manager for the Australian-based Free the Bears Fund.

The bitter, green bile extracted from the gallbladders of endangered bear species, has long been used by Chinese traditional medicine practitioners to treat eye, liver and other ailments.

In a statement, Hunt's group described the practice as "cruel and unnecessary."

The course for 24 Cambodian park rangers will teach them to identify the bears' feces, claw marks on trees and termite mounts that the animals have broken in to. The information gathered will give conservationists a greater understanding of the animals and determine their population status, which is threatened by hunting and trafficking, Hunt said.

Hunt said it was not known how many wild bears remain in the Cambodian wild as few studies have been done.

"For some reasons, bears don't attract the kind of attention that tigers, leopards and primates do," Hunt said.

The World Conservation Union says Asiatic black bears and Sun bears are considered "threatened to endangered."

Hunt's group said in a statement that more than 10,000 bears in China and 4,000 in Vietnam are kept in inhumane conditions at bear farms.

The rangers are being trained by two international experts _ Gabriella Fredriksson, who has spent years tracking and rehabilitating bears in the forests of East Kalimantan, Borneo, and Robert Steinmetz from the World Wildlife Fund in Thailand, Hunt said. Eight observers from Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia were also attending.

Hunt's group has sponsored a sanctuary at Phnom Tamao Zoo, about 28 miles south of the capital Phnom Penh, where 78 rescued bears live.

He said the group has rescued three cubs, aged nine and 14 weeks old, from traffickers this month. Read more!