UK minister for trade, investment to visit Vietnam

UK minister for trade and investment Gareth Thomas will visit Viet Nam from January 19 to 20 as part of his ten-day visit to Southeast Asia, which is intended to promote British business in the region and facilitate free trade talks.

The Viet Nam visit will help the Minister “familiarise himself with British trade and investment activities as well as international development issues in Vietnam,” wrote an announcement from the British Embassy in Ha Noi.

He will call on the Vietnamese government to follow up on last month’s joint economic and trade committee meeting in London, according to the Jan. 16 announcement.

Mr. Thomas will call on Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung to discuss local and international trade and investment matters. He will also meet with Minister of Planning and Investment Vo Hong Phuc, Minister of Industry and Trade Vu Huy Hoang, and Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat to learn about Vietnam’s progress on implementing World Trade Organization commitments.

The visiting trade minister will also meet with a number of UK business representatives while in Hanoi.

In the afternoon of Jan. 20, he is scheduled to call on the Chairman of the People’s Committee in Ho Chi Minh City to discuss the business environment in southern Vietnam.

On Jan. 14, the British newspaper Telegraph reported that the UK trade minister said Southeast Asia is a bigger export market for British companies than either China or India. Telegraph said UK exports to Southeast Asia in 2007 were worth over £9 billion, compared to £5.22 billion with China and £4.65 billion with India. (Sai Gon GP)
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Performance introduces Khmer salon series

By Greg Mellen, Staff Writer

LONG BEACH - On Thursday night the stage is bare, illuminated by a lone halogen spotlight as dancer Sothavy Khut and curator Prumsodun Ok go over preparations for her upcoming performance.

Khut sorts through the bracelets, anklets, headwear and clothing she will wear, while Ok wrestles with the light and Serey Pep adjusts the backdrop.

If all goes well, there will be magic tonight on the stage in the spare industrial space at 1364 Obispo Ave. that is home to the Khmer Arts Academy.

That's because, when a dancer performs the classical Cambodian Robum Tiyae, she attains a semidivine status as a medium between the material and physical world.

At least that's how Ok describes the solo performance Khut will give.

"It remains one of the most sacred works of the canon and according to Chheng Phon, a former dancer of the palace and Minister of Culture from 1980 to 1990, the audience in Robam Tiyae is not human but spiritual," Ok wrote about the work.

Tonight's performance will kick off a series of monthly events called the Khmer Arts Salon Series.

The series will consist of once-a-month performances intended as intimate lecture demonstrations by a diverse group of artists. The events, which are planned and funded to include 20 shows over the next two years, will spotlight Southeast and South Asian performance styles, ranging from classical Khmer dance and song to Balinese shadow puppetry to classical Indian music.
The series is the brainchild of Prumsodun Ok, an ebullient 21-year-old Long Beach native who is a self-described dancer, instructor, choreographer, curator, cultural activist and media artist/filmmaker.

He has studied traditional Cambodian dance with Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, founder of the Khmer Arts Academy, and Charya Burt, an internationally renowned Khmer dancer in Northern California.

He is currently teaching at the Khmer Arts Academy. He came up with the idea of the salon series and pitched it to John Shapiro, husband to Sophiline, who had been wanting to take on such a project and helped get funding for the series.

Khut, 28, is a dancer with the Shapiros' Khmer Arts Ensemble based in the Takmao District of Cambodia near Phnom Penh. She has toured with the dance troupe to the United States, Vienna, Austria and Holland, and is spending the year as an artist-in-residence at Khmer Arts Academy.

Ok, who spent two years studying film at the San Francisco Art Institute and is contemplating enrolling at UCLA for the California Institute of the Arts, has high hopes for the series.

"I talked to John (Shapiro) and we really want to make (Khmer Arts Academy) a hub for arts again and make it visible by bringing other artists to the community," Ok said.

Although Sophiline Shapiro spends much of her time with her troupe in Cambodia and on tour, she still has a place in her heart for Long Beach and the inner-city Cambodian-American kids her academy serves.

"I'm keeping that connection and sense of attachment in both places," she told the Press-Telegram last year.

A survivor of the Cambodian genocide of the mid-1970s, Sophiline founded the Khmer Arts Academy in 2002 with her husband, whom she married in 1991.

Former students of Shapiro continue to teach classical dance, but Ok wants to take it a step further.

"I want to find a way to engage (young artists)," Ok says. "We're looking for ways to connect (through) different art forms."

Khut, who speaks no English, has modest goals for tonight's performance.

"I want to inspire people to come and take classes," she says through translation. "And for them to remember the dance and its significance."

While the Salon Series is evolving, Ok has the first five performances booked. He says he looks forward to exciting shows and surprises to come as he meets more artists and delves into the intricacies of Southeastern and Southern Asian performance arts.

Although Los Angeles has a remarkably lush and diverse arts scene, Ok says it's often hard to get people out to far-flung sites.

"I want to bring those arts here," Ok says. "Plus some of our students are poor. I want to bring the richness of art to our community."

greg.mellen@presstelegram.com, 562-499-1291


KHMER ARTS SALON SERIES EVENTS

Today: Cambodian Classical Dance - Robam Tiyae and the Spirit Medium

Feb. 21: Cambodian Clasical Dance - Chea Samy and the Language of Dance

March 21: Balinese Shadow Theater - maRia Bodmann with Bali and Beyond

April 18: Khmer Mourning Music - Smot: Songs of Healing

May 16: Indian Classical Music - New Directions with Gautam Tejas Geneshan and Anantha Krishnan

All show times: 7 p.m.

Where: Khmer Arts Academy

1364 Obispo Ave., Long Beach

Admission: Free

Information: 562-472-0090 Read more!

Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains Get Their First Eco-Resort

By BRIAN CALVERT

KOH KONG PROVINCE, Cambodia -- In a wild range of forested peaks tumbling into the mangroves of Cambodia's western coast, tigers and Asian elephants still roam the woods, fishing cats hunt puddle frogs, Malayan sun bears ransack bee nests and highly endangered Siamese crocodiles ply the streams.

These are the Cardamom Mountains, and when I first visited them in 2000 -- the year of the conservation organization Fauna and Flora International's wildlife survey -- they were a challenge just to reach. My journey with a World Health Organization expedition from Phnom Penh began with a punishing two-day journey via trawler and motorboat, followed by a long ride on a bumpy logging road.

But when I finally arrived at my destination, deep in the jungle at the end of a neglected logging road, the Cardamoms didn't disappoint: Clear streams tumbled from the mountainsides, mist cooled the early mornings and the forest's canopy and undergrowth cloaked the valleys in quiet. Accommodations were nil, and we slept on hammocks slung from trees in hardscrabble mountain villages.

I was in one of the most pristine forests of Southeast Asia. Inaccessibility during Cambodia's civil wars and the Khmer Rouge reign -- the mountains were a stronghold for the group -- had helped protect the area. Peace had brought problems that include illegal logging, but it remained a wildlife haven. The trip became one of my Cambodian favorites.

So it was with much anticipation in August that I made reservations at Rainbow Lodge, which had opened in January 2008 at the base of the Cardamoms. The mountains' first eco-friendly resort -- one of very few lodgings at all -- promised all of the serenity of my first trip with little of its hardship. My old destination remained an incalculable mental distance from Phnom Penh's bustle, or, for that matter, the crowded temples of Angkor Wat, but a new road and series of bridges had put it within five hours (by air-conditioned bus) of the capital.

Apparent isolation is the Rainbow Lodge's main feature. We -- I was traveling with Min Lieskovsky, a writer and anthropology student -- were told to call the lodge from the third major bridge, have the driver drop us at the fourth, and wait there to be picked up. This we did, and we suddenly felt very alone as the bus vanished over a ridge. It was a fleeting feeling, however, because even as we slung our packs on our backs, Janet Newman, the owner of the lodge, was waiting for us at the water's edge.

A 41-year-old barrister from Birmingham, England, she had tired of a career dealing with violence and abuse and decided to put her energies to another use. A short stint as a volunteer for an organization called Frontier, in the Cardamoms' nearby Botum Sakor National Park, persuaded her to move to Cambodia for good and set up a green-friendly resort. She introduced us to a friendly russet mutt, Sunny, and a taciturn Cambodian guide, Prom Sa Lei, who ushered us onto a river skiff and launched us from shore.

After a short ride, the Rainbow Lodge came into view through thickets of water palm and stands of bamboo, a cluster of seven bungalows and a breezy, thatched bar. It was early on a Saturday afternoon, and within an hour -- following a briefing by Ms. Newman on water and power conservation -- Ms. Lieskovsky and I were swimming off the dock in the languid currents of the Kep River and sunning ourselves on the bow of the moored skiff, the Cardamoms looming high and verdant upriver.

Natural jungle is already coming back to the resort, built on former farmland. Ms. Newman says more species of wildlife appear all the time.

"We're trying to show the local people that protecting wildlife can bring in an income," she says. "Tourism can actually be a benefit to them, some financial benefit."

The jungle has been incorporated, not subjugated, and a stay at the lodge, though quite comfortable, requires an acceptance of nature on its own terms. Rainbow Lodge isn't a luxury resort. It's solar powered, with backup generators, which is why Ms. Newman encourages visitors to turn lights off when not in use. The thatched bungalows -- clean, but rustic and sparsely appointed, with mattresses a little saggy in the middle -- are shared with denizens of the jungle; our room was home to a large noisy type of gecko called a tookay and a rather meaty spider.

As recent guest Bronwyn Blue puts it, "It's absolutely basic -- except for the food." (Our weekend menus included steamed lemon-grass fish, prawn curry, sautéed squid and pineapple fritters in chocolate sauce.)

Ms. Blue, who runs an interior design company in Phnom Penh and who spent her 32nd birthday at the lodge, was glad she'd thought to bring shampoo, though the lodge does provide soap, towels, blankets, a fan and an electric bug swatter, which resembles an electrified tennis racket. The hot water is just lukewarm, though that tends to suffice in the tropics. "Maybe you want to bring your own creature comforts with you," Ms. Blue says. "Bring your own Champagne."

Entertainment is provided mostly by the Kep River and its tributary, the Tatai. Sunday morning Ms. Lieskovsky and I borrowed the lodge's kayak and paddled upriver until we came upon a small stream -- hidden behind a curtain of water palms -- that fed the main channel. Stowing the kayak, we spent hours swimming and walking, exploring the stream's spills, pools and boulders.

Sights along the way included many butterflies; with help from a field guide compiled by Ms. Newman and other volunteers at Frontier -- the only one in print specifically for Cambodia -- I was able to tentatively identify two species, the common banded demon and the glass tiger.

"A large, diverse butterfly population indicates a good diversity of habitats and environments," says Emily Woodfield, who is now the country director, based in Phnom Penh, of Fauna and Flora International and who worked on the field guide. The ones around the Rainbow Lodge are likely to be a mix of types that flourish in lowland agriculture settings and others coming out of the forests, including rarer species, she says.

"In Cambodia, it's actually quite difficult to get into that kind of forest, so the Rainbow Lodge offers you a taste of that," Ms. Woodfield says. An entire day could be spent spotting butterflies, and, field guide in hand, attempting to make identifications (Ms. Newman keeps a copy at the lodge that you can borrow for excursions.)

Ms. Blue says they enthralled her: "Black and white butterflies, yellow butterflies, orange butterflies, green butterflies. There were butterflies everywhere."

Other activities include guided treks through the jungle and trips in Mr. Lei's skiff to waterfalls, rapids or the nearby Gulf of Thailand; boat rental runs $12 an hour, including Mr. Lei's captaining. There's also an overnight camping trip, which the lodge's Web site cautions is "truly for the adventurous."

Sunday afternoon, we hired Mr. Lei and his skiff for a trip up the Tatai to Tatai Waterfall, a masterwork of Mesozoic sandstone -- wide, high and pristine. We clambered up the rocks, ducked our heads under powerful cascades of translucent water, and, after prudent discussion, plunged into the eddies and chutes of the rapids at the base of the falls. A banged-up ankle notwithstanding, the afternoon was close to perfect. This weekend was overtaking my first trip to the Cardamoms as a favorite.

Monday morning we had one last trip on the skiff -- a return to the bridge to catch the bus that would take us away from all this. We said goodbye to our hostess and Mr. Lei, the bus arrived, and in a cloud of exhaust and a burst of air-conditioning, we headed back toward the city.

—Brian Calvert is a writer based in Phnom Penh.

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Violence, Forclosures Define Cambodian Community 20 Years After School Shooting

Editor’s Note: Twenty years after a gunman opened fire on a schoolyard of mostly Southeast Asian children in Stockton, Calif., the Cambodian American community tries to heal from that violence, and the larger issues affecting refugee immigrants to America. Eric Tang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies and the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His forthcoming book is titled 'Unsettled: America’s Refugees and the Struggle for a Just Resettlement.'

STOCKTON, Calif. -- “Going back to teach at the school was my way to letting go of it all,” said Rann Chun, a third-grade teacher at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, Calif.

Exactly 20 years ago, on January 17, 1989, Chun was a nine-year-old student at Cleveland when a lone gunman opened fire on the schoolyard, killing five and injuring 30 before taking his own life. Chun’s six-year-old sister, Ram Chun, was among those killed.

Before Columbine or Virginia Tech—indeed before “school shooting” became familiar phraseology in American culture—there was the Stockton schoolyard incident.

Few outside of Northern California recall this tragedy in which 24-year-old gunman Edward Patrick Purdy emptied 105 shots from an AK-47 assault rifle into a schoolyard of approximately 450 schoolchildren. Fewer still recall that at the time of the shooting, Southeast Asian refugee children comprised 70 percent of Cleveland’s student body. Among the five fatalities, four were Cambodian Americans—including Ram Chun—and one was a Vietnamese American. Their ages ranged from 6 to 9 years old. The families of these children had recently resettled in Stockton in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia.

Twenty years ago, the tragedy brought forth divergent – if not competing – analyses and lessons. Racial justice advocates demanded that the attorney general consider the incident a hate crime. Others took the occasion to call for stronger gun control laws. But for the mostly Cambodian-American survivors, there was another lesson gleaned: The struggle for peace and survival does not end with resettlement in the United States.

According to Stockton community leader Sovanna Koeurt, those who lost their children had to “either let go and build something new and for the better or they didn’t survive.”

Chun’s father found this impossible to do. Though he had had lost loved ones to the Khmer Rouge, he could not pull himself together after the killing of his youngest daughter.

“He didn’t survive,” Chun said. Within 10 years of the shooting, the father passed away, succumbing to deep depression and heavy drinking.

Three years ago, Chun returned to Cleveland Elementary to become a first-grade teacher—incidentally, this was the grade his sister was in during the time of the shooting. He now teaches third grade.

“I went back to be role model for change, for a new beginning,” he said. “I didn’t want to leave it behind as a place where my life changed for the worse, but for the better.”

According to Koeurt, Chun’s story exemplifies not only triumph over tragedy, but also the way in which a young man can beat the odds in a community plagued by poverty and gang violence.

“Resettlement to America was just another verse, another phase, in our story of refugee survival,” said Koueurt, who is the founding director of APSARA, a social service agency and community development corporation created in the wake of the shooting. She is referring to how life in the United States presented a new set of hardships and tragedies, and how refugees had to draw on the skills from their past lives in order to survive. Indeed, the schoolyard shooting has not been the only hurdle to overcome in the past 20 years.

Long Keo, 27, was among the 30 wounded during the shooting, having sustained a bullet wound to the abdomen. He recalls multiple surgeries throughout his childhood, going in and out of hospitals for years after the incident. And yet, when he looks back on his adolescence, surviving the shooting is not his defining struggle. Instead, he recalls the gang violence that gripped Stockton and nearly took his life on more than one occasion.

Several years ago, his living room was riddled with bullets from a drive-by shooting. Then, this past summer, his mother learned that the family would be evicted from their home. They were renting from a landlord who was on the brink of foreclosure. When I came to speak with the family about the 20th anniversary of the shooting they, understandably, were more interested in talking about their current housing crisis.

These smaller tragedies that have dotted the lives of Stockton’s Cambodian Americans perhaps explains why, there is little fanfare surrounding the 20th anniversary of the shooting. This is not to say that community members have become inured to violence and tragedy, but rather that there is a broader context of immigrant and refugee life in which the shooting must be discussed.
Still, on Friday night the Children’s Museum of Stockton held a small, invitation-only memorial event for the victims and heroes of 20 years ago. Today, the city’s local paper, The Stockton Record, will run a feature article looking back on the incident. And then there are those, like Chun, who find ways to “honor my sister’s memory everyday.”

“I could have taught at another school in the district,” said Chun. “But I chose to be here. Being here helps me let go of the tragedy, but still hold on to her.”
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Baker Tilly sets up Cambodian audit firm

LOCAL audit firm Baker Tilly Monteiro Heng has set up an office in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

There are only 21 approved audit firms in Cambodia and Baker Tilly Monteiro Heng is one the international firms that has successfully registered as an audit firm in Cambodia, a statement issued by the company yesterday said.

Inspector General to Ministry of Foreign Affairs Hong Panharith was the guest of honour at the official opening of the office in the Cambodian capital Thursday night.

Also present at the event were Bun Honn, the Secretary of State under Ministry of Justice; Sok Soken, Acting Director of Cabinet, Ministry of Commerce; Lim Samkol, Ambassador of Cambodia to Korea; and Teh Sing, President of Malaysia Business Council of Cambodia.

Three Baker Tilly Monteiro Heng Malaysia Group partners have been also admitted as certified public accountants and approved auditors with Kampuchea Institute of Certified Public Accountants and Auditors, namely Executive Partner Andrew Heng, Partner Lock Peng Kuan, and Associate Partner Joe Heng.

Hong Panharith in his opening remarks expressed hope that Baker Tilly Monteiro Heng would contribute to the growth of corporate governance in the Cambodian commercial sector and in the large economy.

“This awareness and institution of corporate governance in our economy would assist the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and international corporation to promote Cambodia as an investment destination,” he was quoted saying in the statement.

Andrew Heng said the office in Cambodia will be assisting the international corporations in the country.

Since the early 1990s, Cambodia has enjoyed over a decade of high average economic growth - 7.1 per cent - driven largely by construction, tourism and since the late 1990s, a rapidly emerging garment sector.

There is an increase in private investment in response to an improved investment climate, with government reforms beginning to show results.

Budgetary performance continued to improve in 2005 with the overall fiscal deficit estimated at 3.1 per cent of gross domestic product, narrower than the average of the previous five years.

“Cambodian stock exchange is planning to commence in December 2009. We are hoping to capture the pie of the pre-IPO transactions in the privatisation of enterprises as well as the international corporations,” said Lock Peng Kuan.

“In view of the global economic slowdown, it will be good strategy to invest in developing market like Cambodia,” he said.

Baker Tilly Monteiro Heng Group (BTMH) was first established in 1978 and is currently one of the leading firms of Accountants and Consultants in Malaysia.

Drawing on the talent of more than 200 people in Malaysia, Baker Tilly Monteiro Heng Group provides a full range of professional services which include audit & taxation, corporate advisory, forensics & investigation, corporate recovery, restructuring & insolvency.— Bernama
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The Neglect Of Cambodia In Its Hour Of Need

By Sam Oglesby, For The Bulletin

If the story of Cambodia were not wrapped in a veil of tears, its recent history might sound like a comic farce combining the Alice in Wonderland fantasy with the tin pot antics of the half-mad, half-genius monarch depicted by Peter Sellers in The Mouse That Roared.

Norodom Sihanouk, the god-King of Cambodia, has presided over his country from the idyllic, hot-house days of French colonial rule in the 1950s, through the blood-drenched Killing Fields of the 1970s when one-third of the Khmer population perished, to the heady carpet-bagger capitalism of the 21st century. Now in his 80s, the seemingly immortal King Father’s cackle still can be heard around the world as he levitates from palaces in unlikely places like Pyongyang and Beijing to the sultry splendor of Phnom Penh and the cosmopolitan reaches of the French Riviera and Manhattan.

Crazy like a fox might best describe this master politician who also happens to be an accomplished film maker. As he giggles, fussing over his guests’ drinks and playing the consummate host, who would guess that Sihanouk is plotting, scheming and planning. By hook or crook, he has saved his country from annihilation and has presciently helped to put in place the foundations for a stable, prosperous Cambodia.

How Sihanouk maneuvers as puppeteer, manipulating the various actors dancing in the shadows of the Cambodian political drama, is related in compelling detail by Benny Widyono in Dancing in Shadows – Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge and the United Nations in Cambodia (Brown & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 322 pages, $29.95).
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Mr. Widyono was a senior United Nations official present in Cambodia during the 1990s when the U.N. started a massive effort to restore peace and orchestrate the elections that set the kingdom on a path to stability and prosperity. The author not only hob-nobbed with royalty and ambassadors during his five-year assignment, he also frequented street markets and roadside food stalls, talking to taxi drivers and vendors about their hopes and fears, taking the pulse of the population in his capacity as U.N. peace-keeper and subsequently as the U.N. Secretary General’s special representative. His memoir is a fascinating account of how a devastated country put itself back together again; it is also a perceptive treatise on how the world — the U.N. and the great powers, not to mention the globe’s one super power — should deal with conflict and human disasters. The valuable lessons to be learned from this book should be carefully studied by the international community so that future conflicts, wherever they might occur, may be minimized to prevent suffering and death.

The horrors of the Cambodian holocaust (1975-79) were well known by the world, having been grimly documented by refugees who escaped the clutches of the Khmer Rouge’s insane regime of terror, where even grandmothers and small children were clubbed to death by teenaged soldiers at the behest of Pol Pot and his henchman. By the end of the five-year nightmare, which was terminated by Hun Sen’s forces, backed by the Vietnamese military, more than two million innocent people had been slaughtered. Cities were deserted, hospitals and schools had been destroyed, educated professionals had been eliminated — anyone wearing glasses was shot by the Khmer Rouge — and the country had been reduced to rubble.

What was the international community’s response to this human tragedy? Was relief and humanitarian assistance offered to the suffering survivors? Were emergency medical supplies and food aid delivered to those who huddled at death’s door? Incredibly, almost nothing was done. Even more unbelievable, after their defeat, the Khmer Rouge butchers continued to occupy Cambodia’s seat at the U.N., as China, the U.S. and most European countries (except France) voted to permit diplomats of the Khmer Rouge regime to continue to represent the country they had decimated. The “Cambodian problem” — euphemistically so described in U.N. corridors — was deemed to be the Vietnamese occupation and not the Khmer Rouge genocide. Pure and simple, Cambodia had become a pawn and a victim of Cold War power politics.

With the U.S. and China facing off against a crumbling Soviet Union, the decade of the 1980s resulted in a diplomatic stalemate when nothing was done to ease the suffering in Cambodia. Although the fighting had subsided, poverty and starvation had taken hold in a tiny country that had received more bombs than the Allies had dropped during the Second World War. The most heavily mined country in the world, people limping on crutches or moving about pitifully in makeshift wheelchairs were everywhere. The irony of being a starving neighbor of Southeast Asia’s prosperous “tigers” — where annual growth rates were bounding above 10 percent — was almost too bitter to contemplate.

Entering deus ex machina — like in 1992, the arrival of 20,000 U.N. personnel, dubbed by locals as the “invasion of the white cars” since all U.N. vehicles, even helicopters and airplanes were painted white — signaled a long-awaited rescue effort that should have occurred a decade earlier. Its mandate was to organize and carry out free and fair elections for a National Assembly, disarm the warring Cambodian factions, restore human rights and begin the path to reconstruction and national development.

By 1998 with elections successfully conducted, the Cambodia nightmare was over. With the dissolution of the Khmer Rouge and other rebellious factions, the kingdom was once again at peace, having transitioned from a post-conflict society into a developing country with the standard problems of widespread corruption and continuing pockets of rural poverty.

Author Widyono examines Cambodia’s sad experience from an Asian perspective and, in doing so, offers valuable lessons for diplomats and foreign affairs gurus to contemplate. In setting forth an Asian model for development where the priorities of growth, democracy and human rights must be properly balanced with the cultural and religious environment of a society, he postulates, by implication, that each region of the world must be approached, taking into account the prevailing local ethos. When it comes to providing foreign aid, “one size does not fit all”; what is right for Uncle Sam is not necessarily right for Afghans or Africans. When offering help to others, proceed with caution and sensitivity, but don’t dither for a decade while people are dying.

Sam Oglesby, a long-time resident of Southeast Asia, writes on international politics and development. His e-mail can be reached at ogl39@aol.com

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Vietnam, Cambodia boost neighborliness

HANOI, Comprehensive cooperation and border demarcation were two of the topics in the spotlight during discussions between Vietnamese National Assembly Chairman Nguyen Phu Trong and Cambodian National Assembly President Samdech Heng Samrin, the Vietnam News Agency reported on Friday.

Samdech Heng Samrin paid an official friendship visit to Vietnam from Jan. 15 to Jan. 19, at the invitation of his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Phu Trong.

Trong praised Samdech Heng Samrin's outstanding contributions to strengthening and developing the friendship and cooperation between the two countries, after congratulating him on his re-election as Chairman of Cambodia National Assembly.

Vietnam always nurtures the traditional friendly ties and comprehensive cooperation with Cambodia under the motto of "good neighborliness, traditional friendship and comprehensive and long-lasting cooperation", said Trong.

Heng Samrin spoke highly of cooperation between the two legislatures, focusing on a range of activities, including the exchange of high-level National Assembly delegations and delegations of National Assembly agencies and friendship parliamentarians' groups, the arranging of visits for researchers to exchange experiences and the hosting of seminars and meetings for National Assembly agencies to exchange views.

Regarding border demarcation, the two sides expressed satisfaction on initial results of land border demarcation and marker planting conducted by joint efforts of the two countries in the past years.

Heng Samrin said that the successful settlement of the boundary issue is expected to reach by 2012.

The approval of the supplementary land border treaty by the two sides will help to realize Vietnam-Cambodia land border determination treaty and nurture the time-honored friendship, said Trong.

Heng Samrin expressed his thanks to Vietnam for its sincere assistance to the Cambodian people in their past struggles and during their current goal of national construction and development.

Trong concluded the discussions by expressing his thanks to Cambodia for its support to Vietnam's course of development in the past years, especially helping Vietnam gather and return home remains of Vietnam soldiers left in Cambodia.
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Cambodia's 2 main opposition parties ally for upcoming elections

PHNOM PENH, The Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) and Human Rights Party (HRP), which are two main opposition parties in the Cambodian National Assembly, agreed Thursday in principle to establish a political alliance called the Democratic Movement of Change (DMC) for the upcoming elections.

The DMC is a new political force to lead and advance the country to have prosperity, according to the joint statement issued by both parties.

The upcoming elections include the 2012 commune council election and the 2013 general election.

"Our candidates will be registered to represent only one party in polling constituency," SRP president Sam Rainsy and HRP president Kem Sokha told reporters at a press conference.

"We will walk on the non-violent and legal strategies for political actions," Sam Rainsy said, adding that the movement does not oppose any individual or parties.

Meanwhile, Khem Sokha appealed to intellectuals and democratic supporters to join the DMC for upcoming elections.

In last year's general election, the SRP won 26 seats and HRP won three seats in all the 123 seats in the National Assembly.
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Cambodia aims to roll out forest preservation program

PHNOM PENH, The Forestry Administration of Cambodia hopes to implement by September a program designed to prevent development projects from decimating Cambodia's forests, national media reported Thursday.

The program would prioritize the use of law enforcement to crack down on illegal loggers, the identification and demarcation of forest areas, increased community participation in forest conservation, and investment in research projects related to the country's forests, Ty Sokhun, director of the administration, was quoted by the Phnom Penh Post as saying.

Currently, the administration has completed 30 percent of a draft document detailing the program, Ty Sokhun said, adding that they hope to hold forums for public discussion of the program in May and to implement it in September.

"We strongly believe that this program will not only make forests in Cambodia more abundant but also improve the lives of people living in rural communities and reduce poverty throughout the country," he said.

Meanwhile, Keng Pou, a member of the Phnong minority group living in Ratanakkiri province, called for the government to assist local efforts to encourage forest preservation.

"We need the government to encourage us, and support and protect us when we are fighting against illegal loggers," he told the Post.

He said some members of his village have sustained serious injuries while fighting off illegal loggers.
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Traffickers prey on Cambodian men

By Jon Govett

POPOK, Cambodia: "They killed one crewman for something very simple," said Thung Yeap. "He just wanted to go home. He kept asking. So in the end, the captain shot him dead."

Thung Yeap is one of the lucky survivors of a journey that starts in some of Cambodia's poorest villages and sometimes ends, fatally, in the waters of the South China Sea.

According to local law enforcers and international agencies, hundreds like Thung Yeap, mostly Cambodian farmers, have fallen victim in recent years to traffickers who turn them over to crews on Thai fishing boats, where they work without pay and often at gunpoint.

"It is an issue that needs urgent attention," said Lim Tith, national project coordinator for the United Nations' Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking, or Uniap, in Phnom Penh. "It really is a kind of descent into hell."

Kept at sea sometimes for years, these men, who have typically paid to be smuggled into Thailand with the promise of good factory jobs, are often treated brutally, subjected to beatings and even death for any attempted escape.

Until recently their plight fell under the radar of regional law enforcement agencies. Far from shore, the abuse they suffer evades detection, and legal jurisdiction is murky. The victims themselves have often hesitated to seek help, fearing they could be prosecuted as illegal immigrants.

Only in the past year have Thailand and Cambodia expanded trafficking laws written to protect women and children who were sold or tricked into prostitution or other forms of forced labor to explicitly include men. The hope is that men who find themselves in another country as a result of trafficking will be more likely to approach the authorities and be given assistance, because they will be recognized as victims rather than illegal migrants.

Cambodia and Malaysia also recently signed a memorandum of understanding on combating trafficking, as many of the Thai fishing boats operate in Malaysian waters.

Thung Yeap was able to return home to Popok village in Kampong Thom Province last month because he escaped when his fishing boat made a rare stop in port in Sarawak, in the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo. The Malaysian authorities detained him as an illegal immigrant before sending him back to Cambodia.

He and Dorn Chenda, who is from Steung Saen village in Kampong Thom, ended up in the same detention center in Sarawak, and Uniap worked with the Cambodian human rights group Licadho to have them repatriated to Cambodia.

Kampong Thom is one of the country's poorest districts, blighted until just 10 years ago by fighting between Cambodian government troops and Khmer Rouge guerrillas.

"People live hand to mouth round here," said Prak Phanna, village headman of Anlong Kranh, a village near Popok. "We used to make some money cutting and burning trees for charcoal, but the government made this illegal recently, so we have nothing. I'd say most people maybe make $20 to $30 a month around here. So, when the young men can't make ends meet, they go to Thailand."

Chorn Theong Ly, also from Anlong Kranh, was among them.

"One day a middleman came to our village," he recalled. "He said he would take us to Thailand, where we could have an easy life, working in factories. He said we'd earn 4,000 baht a month there," an amount equal to $115. "So, we each paid him 3,000 to smuggle us across the border."

What followed was a nightmare.

"When we got to Thailand we were taken to a house in Samut Prakan" - a seaside province south of Bangkok - "and locked up there. We began to realize then that something was wrong. At 4 a.m. they came for us, the traffickers, and took us straight to the boats. It was then we realized we had been sold to a fishing captain. And by then it was too late to act."

Forced to work under the supervision of an armed Thai crew, the Cambodians - some of whom had never been afloat before - suffered terribly.

"We were all seasick, and I remember vomiting blood," said Chorn Theong Ly. "The captain beat me, too, using an octopus tentacle as a whip. I was beaten almost unconscious. I also saw other crew members killed, twice - one shot, the other beaten to death, when he refused to work."

The promised wages never arrived.

"After four months at sea," said Dorn Chenda. "I started demanding my wages. They told me they had sent them to my wife back in Cambodia. But it turned out they'd never paid her a penny."

The boats typically operate out of ports like the one in Samut Prakan.

"That is one place where there are many houses where the traffickers can lock up the new arrivals," said Manfred Hornung, monitoring consultant with Licadho. "They are brought there illegally, so have no papers, and are totally at the mercy of the traffickers."

The Thai police say they are aware of the practice but say that enforcement is difficult.

"When some do escape, they usually don't want to talk to the police," said Lieutenant Colonel Thakoon Nimsombun of the Thai Justice Ministry's Department of Special Investigations Anti-Trafficking Center, often referred to as DSI. "When they go back to Cambodia, they just disappear, and it's difficult to find them again."

Lisa Rende Taylor, chief technical adviser at the Bangkok office of Uniap, said that until the anti-trafficking laws were extended to cover men, there was little incentive for victims to cooperate.

"In one case, when a boat had put out to sea and run out of gas, many of the trafficked crew had died, with the bodies thrown overboard," she said. "When the boat was finally brought back to port, there was a big question as to what law to prosecute them under. The crew were classed as illegal immigrants, so how could they testify without being arrested?"

Another problem, said Police Colonel Akarapol Punyopashtambha of the DSI, "When the crimes are committed, they are out at sea, and there are a lot of jurisdictional problems there. They may be at sea for years, too, so it's hard to get to them."

Meanwhile, in Kampong Thom, the survivors of this ordeal at sea are now trying to come to terms with their experience.

"We were always thinking of escaping," recalled Thung Yeap. "There was no way, though. We were powerless. The sea itself was our prison." Read more!

.C. aid worker dies after Cambodia attack

A B.C. aid worker who was severely injured after being attacked in Cambodia last week has died from his injuries.

Jiri Zivny, 46, of Kamloops, B.C., died at 5:15 p.m. local time Thursday in Phnom Penh's Calmette hospital, where he was being treated for serious head injuries.

Zivny was attacked after he withdrew money from an ATM in Preah Sihanouk Province last Friday, about four hours south of Phnom Penh. He was reportedly clubbed in the head by assailants who stole his cash, his wallet, some of his clothes and left him for dead.

Zivny's medical insurance had expired and his death comes as his agency was trying to raise funds to bring him back to Canada for medical treatment -- a flight that could cost up to $20,000.

Friend and fellow aid worker Monty Aldoff says Zivny received a "substandard" level of medical care in the capital city's hospital.

"The conditions were deplorable," he told CTV News Thursday morning, his voice breaking. "It stunk and there were rats everywhere and it was just substandard. Unacceptable."

Aldoff, with help from the International Humanitarian Hope Society, the Kamloops, B.C. agency they worked with, brought in an American doctor to oversee Zivny's progress.

Zivny was in the country delivering supplies to Asian orphanages, as part of a trip organized by the B.C. charity. He had been travelling with other IHHS members in December, but had decided to extend his trip.

IHHS president Evelyn Picklyk told The Canadian Press that Zivny had a passion for his work with children.

"Every time we went to an orphanage, he was in tears," she said.

While Picklyk said aid workers generally travel in groups, she confirmed that Zivny had been travelling alone at the time that he was attacked.

According to the Canada Revenue Agency website, the IHHS falls under the "missionary organizations and propagation of gospel" category of charitable organizations. It has held charitable status since Jan. 1, 2007. Read more!

No impartial tribunal in Cambodia

By Lao Mong Hay

Hong Kong, China — Cambodia is bound by the Paris Peace Agreements, which were concluded in 1991 to end a protracted war in the country and which obligate Cambodia to adhere to international human rights norms and standards. These include, among other things, the creation of an independent judiciary and the right to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal established by law.

All the specified international human rights norms and standards have now become an integral part of Cambodia's Constitution. This Constitution spells out clearly that Cambodia shall recognize and respect human rights as stipulated in all relevant international instruments. It provides for the separation of powers, an independent judiciary, the guarantee of this judicial independence by the king with the assistance of a supreme judicial body called the Supreme Council of the Magistracy, and the protection of human rights by the king and the judiciary.

However, despite all the constitutional guarantees and protections mentioned above, in reality the Cambodian people have not enjoyed these rights, including the right to a fair and public hearing by a competent and impartial tribunal. There is no such tribunal as yet in Cambodia.

Since the abandonment of communism in the early 1990s, the Cambodian judiciary has not proved to be independent despite continued criticism over its lack of this important attribute. It is very much under political control. Most, if not all, members are affiliated to the ruling party, with the chief justice of the Supreme Court being a member of the party's standing and central committees.

More recently the Cambodian authorities have recognized the obvious, though indirectly. Last October a deputy prime minister, Sok An, announced that the government “will be preparing a workshop on the law and courts,” saying that the government had heard “bad rumors about courts in Cambodia” and it was going “to work very hard to change that.” He added that the government “needed to enforce discipline and make sure that the courts are independent."

As for competency, the courts have recently been found to be short of it. Last year the Senate's Legislation and Justice Committee conducted an investigation into the functioning of the courts and the legal knowledge of judicial officials. After the completion of the investigation in a number of courts in November, its chairman, Ouk Bunthoeun, revealed some of the committee's findings, one of which was the inadequate knowledge base of these officials. "The judges and the prosecutors are facing difficulties implementing the laws …There are a lot of technical terms that (they) don't understand," he said.

The Cambodian courts have also been found to lack impartiality. This lack comes from their lack of independence and from corruption. A survey by Transparency International released in February 2008 found that the judiciary, in tandem with the police, was the most corrupt institution in Cambodia.

A study by an NGO released earlier, in December 2007, said, “ The primary functions of the courts continue to be: 1) To prosecute political opponents and other critics of the government; 2) To perpetuate impunity for state actors and their associates; 3) To promote the economic interests of the rich and powerful.” Ouk Bunthoeun, mentioned above, said his committee had also found the bias and corruption that the courts have been accused of.

The dismal status of the courts of law and the ensuing denial of constitutional right to a fair and public hearing by an independent, competent and impartial tribunal should no longer be tolerated. The king of Cambodia should discharge his constitutional duty, get the Supreme Council of the Magistracy which he chairs, and seek support from the government and the Parliament to ensure the independence of the judiciary.

As the first step, the law on the status of judges and prosecutors that the country's Constitution has specifically stipulated and the government has long promised, was enacted and effectively enforced. This law should affirm and protect the constitutional immovability and independence of this group of judicial officials so as to ensure the security of their tenure. It should prohibit their affiliation to any political party while their tenure is secure.

The Supreme Council of the Magistracy should free itself from political control as well and, like judges and prosecutors, its members should not be affiliated to any political party. This council should effectively enforce its code of ethics for judges and prosecutors and establish the procedure and mechanism for complaints against these judicial officials which should be easily accessible to the public.

In the meantime, the leadership of the country should respect the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary, and end their control over it. Furthermore, this branch of government should be allocated adequate resources so that it can properly provide justice and protect human rights.

--

Lao Mong Hay is a senior researcher at the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong. He was previously director of the Khmer Institute of Democracy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and a visiting professor at the University of Toronto in 2003. In 1997, he received an award from Human Rights Watch and the Nansen Medal in 2000 from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.) . Read more!

Canadian arrested in Cambodia on child sex charges

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: A Canadian man has been charged with sexually abusing two Cambodian girls, ages 10 and 12, and could face up to 13 years imprisonment if convicted, authorities said Wednesday.

Mok Pheang, a prosecutor in Sihanoukville province, said that Daniel Lavigne, 68, of Quebec province was charged Wednesday with having sexual intercourse and committing indecent acts with minors.

Police arrested Lavigne on Monday at the bus station in Sihanoukville town, said Soun Sophan, deputy police chief of the coastal city 185 kilometers (115 miles) southwest of Phnom Penh.

The suspect was headed to the capital, Phnom Penh, with the two girls, Soun Sophan said

The officer said Lavigne denied the charges, claiming that he treated the girls as his adopted daughters. But the girls told police that the Canadian had sexually molested them at a guesthouse.

Lax law enforcement and poverty have made Cambodia a prime destination for foreigners seeking sex with minors. However, police have in recent years stepped up efforts to fight the crime, and several foreigners are serving lengthy prison terms. Read more!

B.C. aid worker left for dead after Cambodia attack

Hun Sen regime is about violence and crimes. Especially, the local authority that people trusted the most are among criminals. Those authorities are the slave of the crimes and the riches. This kind of crime was usually associated with the local police officer and the drug addicts.

A B.C. man is fighting for his life in Cambodia after a violent mugging.

Darcy Wintonyk

Humanitarian worker Jiri Zivney was beaten, robbed and left for death January 9 in Phnom Penh outside a bank machine.

"As he was riding away on his motorbike, they clubbed him in the head and he crashed his bike," family friend Monty Aldoff tells CTV News.

The 46-year-old was transferred by ambulance to a hospital in the capital city, where he is listed in critical condition. Doctors are working to stabilize him so he can be brought back to Canada for treatment.

According to the International Humanitarian Hope Society, the Kamloops resident was in the country delivering medical supplies to orphans on behalf of their agency.

Zivney was on his 24th day of a humanitarian trip to China, Vietnam, Thailand and Burma. Most of the other team members returned to Canada after the Bangkok airport shutdown in November, but Zivney and another team member wanted to carry on by land.

A trust fund has been set up in Zivney's name at Valley First in Kamloops, B.C., Account # 610071571 (transit # 27310-809).

Read more!

Cambodia drafts law to regulate internet strictly

PHNOM PENH, The Cambodian Ministry of Information is drafting a law that will extend the libel, defamation and ethics rules currently governing print media to other media platforms, including Internet, national media said on Tuesday.

The law will be used to formalize content management rules so that they can be easily applied by future information ministers, the English-language daily The Phnom Penh Post quoted Information Minister Khieu Kanharith as saying.

"We are drafting the legislation in order to have a proper law to manage radio, television and other platforms," he said.

The recent explosion of media outlets of print media made the law necessary, he said, pointing to the increase in websites in recent years, as well as the growth in radio and television.

It is unknown when the draft law will be finished as much work needs to be done before it can be sent to the Council of Ministers for approval, he added.

Cambodia now has 9 aerial television channels, 60 cable channels, several satellite and Internet channels, and dozens of newspapers and magazines, according to official figures.

The number of websites remains unknown yet.
Read more!

Official denies delay of opening Cambodian stock market

PHNOM PENH, A Cambodian official denied media reports that the opening of stock exchange market has been delayed indefinitely due to the worsening global economic slowdown, English-language newspaper the Cambodia Daily said Tuesday.

"We didn't declare postponement of the stock exchange. I am sure it will open in 2009," Mey Vann, director of the Department of Finance Industry of the Ministry of Finance and Economy, was quoted as saying.

"We are working on it and there is no delay," he said, but decline to discuss the exact date.

On Monday, another English-language daily The Phnom Penh Post quoted Mey Vann as saying that "Cambodia has been affected by the global financial crisis, especially in terms of real estate and garment exports. Therefore, the plan to open our own stock market has been postponed, and no specific schedule is set for it."

The launch of the stock exchange market was originally scheduled for last September, with the South Korean Exchange providing funds and technical support.

As Cambodia's economy, one of the region's most vibrant, slowed to single-digit growth last year, the exchange's future was put in doubt, said The Phnom Penh Post.

Cambodia enjoyed consistent double-digit economic growth rate from 2005 to 2007, which fueled the government's ambition to upgrade its financial and capital market, and the establishment of a stock exchange market was just one of its major plans in this regard.
Read more!

U.S. to donate $600,000 in military aid for Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, The United States plans to donate more than 600,000 U.S. dollars in "non-lethal" military aid to Cambodia in 2009, national media on Tuesday quoted U.S. Embassy spokesman as saying.

The United States expects to give 635,000 U.S. dollars in aid toward countering transnational criminal activities, including anti-drug trafficking and demining programs, John Johnson told English-language newspaper the Cambodia Daily.

The aid encompasses an estimated 575,000 U.S. dollars in Foreign Military Funding, which is used to buy vehicles, protective gear as well as medical and communication equipment, and about 60,000 U.S. dollars in International Military Education and Training Funding, which is primarily for English-language education, he added.

The U.S. suspended military aid for Cambodia at the end of last century and lifted the restriction two years ago.

In 2008, it donated 1.5 million U.S. dollars in peacekeeper training, 1 million U.S. dollars in demining assistance, and nearly 3 million U.S. dollars in other humanitarian programs in the kingdom, according to the embassy.
Read more!

CAMBODIA: Malaria becoming deadlier

PAILIN, 13 January 2009 (IRIN) - A deadly strain of malaria along the Thai-Cambodian border is becoming increasingly immune to treatment, threatening the global effort to end malaria, new evidence shows.

Artemisinin combination therapy (ACT), whereby patients take both a fast-acting and slow-acting drug to kill the parasite, is losing its therapeutic effects as treatment is taking longer.

"We are facing a problem that instead of killing the parasite within 24 to 36 hours as before, ACT now needs up to 120 hours to kill the parasites," Pascal Ringwald, a medical officer at the World Health Organization (WHO), in charge of monitoring anti-malarial drug resistance, told IRIN from Geneva.

The parasite's resistance to Artemisinin, one of two drugs in ACT therapy, is the driving factor behind the deterioration of ACT.

Usually, doctors will prescribe Artemisinin with one of many slower-acting drugs.

Yet the problem is not only resistance to Artemisinin, which has existed since the 1970s, but rather tolerance to ACT, the more advanced therapy consisting of two drugs, Ringwald said. Artemisinin monotherapy refers to taking the drug alone and is not recommended by the WHO.

"Artemisinin resistance appears in parts of Southeast Asia where there has been rampant and uncontrolled use of Artemisinin monotherapy," Sir Richard Feachem, director of the Global Health Group at the University of California at San Francisco, told IRIN.

At one-tenth the price of ACT and without its adverse side-effects, such as vomiting, Artemisinin monotherapy continues to remain a popular choice for many.

However, if the threat is not contained, resistant malaria will spread through the region and hit poor communities in particular, Feachem warned.

Duong Socheat, director of the National Centre for Parasitology, Entomology and Malaria Control in Phnom Penh, told IRIN that ACTs, outreach and prevention tools like mosquito nets had seen remarkable progress despite a tolerance threat. A total of 100,000 malaria cases were reported in 2006, falling to 59,000 in 2007 and 54,000 in 2008.

The malaria death rate has been halved in only two years – from 396 in 2006 to 241 in 2007 and 184 in 2008.

Containing the threat

At an emergency meeting in October, the WHO recommended a switch to a new ACT therapy called dihydroartemisinin–piperaquine (DHA-PIP) for 2009, which is virtually 100 percent effective according to new trial results in Cambodia.

The previous ACT treatment since 2001, artesunate mefloquine, is still 90 percent effective, but unpopular among at-risk populations that still use monotherapy despite the ban.

Merchants often sell cheap, counterfeit monotherapies in rural areas.

The WHO also recommended wider distribution of mosquito nets, stricter enforcement of the ban on monotherapies, and the rapid deployment of WHO-endorsed drugs.

Drug-resistant history

Yet malaria has been developing resistance to Artemisinin for decades, and ACT tolerance is only a new phase in the parasite's evolution.

Since the 1970s, factors such as gem-mining migrants from all over Southeast Asia mixing malaria strains at the Thai-Cambodia border, an unregulated drug market, and overuse of Artemisinin monotherapy have all caused plasmodium falciparum, a common malaria parasite in Cambodia, to develop resistance to the drug.

The government and WHO responded by endorsing ACT in 2001 and banning Artemisinin-only therapy. But even ACT, despite being more than 90 percent effective against malaria, will need to be adapted soon, Feachem said.

"Ensuring that Artemisinin is always given with another drug, in the form of ACT, is a clever use of a clever drug," Feachem said. "However, parasite resistance will eventually catch up with this, and for this reason the development of new drugs ... is of the utmost importance to the health of people worldwide."

Fake drugs and patients not complying with their treatment schedules are other factors.

"If people don't take their drugs regularly, then they will have problems with resistance," Hou Nirmita, head of the health department at the Ministry of Women's Affairs, told IRIN.

But Feachem, who thinks malaria could be eradicated worldwide by 2050, sees hope. "The challenge of drug resistance, and the fact that we can never prevent the development of resistance in the long term, provides a strong argument for the acceleration of elimination and control efforts now," he said.

"To delay or to implement programmes in a half-hearted manner is both expensive and dangerous,” he explained.

According to the WHO World Malaria report for 2008, half the world's population is at risk, and an estimated 247 million cases led to nearly one million deaths in 2006. Pregnant women and children in Africa are especially threatened, the WHO says. Read more!

Cambodian PM makes first Middle East visit

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has departed for oil-rich Kuwait in his first-ever visit to the Middle East, aimed at expanding business and trade ties.

Hun Sen was accompanied by a number of high-ranking government officials and business people as he left on the four-day trip on a plane provided by Kuwait.

"This visit will lead to the development in the future between Cambodia and Kuwait, and between Cambodia and other countries in the Middle East," Foreign Minister Hor Namhong told reporters.

During the visit, officials are scheduled to sign agreements on Kuwaiti technical aid to build a hydro-power plant, irrigation systems and roads in the impoverished Southeast Asian nation, the minister said.

Officials will also agree to direct flights between the two nations to boost tourism, he said.

Hor Namhong, who is accompanying Hun Sen, said the premier would also hold discussions about rice, trade exchange and investments.

Kuwaiti premier Sheikh Nasser Mohammed al-Ahmed al-Sabah visited Cambodia and inked trade deals last August, while Phnom Penh is also looking into land-lease agreements with Kuwait.

Kuwait granted Cambodia a 546-million-dollar agricultural loan in August in return for crop production.

Impoverished Cambodia has climbed back from decades of civil unrest to emerge as one of the region's most vibrant economies, attracting increasing foreign investment.

Cambodian officials have also said they hope Middle East governments will help train local experts on the petroleum industry, which is starting to take root after the discovery of offshore deposits.
Read more!

The Cham draw on their inner strength

By Paloma Esquivel
January 12, 2009
In the secluded courtyard of a weathered condominium complex, at the dead end of a graffiti-marred Santa Ana street, the Cham are busy preparing a summer feast.

Banana trees grow tall here, shadowing crowded stalks of lemon grass and green onion. Severed bits of a cow slaughtered in conformity with Islamic law fill bright blue plastic tubs. Nearby, women sit cross-legged, chatting and laughing; their strong hands grind fresh ginger in stone mortars.

Centuries ago, the Cham ruled over their own kingdom, known as Champa, along the coastline of what's now Vietnam. They were maritime traders whose first religion was a form of Hinduism, but they later adopted Islam. Today they are a people without a homeland, their numbers a few hundred thousand. For centuries, they have been chased from place to place -- from the highlands of Vietnam to the rivers of Cambodia and, in the bloody aftermath of genocide, to the United States, where thousands have settled.

In the margins of each place, they've come together.

So it is here, where a hundred Cham families live in this worn Santa Ana complex alongside Latinos, Laotians and Cambodians. In the middle of one of the city's most crime-infested neighborhoods, they have turned one apartment into a mosque and built a world centered on faith. In celebration, neighbors prepare feasts and share stories. In hardship, they share burdens, the cost of food and the cost of burial.

But even as they've struggled to keep their small community intact, the outside world has crept in. Some young people have turned to gangs and drugs. Others have packed their bags and fled. A few have drifted from the religion and language that shaped their youth. Now, when the call to prayer goes out, the mosque is filled mostly with elders and small children, as if those in the middle simply disappeared.

On the day of the feast to celebrate the beginning of Ramadan and the end of the Islamic school year, one man finds himself wanting to rebuild his ties.

Nasia Ahmanth doesn't properly speak Cham, which is similar to Malay. He rarely attends mosque and can't read the Arabic of the Koran. He rarely prays.

He was a baby when his father, El Ahmanth, led a village of Cham refugees here. But as the group put down roots, Nasia drifted, lured by the streets. By the time he was 17, he says, he was an addict and speed was his drug of choice. As it raced through his body, he felt unstoppable, light and creative at once.

Now he's 30 and, he says, sober. He has a son of his own and two years ago moved out of the neighborhood to distance himself from drug-using friends. Last year, though, when his father died, he found himself looking homeward, wanting to rebuild his ties to a community he feared was fading.

"I want my son to know what Cham is," he said.

Nasia had just been born when his family fled the Khmer Rouge's brutal reign in Cambodia in 1979. They went to Thailand, then to refugee camps in the Philippines before landing in Santa Ana.

With a few hundred dollars in refugee assistance, his father rented an apartment on Minnie Street, in a neighborhood ravaged by shootings and drugs. He sponsored 10 families living in refugee camps in Thailand who had also fled Cambodia, and before long those families were sponsoring more refugees.

Ghazaly Salim and his wife and daughters were among the first to arrive, coming at the senior Ahmanth's request after first landing in Houston.

Today Salim, 56, is a telephone installer who spends his off time organizing the mosque. He is something of a community patriarch. He values faith and piety above all, and, though it's not a Cham tradition, he wears a skullcap as a sign of fealty.

Decades ago, he was a religious student in Cambodia. Just before it was time to leave for the school, he went, house by house, to his neighbors. Each family gave him some rice to sell in the market so he could pay for school.

Sticking together "is what our grandfathers taught us," he said.

In Santa Ana, he found freedom and opportunity -- and more struggle.

Minnie Street runs parallel to Santa Ana's north-south railroad tracks, a place of squalor and danger. Over the years, it became a first stop for immigrant families: Latinos, followed by Cambodians and Laotians and then Cham. In this new home, windows were lined with bars. Paint peeled, cockroaches crawled on walls, and rodents scurried across the floors. Families packed 10 to an apartment.

In villages in Cambodia and Vietnam, the Cham had been renowned blacksmiths and rice farmers. In Santa Ana, they struggled to find work in packing plants, as janitors and on assembly lines for minimum wage.

Nasia's mother, Sani Karim, worked on an electronics assembly line. His father got a better job as a teacher's assistant at the nearby elementary school. Those who couldn't find work spent days sitting on the sidewalk or standing idly in doorways. At night, drug dealers could be heard whistling to warn others when police cars cruised by.

Even so, many of the Cham determined to build a mosque. Almost as soon as they arrived, they pooled their minimum-wage salaries and asked for help from local Arab Muslims. In three years they had enough to buy Building B-2, a dingy single-story unit with bars on the windows and a door that opens onto a concrete courtyard. Most moved into surrounding units; others rented nearby.

Five times a day, the call to prayer from B-2 sounds across the neighborhood. Inside, men line up on prayer rugs laid over a linoleum floor. Women, who don't go outside without covering their hair with scarves, go to a white-walled bedroom in the back for their own prayer.

For elders, the mosque and its courtyard are a refuge. But younger generations have struggled to navigate between their insular community and the world that surrounds them.

"You can only go to the mosque so much before you get tired of the uniformity," said Mogul Ahmanth, 35, Nasia's brother.

Here, it isn't difficult to find a different way of life.

Late last year, more than 200 heavily armed police and federal agents raided the condo complex. Eighteen people, mostly Latinos suspected of dealing heroin and cocaine for the Minnie Street Lopers, a local street gang, were dragged out in handcuffs. Inside apartments, agents found semiautomatic weapons and a bolt-action SKS carbine with a foldaway bayonet, popular with communist troops in Vietnam. Heroin, rock cocaine and 3 pounds of methamphetamine were also seized; some of the drugs had been stashed in tree trunks.

When he was young, Nasia's father would regale him with stories about the Cham. As a child he sometimes imagined his father's position of leadership in the community made him something of a Cham prince.

As they grew, the father advised his three young boys to go to mosque and talk to the elders. Get involved in their discussions, he told them. Help with small things -- moving chairs, cleaning up, organizing events.

"You need to learn to walk before you can run," he said.

Nasia rejected his father's way of life in favor of the one he saw friends adopting. In junior high, he joined a group of Cambodian and Laotian homeboys in a tagging crew. In high school they became a gang. They never did anything too bad, he insists. But there was alcohol, then pot. Eventually, he found himself in the bathroom of a friend's Minnie Street apartment, inhaling his first line of speed. Addiction seemed to come quickly.

He remembers going home before dawn one day, his pupils dilated, his teeth grinding.

His father stared at him. "I know what you're up to."

The man who believed Nasia would grow up to be an architect, who imagined he would help lead the Cham, looked at his son and walked away.

A short time later, the son packed his belongings and left for Delaware, where a friend lived. He worked as a machine operator for four years, until he knew he could go home without turning back to drugs. He returned four years ago.

But the community regards him with suspicion. Although he considers himself a Muslim, he admits he doesn't embrace regular prayer or other tenets of the faith.

"Religion is the way of life," said Salim, the community leader. "You have to know religion to lead. You have to know what to teach."

Even so, when Nasia's father died last year, the urge to embrace his community grew stronger.

The Cham stories his father told him when he was younger have stayed with him; they hold a power over him. He believes that one day the Cham might have their own homeland again.

Recently, his father's advice about volunteering to help, about learning to walk before running, has echoed in his mind.

He began talking to Mathsait Ly, an older cousin, about helping, and he persisted until Ly gave him a chance. This year, Ly asked him to join the Cham board of directors as event coordinator, making him its youngest member. He would serve as master of ceremonies at the feast marking the beginning of Ramadan and the end of the Islamic school year.

The day of the feast, elders woke early to roast sweet marinated meat; women made rice, cauliflower and pickled carrots sliced thin as paper.

A few men tended fresh meat grilling over hot coals. Others lifted a giant aluminum pot full of boiling tripe onto a gas fire. Someone had tagged a giant red face with Xs for eyes on a condominium wall.

Salim and Ly scuttled about, giving directions and watching over the celebration.

Nasia showed up a few hours late -- about 10 a.m. The others had been up before dawn.

"I went to a movie last night," he said, smiling apologetically.

Inside the mosque, he nervously paced on prayer rugs, his shiny black hair combed back neatly. A group of graduating students shuffled in place, tugging at stiff shirts and long robes.

Nasia glanced at a speech he'd written for the crowd gathering outside. He clicked the end of his pen over and over again, reading aloud, tripping over unfamiliar Arabic words.

When he took to the stage, his voice hardly registered, despite the microphone in front of him.

"This day is about coming together to celebrate the end of Ramadan," he said -- though it marked the start of the traditional month of fasting. No one seemed to notice the slip.

"This," Nasia Ahmanth said, "is the day where parents become proud of their child." Read more!