Gentle survivors leave indelible impressions

WEEKS after returning from Cambodia, I still dream each night I'm sleeping on a boat that drifts aimlessly across the Tonle Sap.

Beside me are the landless people who tether their vessels to the shifting edges of this vast freshwater lake, the largest of its kind in Southeast Asia.

I wake confused, certain I will find a sleepy family squatting before the fire, stirring the morning soup, readying themselves for a new day on this body of water that is more welcoming for them than solid ground. So immersed have I been on my journey into this country that even in my sleep I am visited by its gentle souls.

It's a journey that begins in relative luxury: guests at Phnom Penh's Golden Gate Hotel, my fellow travellers and I sip cocktails at the Foreign Correspondents Club, straining for a view of the Mekong River. We have sealed ourselves off momentarily from the deprivation of this city, lingering over our cranberry mojitos and Singapore slings as motos rush by like fireworks on the street below.

But we haven't come to Cambodia to gawk from a distance at the flotsam washed up from decades of civil war and the unspeakable brutality of Pol Pot's regime. Under the guidance of the SeeBeyondBorders foundation, we will seek out the beauty of this place, build connections, target development initiatives and channel support to marginalised communities. In short, we will try to make a difference.

During several days, we are introduced to the complex Cambodian narrative: at Phnom Penh University, where we pair up with students desperate for English conversation, and at Pol Pot's Tuol Sleng prison, redolent still with incomprehensible evil. There's the non-government organisation-funded school at which we apply termite control and play shriek-inducing games with village children and the Khmer Rouge killing field transformed by Jesuit Services Cambodia into a vocational training centre for the disabled. The wares of the Mekong Wheelchair Shop are custom-designed for the country's robust roads and rice fields. The wheelchairs are as utilitarian as bicycles in a country still paved with five million landmines.

Thus initiated, we buy fish-stuffed baguettes for breakfast and board an early-morning bus to Battambang. Provincial Cambodia opens up like a storybook: ox-wagons heaving beneath clay vessels, a new highway arching optimistically above the morning bustle, the curiously titled Ministry of Cults and Religions building tucked into a side street. We stretch our legs at a roadside market where a Cambodian expat now living in the US offers me a bite of her whole fried chicken. I settle for a bag of dried jackfruit instead.

We are staying at the Arrupe Welcome Centre, run by Spanish Jesuit Kike Figaredo and a cohort of young volunteers; here, farmers rake mounds of rice set out in the sun to dry and wheelchair-bound youngsters zip about, shaping for themselves a destiny never imagined under Pol Pot.

SeeBeyondBorders has organised a three-day intensive maths workshop for 70 village teachers, many of whom are barely out of school themselves; they register bright and early on the first day, hungry for knowledge. The five Australian teachers in our group unfurl Khmer number charts and unpack wooden blocks, practising their counting. "Muoy, bir, bei," they chant.

The rest of us spend two days with Dhammayietra Mongkol Borei, a local health and development NGO. Our job is to construct salas, meeting places for elderly Cambodians. Dhammayietra founder Arlys Herem, an American nurse who came to Southeast Asia to work with refugees in 1983, says old people, always well respected in Cambodian society, are central to the country's social reconstruction. "There's [also] great potential for them to monitor what's happening to orphans and vulnerable children in the village," she explains.

Forming a chain gang with the villagers, we haul stones, pass buckets, lay bricks and concrete, and eat communal meals. Alex, a young Sydney-based Canadian, converses with the man beside her, she in English, he in Khmer. "We somehow understood one another," she says later.

As we're about to farewell the villagers, they present us with bowls of milky, purple brew and watch us expectantly. "You really should try some," SeeBeyondBorders founder Ed Shuttleworth whispers, noticing our hesitation. And so we tuck in, for if we don't at the very least accept our hosts' generous hospitality, what would be the deeper purpose of our visit? The dish, as it turns out, tastes much like a pudding my grandmother might have served.

Made with "chicken blood" potatoes, coconut milk, sugar and sticky rice, it's a parting gift as sweet and warm as the people who deliver it.

We travel by van to Siem Reap and settle in at the Reflection Centre, run by Denise Coghlan, Australian-born director of Jesuit Refugee Service Cambodia and member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. The centre has a peacefulness that even the traditional sleeping mats and bucket baths can't dislodge. Indeed, these authentic surrounds only deepen the impression of our daily encounters.

We join a group of women who run a village nutrition program and set to work hacking the rinds off pumpkins, cooking soup in a blistering lean-to kitchen, dishing it out to rows of hungry, bright-eyed children.

When we gather each evening to reflect on our days, I feel increasingly impotent in the face of such overwhelming hardship.

While the teachers run another round of oversubscribed workshops, Adam, a landscape architect from Sydney, works on a gardening project with refugees from Sudan and Iraq, and the rest of us prepare parcels for destitute families living on the Tonle Sap. We visit disabled villagers with their wide smiles and agonising stories: in one home the grandmother has lost her legs, the father his arms and eyes. He has gone for a walk, his wife tells us; he feels his way with his feet.

The lake is wild and inaccessible the morning we are to deliver the parcels, but the day after, as we squeeze in some last-minute sightseeing, we get a call from the priest who runs the outreach program: the wind has subsided, he's off to the lake, would we like to join him? Angkor Wat or the people of the Tonle Sap? There's no contest.

The floating villages bob about in their soupy waters, wooden vessels flanked by waterborne pens in which livestock and vegetables flourish. "You must hand over the rice with two hands," Ratana Som, our translator, instructs us. "You must also sit because it makes you equal."

I clamber awkwardly aboard a boat, settling into an incense-scented space occupied by a woman, her daughters and grandchildren. The ceiling is pasted with bright pink lace and images of the saints; a cat slinks casually by, a baby slumbers in a hammock. I hand the package to the grandmother, sceptical of the long-term effect of this gesture.

Perhaps she has sensed my despondency for as I leave she hugs me tightly and reassuringly, as a mother would.

And in that moment I have an unexpected, liberating epiphany: my world has expanded while I wasn't looking, stretching its boundaries to envelop Cambodia and its people, transforming the hungry, damaged faces on the evening news into the warm, flesh-and-blood people sitting before me. Leaving my shoes at the door, I have allowed a whole new consciousness to stream through me. I haven't saved the world, but I've taken an important first step.

We offload our remaining cargo against the backdrop of a lavishly setting sun, then float back towards Siem Reap and our own privileged lives.

Tucked into my metaphorical pocket are the mementos I wouldn't have found for love or money at Cambodia's markets and souvenir shops: the indelible stories of the people I've met along the way, and the profound cross-cultural acceptance that came with that motherly hug on the Tonle Sap.

Catherine Marshall was a guest of SeeBeyondBorders.

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The SeeBeyondBorders mandate is to empower communities living in developing countries by supporting specific partners and projects.More: www.seebeyondborders.org.

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Endangered crocodiles hatched in Cambodia

By Ouk Navouth And Jerry Harmer
Associated Press

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Conservationists in Cambodia are celebrating the hatching of a clutch of eggs from one of the world's most critically endangered animals.

Thirteen baby Siamese crocodiles crawled out of their shells over the weekend in a remote part of the Cardamom Mountains in southwestern Cambodia, following a weekslong vigil by researchers who found them in the jungle.

Experts believe as few as 250 Siamese crocodiles are left in the wild, almost all of them in Cambodia but with a few spread between Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia, Vietnam and possibly Thailand.

The operation to protect and hatch the eggs was mounted by United Kingdom-based Fauna and Flora International, for whom conservation of this once-abundant species is a key program.

"Every nest counts," program manager Adam Starr told Associated Press Television News. "To be able to find a nest is a very big success story, to be able to hatch eggs properly is an even bigger success story."

The nest, with 22 eggs inside, was discovered in the isolated Areng Valley. Fauna and Flora International volunteers removed 15 of them to a safe site and incubated them in a compost heap to replicate the original nest. They left seven behind because they appeared to be unfertilized.

A round-the-clock guard was mounted to keep away predators like monitor lizards. Last weekend the crocodiles began calling from inside the shells, a sure sign they were about to hatch.
Within hours 10 emerged — and a further surprise was in store. Three of the eggs left behind at the original nest also hatched. A field coordinator, Sam Han, discovered the squawking baby crocodiles when he went to recover a camera-trap from the site.

"When I first saw the baby crocodiles they stayed and swam together near the near site. They were looking for their mother," he said. He snapped a few photos of the hatchlings, their noses poking out of the water.

To cap the success, the camera-trap yielded two infrared shots of the mother crocodile returning to the nest.

The reptiles are now being kept in a water-filled pen in a local village in the jungle-covered mountain range. The indigenous Chouerng people who live there revere crocodiles as forest spirits and consider it taboo to harm them. It's likely they'll be looked after for a year before being released into the wild.

But the euphoria is tempered by hard-edged reality. This part of the Areng Valley has been earmarked for a major hydropower project. The conservation group is looking for other areas of similar habitat to release the juveniles when the time comes.

"To put these crocodiles back into the Areng Valley could spell certain doom for them," Starr said.

The Siamese crocodile has suffered a massive decline over the last century, because of a high demand for its soft skin. Commercial breeders also brought them to stock farms where they crossed them with larger types of crocodile, producing hybrids which further reduced numbers of the pure Siamese.

In 1992 it was declared "effectively extinct in the wild" before being rediscovered in the remote Cardamoms in Cambodia eight years later.

Siamese crocodiles take 15 years to reach sexual maturity, complicating efforts to revive the population. Only a handful of the 13 new crocs are likely to survive long enough to make a long-term impact on numbers. Read more!

Cambodia announces plan to conserve land a long shores of Tonle Sap lake

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA — Cambodia announced plans Thursday to conserve forested shore areas around Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia's largest freshwater lake.

Sam Nov, a deputy director of the country's Fisheries Administration, said that some 1.6 million acres (640,000 hectares) of forest land that floods during rainy season with be declared off-limits for development, including encroachment by farmers planting rice.

The lake covers about 618,000 acres (250,000 hectares) during the dry season and expands to about 3 million acres (1.25 million hectares) during the rainy season. It is the habitat for more than 200 species of fish, 42 types of reptiles, 225 species of birds and 46 kinds of mammals.

"The flooded forests are very vital shelters for several species ... and their offspring," Sam Nov said. "We urgently need to conserve this forest. If not we will lose it forever."

Several areas of flooded forest and wetlands have already been cleared by farmers and agribusiness companies in recent years to convert the land for dry season farming, he said.

Officials from the six provinces that surround the lake, located about 120 miles (200 kilometers) northwest of the capital Phnom Penh, will soon begin informing villagers of the ban on destroying the forest areas, said Sam Nov. Read more!

Cambodia PM warns against betting on World Cup

PHNOM PENH — Cambodia's premier warned football fans to resist illegal gambling on the upcoming World Cup, with police across the country ready to arrest anybody found having a flutter.

"On Friday, the World Cup will start. I would like to appeal to (the people) not to bet on football," Prime Minister Hun Sen said during a student-graduation ceremony on Wednesday.

"Both secret and open football betting must finish. Just watch it and clap your hands," he said.

Hun Sen said he did not want to see "other countries win the football, but Cambodian people lose money."

Cambodia's sole football bookmaker was abruptly closed in early 2009 as Hun Sen ordered a crackdown on betting, saying that gambling caused family disputes, domestic violence and robbery.
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Cambodia's Military-Business Partnerships Raise Alarm

By BRENDAN BRADY / PHNOM PENH

A land dispute in March between a sugar-plantation developer and a small community in the province of Kampong Speu motivated military police stationed nearby to spring into action, ostensibly in order to prevent an eruption of violence. It didn't take long, though, for the villagers to view the supposed peacekeepers as intimidators.

It wasn't the first time military personnel were seen as supporting the business interests of Ly Yong Phat, a prominent developer and Senator with the country's ruling party. Last October in the province of Oddar Meanchey, 100 families were driven off their land by members of an infantry brigade stationed in the area. They were moved to make way for another Ly plantation, according to the local rights group Licadho. Now that Ly's businesses will be officially sponsoring both of these military units following a new government initiative, says Licadho's Mathieu Pellerin, "it looks like a job-well-done payback." (See TIME's photo-essay "The Rise and Fall of the Khmer Rouge.")

At the end of February, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen kicked off a program creating partnerships in which businesses would provide donations for particular units of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. The government has framed the initiative, which involves some 60 pairings, as facilitating the magnanimous inclination of corporations operating in Cambodia to support the welfare of the country's troops. Observers, however, caution that the program will ultimately serve to further enmesh the country's powerbrokers - political, military and business - into a network to serve their mutual interests and ensure everyone's allegiance to the ruling party.

The Cambodian military regularly guards large-scale private land concessions across the country, according to rights groups, and has been used to evict the rural poor for business developments. Hun Sen's new policy, says U.S.-based watchdog group Global Witness, is a step toward formalizing that process. "Global Witness has documented links between Cambodia's military and powerful business tycoons for many years now, so the relationships are not new," says Eleanor Nichol, a campaigner with the group, which was expelled from Cambodia in 2007 after publishing a report, fervently refuted by the government, that linked prominent officials in the government, military and business community with the illegal logging trade. "This latest move ... to officially sanction these partnerships is particularly shocking because it legitimizes a guns-for-hire scenario."

The government and companies participating in the new patronage program reject claims that the partnerships could lead to improprieties. Ly Yong Phat says his involvement in the program is to compensate for the military's lack of funding for troops' basic needs. Corporate support, according to a government memo, will "solve the dire situation of the armed forces, police, military police and their families through a culture of sharing." The government has responded to criticisms by specifying that donations would likely come in the form of food and shelter. (See the top 10 news stories of 2009.)

The program has confounded regional security experts. "It's not unusual in militarized states like Iran, Yemen, Turkey and Vietnam for the army to own and run corporations, but the direct corporate sponsorship of active-duty units is something new and very worrying," says John Harrison, a security expert based in Singapore. The only country in the region that comes close to having a similar system is Indonesia, says Carlyle Thayer, a professor of Asian security affairs at Australia's University of New South Wales. Like Cambodia, Indonesia has a long history of blurred lines between military and political power. For years, Indonesia has used "foundations" to collect donations from the private sector to compensate for shortages in public military funding. While some of the money has been used for its intended purpose of supporting military families, the system has promoted alliances between the Indonesian army and companies wherein donations are exchanged for "mafia-like" criminal services, according to Human Rights Watch.

Cambodia's army-sponsorship initiative goes against the grain of business divestment in the militaries of China and Vietnam, says Thayer. Citing a need to bolster security preparedness in the army, the Chinese government in 1998 forced its entrepreneurial army to sell off the majority of its investments and compensated the subsequent revenue shortfall by increasing defense spending. Two years ago, Vietnam called for a similar plan in the name of army discipline. "Cambodia should heed [those] lessons," says Thayer.

But unlike China and Vietnam, where booming economic growth helped bolster state funding for the military, Cambodia's army is badly strapped for cash. The problem is exacerbated by the deployment of large numbers of troops along the border with Thailand, as the two countries continue to engage in a protracted border-demarcation dispute. Even though the corporate donations are ostensibly voluntary, organizing official partnerships raises questions about the pressures companies will face to participate - and what benefits will be extended, or denied, to them based on their contributions. The end result, warn a litany of local and international rights groups, could be a cash-driven race to the top among companies vying for government favor, matched by a race to the bottom in state support of laypeople involved in rows with influential corporations.

Observers have also raised concerns that the initiative could further skew Cambodia's political landscape, which has seen a dramatic consolidation of power by the ruling Cambodian People's Party over the past decade. "In times of need, the public in many countries will spontaneously support their military ... Cambodia's new program is something very different," says Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore. By soliciting funds for the army, the government can position itself to arouse nationalist fervor that will, in turn, translate into support for its political backer: the ruling party itself.

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India, Cambodia sign MoU in Water Sector

Phnom Penh (Cambodia), June 9 : India and Cambodia on Wednesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in Water Sector.

The MoU will pave way for preparation of technically sound and economically sustainable projects with expert manpower availability and experience of Water and Power Consultancy Services (WAPCOS) in diverse climatic and geographic conditions.

The MoU was signed during the three-day Cambodia visit of Union Minister for Water Resources and Parliamentary Affairs Pawan Kumar Bansal.

"This visit is a follow-up of Agreement signed between Royal Government of Cambodia and Government of India in December 2007 for cooperation in water sector. This visit will also strengthen bilateral cooperation between India and Cambodia," said Bansal.

He visited project sites of WAPCOS Ltd, a Government of India Undertaking under Ministry of Water Resources, which is undertaking projects related to Water Resources and Power Development in Cambodia.

Bansal met Lim Kean, Minister for Water Resources and Meteorology, Royal Government of Cambodia at Phnom Penh.

During the meeting, the Minister observed that bilateral cooperation between India and Cambodia dates back to early seventies when the Tonlesap Multipurpose project was taken up.

He pointed out the historical and cultural similarities between the two nations and also referred about the achievements made by India in water sector since Independence.

The Minister for Water Resources and Meteorology, Royal Government of Cambodia thanked the Government of India for providing the Lines of Credit to Cambodia in water sector.

Lim Kean talked about the greater role India can play in the global economy in the times to come and appreciated the technological and economic advancement made by India. Read more!

Lawmakers Select Two Anti-Corruption Representatives

The National Assembly and Senate established their representatives on a new anti-corruption council on Tuesday, voting respectively for Top Sam and Prak Sok, two members of the Constitutional Council since its 1998 inception.

Now the two men, who must be finally approved by the king, will be a part of the 11-member National Anti-Corruption Council, which prepares strategies and policies to fight graft under a new law passed this year. The council also makes recommendations to its counterpart, the Anti-Corruption Unit, which is in charge of enforcing the policies.

Top Sam, who is 63, was a secretary of state for the Ministry of Commerce until 1998. Prak Sok, who is 67, was a judge and deputy chief of the Supreme Court until he joined the Constitutional Council.

Both men welcomed the news on Tuesday.

“I am very happy to get the new job, and I am committed to doing my best to fulfill my new job strongly and effectively,” Prak Sok told VOA Khmer Tuesday.

But critics say they doubt the men or the new council will effectively combat Cambodia’s corruption, often blamed on government officials within the ruling party.

“We don’t believe in the independence or effectiveness of the representatives of the National Assembly and the Senate in fighting corruption in Cambodia, because the two men come from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, and the two will get pressure from the ruling party before deciding any case,” Mam Sitha, director of the Anti-Corruption Committee, a non-governmental organization, said Tuesday. “The council can decide on small corruption and not powerful corruption, and they cannot decide on the main power behind the corruption.”

Son Chhay, a lawmaker for the opposition Sam Rainsy Party, said Tuesday the two legislative candidates do not have experience investigating corruption. “But we will follow up on their work,” he said. “I’m not interested in the history of Prak Sok and Top Sam, but I am more interested in the willingness of the government to fight corruption.”

Pen Thol, a member of the Constitutional Council who worked with the candidates for the past six years, said both had good relationships with the seven other members of the Constitutional Council in working groups. They were both effective decision-makers and worked hard on decisions by the council, which examines election complaints as well as constitutional matters, Pen Thol said.
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No Injuries Reported in Brief Border Clash

A Cambodian soldier carries a B-40 Rocket Launcher as he headed to the tent near the Famed Preah Vihea at the Cambodian-Thai border in Preah Vihea Province, a bout 245 Kilometers North of Phnom Penh

Cambodian and Thai troops engaged in a brief exchange of gunfire on Tuesday, but neither side reported injuries.

The clash, which began just before 10 am in the Dangrek Mountains of Oddar Meanchey province, lasted only five minutes, said Chhum Socheat, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, who blamed the exchange on a “misunderstanding.”

“The soldiers of Trapaing Prasath district were patrolling, and they met accidentally with Thai soldiers who were on patrol as well,” he said. “Both sides opened fire.”

Chhum Socheat said the Thai soldiers likely thought they were firing on illegal loggers, not soldiers. Commanders on both sides were already discussing the issue, he said.

Cambodia and Thailand have both amassed troops along the northern border, following the inception of Preah Vihear temple as a World Heritage site under Cambodian control. Both sides lay claim to land near the temple, fueling a standoff that has gone on since July 2008. Sporadic clashes have left a handful of killed soldiers on each side. The latest clash took place in O’smach district in April, though no one was hurt.

A Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday the Thais had not yet verified reports of the engagement.

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Stockholm Water Institution Awards City Authority

A Cambodian villager pours use water into a jar at his home in Chriev village, Kandal province about 24 kilometers (15 miles) northwest of Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

The Stockholm International Water Institute has given its annual award to Phnom Penh’s water agency for self-sufficiency and high-quality performance in water supply.

“The [Phnom Penh Water Authority] has successfully fought corruption and shown this can be achieved in a developing country on a large-scale basis using simple but effective management techniques that are based on well-accepted business principles and strategies,” the institute said in a statement.

The award will be conferred to the Phnom Penh Water Authority during World Water Week in Stockholm, which begins Sept. 5.

“My team is encouraged by this prestigious award to carry on our mission to increase collection efficiency, improve water regulation, and deliver affordable water to the poor," said Ek Sun Chan, director general of the water agency.

The authority worked to refurbish the city’s entire supply system and introduced cost-effective billing and payment collection methods, as well as management to provide water to almost all of the city’s residents, starting from 1998, the institute said in its statement.

“The PPWA has a strong commitment to social and environmental responsibility,” it said. “It has shown the developing world as a whole that large cities can expect continuous access to clean water.”

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Cambodia's missing 'jungle woman' found in toilet

PHNOM PENH — A Cambodian woman whose story gripped the nation after she apparently spent 18 years living in the jungle has been found in a dugout toilet 11 days after she disappeared again, her father said Monday.

Rochom P'ngieng, 29, was reported missing late last month by her family, who at the time said they believed she had fled back into the forest.

She was found in an outdoor toilet about 100 metres (300 feet) from her home after a neighbour heard her crying, Sal Lou, the man who says he is her father, told AFP by telephone.

"She was discovered in a 10-metre deep toilet. It's an unbelievable story. She spent 11 days there," he said, adding that her body was soaked with excrement up to her chest.

"We are still wondering how she could get into the toilet" which has a small entrance hole covered in wood, he said, adding that she had been admitted to hospital following the incident.

Rochom P'ngieng went missing as a little girl in 1989 while herding water buffalo in Ratanakkiri province, around 600 kilometres (400 miles) northeast of Phnom Penh and home to some of the most isolated and wild jungle in Cambodia.

In early 2007 she was brought from the jungle, naked and dirty, after being caught trying to steal food from a farmer. She was hunched over like a monkey, scavenging on the ground for pieces of dried rice.

Cambodians described her as "jungle woman" and "half-animal girl" and since rejoining society she has battled bouts of illness after refusing food.
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Mekong Sub-Region Nations Vow to Develop Infrastructure

Five countries along Asia's Mekong River pledged Sunday to put more investments on transport infrastructure development to enhance connectivity and maintain sustainable economic growth.

The commitments were made by the five prime ministers of the sub-region countries -- Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam -- at a session themed: Region Growth and Leadership at the ongoing World Economic Forum on East Asia.

Vietnam Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said the regional countries should mobilize investment capital from East Asian partners and other countries for infrastructure development process.

The regional countries should create favorable conditions to apply a public-private partnership mechanism for the development of transport and urban infrastructure networks, Dung said.

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said a common logistics network should be set up. Thai ministries and agencies have joined hands with East Asian partners of China and Japan for more soft loans for infrastructure development in the regional, he said.

A special fund should be set up to support the regional countries, he said.

Laos will continue actively building railway and road transport infrastructure networks linking China's southern province of Yunnan, its capital city of Vientiane, and parts of central Vietnam, Prime Minister Bouasone Bouphavanh said.

Cambodia Prime Minister Hun Sen also agreed to boost transport, energy infrastructure development.

Myanmar Prime Minister U Thein Sein held that enhanced connectivity would help regional countries improve cooperation to maintain sustainable agricultural production.

The Mekong sub-region consists of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and China's Yunnan and Guangxi.

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Remembering Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos

by Sichan Siv


Spring 2010 marks the 35th anniversary of the fall of Cambodia and South Vietnam to communism. In a recent speech at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library in Ann Arbor, Mich., to commemorate the sad anniversary, I mentioned a pivotal date: April 10, 1975.

While in Cambodia, I listened to President Ford’s address to the joint session of Congress through the Voice of America. My heart sank when I heard him say: “The situation in South Vietnam and Cambodia has reached a critical phase requiring immediate and positive decisions by this government. The options before us are few and the time is very short.” I quoted this in my memoir Golden Bones (HarperCollins, 2008).

In his recently published book An American Amnesia (Beaufort Press, 2010), Bruce Herschensohn speaks to this date more extensively, including President Ford’s request for “Congress to appropriate without delay $722 million for emergency military assistance and an initial sum of $250 million for economic and humanitarian aid for South Vietnam.” Herschensohn concludes his quotes with the following paragraphs from Ford’s speech:

“In Cambodia, the situation is tragic. And yet, for the past three months, the beleaguered people of Phnom Penh have fought on, hoping against hope that the United States would not desert them, but instead provide the arms and ammunition they so badly needed. In January, I requested food and ammunition for the brave Cambodians, and I regret to say that as of this evening, it may soon be too late… Let no potential adversary believe that our difficulties or our debates mean a slackening of our national will. We will stand by our friends, we will honor our commitments, and will uphold our country’s principle.” But we didn’t, adds Herschensohn.

Ford’s address was one of the most difficult he had ever delivered. On the copy of the speech that he read, he added his own hand-written words to begin the speech: “I stand before you tonight after many agonizing hours and solemn prayers for guidance by the Almighty.”

An American Amnesia starts on January 23, 1973 in the corridors of the White House, where Bruce Herschensohn was working for President Nixon. He describes the cheerful mood in the executive compound after the peace agreement had been signed in Paris by the United States, its ally South Vietnam, Communist North Vietnam, and the Vietcong, known as the Provisional Revolutionary Government.

It was more than a cease-fire, Herschensohn points out. It called for the United States and North Vietnam, a.k.a. the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, to respect the right of the South Vietnamese people to self-determination. Following articles urged all parties to settle issues through negotiations and avoid armed conflicts and acts of reprisal, to insure democratic liberties, including freedom of speech, etc.

Cambodia and Laos were barely mentioned in the Accords; not until chapter 20, article 20. (I was a high school teacher in Phnom Penh and working at a conference of Southeast Asian nations on January 23, 1973. In all naïveté, I was happy that Cambodia was mentioned at all).

Without referring to North Vietnam and the Vietcong, who had occupied Cambodia’s eastern parts since the mid sixties, the accords stated: “Foreign countries shall put an end to all military activities in Cambodia and Laos, totally withdraw from and refrain from reintroducing into these two countries troops, military advisers and military personnel, armaments, munitions and war material. The internal affairs of Cambodia and Laos shall be settled by the people of each of these countries without foreign interference.”

These all sounded idealistic and wishful. There was hardly any provision to penalize the offenders of these articles. If anything, it was like trying to give speeding tickets at the Indy 500.

Obviously, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong had no intention of respecting the accords. Two years later they ran their tanks through Saigon and took over South Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge went even farther by immediately turning Cambodia into a land of blood and tears, where some two million people died. It was said there were only two kinds of people: those who had died and those who would die.

After 12 Congresses and five Presidents (Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford), Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam fell to the Communists. Who lost them?

An American Amnesia details the role of the 94th Congress which came to Washington after the November 5, 1974 post-Watergate landslide. It brought 291 Democrats and 144 Republicans to the House, 61 Democrats and 39 Republicans to the Senate. When it convened on January 3, 1975, President Ford became no more than a caretaker. The Democratically controlled Congress, along with the biased media, the anti-U.S. and pro-North Vietnam protesters (Jane Fonda, Ramsey Clark, and the like) made President Ford’s job at best challenging and at worst impossible.

Nixon probably said it best in 1969: “Let us be united for peace. Let us also be united against defeat. Because let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.”

Herschensohn’s chapter on “Hotel Journalism” is very telling about “cocktail reporting,” a tendency of anti-war journalists who filed stories from hotel bars based on propaganda fed by communist sympathizers. Incidentally, I was at one of those hotels, Le Royal in Phnom Penh, with my brother on April 17, 1975 when the Khmer Rouge came in and opened the darkest chapter of Cambodia’s history.

Bruce Herschensohn does an excellent job in painting the reality of this period, exposing the biased press and the overtly pro-Communist anti-war movement, and saluting the real heroes (Bud Day, John McCain, Jim Stockdale). He debunks many myths about the Vietnam War which he refers to as the Southeast Asian War.

President Reagan once quoted a Russian proverb: “Trust, but verify.” I would add, “For Communists and dictators, never trust, and always verify.”

Bruce Herschensohn’s American Amnesia is a must read for those interested in this critical period of history. Read more!

U.N. agency in Cambodia appeals for better care of women, girls

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) appealed to the world leaders to pay more care and support to the women and girls in Cambodia.

In a statement on Friday, UNFPA said the challenges of pregnancy and childbirth threaten women's lives every single day.

It said, "Though in Cambodia we have seen a two-fold increase in births attended by skilled health personnel in a decade -- progress we can all be proud of -- five women still die giving life every day, and many still lack access to essential reproductive and maternal health services."

The appeal titled "Delivering a better future for women and girls" was made just a few days ahead of the leaders from around the world to get together at the Women Deliver Conference in Washington, D.C. on June 7-9, to renew their commitments toward improving reproductive and maternal health, improving gender equality and accelerating progress toward MDG 5.

The Cambodian delegation will include Ing Kantha Phavi, Minister for Women's Affairs, Khuon Sudary and Ouk Damry, both are members of the National Assembly, Khloth Tongphka, member of the Senate, and officials from the Ministry of Health, UNFPA Representative to Cambodia Ms. Alice Levisay, and NGO representatives.

The statement said that women are a driving force in Cambodian society and in the Cambodian economy.

"When women aren't healthy, their families, their communities and the country suffer," it said.

Women Deliver representatives will call on governments, multilateral organizations, donors and non-governmental organizations to redouble their commitments and translate talk about reproductive and maternal health into action.

"Women deliver not only babies. They deliver enormous social and economic benefits to their families, communities and nations. All research shows that it pays off to invest in women. But they need to be healthy and alive to thrive and contribute," says President of the Women Deliver Initiative, Jill Sheffield.

The Women Deliver Initiative was launched at a conference held in London from October 2007 to mark the 20th anniversary of global efforts to reduce high rates of maternal and newborn death and disability in the developing world.

Source: Xinhua Read more!

ASME to open 1st business centre in Cambodia to increase links with local firms

SINGAPORE: The Association of Small and Medium Enterprises or (ASME) will open a business centre in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh to increase tie-ups between companies.

The centre, supported by SPRING Singapore and IE Singapore, is scheduled to be opened early next year.

This is the first-ever overseas centre by a Singapore business association.

Collaborating to develop Cambodia's infrastructure or providing education services in Phnom Penh are some of the sectors that Singapore SMEs can venture into.

Bryan The, CEO, Association of Small & Medium Enterprises, said: "Singapore businesses tend to lag behind some of the other competing countries in the region like Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong for example.

“And that often when business opportunities crop up, the other countries tend to snap them up faster than Singapore. So we hope that by being physically there, it could help hasten the process and also raise awareness of such opportunities to Singapore businesses.

“We think that in the next five years, Cambodia would be the next big thing, possibly even as big as Vietnam and being relatively untapped. This is the right time to be in Cambodia right now.”

ASME's business centre comes on the back of the government's recent call for Singapore companies to internationalise.

The centre will also look for opportunities in countries like Laos and Myanmar.

ASME has decided to set up a business centre in Cambodia because currently, there is no Singapore representative or assistance there.

The association believes that Cambodia has potential market opportunities worth over US$200 million. One of the key responsibilities of the centre will be to match-make Cambodia and Singapore companies for business cooperation.

And understanding consumer needs in emerging regional markets is key when expanding overseas.

Arnaud Frade, regional director, Retail and Shopper, TNS, said: "Getting to know your consumers and not making assumptions. What is working here in Singapore may not be working in China.
“If they go into this market without the real knowledge, they'd very likely waste a lot of resources, distract their management and ultimately, again risk losing share at home because all their resources have been diverted."

To better familiarise Singapore SMEs with the demands overseas, ASME will double its trade missions to over 20 this year to countries like China, Vietnam and even Uzbekistan. - CNA/vm





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Defence ministers hold summit on Asian security - Summary

AvailableSingapore - South Korean President Lee Myung Bak on Friday urged the world community to take North Korea to task over the March sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan, which claimed the lives of 46 sailors.

"Today, the Republic of Korea government referred the matter of North Korea's attack against the Cheonan to the United Nations Security Council," Lee told defence ministers and policymakers from 28 nations gathered for the largest dialogue on Asian security in Singapore.

Pyongyang had to "admit its wrongdoing and must pledge to never again engage in such reprehensible action," Lee said.

He called on Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons programme, noting that it was "never too late to embark on the path of mutual benefit."

The three-day 2010 Shangri-La Dialogue opened amid rising tensions and sabre rattling on the Korean Peninsula after the South, backed by the findings of a multinational investigation team, blamed the North of sinking the Cheonan with a torpedo.

Lee said South Korea was not seeking confrontation and war with the North, but together with the United States and other allies had to respond firmly.

The North Koreans "must understand very clearly that they have to suffer the consequences," said Lee.

The Stalinist regime in Pyongyang denied any involvement in the Cheonan incident and threatened to start an all-out war against the neighbouring South.

The present situation on the Korean Peninsula was so grave "that a war may break out at any moment," North Korean diplomat Ri Jang Gon told a United Nations forum on Thursday.

The North Korean threat was expected to rank high among the issues to be discussed in the Singapore summit's plenary sessions and at meetings on its sidelines.

Other topics to be addressed are security partnerships in the region and humanitarian and disaster relief in the Asia-Pacific.

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates is scheduled to address the summit on Saturday.

The annual dialogue organized by the London-based non-governmental International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) represents the highest concentration of defence and security leaders in Asia.

Since its inaugural meeting in 2002, the summit has also expanded as a venue for diplomats from the United States and Europe.

Attendees are to include ministers and delegates from Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Russia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Britain, the United States and Vietnam.

The summit is scheduled to conclude on Sunday. Read more!

CAMBODIA: Donors pledge $1 billion but criticise corruption

PHNOM PENH, (IRIN) - Donors pledged the largest aid package in Cambodian history this week while at the same time scolding the country for failing to implement various reforms.

Donors pledged US$1.1 billion in aid for this year - up from last year’s $950 million - during a two-day conference ending on 3 June. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen insisted his government would use the funds effectively, calling reform a “life-or-death issue for Cambodia”.

But rights groups say donors should take a tougher stance to weed out corruption; the country was last year ranked the world’s 22nd most corrupt by Transparency International.

Activists say much of last year’s money has been diverted from the projects they were intended for, such as schools, roads and hospitals.

“The onus for protecting donor aid falls squarely at the door of the donors themselves,” said Ou Virak, head of the Phnom Penh-based Cambodian Centre for Human Rights.

Donors needed to do more to make sure their aid was put to good use, he added.

The World Bank is also unconvinced there has been adequate progress. "It is important for the government to take the lead in aligning resources to development priorities," Annette Dixon, country director for the World Bank, said at the conference.

The Bank said the Cambodian government had to be more transparent with its public finances and handling of natural resources after allegations that foreign oil companies paid bribes for oil exploration deals in the Gulf of Thailand, off Cambodia’s southwest coast.

Last summer, Carol Rodley, US ambassador to Cambodia, said Cambodia lost about $500 million to corruption each year, a remark the government condemned as "politically motivated”.

"It's normal that these donor countries raise this issue of corruption,” Phay Siphan, a government spokesman, told IRIN. "The new anti-corruption law will reduce those improper activities."

Some lawmakers have praised the anti-corruption law, passed in March, which requires government and military officers to disclose their wealth to an anti-corruption body.

But critics say the law was passed hastily and that it contains disturbing amendments, including prison time for whistleblowers.

Various drafts of the law lingered in the National Assembly, the lower house, for 15 years before the bill suddenly went to the floor in March.

Friction

Despite the prime minister’s assurances, Cambodian officials have in recent months issued increasingly bold warnings to donor governments and the UN, complaining of interference in internal matters when they urge officials to clean up corruption, halt arbitrary land evictions and curtail defamation lawsuits against opposition lawmakers.

In March, Cambodian foreign minister Hor Namhong threatened to have UN country head Douglas Broderick expelled after Broderick had requested the government spend more time drafting the anti-corruption law. The foreign minister called this an “unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of Cambodia” in a letter to Broderick. The UN has stayed silent on the issue.

Cambodian officials claim the country has been transformed from a war-torn pariah state to a politically stable destination for tourists and investors.

But activists say that is not enough. “The aid situation has done pretty well in infrastructure,” Donald Jameson, a former US embassy official in Phnom Penh, told IRIN by telephone from Washington DC. “But there is very little being done about the quality of education, healthcare or corruption in the judiciary.”

About one-third of Cambodians still live on $1 a day or less, according to government statistics.

Playing the China card

Some analysts contend that China, Cambodia’s largest donor, is shaking things up by increasing the size of its aid packages each year, with few conditions. Cambodia now makes more decisions in the interests of China, observers say.

In December, Cambodia deported 20 Uighur refugees from Xingjian, a province in northwest China. The UN and US condemned the decision, claiming it was against international refugee law.
After the expulsion, China awarded $1.2 billion in aid and soft loans to Cambodia.
Read more!

6th SEA Junior Table Tennis Championship opens in Cambodia

The 16th South East Asian Junior Table Tennis Championship opened Thursday at Olympic Stadium with 86 table tennis players taking part in the competition.

This will be the first time Cambodia has hosted the annual event which was held last year in neighboring Thailand, the Phnom Penh Post reported.

Eight countries took part in the five-day competition starting from June 3 to 7. The countries include Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and hosts Cambodia.

Bun Sok, secretary of state of Cambodia's Education, Youth and Sports Ministry attended the opening ceremony. He spoke highly of the development of table tennis in Southeast Asia, and expressed his excitement for Cambodia having the chance to host the regional table tennis championship. He believed that it will further strengthen the cooperation between countries in the region through the organization of competitions, and also help Cambodia to accumulate more experience for hosting more international events in future.

Im Sethy, minister of Cambodian Education, Youth and Sports Minister said in his message that table tennis is one of the major international sports events. Many people enjoy the sport because it helps to cultivate people's endurance and rapid reaction capacity, and people of all ages young and old can participate.

Chan Foong Keong, Secretary-General of Southeast Asian Table Tennis Association, said after the first Southeast Asian Junior Championship was successfully held in Kuala Lumpur, the competition has been developed continually. The competition aims to train the national table tennis player for future international competitions.

The tournament will feature men's and women's singles, doubles, and mixed teams for U18s, and U15s. The Cambodian team will field 13 males and 2 females.

Source: Xinhua Read more!

Watchdog Renews Call for Oil Transparency

The US oil giant Chevron and the Cambodian government need to improve transparency in the management of oil revenue, a Cambodian watchdog said Monday.

“What we want to know is how this revenue from natural resources is being managed, because it is a new sector,” Mam Sambath, chairman of Cambodians for Resource Revenue Transparency, told “Hello VOA.” “We want to see this revenue being managed transparently and accountably so that Cambodian people and their future generations benefit equally.”

Mam Sambath, who attended Chevron’s annual meeting last week in Houston, Texas, to advocate for a payment disclosure policy, said greater transparency will work in the company’s interest.

“The disclosure will instead promote a good image of Chevron in a country it operates,” he said. “And it will also attract other highly responsible companies to follow suit and invest in that particular country.”

Cambodia insists it has been transparent in managing state revenue.

“We don’t have a problem [if a company makes their payment public],” Hang Chuon Naron, secretary-general of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, told VOA Khmer. “The prime minister has authorized us to do that, and we have been doing that all along.”

However, a caller from Banteay Meanchey province expressed skepticism in the government’s transparency efforts. Villagers are seldom fully informed of gold mining operations in the province, the caller, who gave his name as Ny, said.

Transparency advocates say Cambodia would do well to become a member of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, or EITI.

“On natural resources, the international community must push the government to be a member of EITI to ensure effectiveness in management of revenues and expenditure from mineral resources,” said Yim Sovann, spokesman for the opposition Sam Rainsy Party. “Sooner or later we will extract oil and gold, and revenue from this sector is gigantic. If we manage it properly we will be rich.”

Yim Sovann called for openness for input from the public, lawmakers and the international community for the drafting of a management law for natural resources currently underway.

Mam Sambath agrees.

“I strongly urge the government to consider becoming a member of EITI, so that we can better manage revenue from natural resources and help better manage our economy,” Mam Sambath said.
Read more!

In Donor Meeting, Hun Sen Vows Deeper Reforms

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday moved to assure international representatives and aid agencies he was committed to deepening government reforms and fighting corruption, as an annual donor meeting got underway.

Speaking at the opening of the Cambodian Development Cooperation Forum, where donors are expected to pledge more than $1 billion in aid to Cambodia, Hun Sen said the government had made the “utmost efforts to firmly and deeply implement various reform programs and consider them as life or death issues.”

The government will present a $6.2 billion development plan to donors this week, part of an updated five-year strategy for continued reform and poverty alleviation. More than 100 participants from donor countries and international aid groups such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund joined senior government ministers for two days of talks.

“The Royal Government considers the fight against corruption as a top priority during its fourth mandate,” Hun Sen said in a speech that lasted more than an hour. “We have a strong will for implementing these reforms.”

Speaking on behalf of the donors, Annette Dixon, the World Bank’s country director, said meetings would center around “key reforms, which the government is undertaking, particularly in decentralization, public financial management and reforms of the civil service.”

“Further strengthening transparency and accountability in the management of Cambodia’s public finances and natural resources will be fundamental for ensuring more sustainable and inclusive growth,” Dixon said, adding that the government had made important achievements in passing an anti-corruption law and updated penal code.

Critics of the anti-corruption law have said it lacks the teeth to root out the country’s endemic corruption.
Read more!

Researchers offer solutions to poisonous well-water crisis in southern Asia

Over 100 million people in rural southern Asia are exposed every day to unsafe levels of arsenic from the well-water they drink. It is more than doubles their risks for cancer, causes cardiovascular disease, and inhibits the mental development of children, among other serious effects.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has referred to the situation in Bangladesh, where an estimated 60 million people are affected, as 'the largest mass poisoning of a population in history.'

In the May 28 issue of the journal Science, researchers from Stanford University, the University of Delaware, and Columbia University review what scientists understand about this groundwater contamination crisis and offer solutions for the region, which spans Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Vietnam.

Holly Michael, assistant professor of geological sciences in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment at the University of Delaware, is a co-author of the article, with Scott Fendorf from Stanford and Alexander van Geen from Columbia University. Fendorf received his doctorate from UD in 1992 and is now chair of environmental and Earth system science at Stanford.

Michael earned her doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and joined the UD faculty in 2008. She travelled to Bangladesh to study the groundwater contamination problem firsthand during her postdoctoral training with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Arsenic occurs naturally in the Earth's crust. Tasteless, odourless, and colourless in solution, the element is a known carcinogen and can be detected in water only through testing.

The source of South Asia's arsenic contamination is the Himalaya Mountains. Minerals from rocks, eroding coal seams, and sediments contain arsenic and are carried into the major rivers that flow out of the mountains, including the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Irawaddy, Meghna, Mekong, and Red rivers. The flat, low-lying floodplains of these major rivers are the areas affected by groundwater contamination.

A logical solution is to dig deeper wells to reach uncontaminated aquifers for supplying safe drinking water. However, farmers also want access to this water to irrigate their rice paddies. And that's a problem, according to Michael's research.

In 2008, Michael showed through numerical modelling of groundwater flow in the Bengal Basin that an uncontaminated domestic well more than 500 feet (150 metres) could remain arsenic-free for at least a thousand years. However, she projected an entirely different scenario for deep irrigation wells, which use mechanised pumps instead of hand pumps to bring groundwater to the surface. The high volumes of water drawn by these irrigation systems induced a much faster downward migration of arsenic-contaminated surface water into the deep aquifer.

'To protect drinking water from arsenic contamination, we recommend that deeper wells only be used by individual households for drinking water and not for crop irrigation,' Michael says.

In addition to preserving deep wells specifically for drinking water, she and her co-authors also recommend these measures:

- Reinvigorating well-testing campaigns by governments and international organisations.

- Better use of existing geological data and the compilation of test results to target zones that are low in arsenic for the installation of community wells.

- The re-testing of tens of thousands of deep wells, particularly those that have been used for both domestic and farming purposes.

- The choice of mitigation option can be situation-dependent: filters or other alternatives may be the best choice in some areas.

'Obviously, arsenic-contaminated drinking water is a huge problem from a human health perspective,' Michael says. 'We've shown that there are some viable options in South Asia, but there is much more that we need to understand.'

Currently, Michael is working to model arsenic transport, how it may move in the future in the aquifer system in Bangladesh. She also is working with the World Bank on a study of groundwater sustainability in Bangladesh related to water supply and vulnerability of coastal groundwater to sea-level rise.

Read more!

Cambodia upholds opposition MP defamation case

Mu Sochour's Parliamentary immunity was lifted so she could face charges

Cambodia's highest court has upheld a ruling that a leading opposition figure defamed the prime minister.

Prime Minister Hun Sen had sued Mu Sochua for defamation after she accused him of making derogatory remarks about her.

The former women's minister has refused to pay the $4,000 (£2,725) fine and says she is willing to go to jail.

Mu Sochua, the current MP for Kampot, called the ruling "a travesty of justice".

She had no defence counsel in court as her lawyer quit the case and joined the governing party after Cambodia's bar council accused him of malpractice.

The courts dismissed her complaint and the national assembly voted to lift her parliamentary immunity from prosecution so the prime minister's case could go ahead.

The ruling came as Cambodia's international donors met government officials to discuss their aid pledges for the coming year.

Local human rights groups have described freedom of expression in Cambodia as in a "perilous state".

A coalition of pressure groups has asked donors to link their payments to Cambodia's progress on human rights issues.

Read more!

Foreign donors concerned about accountability in Cambodia

Phnom Penh - Cambodia's donor conference opened Wednesday with warnings that access to land, improved transparency, and accountability for use of natural resources will be essential for the country's development goals.

World Bank country head Annette Dixon noted that 4 million Cambodians - about 30 per cent of the population - live in poverty while many more 'live precariously near poverty.'

'Life continues to be extremely challenging for the majority of Cambodian rural families, who remain vulnerable to shocks,' she said.

Dixon applauded reforms in managing public finances, and said the government had strengthened social protections for the poor.

She said donors remained 'strongly committed' to development efforts help the poor, despite global financial woes, 'which in turn heightens the need to improve aid effectiveness and accountability for results.'

Cambodian officials, non-governmental groups and foreign donors are meeting for two days to discuss the country's most pressing issues. On Thursday, donors will announce how much money they will give to help the government for it development goals.

In 2009, donors provided 951 million dollars, around half the government's budget. The finance ministry said it expected pledges of more than 1 billion dollars this year.

Prime Minister Hun Sen told the conference that good governance was 'the most important prerequisite for a sustainable and equitable economic development and social justice.'

'In the context of this vision, the Royal Government considers the fight against corruption as a top priority,' he said, citing a new anti-corruption law, and an ongoing crackdown on illegal logging and fisheries, as evidence of the government's commitment.

Hun Sen said agriculture was the top development priority for the predominantly rural population, saying it could bolster economic growth and ensure food security.

He also pledged to pay more attention to granting land concessions to the poor. Land concessions are a highly contentious subject, with large investors in possession of more than a million hectares.

Non-governmental organizations said improvements in some health indicators showed similar gains could be made in governance, land use and natural resources. They called for reform of the judiciary, which is seen as corrupt and inefficient.

On Tuesday, the Britain-based organization Global Witness, called on donors to pressure the government to deliver meaningful reforms in the face of 'gross mismanagement' of its natural resources.

Global Witness is not participating in the conference.
Read more!

SKorea to fund Angkor road

PHNOM PENH (Cambodia) - South Korea has provided US$9.2 million (S$12.9 million) to Cambodia to build a new road that will circle the famed Angkor temple complex and reduce traffic in the area, officials said Monday.

The 21-kilometer road will be closed to trucks to reduce pollution, noise and vibrations that could damage the ancient ruins, said Soeung Kong, vice secretary-general of the Apsara Authority, the government agency that oversees the temples.

Construction will start this year and take three years to complete, he said. It will be the second road in the Angkor area funded by South Korea, connecting with existing roads to the north and northwest of the temples, said South Korean Embassy official Son Sungil. The first road extended south from the temple complex.

Tourism is a major foreign currency earner for cash-strapped Cambodia, which hosts nearly 1.5 million foreign tourists each year, mostly from South Korea, Japan and the United States. More than half of the tourists visit Angkor, a UNESCO World Heritage site in northwestern Siem Reap province.

The temples were built when Angkorian kings ruled over much of Southeast Asia between the 9th and 14th centuries.

Conservationists have long expressed concerns about tourism's impact. They say uncontrolled pumping of underground water to meet the rising demand of hotels and residents in the nearby town of Siem Reap may be destabilizing the earth beneath the temples. -- AP

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Cometh the hour, cometh the man with the wrecking ball (Feature)

By Robert Carmichael


Phnom Penh - A blue sheet-metal fence around an old building in Phnom Penh is a bad omen for those keen on Cambodia's dwindling stock of colonial architecture.

'The presence of these fences is a worrying sign,' says one architectural historian, 'because when these fences go up it normally means the buildings are going to come down.'

The historian, who has lived in Cambodia for 16 years but does not want his name used, says the pace of destruction has accelerated in recent years.

'It is speeding up, and it has almost gone past the point of no return,' he says. 'I would think that more than half of the buildings I can remember as being important have now gone in 16 years.'

The latest building to be screened off is the venerable Renakse Hotel adjacent to the Royal Palace near the riverfront. Earlier this year the Renakse was the focus of a squabble between the leaseholder and the country's ruling party, which owns the building. The case went to court; the party won.

Should the hotel be demolished, which seems likely, it will be the fourth colonial-era building of merit to be knocked down this year alone, says French architect Michel Verrot, who has lived in Cambodia for 11 years.

By his count, 40 per cent of the capital's several hundred colonial buildings has been swept away in two decades.

Verrot runs the French-funded Mission du Patrimonie that assesses what is left of Phnom Penh's architectural heritage.

It also helps with restoration efforts on some colonial buildings, the oldest of which were constructed between 1885 and 1892.

'They are the first places in Phnom Penh where the new architecture was built which became the colonial architecture in Phnom Penh,' says Verrot.

When it comes to architectural heritage, Cambodia is defined by Angkor Wat, the magnificent ancient temples around the town of Siem Reap in the north-west.

Verrot says the domination of Angkor Wat blinds the government to the value of other heritage buildings, whether of colonial architecture or the 1950s and 1960s designs of Vann Molyvann, the country's foremost living architect.

Regarding the capital, Verrot says the biggest problem is not preserving architectural heritage, substantial though it is.

He bemoans the lack of attention paid to its urban heritage: the concept of a town with well laid-out gardens, wide avenues and unobstructed views between iconic buildings.

'Now all the views are becoming very disturbed without any global idea of town development,' Verrot says of the mushrooming of tower blocks and glass skyscrapers. 'There is no vision.'

The Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts oversees the country's heritage, but secretary of state Samraing Kamsan says it has limited authority to preserve the buildings. A key challenge is that Cambodians prefer modern buildings.

'They do not understand or love the traditional and the old-style building,' he says. 'You need to teach them to understand the value.'

There are other difficulties too. Some old buildings have numerous poor families living in them. One chapel, for example, contains more than 20 families, but they are in no position to pay for repairs.

Samraing Kamsan says colonial buildings in provincial capitals are also in trouble - years of strife and poverty meant preservation was not a priority. And there is the rocketing value of land.

'I do believe this is a problem,' he says, before adding a lack of cash to the queue. 'If we have no money to preserve, we cannot stop the development of the modern building.'

Verrot says the government's desire to see Phnom Penh emulate Bangkok and Singapore is undoing what is left of the city's colonial architecture.

'(The government's view is that) the heritage is in Siem Reap, and tourism must be at the seaside and in Siem Reap, but not in Phnom Penh,' he says. 'It's wrong, it's clearly wrong, but it is (the view).'

The architectural historian cited earlier believes the government, which wants tourists to remain in-country longer than the usual three days spent seeing the temples, is missing a trick. After all, Phnom Penh is not going to compete with shopping cities such as Singapore.

'When you look at Phnom Penh, all the things tourists come to see are almost all architectural. There's not really anything else,' he says. 'How are they going to attract people to stay in Cambodia
- Phnom Penh in particular - if there isn't architecture to look at?'
Read more!

'Di was murdered because she planned to expose UK's role in arms trade'

London, June 1 (ANI): Princess Diana was murdered because she planned to expose Britain's role in the deadly arms trade, according to a leading defence lawyer.

Buzz up!Michael Mansfield QC claimed that she was planning to publish a diary replete with details of those closely involved with British land-mine manufacturing.

"Everyone remembers she raised the profile of the land mines.

"Everybody is aware that the British involvement in the arms trade, particularly land mines, is and was a huge vested interest.

"It seems to me she had planned various visits. She had already been to Angola and she was going to Cambodia.

"A large number of land mines had been manufactured by the British. She claimed she had an explosive diary in which she was going to expose the people most closely involved in the British arms trade," The Daily Express quoted him as saying in the Hay Festival in Powys, Wales.

Mansfield said her anti-land mine campaign and plan to reveal the secrets behind the trade were "not unrelated" to the car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997 that killed Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed.

He also spoke of a witness who claimed that the diary existed along with a missing box of papers that could contain crucial information.

He told a Spanish newspaper, "Diana had given interviews attacking the Royal Family but what most annoyed the authorities was that she became very actively involved in the campaign against land mines."

A spokeswoman for Princes William and Harry said they had "no comment" on the latest allegations surrounding their mother's death. (ANI) Read more!

New £16m Hindu temple opens in Wembley

By Catrin Nye
BBC Asian Network


Wembley's newest looming landmark has opened it doors after 14 years of construction.

It is the £16m Shree Sanatan Hindu Mandir, which loosely translates as the all-inclusive temple.

There is none of the metal core most buildings have and, instead, it has been built using ancient techniques based on Hindu scriptures.

The method dates back thousands of years and was used to construct the world famous Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

Many of the temple's component pieces have been hand carved in limestone in the tiny town of Sola - located in the Indian state of Gujarat - before being flown over and pieced together in the UK.

There were also 41 marble deities made in India especially for the mandir.

The temple covers 2.4 acres (9,700 sq m) on the Ealing Road and, at its highest point, is 66ft (20m) tall.

Its bright sand-coloured walls stand out in stark contrast to the unassuming surroundings.

A ceremony called Pran Prathistha was held to "infuse the spirit of God into the statues" as part of the temple opening.

A VIP opening was then held with donors, sponsors and local dignitaries in attendance.

Ajay Jobanputra is governor of Shri Vallabh Nidhi UK (SVNUK), the charity which raised the funds to build the Shree Sanatan Hindu Mandir.

He hopes the temple will provide a place of worship for all Hindus and welcome those of other faiths.

"Famous spiritual leaders and forms of Gods from other religions are featured in the carvings such as Mother Teresa, Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji (a Sikh Guru), Meerabai, Lord Swaminarayan and many more.

"It's about showcasing the importance of respect, love and compassion for all religions, making the temple dynamic and universal.

"The message being promoted is of Vasudev Kutumbakaum, a Hindu term to describe the world as one big family."

The chief priest at the Shree Sanatan Hindu Mandir is Dr Raj Pandit Sharma, who said the new temple may stand out as a structure but it fits in with the eclectic local community.

"I think it will add to the charm of the area," he explained.

"Ealing Road already has mosques and churches and I think this temple will stand out as something unique that can be seen from some distance.

"I would hope that anybody who comes to the temple would find it a place where they will feel relaxed. It's like a sanctuary of peace amongst the bustling heart of London."

Special events

Each morning there will be prayers at the new temple in line with Hindu tradition.

It will house special events for such occasions as Diwali and Navratri as well as annual religious functions to celebrate the birth of Hindu saints and Gods like Jalaram Jayanti (Saint Jalarambapa) and Janmasthami (Lord Krishna).

Mr Jobanputra says the temple is expected to draw crowds from across London and visitors from much further afield.

"We're estimating around 400 to 500 local people will visit us during the weekdays and double that on weekends.

"We also expect visitors from other parts of the UK and Europe.

"We have already had visit requests from Spain, Portugal and Switzerland." Read more!

Unresolved Land Disputes Rising: Rights Coalition

Rights groups say they are concerned with a spike in reported land disputes that have gone unresolved under the current law.

The increasing number is because the government is providing economic land concessions while powerful government officials are also seizing land from the people, Chhith Sam Ath, executive director of the NGO Forum, told reporters Tuesday.

Land disputes reported to NGOs under the umbrella organization climbed 27 percent in 2009, from 173 cases in 2008, and another 32 percent in in first five months of 2010, according to the NGO Forum.

Nun Pheany, spokesman for the Ministry of Land Management, denied the reports that land disputes were increasing. The ministry received 5,000 complaints since the beginning of 2009 from 24 provinces and municipalities and has resolved 70 percent of them, he said.

In a joint statement issued Tuesday, the Coalitions of Civil Society Organizations said most land dispute cases were still unresolved.

“Most land dispute cases involve companies including both local and foreign investment companies as well as wealthy and powerful people,” the group said. “They affect large number of families and are mostly disputed with companies who obtained an economic land concession. It’s worth to note that in the past, land dispute cases usually involve dealing with violence and end up unresolved. Only few cases have been settled legally.”

The statement of concern comes ahead of a large donor meeting scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday.

The coalition recommended more participation of poor communities in land decisions, fair resolution and compensation in existing land disputes, a stronger resolution mechanism, a cease to arrests made in land disputes and the empowerment of authorities to solve land dispute cases.
“Please stop using the military or police forces to protect the company,” the group said.
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NGOs Call on Donors To Strengthen Conditions

Cambodian Non Governmental Organizations workers shout slogans during a demonstration in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Leaders of Cambodia’s leading development organizations said Tuesday they want the international community to put conditions on development aid pledges, which are expected to be more than $ 1 billion when they meet with senior government officials this week.

A donor meeting Wednesday and Thursday will focus on the government’s national development plan, which is expected $6.2 billion over the next five years.

The meeting, officially known as the Cambodian Development Cooperation Forum, gathers Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Cabinet with representatives from the US, the European Union, China, Japan, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, UN and others.

Local and international non-governmental organizations will also be represented by NGO Forum and the Committee for Free and Fair Elections.

“We request international donors to present the list of recommendations on what to demand from the Cambodian government before agreeing to provide future development aid,” Chhith Sam Ath, executive director of NGO Forum, a consortium of development organizations, said. “We have concerns over the management of land and natural resources, which the government and the donors should think about deeply.”

Much of Cambodia’s annual budget is supported by aid from other countries and larger development banks and agencies. In recent years, that has included large aid packages from China, who Cambodian officials say grant money without the conditions typically imposed by the West.

“The stance of the NGOs is of reflection and discussion,” Chhith Sam Ath said. “We don’t want to prevent development aid. We welcome the aid, but we want the aid provided to Cambodia to be used directly and effectively.”

Aid conditions have nettled Cambodia’s leaders in the past, although some critics say the donors do not use enough leverage to push the government to do more to fight corruption, poverty and human rights abuses.

Ahead of this week’s meetings the outspoken critic of Cambodian policies, Global Witness, called on donors to do more.

“The Cambodian government has been promising to reform for years, but nothing had changed,” Global Witness Campaigns Director Gavin Hayman said in a statement Tuesday. “Our latest report shows that the political elite has no intention of loosening its stranglehold over the country’s natural resource wealth. Donors simply cannot continue to turn a blind eye.”

Hang Chhaya, executive director of the Khmer Institute for Democracy, said the donors should “put condition pressure on the government for providing aid to end human rights violations and evictions, as well as recommend to the government legal and judicial reform and anti-corruption [where] reform is slow.”

“The donors should have influence or power over the Cambodian government to respect human rights and democracy,” Hang Chhaya said.

Ros Sopheap, executive director of Gender and Development organization, said the government’s policy to promote gender equity has not been effectively implemented.

“So we would like the government and the donors to take care of solving the challenges to women, like poverty, low education, domestic violence and trafficking,” she said.

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Cambodia coastal development strategy moves ahead

Cambodia has begun implementing its master strategy for attracting development in the country's four coastal provinces over the next 20 years, local media reported on Monday, citing officials at the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction.

"This is a good plan and a way to develop Cambodia into the future," the Phnom Penh Post quoted Land Management Minister Im Chhun Lim as saying at a conference detailing the plan on Thursday.

Calling Sihanoukville the "dragon's head", Im Chhun Lim said that the plan priorities improving development in Sihanoukville, Kampot, Kep and Koh Kong provinces in order to increase economic activity and provide jobs.

"We're insuring a balance between protecting the environment in coastal areas with attracting both local and foreign investors," he said at the conference.

The strategy will focus on attracting local and foreign investment to the region, with an eye to strengthening export industries, said Pen Sophal, director at the ministry's Urban Planning Department.

"Government wants sustainable, transparent development on coastal areas to attract investors," he said on the sidelines of a conference on drafting a final strategy for the "National Integrated Coastal Area".

He added that the pan is slated to run until 2030.

The plan, called The Study of Strategy National Integrated Coastal Area and Master Plan Sihanoukville Sustainable Development, focuses on strengthening infrastructure and special economic zones servicing Sihanoukville Port.

"We focus on Sihanoukville because the province has potential for growing faster due to its proximity to the international port for industry, agriculture and services," he was quoted as saying.

Source: Xinhua
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China gives trucks to Cambodia

PHNOM PENH - CHINA has promised more than 250 new military trucks to Cambodia, Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Monday, signalling deeper military cooperation between the two nations.

PM Hun Sen said a donation of 257 military trucks and 50,000 military uniforms was agreed during a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Shanghai earlier in May.

'They are all brand-new trucks... from the factory,' PM Hun Sen said during a ceremony to open a Chinese-funded bridge.

The trucks will arrive in Cambodia June 18 and then be featured in a parade, said PM Hun Sen, who went on to praise Chinese leaders for 'talking less, but doing a lot' to help Cambodia.

The announcement of Chinese military aid comes after the US in April stopped a shipment of military trucks to Cambodia as punishment for sending ethnic Uighur asylum-seekers back to China in defiance of international appeals.

Cambodia in December deported the 20 Uighurs, members of a largely Muslim minority group in western China, even though they were seeking UN refugee status and said they would face torture if returned. The decision to deport the Uighurs came a day ahead of a visit by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, during which he agreed US$1.2 billion (S$1.69 billion) in aid and loans to Cambodia with Hun Sen. -- AFP

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MOffY Cartoon Land Now Available at Tigo of Millicom in Laos

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Cambodian FM to Visit Iran in August

TEHRAN (FNA)- Cambodian Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Hor Namhong is scheduled to visit Iran in August, Iranian Ambassador to Phnom Penh Seyed Javad Qavam Shahidi said on Sunday.

"During the trip, the Cambodian foreign minister will meet and talk with his Iranian counterpart Manouchehr Mottaki as well as other high-ranking Iranian officials," Qavam Shahidi told FNA.

He reiterated that Namhong's visit to Tehran is aimed at further activation of bilateral relations between the two countries.

Meantime, an Iranian parliamentary delegation left Tehran for Phnom Penh on Saturday to discuss bilateral ties and other issues of mutual interest with Cambodian officials.

"During the three-day trip, the two sides will hold discussions on inter-parliamentary relations and discuss paving the ground for developing ties and other related issues based on the Islamic Republic of Iran's view on the East Asian countries," Head of the delegation Mohsen Kouhkan told FNA.

The delegation, comprising five Iranian legislators, is also due to meet with the Cambodian prime minister, foreign ministry officials, their Cambodian counterparts and members of some of the country's parliament commissions.

Qavam Shahidi said expansion of parliamentary cooperation between the two countries, closer cooperation in the Asian Parliamentary Assembly (APA) and the two sides' cooperation in the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) are the main goals of the Iranian delegation's trip to Phnom Penh.
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Unrest May Signal New Phase in China Economy

The strike at the Honda transmission factory in Foshan has shut down four auto plants as well.

By Keith Bradsher

FOSHAN, China — Add another entry to the list of worries for the global economy and financial markets: labor unrest in China.

Rapidly rising industrial wages are beginning to allow China’s workers to share in their country’s rising prosperity. The question is whether these gains can be maintained and even increased without disrupting supply lines to companies around the world, and without discouraging much future investment by Chinese and global companies alike.

The biggest eye-opener for multinationals in China recently has been a nine-day-old strike at a sprawling Honda transmission factory here in Foshan, about 100 miles northwest of Hong Kong.

The strike, which has forced Honda to suspend production at all four of its joint venture assembly plants in China, has shown that Chinese authorities are willing to tolerate work stoppages at least temporarily, even at high-tech operations on which many other factories depend.

Chinese policy makers are trying to let wages rise to create the foundations of an economy driven by domestic demand, without derailing the export machine that has produced the world’s strongest economic growth over the last three decades.

Even before the strike, manufacturers and buyers of low-cost products were already actively seeking alternatives to China, like Vietnam and Cambodia, said Richard Vuylsteke, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong.

“They’re looking very seriously, and we’re seeing that in apparel and footwear,” he said. “A lot of our members are seeing appreciating wages.”

Honda has been making increasingly generous offers — or perhaps desperate offers — to settle the strike. The company has already offered increases in total compensation of close to 50 percent, according to crumpled-up copies of the offer provided by striking workers.

Roughly half of the 1,900 workers are recent hires from high schools and vocational schools who are paid training rates of just 900 renminbi, or $132, a month, pay slips showed. More experienced workers at the three-year-old factory earn up to 1,500 renminbi, or $220, a month.
Honda’s offer would raise total compensation for trainees to $202 a month, including benefits like a new food allowance; older workers would get slightly smaller raises. The strikers rejected the offer because nearly half of the raises consisted of increases in benefits that might be revoked later. The strikers are demanding an extra 800 renminbi a month, or $117, all in cash.

Takayuki Fujii, a Beijing-based spokesman for Honda, said Saturday evening that negotiations were continuing, but he declined to provide details.

There were signs on Saturday that the Honda strike was beginning to test the government’s patience. After two days of allowing surprisingly extensive coverage by state-controlled media, the authorities imposed a blanket ban on domestic coverage, reverting to their usual policy of hushing up labor disputes.

Local newspapers had no mention of the strike this morning, and many references to the strike had disappeared from Chinese Internet sites. But there was no sign of police at the factory or one of its dormitories.

Labor advocacy groups say that they hear of frequent strikes in China, with work stoppages occurring somewhere every day. But strikes are typically hushed up and are often resolved in a day or two by the authorities, either with the police or through pressure on employers and workers to resolve their differences.

Honda is not alone in facing intense pressure to raise wages. Foxconn, a giant electronics manufacturer near here in Shenzhen, said on Friday that it would raise wages by about 20 percent after being deeply embarrassed by a series of suicides by workers this year and criticism of working conditions.

The overall effect of wage increases on China’s competitiveness is not entirely clear, because of incomplete national data on average wages and productivity. Nicholas Lardy, a specialist in the Chinese economy at the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, said that Chinese productivity was rising so quickly that actual labor costs per unit of production appeared to be flat.

One surprise of the strike here is that it involves laborers whose wages appear to have already roughly doubled in the last five years: blue-collar workers in export factories in the Pearl River delta region around Hong Kong.

By contrast, the wages of young college graduates have actually declined in recent years as China has rapidly expanded its universities and built new ones, creating a surplus of more highly educated workers.

The president of a big Chinese corporation, who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of labor issues, said that his company paid 4,000 renminbi a month a decade ago for recent graduates with computer science degrees, which is $585 at current exchange rates, and only 3,500 renminbi now.

If anything, conditions are growing worse for new college graduates, not better. A survey in Beijing released earlier this month by the Communist Youth League Beijing Committee and the Beijing Youth Stress Management Service showed that a fifth of new college graduates with bachelor’s degrees and a tenth of graduates with master’s or doctoral degrees were willing to work for free in their first jobs because they despaired of finding paid work.

The government has tried to respond to the glut of college graduates by ordering state-owned enterprises to hire large numbers of them and try to find tasks for them to do. But these enterprises are increasingly expected to be profitable and have not absorbed all of the graduates, with the result that big cities in China have growing numbers of unemployed or low-paid college graduates.

These graduates are typically the only child in a family because of China’s one-child policy, and their families have frequently invested much or all of their savings in their educations.

Partly because so many young Chinese now go to university and partly because of a declining birth rate, the number of young Chinese available for factory work is falling far short of the demand from employers. That is producing higher wages for blue-collar workers and giving them leverage to demand even more, as the Honda strike shows.

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