Are Cambodia, Vietnam and Lao soon forming Federal state government? Are they under one Yuon Communist rule? it is the tactic that Yuon communist using for centuries to colonize Cambodia and Lao, Yuon communist is never co-operating with Cambodia, but Yuon wanted Cambodia to form co-operation with them (Cambodia should know the same game).
Ha Noi — The Armies of Viet Nam and Cambodia should promote co-operation to protect and develop both countries and contribute to keeping peace in the region and all over the world, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung stated yesterday.
Dung made the remark in a meeting with General Ke Kim Yan, Commander-in-Chief of the Cambodia Royal Army, who was paying an official visit to Viet Nam at the invitation of senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Khac Nghien, Chief of General Staff of the Viet Nam People’s Army.
The Prime Minister said that co-operation between the two armies was very important for preventing crimes and defeating hostile forces to ensure national stability.
Dung stressed that the two armies should continue their joint patrols at sea and support the two countries’ authorised agencies in planting border markers.
The Cambodian Chief Commander thanked the Prime Minister for his reception and stressed that the Cambodia Royal Army would closely co-operate with the Vietnamese Army to keep peace, stability and development in the region and all over the world.
Yesterday, Yan had a meeting with Nghien in which the senior lieutenant general affirmed that the visit would contribute to promoting mutual understanding to develop the long-standing relationships between the two armies and peoples.
In return, Yan stressed that the Cambodian people always remember and are grateful to the Vietnamese State and Army for helping Cambodia escape from Khmer Rouge genocide as well as supporting the process of building up Cambodia.
At the meeting, the two sides informed each other about the two countries’ situations regarding security, national defence, socio-economic development and army expansion.
The two generals agrees to promote co-operation by exchanging military staff and defence information, training and searching for and returning the remains of Vietnamese volunteer soldiers and experts who died in Cambodia during wars.
The two armies will contribute to fostering the long-standing relationship and friendship between the Vietnamese and Cambodian armies and peoples, with the motto "good neighbour, traditional friendship, comprehensive co-operation and long-lasting stability", for the sake of peace, stability and development of each country and the world, the leaders agreed.
The Cambodian delegation also visited and presented gifts to 12 experts who used to work in Cambodia. — VNS
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Wednesday, October 17, 2007
VN and Cambodia armies plan ties
UNCTAD launches World Investment Report 2007 in Cambodia
PHNOM PENH, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) launched the World Investment Report 2007 here on Wednesday.
This is the third time for Cambodia to host the launch of the World Investment Report, Cham Prasidh, Cambodian Minister of Commerce, said while addressing the launching ceremony, which was held at the Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC).
Sven Callebaut, regional expert for the UNCTAD for Cambodia and Laos, presented a copy of World Investment Report 2007 to Cham Prasidh after officially launching the book during the ceremony.
Meanwhile, Cham Prasidh delivered some figures about the investment in Cambodia during his speech.
So far, the total investment in Cambodia registered at the CDC has been amounted to about 10,000 million U.S. dollars, including 9,417 million U.S. dollars of foreign direct investment (FDI), Cham Prasidh said.
The total investment was composed of 1,091 million U.S. dollars of investment in agriculture, 1,848 million U.S. dollars of investment in industry and manufacturing, 2,689 million U.S. dollars of investment in tourism industry and 4,380 million U.S. dollars of investment in infrastructure and service, he said.
From January to September this year, the total investment in Cambodia has been amounted to 1,812 million U.S. dollars, including 861 million U.S. dollars of FDI, Cham Prasidh said, adding that the investment in Cambodia was composed of 56 million U.S. dollars of investment in agriculture, 249 million U.S. dollars of investment in industry and manufacturing, 934 million U.S. dollars of investment in tourism industry and 572 million U.S. dollars of investment in infrastructure and service.
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Russian-made cargo plane crash-lands soon after takeoff from Cambodia's capital
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: A Russian-made cargo plane crash-landed in a rice field Wednesday night shortly after takeoff from Phnom Penh International Airport, a Cambodian aviation official said.
Police said one crew member was injured.
Him Sarun, Cabinet chief for the Secretariat of Civil Aviation, said the plane took off at about 9 p.m. and was headed to Singapore when it crashed about 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of the airport. He said the plane was an Antonov AN-12, but he had no details about its crew or ownership.
A senior police official at the airport said the plane had an engine problem which forced the crew to make the crash-landing. The officer, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said a crew member, who appeared to be from a former Soviet republic, was injured, but he did not know to what extent. The total number of crew aboard was unknown.
The officer said the plane was exporting clothing — Cambodia's biggest export.
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Public Bank third quarter profit jumps 25%
KUALA LUMPUR: Public Bank Bhd's third-quarter profit jumped 25% as contribution from overseas operations and the performance of its mutual funds grew strongly.
The banking group, which also saw strong growth in net interest income, is projecting to maintain its earnings momentum in its final quarter.
“The group will also continue to expand its overseas operations,'' Public Bank chairman Tan Sri Teh Hong Piow said in a statement yesterday.
“The group targets to increase its fee-based activities, particularly in fund management, bancassurance and other wealth management services, by launching new products to meet the diverse investment needs of the group's customers,'' he said.
Public Bank posted a net profit of RM543.6mil, or 16.21 sen a share, for its third quarter ended Sept 30, compared with RM436.3mil, or 13.16 sen a share, in the previous corresponding quarter.
Revenue rose 15.4% to RM2.41bil against RM2.09bil previously while pre-tax profit improved 27.7% to RM774.4mil from RM606.3mil.
For the nine months ended Sept 30, Public Bank posted a 20.5% growth in net profit to RM1.54bil, or 46.02 sen a share, from RM1.28bil, or 38.74 sen a share, a year earlier.
Revenue rose 26.4% to RM6.98bil from RM5.53bil while pre-tax profit increased 23.5% to RM2.18bil from RM1.77bil.
Public Bank said total loans expanded by an annualised rate of 19%, higher than the 17% experienced in the first half this year.
The cost-to-income ratio fell to 32.2% in the third quarter compared with 34% in second, while net non-performing loans was 1.4% at the end of the third quarter. Loan loss coverage ratio was 112%.
Public Mutual Bhd's total assets under management expanded by 52% from RM16.2bil at end-2006 to RM24.54bil at the end of September. Of that amount, 77% were equity-linked funds.
Public Bank said its market share of the private unit trust industry was 36.4%.
Public Mutual's unit trust management fees and income from the sale of trust units was RM196mil and RM133mil respectively, which were 57% and 214% higher compared with the previous corresponding period.
In the nine months to Sept 30, trust unit sales reached a record RM8.39bil, three times more than the RM2.77bil recorded in the previous corresponding period in 2006 and more than double total sales for the whole of last year.
Loans given by Public Bank remained focused on small and medium-scale enterprises, residential properties and passenger vehicles as these three sectors accounted for 70% of the group's total loan portfolio.
The bank's overseas operations continued to expand rapidly as Public Bank (Hong Kong) Ltd saw loans and deposits grow by 47% and 38% respectively.
The strong loan and deposits growth were backed by a major expansion in the branch network and brand name. Public Bank HK now has 24 branches, an increase of 11 from the 13 branches its acquired in May last year.
In Cambodia, Cambodian Public Bank Ltd registered loan growth of 68% in the nine months to Sept 30, and opened three more branches to bring the total to eight. Public Bank also commenced its insurance operations in Cambodia during the quarter.
In the fourth quarter, Public Bank intends to open five more branches in Hong Kong, one in Shenzhen (China), two in Cambodia, two in Laos and one in Vietnam.
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ARINC partners with Cambodia`s two largest airports
Cambodia Airport Management Services (CAMS), operator for Societe Concessionnaire des Aeroports (SCA), has selected ARINC Incorporated to provide common-use passenger check-in and boarding capabilities for Cambodia’s two main airports.
ARINC will deploy its industry-leading iMUSETM passenger system at Siem Reap International Airport, a busy tourist destination, and at Phnom Penh International Airport, the country’s largest airport.
Common-use passenger systems allow multiple airlines to share check-in desks and boarding gates, reducing overall airport costs and making more efficient use of airport infrastructure investments. Once used only at the largest terminals, common-use has recently become a cost-effective choice for today’s mid-size airports as well.
Antoine Seguin, CAMS Information Technology Manager, stated, “We expect the ARINC common-use technology to help our customer service agents raise their productivity, as they will only have to learn one program to provide check-in services for all airlines. In addition, we can enhance our airport operations by maximizing the use of available counter space.”
“ARINC is very pleased CAMS has chosen our implementation of common-use to meet their operational requirements and achieve their project objectives,” stated Randy Pizzi, ARINC Vice President & Managing Director, Asia/Pacific. “The ARINC iMUSE passenger system has been specifically designed to bring the benefits of common-use to airports of all sizes.”
A subsidiary of Societe Concessionnaire des Aeroports (SCA), a joint venture of French Group Vinci and Malaysian Muhibbah, Cambodia Airport Management Services Limited (CAMS), operates Siem Reap International Airport, the second largest airport in Cambodia, located near the Angkor Archeological Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Airport`s new international terminal was built in 2006 and handled 1.4 million passengers last year. Phnom Penh International Airport, located outside the capital city caters to both tourism and business travelers. Its domestic and international terminals serve 23 airlines and have a total capacity of 5 million passengers a year.
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Tuesday, October 16, 2007
JAL Starts Direct Charter Flights to Cambodia
Tokyo, Japan, Oct 16, 2007 - (JCN Newswire) - JAL will start operating direct charter flights from Japan to Siem Reap in Cambodia. Up until the end of this fiscal year, ending March 31 2008, JAL plans to operate between 10-15 round trip flights, starting with a flight departing Osaka (Kansai) on November 20, 2007. (Subject to government approval).
The airline will operate direct flights to Siem Reap from Osaka (Kansai), Tokyo (Narita) and Nagoya (Chubu) using Boeing 767 aircraft. The aircraft will have a capacity of 200 passengers per flight, and the journey will only take from between 5 to 6 hours. The flights will only be sold as part of a holiday package offered by travel agents in Japan.
The number of Japanese travelers visiting Cambodia, location of the UNESCO World Heritage site Angkor Wat, has been increasing every year. Based on data from the Ministry of Tourism, Kingdom of Cambodia about 120,000 Japanese visited Cambodia in 2006.
Up until now there have been no direct scheduled flights from Japan to Siem Reap. Travelers have had to change flights in Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh, for example.
JAL plans to operate a total of 400 round trip charter flights this fiscal year. Between April and September this year, JAL has already operated around 225 round trip charter flights to such tourist destinations as Budapest and Prague in Central Europe, Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia as well as Toronto and Montreal in Canada.
Responding to changes in Japanese tourism demand, JAL also started operating earlier this year for the first time direct charter flights to Dubrovnik, a Croatian resort in the Adriatic Sea, and Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands, called the 'necklace of the Pacific'.
About JAL
Asia's largest airline group, the JAL Group (TSE: 9205) serves 213 airports in 33 countries and territories, including 61 airports in Japan. The Group network extends over 235 international passenger, 39 international cargo, and 160 domestic routes. Altogether, the 9 airlines of the JAL Group make a total of over 1,200 flights a day, and in fiscal year 2006 carried nearly 58 million passengers. JAL Group operates a fleet of 276 aircraft including 64 Boeing 747s and 39 state-of-the-art B777s and is gradually introducing more fuel efficient medium and small-size aircraft such as the new high-tech Boeing 787 and B737 New Generation. For more information, please visit www.jal.com .
Contact:
JAL Press Office
Stephen Pearlman
stephen.pearlman@jal.com
Tel: +81-3-5460-3109
www.jal.com/en/corporate/
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Transitions Cambodia, Inc. Gives Future Hope to Victim Survivors of Sex Trafficking
HILLSBORO, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Transitions Cambodia, Inc. based in Hillsboro, Oregon launches its new program in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We provide Cambodian and Vietnamese survivors of sex trafficking, sexual exploitation and abuse with the opportunity to re-build their future. Transitions Cambodia, Inc. establishes small scale transitional centers which have a small staff of four full-time team members and each center manages 10-15 clients. These centers are set up in apartment-style buildings, with a focus on giving clients a transitional step in adapting to the complexity of independent adult living.
Transitions Cambodia, Inc. provides housing, life skills training, health and dental care and most importantly a strong vocational training program that gives these precious girls a chance for a productive future. Training opportunities are provided in everything from IT and office skills to tailoring, depending on each girl’s interests and abilities. On completion of this program each girl is assisted in reintegrating into society with viable employment and a stable living situation.
At this moment, around the world, there are hundreds of thousands of children being used for the purpose of sexual exploitation and abuse. They are being raped, tortured and thrown away as if they had no worth. Cambodia is one of the most affected countries, due to its recent history and lack of sufficient infrastructure to protect its children. Providing a stable and semi-independent transitional home encourages and facilitates these young women in becoming self sufficient and prevents re-trafficking and re-entering the commercial sex industry as adults.
For more information about this exciting project please visit our website at www.transitionscambodia.org.
“James and Athena Pond came to Cambodia … at a time of critical need for quality, secure shelters for rescued victims of child sexual exploitation. They have filled that need wonderfully opening … [the] Transitional Living Center in 2006. Their shelters and programs are professional, nurturing and effective. The stories of restoration and hope that result from their efforts are profound and moving. Now, once again, the need is critical for transitional centers to bridge the final reintegration of survivors of child sexual exploitation into their communities. It is our privilege to partner with them in this work in Cambodia.”
Kaign N. Christy, Regional Director, International Justice Mission, Southeast Asia
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North Korea to learn about disability volleyball from Cambodia
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: North Korea will send observers to Cambodia next month to learn from an international competition for disabled volleyball athletes, an official said Tuesday.
The Cambodian National Volleyball League of Disabled People is organizing the tournament from Nov. 24 to Dec. 1, said Christopher Minko, the group's secretary-general.
He said it will be the first time that North Korea will be participating in an international disability sporting event.
The Cambodian team is mostly made up of victims of land mines, the deadly legacy from three decades of armed conflict that ended with the collapse of the Khmer Rouge genocidal movement eight years ago.
"They're not sending a team but it's a delegation to come and watch how we stage this event, how we work with disabled athletes ... because they want to start their own (disability) volleyball program," Minko said.
Eight countries, including Cambodia, will be taking part in the tournament. Other teams will come from Mongolia, Canada, Slovakia, Poland, Germany, India and Malaysia.
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North Korean PM to visit Cambodia in November
During his November 1 to November 4 trip, Kim will meet Prime Minister Hun Sen and former king Norodom Sihanouk, who formed a close personal relationship with North Korean founding father Kim Il-sung at the height of the Cold War.
Sihanouk, whose playboy reputation and royal credentials did not appear to clash with Kim's austere and rigidly communist outlook, still has a palace in Pyongyang and his personal bodyguards are all North Korean agents.
A Cambodian government statement gave few other details of Kim Yong Il's visit.
Vietnam said earlier this month he would visit Hanoi, but did not say when or why. In March, Hanoi hosted talks aimed at normalizing relations between communist North Korea and Japan.
Mariella Frostrup's heaven on earth
The broadcaster doesn't normally advocate spending hours walking around old buildings - but makes an exception for the temples of Angkor in Cambodia.
The most extraordinary place I've visited is the 12th-century temple complex at Angkor Wat, completely inaccessible during Cambodia's troubled past but very easy to get to now - it's just an hour's flight from Bangkok.
I'm no great advocate of wandering around old buildings - I'm fine for about an hour but then I get a bit bored - but for Angkor Wat I make an exception.
The main temple is like a mini-Versailles and there's another one you have to visit very early in the morning because the sun lights up the many Buddhas' faces at dawn - it's one of the most spectacular things you'll ever see.
Then there's a temple where the trees seem to have grown out of the walls, one of many beautifully strange sights here. If you go, be sure to make an early start - it's worth it, just to see the complex in all its glory. It's just the most remarkable place.
Mariella Frostrup presents 'The Book Show' on Sky Arts at 7pm from October 18.
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Thai police, Interpol name suspected pedophile
BANGKOK (AFP) — A suspected pedophile being hunted worldwide after posting Internet pictures of himself raping young boys was identified by police Tuesday as a 32-year-old Canadian on the run in Thailand.
Thai police and the international police agency Interpol named the suspect as Christopher Paul Neil and said he arrived into Bangkok's main airport last Thursday.
It follows a groundbreaking urgent appeal last week when the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) issued a global request for assistance on its website, along with a picture recovered from one of his own images of him abusing boys in Cambodia and Vietnam.
"Thai police are collecting evidence and information from neighbouring countries and other Interpol members to seek a court order for an arrest warrant," police Colonel Apichart Suriboonya said.
"Thai police are working closely with Interpol to search for the man."
Interpol's Cambodian office confirmed the suspect's identity, and said that immigration officers were monitoring the borders in case he tried to enter.
"We have alerted all of our international borders," Keo Vanthan, head of Interpol in Cambodia, told reporters in Phnom Penh, adding, however, that no arrest warrant has been issued for Neil.
Interpol said Monday that Neil was a teacher of English at a South Korean school and that he was believed to be in Thailand.
Officials say he flew from Seoul to Bangkok last Thursday, when security cameras at the airport documented his arrival at immigration.
That image -- released by Interpol -- shows him as balding and with glasses, although previous pictures had him with more hair and no glasses.
"Thailand is at the centre of an international manhunt and authorities in the country, in cooperation with Interpol and police around the world, are hunting him down," Interpol chief Ronald Noble said in Monday's statement.
Some 350 people have reportedly given information after Interpol's appeal for help. The agency said key information came from five different sources on three continents.
International police and prosecutors are collecting and analysing evidence to bring charges against the man Interpol has dubbed "Vico."
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Sunday, October 14, 2007
Travel expo debut for Qatar Airways
Ho Chi Minh City: Qatar Airways made its debut at the International Travel Exhibition (ITE) in Ho Chi Minh City as one of the event's key sponsors.
The travel trade and consumer show, considered one of the highlights of the travel calendar in the region, has grown in significance with Laos, Cambodia and host country Vietnam among many nations that took part.
Record numbers of visitors attended the three-day event. The event attracted more than 120 international buyers from 22 countries.
Qatar Airways launched direct flights to Ho Chi Minh City in March from its hub in Doha, Qatar, becoming the first carrier in the Middle East to serve the country of Vietnam.
Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker said the expanded format at this year's ITE travel show highlighted its growing importance as a platform to promote outbound tourism from the region.
"Qatar Airways is delighted to be supporting travel to and from this part of the world with our four weekly non-stop flights which are part of our ever-growing international network," said Al Baker.
Tourism ministers from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam officially opened the exhibition following high-level meetings between the participating tourism authorities.
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Wanted: Filipino investments
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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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.
