One big happy family in Cambodia

By Bertil Lintner

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

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

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

Hun Sen's 25-year-old son, Hun Manith, is married to Hok Chendavy, the daughter of Hok Lundy, the National Police commissioner. Another of the premier's sons, Hun Many, 24, is married to Yim Chay Lin, the daughter of Yim Chay Li, secretary of state for rural development. One of Hun Sen's daughters, Hun Mali, 23, meanwhile, is married to Sok Puthyvuth, the son of Sok An, Hun Sen's right-hand man and minister of the Council of Ministers.

The friendship between Hun Sen and Sok An dates back to the early 1980s, when Hun Sen was foreign minister and Sok An director of the office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Now those personal ties run blood deep as in-laws. And that's just a sampling of the connections at the highest echelons. Heng Samrin, who was Cambodia's head of state from the Vietnamese invasion in January 1979 to the United Nations intervention in 1991, and now serves as president of the National Assembly and honorary CPP president, has a daughter named Heng Sam An, who is married to Pen Kosal, an adviser to Sar Kheng, deputy prime minister and minister of the interior - as well as brother-in-law of Senate and CPP president Chea Sim. Heng Samrin's adviser, Cham Nimol, is the daughter of Cham Prasidh, minister of commerce. Another of Cham Pradish's daughters, Cham Krasna, is engaged to Sok Sokann, another of minister Sok An's sons.
Sar Kheng's son, Sar Sokha, meanwhile, is married to Ke Sunsophy, daughter of Ke Kim Yan, commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. And Hun Sen's wife, Bun Ramy, currently serves as president of the Cambodian Red Cross, while its second vice president, Theng Ay Anny, aka Sok An Anny, is Sok An's wife.

Family traditionsThere has been no official reaction to the Phnom Penh Post's revealing study. Intermarriage among members of the ruling political and business elites is not uncommon in Asia. In neighboring Thailand, Field Marshal Phin Choonhavan's son, Chatichai Choonhavan, became prime minister of Thailand, while his daughter, Khun Ying Udomlak married Phao Sriyanond, director general of the Thai police.

Another high-ranking Thai army officer, Thanom Kittikachorn, was the brother-in-law of fellow military dictator Praphas Charusathien, while his son, Narong Kittikachorn, also became a military strongman, while his sister Songsuda married Suvit Yodmani, who has served with several Thai governments. Sino-Thai tycoons are known to have arranged their children's marriages to members of other top business families to progress their commercial interests. But in Cambodia's case, where many of the political elite were wiped out during Khmer Rouge-led purges between 1975 and 1979, the number of political marriages is extraordinary. And these new family ties between the children of ministers and top officials potentially set the stage for the CPP's grip on power to continue for generations.

Significantly, the CPP's family connection is emerging simultaneously with a waning of the royal family's influence over national politics. Ever since Hun Sen and his inner circle of friends and advisers ousted former prime minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh in a 1997 coup, the royalist Funcinpec party's political fortunes have waned. Ranariddh was forced into exile after the bloody putsch that killed many of his party members, but later returned to Cambodia to become president of the National Assembly after inconclusive general elections in 2003, when the CPP was unable to garner enough votes to form a one-party government and after much squabbling joined with Funcinpec in a wobbly coalition.

One of the sons of former king Norodom Sihanouk and half-brother of the present monarch, Sihamoni, Ranariddh resigned that post last March and subsequently left the country again. While he was away, he was dismissed as co-chairman of the Council for the Development of Cambodia as well as the National Olympic Committee. He later returned to Cambodia - and was ousted as president of Funcinpec, the main opposition party, amid an internal power struggle in October that many political analysts believe Hun Sen had a hand in. Not surprisingly, perhaps, several of Funcinpec's original leaders were also related.

Ranariddh's uncle and former king Norodom Sihanouk's younger half-brother, Norodom Sirivudh, served as foreign minister in a Funcinpec-led government in 1993. Ranariddh's half-brother, Norodom Chakrapong, meanwhile, helped found Funcinpec but later defected to the CPP. Their half-sister and Sihanouk's eldest child, Norodom Bopha Devi, has served as minister of information and culture, while her latest consort, Khek Vandy, was elected to the National Assembly on a Funcinpec list in 1998. But Funcinpec's family pride has waned considerably since it emerged as the biggest party in the UN-supervised elections in May 1993, when it captured 45% of the popular vote and outpaced the CPP, which came in a close second with 38%. Many political observers think Ranariddh's recent ouster from Funcinpec may represent his last political gasp. His former Funcinpec colleagues recently sued him on allegations that he embezzled US$3.6 million from the sale of the party's headquarters last August.

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court found the prince guilty and sentenced him - in absentia - to 18 years in prison. Ranariddh had recently set up a new party, aptly named the Norodom Ranariddh Party (NRP). Funcinpec, the NRP and the opposition Sam Rainsy Party will be among 10 different political parties standing against the CPP juggernaut in upcoming commune council elections, which are scheduled for April 1 and widely viewed as a bellwether indicator for next year's general elections. It may well be an April Fool's election, with the opposition fractured and vulnerable and the CPP allegedly pursuing a campaign of violence and intimidation against opposition candidates and their supporters in rural areas.

Khieu Kanharith, CPP minister of information, predicted on February 22 that his party would win about 97% or 98% of the positions in the commune councils, and 95% of the vote in the general elections next year. That may well be the case, as Cambodia is fast morphing into a one-party state dominated by the CPP.

The Phnom Penh Post in its February 9 edition quoted a foreign diplomat as saying: "The CPP controls the government, the National Assembly, the Senate, 99% of the village chiefs, the provincial governments. Their influence goes through the judiciary, through the police ... Practically everything is controlled by one party." That assessment would appear to jibe with 55-year-old Hun Sen's January 9 pronouncement that he does not intend to stand down from the premiership until he is at least 90 years old. By then, a third generation of CPP family-tied politicians and officials, if everything goes according to the apparent plan, will just be coming of political age. Read more!

New Digs for ‘Queen of the Fish’

BATTAMBANG II, a grocery near Fordham University in the Bronx, could easily be considered a video and magazine store that also sells groceries. A wall is dedicated to contemporary Cambodian movies and karaoke videos, and the shelves are laden with Cambodian fashion magazines and Khmer-language newspapers. The small back room bulges with thousands of VHS tapes of serialized Cambodian soap operas and folk tales.

The store, which is owned by a Cambodian named Tek Vandy and is named for the city that is the birthplace of many of the 2,000 Cambodians living in Fordham and University Heights, has now raised its profile even further as a clearinghouse for Cambodian popular culture. An actual Cambodian movie star is in residence, one who despite her stardom can be found bundling vegetables and making change.

Mr. Vandy, a sharp dresser who favors Polo shirts and sports a watch bearing the image of the Cambodian prime minister, was married last April to Ratana Veth, a popular Cambodian actress and karaoke singer whom he met during a trip home in 2005. In September, the 43-year-old Mr. Vandy brought his 24-year-old bride to New York, and since then the two have spent weekends barnstorming the country’s other Cambodian neighborhoods, where Ms. Veth sings on the Khmer heritage festival circuit.

These days, all the free wall space in Mr. Vandy’s store is devoted to posters advertising events that give top billing to a heavily made-up Ms. Veth, dressed in the brightly colored silk gowns that constitute traditional Khmer formalwear. “Dance Party With Cambodian Movie Star,” proclaims one poster promoting a New Year’s Eve affair in Long Beach, Calif.; others describe similar gatherings in Atlanta, Dallas, Seattle, Philadelphia and Lowell, Mass.

Cambodian actresses and karaoke singers — the country’s equivalent of pop stars — have immigrated to those cities, Mr. Vandy said, but Ms. Veth is the first to settle in New York, which has a relatively small Cambodian community.

One recent day in the store, at 229 East Kingsbridge Road, Ms. Veth was less formally dressed but looked no less elegant in tight black slacks, open-toed black high heels and a pink-and-white-striped Tommy Hilfiger blouse as she helped her husband tie rubber bands around bundles of potato leaves in the store’s back room.

“I still miss Cambodia very much, but I’m happy that my movies help people who also miss Cambodia,” said Ms. Veth, who says she prefers traditional roles based on Khmer folk tales to the racier material that appears in Cambodian cinema.

Whatever her preferences, she is a decided draw in this corner of the Bronx.

“Customers come in all the time and ask to see her,” said Mr. Vandy, who interprets for his wife. “They say, ‘I’ve seen you on TV, and now I am seeing the real thing.’ ” The fans tend to be older, because, as he explained, “the young people all watch American movies.”

Like Mr. Vandy, most of the local Cambodians arrived in the 1980s, refugees from the repressive Pol Pot regime. Many of their children either were very young when their families emigrated or were born in refugee camps, and have no memories of their home country. While their parents, many traumatized from the war years, struggled to assimilate, the younger generation drifted away from Khmer culture and language.

But for older Cambodians, Ms. Veth’s arrival has been big news. Moreover, because she had a backlog of unreleased films when she left Cambodia, DVDs of her new movies are still arriving at the grocery.

In one popular new release, whose title is loosely translated as “Queen of the Fish,” Ms. Veth plays a mermaid; in another, she portrays a ghost who seeks vengeance against the thief who robbed her grave of her wedding ring, along with the finger it encircled. Particularly popular among Cambodian traditionalists is the DVD of her wedding to Mr. Vandy, an hourlong, 12-act opus with no shortage of traditional songs and dances, banquets and monks’ blessings.

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ADB, Cambodia cooperate in conserving resources of Tonle Sap Great Lake

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Cambodia are working together to conserve the resources of Tonle Sap Great Lake while pursuing pro-poor development initiatives in the area, said ADB in a news release Friday.

ADB and the Cambodian government jointly held a forum in Phnom Penh this month to address the issue, said ADB.

"The forum helped build a stronger sense of ownership of the Initiative among a wide cross section of people involved in this important effort," said Arjun Goswami, ADB country director for Cambodia. "This is a vital step in the effort to restore the environment and improve the livelihood of communities in the Tonle Sap Great Lake."

The Tonle Sap, located north of Cambodia's capital, is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. The ecosystem around the lake is a direct and irreplaceable source of livelihood for more than 1 million people, and an area of environmental biodiversity of global significance, said ADB.

The forum on the Tonle Sap Initiative, which ended on March 6, brought together more than 200 people from ADB, Cambodia, development partners and members of communities living on and around the lake.

Forum participants examined the challenges ahead to achieve equitable development of the Tonle Sap basin and discussed the policies and legal framework that will be needed.

"There is a risk that some of the poor and marginalized could be increasingly left behind," said Urooj Malik, director of the Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources Division of ADB's Southeast Asia Department. "It is vital to involve them more in the process of formulating policies designed to improve their conditions."

A major need identified at the forum was for closer coordination of government policies, laws and regulations related to the Tonle Sap Basin, including "harmonization of those concerning natural resources management, zonation of land and water use, and infrastructure development such as roads, water and sanitation and irrigation," said ADB.

Source: Xinhua .
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Chief defense lawyer vows to prevent collapse of Khmer Rouge tribunal

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: The chief defense lawyer for the long-delayed Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal said Saturday he will try to resolve a key sticking point over fees for foreign lawyers that threatens to derail the trials.

Rupert Skilbeck, the head of the defense support section for the U.N.-backed tribunal, said he wants to meet with the Cambodian Bar Association in the coming days to "see if we can find the way to resolve the problem." He said he was confident an agreement could be reached.

The impasse involves a recent decision by the Cambodian Bar Association to charge foreign lawyers hundreds of dollars (euros) to represent defendants or victims in the long-awaited tribunal, which was scheduled to begin later this year.

The issue became public Friday after Cambodian and international judges finished a 10-day meeting to thrash out differences over draft internal rules for the genocide trials, but said the legal fee dispute had prevented their adoption.

Ky Tech, president of the Cambodian Bar Association, declined comment Saturday. He also refused to discuss details of the legal fees.

The Cambodia Daily newspaper reported Saturday that the bar has decided that foreign lawyers wishing to participate in the tribunal must pay a US$500 (€375) membership application fee to the bar.

If chosen to work with a client, they must pay an additional US$2,000 (€1,500) and a US$200 (€150) monthly fee, the newspaper said..

The international judges may boycott a plenary meeting next month if the fee issue is not resolved, the tribunal office said in a statement Friday.

It said the judges discussed, during their meetings, "in exhaustive detail many points and resolved all remaining disagreements, although some fine tuning remains to be done."

But it indicated that the international judges believed that the proposed fee was an obstacle to adopting the agreed rules, while the Cambodia judges believed the fee was irrelevant to the package of rules.

"It is unacceptable to the international judges, who consider that it severely limits the rights of accused and victims to select counsel of their choice," the statement said.

The radical policies of the now-defunct Khmer Rouge, who held power in 1975-79, led to the deaths of about 1.7 million people from execution, overwork, disease and malnutrition. But none of the communist group's leaders has been brought to trial.

Squabbling over details about the rules to govern the trials has eaten up nearly a third of the tribunal's three-year planned life span. Further delay could mean that former Khmer Rouge leaders — now old and ailing — will never be brought to trial.

Prosecutors are expected to indict about 10 defendants, including the few surviving top Khmer Rouge leaders.

The tribunal was created by a 2003 agreement between Cambodia and the United Nations after years of difficult negotiations.
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Vietnam eyes more overland trade with Cambodia

A directive signed by Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Khiem calls for the checkpoints in the central highlands province of Gia Lai and southern provinces of Dong Thap and Kien Giang to be upgraded from national to international level.

Three others in Dak Lak, Long An, and Kien Giang provinces will be elevated to national-level checkpoints.

Two new local facilities are to be opened, one in Tay Ninh province and the other in Binh Phuoc province.

Last year Vietnam’s exports to Cambodia were worth $780 million, mainly of clothes, electrical cables, domestic plastic products, noodles, and electronic spare parts.

It imported rubber, forest, and agricultural products worth around $170 million from Cambodia.
Vietnam-Cambodia trade is expected to grow by 27 percent annually to reach US$2.45 billion by 2010.

Meanwhile, at a conference in Vung Tau city Thursday, Vietnamese and Cambodian health officials agreed to cooperate on border quarantine control to check the spread of contagious diseases like bird flu and severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.

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Campaigning in Cambodia's local elections begins

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: Election campaigning began Friday for new local governing councils across Cambodia, an apparent effort to transfer more political power from the central government to the countryside.

But some observers said the polls are more likely to consolidate the power of Prime Minister Hun Sen's ruling party.

The election, scheduled for April 1, will choose councils to administer 1,621 communes and sangkats, which are clusters of villages and urban neighborhoods.

Twelve political parties fielding a total of 102,266 candidates are competing in the elections, which are held every five years. Trucks carrying party supporters and draped with political banners wound their way through the streets of the capital Phnom Penh. Supporters chanted their campaign messages through bullhorns to woo voters.

The first local election was held Feb. 2002. Until then, the communes were ruled by chiefs appointed by the Interior Ministry..

Hun Sen's ruling Cambodian People's Party, which has maintained a firm grip on power during the last three decades, won overwhelmingly in the last local election and is expected to emerge victorious again.

The countryside has traditionally been dominated by Hun Sen's party followers.

Although the election is meant to decentralize power, Hang Puthea, executive director of Cambodian nonprofit election monitoring group Nicfec, said that it will not lead to any fundamental changes.

"This election is merely going to strengthen the current ruling party. And as already expected, the Cambodian People's Party will (again) lead in the number of local governing councils," he said.

Citing the proportional Cambodian electoral system, where candidates are appointed by their parties, Hang Puthea said elected candidates usually carry out their duties with political loyalty rather than public interest, in mind.

"I do not know how many more generations (it will take before) decentralization can fully function" in Cambodia, he said.

On Thursday, Hun Sen called for peaceful campaigning and ordered security forces to ensure safety and security until the election is over.
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Maha Ghosananda, Called Cambodia’s Gandhi, Dies

The Venerable Maha Ghosananda, a Buddhist monk who led the rebuilding of his religion in Cambodia, calling for peace and reconciliation after the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, died Monday in Northampton, Mass. He was in his late 70s and lived in Providence, R.I., and Leverett, Mass.

The death was confirmed by Christina Trinchero, a spokeswoman for Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton.

Cambodian monks elected Maha Ghosananda (his monastic name) as a supreme Buddhist patriarch in 1988. By then, his efforts to bring solace to a nation in which more than 1.5 million people were starved, worked to death or executed under the Communist dictatorship of Pol Pot had inspired many to call him “the Cambodian Gandhi.”

In his 2002 book “The Future of Peace: On the Front Lines With the World’s Great Peacemakers,” Scott A. Hunt, a professor of Buddhism at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote that Maha Ghosananda’s ability to forgive those “responsible for the murder of his entire family is incomprehensible,” until one heard his explanation of Buddhism.

Maha Ghosananda said he “does not question that loving one’s oppressors — Cambodians loving the Khmer Rouge — may be the most difficult attitude to achieve,” then added, “But it is the law of the universe that retaliation, hatred and revenge only continue the cycle.”

Reconciliation, he continued, “means that we see ourselves as the opponent; for what is the opponent but a being in ignorance, and we ourselves are also ignorant of many things.”

Somdet Phra Maha Ghosananda was born in Takeo, Cambodia, in 1929. He was initiated into the Cambodian Buddhist Order in 1943. In 1969, he received a doctorate from Nalanda University in Bihar State, India.

He was living in a monastery in southern Thailand when a five-year civil war ended in Cambodia in 1976, with Pol Pot establishing what he called Democratic Kampuchea. Within days, almost the entire population of Phnom Penh, the capital, had been marched into the countryside to do forced labor. The Khmer Rouge closed about 3,600 Buddhist temples throughout the country.

By the time Vietnamese forces overthrew the regime 44 months later, only about 3,000 of Cambodia’s 60,000 Buddhist priests were still alive.

By then, Maha Ghosananda had already trekked from one refugee camp to another along the border with Thailand, establishing Buddhist temples and training new monks. He continued that work throughout the country after the ouster of Pol Pot.

Maha Ghosananda moved to Massachusetts in the late 1980s at the invitation of a Buddhist order in Leverett. But in 1991 he returned to Cambodia to lead a 16-day pilgrimage across the country — gathering followers from village after village — in the first of what became known as the Dhammayietra Walks for Peace and Reconciliation.

In 1998, the Niwano Peace Foundation of Japan awarded Maha Ghosananda its peace prize, saying in its citation that “through these walks, Maha Ghosananda became a bridge of peace — bringing together people who had been separated by war — and wiped away their fears with his call for peace.”

Pointing out that Maha Ghosananda had promoted nonviolence as a remedy for other causes, including deforestation and the use of land mines, the foundation also said, “In both spirit and deed, he has shown the way to a fundamental resolution of regional and ethnic strife around the world.”

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CAMBODIA: Ousted Prince Ranariddh condemns conviction

Cambodia's Prince Norodom Ranariddh has condemned his fraud conviction in a Phnom Penh court this week, describing it as a grave injustice and politically motivated. And he's accused his long time nemesis Prime Minister Hun Sen of playing a direct role in ensuring the guilty verdict.

Presenter/Interviewer: Linda LoPresti
Speakers: Cambodia's ousted leader Prince Norodom Ranariddh

RANARIDDH: I feel personally a great sense of injustice against myself and it is clearly politically motivated. I think that what Hun Sen, the Prime Minister of Cambodia did against me is to put pressure on me and to prevent me in particular from having political activity, and in particular, during the upcoming elections.

LOPRESTI: Indeed, this conviction keeps you out of the country. It means you can't take part in both next month's local elections or national elections to be held in 2008. So what of your political career in Cambodia?

RANARIDDH: Oh, I think madam, I can have a party which bears my own name. There is no doubt about it and so I will continue to have my party, my canidates, who very, very eager now to compete in the elections. As for my political career, I think that the national community will realise once again that we cannot talk about democracy, about liberalism, about pluralism if Norodom Ranariddh and his party are not allowed to participate in the next general elections.

LOPRESTI: Your own political organisation, the Norodom Ranariddh Party which you formed after being ousted from Funcinpec. Your party though, how can it make any headway in these elections without you at the helm?

RANARIDDH: I think that on the contrary, the injustice that let's say the tribunal against me, on the contrary instead of discouraging my followers, it has provided to them a sense of great courage, determination, to fight in render justice to me.

LOPRESTI: So, you're saying that because of this trial which you've described as politically motivated, it will make people, it will gather more support for your party, for the NRP?

RANARIDDH: Absolutely, absolutely madam, you are right.

LOPRESTI: Prince Ranariddh, what are your plans now? There are reports that you will write to your brother, King Norodom Sihamoni in a letter detailing the trial's irregularities. Is that something you will do?.

RANARIDDH: Absolutely, absolutely. I will write to him, not in his capacity as my younger brother, but in his capacity of president of the Supreme Council. I like to show to him that the justice in Cambodia is that everything else but not justice at all. Why Hun Sen said that he would not ask my brother, he must be the king to give me amnesty. He has no right to say that. Because on the one hand, the king has the full right without consulting anyone to grant any amnesty to anyone.

LOPRESTI: Well, in 1998, after you were sentenced to 35 years in prison for allegedly plotting a coup with the Khmer Rouge a year earlier, you were saved by a royal parden from your father, former King Norodom Sihanouk. Will you be seeking a royal pardon this time round?

RANARIDDH: I think that I will wait for one or two more days to have a clearer picture. I think that the first thing is to mobilise my people and on the otherhand to send as I mentioned earlier, a letter to his Majesty the King.

LOPRESTI: Just finally Prince Ranariddh, you live in Paris these days. Do you think you're ever going to return to Phnom Penh and have a successful political career?

RANARIDDH: I hope that like in 1998 I will be allowed to go back and to continue my political career. Read more!

B.C. man charged under sex tourist laws

VANCOUVER - A British Columbia man has been charged under Canada's sex-tourism legislation, the RCMP said Tuesday.

Kenneth Robert Klassen, 56, of Burnaby was arrested Friday and is charged with 35 sex offences allegedly involving 17 victims in Colombia, Cambodia and the Philippines.

The international art dealer remains in custody and is scheduled to appear Monday in Vancouver provincial court.

It's only the third time in Canada that a man has been charged under the sex tourism law, which aims to protect children in foreign countries from sexual exploitation by Canadians.

The law was introduced a decade ago, but was recently amended to make such crimes easier for police to investigate by eliminating the need for them to seek consent of the foreign country where the crimes allegedly occurred.

The first prosecution was Donald Michel Bakker of Penticton, B.C., who was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2005 after police discovered videotapes showing him sexually assaulting Vancouver prostitutes and young girls in Cambodia.

The 2.5-year investigation began at Vancouver's International Airport on Aug. 27, 2004, when officers with Canada Border Service Agency identified a suspicious parcel found to contain undeclared DVDs, which contained child pornography images.

The parcel, destined for a home in Burnaby, was turned over to the RCMP for investigation. The parcel was monitored and was allegedly picked up by Klassen, who was arrested at the time.

Search warrants were executed on his home and a storage locker, where police seized a video camera and 21 DVDs that allegedly containing video clips of Klassen having sex with 92 girls in three countries.

Police allege the DVDs contained images of the accused allegedly having illegal sex with girls ranging in age from nine- to 18-years-old.

The 35 charges involve 17 alleged victims - six Colombians, eight Cambodians and three in the Philippines.

RCMP Cpl. Pierre Lemaitre credited Foreign Affairs and international police agencies for co-operation, including help from the FBI and police in Colombia and the Philippines.
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Cambodian tribunal mired by dispu

PHNOM PENH (AP) -- Bickering between Cambodian and international judges has all but paralyzed the effort to bring members of the Khmer Rouge regime to justice for their murderous rule in the late 1970s.

The first trials had been expected this year, but the special tribunal, officially known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia, has been bogged down by infighting that many say could cripple the proceedings entirely.

Cambodian and UN-appointed judges wrap up a 10-day meeting Friday aimed at thrashing out their differences on how to integrate Cambodian and international law. The tribunal was set up to operate with the Cambodian judicial system, but with protections against corruption and political manipulation. Squabbling over details about the rules to govern the trials has eaten up nearly a third of the tribunal's three-year plan. Further delay could mean that former Khmer Rouge leaders will never be brought to trial for turning Cambodia into the bloody land of "the Killing Fields."

"It's a race against time," said Theo Kidess, charge d'affaires of the German Embassy, whose country has contributed more than $3 million to the tribunal's $56.3 million budget.
"There's a growing impatience and definitely a sense of urgency that we need to get this done with," he said.

The radical policies of the now-defunct Khmer Rouge, who held power in 1975-79, led to the deaths of about 1.7 million people from execution, overwork, disease and malnutrition. But not one of the communist group's leaders has ever been brought to trial.

Pol Pot, the movement's leader, died in 1998. Ta Mok, its military chief, was imprisoned pending court charges, but died last July. Kaing Khek Iev, who headed the infamous Khmer Rouge S-21 torture center — also known as Tuol Sleng, and now a genocide museum — is the only leader now in custody awaiting trial.

Pol Pot's top lieutenants Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan are alive but aging, with serious medical problems. There's a fair chance that death will put a claim on them ahead of any judge.

The tribunal was created by a 2003 agreement between the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen and the United Nations after six years of difficult negotiations and would-be withdrawals by both sides.

Vann Nath, one of the handful of survivors among the more than 14,000 prisoners who passed through S-21, said he is losing hope.

"Frankly speaking, the hope I have nurtured all along is rotting away now," said the 62-year-old artist, who is battling chronic kidney disease. He said he desires "only partial justice, not an ultimate one, and if we cannot even get that, our lives seem worthless."

Patching up the differences "is not 'mission impossible,'" said David Scheffer, a former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues.

But there "is certainly a possibility that the international judges, or some of them, might quit if the negotiations collapse on the internal rules," said Scheffer, who helped negotiate the creation of the tribunal in the early stages.

"Hun Sen wants to keep control, and that's the bottom line," said Brad Adams, director of the Asia division of New York-based Human Rights Watch, referring to Cambodia's prime minister.

The prime minister's critics have long speculated that he would not like to see too extensive a list of defendants, which could include former middle-ranking Khmer Rouge members who later became his allies. Hun Sen himself was a junior Khmer Rouge cadre who defected from the group before it was overthrown in 1979.

Muddying the waters further has been an allegation that Cambodian court personnel, including judges, had to kick back a significant percentage of their wages to Cambodian government officials in exchange for their jobs. Cambodian judges have dismissed the accusation.

The United Nations Development Program, which is managing some of the tribunal's funds, also has raised concerns about the transparency of the tribunal's hiring process. Scheffer warns that without the trials and their official record, Cambodian society "will never fully recognize the significance of what occurred and of the nation's responsibility to prevent such crimes in the future."

On the Net: Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia: http://www.eccc.gov.kh United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials: http://www.unakrt-online.org
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Officials plan for avian flu pandemic

OFFICIALS from six Asian countries shared fears yesterday about how various parts of society could break down in a flu pandemic, voicing concerns ranging from food and water shortages to the mass movement of panic-stricken populations.Delegates from China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam met in Siem Reap, Cambodia, for a second day of exercises testing their ability to respond should the H5N1 bird flu virus mutate into a form that is more easily spread among humans.

Officials from agencies ranging from tourism to defense raised issues they would likely be forced to handle, including a flood of people seeking medical care in neighboring countries and a lack of public trust that could lead to social upheaval.

The participants were faced with a mock scenario that was certainly feasible: After 18 people from one Malaysian community tested positive for bird flu along with three health care workers, it was confirmed that the H5N1 virus had mutated into a form that could spread more easily among people. The virus then began to spread across the region and beyond.

The decisions made during the event, and the time it took to carry out the plans, helped the officials gauge how prepared they were for a real situation."We think this is a very dangerous point for us," said Dr Preecha Prempree, an epidemiologist from Thailand's Ministry of Health, who thinks Asia is the most likely place where a pandemic could emerge.

"We have to have cooperation in the region."The delegates referred to problems faced during the 2003 spread of the SARS virus, which emerged in Asia and killed nearly 800 people worldwide. They discussed the best strategies for protecting health care workers, keeping infected people from crossing borders and isolating the sick.

"They learned a lot from their experience with SARS, which doesn't necessarily mean they've solved all the problems that they had," said Dr Melinda Moore, a senior health researcher for the RAND Corp, a United States think tank that helped design the exercise. "But at least it's a basis for understanding where the gaps are, what the issues are - not just in the abstract but because they actually experienced them."

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Monk who rebuilt Buddhism in post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia, dies

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. --Maha Ghosananda, a monk who played a key role in rebuilding Buddhism in Cambodia after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, has died.

Ghosananda, who lived in Leverett and Providence, R.I., died Monday at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, hospital spokeswoman Christina Trinchero said. Trinchero did not know the cause of death or his age.

Non Nget, a senior Buddhist patriarch in Cambodia who has known Ghosananda since childhood, said he was 81.

In Cambodia, the country marked the passing of a "resilient advocate for peace" who had "made a lot sacrifices for the sake of happiness and peace," said Chhorn Iem, Cambodia's deputy minister for religious affairs.

The Cambodian monk lived in exile between 1975 and 1979, when the Khmer Rouge denounced Buddhism and caused the deaths of nearly 2 million people through starvation, disease, overwork and execution.

Ghosananda was one of the first monks to return to Cambodia and train new Buddhist leaders after Pol Pot's regime was toppled by the Vietnamese in 1979.

"He did everything he could to restore Buddhism to Cambodia," Jim Perkins, pastor of the Leverett Congregational Church and a friend of the religious leader, told the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

Ghosananda was elected a Supreme Cambodian Buddhist Patriarch by fellow Buddhist monks in 1988 for restoring Buddhism in the war-torn country.

During the 1990s, he lead the Dhamma Yatra movement to rebuild religious life in Cambodia.
In 1994, he led a peace march to the northwestern town of Pailin, still a Khmer Rouge stronghold at the time. Three Cambodians taking part in the march, including a Buddhist monk and a nun, were killed in the crossfire between government soldiers and Khmer Rouge rebels but Ghosananda escaped unharmed.

In 1997, after the Khmer Rouge fighters in Pailin laid down their arms and rejoined the government, he successfully led another pilgrimage for peace to Pailin. This time, the marchers were warmly welcome by residents and former rebels of the Khmer Rouge, which had executed monks and destroyed Buddhist temples during the regime's reign of terror.

He moved to western Massachusetts in the late 1980s at the invitation of the Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist order in Leverett, which seeks a complete elimination of weapons. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times in the mid-1990s.

He split his time between the Buddhist temples in Leverett and Providence, Perkins said.

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US Congress warms to Cambodia

Reports of a top al-Qaeda operative in the Southeast Asian country have prompted a thaw in relations.

By Erika Kinetz Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA - When the USS Gary arrived at the touristy port city of Sihanoukville, Cambodia, last month, it became the first US military vessel to dock in this Southeast Asian nation in over 30 years. US and Cambodian military personnel played soccer, and military doctors fixed the teeth of poor Cambodian villagers.

It's a different picture from the last time the Navy came to Cambodia in 1975, after the infamous Khmer Rouge regime had seized the US merchant ship SS Mayaguez and the military launched a full-scale rescue mission in response.

The USS Gary is just one sign of warming relations between the two nations. Two days after the ship left Sihanoukville, President Bush signed into law a budget resolution for 2007 that for the first time in nearly a decade lifts the congressional ban on direct US funding to Cambodia.

This change in US policy comes as the international community calls attention to Cambodia's shortcomings on corruption and human rights. US officials say that it is a shift of strategy driven, in part, by the exigencies of the US-led war on terror.

"Our hope is to have more normal relations and draw Cambodia closer to the community of nations," says Joseph Mussomeli, the US ambassador to Cambodia.

The appearance in Cambodia in 2002 and 2003 of Riduan Isamuddin – an Indonesian better known as Hambali, who was believed to be Al Qaeda's top operative in Southeast Asia – was a wake-up call to Washington, one Cambodia-watcher and US congressional aide said on condition of anonymity. "Washington bureaucrats finally realized what Cambodia-watchers knew all along: Cambodia matters, and it is indeed a swamp in need of draining."

Sam Rainsy, the leader of the eponymous Sam Rainsy Party, which is the closest thing Cambodia has to an opposition party, praises the policy change, saying it will give the US more leverage to promote human rights and democracy in a region increasingly dominated by China.

"China does not pay any attention to human rights," he says. "We cannot leave our country to Chinese influence alone. The world must be more balanced."

China's roots in Cambodia are deep and in recent years it has emerged as one of Cambodia's most generous donors.

Moreover, Chevron's discovery of oil offshore in 2005 has led to speculation that this small, impoverished nation could become the world's newest petrostate.

Mr. Mussomeli, however, says China and oil have nothing to do with the warming relations. "The US is looking to see progress on issues that matter to the Cambodian people – greater openness, greater democratization, a higher standard of living, and a genuine commitment to stamp out corruption," he says. Congress has earmarked $15 million for democracy and rule-of-law programs in Cambodia this year.

Though Mussomeli says Cambodia is becoming a more open society, the nation still has a long way to go. In its annual review of human rights around the world, released last week, the US State Department took Cambodia to task for its "poor" human rights record, citing security forces that act with impunity, arbitrary arrests, endemic corruption, and human trafficking.

Local rights group Licadho found that nearly 40 percent of the 172 human rights abuses it documented in the first half of 2006 were perpetrated by the military or the police.

US officials stress that the lifting of the ban on direct assistance and military aid will not result in a tide of new money sloshing around government coffers. No new direct funding has yet been committed. "The absence of restrictions will not result in a major change in US government funding priorities, oversight, or project management, as we look to develop this promising bilateral relationship," says Erin Soto, the Cambodia Mission Director of USAID.

Mu Sochua, the secretary general of the Sam Rainsy Party, warns of the US loosening its oversight of the country's governance. "If the US is only thinking about fighting terrorism and lowers its standards on the performance of governments in terms of democratic social protections, that will not be beneficial to the Cambodian people."

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Cambodia's former premier dealt political blow with 18-month prison sentence

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: A former Cambodian prime minister, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, was sentenced in absentia to 18 months in prison on Tuesday on embezzlement charges filed by members of the royalist political party he once led.

The action should make it difficult for Ranariddh, a once-influential national figure who is the son of former King Norodom Sihanouk, to stage a political comeback. Ranariddh was co-prime minister of the country from 1993-97, and his supporters alleged the move was politically motivated.

The Funcinpec party, which ousted Ranariddh as president in October 2006, had sued the prince accusing him of allegedly embezzling some US$3.6 million (€2.7 million) from the sale of the party's headquarters in August that year.

Judge Sao Meach, of Phnom Penh Municipal Court, found the prince guilty of breach of trust and sentenced him to 18 months in prison.

Muong Arun, Ranariddh's lawyer, dismissed the verdict as unjust. Ranariddh is not in Cambodia, but his exact whereabouts are not clear.

Funcinpec rejected Ranariddh as its leader on Oct. 18, citing his alleged incompetence and frequent absences from the country.

Ranariddh's longtime political rival, Prime Minister Hun Sen, had encouraged the party to eject Ranariddh. Funcinpec is the junior partner in Hun Sen's coalition government.

Since his ouster, Ranariddh has formed his own political party named after himself, the Norodom Ranariddh Party.

Tuesday's verdict would prevent Ranariddh from running for public office in Cambodia unless he serves at least two-thirds of his jail term or receives a pardon from King Norodom Sihamoni, his half brother.

But Hun Sen, in a speech Saturday, made it clear that he would not back a royal pardon for Ranariddh.

"If you are a royal engaged in politics, you are also equal before the law and (liable) to be put in jail. Let's be clear about this," Hun Sen said, without referring to Ranariddh by name.

Muth Chantha, Ranariddh's party spokesman, said the verdict "is politically motivated to prevent the prince from taking part in future elections."

He said the prince will not appeal the verdict because doing so would amount to recognizing it.
"We have believed all along that there is no justice for him in this case. This is a court that serves interest of the government, not the people," Muth Chantha said.

During the trial Tuesday, the judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence proving Ranariddh had embezzled the money.

But he said the prince was guilty of intentionally registering the new property under his name, instead of Funcinpec's, therefore "breaching the trust of the party."

He also ordered Ranariddh to pay US$150,000 (€114,000) in compensation to the Funcinpec party.

Ranariddh is also facing an adultery lawsuit lodged against him by his estranged wife, Norodom Marie Ranariddh. He faces up to a year in prison and fines of up to 1 million riel (US$245; €190)
if convicted.

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Dredge/booster barge shipped to Cambodia

Logistics specialist John S. Connor, Inc., Glen Burnie, Md., has recently completed the shipment of a dredge/booster barge for Sokimex Group, based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Sokimex will use the equipment for dredging operations in the Mekong River so that the river can accommodate more vessel traffic.

Sokimex acquired the dredge/booster barge from Renda Dredging Company.

The equipment weighed 1,135 tons, making it the heaviest shipment ever handled by John S. Connor in its 90 year history. It was so large and heavy that the dredge and barge had to be separated into two sections so it could be shipped.

After the equipment was separated, the dredge alone weighed 610 metric tons and was enormously bulky; 107-ft. long, 51-ft. high, and 43-ft. wide. The booster barge as a separate lift weighed an additional 525 metric tons.

John S. Connor made all the logistics arrangements for the shipment of the equipment.

In order to accomplish the loading of the dredge and barge onto the MV WIEBKE, a specialized heavy-lift ship, the shippers utilized the services of a naval architect and an engineering firm to ascertain lift points, weight, and the center of gravity of the dredge and the booster barge.

The loading of the two large pieces, work boats and other equipment onto the MV WIEBKE in Port Manatee, Florida, required five days. The ship has two cranes with lifting capacity of 340 tons each, plus a third crane with a lifting capacity of 220 tons. Two of the ships heavy lift cranes were married together in order to generate enough lifting capacity to load these heavy pieces.

The dredge and barge had to be lifted onto the ship directly from the water at Port Manatee.

Because of the excessive weight and size of the equipment, four lifting cradles, two for each heavy piece, had to be fabricated, each one weighing 18 tons. A diver was utilized to be sure the cradles were positioned properly to lift the equipment.

"The Master and crew of the MV WIEBKE, along with their port captain, performed extremely well in completing this complicated heavy lift operation," says William Settle, bulk manager at John S. Connor.

The MV WIEBKE left port with the dredge, barge, and other additional work boats and equipment safely on board and sailed via the Suez Canal, arriving five weeks later in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. From there, the equipment was discharged and towed up the Mekong River to Phnom Penh. It will take another six months to reassemble the equipment and get it in place to begin the dredging project.

Sokimex Group, established in 1990, has over 2,000 employees and annual revenues in excess of $100 million.

John S. Connor is a full service logistics firm based in Glen Burnie, Md. The company is a leading provider of ocean freight and air freight, customs brokerage, domestic transportation, and steamship agency services. Connor has an extensive network of agents worldwide, and is a licensed NVOCC.

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Cambodia Oil Windfall Sparks Corruption Concern

Cambodia may reap billions of dollars in new revenues from offshore oil and gas fields in coming years, but experts fear such a windfall might be misspent. Prime Minister Hun Sen has so far brushed aside international concerns about lack of fiscal accountability.

Cambodia’s good fortune began in 2005 when U.S.-based Chevron found promising oil deposits at offshore test wells some 87 miles (140 kms) southwest of the port of Sihanoukville.

Preliminary estimates of the recoverable reserves are 400-500 million barrels of oil and 2-3 trillion cubic feet of gas. Cambodia’s total reserves could run as high as 2 billion barrels and 10 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to the World Bank.

In a country with an annual per capita income of about $500 last year, the discovery of oil that could sell on world markets for $60 per barrel might be good fortune indeed.

But instead of celebrations, the news has met with warnings that Cambodia lacks the strong government and civil institutions to turn oil revenue into public benefits.

A study of Cambodia for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in 2005 warned that Cambodia might follow the path of Nigeria, where new oil wealth turned into a “resource curse.”

Despite huge capital inflows from oil, Nigeria’s GDP has grown less than its population since 1980, while corruption and social unrest have risen because revenues have been misspent, the report said.

But at a student graduation ceremony Feb. 28, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen showed little patience with warnings that his country could follow the same path.

“Some people are worried about the Nigerian disease, saying that it should not be allowed to reach Cambodia. I have told them that Cambodia is not that stupid,” the prime minister said in remarks reported by the Associated Press.

Legitimate concern?

In an interview with Radio Free Asia, David Dapice, a senior economist at Harvard University and author of the UNDP study, said that Cambodia should move quickly to implement reforms before the money starts flowing in.

“There is legitimate concern that Cambodia has work to do,” said Dapice.

“There is a tendency toward big, prestige, wasteful investments. There is a tendency sometimes for things to cost more than they should, even if they’re appropriately chosen. And the legal system certainly needs to be strengthened, so that if there are cases of corruption they can be identified and then prosecuted in a proper way,” Dapice said.

“These are not areas right now where, at the moment, Cambodia has strength. They need to get better in these areas.”

Dapice said that recent improvements in Cambodia’s agricultural output and poverty reduction give hope that new funds from energy can be used productively, especially if nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are allowed to serve in some watchdog role.

The greatest danger is that oil money could be diverted into pockets that have already started to concentrate wealth, especially through land ownership, said Dapice. That risk could be particularly high, he added, if large cash bonuses are paid in the awarding of oil development contracts.

“You could end up basically displacing large numbers of farmers who would then probably drift into the cities, and you would have an over-urbanized society with very few decent jobs and a lot of crowding and everything, and that typically leads to social instability.”

Dapice said that Cambodia will have to foster good governance and institutions in several sectors at once so that it can handle the new oil money transparently.

“A lot of different parts of a society have to work,” he said. “The legal system, the newspapers, the NGOs, and of course the government itself has to be committed to it.”

“So there are real challenges here, and things could go badly wrong. But if people work on it and try to direct the resources in a reasonably productive way, I think there’s nothing that says that it’s written that it has to be as bad as Nigeria.”

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U.S. Embassy honors 2 Cambodians with Women of Courage Award

The U.S. Embassy in Cambodia honored two women as the Cambodian winner and runner-up of International Women of Courage Award on Monday.

"Presenting this award to women of courage is an opportunity to celebrate acts of bravery by the extraordinary women in Cambodian who, in transforming their own society, create a more peaceful and prosperous nation for all," U.S. Ambassador Joseph A. Mussomeli said in a ceremony joined by Cambodian Minister of Women's and Veteran's Affairs H.E. Dr. Ing Kantha Phavi.

The winner for Cambodia is Ms. Oung Chanthol, Executive Director and Founder of the Cambodian Women's Crisis Center (CWCC), a press release said, adding that the runner-up is Ms. Ith Mathoura, a trained lawyer currently working for the Community Legal Education Center (CLEC).

These two women have demonstrated outstanding courage and leadership in promoting the political, economic and social advancement of women in Cambodia, it said.

Ms. Oung Chanthol is a lawyer who has been a leader in the fight against violence against women, particularly trafficking, rape and domestic violence, Mussomeli said, adding that Ms. Oung Chanthol founded the CWCC in 1997 which has helped several thousand victims of gender-based violence.

"This award is not just a proud moment for CWCC and for me, but for all, our whole nation, all women in Cambodia, and our government, which sees women as crucial partners in the development of our nation," Ms. Oung Chanthol said after receiving the award from Mussomeli.

The first annual "International Women of Courage" awards program was inaugurated by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in honor of International Women's Day 2007, the press release said, adding that the award is the State Department's only continuing awards program exclusively for emerging women leaders.

Source: Xinhua

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Dubai Donation Begins Rescue Of WFP Food Aid Operation In Cambodia

The United Nations World Food Programme today welcomed an urgently needed contribution of US$1 million from the Government of Dubai in response to its appeal to end drastic food aid cuts affecting 700,000 poor Cambodians, including HIV/AIDS and TB patients. But at the same time WFP warned that more donations were desperately needed to ensure the full resumption of operations in the country.

In January, key WFP activities in Cambodia were suspended due to lack of funding. Now, thanks to this generous contribution, food aid to 70,000 people affected by HIV/AIDS and 18,000 TB patients, will resume earlier than originally expected. "At stake are the lives of thousands of HIV/AIDS patients receiving anti-retroviral drugs whose effectiveness depends upon proper nourishment," said WFP Executive Director, James Morris. "And then there are the TB patients whose incentive to complete their treatment is often the food aid they receive at treatment centres.

All these people are desperately poor - this helping hand from Dubai is truly lifesaving." In a poor country like Cambodia where 35 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, hundreds of thousands of children are dependent on WFP meals provided by the agency's food for education programme.

WFP is already starting to see the negative impacts of the suspension of its activities: declines in school attendance rates; reduced attention spans of children in class and worsening health of HIV/AIDS and TB patients as well as, in some cases, a drop in treatment adherence.

The donation by the Government of Dubai will be used to prioritize HIV/AIDS and TB patients but more donations are needed to resume the food for education programme. "We are extremely grateful to the Government of Dubai for their valuable and timely support, which is part of a growing commitment to development aid from the governments in the Gulf region." said Morris. "We appeal to others to follow."

WFP is the world's largest humanitarian agency: each year, we give food to an average of 90 million poor people to meet their nutritional needs, including 58 million hungry children, in at least 80 of the world's poorest countries.

WFP -- We Feed People. WFP Global School Feeding Campaign - For just 19 US cents a day, you can help WFP give children in poor countries a healthy meal at school - a gift of hope for a brighter future.Visit our website: http://www.wfp.org

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Cambodia Calls On ASEAN To Present A United Front On Land Mines

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen Monday called on four Association of South East Asian (ASEAN) nations which have so far not signed the Ottawa Treaty banning land mines to conform and help the bloc set an example to Asia and the world.

Speaking at a three-day conference on mine action in the capital, Hun Sen said ASEAN should form a united front and all member governments should sign and ratify their entry to the treaty, the signatories of which agree to prohibit the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti-personnel mines and support their destruction. He said Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Singapore were the members of the 10-nation ASEAN bloc which had so far resisted signing, adding that if Asia was to become land mine-free, ASEAN should set the example for the continent.

"ASEAN has already declared Asia should be free of nuclear weapons and has asked other nations to sign on this, so ASEAN should also be the leader on the prohibition of the use, production and stockpiling of landmines," he said. He said land mines were a serious obstacle for the development of Cambodia and other Less Developed Nations and were a hidden killer that ordinary Cambodians had been forced to live with for too long.

Cambodia remains one of the most heavily mined nations in the world after 30 years of civil war. Hun Sen said Cambodian Red Cross figures put the number of land mine casualties in the country at 60,000 and counting, with 30 per cent of these fatalities and the rest forced to live as invalids for the rest of their lives. "Of course, this is the right of each country to decide, but I believe ASEAN should unite on this issue," Hun Sen told the conference.

Cambodia recently sent a demining team to Sudan and Hun Sen said that his country was happy to help another nation which would struggle to meet development goals because of the insidious factor of mines. Canadian Ambassador to Cambodia Donica Pottie agreed, and used the opportunity to urge the United States, arguably the most significant nation to so far refuse to join the treaty, to relent and lead by example.

"Canada welcomes the Cambodian appeal ... however, it depends very much on these countries themselves," she said in an interview after Hun Sen's address. "The US has a huge commitment to demining programmes around the world," she said. "We would definitely welcome the US to join (the treaty). We appreciate US demining efforts and ... the US spends a lot of resources on demining, including Cambodia." ASEAN consists of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

© 2007 DPA

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Jolie Overwhelmed at 1st by Refugee Work

The Associated Press
Sunday, March 11, 2007; 8:04 PM

NEW YORK -- Angelina Jolie says her work as a humanitarian ambassador for the United Nations at first left her tearful and overwhelmed.

"The first two years I just cried constantly," the actress told Newsweek. "I couldn't really talk about the situation without being emotional. And I went through a period of just complete lack of hope."

During her February visit to the Oure Cassoni camp on the border between Darfur and Chad she came across a disturbed 7-year-old boy whose family had tied him to a pole to stop him wandering away or banging himself. The boy had spent 48 hours hiding in the bush after his village was bombed.

"I talked to him for like half an hour and just kind of looked at him for a long time before he touched me," Jolie told the magazine, "and there was a little boy in there who was open to a kind sound."

Jolie has visited camps in Africa, Pakistan and Cambodia as part of her work as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. She said she travels unaccompanied on commercial flights, and doesn't care about people who describe what she does as celebrity tourism.

"I don't know if anybody saying that has spent the last six years of their life going to over 30 camps and really spending time with these people," said Jolie, who wants to return to Cambodia.

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Cambodia arrests senior officer in war against land grabbers

A major colonel from the border unit of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (CRAF) has been arrested, becoming the first senior officer arrested during the government's high-profile campaign against land grabbers.

"We arrested Te Haing in Banteay Mean Chey province according to the warrant from the Phnom Penh Municipal Court" on Saturday, Sao Sokha, military police commander of Cambodia, told Xinhua here on Sunday.

In addition, an official at the court told Xinhua on condition of anonymity that Te Haing was arrested for encroaching state land and cutting forestry to take about 1,567 hectares of land in Banteay Mean Chey province.

"Because he worked there, it was difficult to investigate the case. After checking the case, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court issued the arrest warrant and then transferred his case to Phnom Penh," he said.

Te Haing, also registered as owner of the Te Haing Development Co. Ltd., was accused under Article 97 of the Forestry Law and might be jailed for five to 10 years, he said, adding that all his properties will be confiscated by the state.

On Thursday, Chao Phirun, director general of RCAF's technical and material department, said that he had handed over more than 200 hectares of land to the government after Prime Minister Hun Sen threatened to fire him on Monday in the war on land grabbers.

"I already gave the land to the government (on Tuesday). Hun Sen has written to thank me," said the general, who is from Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party (CPP).

"I am not sad. This is a contribution to help the government," he said of the 215 hectares of land in Kampot province's Chhuk district.

He insisted that he was unaware that he was the target of Hun Sen's threat, as the land was bought by his wife in 1999 from 46 families rather than being grabbed from their hands.

Government spokesman Khieu Kanharith told reporters that Chao Phirun will not be fired as he returned the land.

Earlier, a top government official from CPP called Hun Sen to inform about his withdrawal from a land dispute in Koh Sla area in Kandal province.

Hun Sen said on Monday that he will purge perverse land grabbers out of the government and CPP, who might otherwise cause social instability or even trigger off riots.

"The government is going to fight against illegal land grabbing at any cost. The war against land grabbers is starting right now," he told hundreds of diplomats and high-ranking government officials at a national forum.

They should withdraw from land disputes by themselves, and if they don't, they will be fired from the government and expelled from the party, he said.

"I am not going to tolerate anyone any longer on this issue," he added.

Local media have reported recently that military officers and high-ranking government officials used to stand behind land disputes across the kingdom, causing much anger among the people, especially the deprived farmers.

In February, Hun Sen said that illegal land grabbing will destabilize the country.

"Our government has made tremendous efforts to build many roads, but it is sad to see that after the road is built, many people from the city rush in to buy or capture land (beside the road), squeezing the local community out of their property," he said. All provincial governors, district chiefs and commune councils are held responsible for the situation of landlessness and land grabbing in their territories, he said.

"I promise to punish any officials who are found to be involved in land grabbing and clearing of state land for personal use," he added.

Land disputes have been frequent across Cambodia in recent years, resulting in hundreds of death and injury, according to official reports.

Source: Xinhua

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CAMBODIA: JUDICIAL COMMITTEE MEETS TO DISCUSS KHMER ROUGE TRIALS: UN SPOKESPERSON

press released UN-news centre

In a further effort to resolve differences that have stalled the long-awaited trials of former Khmer Rouge leaders, accused of mass killings and other horrific crimes during the 1970s in Cambodia, a judicial review committee is again meeting this week and next in the capital Phnom Penh, a United Nations spokesperson said today.

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) Review Committee, which is made up of both international and national judges, is discussing various outstanding issues that have so far held up adoption of the Internal Rules for the conduct of the trials, spokesperson Michele Montas told reporters.

This meeting is scheduled to conclude on 16 March at which time it is hoped a date for the official adoption of the internal rules can be announced, Ms. Montas added. This latest session of the Review Committee follows an earlier one in January. The UN is funding most of the $56.3 million three-year budget for the Khmer Rouge trials.

Judges and prosecutors for the trials were sworn in last July. Under an agreement signed by the UN and Cambodia, the trial court and a Supreme Court within the Cambodian legal system will investigate those most responsible for crimes and serious violations of Cambodian and international law between 17 April 1975 and 6 January 1979.

The UN will pay $43 million of the $56.3 million budget for the trials, with the Government of Cambodia providing $13.3 million.At a pledging conference in 2005 to support the UN assistance to the trials, former Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that the crimes committed under Khmer Rouge rule "were of a character and scale that it was still almost impossible to comprehend," adding that "the victims of those horrific crimes had waited too long for justice."

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Spanish psychologist evaluates Cambodia's 'jungle woman'

Ker Munthit news associate

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - A Spanish psychologist met with Cambodia's "jungle woman" on Tuesday, hoping to unravel some of the mystery surrounding the woman who emerged from the forest, naked and unable to speak, after possibly 18 years in the wild.

Hector Rifa, a doctor of psychology from Spain's University of Oviedo, said his priority was to ensure the woman was receiving proper treatment for whatever traumatic experience she has undergone.

But it is also possible he may find clues to the woman's true identity - whether she is indeed a local girl who disappeared in 1988, as claimed by the family in northeastern Cambodia who has taken her in as their long-lost daughter.

Rifa said he plans to spend several days at the home of village policeman Sal Lou, who claims the woman is his daughter Rochom P'ngieng, who disappeared while tending water buffalo when she was eight.

Sal Lou's family, members of Cambodia's Pnong ethnic minority, say they are certain the woman is Rochom P'ngieng because of a childhood scar on her right arm.

With no other evidence supporting their claim, however, others have speculated that the woman may have a history of mental troubles and had simply become lost in the jungle much more recently.

In any case, her inability to communicate and evident attempts to escape from Sal Lou's family indicate she is in a difficult psychological situation.

Rifa has been working with indigenous people in Rattanakiri province over the past four years for the Spain-based group Psychology Without Borders.

In an interview earlier Tuesday, he told The Associated Press he thinks the woman's behaviour showed she was having difficulty adapting to normal life, as would be expected if she had been lost in the jungle for an extended period of time.

"It is not extraordinary . . . or anything coming from another world," he said, referring to concerns by superstitious villagers that the woman may be possessed by a jungle spirit.

"From the point of view of psychology, I suspect that this is like for us, if we have stayed one week in the forest and came back to the world, you are a little out of it. So if we have stayed 18 years out of the office or of the world, when we come back we need some time" to readjust, he said.

On Monday, two Cambodian human rights groups expressed concern that the woman may be suffering due to the spotlight cast on her since she emerged from the wild, and offered to provide medical and psychiatric treatment.

Curious villagers and journalists have flocked to see the woman, who was found Jan. 13 walking bent over rather than upright. She pats her stomach when hungry and uses animal-like grunts to communicate.

"The important thing is to try to help the family, if they don't know how to manage (her)," Rifa said.

Mao San, the Oyadao district police chief, said Tuesday the investigation into the woman's case has "hit a dead end" because she cannot communicate.

"Only when she starts speaking can we ask her where she might have been or whom she might have been with the whole time," he said, stressing the need to do DNA tests to confirm she is the child of Sal Lou. Sal Lou has said he is willing to undergo DNA testing "to clear any doubts that she is my child."
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Cambodia human rights violations rampant: UN report

Friday March 9, 2007

[JURIST] The Cambodian government uses systematic human rights and civil liberty violations to maintain its hold on power, according to a report [UN press release] by UN special rights representative Yash Ghai [appointment notice] and obtained by AFP. The report listed illegal land grabs, torture while in police custody, corruption among senior government officials, and a steadfast government opposition to democracy among other violations.

Cambodian officials angrily denied Ghai's allegations, accusing him of being an outsider speaking about things he did not understand. Cambodian government human rights advisor Om Yentieng said it would not be appropriate to respond to the accusations [DPA report], which he insisted were not based on fact. Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen [BBC profile] said that Ghai is no longer welcome in Cambodia because of his criticism.

In contrast, the Asian Human Rights Commission [advocacy website] condemned [press release] Sen's remarks and human rights advocate and founder of Cambodian rights group Licadho [advocacy website], Kek Galabru, said Ghai's conclusions were "generally correct." AFP has more.

The UN findings are broadly consistent with the latest US State Department human rights report on Cambodia released earlier this week as part of its 2006 worldwide human rights review [JURIST report], which concluded:

The government's human rights record remained poor. Government agents committed extrajudicial killings, and security forces acted with impunity. There was little political will to address the failure by government authorities to adhere to the rule of law.

Detainees were abused, often to extract confessions, and prison conditions were harsh. Human rights monitors reported arbitrary arrests and prolonged pretrial detention, underscoring a weak judiciary and denial of the right to a fair trial.

Land disputes and forced evictions, often accompanied by violence, were a growing problem. The government restricted freedom of speech and press through the use of defamation and disinformation suits, controlled or influenced the content of television and radio broadcasts, and sometimes interfered with freedom of assembly.

Corruption was endemic and extended throughout all segments of society, including the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government.

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Cambodia ruled through rights abuse: UN

March 9, 2007

PHNOM PENH (AFP) - Systematic rights violations are key to the Cambodian government's grip on power, a United Nations' envoy warned in a report accusing the administration of refusing to improve its rights record.

The report by special rights representative Yash Ghai, which was obtained by AFP on Friday, urged the international community to lean harder on the government over its failure to protect basic liberties.

"As deliberate and systemic violations of human rights have become central to the government's hold over power, the international community ... should do all it can to persuade and press the government to respect its human rights commitments," the report said.

Ghai, who is expected to return to Cambodia next week, regretted that "instead of responding to the concerns raised by the special representatives and United Nations bodies, a frequent response of the government has been evasion or accusation, scapegoating and intimidation," it added.

After an unusually blunt appraisal of rights violations last year, Ghai was publicly attacked in several speeches by Prime Minister Hun Sen, who demanded he be sacked.

His comments also prompted a round of criticism from other top government officials who blasted UN staff as "gods without virtue" and "tourists" in a country they knew nothing about.

The report, written after Ghai's second trip to Cambodia last March, was submitted to the UN's Human Rights Council during its session earlier this year.

While noting that Cambodia enjoys better political security, it catalogued a growing list of violations, from illegal land grabs to torture while in police custody.

"The absence of effective institutions of government, basic laws and an impartial judiciary ... all leave Cambodia's citizens insecure, vulnerable to systemic denial and violations of their rights," the report said.

Despite billions of dollars in foreign aid, most of impoverished Cambodia's institutions are still in ruin after decades of war that ended in 1998.

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Festival showcases Mekong region traditional artisans

The two-day festival will feature 14 artisans including eight from China, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia, besides six from Vietnam.

Visitors will have the opportunity to discover the similarities and specific features of the weaving traditions in the Mekong region.

On show will be tools to net fish made by the Lao people from Thailand, Kho Mu from Laos, Khmer from Cambodia and Vietnam, and other ethnic groups from Vietnam's southern Dong Thap province, baskets woven by Vietnamese people in Can Tho, and other bamboo products made by the Thai people living in Yunnan, China.

Children can also try their hand at several activities designed exclusively for them at this outdoor festival.

The event, organized jointly by the Culture Heritage Department and the Vietnam Ethnology Museum, will get technical support from the Center of Folk Life and Cultural Heritage of the US’s Smithsonian Institute, and financial support from the US’s Rockefeller Fund through the Thailand Royal Center of Human Studies.

It is a prelude to participation by Vietnamese artists in the 41st annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington D.C, the US, in June this year. The Smithsonian Folklife Festival program, themed Mekong river: Connecting Cultures, will give an insight into the complex connections among ethnic groups, languages, and traditions of peoples living along the mighty river.

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Vietnam, Cambodia to boost cooperation in health care

VietNamNet Bridge - Vietnam and Cambodia have agreed to boost cooperation and exchange of experience in developing health care services, especially those for children. An agreement to this effect was signed in Phnom Penh on March 6 during a Cambodia visit by a delegation of Vietnam's Committee for Population, Family and Children led by its Chairwoman Le Thi Thu from March 5-9.

Thu and Ith Somheng, Cambodian Minister of Social Affairs and War Veterans, agreed to intensify and diversify their collaborative activities through the exchange of delegations and the training of management cadres relating to population, family and children.

The Vietnamese delegation then met Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who appreciated their visit and expressed his wish that the two sides would implement well their cooperation agreements.

The delegation will also visit several Cambodian localities to learn more about family planning and other related activities.

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Cambodia court sentences two Germans to prison for child sex abuse

The associated press

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: Two Germans who worked as English teachers in Cambodia were among five people sentenced Friday to prison terms for sexually abusing four Vietnamese girls, a crime that one of the girl's mothers was an accomplice to.

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court sentenced Karl Heinz Henning, 61, to 28 years in prison on charges of human trafficking and debauchery — a Cambodian legal term for sexual offenses against minors.

Police arrested Henning after they observed him bringing the girls, aged 10 to 14, to his Phnom Penh apartment. While police were searching the apartment, he tried to escape by jumping from his balcony to the ground, some four meters (13 feet) below, but crashed into a metal canopy and was arrested.

The court also handed a 12-year prison term to Thomas Sigwart Eugen, 42, on debauchery charges. Eugen was arrested after police saw him having sex with two of the girls on a videotape confiscated from Henning.

"The two Germans committed the crimes because they figured Cambodia is a poor country and that they could just use their dollars to buy sex to fulfill their urges," Judge Ke Sakhan said. "These are illegal acts Cambodia cannot tolerate."

Both men worked as private English teachers in Phnom Penh.

The Germans denied sexually abusing the girls during their trial March 1. Henning said the four girls had come to his house to learn English and computer skills from him.

A Vietnamese couple that acted as sex brokers for the Germans received 17-year prison terms each on charges of human trafficking. The couple worked with one of the girl's mothers, who was sentenced to 15 years in jail, also on human trafficking charges.

Phnom Penh's anti-human trafficking police arrested the two Germans in separate raids of their rented apartments in the capital, Phnom Penh, in August.

Eugen, speaking to reporters at the court Friday, said he was "quite shocked" by his prison sentence.

Child rights advocates say Cambodia's lax law enforcement has made it a destination for foreign pedophiles. However, police have recently stepped up action against offenders.

On Tuesday, the same court sentenced a Swiss man to 11 years in prison for sexually abusing a 12-year-old Cambodian girl.


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U.S. funding for Cambodia to drop by quarter in 2008

The United States funding for Cambodia is slated to drop 25 percent in fiscal year 2008 to 40.9 million U.S. dollars, from 54.9 million U.S. dollars in fiscal year 2006, local media said on Thursday.

"The projected cuts in funding in fiscal year 2008 are unrelated to conditions in Cambodia and are a function of a tight budgetary environment in Washington and realignment of global development priorities," U.S. Embassy spokesman Jeff Daigle told the Cambodian Daily.

Funding for anti-human trafficking, promotion of labor rights and political party development after the 2008 national elections will no longer be focus areas for the U.S. assistance, he said.

It will turn to focus on developing democratic institutions, strengthening peace and security, establishing a health system that can respond to infectious disease outbreaks and encouraging market-driven economic growth, he said.

Meanwhile, Cheam Yeap, lawmaker from the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP), said that the proposed cut will not be felt deeply, as the U.S. doesn't provide much direct assistance to the Cambodian government.

"The U.S. cutting funds will not affect the government's programs and the government's budget," he said.

He also said that Cambodia has a wealth of other donors that it can turn to for assistance.

"China also gives us a lot of money for infrastructure," he added.

The proposed reduction comes amid a warm-up of the U.S.- Cambodian relations.

The U.S. has decided to resume direct aid for the Cambodian government after a decade of hiatus and a U.S. Navy vessel just paid an official visit to the kingdom's port city Sihanoukville.

In addition, under the terms of the 2007 U.S. budget resolution passed on Feb. 15, Cambodia will likely receive about 56 million U. S. dollars of aid this fiscal year, without any restrictions on direct government assistance.

Source: Xinhua

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UNICEF donates 140,000 USD for demining in Cambodia

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has donated more than 140,000 U.S. dollars for demining and landmine education in the western provinces of Cambodia for this year, an official said on Thursday.

The fund will be used for demining, education about danger of landmine and UXO (unexplosive ordnance), organizing spots for broadcasting on TV, building network to educate villagers in communities of landmine areas, Khem Sophoan, head of the Cambodia Mine Action Center (CMAC), told Xinhua on phone.

The money is for 26 districts in the western provinces of Cambodia, including Battambang, Preah Vihear, Oddar Mean Chey, Banteay Mean Chey and Pailin, where mines pose great danger for the communities, he said.

UNICEF has donated over one million U.S. dollars for CMAC since 1995, he said.

In the past two months of this year, mines killed over 10 people, including seven deminers of CMAC, he added.

According to official statistics, there were more than 400 human casualties over mine and UXO explosions in 2006 in Cambodia, or 50 percent decrease over the average number of the previous six years.

Due to 30 years of armed conflicts, Cambodia has become one of the world's most heavily mined countries with an estimated 4-6 million of such "hidden killers" buried underground in areas as extensive as 2,900 square kilometers.

It may take the kingdom another 150 years to clear out all the mines and UXO, statistics say.

Source: Xinhua

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