Painting a smile on 'brand ASEAN'

By Charles McDermid and Jakkapun Kaewsangthong

HUA HIN, Thailand - At the same time that Southeast Asia's heads of state were atop a splashy stage entangled in their famous 10-member cross-body handshake, Cambodian activist Pen Somony was sitting on a curb outside the venue, surrounded by reporters, and fearing for his life.

At the same moment that Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi's nine-car motorcade had stopped traffic to glide into the ultra-posh Sheraton Hua Hin Resort and Spa, Nayom Pai-Sri was across the street selling snacks and cigarettes from a tumbledown shack to try and feed his family.

Welcome to the annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, where hard issues generally go unmentioned and poverty and human rights take a back seat to diplomatic platitudes, trappings of togetherness and lavish expressions of Asian statecraft.

This year was meant to be different. For months, officials had billed the meeting in the beach and golf resort of Hua Hin as a celebration of the dawn of a "new" ASEAN. This was the bloc's first gathering since ratifying the long-awaited ASEAN charter which came into force 10 weeks ago. The charter incorporated the group [1] as a legal entity and laid the foundation for a European Union-like community, without a common currency, by 2015.

More importantly, to fulfill the theme of this year's event - "ASEAN Charter for ASEAN People" - leaders had promised to prioritize and empower the bloc's some 570 million people - a stunningly diverse population larger than the European Union or the North American Free Trade Association.

"I will join hands with fellow ASEAN citizens across the region to make ASEAN a household name, not only for the people of Southeast Asia but for those beyond," said new Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, whose emergence as a dynamic regional leader may have been the ceremonial event's most significant storyline.

Led by Abhisit's youthful charisma, host Thailand pulled out all the stops. The summit's theme was "ASEAN Charter for ASEAN Peoples", and among the many accompaniments was a new flag, which depicts a bundle of ten rice stalks and the motto "One Vision, One Identity, One Community", and a comic book featuring a cute, blue alien who arrives from space to make friends from each Southeast Asia nation.

There was even the debut of an ASEAN theme song - The ASEAN Way - which includes the stirring lyrics, "Together for ASEAN, we dare to dream; We care to share, for it's the ASEAN way." The touchy-feely frenzy was enough to make Kavi Chongkittavorn laugh.

The veteran Thai journalist and former assistant to the secretary general of ASEAN from 1993-1994, has long been a strident critic of ASEAN's ineffective policies and at times questionable governance. (Kavi once reported Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen as saying the only good thing about ASEAN summits was "golf, karaoke and durian".)

"ASEAN used to be a joke," Kavi told Asia Times Online. "In the old days they would get together because they had known each for 10 years and play golf and talk business. Now it's a different generation, and different language is being used to engage people. ASEAN is no longer a joke - the charter is the yardstick," he added.

In the past, ASEAN did little to counter criticism that the group was only an elite fraternity. As John Funston, a former senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, wrote, "To resolve differences between members - ASEAN relied less on formal institutions and treaties than on close personal ties at official, ministerial and head of government level – often cemented on the golf or post meeting entertainment sessions."

This reputation, along with ASEAN's non-intervention policy and strict adherence to consensus decision-making, has dogged the bloc for years. This year China, India, South Korea and Japan declined to attend after the event was postponed due to street violence in Bangkok. The United States has also become "frustrated" with the grouping's slow pace, according to Harry Harding, professor of international affairs at George Washington University in Washington.

"There is a backing away from the idea that everything regional must be ASEAN-led," Harding said during a presentation in January at Chulalongkorn University's Institute of Security and International Studies. He noted, for instance, that the Shanghai Cooperation Dialogue has a more effective dialogue mechanism for security issues than ASEAN because it brings together military people rather than foreign ministry folks - as ASEAN does.

‘Ogres' and activists
Even as Thailand scrambled to paint a smile on "brand ASEAN", old rivalries and nagging issues were thrust to the forefront. Some familiar faces were stirring up trouble.

Myanmar premier Thein Sein and Cambodia's Hun Sen broke ranks from their ASEAN counterparts on the summit's first day, threatening to storm out of a face-to-face forum with a multinational civil society coalition if activists from their own countries were allowed to take part. Once the delegates exited, the meeting proceeded.

Myanmar activist Khin Ohmar, last year's winner of Sweden's Anna Lindh human rights prize, and 29-year-old Pen Somony of the Cambodian Volunteers for Human Rights, had been selected by a regional human rights coalition to act as representatives from their native countries.

The move sent tremors through the ASEAN hierarchy, which had promised a new approach to human rights as a key issue on the summit's agenda. The stubborn line from two of the bloc's most authoritarian governments cast doubt on the willingness of old guard ASEAN leaders to commit to the people-oriented aspects of the new charter.

The aftermath of the threatened boycott, which resulted in a security scrum and an ad hoc curbside press conference, thrust ASEAN's controversial human-rights record back into the spotlight. In explanation for the move, Cambodia said it reserved the right to select its own civil society representative and Myanmar was apparently displeased with Ohmar's pro-democracy activities, according to rights activists and delegates.

"Hun Sen wanted to show that the civil society forum needed better preparation," said Kavi. "Hun Sen has a special place in ASEAN, as he is the longest reigning leader at the moment. The point he wanted to make was about non-governmental organizations, but it might have been better if he had kept quiet."

Earlier, delegates lauded the forthcoming establishment of a new ASEAN human-rights body, a landmark event in the group's 42-year history. But critics said the proposed body, expected to begin functioning later this year, would lack the teeth to punish violators such as Myanmar with expulsion or sanctions.

The event's organizer said the first-of-its-kind forum was still a success, and a blueprint for future government-civil society dialogue. "The event was tarnished. It would have been ideal to have all the civil society representatives," said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.

"Still, this engagement between civil society and the leaders is unprecedented. Under the initiation of this chairmanship it has created a building block that can be built upon. To the extent that leaders listened, it was a positive outcome," he added.

The incident ensured that human rights would be the summit's hottest issue with the some 1,200 attending media. The only backlash may be that Myanmar, which has already been pressed hard on the issue of the ethnic Rohingya boat people, and Cambodia may have increased media scrutiny of their policies and human rights records.

During the summit Myanmar's foreign minister said his country might be willing to take back Rohingyas - but only if they were identified as Bengalis who reside in Myanmar and not as Myanmar citizens. This is in line with Myanmar's official policy which denies Rohingyas official status, including the right to move freely or marry without state permission. According to the BBC, a memo faxed to journalists by the Burmese consul in Hong Kong last week insisted Rohingyas could not be from Myanmar, as they were dark-skinned and "as ugly as ogres".

"[Myanmar] and Cambodia are trying to sabotage one of the most important ASEAN summits ever. We're disappointed, but not surprised," said Debbie Stothard with the rights group Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, who has been following ASEAN's human rights practices since 1988. "It's unbelievable that powerful, oppressive ASEAN governments can't bear to face their own people. Hopefully, they'll feel a deep sense of embarrassment," she added.

Thais in the middle
While this may be unlikely in Cambodia's Phnom Penh and the Myanmar capital of Naypyidaw, Thai leaders were aghast at the activists' treatment. After the incident became public, both activists held a brief meeting with Thai Prime Minister Abhisit. "We will take gradual steps and encourage a wider participation," he told reporters after the closed-door meeting.

Even before the meeting - Kavi called the high level of distrust between officials and their civil groups "an ugly scar on the ASEAN psyche". He credited Abhisit's willingness to meet with the delegates as keeping the summit from total collapse.

Cambodian activist Sonomy was visibly shaken by the ejection. Speaking softly in halting English and Khmer, he said he would let his colleagues speak for him as he was worried about possible repercussions once he returned home. "We hope that the Thai prime minister and ministry of foreign affairs will honor their commitments and that no harm will come to him," said Stothard.

Others lauded Abhisit's handling of the diplomatic flare-up. "I think [Abhisit] did a great job on two fronts. He articulated a stance on unity and used the example of the meeting held during the financial crisis in 1997." said Kavi. "Now he's emerged as a bright, young leader to the global community and in Thailand. He just wrote his reputation. I think Abhisit was able to capture a new spirit and create a new ASEAN."

Others were less enthusiastic, citing ASEAN's history of divisiveness and inactivity and claiming that competing outside forces - namely the US and China - will eventually pull the group apart. One attending analyst who declined to be named, told Asia Times Online, "ASEAN has chance to do so many great things, but won't. Their missed chances for cooperation are too numerous to mention down there. China will have them all like an anaconda before they notice."

Even Kavi, who is unmistakably bullish on ASEAN's direction, admits progress will be slow even as rhetoric is increasingly rosy. As he put it, the change has been "evolutionary, rather than revolutionary", as some ASEAN members and citizens may have liked.

"There was much more openness at this meeting. The leaders are more comfortable and the secretary-general has more power, including control of all ASEAN humanitarian efforts. Just 15 years ago he was neither a secretary nor a general," he said. "There has been lots of groundwork and guidelines put in place that still need to be fleshed out. Right now if you took a bite out of ASEAN, you would get a mouthful of bones."

Note
1. The 10 members of ASEAN are Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

Charles McDermid is an Asia Times Online correspondent based in Thailand. Jakkapun Kaewsangthong is a Thailand-based journalist. Read more!

UN Lawyer O'Brien Refuses Questions on Cambodia Tribunal, Ignores Logo Misuse

UNITED NATIONS, The UN's new top lawyer, asking Tuesday about the funding and corruption crisis at the UN-affiliated genocide tribunal in Cambodia, refused to answer any questions about it.

At a press conference at UN headquarters in New York, Patricia O'Brien purported to respond to twenty minutes of questions about the so-called Hariri Tribunal, concerning the deaths of some two dozen people in Lebanon. The Cambodia tribunal, already plagued by allegations that local Cambodian staff paid bribes to get their jobs, is threatened with closure according to its top judge due to a lack of funds.

As Inner City Press asked what the UN is going to do, Ms. O'Brien said she would not answer any questions on that or any other non-Hariri Tribunal topic. Inner City Press followed up, will there be another opportunity to ask these questions? I am not undertaking any further commitment of availability, Ms. O'Brien said.

Several comparisons came to mind. The Cambodia tribunal deals with more than a million deaths, while the Hariri Tribunal deals with two dozen. On the latter, however, the UN has good news, or thinks it does. Its corruption-plagued tribunal, the UN would apparently prefer just went away.

Of this UN-assisted tribunal, "a report surfaced last week on the German legislature's Web site alleging that a top U.N. tribunal official had acknowledged the kickbacks and accused a senior Cambodian administrator of corruption. The head of public affairs for the tribunal refused to comment on the report."

Ms. O'Brien's predecessor Nicolas Michel, while more focused on Lebanon than Cambodia, nevertheless answered questions about Cambodia. Ms. O'Brien, since being awarded the UN's top legal job, has rarely if ever been available to the media. She came to one press conference and left before taking any questions.

Two weeks ago, Inner City Press approached Ms. O'Brien in the hallway of the UN, after a ceremony in which she and two dozen other Under Secretaries-General signed "accountability" compacts with Ban Ki-moon. Inner City Press told Ms. O'Brien of recent instances of corporations publicly using and misusing the UN logo and name to promote their business. Previously, when Inner City Press had raised such cases to the UN Office of Legal Affairs, which Ms. O'Brien now heads, some actions had been taken. Ms. O'Brien instructed Inner City Press to proceed as it had in the past.

Inner City Press e-mailed to Ms. O'Brien, at her UN-listed address, a half-dozen examples of corporate use of the UN logo. Having no response, Inner City Press sent the examples again, on the eve of Tuesday's press conference. Still no response, until the terse statement that only Hariri Tribunal questions about be entertained, and no other Q&A opportunity was envisioned.

The UN is ostensibly a public organization; in any event, Ms. O'Brien's salary is paid by taxpayers all over the world. While Ban's UN talks about accountability and transparency, even its top lawyer appears to resist or oppose both. We will have more on this.

Read more!

Cambodia to host ASEAN-U.S. military exercise in 2010

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia will host a large-scale ASEAN-U.S. military exercise in 2010, Khmer-language newspaper the Deum Ampil said on Tuesday.

"It is an honor for Cambodia to be chosen by ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and superpower U.S. as the location for such a large-scale international military exercise," Pol Saroeurn, Commander-in-Chief of Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF), told the paper.

"We will take efforts to make it a success," he said, adding that he will also instruct all his subordinates to be careful with the work.

The Sihanoukville port will be used as the maritime location ofthis military haul, the paper also quoted a governmental official as saying on condition of anonymity.

Cambodia once joined international military exercises respectively in Bangladesh and Mongolia and also sent peacekeepers to Sudan for de-mining operation under the U.N. umbrella.

In April 2008, 40 Cambodian soldiers participated in a three-week multi-national peace-keeping exercise in Bangladesh.

The U.S.-led mission was named "Ambassador of Peace" and involved some 400 soldiers from 12 countries, including Bangladesh,India, Indonesia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Nepal, Brunei,Mongolia, Tonga, Cambodia and U.S.

In July 2007, 43 Cambodian soldiers took part in a military exercise for UN peacekeeping mission in Mongolia.

In addition, Cambodia sent 135 deminers to Sudan in 2006 for UN peacekeeping mission, and then 139 in June 2007 to replace the oldones. The deminers were renewed again in 2008.
Read more!

Cambodia KRouge defence warned over website

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — The defence team of a Khmer Rouge leader has been ordered to remove confidential documents from Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes court from a website, the tribunal's investigating judges said Tuesday.

Lawyers for former foreign minister Ieng Sary "face sanctions" if they do not remove all documents relating to judicial investigations within 48 hours, the court's co-investigating judges said in a press statement.

Ieng Sary, 83, is one of five leaders from the late 1970s regime charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes, but details of the investigation ahead of his trial are kept confidential.

Investigating judges said they needed "to guarantee the protection of privacy of those persons mentioned in the case file and the presumption of innocence, as well as to promote efficiency in investigations."

But the website containing defence filings and letters has also posted a letter to court officials saying that no documents on the site relate to the current investigation of Ieng Sary.

The letter by defence lawyers Michael Karnavas and Ang Udom goes on to allege that judges suppress filings "which may be embarrassing or which call into question the legitimacy and judiciousness of acts and decisions."

Ieng Sary has been rushed to hospital nine times since he was detained by the court in November 2007, and last week had an appeal for release from the Khmer Rouge court delayed after he said he was too ill to appear in court.

As the top Khmer Rouge diplomat, Ieng Sary was frequently the only point of contact between Cambodia's secretive communist rulers and the outside world.

He has denied any involvement in atrocities but he was one of the biggest public supporters of the regime's mass purges, researchers say.

Up to two million people died of starvation and overwork, or were executed, as the 1975-1979 regime emptied Cambodia's cities in its drive to create a communist utopia.

The long-awaited first Khmer Rouge trial started last month when the regime's notorious prison chief, Kaing Guek Eav, better known by the alias Duch, went before the court.

Read more!

Cambodia to host ASEAN-U.S. military exercise in 2010

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia will host a large-scale ASEAN-U.S. military exercise in 2010, Khmer-language newspaper the Deum Ampil said on Tuesday.

"It is an honor for Cambodia to be chosen by ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and superpower U.S. as the location for such a large-scale international military exercise," Pol Saroeurn, Commander-in-Chief of Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF), told the paper.

"We will take efforts to make it a success," he said, adding that he will also instruct all his subordinates to be careful with the work.

The Sihanoukville port will be used as the maritime location ofthis military haul, the paper also quoted a governmental official as saying on condition of anonymity.

Cambodia once joined international military exercises respectively in Bangladesh and Mongolia and also sent peacekeepers to Sudan for de-mining operation under the U.N. umbrella.

In April 2008, 40 Cambodian soldiers participated in a three-week multi-national peace-keeping exercise in Bangladesh.

The U.S.-led mission was named "Ambassador of Peace" and involved some 400 soldiers from 12 countries, including Bangladesh,India, Indonesia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Nepal, Brunei,Mongolia, Tonga, Cambodia and U.S.

In July 2007, 43 Cambodian soldiers took part in a military exercise for UN peacekeeping mission in Mongolia.

In addition, Cambodia sent 135 deminers to Sudan in 2006 for UN peacekeeping mission, and then 139 in June 2007 to replace the oldones. The deminers were renewed again in 2008.
Read more!

22 attacks conducted against journalists in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, Twenty-two cases of violence against journalists were recorded in the second half of 2008 and the first two months of 2009 in Cambodia, said English-language daily newspaper the Phnom Penh Post on Monday.

These included cases in which journalists were detained and cases in which threats or accusations were made against them "by individuals, groups, authorities and court institutions," the paper quoted a press release from the Club of Cambodian Journalists (CCJ) as saying.

Meanwhile, the CCJ decried unprofessional behavior on the part of some journalists, who accepted bribes or used unethical means to advance the aims of the groups that they supported.

The press release also urged the Ministry of Information to use more discretion in issuing press cards.

"Some media pass holders are not journalists," said CCJ secretary general Prach Sim.

Over 300 newspapers are registered with the ministry, but only 10 are publishing daily and 30 can get printed on regular basis.
Read more!

Cambodia's ex-king cites progress against his cancer

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — Cambodia's former king Norodom Sihanouk says he is showing progress in his most recent fight against cancer, according to a royal letter posted on his website.
The 86-year-old, who left for Beijing in July last year to receive medical treatment for other illnesses, said in late December that his Chinese doctors had found a new cancer in his body.

Sihanouk said in a letter dated February 27 that after treatment, "today I went to hospital to have it checked with modern equipment (PET Scan) and saw that this cancer has shrunk."

However he added that he needed to prolong his stay in Beijing for further treatment.

Sihanouk was first diagnosed with B-cell lymphoma, a cancer affecting blood cells crucial to the immune system, in 1993.

The cancer began in his prostate and recurred in 2005 in his stomach.

Sihanouk has suffered from a number of other ailments including diabetes and hypertension.

Despite giving up his role as monarch, Sihanouk remains a prominent figure in Cambodia and often uses messages on his website to weigh in on matters affecting the country.
Read more!

Cambodian, Thai officials hold meeting on border issues

PHNOM PENH, Officials of the secretariat of the General Border Committee (GBC) of Cambodia here on Monday held a meeting with their Thai counterparts to find a solution for the long-running border dispute.

"We pledged to solve our border issues with a bilateral and peaceful deal on basis of the exiting mechanism that both sides have already agreed with, and we also agreed to avoid armed clashes in the future," Neang Phat, secretary of state at the Cambodian Ministry of National Defense, told reporters during the break time of the meeting.

"We will report what we agreed with at the meeting to both defense ministers and they are going to have a meeting in April," he said, adding that the meeting on Monday will help facilitate the troops of both sides to keep restraint and lead to a latest bilateral deal on the border issues.

Meanwhile, Hor Namhong, Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, told reporters here on Sunday that Cambodia and Thailand have agreed to resolve their border dispute by using a memorandum of understanding signed in 2000.

"I think if Thailand has a clear stance and is willing to use the 2000 MoU, there will be no further difficulties in the future," he said upon his return from the 14 ASEAN Summit in Thailand.

The MoU states that the Joint Border Committee (JBC) of the two countries should use maps drafted in 1904 and 1907, which was ratified by Siam (as Thailand was then known) and France, Cambodia's former colonial power, to delineate the common border.

Tension between Thailand and Cambodia ratcheted higher in 2008,when troops from both countries clashed near the Preah Vihear temple at the border area and soldiers on both sides died in their fighting in October. An uneasy peace was restored days later.
Read more!

Judge: Cambodian genocide court faces funds crunch

By SOPHENG CHEANG

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Funding for some operations of Cambodia's genocide tribunal, already tarnished by corruption allegations, may dry up by the end of the month and cause local staff to walk out, a judge said Monday.

The warning by Judge Kong Srim, president of the Supreme Court Chamber, raised the prospect of yet more disruption to the long-delayed U.N.-assisted tribunal, which is seeking justice for the estimated 1.7 million Cambodians who died during the brutal 1975-79 reign of the communist Khmer Rouge.

Political and procedural disputes between Cambodia and the United Nations have delayed the tribunal's launch . It has been 13 years since Cambodia asked the U.N. to help establish the special court, which still has not heard any testimony, and many fear the defendants — already old and infirm — could die before they face justice.

The judge's statement came as it was revealed that defense lawyers want to question the country's prime minister and former king, which could revive an uncomfortable debate about the roles each played during Cambodia's holocaust.

Kong Srim told reporters the tribunal would not have sufficient funds to pay Cambodian staff salaries this month.

"It hardly seems reasonable for judicial officers and staff to be expected to continue working without remuneration," Kong Srim said. He added, however, that Cambodian and U.N. officials "are confident that this problem will shortly be resolved." He did not explain how.

The U.N. Development Program, which manages the funds contributed by international donors for the Cambodian side of the court, froze disbursements last July pending an investigation into allegations that the Cambodian personnel were forced to pay kickbacks to obtain their positions,

Aid donors have warned they will reconsider their pledges if the allegations of corruption are not satisfactorily resolved.

The allegations, which were originally leveled two years ago by the Open Society Justice Initiative, a New York-based watchdog group monitoring the tribunal, have been publicly denied by Cambodian and most U.N. officials.

A report surfaced last week on the German legislature's Web site alleging that a top U.N. tribunal official had acknowledged the kickbacks and accused a senior Cambodian administrator of corruption.

The head of public affairs for the tribunal refused to comment on the report, which has been removed from the Web site.

"I can't comment on a document I haven't seen about a meeting I was not at," Helen Jarvis said Monday.

Legal maneuvering ahead of the trials meanwhile continued.

According to confidential documents obtained Monday, the defense team for Nuon Chea, the main Khmer Rouge ideologist, is seeking court permission to interview Prime Minister Hun Sen and former King Norodom Sihanouk.

The documents also request testimony from Senate President Chea Sim and Assembly President Heng Samrin. Both men, along with Hun Sen, were members of the Khmer Rouge but defected to Vietnam before the regime was ousted.

"They are likely in possession of much relevant information to the pending judicial investigation," one of the documents said. All have denied any role in atrocities.

The defense team said that the 86-year-old former King Sihanouk, who briefly served as a symbolic head of state after the regime took power, had "rare access to the Khmer Rouge leadership, their strategies and policies" and was "privy to a range of sensitive information."

Son Arun, Nuon Chea's Cambodian attorney, confirmed the authenticity of the documents but said he had not personally filed the request.

The tribunal's first trial, scheduled to begin March 30, is for 65-year-old Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, who headed the Khmer Rouge's largest torture center. Later trials will be held for Khieu Samphan, the group's former head of state; Ieng Sary, its foreign minister; and his wife Ieng Thirith, who was minister for social affairs.
Read more!

Door closed for Cambodia, Myanmar reps

The governments of Cambodia and Myanmar have banned two representatives from their own countries from meeting with Southeast Asian state leaders during the official meeting between ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and civil society organizations scheduled Saturday at Cha-am.

Cambodia has refused to let in Pen Somony, a program coordinator for the Cambodia Volunteers for Civil Society. The Myanmar junta has barred the door for Khin Ohmar, the Bangkok-based chair of the Network for Democracy and Development. The two will not be able to join their seven counterparts in the meeting, held as part of the 14th ASEAN Summit program.

The injunction from Cambodia came as a last-minute surprise. Country representatives voiced their objection only a day before the meeting though the list of representatives had been submitted to the ASEAN Secretariat last November, said Yuyun Wahyuningrum of the Bangkok-based Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development, which represented Laos and Brunei.

Yuyun said they had anticipated the ban from military-ruled Myanmar but had not expected Cambodian to follow suit, especially since the latter did not specify any reason for a ban that could undercut freedom of expression in the region.

“The Cambodian [NGO] representative feels a bit threatened by the ban and fears returning to his country and has concerns for his safety. The Myanmar representative is based in Thailand and had expected the government’s ban because it frequently limits civil society voices this way,” she said.

She added only groups from eight of the 10 ASEAN countries had sent representatives to attend the 30-minute meeting, which included statement reading and a question-and-answer session.
“Laos did not participate because of concerns over government crackdowns on activists and Brunei Darussalam did not delegate a representative because it may not have any civil groups,” said Yuyun, who was delegated to represent the two absent countries.

She said the meeting – attended by the 10 ASEAN state leaders and the six representatives from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – ran smoothly despite the bans. Yuyun expressed regret afterward that only Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung answered the five questions put forward by the civil society leaders.

The Malaysian NGO representative, Wathshlah G. Naidu from Asia Pacific International Women’s Rights Action Watch, said their questions included public participation in the good governance process, representation on the ASEAN human rights body, migrant workers, the status of Burma (Myanmar) and gender issues.

“In response to the question on the ASEAN human rights body, they said they realized civil society leaders needed to be involved. They also recognized the [current bylaws] draft had no protective mechanisms. They affirmed that, in subsequent discussions, protections should be incorporated within the ASEAN human rights charter as part of its terms of reference,” Naidu said.

Naidu said further Abhisit had not responded directly on the issue of Burma but mentioned that ASEAN leaders would have an open discussion to address it. Yuyun added the Thai government had said they would ensure that political development in Burma would continue.

Yuyun also said the Vietnamese government had said it supported the participation of the civil society in community building but it should be within the scope of the ASEAN principle of noninterference.

“Prime Minister Abhisit agreed there is a deficit in the people’s participation in ASEAN forum that he wanted to improve. Hopefully, in the future, ASEAN is moving forward into a single society under the new charter,” she said, referring to the charter put into force last December.

“However, he emphasized that cooperation between civil society organizations and the ASEAN should be based on the principle of respect for national sovereignty and noninterference.”

Read more!

Barring of rights activists from ASEAN talks stirring anger

HUA HIN, Thailand -- Southeast Asian leaders were embroiled in a fresh row over human rights on Saturday after Myanmar's junta and Cambodia blocked activists from attending rare face-to-face talks.

Myanmar premier Thein Sein and his Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen had refused to join the meeting with civil society representatives if activists from their countries were present, delegates and rights groups said.

The angry spat at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in the Thai beach resort of Hua Hin threatened to overshadow the 10-member group's efforts to deal with the global financial crisis.

“I was disappointed but it was expected. The refusal by the Burmese regime clearly shows they are not committed to change,” one of the two barred activists, Khin Omar from Myanmar, told AFP after the meeting.

Myanmar's military regime changed the country's name from Burma in 1989. She said the move showed that a landmark ASEAN charter that came into force in December and calls for the establishment of a new regional human rights body “is just a cosmetic show”.

The meeting went ahead without Khin Omar and the other activist, Pen Somony of Cambodia, who instead both held a brief meeting with Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. Singapore-based civil rights activist Sinapan Samydorai, who was at the meeting, said that when one delegate raised the issue of the barred campaigners “I saw the face of the Cambodian and Burmese leaders change”.

There was also no representative from communist-ruled Laos because they feared possible repercussions at home, Samydorai said.

The meeting eventually covered topics including the rights body, migrant workers, Myanmar and gender, delegates said. There was no immediate comment by any of the ASEAN leaders who attended.

Human rights have been a perennial challenge for ASEAN in the 42 years since it was founded as a bulwark against the spread of communism. Its members now include a monarchy, a dictatorship and two communist states.

The bloc has repeatedly been pressed to use its influence to improve the rights situation in Myanmar but to little avail. Its soft approach contrasts with the sanctions imposed by Western nations.

A key problem has been the group's core policy of non-interference in domestic affairs, which has previously been used by nations like Myanmar to fend off criticism.

The policy has most recently been enshrined in a draft document seen by AFP on the proposed rights body, which in its current form has no powers to investigate or prosecute rights abusers.

Read more!

US: drug problems in Cambodia, Philippines

By FOSTER KLUG

WASHINGTON - 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.

Read more!

Burma, Cambodia Bar Rights Activists from ASEAN Talks

By VOA News

Burma and Cambodia blocked leading activists from attending talks with Southeast Asian leaders Saturday in Thailand, where the regional bloc is trying to promote human rights as part of its charter.

Leaders from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations - ASEAN - were set to hold rare talks with civil society representatives at their annual summit, taking place in the Thai beach resort of Hua Hin.

But, Burmese Prime Minister Thein Sein and his Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen said they would not take part if activists from their own countries were present.

Debbie Stothard, a coordinator with the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, said rights groups had no choice but the withdraw their Burmese and Cambodian representatives.

The barred activists were Khin Omar, a democracy campaigner from Burma, and Pen Somony, a volunteer coordinator from Cambodia.

Human rights have been a recurring issue for ASEAN, which has a charter that prevents interference in its members' affairs.

Soe Aung, with the Burmese rights group, told reporters that ASEAN needs to change its policy of non-interference or no change will ever come to Burma.

ASEAN comprises Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Brunei and the Philippines.
Read more!

Cambodian opposition leader loses immunity

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A Cambodian parliamentary committee has suspended the immunity of opposition leader Sam Rainsy, a move he condemned on Friday as unconstitutional and intended to silence criticism of Prime Minister Hun Sen.

The French-educated former finance minister, who leads a party named after himself, was stripped of his immunity for refusing to pay a $2,500 fine for defaming Hun Sen's ruling Cambodian People's Party during last year's election.

Rather than paying the fine to what he says is a systemically corrupt government, he had offered to give the same amount to a hospital.

Under Cambodia's constitution, only the full National Assembly, not its Permanent Committee, can strip a sitting Member of Parliament of immunity from prosecution.

"They are definitely taking a short-cut. They definitely violated the constitution, which means that they want to silence me," Sam Rainsy told Reuters.

When stripped of his immunity in the past, he has often fled Cambodia shortly afterwards, normally to France.

A former Khmer Rouge soldier who has been in charge for the last 23 years, Hun Sen won a landslide in July's election but remains vulnerable in Phnom Penh to Sam Rainsy, who commands support from the capital's increasingly educated youth.

Read more!

Thai, Cambodian PMs meet as border tension eases

HUA HIN, Thailand, Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva met his Cambodian counterpart on Friday as tension along their disputed border has eased, vowing to start energy cooperation in the overlapping Gulf of Thailand.

Abhisit said both countries had agreed to set up panels of technical experts to work on demarcation of the gas-rich area.

"Our understanding has been improved a lot recently and we are looking into possibilities to start our energy cooperation," Abhisit told reporters.

Cambodia's exploration area covers 37,000 square km (14,300 sq miles), while another 27,000 square km are disputed with Thailand.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said this month his government was preparing a framework to manage its energy revenues when offshore oil fields start producing from 2010.

In November last year, U.S. major Chevron Corp (CVX.N) and operator of Block A in the Gulf of Thailand, said Cambodia's first oil was unlikely to be onstream before 2010 at the earliest.

Chevron operates the block with a 55 percent interest, while Mitsui Oil Exploration, a unit of Mitsui & Co (8031.T), holds a 30 percent stake and South Korea's GS Caltex a 15 percent stake. Abhisit said he would expand cooperation with Cambodia to trade and tourism, aiming for a one-visa-two-country project for tourists who want to visit both countries at once.

Phnom Penh and Bangkok agreed earlier this month to withdraw the remaining troops on their disputed border to avoid a repeat of last year's armed clashes near a 900-year-old Hindu temple.

Hun Sen told reporters this month both countries would jointly demarcate the jungle-clad area where four soldiers died in a firefight last October.

The Preah Vihear temple, or Khao Phra Viharn as it is known in Thailand, sits on an escarpment that forms the natural border between the two countries and has been a source of tension for generations.

The International Court of Justice awarded it to Cambodia in 1962, but the ruling did not determine the ownership of 1.8 square miles (4.6 sq km) of adjoining scrubland, leaving considerable scope for disagreement. (Reporting by Nopporn Wong-Anan; Editing by Valerie Lee) Read more!

US: drug problems in Cambodia, Philippines

By FOSTER KLUG

WASHINGTON - 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.

Read more!

ASEAN leaders challenged on rights, economy

by Thanaporn Promyamyai, Agence France-Presse


HUA HIN, Thailand - Southeast Asian leaders Thursday faced renewed pressure to deal with rights abuses in Myanmar on the eve of an annual summit likely to be dominated by the global economic crunch.

International rights watchdogs and the United States both urged Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders gathering here this weekend to push for reform in the military-ruled nation, the 10-member group's black sheep.

Tight security was in place in the Thai beach resort of Hua Hin, amid fears anti-government protesters who have besieged the premier's office in Bangkok could turn their attentions to the three-day summit starting Friday.

ASEAN ministers are expected to discuss the formation of a regional human rights body on Friday, a day before heads of state formally meet, but Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch expressed concerns.

"To be worthy of its name, the body must be empowered to effectively address human rights in Myanmar," Donna Guest, London-based Amnesty's Asia-Pacific deputy director, said in a statement.

Myanmar, ruled by the military since 1962, is a member of ASEAN but has long been a thorn in its side, with Western nations urging the regional bloc to push the junta towards political reform.

The rights groups said the summit must in particular address the rights of refugees and migrants, in particular Myanmar's Rohingya boat people, whom the military of fellow ASEAN member Thailand is also accused of abusing.

They also highlighted recent harsh prison terms handed down to pro-democracy activists.

Separately the US ambassador to ASEAN, Scot Marciel, called on the region to push Myanmar's rulers for "political progress" using their contacts and access to the country.

ASEAN has not put the issue of the Rohingyas on its agenda for the rigidly organised summit, but Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said it might be discussed at an informal dinner with his colleagues late Wednesday.

Kasit defended the planned rights body, saying: "We are an ASEAN family... we can talk to one another without making demands or questioning."

But the focus of the summit is expected to be ASEAN's efforts to help its export-driven economies escape the ravages of the global financial crisis, with several member nations either already in recession or on the brink.

Leaders are to sign a declaration on a roadmap for forming a European Union-style community by 2015 and to formally initial a free-trade pact with Australia and New Zealand.

They will also discuss a 120-billion-dollar emergency fund agreed on by Asian finance ministers on Sunday -- but analysts warn that the region is largely at the mercy of what happens elsewhere.

Several ASEAN nations are also distracted by elections or political turmoil, with Thailand facing a recent resurgence of months of unrest that had forced the summit to be delayed from its original date in December.

Key regional partners including China, Japan and India have stayed away from the rescheduled summit.

In Bangkok, supporters of ousted Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra rallied for a third day outside current Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's office to demand new elections.

Thailand's Kasit, who faces calls to quit over his involvement in a protest movement that shuttered Bangkok's airports last year, defended his record and said he did not think his attendance at the summit would be a distraction.

"I am such a nice person and serving society to the best of my ability," Kasit said.

Officials said there was no threat to the summit from the latest protests but police said they had deployed more than 5,000 officers, including some with sniffer dogs, to protect the venue.

Thailand currently holds the rotating chair of ASEAN, which includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam.

Read more!

Two UK men found dead in Cambodia

Two British men have been found dead in a Cambodian hotel room after apparently snorting heroin by mistake.

Mark Ganley, 34, and David Hunt, 36, both originally from Southampton, were found in a hotel in the capital city Phnom Penh earlier this week while on holiday, sources said.

The Foreign Office added that consular assistance was given to the families of the men after the deaths were reported.

Cambodian police said businessman Mr Ganley, believed to be living in Vietnam at the time of his death with his partner, and journalist Mr Hunt had bloodied noses.

It is thought they died of overdoses after snorting heroin-based powder but believing it to be cocaine.

The men were found in a shared hotel room with a bag of white powder and some local currency after a maid entered.

Cambodian police are investigating the deaths.

Mr Hunt's sister Kate Sanderson told the Southern Daily Echo: "This was a tragic accident and we are devastated by our loss.

"Both Mark and David were talented individuals and were hugely loved and respected by family and friends alike. They will be sadly missed."

Mr Hunt worked for the Portsmouth based news agency M&Y and its director Pat Symes said: "David worked for us for three years and we were deeply shocked and saddened by the news. He was an outstanding news and sports journalist and is already greatly missed."
Read more!

Detention hearing for Khmer Rouge official delayed

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: Judges at Cambodia's genocide tribunal say they have delayed a hearing on whether to release the Khmer Rouge's former foreign minister from pretrial detention, citing his poor health.

Head judge Prak Kimsan said Thursday the hearing was postponed until April 2 following an appeal by Ieng Sary's attorneys on health grounds. Ieng Sary did not appear in court.

It is the second time that Ieng Sary, 83, has filed a petition for release since his arrest in 2007 on charges of crimes against humanity.

He was hospitalized Monday with a urinary infection and returned to his cell Wednesday.

The U.N.-assisted tribunal has charged five people in connection with the estimated 1.7 million deaths during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 rule. Read more!

Vietnam, Cambodia agree to accelerate border marker planting

Speed up land grabe and encrouchment by Yuon Ha Noi, land and sea in thousand squar kilometres are shrinking deep into Cambodia territories.

VietNamNet Bridge – The eighth session of the Vietnam-Cambodia joint technical subcommittee for land border demarcation and marker planting was held in Phnom Penh from Feb. 23-25.

The Vietnamese delegation was headed by Nguyen Hong Thao, Deputy Head of the Foreign Ministry’s National Border Committee and member of the Vietnam-Cambodia joint border committee, whilst the Cambodian delegation was led by Long Visalo, Secretary of State of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and Head of the Joint Technical Committee for Land Border Demarcation and Marker Planting.

Based on the results of the border demarcation and marker planting activities undertaken by Vietnam and Cambodia as well as the current situation in each country, the two sides agreed to propose adjustments to the master plan governing the matter for the 2009-2012 period.

They also discussed preparations for the third session of the Vietnam-Cambodia Joint Committee for Border Demarcation and Marker Planting. Read more!

Ecstasy threatens rainforests in Cambodia

Authorities, working with conservationists, have raided and closed several 'ecstasy oil' distilleries in Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains. The distilleries posed a threat to the region's rich biological diversity, reports Fauna & Flora International (FFI), the conservation group involved in the operation.

"The factories had been set up to distill 'sassafras oil'; produced by boiling the roots and the trunk of the exceptionally rare Mreah Prew Phnom trees and exported to neighbouring countries," said FFI. "The oil is used in the production of cosmetics, but can also be used as a precursor chemical in the altogether more sinister process of producing MDMA – more commonly known as ecstasy. The distillation process not only threatens Mreah Prew Phnom trees, but damages the surrounding forest ecosystem. Producing sassafras oil is illegal in Cambodia."

The raids followed a month-long investigation by FFI and the Ministry of Environment which turned up several newly built sassafras factories run by Vietnamese syndicates in Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary. The sassafras oil is usually smuggled to Thailand or Vietnam.

"The re-emergence of the sassafras factories in Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary is of enormous concern to us," Tim Wood, FFI Field Coordinator at Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary, said. "Not only are we faced with the prospect that the oil may be used for producing illicit drugs, but the factories have a very destructive impact on the fragile habitats and ecosystems in the sanctuary.

"These factories are located close to streams and by-products from the distillation process causes significant pollution of the environment. In addition, the distillation process itself uses enormous quantities of fuel wood from other rainforest trees. Finally, the factory workers typically engage in poaching wildlife from the surrounding forests to supplement their basic diets. Thankfully, on this occasion we were able to locate and destroy the factories before they were in full production mode."
Read more!

CAMBODIA: Cursed by oil and poverty

PHNOM PENH, Having allegedly exhausted Cambodia's timber resources to fund its 1990s civil war, business and military elites are plundering mining resources while failing to uphold international human rights and transparency standards, a new report warns.

The long-term effects could fuel corruption and contribute to a "resource curse", whereby a tiny elite soaks up the profits instead of using oil and mining revenues to alleviate poverty, London-based Global Witness states in Country for Sale.

Cambodia is Southeast Asia’s second-poorest country after East Timor, with 35 percent of its population living on less than US$1 a day, according to government statistics.

Revenues from the 2005 oil find, which could total more than $1.5 billion annually, according to some estimates, should be directed to achieving its 2015 Millennium Development Goals, say critics.

"I see the rise of Cambodia's mining and oil sectors as just one part of the wholesale diversification of natural resource and state asset exploitation in Cambodia," Eleanor Nichols, a campaigner for Global Witness, told IRIN.

"Historically, the revenue generated by their misappropriation has reinforced the position and impunity of elites, further strengthening their hold on the levers of power," she said.

Global Witness has had a rocky relationship with the government, having closed its office in Phnom Penh in 2005 after threats over a report implicating top officials of illegal logging.

The Nobel-prize nominated group first monitored the country's forestry resources in the 1990s when international donors urged logging reform.

Greater transparency demanded

The group, with several other NGOs, continues to urge international donors to demand more transparency in Cambodia’s young oil and mining sectors as a condition for aid.

Cambodia receives about $600 million aid every year. In 2009, the national budget is $1.77 billion, with donors pledging around $1 billion.

"It is fair to say that the revenue generated would be significant for a country which still relies on donor countries to provide the equivalent of over 50 percent of the annual government budget in development aid," Nichols said.

Secretive mining contracts, mostly in the country's remote northern provinces, allegedly require the forced, mass evictions of rural poor and indigenous people.

"On some sites, land has been taken from local people and cases of intimidation of residents are reported," Global Witness stated. "There has been no free, prior and informed consent by the local population in any of these cases."

The Cambodian embassy in London issued an angry response to the report, denying the accusations.

"The Global Witness report was fairly underhanded and failed to recognise the tireless work and vision of some in government," Michael McWalter, the Asian Development Bank's oil and gas adviser to the government, told IRIN in an e-mail.

Oil worries

The International Monetary Fund estimated the find off the southwest coast at two billion barrels, though energy giant Chevron has been tight-lipped about numbers.

Cambodia could follow the patterns of Nigeria, Venezuela and Iraq, where mismanagement and secrecy surrounding oil contracts plunged the countries into further poverty, said Ou Virak, an economist and head of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights.

"There's every indication Cambodia is heading towards Nigeria. We fit very well of a profile of countries facing a resource curse," he told IRIN. "The fact that all key institutions with money are headed by only a few people indicates there is no intention of having a system in place for transparency and accountability."

Donors last year asked the government to consider joining the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) a global coalition of governments, companies and civil society groups that requires full disclosure of oil, gas and mineral revenues.

The government originally considered signing on to EITI, but reportedly said in October it would not endorse the initiative.

The UN Development Programme (UNDP) hosted a conference last March to address how the government should manage oil and gas revenues to alleviate poverty.

At the conference, delegates from the Cambodian National Petroleum Authority, Supreme National Economic Council, and Norwegian Petroleum Directorate discussed the possibility of establishing an independent fund to manage revenues transparently, a model that has worked in Norway. Read more!

"Super" malaria threat on Thai-Cambodia border

LONDON, The fight against malaria could be undermined by the emergence on the Thai-Cambodian border of strains that are resistant to the most potent type of drug, the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday.

Artemisinin, a compound extracted from a Chinese herb, is regarded by medical experts as the best drug against malaria and is recommended for use in combination with other medicines to stop the development of resistance.

But the WHO said there was growing evidence that parasites resistant to artemisinin had emerged along the border between Cambodia and Thailand, where workers walk for miles every day to clear forests.

The risk is similar to the development of so-called "superbugs" that are resistant to antibiotics.

"If we do not put a stop to the drug-resistant malaria situation that has been documented in the Thai-Cambodia border, it could spread rapidly to neighbouring countries and threaten our efforts to control this deadly disease," Hiroki Nakatani, WHO assistant director-general, said in a statement.

The WHO plans to try and contain the spread of resistance with the help of a $22.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The prevalence of malaria has been reduced considerably over the past 50 years, but the disease still kills more than a million people every year.

Resistance along the Thai-Cambodia border started with chloroquine, followed by resistance to sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine and mefloquine, drugs used in malaria control several years ago.

The risk of resistance to any drug increases when it is used on its own, which is why the WHO recommends the routine use of artemisinin combination therapies, such as Novartis AG's (NOVN.VX) Coartem. (Reporting by Ben Hirschler, editing by Will Waterman) Read more!

In Sihanouk's words: the Cambodian monarch's private archives

This file picture taken on Feb. 24, 1995 shows King Norodom Sihanouk praying during a Buddhist ceremony at Wat Mony Prasittivong outside Phnom Penh (AFP photo / files)

PARIS, Feb 25, 2009 (AFP) - In meticulously labelled boxes piled on shelves in an old Paris building lies the hidden story of Cambodia's King Norodom Sihanouk, his personal chronicle of 30 years of Khmer suffering and death.

After abdicating in 2004, the self-proclaimed "king-father" of the country, now aged 87, handed France his personal archives last January for safe-keeping at the National Archive.

"Rarely does a foreign head of state give archives to another country," said Olivier de Bernon, head researcher at the Far-East French Institute (EFEO) and the first to browse the "historically significant" papers.

"The archives were never in Cambodia, but came directly from Sihanouk's home in Beijing," said de Bernon.

It took him two years, with the help of two researchers and an archivist, to sift through the king's 10,000 photographs and one million documents. An inventory of the "Sihanouk Fund" is to be published this year.

Destroyed by later regimes, no personal records remain of Sihanouk's first reign, coronation or childhood. The Paris archives cover the later agitated times that followed Lon Nol's pro-American coup which overthrew Sihanouk on March 18, 1970.

Among the gems are a photograph of Sihanouk's resignation speech as head of state of the Khmer Rouge regime on April 2, 1976 and pictures of North Korea, where he was invited by the country's founder, the late Kim Il-Sung.

Head of state turned political prisoner, Sihanouk spent 1976-79 under house arrest in his Phnom Pen palace with Queen Monique.

A one-time sympathiser of the extremist Cambodian communist movement nicknamed "the red prince" during the Vietnam War, it was the king himself who came up with the name "Khmer Rouge" in 1960.

But de Bernon said Sihanouk was never a supporter of the extremists, with five of his children and 14 grandchildren killed under the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, which left a total of two million Cambodians dead.

"The king was in Beijing from April to September 1975 and was only in power for a year under the Khmer Rouge before resigning. It was only in 1977, like many others, that he understood how the regime operated, and in fact high-ranking Chinese officials had to intervene to ensure he wasn't killed," said de Bernon.

Letters signed Zhou Enlai, Malraux, Arafat, Mandela or Reagan are among Sihanouk's letters.

One from actress Jane Fonda congratulates him for the Khmer Rouge victory and offers to take up their cause in the US.

"Sihanouk has a literary style that shines through in his letters, speeches and thousands of drafts," said de Bernon.

A workaholic with a wide variety of interests, Sihanouk wrote poems, songs and even recipes, and played the saxophone and piano. He could sing in a dozen languages, sometimes for four or five hours at a time, and shot dozens of films glorifying Cambodia.

Read more!

Thailand to return seized Cambodian artefacts

Fine Arts Department director-general Kriangkrai Sampatchalit said yesterday that the other 36 items wanted by Cambodia could not yet be returned because more evidence was needed to prove their origin.

The Cabinet yesterday agreed to return seven artefacts to Cambodia in a yet to be scheduled handover ceremony.

"Once more evidence is provided to us, the department will identify and verify these [36] items," he added.

The sandstone artefacts to be returned are an 86-centimetre bust of a goddess and six of demons varying in height from 60cm to 81cm. The busts date back to the 18th century and some are cracked or damaged.

Culture Minister Teera Slukpetch said the artefacts had been intercepted by customs in Samut Prakan province in May 2000, while they were being smuggled into Thailand in sea-freight cargo. They have since been in the custody of the Fine Arts Department pending completion of legal and customs procedures.

There are no details over whether anybody was arrested.

The items will be put on display at the National Museum from today before they are handed over. The Fine Arts Department's permanent secretary Weera Rojphojjanarat said it had not been decided if Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen would be invited to the handover ceremony.

The Culture and Foreign Ministries of both countries are working on diplomatic protocol to have the artefacts returned to Cambodia as soon as possible, reportedly as a sign of goodwill aimed at strengthening bilateral relations that have soured after the Phrea Vihear dispute.

Kriangkrai said the department was pursuing some 100 artefacts of Thai heritage that have reportedly surfaced in other countries.

Read more!

Typhoon or big bright sun: the economic forecast on Cambodia goes wild

Short, poor, ill and corrupt, or, in other words, the new potential composite of the average Cambodian person elaborated on the basis of statistical figures circulated here and there by various international and national organisations intervening in Cambodia. However, despite the profusion of reports, charts, tables and databases supposed to dissect the Cambodian economy and society, finding recent and reliable elements in the jungle of numbers that these statistics made in Cambodia represent remains a hard task. Alarmist views regarding the economic crisis do not help either since they provide indices which take different shapes and prove randomly malleable. And indeed, predictions for 2009 might well make one feel giddy, as they bet on an economic growth rate oscillating between 1% and... 6%, according to sources. Even though analyses disagree on the results concerning the past few years, forecasting Cambodian economy looks like a tough challenge.

GDP: who can lower the stakes?
The International Monetary Fund is definite on that point: Cambodia is going to be badly stricken by the global economic crisis. Six months ago only, the same organisation reckoned that despite a slight downturn, the Cambodian economy remained “robust”, and all indicators are today are in the red: a decrease in orders in the textile industry, a drastic drop in the number of tourists, a massive decline in the building sector ... The direct result is that the growth rate of the Gross Domestic Product, which was due to go above 7% in 2008 was revised downwards and reached an estimated 6.5% at the end of the year. For 2009, according to the latest report released by the institution, the growth rate should not go over 4.8%, a prediction which is already dubbed as optimistic by John Nelmes, IMF Resident Representative in Cambodia.

For its part, the World Bank , who also revised its estimations for the past years (the 7.5% estimated in 2008 were brought down to 6.7%), predicts for 2009 a growth rate close to 5% (4.9% to be precise, i.e. 2 points below the initial predictions). The Asian Development Bank (ADB ) forecasts for its part 4.7%. And the Economist Intelligence Unit (a branch specialising in economic statistics and forecasts within the private British group The Economist) is the naysayer in the lot, putting forward predictions of a rate close to 1%, in other words the weakest Cambodia has ever seen, at least since the Paris Accords (October 23rd 1991).

When it comes to those figures, the Cambodian government refrains from officially refuting them, for the simple reason that they were partly calculated thanks to data that the government themselves communicated to those organisations, via the Ministry of Economy and Finance , the Ministry of Planning and the National Institute of Statistics (NIS ) . However, it appears easy for the government to downplay the impact of this today, by proposing in turn its own “estimations” and its “objectives”. The prime Minister of Cambodia, Hun Sen, claimed on February 16th in front of a packed audience of international economists, that the Cambodian GDP could well increase by 6%, with a little bit of good will!

Clear skies, showers or typhoon?
Between the bright sun the government would like to dream of, the typhoon forecast by the British group and the skies alternating sunny spells and scattered showers predicted by the World Bank, the IMF and the ADB, it is hard to know who to turn to and trust. Most analysts yet speak with one pessimistic voice. Indeed, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) announces tens of thousands of unemployed people in Cambodia’s key-sectors, which will be the victims of a crisis which would supposedly affect no less than 500,000 Cambodians and might even, by the end of 2009, concern more than a million of them. The French daily newspaper le Monde also adds their own reading of the situation. Indeed, in its February 23rd edition, the Paris-based daily paper did not hesitate to display as a title for their article, “Cambodian economy suffers as a result of its opening-up to the world”, thus underlining the contrast between the golden picture of a country who for the past ten years “had yet mounted the Asian horse of growth” and a grimmer one depicting the economy which at the end of the day, is just that of “one of the poorest countries in the world”.

Short and sickly
It is true that if one simply juxtaposes statistics found here and there on the net, the portrait is not that flattering. “The Cambodian” is pictured as poor (average annual income per capita: slightly less than USD600, according to the government), corrupt (166th country out of 180 in the 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index published by the NGO Transparency International , sickly (with an average life expectancy of 62 years, compared to 72 in Thailand and Vietnam) and short (81st out of 81 countries, with an average height of 5’31” for adult men, compared to 5’38” for the Vietnamese, 5’54” for the Thai and 6’04” for the Dutch), although this last feature is said to be considered a quality http://www.shortsupport.org/ .

Everyone looking for their own figures
Data, even when published in documents and on the Internet websites of institutions well-known for their reliability, is very often obsolete or has been collected using various methods, which eventually blocks the way to any possible comparison. Thus, one can see on the public databases of many organisations (like the WHO , the World Bank , UNICEF , the CIA ...), the Cambodian population was largely over 14 – if not 15 – million inhabitants in 2006... when the last national census counted 13.39 million souls. Cambodians appear to live five years longer or shorter, depending on the sources (ranging from 57 years according to UNICEF, to 62 years according to the WHO)... And they obtained an annual average GDP per capita, in 2007, of USD540 according to the World Bank, when the IMF claims it was USD604.

Indices for developing countries?
Beyond these discrepancies, which can be explained in some cases by the techniques used, the very quality of these indices is regularly questioned. Some estimate that the indices bring a distorted vision of reality and therefore call to create new instruments or to use others which are already set up – this would allow the refining of analyses of economies and societies in the modern world, particularly in developing countries like Cambodia where the informal sector plays an essential part. Pointing at statistical mistakes a posteriori or blaming economic indicators might be a little too easy. But in any case and facing the dark perspectives drawn by those figures, this helps remind that these indicators were first elaborated as tools meant to provide a better understanding of a complex world, and were not invented to remodel or govern it.

Read more!

Despite Rapid Premium Growth, Cambodia's Insurance Sector Has a Long Way to Go

BestWire Services Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Cambodia's insurance industry has seen rapid premium growth in recent years, which largely outpaced the country's gross domestic product, yet the market has not seen marked development.

In the past year, Cambodia's insurance industry experienced 18% growth in premium income, in comparison with an estimated GPD growth of 6.8%. However, the insurance market size has only a total value of US$20.5 million. This makes it hard to attract new players, particularly foreign insurance companies, which could play a critical role in developing the market, said Youk Chamroeunrith, general manager and director at Forte Insurance, a leading local insurance company.

"We need to have more foreign investment first to drive premium growth," said Chamroeunrith in an interview. However, the global financial crisis has put pressure on insurance growth because of declining foreign investment. Chamroeunrith said premium growth already slowed down by about 2% in the past year.

Lack of a legislative framework and a low level of insurance awareness in the country are the biggest hurdles for insurance development in Cambodia, said Chamroeunrith. The country now only has nonlife insurance operators and product offerings are limited to commercial business lines for corporate clients.

Now, Cambodia only has five domestic insurance companies: Forte Insurance, Caminco, Asia Insurance [88751], Campubank Lonpac and Infinity Insurance, and one local reinsurer, Cambodia Reinsurance Co., which is 80% owned by the government, according to the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

Slow Development A Malaysian company is expected to open shop in Cambodia in partnership with a local company. Malaysia's Kurnia Asia Pte. Ltd. [86752] plans to set up a nonlife joint venture with Canadia Investment Holding Ltd., parent company of Canadia Bank in Cambodia.

State-owned Caminco also plans to sell its 75% shares owned by the government, and then a joint venture may be formed with a Thai insurance company and local investor.

In general, Cambodia's insurance sector is facing the dilemma of small market size to attract new entrants. Chamroeunrith said this is one factor that ultimately constrains further market development without more players. Established in 1999, Forte Insurance takes up about 50% of market share in terms of total nonlife insurance premiums in Cambodia.

Insurance companies generate a majority of insurance premiums from corporate sector's property, fire, motor and medical business lines in Cambodia. Individual premium only accounts for a very small proportion of insurance business, said Chamroeunrith.

Corporate clients are a major driver for future premium growth in the country, which just opened up the market for business in recent years, said Chamroeunrith. The government has tried to attract more direct foreign investment, and this will contribute to drive insurance demands. Cambodia attracted US$10 billion in foreign investment last year and the market should have the potential to grow, noted Chamroeunrith.

Currently, life insurance is nonexistent in Cambodia, where only 1% to 2% of the nation's 14 million population can afford insurance. License for life insurance was made available last year but there is no legislative framework laid down for investment products.

Life insurance is not developed in the Cambodia because people have little knowledge on the importance of buying insurance for protection. The lack of a regulatory framework is one obstacle but the fundamental issue is a low level of insurance awareness across the country, according to Chamroeunrith.

The World Bank identified life insurance as an important financial sector as its development can ultimately encourage public savings and drive productive investment. In this area, Cambodia has some way to go. Read more!

Khmer Rouge 'First Lady' in Cambodia court tirade

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — The former Khmer Rouge "First Lady" launched an angry tirade at Cambodia's UN-backed genocide tribunal on Tuesday, telling her accusers they would be "cursed to the seventh circle of hell."

Ieng Thirith, 76, facing trial for crimes against humanity under the communist regime, at first told the court that defence lawyers would speak on her behalf during her appeal against detention, saying: "I am too weak."

But she later erupted at the prosecution's suggestion that she was aware of atrocities at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison while she served as social affairs minister during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-1979 rule.

"Don't accuse me of being a murderer, otherwise you will cursed to the seventh circle of hell," Ieng Thirith said in an 15-minute outburst.

"I don't know why a good person is accused of such crimes and I have suffered a great deal and I cannot really be patient because I have been wrongly accused," she said.

Alternating between English and Khmer, she said that "everything was done by Nuon Chea," the regime's top ideologue who is also among the five top cadres facing trial at the tribunal over the regime's atrocities.

Although Ieng Thirith regained enough strength for her vigorous denial, the health of the ageing suspects is an ongoing concern.

Ieng Thirith's husband, former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary, was hospitalised Monday evening for blood in his urine, court spokesman Reach Sambath said.

It was the ninth time Ieng Sary, 83, has been rushed to hospital since the pair were detained by the court in November 2007, the spokesman said.

In documents read to the court Tuesday, investigating judges argued it was necessary to keep Ieng Thirith in jail to protect her security, preserve public order and ensure she did not flee from trial.

But defence lawyer Phat Pouv Seang demanded her immediate release, saying that the investigating judges failed to provide adequate evidence.

After years of wrangling between the Cambodian government and the United Nations, the court was created in 2006 to try leading members of the Khmer Rouge regime.

The tribunal's long-awaited first trial started last week when the regime's torturer-in-chief, 66-year-old Kaing Guek Eav, better known by the alias Duch, went before the court.

Those proceedings were largely limited to lawyers arguing over the use of a film showing the Tuol Sleng prison controlled by Duch, where investigators say more than 15,000 people died.

Arguments and testimony in the case against Duch will begin March 30, according to an order signed Monday by trial chamber president Nil Nonn.

Duch's lawyer Francois Roux has said his client, who has converted to Christianity, wished to use the trial to publicly ask his victims for forgiveness.

The Khmer Rouge government oversaw one of the worst horrors of the 20th century, wiping out up to two million people through starvation, overwork and execution in a bid to forge a communist utopia.

The leader of the regime, Pol Pot, died in 1998. Ieng Thirith's sister Khieu Ponnary was married to him.

Duch's trial is expected to take around three months, and then the court is expected to mount its case against Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith, former "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, 82, and 77-year-old former head of state Khieu Samphan.

Judges are mulling opening cases against several former mid-level Khmer Rouge leaders after a dispute between the international and Cambodian co-prosecutors over whether to pursue more suspects.

International backers have appeared hesitant to pledge more money to the court after allegations of political interference by the government over whether the court will bring charges against more Khmer Rouge figures.

The tribunal has also faced controversy over claims that Cambodian staff paid kickbacks for their jobs.
Read more!

Vietnam, Cambodia eye closer inspection cooperation

Cambodia Kingdom or Vietnam Kingdom? A nobrain -Hun Xen government official is showing the world that Cambodia government is unable to draft corruption law

HANOI, A senior Cambodian official has asked for help from Vietnam’s Government Inspectorate in the training of personnel and making of laws regarding anti-corruption, complaints and denouncements.

The Cambodian Minister of National Assembly-Senate Relations and Inspections, Som Kim Sour, made the request during her talks with Vietnam ’s chief government inspector, Tran Van Truyen, in Hanoi on Feb. 23.

Som Kim Sour appreciated the Vietnamese Government Inspectorate for assistance it extended to the Cambodian ministry, as well as its operation results in the recent years.

Truyen briefed his guest on his agency’s work relating to socio-economic issues, complaints and denouncements and the fight against corruption in 2008 and directions set for this year.

Cooperative ties between the Vietnamese Government Inspectorate and the Cambodian Ministry of National Assembly-Senate Relations and Inspections is vivid evidence of the cooperation and friendship between the two countries, he stressed. (VNA) Read more!

Ask an Expert: Tap into the power of community

By Steve Strauss for USA TODAY


Q: I own an Italian market in New York. I would like to expand, even if the conventional wisdom says it's not the right time. That said, getting a loan is hard and I'm not sure I have the resources to do it without some help. What should I do? — Max

A: Well, if it's help you need to grow your business, then you should get some. What if I told you there was an easy way to get that help, and it won't cost you hardly a cent? And what if I further told you this method is incredibly powerful and historically successful?

I thought you might be interested.

Think for a moment about all of the immigrants who have come to this country, be it Irish Catholics, Eastern European Jews, Asians, whomever. When you hear their success stories, usually it's because they were industrious, hard-working, entrepreneurial, thrifty, and so on.

They also tapped the power of their community.

Historically, when an immigrant starts a new business in this country, their first taste of success comes when members of the community begin to frequent the business. Word gets around, other members of the group start to show up, and the fledgling business takes root. If the business is really good, then the word of mouth continues to grow, and the business expands organically, seemingly effortlessly.

But it's not just new immigrants who can tap the power of community, almost any business can.

Sophy Khut and her family escaped Cambodia after the war and moved to the Portland, Oregon in 1976 when she was about 10 years old. As she became a young woman, needing to help her family, she began to work in an aunt's restaurant, doing everything from washing dishes and mopping floors to cleaning up and bussing tables. She opened her own restaurant just a year later — when she was but 22. But with the help of the local Cambodian community, it started strong. Their continued support helped the restaurant grow.

Buoyed by her success, Sophy looked around and realized that a golden opportunity lay not far away: Long Beach, Calif., has the largest Cambodian community anywhere in the world outside of Cambodia. As she told me, "it was a great opportunity and a ready market." So she up and moved to California, by herself, and started another restaurant, from scratch.

Sure, it sounds intimidating, but Sophy knew the secret: Help the community and they will help you.

So she opened Sophy's Thai and Cambodian Cuisine and immediately began tapping into the vast Cambodian community that surrounded her. She knew that a great restaurant, serving delicious, home-cooked food should be a winner.

She was right.

Sophy's is now one of the very best Cambodian restaurants in all of Southern California. Nobody does it better than Sophy's, and the mass of satisfied customers every night attest to that. That she just moved to a restaurant three-times the size, and it's already full every night, is further proof.

And how about this: It's all word of mouth. Sophy does not advertise. That's the power of community (and having a great business).

Here's Sophy's secrets to having your community support your business:

"Give, rather than take": Sophy explains that giving actually has two meanings:

• First, you have to give your customers a great product or service. Give them more than they expect.

• Second, give in the traditional sense. For instance, the Cambodian community in L.A. has a foundation called Hearts Without Boundaries, whereby they bring needy Cambodian children who have congenital heart defects to the U.S. and give them surgery and all of the medical help they need – for free. Sophy is a big a participant in the group, and in fact the team meets in her restaurant regularly.

"Get involved": In Sophy's case, she helps out every year with the Cambodian New Year parade. She has food booths at fairs and expos. She opens the restaurant up to different groups. She donates to non-profits.

All of this gets the word of Sophy's Restaurant out there. And then, when people show up, her great food and friendly restaurant makes them want to come back.

So the lesson is clear: Get involved in your community. Befriend them. Be thankful for their patronage. Help out. Just take it from Sophy: "Support your community and they will support you!"

Today's tip: Do you bill by the hour for different clients and customers? If so, you might be interested in some great software I recently learned about. Fast, easy, online, and affordable, Bill4Time can help you focus on your work, not your billing. Check it out here.

Ask an Expert appears Mondays. You can e-mail Steve Strauss at: sstrauss@mrallbiz.com.And you can click here to see previous columns. Steven D. Strauss is a lawyer, author and speaker who specializes in small business and entrepreneurship. His latest book is The Small Business Bible. You can sign up for his free newsletter, "Small Business Success Secrets!" at his website —www.mrallbiz.com.


Read more!

Cambodia drafts sub-decree for better resettlement in development projects

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia has started drafting a sub-decree on addressing social-economic impacts caused by the development projects on implementation of involuntary resettlement, a government official said here on Monday.

"In the current context of Cambodia, we are lacking legal norms and legislations to support resettlement implementation, including limited awareness of people on law and weak enforcement of land law and other regulations," said Chhorn Sopheap, deputy secretary general of the Supreme National Economic Council and director of the resettlement department of the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

"We continue to further revise the sub-decree to cover all important issues in conformity with other laws and regulations, and to ensure efficient implementation," he said in the opening remarks of the five-day regional workshop of involuntary resettlement implementation and management, which also attracted participants from Vietnam, Laos and Indonesia.

The government is preparing this crucial sub-decree as policy guidelines for a better resettlement implementation, he said.

The project implementation is even more difficult and complicated if a third party causes problems behind because resettlement implementation is not only related to socio-economic side of affected people but also sometimes related to people's mind, especially political issues, he said.

"There were some problems occurring during the project implementation due to lack of adequate policy measures as well as experience, but we have to maintain a balance between people's rights of interest and general or public interest represented by prerogatives of public power," he said.

"We believe that good resettlement can prevent impoverishment and poverty of the affected people by turning displacement into development opportunities," he added.
Read more!

ASEAN Agrees to Boost Regional Fund by $40 Billion

Asian finance ministers pledged to uphold free trade and investment in the midst of the global economic slowdown and said they would allocate an additional $40 billion to protect falling currencies.

The ministers from 10 Southeast Asian nations as well as China, Japan and South Korea agreed to boost funding for the Chiang Mai Initiative -- an arrangement forged after the 1997 Asian financial crisis to address foreign reserve deficits through bilateral currency swaps -- from $80 billion to $120 billion.

The 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will provide 20 percent of funding, with 80 percent from China, Japan and South Korea.

The plan is expected to be approved at an ASEAN summit in Hua Hin, Thailand, from Feb. 27 to March 1.

"We reaffirm our determination to dedicate ourselves to increasing the free flow of trade and investment, to standing firm against protectionist measures which would worsen the economic downturn," the ministers said in a statement.

The commitment to free trade echoed comments made earlier in the day by Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

"I hope that ASEAN will send a signal that in this economic downturn it will not favor protectionism," Abhisit said. "ASEAN will not survive alone while causing trouble to other countries."

In October, ASEAN finance ministers expressed confidence that the group would weather the global downturn, noting its economic fundamentals remained sound even though growth might not match last year's 6.7 percent.

But in recent months, many countries have begun to feel the effects of the downturn on their export-driven economies.

Thailand reported Thursday that exports posted their steepest fall in 12 years in January as demand for the country's cars, hard drives and electrical goods evaporated amid the global slump.

Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines have all announced multibillion-dollar stimulus packages that include a mix of infrastructure projects, cash handouts or tax cuts aimed at creating jobs and boosting consumer demand.

ASEAN was founded during the Cold War as an anti-communist political coalition, later evolving into a trade bloc. It consists of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Read more!

CHINA: Khmer Rouge Trials Raise Ghosts of the Past

By Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Feb 20 (IPS) - The skeletons are tumbling out of China’s cupboard of buried memories. The 30th anniversary of China’s brief but bloody war with Vietnam may have gone unmarked but for the fact that Feb.17 also saw the start of the trial of the chief torturer of Cambodia’s grisly Khmer Rouge.

China’s role in Cambodia’s bloody past is now little spoken of and this is how Beijing, Hanoi and Phnom Penh - all intent on trade and development - prefer it.

When in 1979 Vietnam ousted Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime, Beijing was so incensed by what it saw as defiance in its backyard by a political party it had helped create that it ordered an attack to "teach Vietnam a lesson" and keep Pol Pot in power.

During his 1975-1979 rule Pol Pot had sought to replicate Mao Zedong’s agrarian utopia, but the experiment left Cambodia deeply scarred and a quarter of its population - some 1.7 million people - dead.

Although aware of the atrocities committed by the regime, Beijing sided with the Khmer Rouge over the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and launched a massive offensive against Vietnam along the two countries’ border.

The month-long border conflict claimed anywhere between 20,000 to 60,000 lives, and yet no commemorations were held on the 30th anniversary either in Beijing or Hanoi.

As the trial of Khmer Rouge’s chief investigator Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, opened in Phnom Penh, China sought to downplay its role in supporting Pol Pot’s regime.

"As everyone knows, the government of Democratic Kampuchea had a legal seat at the United Nations, and had established broad foreign relations with more than 70 countries," foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular press briefing, referring to the former Khmer Rouge government.

Duch is being tried on charges of crimes against humanity. Under his watch, as commandant of the notorious S-21 prison, some 14,000 people were tortured and sent to their deaths in the killing fields outside the capital Phnom Penh.

According to Pol Pot’s biographer, Philip Short, after the Vietnamese invasion, Duch found shelter in China, working for Radio China International in Beijing.

"China owes Cambodian people an apology," says Lao Monghay, former director of the Khmer Institute of Democracy in Phnom Penh and now a senior researcher at the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong. "It supported the Khmer Rouge before coming to power and continued to lend its support even after Pol Pot assumed power regardless of what was happening to Cambodian people."

According to Lao Monghay, China had donated one billion US dollars to Democratic Kampuchea before 1979 and another billion dollars after 1979 in order to fight the Vietnamese invasion.

China often admonishes Japan to "face up" to history, insisting that Tokyo’s unapologetic attitude regarding its invasionist politics of the past impedes relations with its neighbours. But when applied to China’s own past, reckoning of history’s fallacies is discarded as irrelevant to current and future developments.

"China and Vietnam have had a period of unhappiness in their past,’’ Jiang Yu told reporters. "But what’s important is that the leaders and people of both countries have a broad wish and consensus to create a bright future together. History has already reached its conclusions," she added.

The Khmer Rouge regime was a replica of Maoist regime, says Lao Monghay, and any probe into its record could throw unfavourable light on China’s own historical blunders. "The Chinese communist regime hasn’t accounted yet for the sufferings caused to its own people during years of political campaigns and persecutions," he adds.

During Mao’s rule China armed and trained rebel groups in almost every South-east Asian country, including Indonesia, Laos, Burma, Thailand and Cambodia, even as it fostered warm relations with their official governments.

Beijing’s generous support for revolutionary armies all over Asia rose during the Cultural Revolution when China’s rivalry with the Soviet Union intensified and they competed for influence in the region as Western colonial powers retreated.

"In the end it was realpolitik, far more than ideological affinity, which brought China and Cambodia together," wrote Short in his biography of Pol Pot, ‘The History of a Nightmare.’ "There was near-perfect symmetry to the three countries’ relations. China was to Vietnam as Vietnam was to Cambodia - a vast and powerful neighbour, which threatened hegemony."

While Beijing saw Vietnam as a Soviet bridgehead in Asia, it also saw "Cambodia as the one country on Vietnam’s western flank which might be expected to resist the expansion of Vietnamese, and hence of Soviet power," Short wrote.

Now, as then, imperatives of ideology have given way to realpolitik. Economy and trade form the basis for Beijing’s policies towards its neighbouring countries these days. China is patiently rebuilding traditional ties with all of its Southeast Asian neighbours, using foreign investment, development aid and "soft power" to draw them back into its economic orbit.

The Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) intra-regional trade programme, launched by the Asia Development Bank (AsDB) in 1992, has provided Beijing with the framework for expanding economic ties without arousing fears among its neighbours still wary of Chinese power.

"China actively participates in the development of the GMS because it sees it as the building of a passage to all of South-east Asia," says He Shengda, researcher with the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences.

In Cambodia these days, Chinese firms are engaged in mining and logging, and have built roads, bridges, garment factories, power plants, casinos and resorts, investing about 1.5 billion dollars in 2007.

A Cambodian investment group and a Chinese textile firm have committed three billion dollars to a joint venture, in Sihanoukville, modelled along the lines of China’s tax-free special economic zones.

In Vietnam, the old theatres of war are now bustling with Chinese traders, facilitated by new highways, such as the one linking Nanning in Guangxi province with Hanoi. Within three years, another AsDB-financed highway will shorten the drive between Yunnan capital Kunming and Hanoi to less than 24 hours.

Similar accelerated economic integration can be seen elsewhere in South-east Asia where Chinese companies are providing capital and expertise in exchange for markets and valuable resources.

"The economies of the GMS and China are highly complementary," says Zhang Guotu, an expert on South-east Asia with Xiamen University. "The sub-region has great potential in terms of resources and labour but its economies are lagging behind. This presents opportunities for Chinese state and private companies looking both for markets and investment."

Within the greater scope of Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), China is pushing for enlarged economic interdependence too. In a sign of its growing ambitions, last year Beijing appointed a special ambassador to the 10-member association.

In 2010 China and ASEAN are due to launch the first stage of a trade agreement, reducing tariffs on trade between China and the five founding countries of the bloc - Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. In 2015, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Burma will also join the trade bloc. The exception is Brunei.

Nevertheless, China’s relations with South-east Asian nations remain prickly as history and politics often get in the way of economic integration.

"History should not be easily discarded," says Lao Monghay. "It only takes a look at Cambodia and China relations for example, to see that they have been like a yo-yo in the past - swinging from good to bad and back."
Read more!

Migrant workers: Last ones in, first ones out

By Manolo Abella And Geoffrey Ducanes Ilo


THE rapid growth of migration and remittances is ending.

Some of the countries that absorbed many Asian migrant workers, particularly the United States and Europe, have reported the sharpest economic downturns in the current global financial meltdown.

More than 4 million South and Southeast Asian workers in seven countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are expected to significantly decrease in 2009.

Substantial numbers come from the Philippines (1.2 million, mainly in the US and Canada) and India (1.1 million mainly in the US, the United Kingdom and Canada).

When the dust has settled, many Asian workers are expected to be laid off in these countries.

Much lower demand for migrant workers is expected in Asian destination countries like Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. The jobs most likely to be affected are those in construction, finance, trade-related industries (such as export manufacturing and shipping), travel and tourism.

Contracts are unlikely to be renewed or even prematurely terminated. Migrant workers who have just recently arrived in countries of employment are going to be particularly affected since the last ones in are likely to be the first ones laid off.

Malaysia has more than 2.1 million registered foreign workers. Most of those retrenched are from manufacturing, which together with the services sector, is expected to be the hardest hit by the crisis.

About 30 percent (900,000) of Singapores workforce are foreigners, including 143,000 professionals from all over the world. The rest are low-skilled workers, mainly from Southeast Asia, China, India and Sri Lanka.

Thailand has some 1.8 million foreign workers mostly coming from neighboring Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.

South Korea has more than 400,000 foreign workers. In December it suffered a decline in total employment for the first time in more than five years while small and medium-sized companies have gone bankrupt or shut down.

Upside

The situation is not as dire for all workers or in all destinations. The demand for health sector jobs, for instance, will likely remain strong. Foreign engineers are still very much in demand in some countries like Saudi Arabia.

Public investments in the Gulf States are foreseen to remain strong in spite of the severe drop in oil prices.

The economies of major labor-importing countriesSaudi Arabia and Kuwait along with Qatarare expected to have stable growth, although that of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which had earlier experienced rapid growth is now expected to decline.

The Philippines has large numbers of workers in the Gulf Statessome 2.18 million workersrepresenting 43 percent of the 5.1 million Filipinos working on temporary contracts abroad. The Philippines also has substantial number of workers in North America (700,000), Europe (668,000) and East and Southeast Asia (one million).

The number of Filipino contract workers abroad continued to increase reaching a total of 1.377 million in 2008, an increase of some 28-percent over the previous year.

This means a daily deployment of some 3,772 documented migrant workers.

In recent years Asia experienced unprecedented rates of growth of recorded migrants remittances. Double-digit rates of growth were recorded for Asian countries, notably Nepal, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Philippines.

In the Philippines, the annual growth of migrants remittances averaged almost 16-percent over the previous six years. For 2009, the central bank predicts that remittances are still likely to grow but at a slower rate of from 3 percent to 6 percent.

Although remittances slowed down in the latter half of 2008, overall growth for the first 11 months was 15 percent, reaching $15 billion.

According to the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), reported displacements up to January 20 affected 4,000 Filipino workers mainly in Taiwan (3,494), UAE (297), Brunei (69) and Macau (45).

The most common reasons cited for the displacement were bankruptcy of companies and a slowdown in operations.

Downside

There are concerns that the brunt of adjustment to the economic crisis will fall hardest on migrant workers.

Layoffs have already been reported for industries most directly affected by the crisis. But other forms of adjustments such as work-sharing and reductions in wages and benefits are not yet reflected in any formal statistics.

More foreign workers in Singapore complain about pay cuts, not being paid on time, having their working days reduced, and not being provided food, shelter and healthcare, which employers are legally obliged to provide.

Many Malaysian firms adjust to the crisis by reducing the number of working days, hours of overtime work and in some instances forcing workers to use their annual leave.

Many countries have stopped issuing new work permits to or renewing work permits of foreign workers. Some are even providing companies incentives to replace foreign with native workers.

Singapore is urging companies to avoid lay-offs by finding means to cut costs. In case of unavoidable retrenchment, foreigners will be laid off first.

Malaysia has issued a freeze on the issuance of work permits for foreign workers and has instituted a policy to terminate foreign workers first.

South Korea has stopped issuing new visas and it is unlikely that the quota for foreign workers will be increased. It is encouraging small and medium-sized companies, the primary employers of foreign workers, to hire more locals.

Thailand has announced that no new work permits will be issued and that the planned registration of undocumented foreign workers will now be put off till after 2009.The work permits of about 500,000 foreign workers will not be renewed for 2010 and authorities have threatened to deport undocumented migrant workers.

Countries have responded by close monitoring, providing immediate assistance and looking for alternative employment for those who have been displaced.

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) has established help desks in provinces to help match the skills of retrenched (or aspiring) migrant workers with available jobs within the country and abroad, as well as to advise them on self-employment.

President Gloria Arroyo has ordered the Overseas Workers Welfare Fund to set aside P250 million for livelihood support to displaced migrant workers. DOLE has already sent special missions to Taiwan and Dubai to assist Filipinos who have lost their jobs or are expected to lose their jobs in reintegration.

The POEA is also providing legal assistance to displaced workers seeking refund of plane ticket expenses, placement fees, etc. from recruiting agents or their employers.

Read more!