CAMBODIA: Schools and students struggle post-floods

Students outside a temporary school set up after flooding in Anlong Chrey village

PHNOM PENH, 24 November 2011 (IRIN) - Schools damaged in Cambodia's worst monsoons in more than a decade may take up to a year to recover after flooding delayed the start of school for thousands of students nationwide, say aid workers and officials.

As of late October, 323 schools out of 1,400 damaged ones were closed; some have since reopened. Though flood waters have receded, how well those schools are functioning and how many remain closed is still unknown, as the government continues its damage assessments in a dozen flood-hit provinces.

At least 77 schools are beyond repair, while students and teachers were still pumping water out of dozens more, said the director of the education ministry's construction department on 21 November, Song Yen.

"We have not yet completely assessed the damage," he added.

Sam Sereyrath, general director of education at the Ministry of Education, estimated some 20,000 children remained out of school, based on the number of schools destroyed.

Meanwhile, teachers warned that flooding had exacerbated the chronic shortage of books and other study materials. Purchases of 47,000 textbooks for 12 grades are under way while some schools simply opened their doors in October with no teaching materials, said the president of the Cambodian Independent Teachers' Association, Rong Chhun.

It will still take months for the school system to recover, he added.

Disruption from the flooding will have a "huge impact" on drop-out rates, absenteeism and enrolment, said Keo Sarath, education programme manager at Save the Children Cambodia.

MDG progress
The country's progress on the Millennium Development Goal for primary school education is mixed: 94 percent of primary school-age children were enrolled for the 2009-2010 school year; 83 percent of students enrolled in primary school completed the 2008-2009 year; and there was virtually no gender disparity in enrolment. Lower secondary education goals cannot be achieved by 2015 at the current pace, according to a preliminary UN analysis from September 2010.

To mitigate the risk that the floods may derail progress on primary education, existing guidelines to make up lost school hours must be enforced, said Denise Shepherd-Johnson, head of communications for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Cambodia.

A downward trend in government spending on education - 19.2 percent of the budget in 2007 to 15.9 percent in 2012 - limits the Education Ministry's ability to respond to the flooding, she added.

Almost 10 percent of the country's population, about 1.6 million people, was directly hit by the flooding, about one-quarter of a million people fled to higher ground and about 250 people died, according to the National Committee for Disaster Management's most recent data from 28 October.

The flooding began in mid-July in the upper Mekong River, and then spread to 18 of the country's 24 provinces as Cambodia's largest lake, the Tonle Sap, more than doubled its monsoon-season size.

Almost 20 million people have been affected since June in Thailand, Cambodia, Philippines, Vietnam and Laos.

Stop-gap schooling
Save the Children and the Education Ministry have set up more than 400 temporary schools in four of Cambodia's worst-hit provinces, reaching more than 12,000 primary-school students.

"Every day a child is not in school increases the risk they drop out permanently in a disaster like this. If we can quickly get them back in school-like settings, the chances of this happening are reduced," Jasmine Whitbread, CEO of Save the Children International, told IRIN.

In recent visits to the flood-hit provinces, Battambang and Kampong Cham, residents of villages who lost their annual rice crop, or remain isolated by flooding, told IRIN they were struggling to feed themselves and keep their livestock alive.

Flooding destroyed some 265,000 hectares of rice, about 10 percent of the total 2.5 million hectares planted, according to the government.

A rice-growing village, Anlong Chrey, in Kampong Cham Province, has become an islet reachable only by an hour's boat ride.

It had been entirely submerged for about one month, after the Mekong River, 8km west, and the Tonle Sap River, 35km east, overflowed their banks and converged in mid-September, said residents.

The village has two temporary primary schools - attended by about 140 children - but older students are among the hundreds who have been forced to leave the village of about 380 families in search of work.

Some children have gone as far as Thailand and Malaysia, residents said. A recent assessment by Save the Children Cambodia in 20 villages raised concerns of increased child labour and migration as adolescent girls search for work.

Soy Chet, 16, lives alone in Anlong Chrey village in a hut surrounded by knee-deep water. Orphaned three years ago, she managed to remain in school and support herself before the floods.

She said she hoped to finish primary school, but did not know what she would do afterwards as her neighbours had told her they could no longer support her.

"Maybe I will go to look for work in a sewing factory," she said, adding that if she did, it would be the first time she had ever left her district. Read more!

Khmer Rouge No. 2 says regime acted for Cambodians

This combination of three photos released by Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, shows from left to right: Nuon Chea, former Khmer Rouge's chief ideologist and the No. 2 leader, Ieng Sary, former Khmer Rouge foreign minister, and Khieu Samphan,f ormer Khmer Rouge head of state, during a trial for former Khmer Rouge top leaders, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, Nov. 21, 2011. The three top Khmer Rouge leaders accused of orchestrating Cambodia's "killing fields" went on trial Monday before a U.N.-backed tribunal more than three decades after some of the 20th century's worst atrocities. (AP Photo/Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Mark Peters) EDITORIAL USE ONLY

By SOPHENG CHEANG, Associated Press 

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — The deputy leader of the Khmer Rouge regime blamed for 1.7 million deaths in Cambodia's "killing fields" insisted Tuesday he carried out its policies for the sake of Cambodians and to protect the country from invaders.

The communist movement's chief ideologist did not directly respond to the horrors that prosecutors described a day earlier at the start of the U.N.-backed tribunal for him and two other top Khmer Rouge leaders.

Instead, Nuon Chea gave a political history of the movement and Cambodia, insisted his role was patriotic, and blamed neighboring Vietnam for much of the country's troubles.

"I had to leave my family behind to liberate my motherland from colonialism and aggression and oppression by the thieves who wish to steal our land and wipe Cambodia off the face of the Earth," Nuon Chea said in his first public comments at the trial.

"We wanted to free Cambodia from being a servant of other countries, and we wanted to build Cambodia as a society that is clean and independent, without any killing of people or genocide," he said.

The tribunal is seeking justice on behalf of the 1.7 million people — as much as a quarter of Cambodia's then-population — estimated to have died from executions, starvation, disease and overwork when the Khmer Rouge held power in 1975-79.

The three most senior surviving leaders — Nuon Chea, 85; former head of state Khieu Samphan, 80; and former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary, 86 — are charged with crimes against humanity, genocide, religious persecution, homicide and torture. They have long denied blame.

Nuon Chea was the Khmer Rouge's second-highest leader after Pol Pot, who died in 1998 in a jungle while a prisoner of his own comrades. Prosecutors earlier Tuesday said the defendants cannot blame Pol Pot alone for the atrocities that took place.

Prosecutor Andrew Cayley said that like Pol Pot, the defendants exercised life-and-death authority over Cambodia while in power.

"The accused cannot credibly claim they did not know and had no control over the crimes that occurred," he said.

Prosecutors have described a litany of horrors, large and small, saying the Khmer Rouge sought to crush not just all its enemies, but seemingly, the human spirit.

Khmer Rouge rule began April 17, 1975, when it captured Phnom Penh to end a bitter five-year civil war and immediately forced the evacuation of the capital, where 1 million people had sheltered. The country was almost sealed from the outside world and most people were forced to work on giant rural communes as the Khmer Rouge attempted to create a pure agrarian socialist society.

People were deprived of any private life, and forced marriages took the place of love. Intellectuals, entrepreneurs and anyone considered a threat were imprisoned, tortured and often executed in so-called "killing fields."

Economic and social disaster ensued, but the failures only fed the group's paranoia, and suspected traitors were hunted down, only plunging the country further into chaos.

Vietnam, whose border suffered bloody attacks by Khmer Rouge soldiers, sponsored a resistance movement and invaded, ousting the Khmer Rouge in 1979 and installing a client regime.

Nuon Chea did little to directly address the allegations of atrocities when he spoke for about an hour and a half Tuesday in time allotted for defense rebuttals of the prosecutors' statements.

He told the tribunal he has waited a long time to explain "a proper history" of Cambodia to its people and thanked Cambodian heroes who devoted their life to defending the country.

Nuon Chea's co-defendants were very much the public face of the Khmer Rouge as they sought diplomatic support after being ousted. He was more secretive but became more familiar last year with the release of a documentary, "Enemies of the People."

I have always said I made mistakes. I am regretful and I have remorse. I am sorry for our regime. I am sorry," Nuon Chea told Cambodian filmmaker Thet Sambath.

But he was clear the Khmer Rouge leaders had seen their primary duty as safeguarding the revolution and said suspected traitors were killed because they "were enemies of the people."

In court Tuesday, Nuon Chea reiterated the Khmer Rouge's longstanding position that concern about Vietnamese intentions contributed to the Khmer Rouge's decision to forcibly evacuate Phnom Penh in 1975.

The capital's evacuation is expected to be a focus of the current trial, as the tribunal grouped similar charges together to speed the process. Allegations involving the forced movement of people and crimes against humanity are being handled now, with genocide, torture and other charges being decided later.

Even streamlined, the proceedings are likely to be lengthy. After prosecution and defense statements, actual testimony is to begin Dec. 5.

"Here in Cambodia, a unique opportunity has been given ... to set a powerful example, and to send a strong warning from the past to the future so that human beings everywhere can rightfully expect to live in peace under the law," Cayley said.

The defendants are old and infirm, and there are fears they won't live long enough for justice to be achieved. A fourth defendant, the Khmer Rouge's social affairs minister, was ruled unfit to stand trial because of Alzheimer's disease.

Judge Nil Nonn denied a second request Tuesday for defendant Ieng Sary to follow the proceedings from another room to ease his physical burden. The judge said it was important for all the defendants to be present for the prosecution's statement.

Some of those attending the trial have provided their own vignettes of the terror: a commune chief who said he killed others because otherwise he would have been killed himself; a man who lost four siblings and law school and police academy students born long after the regime ended.

Two-thirds of Cambodians today were not yet born when the communist group's reign of terror ended in 1979.

The tribunal, which was established in 2006, has tried just one case, convicting former prison chief Kaing Guek Eav for war crimes, crimes against humanity and other offenses. His sentence was reduced to 19 years due to time served and other technicalities.

That case is seen as much simpler than the broader current case against three higher-ranked regime leaders. Kaing Guek Eav confessed and was implicated by meticulously kept prison records.

The case has been overshadowed in the past year by claims that political interference would keep the tribunal from pursuing more suspects. Prime Minister Hun Sen has publicly declared he is against further trials, which he claimed could destabilize the country. More prosecutions could target political allies who used to be with the Khmer Rouge — as he was himself, before defecting.
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Babies for Sale: Looking at the Adoption Industry in Guatemala



Photo:  Erin Siegal

 Last year, American families adopted more than 11,000 children from abroad. More than half came from either China or Ethiopia; but as recently as 2007, the country that sent the most children to the U.S. was the Central American nation of Guatemala. Between 1999 and 2010, more than 26,000 Guatemalan children were adopted by U.S. parents.

Today, however, an advisory on the State Department’s website warns: “The United States is not currently processing adoptions from Cambodia or Guatemala.”

What happened? The answer─which involves cross-border corruption, kidnapping and finally a crackdown─is revealed in Finding Fernanda: Two Mothers, One Child and a Cross-Border Search for the Truth, a new book by investigative journalist Erin Siegal.

Siegal began looking into Guatemalan adoptions when she was a fellow at the Stabile Center for Investigative Reporting at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. After emailing a woman who had posted about problems with an adoption on a listserv, Siegal found herself thrown into an opaque world of child-trafficking, unscrupulous attorneys and American parents left in the dark about the circumstances that brought their new sons and daughters to their homes.

The Crime Report spoke with Siegal from her home in Mexico.
The Crime Report: You describe corruption at every turn in the adoption industry in Guatemala, from fake DNA test results and forged paperwork to bribery and outright kidnapping. Were you surprised to learn the scope of the illegality?

Erin Siegal: I don’t know if I can say I was surprised because before I got into this investigation I read Francisco Goldman’s classic Guatemalan book, The Art of Political Murder. The book lays out corruption in the judicial system and corruption within the Guatemalan government, so it was really instrumental in my thinking about how Guatemala works, as opposed to a place like the United States.

I went into this investigation with a base level of understanding around general corruption. It’s not just adoptions. In Guatemala you can bribe anyone for anything. You can arrange a hit, a murder, for practically the price of a Happy Meal. So when I started learning about everything that happens in adoptions, I think the bigger surprise was that American adoptive parents were so misinformed and had so little access to true information. Who would be telling them what was really going on? There was no incentive for anyone to do that in most cases.

TCR: If people are willing to throw $20,000 or $30,000 at an industry like that, can anything really be done to make it more legitimate?

ES: That’s the big question. In the Guatemalan adoption industry there were so many intermediaries. American money would initially be handed off to an adoption agency [in the U.S.] that was accredited by a state licensing agency, but after that...they didn’t know [where it went]... And that’s the crux of the problem: there’s no oversight in countries that haven’t signed the Hague Convention treaty.

TCR: Tell me about the Hague Convention.

ES: The Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption sets up guidelines for countries that send children and that receive children. The Hague suggests we need to track money in adoptions, people need to be accountable for who they work with, and there needs to be very strict record keeping. And that’s all good and wonderful, but it does have a major failing, which is that adoption agencies that don’t pass Hague accreditation here in the U.S. are still allowed to operate; they just can’t operate in Hague signatory countries. It’s a pretty glaring hole.

TCR: What role did American adoption agencies play in perpetuating corruption in the system of Guatemalan adoptions?

ES: There were no incentives for American agents to do any kind of backgrounding on the people that they worked with. In a case like Celebrate Children International (CCI), the agency in my book, they repeatedly worked with folks that engaged in some pretty shady practices. CCI clients told me that they kind of understood that things weren’t exactly on the up and up—they had a lot of suspicions but for them it was impossible to find out the truth. Whereas you’d think the [agency itself] would have a responsibility to know what their partners were doing, and know where the children they were placing actually came from.

Yet if you look at the local and state statutes, nothing in the code mandates that an adoption agency working internationally has to know where the children they place are coming from. The children just have to be deemed legally adoptable by the other country. And obviously in a place like Guatemala, that can happen in many different ways that aren’t exactly legitimate.

TCR: Have any American adoption agents been indicted for their practices?

ES: There was actually a really high profile case that happened a couple years ago with a woman named Lauryn Galindo who was basically the go-to person for Cambodian adoptions. She had handled something like 700 adoptions, including for Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. She was convicted in U.S. court on federal charges of money laundering and visa fraud. I believe [she’s] free today. The federal government has had some luck in going after folks for immigration fraud. But it hasn’t happened a lot.

Another big case was the Mary Bonn case. She is a Florida woman who smuggled a Guatemalan girl into the U.S. using fake documents. There was a big investigation and they eventually found the child in her house.

TCR: You write that as far back as 1990, U.S. embassy officials in Guatemala were warning the U.S. government that adoptions from Guatemala often involved fraud, but it wasn’t until the end of 2007 that adoptions between the two countries stopped. Why was this allowed to go on so long?

ES: There are a lot of forces at play in the Guatemalan adoption industry. The adoption lobby in Guatemala and the U.S. was pretty powerful. In such a poor country, the folks that were the puppeteers of the industry were private lawyers, and lawyers in Guatemala are in general upper class citizens. They have political clout… Guatemala tried to pass reform efforts for a while and at every turn reform efforts failed.

In the U.S., adoption lobbying groups like the Joint Council on International Children's Services (JCICS) were invited to steer Congress on adoption issues. They would provide data at Congressional hearings. It’s kind of tricky, because in the early 2000s and up until a couple of years ago, their core constituency, their membership, was mostly made up of  adoption agencies who had a financial interest in maintaining a flow of children from countries like Guatemala. So there wasn’t really an incentive for things to change.

And the embassy’s role isn’t to be a regulator. The embassy’s role is to oversee American interests.  So if a large part of American interest in the country is in adopting, they’re there to facilitate things—and to make sure they don’t get caught up in child trafficking scandals.

TCR: When did adoptions between Guatemala and the U.S. stop?

ES: December 31, 2007. It wasn’t an American decision. It was Guatemala’s decision to ratify the Hague. But the change only related to new adoptions, so the rules took effect and around 3,000 kids were caught in limbo. And today, there are still 300 adoptions that are in progress.

TCT: There are families in the U.S. who began the adoption process in 2007 and they’re still waiting?

ES: Yes. When Guatemala ratified the Hague, regulations were put in place that allowed these cases to move forward under transition rules. They weren’t necessarily Hague-compliant cases, but they weren’t being processed under the old system—they were in between… In 2010, the government released a report that was an analysis of how the cases were processed, and they found that in 60 percent of the cases there were “irregularities”–which is a catch-all phrase attached to an adoption case that has some kind of fraud. Maybe the paperwork isn’t exactly correct, or the paperwork is doctored, or something as egregious as alleged kidnapping.

That number was pretty staggering to people who read the report… American pressure to get those cases moved throughout this process has been really enormous. You have really concerned adoptive parents, who are concerned for good reason. They feel like they love the kids they’re going to adopt and they want the best for them; they don’t want them stuck in orphanages. So they write to their Senators and their Representatives and those politicians put pressure on the embassy in Guatemala to try to get the cases moving. It’s a really delicate diplomatic issue because Guatemalan prosecutors are trying to unravel which cases are legitimate and where each of these children is from. That takes a lot of energy and resources to do that they don’t necessarily have.

A new human trafficking unit was actually created in Guatemala’s Ministerio Público in November 2007, and most of their caseload even today is dealing with adoption. It’s a very slow process, and really difficult situation because these kids are stuck in purgatory and there’s no easy way out.

TCR: Are there other countries that American parents should be wary of adopting from?

ES: Ethiopia has sort of filled the void left by Guatemala in fulfilling the demand for adoptable children. The numbers there have skyrocketed over the past decade. It’s the same thing that happened in Guatemala, Cambodia and Vietnam. When adoption economies begin to snowball in a sending country, the demand [in the U.S.] snowballs. In Ethiopia, orphanages open and immediately sign contracts with America agencies. Getting a child from Ethiopia is relatively fast and simple compared to lots of countries–especially countries like Russia that have lots of regulation now, and where the adoption process can take years. Adopting from Ethiopia, on the other hand, can take as little as six to eight months.

Julia Dahl, former deputy managing editor of The Crime Report, is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn, NY. She currently writes for Crimesider, CBSNews.com's crime blog. You can read her other articles at www.juliadahl.com. She welcomes comments from readers. Read more!

Cambodia's surprising cuisine: Spiders, anyone?

Visitors brave enough to try the spiders, locusts, crickets, snake salad and termite-egg soup might be pleased.

By Heidi Fuller-Love, Special to the Los Angeles Times



In Skun, Cambodia, vendor sells Tarantulas 


 

As the sun set over Angkor Wat, the temple built for King Suryavarman II in the 12th century, I nosed my Vespa out into the line of three-wheeled tuktuks, bikes and cars. In my pink crash helmet and Gucci bike goggles, I felt as frivolous as an extra in the '60s movie "Quadrophenia," but my mission was a serious one: I was planning to travel the nearly 200 miles from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh in three days, stopping on the way to sample some of the weirdest and most wonderful foods Cambodia has to offer.

Before leaving Siem Reap, however, I headed for Le Tigre de Papier cooking school to get a handle on Khmer cuisine. I put my foot in my mouth — before even taking a first bite — when I mentioned the influence of Thai food on Cambodia's culinary offerings. Heng, who runs the cooking course, scowled. "Let's get one thing straight: We influenced their food from 9th to 13th century when Thailand was under our rule. Khmer food came first, and the Thais copied from us."

Despite Heng's understandable chauvinism, the influence of other cultures on Khmer cuisine can't be ignored. Cambodian food has distinctive flavors — including the use of preserved lemons in dishes such as the chicken soup ngam nguv — but it was Chinese traders who introduced noodles; the Indian influence is shown in the coconut milk and turmeric used in curries and desserts; and the French presence is clearly seen in that Khmer breakfast, a baguette smothered with liver pâté.

PHOTOS: Cambodia's unique cuisine

That evening Heng took me to the food stands surrounding Siem Reap's night market. The aroma of spicy barbecued meats swirled around us as we made our way through the vast souk and bagged two of the few empty seats next to a long line of food carts. "When you first come to Cambodia, people tell you never to eat street food, but if you want to eat the best of Khmer cuisine you should never eat anywhere else," Heng said.

We sat at rickety plastic tables and ate cháo lòng, a flavorful rice broth dotted with cubes of congealed blood and served with tubular chunks of tripe.

Emboldened by my first encounter with Khmer offal, I ordered plea sach ko — a version of laab made with beef tripe, toasted rice and cilantro — the next morning for breakfast. Sweet and salty with a hint of spice, it looked hideous but tasted delicious and gave me the courage to head out on my cream-colored Vespa in a convoy of tuktuks, honking trucks and mopeds leaving Siem Reap.

It was June, the wet season, so I wasn't surprised when rain started lashing down. I was taken aback, however, when the road fizzled out and became nothing but a muddy potholed track. By the time I reached Chong Khneas, a floating village on Tonle Sap lake about nine miles south of Siem Reap, my scooter was chocolate brown, and I looked as if I had indulged in a leisurely mud bath.

Luckily the rain stopped and I stripped to a T-shirt as steam rose from southeast Asia's largest freshwater lake. Hopping on a boat, I took the two-hour trip to Kompong Phluk, the lake's largest settlement, where I visited a prahok shed to see the hanging fish whose odoriferous fermented juices and flesh are used to make Cambodia's ubiquitous fish paste.

Next I headed for a bamboo food hut on stilts and ordered frog amok. A variation on Cambodia's signature dish fish amok, the entire frog (not just its legs) was steamed in a banana-leaf basket along with prahok, turmeric and coconut milk. Served with a zingy green papaya salad, the chopped frog was tender and tasted like creamy chicken.

That evening I was caught in the rain and stranded in the little town of Damdek. I managed to locate a homestay, where I slept under the eaves — with the family snoring on a mattress next to me and pigs snorting in their pen below.

A couple of hours' drive from Damdek, the tiny town of Skun is home to Cambodia's largest concentration of tarantulas.

I visited the fascinating breeding project and the edible insect exhibition at the Skun Spider Sanctuary, where I learned that arachnids are a gastronomic delicacy in Cambodia. "Along with lizards, scorpions and rats, they were introduced onto the menu during the famine under the Khmer Rouge regime, but now they have become so popular that there are fears they could be hunted to extinction," sanctuary employee Sopheap told me.

In Skun, the market stands were piled high with fried crickets, grilled locusts and braised a-pings, as the beleaguered arachnids are known locally. All around me school kids and old women were buying the spiders. They are black, hairy, as big as a hand and, at 50 cents each, didn't come cheap. "We fry them to destroy the poison, then dip them in garlic and salt," a vendor said.

Steeling myself for the big one, I browsed the stands, sampling crickets (bland and crunchy) and locusts (meaty and the legs stick between the teeth) before buying a bag of tarantulas. Shutting my eyes, I dipped my hand in the bag, pulled off a leg and nibbled. Surprisingly, once the initial revulsion wore off, the taste was not so bad. The texture of the a-ping was rough and crispy like a pork crackling, but inside it was tender and fatty and tasted a bit like cod.

"The head is the best bit," said an old woman, with half a spider in her hand, half in her mouth. I decided to take her word for it and offered her the rest of my bag. She accepted gratefully and made short shrift of the three arachnids inside.

A lazy putter along the N7 brought me to Kampong Cham, a bustling town along the Mekong River where I spent the night in a rundown guesthouse and ate termite-egg soup, popping each tiny egg between my teeth to enjoy the salty, slightly sour taste.

From Kampong Cham it was a three-hour trip on the N6 to the traffic-clogged Japanese Friendship Bridge — built in 1993 to replace the original bridge that was blown up in 1973 by the Khmer Rouge — and into Phnom Penh.

Parking my steaming Vespa outside Romdeng, I took my seat at this restaurant set in a charming colonial house. Run by former street children, Romdeng is renowned for its local cuisine.

After an entree of fried spider served with a spicy lime dipping sauce, I tucked into the green mango and wild snake salad. Pungent and chewy, the dried snake, complemented by the silky sweet mango, was superb, and I congratulated myself on finding the ideal place to finish my scooter trip. Read more!

Cambodia’s UN-backed tribunal begins trial of Khmer Rouge leaders for ‘killing fields’ regime

By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, November 21, 6:26 AM


PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Cambodians were bluntly reminded of their tragic history Monday as the trial began of three top Khmer Rouge leaders accused of orchestrating the “killing fields” in the late 1970s.

After Judge Nil Nonn declared the trial open, the prosecution started summarizing its case at the U.N.-backed tribunal — more than three decades after the Southeast Asian country witnessed some of the 20th century’s worst atrocities.

An estimated 1.7 million people died of execution, starvation, exhaustion or lack of medical care as a result of the Khmer Rouge’s radical policies, which essentially turned all of Cambodia into a forced labor camp as the movement attempted to create a pure agrarian socialist society.

The defendants are old and infirm, and there are fears they won’t live long enough for justice to be done.

On Monday, they sat side by side with their lawyers in the courtroom especially built for the tribunal, as the prosecutors began describing the scope of their alleged crimes.

Present were 85-year-old Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge’s chief ideologist and No. 2 leader; 80-year-old Khieu Samphan, an ex-head of state; and 86-year-old Ieng Sary, the former foreign minister.

All three steadfastly maintain they are innocent. They showed little reaction as a litany of charges was read out against them.

A fourth defendant, 79-year-old Ieng Thirith, was ruled unfit to stand trial last week because she has Alzheimer’s disease. Ieng Sary’s wife was the regime’s minister for social affairs. She remains detained pending a court decision on prosecutors’ appeal against her unconditional release.

The charges against the surviving inner circle of the communist movement include crimes against humanity, genocide, religious persecution, homicide and torture. Their leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998 in the jungle while a prisoner of his own comrades.

“This is the first (trial) of the Khmer Rouge leadership responsible for enacting a series of policies that led to the deaths of nearly 2 million people,” said Anne Heindel, legal adviser to the independent Documentation Center of Cambodia, which collects evidence of Khmer Rouge atrocities.

“There is hope that it will help Cambodians understand why it happened, why Khmer killed Khmer, and will teach the younger generation to ensure it will never happen again,” she said. Two-thirds of Cambodians today were not yet born when the communist group’s reign of terror ended in 1979.

Prosecution statements continue Tuesday, to be followed by two days of response by the defense. Actual testimony is scheduled to begin on Dec. 5.

Meas Sery, 51, said he came to Monday’s hearing from his home in Prey Veng province to see for himself the faces of the defendants. He said he lost four siblings under the Khmer Rouge regime.

“Even though there is no verdict be announced yet, I am happy to see these three leaders brought to the court. I believe that justice will come and I will receive it soon,” Meas Srey said.

The trial’s impact should go beyond Cambodia, said Clair Duffy of the Open Society Justice Initiative, which has been monitoring the tribunal’s work.

Because it not only subjects the former leaders to the scrutiny of the law but also gives victims a forum to tell their stories, it has “a huge potential not only to contribute to justice in Cambodia, but also to contribute dialogue to ongoing efforts to bring perpetrators of these kinds of atrocities to justice around the world.”

Chea Leang, Cambodian co-prosecutor, recalled for the court the brutalities of Khmer Rouge rule, beginning on April 17, 1975, when they captured Phnom Penh to end a bitter five-year civil war, and immediately began the forced evacuation to the countryside of the estimated 1 million people who had sheltered in the capital.

She recounted the new social order established by the group: an all-enveloping system of forced labor, with personal property banned, religion, press and all personal freedoms abolished. It was rule by terror.

Before the court adjourned for the day, Chea Leang insisted the evidence would show that the regime the defendants led “was one of the most brutal and horrific in modern history.”

Some of those attending the trial provided their own vignettes of the terror.

Chim Phorn, 72, was chief of a commune under the Khmer Rouge regime in Banteay Meanchey province in the northwest. He said that in 1977, he killed a young couple who were in a romantic relationship without being married, a breach of rules. He said he beat the couple to death with an axe handle.

“I was ordered to kill the young couple because they fell in love without being married,” Chhim Phorn said. “If I did not kill them, my supervisor would have killed me, so to save my life, I had no choice but to kill them.”

Now, he said, he feel remorse and hates the Khmer Rouge leaders for what they made him do.

The tribunal has split the indictments according to charge into separate trials to speed the proceedings. The current trial is considering charges involving the forced movement of people and crimes against humanity.

Even streamlined, the proceedings are likely to cover an enormous amount of ground, and there is no estimate of how long they will take.

The tribunal, which was established in 2006, has tried just one case, convicting prison chief Kaing Guek Eav for war crimes, crimes against humanity and other offenses. His sentence was reduced to a 19-year term due to time served and other technicalities.
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U.N. Court Appeals Release of Khmer Rouge Defendant

By Seth Mydans

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Prosecutors asked judges in a United Nations-backed trial Friday to delay the release of the highest-ranking female member of the Khmer Rouge after the court ruled that she was unfit to stand trial because she suffers from dementia.

“We have applied for a stay of the immediate release and we have also filed a motion of appeal in respect to certain parts of the decision itself,” said one of the prosecutors, Andrew Cayley.

As minister for social affairs, the defendant, Ieng Thirith, 79, was on trial along with three other leaders of the Khmer Rouge government, which was responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million people from 1975 to 1979 through execution, torture, forced labor, starvation and disease.

In a statement Thursday, the court said that while it acknowledged the gravity of the crimes for which Ms. Ieng Thirith was charged, she “lacks capacity to understand proceedings against her or to meaningfully participate in her own defense.”

On Friday, the president of the trial chamber, Nil Nonn, rescinded an order that Ms. Ieng Thirith attend the Monday hearing, the court spokesman said.

Ms. Ieng Thirith was charged with crimes against humanity, genocide, homicide and other crimes the indictment described as her role in “planning, direction, coordination and ordering of widespread purges.”

The legal communications officer for the court, Lars Olsen, said Ms. Ieng Thirith would be released “as soon as practically possible” and would be “free to go wherever she wants,” but she remained in detention Friday while prosecutors filed their appeal.

One of her lawyers, Diana Ellis, said in an e-mail that plans for Ms. Ieng Thirith’s future “have yet to be finalized.”

The only conditions set by the court were that she “refrain from interfering in the administration of justice,” including interference with potential witnesses.

Only five senior members of the Khmer Rouge have been arrested, and Ms. Ieng Thirith would be the first to be set free.

One defendant, Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, 69, was convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison in July 2010 for his role as commandant of the Tuol Sleng prison, where more than 14,000 people were sent to their deaths. The court reduced that term to 19 years because of time already served.

In ordering the release of Ms. Ieng Thirith, the court said prosecutors could create a mechanism to periodically monitor her health once she was free, with the possibility that she could be rearrested if her condition improved. The court said that her dementia was consistent with Alzheimer’s disease.

In a June 24 medical report to the court, a geriatric expert from New Zealand, A. John Campbell, said that Ms. Ieng Thirith was disoriented and had difficulty with memory and that the medical workers who attended to her said she could be “bad tempered.”

Mr. Campbell said that Ms. Ieng Thirith sometimes lost her way inside the small detention center and that she sometimes talked to herself, “usually about the past and her youth.”

Until her arrest in November 2007, she had been living in a villa in Phnom Penh with her husband, Ieng Sary, 86, the former Khmer Rouge foreign minister, who is a co-defendant.

Along with her husband, the remaining defendants are Nuon Chea, 85, the party’s chief ideologue, and Khieu Samphan, 80, the head of state. The Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, who died in 1998, was never tried.

Mr. Nuon Chea also sought to be released for health reasons, asserting that he was not able to concentrate for long periods. But he was found fit to stand trial last week, according to the court spokesman, Mr. Olsen.

If it proceeds, the release of Ms. Ieng Thirith would be the latest setback for the tribunal, which has been tarnished by accusations of corruption, political interference by the Cambodian government and lax oversight by the United Nations.

The tribunal has suffered delays since it began its work in 2005, along with soaring costs that are expected to reach $150 million by the end of the year.

Five members of the legal office resigned in the spring in protest over alleged inaction by the investigating judges. Last month, one of the investigating judges, Siegfried Blunk from Germany, resigned, citing political interference by the Cambodian government.

The Open Society Justice Initiative, which is based in New York and has been monitoring the tribunal, called on the United Nations to conduct a formal investigation into the accusations of judicial misconduct and political interference in the trials.

As a young woman, Ms. Ieng Thirith was a brilliant scholar, along with her elder sister, Khieu Ponnary.

The sisters moved to Paris, where Ms. Khieu Ponnary studied Khmer linguistics, and Ms. Ieng Thirith, then known as Khieu Thirith, studied English literature with a focus on Shakespeare.

Ms. Khieu Thirith married and took the family name of Mr. Ieng Sary in Paris in 1951, where he was one of a group of radical Cambodian students together with Pol Pot. After returning to Cambodia, Ms. Khieu Ponnary married Pol Pot, who was several years younger than she was.

Before the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, Ms. Khieu Ponnary became mentally ill, and Pol Pot later remarried. She died in 2003.

As her sister’s mind faded, Ms. Ieng Thirith became the de facto “first lady” of the revolution.
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Lightning kills 160 in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH (Xinhua) -- Death toll by lightning since early this year has reached 160, already surpassed last year's record at 114, a government official said Friday.

Keo Vy, communication officer of National Committee for Disaster Management said that since early this year, 160 Cambodians were killed by lightning, and injuring 138 others, adding lightning also killed 60 cows and buffaloes and four houses damaged.

According to Keo Vy, five provinces out of 24, were most affected by the lightning -- Pursat, Battambang, Takeo, Prey Veng and Kompong Cham. Most of the victims were living in rural areas.

Lightning occurs every year in Cambodia, which normally starts in rainy season which begins from May through October. Lightning killed 140 Cambodians in 2009 and 114 last year.

This year, Cambodia has been also affected by severe flooding that has claimed almost 250 deaths to date.
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Cambodia’s genocide tribunal finds Khmer Rouge defendant Ieng Thirith unfit to stand trial

(Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Mark Peters, File/Associated Press) - FILE - In this Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2011 file photo released by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Ieng Thirith, former minister of social affairs, reacts during a hearing of former Khmer Rouge top leaders in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Cambodia’s U.N.-backed tribunal ruled the former senior member of the Khmer Rouge is unfit to stand trial 


By Associated Press, Updated: Thursday, November 17, 6:24 AM

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Cambodia’s U.N.-backed tribunal on Thursday ruled a former senior Khmer Rouge leader unfit to stand trial for genocide and other crimes because she has Alzheimer’s disease.

The tribunal said the illness diminishes Ieng Thirith’s mental capacity and ordered the 79-year-old defendant freed from detention. She behaved erratically at earlier court appearances, and her lawyers had requested the medical exams.

The ruling came just four days before the start of her trial with three co-defendants, one of whom is her husband, Ieng Sary, foreign minister in the late 1970s Khmer Rouge regime. He informed the tribunal last month that he intends to exercise his right not to testify.

Ieng Thirith was minister for social affairs and is accused of involvement in the “planning, direction, coordination and ordering of widespread purges” and has been charged with crimes against humanity, genocide, homicide, torture and religious persecution.

The U.N.-backed tribunal is seeking justice for an estimated 1.7 million people who died of starvation, exhaustion, lack of medical care or execution during the communist Khmer Rouge’s rule.

Ieng Thirith has said the charges against her are “100 percent false” and said she always worked for the benefit of the people.

She is the sister-in-law of Khmer Rouge supreme leader Pol Pot, who died in 1998. Pol Pot married Ieng Thirith’s sister, Khieu Ponnary, who died in 2003.

The other defendants were also part of the ruling inner circle: head of state Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea, who was second in command to Pol Pot and the group’s chief ideologist.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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The Face of Modern Slavery

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF



Somaly Mam, left, helped Srey Pov after she escaped from a brothel.


When I write about human trafficking as a modern form of slavery, people sometimes tune out as their eyes glaze over. So, Glazed Eyes, meet Srey Pov.

She’s a tough interview because she breaks down as she recalls her life in a Cambodian brothel, and pretty soon my eyes are welling up, too.

Srey Pov’s family sold her to a brothel when she was 6 years old. She was unaware of sex but soon found out: A Western pedophile purchased her virginity, she said, and the brothel tied her naked and spread-eagled on a bed so that he could rape her.

“I was so scared,” she recalled. “I was crying and asking, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ ”

After that, the girl was in huge demand because she was so young. Some 20 customers raped her nightly, she remembers. And the brothel twice stitched her vagina closed so that she could be resold as a virgin. This agonizingly painful practice is common in Asian brothels, where customers sometimes pay hundreds of dollars to rape a virgin.

Most girls who have been trafficked, whether in New York or in Cambodia, eventually surrender. They are degraded and terrified, and they doubt their families or society will accept them again. But somehow Srey Pov refused to give in.

Repeatedly, she tried to escape the brothel but she said that each time she was caught and brutally punished with beatings and electric shocks. The brothel, like many in Cambodia, also had a punishment cell to break the will of rebellious girls.

As Srey Pov remembers it (and other girls tell similar stories), each time she rebelled she was locked naked in the darkness in a barrel half-full of sewage, replete with vermin and scorpions that stung her regularly. I asked how long she was punished this way, thinking perhaps an hour or two.

“The longest?” she remembered. “It was a week.”

Customers are, of course, the reason trafficking continues, and many of them honestly think that the girls are in the brothels voluntarily. Many are, of course. But smiles are not always what they seem. Srey Pov even remembers flirting to avoid being beaten.

“We smile on the outside,” she said, “but inside we are crying.”

Yet this is a story with a triumphant ending. At age 9, Srey Pov was able to dart away from the brothel and outrun the guard. She found her way to a shelter run by Somaly Mam, an anti-trafficking activist who herself was prostituted as a child. Somaly now runs the Somaly Mam Foundation to fight human trafficking in Southeast Asia: She’s the one who led the brothel raid that I recounted in my last column.

In Somaly’s shelter, Srey Pov learned English and blossomed. Now 19, Srey Pov can even imagine eventually having a boyfriend.

“Before I didn’t like men because they hit me and raped me,” she reflected. “But now I think that not all men are bad. If I find a good man, I can marry him.”

Somaly is creating an army of young women like Srey Pov who have been rescued from the brothels: well-educated and determined to defeat human trafficking. Over the years, I’ve watched these women and girls make a difference, and they’re self-replicating.

In my last column, I described a frightened seventh-grade Vietnamese girl who was rescued in a brothel raid that Somaly and I participated in. That raid in the town of Anlong Veng has already had an impact, for six more brothels in the area have closed because of public attention and fear that they could be next. And the seventh-grade girl is recovering from her trauma at a shelter run by Somaly, where a girl named Lithiya has taken her under her wing.

Lithiya, now 15, is one of my favorites in “Somaly’s army,” perhaps because she wants to be a journalist and has taught herself astoundingly good English. Trafficked at age 9 from Vietnam, Lithiya was locked inside a brothel for years before she climbed over a wall and escaped. Now a ninth grader, she is ranked No. 1 in her class.

Srey Pov, Lithiya and Somaly encountered a form of oppression that echoes 19th-century slavery. But the scale is larger today. By my calculations, at least 10 times as many girls are now trafficked into brothels annually as African slaves were transported to the New World in the peak years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

So for those of you doubtful that “modern slavery” really is an issue for the new international agenda, think of Srey Pov — and multiply her by millions. If what such girls experience isn’t slavery, that word has no meaning. It’s time for a 21st-century abolitionist movement in the U.S. and around the world. Read more!

Thailand, Cambodia agree to withdraw troops on border

Yutthasak says soldiers to be replaced by police

Thailand has agreed in informal talks with Cambodia that both sides will withdraw their troops from the overlapping border near the Preah Vihear temple site after the General Border Committee meeting in December.

The talks on the replacement of troops in the 17.3 square kilometre area along the border, marked as the demilitarised zone, is among five issues the two countries will finalise at the next soldier-to-soldier meeting of the GBC, Defence Minister Yutthasak Sasiprapa said.

He was referring to recent negotiations with Cambodian Defence Minster Tea Banh.

"We've talked about the five issues and informally agreed to approve them all at the meeting," Gen Yutthasak said.

"There are some details for further discussion, but I believe we'll agree on all of them."

More than 700 Thai soldiers and up to 1,000 Cambodian soldiers are stationed in the area.

But the two countries must withdraw their troops to comply with the International Court of Justice's order on July 18 that the disputed border should be free of soldiers to avoid more skirmishes following cross-border fighting this year.

In their recent talks, neither country finalised how many soldiers they will withdraw, but Gen Yutthasak insisted all must move out and be replaced by police. He suggested each country deploy 400 officers.

Gen Yutthasak wants to hold the GBC meeting this month, but if the two countries cannot agree on a date, negotiations on the five issues are expected to start next month.

Other issues include the formation of an observer team in the disputed area, border checkpoint management, coordination with Unesco officials and what to do with people living in Wat Kaew Sikha Khiri Sawara.

The temple is on the overlapping border of the 4.6 sq/km area near the Hindu temple ruins. Both countries claim ownership of the area.

Gen Yutthasak said either Cambodian people must leave the temple or Thai people must be allowed to settle in the area in equal numbers.

Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia should form a team made up of nine representatives from each country. Members would not have to be soldiers.

Gen Yutthasak suggested three areas serve as border checkpoints: the entrances to Preah Vihear and Wat Kaew Skha Khiri Sawara, and an area near Chong Ban Dai Hak. Read more!

Codan ships mine detectors to Cambodia

Codan chief executive Donald McGurk with mine detectors made at Codan's Newton factory.

ADELAIDE technology firm Codan is supplying 405 landmine and unexploded ordnance detectors to Cambodia as part of a $2 million contract with Japan's Government.

The mine detectors, manufactured in Newton, are being donated by the Japanese Government to the Cambodia Mine Action Centre to help ongoing land clearance operations in the Cambodia.

The first shipment of the latest model Minelab F3 detectors has already been exported with a second shipment, including spare parts for older detectors, due to leave in December.

Codan's Minelab Countermine Division general manager Hugh Graham said the latest order adds to more than 3000 Minelab detectors already in use in Cambodia since 1998.

"Cambodia remains one of the most mined countries in the world Cambodia (with an estimated 4-6 million mines and unexploded ordnances scattered as remnants from wars from the 1960s to the mid 1990s)," he said.

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Minelab's detectors are considered to be highly effective in mineralised soils, such as those in Cambodia, and are sensitive to "minimum metal mines" used in the country, he said.

However the Cambodian shipment is not the division's biggest contract this financial year, Mr Graham said.

It shipped 1200 detectors to Angola for an estimated $4 million earlier this financial year and has upgraded detectors for the Australian Army with 600 units deployed this year in Afghanistan, he said.

Codan chief executive Donald McGurk told last month's annual general meeting that the company was on the acquisition trail and expected to bed a deal down this financial year.

Codan's Minelab division generated 54 per cent of the company's revenue last financial year, worth $92.1 million and exports to 55 countries including Angola, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Mozambique, Bosnia and Afghanistan.

Minelab introduced its latest countermine model, the F3 Compact detector, to military, security and humanitarian customers last year.
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A shadow over Boeung Kak lake

“Having a well-placed Cambodian partner may ease the worries of Chinese investors. But high political benefits also bring high political risks. On September 11, Cambodia’s main opposition party issued a statement describing Shukaku as ‘an enemy of the Khmer people’.”



Perhaps concerned about the negative impact of the “relocations” from Boeung Kak, the commercial attaché at China’s embassy in Cambodia, counsellor Jin Yuan, gave an interview to the Global Times in January, rejecting responsibility on behalf of the Chinese firm. Shukaku bore sole responsibility for the relocations and Erdos Hongjun would only be involved after that process finished, he said, adding that compensation negotiations were being carried out by a special body appointed by the Phnom Penh government and had nothing to do with either company.

Admittedly, according to its contract, the Chinese company isn’t legally responsible for the relocations. But as a 50% shareholder in the joint venture and the project’s sole investor, doesn’t it have a social responsibility to the thousands of residents whose lives have been gravely affected by the scheme?

The Global Times report also stated that “Even though the residents’ buildings are mostly illegal, the development company has still paid out compensation and built alternative housing 20 kilometres outside of Phnom Penh.” The implication is that the residents’ demands are illegitimate, the developers have already done more than necessary and the Boeung Kak locals have no cause to bother the Chinese firm.

But in Cambodia, where the rule of law is weak, legality and justice may not always be one and the same. If you want to be a good investor, you have to make an effort to understand local realities, as well as obeying local rules.

Originally, the banks of Boeung Kak were uninhabited. But after the fall of the Khmer Rouge in the 1980s, Cambodians started to move back to Phnom Penh from the surrounding provinces and some settled here. In 2001, a new land law was passed: if a household could prove that it had lived in one place for the five years prior to 2001, then it owned the property.

Most of the residents around Boeung Kak meet that requirement. But the government has made slow progress certifying land rights, and so their ownership remains unrecognised. After the city government announced the leasing of land to Shukaku in February 2007, the locals started to fear they would sooner or later be driven away – and sure enough, the following year, government promises that locals would not be moved were broken, and pressure started to be applied. The nightmare began.

As the Global Times reported, the developers did provide compensation. Residents were given three choices: US$8,500 in cash; a new home 20 kilometres away from the city and US$500 for moving costs; or temporarily relocation to another site with the option of moving back in five years.

That may sound adequate, but it’s not. Land in the area already costs US$3,000 per square metre. Assuming each household originally had 50 square metres of land, it would have had a market value of US$150,000. And so $8,500 is far from a fair price.

The majority of the displaced residents had no choice but to head to the city’s outskirts and “spend about US$6,000 on a piece of land, and then another three or four thousand dollars building a house,” Sia Phearum, secretariat director of Housing Rights Task Force, a Phnom Penh-based NGO, told reporters. They couldn’t buy land in the city proper for two reasons, he said: one, it is too expensive, and, two, they would only be likely to be relocated again.

Unlike in Chinese cities, Phnom Penh does not have lots of residential property developments, and those that do exist are not built for ordinary people. If the average local wants a house, he or she “buys” a piece of land and builds on it. However, that “buying” normally means obtaining a proof of exchange from the village or county head, which has no legal force. If the government decides it wants the land, that piece of paper is not enough to prove ownership. Of course, residents can go through the proper formalities and have their land rights recognised, but that can cost US$1,500 in bribes to the authorities – more than an ordinary worker might make in a year.

The second option is no better. In early 2010, I visited the replacement housing provided to relocated locals by the developer: rows of single-storey buildings. Inside each house is just a large empty room. There are no kitchens, and the toilets are outside. Basic infrastructure is inadequate.

Most importantly, it’s too far from the city. Cambodia is not a developed nation, and leaving the city means going back to an agricultural society, away from modern infrastructure like electricity and running water. It can also mean losing your livelihood: Phearum said 60% of those who moved here ended up returning to the city and renting somewhere to live.

Moving has also caused employment and education difficulties. The women can no longer earn their usual income setting up small stalls by their front doors, as the area has very few residents – and those who do live here have no money to spend. Many of the men tend to work as motorcycle taxi drivers and this has problems too: it’s a 50 kilometre round-trip to the city, which means spending a lot more on fuel. There’s no nearby school, so some children dropped out. One middle school student told me that he’d missed a year of education, until an NGO gave him a bicycle so he could get to a school 20 kilometres away.

The third option, to move back to Boeung Kak in five years, is even less popular. The developers are promising apartments in high-rise buildings, meaning residents will not be able to run stalls at their front door. The community also has no confidence that the developer will keep its promises.

And so the remaining 800 residents are refusing all three proposals and demanding land where they can build homes near the lake. The developer can continue to say its compensation schemes are more than fair, but in reality the residents have been placed in a hopeless situation.

How did this project attract two or three different Chinese firms, and how can those firms ignore the pleas of the locals? Perhaps it has something to do with who the Cambodian partner is.

Shukaku’s chairman is senator Lao Meng Khin of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, and a special adviser to prime minister Hun Sen. He is also ethnically Chinese, and always accompanies the prime minister on visits to China. In 2009, Khin was invited to Beijing for the 60th anniversary celebrations of the People’s Republic of China. He is often found lurking in the shadows of large Sino-Cambodian joint ventures.

In March 2004, Cambodian International Investment Development Group (CIIDG) – of which Lao Meng Khin is also chairman – signed a deal with China’s Henan Jinqu Gold, forming Jinqu Mining, to extract gold ore in Cambodia. In November 2004, he imported a train from China South Locomotive and Rolling Stock, the first such purchase from China made by Cambodia. And, in February 2008, a consortium of four Chinese firms, led by the Jiangsu Hodo Group, invested in a special economic zone in Sihankouville, again in partnership with CIIDG.

An investigation by United Kingdom-based NGO Global Witness has found that Lao Meng Khin is also a director of a forestry company that cooperates with Chinese logging business Hainan Wuzhishan Group, and of two more firms which, judging by their names, are likely China-Cambodia joint ventures: Petrol Camchin and Sino Hydropower.

Clearly, he has excellent contacts with the authorities in charge of various resources. Global Witness estimates that Lao Meng Khin and his wife’s company, Pheapimex, has felling rights to 1.33 million hectares of forest – 7.4% of Cambodia’s total land area. According to a US embassy cable released by Wikileaks, Pheapimex has recently obtained usage rights for 315,000 hectares of land for plantations and mining.

Having such a well-placed Cambodian partner may ease the worries of many Chinese investors. But high political benefits also bring high political risks. On September 11 this year, Cambodia’s main opposition party, the Sam Rainsy Party, issued a statement describing Shukaku as “an enemy of the Khmer people”. It warned all law-abiding companies and organisations to avoid any connection with the company, including owning its shares, making joint investments, loans, guarantees, purchasing or supplying products or services or cooperating in any way. Although the governing Cambodian People’s Party still has a strong grip on power and the Sam Rainsy Party is very likely to remain in opposition for the foreseeable future, its rhetoric and the public opinion it represents must be taken seriously.

Liao Ruo is a reporter based in Beijing. Read more!

Cambodia highlights fruitful cooperation with China

PHNOM PENH, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia's National Assembly ( CNA) is satisfied with the fruitful relations and cooperation between Cambodia and China on economy and investment, the CNA's President Heng Samrin said Wednesday.

Besides solid political ties between the two countries, the trade and investment relations have been growing very fast, he said during a meeting with visiting Ge Zhenfeng, deputy director of Overseas Chinese Affairs Committee of the Chinese National People's Congress.

On the bilateral trade relation, he said that the two-way trade volume was 1.43 billion U.S. dollars in the first eight months of this year, almost equal to the trade volume in the whole year 2010 that was 1.44 billion U.S. dollars. He added that it is expected the bilateral trade will reach 2 billion U.S. dollars this year.

As for the investment, China's total investment in Cambodia during the first nine months of this year was 1.14 billion U.S. dollars, up 68 percent from 680 million U.S. dollars at the same period last year, according to the reports of the Council for the Development of Cambodia.

The reports said that from 1994 to September 2011, China's accumulative investments in Cambodia had reached 8.86 billion U.S. dollars, bringing China as the largest investor in the country.

More importantly, he said, China has actively helped Cambodia in the development of infrastructures such as roads, bridges, irrigation system and hydro-electric dams, as well as in humanitarian activities.

Meanwhile, Heng Samrin reiterated that Cambodia still sticks to one-China's policy for the cause of peace, stability and regional cooperation.

In response, Ge Zhenfeng said the visit was to strengthen and expand friendship relations and solidarity between China and Cambodia.

He also pledged to boost more cooperation between China and Cambodia on trade and investment for the interests of peoples in both countries.

Ge Zhenfeng arrived here on Nov. 15 for a four-day official visit. Read more!

Manulife expands into Cambodia's life insurance market

TORONTO / CAMBODIA / HONG KONG , Nov. 15, 2011 /PRNewswire/ - Manulife Financial today announces that it has received "approval in principle" from Cambodia's Ministry of Economy and Finance to set up a wholly foreign-owned life insurance operation. Cambodia expands Manulife Asia's operations to an 11th territory.

David Wong , Senior Vice President, ASEAN Operations, said: "We are grateful for the Cambodian Government's support. This expansion demonstrates our commitment to Asia and our success as a forward-thinking leading insurance company that offers strong and reliable risk protection products and services to our customers.

"I am very excited to see Manulife expanding its footprint into Cambodia . Manulife's last new entry was Vietnam , in 1999. We hope that in Cambodia we can match the achievements of Manulife in other ASEAN markets and help develop Cambodia's life insurance industry to better serve the emerging life insurance needs of its population."

In entering the market, Manulife has agreed to support the Cambodian government's efforts to develop the insurance profession and build confidence in the industry, including through improved consumer education. The company is currently working closely with the government to expedite the final stages of the license approval. In the meantime, it is now actively in the process of establishing its operation in Cambodia , with its head office to be located in Phnom Penh .

With a population of 14.4 million, Cambodia is a World Trade Organization member experiencing rapid economic growth and significant foreign investment. Most importantly, Cambodia's commitment to aligning its growth with the wider development of the Greater Mekong region has unlocked great potential and given confidence to investors.

About Manulife Financial
Manulife Financial is a leading Canada -based financial services group operating in 21 countries and territories worldwide. For more than 120 years, clients have looked to Manulife for strong, reliable, trustworthy and forward-thinking solutions for their most significant financial decisions. Our international network of employees, agents and distribution partners offers financial protection and wealth management products and services to millions of clients. We provide asset management services to institutional customers worldwide as well as reinsurance solutions, specializing in property and casualty retrocession. Funds under management by Manulife Financial and its subsidiaries were C$492billion ( US$473 billion ) as at September 30, 2011 . The Company operates as Manulife Financial in Canada and Asia and primarily as John Hancock in the United States . Manulife Financial Corporation trades as 'MFC' on the TSX, NYSE and PSE, and under '945' on the SEHK. Manulife Financial can be found on the Internet at manulife.com. Read more!

Leading Civil Party Withdraws Complaint from Tribunal

The withdrawal would “send a message to the court” that could lead to “more victims who will withdraw their participation in court processes.”

David J. Schefer, an U.S. Professor of Law of Northwestern University, right, and Cambodian genocide victim Theary Seng, front left, walk through a gate at the U.N.-backed tribunal court hall, file photo.



Seng Theary, a Cambodian-American lawyer whose family members were killed by the Khmer Rouge, had one word for the UN-backed tribunal when she withdrew her case from the court on Tuesday: “Enough.”

Seng Theary, who is the president of the Association of Khmer Rouge Victims, representing more than 3,800 complainants at the court, submitted her withdrawal because she felt the court “cannot provide justice to victims,” she told reporters later. She called the court “a farce.”

Seng Theary had been a civil party complainant in cases 003 and 004, which have come under intense scrutiny for alleged political interference and mishandling by investigating judges.

She blamed the UN for “complicity” in the poor handling of the cases, which would require five more indictments at the court, a move Prime Minister Hun Sen opposes on the grounds it would destabilize the country. She called on the government and international observers to work toward more independence at the court and further investigation into both cases.

Tribunal spokesman Huy Vannak said the UN and the government were committed to letting the court functional independently.

However, Long Panhavuth, a court monitor for the Cambodia Justice Initiative, said the withdrawal would “send a message to the court” that could lead to “more victims who will withdraw their participation in court processes.” Read more!

To err is human, to correct is only right and proper



In the eye of the Storm.....David Harley. Photo: Andrew Meares

 On Friday, smh.com.au posted ''Australian sailor dies in Cambodia'', a story about a woman who had been found dead in a hotel room in Sihanoukville while on shore leave from HMAS Warramunga. It had a time stamp of 12.35pm. The story said her family had been informed.

But the sailor was not a woman - he was later identified as Leading Seaman Boatswain's Mate Bradley William Livingstone - and on Friday evening I got a call from an irate chief petty officer, who said parents of every woman sailor on the Warramunga would be ''out of their minds with worry''. He was explicit in his opinion of journalists, including - when I said reporters would not have made it up - ''They do make it up! They do!''

They don't, of course, and the error was tracked back to an AAP report, picked up by news organisations which take copy from it.

The Chief of the Defence Force, General David Hurley, was quoted as telling Macquarie Radio: ''She was doing port visits after the exercise. We don't know any more …'' Someone who was unaware ships are referred to as ''she'' by the navy presumed the sailor was the ''she''. AAP sent a correction at 1.27pm, but by then the story had been posted on websites around the country. Yesterday they were still up on many, including smh.com.au and theage.com.au. (The Herald's national security correspondent, Dylan Welch, filed at 12.31pm on Friday a story with the line ''who was originally incorrectly reported as a woman''.)

It was an easy mistake for an inexperienced journalist to make but, as the chief petty officer said, heart-chilling for parents.

The Heralds make mistakes - as do all newspapers, news agencies and news organisations. It would be impossible to get it right every time. A weekday Herald is the equivalent of an average-size book, which can take a year to write, publish and distribute.

Journalists are only human - but I have not met one whose goal was anything other than perfection. They often do not meet that goal, and that can be put down to inexperience, a looming deadline, crossed wires or plain old sloppiness - and sometimes a combination.

Recently the Herald published errors of historical fact - Governor Phillip was alive and well more than 50 years after his death and Kaiser Bill was ahead of his time in being married to his mother. These are easily checked but were not. Embarrassing, very, but I am glad the Herald's editors believe what is wrong must be corrected.

Over the years editors have worried corrections would lead readers to the conclusion the paper is always making mistakes. I hold the opposite view. As the editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, said in a recent speech: ''The truth, as all honest journalists know, is that newspapers are full of errors. Not just errors, but crude over-simplifications, mistakes of emphasis, contestable interpretations and things which should simply have been phrased differently. It seems silly to pretend otherwise. Journalism is an imperfect art … And yet many newspapers do persist in pretending they are largely infallible.''

Corrections should be in a prominent and regular position so readers know where to find them. (There are Herald readers who turn to page two even before they start on page one.) And when published online they should be attached conspicuously to the story. That does not always happen, but I have been assured steps are being taken to fix that. Soon, I hope.

Many believe an error should be attributed to the journalist who made it. I do not. A mistake made in a newspaper's name should be corrected in its name. Journalists work for the newspapers; they represent them. Although reporters' names are on the story, those stories appear under a masthead which we hope will be around a lot longer than the reporters.

Who made the mistake is of no consequence to the reader; what is of consequence is that it is corrected as quickly as possible. The pain caused by the story about the dead sailor is a perfect example of why.
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Second Cambodian-American Elected to Lowell City Council

“We need inter-racial communication within the community, especially cooperation with city authorities to establish after-school programs for students.”

Nuon Vesna became the second Cambodian-American to be elected to the city’s governing body on Nov. 8.



A Cambodian-American who ran on a platform of public safety, education and economic development has been elected to the city council of Lowell, Mass.

“We need inter-racial communication within the community, especially cooperation with city authorities to establish after-school programs for students,” said Nuon Vesna, who became the second Cambodian-American to be elected to the city’s governing body on Nov. 8.

Students need a variety of activities to partake in, he said, “rather than playing around in the streets and forming gangs to cause trouble in our community.”

Cambodians in Lowell tend to cluster around their own areas, he said, but businesses need to reach out more widely. He plans to work with city authorities to review permits and licensing in the city.

Nuon Vesna, who is a member of the Zoning Board of Appeals, said he hopes to work with like-minded elected council members to achieve his goals.

“They also want public safety, they want business people to expand their businesses to other places in the community,” he said. They also want the creation of a Cambodia Town neighborhood, he said. “Therefore we need to work cooperatively with them to make the project a reality.”

A committee has been working on the establishment of a Cambodia Town, which is looking at the one already established in Long Beach, Calif. However, he said, in some ways that model may not work for Lowell.

Nuon Vesna said he decided to stand for election to represent Cambodians, who are a quarter of the population in Lowell. He said he hopes to solve the community’s problems and be an active mediator between the community and the city’s leaders.

His election, he said, was a good sign that Cambodians in Lowell are actively going to the polls.
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Lawmaker Investigating 10 Deaths of Cambodians in Malaysia

“It is very good for helping protect the basic rights of our laborers in Malaysia.”

This picture taken on January 19, 2011 shows a young woman reading advertisements for "maids wanted" outside a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur.



Opposition lawmaker Mu Sochua is investigating the deaths of 10 Cambodian maids in Malaysia to prepare a complaint to the country’s parliamentary human rights committee.

The 10 women died from illnesses or suicide in a country that has earned wide condemnation for its treatment of migrant workers, said An Bunhak, president of the Association of Cambodian Recruitment Agencies.

Other Cambodian women have returned with stories of physical or sexual abuse at the hands of their employers, and Cambodia has banned workers from travel there pending investigations into allegations of abuse there and in Cambodian recruitment agencies.

Mu Sochua said she was clarifying documents with the Cambodian Embassy in Malaysia before submitting a complaint to the Malaysian National Assembly’s Human Rights Committee.

An Bunhak said the group was cooperating with Mu Sochua’s efforts.

“It is very good for helping protect the basic rights of our laborers in Malaysia,” he said. “We requested that the Malaysian authorities perform autopsies and that parents or family members were invited to directly see the autopsies in Malaysia.”

Moeun Tola, head of the Community Legal Education Center’s labor program, said the organization is seeking more detailed information of the deaths of the workers.
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CAMBODIA: Millions to receive insecticide-treated mosquito nets

PHNOM PENH, 14 November 2011 (IRIN) - Millions of Cambodians are set to receive insecticide-treated mosquito nets as part of a government-led effort to mitigate the risk of malaria and dengue fever.

"This is Asia's largest-ever distribution of mosquito nets. It will cover over 4,000 villages in 20 provinces in Cambodia," Steven Bjorge, malaria team leader at The World Health Organization (WHO) Cambodia, told IRIN on 14 November. "The goal is to ensure that every person at risk of contracting malaria has a mosquito net by the end of the year."

The US$14.5 million project to distribute 2.7 million nets is funded by the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The nets will be distributed by the National Malaria Control Centre with technical assistance from WHO.

Speaking at the launch on 7 November in the remote northeastern province of Kratie, Health Minister Mom Bun Heng told about 1,000 residents: "It is urgent that we help people living in forest areas as they are at great risk of contracting malaria, particularly after the recent flooding."

The project aims to distribute 785,000 insecticide-treated nets in six provinces this month, including three of those hit hardest by the worst flooding in more than a decade.

Heavy flooding According to the National Committee for Disaster Management, the floods killed about 250 people and affected about 10 percent of the country's population, or 1.5 million people.

Out of 18 provinces affected by floods, Kandal, Kampong Thom, Prey Veng and Kampong Cham remain the hardest-hit, with relief organizations still finding it difficult to reach many affected communities. More than 250,000 displaced people have reportedly returned to their places of origin, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs stated on 10 November.

"This distribution of insecticide-treated nets is also necessary in the aftermath of the floods. As the waters recede we expect malaria to rise within six to eight weeks as malaria-carrying mosquitoes start breeding in pools of stagnant water," Bjorge said. "So these bed nets will help the flood-affected people protect themselves against malaria."

In December, 1,915,000 insecticide-treated nets will be distributed in 13 provinces, the health ministry said.

The National Malaria Centre has also planned a workshop to set national treatment guidelines for malaria at the end of this month. "Cambodia has yet to adopt a single first-line Artemisinin combination treatment for malaria," WHO's spokesman, Sonny Inbaraj Krishnan, said.

In western Cambodia, the combination first-line treatment is dihydroartemisinin-piperaquin (DHA-P) and in the rest of Cambodia Artemisinin-Melfoquine (A+M) is used. "A+M is not used in western Cambodia because the malaria parasites there are resistant to Melfoquine," Krishnan said.

In the first nine months of 2011, there were 43,991 reported malaria infections and 64 deaths, compared with 38,321 infections and 82 deaths in the same period last year, the National Centre for Malaria reported.

According to WHO, in 2000, the number of treated malaria cases in Cambodia stood at 129,167 with 608 deaths. In 2010, that dropped to 56,217 and 135 deaths, down 78 percent.

At the Cambodian National Health Congress in March, Prime Minister Hun Sen set a target for eliminating deaths from malaria by 2015, and infections by 2025.

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Danish support to Cambodian flood victims

Life With Dignity (LWD), supported by Denmark, recently distributed more food, water purifiers and mosquito nets worth US$55,000 to 1,424 families affected by flood in Battambang and Kampong Chhnang provinces.

This is the second time that LWD pooled resources locally and internationally in order to help Cambodian flood victims.

The humanitarian aid was donated by the Royal Danish Embassy, Danida upon an appeal for emergency relief made by ACT Allinace’s members in Cambodia namely LWD, Church World Service (CWS), DanChurchAid/Christian Aid (DCA/CA) and FinnChurchAid (FCA), all of which formed ACT Cambodia Forum.

The aid, which was administered by LWD in cooperation with DCA/CA and under the strong support of the Provincial Committee for Disaster Management (PCDM), aimed to release sufferings of the flood-affected people.

As the aid was limited, families who were mostly affected by flood and received less donations to date were selected as the recipients. They included 743 families from 3 communes in Kampong Laeng and 2 communes in Chulkiri districts of Kampong Chhnang and 681 families from 3 communes of 3 districts of Thmarkoul, Ek Phnom, and Sangkae in Battambang.

Speaking at the distribution ceremony at Tapon commune of Sangkae district, Dr. Sam Inn, LWD Executive Director, expressed his sympathy for the flood victims and advised them to take care of their health during the flood, especially taking care of small children who are the most vulnerable.

"Despite losing houses, properties, and animals, please don’t lose hope. We have to overcome any difficulty caused by flood," he said.

"We will try our best to raise more funds in order to restore flood damage. We will cooperate with local authorities at all levels to explore top priorities in order to improve the livelihood of the affected people," he added.

Tom Barthel Hansen, Head of Representation of the Royal Danish Embassy, Danida, in Cambodia, said today’s donation was from the Danish government as well as the people of Denmark. “The huge part of today donation is the international solidarity of Denmark and Cambodia,” he said, adding that Cambodia faced a lot of poverty and political challenges, but Khmer people are strong to overcome these challenges.

He also deeply thanked LWD for channeling the donation of the Danish government to help the flood-affected people in Kampong Chhnang and Battambang.

H.E. Uy Ry, Battambang Deputy Governor, expressed his deep thanks to the Danish government for their generous support to help Cambodian flood victims. He also thanked LWD and DanChurchAid/CA for their efforts in managing the distributions.

At the distribution ceremony in Peam Chhkaok commune of Kampong Chhnang’s Chulkiri district, H.E Hy Nat, Kampong Chhnang Deputy Governor, deeply thanked and requested LWD to provide more emergency aid for the remaining victims and continue its support to recover the damaged rice farms.

Mr. Chhuon Vuthy, LWD Human Resource Manager, expressed his sincere thanks to the Royal Danish Embassy and the Danish people for their generous support to help the Cambodian flood victims in a timely manner. “Though the donation is small, this is the culture of sharing sufferings and helping each other,” he said.

Each family received a kit of 25kg of husked rice, 1 liter of cooking oil, 1kg of ionic salts, 400g of detergent, 1 set of 13-liter water purifier, 1 mosquito net for those who live in malaria-prone areas, and 1packet of Diarrhea Treatment (Orasel) for those who didn’t receive it before.

The floods hitting Cambodia since August have affected 1.2 million people, killed 247 people, and destroyed 230,000 hectares of paddy fields, according to National Committee for Disaster Management.
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