Plot to assassinate Thai royal adviser uncovered

Is Thailand happy with the royal family or they are the obstacles for them?

BANGKOK - Thai police have arrested three men who they claim were plotting to assassinate an adviser to King Bhumibol Adulyadej at a time of rising political tension in the country, a news report said Wednesday.

The suspects allegedly told investigators that some military officers wanted to create turmoil ahead of Wednesday’s mass rally by supporters loyal to fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the Nation reported.

The supposed target was Chanchai Likhitjittha, a member of the royal Privy Council and former Supreme Court judge who Thaksin claimed was deeply involved in the decision to overthrow him in a September 2006 coup. Chanchai later served as justice minister in the military’s post-coup government.

The three men, including the alleged organiser of the plot, an army major, have all confessed, deputy national police chief General Jongrak Chuthanont said.

The would-be gunman, who was apparently hired for 130,000 baht ($3,600), was caught outside Chanchai’s home on the outskirts of Bangkok.

A mass demonstration by Thaksin’s Red-Shirt supporters Wednesday, is aimed at shaking up the political scene by targeting royal advisers who the group claims are meddling in politics.

Red Shirt leaders hope at least 100,000 people will gather outside the Government House, the cabinet offices, before moving on to the nearby home of former prime minister and army commander General Prem Tinsulanonda, the man they claim was the ‘mastermind’ behind the 2006 coup. Prem currently heads the Privy Council.

News of the alleged plot against the royal adviser was being treated sceptically in some quarters. ‘A very convenient plot,’ said a Red Shirt organiser, who asked not to be named.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said the authorities would act ‘decisively’ to protect the monarchy and maintain law and order during the protest but that no state of emergency would be called..
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From Cambodia to Columbia

By Nettra Pan


Through the phone, the voice sounded cracked and distorted, heavy with genuine concern, aged by more than enough traumatizing experiences for any one lifetime. Thinking of the crime, violence, and general danger present at the time in a war-riddled nation, my grandmother wasted no time making herself clear regarding an offer my father had received. She told him, “I want my granddaughter to still have a father.”

This was my grandmother’s reaction to my dad’s announcement that he would be accepting a position in Cambodia’s United Nations Transitional Authority in 1992. At a time when refugees were still fleeing from the postwar conflict in Southeast Asia, seeking life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness anywhere but home, my father was among those headed in the opposite direction—to help, toward home (if you could even call it “home,” seeing as he had not been there in 20 years). To my grandmother, I imagine that my father’s acceptance of this job encompassed many negative doubts and fears. Accepting meant to abandon his stable post at Unocal, an oil company now absorbed by the corporate giant Chevron. It meant leaving Southern California, the place where most of the surviving members on my father’s side had sought refuge from the Khmer Rouge genocide of 1975-1979.

For my mother, my father’s choice didn’t translate easily either. She had just recently moved to the United States from France, where her side of the family found protection from the war. For her, it was only after countless garage sales, selling our car and our house, and transits in France, Switzerland, and Thailand, that she and I, a wide-eyed toddler at the time, finally reunited with my father in Cambodia’s capital city, Phnom Penh.

Here in New York, nearing the end of my first year at Columbia, I’ve been flattered to see a rise in the number of people curious about my past, especially given the great diversity on our campus. Like high school students will be asking themselves this month, I’ve had my share of the typical “Why Columbia?” question. True, a lot of students choose their colleges because of the distance between their school and home. New York City is the ultimate destination for students who may be habituated to a small town—students thirsty for more everything, especially more freedom. But my grandmother had a point when she spoke to my dad 30 years earlier. Isn’t moving halfway around the world a bit much?

The international student would know: College abroad means trading in real phone calls for Skype and IM at odd hours of the night. For some, this difference means sacrificing frequent visits from home for frequent packages from Lerner. It involves exchanging long transit hours at airports for even longer winters away from home. For my parents, their only child’s choice of college probably led to a more severe case of Empty Nest Syndrome and accentuated their characteristics as protective, demanding parents. (Yes, Cambodians fit the Asian stereotype as well.) My father seemed most convinced that the crime, violence, and general danger of a big city automatically dropped Columbia from the list from which I was choosing. He also preferred Stanford and Berkeley for the fact that I would be closer to family. Ironic, no?

Maybe not. As the sun, squirrels, and acceptance letters come out again, existential questions begin to resurface in the classic Columbia fashion as I ask myself how I got here. I remember the plane ride, the excitement, how new and not quite familiar everything felt at first but how natural and comforting everything ended up being. Columbia helped, of course, by arranging a dinner for international students on our first night at school. Six months later, the friends I made there are still some of my closest friends, hailing from Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East. These friends helped as well. I was lucky enough, as an international student, to be adopted by an American family for a weekend and get a chance to indulge in the American traditions of Thanksgiving and Christmas, or Hanukkah.

Looking back, perhaps the parallel between my father’s move to Cambodia and mine to New York is not that unexpected. It’s likely that the same thing that lured my father to Cambodia was exactly what I found in the City that Never Sleeps; a dynamic life, internationalism, and the ability to give back to our land of origin, still in dire need of assistance. I guess you could say the United Nations headquarters located here was also factor in my decision. But most importantly, another similarity is how well our seemingly arbitrary choices worked out. Raising me in the international environment of a developing country provided me with an interesting perspective. I feel lucky to have gotten the best of all three worlds, compared to American or French cousins whose parents did not return to Cambodia. Thinking of how strongly these three countries influence me now, I don’t know how I ever imagined myself elsewhere else. Riding the subway downtown, walking across campus, or even just sitting in John Jay, I realize New York is the one place where nearly everyone here is also from somewhere else. But the fact I cherish most is this: It feels like home.

The author is a Columbia College first-year.


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Large anti-government protest in Bangkok

Bangkok, Tens of thousands of supporters of coup-ousted Thai leader Thaksin Shinawatra rallied here today, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and the top advisor to Thailand’s revered King.

Waving red coloured, foot-shaped clappers, the protestors, wearing red shirts, under the banner of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), surrounded the official residence of the influential Privy Council President Prem Tinsulanonda whom Mr Shinawatra accuses of having masterminded the September 2006 coup d’etat that toppled him.

An estimated 60,000 UDD members from across the country had gathered by mid-day in the heart of the Thai capital’s government zone, announcing they would remain there till the government quits.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister announced that the Southeast Asian nations summit scheduled from April 10-12 in the nearby resort town of Pattaya would go ahead despite a physical assault by UDD cadres on his motorcade there yesterday.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders are scheduled to meet their counterparts from India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand during the ASEAN Plus One Summits, the ASEAN Plus Three Summit and the East Asia Summit.

Thousands of red-clad anti-government protestors have been besieging the Prime Minister’s Office for the past fortnight and listening to live video messages and phone calls from Mr Shinawatra from abroad every night.

The ousted leader has upped the stakes in his confrontation with what he calls the aristocratic-elite establishment which he accuses of toppling him because he was working to empower the rural poor.

Mr Shinawatra has fired up UDD passions by directly naming the Privy Council chief of instigating the 2006 coup and calling on Thai people to topple the old order to bring about a historic change for their children’s future. Read more!

Cambodian, Thai PMs to meet on border disputes

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia Prime Minister Hun Senwill meet with his Thai counterpart Abhisit Vejjajiva in order to solve both sides' border disputes and avoid further armed clash, a Cambodian spokesman said here on Tuesday.

"They will meet for bilateral talks during the ASEAN summits from April 10 to 12 in Thailand," said Phay Siphan, secretary of state and spokesman of the Council of Ministers.

Cambodia welcomes talks anywhere and anytime to avoid further armed clash between Thai and Cambodia troops in the areas near the Preah Vihear temple, he said.

Two rounds of armed confrontations took place last Friday after Thai troops with weapons intruded on Cambodian land near the 900-year-old temple, and resulted in death and casualty on the Thai side, according to a statement issued by the Cambodian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

Since July 2008, troops from both sides have stationed near the Preah Vihear temple, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and two armed confrontations last year sparked brief concerns of war.

The two neighboring countries have never fully demarcated their disputed border, mainly due to different interpretations of historical maps, as well as the landmines left over from decades of civil war in Cambodia.
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Cambodia: A street food experience

By Jeffrey Fournier/51 LINCOLN


The relationship between a person and the food that they eat is very personal and powerful. Just as strong is the connection between a culture and its food. My first experience with Khmer food was a nervous and sublime one that will stay with me forever.

My first day in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, brought me to the Kandal Market. Food stalls created a river of activity into which a multitude of people flowed. Boston-based photographer Heath Robbins and I negotiated through this chaos, our senses overwhelmed by pungent odors and bright colors.

As we waded carefully through the throngs of locals, my experiences as a chef piqued my intuition that these are a people who take pride in their food, serving fresh and delicious products.

After allowing myself to absorb the environment, I found an intriguing food stall on the outskirts of the market. Stacked high with fresh basil, plates and jars of sauces I had never seen or tasted before, skewers of cuttlefish and head-on prawns smoked away over wood charcoal, tantalizing my tastebuds. Small children smiled at me and bit into the cuttlefish like it was a fruit roll-up.

I knew this was the place for me. Getting the attention of a young Khmer woman, I pointed at the shrimp and she quickly motioned me to sit a stool at her table.

My host presented me with a plate of fresh basil leaves (more powerful than any basil I have had in recent memory), crisp bean sprouts and a sweet, pungent ginger sauce. When the skewer of shrimp was delivered, the young woman smiled with pride, seeming to know that I was about to experience something unique and personal.

Everything around me disappeared as I bit into the crispy, salty head of the first shrimp. I found myself lost in the sweetness of the ginger sauce mingled with the strong flavor of the sea - a reminder of the simple pleasures of food.

There is no sense criticizing honest food. It was produced with no pretence and allowed me to dine without inhibition. These few bites felt like welcome into Cambodia and invited me to start my culinary adventure.

The flavors of Cambodia touched me deeply and I have paid homage to the street vendors by including some Cambodian dishes on my spring menu. Below is a recipe for Cambodian Skewered Shrimp.

Jeffrey Fournier is the executive chef and owner of 51 Lincoln in Newton. For reservations, call 617-965-3100 or go to www.51lincolnnewton.com.

CAMBODIAN SKEWERED SHRIMP WITH GINGER SAUCE

INGREDIENTS:

For the shrimp:

2 pounds U-10 shrimp (10 shrimp per pound), shell on

8 bamboo skewers

1/4 cup kosher salt

1 bunch basil

2 cups bean sprouts

For the Ginger Sauce:

1/4 cup chopped garlic

1/3 cup simple syrup

Salt and pepper to taste

Juice of two limes

Pinch to 1 teaspoon of chili flake (depending on desired spiciness)

DIRECTIONS:

To make the shrimp: Place shrimp (in shell) in a bowl and sprinkle with salt.

Fill bowl lightly with water until shrimp are covered. Refrigerate and leave for 1 hour.

Remove shrimp from the water and skewer five shrimp on a double skewer (one going each direction through all shrimp).

Grill over charcoal, about 2 to 3 minutes per side.

Serve with basil and bean sprouts.

For the Ginger Sauce: Mix the garlic, simple syrup, salt and pepper, lime juice and chili flake, and serve in bowl for dipping.

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PM again refutes UK report purporting instability of Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has once again dismissed a UK report claiming that the kingdom is among the top five countries at high risk of political instability amid the current global economic climate, the official Agence Kampuchea Presse (AKP) said on Tuesday.

With its report, British think tank the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) possibly aimed to interrupt the foreign investment in Cambodia, the AKP quoted the premier as telling the 5th Asia Economic Forum here on Monday.

Fortunately, all the projects in Cambodia were now going ahead, and didn't retreat, he added.

The premier also revealed that the EIU had invited him to visit England in September and he still hesitated whether to accept it or not.

The recently issued EIU report classified the risk of social upheaval and political unrest as high or very high in 95 countries, as a result of the current global financial crisis. Cambodia was ranked fourth in terms of such threat.

In late March, Hun Sen had already rejected the report, saying that "we have political stability and live in peace now."

"We know that their assessment had other purposes inside," he added.
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Cambodia picks up 138 troops for UN missions in Chad, Central Africa

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia here on Tuesday declared the list of 138 troops, who will undertake UN peacekeeping missions in Chad and Central Africa, but their departure date has not been set yet.

The Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) held a ceremony at the headquarters of its special armed forces in the outskirts of Phnom Penh to highlight the honor.

In late March, Prime Minister Hun Sen told a university graduation ceremony that Cambodia will send its soldiers as UN peace keepers to these two countries according to the request of the UN Secretary General.

"We already sent three groups of soldiers for mine clearance in Sudan under the UN peacekeeping umbrella," he said.

In 2006, Cambodia sent 135 deminers to Sudan for UN peacekeeping mission, and then 139 in June 2007 to replace the old ones. The deminers were renewed again in 2008.
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Ousted Thai PM Thaksin not in Cambodia: Official

PHNOM PENH, A government spokesman here on Tuesday dismissed the rumor that ousted Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra once stayed in Cambodia to carry out his political agenda.

"The Thai side heard some wrong information about Thaksin. They got the rumor about the presence of Thaksin in Cambodia. Thaksin actually didn't have any presence in our country," said Phay Siphan, secretary of state and spokesman of the Council of Ministers.

For anything that he did, Thaksin could observe his own country's law and the international law, he said.

In addition, Thailand could not order Cambodia to do this or that, because Cambodia was independent, had its sovereignty and could make any decision by itself, he added.

Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya once told reporters that the bilateral ties between Thailand and Cambodia could be affected adversely, if the ousted premier was allowed to launch political attacks from Cambodia.
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Pain of Khmer Rouge Era Lost on Cambodian Youth

By SETH MYDANS


TRAPAENG SVA, CAMBODIA — Thirty years after the killing stopped, Cambodia suffers from a particularly painful generation gap — between those who survived the brutal rule of the Communist Khmer Rouge and their children, who know very little about it.

“I used to tell my children the stories, but they only believed a tiny bit, like nothing,” said Ty Leap, 52, who sells noodles and fruit drinks from a roadside stall. “I don’t like it, but what can you do? It really is unbelievable that those things happened.”

For nearly four years, from 1975 to 1979, the Communist Khmer Rouge caused the deaths of 1.7 million people from overwork, starvation and disease as well as torture and execution as they attempted to construct a peasant utopia.

Almost everyone here of a certain age has stories to tell of terror, abuse, hunger and the loss of family members.

“Some older people get so upset at their children for not believing that they say ‘I wish the Khmer Rouge time would happen again; then you’d believe it,”’ Mr. Ty Leap said.

As much as 70 percent of Cambodia’s population is under the age of 30, and four out of five members of this young generation know little or nothing about the Khmer Rouge years, according to a survey last fall by the Human Rights Center, University of California, Berkeley.

That ignorance — among both young and old — seems also to embrace the trials of five major Khmer Rouge figures that began last month, a process that is meant, in part, to begin a process of healing and closure.

Parts of the trial sessions are being broadcast and newspapers are carrying reports, but even in this village at the edge of a former killing field 40 kilometers, or 25 miles, south of the capital, Phnom Penh, many people said they were not aware that the hearings were under way.

“I miss some programs so I don’t know about that,” said Khieu Hong, 36, who was listening to a small transistor radio. “If you want to know about the trials you should ask the police or the old people.”

Hun Ret, 36, a cattle trader who lives nearby, said he strongly supported a trial in order to punish Khmer Rouge perpetrators. But he was surprised when he was told that the trials had already started.

Again the Berkeley study seemed to support the perception of widespread ignorance. Only 15 percent of the people it surveyed said they knew much at all about the trials, although that number is likely to have risen since the hearings began. The study was based on personal interviews with 1,000 people during the last three weeks of September.

Beyond the question of age, ignorance about the past appears to be a combination of culture and policy and perhaps also the passivity of a people too exhausted by history to confront its traumas.

The trials are being held under pressure from the United Nations and Western governments in a nation that might have preferred the approach of its prime minister, Hun Sen, who once proposed that Cambodia “dig a hole and bury the past.”

Hun Sen was a mid-level Khmer Rouge commander, though there is apparently no evidence that he committed major crimes. Several ranking members of his governing Cambodian People’s Party and of the military are also former Khmer Rouge.

Because of these cross-currents in recent Cambodian history, the Khmer Rouge period has not been taught in school, causing some teachers who are survivors to feel orphaned by their students.

A new high school textbook has been prepared but will reach only a portion of the country’s students.

“I talk to them but they don’t always believe what I tell them,“ said Kann Sunthara, 57, a chemistry teacher. “My father and husband and brother and sisters and many others died. Sometimes when I’m telling about them I have to turn my back and cry.”

Another teacher, Eam Mary, 41, who was severely tortured as a boy under the Khmer Rouge, said he can only catch the attention of his class when he tells weird stories, like the times he was forced by hunger to eat baby mice or lizards or worse.

“They say ‘Eew, disgusting!”’ he said. “And at the same time some of the kids in the back of the class are playing and not paying attention.”

The generation gap seems evident here at the former killing field, where dozens of skulls and bones have been preserved in a makeshift memorial — one of hundreds around the country — as evidence that the massacres really did happen.

Some older people say they still hear the cries of wandering ghosts whose bodies have not been properly laid to rest. “They come out at night and frighten people,” said Mr. Khieu Hong, the man with the radio. “They cry ‘Whoo, whoo!’ It sounds like somebody is being tortured and crying out.” But the children who graze cattle nearby seem deaf to the moans of ghosts.

For some of them, the bones are playthings. Sometimes they stick their fingers into the eyes of the skulls, like bowling balls. Sometimes they put them on their heads like scary caps, the children say. Sometimes they kick them.

But they seemed confused when they were asked whose skulls these were.

“They are the skulls of ghosts!” said Prok Poeuv, 11, standing near the small stupa that houses the bones. But he added that he did not know whose ghosts these were, and he said he had never heard of the Khmer Rouge.

Sok Dane, 12, said she knew a little more. “My grandmother tells me that in the Khmer Rouge time some people hit other people,” she said.

But that was all she knows, and the meaning of “Khmer Rouge time” was unclear to her.

Chhun Sam Ath 42, a mother of six who lives in a shanty beside the collection of skulls, is one of the better informed villagers. She has a glossy handout about the tribunal although she does not read very well.

She said some children here, deep in their souls, may know more about the past than they seem to.

“I think some of my children are reborn from the victims in the killing field,” she said. “When people come and leave offerings for the skulls, my daughter always runs to get the food, as if they were bringing it for her.”


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A Time of War

Was the Vietnam War 'unwinnable'?

By ARTHUR HERMAN

America's most controversial war ended 34 years ago this month. There are two schools of thought about what happened in Vietnam. The version taught in colleges and textbooks is that it was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. Thanks to Cold War paranoia, the story goes, the U.S. wound up caught in the middle of a civil war that North Vietnam and its leader, Ho Chi Minh, were bound to win and that America and its ally, South Vietnam, were bound to lose.

The second, more recent, version, involving a re- examination of the evidence on the battlefield and at the Pentagon -- and drawing on testimony from the North Vietnamese themselves -- concludes that the U.S. military succeeded far better in Vietnam than was once supposed. The revisionist view suggests that the conflict was not only winnable but largely won by January 1973, when the Paris Peace Accords were signed compelling North Vietnam to recognize South Vietnam and to honor the border between the two countries (an agreement the North immediately violated). By then, however, the U.S. Congress refused to support South Vietnam any further. So America stood on the sidelines while a tragedy ensued and perhaps as many as two million innocent people lost their lives -- and communism won an unearned Cold War victory.

John Prados's "Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945-1975" is, as its title suggests, an attempt to hold the barricades against the new version and resuscitate the old. Mr. Prados, a senior fellow of the National Security Archive at George Washington University and, as he tells us, once a Vietnam War protester, offers a detailed picture of a U.S. government unwilling to confront its mistakes and an American military baffled by a guerrilla insurgency. He weaves the story of the antiwar movement into his account of the war itself in an effort to show how he and other protesters grasped the futility of the war far earlier than the politicians in Washington.

Mr. Prados argues, above all, that America failed in Vietnam because it "failed to understand the Vietnamese revolution," which, in his view, was essentially a long anticolonial struggle. But the tragedy that unfolded after America left Vietnam would suggest that America's leaders, starting with Harry Truman, understood the Vietnamese "revolution" only too well, seeing Ho Chi Minh not as a nationalist but as an ideological soulmate and willing tool of both Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong -- that is, as a man prepared to extend communism's reach regardless of the cost.

In this, Ho resembled North Korea's leader, Kim Il Sung. In fact, the parallels between Korea and Vietnam become more striking over time. In both cases a Stalinist regime in the north tried to overrun its neighbor to the south; in both cases U.S. military force was deployed to fend off the aggression. Mr. Prados glosses over this part of the story, saying nothing about how the regime that took power in North Vietnam in 1954 systematically butchered its political opponents and terrorized the peasantry in ways that would prove to be frighteningly similar to those of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia 20 years later.

Mr. Prados is particularly unwilling to concede that it was the intervention of American ground troops that first halted -- and then, during the Tet Offensive of January 1968 -- finally broke the Hanoi-backed Viet Cong insurgency in the South, compelling the North Vietnamese army to pull back to its sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia. The Nixon administration's effort to smash those sanctuaries and to intensify the air war over North Vietnam was what finally forced Hanoi to the negotiating table.

Mr. Prados gives us instead a war in which the Americans can never do anything right and the communists never do anything wrong, until finally thousands of antiwar protesters, including John Kerry and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, take to the streets to force Washington and the American public to face reality and get out of Vietnam.

Far from seeing reality more clearly, however, the antiwar left constructed a fictionalized version of what was happening in Vietnam. The totalitarian Ho was portrayed as an Asian George Washington; a decisive victory like Tet was painted as an American defeat. The average American soldier was depicted as a murderous brute. Likewise, the bombing of Cambodia to prevent that country from being overrun by Hanoi -- a move that Cambodia's leaders and members of Congress knew about and approved -- was branded as secret and illegal; and the American incursion into Cambodia in 1970 to break up North Vietnamese sanctuaries and wind down the war was presented as a move that widened it.

Then, in 1975, when a massive North Vietnamese army overran the South in blatant violation of the Paris treaty and the North's former allies, the Khmer Rouge, took over Cambodia, certain members of the left celebrated the communist victory as if it were their own -- which, in political terms, it was. When Saigon fell, the headline to Sydney Schanberg's New York Times story read: "Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life."

Now we know better. We know of the 65,000 South Vietnamese murdered when Hanoi took over and of the thousands of boat people who died fleeing the communist regime and of the perhaps 250,000 who died in re-education camps. But Mr. Prados ends his book by simply pulling a veil over what ensued when America left Vietnam and the communists took over.

It is a fact that the left routinely resists, then as now: Americans fought and died in Vietnam for freedom, just as they are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan today. Whatever mistakes generals and policymakers have made along the way cannot detract from that essential truth -- which should be a part of any reliable history.

Mr. Herman's "Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age" appears in paperback later this month.

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Cambodia warned on ex-PM Thaksin

The Nation/Asia News Network


Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya warned Cambodia yesterday that bilateral ties could be adversely affected if ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra is allowed to launch political attacks from that country.

He said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was trying to verify reports that Thaksin was spotted in Cambodia.

"If Cambodia loves Thaksin that much, the ties with Thailand will certainly have problems," said Kasit.

Thaksin, who has been convicted in a corruption case, has made nightly speeches through a video link-up from overseas to his supporters gathering outside Government House. Democrat Party figure Theptai Senapong claimed he was informed that Thaksin was seen in Cambodia recently.

The foreign minister said yesterday that he had invited diplomats from various countries - including those from Latin America, the Middle East and Africa - for a meeting tomorrow when he would explain to them the Thai justice process regarding Thaksin's cases. He also would ask countries without an extradition treaty with Thailand to send back Thaksin voluntarily to face legal action.

Kasit said Thailand has informed countries with no extradition treaties with Thailand about Thaksin' status and "how he has created a crisis for the country". These states include Dubai, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

"Many countries have responded by not allowing Thaksin to use their territory in launching his attacks against Thailand," Kasit said.

Kasit was speaking at the Democrat Party headquarters while attending the celebration of the 63rd anniversary of the country's oldest political party.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva yesterday said he expected to discuss with his Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen the border dispute between the two countries.

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Beyond Angkor Wat: Cambodia's Hidden Beaches

By Jeninne Lee-St. John

Most visits to Cambodia begin with the ancient temples of Angkor Wat or the Khmer Rouge's infamous killing fields just outside Phnom Penh. I'm not saying they're not worth seeing, but on our recent 10-day journey through Cambodia, we visited neither. My husband had already hiked Angkor Wat a couple of months back and, frankly, it just felt too depressing to center an entire vacation around mass murder. So we headed instead to southwestern Cambodia, to the developing coastline, in search of waterfalls and beaches. And we found the people there were just as welcoming as the landscape.

We flew into Phnom Penh International Airport and took a tuk-tuk (a motorized rickshaw) into town. It was a $5, 45-minute, open-air trip on the highway, which probably did bad things to our lungs but helped ease my motion-sickness from our wobbly descent into the airport. It also gave us a nice visual primer of the capital, which we were using only as a way station. Looking back, I would have liked at least another day in Phnom Penh to take in the culture — the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, for example — and the laid-back, late-going bar scene. As it was, we had time only for dinner at the Foreign Correspondents' Club (363 Sisowath Quay, Phnom Penh; +855-23-210-142), where we also stayed the night, and to hit up a couple of bars, including Love Orange — a disco packed with teenagers cheering on the drag-queen-lip-synching show.

The next day, it was on to Koh Kong, a coastal frontier town on the Thai border, which until a couple of years ago was best accessed by boat. It is separated from the rest of Cambodia by the Cardamom Mountain range, a dense forest that houses endangered species like the Indochinese tiger and the Malayan sun bear, and used to be a Khmer Rouge stronghold. But a national highway, built with help from the Thais, including four bridges spanning rivers once crossable only by ferry, has cut the drive to Koh Kong from the capital in half — to four hours.

Koh Kong has one paved road, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it dock and an inordinate number of Germans. The main activity for travelers in this beach town is meeting other travelers. Most of the guesthouses and hostels in Koh Kong are run by Europeans and Australians (the proprietor and family usually live on-site) and are good for getting a drink, sitting in a hammock and chatting up your neighbor. They're also good for a cheap ($7 per night) room, if you can endure using a shared toilet. If not, I suggest you stay at the $35-per-night Koh Kong City Hotel (Street 1, Koh Kong; +855-35-936-777) on the waterfront, which is sparse and basic, but has decadent, memory-foam-style mattresses and private, Western-style bathrooms. The front-desk service here is lacking, but you'll sleep the sleep of the dead.

The tour outfits in Koh Kong aren't well advertised, but you can get yourself a seat on an organized excursion if you know whom to ask and don't mind surprises. We stumbled randomly on Otto, owner of a guesthouse called Otto's, on our first night in town. We went to his place for dinner (fantastic fried potatoes) and when we asked for advice on local tours, he pulled out his cell phone, dialed his friend Thomas and booked us instantly on a boat excursion for the following morning. His method was efficient, if mysterious. Even as we boarded the boat the next morning, we had no idea where we were going or what we would see.

There were eight other travelers aboard our long-tail motor boat, seven of whom were German and most of whom were staying at Thomas' guesthouse, Neptune. Thomas, also German, did the entertaining, while our Khmer captain steered with his foot and drank an Angkor brand beer. The first two hours took us south past islands dotted with stilted fishing villages painted in blues and greens and oranges, then through a mangrove forest, into the Gulf of Thailand. There we hit the jackpot: a school of dolphins jumping in the waves.

We stopped for lunch in a fishing village where Thomas had once stayed a night after being stranded at sea. He made friends with the villagers, and now returns often to introduce his tour groups. In general, as tourists, we try not to gawk at the poverty around us, but this was impossible at such close range. About 15 people lined up on the "dock" (really, a front porch) and helped us clamber from our boat over theirs and into their one-room home. There wasn't much dialogue between the groups, given that none of the tourists spoke Khmer and our hosts didn't know English, but there was much smiling and cooing at the babies, one of whom was cooling off in a pot of water. We ate stir-fried veggies and tofu with a cabbage salad cross-legged on the floor. Through the slats, you could see the water a few feet below. The hospitality was free: Thomas brought our lunch, and gave our hosts a case of beer as a token of friendship.

Another sail took us to Koh Kong Island, a dense national forest that is forbidden to recreational exploration. We dropped anchor off a deserted white-sand beach and hopped overboard into the clear, warm sea. The water was probably 70 degrees and not more than five feet deep, with gentle waves that glimmered in the late-afternoon sun. Then, sated and relaxed, we motored home.

The next day, my husband and I decided to find our own adventure. We rented a motorbike for $4 and borrowed a couple of sturdy helmets from Bob, the Australian restaurateur who runs Bob's, in town. Then we headed east about a dozen miles out of town, to check out the Tatai waterfall with two friends we had met on the boat the day before — a twentysomething German woman who was traveling solo in Asia for six months and a dreadlocked guy we called The Wanderer because when asked where he was from he said, "My last address was Berlin, but I am now a man with no address," and when we asked for his name, replied, "I don't believe in names. They are so superficial."

Tatai gushes rapids during the rainy season (May to October), but during the dry time of year the river is low and dotted with warm, fresh-water pools. Families picnicked and swam. And barefoot kids climbed up and hurled themselves off the cliffs in ways that would give most parents I know a seizure.

But the real adventure of the day was the motorbikes. The last time my husband, Keirn, had driven one was 10 years ago in the Philippines. Now that we live in Vietnam, where everyone gets around on scooters or motorbikes, we were keen to practice our driving skills and happy to do so outside of Saigon's swirling, incessant traffic.

We rode the highway, over hills, across a bridge and back. It was exhilarating. But on the dirt access road from Tatai to the highway, we hit a patch of sand and lost control of our bike. Next thing we knew, Keirn and I were lying on our sides, covered in red soil, wondering if we were still in one piece. We were. We had been traveling slowly, luckily on a dirt road not asphalt, and there were lots of people around to help us.

Everyone came running. A group of five women — our saviors — pulled their truck over just past our crash. A few of them hoisted our bike into the bed of their truck, tied it down and piled in after it. My husband and I climbed into the cab with the driver, who turned out to be the proprietress of one of the nicer guesthouses in town, Koh Kong Guest House (Street 1, Koh Kong; +855-16-654-171), and took us to a pharmacy before dropping us off at our hotel.

The Wanderer, it turned out, had trained as a nurse sometime in his mysterious past. It was another stroke of luck for us. I had gouged some holes in my hand in the accident and Keirn had a deep gash on his elbow that probably should have gotten a stitch. But we felt wary of our chances at a neighborhood clinic, so The Wanderer cleaned our wounds, patched us up, and sent us back to our comfy bed to relax.

Which is what we did for the rest of our trip. From Koh Kong, we moved on to Sihanoukville, a three-hour drive southwest. Sihanoukville, named after a former king, is billed as Vietnam's up-and-coming high-end resort town, but, for now, it is more accurately described as a beach-town-for-backpackers. Hostels are abundant here and there are a couple of nice hotels, where you can get rooms for $5 to $400, depending on your budget. We got the last room, a private bungalow, at the one real resort in town, the Sokha Beach Resort (Street 2 Thnou, Sihanoukville; +855-34-935-999; reservations@sokhahotels.com), which was nice enough, but not worth the $200-plus per night.

Sihanoukville's main public beaches, Occheuteal and Serendipity, are lined with cafes that offer lounge chairs by day and become bars night. This shoreline and the roads behind it constitute the town's most popular restaurant and nightlife area, and there's enough litter piled about to prove it. We had excellent Mexican food at the new Reef Resort (Road to Serendipity, Sihanoukville; +855-012-315-338; bookings@reefresort.com.kh), a boutique hotel, and practically fell asleep afterward on the huge pillows spread out on the sand at Purple Lounge (at about the midpoint of Serendipity Beach). The town's former main drag, which is a 10-minute ride northwest of that area, is called Victory Hill. The crowd there comprises mostly older Western men and their young Cambodian companions, which is a little creepy, but we had a nice French dinner at XXL (+855-92-738-641).

We pried ourselves off the beach for one day, paying a tuk-tuk driver $30 (probably too much) for a six-hour tour of town. If you like animals, ask someone to take you to the Buddhist monastery, where the legions of wild monkeys will eat out of your hand. And definitely set aside an hour to visit Boom Boom Room (Serendipity Beach Road; +855-12-219-657), where you can load up your iPod or MP3 player with supercheap music.

Recently, Russian developers have taken an interest in Sihanoukville, helming many new projects, including Snake House (a guest house, restaurant and zoo on Mittapheap Kampuchea-Soviet Street; +855-12-673-805) and the town's most impressive bar, Airport (Krong Street; +855-34-934-470): it's an open hangar housing a real Antonov-24 turboprop plane, which makes up the club's VIP section. Airport opens onto Victory Beach, which during the day offers a small, calm, shallow shoreline without the hectic scene found on Serendipity.

Sihanoukville is Cambodia's main shipping port, so there's local wealth here as well. In five years, a handful of new resorts and several middle-class housing developments will have likely sprung up. So, if you like your beach towns simple, cheap and dirty — The Wanderer, for one, thought Sihanoukville was already too bustling — you might want to go there now.

Meanwhile, if anyone wants to visit Angkor Wat, let me know.

Read more!

Nixon, U.S. blamed for Cambodia genocide

File photo of President Richard Nixon dated March 10, 1971. (UPI Photo/Darryl Heikes/Files)

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, April 6 (UPI) -- A notorious former Khmer Rouge prison commander on trial for war crimes says U.S. backing for Cambodia's right-wing government set the stage for genocide.

Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, testified during his trial on charges that he oversaw the torture and execution of 17,000 victims at the S-21 prison camp that Pol Pot's communist Khmer Rouge movement would have died off in 1970 had not U.S. President Richard Nixon backed right wing military strongman Lon Nol, The Times of London reported.

When the autocratic Prince Norodom Sihanouk was deposed in a 1970 coup the leftist Khmer Rouge was in disarray but the overt backing of Lon Nol by Nixon and U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as the Vietnam War raged nearby generated a backlash against the government and rescued Pol Pot's movement from oblivion, Duch reportedly testified.
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"I think the Khmer Rouge would already have been demolished," The Times quoted him saying. "But Mr. Kissinger and Richard Nixon were quick (to back Lon Nol) and then the Khmer Rouge noted the golden opportunity."

The reign of the Khmer Rouge from 1975-79 saw the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians through execution, starvation and overwork, historians say.

Read more!

Thai, Cambodian PMs to confer on border tensions during ASEAN summit

BANGKOK, Thailand's Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said on Monday he would discuss with his Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen about defusing tensions along the two countries' border on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) plus 3 summit, Thai News Agency reported.

The issue won't be raised at the three-day summit, which will start on Friday in Pattaya; instead the two countries will have a negotiation between themselves, Abhisit said.

The situation at the border has steadily improved and normalcy should be soon restored as concerned officials of both countries have met and discussed ways to cool down the situation, he said.

The latest border clashes between Thailand and Cambodia broke out last Friday when soldiers of the two countries clashed twice near the ancient Preah Vihear temple, leaving casualties on both sides.

Thailand and Cambodia have earlier conducted a few round of negotiations which involved the militaries and foreign ministries from the two sides to solve the border dispute regarding areas around the temple, a UNESCO world heritage site.

The International Court of Justice ruled the temple belonged to Cambodia more than 40 years ago. But border dispute over areas around the temple has remained a fuse in the two countries' relationship.

The Thai-Cambodian border has never been fully demarcated, in part because the border is littered with landmines left during the Indochina war between 1960s and 1970s.
Read more!

New Years, Cambodian style in White Center

Samantha Sambath samples a traditional treat from Cambodia, pineapple with salt and pepper, at a neighborhood festival in celebration of that country’s New Year. The event, held Saturday, April 4, was sponosored by the Cambodian Cultural Alliance of Washington.

By Steve Shay

The Cambodian community celebrated that country's New Year at a White Center street festival, Saturday, April 4.

It was a sunny day and the festival was in full swing at 15th Avenue Southwest at Southwest 98th Street in White Center.

A stage draped in Cambodian decor featured entertainment with traditional dance, music and games. There were booths with authentic traditional arts and crafts, food, and information tables for Cambodian charities, as well as other organizations like the White Center Food Bank.

The New Years tradition is called Chaul Chnam Thmey and falls on April 13 to 15. The community event was organized by the Cambodian Cultural Alliance of Washington.

Read more!

Lost in Cambodia

By Kim Echlin

Hamish Hamilton


A lover goes missing in the aftermath of the Vietnam War in Kim Echlin's new novel, The Disappeared

"Things do not suddenly happen to us. Things happen step by step." These are the thoughts of Kim Echlin's protagonist, Anne Greves, as she nears the end of a dangerous pilgrimage in the Toronto writer's new novel, The Disappeared. They are words echoed on every page of Echlin's remarkable novel.

When the book opens, Anne is a young, Montreal girl interested in blues music. While at a jazz club with friends, she meets a young Cambodian man, 21-year-old Serey, five years her senior, who is in exile in the West. The year is 1979, Cambodia is controlled by the odious Pol Pot regime and Serey, a musician, is unable to contact his family. The borders, and all communication, have been closed.

RECKLESS AFFAIR

Anne and Serey fall deeply in love, much to the dismay of Anne's father, a widower, who has raised her in an emotionally remote manner, with the help of a French housekeeper. Anne's affair with Serey, although reckless, is rich and rewarding. Looking back, Anne muses, "I never felt any forbiddenness of race or language or law. Everything was animal sensation and music. You were my crucifixion, my torture and rebirth. I loved your eyes, the tender querying of your voice in song." She remembers, too, that what she learned from her mother is "that those we love can disappear suddenly, inexplicably. And then there is nothing."

When the Vietnamese invade Cambodia and the Pol Pot government is overthrown, Serey does, indeed, disappear. He tells Anne he must return to find his parents and younger brother, to know if they have survived. He made no promise to return. Anne is frantic.

Echlin's novel shifts, then, from radiant love story to desperate search. After waiting 11 years for Serey, Anne, consumed by erotic longing, sets out to find him. She arrives in Phnom Penh during the turmoil of national elections. Corruption is rampant. Violence trumps reason and chaos prevails. "They talked about observing elections but no one saw the village meetings after dark when people were told how to vote and people who asked questions were beaten, killed. Foreigners said, Keep the eyes of the world here, but the people knew that borders and banks close and foreigners leave and wires are cut and bodies disappear and the thirst for power spreads like the odour of rotting, terrifying everyone into obedience. No one can force compassion. But it can be extinguished."

RECORD GENOCIDE

With the help of Mau, a taxi driver, and a fellow Canadian dispatched to Cambodia to record the genocide that had happened there, Anne finds her lover, changed, as is she, by the traumatic events of the decade they had spent apart. But their love remains strong, struggling to flourish despite the fate of Serey's family, despite the guilt he carries, despite the underground political work with which he is now engaged. Serey had found Cambodia a fraud, a country with the false trappings of a new democracy, but without the reality. The round-the-clock killing had continued.

Looking back, years later, Anne remembers she and her lover had pledged themselves to each other, despite what they knew might happen. Even unto death.

In a brief 228 pages, Echlin manages to juxtapose the horrific depravity of the Pol Pot era, and its brutal successor, against the power and resilience of individual human courage. Read more!

Cambodia, Thailand agree to prevent new border clash

BANGKOK, Thailand and Cambodia agreed on Sunday during an urgent meeting that their commanders would increase their supervising over their soldiers to prevent re-occurrence of the Friday's clash, in which two Thai soldiers were killed.

Maj Gen Kanok Natrakawesana, commander of Thailand's Suranaree Task Force, held the urgent meeting with Cambodian Maj Gen Srey Doek in Preah Vihear Temple on Sunday morning, the website by The Nation newspaper reported.

"If any problem happens, commanders of both sides would immediately step in to prevent any new fighting," Kanok said, describing the urgent meeting as constructive.

Meanwhile, Srey Doek told Khmer media that the meeting was held in order to make the situation return normal and to make sure there 's no more gunfire.

"We have agreed to stay on our own sides of the border," Srey Doek said.

Concerning last week's exchanges of gunfire, Kanok said it was a misunderstanding and both countries had already discussed and solved the misunderstanding.

"We have agreed that we will cooperate more and such fighting would not happen again," Kanok said.
Read more!

Cambodia leader talks down clash

Cambodia's prime minister has said that he does not wish to see border clashes between Thai and Cambodian troops escalate into a more serious conflict.

Hun Sen said no Cambodian soldiers had been injured in exchanges of fire on Friday that he regarded as incidents between neighbours, not a war.

Thai authorities said at least two Thai soldiers died and seven were wounded.

The disputed area, which surrounds an ancient temple, has long been a source of tension between the two countries.

An international court awarded Preah Vihear temple to Cambodia in 1962, but a 5-sq-km (1.9-sq-mile) patch of land surrounding it remains the subject of rival territorial claims.

"There was brief fighting, but the fighting was like neighbours who live close to each other and always have disputes," Hun Sen said of Friday's violence.

"Today they have a dispute, then they soothe things and talk to each other."

Simmering tensions

The neighbours are due to hold further border talks from Sunday in the Cambodian resort town of Siem Reap.

Each side accused the other of firing first in Friday's two exchanges of rocket and gunfire, in what is seen by analysts as a significant heightening in tensions.

The fighting appeared to have started after a Thai patrol visited the site where a Thai soldier was injured after stepping on a landmine on Thursday.

Nine Thai soldiers are reported to have been injured in the exchange, three of them seriously.

Thailand and Cambodia share a border that runs for nearly 800km (500 miles), much of it heavily mined.

Soldiers from the two countries have been stationed in the area around the Preah Vihear temple since tensions increased in July last year, after it was listed by Cambodia as a World Heritage Site.

Two Cambodian soldiers were killed there in October in a gun battle. Last week, Cambodia accused Thai troops of crossing over briefly into its territory. Read more!

Hope blooms in Cambodian resort

In Cambodia, as the pain of the brutal Khmer Rouge years is relived in a courtroom in Phnom Penh, Petroc Trelawny goes further back in time to revisit the days of the French colonial era - and explores one of their old seaside playgrounds.

The security guard finally appeared, after my driver had spent some minutes shouting and banging the gate.

He was a middle-aged man, who stumbled out of what had once been the reception room window, down the curved ramp passing the crumbling remains of a pair of cast-concrete statues.
A few dollar bills later, the rusty chain around the gate was loosened and I was in.

Ghostly remains

Kep-sur-Mer is what the French called this small town in colonial times. A nice beach, lush forestation, and sea breezes to keep the colons [colonisers] cool - all this a matter of hours by car from the heat and dust of the capital.

From the end of World War II through until the mid 1960s, French settlers - and a few rich Cambodians - built dozens of bungalows and villas for themselves.

Then came the gradual rise of the Khmer Rouge. It soon became too dangerous to leave Phnom Penh.

At first the contents of the weekend homes were looted, then the doors and window-frames and roof tiles were taken.

What was left was then abandoned to the elements, or set ablaze as part of the Khmer Rouge's quest to eliminate anything to do with an imperial past.

But the buildings were too well constructed to be completely destroyed.

Now Kep is full of ruins, houses with crumbling verandas where pastis was once sipped as the sun set, lovingly tended vegetable plots now overgrown, trees where beds and sofas were once carefully arranged.

Of all the ghostly remains, my home-behind-the-gates was by far the most spectacular.

A grand double-fronted residence, with wide balconies on the first floor and gaping gaps where shuttered French windows would once have stood.

But there was something different about this place, and it took me a few moments to work out what. Then I realised. The ruin was surrounded by perfectly kept gardens.

The lawn was trimmed, the shrub-beds immaculate, the white roses carefully pruned.

The young gardener soon appeared, a broad smile on his face as he carried buckets of water.

Round the back of the house was his well, and his toddler daughter, alarmingly amusing herself playing with an axe.

I pointed to show that I would like to look inside the house, and he waved me in.

Red and white tiles still covered 60% of the floor. In the central hall, an elegantly curved staircase slowly wound its way upstairs, its banisters long gone.

The walls were riddled with bullet marks - there had obviously once been some stand-off here.

The occupant of the master-bedroom would have enjoyed spectacular views of the Gulf of Thailand.

The adjacent bathroom had once boasted a powder-blue suite - most of it gone, or reduced to rubble, save for the lavatory roll holder, which somehow had survived intact.

Mysterious benefactor

Then came a clue as to the ownership of this house. Another bedroom had been turned into a makeshift classroom.

A series of cartoons painted on the wall seemed to poke fun at the government.

In one a spotlight shone on a man in a suit, who looked like Hun Sen, prime minister for the past 25 years. In the beam, the word "transparency" was written in English and in capitals.

On another wall, a blackboard had the words along the top, again in English, HM Norodom Sihanouk, King of Cambodia.

Sihanouk was monarch until 2004, when he unexpectedly abdicated, handing power to one of his sons, Norodom Sihamoni, a former ballet dancer who has spent most of his life abroad.

"King house, king house," my driver told me as we pulled away, waving goodbye to the gardener and his daughter.

In fact as I discovered later, it was actually the villa of the king's mother.

The king's own residence is on a bluff the other side of town, a '60s fantasy with sweeping picture windows and circular terraces overlooking the sea.

Again the house is crumbling, but the grounds are perfectly maintained.

So who is paying the gardeners? Locals told me that money arrives regularly and discreetly from the royal family itself.

Kep is gradually coming to life again.

French families are staying in the simple hotel on the beach and an eco-resort has opened in the hills.

The grand former colonial governor's house - rather like a Normandy chateau - has been restored and surrounded by chalets, though a financial dispute means the complex is currently locked shut.

Cambodia now attracts over a million foreign tourists a year, but Norodom Sihamoni is king of a nation that is still high up the UN list of Least Developed Countries and suffers from what has been described as "pandemic" corruption.

Recently the IMF announced Cambodia's economic outlook was distinctly gloomy.

But if it is the king who is keeping his gardens growing in this little coastal town, perhaps he dreams of a day when Cambodia's situation is more stable, rosier, and Kep-sur-Mer as was, can become a royal resort once again. Read more!

Thai Army chief: Thai-Cambodian border clashes caused by "misunderstanding"

BANGKOK, Thailand's Army Commander-in-Chief Gen. Anupong Paochinda said Saturday clashes between Thai and Cambodian soldiers at the disputed border area on Friday resulted from "misunderstanding", according to Thai News Agency (TNA).

Soldiers of each country stationed on the disputed border area thought that the other side intruded into their country's territory, said Anupong.

Leaving Bangkok for a visit at a hospital in Thailand's Ubon Ratchathani province where soldiers wounded in the border clashes are being treated, the Army Chief noted that Thailand would not use force to resolve the problem.

He said preparation were under way for negotiations between Thailand and Cambodia, at the ministerial level as well as with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, to resolve the issue, according to the TNA report.

However, senior army officers of both countries in the disputed area will play a significant role in finding ways to end the dispute, said Anupong.

Thailand and Cambodia have earlier conducted a few round of negotiations which involved the militaries and foreign ministries from the two sides to solve the border dispute regarding areas around the ancient Preah Vihear temple, a UNESCO world heritage site.

The international court ruled the Preah Vihear temple belonged to Cambodia more than 40 years ago. But dispute about borders areas around the temple has remained a fuse in the Thai-Cambodian relationship.

The issue became hot again after the Cambodia applied successfully for the temple to be listed as a world heritage site in July last year. Military deployment was enhanced and sporadic clashes were reported along the border.

Not much progress has been made in the negotiations between two foreign ministers and two militaries except for a promise to act "restraint".

Friday's new border clashes caused the deaths of two Thai soldiers and two Cambodian soldiers, and injuries of nine Thai soldiers.

The number of Thai soldiers stationed in the area remains unchanged, even though plans to evacuate villagers living near the disputed area have been prepared, Anupong said.
Read more!

The latest casualties in Preah Vihea front

Preah Vihea heritage: war erupted for the second times between Siam Soldiers and Cambodia troops in Eagle Field at Preah Vihea temple. The second times of firefighting between both sides started at 2:45 PM April 03, 2009.

There was a fierce fighting in several locations of the front lines. There were several casualties on Siam side and all of the Siam soldiers were abandoned their posts and bunkers.



All the Siam military posts and bunkers were stepped on by Cambodian soldiers, except Beehives front line that have 30 soldiers each sides were not exchanged fire and the Siam commander raised White Flag asking for negotiation and told the Cambodian side not to fire at them.


according to the news from Kieu Kanharith, government spokesman, there were 4 Siam soldiers were killed and 10 others were captured. But according to the sources from the front line, there were many more wounded and died.



Helicopters came to transport the dead and wounds to hospital. The firefighting lasted about 50 minutes, Cambodian soldiers captured several locations including 20 houses in Battalion, west of Veal Enthrea. Read more!

Thai, Cambodia troops clash near disputed temple

Front line erupted with gun fire as Siam soldiers invading Cambodian sovereignty. Rockets were launched after sixthy Thai troops emerging in Eagle Field in the front line of Khmer soldiers, two Thai soldiers were dead and three were injured.

PHNOM PENH, Thai and Cambodian soldiers exchanged rifle and rocket fire on their disputed border near an ancient Hindu temple on Friday, but there were no reports of casualties, officials from both countries said.

"The armed clash began when Thai soldiers entered Cambodian territory. We fired rockets at the Thai soldiers," Cambodia's government spokesman Phay Siphan told Reuters.

In Bangkok, Thai Major General Kanok NetraKaveysana confirmed there had been a brief firefight early in the morning, but he had no reports of wounded or dead.

"It was a misunderstanding and it has been resolved," he said, without explaining further.

The fighting erupted a day after a Thai soldier was badly wounded when he stepped on a landmine near the 900-year-old Preah Vihear temple, where both sides have stationed troops since armed clashes in the area last year.

Tensions rose last month when 100 Thai troops crossed into a disputed area near the temple and were stopped by Cambodian soldiers, but no fighting occurred. The border had been quiet for months while the Southeast Asian neighbours sought to jointly demarcate the jungle-clad area where one Thai and three Cambodian soldiers died in last year's exchange of rifle and rocket fire.

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

The International Court of Justice awarded it to Cambodia in 1962, but the ruling did not determine the ownership of 1.8 square miles (4.6 sq km) of scrub next to the ruins, leaving considerable scope for disagreement.
Read more!

Debt strains Cambodian New Year celebration

By Greg Mellen Staff Writer

LONG BEACH - Regardless of the weather, the Cambodian New Year parade will step off Sunday attempting to clear a financial fog that surrounds the annual event.

Just last week, the Cambodian Coordinating Council, which organizes the annual parade and a separate New Year's celebration at El Dorado Park on April 25, put the finishing touches on a multi-year payment plan to make up a shortfall of about $40,000. The group has already made a $5,000 payment.

How organizers ended up $40,000 in debt for an event that costs about $40,000 in city fees and for which there are sponsors, fundraising, and - in the case of the El Dorado Park event, a hefty admission charge - depends on whom one asks.

And then there are the looming costs.

In the wake of the economic downturn, leaders of this year's parade and celebration say they are somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000 short of the money they need.

Although the parade is good to go, the April 25 celebration is still in limbo, although leaders assure it will happen.

Much of the parade and celebration leadership this year is new and the group says these board members are bringing new vitality and business acumen to the group. They are promising to open their books and be "transparent," but not quite yet.

Parade organizers say the city boosted its fees for the event last year from about $25,000 to $40,000 and they never recovered. Some say the city never adequately explained why the costs rose so sharply or gave them fair warning.

David Ashman, manager of special events in the city, said in the first few years of the parade the city "capped" its fees. Also, then-6th District City Councilwoman Laura Richardson's office was able to provide help and the parade had several major donors, including Sound Energy Solutions, which has left Long Beach.

"We capped city costs and absorbed costs to help them get on their feet," Ashman said of the first three years. "It was a different time and we could afford to do that."

With the city's burgeoning budget deficit, Ashman says the city can no longer take on those costs, especially in areas such as public safety, public works and traffic management.

"We're under a directive to recover the full costs for those," Ashman said.

Still, the question of how a $15,000 increase in costs translates into a $40,000 deficit is unclear.

Late last year, the city began negotiating the debt with the Cambodian Coordinating Council and settled on the current payment plan.

Some organizers said they had to keep some money in their account for operating expenses and emergencies and they are still working on the books to figure out where the rest went.

Others say money had to be paid up front to put on this year's parade and celebration.

Ashman says about $13,000 has been paid in advance for a traffic vendor and other costs.

Anthony Kim, who is now heading finances, says about $20,000 has been raised this year.

When asked if he worries the celebration may not happen, Kim is adamant.

"It never crossed my mind," Kim says.

Kim and others on the finance committee are trying to raise the needed money and promise they'll get there.

One initiative they are particularly hopeful about is the One Dollar Donation Campaign. They say if every resident went online to their Web site, www.cam-cc.org, and donated $1, the group would be flush.

The cost of putting on the events this year was originally estimated at $44,000, but the Department of Parks, Recreation and Marine has waived a number of rental and application fees and helped organizers find a variety of cost-cutting measures that reduce the bill.

Also, post-parade activities have been moved from MacArthur Park to an empty Redevelopment Agency lot on Anaheim Street and Walnut Avenue to pare costs.

Phylypo Tum said the new board debated whether to drop the parade because of the added costs, but couldn't do it.

"The board decided we owe it to the community. We said, `We'll stick together no matter what it costs."' Tum said.

greg.mellen@presstelegram.com, 562-499-1291

Read more!

Thai FM says sorry for vocabulary misunderstanding with Cambodian PM

PHNOM PENH, Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya has apologized to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen for the misunderstanding of the word he used to describe the premier, according to his letter received here on Thursday.

"Do kindly accept my deep apology for such an unfortunate incident and the unintentional cause of misunderstanding," said the foreign minister in the official letter dated April 1 for the prime minister.

"I have the honor to refer to the recent news reports that Your Excellency is concerned with the terms that I used to describe Your Excellency during the parliamentarian debate session in Thailand," he wrote in the letter.

"In the Thai language, the word 'Nak Leng' which I used during the debate means a person who is lion-hearted, a courageous and magnanimous gentleman, and this is what I referred to you as an expression of my appreciation of and respect for Your Excellency," he added.

On Tuesday, Hun Sen lashed out against Kasit Piromya, for he recently called the premier a "gangster."

"I am neither a gangster nor a gentleman, but a real man," the official Agence Kampuchea Presse quoted the prime minister as telling a road inauguration ceremony in Sihanouk province.

Hun Sen asked the Thai foreign minister to correct the comments that he made.

"To correct or not, it is your right. But, I wish that you choose good words because we are neighbors. We need mutual respect," he added.

According to the prime minister, Kasit Piromya called him a "gangster," because he was angry with the premier for having issued an ultimatum to Thailand to pull its troops out of the Cambodian border area of Veal Intry last October.

Thai troops had armed clash with the Cambodian ones there in October last year, causing death and casualties on both sides.
Read more!

Drawing From the Music of '60s Cambodia

By ASPLIN Steve


REVIEW * * * * Dengue Fever, Venus on Earth -------------------- REVIEW * * Bedouin Jerry Can Band, Coffee Time -------------------- The recent Womad festival in New Plymouth had the band Dengue Fever performing their brand of psychedelic pop rock. Last year they released their third album through Peter Gabriel's label, Real World Records.

Like previous albums, Venus on Earth features Cambodian vocalist Chhom Nimol singing in her native tongue, Khymer. The difference is that on this album there are also several songs performed in English or a mix of the two languages.

A six-member group founded by American brothers Ethan and Zac Holtzman in 2001, Dengue Fever draw inspiration from a '60s sound pioneered by Cambodian artists Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Sereysothea. Their first two albums mostly comprised cover versions of these artists' songs.

This album's addition of songs in English makes it more accessible to those who do not speak Khymer. These tracks nicely segment the recording without compromising the band's sound.

With instrumental flavours that include the distinctive Farfisa organ and music that uses Asian scales in the accompaniment, Venus on Earth gives an aural snapshot of another place.

In terms of authenticity, it is difficult to assess its relevance to what really occurred in the Cambodian music scene in the '60s, but the songwriting traverses the language barrier.

The awareness that many listeners will not understand the lyrics seems to have given the band extra incentive to make their parts more interesting. Venus on Earth is refreshingly different, with the focus planted firmly on the music and the shared vision of the members of Dengue Fever. Musicians are sometimes nomadic by nature but the Bedouin Jerry Can Band truly espouses the lifestyle. From the Egyptian Sinai desert, the band are made up of travelling poets, storytellers, coffee grinders and musicians.

This group caused a minor controversy and attracted criticism in their first performances, as they used left- over munitions casings and petrol cans from previous military conflicts as instruments. Using these objects as percussive instruments was perceived to be insulting to many in their native musical community, who view music as sacred and saw these additions as corrosive to the Bedouin cultural heritage.

These criticisms were not shared by audiences, however, and the group's popularity has increased exponentially in the Bedouin community. According to the band, this is largely due to the increase in MP3 players imported into the region via the Suez Canal.

The opening track of this disc is painful to listen to. Luckily, the rest of the songs don't follow in quite the same discordant fashion. They are, however, quite repetitive, and there is little variation in the rhythms or instrumentation.

The jangle of the Simsimiyya, like a lute, or five-string ukelele, is incessant throughout all the songs, and although there is some respite with group chanting on some tracks, it is a little difficult to actively listen to Coffee Time.

The highlight on the album is the song Mallate, which is performed a cappella style, just with vocals and clapping. The tracks that follow it are also similar in their performance, and this works better than the early songs. This album would be much more pleasant if the last five tracks were put first and five of the songs in the middle were cut from the disc. Read more!

An Giang vegetable exports to Cambodia thrive

Hun Sen had never opened market for local produce of farmers, but allowing Yuon produces to invade Cambodia market, all kinds of cambodian produces were not be able sell in markets.

An Giang, Mar 31, 2009 (Asia Pulse Data Source via COMTEX) -- About 70 tonnes of vegetables are exported from An Giang province to Cambodia everyday, double the volume in previous years, according to local officials.

Nguyen Van Thao, head of An Phu districts Agriculture and Rural Development Department, said the growth follows an agreement between the two countries to exempt tariffs for 40 agricultural products.

The vegetables are grown to high hygiene and safety standards, Thao said.

The Mekong Delta province has become the first locality to export safe vegetable to the neighbouring country through the Khanh Binh border crossing.

An Phu district alone has around 1,000 ha for vegetables, yielding 20,000 tonnes per year. The productivity is yet to meet vegetable demand in the Cambodian market.

However, according to Thao, the export volume has recently dipped and prices of some kinds of vegetables dropped by 50 percent, due to the harvest of vegetables in Thailand .

Farming area in Thailand is not as large as in the Mekong Delta, and brisk exports is expected to resume after the harvest season in Thailand ends, Thao said.

Despite the current lull, merchants at the Khanh Binh wholesale market said they receive orders from Cambodia worth billions of VND a day.

An Phu district authorities said they are now expanding the area for cultivating vegetables by 1,300 ha to meet export demand. Read more!

Local Vacationers Take Roads Less Traveled In Cambodia, Vietnam

Jim and Toni standing at a temple entryway with massive tree roots exposed. 80% of the jungle growth has been removed revealing evidence of the lost civilization.

By Steve McLaughlin

Jim and Toni Kull of Hillsboro have logged nearly 100,000 miles traveling to twelve countries across four continents since they retired nine years ago.

The couple recently returned from a fourteen day trip to Cambodia and Vietnam.

“We generally prefer to avoid major tourist areas,” said Jim.

“Instead, we focus on more quaint, pristine places where the pace is a little slower and the people are more approachable, more interactive,” said Toni.

Other trips the couple have enjoyed include New Zealand, Newfoundland, Iceland, Scandinavia, Turkey, Costa Rica and China.

“We would recommend the Cambodia - Vietnam destination to anyone who wants to immerse themselves in a country of open, honest, hardworking people who are exceptionally gracious and engaging,” said Toni.

“Although they have few, if any, luxuries, the residents seem genuinely satisfied with their life dedicated to the basic struggle to provide for daily needs.”

Interacting with people, walking with few restrictions through the ruins of 1,000 year old temples, and an overnight cruise in the Ha Long Bay in the Gulf of Tonkin stand out as the most memorable aspects of their vacation.

In addition, a favorable exchange rate made the trip more affordable when compared to other destinations.

Although Coca-Cola was available at most places they visited, they did not see signs of other American iconic institutions such as McDonalds, WalMart, Starbucks or Walgreens. However, they did spot a rack of Barack O'Bama T-shirts for sale by one street vendor.

Neither Jim nor Toni saw action in the Vietnam War but evidence of that conflict was inescapable as they journeyed through Cambodia and Vietnam.

In Phnom Penh, Cambodia, they toured the Genocide Museum which is a living reminder of the Pol Pot regime responsible for the deaths of over 1 million Cambodians. Hundreds of human skulls are on display at the prison where only seven inmates survived. Over 30,000 other inmates were not so fortunate.

Meanwhile, across town, they saw evidence of a lavish lifestyle at the presidential palace where the floor was composed of pure silver tiles each weighing one kilogram.

They traveled over 1,000 miles from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in the south to Hanoi in north Vietnam. They saw frequent reminders of the Vietnam War including bomb craters and tunnels and listened to a number of “official tour guides” who gave visitors a rather slanted view of everyday life in Vietnam.

They toured the Hoa Lo Prison, better known as the Hanoi Hilton, where Senator John McCain was held for much of his 5-1/2 year captivity.

Another impressive sight was viewing the embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh which is on display at a mausoleum named in his honor. “Uncle Ho” is regarded by the Communist government with almost god-like status.

During their 14-day vacation, Jim and Toni were booked on 12 different flights; fortunately, they did not experience any significant delays nor lost luggage.

Hillsboro is Home

“Toni and I came to Hillsboro in 1967 thinking we would be here for a couple of years,” said Jim. He is originally from Strasburg; Toni is from Lawrenceville.

He retired after 33 years with the Hillsboro school system where he taught industrial arts and building trades. Toni worked as a medical transcriptionist at the Hillsboro Hospital.

Their three children, David, Kim and Susan, grew up in Hillsboro. While they no longer live here, Hillsboro remains a favorite destination for them and their seven children collectively.

As their grandchildren get older, Jim and Toni plan to take each of them on vacation.

They've already taken one grandson with them to China in 2006. Later this summer, two more grandchildren will accompany them when they return to China.

“The people at the Pegasus Travel Agency in Hillsboro have been really helpful in arranging our next trip,” said Jim.

“The kids have already had their required shots and passports and visas have been received for them, so much of the preliminary work has already been done.”

Jim and Toni take pride in the collection of photos they have accumulated over the years and eagerly share stories about each one. Together, they provide a wealth of unique experiences and knowledge that can only be obtained by walking down those roads less traveled.

Read more!

Teamwork helps Cambodian girl walk

By Jay Tokasz
NEWS STAFF REPORTER


Less than a month ago, Makara Tuan used crutches to navigate her Cambodian village and risked losing her right leg to a rare bone disease.

But on Tuesday, thanks to a remarkable set of circumstances that brought the beaming 14-year-old girl to Western New York, Makara walked into an Amherst physical therapy office, without crutches, and performed a series of exercises with an easy smile.

“It is a miracle, the whole thing, from start to end,” said Deborah Franco, a Lockport resident who helped lead the effort to get Makara’s ailing leg healed.

The start was more than a year ago, nearly 12,000 miles away in a small village in Svay Rolom, where Makara limped into a medical mission run by Operation Renewed Hope, a Christian humanitarian group based in Fayetteville, N. C.

Makara complained of a broken leg, and when doctors asked her how she broke it, she simply replied, “I got out of bed.”

X-rays from a hospital two hours away in Phnom Penh ultimately confirmed that Makara had an aneurysmal bone cyst, a disorder that ravaged her femur to the point that merely walking would cause it to snap.

Unless she had complicated surgery by a skilled orthopedist, the leg probably would have to be amputated.

Franco entered the story about a year ago, when she met a doctor affiliated with Operation Renewed Hope at a convention in Louisville, Ky. The doctor later e-mailed Franco regarding Makara’s case and the organization’s efforts to find a U. S. hospital and surgeon.

Franco, in turn, contacted her close friend Dr. Helen Cappuccino, a general surgeon who is married to an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Andrew Cappuccino, the man credited with helping save the life of former Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett.

Andrew Cappuccino agreed to do the surgery and volunteered to fly to Cambodia.

But hospitals there don’t have the equipment necessary for the kind of delicate surgery necessary in Makara’s case.

When approached by Operation Renewed Hope, a few American hospitals declined to host Makara. So Kenmore Mercy, where the Cappuccinos practice, signed on.

Franco’s employer, Raptim International Travel in Lewiston, which specializes in travel arrangements for humanitarian efforts, paid for the airfare. An immigration attorney provided pro bono legal work for Makara’s visa. And Cappuccino and Kenmore Mercy provided their services free of charge.

In all, the gratis services probably totaled more than $50,000, said Jan Milton, founder of Operation Renewed Hope.

On March 14, Makara flew into Chicago, where Franco met her for a flight into Buffalo. On March 19 Cappuccino placed rods in Makara’s leg to allow the bone to heal.

Makara has been living with Franco, who has temporary legal guardianship while the girl is in the United States. She’s also spent time with the Cappuccinos, who have a daughter around the same age as Makara.

Milton credited Franco with making Makara’s unlikely journey and recovery a reality.

Franco, though, ascribed everything coming together as the work of God.

“There’s absolutely no man who could have done all that,” she said. Read more!

Author, activist talks about Cambodia with students, faculty

Editor's note: Typical inveverted pyramid structure will not do for this piece. That was my first thought walking out of the main theatre of the Vern Riffe Center for the Arts this evening as the elevator carried me up to my office. There is no way that the inverted pyramid of facts in descending order could ever convey the real meaning and impact of this evening's events.

"Peace is not automatic. It is something we must commit to and work for on a daily basis," author and activist Loung Ung said during the question and answer session following her lecture on her experiences as a child, surviving the genocide in Cambodia in the 1970s.

Loung Ung met for dinner with a small group of students, faculty, and university staff members in the provost's conference room. She had just arrived from Cleveland where her husband is from, after spending the past three months in Cambodia. On Feb. 20, 30 years after the war and 10 years after Cambodia and the United Nations began negotiations, a tribunal was finally meeting to try many of the leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime for crimes against humanity. It took 10 years of negotiations to decide who would go on trial, as well as other issues such as funding and witness protection. The actual trial begins March 30.

"I wasn't sure how I was going to feel," Ung said.

At the age of five, she was forced to flee her home along with her family. The communist Khmer Rouge brought war on the Cambodian people, killing nearly two million people in the space of three years, eight months, and 21 days.

"Three years, eight months, 21 days," Ung's clear gentle voice sounded eerie repeating the numbers to drive her point home.

There were only 40 seats allowed for the press, but Ung chose to go in as a civilian. She related what it was like to sit and interact with the people, a group of monks in orange robes, villagers, and students.

"So many of the young people there do not believe it happened. They know people died in the war, but they do not know what that means," Ung said.

She told a story about one of the student s she spoke to who lived near one of the country's 20,000 mass graves. Every year during the rainy season the impression in the ground would fill up with water and water lilies would grow there, the girl told her. One of the students Ung spoke to that day had decided that not all these people could be telling the same lie, and so it had to be believed. Children in Cambodia are not taught about the genocide until the 12th grade, but only about 25 percent of students make it that far in school. She said it is often difficult for the younger people to connect what they see now in their country with the stories they hear of the war.

"The same rules no longer apply to this game," Ung said about the differences in International and Cambodian ideas about law and justice in this case. One of the men on trial signed the death warrants of 14,000 people. Ung plans to go back to Cambodia in June or July when the verdict comes out.

At dinner, Shawnee State student Bethany Heidenreich asked what Ms. Ung would like to see come out of the trial.

"Accurate information," Ung said. "At the very least that's what we need. Healing for us comes out of new generations. How do you teach a kid about the law when those who have broken the greatest law of all are not held accountable?"

Ung also spoke about her writing. She kept a journal for many years, and her book "First They Killed My Father" was written from her journal. She said that the goal of her writing is to tie the horror with the heart and make it a human story.

"Human spirits can be broken. We're just trying to do the best we can, so we need to give each other a helping hand," Ung said about her realization that it was part of her purpose to raise awareness.

She chose to go the authentic route, to write what felt real. Her first book is told in the first person present tense, in the voice of her five-year-old self.

"I was angry, I was hurt; I wanted people to know what it was like to survive a war," Ung said. "What do you do when on day 366, on day 1000, people stop talking about it, stop writing about it?"

Ung said that as of about a year and a half ago she has been able to devote more time to writing and has found that she greatly enjoys it. Her new book is about her mother's childhood migration from China to Cambodia.

"So many places I walked in Cambodia I had memories, it was like they rose up out of the pavement," Ung said about her return visits and memories from her childhood.

She said that she chose to write her book in a child's voice as a way of speaking for all those children out there who don't have the words to tell their stories.

Then Ung asked Dave Todt, vice president for academic affairs, what he would want the audience members at her lecture to take away with them from her visit.

"A desire to know more…about Cambodia, the impact that violence has on families, on countries; that there's some spark of interest," Todt said.

Loung Ung's lecture about her book "First They Killed My Father, A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers" began at 7 p.m. SSU professors Rita Haider and Shannon Lawson introduced Ung to the audience with a thought-provoking recollection of how the promise of never again after the mass killings of the Holocaust and World War II turned into again and again with the numerous tragic instances of genocide around the world since then.

"I want to share with you my journey from a child of war to an activist for peace," Ung said. "Never again turned into again, and again, and again. And I am one of the lucky ones."

Loung Ung's book "First They Killed My Father" is available in the SSU bookstore or online.

Editor's note: Bring a few tissues when you read it, and be prepared to find the heart in the horror story-a human story that made me remember why I chose journalism in the first place. Read more!

Rio Tinto Sells Assets In Thailand-Cambodia Overlapping Area

BANGKOK -(Dow Jones)- Rio Tinto Ltd. (RTP), one of the world's leading mining companies, said Wednesday it completed the sale of its oil and gas assets in the Thailand-Cambodia overlapping area.

The company has decided to sell its 16.67% stake in Block B7, B8, B9 in the overlapping area and a royalty interest in Block 9A located in the Gulf of Thailand, an official at Rio Tinto told Dow Jones Newswires, declining to give further details.

"The sale has been completed this morning (Australian time)," the official added.

The divestment is aimed to streamline its business portfolio, which focuses on mining and processing mineral resources, said an industry's source.

Another person familiar with the deal said the assets will be sold to BG Group (BG.LN).
BG Group, through BG Asia Inc owns owns 50% stake in the Block B7, B8 and B9. Chevron Overseas Petroleum (Thailand) Ltd. owns 33.33%.

BG Group and Chevron representatives in Thailand weren't immediately available for comment.
Macquarie Group, which is the financial adviser to Rio Tinto, declined to comment.

The concession, covering a total area of 10.4 million square kilometers, was awarded to the group in 1972 but has been inactive since 1975 due to overlapping disputes between Cambodia and Thailand, according to Thailand's Department of Mineral Fuels.

Chevron is the operator of the Block B9A, holding a 51.66% stake.

-By Alex Wilson and Supunnabul Suwannakij, Dow Jones Newswires; 66 2266 0744; tu.suwannakij@dowjones.com .
Read more!

Cambodian PM bans cockfighting nationwide

PHNOM PENH, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has outlawed cockfighting across the country, in his latest efforts to prohibit various gambling activities, national media said on Wednesday.

"I am announcing today the closure of all cockfighting arenas, including the cockfighting arena of (Deputy Prime Minister) Sok Anin Bati district of Takeo (province)," Chinese-language daily newspaper the Commercial News quoted him as telling a road inauguration ceremony in Sihanouk province on Tuesday.

Sok An, a well-known cockfighting aficionado, used to keep the arena in Takeo for fun and gambling.

"It is said that Sok An opened a cockfighting arena. (If) the deputy prime minister can indulge in cockfighting, they why can't others? Now, I am ordering Sok An, do you hear? I tell (you) to close the Tonle Bati (arena), or I will bring in armed forces to surround it," he added.

The crackdown on cockfighting followed Hun Sen's earlier ban on slot machines, sports betting and all other forms of gambling in a reputed bid to reverse a decline in social morality.


Read more!

Cambodian New Year falls on early morning of April 14

PHNOM PENH, New Year on the Cambodian calendar will fall at 01:36 local time of April 14 (1836 GMT of April 13), Chinese-language daily newspaper the Commercial News said on Wednesday.

An Apsara, or fairy lady in Cambodian folklore, in black costumes and on a horse, will descend from heaven to the land of the kingdom at that time, to safeguard Cambodia during the New Year season, astrologers told the paper.

Prior to the New Year time, people can set up a table in front of their houses with 11 kinds of fruits and candles on sacrifice to welcome the fairy lady's arrival, they added.

The government has set April 14 to 16 as national holiday to celebrate the New Year.

During the holiday, people usually visit pagodas and pray for peace and prosperity in the coming year.
Read more!