By Cielito Habito
MANILA, Philippines -- Philippine central bank figures released last week tell us that inflows of net foreign direct investment (i.e., not counting portfolio investments or "hot money") from January to July grew a whopping 70 percent over the same period last year, even better than the 50-percent growth posted last year. It would seem from the numbers that attracting foreign investments has not been a major hurdle lately.
But we have a problem. When we add foreign and domestic investments together to get total investments in our economy, the number had been falling continuously from quarter to quarter since early 2005, with the negative growth turning only slightly positive in recent quarters.
What does all this tell us? It takes simple arithmetic to figure out that the domestic part of investment must have been falling rather steeply over the last two years.
Dramatic contrast
Why this dramatic contrast between the behavior of foreign and Filipino investors? Do foreign investors know something that Filipino business people don't? Do foreigners have better faith in our economy's longer term potentials, and are manifesting that confidence in dollar votes for our future? Are Filipino investors too short-sighted and inordinately deterred by short-term distractions--as Malacañang would prefer to characterize our persistent woes on the political and governance front?
Or is it actually the other way around? Do Filipino business people know our country more intimately than their foreign counterparts, and know something that the latter don't? Are Filipinos better-informed and more attuned to our economy's true outlook--and are manifesting it through their own peso votes (or lack of it) for our future? The answer, of course, is for the investors themselves to tell.
Falling far behind
Whichever way it is, the cold hard fact is that we are lagging behind our Southeast Asian neighbors in the way we are investing in our own economy. Between 2002 and 2005, our annual investment growth averaged only 0.6 percent. Compare that to 3 percent in Malaysia, 4 percent in Indonesia, 11 percent in Vietnam and Thailand, and a zooming 20 percent in Cambodia! Have you been to Cambodia lately? The way tourism is booming there and with the rapid facelift Phnom Penh and Siem Reap are undergoing, we may be seeing yet another neighbor threatening to pass us by! And given more recent investment figures, we may be falling even farther behind our neighbors.
Viewed in this light, the government is right in lining up massive investments in infrastructure for the years ahead. I have already pointed out before that our extraordinary jump to 7.5-percent GDP growth is explained entirely by the steep double-digit growth in government spending, both in regular expenses and especially in infrastructure. The government has obviously been trying to pump-prime the economy. The problem is that the pump, so far, refuses to be primed. Private domestic investment has yet to follow the government's lead.
Critical link
Where do we need the investments most? With 61 percent of our 2.8 million unemployed never having gone beyond high school, I have constantly argued that agriculture (including agribusiness) and tourism will be our best bet for creating these much-needed jobs relatively quickly. There remains great job creation potential both within and near our country's farms. A critical link is agri-processing enterprises, which would expand the markets for our farm products, especially nontraditional and high-value crops, both here at home and overseas.
Local governments can play a much stronger role in fostering the right environment to attract more investments to strengthen this critical link. Over the years, our main obstacle in agriculture has been an overcentralized approach to the sector that is prone to inefficiency and graft. Worse, that overcentralized bureaucracy has had the most unstable leadership among major government departments in recent memory.
More than infra
As for tourism, our problem, as I have constantly maintained, lies more in policy and less in infrastructure. With rapidly rising numbers of affluent Chinese and Indian tourists coming out of those countries' zooming economies, there should be great opportunities for a massive increase in our tourism-related jobs. But it seems we are willingly foregoing the opportunities in the way we continue to make it more costly and difficult for those tourists to fly into the Philippines. And this we are doing by unnecessarily limiting the airline seats available, all because our seemingly captured policymakers choose to put the profits of the already lucrative dominant domestic carriers above the wider national interest. (Wonder why Cambodia has been getting far more tourists than we do?)
We can unleash far more job-creating investments by both Filipinos and foreigners than what we manage to get now. But first, our leaders must take to heart what investors appear to be saying loud and clear: Infrastructure investments are good, but what we need, more than anything else, is good governance.
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Sunday, October 14, 2007
Wanted: Filipino investments
Loyal to the old regime
In their last stronghold, the former leaders of the infamous Khmer Rouge are still held with a mixture of respect and affection, writes GEORGE MCLEOD from Anlong Veng
Propaganda posters depicting idealised workers have been replaced by billboards advertising beer, cigarettes and condoms. Karaoke bars and brothels dot the town where army outposts once stood.
But even with the Khmer Rouge regime gone, their ideology appears to have remained intact in their last stronghold, where they clung to power up until 1998, when the Cambodian army finally wiped out the rebel movement.
Kuch, who works at one of the many new guesthouses in the town, just minutes from the grave of former Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, looks back on the Khmer Rouge period with fondness.
"The Khmer Rouge leaders were always good to us," says Kuch, who goes by only one name. "We always had enough food, everybody liked Ta Mok and Nuon Chea," he said, referring to the former Khmer Rouge leaders.
Even after the arrest of Khmer Rouge mastermind Nuon Chea, residents of Anlong Veng cling to old beliefs about the defunct Maoist movement.
Prolonged negotiations between the UN and the Cambodian government saw Nuon Chea's arrest last month on charges of crimes against humanity. The ailing 82-year-old is accused of helping instigate one of the 20th century's worst mass-slaughters.
More than one million Cambodians are thought to have died under the Khmer Rouge regime from 1974-1979. They emptied Cambodia's cities and killed nearly all of the country's intelligentsia; some were executed for simply understanding a foreign language. Rural areas were turned into virtual forced labour camps where hundreds of thousands starved.
The regime was ousted by a 1979 Vietnamese invasion, but the Khmer Rouge mounted an insurgency from Cambodia's eastern borders. Anlong Veng lies about 10 miles (17km) south of the Thai border and was the last rebel stronghold to fall to the government.
I first visited Anlong Veng in 1998 only weeks after the town was invaded by the Cambodian army. North of the city, Khmer Rouge commander Ta Mok and 200 die-hard supporters were still fighting the final days of a lost war.
Anlong Veng and the surrounding countryside had been hurriedly evacuated by the Khmer Rouge. Entire villages were eerily empty, some with chickens still scurrying about. Many abandoned houses still had rice sacks in their living rooms as if residents left expecting to return in hours.
After hearing stories of starvation and hardship, Anlong Veng appeared relatively prosperous even in the Khmer Rouge's last hours. The town centre had a large concrete hospital and a school, unlike most other Cambodian towns whose schools were little more than bamboo huts. Anlong Veng's roads were well-maintained and the town even had a man-made lake providing fish and water in the dry season.
Propaganda leaflets scattered near the frontlines gave some insight into the warped views taught to Khmer Rouge cadre.
Cambodia was said to be occupied by Vietnamese agents who were carrying out ethnic cleansing against the Cambodians. Many featured photos of emaciated children and mass graves, possibly Khmer Rouge mass-graves, with captions stating that the atrocities were perpetrated by the yuon _ a derogatory term for the Vietnamese.
A school book discovered near the city taught young children how to wage guerrilla warfare, and to fight the yuon invaders.
"Sure, some bad things happened (under the Khmer Rouge), but that wasn't the leaders' fault. There were many (Vietnamese) agents here, they have always tried to dominate Cambodia," says Daeng, an ethnic Lao who also goes by only one name.
When asked about the killings and purges allegedly ordered by Nuon Chea, Daeng was dismissive.
"I don't know too much about Nuon Chea, but I think he was a good person. Anything bad that happened was probably his subordinates," he said.
For many locals, the fall of the Khmer Rouge has brought uncertainty and vice.
"It was better before because the leaders protected us," said Daeng, a former soldier whose arm was disfigured from a gunshot wound sustained during the war. "There are no jobs now and a lot of bad people have come to the city."
None of the residents interviewed were aware of the UN's arrest of Nuon Chea. "I didn't know he was arrested," said another resident who came from Kompong Cham province.
Anlong Veng's hardline leader Ta Mok is remembered with a mixture of fear and fondness. In the mid 1990s, Ta Mok instituted draconian laws prohibiting prostitution, theft and drunkenness at pain of death. But for many residents, the strong rules brought stability.
"Everybody knew what to do, it was much easier back then," says Kuch.
"One benefit is that we have more freedom now. You had to be very careful what you said and did before, and you couldn't travel unless you were told to. Ta Mok had eyes and ears everywhere," he said.
With widespread apathy in former Khmer Rouge areas, some observers wonder if the Khmer Rouge tribunal has failed to connect with ordinary people.
"I think the ex-Khmer Rouge members are very happy with the peace brokered by Khieu Samphan's surrender, however, they consider modern Cambodia very corrupt compared to the Spartan ways of Ta Mok, who was fair but tough," wrote Martin Rathie, an expert on the Khmer Rouge currently teaching at Vientiane College.
"Many of the KR feel neglected by the system because all the big shots went to western Cambodia or Phnom Penh," he wrote in an email response.
According to Rathie, many Cambodians simply want to leave the Khmer Rouge period behind. "Most of the residents just want to forget the past and concentrate their efforts on getting good roads, schools and clinics."
Heather Ryan from the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), said more effort is needed to make the UN tribunal relevant to ordinary Cambodians. "I don't think nearly enough outreach has been done. That's one thing that we are really critical of the court for," she said. The OSJI is a legal NGO that has been monitoring the Khmer Rouge trial.
Ms Ryan emphasised that the pro-Khmer Rouge sympathies of many Anlong Veng residents were unusual.
"Those are the communities where there are many ex-Khmer Rouge living, so I think they have a very different attitude about the regime and the (UN) court," she said.
"Nuon Chea has lived in that community for about 20 years peacefully, so he is regarded as a member of the community," she speculated.
Ms Ryan was surprised that Anlong Veng residents were unaware of Nuon Chea's arrest. "That's very odd because the press coverage everywhere was immense," she said. "I would be cautious about taking what is said in Anlong Veng and assuming that it applies in the rest of Cambodia."
Even the grave of Pol Pot is adorned with incense and locals often visit the site for good luck. When Ta Mok died in prison last year, hundreds turned out for the funeral, many crying at the fallen strongman's death.
The houses of former Khmer Rouge leaders have become mini-tourist attractions. The biggest is one of Ta Mok's houses in the town centre. A large map of Cambodia is painted on the wall, which in 1998 said that southern Vietnam was stolen from Cambodia. The label has since been scratched out by the Cambodian government.
A nearby guard said Cambodian authorities had erased the label to prevent visitors from sympathising with the Khmer Rouge.
"Ta Mok was a good man," said a guard near Ta Mok's house who did not want to be named. "He used to go to Thailand and bring us back gifts."
Contact: georgemcleod@gmail.com
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Survivor recounts horror of Khmer Rouge
Youk Chhang was 13 when he was beaten by members of the brutal Khmer Rouge for picking mushrooms and offering them to his pregnant, starving sister.
Even his mother, who was in the crowd of onlookers, couldn't react or both of them would have been executed.
Years later, filled with revenge, Chhang returned to Cambodia to confront the perpetrator.
"He didn't even remember me," Chhang said in an interview today at a three-day conference on the prevention of genocide. "That was the most heartbreaking thing and I realized revenge was not the answer."
For the past 10 years, Chhang has been collecting evidence that will be used at the recently established tribunal in Cambodia to prosecute the leaders of the regime responsible for the deaths of about 2 million people, including many of Chhang's family members.
In July, two of the leaders behind the notorious "killing fields" between 1975 and 1979 were arrested and Chhang said three more will be picked up in the coming weeks. Now aged between 64 and 82, they've been living openly in Cambodia, close to the Thai border.
When the first trial begins next year - three decades after the killings - it will be the first ever to address one of the world's biggest mass murders.
About a quarter of the country's population was either murdered or died of torture, exhaustion, illness or starvation during the insane social-engineering experiment in which urban residents were forced at gunpoint into the countryside.
Chhang's Documentation Centre of Cambodia in Phnom Penh has amassed 1.5 million pages of documents, uncovered 28,000 mass graves, and discovered 189 prisons and photographs.
They also spoke to 10,000 perpetrators, who, says Chhang, were very open when speaking about their actions.
"All of them had been indoctrinated to believe that it wasn't his responsibility, that it was the responsibility of someone above him," he said. "Some of the killers were just farmers, being indoctrinated to believe his action was for the good of the nation."
Canadian Robert Petit, who worked in Montreal as a criminal prosecutor for eight years before heading to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, is acting as co-prosecutor with a Cambodian. The Canadian government has provided $2 million of the $56-million budget for the tribunal, which has a three-year time limit.
But it comes about 10 years too late to get Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge guerrilla force that set in motion the killings. He died in a jungle hideout in 1998.
Last year, one of the top Khmer Rouge leaders, Ta Mok, died at age 80.
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Global conference on genocide opens in Montreal
MONTREAL (AFP) — Survivors of mass murder in Rwanda and Cambodia joined human rights experts, diplomats and legislators in Montreal at a global conference aimed at exploring ways of preventing genocidal violence.
The conference, sponsored by McGill University's law faculty, comes amid continuing atrocities against civilians in Sudan's Darfur region -- a conflict described as 'genocide in slow motion.'
"It seems that for the most part the vow of 'never again' was not taken seriously by the international community. Since 1948 (the signing of the genocide convention), it is more like 'ever again' that we have had, from Cambodia to Bosnia, to Rwanda and now today in Darfur, a repeated failure to intervene against what is considered the ultimate crime," Payam Akhavan, the conference chair, told AFP.
Participants were due to discuss the crisis in Darfur where at least 200,000 people have died and two million others displaced since the Sudanese government enlisted a militia to put down an ethnic minority revolt that broke out in 2003.
The Arab militia has been accused of widespread rape, murder and the destruction of rebel villages. The United Nations, which had been unable or unwilling to stop the killing, now plans to deploy 26,000 peacekeepers to the region to replace a poorly equipped force of 7,000 sent by the African Union.
Among the speakers at the three-day event which opened Thursday were Romeo Dallaire, former commander of the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, Nobel Laureate and Nigerian political critic Wole Soyinka, human rights researcher Alison Des Forges, and Francis Deng, a former Sudanese diplomat who is now advisor to the UN Secretary General on the prevention of genocide.
The Montreal meeting opened with painful accounts of survivors of the Jewish and Roma holocausts, and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides.
Esther Mujawayo, a Rwandan woman who lost her mother, father and husband in the genocide said her experience had made her a skeptic.
"Don't tell me you didn't know. The world did know. The world looked away. You knew but did not have the will," said Mujawayo, who managed to escape the country with her three daughters.
She said foreign nationals and their pets were saved during the genocide, while the Rwandans were abandoned.
"When the people were evacuating, the French, the Belgians, the Americans, all the expatriates, they even evacuated their dogs and their cats. I can't forget that image.
"A Belgian dog is better off than my child, and this is sad."
Dallaire, who tried and failed to get UN approval to stop the Rwandan slaughter, asked: "What will give the political structures of our nations the warm fuzzy feeling they need (...) to protect and possibly ultimately prevent other human beings who are just as human as we are from falling victims to slaughter and mass destruction?
"What is that instrument, what is that magic formula that will give those politicians the will to intervene? Ladies and gentlemen, that's the crux of this whole exercise."
Mujawayo accused the international community of abandoning Rwandan victims again now, citing the lack of compensation for women raped during the genocide and infected with AIDS. She said the United Nations preferred to give AIDS drugs to Rwandan defendants in Arusha accused of masterminding and carrying out the genocide than to victims.
Panelists were expected to discuss how to predict genocide and fight the political and bureaucratic inertia that impedes UN intervention in genocidal conflicts. The role of governments and business in sustaining genocide or slapping economic sanctions onto guilty regimes was also on the agenda.
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Friday, October 12, 2007
Oregon Coast Winery Owner Makes a Difference in Cambodia
Nehalem, Oregon) – One Oregon coast businessman is making a world of difference in a small town in Cambodia, and he’s offering others the chance to help out as well.
It’s much more than charity for the tiny village of Chheneng, in the Mondulkiri province of Cambodia – an impoverished place populated by the Pnong, an ethnic minority that suffered much under regimes of the last century in both Cambodia and Vietnam. The village has no running water or electricity, and they have little to eat on a regular basis, mostly foraging in the jungle for food.
Nehalem’s Ray Shackelford has been helping out with donations and strategies that have given them a means to help themselves – much more than just a handout. Along with Shackelford, a man in town known as Elephant and his brother-in-law Sen Heng, villagers have built two schools, another well for the people, and a sewing shop that is helping them on their way to self-sufficiency.
Shackelford owns the Nehalem Bay Winery on the north coast and the Depoe Bay Winery on the central coast.
Shackelford first met Elephant in 1992 – a man whose birth name is Chan Kem Lang. At the time he was a bicycle taxi driver. “I have seen him – and helped him – go from being a driver to this year getting his bachelors degree,” Shackelford said.
Heng heads up the construction projects, while his wife - Sen Ratanna – teaches the villagers how to sew.
Over those years, Shackelford has poured around $30,000 into helping the village in various projects, which includes helping them to buy property, building the new well, and creating some bathroom facilities. One of the schools cost $800 to build, and the other $700 – unbelievably cheap compared to such costs in the west. Together the schools teach about 60 children.
The sewing shop creates small, beautiful handbags, backpacks and wine bags, made from a silk-like fabric of bright colors and a hint of iridescence. These are being sold at Nehalem Bay Winery and the Depoe Bay Winery, allowing the public to help these people.
This last trip, Shackelford was able to hand them $1500 from the bag sales – roughly 15 times the amount of money the entire village might have at any one time.
The bags run $15 to $25, and all proceeds go to the villagers.
In the past, Shackelford has purchased some rice for them to eat, and acquired seeds for a garden project so they can grow better food for themselves.
“The schools were built with local materials, like bamboo and coco wood, and all the work was done by parents and teachers,” Shackelford said. “The well was dug by experienced diggers. But wow, what a bad job that is. Can you imagine digging a 39-inch by 39-inch square hole in the ground, about 25 or 30 feet deep, by hand, and pulling the dirt up with just a bucket? Tough and dangerous.”
Chheneng is actually divided up into the new one and the old village, and each has a school for the first time in their existence. “The old one is about seven kilometers off the highway, and the highway is kind of a joke,” Shackelford said. “Really, it’s just a bad road. In the rainy season it can only be traversed by water buffalo and a cart, or by walking with mud up to your knees. In July I was able to ride it with a motorbike, but not now.”
The school at the new village teaches only English and has students from 6 years old to 14. The older village school holds kids grades 1 – 3, and teaches their language of Khmer.
Shackelford spends much of the year traveling all over the world, exploring and tasting new things, like a sort of Indiana Jones for the north Oregon coast. On his adventures, he has personally grabbed some international interest in the plight of the Pnong. Chatting with a pair of Dutch teachers in Berlin, Germany, he got them to donate some money. His son in Texas helped out financially, as did some of those attending his 50th high school reunion recently.
Shackelford also plans to help create an orphanage overseas in the near future.
The bags will soon be available for purchase on the winery's website, www.nehalembaywinery.com .
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Uncertainty for an Orphan Claimed in Two Adoptions
In the summer of 2003, an heiress with a flamboyant lifestyle decided to devote herself to saving Cambodian orphans.
While she was in Cambodia, starting an orphanage on the Mekong River, she became enchanted with a toddler known as Rath Chan — “rath” means “orphan” in Cambodian.
Now Rath Chan, renamed William, is caught in a dispute between the heiress, Elizabeth Ross Johnson, and Lionel Bissoon, a celebrity weight-loss doctor with whom she was having an affair. They are no longer a couple, but both claim to have legally adopted the child.
Yesterday, a judge invalidated an adoption Ms. Johnson obtained in Manhattan Surrogate’s Court a year and a half ago, because of adoption papers in Cambodia, including a revised birth certificate naming Dr. Bissoon the boy’s father, according to Dr. Bissoon’s lawyers. The judge, Kristin Booth Glen, is the same judge who initially granted the adoption. She allowed the child to stay with Ms. Johnson.
The judge has ordered her decision sealed. But Dr. Bissoon’s lawyers agreed to talk about it because, they said, it was extremely rare for an adoption to be vacated.
Bonnie Rabin, one of Dr. Bissoon’s lawyers, said the judge had found that the adoption in Manhattan had been “procured by fraud,” because, among other things, Ms. Johnson failed to tell the court that Dr. Bissoon considered himself the child’s father.
The judge ruled that Dr. Bissoon had adopted William first, in a “full and final” adoption in 2004 in Cambodia, which Ms. Johnson had ignored when she adopted the child in New York, the lawyers said.
Last night, Ms. Johnson issued a statement through a spokeswoman, Marcia Horowitz, saying she was devastated by the judge’s decision. “The surrogate court’s decision setting aside an adoption that the court had granted last year ruptures my relationship with my son, whom I have loved and raised since infancy,” Ms. Johnson said.
She said that the decision ignored the “deep bond” between her and the child, and that she would immediately appeal.
Ms. Horowitz said the child, now almost 5, would stay with Ms. Johnson during the appeal.
Robert S. Cohen, Ms. Johnson’s lawyer, declined to comment yesterday. But during court proceedings, Ms. Johnson’s lawyers argued that there had never been a Cambodian adoption, that if Dr. Bissoon had arranged anything, it was only permission from the Cambodian government to adopt the child. They said that whatever he did, he did to help her adopt the child, and that he challenged the New York adoption only because he wanted money. Ms. Rabin acknowledged that Dr. Bissoon had asked Ms. Johnson for child support.
Dr. Bissoon said he did not want to take William away from Ms. Johnson, but wanted joint custody. “I’m the only father he has,” Dr. Bissoon said after learning of the judge’s decision. “I want him back in my life.”
He said he had not been allowed to see William since December 2005, when, he said, Ms. Johnson “staged” a fight with him and threw him out of her apartment at 1 Central Park West, in the Trump International Hotel and Tower. Ms. Johnson’s spokeswoman denied that Ms. Johnson had provoked a fight. “They parted ways,” Ms. Horowitz said.
Dr. Bissoon said the prospect of seeing the child again was “a thrill,” but added that he was somewhat bitter. “When you think of what we’ve gone through, not sleeping, sometimes not even wanting to go to work,” he said, “I guess the best nights I’ve had is the nights I would dream about him.”
Ms. Johnson and Dr. Bissoon became romantically involved in February 2003, Dr. Bissoon said. A month earlier, he had been profiled in People magazine as the doctor who helped the singer Roberta Flack lose about 40 pounds through mesotherapy, a treatment that involves injections of medications.
Ms. Johnson, now in her 50s, had been married five times, had four children of her own, led a jet-setting life as a socialite, philanthropist and traveler, and had been romantically linked to a string of celebrities, like the singer Michael Bolton, the hairdresser Frédéric Fekkai and Jerome Jeandin, a chauffeur at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. She is the great-granddaughter of Robert Wood Johnson, a founder with his brothers of the pharmaceutical empire.
Dr. Bissoon, 46, is an osteopathic doctor with offices on the Upper West Side, in Los Angeles and in West Palm Beach, Fla.
On a trip to Cambodia in June 2003, according to an affidavit filed by Dr. Bissoon in Surrogate’s Court, Ms. Johnson called him to announce, “I found your son.” Although they had never discussed adoption before, he said in an interview, she told him that the boy, Rath Chan, looked just like him.
She was working to establish her orphanage, Golden Children, on a 17-acre site east of Phnom Penh. According to an Internal Revenue Service filing, Golden Children had assets of $8.8 million in 2005. The filing lists Ms. Johnson as president and the socialite Anne Bass as vice president.
Cambodian adoptions were growing in popularity around the same time. But Ms. Johnson was not the best candidate there because of her age and the fact that she already had children. In addition, the United States had restricted the immigration of Cambodian infants because of concerns that they might be sold.
Dr. Bissoon said the immigration problem, along with opposition by Ms. Johnson’s family, had led to an elaborate plan for him to adopt the baby in his native Trinidad. But the plan fell through, he said, because Trinidad frowned on adoptions by single fathers.
The baby was brought to the United States for medical reasons, according to Dr. Bissoon, who said he went on to file adoption papers in Cambodia and to put his name — but not Ms. Johnson’s — on the baby’s revised Cambodian birth certificate.
After the romance ended in the summer of 2004, Dr. Bissoon continued to visit the child at Ms. Johnson’s apartment three to six days a week, he said, until Ms. Johnson banished him in December 2005. She then went on, he said, to adopt the child in New York without telling him.
Dr. Bissoon said he had not seen William since he sneaked into his preschool on his birthday in January 2006. But he said he did not think the boy had forgotten him. “Children don’t forget that easily,” he said.
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Cambodia forms authority to probe oil reserves in Tonle Sap Basin
The Cambodian government has created the Tonle Sap Basin Authority to conduct a study on possible oil reserves in the great lake area for interested private investors, local media said on Friday.
The authority was established to manage the Tonle Sap Basin and coordinate future oil and gas projects with the international partners, said Tao Seng Hour, deputy president of the Agricultural and Rural Development Council and president of the new authority.
"The authority will do studies for oil exploration" in the 16,000 square kilometers stretch surrounding the Tonle Sap Lake, he was quoted by English-Khmer bi-lingual newspaper the Cambodian Daily as saying.
"We will make sure that there is no pollution," he added.
In March this year, Prime Minister Hun Sen expressed his opposition to the Tonle Sap Basin being designated a World Heritage Site, saying that fishing and extraction of oil and mineral resources might be constrained as a result of its protected status.
In 1997, the lake and the surrounding floodplain were designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, which established zones with different levels of protection and development, but also permitted natural resource extraction.
Source: Xinhua
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Thursday, October 11, 2007
Mozart Tale With Accent of Cambodia
By Gia Kourlas
The story, a retelling of Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” is a celebration of youth, love and enlightenment that places its title character between her estranged parents. Unable to abide by either’s rigid ways, she discovers, more through honor than rebellion, that she possesses enough fortitude to carve her own path.
Performed by the 32 dancers, musicians and singers of the Khmer Arts Ensemble of Phnom Penh at the Joyce Theater on Tuesday night, the 90-minute production was commissioned in 2006 by Peter Sellars for a festival in Vienna. Tender and faintly campy in the sweetest sense — as when glimmers of irritation flicker across the performers’ faces — “Pamina Devi” is an exotic journey enriched by subtle political undertones.
All of the dancers are women, even those playing male roles; their jeweled costumes give splendor to their highly articulated feet and sinuous arms and hands, in which supple fingers curl backward to extraordinary effect. Even though Ms. Cheam Shapiro’s Cambodian tale, told with English subtitles, is occasionally dense — navigating the names practically requires sketching out a family tree — the staging and characterization isn’t nearly as opaque.
In the dance-drama, Pamina Devi, portrayed by the delicate Pumtheara Chend, is abducted by Thornea (Sok Sokhan) to the dismay of her mother, Sayon Reachny, the Queen of the Night (the wonderfully imperious Sam Sathya). After the queen and her devotees liberate Preah Chhapoan (Kong Bonich) from a krut, or garuda bird, he promises to rescue Pamina Devi. Armed with a portrait of her and a magic flute, he travels to the Realm of the Sun, ruled by the young girl’s pompous, controlling father, Preah Arun Tipadey (Chao Socheata).
Ms. Cheam Shapiro’s lyrics, translated from Khmer, can be unintentionally funny. (After Preah Chhapoan gazes longingly at Pamina Devi’s portrait, his subtitle reads, “Between the two of us, we would produce the most perfect children.”) Yet they don’t dim this production’s vibrancy. From the percussive, tangy music to the powerful bodies encased in gold, “Pamina Devi” is something of a quiet spectacle, and its message is freedom.
“Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magic Flute” continues through Sunday at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea; (212) 242-0800 or joyce.org.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Japan to provide 8-mln-USD loan for poverty reduction in Cambodia
Cambodian children is owing 8.695 million US more to Japan, is Cambodia government too poor or too much corruption? Cambodia economic have been rising every year and billion dollars revenue should be more than enough to feed 14 million citizens.
Japan Tuesday agreed to provide 8.695 million U.S. dollars of loan for poverty reduction and economic growth operation in Cambodia.
The loan from Japan will mainly support the implementation of the good governance reform program in the royal government's National Strategic Development Plan 2006-2010, said Hor Namhong, Cambodian deputy prime minister and minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, after signing the note of exchange with Japanese officials.
The loan will be paid in 40 years with an annual interest rate of 0.01 percent, said a press release from the Japanese Embassy.
With the current loan project, the total amount of Japan's loan for Cambodia has so far reached 146 million U.S. dollars, it added.
Source: Xinhua
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Artwork smoocher tried in France
A woman who smudged a $2.8m (£1.37m) artwork with a lipstick-laden kiss has appeared before a court in France.
Rindy Sam, also an artist, faces a fine of 4,500 euros (£3,120) and a class in good citizenship for the charge of voluntarily damaging a work of art.
She told the Avignon court: "I didn't think. When I kissed it I thought the artist would have understood."
Restorers have been unable to remove the lipstick from the white Cy Twombly canvas since it was kissed in July.
'Act of love'
They have unsuccessfully used 30 products to get rid of the stain.
Ms Sam was arrested after the incident at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Avignon, which she called "an act of love".
The painting, which was part of a travelling exhibition, is owned by collector Yvon Lambert, who has sued for damages worth two million euros (£1.38m) which includes the value of the painting and restoration costs.
Cambodian-born Frenchwoman Ms Sam, 30, will return to court on 16 November to hear the verdict.
US artist Twombly, who was born in 1928, is known for his abstract paintings combining painting and drawing techniques, repetitive lines and the use of graffiti, letters and words.
He won the Venice Golden Lion award for his work in 2001.
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Cambodia's 'Lion Fighters' rise again as martial art is revived
PHNOM PENH (AFP) — The rolling thunder of an oncoming monsoon storm provided the appropriate soundtrack to Ratanak Akthun's entrance into the ring.
The self-assured young fighter eyed his opponent, Puth Khemarak, who seemed less solid and a little dazed by the applause that greeted his own entrance into the gymnasium in Phnom Penh's Olympic Stadium.
Their clash was to be the first full-contact fight of last month's National Bokator Championships, and the crowd, made up of students from opposing fighting schools, clapped and shouted itself into a frenzy.
But practitioners are struggling for legitimacy and purists say a younger generation's fascination with foreign martial arts is threatening this symbol of the country's past military might.
More an art form than a sport, bokator -- which literally means "lion fighter" in Cambodian -- has been somewhat derisively described as a dance with a little bit of fighting thrown in for effect.
This is not entirely untrue. Those who have mastered the thousands of punches, sweeping high kicks, take-downs and feints have a fluid animal grace that lulls the spectator into forgetting that this is a seriously dangerous fighting form.
But then erupts a violence that is found in few fighting rings. Like Saturday night brawlers, nearly bare-knuckled bokator fighters pummel, stomp and throttle each other into submission.
Ratanak Akthun's earlier cockiness could not save him from a crushing kick that broke ribs and sent him to a humiliating, semi-conscious departure from the ring.
The next two full-contact matches ended just as abruptly in knock-outs.
The September championships were only the second ever to be held and were the result of one man's singular crusade not just to return bokator to Cambodia, but also to introduce it to the rest of the world.
Sean Kim San, a bokator grandmaster and founder of the Cambodian Yuthkun Federation, returned from the United States in the 1990s and in 2004 opened a school to teach the craft to a new generation of Cambodians otherwise fed a diet of Thai kickboxing and Western professional wrestling.
"We had been sleeping for 1,000 years but 2004 was the new birth for bokator," said the 62-year-old master.
Speaking recently in the converted space above a parking garage that he shares with several other martial arts schools, Sean Kim San took out a few vinyl folders that he said are the sport's bible.
Inside he is creating, in painstaking detail, an index of the hundreds, if not thousands of moves that must be mastered at each level of bokator.
"Before there was nothing," he said, explaining that before he took up his quest to revive bokator, knowledge of the fighting form lay scattered across the country among its few surviving yet reluctant masters.
Scenes of bokator are carved into the walls of the Angkor temples, inextricably linked to a rich cultural heritage that goes back many hundreds of years.
But the Khmer Rouge who seized control of the country in 1975 and unleashed one of the 20th century's most devastating upheavals, inexplicably sought to destroy Bokator along with every other vestige of modern Cambodia.
Most of its practitioners were among the two million left dead by the time the regime was overthrown in 1979, and those still alive hid their talents out of fear, Sean Kim San said.
"The Khmer Rouge -- everything interesting they destroyed," he said, adding that after his return to Cambodia he unearthed about a dozen elderly bokator masters.
"But they were still scared about the killings, about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge -- they were afraid to speak the truth," he said.
Still, he pieced together this puzzle, logging each swing or kick into his catalogue of bokator moves and slowly rebuilding interest in the ancient form.
Three years ago, he said he had only seven students in one school. Now more than 1,000 practice Bokator in schools across 10 provinces.
"We have about 400 or 500 students here, including some foreigners," he said of his own gym at the end of a ramshackle Phnom Penh side street. "This is how far we've raised up the sport."
Mathew Olsen, an Australian instructor of the Korean martial art hapkido and a bokator convert, said he had not known Cambodia had its own martial art.
"I was surprised there was something with such a wide spectrum -- the weapons, the punches, kicks, the ground fighting and pressure points makes it very lethal," he said during a recent training session.
"Bokator is a very complete martial art, very interesting to foreigners," he said. "Basically I think there is more art in this martial art than a lot of other martial arts."
While one of Sean Kim San's hopes is to introduce bokator to the wider world -- and eventual inclusion in international martial arts competitions -- a larger and more immediate goal is to keep this very Cambodian tradition alive at home.
"It is very important to pass this from generation to generation because this is our blood. This was passed down from grand masters and our kings," he said.
He has a dream, he said, that bokator training will become a regular feature in Cambodian primary schools.
"That means millions and millions of people know very well bokator," he said.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam cement their relationships with one another with new declaration
In a continuing effort to join tourism forces Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam issued an official joint declaration on trilateral cooperation at their meeting in Ho Chi Minh City last Friday. The declaration will see all three countries working with their national tourism agencies in order to increase the flow of information between themselves and knowledge of tourism development and promotion. They have all agreed to hold and attend tourism events and tours and to conduct personnel training.
Each country will also participate in promoting visitation to and raising awareness of their sister destinations and will also encourage public-private partnerships with regard to tourism development.
The meeting was the first of its kind for all three countries and was regarded by the Vietnamese Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Hoang Anh Tuan, as a milestone in boosting trilateral cooperation. He also stated that their meeting will help to build the three countries into a single tourist destination.
Cambodia Tourism Minister, Thong Khon, and Lao Minister and Chairman of the Lao National Tourism Administration, Somphong Mongkhonvilay, also shared Tuan’s sentiments and said that the declaration will help to fortify sustainable tourism development in the Greater Mekong Sub-region and the ASEAN.
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Khmer Krom: Nonviolent Demonstrations OK?
Cambodia's constitutional commitment to allow freedom of expression, assembly and peaceful demonstrations is finally being put into implementation by law, signifying a positive prospect for human rights activists and especially the Khmer Krom community.
Below is an article published by UNPO:
Cambodia’s Council of Ministers issued a communiqué indicating that the plenary session of the Council of Ministers, held on 05 October 2007 had agreed and approved the nonviolent demonstration right draft law which was prepared by the Ministry of Interior.
The draft law includes 6 Sections divided into 30 Articles. The communiqué stated that the draft law on the nonviolent demonstration right was prepared on the basis of Articles 37 and 41 of the 1993 Cambodian Constitution which provide the right of citizens to strike or to stage nonviolent demonstrations, and guarantee the freedom of expression and assembly. Pursuant to these articles, the aforementioned rights are to be implemented in the framework of a law. Such a law has so far never been passed. The fact that it has been drafted and could soon be passed is an encouraging sign after so many peaceful demonstrations were disrupted by the police in the past years.
A Member of UNPO, the Khmer Krom (from Kampuchea Krom, South Vietnam) constitute a large community in Cambodia. Their natural refuge when fleeing suppression in Vietnam, Cambodia has not always been a safe haven for them. Despite their nonviolent approach, the Khmer Krom have repeatedly been prevented from staging peaceful demonstrations in Cambodia by the police (some of their demonstrations have even been violently repressed). The passing of the nonviolent demonstration right law will be a major step towards the democratisation of Cambodia and might, by ricochet, have impact on the politics of the region, allowing oppressed minorities from Vietnam and Laos to voice their concerns in Phnom Penh.
Note: Articles 37 and 41 from the Cambodian Constitution:
Article 37 - The right to strike and to non-violent demonstration shall be implemented in the framework of a law.
Article 41 - Khmer citizens shall have freedom of expression, press, publication and assembly. No one shall exercise this right to infringe upon the rights of others, to affect the good traditions of the society, to violate public law and order and national security. The regime of the media shall be determined by law.
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Cambodian cow in police custody for killing motorists
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: A Cambodian cow was taken into police custody for causing traffic accidents that resulted in the deaths of at least six people this year, a police official said Tuesday.
The cow's owner could also face a six-month prison term under a new traffic law that holds people responsible for accidents caused by their animals, said Pin Doman, a police chief on the outskirts of Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.
The white, 1.5-meter (5-foot) tall cow was standing in the middle of a main road Monday night when a 66-year-old motorcyclist crashed into the animal and died. Most Cambodian roads are dark at night.
Earlier this year, the same cow was responsible for another traffic accident that resulted in the death of five people and several injuries, when a truck veered off the road and crashed as its driver tried to avoid the animal.
Pin Doman said he was holding the cow at his police station.
He said the cow's owner had been warned four times in the past to keep his cattle leashed and could face prison time if relatives of those who died initiate legal proceedings.
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SOCCER: In Chelsea or Cambodia, putting some kick back into the game
To some people, competitive soccer is all about kicking backsides. What wouldn't Cambodia's players give to beat Turkmenistan on World Cup qualifying duty in Phnom Penh on Thursday? And what greater pleasure might Chelsea's paymaster, Roman Abramovich, derive than hiring Henk Ten Cate, the coach who reputedly once booted José Mourinho in the bum long before Abramovich got rid of him?
The ball is round, the rules are the same. But the world is a very different place to a soldier or a traffic policeman or a laborer who pays for his own boots to play for Cambodia - compared with the pampered Chelsea players who earn more in boot money than a Cambodian expects in a lifetime.
A sensitive, humane article by Ek Madra, the Reuters man in Phnom Penn, this week set the scene for the Cambodia versus Turkmenistan home and away contests. He describes Thol Sothearith, a Cambodian defender, traveling to the optimistically named Olympic Stadium on an aged Honda motorbike - crossing potholed roads and wearing old boots that cost him a third of his $25 a month army pay.
"They're cheap, but they work well," Sothearith, 22, tells the reporter. "We lack support, morally and materially. We don't have enough nutrition, our pay is low. But win or lose, its great to be in the World Cup."
Turkmenistan will not lightly surrender rank to the Cambodians. The visiting team rates 174th among FIFA's 208 nations, lording it, by four places, over Cambodia.
In this first-round knockout phase, 43 Asian countries will start the elimination process down to just four teams for the 2010 final tournament.
"Teams like us reaching the World Cup, its not going to happen," says Scott O'Donell, the one time Australian A-league player who augments his Cambodia coaching work with television soccer punditry. "My players know this is the biggest game of their lives. All we can ask for is their best."
From Palestine to Afghanistan to Macao, we wish them good sport in this win-or-bust week that will also kick off qualifiers for gods like Ronaldinho and Lionel Messi down in South America. Those are names to conjure with, and their style is in part the reason why Abramovich is having a staff makeover at Chelsea.
Mourinho was a match winner for the Russian, but Abramovich tired of the coach's making himself the star while the team gave pragmatic performances.
Pragmatic, that is, compared with Barcelona. Recently, Abramovich tried to tempt Ronaldinho from Barça to his club in London. He failed, for now, but with the signing of Ten Cate comes a little bit of what made Barcelona hum.
Ten Cate was the No. 2 to Frank Rijkaard at Barcelona. With Rijkaard in charge and Ten Cate a kind of sergeant major on the training field, Barça was supreme in Spain, in the Champions League, and in most people's ideal of how soccer should be played.
Ten Cate, like Rijkaard of Dutch-Suriname origin, eventually went his own way as the head coach of Ajax Amsterdam. Why would he now accept a role as assistant to the new coach of Chelsea, the Israeli Avram Grant?
A £2 million, or $4 million, salary, double what Ajax paid Ten Cate, helps. A mutual understanding between Grant and Ten Cate, forged when the Israeli studied the way things worked in Barcelona, suggests the Dutchman will get a fair amount of command on the training pitch, while Grant decides selection and tactics.
There might be - and we might never hear - verbal agreements of an eventual hand-over of responsibilities. Some even speculate that, after this current season is over, Rijkaard will depart Camp Nou and renew his double act with Ten Cate, while Grant reverts to the overview post of director of football.
Such multiple managerial and coaching roles are familiar staffing arrangements at Europe's big clubs.O'Donell might, at best, have an interpreter at his elbow, but Mourinho, who came into soccer as a translator, surrounded himself with enough Portuguese aides to attend to every player's needs bar visits to the toilet.
When Mourinho's £5 million-a-year contract was paid off, the assistants also went. Grant, well aware of the Abramovich requirement to entertain - and sharing the ethos - had first to win over the players' support. Slowly, that is happening. The Israeli's sincerity is winning over some of the dissident players who had joined Chelsea for Mourinho.
They are in for more surprises, as Grant shapes his backroom staff. After Ten Cate will come, if Grant gets his way, Colonel Avi Moyal. He was the fitness trainer to the Israeli national squad when Grant was in charge and is currently the head of Israel's combat fitness training development.
So maybe there is a link between the Cambodians, some of whom are soldiers by day and soccer players by night or weekend, and the Chelsea Set?
The curious thing about soccer millionaires is that they might pout about team tactics, especially those that leave some of them like Andriy Shevchenko on the bench, but rarely do they complain about the toughest of commando-like fitness routines.
It was Rui Faria who tuned up the players' bodies under Mourinho's tenure, and often Faria who acted as their confidant while reporting back to the coach on what was being said in the camp.
The Israeli colonel will know all about the body and mind games. Even Israelis say his regimen is tough, but he allowed wives and families to run on the beach with his men at weekends.
The new order is marching in on Chelsea, and no doubt Ten Cate will think twice before chasing men like Avi Moyal down the tunnel and applying his boot to the backside.
Chelsea always denied that Ten Cate actually did boot Mourinho during a fracas in the tunnel on that infamous night in 2005 when Mourinho accused Rijkaard of visiting the referee's room at halftime during a Champions League match between Barcelona and Chelsea.
It was agreed that Ten Cate had a go at somebody, but the contact hit either the fitness man Faria, or the tactician Baltemar Brito.
Whatever, there is no mistaking where Abramovich made his mark.
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Monday, October 08, 2007
Cambodia Hip Hop Artist Tells Story through Rap
Prach Ly came to the United States as a child with his family to escape Cambodia's killing fields. He grew up in Long Beach, California where he started rapping in English and Khmer about Cambodia's genocide, his community and life as an immigrant. Then he became a star in Cambodia nearly overnight after he released a homemade CD. The press dubbed him the first Khmer rap star and credited him with bringing hip-hop to Cambodia.
Prach Ly recently took a break from working on his latest album to perform at Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where he spoke to VOA's Robin Chen Delos. Here he tells his own story.
"I am a musician. I'm from Cambodia. My name is Prach. And I was born in a concentration camp during the killing field.
Toward the end of the killing field our family escaped the war and went to the border of Thailand. And we stayed there at the border and we got sponsored to America,” Ly explains.
“And when I got to California in Long Beach everything wasn't all great or anything like that. It was poverty-stricken. There was gang activities. The back of our head was, you know, if you grow up past 18 years old you probably did pretty good because of all the activities there. We were ducking drive-by shootings and stuff like that.
But then that's when the whole poetry, that's when the whole hip-hop, that's when the whole rap music came. I was surrounded by that. 
I used the karaoke equipment to record my music, my lyrics. I would go buy instrumental songs, and put my word over it. And I got a CD made.
The CD was like an autobiography, coming from the whole killing field process, all the way to America and the struggle in America. And for New Year I just passed it out. And a DJ from Cambodia, DJ Sop, he was there at the New Year. He took the CD back to Cambodia, he played it over the radio and everyone was calling in to ask who's the artist.
And then the government, they censored and they banned my music. And then some of the people who heard the music they argued, they said, 'Wait a minute, why are you banning his music? It's nothing in reference to the government -- it's just talking about history.' So now the people are going to the markets and starting asking [to ask] for it and buying the CDs.
And then Newsweek and Time magazine and Asia Week, they located me and they contacted me and they like, 'We just want to ask you a question: how do you feel about having the number one album in Cambodia?' I go, "What?!' You know, I never sent it there.
The important thing was the kids was asking the parents, it was more like an educational tool. They were asking the parents and asking the elders what had really happened during the killing fields,” he says proudly.
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Cambodia welcomes Chinese investment surge
For Cambodia, struggling to regain its economic footing after 30 years of civil war and keen to shrug off its dependence on aid, Chinese investment has been welcomed with open arms and few questions asked, at least publicly.
The Chinese government is pouring money into bridges and roads (it donated 6 million dollars of steel bridges to Cambodia in 2001) and pledging military assistance in the form of new vessels for the country's dilapidated navy.
But China's emphasis is increasingly looking beyond aid towards desperately needed investment. Chinese, and now Cambodian investors, are planting hectares of bio-fuel crops like jatropha, which the Chinese industry devours insatiably.
Just last month yet another Chinese company inked a deal to grow mulberries over a tract of land in the country's south to supply raw silk to its factories and offering to build a factory to process the silk worm cocoons in Cambodia.
In May, China's fifth largest steel mill, Wuhan Steel, announced it had joined Shanghai-based Baosteel Group, Anshan Iron and Steel Group and Beijing's Shougang Iron and Steel Group to explore for iron ore in Cambodia's remote northern Preah Vihear province on the Thai border.
The relationship has not been built overnight. China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs website boasts diplomatic ties with Cambodia since 1958 and notes China's agreement to wipe outstanding loans to Cambodia five years ago - something the US, amongst others, still steadfastly refuses to do.
Cambodia's revered former king Norodom Sihanouk spends months at a time in Beijing and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao showed the value he placed on the relationship in April 2006 when he included Cambodia in a tour of New Zealand and Australia.
"Chinese companies come to Cambodia because we have a long relationship and Cambodia is openly courting Chinese investment," Chhin Cheadara, deputy director of the Phnom Penh Chamber of Commerce explained.
"Most of these investments are in the garments and construction industries, as well as mining and electricity production," said Chhin Cheadara. "This creates infrastructure and employment opportunities here, but more importantly, it is long term investment. In the future, we envisage more and more Chinese companies coming to Cambodia."
But this Chinese investment boom has worried some environmental and human rights groups. For instance, Australian mining giants such as BHP Billiton Ltd, currently exploring in the north-east for bauxite, have vast corporate responsibility programmes and are accountable to the scrutiny of media and shareholders at home.
Activists claim that Chinese companies may not feel these restraints and the Cambodian government has refused to rule out mining in environmentally sensitive areas if it deems the benefits outweigh the risks.
Chinese investors are not confined to mining either. In January one group was given the go-ahead for a hydroelectric plant in the coastal province of Koh Kong worth up to 215 million dollars.
Critics point out other potential drawbacks. The International Monetary Fund warned last month that soaring property prices constituted a risk to the country's nascent banking sector, going as far as to call the situation "a bubble" and cautioning that 90 per cent of loans were currently secured against property.
Analysts say the sudden rise in land values is due at least in part to the long Chinese tradition of property investment and speculation. Huot Pongan, undersecretary of state for the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy said the benefits outweigh the risks.
"We don't have enough electricity. China is developing that for us. We don't have the resources to build mines and harvest our resources. China does. And China has been here for a long time and will stay here for a long time," said the energy minister.
By 2004, the World Bank listed China as one of Cambodia's key sources of FDI as countries like the US and Japan continue to drag their feet, preferring instead to fund aid and soft loans.
Council for the Development of Cambodia figures show domestic and foreign investment approvals more than doubled to 2.6 billion dollars in 2006 from 2005, fed by key areas which China has shown vast interest in, including mining, energy and construction.
And of foreign investment approvals, China was dominant, with 763 million dollars in approvals in 2006 - nearly double its 2005 total. In comparison, Russia was a distant second, with approvals totaling 278 million dollars for 2006.
"There are a number of reasons why Cambodia is receptive to China. One is the way it does business. China understands Cambodia. It doesn't throw us scraps of aid and then scold us in front of the world like a naughty child. That is not the Asian way - that is the colonial way," one Cambodian analyst said on condition of anonymity.
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Former Khmer Rouge foreign minister denies responsibility for crimes during his rule
BANGKOK, Thailand: The Khmer Rouge's former foreign minister, Ieng Sary, said Sunday he believes he is next to face charges by a U.N.-backed genocide tribunal, but denied responsibility for the deaths of some 1.7 million people during the group's rule of Cambodia in the late 1970s.
After arriving at Bangkok's international airport, he said he heard about the speculation on the radio earlier Sunday as he headed to the airport in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital.
"I have done nothing wrong," Ieng Sary, believed to be 77, said of his years with the Khmer Rouge regime.
"I am a gentle person. I believe in good deeds. I even made good deeds to save several people's lives (during the regime). But let them (the tribunal) find what the truth is," he said without elaborating.
He was in Thailand to receive a checkup for a heart condition, he said.
Surviving Khmer Rouge leaders have typically claimed innocence in the crimes committed when their communist group held power in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.
The group's radical policies caused the death of an estimated 1.7 million people from starvation, illness, overwork and execution.
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998, and his former military chief, Ta Mok, died in 2006 in government custody.
The tribunal's prosecutors have recommended five former Khmer Rouge leaders for trial. So far, only two of them — Nuon Chea, the former Khmer Rouge ideologist, and Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch who headed the former Khmer Rouge S-21 torture center — have been detained on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The other three suspects have not been publicly named. But Ieng Sary, who lives freely in Cambodia but in declining health, is widely believed to be on the prosecutors' list.
Ieng Sary, dressed in khaki pants, shirt and hat, flew on a Bangkok Airways flight with a Cambodian aide.
When he arrived in the Thai capital, he had to be pushed in a wheel chair, while his aide carried a walker.
Ieng Sary said he was visiting a Bangkok hospital for a regular heart checkup and would return to Cambodia in a few days.
"My heart is not functioning well following previous surgeries. My health is my big concern now," Ieng Sary said.
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Sunday, October 07, 2007
Cambodia issues decree to facilitate loans for investors
The Cambodian government has issued a sub-decree allowing investors to use long-term leases and rights to economic land concessions on state properties as collateral when applying for bank loans, local media reported Saturday.
According to a copy of the sub-decree signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen, investors and companies are also able to transfer these concessions or long-term leases to other interested parties, the Cambodia Daily newspaper said.
"Investors have the right to pawn or transfer long-term leases or economic land concessions including buildings and other properties that they have invested in on the land," the sub-decree stated.
The sub-decree acts as a safety net for land concession holders by allowing them to sell the rights to concessions that they can no longer afford to operate, Chan Tong Yves, secretary of state for the Ministry of Agriculture, was quoted by the newspaper as saying.
In Channy, president of Acleda Bank, said that although the new sub-decree could help investors in applying for loans, other documents proving the investors' capital are required.
Source: Xinhua
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Cambodia’s Spirits Stir, Toe to Spine
Ms. Chao Socheata — a 21-year-old dancer in “Pamina Devi,” the choreographer Sophiline Cheam Shapiro’s retelling of Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” which opens a six-day run on Tuesday at the Joyce Theater in Manhattan — spent much of February weeping, part of it yelling and part of it in a kind of transfixed ecstasy in which she would teach things that she did not know.
When the spirit teachers came upon her, munificent and full of good, old ideas, the honor and the revelations were almost too great for her to bear. On Feb. 18, she passed out. That’s when the monks were called in. But the lesson had been well taught: in Cambodian dance, as in Cambodian life, the spirits are always watching.
So, to some extent, is the government.
In Cambodia, dance has long been a function of the state — an emanation of power, first the king’s, now that of the strongman government of Prime Minister Hun Sen. The state-run Royal University of Fine Arts here in the capital has a virtual monopoly on arts training, and many graduates go on to work in the ministry of culture or teach at the university.
In recent years, however, an avant garde of Cambodian artists, Ms. Shapiro among them, has been creating an alternative to the state’s model. To make new art, they are finding, they have to change the way art is made.
“Pamina Devi,” which the director Peter Sellars commissioned for the New Crowned Hope festival in Vienna last year, is a case in point.
Last year, Ms. Shapiro, who had moved to the United States in 1991, returned to Cambodia with her American husband, John. They set up shop on a five-acre estate just outside Phnom Penh, and early this year they founded the 31-member Khmer Arts Ensemble, Cambodia’s first full-time independent dance company since the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975.
Dancers at the ensemble make $100 a month for full-time work. The ministry of culture is Cambodia’s largest employer of dancers, paying them $30 to $50 a month, plus performance fees. (In comparison, jobs in local garment factories pay a minimum of $50 a month.)
“Our goal over the next few years is to get up to a more livable wage, $300 to $500” a month, said Mr. Shapiro, executive director of the Khmer Arts Academy, an umbrella group that includes the performance ensemble as well as a dance school in Long Beach, Calif.
The academy’s total budget has grown to more than $500,000 this year, from $80,000 when they founded it in 2002. The Shapiros have grand plans. Mr. Shapiro says they’d like to start a dance research and publishing arm, an international exchange program and a costume shop. One can have such dreams in Cambodia, largely because costs in the country are so low.
“We thought about doing this in the United States,” Mr. Shapiro said. “The economics didn’t work out. An ensemble of 31 members — that’s a ballet company. It’s really expensive.” In Cambodia, $100 a month is a decent wage.
Ms. Shapiro has deep roots within the government system. She was in the first class to graduate from the Royal University of Fine Arts after it reopened following the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, and taught there for several years. Her uncle was the country’s minister of culture in the 1980s.
Mr. Shapiro says the couple tried at first to work within the system, but it wasn’t a good fit. “The university, like other systems in Cambodia, is a hierarchical system of patronage,” he said. “Sophiline doesn’t have a high position in government. She’s an individual artist. She says: ‘I’m going to make a dance. I’m going to pay for it.’ She’s cutting off a lot of levels above her.”
“We want to take classical dance and give it more emotion and drama, to make dances that are critical of society,” he continued. Old-guard government officials “scratch their heads and say, ‘Critical? That’s not what dance is for,’ ” he said. “We have an entirely different concept of what art can be used for.”
The Khmer Rouge, radical Communists who oversaw the deaths of about a quarter of the population in the late 1970s, devastated classical Cambodian arts. In the uneasy years since their overthrow by the Vietnamese, most artistic energies — and money — went into cultural preservation. Only now has attention begun to shift toward creation.
That shift has not gone down altogether smoothly. “Pamina Devi” is, in part, a story about the clash between men and women. But Mr. Shapiro said the ministry of culture would not let the ensemble use male dancers — too radical a departure from the female-dominated canon. Instead, the women playing male characters wear pants.
Khim Sarith and Him Chhem, secretaries of state at the culture ministry, said they were unaware of the decision by a previous minister to bar the company from using men. Through a translator, Mr. Him Chhem explained that classical court dance was traditionally dominated by women. He said he had yet to see “Pamina Devi” but hoped Ms. Shapiro would ground her work in a clear understanding of the form.
The government can exert subtle control in many ways short of outright censorship. Some of Ms. Shapiro’s dancers still work for the ministry and thus are especially vulnerable.
“We are glad to have more dance companies if they can apply all the ministry’s requirements to preserve our Cambodian dance,” Mr. Khim Sarith said.
Innovation is fine, he said, as long as it does not damage the integrity of the form. “We need preservation and innovation,” he said, “but the innovation must apply the basic foundation and style of the dance.”
Cambodian dance began as a form of religious devotion, and those spiritual roots are very much on Ms. Shapiro’s mind. The week before leaving for the five-city United States tour, Ms. Shapiro and her company held a lavish “teacher spirit” ceremony (“Sampeah Kru”) at their studios. On silver trays, they laid out offerings of pigs’ heads, chickens, ducks and tropical fruits. There were thick banana stalks garlanded with fresh jasmine and topped with hard-boiled eggs.
“It’s a way of showing respect for our teachers and asking the teachers to guide us,” Ms. Shapiro said. “We believe our teachers’ spirits are watching us, to make sure we respect the dance and aren’t fooling around.”
Classical Cambodian court dance, of which “Pamina Devi” is an example, consists of a slow unfolding of fixed gestures. Hands open into flowers; fingers fold into thorns or trace the path of a tear. Everything curves. Toes curl up, fingers bend backward, the spine takes on a dangerous sway. It’s best, really, to give up all modern notions of time and accept that this dance can be no more rushed than the sea.
“Dances were a form of prayer: they connect earth to heaven,” Ms. Shapiro said. “The slowness is to maintain a sense of spirituality. It is a way of praying.”
She has turned Mozart’s “Magic Flute” into a kind of modern Cambodian morality tale. Depending on one’s perspective, it’s about responsibility shirked, the dangers of ideology, the children of conflict and one young woman who grows up to find strength in herself.
“There’s a new energy coming up,” Ms. Shapiro said. “There’s a desire to catch up with the rest of the world. We’ve been falling behind for so many years; we want to catch up. The nation is in a process of transforming.”
Her distinctive blend of old and new is an inspiration, said Hang Borin, 27, a teacher at the Royal University of Fine Arts, who started an experimental dance ensemble called Trei Visay (Compass) with his friends last year. “She brings foreign stories and makes classical dances,” he said. “She has good ideas.”
Pumtheara Chenda, 21, who dances the role of Pamina Devi and used to perform with the Ministry of Culture’s classical dance troupe, said she liked working with Ms. Shapiro because she learned about the depths of a dance, not merely its steps.
“When I performed with the ministry, I just know how to perform, but I don’t know what it means,” she said. “They don’t explain about the story. They just say, ‘Do this, do that.’ I knew nothing. With Sophiline, I know the story.”
Ms. Chao Socheata, who has recovered from the spirits that ailed her earlier this year, plays Preah Arun Tipadey, the Sarastro role. She likes the story of Pamina Devi, who is caught in a battle between her mother and a father figure, “because it’s about parents who don’t understand their children and don’t pay attention to their children,” she said through a translator. “It relates to my personal life.”
She said that the spirits still visit sometimes when she dances. “My body knows the spirits come,” she said. “But it’s just to watch, not to possess.”
