By David Ariosto, CNN
Cambodia, long suspected of being fertile ground for human traffickers, has drawn recent attention after reports of sexual abuse and widespread mistreatment prompted government actions to improve the plight of its young women and girls.
Considered a modern-day form of slavery, human trafficking involves the illegal trade of people and commonly includes sexual exploitation and forced labor.
In Cambodia, CNN uncovered stories of suspected abuse; ranging from girls as young as 4 years old being sold for sex - an industry thought to be bolstered by foreign tourists - to young women trapped in debt-bondage, having being lured to neighboring Malaysia for work.
In an effort to unravel a phenomenon that human rights groups say still plagues southeast Asia and the broader region, the CNN Freedom Project highlighted Cambodia because of both its reputation and a recent pledge to better the situation.
But whether recent reforms have since worked to stem the alleged abuses remains a subject of debate.
Domestic labor in Malaysia
Drawn by the prospect of a better life and the promise of more money, many young Cambodian maids working in Malaysia said they were recruited to go there by labor agencies, now only to find themselves unable to leave.
The women - often subject to poor treatment in prison-like facilities - forfeit their passports and are commonly left in a situation tantamount to indentured servitude, said Manfred Hornung, a legal adviser for the Cambodian Rights Group, Licadho.
On October 15, however, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen signed a measure into law banning the practice of sending domestic workers to Malaysia, perhaps in response to mounting criticism.
The ban was enacted just days after a report by CNN's Dan Rivers examined a recruitment agency in the Cambodian capital.
The story "that aired on CNN has actually awakened the country up the whole country on this human trafficking issue again," said Cambodian parliament member Mu Sochua. "I have to say that his piece is just one little part of the whole problem, which is much worse."
She said the report prompted her to further petition the country's leadership to take action.
But only weeks later, Sochua told CNN that labor recruitment agencies in her country were still sending domestic workers to Malaysia, adding that many government officials either own or have close ties to the companies.
The country's ministries of labor and interior "are not taking any action," she said, noting that "many officials and familial members of some ministers actually own these dubious agencies."
Sochua did not identify the officials, ministers or companies to which she was referring and CNN cannot independently confirm her claim.
But a government spokesman called the practice of sending labor abroad "a learning process."
"We are finding out why it has happened and why it is happening," said Phay Siphan, a spokesperson for the country's Council of Ministers.
Recruitment agencies, meanwhile, forge identification papers in an effort to recruit children, charge "excessive recruitment fees" and mislead workers about potential opportunities, according to recent a Human Rights Watch report.
Up to 50,000 Cambodian women have migrated to Malaysia since 2008, the report said.
And yet just three days after the domestic worker ban was signed into law, 25 Cambodian maids - wearing shirts emblazoned with name of a recruiting agency - checked in for an Air Asia flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, according to Licadho.
CNN cannot independently confirm that account.
"It is a heartbreaking story," said Sochua. "I constantly meet with many parents who come to tell me that they don't know where their girls are, they simply disappeared and lost contacts with families after girls left to Malaysia."
Sex slavery
Often accused of being both a source of and destination for human sex trafficking, CNN explored allegations of abuse affecting young girls in Cambodia - notably in a village outside the capital of Phnom Penh.
The village, Svay Pak, appears to have a disturbing reputation as a place where little girls are openly sold for sex to foreign tourists.
One of the girls - who CNN is not naming to protect the identity of the victim - says she was forced to work in a brothel before she could read.
"I was about 5 or 6 years old," the girl said. "The first man said to me, 'I want to have sex with you.' At the time I didn't know what to do. No one could help me."
Dozens of girls in her neighborhood told CNN that they've had similar experiences.
Sex workers elsewhere in the country are also subject to other forms of sexual violence, according to Human Rights Watch.
Last year, the group released a report that detailed widespread allegations of 90 female and transgender sex workers that said police "had beaten them with their fists, sticks, and electronic shock batons."
"Several said officers raped them while they were in police detention," the report said. "Every single sex worker we spoke with said the police demanded bribes or stole money from them. Some officers demanded sex."
Two years earlier, the country had passed a law meant to protect sex workers. But rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch, say there is "little evidence that this has happened, or that prosecutions for trafficking have been pursued.
Government officials decline to comment on those allegations.
Timeline
As the CNN Freedom Project continues to examine the effects and root causes of human trafficking, the following timeline reflects key aspects of coverage and events around the region.
October 3-5, 2011: CNN airs a three-part series that examines a recruiting agency, with alleged ties to the Cambodian government, suspected of trafficking maids to Malaysia. Just before the series airs, the young woman featured in the story begins receiving compensation, she says, but is still unable to leave the factory – her passport confiscated – until her "debt" is paid off. Read more of the report by CNN correspondent Dan Rivers
October 15, 2011: Cambodia's prime minister signs an order suspending the recruitment, training and sending of Cambodian domestic workers to Malaysia. Weeks later an opposition lawmaker says labor recruitment agencies are still sending domestic workers to Malaysia, adding that many government officials either own or have close ties to the companies. CNN cannot independently confirm that account and government officials say stopping the practice is "a learning process."
October 17, 2011: Malaysian Foreign Minister pledges to apologize to Cambodia if allegations of abuse of Cambodian workers in Malaysia are proved to be true.
October 22-23, 2011: CNN airs a two-part documentary called "Not My Life" that focuses on Cambodian brothels, specifically an area not far from the capital, where young girls are prostituted to visiting tourists.
October 24, 2011: CNN correspondent Sara Sidner reports from Cambodiagoogle. as a follow-up to what was revealed in "Not My Life." She files a story that focuses on a young woman who talks about how she endured repeated rapes from the time she was 5e years old. Shortly after the story airs, Cambodian authorities contact Don Brewster who runs the aid group featured in "Not My Life" to say they would act and make arrests. Brewster says he's been "yelling from the roof tops" for the past two years and it's not until CNN airs the story that suddenly there is action.
October 28, 2011: An article in the Cambodia Daily - an English-language daily newspaper - highlights government ties to recruiting agencies, including the one featured in Rivers' report.
October 31, 2011: Human Rights Watch publishes a report based on interviews with migrant domestic workers, government officials, non-governmental organizations, and recruitment agencies that highlight alleged abuses of women and girls in Cambodia and Malaysia, including allegations of forced confinement, heavy debt burdens and rape.
November 6, 2011: Journalist Nick Kristof accompanies a police raid at a brothel in Cambodia and posts message on the social networking site Twitter about how the army showed up and ordered police to cancel the raid as it was taking place. CNN cannot independently confirm that account, and the government has declined to comment.
Read more!
Saturday, November 12, 2011
In Cambodia, anti-slavery reforms questioned
Rediscover tranquility amid Cambodia's busy temples
Even before the first blush of sunlight has touched the jungle, I catch sight of the faces through the darkness. Crafted from great blocks of stone, mottled with lichen, weatherworn by centuries of tropical rain, they leer out towards the last strains of night. With each minute that passes more are revealed, as if their numbers are swelling, from a handful until there is a vast stone army of heads.
The jungle is stirring around me, the vines and dense undergrowth alive with all manner of life - macaques leap from one branch to the next, dragonflies pause on dew-covered leaves, and multi-coloured birds dart and swoop through the canopy. As the darkness melts away into light I make out the twisted roots of silkwood trees, curving through the ruins, a realm right out of Indiana Jones.
In a world abundant with possibility for the intrepid traveller, no destination is quite as bewitching as Angkor, the ruined capital of ancient Cambodia. The first time I visited, 15 years ago, the area was still heavily mined, a legacy of the devastating reign of terror at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Back then I had to examine the temples, monasteries, and fortified bastions from a distance. Venturing beyond the scarlet skull and cross bones signs - which peppered the undergrowth - would have put me at risk of losing my feet.
But time is healing Cambodia and, at last, Angkor - a Unesco World Heritage Site - is safe once more. Yet, despite its extraordinary size and significance, the ancient capital of the Khmer empire tends to be overlooked by visitors from outside the region.
A vast series of temples, statues, and religious buildings, spread over an area the size of Manhattan, Angkor was the most populated ancient centre of the pre-industrial age. Thought to have had a million inhabitants at its height 1,000 years ago (compared with London's 30,000 at the time), it was laid out on a jaw-dropping scale.
At the centre of it all, encircled by a moat as wide as two football fields, is Angkor Wat, its name meaning "Temple of the Capital". Regarded as the largest religious structure ever completed, it stands as tall as Notre Dame Cathedral, which was completed at about the same time. The cornerstone of a mighty civilization that rose, and eventually waned, it was subsumed into the surrounding jungle. And there it lay for generations, until rediscovered by the West a century and a half ago.
The French philologist Henri Mouhot was one of the first Europeans to set eyes on the ruins, back in 1860. But he didn't actually discover Angkor, because the ancient Khmer capital was never really "lost". The local tribesmen knew very well that the jungle was packed with ruins. Abandoning it all, they preferred to live on the margins of the nearby Tonlé Sap Lake rather than in the interior.
And it was the lake that, curiously, gave rise to the entire Khmer culture in the first place. But the story of how Angkor came to be begins far away - in Tibet, where the melted snows of the Himalayas flow down the great snaking length of the Mekong. Eventually reaching the shallow delta, the waters feed into the South China Sea. But at the height of the seasonal floods, the current stops and the waters back up, essentially reversing the Mekong's flow. In one of nature's most peculiar phenomena, the river flows in the opposite direction for four months each year, with the overflow pooling into the Tonlé Sap Lake.
With the waters surging through the surrounding forests, the lake quadruples in size, becoming an inland sea - 160 kilometres long and half as wide. Teaming with fish, more than in any other body of fresh water on earth, Tonlé Sap becomes an angler's dream. And then, as the flood waters recede, the mud plains provide the perfect conditions for cultivating rice. The abundance of fish and rice were, for the ancient Khmer, the foundation stones of an empire. As the Nile gave birth to ancient Egypt, so the reversing Mekong spawned the culture that had at the centre of its capital the magnificent Angkor Wat.
Constructed during the reign of King Suryavarman II, during the first half of the 12th century, the central temple was arranged with five towers, each one symbolic of a closed lotus bud. A curious feature of the temples at Angkor is that they are devoted to the Hindu pantheon, with the five towers representing Mount Meru, home of the Hindu deities. Brought on the monsoon winds by Indian traders from the subcontinent, 3,000 km away, Hinduism seems rather out of place in a land so firmly linked with the Buddhist faith.
Having defeated their ancient adversaries, the Vietnamese, at battle on the Tonlé Sap Lake, King Suryavarman's successor, Jayavarman VIII, set about fortifying the capital with massive walls.
He constructed a moat as well, filling it with crocodiles into which his enemies and detractors were flung. The carvings and exquisite reliefs that adorn Angkor's temples recount the trials and tribulations of Khmer rule and the myths. Among them is the "Churning of the Sea of Milk", a process believed to create the elixir of life. Just as interesting are the depictions of ordinary life - women beautifying themselves, labourers toiling away, children scampering through the forest, and soldiers marching off to war.
From the hundreds of Sanskrit inscriptions, archaeologists have decoded a full chronology of the Khmer dynasties, despite the fact there are no known records on paper. The palm leaf prayer books and other documents known to the Khmer - the kind still used locally by Buddhist monks today - don't hold up well in the intense tropical climate.
The one snapshot we have into life at Angkor, made at its height, was documented in the diary of a Zhou Daguan, Chinese diplomat in 1296. He wrote that guards were stationed at the gates to the city. They inspected the feet of arriving visitors because criminals tended to have their toes hacked off. No toes, no entry.
Zhou Daguan recounted that the inner palace was off limits to all but the royal family, the king's 2,000 female servants, and his many concubines. Each night, he said, the monarch would sleep in a golden tower, protected by a seven-headed serpent.
He and his concubines may be long gone, but one unlikely link to the glory days of his court still remains. Scan the stone friezes which adorn the palace walls, and you find yourself gazing on the lovely images of apsaras, dancing girls.
Shortly after Zhou Daguan left, the great Khmer capital was attacked by the Thai onslaught. After enduring for five centuries, the mighty civilisation of Angkor collapsed after a siege of just seven months.
Carried away by the invading Thai army, the original apsara dancers lived on, their performances still charming audiences across Thailand and Cambodia today.
Having been plundered, Angkor was left abandoned, allowing the jungle to reclaim it for itself.
Visiting Angkor today is an emotional experience. The magic of the place is interwoven along with the twisting, meandering roots of sprawling silkwood trees, the towering trunks of which intersperse a great many of the ruins. There's a sense that you are treading in the footsteps of the first foreigners who arrived, to find a city reclaimed by the natural world.
Flying to the international airport at Siem Reap, a town reliant on the ruins of Angkor for its survival, I find myself in a quirky hippyesque town. Like Kathmandu in the 1970s, it's populated by foreigners who just can't bear to leave. There are markets selling the usual assortment of Cambodian knickknacks and pirated DVDs, bars and yet more bars, each one with Wi-Fi and cut-price drinks. And, on every street corner, there are tuk-tuk drivers waiting to schlep you down the road to the ruins.
Most visitors stay three days, that is unless they never manage to break free. When you buy the $40 (Dh147) three-day pass at the main gate (single day passes cost $20), it allows you to enter the evening before the pass kicks in, a good way of getting an initial sneak peek.
When I arrive, I find it all quite baffling. All I know is that I want to steer clear of the Chinese package tourists who are marching about in tight-knit formation, taking pictures of each other rather than the monuments. On the first day I pay the requisite $25 (Dh92) for an official guide. He doesn't speak much English, but it doesn't stop him spewing a constant stream of historical trivia I can't understand.
Fortunately, I meet a tuk-tuk driver called Mutt. He doesn't speak much English either, but he understands I want to explore the ruins when no one else was about. Appearing as if by magic whenever I need him, he lets me into a little secret, related through mime: how to beat the crowds.
It's simple. Most of the visitors who tour Angkor do it in a certain order, starting with the great temple itself, and followed by the smaller outposts. The secret is to start well away from Angkor Wat itself, and to hit the jungle paths before dawn. As Mutt explains in sign language, most Chinese package tourists stay in bed until late, and then make the most of their hotel's buffet breakfast. His top tip is to shun the buffet, start early, and to go around in reverse order.
That is how I end up just north of Angkor Wat, at the Ta Prohm ruins, long before even the faintest glimmer of sunlight. It is still pitch black when Mutt swerves his tuk-tuk to a halt and points to the seething nocturnal undergrowth. I must seem anxious because he smiles, then gives me a thumbs up.
Carefully threading my way between the trees, the sound of cicadas deafening, I can feel the cool stone buildings all around me even before I see them. Like a set from a Hollywood epic, it all seems so perfect, a fragment from a child's fantasy. Vines and roots snaking between the stone blocks, many are carved with exquisite scenes of deities and court life. Lichen-encrusted, mossy and damp with dew, the stones had lain forgotten for centuries. But reminders of our modern age are present, too: graffiti carved into the silkwood roots and, worse still, empty niches where priceless statues have been hacked away and sold.
With the first strains of light breaking through the forest, I cross over a slender canal and find myself at Bayon, with its haunting towers - 37 of them - each one adorned with four faces. As I discover later, the ruins of Angkor Wat, the main temple, are awe-inspiring in an almost primal way. But the smaller clusters of ruins nearby, at Ta Prohm, Bayon, Roluous and Angkor Thom, are all the more impressive for the wannabe Indiana Jones.
Exploring the ruins, you can't help but be touched by a sense of tranquility as well as wonder. It's as if the destruction of the Khmer empire by the invading Thais and, more recently, the Khmer Rouge reign of terror, makes the peace all the more profound. During its four-year rule, Pol Pot's regime executed all but two of the thousand Cambodian archaeologists working at Angkor. Destroying all their plans and scholastic documents, then mining the area, they turned the clock back to Year Zero, just as they did in the rest of the country.
Thankfully, Angkor is thriving once again. Last year more than 2,000,000 tourists visited the ruins, more than twice the number living there at the height of the Khmer empire. Most of these sightseers hail from the Far East and the swelling tourist numbers pose a new threat. Traipsing up and down over the steps, and along the shaded corridors, the soft sandstone is being eroded like never before.
But, having fallen in love with Angkor, I find myself to be as guilty as all the rest. Climbing into the tuk-tuk, thrilled at beating the crowds, the driver, Mutt, gives me another thumbs up gesture. Miming a plane flying off, then coming back, he points at me and shrugs.
Will I come back?
"How could I not?" I say with a smile.
Read more!
Thursday, November 10, 2011
The Innovators: Coco Rocha's Jewelry for Senhoa
We were already excited about supermodel Coco Rocha's gorgeous new jewelry collection -- chains! studs! Swarovski crystals! -- but when we learned that each piece was hand-crafted by a survivor of exploitation in Cambodia, we were even more intrigued.
How did the Senhoa project come about initially? I first found out about Senhoa at my wedding in France last summer. Lisa, the founder of Senhoa, was on hand as the girlfriend of one of my videographers and she gifted me a beautiful Senhoa bracelet, which I wore the first day of my wedding.
Lisa told me the story behind the making of the jewelry and Senhoa. From ages 4 to 19, these girls are rescued from brothels and human trafficking in Cambodia. Most of them do not have a family to return to, as it was their families who actually sold them into slavery in the first place. The girls receive a full education and rehabilitation in the Senhoa program and, when they turn 15, they are offered a job in jewelry-making where they are paid better than school teachers. ... Following my meeting with Lisa, I tried to wear Senhoa pieces and mention them whenever I could, at events or on the red carpet. Earlier this year, we decided that a jewelry collaboration was probably the best way I could lend my voice to the cause, and really the whole project was a natural fit.
Just to provide some context for the collection, can you tell us a bit more about the human trafficking problem in Cambodia?
When you hear some of the facts and figures, you realize the extent of the problem in Cambodia is staggering. Thirty-five percent of all prostitutes in Cambodia are under the age of 18, some as young as four years old. Of them, 40 to 50 percent are HIV positive. These girls endure the most miserable living conditions you can imagine -- abuse, beatings, inadequate food and sleep and little to no protection against sexually transmitted diseases.
Did you collaborate with the Cambodian jewelry-makers to come up with designs that would be relevant for a fashion audience?
Well, I was familiar with what the girls were already making because I had been wearing Senhoa pieces at red carpet events for a year. They make very pretty pieces and are amazing at bead work ... After sending a lot of sketches back and forth over email, I flew out to L.A. to put the jewelry pieces together myself. I'm glad I did, because I got to experience firsthand the intricate and painstaking work the girls put into this jewelry -- I spent a whole day beading just one piece! We used high-quality materials in the jewelry, like Swarovski crystals, which not only add to the beauty of the product but help instill a feeling of self-worth in these girls who are now associating themselves with materials of high value. Once my design prototypes were finished, they were flown to Cambodia along with Jenny, Senhoa's creative director, who teaches the girls how to construct these pieces. I think one of the great things about this jewelry line is that every hand that worked on it, from design to production, is deeply invested in its success.
How will the girls benefit from acquiring jewelry-making skills?Jewelry-making provides these young women with a safe and secure job so that they can gain economic independence. In a way, it's also a medium of art therapy. The girls are trained to produce these high-quality, semi-precious Senhoa pieces as well as design and make their own costume jewelry, exercising freedom within creativity. What's more fulfilling than seeing something so beautiful bloom from your own two hands?
The Senhoa program also provides a comprehensive life-skills curriculum to supplement their vocational training ... [including] Khmer and English language lessons, math, life-skills, science and physical education. The classes are carefully catered to the girls’ abilities, to rebuild the foundations for learning ... Often times, it is very hard for us to deal with the realities and atrocities of sexual exploitation -- who hasn't seen grainy, black-and-white photos of young children being sexual abused in Southeast Asia and felt helpless? It can get so depressing that people just want to "switch off." That's why Senhoa's goal is to engage people on the issue of human trafficking in a different way.
What was the most satisfying thing about the project for you personally?Definitely the most satisfying part of this project was hearing personal messages back from the girls in Cambodia. They were so excited about my designs and happy to see pieces they made around the neck of a famous icon like Iman. I would love to go visit the girls myself soon!
Read more!
Cambodia: forestry and development, it's not always clear cut
Is helping indigenous people develop community forestry good for development, or is it better to let foreign companies log the native forest and replace it with rubber plantations?
Last week in Cambodia, some questions on forestry and development came into sharp relief. I visited a region where Oxfam's local partner is helping indigenous people develop community forestry and resist the encroachment of foreign companies (as well as Cambodian ones, and the odd party or army boss) intent on logging the native forest and replacing it with rubber plantations.
I expected a black-and-white case but, as so often happens, found a much more complex picture. First, the community forestry: the village of O Preah in Kratie province (north-east Cambodia) is home to 67 families of the Phnong indigenous group, who have set up a rather successful community resin association. They tap resin from three species of trees and sell it to varnish and paint producers in Cambodia and neighbouring countries – and since they formed a producer association to market collectively, things have been going well. Until now.
The Vietnamese company Dong Nai/Dong Pu has been granted the land under the Cambodian government's new economic land concessions law – large parcels of land are sold off to investors, usually foreign, for logging and industrial agriculture.
Hea Samoeun, chief of the resin collectors, said members are not happy. They spoke to the commune council, but were told to get jobs on the plantations. "We don't want to work for the company – resin collecting is what we have done for years. The company tried to negotiate by offering us $3 a tree, but if we agree they will cut down everything – so the community said no. They came back and offered us $200 per family and some land for two years for seven families, but we still said no. Why? Because in one day we can earn maybe $12 from collecting resin and still have time for fishing. The company pays you $3.50 and you work from morning to night."
The problem is the economic land concessions law overlaps with the law protecting resin trees in the community forest. Land titles have only been introduced in Cambodia in the last decade (previously all land belonged to the government), so the land rights of Hea Samoeun (as with most Cambodian farmers) are legally murky.
And here's where the politics and power kick in. The law is only part of the story, and sometimes it seems a fairly minor part (although Hea Samoeun shows us his carefully filed legal complaint, adorned by 67 red ink thumbprints from the largely illiterate villagers).
"It is illegal under the land law to log resin trees – the forestry administration tells us it should be up to five years in jail for cutting down a single tree," said Hea Samoeun. "The government claims the community agreed to give up the land, but has never shown us any document – and the law says it should be published."
The two sides are at a stand-off. So far, so black and white. But wait. On a car journey, we pass dozens of neat rows of worker housing and a clinic, all built by Dong Nai/Dong Pu. The rubber plantation will provide jobs for 20 times (maybe more) as many people as currently make a living from resin collecting – poor Cambodians migrating into the forest from the lowlands. After all, rubber tapping is just a form of organised resin collection. Provided wages and conditions are acceptable, isn't that development too?
The compensation that Dong Nai/Dong Pu offered was better than in many similar situations elsewhere in Cambodia, and the company stopped logging at the first protest – that's not what we've seen in far bloodier land grabs in Uganda and elsewhere. One local NGO even holds them out as a model of good practice.
Cambodian activists counter that the plantation jobs are badly paid, and will go to incomers (so what?), that the loss of biodiversity and other "environmental services" is an issue, and that indigenous people do badly when they migrate from their home village. Apples and pears – culture and economics; economic rights v indigenous rights v human rights (all supposedly indivisible). If the process was fair and transparent, it might be possible to argue out the pros and cons, but politics and power obscure and skew every decision.
As for Hea Samoeun and his people, it's incredibly hard to see a successful outcome. The companies don't want to engage and formal laws and politics are often a shadow play, while the decisions come from informal and unaccountable power and money.
Can we make a convincing business case for a different approach, and would investors even listen? Could a pro-poor investor make a decent profit and pay decent wages (eg for rubber), or buy their products from smallholders (with government or NGO support)? And would the government support such an effort?
Our outgoing country director thinks this is one way forward. NGOs have made some progress on other value chains, eg pharmaceuticals, garments and supermarkets, by being propositional and working with progressive businesses to develop the business case. Might it work for forests too?
Like I said, a much more complicated picture than I was expecting – what have I missed? Read more!
Cambodia attracts $476 M investments from ASEAN in 9 months
From January to September this year, the country had granted licenses to Vietnam's investment projects worth $246 million and to Malaysia's projects of $230 million, showed the reports from the Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC).
During the first 9 months last year, the country received the fixed asset investment of $287 million, of which, $152 million from Malaysia, $114 million from Vietnam and $19 million and $2 million from Singapore and Thailand respectively.
The reports recorded that the ASEAN countries investing in Cambodia are only Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore.
From 1994 to September 2011, among ASEAN, Malaysia is the largest investor in Cambodia with the accumulative investment of $2.6 billion, followed by Vietnam at $812, said the CDC's data.
Thailand and Singapore are the third and fourth with $746 million and $636 million respectively.
They invested in various sectors of businesses here including agriculture, especially rice mill and rubber plantation; industries, garments and construction materials; mineral resources; tourism; aviation; telecommunications; and banking and finance.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Read more!
2,000 Schools Remain Closed
 |
| Many schools in Pursat Province remained closed |
Most of the affected schools are along the lower Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers, said Nhim Vannda, the first vice-president of the National Committee for Disaster Management.
Only 2,000 of 4,000 schools nationwide have reopened since the floods hit 18 provinces and cities in early October, officials said.
Nearly 250 people have perished in the floods in Cambodia so far, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its latest flood bulletin.
“We are very concerned about the students' education. I am afraid that they can’t finish their curriculum on time,” said Yoeung Rithy, chief of a village in Kompong Thom province on the banks of the Stung Sen river.
Cambodian Independent Teachers’ Association President Rong Chhun said even while some schools remain open, their classes are delayed due to logistical problems.
School equipment has been damaged and documents destroyed due to the disaster, he said.
“The Ministry of Education must establish a supplementary curriculum for the students to make sure that they can finish their academic year as usual,” Rong Chhun said.
Ministry of Education Director Ung Ngohok said additional classes would be held to prevent affected students from falling behind in their studies.
"The government has also instructed the Ministry of Education to make sure that the students have enough time to prepare for their examinations," he said.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has provided U.S $300,000 to help subsidize educational materials in flood-affected areas.
A Ministry of Education report obtained by RFA showed that there are still 900 schools in 15 provinces under flood waters.
Some of the schools where the floods have receded may not have resumed classes because the damage has not been rectified.
Climate change
At least 1,000 people have died in the region's floods, according to an Agence France-Presse tally on Thursday. Millions of homes and livelihoods have also been destroyed by the disaster.
The World Bank warned that climate change will bring more floods and extreme weather to Southeast Asia.
"What we are seeing is there are more floods, more extreme weather events, higher temperature, more variable rainfalls, and we believe that is caused by climate change," Andrew Steer, the World Bank's special envoy for climate change, said in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi.
"And we should expect this to increase, sadly," Steer said.
The death toll in Thailand, grappling with its worst floods in half a century, has reached 533, the government said, and the slowly advancing waters are now threatening the heart of Bangkok, a city of 12 million people.
Vietnam's government has reported at least 100 deaths, including many children, in southern and central parts of the country while a fresh deluge in central provinces prompted the evacuation of some 30,000 people.
At least 106 people have died in flash floods caused by heavy storms in central Burma in late October.
In Laos, 30 people lost their lives in the floods, OCHA said in a statement.
The U.N. body, which does not include Burma in its flood updates, also reported 98 deaths in the Philippines.
Vast swathes of rice paddy fields have been damaged or destroyed in Southeast Asia as a result of the inundations triggered by unusually heavy monsoon rains that began some three months ago.
"To date, nearly nine million people have been affected by torrential rains and overflowing rivers," OCHA said.
Read more!
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Southeast Asia: U.s. Completing Asian NATO To Confront China
By Rick Rozoff
Since the North Atlantic Treaty Organization adopted its first Strategic Concept for the 21st century a year ago this month in Portugal, and in the process all but formalized the bloc as a global military intervention force, discussion has been rife concerning a collective partnership with the 54-nation African Union, a "mini-NATO" in the Persian Gulf and another in the Arctic Ocean and the Baltic Sea, the culmination of the transformation of the Mediterranean into a NATO sea and the effective "NATOization" of the ten-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). [1-5]
The U.S.-dominated military alliance, whose current American ambassador, Ivo Daalder, for years has advocated becoming a full-fledged global NATO (in one instance in an article with that precise title), expanded from 16 to 28 full members in the decade beginning in 1999 and has over forty partners in four continents outside the Euro-Atlantic zone under the auspices of programs like the Partnership for Peace in Europe and Asia, the Mediterranean Dialogue in Africa and the Middle East, the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative in the Persian Gulf, the Contact Country format in the Asia-Pacific region (Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea), Annual National Programs with Georgia and Ukraine, the Afghanistan-Pakistan-International Security Assistance Force Tripartite Commission, the NATO-Russia Council, the NATO Training Mission-Iraq and NATO-Training Mission -- Afghanistan (with a Libyan version to follow), a bilateral agreement with the Transitional Federal Government in Somalia where NATO has airlifted thousands of Ugandan and Burundian troops for the war there and other arrangements.
Formal partnerships with the African Union and ASEAN would gain the world's only military bloc fifty new cohorts in Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Mauritania and Morocco -- the last not an African Union member -- are already members of the Mediterranean Dialogue) and ten in Southeast Asia: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore. Thailand and Vietnam.
In addition, in September U.S. permanent representative to NATO Daalder told Indian journalists visiting the Alliance's headquarters in Brussels:
"I think it is important to have a dialogue (with India) and deepen that dialogue.
"It is through dialogue, through understanding each other's perceptions and perhaps by working on misperceptions that may exist, that we can strengthen the relations between India and NATO."
He also bluntly suggested that India, a founding member of the 120-nation Non-Aligned Movement, should abandon its policy of neutrality and collaborate with the U.S. and NATO in the development of an international interceptor missile system.
In articles written in the last decade, including the aforementioned "Global NATO," [6] Daalder and fellow Brookings Institution and Council on Foreign Relations officials argued for partnerships between the bloc and nations around the world under Daalder's concept of an Alliance of Democratic States and other mechanisms. The countries mentioned by name include Australia, Botswana, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa and South Korea. [7]
Immediately ahead of the NATO summit in Lisbon, Daalder was quoted stating:
"We're launching Nato 3.0.
"It is no longer just about Europe -- it's not a global alliance but it is a global actor. We need to look for opportunities to work with countries we haven't worked with before, like India, China and Brazil."
The month before, in October of last year, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in a video post on his blog, "We should reach out to new and important partners, including China and India."
With NATO as the prime mover and in charge, that is. He added: "We should encourage consultations between interested allies and partners on security issues of common concern, with NATO as a hub for those discussions."
In September of this year he told the Xinhua News Agency: "I would very much like to see a strengthened dialogue between China and NATO." China and India were among 47 nations represented at a meeting at NATO headquarters on September 14 to discuss naval operations in the Gulf of Aden and in the broader Indian Ocean where NATO runs Operation Ocean Shield. Other non-NATO nations present were Australia, Egypt, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates. At the time the last two were supplying warplanes for NATO's Operation Unified Protector assault against Libya.
If the architects of an international NATO realize their ambitions fully, more than 140 of the world's 194 nations will be members or partners of the North Atlantic Alliance. Their troops, military hardware and air and other bases will be available to the U.S.-dominated bloc for actions nearly everywhere in the world, as warplanes from NATO partner Israel have recently been training in Romania, Greece and a NATO air base in Sardinia for strikes against Iran.
With every nation on the European continent and every European island nation except for Cyprus now either a NATO member or partner and with the Alliance now firmly ensconced in Africa, the Middle East and the Indian Ocean, the U.S. and its Western allies are concentrating their firepower on East Asia.
The war in Afghanistan is in its eleventh year and it has provided NATO the opportunity to integrate the militaries of over fifteen Asian-Pacific countries (including the Middle East and the South Caucasus in that category) through supplying troops and other military personnel to NATO's International Security Assistance Force: Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Georgia, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mongolia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Tonga, Turkey and United Arab Emirates. All but Bahrain and Japan are what the bloc refers to as Troop Contributing Nations, of which Kazakhstan is to be the 49th, with its parliament at least temporarily blocking the formalization of that status.
Before his death late last year U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke was recruiting Bangladesh to become the 50th official supplier of troops for NATO's Afghan war. [8]
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently concluded an eight-day trip to Asia, his first as Pentagon chief, where he visited Indonesia, Japan and South Korea.
On the first leg of his journey he met with the defense ministers of the ten members of ASEAN. Indonesia holds the organization's chairmanship this year. Next year it will be transferred to Cambodia, where at the same time Panetta was in East Asia his subordinate, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia Robert Scher, visited for two days to solidify military relations with the host nation where U.S. Army Pacific has led multinational Angkor Sentinel military exercises for the past two years.
Xinhua quoted the Pentagon official as saying:
"It's a fruitful visit. I participated in a series of productive meetings with the Cambodian Ministry of Defense and Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) to discuss the growing U.S.-Cambodia bilateral defense relationship""
He was additionally cited stating he "had discussions about Cambodia's objectives as it approaches to take over the chairmanship of ASEAN in 2012.
"The U.S. Department of Defense is committed to continuing to work with the RCAF to develop a professional force that will contribute to regional and international peace and stability" and "the United States' overall commitment is to enhance its engagement in the Asia-Pacific region in the future."
While in Indonesia, Panetta indulged in the affectation of identifying himself as "a son of the U.S. Pacific coast," having been raised in California, as his commander-in-chief, Hawaii-born President Barack Obama, has touted himself as America's first Pacific head of state.
He met with Indonesian Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro, according to the Stars and Stripes newspaper, "to discuss growing bilateral military relations and broader issues facing Southeast Asia"[c]hief among those issues [being] China's growing assertiveness in an area it considers its own backyard."
In his own words, "I've made it very clear that the United States remains a Pacific power, that we will continue to strengthen our presence in this part of the world and that we will remain a force"in this region."
Later in Japan, the Pentagon chief told American troops at the Yokota Air Base near Tokyo: "We are not anticipating any cutbacks in this region. If anything we are going to strengthen our presence in the Pacific." Two weeks earlier Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had spoken in a similar vein: "Probably the greatest opportunities in the years ahead will be found in the Asia Pacific region, which is why we have renewed America's leadership and pre-eminent role there."
In July of 2010 Clinton attended the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi and entered the fray in the disputes between ASEAN member states and China over the Spratly and Paracel islands in the South China Sea, in essence pledging the U.S. as guarantor for ASEAN against China. Panetta's meeting with his ten ASEAN counterparts last month provided an overt military component to the commitment.
While in Japan the defense secretary celebrated a half century of American-Japanese military colloboration enshrined in the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan of 1960, adding, "And it will be for the next 50 years as well."
Panetta also told assembled U.S. and Japanese troops: "I just had the opportunity to be in Indonesia and meet with the (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) defense ministers. And I conveyed the same message to them: the United States will continue to work with all of them to improve our cooperation, to improve our assistance, and to make sure that we strengthen security for all nations in the Pacific region."
Southeast Asia has a population of approximately 600 million, two-thirds that of the Western Hemisphere and almost three-quarters that of Europe. It contains one of the world's most vital shipping lanes, the Strait of Malacca. The strait runs for 600 miles between Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore to the east and the Indonesian island of Sumatra to the west.
According to the United Nations International Maritime Organization, at least 50,000 ships pass through the waterway annually, transporting 30 percent of the goods traded in the world, including oil from the Persian Gulf to major East Asian nations like China, Japan and South Korea. As many as 20 million barrels of oil a day pass through the Strait of Malacca, an amount that will only increase with the further advance of the Asian Century. [9]
Since the end of the Cold War the U.S. and its Western allies have expanded NATO throughout Europe and combined that effort with the creation of an Asian NATO that in part consists of the revival and expansion of other Cold War military alliances based on NATO: The Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS).
But what is being built currently is far more extensive than all the latter three combined and is, moreover, not complementary to but in collusion with NATO, the Afghan war serving the purpose of unifying East and West under American and NATO control as the Korean War and Vietnam War did for the creation and consolidation of SEATO and ANZUS.
In May of 2010 the Atlantic Council of the United States, the main NATO lobbying group in the Western Hemisphere and indeed in the world, posted an article by Max Boot, the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and frequent lecturer at the Army War College and the Command and General Staff College, titled "Building an East Asian NATO."
It contained this excerpt:
"A common complaint heard among American officials and policy analysts is that in East Asia -- one of the most important and conflict-prone areas of the planet -- there is no security architecture comparable to NATO. The U.S. has ties to many key countries, notably Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, Australia, Thailand, and Taiwan. But they do not have strong ties to one another, and there is no joint military planning of the kind that NATO undertakes"" [10]
In recent months the topic of a NATO-ASEAN military partnership has been given increased attention.
In August U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell gave an interview to The Australian in which he said:
"One of the most important challenges for US foreign policy is to effect a transition from the immediate and vexing challenges of the Middle East to the long-term and deeply consequential issues in Asia."
"There is an undeniable assertive quality to Chinese foreign policy and we're seeing that play out in the South China Sea and elsewhere.
"What has been effective in the past year or so is the number of countries in the Asia-Pacific (that) have been prepared to say to China that greater transparency (from China in military matters) is in the interests of the Asia-Pacific region.
"I think what you see is an across-the-board effort (by the US) to articulate India as playing a greater role in Asia, and also revitalising relations with ASEAN -- both ASEAN as an institution, and with its key members, such as Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore, and revitalising what used to be a very important relationship with The Philippines." [11]
His comments paralleled those of defense chief Panetta and other Pentagon officials in affirming that with the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and the beginning of a drawdown in Afghanistan, the Pentagon is focusing on East Asia, with NATO to take a greater role in policing the Greater/Broader/New Middle East and Africa in order to free up the American military to shift to the east.
In July an article appeared in the Jakarta Post with the title "Sketching out a future ASEAN-NATO partnership" by Evan A. Laksmana, identified as a researcher for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, presumably an affiliate of the think tank of the same name in Washington, D.C. Indonesia, recall, currently chairs ASEAN.
The author's comments included:
"As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) enters its seventh decade and as ASEAN consolidates its regional community building ahead of and beyond 2015, the bodies have much to learn from each other.
"For NATO, ASEAN will be increasingly critical for the future of Asian stability and order and would be an ideal candidate for a strategic counterpart to tackle common regional and global security challenges -- especially when ASEAN consolidates its regional community building, allowing it to share NATO's role as a community of like-minded nations"
"Southeast Asia's geopolitical, geo-strategic, and geo-economic value also suggests that NATO's future missions beyond its traditional area of operations might increasingly depend on ASEAN."
Further, he recommended:
"Any future ASEAN-NATO partnership could at least be placed within five major policy areas: peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR), maritime security, defense reform and counterterrorism."
"These five areas of engagement could be further executed in four levels of cooperation: strategic, institutional, operational and people-to-people.
"Strategically, NATO can engage ASEAN in discussions and dialogue regarding the five security issues using two tracks.
"In track one, the ASEAN Defense Ministers' Meeting Plus (consisting of all ASEAN countries plus Australia, the US, China, South Korea, Japan, India, Russia and New Zealand) as well as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) provide critical dialogue venues.
"In track two, two groupings are crucial: the ASEAN Institutes of Strategic and International Studies (ASEAN-ISIS), a network of nine major think tanks in Southeast Asia, and the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP), a network of nearly all major Asia Pacific think tanks.
"Institutionally, NATO could explore future cooperation or collaboration with either the ASEAN Secretariat, the network of ASEAN Peacekeeping Centers, the ASEAN Center for Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief or even the ASEAN Institute for Peace and Reconciliation.
"Other forms of diplomatic defense activities such as port visits or officer exchanges that are more practical and "neutral' might also help alleviate some of the sensitivities of regional countries regarding NATO's visibility."
The writer ended his piece with these comments:
"This would slowly and gradually raise the public profile and awareness of NATO's potential contribution to regional stability.
"This is at least the writer's impression from discussions with various NATO officials on a recent trip.
"NATO should at least start thinking of engaging ASEAN early to avoid any surprises when a new, region-wide crisis in Asia comes knocking. For ASEAN, if we are serious about boosting our regional security community building, would it hurt to learn from a multi-national organization that has had the longest practical experience in the endeavor?" [12]
Three days later an article appeared in the Pakistani press called "NATO knocks at the door of ASEAN" by Dr. Jassim Taqui, which issued these warnings:
"Having failed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has decided to change direction towards Southeast Asia. In this regard, NATO shows a keen interest to establish a partnership with ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations)."
Although "the United States continued to influence ASEAN since 1997," now "Washington is combining with India to influence the region in a bid to neutralize the rising cooperation between ASEAN and China.
"During her visit to India, the US Secretary of State Ms Hillary Clinton urged India to expand its traditional sphere of influence from South Asia to Central Asia and Southeast Asia to contain China's increasing assertiveness. Ostensibly, Clinton's slip of the tongue suggests a strategy that aims to encircle China in its backyard in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Rim on one hand and to boost engagement in Central Asia, on China's western flank, on the other.
"Clinton's tone is confrontational. It justifies the containment of China by Washington and New Delhi on the ground of "common values and interests.' Clinton also announced that the Obama administration would soon launch a three-way dialogue with India and Japan to counter China." [13]
At the beginning of the year U.S. Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters:
"We have 28,500 troops on the Korean Peninsula. We've got, I think, north of 50,000 troops in Japan. So we have significant assets already there. Over the long-term lay-down of our forces in the Pacific, we are looking at ways to even bolster that, not necessarily in Korea and Japan, but along the Pacific Rim, particularly in Southeast Asia." [14]
In September a U.S. Pacific Command spokesperson told The Diplomat "that ASEAN's pursuit of regional defence industry collaboration would help advance US national interests in the Asia-Pacific as it would usher in a new'set of standards, similar to NATO, (that) will facilitate interoperability among ASEAN and US militaries.'"
The feature also stated:
"From an operational perspective, the adoption of NATO standards by ASEAN would advance long-term plug-and-play interoperability between NATO and ASEAN militaries. While this would improve joint-military action across numerous mission spaces, it also would allow Pentagon defence planners to view ASEAN militaries as potential forward-based force multipliers for some regional scenarios with potential adversaries, including China." [15]
As the year nears it end it is apparent that the Pentagon and its increasingly global military bloc, NATO, are concentrating on integrating the militaries of Southeast Asia in their inexorable drive to contain and confront China and abort the emergence of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a viable, non-military alternative to them in Eurasia.
Read more!
Cambodian MP wants bilateral agreement on domestic workers
According to her, a mere memorandum of understanding, as suggested by Human Resources Minister S Subramaniam would be insufficient in addressing and resolving the issue of Cambodian domestic worker abuse in Malaysia.
Cambodia last month imposed a temporary ban on its citizens from working in Malaysian households following allegations of abuse.
Sochua, who was the driving force behind the ban, is adamant that better mechanisms be put in place when it is finally lifted to guarantee the protection of domestic workers and the prosecution of those who violate the law.
In a joint press conference with Tenaganita today, she explained that a bilateral agreement is crucial because it would have to include the Asean Migrant Workers Declaration, the International Labour Organisation( ILO) Convention on Domestic Workers and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
“And the agreement shouldn’t be limited to governments alone but must also include civil society, unions and NGOs to truly address the issue,” she said. “And politicians have to be involved as well so that we can hold ourelves accountable to our constituents.”
“I will continue pushing for clear mechanisms that will ensure a clean process of recruitment and accountability. This is not about business alone.”
Tenaganita, meanwhile, announced that it will push for a standardised contract for all domestic workers which will be the basis for the development of the bilateral agreement.
Its executive director, Irene Frenandez, told the media that Malaysia practiced discrimination in the way it addressed domestic workers as there are different contracts for each country.
“We need a standard contract for all domestic workers regardless of their countries of origin,” she said. “This way employers will also be clearer on their responsibilities in terms of protecting and addressing the rights of the domestic worker.”
Fernandez added that the Bar Council and other civil society groups had submitted a memorandum to the Human Resources Ministry about a year ago which included the recommended contract.
“We will revive that discussion and work together with Sochua and other civil society organisations in Cambodia on this matter,” she said. “Hopefully these basic demands and requirements are put in place so the ban can be lifted within three months.”
‘Real issue must be tackled’
Fernandez also said that the two main issues that required restructuring are the recruitment fees and the need for a post-arrival orientation programme.
“Recruitment fees is one of the major controls that employers have over domestic workers,” she pointed out. “It creates debt bondage and has to go. Direct recruitment from Indonesia only costs RM2,000, so employers don’t really need to fork out huge amounts for a domestic worker.”
“The post-arrival orientation programme must be rights-based and conducted for both employer and domestic workers. We will ask the government to allow civil societies to also conduct this programme to prevent agencies from pushing their own framework of control.”
Sochua, however, acknowledged that certain measures would take more than three months to implement, like the full adoption of the Asean declaration, changing legislation and reforming the judiciary.
“But Cambodia has to clean its house first before asking Malaysia to do the same,” she said. “We need to address the problem of unemployment among women by protecting them instead of simply providing them employment opportunities abroad.”
“The temporary ban has sent out a very clear message in Cambodia and has received strong public support. And I believe that the Cambodian Prime Minister has the political will to change the situation. But there is still a long way between will and what is eventually done.”
During her first visit to Malaysia in August, Sochua only met with rescued domestic workers and NGOs to avoid her visit being politicised.
This time however, she will be holding informal talks with opposition MPs including Subang MP Sivarasa Rasiah and Batu MP Tian Chua.
But she made it clear that she isn’t here to seek out media opportunities or to seek the apology that Foreign Minister, Anifah Aman, promised to offer if the allegations of abuse are true.
Neither Anifah nor any government representative has responded to a recently released report by the Human Rights Watch on the abuse of Cambodian domestic workers to Malaysia.
“What is an apology without addressing the real issue or hearing the voices of the workers?” said Sochua. “And without realising that a visa of employment is not a visa of exploitation.” Read more!
Rights Groups Say Pressure on Land Protesters Increasing
Dozens of land protesters have been detained and hundreds were charged in the courts in the first nine months of this year, indicating an increase in pressure by the judiciary in land disputes, rights groups said Wednesday.
In separate calculations on cases related to land disputes, Adhoc said it recorded 46 detentions and 173 court charges, Licadho said it counted 35 detentions and 163 charges and the Cambodian Center for Human Rights said it counted 26 court charges, all from January to September.
Charges included incitement, for land protests, and the destruction of property related to protests, demonstrations and disputes.
Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, said the detentions and charges put “more pressure on poor villagers” by a court system that “is not independent.”
“This violates the people’s rights to justice, fair trial and fair hearings,” he said.
Chan Saveth, lead monitor for Adhoc, said the number of court actions against villagers had increased from last year.
“The authorities are now using the courts to prevent the people’s spirit to struggle in land disputes,” he said. The charges usually stem from complaints lodged by “powerful sides” in such disputes, he said.
Companies or “powerful men” use the complaints as pressure, said Am Sam Ath, chief investigator for Licadho, leading “people to not peacefully solve the dispute.”
Both Licadho and Adhoc said they had not noted a measurable increase in the number of land disputes themselves, but in the number of court actions related to them.
Government spokesman Phay Siphan said rights organizations should raise the problems of detentions and complaints with the courts themselves and with the government to help strengthen the rule of law.
“The courts must find and maintain justice for all parties,” he said. “Judges cannot be free from law. We should find an effective way to strengthen justice for all people in Cambodia.” Read more!
Monday, November 07, 2011
Cambodian Embassy in US Collecting for Flood Relief
“They face a lot of shortages, and, most importantly, infectious diseases are worrisome. In the immediate future, they will need food, shelter and healthcare.”
The Cambodian Embassy in Washington is helping to raise funds for floods victims in Cambodia, following weeks of inundation that has left thousands of families stranded.
At a gathering in Washington Sunday, the embassy collected around $6,500 from some 200 Cambodian-Americans, the ambassador, Hem Heng, told VOA Khmer.
At least 250 people have died in the floods, which began in August and continued through September. The floods hit 17 provinces, covering some 400,000 hectares of rice fields and causing many to be evacuated to higher ground.
“They face a lot of shortages, and, most importantly, infectious diseases are worrisome,” Hem Heng said. “In the immediate future, they will need food, shelter and healthcare.”
The embassy will continue to take donations, he said. “I would like to appeal to all Cambodian-Americans to contribute as much as you can to help the victims of these severe floods, which have never happened before in our history.” Read more!
Lack of Morality Hurting Everyday Cambodians: Analyst
“Help each other, be sympathetic with each other, that’s first for society to be comfortable and stable. And if we talk about state governance, that can relieve much of the people’s suffering.”
Cambodia’s history shows that a lack of freedoms and equal rights have led to unrest in the past, a pattern that could repeat itself, a leading political analyst said Thursday, adding that Cambodia today is lacking in morals, making it harder for the country to develop.
“There is a gap between rights, or equity, stipulated in the constitution and the implementation,” said Lao Monghay, an independent analyst and monthly contributor to “Hello VOA.” “Practical application is impossible, one can’t exercise one’s rights, and there is abuse of power.”
“What appears is resistance, and that causes everyone’s destruction,” he said.
A similar situation led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, civil war and ultimately the presence of foreign troops, he said. “That’s the history.”
Lao Monghay encouraged Cambodians to exert their own efforts and influence to help their fellow citizens.
“If we have the power and the means, we should relieve other people’s suffering,” he said. “Help each other, be sympathetic with each other, that’s first for society to be comfortable and stable. And if we talk about state governance, that can relieve much of the people’s suffering.”
He pointed to both Buddha and Jayavarman VII, a former Angkorian king, as models who considered the suffering of others the same as their own. Currently, he said, such morality and virtue are lacking in Cambodia’s average citizens and officials. And he said that the “supreme moral law,” compassion, pity, joy with others’ happiness, and sincerity needed to be better applied by citizens.
Robberies, murders, abuse of others, drunkenness and even traffic violations are all examples that indicate low morality, he said. Higher morals would mean less need of laws, but would also lead to the better following of laws, he said.
“Morality is just like a policeman for our selves, maintaining the individual,” he said. “And the law is like the policeman that holds us externally. There is mutual involvement.”
Today, law enforcement is not effective, he said, because the police “are not clean themselves.”
“How can it be fair for law enforcement to enforce the law without the adequate means, salaries and other things?” he said.
Ou Virak, head of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, told “Hello VOA” that Cambodia lacks a respect for the law; in something as simple as traffic, it leads to thousands of deaths a year, and the loss of time, money and property. Meanwhile, land grabs are still under way, he said.
“These two issues, multiple that by hundreds, by thousands of other cases in the country’s economy, products, goods and thousands of services, and we see why our country is poor,” he said. “And why others are rich.” Read more!
Cambodia hands out mosquito nets to fight malaria
Robert Carmichael, Phnom Penh
The Cambodian government has begun handing out the first of nearly 3 million mosquito nets as part of its strategy to eliminate malaria by 2025.
Cambodia's health minister handed out the first bed nets to villagers in the remote north-east of the country on Monday.
Between now and January, the government will target more than 4,000 villages that experts say are at the highest risk of malaria.
The distribution of 2.7 million insecticide-treated bed nets is being paid for by the Global Fund, and is the largest in Cambodia's history.
Malaria killed 135 people in Cambodia last year, a significant improvement on 2009 when twice as many died.
Phnom Penh wants to eliminate the disease within 15 years.
The World Health Organization's Cambodia office expects the number of malaria cases will halve as a result of this campaign.
Read more!
Sunday, November 06, 2011
Cambodia eyes UAE to broker its milled rice: Commerce Minister
PHNOM PENH, Nov. 6 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia's Minister of Commerce Cham Prasidh said on Sunday the country has been seeking Dubai investors to broker Cambodian milled rice for countries surrounding the Persian Gulf.
"Although our rice is not the types of rice consumed in the United Arab Emirates as they mostly eat India's long grain Basmati rice, we want Dubai's rice brokers to buy our milled rice and wholesale to countries in-and-surrounding the Persian Gulf," he said at the Phnom Penh International Airport when returning from participating in the International Rice Exhibition 2011 in Dubai.
Cham said his visit to Dubai was the start of the bilateral trade relationship between Cambodia and Dubai and he had extended an invitation letter to Sheikha Lubna Bint Khalid Al Qasimi, the UAE Minister for Foreign Trade who will visit Cambodia early next year, in order to look into the cooperation on rice and other agricultural produce between the two countries.
"We believe that from next year, the trade and investment relationship between Cambodia and Dubai, especially rice cooperation, will be started," he said.
The UAE is the world's biggest re-exporter of rice. Annually, the Dubai brokers milled rice from around the globe in equivalent to 1.4 billion U.S. dollars, he said.
Cambodia produced some eight million tons of rice paddies last year. Of the figures, the country leaves 3.9 million tons of rice paddies, in equivalent to 2.5 million tons of milled rice, left over for exports this year, according to the government report.
However, this country can export only the small amount of its milled rice due to the lack of sophisticated post-harvesting technology.
The country needs roughly 350 million U.S. dollars to invest in hi-tech post harvest technology and to purchase rice paddies from farmers for processing in order to achieve its self-imposed target of one-million-ton rice exports by 2015.
Read more!
Attacks on Khmer Rouge were backpacker's death warrant, say former diplomat
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In a submission to a Senate inquiry, Mr Gaisford, a controversial former whistleblower in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said a Cambodian army general told him in early August 1994: ''We're here to take the mountain. The big noses [foreign hostages] are of no consequence [to us].''
Mr Wilson, Englishman Mark Slater and Frenchman Jean-Michel Braquet were murdered in early September 1994 after negotiations between the Cambodian government and their Khmer Rouge captors broke down.
In his submission to the Senate inquiry into the government's response to the kidnapping of Australians overseas, Mr Gaisford, who retired in 2001, said the government secretly agreed to the Cambodian government paying a $US150,000 ransom for Mr Wilson and his companions while publicly reiterating its ''no negotiation, no ransom'' hostage policy.
Mr Gaisford said the Cambodian co-prime minister at the time, Hun Sen, intervened militarily to attack the Khmer Rouge, breaking an agreement with Australia, France and Britain ''not to act adversely without consultation or prior consent''.
Mr Gaisford said Australian diplomats and consular officials were told to treat the families of hostages overseas as a ''problem'' who should be managed by fear and not be kept informed.
One of his former bosses at the Australian embassy in Phnom Penh told him to treat Mr Wilson's family ''as mushrooms'' to be ''kept in the dark'' as much as possible, Mr Gaisford said.
''We were also [told] to keep them 'too frightened' to travel to Cambodia or if they did come, then keep them too scared to travel outside the capital, where we could manage them,'' he said.
Mr Gaisford is expected to testify into an inquest in Melbourne into Mr Wilson's death, which has resumed after a 13-year adjournment.
In its submission to the Senate inquiry, the Department of Foreign Affairs said the policy not to pay ransoms underpinned its response to the few kidnappings of Australians that have occurred in the past decade.
Saturday, November 05, 2011
A 5-day tour in and around Siem Reap visit Angkor temples Kbal Spean Bantey Srei Beng Melea Tonle Sap lake
By Lotramar
A 5-day tour in and around Siem Reap visit Angkor temples Kbal Spean Bantey Srei Beng Melea Tonle Sap lake
Itinerary
Day 1: Arrival in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Upon your arrival in Siem Reap aiport, you will be greeted by Lotussia Travel local team and transferred to your hotel for check-in (*). The rest of the day is free at leisure. Overnight in Siem Reap.
Day 2: Visit Angkor Temples (B,L).
We start the day with the infamous and treasured legacy of Angkor Wat. The masterpiece and holy grail of the temples of Angkor. Angkor Wat is the world’s largest religious building and an insurmountable legacy left by Suryavarman II. Believed to be the world's largest religious building, there is almost one kilometer of exquisitely detailed carvings which depict the intricacies of the Khmer empire through dramatic and humorous stories of love, life, war, religion and mythology, before accessing the inner complex to experience the powerful energy that this sublime temple inspires. Marvel at the quincunx of towers, admire the carvings and architectural detail of the complex as a whole, as it seemingly defies with its beauty and symmetry the fact that it’s a man-made creation almost 1000 years old.
We shall continue our visit Ta Prohm. Of Tombraider fame, Ta Prohm is an Angkorian treasure, and it’s going to stay that way. One of the most fascinating things about Ta Prohm (except for its size, beauty and pleasantly eerie atmosphere) is that today it can be appreciated perfectly as it would have been in its day, a mere 900 years ago, as it has been ‘left as it was found’ by the French explorers who discovered it in the 19th century. Ta Prohm is a sight to behold, a veritable maze with gigantic golden trees strangling the stone foundations at every juncture, fine carvings, prominent galleries and a layout that will bring out the explorer in you.
After lunch we commence our exploration of Angkor Thom. Known as the ‘Great City’, Angkor Thom was Jayavarman VII’s ultimate creation, his true expression of design excellence. Angkor Thom was an entire city built in the 12th century which at one point was believed to house up to 150,000 people across an area of nine square kilometers and which thrived upon a complex system of agriculture and waterways. 5 magnificent gates which stand 23 metres high and are spiritually guarded by faces reminiscent of the Bayon, and we will enter through the Victory Gate, complete with a causeway with two emanating rows of Devas and Asuras, both of which are wrestling a powerful Naga.
We will converge upon the centre of this extraordinary city, and begin to explore its elements, starting with the Elephant Terrace, a royal platform used as a viewing gallery for grandiose royal spectacles, decorated wonderfully with statues of elephants and perfect carvings. Adjacently sits the Terrace of the Leper King, decorated in much the same way but unique for possessing the statue of Yama (the Leper King), god of Death.
We will proceed through the forest to Preah Palilay. Guarded by a large Buddha this is a small but beautiful temple from the 13th century. Afterwards we will proceed to Phimeanakas, a 10th century largely uncarved but beautifully constructed pyramid temple affording terrific views, before Baphuon, an imposing 50 metre tall temple dedicated to Shiva which houses one of the world’s largest reclining Buddhas. And finally to Bayon, arguably the most stunning of all the Temples of Angkor, adorned with 37 towers decorated with wonderful giant stone faces and beautifully decorated carvings throughout.
Finally we will proceed to Bakheng Hill (if weather permitted) , an iconic temple setting where we will admire the sun set over this ancient land, with views across the great Tonle Sap Lake, the West Baray, and of course, Angkor Wat.
Overnight in Siem Reap.
Day 3: Kbal – Spean – Bantey Srei (B,L).
Breakfast at the hotel, then travel 45km to Kbal Spean, or valley of the 1000 lingas; a remarkable place where natural meets man-made phenomenon – 1000 hand carved lingas lie on the bed of the Kbal Spean River downstream from the stunning waterfall, placed there to fertilize the river during ancient times.
Lunch will be provided in a local restaurant in town.
After lunch we will continue to Banteay Srei; 30km from Siem Reap, Banteay Srei is a unique and exquisite temple, glowing red and in perfect symmetrical detail, which possesses a truly unrivalled beauty all of its own. The carvings here are undoubtedly the most detailed of any of those in Angkor, and the perfection and attention to detail are remarkable.
We move on to Banteay Samre, or Citadel of the Samre, a smaller temple located in the jungle in the style of Angkor Wat. On our return we will also stop at Srah Srang – a vast and beautiful man-made lake where the Royals of Angkor would bathe, relax and unwind, before returning to Siem Reap.
Overnight in Siem Reap.
Day 4: Beng Melea – Tonle Sap lake (B,L).
After breakfast at the hotel, we will venture to Beng Melea Temple. 65km from Siem Reap through traditional rural villages, Beng Mealea, yet another of King Jayavarman VII’s extraordinary creations, will be discovered. On a huge one whole square kilometer scale, this temple is built in the same style of Angkor Wat, and although partly collapsed its immense grandeur is still a sight to behold. Lost to the jungle, and with fewer visitors, Beng Mealea will certainly bring out the explorer in you.
Once back in Siem Reap we shall visit the Great Tonle Sap Lake, the largest lake in Southeast Asia. After taking in the beautiful countryside to reach the water’s edge, we will transfer to our boat and proceed to sail through mangroves, visit floating and stilted villages, and experience a fascinating, traditional and unique way of life. This lake with an area of 16000 square kilometers during the height of the wet season is an astonishing place, so significant to Cambodia and Southeast Asia as a whole, and it’s home to great number of rare species of wildlife and some of the most resourceful communities on this earth.
Overnight in Siem Reap.
Day 5: Angkor National Museum – Departure (B).
Visit the Angkor National Museum, a wonderful cultural landmark in Siem Reap over 20,000 Sq.m. in area which through a modern interactive approach takes you on an exciting tour through the ancient Khmer Kingdom within its modern day context through the exhibition of ancient artefacts, videos, presentations and historical accounts of the kingdom of Angkor.
Afterwards we’ll visit Chantier Ecole-Artisan d’Angkor, a museum and vocational centre dedicated to the revival of Khmer art. Founded on the idea that Cambodia must endeavour to keep its heritage of skilled craftsmanship alive despite the loss of a large body of expertise during Cambodia’s recent history, Artisans d’Angkor was set up by CEFP (Chantiers-Ecoles de Formation Professionnelle) to provide instruction and employment to some of the poorest members of the community in such art. Visitors can observe modern day professionals employing ancient techniques in the production of metalwork, stonework, lacquer and silk.
According to your flight departure, you will be transferred to Siem Reap airport for onward flight home. The end of Lotussia Travel service.
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Cambodia: Dispute in South China Sea should be solved between China, concerned countries
PHNOM PENH, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia's Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Hor Namhong said on Saturday that the territorial dispute in the South China Sea should be solved between China and the concerned countries by complying with the Declaration of Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) and recent adopted guidelines.
His remarks were made on Saturday during meeting with visiting Liu Zhenmin, assistant to Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, at the ministry.
"Both sides agreed that the South China Sea issues must be solved out between China and the states involved in the dispute only," Koy Kuong, spokesman for Cambodia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told reporters after the meeting.
"All concerned parties in the South China Sea have to comply with the (2002) DOC and adopted recent guidelines," Hor Namhong was quoted by Koy Kuong as saying to Liu Zhenmin.
Hor Namhong continued to say that all relevant parties in the dispute have to build mutual trust in order to solve the dispute in the spirits of mutual benefit, peace and friendship.
China and ASEAN in July adopted an agreement on the guidelines of implementing the DOC.
The guidelines include some principles that offer directions for implementing the DOC and map out procedural rules for cooperation in the future.
The oil- and gas-rich South China Sea is partially claimed by several Southeast Asian states, including the Philippines and Vietnam.
Meanwhile, Liu Zhenmin said the visit in Cambodia was to strengthen bilateral and regional cooperation in all fields with Cambodia and said China still continued its support to Cambodia in all circumstances.
Both sides also exchanged views on the East Asia Summit in Bali, Indonesia later this month in order to enable the Summit to run smoothly and successfully as this year was the 20th anniversary of the establishment of China-ASEAN dialogue relations.
Liu arrived Phnom Penh on Saturday and will leave here on Sunday.
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Friday, November 04, 2011
US man found guilty of abusing Cambodian boy, sentenced to 4 years in jail
By Associated Press
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A Cambodian court has sentenced an American man to four years in prison on charges of sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy.
Judge Suos Sam Ath of Phnom Penh Municipal Court said James D’Agostino was found guilty Friday of paying for sexual services from a minor. He paid tuition for the boy, who stayed at his home.
D’Agostino, 56, denied the accusation. He was a volunteer doctor at a children’s hospital in the Cambodian capital and previously worked as a pediatric emergency doctor in Syracuse, N.Y. He was arrested in February after the boy told authorities about his reported actions.
Cambodia has long been a magnet for foreign pedophiles because of poverty and poor law enforcement. In recent years police and courts have increasingly targeted sex offenders.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Cambodia: UN stepping up emergency response to severe floods
4 November 2011 – The United Nations reported today that it is increasing its joint efforts with Cambodian authorities and aid providers to offer food assistance to some of the thousands of people that have been displaced by severe flooding recently.
Some 240,000 people have been displaced by heavy rains and according to the World Food Programme (WFP), 10 per cent of the rice crops have been destroyed and 265,000 hectares of rice fields have bee damaged, raising the price of rice by 12 per cent.
“Cambodia’s worst floods in more than a decade have forced people from their homes and destroyed their crops,” said WFP’s country director in Cambodia, Jean-Pierre de Margerie, in a statement released by the agency.
“Now, with the price of rice on the rise, the poorest households face the prospect of not having enough to eat. Food support is needed now, and will be needed in the months ahead, as people recover from this disaster.”
To mitigate the impact of the floods, the WFP launched an emergency operation in collaboration with the Government and the non-governmental organization (NGO) partners, which consists of distributing 50 kg of rice to each family, and aims to reach some 60,000 people.
The WFP is also working with Cambodian authorities to assess the number of people that need food assistance, how long they will need it for, and the time it will take them to recover.
During a news briefing in Geneva, spokesperson for the WFP Gaelle Sévenier said a one year plan to help the 150,000 most vulnerable victims would also be put in place, and added that the WFP had already received $2.5 million for emergency funding for operations in the country, with $1.5 million more to come.
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New protections called for Cambodian maids working in Malaysia
By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
Catholic Online (http://www.catholic.org/)
Many young girls are sent to training academies by families who incur huge debt
Many Cambodians who work in Malaysia as domestic help, such as maids or nannies, face untold human rights abuses such as abuse, torture and sexual assault. Human Rights Watch say that both Cambodia and Malaysia must do much more to halt the mistreatment of those who work abroad.
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Twenty-eight women were interviewed by the group and nearly half reported suffering physical or psychological abuse from their employers. Another three women had claimed that they had been raped, one by her employer.
The nation of Cambodia has well-connected recruitment firms that forcibly confine young women in poor conditions in training centers for months before they are sent to work abroad. These firms provide cash advances to these women's families, as well as food and livestock. These recruitment firms also charge huge training fees, which takes these women months to work off.
"They Deceived Us At Every Step," is the name of the report documenting these abuses.
"The report is basically a comprehensive account of what happens when women decide to travel from Cambodia to Malaysia," Human Rights Watch's women's rights researcher Jyotsna Poudyal says. "So it documents the abuses and exploitation at each step of the migration process. Our concerns are basically about women who decide to migrate must be protected, and this report looks into the recruitment steps, and then comes up with concrete recommendations of what could be done to improve the situation."
Malaysia and Cambodia should abide by, and then ratify the International Labor Organization's convention on domestic workers, which protects workers from violence and exploitation, says the group.
Furthermore, Phnom Penh must draft a comprehensive migration law that addresses issues such as debt bondage, child recruitment and other abuses common to the recruitment side of the industry.
What makes this very ugly scenario possible stems from economic necessity. A third of all Cambodians live below the poverty line. There are very few jobs available for the estimated 300,000 young people who enter the labor market each year.
The Cambodian government announced a halt to sending domestic workers to Malaysia last month. Poudyal says the suspension is most likely temporary, and that Phnom Penh has shown little interest in tackling the problem.
"From our point of view it seems that the government is keen to promote migration, but at the same time extremely reluctant to extend basic protections to its workers," added Poudyal. "So I would say that if Cambodia is serious about being a big exporter of labor then they have to resolve these issues in the long term."
It is a measure that must be done. Indonesia barred its citizens from working in Malaysia two years ago after reports of similar abuses. That action forced Malaysia to ensure that Indonesian domestic workers were awarded protections.
Cambodians are currently excluded.
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