Tobique Valley students help Cambodia kids

A yearbook is full of memories and for the students of Tobique Valley Middle High School, the 2009 edition will evoke images of how they helped less fortunate children thousands of miles away. The students have raised $650 for school children in Cambodia and on Friday, Jan. 16, they added their signatures to a school banner that has already been signed by the Asian youngsters.

"We decided this year that we wanted to do something a little more meaningful than dedicating our yearbook to an individual," Dylan Mahaney, yearbook editor, said of their decision to dedicate it to the project. "This was something we thought was worthwhile."

Teacher Bridget Nugent Rideout is yearbook advisor and she suggested the Cambodian project to the students. Her dad Professor Bill Nugent and his childhood friend Gary Keenan of K-Line Construction in Woodstock are working to help the Pinocchio School for Poor Children in Sihanoukville, coastal Cambodia, and travelled there over the Christmas holidays to deliver $4,000 raised by a variety of supporters mostly in New Brunswick. The money will be used to buy school uniforms, shoes, school desks and other supplies.

On Jan. 16, the Tobique Valley middle school students watched a presentation that featured photographs of the children taken during the Cambodian visit. Dylan Mahaney along with Sabrina St. Pierre, junior editor, and Kelsey Witherly, yearbook member, explained Prof. Nugent and Keenan not only delivered much-needed money but also book bags and other school supplies that delighted the youngsters.

"They bought a lot of flip-flops," Mahaney added, noting the lightweight footwear is ideal there. "These children really don't have very much."

As students saw photographs of sparse living conditions, Mahaney noted the hammocks in the pictures serve as beds, couches and chairs. Families that number as many as 26 people live in one small home. In another photograph, the Tobique Valley students saw their school banner being signed by the Cambodian children.

"Their alphabet doesn't look like ours so some of their names don't look like words," Nugent Rideout explained. "This is the same banner that you are going to sign and then it will be on display in our school."

The majority of the funds raised by Tobique Valley Middle High School came from the 24-hour famine held by high school students recently. The middle school classrooms had donation collection jars that also brought in dollars.

Anyone who wants to help the children in Cambodia is also welcome to get involved. Paul Nugent is currently working as a professor in the English department at Yeungnam University in Korea and Gary Keenan is back in Woodstock but both men have committed to continuing to help the children.

"Paul is planning to return within the year to personally deliver any donations or items that in been donated in Woodstock or Korea," Nugent Rideout explained. "The two Monquarters will bear the costs of shipping or delivering any items that are donated."

Although Professor Nugent and Keenan have been involved in a variety of humanitarian projects, their discovery of the Sihanoukville school happened almost by accident. The men had been delivering aid in Vietnam and were spending two weeks touring Cambodia when they met the founder of an orphanage and school for the poor who was in the guest house where they stayed. Cees Chamuleau, originally from Holland, had gone to Cambodia to visit an old friend when he became aware of child labour being used to run a small stone quarry in the community. Appalled by what he saw, he brought the story to the attention of the United Nations and then decided he wanted to open a school there to give the youngsters an alternative to labouring.

Despite a lot of opposition, Cees eventually opened a school for 250 students, many of them residents of the orphanage he also established nearby.

"Children do not have to pay to attend the school as most families in the area have little or no money," Nugent Rideout stated.

"Cees and his associates give the children uniforms and shoes, a midday meal and look after their medical needs, some of which are very serious."

The visit to the school was described as "heart warming" by Nugent and Keenan who said the children were delighted to have visitors. The pupils received Canada pins and flags, a large New Brunswick and Canadian flag, as well as some candy. The children will receive some of Prof. Nugent's recently published storybooks as well as Scotiabank rulers donated by Tom and Bridget Brennan. The supporters also provided a Christmas feast of suckling pig that was enjoyed during the December visit.

"There are some Christians there and they do have Christmas but it isn't like here. They don't have all the presents. It's just a day they observe," Mahaney explained.

Items still being collected include new clothes like t-shirts, caps, school supplies, calculators and donations. A donation of $25 can buy five school uniforms, a desk or flip-flops for 50 children.

More information is available by contacting Gary Keenan at 328-9848.

When the students at Tobique Valley look back on their school year, they will have the satisfaction of knowing they did something that made a difference in the world. The photographs of Cambodian children with big, bright grins make the Tobique Valley students smile.

"You can see how excited these children are," Mahaney noted. Read more!

Where Guns Fall From the Sky

A weapons collection in Cambodia in a scene from “Dealing and Wheeling in Small Arms.”

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

“I’d rather lose one son than my gun, because with a gun I can save my family,” declares a frightened Congolese villager in “Dealing and Wheeling in Small Arms,” a depressing, scattershot survey of the spread of weaponry around the world, especially in Africa.

This Dutch film, directed by Sander Francken, shifts abruptly back and forth between a ground-level view of how small arms have affected poor countries and a throw-up-your-hands analysis of the inability of any international agency, including the United Nations, to curtail the prolific, and profitable, small-arms trade. Although the film visits Cambodia, Uganda and Bosnia, it focuses mostly on Congo, where imported guns have plunged the country into perpetual civil war.

The Congolese strife suggests a rural African equivalent of gang warfare in American urban neighborhoods, and the documentary includes more than one scene of gun-toting children wreaking havoc. Angry Congolese villagers emphasize that the guns were not made there; they were manufactured outside the country. They find their way to Congo by plane, boat and car through shadowy networks that are almost impossible to trace because the route involves so many way stations, with payoffs at each.

It is not surprising that some Congolese view the spread of small arms as a conspiracy of the haves to keep the country at war while stripping it of its natural resources. One man tells of guns’ being dropped from airplanes and of villagers’ being lined up, handed free weapons, and told to go fight one another.

Accurate statistics about the spread of small arms are hard to come by and are, at best, rough estimates. In the last 15 years, Vanessa Redgrave says in a voice-over, 100 million small arms were manufactured and sold, with Western Europe the largest supplier. Attempts to reduce the supply are pitiful.

The movie wastes precious time following the director around as he interviews gun dealers and marksmen on firing ranges about the differences between this and that automatic weapon; these scenes smack of gun fetishism, and to those who don’t share what might be called the gun gene, they are boring and creepy.

Gun love, the film suggests, is in our blood, and the manufacture and distribution of arms a rampant social pathology that is not about to end anytime soon.

DEALING AND WHEELING IN SMALL ARMS

Opens on Wednesday in

Manhattan.

Produced and directed by Sander Francken; written by Joost Schrickx, Josh Lacey and Mr. Francken; narrated by Vanessa Redgrave; directors of photography, Sander Snoep, Pieter Groeneveld, Edwin Donders, Jan-Dries Groenendijk, Maarten Kramer and Mr. Francken; edited by Gys Zevenbergen; music by Rainer Michel. At the Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue, at Second Street, East Village. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. This film is not rated.

Read more!

9 tips for verboten vacations

By Christopher Elliott
Tribune Media Services

(Tribune Media Services) -- When it comes to travel, forbidden is in.

Cuba, Iran and North Korea -- long off-limits to most American visitors -- might be added to the "allowed" list under an Obama administration. Other destinations that were considered too dangerous or hostile to Americans are becoming fashionable again, as travelers jettison boring "staycations" for something more exotic.

"People who love to travel will take their chances," says Glenn Strachan, a wireless communications consultant in Annapolis, Maryland. He's been to several "forbidden" places, including everyone's favorite no-no vacation hotspot, Cuba, as well as Vietnam and Cambodia when they were still closed to Americans.

"Had we been caught," he says of his visit to Cambodia years ago, "we likely would have been killed."

That's the thing about these verboten vacations: They can be risky. The State Department publishes a list of travel warnings that shouldn't be ignored. They range from Cote d'Ivoire, which is experiencing periodic episodes of political unrest and violence since a failed coup a few years ago, to the Philippines, where Americans are at risk from terrorist attacks.

Never mind the health hazards of vacationing somewhere that's off the beaten path. Or on the warpath.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes health advisories for most countries. If you're traveling to Somalia, for example, you should consider vaccines for yellow fever, Hepatitis A and B, typhoid, rabies and polio. Going to Myanmar? Add a vaccine for Japanese encephalitis and take your malaria pills, please. "We very rarely tell people that they should not go to a particular country," says CDC spokeswoman Shelly Sikes Diaz.

So when they do, you might want to heed their warning.

Still interested in going off the grid on your next getaway? Here are nine tips.

There's no such thing as safe

Even if you decide to travel somewhere familiar -- or at least government-sanctioned -- there's no guarantee you'll come back alive. "Let's face it," says Joy Thrun, who owns Classic Travel, a travel agency in Okemos, Michigan, "there is no safe place." Curiously, some of the destinations that are thought to be dangerous, including Israel, Nepal, Kenya, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Haiti, Syria and the Philippines, are not as hazardous to your health as the government would have you believe, she adds. "I would not hesitate to travel there," she says. "They're wonderful travel destinations."

Ask around

That's the advice of Tony Wheeler, co-founder of Lonely Planet, and author of "Bad Lands: A Tourist on the Axis of Evil." "It's very interesting to compare the U.S. Department of State advisories with the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office advisories and Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade," he told me, adding that the British ones are generally the "most measured." When he visited Afghanistan and Iraq a few years ago, he remembers the British advisories essentially saying, "This bit is really bad, this bit is probably OK, take care anywhere," he says. "They didn't simply say 'don't go.'"

Remember, you're not the first American

Brandon Wilson, author of "Dead Men Don't Leave Tips: Adventures X Africa" says if you want to go somewhere forbidden, odds are other Americans have already been there. "Fortunately, there are some great fellow-traveler resources, such as blogs and forums, where folks can address your concerns," he says. "Tap into their knowledge and see how they may have skirted around the needless bureaucracy."

Brush up on customs

A breach of etiquette may sink your entire trip, warns Martha Wharton, a vice president at TCS Expeditions in Seattle. For instance, if you're a woman traveling to Iran, don't forget to have a separate passport photo taken for your visa, in which you're wearing a headscarf. "Also, in Muslim countries, no alcohol is allowed, and in Burma, there is no cell phone or non-government controlled Internet access," she adds. "Such is the nature of expedition."

Got money?

Your ATM card and credit card may not work in a country that's "off limits." "It's pretty tricky," says Peter Frank, who edits the travel site Concierge.com. "Traveler's cheques are probably useless, and the last thing you want to do is carry around a big wad of cash. But depending on the destination, that may be your only choice."

Mind your own government

The biggest hurdle to visiting a "forbidden" place may not be that country's regime, but your own government. Kelly Hayes-Raitt, a Santa Monica, California, Middle East activist and blogger, says her trips abroad have left her with an FBI file listing her pre-invasion and post-invasion trips to Iraq. "It's not easy traveling to countries that the U.S. has deemed off-limits," she says. Among the challenges: securing visas, researching accommodations and getting wheels once you're in the country. "Some of these countries, like Iran and North Korea, require American tourists to have full-time minders, which really increases the cost for single travelers dramatically," she told me.

Don't break any rules -- push to change them

Another challenge in traveling to an off-limits country is making sure that you don't violate any laws, according to James Friedlander, the president of New York-based Academic Arrangements Abroad. Without the necessary permits, your trip may be illegal. "Many times, getting permission is possible through high-level cultural institutions or political contacts," he says. For instance, the U.S. government routinely allows academics and journalists to visit these banned countries. But the long-term solution is to push for these rules to be lifted. "With the change in administration in Washington, some regulations regarding travel to Cuba, for example, will be relaxed," he says.

Have a security plan

While many of these destinations aren't as dangerous as you might think, you still have to plan ahead and take certain precautions. Philip Farina, a San Antonio-based security expert, recommends you design a backup plan that enables you to get to a safe environment if you find yourself in danger. "This includes letting your friends and family know where you will be heading, checking with the U.S. Department of State and the Overseas Security Advisory Council to see who the danger-players in that country are, and how they operate," he says. Farina says you should carry a hidden kit containing a copy of your passport, emergency cash, a local phone card, a map of the travel region and the telephone number of a company that specializes in high-risk evacuations -- just in case.

Shut up

You'll be tempted to tell the world about your Cuba vacation, but you might want to think twice. Not only could you face fines and imprisonment, but also your friends might take a dim view of your choice of destination. "I think that the biggest hurdles to traveling to a forbidden destination are the propaganda machine and the hostile, uninformed reactions of fellow Americans who really know nothing about the countries in question or about the laws regarding travel there," says Julie Schwietert Collazo, the managing editor of Matador Travel and a frequent visitor to Cuba. "There's also the fear that we're doing something terribly unpatriotic by going to these off-limits places. I don't think there's anything further from the truth."

Even if more countries are open to Americans than ever before -- and even if more Americans want to visit these undiscovered destinations -- it's still likely that large parts of the globe will continue to be free of Western visitors. At least, for now. That's the assessment of Babs Ryan, who wrote a book about globalization called "America's Corporate Brain Drain."

"Unfortunately," she told me, "the beautiful, history-rich Middle Eastern countries will still be ignored by most Americans. Even frequent travelers lump Muslims and Arabs into one category or are ignorant about the difference in cultures in that region."

And in that case, ignorance is not necessarily bliss.

(Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine. This column originally appeared on MSNBC.com. You can read more travel tips on his blog, elliott.org or e-mail him at celliott@ngs.org). Read more!

Cambodia to work out new law to punish drug traffickers

PHNOM PENH, Drug traffickers will receive harsh punishments for possessing small quantities of illegal substances if a new draft law to be worked out in March, national media reported on Wednesday.

Under the proposed law, drafted by the National Authority for Combating Drugs (NACD) at the Ministry of Interior, life imprisonment will be given to those who are in possession of 80 grams of heroin, according to the Phnom Penh Post.

Currently, life terms are only handed down to those who are in possession of at least 100 grams.

"The new law is more detailed. We have given greater consideration to guilt, punishment and the amount of drugs (necessary for punishment)," Lour Ramin, permanent vice chairman of NACD told the Post.

The draft, written with the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) as advisers, will also strive to comply with international drug control laws including those regarding prescription drugs available over the counter in Cambodia, officials said.

Lars Pedersen, officer in charge and project coordinator for the UNODC in Cambodia, described the new legislation as having a much "tighter control" on drug trafficking across Cambodia's borders with neighboring countries.

"The drug situation in Cambodia has escalated over the years with the use of illicit drugs increasing and drug trafficking becoming a major concern for the Cambodian government," he said.
Read more!

What happened in Cambodia?

By Abe De Ramos
Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong)

As the extent of the U.S.-led financial crisis unfolds globally, developing Southeast Asian countries are finding themselves in the position of suffering the collateral damage. While not directly hit by the liquidity crunch like their larger and wealthier neighbors, they’re also not immune to the slowdown, being part of the chain that supplies goods to consumers in the West who are now crimping on their spending. Indeed, the crisis highlights how developing economies in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) are being reduced to a fringe role in the global economic landscape, and how they’re facing the hard truth that they won’t be able to regain the “tiger economy” status they once held without building a stronger domestic base.

On the surface, it seems as though the region will ride out the crisis relatively well. After all, the first economies to go into recession are those whose financial and industrial sectors are directly linked to the fortunes of the West. The liquidity crunch in Wall Street has weakened the financial hubs of Hong Kong and Singapore, while falling consumer confidence is hurting many Japanese companies reliant on exports to the United States and Europe. Projected declines in GDP growth rates for developing Asean nations this year also seem to be less severe than in China, the factory of the world, as well as Taiwan, Korea and India, which generate substantial revenues from exports of goods, services and technological expertise.

But the region is far from well and good. Being in the middle of the supply chain East Asia has created in the last 20 years—in which a computer is designed in Japan or Taiwan, its components made in Malaysia, Thailand or Indonesia, then assembled in China—developing Asean nations are seeing a mild slowdown now only because of the lag effect. The question is how quickly and how well it can recover when the full impact of the global slump finally hits home.

In the near term, countries like the Philippines and Vietnam have little leeway to boost domestic economic activity in order to offset falling external demand. With the crisis proving deeper than expected, Asian governments may need to provide stimulus packages and pursue easier monetary policies. However, most are already overstretched, with negative fiscal balances unsupported by a narrow tax base, and made worse by fiscal leakage through corruption. Those with the borrowing capacity such as Thailand and Malaysia can raise funds, but for much higher costs given the lack of liquidity and greater perception of risk.

What differentiates developing Asean nations from the rest of the region is a weak domestic economy. Private consumption expenditure as a component of GDP has barely budged since at least 1990. This would not necessarily be a negative factor if it were overshadowed by growth in state expenditure and capital formation through investments, as has happened in China and India. However, these indicators have also lagged across Southeast Asia, with the exception of Vietnam, a newcomer to liberalization.

It’s true that in the larger economies of Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, exports have grown and made significant contributions to their GDP growth over the period. It’s also true that in the Philippines, Cambodia, Indonesia and Vietnam, remittances from migrant workers have become an important revenue source and driver of domestic demand. But these trends only emphasize the troubling reality that developing Asean nations are struggling to create their own wealth within their respective boundaries.

In the long term, no country in the region is yet competitive enough to generate robust, sustainable growth without the spoils from their industrial neighbors and the West. This is a factor of their failure to innovate and create globally competitive domestic industries. While China has foreign investments and exports to thank for its growth, it used its newfound wealth to invest in knowledge and manufacturing technology, creating not just a virtuous cycle of job creation and more investments, but also national champions—companies that are taking on global giants. In India, it’s not the state but an enterprising private sector—encouraged by favorable demographics and an economy that’s opening up—that’s giving birth to the same virtuous cycle and homegrown multinationals. How many innovators and global companies from Southeast Asia can you name?

The problem is it may already be too late for developing Asean countries to attract the kind of foreign investments that will help them benefit from technology transfer. Multinationals that have the technology are putting it to use in China, investing only in the region to diversify geographic risk. Private investments, meanwhile, are constrained by capital limitations and a general lack of entrepreneurial spirit: companies are not borrowing, and banks are not lending. As a percentage of GDP, domestic credit from the banking sector in developing Asean nations, apart from Vietnam and Cambodia, is lower than 1995 levels. Domestic capital markets, an alternative funding source, are shallow: stock markets are small, bond markets even more so.

This situation isn’t likely to change soon. The Asian crisis of 1997 has forced both banks and investors to be conservative in lending and borrowing, and governments’ inclination to build up their foreign reserves has no doubt misallocated capital away from job-creating and industry-building initiatives. In other words, as developing Asean nations rebuilt themselves from their own crisis, they lost sight of the long term, in the process losing competitiveness to aggressive neighbors. This current crisis, as it washes on their shores, should challenge the region to reassess its vision for the future, perhaps towards a domestic economy able to dictate its own fate.

Abe de Ramos, an Associate Fellow of the Asia Society, is a Hong Kong-based financial editor and a former policy analyst at the CFA Institute’s Center for Financial Market Integrity. Read more!

Cambodian casinos out of luck as revenues take a hit

Written by Kay Kimsong

Local casino operators report fewer gamblers on both the Thai and Vietnamese borders, with across-the-board cost cuts planned for this year.

THE global economic crisis has hit Cambodia's gaming industry, with casinos on the Vietnamese and Thai borders announcing hefty cost cuts.

The local downturn comes amidst a global gambling slowdown affecting casinos worldwide - Macau's gaming industry posted a US$300 million drop in revenues in the last three months of 2008, while US gambling hotspot Nevada reported a 65 percent plunge in takings last year.

Cambodia is particularly susceptible: With about 30 casinos, it has more gambling venues than any country in Southeast Asia. Traffic at the Thai border is down sharply with casinos taking a triple hit from the global economic crisis, recent border tensions and a falling Thai baht.

At the Kings Crown Casino and Hotel - with locations in Cambodia on both the Thai and Vietnamese borders - the number of visitors has dropped sharply, leading to losses of $620,000 in the last quarter of 2008, the company said.

The company says it is cutting the work week for its more than 2,000 employees, a move designed to trim costs, said Cambodian Peoples' Party Senator and casino owner Phu Kok An.

He told the Post that his company was negotiating with employees to reduce their working month from 30 to 15 days.

"We are not laying off workers but they will get 15 days' salary. If your salary is $200 per month, you will get $100."

The company currently spends $300,000 a month on salaries, he added.

The casino has outlets in Poipet on the Thai border and Chrey Thom district, Kandal province, close to Vietnam.

"We are not earning enough income to spend on staffing, water and electricity. When people earn less money, they gamble less," Phu Kok An said.

He said that the number of gamblers fell sharply but that the business would remain open.


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we are not earning enough income to spend on staffing, water and electricity.

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"We earned some profit in early 2008 but made losses over three months [in September, November and December 2008], we employ a lot of workers - we are overstaffed - and we're overspending," he said. But Vann Sitha, vice president of New World Casino-Hotel in Bavet on the Vietnam border, said his company does not plan to lay off any of its 700 employees or reduce working hours. Although some staff had resigned, it would continue to recruit, he added.

"Our casino management has never laid off staff, but some like to move from job to job seeking a better salary offer," he said, adding his business had been less affected by recent events given its location on the Vietnamese border as opposed to the troubled Thai side.

Phat Bun Hour, assistant to Koh Kong Casino owner Ly Yong Phat, also a CPP Senator, declined to comment.

Chea Peng Chheang, secretary of state at the Ministry of Finance, is calculating the casino industry's total revenue for 2008, which he said will be completed this week. Revenues are expected to be lower than the $10 million generated in 2007. Read more!

Guarding Cambodia's giant turtles

Written by Brendan Brady
Sambor district, kratie

Wildlife officials use cash to entice Mekong residents in northeastern Cambodia to protect nesting grounds of Cantor's soft-shell turtles, believed extinct just two years ago.

LAST year, Mekong resident Su Pie sold the delicate eggs he unearthed to Chinese miners working in the area, banking around US$20. This year, he stands to make exponentially more by not laying a hand on any nests he discovers, as well as ensuring no one else does either.

The 59-year-old fisherman and farmer, whose home lies along the Mekong in a district called Sambor, about an hour from the city of Kratie, stands along the banks of the river with his wife and three children as he explains to Conservation International (CI) officials his mixed success this year in contributing to their project.

The good news was he found two nests. The bad news was he ate the eggs from one after he suspected it would be discovered by other local fishermen, given its visible location.

The conservation officials cringe as they hear this. They can count the number of meals that could push Cambodia's population of the endangered Cantor's giant soft-shell turtle to extinction. But the program employing locals to protect nests is in its first year, and they expected it to develop with hitches.

Cantor's can grow up to two metres in length and reach weights of more than 50 kilograms. The turtle's flat, soft shell is covered with rubbery skin and has been valued for use in post-natal traditional Khmer cures.

In 2007, wildlife experts found the super-sized freshwater turtle species, which was previously believed to have vanished from Cambodia. Until the discovery in May that year of an 11-kilogram female by a scientist working for the government and the global conservation group WWF - including her nesting grounds and hatchlings - the Cantor's turtle was believed by officials to exist only in very small numbers in Laos, and many feared the animal's extinction was imminent.

Since then, the wildlife groups planned to employ local villagers to protect the species' breeding grounds.

"I like helping protect them, but if I didn't get money, I would always take half of them and leave the other half," the fisherman said. "Other fishermen come around looking for eggs, also, so it can be difficult to do what I'm asked."

After verifying the location of the preserved nest, the conservation officials pay Su Pie $30 on the spot. The fisherman receives a net, which he is instructed to place over the nest to protect it from natural predators, such as monitor lizards, so the baby turtles can be caught and studied before they are released by the CI team, which will base itself in the area as the hatching period nears.

"Thirty dollars for finding the nest, plus $2 a day from the time we see the nest until it hatches, plus $2 per hatched egg," explained the program's head monitor, Kim Chamnan. Nests typically hold 20 to 50 eggs, which take more than 60 days to hatch.

"He can make a lot more by cooperating with us. He'll get more than $200 for this nest if they hatch," said Kim Chamnan.

Last year, CI officials were able to preserve four nests and held onto twelve hatchlings for a "Head-Start" program in which they allow them to mature in captivity before they are released at a size large enough to overwhelm any would-be natural predators.

A fragile youth
Sightings of adult Cantor's are rare, as they hug the muddy river bottom. Sonar is required to track the turtles, given the depths of as much as 40 metres they tend to inhabit.

"It buries itself in the sand and spends 95 percent of its time completely hidden out of sight with just its eyes and nose showing," said David Emmett, a wildlife biologist for CI based in Cambodia. "It feeds from this position, striking at fish and crabs."

But the creatures are especially vulnerable at birth as the mother, while armed with a bone-crunching bite, does not hang around the nest.

Kea Ratha, a graduate student at the Royal University of Phnom Penh whose research has centred on the feeding behaviour of hatchling Cantor's, says their high-mortality rate during pre-natal stages and as newborns places a premium on efforts to protect their nesting sites.

But "besides the Conservation International project, nothing is being done to protect this species, which faces many threats", she said.

Emmett says officials have not yet been able to survey the Cantor's population in Cambodia, but estimated it was on the decline, with only around a hundred breeding adults.

"Adults are being caught and sold, and nests are plundered by fisherman for eggs. The population is surely declining, but because they are capable of laying so many eggs - up to 50 in one nest - the population could recover very fast if the nests are protected."

Locals search for nests by looking for tracks from the mother. They poke a stick into the sand, and if it gives easily, it is a sign eggs may lie below.

Cambodian palettes are not especially drawn to turtle eggs, says Kim Chamnan, unlike the Chinese, for whom turtle holds a potent combined culinary and medicinal allure.

At rural markets in the area, an egg goes for around 1,500 riels (US$0.37 cents), so a nest's bounty is not likely to land much more than ten dollars. But that cash is still very attractive to local fishermen who are not aware of the conservation officials' much larger offer.

Trawling along the river in a thin, wooden vessel, the two-man Conservation International team approaches residents they see on or along the river, giving them a graphic laminated handout with a picture of a turtle nesting site and a number to call should they spot one. The hefty cash rewards get the attention of local residents, but it will take time for the campaign to spread awareness. In the meantime, officials will continue to find dug-up nests, like the handful spotted along the river's banks during the day's patrol.

Money talks
Like most of the riverine inhabitants, 31-year-old Ken Vy fishes and farms for a living. But he has stood out to Conservation International officials for his ability to sniff out nests.

Last year, he was informed of the project towards the end of the hatching season, so he got a late start, spotting one nest for which he was rewarded with a total of $200.

"I had already eaten or sold the eggs from two nests. I just came here to walk my cattle, and while I was here, I would look for nests," he said.

But with hundreds of dollars hanging in the balance, he now dedicates part of his time to searching for nests.

"Last night, I came at four in the morning with a headlamp to go searching. If I waited until later in the morning, I was afraid other fisherman would see me and search here, too."

He has staked out two nests on a small sand bank near his home. "I come here a few times every day to protect the nests, to make sure no one else is stealing the eggs."

In the presence of officials from the capital soliciting his help, Ken Vy becomes animated as he talks about his laborious routine to keep would-be egg snatchers at bay.

But he was clear it was the handsome cash reward that motivated him to rise in the dark hours of morning to hunt for nests he can protect - and the pragmatism of the wildlife team in understanding this could be the thrust behind the program's success if the endangered species is to be protected. Read more!

Cambodian mobile phone operators to expand services

PHNOM PENH, Despite the economic downturn and concerns over corporate investment, Cambodian mobile phone operators say their expansion plans are on schedule for 2009 as the industry continues to grow, national media reported Tuesday.

"Our expansion plans are on track," Adam Cabot, CEO of Star-Cell, was quoted by the Phnom Penh Post as saying.

The company has announced it was going to expand services to all of Cambodia's provinces for its 100,000 subscribers.

"Yes, (the crisis) will have an effect, but it is hard to say how much. We are still maintaining our position and doing well," he said.

Cambodia's mobile market has grown rapidly in the past five years, and companies are scrambling to gain a foothold as phones and the internet gain popularity.

Domestic mobile-phone usage surged 49 percent in 2007 but the national penetration rate remains a low 17 percent.

In contrast, neighboring Vietnam saw 75 percent growth with a 33 percent penetration rate in the same year, according to Budde Comm, an independent telecoms analyst.

Cambodia's low mobile penetration rate is a draw for many companies such as Vietnam-based mobile operator Viettel, which is launching a major drive to tap Cambodia's rural market and bring schools online.
Read more!

Cambodia's Funcinpec, NRP agree to alliance for may election

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia's two main royalist political parties, the Funcinpec and the Norodom Ranariddh Party (NRP), have decided to combine forces for May's district and provincial council elections, national media reported Monday.

Officials from the two parties met on Thursday to hold talks and agreed to assist each other in the upcoming election, in which commune councilors will vote to choose the first-ever district, provincial and municipal councils, Funcinpec Secretary-General Nhiek Bun Chhay was quoted by the Cambodia Daily newspaper as saying.

"We have agreed to unite with each other during the council election on May 17," he told the newspaper.

He added that the two parties uniting to form a single party would make sense because the NRP was originally born out of Funcinpec.

NRP spokesman Suth Dina confirmed that the discussions between the two parties were held and the two parties would cooperate for the May election.

In late 2006, Prince Norodom Ranariddh formed the NRP shortly after being ousted from the presidency of Funcinpec, effectively splitting the royalist vote.
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Cambodia to Finish Bourse Listing Details by April

By Daniel Ten Kate

Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Cambodia, the second-poorest country in Southeast Asia, plans to complete the listing requirements for its first stock exchange by April in preparation for a December opening, a top exchange official said today.

“Everything is on schedule so far,” Ming Bankosal, director-general of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Cambodia, said by phone from Phnom Penh. “We will finalize the issuing requirements by the end of the first quarter, and after that we’ll accept applications from companies.”

Cambodia, which abolished money under the Khmer Rouge three decades ago, is seeking to lure foreign funds as the global economic recession has led to drops in tourism, garment exports and commodity prices. The International Monetary Fund said the economy may grow 4.75 percent this year, which would be the slowest since 1998.

The government has targeted 20 companies to sell shares during the exchange’s first year of operation. They include Sokimex Group, the country’s biggest petroleum company, and Acleda Bank Plc, its largest bank, Kao Thach, head of the Ministry of Economy and Finance’s financial market division, said last year.

Regulations

“The starting date is not really the key issue,” said Douglas Clayton, chief executive officer of Leopard Capital, one of several private equity firms that plans to invest in companies and cash out through share sales in the local market. “I won’t mind if it’s delayed for another year because it might give them more time to get the regulations in order.”

Leopard Capital has raised about a quarter of the $100 million it’s targeting for a fund that closes at the end of March. Opportunities are rife for those with cash on hand who can benefit from falling prices, Clayton said.

The global financial crisis, which cut the value of stock markets in neighboring Thailand and Vietnam by at least half last year, has not deterred Cambodia from pressing forward with a stock exchange, Ming said. The SECC is in the process of developing tax breaks and other incentives for companies to list, he added.

“Now the U.S. is in the process of recovery and this recovery can spread to the world,” Ming said. “We hope that in late 2009, everything will be okay.”

The listing requirements in Cambodia will likely be modeled on the Kosdaq, South Korea’s second stock market that was set up 12 years ago for small- and medium-sized firms as well as venture start-ups, according to Kao Thach. Companies seeking a Kosdaq listing need to be in business for at least three years with minimum paid-in capital of 500 million won ($495,417) and debt-to-equity ratio of less than 150 percent of the industry mean.

To contact the reporter on this story: Daniel Ten Kate in Bangkok at dtenkate@bloomberg.net

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Cambodia's first Khmer Rouge trial to start mid-February

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — Cambodia's UN-backed genocide tribunal on Monday officially set February 17 as the start date for the long-awaited first trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders accused of atrocities in the 1970s.

Court documents said the hearing for former prison chief Kaing Guek Eav -- better known as Duch -- will be for crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Convention as well as premeditated murder and torture.

Duch, 66, will be the first leader of Cambodia's brutal 1975-1979 communist regime to stand trial at the tribunal, an initial step towards justice for the up to two million people who died under Khmer Rouge rule.

He will be tried for "his acts or omissions in Phnom Penh and within the territory of Cambodia between 17 April 1975 and 6 January 1979," said the court documents, released to the media on Monday.

Duch was indicted last year for allegedly overseeing the torture and extermination of more than 12,000 men, women and children when he headed Phnom Penh's notorious Tuol Sleng prison, known as S-21.

"This is what we have been waiting for for so long," said Tuol Sleng survivor Vann Nath, who made it through years in the prison because he was put to work painting pictures that celebrated the regime.

"Now we know the clear date for the trial. And we hope that we will know the truth that we have been waiting 30 years for," added Vann Nath.

A mathematics teacher who became the Khmer Rouge's torturer-in-chief, Duch has been in prison since 1999 for his role at Tuol Sleng. He was formally transferred to the tribunal in July 2007.

Thousands of inmates were taken from the centre he ran for execution at Choeung Ek, now infamously known as the Killing Fields.

The indictment last August gave a detailed breakdown of the horrific conditions at Tuol Sleng and Duch's alleged role in the atrocities, saying that every prisoner who arrived there was destined for execution.

"Duch personally tortured or mistreated detainees at S-21 on a number of separate occasions and through a variety of means," the indictment said.

Chum Mey, another survivor of Tuol Sleng who was spared because he was put to use repairing car engines, called Monday's announcement "another step toward justice."

"I want Duch to speak about the truth of the regime and where he got the order to kill the people," Chum Mey said.

Up to two million people were executed or died of starvation and overwork as the regime emptied Cambodia's cities, exiling millions to vast collective farms in a bid to forge a communist utopia.

Duch is one of five Khmer Rouge leaders who have been detained by the court for their alleged roles in the regime.

Also in detention awaiting trial are "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, former head of state Khieu Samphan, ex-foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife Ieng Thirith, who was the minister of social affairs.

Established in 2006 after nearly a decade of negotiations between Cambodia and the UN, the long-stalled tribunal has met controversy as it seeks to prosecute crimes committed 30 years ago by senior Khmer Rouge leaders.

At least two of the top Cambodian tribunal officials have been accused of corruption by some defence lawyers in connection with an alleged scheme where local staff were forced to pay kickbacks for their jobs.

Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia which chronicles Khmer Rouge crimes, said the court needed to do better.

"Many have feelings of reservation. It's been three years and over 50 million dollars, and now we have a small case coming up," Youk Chhang said.

"It's just a beginning -- a little tiny light in the tunnel," he added.

The tribunal received a boost earlier this month when Japan's foreign minister pledged funding of 21 million dollars during a visit to Cambodia.

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Complex remains refuge in a new land

By Jennifer Torres
Record Staff Writer

Now Chhit is the 26-year-old mother of a Cleveland School kindergartner named Donovan.

They share an apartment at Park Village, a place where breezeways shuttle ghosts and gossip, and walls shelter lives still touched by past tragedies.

On a chilly morning before Christmas, Chhit wrapped herself in a sweater and sat in the corner of her couch. High on her living room's walls hung paintings of Cambodian villages she has never seen, and stacked neatly in shelves were magazines - Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Us - that Chhit and her sisters trade back and forth.

Donovan had a few minutes more to sleep before his mother woke him for school.

Terror to terror

In 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge forces took over Cambodia, and over the next four years, nearly 2 million people - more than 20 percent of Cambodia's population - were killed in a campaign of forced labor, starvation and execution.

Thousands fled. More than 150,000 of them were moved to the United States.

Federal authorities tried to place refugees across the country to diffuse their impact. But Cambodian families wanted to live near each other, and enclaves such as Park Village grew.

Cultural and linguistic concentration - along with the trauma they had suffered - led to isolation. But it also helped preserve traditions and networks of support.

Soth Chhit, Savan's father, fled Cambodia with his family in January 1979, and for the next six years, they lived in Thai refugee camps.

On Sept. 12, 1985, the family arrived in Louisville, Ky., but after five months, they moved again - to No. 42 at Park Village.

"We heard rumors about California," Chhit said, "that it was like a Cambodian homeland."

He remembers pandemonium at the complex three years later.

Parents were yelling. Something had happened at their children's school.

Chhit rushed to Cleveland. He couldn't find Savan.

"But we found all her articles," he said. "We didn't know if she was alive, and there was no one there to explain."

She had been shot three times in the leg and was taken to Dameron Hospital.

"When I crawled from the playground to the hallway, a man was there," Savan said. She said the man helped her and rode with her to the hospital, but she never found out who he was.

The walls have ears

Tacked above Phan Mao's apartment door is a Buddhist prayer forbidding evil to enter.

Mao moved to Park Village from Texas in 1987.

"It felt almost like home because of all the countrymen," she said.

Her 10 children attended Cleveland School.

On a recent afternoon, women gathered in her apartment to prepare for a prayer service planned for a dying neighbor.

Monks from the Wat Dharmararam Buddhist Temple on Carpenter Road come almost weekly to Park Village for religious ceremonies.

Two came to lead chants for Thang Pen, Mao's neighbor, who lay in a hospital bed.

Men and women left their shoes outside Pen's door and knelt around her to pray.

Savan believes that when people die, their ghosts sometimes return. When she was younger, she worried about seeing ghosts at Park Village.

Now she worries about the eyes of elderly neighbors who report her comings and goings to her mother.

It's impossible to keep secrets inside the complex, she said.

Maintaining a haven

The Park Village Apartments were built in 1968. By 1989, they were desperately run-down.

Children had nowhere to play. Residents faced flooding, crowding and sewage leaks.

Finally, as authorities were threatening to close Park Village because of its squalor, its owner defaulted on government loans, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development took control.

In 1993, a low-income housing organization and a group of tenants working together as the Asian Pacific Self-Development and Residential Association, or APSARA, bought the complex from HUD for $1.

The apartments and grounds were extensively renovated, and social service programs were developed.

In October, Park Village residents began a celebration of APSARA's 15th anniversary with a Cambodian blessing dance.

Leaders talked about how Park Village had become a center of Cambodian-American life. Police officials discussed how safety had improved in the community, which had once been the birthplace of the Loc Town Crips street gang.

When the sound system failed, APSARA's assistant director, Vanna Prasit, joked that the organization's equipment was also in its 15th year, and money to replace it was even scarcer than in the past.

Park Village offers after-school tutoring, lunch and social activities for seniors, a fitness program, and dance and language lessons. There is also a Head Start preschool inside the community's gates.

But budget troubles have scaled back many programs, and Prasit worries others are threatened.
On a rainy afternoon just before winter break, her daughter, a Cleveland first-grader, was among the children who ran inside the community center to play and finish homework. Some pushed strollers carrying baby siblings. Many brought snacks left over from school lunches. A group of girls popped tapes of Cambodian music into a casette player and practiced dances.

Ties to Cleveland

At Park Village, there are many residents who, like Savan, are too young to remember the horrors of the Khmer Rouge. And many like her son, for whom the most frightening day at Cleveland was the first day of kindergarten, when he tried to run home.

Still, the past keeps tugging at lives moving forward, and ties to Cleveland remain strong.

In April 2006, when Stockton Unified officials proposed an attendance-boundary change that would send Park Village children to a different elementary school, parents protested. Six months later, when Pat Busher retired as Cleveland's longtime principal, the community held a celebration in her honor.

Chhit said Donovan's teacher is Cambodian and understands how to communicate with Cambodian families.

At 7:30 a.m., she woke him for school. He rubbed his eyes as she led him to the bathroom and turned on the faucet.

Chhit dropped out of Stagg High School after her junior year. She hopes to earn her diploma at adult school.

On her right leg is a deep scar left from the shooting. Sometimes, she said, that leg still hurts.

Contact reporter Jennifer Torres at (209) 546-8252 or jtorres@recordnet.com.


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‘Cambodia’s friendship priceless,’ NA leader

Of course, the friendship between Yuon and Khmer is priceless for centuries for Khmer Kingdom. The friendship had cost Cambodia everything, including natural resources.

HA NOI — National Assembly Chairman Nguyen Phu Trong said that it had always been Viet Nam’s policy to develop friendship and multi-faceted co-operation with Cambodia at a meeting yesterday with Cambodian National Assembly Chairman Heng Samrin.

Viet Nam had always considered its traditional friendship with Cambodia as priceless for both nations, he said.

Trong said the two sides should educate people, especially the young, to continue preserving this traditional friendship and co-operation.

He said that Vietnamese people, being a close friend and neighbour of Cambodia, were happy to see the great achievements of Cambodian people in recent years.

"Viet Nam has always supported the Cambodian Government’s policies for the country’s development, the happiness of the Cambodian people, and peace and stability in the region," he said.

He said the two legislative bodies should take more practical measures to boost relations with each other.

Trong praised the two National Assemblies for ratifying an additional pact for the Border Demarcation Agreement between Viet Nam and Cambodia.

Trong also expressed thanks for the support that Cambodian people had given to Viet Nam in recent times. He thanked the Cambodian National Assembly and Government for creating favourable conditions for the Vietnamese community living in Cambodia, and for helping Viet Nam to find the remains of Vietnamese volunteer soldiers who died in Cambodia.

Cambodian NA Chairman Heng Samrin expressed his appreciation for strong co-operation between the two NAs, and said he believed that the two would continue to boost relations between the two countries.

Heng Samrin said he was happy to see co-operation between the two nations expanding in so many aspects.

He affirmed that the Cambodian National Assembly and people supported the development of co-operation with Viet Nam.

He said Cambodia was determined to complete border demarcation with Viet Nam by early 2012.

On behalf of the Cambodian National Assembly and the people of Cambodia, Heng Samrin expressed his gratitude for the great support that the Party, Government and people of Viet Nam gave to Cambodia, especially in helping the Cambodian people to escape the Pol Pot genocidal regime.

He gave special thanks to the Vietnamese volunteer soldiers who died for international duties in Cambodia, and their families.

Warm welcome

Later yesterday, Heng Samrin was received by Viet Nam Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.

He briefed Dung about the results of his meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart, Nguyen Phu Trong, saying it would boost bilateral ties.

Dung also spoke of the significance of Heng Samrin’s visit and congratulated Cambodians on achievements in socio-economic development, especially evident in the higher living standard of Cambodian people, the strengthened partnership that Cambodia had built with neighbouring countries and Cambodia’s stronger stance in the international arena. Dung said the legislative co-operation between the two National Assemblies had created a firm foundation for potential bonds in many areas. He said this would benefit both countries.

The PM took the opportunity to send his best wishes to Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni and other Cambodian leaders. — VNS
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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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