Our hungry planet: A time of want

As world hunger worsened this past year, some blamed countries that limited trading and began to hoard food. Others blamed free trade policies.

SAMPOAH VILLAGE, CAMBODIA

Some of the worst fallout of the world's food crisis this year hit villages like this one, a ramshackle collection of unsteady huts set next to rice fields.

Here, on a late summer day, Som Samuen stood in her doorway as she considered what had become a daily problem: How would she find dinner for herself and her 12-year-old son, who scampers through the fields on rainy days to hunt for crabs and minnows that dart through the shallow water of the rice paddies.

The washerwoman lays claim to a meager income on most days, and when the price of fish and rice shot up this year during a global food crisis, her tenuous hold on life began to fray. Some days, she and her son don't eat.

Cambodians have a phrase, "the hungry season," for the weeks in late summer that fall just before harvest. This year it hit like a hammer.

People here, some of the poorest in the world, simply couldn't keep up as food prices raced upward this spring, fueled by a food shortage, poor crops and commodity speculation in financial markets around the world.

Food riots broke out in some countries, and dozens of nations began restricting exports to ensure there would be enough to feed their own residents -- which sent food prices even higher in other countries.

Although the crisis has eased, the shocking specter of famine led to a renewed debate about the benefits and limits of free trade, particularly with some food companies and farmers in Minnesota and other developed nations enjoying some of their fattest profits on record.

Today, some 967 million people worldwide -- 44 million more than last year -- exist in a state of hunger like Samuen and her son, unable to afford the higher prices for the 2,100 calories a day needed to nourish the body. And though food prices can be difficult to predict, the United Nations has forecast that the world by 2050 will need twice the amount of food produced today to feed an expected global population of 9 billion people.

Executives at Cargill and other international food companies say free trade is the only way to meet that demand. But a growing chorus of critics say that global trade policies and practices have left residents of developing nations more vulnerable to market gyrations and calamitous natural events, such as the prolonged drought in Australia that has helped drive up rice prices. Producing food locally is far more efficient than carting it around the world.

Stand at the edge of a Cambodian rice field and it's hard to imagine anyone would go hungry here. The neon green fields stretch to the horizon in some places.

But the need for more food in Cambodia has rarely been more urgent than it is today. About one in five Cambodians don't have enough to eat, some 2.8 million people. A full 44 percent of Cambodian children are malnourished, according to the World Health Organization. Rising food prices tipped 105 million people into poverty, a World Bank economist estimated, with about 210,000 Cambodians counted in that number.

Higher prices for their crops didn't benefit farmers in developing countries enough to counteract the extra burden on their budgets. That's largely because many Third World farmers don't grow enough to feed themselves and must supplement their diet with food bought at market, according to a World Bank analysis published this summer.

The Cambodian government urged farmers to plant more rice this year, hoping to increase the national crop from 6.38 million acres to 6.42 million acres, said Prak Thaveak Amida, a government agriculture minister. That might require more land though since yields have remained steady for a while, according to the International Rice Research Institute.

Annual rice production of about 6.7 million tons would make a valuable cash crop for export, but Cambodian farmers, like those in other poor nations in Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, use decrepit machinery that makes the rice unsuitable for export markets. Instead, about a third of the crop in its raw form moves out of the country by informal channels to Vietnam, where it's processed in high quality mills.

If Cambodia's local rice industry were more advanced with storage silos, modern mills and the capital to buy a farmer's crop for processing, the country could export like its neighbors to the east and west, Thailand and Vietnam, the world's No. 1 and No. 2 rice exporters. Corruption and bribery plague Cambodia, foiling outside investors who could help develop the country's economy, according to Transparency International, a group that monitors government corruption.

The pressures that drove U.S. grocery bills up 7.5 percent in the past year were more acutely felt in the developing world, where people often spend a larger percentage of their income on food. The high prices led to the government's collapse in Haiti, and fear of shortages led 47 countries, to restrict trade this year, including Vietnam, Cambodia's neighbor to the east. The move ensured plenty of rice within Vietnam, but left its trading partners scrambling to make up the difference. Prices in Cambodia quadrupled from their historic averages, forcing many families to go with less -- or without.

Unable to sell

On a day in late August, a wooden boat laden with bags of unmilled rice ferried up the Mekong River to the shoreline outside the bustling city of Can Tho, Vietnam. The boat was soon swarmed by men lifting bag after bag out of the boat's hold and onto a conveyor belt that ran into Tran Quoi's rice mill. Quoi, a private rice seller, had a competitor for most of this year that he couldn't beat: his own government.

The government-owned rice mill near his office rode out the trade barriers imposed by agriculture ministers in Hanoi, but his business relies on exports.

"It's unfair for some poor people," said Quoi, who normally mills the rice and ships it out for the export market. He was eventually allowed to sell on the export market when the government lifted the restrictions this fall, but by then prices were dropping and he had lost the best market.

Cargill and other companies say trade barriers were precisely the wrong response to the crisis because they send the wrong signals to everyone in the food chain.

They say limiting exports means lenders will shy away from financing purchases of land or equipment; scientists will devote less time and money working to improve crop yields; and farmers will have little incentive to boost efficiency or output.

"In the countries that hold prices down, they send a less vibrant message to their farmers to expand production," Cargill CEO Greg Page told the Star Tribune this summer, drawing on the example of Argentina, where leaders instituted price controls and export restrictions in the face of rising food prices this year. "So I think it's easy to make the argument that in Argentina, by dramatically suppressing the price of grain in the country at the same time they have to pay world price for fertilizer, they mute the signal to the farmers of Argentina to produce more to feed the world's need."

Cargill is not alone in that belief. Economists and government officials in the United States and elsewhere, including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, argue that each country should simply grow those foods that it's most efficient at growing, and trade for the rest, a model of "comparative advantage" that is the goal of free trade. The English economists who coined the phrase once made this argument using wool and wine as examples, saying it made more sense for England to trade its excess wool to Spain for wine than to plant vineyards.

For consumers, free trade makes buying Chilean grapes easier. For Minnesota farmers, it creates more markets for their soybeans, corn and milk. And food companies such as General Mills can more reliably replace expensive soy oil with palm oil.

Of course, trade restrictions are not limited to developing nations. The United States, France, and other nations use subsidies or tariffs to protect a variety of agricultural interests from foreign competition.

Despite this year's turmoil, free trade has not been an easy sell to the American public, with many blaming it for the loss of American jobs or the import of contaminated food. A Pew Research Center poll this year found that 48 percent of respondents believe free trade agreements are bad for the United States. A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found similar fears, with 58 percent of Americans saying globalization has subjected this economy to unfair competition from cheap labor.

The world's on-again, off-again embrace of open trade was off again this summer when the latest round of negotiations at the World Trade Organization blew up in July. The talks -- the Doha Development Round -- came undone because some WTO member nations worried that the agreement wouldn't protect against surges of cheap imported food that would then collapse local farming economies.

For Alexandra Spieldoch, a trade expert and free-trade critic with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a Minneapolis-based think tank, the policies in Doha are precisely the problem. Privatization schemes, deregulation and trade facilitation, are "exactly the approach that has contributed to many of the problems we are seeing today in the food system," she said. "It's likely that this approach will worsen rather than ease the crisis."

The priority should be on local food systems, she added. Her argument is the counter to Cargill's view of "comparative advantage," one that says a country's food security relies not on trade but on education and investment in local agriculture. It's a twist on the old axiom that would have people teaching a man to fish rather than giving him food.

Local investment, and not free trade deals with Europe or the United States, would feed more people in Africa, argued Patrick Woodall, senior policy analyst at Food and Water Watch, a Washington-based think tank.

"It's not that tons of people in Africa are drinking coffee and eating chocolate bars," he said. "They're dedicating acreage to crops that are exported to the U.S. and Europe, and the continent's going hungry."

The problem has been exacerbated by low prices for commodities such as cocoa, coffee and cotton. "This has been comparatively advantageous to the people who buy raw coffee beans, and but it's not comparatively advantageous to those who are hungry."

Worried it's not enough

Stepping into the rice market in Phnom Penh's neighborhood of Ben Keng Kong means navigating a warren of stalls and vendors jammed side-by-side. Plastic tarps strung overhead keep at bay some of the heavy rain that comes every afternoon of rainy season. Kol Kim, 65, withered and shirtless, sat in the shade of one such tarp on a late summer day behind mounds of fresh rice.

His customers had been happier lately because prices had retreated since April, when rice sold for nearly four times its historic average. Still, prices are about double what they were, he said, about 70 cents per kilogram for the best quality rice. Some customers were buying more than they needed, fearing prices would go back up.

Said Kim: "They buy it just to store it."
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China lends Cambodia $305m

PHNOM PENH - CHINA on Wednesday gave impoverished Cambodia more than US$200 million (S$305 million) in loans and grants to re-build the country's infrastructure, a government official said.

Chinese and Cambodian officials inked an agreement to give a 200-million-dollar-loan to rebuild roads in the kingdom during a meeting between Prime Minister Hun Sen and China's visiting top political advisor Jia Qinglin, government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said.

During the meeting, Mr Jia also announced a grant of US$7.26 million and the same amount as a non-interest loan, he said.

The announcement came just a day before the annual aid meeting between the government and international donors.

Last year, Cambodia's donors pledged US$689 million to the impoverished country, including tens of millions from China.

China, a former patron of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, routinely gives Cambodia hundreds of millions in aid outside the donor structure, and has been repeatedly praised by Mr Hun Sen for not attaching any conditions to its money. -- AFP

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Cambodia to form tourism task force to tackle crisis fallout

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia's tourism sector is set to form a task force next week to address the Thai political crisis that has caused foreign arrivals in the Kingdom to plummet, national media reported Wednesday.

The task force will consist of 10 institutions, including airlines, travel agencies, hotels, restaurants and government departments, and will develop a national strategy to attract foreign tourists, Ho Vandy, president of the Cambodian Association of Travel Agents, was quoted by the Phnom Penh Post as saying.

He said the Ministry of Tourism approved the task force on Tuesday and it would convene next week.

Both of Bangkok's major airports have been occupied by anti-government protesters since last week, leaving hundreds of thousands of travelers stranded.

The crisis has hit Cambodia's tourism industry hard, as about a third of the Kingdom's visitors arrive via Thailand.

Ho Vandy said the task force hopes to shift Cambodia's tourist arrivals away from Thailand.

"Although most tourists in Cambodia come through Thailand, our tourism sector has survived because we have other gateways such as Malaysia, Singapore, China, South Korea and Vietnam," he added.


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Cambodia's golf plans now face financial hurdles

SIEM REAP, Cambodia (AFP) — The sun rises over Cambodia's famed temples of Angkor Wat, while nearby, dozens of female caddies wearing long-sleeved green shirts and wide-rimmed hats await golfers.

The 18-hole Angkor Golf Resort designed by golfing legend Nick Faldo opened a year ago, becoming the country's second professional-level golf course.

This is exactly what the Cambodian government has in mind when it says it wants to lure well-heeled travellers.

"We are developing more golf courses in order to attract more tourists to visit the country," says Minister of Tourism Thong Khon.

"Tourists can visit the Angkor Wat temples and stay to play golf in one trip."

At least four more luxury courses are now in various stages of construction in the impoverished country which drew more than two million tourists last year, but hopes to draw three million in 2010 and five million by 2012.

Golf is part of the plan to get visitors to stay longer than the few days it takes to visit the ancient Angkor temples, but Cambodia's strategy to diversify its tourism industry might have landed in the sand trap of the global financial crisis.

There are only four commercial courses in Cambodia right now, but the head of the national golf association, Suos Yara, thinks there needs to be at least 50 greens to nurture the game among locals and transform the country into a true golfing destination.

But as tourist arrivals slow amid the gathering global economic storm, he knows that dream looks increasingly distant.

"Many (Asian) investors want to build more golf courses here but because of the financial crisis, they have pushed back their projects," Suos Yara says.

Even the pristine Angkor Golf Resort, which was averaging more than 700 golfers a month, is starting to notice the drop in interest, says its manager Adam Robertson.

"I have already seen a decline in the number of visitors compared to last year. Usually in the time of a crisis the annual holiday is cancelled first," said Robertson.

"Without a doubt this (financial crisis) is a major worry for all hospitality oriented businesses."

Yet golf is here to stay. The country's defence minister last month teed off with Thai military officials in a spot of golf diplomacy before talks aimed at resolving a deadly territorial dispute.

The sport is so beloved at the highest levels of government that Cambodia's senate has its own nine-hole course.

Prime Minister Hun Sen's golf scores are posted on his cabinet website, even though he has a handicap of 15.

Earlier this year the premier, a huge golf fan, said he even wanted a luxury course built in the former Khmer Rouge rebel stronghold of Pailin.

Cambodia's leaders have also approved plans for a luxury golf course in Bokor national park, a protected wildlife area.

And despite the worldwide economic slowdown, the country's profile in the sport will be further lifted when the Asia Golf Tour stops by in December for the second annual Cambodia Open.

"Golf is still a new sport in Cambodia but I think it will continue to grow," Robertson said.

But there is still a long way to go as the sport remains alien to most Cambodians, he said, adding that the Angkor Golf Resort had to teach some 350 employees the rules.

"Not only do we at Angkor Golf Resort train our caddies, but we have taken it upon ourselves to train new golfers in the etiquette of golf," he said.
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Cambodia to seek less donor aid for 2009

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia will reduce the amount of aid requested from donors in the coming year, as the global financial crisis puts a pinch on the Kingdom's foreign backers, national media reported Wednesday.

The government will seek less than 600 million U.S. dollars in official direct assistance (ODA), Cheam Yeap, Cambodian People's Party (CPP) lawmaker, was quoted by the Phnom Penh Post as saying.

"Last year the government requested 602 million U.S. dollars, but they ended up giving us more 690 million U.S. dollars," he said ahead of a three-day meeting between donors and the government that begins Wednesday.

Cheam Yeap said that the global financial crisis could prevent countries from maintaining their normal levels of assistance.

The effects of the global economic recession will be one focus of the Cambodian Development Cooperation Forum, an annual event which is supposed to provide the government, civil society and donor groups with an opportunity to review key public policy issues and their financial requirement.

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Cambodian football team readies to face Singapore in Indonesia

PHNOM PENH, The Cambodian national football team will fly to Indonesia on Wednesday to play Singapore in their opening match of the 2008 ASEAN Football Federation Suzuki Cup, national media said Tuesday.

Cambodia was well prepared for the Friday game, Ouk Sethycheat, secretary general of the Football Federation of Cambodia, was quoted by English-Khmer language newspaper the Cambodia Daily as saying.

"We are ready and will do all the best efforts we have," he said, adding that the 22 players had been in a training camp since Oct. 24.

It was a major success for Cambodia to qualify to compete, he added.

Cambodia has never defeated Singapore. As part of Group A, Cambodia is also scheduled to play host Indonesia on Dec. 7 and Myanmar on Dec. 9.

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China builds South East Asia ties

China's top political adviser, Jia Qinglin, has arrived in the Lao capital Vientiane, on a goodwill visit.

Separately, Chinese State Councillor Meng Jianzhu arrived in Cambodia and met Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Hun Sen highlighted the importance of China - and its powerful economy - to South East Asia.

At times under Vietnam's umbrella, Laos and Cambodia have been receiving more Chinese investment, aid and migration in recent years.

Chinese state media reported Hun Sen as saying that the fast economic development of China was an encouragement not only for the Chinese people, but for people in the region.

Laos and Cambodia have been willing recipients of growing amounts of financial and other assistance from China, from the building of roads to the migration of traders.

Cambodia appreciated the long-term support and help that China has given for the economic and social development of Cambodia, Hun Sen said.

Officials then signed agreements to promote co-ordination of security between the two countries, part of which will involve China donating police equipment to Cambodia.

Project criticised

In Laos, China is funding several large construction projects, including the now completed road from northern Laos into southern China.

Thousands of Chinese workers have been brought to the country to work on these projects.

Correspondents say that criticism has emerged of what some see as overly close ties with China.

They cite the example of the stadium under construction in Vientiane which is financed by the China Development Bank.

The bank brought in the Suzhou Industrial Park Overseas Investment company from China, which was then granted a 50-year lease on 1,600 hectares of marshland to build a special residential zone in an area of ecological and national significance near That Luang monastery.

Opponents of the That Luang Township have said that the plan to turn a large marshland into a new "Chinatown" cedes too much sovereignty to the large neighbour to the north.

Unofficial estimates of about 300,000 new Chinese residents in Laos are impossible to confirm as many Chinese live without documentation, correspondents say.

The Xinhua news agency reported Mr Jia as saying that China and Laos have enjoyed "frequent contacts between leaders, ever-deepening economic co-operation and trade, mutual support and close co-ordination in international and regional affairs and expanded exchanges and co-operation in diverse areas".

Mr Jia said he hoped that this visit will "promote continuous progress in China-Laos relationship featuring long-term stability, good neighbourliness, mutual trust and comprehensive co-operation". Read more!

Genocidal loopholes in Cambodia

By Stephen Kurczy

PHNOM PENH - The Khmer Rouge's alleged former chief executioner and head of state will both appear in court this week in Cambodia. Yet instead of reeling the radical Maoist regime's most senior leaders closer to justice, the two-and-a-half-year-old United Nations sponsored tribunal's final hearings for this year will showcase defense stall tactics and set up one defendant to be the first, and possibly the only, cadre convicted for the regime's crimes against humanity.

French attorney Jacques Verges, who represents Khieu Samphan, the former Khmer Rouge head-of-state, will argue later this week before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) that the failure to translate all evidence into French has violated his client's right to a fair trial and thereby warrants his release.

Meanwhile, the court is expected to announce whether former torture prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, will be tried under the 1956 Cambodian penal code and Joint Criminal Enterprise, a form of liability that holds all members of a conspiracy responsible for each other's crimes. The ruling could prove disadvantageous to the defense, as the Khmer Rouge is accused of some of the most egregious violations of international humanitarian law in the 20th century during its three-year, eight-month and 20-day rule.

While Duch nears conviction for crimes committed during his oversight of the S-21 prison in Phnom Penh and the notorious Choeung Ek killing fields nearby, where a combined 12,380 detainees died, observers say Khieu Samphan's case showcases a defense team vigorously defending its client.

"The Khieu Samphan hearing will very much send the message, 'sounds like the court is hung up on technical details and administrative issues'. The other one, with Duch, looks a lot like a trial that is actually going to deliver something in the foreseeable future," said John Ciorciari, senior legal advisor to the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam).

The last time Verges appeared in the ECCC, on April 23, he refused to speak because all evidence was not translated into French. The pre-trial judges found that Verges' refusal to cooperate violated Khieu Samphan's right to be represented and "right to a timely hearing". The sideshow earned Verges a warning from the court, but also an eight-month delay in procedures.

More than a year has passed since the court placed Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot's right-hand man in detention for his alleged role in "directing, encouraging, enforcing or otherwise rendering support to [the Communist Party of Kampuchea] policy which was characterized by murder, extermination, imprisonment, persecution on political grounds and other inhumane acts such as forcible transfers of the population, enslavement, and forced labor." Because of the delays and legal stalling tactics, Ciorciari said Khieu Samphan's trial is unlikely to begin until 2010.

That's good news for Verges, former advocate for Nazi Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie and the Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal. He has said that the ECCC "borders on lynch-mob justice". Observers don't expect to see Khieu Samphan's release when the pre-trial chamber rules this week on Verges' appeal, legal experts say, but do anticipate another entertaining presentation from Verges. As Verges himself said in a November interview with German magazine Der Spiegel, "A good trial is like a Shakespeare play, a work of art."

Verges "is someone with a lot of tricks up his sleeve, and he's very masterful at using criminal processing in a way that tells a larger narrative about justice", said Beth Van Schaack, assistant law professor at the US's Santa Clara University School of Law who served on the criminal defense team for John Walker Lindh, the American citizen who joined Afghanistan's Taliban. "He'll be using whatever legal loopholes that he can find. To a certain extent, that's what we expect from a defense."

Verges and other defense lawyers can't claim full responsibility for delaying the UN tribunal. Twice in the past two years the court has been rocked by allegations of internal corruption. The Open Society Justice Initiative in 2007 said tribunal staff paid kickbacks for their positions and this year in August the UN Office of International Oversight Services in New York said multiple tribunal staffers had complained of graft.

John Hall, associate professor at Chapman University School of Law in California, has said the corruption allegations could "fatally" damage the tribunal if the Cambodian government cannot stamp it out. Not surprisingly, Verges has also called the entire court into question, saying in the Der Spiegel interview, "It may be that the trial against Duch will begin soon, but not the trials against the other four prisoners … because the tribunal in Phnom Penh has already gambled away its credibility and legitimacy."

Ailing comrades
Meanwhile, the aging Khmer Rouge cadres complain of illness. Khieu Samphan, 77, was treated in May for a minor stroke. Ex-foreign minister Ieng Sary, 83, entered the hospital in late July after doctors discovered blood in his urine during a routine checkup. Duch, at 66, is the junior by at least a decade to the other four detainees. Yet aside from Duch, none of the detainees are expected to go to trial until late 2009 or 2010, two years after the trials were originally expected to conclude.

"The more likely thing is that [Duch] happens to be the only one convicted before the other four all croak. He will, in a narrow legal sense, be the only one who got nailed," DC-Cam's Ciorciari said by telephone from Stanford University.

"It sounds a bit like Duch is being set up to be the fall guy," said Cambodia historian David Chandler, the author of Brother Number One and Voices from S-21 and an emeritus professor of history at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

However, the court on December 5 will rule on the very issue that could prevent Duch from becoming the fall guy: whether to allow as a form of criminal liability Joint Criminal Enterprise, a legal theory wherein members of a conspiracy are held responsible for each individuals' actions.

On January 7, 1979, when Vietnamese forces entered Phnom Penh and stumbled on Duch's detention center, "Troops discovered a number of recently killed persons still chained to iron beds, and thousands of documents scattered in and around the buildings," according to Duch's indictment. Twenty years later, the former math teacher was found in Battambang province living under a pseudonym. He had converted to Christianity and had his children baptized. Duch was arrested and placed in Cambodian military jail until July 2007, when he was transferred to the ECCC detention center.

The court's pre-trial investigation included interviews with Duch wherein he admits to receiving and conveying orders to execute, and also interviews with numerous witnesses, S-21 personnel and detainees that detail Duch's instructions to use electric shock, asphyxiation and fingernail extraction as methods of interrogation.
In their August 8 indictment, the co-investigators narrowed Duch's liability to crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. It's what they did not charge Duch with that is the subject of the December 5 hearing. The co-prosecutors appealed the closing order because they believe Duch is also liable under the 1956 Cambodian Penal code - for homicide and torture - and Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE).

JCE is not clear-cut. In three briefs to the court, submitted in late-October, three legal experts offered differing views on JCE applicability, which comes in three classifications: JCE I, where participants share intent, such as in a heist when both the robber and the driver share the intent to rob a bank; JCE II, where participants engage in a common design, such as in a concentration camp when both the prison guards and the incinerator operators share tasks indispensable for the achievement of the camp's main goals; and JCE III, where participants in a common design are liable for those results foreseeable even if not necessarily intended, such as when the forced eviction of a city leaves the young, sick and elderly dying along the roadside.

JCE III has been rejected outright as a mode of participation in Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland, and remains highly criticized in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. But in Antonio Cassese's brief to the court on JCE, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of International Criminal Justice backs the form of liability and cites from the 1947 International Military Tribunal Judgment at Nuremberg: "Hitler could not make aggressive war by himself. He had to have the cooperation of statesmen, military leaders, diplomats, and business men. When they, with knowledge of his aims, gave him their cooperation, they made themselves parties to the plan he had initiated."

Cassese's parallel is plain: though Brother Number 1 Pol Pot is dead, his crimes were part of a larger conspiracy that arguably included cooperation from the five Khmer Rouge leaders in detention today. Allowing JCE as a form of liability in Duch's case would bring the four other Khmer Rouge leaders in detention - Khieu Samphan, former foreign minister Ieng Sary, his wife former social affairs minister Ieng Thirith, and the regime's chief ideologue Nuon Chea - closer to responsibility for the atrocities at S-21 and further from escaping culpability.

"If I were a prosecutor trying to nail the other four," said DC-Cam's Ciorciari, "I would want to link them to Duch, because his crimes are the easiest to prove. If a prosecutor wants - and it would be wise - to link them all to Tuol Sleng, I would want to use a legal theory, like Joint Criminal Enterprise, that would enable me to connect these others to the very provable atrocities of Tuol Sleng."

Compelling evidence
Evidence already links Duch's torture prison with the four other detainees. Duch's named "superiors," whose identities are redacted in the indictment, are believed to include at least Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan. Chandler has said the chain of command passed down from Pol Pot to Nuon Chea to Son Sen, the deputy prime minister of the Khmer Rouge's Democratic Kampuchea government, to Duch at S-21, which was known of and approved by Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith and Khieu Samphan.

By allowing JCE as a form of liability, the court may cast a net so wide that it implicates and leads to the subpoena of senior Cambodian officials serving in today's government; a year ago, Norodom Sihanouk's official biographer Julio Jeldres said the court appeared on the verge of collapse when it was questioned if the former king should testify. (See Khmer Rouge tribunal in jeopardy (again) Asia Times Online, September 18, 2007.)

"JCE will bring other people to light," said Beth Van Schaack of Santa Clara University. "If the investigation becomes too wide-ranging, subpoenaing sitting members of the government, it could provoke some government backlash," she said by telephone from San Francisco.

It remains debatable whether all three forms of JCE existed on April 17, 1975, when Pol Pot's ragtag army first marched into Phnom Penh. Cassese, an ardent backer of JCE, has been called impartial by the defense because he was one of the five appellate judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia who authored the very phrase "joint criminal enterprise."

If the pre-trial chamber on December 5 announces that JCE is not allowed, the co-prosecutors say "the full scope of torture or mistreatment of detainees that was practiced at S-21" will not be covered. Of additional concern is that the prosecutors gambled away a half-year of precious time. While Duch's trial was anticipated to begin in September, court spokesman Peter Foster said the prosecutors' appeal pushed the starting date into the first quarter of 2009.

"The important thing to realize is it shouldn't be considered a delay. This isn't something out of left field," Foster said. The tribunal "takes as long as it takes. There's no ending mandate. What there is, are international standards."

Van Schaack agreed, arguing that even if JCE is unexpectedly barred as a form of liability, this decision will allow the co-investigating judges to hone in on evidence and frame future indictments. "Resolving jurisprudential questions is never a waste of time," she said. "There's no doubt that people are disappointed by the lack of progress. There's no doubt that it would have been nice had things moved along, but that's one of the problems of ad hoc justice, it takes time."
But what amount of time - and money - is justifiable? Rival goals of a speedy trial, yet on an international standard, will collide in public view during the final ECCC hearings of 2008 and may incite major donors of the proceedings, such as the US, to speak up and demand results, said Ciorciari.

In September the US pledged its first donation of US$1.8 million. Yet the US remains concerned about the ECCC's ability to meet international standards and address corruption in an efficient manner, John Bellinger, a legal adviser to the US secretary of state, said on November 14 in an address at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Massachusetts. He told the audience, "Justice delayed is justice denied."

Already over-budget and nearing its original end-date with not a single trial begun, the tribunal must measure the cost of justice for the victims of the Khmer Rouge, Ciorciari said, either with a trial hurdling stall tactics and rushing to a timely end, or with a trial stretching beyond the natural lives of detainees, costing hundreds of millions of dollars more, and resulting in only one conviction.

"If someone doesn't say 'giddy-up,' we're in real danger."

Stephen Kurczy is a Cambodia-based journalist. Read more!

Cambodia, UNESCO post sign of world heritage at Angkor Wat temple

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) on Monday unveiled the sign of World heritage at the Angkor Wat temple in Siem Reap province, which was listed as a World Heritage in 1992.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and Marcio Barbosa, Deputy Director-General of UNESCO, were presided over the ceremony at the Angkor Wat temple.

"It is a great honor for Cambodian people and the world because the Angkor Wat temple is universal for humanities," Hun Sen said at the ceremony with live radio broadcasting.

"We want to use our culture to develop the country through tourism," he said, adding that the country has hundreds of ancient temples.

"We also want to see a ceremony like this at the Preah Vihear temple," he said.

He also expressed concern that local residents in Siem Reap are trying to pump underground water which could cause damage to the Angkor Wat temple.

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Cambodian police seek last remnants of Japanese terror organization

PHNOM PENH, Police are on the hunt for Japanese terrorists suspected of seeking refuge in Cambodia after decades on the run, national media reported Monday.

According to documents issued by the Phnom Penh police, 14 ex-members of the leftist Japanese Red Army militia and Yodo-go Group, which is best known for the May 1972 Lod Airport massacre in Tel Aviv, have come under investigation by Cambodian police, the Phnom Penh Post said.

Hy Prou, Phnom Penh deputy police commissioner and chief of the Central Security Office, said that after receiving requests from the Department of Immigration at the Ministry of Interior, police officials at all levels are on the lookout for the fugitives.

"We are not sure if they are in Cambodia or other countries," Hy Prou was quoted as saying.

"They are international criminals, so (the Japanese) need the cooperation of the countries in the region," he added.

Meanwhile, Keo Vanthan, director of Interpol police at the Ministry of Interior, said that he was not aware of any request from the Japanese government asking for help locating the criminals.

"We have previously received one request from Japanese authorities seeking criminals, but not these ones," he said.

"I couldn't say whether those are dead or not, since I have not yet received the documents."
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Group heads to Cambodia

MONMOUTH — A half dozen Monmouth residents are part of an 11 person mission that left Friday for Cambodia.

The trip is a joint effort between First Christian Church in Monmouth and The Crossing, in Macomb. Larry Moore, Mark McCaw, Jim and Pam Epperson and Marty and Sherry Johnson are all local residents going on the trip, which will return Dec. 9.

During a prayer service prior to their departure Friday, Pastor Jim Epperson reminded everyone the trip was not a vacation, but a chance to spread hope.

A mission went to the same place in Cambodia last January, said Pam Epperson, worship coordinator for First Christian Church. They will be helping and providing medical supplied to girls who were trafficked in the sex slave industry, as well as children whose families are homeless and living as "squatters."

"It's complicated because most of the girls come out of a Buddhist background and think they deserved the horrible things that happened to them," Pam Epperson said. "We give them hope in Jesus Christ, God forgives. It's not their fault." Read more!

U.S. Deportee Brings Street Dance to Street Boys of Cambodia

By SETH MYDANS

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — It may be the only place in Cambodia where the children are nicknamed Homey, Frog, Floater, Fresh, Bugs and Diamond.

And there are not many places like this small courtyard, thumping with the beat of a boom box, where dozens of boys in big T-shirts are spinning on their heads and doing one-hand hops, elbow tracks, flairs, halos, air tracks and windmills. And, of course, krumping.

It is a little slice of Long Beach, Calif., brought here by a former gang member by way of a federal prison, an immigration jail and then expulsion four years ago from his homeland, the United States, to the homeland of his parents, Cambodia.

The former gang member is Tuy Sobil, 30, who goes by the street name K.K. The boys are Cambodian street children he has taken under his wing as he teaches them the art he brought with him, break dancing, as well as his hard lessons in life.

K.K. is not here because he wants to be. He is one of 189 Cambodians who have been banished from the United States in the past six years under a law that mandates deportations for noncitizens who commit felonies. Hundreds more are on a waiting list for deportation. Like most of the others, K.K. is a noncitizen only by a technicality. He was not an illegal immigrant. He was a refugee from Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge “killing fields” who found a haven in the United States in 1980.

He was an infant when he arrived. In fact, he was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and had never seen Cambodia before he was deported. But K.K.’s parents were simple farmers who failed to complete the citizenship process when they arrived.

Like some children of poor immigrants, K.K. drifted to the streets, where he became a member of the Crips gang and a champion break dancer. It was only after he was convicted of armed robbery at 18 that he discovered that he was not a citizen.

Like many deportees, he arrived in Cambodia without possessions and without family contacts. He was a drug counselor at first and then founded his break dancing club, Tiny Toones Cambodia, where he now earns a living teaching about 150 youngsters and reaching out to hundreds more.

With the financial support of international aid groups like Bridges Across Borders, based in Graham, Fla., he has expanded his center into a small school that teaches English and Khmer and computers in addition to back flips, head stands and krumping, or crazy dancing.

Some other deportees have found work that uses their fluency in English, particularly in hotels. Some have reunited with families. But many have slipped into unemployment, depression and sometimes drug use.

“Some were doing well initially but now over time have become unemployed or never did get employment, and just got discouraged,” said Dimple Rana, who works with Deported Diaspora, which is based in Revere, Mass., and helps deportees adjust.

“I know of a whole bunch of returnees whose mothers were sending money from their Social Security,” she said. “Now, with the economy in the United States, it is very hard and families are not able to send even $100 or $150.”

K.K. stands out as a success, both in finding a calling and in embracing his fate. He has a fair command of the language, unlike some deportees who arrived with no knowledge of Khmer.

“I think it was meant for me to be here, even though I lost my family,” he said. “And my kid is there, Kayshawn. He is 8.”

K.K. is in touch with his relatives in Long Beach but has not seen them since he was deported.

“Right now, you know, these kids are my family,” he said. “I don’t have a kid here, but I adopted one, a street kid. His mom and dad are on drugs.”

The boys and girls leaping and spinning here are the children of Cambodia’s underclass, like thousands who fill the slums of Phnom Penh — children who spend their evenings, as K.K. put it, “begging and digging through garbage to find food.”

K.K., whose youth was not so different from theirs, said he teaches them to find pride in who they are. A wall of his center is marked with students’ graffiti: “I want to be a rapper,” “I want to be a D.J.,” “I want to be a doctor.”

“I try to tell them not to judge people by the way they look,” he said. “I still have a struggle here in Cambodia. People judge me. People see me with tattoos and think I’m a bad guy.

“Sometimes it’s, ‘Come on, we’re going to kill some Americans,’ ” he said, describing threats from street toughs. “I’m not American. I’m Khmer, man.”

His journey between identities reached a point of strangeness when he was invited last December to perform with some of his students at a Christmas party at the United States Embassy.

“The American ambassador gave me a handshake and a hug, and asked me one day when his kid is a little older he wanted to put him in my school,” K.K. said.

The ambassador at the time, Joseph A. Mussomeli, recalled the performance as “great fun,” but he said the piquancy of the moment had not been lost on him.

“You are right that there is a certain wonderful irony to him being ‘rejected’ or at least ‘ejected’ from the U.S. and still landing on his feet — or shoulders and head — dancing,” Mr. Mussomeli said in an e-mail message.

“While watching him I was reminded of that great patriotic speech by Bill Murray in ‘Stripes,’ ” he added, “where he talks about Americans as being rejects from all the good, decent countries of the world! K.K. is/was an American in everything except in law — and he has shown this by his creativity, tenacity, and undying optimism.”

Now another irony is in store for K.K. His club has been invited to send dancers to perform in the United States — Cambodian boys who speak no English and have never left their country.

The real American among them, K.K., deported and excluded from the United States for the rest of his life, must stay behind.

“I can’t go,” he said over the thump of the boom box, as his boys jumped and bounced around him like tiny springs. “I can understand that they deported me here. I’d like to go visit — only visit, because I live here now. I have a brand new life.”


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Cambodia sentences Russian pedophile to 8 years in 2nd trial

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia's Sihanoukville Municipal Court has handed down a second child-sex conviction to Russian businessman Alexander Trofimov for soliciting sex with an underage girl, sentencing him to an additional eight years in jail, state media reported Friday.

The 41-year-old former chairman of Koh Puos Investment Group, who is already serving six years for sexual assault in Cambodia's largest-ever pedophilia case, appeared in court for sentencing after missing the first two days of his trial, his lawyer, Saing Vannak, was quoted by the Phnom Penh Post as saying.

He added that he was unsure whether Trofimov would appeal the ruling.

"I will talk to my client about whether to appeal," he told the Post after the sentence was handed down.

Trofimov was convicted on one of two counts of purchasing sex from a minor, brought by a single victim.

The second count involving 17 victims is still under investigation, with a verdict expected later, said Teng Maneth, a legal officer at the anti-pedophile NGO Action Pour les Enfants.

This week's trial was the third attempt to get Trofimov into court after a lack of lawyer delayed earlier trials.

Trofimov was arrested in 2007 and first stood trial in March of this year on charges of abusing a 13-year-old girl.

He was sentenced to 13 years, but his prison term was slashed to seven years by the Appeals Court in October.

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Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia further co-operation on development triangle

Leaders of Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia signed yesterday a Vientiane Declaration on strengthening the development triangle co-operation and approved the joint agreement of the fifth summit. These were a part of mechanisms to further their co-operation on development triangle area discussed at fifth summit of the Prime Minister Bouasone Bouphavanh of Laos, his Vietnamese and Cambodian counterparts Nguyen Tan Dung and Samdech Hun Sen in Vientiane on 26 November. At the summit, the joint co-ordination committee has also signed the MoU to build the policy for attracting and provision of facilities to promote trade, investment and tourism in which the mechanism has been asked to determine in order to realise the said MoU.

Mr. Bouasone Bouphavanh, Prime Minister of Laos has said that the signed agreements are very importance and significance because it would be a fundamental principle as well as the key reference for the member country to develop the development triangle area with sustainable, richness and prosperity manner. He added that in order to reach the goal of development triangle, the member country has to double work, particularly to increase the fund to develop the infrastructure and human resources.

During the event, the three sides has agreed to build the forum for business sector and propose to organise the meeting for leaders of three countries with business sector at the next summit. Laos and Vietnam has expressed thanks to Vietnamese government for its great assistance on human resource development. They also agreed to encourage the exchange visit of youth leaders from three countries and considered to organise the meeting for the youth leader of the three countries during the next summit.

On this occasion, the leader of the countries has unanimously agreed that the 5th CLV summit held in Vientiane on 26 November has reached with highest successful and met the target goals.

In addition, the three PMs agreed to propose the ASEAN Secretary - General to ask the Thai government to confirm the hosting of 14th ASEAN Summit.

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Official: Thai crisis adversely affects border talks with Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, The current situation of Thai politics has affected negatively its border negotiation with Cambodia, said Cambodian Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Hor Namhong here on Friday.

"I can say that the complicated situation of politics in Thailand has exactly negative impact on the border discussion and plantation of border makers between Thailand and Cambodia," he told reporters after coming back from a regional meeting in Laos.

Both sides have already agreed to hold foreign ministers' meeting next month in Siem Reap and the experts from the two countries are also scheduled to measure the land, plant border makers and cleaned the mines near the Preah Vihear Temple during the same month, he said.

The resolution of the border matters now depends on the Thai side's situation, he said.

"We still need more time and are following the situation in Thailand," he added.

In October, Cambodian and Thai troops exchanged fire on their disputed border area, killing two and wounding a dozen.

Prior to the clash, the ownership of the Preah Vihear Temple caused both sides to maintain military stalemate near the border for weeks.

During this period, rounds of meetings were held, but all failed to find common ground on the border issue to break the stand off.

The two countries have 790-km-long border line, but only with 73 border posts which were planted in 1907.
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Recovered identity: Cambodian community in Portland moves beyond the horror of Khmer Rouge killing fields

By Erin Hoover Barnett, The Oregonian

The years are like shadows she could never really grasp:
Growing up in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Her brother forever separated from her family. Her sister dying. Forced labor in rice fields. Then, at age 14, escaping to Oregon with her mother.

As a teenager in Milwaukie, Mardine Mao was happy to forget. She yearned to say she was from Hawaii or the Philippines, anywhere but Cambodia and the darkness she associated with it.

But as she matured, Mao, now 41, discovered that embracing her identity and sharing the details of that painful time is the road to empowerment.

Cambodians in the Portland area are coming to the same realization as a community. Most of Oregon's more than 5,000 Cambodians fled the Khmer Rouge; many have suffered silently with the rage and anxiety of post-traumatic stress, some struggling to assimilate and nurture American-born children and grandchildren.

Now refugees such as Mao -- a child during the Cambodian genocide and so best able to move on -- are leading the cause to build the community's future by unburdening its past.

Mao this summer became president of the Cambodian-American Community of Oregon and has launched an oral history project. As a U.N. tribunal in Cambodia finally brings members of despot Pol Pot's killing machine to justice, Cambodian youths in the metro area will record their elders' experiences under the Khmer Rouge.

Portland has gotten behind the project with a small grant and has asked the Cambodian participants to share the documentary they produce with neighborhood associations, educating a wider audience about the genocide, recovery and resilience.

For Mao, a Washington County resident and Beaverton High School graduate, the project offers a chance to unlock her own story and tell it to her teenage sons for the first time. The story of how she came to lead this project shows not only her blossoming but the blossoming of her community.

"We're not excited about opening up," says Mao. "But I think we have a responsibility to educate the general public and the world -- and especially our own children."

Mao sits at a friend's coffee shop in a blue silk top and jeans. Her calm face, framed by dark hair, offers little hint of her troubled past.

She is still piecing her story together, drawing out her stepfather, in whom her mother confided. Mao's mother died in 2002 before Mao had the courage to ask about their time in Cambodia.

Mao was born Mardine Ung in 1967 in Phnom Penh, the capital, where her father directed a government-owned news agency. Her father hoped to move the family to Oregon but died before it was possible, leaving his wife to fend for three children when Khmer Rouge troops took over in April 1975.

Mao's mother gathered Mao and her younger sister, Srey Touch, for the forced march to a village 30 miles away. Mao's older brother, Sovathara, was with relatives. They never saw him again.

Mao, just 8 then, believes she was sent to a school to learn the regime's philosophy and work in a rice field. Her mother was also pressed into field work. Mao learned from her stepdad that when she was allowed to visit her mother, she brought ambok (rice cereal) that she had squirreled away. Mao knew her mother was starving.

The only clear memory Mao has is of lying ill on the floor of a thatched hut with many other sick people. Someone gave her a pink pill.

"I'm like blank," she says. "I keep asking people, 'When you're 8 or 9 years old, do you remember everything at that age?'"

The regime targeted the educated and upper classes. An estimated 1.5 million Cambodians -- one-fifth of the country's population -- were starved, worked or shot to death in what became known as the killing fields.

The Vietnamese invasion in 1979 plunged the country into chaos. Mao's mother fled the village with Mao and Srey Touch. They returned to the city only to find that their relatives had all perished.

Returning to the village, the family squatted in a machine shed. Srey Touch fell ill. When she died, they rolled her small body in a woven mat and buried her.

With nothing left, Mao and her mother followed others to the Thai border, fearful of Khmer Rouge soldiers hiding from the Vietnamese.

"I imagine her holding my hand and running at the same time, barefoot in the jungle," Mao says, a flicker of pain passing through her dark eyes.

A friend of Mao's father from Oregon traveled to the refugee camps and found Mao and her mother.

Mao arrived at her uncle's home in Southeast Portland knowing no English. But at 14, she knew one thing: She wanted to put the past behind her.

"I think for a long time I thought I was a bad person," she says, "because I wanted to erase my identity and, as a result, my memory."

Mao and her mom settled with another relative in Milwaukie.

Mao kept quiet in class at Milwaukie Junior High, afraid to ask questions. She remembers scrambling to look up words such as "cell" and "dissection" in science class while her peers cruised through the text.

Yet she took in a lot. She looked in awe at women driving cars with one hand on the steering wheel. She had never seen women drive.

Mao pursued accounting after high school. She felt comfortable in the background.

She married Mony Mao, a civil engineer and fellow refugee, in 1987. Two years later, Mony helped form the Cambodian-American Community of Oregon.

Mardine Mao steered clear of leadership roles. Speaking up in Cambodia was never rewarded. Politics meant corruption and power-seeking. So when her husband rose in the late 1990s to chair the Cambodian community's board, she stayed on the sidelines, buying raffle prizes, cooking and cleaning up after events while raising the couple's sons, Perrin, an eighth-grader and Davin, a high school senior.

"I still had the mentality that this is something that is a job for a man," she says.

Then something changed.

In 2006, the state removed a young Cambodian girl from her parents in Washington County and thrust her into foster care. The family didn't know where she was taken or how to get her back.

Community leaders asked Mao to help the family. Mao learned that the girl had gone to school with a bruise after an older brother threw a Coke can at her. Authorities got involved when the girl, bright and precocious, told a school counselor that her parents disciplined her by smacking her hand with chopsticks.

Mao explained to the social worker that this is common in Cambodia and that the parents didn't understand that it was considered abuse in the United States. After three months, the state let the girl go home.

The family's attorney, Ronault "Polo" Catalani, says Mao made all the difference in the emotional, adversarial process.

"She listens carefully. She lets them get all of that breath out and then she'll talk," Catalani says. "She doesn't shout. She just tells you. There's something just very factual about the way she presents and very fair."

Mao shared the experience during Khmer Heritage Night at a Southeast 82nd Avenue banquet hall in December 2006. She was a minor speaker on a roster that included former Gov. Barbara Roberts and Portland Mayor Tom Potter. She read a prepared speech and says no one expected much until she opened her mouth.

"Something happened to me earlier this year that changed how I feel about volunteering and my outlook on life," she told the hundreds gathered. She relived for her audience the moment when the little girl walked back through her family's front door.

"Her whole face lit up the entire room. She couldn't stop smiling," Mao told them. "I was overcome with joy."

The experience, she said, crystallized her realization that she could make a difference and helped her see that embracing -- not shunning -- her heritage is what emboldened her.

"Now I am more confident and more outspoken than ever," she told them. "Ladies and gentleman, we have a community that provides all these opportunities."

The audience burst into applause.

Mao still carried a burden.

She never got to process with her mother those years in Cambodia. She never got to ask her mother how she survived.

She shared that regret last year at Portland's Khmer Rouge Tribunal Forum at Portland State University, an event that Mao and the community group helped to organize.

The event gave local refugees a chance to talk about their memories, many for the first time. Mao encouraged attendees to pass on the stories to their children before it's too late. The children need to know their family history, she told them, to know who they are.

"That's what I was struggling a long time with in my early days," Mao says now. "I wanted to be somebody else. Now, with just being part of the community, I kind of found myself. I'm a Cambodian American."

Mao also believes that a wider audience can benefit from knowing the stories of immigrants in their midst. She challenged herself to broaden her audience in classes this year at PSU. For one project, she told classmates about her mother's struggle in Cambodia and how hard her life was compared with Mao's.

Afterward, classmates surrounded her with praise. Instructor Vicki Reitenauer says some didn't know about the Khmer Rouge atrocities.

"They left knowing some bit of it and, in a more subtle way, being more enlarged human beings than they were when they went in," Reitenauer says, "and Mardine was a big part of that."

Mao will graduate from PSU in the spring after 20 years of taking classes. She changed her major from accounting to human resources. She says she wants to work more with people.

And she is ready to help more members of her community tell their stories.

The community will begin the oral history project this winter with 20 youths and elders. More will follow. A PSU history professor is training participants to elicit memories sensitively.

Catalani, the attorney, co-chaired a Portland committee that chose the project for a $10,000 grant. The Northwest Health Foundation is considering a $50,000 grant.

"Cambodians have done an incredible job of caring for their own as the tension of their experiences simmers as depression or boils over into rage," he says. "Now they can share what they endured with a larger audience. ... We are all humanized by the sorrow of these people and the persistence of people. We recognize in those faces our beauty and our pain."

Mao hopes the project will provide an important piece of family history for her own sons. Her oldest, Davin, is president of the community's youth organization and will be among the first to conduct interviews, drawing out his parents, his mom's stepfather and his dad's parents.

Davin says he has always thought his father's experience under the Khmer Rouge was more difficult than his mother's. But he admits he doesn't really know much about what his mother endured because she doesn't talk about it.

He has, however, noticed the change in his mom. He remembers her speech at Khmer Heritage Night.

"Maybe," he says, "she's found her calling."


Mardine Mao

Age: 41

Family: Husband, Mony Mao, a civil engineer; sons, Davin, 18, and Perrin, 13

Home: Cedar Mill area of Washington County

Leadership: President of the Cambodian-American Community of Oregon, which provides cultural, educational, recreational and other services for the more than 5,000 Cambodian Americans in Oregon. Learn more at www.cacoregon.org

Community: Cambodians in the metro area are concentrated in Southeast and North Portland, Washington and Clackamas counties, and southwest Washington

Oral history project: Cambodian youths will interview elders about their experiences under the Khmer Rouge. A documentary about the project will be shared through community groups. To learn more, call Hun Kim at 503-412-8933.

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Thailand insists it is ready to host ASEAN summit

BANGKOK, Thailand: Thailand insisted Thursday that it will be able to host a regional summit in December, even after three neighboring countries raised concerns that ongoing political turmoil in the Thai capital could force the meeting's cancellation.

In recent days, protesters demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat have stormed Thailand's two main international airports, forcing their closure and the cancellation of hundreds of flights. They have occupied the prime minister's office since August, vowing to stay put until Somchai and his government step down.

Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos voiced fears Thursday that Thailand may not be able to host the annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, scheduled to take place Dec. 15-18 in the northern city of Chiang Mai.

ASEAN Secretary General Surin Pitsuwan must consider postponing the summit "to ensure the successful outcome ... given the current political situation in Thailand," the three countries said in a statement.

Surin was not available for comment Thursday.

Thai Foreign Ministry Spokesman Tharit Charungvat said the summit would not be rescheduled.

"Everything is still going ahead as planned and we are still ready to host the summit," Tharit said.

The 10-nation ASEAN bloc comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The summit venue already has been shifted from the capital, Bangkok, to Chiang Mai. The foreign ministry has denied the move was to avoid the anti-government protests, insisting it was because the weather is nicer in the north.

Thailand's powerful army commander stepped into the fray Wednesday, urging Somchai to step down and asking protesters to leave Suvarnabhumi.

Neither side heeded his calls, leaving the country paralyzed. Read more!

Cambodia, EC to meet on ban of Siem Reap Airways

PHNOM PENH, Experts from the European Community (EC) will meet in February with the Cambodian civil aviation officials over the EC ban of the Siem Reap Airways' flights to its market, an official said here on Thursday.

EC banned all flights of the Siem Reap Airways to its countries, because it was gravely concerned with safety standard, Rafael Dochao Moreno, Charge d'Affaires of EC's diplomatic mission to Cambodia, told a roundtable discussion on economic and political cooperation between Cambodia and EC.

It also involved the company's technique, training and other confidential report, he said.

After EU put it on blacklist, the Cambodian government also banned its domestic flights, he said.

"We hope the matter will be solved soon," he added.

Earlier this month, EC added the Siem Reap Airways, a local subsidiary of the Thailand-based Bangkok Airways, to its blacklisted airlines, citing its failure to comply with international and Cambodian civil aviation standards.
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Cambodia's Siem Reap Airways suspending operations

Cambodia's Siem Reap Airways is temporarily suspending operations, two weeks after it was put on a European Union blacklist of banned carriers over safety concerns.

A spokesman for Thai parent company Bangkok Airways says from Bangkok that Siem Reap Airways has halted all domestic operations between the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh and the tourist city of Siem Reap.

He says flights have since 22 November been operated by Bangkok Airways with ATR turboprops.

The spokesman says Siem Reap Airways' international flights to nearby destinations will meanwhile be suspended on 1 December.

He says the grounding is a voluntary one and it comes around two weeks after the European Commission added the airline to its list of banned operators. Siem Reap Airways does not serve Europe but the European Commission said the airline "does not operate in compliance" with Cambodian safety regulations and does not meet ICAO standards.

"Significant concerns have also been expressed by ICAO with regard to the ability of the Cambodian civil aviation authorities to implement and enforce the international safety standards," the European Commission said in a statement on 14 November.

The Bangkok Airways spokesman says Cambodian authorities are seeking to resolve the issues that led to the ban and Siem Reap Airways hopes to resume services in the near future.

Specific reasons for the ban have not been disclosed but Cambodian media have reported that it was due in part to aircraft registration issues. Siem Reap Airways' ATR, Airbus A319 and Boeing 717 aircraft are wet-leased from Bangkok Airways and are registered in Thailand.

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Wednesday spotlight: Nurse heading to Cambodia

by Shannon Maynard

Leah Blondke always has wanted to travel.

She is interested to see how people live in other cultures and wants to make a difference in the lives of others. So, when she had the opportunity to travel with the medical group Operation Renewed Hope, she jumped at the chance.

"I've always wanted to get a taste of other cultures," the 22-year-old Pittsford resident said. "I want to see what the world is like and learn from (what I see)."

Blondke leaves Friday for Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where she will spend 10 days assisting a group of doctors on a relief trip. The team will set up clinics and offer free medical, dental and optometry care. Blondke will be responsible for triaging patients and assisting doctors.

While she has been a registered nurse only since June, Blondke hopes her experience at Allegiance Health will benefit her during her time in Cambodia.

"I've learned a lot working at Allegiance and I hope to be able to better assist the doctors with hands-on care," she said.

This will be the second relief trip Blondke has taken with Operation Renewed Hope. In May, she spent 10 days in Uganda. It was an experience that surprised her and made her realize how fortunate Americans are.

"I was impressed with how content the people were," she said.

"They didn't have near the possessions we have, but they were content — like they didn't know what they are missing."

Despite the long plane ride, food and different living conditions, Blondke is looking forward to getting to know some of the Cambodian people and help make their lives a little better.

"I'm interested in seeing how the people have recovered from their recent bad history and I'm open to learning everything I can," she said.


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