ADRA Provides Food and Shelter for Fire Survivors in Cambodia

Source: Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) International
Ann Marie Stickle
Website: http://www.alertnet.org/redir/mem_out_219487/http://www.adra.org
Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia—After a fire completely destroyed 450 homes in an impoverished section of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on April 11, 2008, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) provided emergency food and shelter for 2,400 residents displaced by the disaster.

Coordinating with the mayor's office, ADRA Cambodia distributed rice, noodles, fish, salt, sugar, and vegetable oil to 520 families, or approximately 2,000 identified fire survivors, on April 12.

On April 15, ADRA expanded its response, distributing shelter and noodles for an additional 80 identified families that were also displaced by the fire, and are currently living in a make-shift internally displaced camp near the site of the tragedy.

According to authorities, the fire began at around 5 a.m. and burned for approximately 5 hours.

Due to the close proximity of the poorly constructed wooden homes, and the crowds of people escaping with their possessions, fire engines were unable to enter the area to extinguish the fire, which caused the complete destruction of all 450 homes located there, leaving behind only concrete poles.

More than 50 families were immediately moved to an open field nearby. However, more survivor families are joining the displaced persons camp each day, swelling the camp's population to more than 250 families. ADRA International, the ADRA Asia Regional Office in Bangkok, Thailand, and ADRA Cambodia are funding this response. ADRA has worked jointly with the Cambodia Adventist Mission, the Cambodia Adventist School, and Adventist Frontier Missions in packaging and distribution, and is coordinating with the mayor's office, village leaders, and other NGO partners in the relief efforts.

To assist in ADRA's response to the fire in Cambodia, please contact ADRA International at 1.800.424.ADRA (2372) or donate online to the Emergency Response Fund at www.adra.org. ADRA is present in 125 countries, providing community development and emergency management without regard to political or religious association, age, gender, race, or ethnicity. Additional information about ADRA can be found at www.adra.org. -END- Author: Ann Stickle, Associate Director for ADRA Cambodia Media Contact: Hearly Mayr ADRA International 12501 Old Columbia Pike Silver Spring, MD 20904 Phone: 301.680.6357 Mobile: 301.526.2625 E-mail: Media.Inquiries@adra.org

Read more!

New Year's blast in Cambodia kills 1, injures 25

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — An attacker hurled a hand grenade into a crowd of people dancing at a Buddhist temple to celebrate Cambodia's traditional New Year, killing one villager and wounding 25 others, police said Thursday.

The attack, which killed a 21-year-old man, occurred Wednesday evening about 30 miles north of Siem Reap in western Cambodia, said Ou Em, the provincial police chief.

Many villagers had gathered at the temple for dancing to mark the last day of the traditional New Year holiday, police said.

"First, I thought it was a firecracker that exploded until I saw people with blood on them," said Bou Nimol, a 17-year-old girl who witnessed the attack. "I just ran straight home after that."

Police said they were investigating the attack but had no immediate suspects.

Siem Reap, about 140 miles northwest of the capital, Phnom Penh, is the site of the famed Angkor temples.
Read more!

Man guilty of Cambodia coup plot

It is so sad and regret to see the Justice in the United State bear from its role to pro the Mafia government of Cambodia. In stead of helping Chhun as political exile; United State is trying to please those criminal Mafia officials.

A US court has convicted a Cambodian-born man of masterminding a failed coup attempt against the Cambodian government eight years ago.

Chhun Yasith, 52, was found guilty of four charges relating to the failed attack in November 2000.

Dozens of armed men attacked government buildings in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, in a bid to overthrow Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Several people were killed but the prime minister escaped unhurt.

The court in Los Angeles found Chhun guilty of three charges of conspiracy and one of planning a military expedition against a US ally.

"The planning and fundraising happened right here in the United States," prosecutor Lamar Baker told the court earlier this month.

"It was like the labels say, 'Made in the USA'."

But a lawyer for Chhun argued that his client's only goal had been "to bring democracy to his homeland".

"It was misguided and naive in its execution but it was not misguided and naive in its intent," lawyer Richard Callahan said.

Armed attack

Chhun left Cambodia in the early 1980s when the country was in disarray following the Vietnamese invasion that swept the Khmer Rouge regime from power.

He became a US citizen and worked as an accountant in Long Beach, California.

But in the late 1990s, prosecutors said, he founded a group called the Cambodian Freedom Fighters.

The group's aim was to unseat the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander who had defected to Vietnam in the late 1970s.

Prosecutors said that the group - controlled by Chhun from a base in Thailand - carried out a series of smaller attacks in the lead-up to the coup attempt.

Then on 24 November 2000, dozens of rebels armed with rockets and grenades attacked government buildings in Phnom Penh.

Several people were killed and more injured.

In the wake of the attack, dozens of people were arrested and jailed. Chhun was tried and convicted in absentia by a Phnom Penh court.

He will be sentenced in Los Angeles on 8 September, where prosecutors say he could face life imprisonment.

Read more!

Cambodia’s Urban Renewal Turns Ugly

The government is using the fiction of slum clearance to kick the poor off valuable property

Just a stone’s throw away from Cambodia’s National Assembly in Phnom Penh, a fading billboard trumpets an urban renewal campaign promising to transform 100 poor communities into thriving neighborhoods within a year. Included is the decimated slum that lies behind parliament – Dey Krahorm, or Red Earth village.

The billboard, erected a few months before national elections four years ago, shows Prime Minister Hun Sen leading a band of impassioned officials as they stride toward this much publicized goal.

They never reached it. After the election, urban renewal turned into poverty expulsion. Red Earth now resembles a moonscape of rubble, teetering shacks and evacuated spaces. Fewer than 100 of the nearly 1,000 families who lived there when the billboard was erected remain. The rest have been trucked off to one of the many relocation sites 20 to 30 kilometers outside the city, most of which lack electricity, clean water, toilets, schools, clinics and, importantly, access to jobs.

Excluding Burma, “Cambodia has the most abusive record of forced evictions in the region,” said David Pred, the country director of Bridges Across Borders, an international non-governmental organization formed to combat the root causes of violence.

In an interesting twist, the Cambodian Red Cross, which has been appealing for donations to resettle squatters, is headed by the prime minister’s wife, Bun Rany Hun Sen. Besides widespread allegations of corruption and misuse of funds, the Cambodia Red Cross’s appeal for funds to resettle people evicted as a result of land grabs by people closely tied to the prime minister is, to use the phrase of one diplomat, “more than a little off-putting.”

An official at the International Red Cross agreed: “There’s something not quite kosher about this,” he said.

Although evictions have been a companion to Asia’s “asymmetrical growth”, as Pred calls it, over the past 25 years, the situation in Cambodia is exacerbated by the lack of legal protection for those facing eviction. “At least in a country like the Philippines, affected people can go to court and a have some chance at stopping [evictions] or getting fair compensation. That is not possible in Cambodia today,” Pred said.

Dey Krahorm resident Lee Luleng was blunter: “If I call the police [for help] they will arrest me.” Lee Luleng, 61, is among those who have declined the offer of either relocation outside the city or compensation equivalent to less than 10 percent of the land’s market value of more than US$3,000 per square meter from 7NG, the shadowy company that claims ownership of the land. (7NG describes itself as a publicly listed company in a country that does not have a stock exchange. In a telephone interview, 7NG chairman Srey Sothea said the company is not listed on a foreign bourse and that all its funds are sourced in Cambodia. He declined, however, to identify the exact source of the company’s funds or name its board of directors. He did say, however, that 7NG is “seeking foreign investment.”)

Declining a bad deal from 7NG can come at a heavy price. At least 13 residents of Dev Krathorn, including six community representatives, have been charged with criminal offenses, according to the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights, which has documented a three-year campaign of what it calls “harassment, intimidation and provocation” against the community by private security officers and municipal police.

“They shout, ‘Get out, dogs!’ We shout back, ‘You’re worse than Pol Pot,’” is how Lee Luleng described the frequent standoffs with police and security officers. Along with insults and obscenities, police sometimes toss bags of urine at them, residents say. Police erected a wall along one end of the community to block access to street-side shops (forcing owners to sell or relocate) and tried unsuccessfully to block access to the market that is the community’s main source of income.

Srey Sothea, the 7NG head, said no employees of his company were involved in altercations with residents of Dey Krathorm. “We’re a construction company, not a security firm,” he said. He also denied allegations that 7NG is paying police officers to drive the residents from their homes.

“When Cambodians hear the phrase ‘development plan’, they know it means evictions,” explained Choun Chamrong, a land-rights program officer at the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Organization. “Usually they give up quickly because they know they are up against companies or individuals connected to the government,” she explained. In 2006, Adhoc recorded 16 cases of entire communities being forcibly evicted. Last year, the figure rose to 26.

Brittis Edman, a researcher with Amnesty International, pointed to another disquieting trend. “What we are seeing over the last year is that the courts are increasingly being used as tools to silence housing rights activists,” she said before the February release of AI’s report “Rights Razed: Forced Evictions in Cambodia.” The report warned that “at least 150,000” Cambodians are at risk of forced evictions.

The government’s response was unintentionally amusing. It insisted there were no forced evictions in Cambodia and accused Amnesty International of trying to grab headlines. Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak went further. He told reporters that if the government did not respect human rights, it would have expelled Amnesty’s representatives from Cambodia.

What he failed to mention, however, was that police tried to stop Edman from meeting a group of residents facing eviction near Phnom Penh’s Boeung Kak Lake on February 10. “They told us we didn’t have a permit to hold the meeting, but we explained we were just having a discussion,” Edman said. After a brief face-off, police allowed the discussion to proceed, but they photographed every resident, journalist and activist present, and tape-recorded the meeting.

Villagers say they are crammed together now in a ditch with no access to clean water and no source of income. The impact of forced evictions on public health has yet to be measured – at either the local, provincial or national levels – but NGOs working with communities that have been evicted are scrambling to find funds to expand their medical outreach programs. Illnesses include malnutrition, weakened immune systems, bronchitis and other lung infections, skin rashes, ear and eye infections, diarrhea, fever, intestinal worms, fungal infections, and post-traumatic stress.

Andong, a resettlement site where the evicted have been moved to about 20 kilometers from Phnom Penh, is a public-health disaster. The lack of sanitation, clean water and access to health care leaves the 1,500 families crammed into what has been called a “fetid swamp” highly vulnerable to any outbreak of infectious disease, health workers warn.

Five children died of dengue fever there in March last year alone, resident Kat Vijay recalls. Like most of residents of the site, Kat was evicted from Sambok Chap, a settlement along the banks of the Bassac River in Phnom Penh in June 2006.

Resident Sum Khum says living in Andong is worse than the refugee camp in which she spent 13 years on the Thai border. “Then, we had food and water. We had medicine and schools. Aid workers used to visit us,” said the 74-year-old widow. “Now, we have nothing. Sometimes the Christians come with rice and noodles, but they don’t bring enough.”

After almost two years, the evictees are still waiting for running water, electricity, a sewage system, a clinic, a school, and toilets that work. The 12 that were installed last year, along with 12 bathing stalls, can’t be used because they are not connected to running water.

When he lived in Phnom Penh, Kat Vijay worked in construction, mainly restoring the city’s French colonial mansions, for US$2.50 a day. Since then he has had no work except for a three-month stint building a row of 41 rooms at Andong for the Cambodian Red Cross, he says.

Brittis Edman of Amnesty International noted a new development in forced evictions that many diplomats may find even more off-putting. Some residents at resettlement sites are being threatened with eviction again, possibly to make more room for newcomers, she said.

Read more!

Charity dinner to provide cows for Cambodia's poor

An inventive scheme aiming to help impoverished families in rural Cambodia by providing short-term loans of cows is the motive behind a gala charity dinner and auction to be held in Osaka next month.

Hope International Development Agency, a nonprofit organization that helps people overcome poverty by providing human and financial resources, will host the May 10 event at The Ritz-Carlton, Osaka, in the city's Kita Ward.

Funds raised at the event will go toward the Cow Bank project, a part of Hope's microcredit program, which promotes self-help among rural families and sustainable development in Cambodia.

The Cow Bank operates literally as its name implies: Families borrow a cow from Hope and use it to fertilize and plough their fields. Ideally, the cow will give birth during the loan period, and when the calf becomes self-sufficient a few months later, the borrowed cow is "paid back" to Hope.

The family keeps the calf, while the returned cow is then loaned to another poor family. This cycle can be repeated several times, according to Hope.

The May 10 event, to begin at 7 p.m., is the second such event the organization has staged in the Kansai region.

The evening will feature a five-course dinner; a silent auction of items from developing countries, local artists and companies; live entertainment by Japanese musicians; a short video presentation on Hope's activities in Cambodia; and the opportunity to contribute to helping people in the nation.

The organization, based in Naka Ward, Nagoya, and headquartered in Canada, invites organizations, groups and individuals to attend the event. A table for 10 costs 220,000 yen, while individual tickets are 30,000 yen each.

Tickets for the gala event must be reserved by April 21.

The Osaka event, to be hosted in partnership with The Ritz-Carlton, Osaka, is sponsored by Lexus and AstraZeneca K.K.

A similar event hosted by Hope in Nagoya on Feb. 29 saw more than 450 people attend, along with media organizations including NHK and local TV and radio stations.

The Tokyo event is scheduled for May 9 at the Embassy of Canada.

For more information, visit www.hope.or.jp or call (052) 204-0530.

Read more!

U.N. chief calls for justice in Cambodia

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- On the tenth anniversary of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot's death, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed Tuesday for the senior leaders of the regime to be brought to justice.

"I would like to remind the international community of the urgent importance of bringing to closure one of history's darkest chapters," Ban said in a statement.

The secretary-general said he hoped that the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia "will soon deliver long-overdue justice for the people of Cambodia."

"The United Nations and the Royal Government of Cambodia remain actively engaged in efforts to hold the Khmer Rouge senior leaders and those most responsible accountable for their horrific crimes," he said.

Five former Khmer Rouge leaders have been detained and will face the ECCC, most of them on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

They are: Kaing Guek Eav, the alleged chief torturer of the regime; former Khmer Rouge Prime Minister Khieu Samphan; Ieng Sary, the regime's former foreign minister, and his wife, Ieng Thirith; and Nuon Chea, the top surviving regime leader.

The ECCC, which was established by both the United Nations and Cambodia, became operational in 2006, but the first formal hearings took place in fall of last year.

More than 2 million people died during the party's efforts to transform Cambodia into an agrarian utopia before troops from neighboring Vietnam overthrew the regime. Remnants of the Khmer Rouge continued to battle Cambodia's government into the 1990s before they fragmented in the middle of the decade.

Pol Pot, known as "Brother Number One" during the group's nearly four years in power, died in a jungle hideout in 1998. Ta Mok, the former Khmer Rouge military chief known as "The Butcher," died in a Cambodian military hospital in 2006 while awaiting trial for crimes against humanity.

The tribunal, which includes three Cambodian and two international jurists, is expected to continue until at least 2010. Read more!

More U.S. soldiers' remains in Vietnam repatriated

HANOI, April 14 (Xinhua) -- The Vietnam Office for Seeking Mission Persons transferred Monday custody of possible remains believed to be those of Americans who died during the conflict in Southeast Asia and recovered from excavation sites in Vietnam's central region.

At the repatriation ceremony at the Da Nang International Airport in central Da Nang city on Monday, U.S. ambassador to Vietnam Michael Michalak and U.S. Army lieutenant colonel James Saenz, representing the U.S. government, received custody of the remains, according to a press release by the American Embassy in Vietnam. The ceremony marks the 106th post-war repatriation of remains from Vietnam.

To date, 883 Americans have been identified since 1975 -- 627 from Vietnam, 224 from Laos, 29 from Cambodia, and three from China. There are 1,763 Americans still unaccounted for from the war in Southeast Asia, including 1,353 in Vietnam, said the release. 　 Read more!

During Pol Pot's reign of terror 1.7m died. Now locals pray at his grave

By Ker Munthit in Anlong Veng, Cambodia

TEN years after the death of the brutal Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, his grave has become a symbol of spiritual comfort to some in the village where he died.
Villagers pray at the site, asking for blessings of luck, happiness and even protection from malaria – despite the mayhem he wrought upon their country.

"I know it is odd, but I just do as many people here do, asking for happiness from his spirit," said Orn Pheap, 37, who lost a grandfather and two uncles during the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror from 1975 to 1979.

Her house in Anlong Veng, 190 miles north of the capital, Phnom Penh, sits 100 yards from the grave, and she said: "I don't know how long I can stay angry with him, since he is already dead."

For most, Pol Pot, who died ten years ago today from apparent heart failure, is remembered as a murderous tyrant with fanatical communist beliefs. Under his leadership, the Khmer Rouge turned the country into a vast slave labour camp, causing the deaths of some 1.7 million people from starvation, forced labour and execution.

Last week, his grave – a pile of dirt covered by a knee-high corrugated zinc roof – was cluttered with clay jars filled with half-burned incense sticks, a sign of prayer and worship.

Cambodians believe in the influence of spirits and superstitious forces on their daily lives and fortunes, which may be why some worship at the grave.

Anlong Veng, once a jungle war zone, is now a sprawling market town, bustling with the kind of capitalist activities Pol Pot and his comrades sought to stamp out. Ramshackle shops are filled with clothing, homewares, pirated DVDs and other goods from nearby Thailand.

Pol Pot's grave has been designated a tourist attraction, and it is one of the few remnants of Khmer Rouge history, which the government is trying to preserve.

Some Cambodians have travelled to Anlong Veng to spit on the grave and curse him in anger, said Sat Narin, 37, who owns a nearby clothing shop. "Given his bad reputation, he should not be venerated," he said. "But somehow he is popular with some people."

Among the worshippers who seek blessings from Pol Pot's ghost are ethnic Vietnamese who live in the area – a sharp irony given the massacres of ethnic Vietnamese during his rule.

One such woman recalled a nightmare in which she saw a black-clad man sitting on a tree near her hut. When she described the vision to her Cambodian neighbours, they advised her to take offerings to Pol Pot's grave to ask his spirit for protection. "I have prayed at his grave ever since," she said. "I just want to show some respect to the spiritual master of the land."

FIVE FACE WAR CRIMES TRIAL

IF POL Pot were still alive, he would be facing war crimes charges along with five of his former comrades detained by Cambodia's UN-backed genocide tribunal.

Their long-delayed trials are expected to start later this year.

The five are: the alleged chief torturer of the Khmer Rouge, Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch; Khmer Rouge prime minister Khieu Samphan; Ieng Sary, the regime's former foreign minister, and his wife, Ieng Thirith, who was also a Khmer Rouge member and the top surviving Khmer Rouge leader, Nuon Chea.

Nhem En, who was forced to work as the photographer at the Khmer Rouge's Tuol Sleng torture centre in Phnom Penh, says he is setting up his own museum in Anlong Veng about the communist group – not to glorify them, but for educational purposes.

He, too, used to light incense and pray at Pol Pot's grave, he said, but "only for him not to butcher people again in his next life". Read more!

PETRA NEMCOVA - NEMCOVA HAUNTED BY CAMBODIA CHARITY TRIP

Supermodel-turned-humanitarian PETRA NEMCOVA was horrified after witnessing first-hand the brutality of human trafficking during a recent visit to Cambodia.

The Czech Republic-born model was so jarred by the experience she has teamed up with Southeast Asian-based charity the Somaly Mam Foundation in an effort to raise awareness for the devastating crimes.

She says, "It makes me so angry. Girls and boys get sold as young as four-years-old and are put in animal cages. Some of them never see the light anymore. We met this girl who was 13 and a pimp made her lose her right eye. The words 'pimp' and 'child' should never be in the same sentence."

Nemcova was so moved by the Foundation, which seeks to rescue women and girls from the horrors of a life in brothels or on the streets, she wore a dress hand-sewn by women rescued by the group to a recent charity gala.

The model suffered her own hardship during a 2004 vacation to Thailand, surviving multiple broken bones and internal injuries when a tsunami hit land, killing her then-boyfriend, photographer Simon Atlee, and leaving her stranded for hours in a palm tree.

Read more!

100 tourists evacuated after Cambodian hotel fire: police

PHNOM PENH - About 100 tourists were evacuated early Saturday from one of Cambodia's biggest hotels and casinos, after a fire broke out at a construction site inside the complex in Phnom Penh, police said.

Wood being used for remodelling the NagaCorp hotel caught fire, sparking a blaze in a district of the city crowded with government offices, including the parliament and foreign ministry, military police officer Klook Chandara said.

About 50 firefighters and volunteers worked for three hours to douse the blaze, he added.

The damage was contained to one part of the hotel, and no injuries were reported, although the hotel evacuated all its guests.

"I had just woken up, and someone called me to get out of the room. I was so shocked," said Malaysian tourist Choy Meng Choong, as he hauled his belongings out of the hotel.

The NagaCorp hotel and casino attracts hundreds of tourists every day, mainly from Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea.

"As soon as we knew that something was burning at the back, we evacuated the all tourists to a safe place outside the hotel," said a hotel marketing manager, who asked not to be named.

"Everyone is safe. No one was injured," he told AFP, as a column of thick smoke billowed into the sky.

The blaze was the second major fire in two days in Cambodia's capital, after more than 200 wooden shacks in a slum area were destroyed early Friday, leaving thousands homeless.

Read more!

Cambodia Protects Endangered Bird

By Jerry Harmer

STOUNG, Cambodia (AP) — Conservationists in Cambodia think they may be turning the corner in their fight to save one of the world's rarest birds.

The Bengal Florican, known in Cambodia as "the whispering bird," is remarkable for a male mating display that amounts to a dance competition to attract a mate.

Since 2005, a rush to turn grasslands into large-scale rice farms has gobbled up one-third of the Bengal Florican's habitat in Cambodia, threatening the critically endangered bird with extinction.
Now, a land protection plan devised by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, along with British-based BirdLife International and Cambodian authorities, appears to be slowing this controversial real estate grab.

Most of the world's Bengal Floricans, believed to number less than 1,000, live in scattered pockets on the fringes of Cambodia's Great Lake. The rest are in India, Nepal and Vietnam.

The Cambodian program to protect Florican habitat bans development in five zones totaling 135 square miles. Villages and farms within the zones can remain, preserving traditional ways of life. Police patrol by motorbike during the dry season and by boat when floods come.

Since the program was adopted, three planned developments have been canceled and another put on hold, says Tom Evans, a Wildlife Conservation Society technical adviser in Cambodia.

"Some prospective developers have been deterred at an earlier stage when they learned that the areas had a special designation," he added.

More such zones, dubbed Integrated Farming and Biodiversity Areas, are planned.

In mid-March, the height of the dry season, the grasslands near Great Lake are at their bleakest. They stretch to the horizon, brown and flat under the blazing sun, with barely a tree to break the monotony. Smoke curls into the air where farmers burn off scrub to rejuvenate pasture for their cattle. Ox carts trundle down deeply rutted tracks. An occasional motor vehicle kicks up clouds of dust.

But for the patient and the sharp-eyed, this landscape offers a sight to behold: the courtship display of the male Bengal Florican.

The bird, a black-and-white bustard that looks like a small ostrich, struts into a clearing, stretches its long neck and ruffles up its feathers. Then, it flits into the air before fluttering back to the ground in an undulating pattern, like a parachutist caught in a crosswind.

As it descends, it emits a deep humming sound that has earned it its Cambodian name, "the whispering bird." The displays are usually carried out within sight of other males, in what amounts to an open dance competition to attract a mate.

"They're really unique," says Lotty Packman, a 24-year-old researcher from the University of East Anglia in England. "They're very striking and very charismatic."

Packman was spending long days in the heat, netting Floricans and attaching tracking devices to learn more about them, especially the elusive female of which very little is known.

"You can't conserve it if you don't know its natural history," Packman said after tagging and releasing a male with a solar-powered transmitter that will send back data every two days. "It's a race against time."

The species was rediscovered in Cambodia in 1999. Until then, the country's decades-long civil war had made detailed exploration of the countryside too dangerous.

But peace has proved to be a far greater threat.

Businessmen have snapped up thousands of acres of land in often murky deals and built more than 100 strip dams, which turn the grassland into emerald-green rice paddies that can produce rice during the dry season.

Conservationists have worked hard to win the villagers' support, but despite the restrictions on development, a new plantation has been laid out in one zone and preparations have been made for another. Signs marking the protected areas have been knocked down — it's not clear by whom.
Read more!

Cambodia Suspends Foreign Marriages

Cambodia has temporarily banned marriages between foreigners and Cambodians because of concerns over the rising number of brokered unions involving poor, uneducated women. The move follows the publication of a report highlighting the abuse of many Cambodian brides who went to South Korea following hastily arranged marriages. Rory Byrne reports from Phnom Penh.

The ban will at least briefly halt the increasing number of marriages of poor Cambodian women to foreign men, mostly from Taiwan and South Korea.

Most such marriages are hastily arranged by brokers who charge clients up to $20,000 for each bride. Of this, only $500 to $1,000 typically goes to the Cambodian woman's family - the brokers pocket the rest.

A recent report by the International Organization for Migration says more than 1700 South Korean marriage visas were issued to Cambodian women in 2007, up from just 72 in 2004.

The IOM says the grooms were mostly factory workers and farmers who had trouble finding wives in South Korea because of their low job status.

While the report found no evidence of systematic abuse of Cambodian women who married South Koreans, it says that many do suffer violence.

Srey Roth is the director of the Cambodia Women's Crisis Center.

"Some they cannot stay with the husband because the husband (is) so violent," Roth said. "And then the husband forces them to earn money for support their family. And they cannot get the nationality (citizenship), so it means that they stay under the husband or mother-in-law's control."

Experts say that many marriage brokers from Taiwan and South Korea have moved to Cambodia since Vietnam banned them two years ago.

Now the Cambodian government appears to be cracking down. Three South Korean marriage agencies have been closed recently, accused of using arranged marriages as a front for people trafficking.

The blanket ban on foreigners marrying Cambodians is seen as the next step in the process, designed to give the authorities here more time to properly investigate brokered marriages.

Srey Roth opposes a blanket ban on mixed-marriages, but says that the government should run background checks on all foreigners who wish to marry Cambodian women.

"I want our government (to) have one department to investigate the guy before agree(ing) the foreigner (can) marry to our Cambodian (women)," Roth said. "They should know about the background and living situation and then tell our girl and then our girl can make the decision if they want to marry or not."

Although the IOM report focuses on marriages between Cambodians and South Koreans, it emphasizes that the potential for problems exists globally. It says all brokered unions needed to be better regulated.

Cambodian officials say the ban on foreigners marrying Cambodians will be lifted after the government develops a legal framework to address these marriages.
Read more!

Nationalism and the West; Dangerous America?; Kissinger and Cambodia; Foreign policy credentials?

Nationalism and the West

In his op-ed column "Beware an angry China" (Views, April 9), Philip Bowring rightly points out that China-bashing may increase nationalism in China. But Bowring misses the point that the anxiety in the West over losing its superior position in global affairs has been fomenting nationalism in North America and Europe, which fuels a wave of China bashing.

The Olympic crisis is not about China: It is an expression of the West's sense of superiority. There is much anxiety in the West over losing this superior position, and this is exacerbated by economic insecurity in a globalized world.

It's a joke for the West to think it can use the Olympics to leverage China. Nothing can stop China. Even without the Olympics, people would still travel to China for business or pleasure.

Most Chinese are far less nationalist than many people in the West.

Shuaihua Cheng, Geneva

Dangerous America?

It is quite incredible to read a letter to the editor suggesting that NATO be disbanded and asserting that a majority of the people in Europe and Italy consider America to be the greatest danger to world peace (April 10).

If it were not for the U.S. Army in World War II, Italy might still be under a dictatorship fostered by Mussolini and Germany would be the fascist superpower of Europe.

I am a senior citizen, so I vividly remember that thousands of American soldiers, including several friends of mine, died on an Italian beach to free Italians from the yoke of Mussolini. To point to the United States as a danger to peace in the world is a grave insult. America saved Europe, and the American troops stationed in Germany and elsewhere in Europe are today a bulwark against any possible ideas Russia might have to use Russian oil as a weapon to control the future of NATO.

How quickly we forget.

Bernard Ilson, New York

Kissinger and Cambodia

I reside in a country that still lives with the disaster sown by Henry Kissinger ("The debate we need to have," Views, April 8) and the Nixon administration. His orders to the U.S. military a generation ago were to send anything that flies against anything that moves.

Those who witnessed the destruction in Cambodia say that it is impossible to describe. But it did provoke thousands of peasants to join a hitherto marginal force known as the Khmer Rouge. We are familiar with the result.

Even today, Cambodia remains more influenced by Communist Vietnam than by the West - hardly a strategic victory for the erstwhile secretary of state.

John Macgregor, Phnom Penh

Foreign policy credentials?

Regarding the article "Obama tries to bolster his credentials on foreign policy" (April 11): It is worrying, if not pathetic, that Senator Barack Obama and his advisers cite "his ties to relatives in poor villages in Kenya" and " a trip to Pakistan while he was a college student" as relevant foreign policy experience. That background would hardly qualify him for a job on a microfinance project in a developing country.

As the credentials of the two other U.S. presidential candidates are also rather thin, Obama could make a difference if he were supported by heavyweights in foreign policy and diplomacy among whom he might select his vice president.

Read more!

Crowds hit the road to mark Cambodia’s New Year holiday

Thousands of people crammed onto buses and cars, some clinging to roofs and spilling out of doors, as they headed out of Phnom Penh yesterday for the Buddhist New Year holiday.

The three-day holiday — also celebrated in Thailand, Myanmar and Laos — gives thousands of Cambodia’s transient workers a rare chance to spend time with family, leaving the normally busy capital unusually empty.

“This is the only chance I have to visit my parents, and I am so excited,” said 22-year-old Sun Srey Pov, who left her hometown in the east to work in a Phnom Penh garment factory.

“It is a pleasurable time, although it is hard to travel,” she said while trying to elbow some room in a 12-seat minibus, which was packed with 20 people inside and five hanging off the roof.

In Phnom Penh, elderly women dressed in traditional costume carried food to give to monks at pagodas. The younger generation pursued different traditions — spraying each other with talcum powder, playing street games and dancing to loud music.

But the practice of throwing water and talcum powder on passing motorists has been discouraged by the government.

A truck with a megaphone patrolled the streets, warning that the practice could cause traffic accidents.
Read more!

Bayon TV, The Latest Edition to Join SuncasTV

Bayon TV, Cambodia's largest television, radio and broadcasting channel, will be featured on SuncasTV.

Chicago, IL (PRWEB) April 11, 2008 -- Bayon TV, Cambodia's largest television, radio and broadcasting channel, will be featured on SuncasTV.

Bayon TV: Cambodian TV with a Smile! was founded in 1998 in the Kingdom of Cambodia. The channel is broadcast directly from Phnom Penh and has 4 sub-stations in Kampong Cham, Seim Reab, Shihanouk Ville and Stung Treng. This popular channel broadcasts current events, entertainment news, movies and also features the arts. It is owned by the Prime Minister of Cambodia, Hun Sen, who is also the leader of the Cambodian People's Party.

SuncasTV is a subsidiary of the Suncast Network, Inc., located in Arlington Heights, IL. SuncasTV offers Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) to the North American television viewing public, with a specialty towards providing programming from Asian channels and networks.
SuncasTV is the first IPTV to have full contractual rights to broadcast Bayon TV, which is going to be a channel available to viewers 24/7.

Amongst the channels featured on SuncasTV are English, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Malaysian, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Filipino, Thai and Japanese. Apart from that, there are also channels covering sports, entertainment and the arts, food and real estate.

This new venture between Bayon TV and SuncasTV will serve as a platform to nurture future relations and help strengthen ties between the Cambodians and the Asian American public.

SuncasTV is happy to present you Bayon TV and invites you all to watch this new channel at http://www.suncastv.com/cambodia/index.html; it will be available for viewing on April 1, 2008. SuncasTV provides our Khmer viewers, 24-hour coverage directly from Cambodia with news, interviews, sports, political programs, dramas, documentaries, variety shows and movies. The vision of SuncasTV Cambodia is to bring all the Khmer communities from all over the United States together by allowing all the organizations to post their local news and event video to our Khmer Community Channel.

ABOUT SuncasTV
SuncasTV is ahead of the curve in introducing the IPTV concept to American audiences. SuncasTV is an IPTV service provider which supports IPTV viewers in the U.S. and globally by offering a wide range of information and entertainment content from around the world. (www.suncastv.com). It has a specialty towards providing programming from Asian channels and networks. It targets IPTV viewers in the U.S. with initial entry in the Asian market by offering content from a variety of Asian countries. Currently the channel carries content from China, Korea, Philippines, India, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Japan, and there is an English channel.

Traditional TV viewing required broadcast reception, satellite dish, or cable. Without installing any cables or satellite dishes, one can watch your favorite broadcasts delivered to your TV set whenever you want, regardless of where in the world you are. This is the future trend for TV viewing/delivery. IPTV will soon be the standard platform for delivery for video on demand (VOD), pay per view (PPV) and subscription content from providers.

Read more!

Thousands homeless after Cambodian slum fire: police

PHNOM PENH - Thousands were made homeless early Friday after a slum fire in Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh destroyed more than 200 homes, police said.

The blaze broke out in an area crowded with poorly-built wooden shacks, police said, adding that the cause of the fire was still under investigation.

"Hundreds of houses were completely destroyed," said Pong Savrith, military police deputy commander.

"They were all small wooden houses that were built in a disorderly manner," he told AFP as a column of thick smoke continued to billow into the sky.

Neighbourhood residents swarmed into nearby streets, struggling to rescue their belongings, while others huddled on the curbside, crying as their homes burned.

About 200 firefighters and volunteers worked for five hours to douse the blaze, said fire chief Sok Vannar.

"This is the biggest fire this year," he said, adding that no one had been hurt.

Although large neighbourhood fires are increasingly rare in Phnom Penh, a series of suspicious blazes several years ago destroyed a number of slum areas, forcing tens of thousands to flee.


Read more!

Cambodia, Indonesia's Rajawali to set up airline

JAKARTA, April 10 (Reuters) - The Cambodian government and Indonesia's Rajawali Corporation agreed on Thursday to set up a new national flag airline to serve Cambodia's growing tourism industry, the company said in a statement.

The joint-venture company's capital is estimated to reach $50 million and the Cambodian government will own 51 percent while Rajawali Group will own the rest.

"With a national flag carrier, we envisage our economy and tourism industry will grow rapidly," Cambodia's Deputy Prime Minister, Sok An, said in the statement released by Rajawali.

Cambodia launched its own national flag carrier, Royal Air Cambodge (RAC), in the mid-1990s but it went bankrupt, resulting in heavy losses for the government.

The new carrier, however, might have a better chance due to the rising number of tourists to Cambodia. In 2007, the country attracted more than 2 million tourists and more than 60 percent of them used air travel.

The number of tourist arrivals in 2007 rose almost 19 percent from the previous year and air travel increased more than 25 percent, according to the tourism minister on the official Web site www.mot.gov.kh.

Rajawali was founded by Indonesian entrepreneur Peter Sondakh, ranked by Globe Asia magazine as 19th wealthiest Indonesian with a net worth of $510 million. The group controls diversified businesses from a cement firm to department stores and a taxi company.

It holds an around 25 percent stake in Semen Gresik SMGR.JK, Indonesia's largest cement maker. Rajawali also founded the country's third-largest mobile phone firm before selling its stake to Telekom Malaysia (TLMM.KL: Quote, Profile, Research) and Emirates Telecommunications ETEL.AD.

(Additional reporting by Tyagita Silka) (Reporting by Nury Sybli, writing by Tyagita Silka, editing by Sugita Katyal)

Read more!

The relevance of Cambodia

There are some names in the obituary columns that say more than the voices of the living.

Such is the name of Dith Pran, who died last Sunday at 65. He was the Cambodian photographer who somehow survived the collection of killing fields that his country became after the Americans abandoned it. And who somehow made his way to the United States to tell the world about it.

Hundreds of thousands of his countrymen would lose their lives after the Khmer Rouge swept into Phnom Penh and began rounding up just about anybody who could read and write. Literacy is dangerous. It gives people ideas, and the only ideas allowed in the new Cambodia were the Party's.

The toll of the Khmer Rouge's brief reign of terror in Cambodia (1975-78) is uncertain –– a million, two? Maybe a third of the country's pre-Communist population. The numbers can only be estimated, but the pictures of pyramids of skulls are well known. They've become emblematic of that bloody time.

It wasn't supposed to happen that way, not according to the sophisticates who were advocating an American withdrawal from Indochina in the 1970s. They blithely dismissed all the warnings that a bloodbath would follow once the United States abandoned its allies in Southeast Asia:

"Indochina Without Americans/For Most, A Better Life," –– headline in The New York Times, April 13, 1975.

The Times' correspondent in Phnom Penh, Sydney Schanberg, may have been the most blithe of all about Cambodia's better future once the Americans left. In a report four days before Phnom Penh fell, he wrote that for "ordinary people of Indochina ... it is difficult to imagine how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone."

Schanberg's limited imagination would soon enough be demonstrated by the unspeakable realities to follow. He was still sending optimistic dispatches even as the holocaust was proceeding. He was so monstrously wrong about what would happen in Cambodia after the Communist victory there that he won a Pulitzer Prize for it. The name of his Cambodian photographer, translator, guide and friend? Dith Pran.

The fast-talking Cambodian managed to save Schanberg and other Western journalists from the Khmer Rouge, but was unable to make it out of the country with them. In the swirling chaos of the Communist takeover, all was terror and confusion. The Khmer Rouge were emptying schools and hospitals and whole cities in their hunt for class enemies. (Anybody who wore glasses –– the surest sign of a bourgeois intellectual –– was in danger.)

Dith Pran managed to survive the ceaseless labor, the brutal beatings and the starvation diet (a tablespoon of rice a day), and eventually snuck across the Thai border. Reunited with Schanberg, he would go on to become a photographer for the Times.

Now, once again, the sophisticates are urging Americans to abandon an ally, this time beleaguered Iraq. The leading Democratic presidential candidates speak glibly of pulling out of that country as if there would be no ill effects. As in Cambodia?

This week the American commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, is testifying once again before Congress, and once again he'll be met by a chorus of cynicism, no matter how much real progress his strategy, aka The Surge, has made. Last time he testified, Hillary Clinton told the general it would take "a willing suspension of disbelief" to credit what he said. The critics of the war have their script and are sticking to it. Just as Sydney Schanberg knew all would be better once the Americans had left Cambodia.

What would an American withdrawal now mean for the Iraqis? It is now too late to ask Dith Pran. But his life and trials speak eloquently enough.


Read more!

Vietnam donates rice seeds to Cambodia

VietNamNet Bridge – The Committee for Southwestern region of Vietnam has donated 300 tonnes of rice seeds to Cambodia to help local farmers with the crop cultivation.

The rice seeds were presented at a ceremony on April 9 during a visit to Cambodia by Vice Chairman of the Committee Son Song Son.

Deputy Head of the Cambodian Prime Minister’s Office Heng Bun Heng accepted the donation, saying it further strengthened the traditional friendship between the people of Cambodia and Vietnam .

Heng thanked the Government and people of Vietnam for their solid commitment to Cambodia during their past struggle against the Pol Pot genocidal regime as well as current national construction and development.

In addition to rice varieties, the committee will donate another 150,000 USD worth of goods, including 300 packages of instant noodles, five tonnes of glutamate and six tonnes of soap.

(Source: VNA)
Read more!

Foreign Ministry protests against Cambodia

The world will be laughing at Thailand's claims about Cambodia violation sovereignty of Thailand. Thailand have been stealing lots of temples and antiques from Cambodia. Preah Vihear temple and surrounding area is belong to Cambodia, any pieces of rock, the West entrance inside Thailand, any thing the whole area belong to the Temple should be belong to Cambodia.

The Foreign Ministry Thursday lodged an official protest with Cambodia over sovereignty violation in the overlapping area near Preah Vihear temple.

Virachai Plasai, Director General of Treaties and Legal Affairs summoned Cambodia's Ambassador Thailand Ung Sean to take an aide-memoire after Phnom Penh dispatched a number of armed forces the area in question over a month ago.

The protest was made as Cambodia has violated a memorandum of understanding signed by both sides in 2000 which barred two countries from making any changes in the area before the boundary demarcation, Virachai said.

The Nation
Read more!