Cambodia reopens Sihanoukville airport

Tue, Jan. 23,200

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - The airport at Sihanoukville, Cambodia's main coastal city, has reopened with hopes high that it will further spur travel and the country's burgeoning tourism industry. A Soviet-made Antonov-24 plane belonging to a locally owned airline company landed at the Sihanoukville airport following an opening ceremony Jan. 13, said Norinda Khek, spokesman for Societe Concessionnaire des Aeroports, or SCA, a subsidiary of the French construction group Vinci.

He said the plane flew from Siem Reap province, Cambodia's main tourist hub, and that it carried 11 passengers, who were airline staff flying on the promotional trip. It was the first landing at the airport in the last three years, he added.

The airport had been closed for reconstruction.

The airport, located about 115 miles southwest of the capital Phnom Penh, is expected to serve as the first air link between Sihanoukville and Siem Reap, home to the famous Angkor temples, deputy tourism minister Thong Khon said.

He said he hoped the airport's reopening would encourage tourists to extend their stay to enjoy Cambodia's sandy beaches after touring the temples.

"This is part of our strategy in linking the two tourist destinations," he said, adding that 1.7 million tourists visited Cambodia last year, about a 20 percent increase over 2005.

Tourism has become a major source of income for the cash-strapped Southeast Asian country.
Norinda Khek said that the airport will host only domestic flights because its mile-long runway can accommodate only propeller planes.

But he said the company plans to extend the runway to 1.4 miles to handle jet aircraft by the end of the year. Read more!

Cambodia will claw poachers

BANGKOK, Jan 23 (IPS) - A regional wildlife body is aiming to spread its net wide to trap poachers and illegal loggers, now that a section of Cambodia's nature crime investigators have been armed with new legal tools. A week-long training programme held at Sihanoukville, the main beach resort in that South-east Asian nation, was geared to plug a gap that has long helped major wildlife criminals to get away -- investigations that were too weak to build legal cases.

''Prosecution has always been a problem in Cambodia. There have been very few successful cases,'' Steven Galster, director of field operations at WildAid, the global conservation lobby, told IPS from the site of the training, which ended Tuesday. ‘'We have trained them to set up long-term investigations and to build strong cases to catch the criminals.'' The skills that the 31 Cambodian officers from agencies like the police, the forest department and the customs have acquired are part of a drive by the ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement Network (ASEAN-WEN) to mount a counter offensive against the region's illegal wildlife trade, a multimillion-dollar industry. ASEAN, which stands for the Association of South-east Asian Nations, is a 10-member bloc that includes Brunei, Burma (or Myanmar), Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam. ASEAN-WEN was set up in December 2005.

The need to save Cambodia's wildlife is best captured in the fate of one of its prized predators, the tiger, which is on the verge of extinction. WildAid has also documented other species that have been targeted by poachers, such as pythons, elongated tortoise and pangolins. Other conservation groups like TRAFFIC, the global wildlife trade monitoring network, say that Cambodia's bears, monitor lizards, crocodiles and macaques are as vulnerable to the claws of the poachers. Cambodia's wildlife has become increasingly in demand as ‘'stocks run dry in Vietnam,'' James Compton, TRAFFIC's South-east Asia regional director, said in an interview.

The growing demand from Vietnam and China, neighbouring countries which have been enjoying a long spell of rapid economic growth, has seen the demand for wildlife and wildlife products rise, he said. ‘'(They are used) for traditional medicine, wild meat, pets and private zoos.'' TRAFFIC recently noticed Vietnamese traders on the Vietnam-Cambodian border ‘'commissioning Cambodian poachers to hunt a shopping list of wildlife species,'' Compton revealed. ‘'Wildlife trade is very lucrative and is therefore attracting the business and entrepreneurial community who stand to gain significantly from this trade.''

A study by the World Bank in 2005 offers a glimpse at the profits involved. The wildlife trade in Vietnam in 2002 was estimated at 66.5 million US dollars, the Bank noted in ‘Going, Going, Gone: The Illegal Trade in Wildlife in East Asia and Southeast Asia.' In Indonesia, the study added, an average of over 50 tigers were killed every year from 1998 to 2002. Cambodia's wildlife had been part of this supply chain in the 1970s, too, when the country, caught in a bloody civil war and drawn into the war in Vietnam, came under the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. ‘'By the late 1970s, Cambodia's Khmer Rouge had traded 25 million dollars worth of wild animal parts to the Chinese for weapons and supplies,'' adds the Bank's study. And as Cambodia's small team of rangers working in the country's pristine forests well know, trying to fight the poachers or illegal loggers comes with a high risk, including being attacked by poachers.

In September 2005, for instance, two forest rangers were killed by loggers along the boundary of the Phnom Aurual Wildlife Sanctuary, which lies east of Phnom Penh. A daunting challenge, says the London-based environmental group Global Witness, is one posed by the corruption linked to highly-placed government officials thriving on the illegal logging trade, which has severely depleted the forests. ‘'Wherever there is a forest in Cambodia, there is illegal logging,'' Jon Buckrell, forest policy coordinator at Global Witness, told IPS. ‘'It goes hand-in-hand with systemic corruption. Illegal logging is the preserve of the powerful and well connected -- if you are a poor farmer you cannot simply walk into a forest and start cutting down valuable trees.''

Recent policy decisions by Phnom Penh are expected to worsen this environment, Buckrell said, pointing to new economic land concessions granted ‘'to create plantations'' in natural forest areas. ‘'These permits are illegal and designed to provide a pretext for companies to undertake clear-cutting operations and sell the timber.'' Cambodia's loss of an estimated 2.5 million hectares of forest cover between 1990 and 2005 has even alarmed the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Troubled by the rampant scale of illegal logging in the 1990s, the IMF cancelled a 120 million US-dollar loan. Galster, of WildAid, concedes that corruption will be an issue for the newly trained nature crime investigators, ‘'Corruption is an issue, but half the problem is the lack of skills to deal with the major criminals.'' Read more!

Psychologist seeks to examine 'jungle woman' in Cambodia

Jan. 23,2007

A SPANISH psychologist traveled to see Cambodia's "jungle woman" yesterday to evaluate her condition since she was recently discovered naked and unable to speak after apparently spending nearly two decades alone in the wild. Hector Rifa, a doctor of psychology from Spain's University of Oviedo, said he wanted mainly to make sure the woman was treated properly for what appears to have been a traumatic experience. But it is also possible he may find clues to the woman's true identity - whether she is indeed a local girl who went missing in 1988, as claimed by a family in northeastern Cambodia who has taken her in as their long lost daughter.

Rifa was driving 13 hours yesterday from Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh to meet with the woman in Rattanakiri province's Oyadao district. The family of a village policeman there, Sal Lou, says they are certain the woman is Rochom P'ngieng because of a scar they can recognize on her right arm. The girl disappeared while tending water buffalo when she was eight years old.

With no other evidence supporting the claim, however, her actual identity is a mystery to other people, who speculate that she may just be a troubled person who became lost much more recently in the jungle. In any case, her inability to communicate and evident attempts to escape from the family that has given her shelter indicate she is in a difficult psychological situation."We need to make an evaluation of the situation because until now nobody was taking care" of her, said Rifa, who has been working in Cambodia on health promotion for indigenous people in the province over the past four years for the Spain-based group Psychology Without Borders.

He said he thinks the woman's case may not be anything more extraordinary than that of any other person having difficulty adapting to normal life after being lost in the jungle for an extended period."It is not extraordinary ... or anything coming from another world," he said.

Many villagers believed she may be possessed by a jungle spirit. On Monday, two Cambodian human rights groups expressed fear the woman may be suffering from the spotlight cast on her since she emerged from the wild, and offered to provide any necessary medical and psychiatric treatment. Read more!

EU increasingly impatient with Cambodia over anti-corruption law

Jan 23, 2007, 7:55

Phnom Penh - International donors are increasingly impatient with delays in implementation of a long-awaited anti-corruption law, German Ambassador to Cambodia Pius Fischer said Tuesday.

Fischer, who is the acting European Union (EU) president, called it an important issue for EU policy in Cambodia and could not be sidestepped.

'We strongly advocate the fight against corruption and the early adoption of an anti-corruption law in Cambodia,' he said after addressing a seminar on EU-Cambodian relations in Phnom Penh.

'We cannot debate any longer. For 10 years the royal Cambodian government has discussed a law against corruption. Now is the time to act and implement that law.'

Fischer also warned that implementation was as important as the law itself, and donors would be happy with no less than a politically independent anti-corruption body which can 'locate, integrate and develop cases against corruption.'

Endemic corruption has consistently been cited as a major hurdle to Cambodia's development.
Last November, Berlin-based Transparency International ranked Cambodia at 151 out of 163 countries in its 2006 corruption perceptions index survey.

The group made its ranking on a definition of corruption as 'the abuse of public office for private gain.' Cambodia scored just 2.1 points out of 10, earning it the second lowest position in Asia, ahead of only Myanmar.

Donors have repeatedly threatened to withhold funds from aid-dependent Cambodia if it continues to delay adopting the law. The government promised a new law by the end of last year but later announced that it needed to make changes to the penal code first.

As well as being an important donor to Cambodia, the EU is also a powerful trading partner, ranking as Cambodia's second most-important destination for exports and its sixth leading source of imports, according to 2005 trade statistics, with Germany at the top of the list. Read more!

Hun Sen to allow firms to import oil over borders

Prime Minister Hun Sen has announced that he will allow private companies to import gasoline from Thailand, Laos and Vietnam in order to cut down its prices and contain smuggling, local media said on Monday.

The high price of gasoline because of gas smuggling by paying the sum to currupted border authorities. The price of gasoline had been staying high for several months and causing economic harship. The government had lost million dollars in tax.

Hun Sen declared his decision during a meeting at the Council of Ministers here on Friday, after Ministry of Finance and Economy failed to convince the five main gas traders operating in the country to lower their prices, the Cambodian Daily quoted government spokesman and Information Minister Kiheu Kanharith as saying.

"Hun Sen is allowing any company to import lower-priced gasoline to Cambodia. We can not wait for the companies (to lower their prices), or it will be too late," he said.
The five companies are Caltex Cambodian Ltd, Total Cambodge, Sokimex, Kampuchea Tela Co. Ltd, and PTT (Cambodia) Ltd.

They told the paper that the introduction of new traders to import gasoline will not affect the current gasoline price, but it may help combat smuggling. The question is why is not going to affect gas prices? are some of the above gas companies belong to high ranking government officials, may be? or they have to pay some bribe to high ranking officials.

About 30 percent of gasoline price is paid to the government as tax, they added.
The opposition Sam Rainsy Party has been pressing the government in recent months to make efforts to decrease gasoline price in order to benefit the mass.

Cambodia's gas prices are among the highest in the region, almost one U.S. dollar per liter. There is something wrong in somewhere that force the gas price have to be high in order to survive their business. Or may be the Law disorder in Cambodia is good for the looting. Read more!

France donates over 124 mln euro to Cambodia

France has donated 124.5 million euro (some 161.5 million U.S. dollars) for Cambodia to promote its work in various sector from 2006 to 2010, an official told Xinhua here on Monday.

"The finance will be used for help Cambodia upgrade its work in the sectors of health and anti-HIV/AIDS missions, education, agriculture, court and law system, environment and bio-diversity, food security, French language study, irrigation system, restoration of ancient temples in Angkor Wat complex, training of Cambodian judges, scholarship for Cambodian students to study in France," said Ros Simara, director of Information Department of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

About 4.5 million euro (some 5.8 million U.S. dollars) of the fund will be going for Siem Reap to optimize its tourism layout to facilitate influx of more foreign visitors.

The donation was made recently when Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Hor Nam Hong met with a French delegation, she said.

The deputy prime minister also requested the French to help Cambodia develop its rubber plantation sector, she added.

Source: Xinhua Read more!

Bomb substance for Bangkok blast not from Cambodia: Official

The chemical substance for making the bombs of the Bangkok explosion on the eve of the new year is not from Cambodia, government spokesman Khieu Kanharidh said here on Monday.

Thai people could buy the chemical substance for making the bombs in their own country, they did not have to buy them from Cambodia, said Kanharith, who is also Information Minister.

Thai security authority should show the evidence while telling out the powder provider for the blast that killed three and injured about 40 Thai people, he said.

Cambodia has been cooperating closely with other countries to fight against terrorism and other criminal acts, he added.

The minister made his remarks after a Thai security agency official told an Australian Newspaper that the Jihad Islam (JI) terrorist group bought the chemical substances in Cambodia to make the bombs of the New Year's Eve explosion.

Source: Xinhua Read more!

Experts: Cambodia Needs Tourism Overhaul

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Cambodia should not rely on its famous Angkor Wat temple complex to sustain its tourism industry, and should be looking to develop other destinations as well, officials said Monday. Cambodia has so many beautiful things that could be developed as tourist places.

The advice was given by tourism experts at the launch of a booklet meant to encourage tourists to stay longer to enjoy other attractions that Cambodia has to offer beside its centuries-old monuments.

The country's tourism sector has been developing rapidly in the past few years, becoming a major source of income for the cash-strapped Southeast Asian country. About 1.7 million tourists visited Cambodia last year, roughly a 20 percent increase over 2005.

About half of the visitors went to see Angkor temples in Siem Reap province, Cambodia's main tourism hub.

"One never can take rising streams of tourists for granted," Daniel Haas, first secretary of the German Embassy in Cambodia, said at the launch of the "Stay Another Day Cambodia" booklet.
"Having a wonderful attraction like Angkor Wat is no guarantee that tourists will keep coming to Cambodia," he said, noting the country has attractions beyond its historic culture.

The booklet features products and services including eco-tours, local cuisine and cooking classes, traditional massage, visits to development projects, orphanages, rehabilitation centers, artisans and the concerts of master musicians.

Kate Lloyd-Williams _ tourism program manager of the Mekong Private Sector Development Facility, which produced the booklet with sponsorship from Germany _ said most tourists simply "fly away" after touring the temples, buying some souvenirs and taking some pictures.

"As we all know, tourists spend less time and money in Cambodia than they do in neighboring countries," she said. Read more!

Japan donates 10.5 mln USD for Cambodia to develop economy

Japan has donated 10.5 millions U.S. dollars to Cambodia to help it construct infrastructure and improve its economic structure adjustment, Deputy Prime Minister Hor Nam Hong said in Phnom Penhon Monday.

"This grant aid will be used for the detailed design of the execution of the project for flood prevention and drainage improvement in Phnom Penh and the improvement of the economic structure adjustment efforts by the Royal Government of Cambodia, said Hor, who is also Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

"The finance can help develop the Cambodian economy and social development," Hor added at a press conference held at his ministry.

Earlier, Hor and Japanese Ambassador Fumiaki Takahashi signed the exchange of notes about the extension of the grant aid in presence of Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Meanwhile, Phnom Penh Governor Ke Chu Tema told reporters that later this year Japan is expected to offer 22 million U.S. dollars for Phnom Penh to build riverbanks, flood prevention facility and drainage system.

Since 1993, Japan has extended more than 142 million U.S. dollars of non-project grant aid to Cambodia to help solve its economic difficulties, according to official statistics.

Source: Xinhua Read more!

World survey: Thailand 'no longer free'

(BangkokPost.com, Freedom House)

The year 2006 saw little change in the global state of freedom in the world and the emergence of a series of worrisome trends that present potentially serious threats to the expansion of freedom in the future, Freedom House says in its annual survey of global freedom made available today."Freedom in the World 2007," a survey of worldwide political rights and civil liberties, found that the percentage of countries designated as Free has remained flat for nearly a decade and suggests that a “freedom stagnation” may be developing.

Two countries experienced negative status changes: both Thailand and Congo (Brazzaville) moved from Partly Free to Not Free. Freedom House had condemned the Thailand coup from the beginning. "Along with friends of Thailand everywhere, Freedom House hopes for a speedy return to constitutional rule," it said last year."Thailand has ipso facto ceased to be a democracy.

No matter the rationale - and the restoration of democracy and the end of corruption are frequently cited as justification for coups the world over - no group that gains power through a coup can be accepted as legitimate by democratic governments."Asia experienced the largest proportion of lowered scores in 2006. The dominant development was the military-led coup that ousted Thailand’s democratically elected prime minister.

But other countries previously considered showcases of Asian freedom, including the Philippines and East Timor, also experienced setbacks. In addition, ethnic and religious divisions were a major problem in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Fiji. The region’s most important positive development was Nepal’s climb from Not Free to Partly Free due to the end of direct rule by the king and the return of parliament.Sixteen of Asia’s 39 countries are Free (41 per cent), while 12 are Partly Free (31 per cent) and 11 are Not Free (28 per cent). The continued weakness of democratic institutions—even after holding democratic elections—in a number of countries continues to hamper further progress.

“Although the past 30 years have seen significant gains for political freedom around the world, the number of Free countries has remained largely unchanged since the high point in 1998. Our assessment points to a freedom stagnation that has developed in the last decade,” said Jennifer Windsor, Executive Director of Freedom House, “and should lead to renewed policy attention to addressing the obstacles that are preventing further progress.” Regionally, major findings include a setback for freedom in a number of countries in the Asia-Pacific region, a more modest decline in Africa, and a solidification of authoritarian rule in the majority of countries of the former Soviet Union.

Three countries experienced positive status changes: Guyana moved from Partly Free to Free, and Haiti and Nepal moved from Not Free to Partly Free. Freedom House also noted that the trends reflected the growing pushback against democracy driven by authoritarian regimes, including Russia, Venezuela, China, Iran, and Zimbabwe, threatening to further erode the gains made in the last thirty years. The pushback is targeted at organisations, movements, and media that advocate for the expansion of democratic freedoms. Read more!

Cambodia's `jungle woman' trying to escape

TIRED OF CIVILIZATION: Villagers in Oyadao have turned the family's hut into the must-see attraction, with dozens of locals and journalists stopping by to peer inside.

At their rural home in Oyadao, Rattanak Kiri Province, about 660km north east of Phnom Penh. Cambodia's "jungle woman" seemed to be tiring of civilization and has repeatedly tried to escape back into the wild where she lived for nearly two decades before being discovered last week, her presumed brother said yesterday.

"Last night, she tried some tricks to run back to the jungle," said Rochom Khamphi, who has claimed Rochom P'ngieng as his long-lost older sister.

He said his sister -- who does not speak any intelligible language and only uses hand signals to indicate her basic needs -- indicated she wanted to go outside to relieve herself and then made a break for freedom.

"On the second visit to toilet, she removed her shirt ... and was about to make a move to run," he said.

He said his mother managed to grab her and called out for the rest of the family to help bring her back into the house.

But inside the house, the woman refused to sleep and made several moves toward the front door, Rochom Khamphi, 25, said, adding that the entire family was "sleepless the whole night" because they had to guard her.

Rochom P'ngieng, now believed to be 27, disappeared in the jungle of Rattanakiri Province in Cambodia's northeast while herding water buffaloes when she was 8 years old, according to Sal Lou, who has claimed the woman as his daughter.

Her family says she was found on Jan. 13 walking like a "monkey" out of the jungle. But since then, she continues to mesmerize villagers in Oyadao town, about 70km east of the provincial capital.

Villagers in Oyadao, a town of 100 people, have simply dubbed her "jungle woman" and turned the family's hut into the must-see attraction, with dozens of locals and journalists stopping by to peer inside for a look at her.

Unable to communicate in a language the villagers understand, Rochom P'ngieng's whereabouts the past two decades remain unclear.

Many questions remain about the circumstances of her disappearance and what happened to her, said Mao San, police chief of Oyadao District.

"I suspect there may be a family or someone out there still alive that might have gotten hold of her the whole time," he said on Saturday.

"I still have many questions unanswered," he said. "We would like to have blood taken for DNA testing to ascertain the case. Only by that can we end the suspicion," he added. Read more!

Silent jungle girl poses yet more riddles for Cambodia

Michael Sheridan, Far East Correspondent

THE father sets hot water before his daughter in their wooden shack. She reaches out to touch it. Then she recoils in shock and runs from the room.

After 18 years lost in the jungles of northeast Cambodia, she has forgotten what hot water is, along with all the other rudimentary comforts of peasant life.

This weekend the questions are multiplying about how the girl vanished in 1989, what she endured in the jungle and why she was not found until villagers stood guard to catch a thief last weekend.

Her fear was what struck the first independent eyewitnesses to see her, Yun Samean and Erik Wasson, the reporters who published their first-hand account in yesterday’s Cambodia Daily newspaper.

“She just sat there and stared at us remaining entirely quiet,” said Yun Samean yesterday. “She seemed very frightened.

“She is so afraid of unfamiliar things that when her father boiled water, she reached out to touch it and was so surprised to find it was hot that she ran away to her room.”

The girl has already tried to flee once, tearing off her clothes to rush back into the jungle, said Yun Samean.

She has been living for a week in a village of the Phnong ethnic minority, who inhabit the jungles of northeastern Cambodia, at least 16 hours’ drive from the capital, Phnom Penh.

Although the Phnong follow no organised religion, the family took her to a Buddhist pagoda, where monks sprinkled her with holy water and chanted sutras to calm her spirit.

Now she has become entranced by the family’s collection of DVDs. Like many poor rural Cambodians, they have enough money for an electrical generator and a DVD player.

She is trying to get used to life among the family that has claimed her as their long-lost daughter and spends her days and nights watching the films or sitting glassy-eyed while curious locals come to stare at her.

They attribute the girl’s loss of speech and traumatised behaviour to 18 years as the companion of a jungle spirit who has now abandoned her.

There is a mystery over the figure of a wild, ragged man with glaring eyes and a sword, who fled into the jungle when the girl was found. Some villagers say he was the spirit. And there is a further enigma over the fate of the girl’s sister, who vanished on the same day in 1989.

Police, social workers and members of the extended village family are bemused by the woman’s reappearance and there is as much confusion over her future as her past.

The girl’s name is Rocham Phoeung, now 28, and her missing sister was called Rocham Boeung, according to the man who says he is their father, local policeman Sar Yo, 45.

“She was naked and walking in a bending-forward position like a monkey, exactly like a monkey. She was bare-bones skinny,” he said.

But he checked her right arm. There he found a scar, just as his daughter had from an accident with a knife before she disappeared: “She looked terrible, but despite all that, she is my child.”

Rochom Khamphi, 25, her brother, said: “I saw the scar right away and I knew that she is my sister. Then tears just rolled from my eyes. That’s the proof. I remember it very clearly — I’m not making it up, because I was the one who caused the injury.”

The villagers told how they had been pestered in recent months by a strange thief, who stole food from rations left by workers around a small sawmill on the fringe of the forest.

The sawmill workers lay in wait last Saturday morning. To their amazement, a naked, dirty woman came out of the undergrowth on all fours, like a big cat. She was followed by an unkempt, straggle-haired man, also naked, who had a sword in his hand. The two parties stared at each other in mutual terror.

“The villagers told us they were very frightened because the man had great wide glaring eyes,” said Yun Samean.

Recovering their wits, the villagers chased the pair but the man vanished. They surrounded the girl and brought her to the nearest settlement, a village called O’Yadaw.

“The family told us they recognised her at once,” said Yun Samean, “and I could see that she has a strong resemblance to her sister and her mother.”

The mother, Rocham Soy, 41, told him: “This is my daughter, I am sure of it.” She now yearns to know what became of her other missing daughter.

The family have consented to medical tests to establish their relationship but they face a dilemma. Rocham Phoeung cannot communicate in any tongue and can shed no light on what befell her sister or what happened to her in the jungle.

She appears relatively normal after a week in which she was bathed, given a haircut and provided with ordinary Cambodian clothes. But the reporters noted a thick weal above her left wrist, suggesting she may have been tied up for long periods.

The local police, who are as fearful of ghosts and spirits as most Cambodians, have declined to go into the jungle in pursuit of the fugitive wild man.

Rocham Phoeung’s family hope she can learn to speak again, that she may get psychological help and go back to school, 18 years late.

Read more!

Cambodia opts for ePassport labels

Malaysian ePassport systems supplier IRIS Corporation has signed a contract with Southeastasianet Technologies (SEANET) to supply ePassport labels, ePassport systems and automated border control systems to The Ministry of Interior, Kingdom of Cambodia. SEANET is the prime contractor on the project having been awarded a 15-years concession by the Cambodian Government.

The Cambodian project appears to be the first in Asia to use ePassport labels. According to IRIS, this gives the country the ability to laminate contactless IC chips into existing passport books (either previously issued or stock items). This addresses a challenge faced by countries who have large stockpiles of conventional passport books.

The scope of the project also includes the IRIS’ ePassport system for enrolment, personalization and issuance of ePassports, and IRIS’ automated border control solution. IRIS’ electronic identity management system, IdenCraft, will also be used. This system handles security, inventory, workflow, personalization and lifecycle requirements.

According to the supplier, the deliverables will adhere to International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards and deliver a multi-level identity management solution combining fingerprints, facial characteristics, biodata and signature capture. Read more!

5 kids injured in Cambodia mine blast

PHNOM PENH, Jan. 21 (Xinhua): The explosion of two mines wounded five children on Saturday in Thmor Pouk district, Battambang province, some 250 km northwest of the capital city, police source told Xinhua by phone.

Two of them were heavily injured, while the other three slightly over the blast in Sre Laor village, said Yort Rai, Deputy Police Chief of the district.

"They found the two mines in a black plastic bag behind their village and thought that it was make-up powder boxes. They hit them with a stick in order to take off the shells and sell them to waste-pickers. They then exploded," he said.

The two injured seriously were sent to a children's hospital in Battambang provincial town, he added.

"The girl suffered from injuries on face, hands and chest. Both children may become blind and lose their hands," he said, adding that the four boys and one girl were from four to seven-years-old.

Earlier on Friday, seven mine cleaners died over the blast of three anti-tank mines in Komrieng district, Battambang province.

According to the Cambodia Mine Action Center, there were more than 400 human casualties over mine and UXO (unexploded ordnance) explosions in 2006 in Cambodia, or 50 per cent decrease over the average number of the previous six years.

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

All the mines and UXO may take another 150 years for the kingdom to clear out, statistics say. Read more!

A retired Hawaii Kai couple uses deposites to help villagers

Cans for Cambodia
By Pat Gee

Sometimes onlookers mistake Florence Doi for a homeless woman looking for food through trash cans at public parks. It doesn't bother her a bit.

For every bottle or can she finds, Doi gets a 5-cent refund, and in Cambodia, that is enough to buy a meal of rice for two children, she said.

Her husband, Takeshi Terada, might grumble a bit about the gas it takes to make their daily scavenging rounds, then take the load to a redemption recycling center. But Terada just likes to "kid her," he said.

The retired, elderly couple from Hawaii Kai admit their charity work has become somewhat of an overwhelming, full-time job with all the collecting, rinsing and sorting of cans and bottles.

"(But) when you think about the value of the outcome, that you can help people in Cambodia, it's very worthwhile. ... One-hundred percent (of the refund) goes to charity," Terada said.
They just returned from their third trip to poverty-stricken Cambodian villages with an outreach group from the University Avenue Baptist Church. The group started going seven years ago and is made up mostly of Cambodian refugees, led by Bible teacher Hongly Khuy.

Khuy, himself a refugee, calls the suburbs outside of Phnom Penh "scavenger villages -- they live on the rubbish (they collect)."

Doi saw "a black and smelly village," emitting the smoke of rubbish fires, and children rummaging through garbage when she first visited Cambodia in 2004. She turned to her husband and said, "Let's be the scavengers for them. Let's go out into the beaches and parks, and go into the rubbish cans."

"I was so touched by what I saw. I couldn't think of anything else."

Although the couple cannot speak to the villagers in their language, "we talk with our eyes," Doi said. "The mothers' eyes -- they are just so full of disbelief that they are getting this rice."
This year, they bought $2,000 worth of rice (equivalent to 20,000 pounds) in Cambodia, along with other items, such as saimin, small toiletry items, medicine, Bibles and reading glasses for 300 villagers.

In addition to their recycling efforts, the couple has weekly garage sales at their Kuliouou Street home to sell items that are dropped off by friends, neighbors and people who have heard of it through word of mouth. The couple also picks up hundreds of bottles weekly from Makiki Christian Church.

Within two days of returning from their trip Jan. 3, the couple got more than 2,000 plastic or glass bottles and cans from people who dropped off the items in their garage.

"We raised $88 in two days. These nickels really add up fast," Doi said. "People are very giving. I don't know who they are. They must come to the garage sale and see pictures of (us) in Cambodia hanging in the garage."

She added, "People started dropping things off because they don't want to see us picking through garbage. ... Japanese people don't want to be seen picking through rubbish, but we think, 'Ooh, this is going to feed two children' (whenever they find a bottle)."

Their evening sojourns to Sandy Beach are made as much to enjoy the natural beauty and peaceful surroundings as they are to go through some 30 rubbish barrels. Park regulars are so friendly and save bottles and cans for them, too, Doi added.

"Once a man asked me, 'Lady, you hungry?' and offered me money. ... Maybe they think we're poor. In Hawaii, people are so kind. ... Their hearts open up very big."

If you have recyclables you want to donate to the couple's cause, call 396-0850.

Read more!

Cambodia 'Jungle Woman' yields no clues

By KER MUNTHIT

ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

OYADAO, Cambodia -- A woman who emerged from the jungles of Cambodia a week ago, burbling, grunting and walking bent over, is still giving up none of her secrets, even to the family that has taken her in as their presumed long-lost daughter.

Dubbed a "jungle woman" by residents of this remote district in the northeastern province of Rattanakiri, she is claimed by a local family to be 27-year-old Rochom P'ngien, who went missing at the age of eight when herding buffalo in 1988.

But unable to speak any words the villagers can understand, the woman cannot solve any of the mystery that surrounds her disappearance for nearly two decades.

Villagers expressed skepticism Friday that the woman could survive on her own in the jungle and said she was apparently found with her hair trimmed short.

"If she was in the jungle for 19 years, why was her hair short?" said Cheat Ki, a shopkeeper in the village. "It should have been long unless someone cut the hair for her in the jungle."

Many questions remain about the circumstances of her disappearance and what happened to her, said Mao San, police chief of Oyadao district. Officials want to take DNA samples from the parents and the woman to see if they match, and the parents have agreed, he said.

She was captured, naked, on Jan. 13 after a villager caught her taking food from a lunch box he left at a site near his farm, said local police.

Village policeman Sal Lou described his first glimpse of the woman: "She was naked and walking in a bending-forward position like a monkey, exactly like a monkey. She was bare-bones skinny." Her eyes were red like a tiger's, he said, and he felt fear.

But he checked her right arm. There he found a scar, just as his daughter had from an accident with a knife before she disappeared.

0"She looked terrible, but despite all of that, she is my child," he said. Objective evidence for the relationship, beyond a certain physical resemblance, is thin. But Sal Lou is not the only family member claiming Rochom P'ngien has returned at last.

Rochom Khamphi, 25, said that the moment she arrived at their house with Sal Lou he went to grab her right arm to check for the scar.

"I saw the scar right away and I knew that she is my sister," he said Friday. "Then tears just rolled down from my eyes. That's the proof. I remember it very clearly -- I'm not making it up, because I was the one who caused the injury."

Despite be taken into Sal Lou's extended family, the woman's heart may remain in the jungle. On Thursday she took off her clothes and acted as if she was about to go back into the wild, Sal Lou said.

Restraining her, the family took her to a nearby Buddhist pagoda for a monk to give her a holy water blessing to expel any evil spirits that may have possessed her, he said.

For members of the Pnong minority - who normally are not members of any organized religion, but instead are animists who revere nature - the move was unusual.

"We worship no religion but we took the advice of some elderly Khmer (ethnic Cambodian) people to have the holy water blessing done to chase the evils souls from her body," said Sal Lou, as his presumed daughter sat next to him, motionless as a stone.

She spends her days sitting or lying on the floor, sleeping or staring glassy-eyed at the scores of visitors who come to gawk at her in the dirty, ramshackle house she now shares with 12 other people.

The element of wildness is evident as well to a neighbor, Cheat Ki, and it frightens her.
"I was so scared, scared of evil spirits that might have come with her," she said. "At night before we went to sleep, after seeing her, I told my children to lock the door for fear that some evil might come and strangle us.

Read more!

Congress acted to rein in Nixon over Cambodia during Viet War

Thursday, January 18, 2007By Jerome L. Sherman
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

WASHINGTON -- As Pennsylvania's Rep. John Murtha prepares to use his considerable budgetary power to challenge President Bush on Iraq, he could look to the Vietnam War era for examples of successful congressional confrontations with the president over military authority, several historians say.

In April 1970, then-President Richard Nixon announced that he was sending ground troops into Vietnam's southern neighbor, Cambodia. His decision prompted protests across the country and pushed Congress to pass the Cooper-Church Amendment, blocking further troop deployments across the Vietnamese border.

"That is the first concrete example where Congress, through legislation, says 'no' to the president [on the war]," said Julian Zelizer, a Boston University congressional history specialist.
Dr. Zelizer argued that the president's call for 21,500 more troops for Iraq, opposed by a solid majority of Americans, could provide a similar impetus for the new Democrat-controlled 110th Congress.

Mr. Murtha, D-Johnstown, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee's defense spending subcommittee, has said he hopes to limit any escalation of the U.S. commitment in Iraq by requiring strict readiness levels for the military's strategic reserves, units that could react quickly to crises in other parts of the world. He also wants the United States to withdraw its forces from Iraq as quickly as possible.

For an example of how to proceed, Mr. Murtha could look to former Idaho Democratic Sen. Frank Church: "It's time to acknowledge the futility of our continued military intervention in Vietnam," Mr. Church said on the Senate floor the day after Mr. Nixon's announcement of the Cambodia incursion.

The following week, Mr. Church and then-Sen. John S. Cooper, R-Ky., attached an amendment to an appropriations bill that would block spending on U.S. troops in Cambodia.
"Church's strategy was to show they could limit presidential actions," said history professor David F. Schmitz at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., and author of "The Tet Offensive: Politics, War and Public Opinion." "He would have liked withdrawal, but he knew it was politically infeasible."

Mr. Church's amendment eventually passed the Senate, despite heavy lobbying by the Nixon administration. It died in the House. A different version passed both the House and Senate several months later, but it allowed the president to take action when the safety of U.S. troops was at stake. Mr. Nixon used that loophole to continue the air war in Cambodia, Dr. Schmitz said.

In 1973, Congress overwhelmingly approved a new Church-backed amendment, blocking U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia without congressional authorization. By that point, the last U.S. combat troops had already left Vietnam.

The troop "surge" in Iraq could be creating the conditions for a similar showdown between the president and Congress. "There's this sense that, if the executive doesn't start winding the war down, Congress is going to have to do it," Dr. Schmitz said.

The House Democratic leadership hasn't developed a detailed strategy, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a close relationship with Mr. Murtha, such that she will likely support his plans when the Bush administration comes to Congress for a supplemental spending package on Iraq next month.

Besides limiting the troop surge, Mr. Murtha also hopes to try to force closure of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He calls it a stain on America's international credibility.

Any broad actions by the House will face tougher terrain in the Senate, where Democrats hold only a one-seat majority. But several Republicans also have voiced concern about Mr. Bush's Iraq policies.

Indeed, the president and his party may face more political peril today then Mr. Nixon did in the Vietnam era, when he was directing a war that grew under predecessors Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Dr. Zelizer said the Iraq war is more closely linked to Mr. Bush alone.

Congress also clearly has the power to make the president acknowledge calls for change. "When you control the budget, you really control everything," Dr. Zelizer said. "Congress can create amazing headaches for the president." Read more!

Wild jungle girl found in Cambodia

POSTED: 0312 GMT (1112 HKT), January 18, 2007

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) -- A woman who disappeared in the jungles of northeastern Cambodia as a child has been found 19 years later, police and a man claiming to be her father said.

The woman -- identified as Rochom P'ngieng, 27 -- does not speak any intelligible language, according to Sal Lou, a village policeman who said he is her father. Sal Lou said Thursday he recognized his daughter by a scar on her right arm.

Rochom P'ngieng, then 8, disappeared in 1988 while herding buffalo in a remote area, said Chea Bunthoeun, a deputy provincial police chief in Rattanakiri province some 200 miles northeast of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.

The woman was found Saturday after a villager noticed that food had disappeared from a lunch box he left near his farm, Chea Bunthoeun said.

"She was shaking and picking up grains of rice from the ground to eat," Sal Lou, 45, told The Associated Press by telephone from the province's Oyadao district, where the woman was found.

When she is hungry, she pats her stomach as a signal, he said.
"If she is not sleeping, she just sits and glances left and right, left and right," Sal Lou said. He said his family was closely watching the woman, who he said took off her clothes Thursday and acted as if she was going back into the jungle.

Many questions remain about the circumstances of the girl's disappearance and what happened to her, said Mao San, police chief of Oyadao district. Officials want to take DNA samples from the parents and the woman to see if they match, and the parents have agreed, he said. Read more!

Cambodia arrests 3 army generals for involvement in armed robberies

Three army generals were arrested in Phnom Penh on Tuesday for involvement in armed robberies and conspiracy to commit armed robbery, and sent to Battambang province on Wednesday, Sao Sokha, military police commander of Cambodia confirmed to Xinhua by phone.

"We arrested them in Phnom Penh city according to the arrest warrants from Battambang provincial court, so we sent them back to Battambang province today because they committed crimes there ( some 250 kilometers northwest of the capital)," he said.

One-star general Kheang Savorn, 46, two-star general Outh Sakhan, 48, and two-star general Men Saran, 49, were believed to have been involved in "weapon robberies" and conspiracy to commit armed robbery, Sao Sokha said.

Meanwhile, the arrest warrants signed by investigating judge Du Sok Sa Rin from the Battambang provincial court also confirmed that the court accused the three generals of being involved in 18 gun robberies since 2005. Details of the accusation has been disclosed yet.

If found guilty of such crimes, they will face 25 years of imprisonment.
The first general belongs to the opposition Sam Rainsy Party, while the other two are supporters of the co-ruling Funcinpec Party. Cambodia currently has 619 generals nationwide.

Source: Xinhua Read more!

China's CPC delegation holds talks with Cambodia's CPP deputies

A good-will delegation of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on Wednesday in Phnom Penh met with senior representatives of the Cambodian People's Party (CPP) on bilateral exchange and cooperation.

The CPC wants to exchange experiences about governing state with the CPP, said Chen Jianguo, delegation head and secretary of the CPC Ningxia Hui Autonomous Regional Committee.
He also introduced the situation in China, especially that in Ningxia.

Yos Son, member of the CPP Central Committee and chairman of CPP Committee of Foreign Affairs, welcomed the delegation's visit and exchanged views with them in certain fields.
The delegation arrived here on Wednesday on the final leg of a regional tour which also included Laos and Vietnam.

It paid the visit as guest of the CPP and the co-ruling Funcinpec Party.
The delegation is scheduled to meet Funcinpec representatives on Thursday.

Source: Xinhua Read more!