China pledges more military aid to Cambodia+

PHNOM PENH, May 2 (AP) - (Kyodo)—China has pledged military aid to Cambodia worth 100 million yuan ($14 million), a senior government official said Sunday.

Hor Namhong, deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, told reporters upon return from China on Sunday that Chinese President Hu Jintao offered 256 military trucks and 50,000 military uniforms to the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, worth 100 million yuan.

He said the pledge was made at a meeting with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Saturday while Hun Sen was on a three-day visit to China to attend the opening of the Shanghai World Expo.

Another senior government official who accompanied the premier told Kyodo News the new Chinese aid was "a kind of" complement or replacement for military aid the United States had pledged but later suspended.

The United States had offered about 200 military vehicles and trailers to Cambodia under its Excess Defense Articles program.

But in early April, the U.S. government suspended military aid to Cambodia to protest the Cambodian government's deportation of 20 Uygur refugees to China.

The United States had tried to prevent the deportation but failed.

The refugees arrived in Cambodia via Vietnam and were placed under the protection of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

But Cambodia deported them anyway on the eve of the arrival of Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping on an official visit in December last year.

Critics say the Cambodian act underlined its growing ties with China, which has provided more aid and, unlike many Western donors, voices no complaints about corruption, democracy or human rights in Cambodia.

Cambodia has stated the deportation was "just implementing its policy and laws as a sovereign state."


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Cambodia to enjoy good crops this year, astrologer predicts

SIEM REAP, May 2, 2010 (Kyodo News International) -- A Cambodian royal astrologer predicted Sunday at one of the ancient temples in the Angkor Wat complex that Cambodia will have ''good'' agricultural crops this year.

Astrologer Korng Keng told a crowd of tens of thousands at Lean Chul Damrei Temple in Siem Reap Province that the country's crops, especially corn and beans, will be ''good.''

He made the prediction at a ceremony to mark the beginning of the rainy season in Cambodia, drawing his conclusions from the results of the Royal Plowing Ceremony.

The ceremony in Siem Reap is the first since 1967 when then Crown Prince, later King, Norodom Sihanouk presided over the plowing.

This year, Sihanouk's son King Norodom Sihamoni watched over the traditional welcome to the growing season along with thousands of government officials, diplomats, foreign visitors and Cambodians.

The ceremony is usually held annually near the royal palace in Phnom Penh at the start of the planting season.

But Thong Khon, minister of tourism, said the ceremony was in Siem Reap this year because the timing coincides with the first great Buddhist tourism event ''The Trail of Civilization and Art Performance'' at Angkor Wat in which more than 100,000 participants, including those from nine other countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus China, Japan, South Korea and India.

It is also being used to attract more tourists to Angkor Wat.

Tourism is Cambodia's second-largest income earner after the garment sector and Angkor Wat is the main target for foreign tourists in Cambodia.

According to government statistics, despite a decline in tourism worldwide because of the global economic crisis, Cambodia achieved an increase of 1.7 percent in foreign arrivals last year to 2,161,577.

And in the first three months of 2010, 683,692 international tourists visited Cambodia, an increase of 9.87 percent from the same three months last year.

In the Royal Plowing Ceremony, seven golden trays -- holding rice, corn, beans, sesame, grass, water or rice wine -- are laid out for a pair of royal oxen and predictions for the coming growing season are made from the choices made by the oxen when they reach the trays.

This year, the oxen ate most of the corn and beans, indicating Cambodian farmers will have ''good'' crops at least for these two products in 2010.

According to the royal astrologer, if the oxen eat the grass it means bad luck for farmers because insects may attack the crops.

If they drink the rice wine it means turmoil, fighting or robbery in the country.

But this year, the oxen ate no grass, rice or sesame and drank no water or rice wine.

Drinking water indicates lots of water for cropping, while eating sesame indicates a big harvest.

Last year, when the oxen ate all the corn and beans, Korng Keng predicted ''quite good crops'' for Cambodian farmers.

And Cambodia produced about 7.3 million tons of rice in 2009, leaving a surplus of nearly 3 million tons for export.

Chan Sarun, minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, recently said Cambodia is expected to become one of the world's major rice exporters when a long-term plan to increase land under rice cultivation to 3.5 million hectares from the current 2.6 million hectares is complete.

Rice production then is estimated to reach 12.25 million tons annually.


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North Korean agency says army day celebrated in foreign countries

Pyongyang, May 2 (KCNA) - Seminars, lectures, friendship meetings and film shows took place in Cambodia, Mongolia, Democratic Congo, Ethiopia, India and Russia between April 22 and 25 on the occasion of the 78th birthday of the heroic Korean People's Army.

Displayed in the venues were photographs on the immortal songun [military-first] leadership exploits performed by President Kim Il Sung [Kim Il-so'ng] and leader Kim Jong Il [Kim Cho'ng-il] and books and photographs introducing the Korean people in the struggle for building a thriving nation and the advantages of Korean-style socialism centring on the popular masses.

The participants of the film shows watched Korean films including "The Army of Korea", "Fireworks for a Thriving Nation", "We will Follow You to the End of the Earth" and "The Country I Saw".

The senior minister of Cambodia said in his addresses made at a seminar and film show that Kim Jong Il [Kim Cho'ng-il] has wisely led the whole affairs of the country under the banner of songun [military-first] while regarding the military affairs as the most important state affairs.

The chairman of the National Committee of the Genuine Lumumbist Patriotic Party of Democratic Congo in his lecture warmly hailed the exploits performed by the President by building the army, liberating the country and leading a war to victory.

The Korean People's Army has grown to be an invincible army equipped with modern offensive and defensive means and powerful nuclear deterrent under the leadership of Kim Jong Il [Kim Cho'ng-il], he added.

The chief of a branch of the Ethiopian Youth Study Group of the juche [juche] Idea at a friendship meeting referred to the fact that the President founded the immortal juche [juche] Idea and Kim Jong Il [Kim Cho'ng-il] has dynamically led the Korean people in the struggle for building a thriving nation with his original songun [military-first] politics.

Source: KCNA website, Pyongyang, in English 0527 gmt 2 May 10
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Vietnam's press gang at war over Flynn `find'

WILDLY handsome and extravagantly glamorous, Sean Flynn rode into the ranks of the missing astride a motorbike. It was Cambodia, 1970, and he was on the hunt for news. With his companion Dana Stone, Flynn was probably captured and killed by the Khmer Rouge, but their remains have never been found, despite intensive searches over the years.
The son of Errol Flynn was a noted combat photographer, and his thirst was for real adventure, rather than the Hollywood variety.

In the weeks just before an Old Hacks' reunion of Vietnam war correspondents in Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh City, news emerged that Flynn's remains might have been found by a young Australian, Dave MacMillan, and his associates, including a Briton, Keith Rotheram, the owner of a guesthouse in Sihanoukville, southern Cambodia.

According to rumours seeping through the internet in recent weeks, and partly according to MacMillan himself, the bones thought to be Flynn's had been dug up with a mechanical digger and kept for some time before being handed to the US authorities. The dig had been filmed, and it seems that a lucrative documentary was in the offing.

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Rotheram has reportedly talked about the story going to "the highest bidder".

MacMillan said he had permission from Flynn's half-sister, Rory Flynn, to look for the remains, but members of the Old Hacks were upset by what they saw as the hasty and unscientific handling of their old friend's bones. Flynn was one of their own. He had been best man at Carl Robinson's wedding and Robinson, who covered the Vietnam War for Associated Press, had organised the Old Hacks reunion.

Flynn had shared a house with combat photographer Tim Page and the Australian Vietnam War correspondent Martin Stuart-Fox. Both were in Phnom Penh for the Old Hacks reunion, which last week moved to Ho Chi Minh City. And there, at one of the Old Hacks events, MacMillan arrived to "pay his respects", pointedly ignoring the cool reception he had received at an Old Hacks event in Phnom Penh the week before. Several people in Ho Chi Minh City told him he was not welcome, but he did not leave immediately.

Page says he was blunt with MacMillan: "I said, `Mate, you've got no respect for the dead'."

Page had worked with MacMillan for a while in the past, in a search for Flynn's remains, largely because he thought the young Australian had good connections in Vietnam.

Page is positive the answer to Flynn's disappearance lies somewhere in dusty archives in Hanoi. The North Vietnamese had a lot of influence in Cambodia in the early 1970s; most Khmer Rouge cadres had a Vietnamese adviser.

At the Old Hacks reunion in Ho Chi Minh City last week, Page was still upset. "The mystery becomes more of a Tantric, 3000-piece jigsaw puzzle," he says, adding that he had been in communication with MacMillan after the so-called discovery.

He ordered him to hand the remains over to the US military body specifically set up to locate the war dead: the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC). It seems that MacMillan did finally hand some remains over and, after the publicity following the find, JPAC instituted its own search at the site, finding a few more small pieces of bone.

MacMillan declined to comment for this article, other than to say: "I can't comment, sorry. Thanking you so kindly for your time . . . all questions should be forwarded to Rory Flynn, who I have copied on this email."

Employed by Dogma, which has an urban guerilla fashion outlet in Ho Chi Minh City, the Queenslander apparently lives in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, JPAC's testing seems to have largely ruled out the possibility the remains, which apparently consist of a skull and some small bones, are Flynn's. "The remains are badly fragmented due to the manner in which they were recovered," a spokesman for the US embassy in Phnom Penh says. "Limited analysis suggests that they may be indigenous." Further testing, he adds, is under way.

MacMillan, whose Facebook site has in the past featured a photo of him with a Cambodian scarf wrapped around his head, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, and sporting a Flynn-like moustache, has objected in a letter to a US newspaper to some of the coverage of his find. He says no payment was asked for the remains; he says Page is annoyed because his own documentary about his search for Flynn's remains was jeopardised; he says the excavator was carefully used and he and his associates had the consent of various Cambodian authorities and JPAC knew of their work. He denies they were "amateur bone hunters".

Page says MacMillan's efforts have at least stirred up interest in the journalists who were lost in Cambodia. Thirty-seven foreign and Cambodian journalists, photographers and cameramen were killed or declared missing in Cambodia between April 1970 and April 1975. One was an Australian, photographer Alan Hirons, 24. He had been in Cambodia a week or so when he was taken by the Khmer Rouge. His remains have not been found.
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Shrimpers Fear Ruin From Oil Slick

By ANGEL GONZALEZ and MARK LONG VENICE, La. — Tuan Nguyen fled Saigon on April 30, 1975, the same day Ho Chi Minh's troops swept into the city to bring the lengthy war to a close. Mr. Nguyen's father, a wealthy businessman, arranged for a boat to spirit the family away from the South Vietnamese capital, leaving nearly all their worldly goods behind.

"We lost it all; all I had was a backpack," said the lean 50-year-old.

Now, almost exactly 35 years after his departure, Mr. Nguyen and his several hundred local compatriots face another fearsome twist of fate: a seemingly uncontrollable oil spill encroaching into Louisiana's rich wetlands shore, raising the specter of an environmental catastrophe and threatening to put his profitable shrimp distribution business, the largest in town, on hold indefinitely.

A deepwater well 50 miles offshore from Venice is gushing at least 5,000 barrels of crude a day into the Gulf of Mexico, and it could take months before BP PLC , the company responsible for the spill and cleanup, manages to finally cap the flow. The incident — damage from which some say could eclipse the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989 — has prompted a sweeping response from the federal government, and has brought down sharp criticism of BP and the operator of the rig that burnt and sank last week, Transocean Ltd.

The spill isn't the first livelihood-threatening challenge the local shrimp harvesters have faced down. Erosion wipes enough land to cover a football field off the coast here every 40 minutes; hurricanes including Katrina and Rita devastated the area; and for years the entire U.S. shrimp industry has struggled against a flood of imports of cheaper, farmed seafood from overseas.

Mr. Nguyen's home nation of Vietnam is among the biggest exporters of this farmed shrimp to the U.S., and is one of six countries that was slapped with tariffs on its imports in 2003 after the U.S. government ruled the country's exporters were dumping shrimp into the market at unfairly low prices.

Amid all these challenges, the number of days fishing in the Gulf was down 64% last year from the 2001-03 average, according to the Southern Shrimp Alliance industry group, while the prices garnered for the crustaceans were last year down between 42% and 45% from 2001, according to National Marine Fisheries Service data.

"The shrimping industry, even prior to the oil spill, has been struggling to make ends meet," said Deborah Long, a spokeswoman for the Southern Shrimp Alliance. "There's a double whammy going on, in that the price that fishermen got plummeted while the cost of fuel increased."

Plaquemines Parish's Southeast Asian community is a Cold War legacy--many immigrants fleeing to the area from the Communist takeover of Vietnam and the carry-over turmoil and slaughter in Cambodia. While people of Southeast Asian descent made up just over 2% of the parish's total population in 2000, Vietnamese and Cambodians have an outsized presence in the shrimp industry here. The weather and landscape is reminiscent of Southeast Asia's tropical wetlands, and the fishing life offers some independence.

"If you've got your own boat, you do what you want to do," said Steve Tran, 48, who first lived in California and Florida and worked in restaurants before coming here. Others have always been fishermen, like Chamroeun Kang, 57, who left Cambodia in 1982. Mr. Kang lives on a boat docked at Mr. Tran's distribution business while he builds his home, which he lost to Hurricane Katrina. Before the spill, he was looking "to work and make some money to build a home," he said. After being picked up with his family on the sea by a Maersk shipping vessel, Mr. Nguyen lived in a camp in Hong Kong for a year, and then moved to Paris for 2 years, where his older brother resided. Then he emigrated to the U.S., first to Pennsylvania. But "it was too cold," he said. Mr. Nguyen started the shrimp dock and distribution business here in 1989 and grew it to prosperity. "It was a normal business until Katrina hit" and entirely wiped it out, he said.

"That's when I learned to use the fork lift," said his wife, Kim Vo, who comes from a middle-class family and also lived in Pennsylvania, where she met her husband. She said that the insurance company never reimbursed the family for the storm losses and they had to rebuild everything themselves. But they rebounded: By last year, the business was moving 2 million pounds of shrimp a year, Ms. Vo said.

Now Mr. Nguyen is helping his fellow Vietnamese get work with the very company responsible for the spill. Under pressure by the U.S. Coast Guard to ramp up its response efforts, BP has offered contracts to the local shrimping community to help contain the oil and clean it from the Mississippi Delta's ecologically delicate marshes.

On Saturday, Mr. Nguyen was helping the shrimpers--many of whom speak English poorly--fill out applications for clean-up work. The application requires a physical address--and since many shrimpers live on boats, he puts in the address for his company, Sharkco Seafood International Inc.

Six fishermen in his office animatedly argued in Vietnamese, while Ms. Vo, translated for a reporter: The fishermen wanted to know who's going to pay for the fuel to get their boats out to sea to help clean up oil. BP would reimburse the fishermen, Ms. Vo said, but she recommended the fishermen "keep all their invoices," she said. The shrimpers would get paid between $1,000 and $2,000 per 12-hour day, depending on the size of their boat, Mr. Nguyen said. With harsh weather and rough seas hampering spill-response efforts, and with BP battling technical difficulties to shut down the leak, the road ahead for the shrimping business here looks grim, just as the May-December fishing season was set to begin.

"Now my business is paperwork," Mr. Nguyen joked, referring to his helping fishermen apply for clean-up contracts.
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Chinese President meets with Cambodian PM

Chinese president Hu Jintao meets with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen in Shanghai, east China, on May 1st, 2010

SHANGHAI, May 1 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Hu Jintao met with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen in Shanghai on Saturday.

Hu said China and Cambodia enjoy a long history and solid foundation of friendship, and the two nations are good neighbors, good friends and good partners.

He said it is the unswerving policy of China to constantly deepen and expand the comprehensive, cooperative partnership between the two nations.

China is willing to work with Cambodia to boost the cooperation and exchanges in various fields to achieve a mutually-beneficial situation, promote common development and benefit the two peoples, he said.

China will continue to provide support and assistance within its own capabilities for Cambodia, he said.

Hu thanked Hun Sen for his concern for the earthquake-hit region in northwest China's Qinghai Province.

He said that Cambodia, with the leadership of Hun Sen, sees a stable political situation, a growing economy, and rising international prestige.

He said Cambodia's economy has shown momentum of rebound in coping with global financial crisis, and China is delighted to see the achievements Cambodia has made.

Hun Sen congratulated China on the successful holding of the Expo opening ceremony, and thanked China for helping Cambodia attend the Expo.

He said Cambodia and China have maintained close contacts over recent years and Cambodia is satisfied with the bilateral ties.

He extended gratitude to China for the unselfish assistance to Cambodia in its social and economic development.

He said Cambodia attaches great importance to its ties with China and is willing to make joint efforts with China to maintain a good momentum of the sound relationship, enhance cooperation and exchanges in various fields and strengthen coordination in international and regional affairs.

He said Cambodia adheres to the one-China policy and respects China's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

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U.S. attacks inside Cambodia, escalates Vietnam war: The Plain Dealer front page 40 years ago today

By Dave Davis

President Richard Nixon addressed the nation on April 30, 1970, with news that U.S. troops had just launched an attack inside Cambodia, an escalation of the Vietnam war that sparked widespread protests in the days to come.

See the coverage by The Plain Dealer and read the text of Nixon's address to the nation below:

U.S. Starts Cambodia Attack

WASHINGTON--President Nixon dramatically announced last night that American ground troops have attacked -- at his order -- a Communist base extending 20 miles inside Cambodia.

Nixon told a nationwide radio and television audience that he would stand by his order, certain to provoke controversy, even at the risk of becoming a one-term President.

"This is not an invasion of Cambodia," he asserted. 'The areas in which these attacks will be launched are completely occupied and controlled by North Vietnamese forces. Our purpose is not to occupy the areas. Once enemy forces are driven out of these sanctuaries and their military supplies destroyed, we will withdraw."

The attack, commanded by American officers and augmented by units of the South Vietnamese army, began about 7 p.m. EDT, about two hours before Nixon address the nation and about one hour before he met with Democratic and Republican leaders of Congress to discuss his decision.

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Avoiding Crisis in the Mekong River Basin

Earlier this month, the leaders of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and host country Thailand gathered for the first-ever Mekong River Commission (MRC) summit to discuss the future of the Mekong, one of the world's longest and most resource-rich rivers.

There was much to discuss. The Mekong -- which flows through China, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand, and provides food, water, and transport for about 65 million people -- is now at its lowest level in two decades due to a prolonged drought. Its future is also in peril due to a host of natural and man-made threats. Unless riparian states make a concerted, joint effort to manage the river's resources prudently and sustainably, their actions risk threatening food security, destroying livelihoods, and heightening regional tensions.

The main threat is from hydropower. China, which already has five operational dams, plans to construct about 15 more large- to mega-sized hydropower dams upstream, while Southeast Asian states themselves mull building 11 of their own further downstream. While these dams do not deplete the river's water supply outright, they affect the hydrology of the Mekong by altering the natural timing and volume of the river's seasonal flows. According to a recent report (.pdf) by the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank, resulting reductions in silt deposits downstream could threaten one of the most productive regions of wet rice cultivation, while erratic water currents may block the spawning migration of fish in what is now the world's largest freshwater fishery.

Other trends are equally, if not more worrying. Demographic and development pressures will further increase demand on the river's already threatened resources. According to projections (.pdf) by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the population in the Lower Mekong is expected to swell to 90 million by 2025, with over a third living in urban areas. Total irrigation water requirements for the region, which stood at about 43,700 million cubic meters in 2002, will rise to about 56,700 million cubic meters by the end of this year.

Disruptive climate change threats also hover in the longer-term future. Global conservation group WWF predicts intense floods and droughts, coastal erosion, higher seas and heat waves for the Mekong Delta. Vietnam's own Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment says that if sea levels rise 30 inches by 2100, 20 percent of the Delta and 10 percent of Ho Chi Minh City could be swamped.

The six riparian states now seem to grasp the growing threats to the Mekong as well as the coming crisis they might spawn. At the first summit convened in the MRC's 15-year history this month, Thai Prime Minister and host Abhisit Vejjajiva declared that the Mekong "will not survive" if nations do not "take joint responsibility for its long-term sustainability." Leaders of the four Mekong Basin nations -- Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam -- also agreed on areas for "priority action," including researching threats related to climate change and intensifying efforts toward flood and drought management. China, for its part, also began releasing previously withheld data on water flows in its section of the river last month, in response to claims that its dams upstream were causing the current protracted drought.

Yet far bolder efforts will be needed to save the Mekong. China and Myanmar must become full members of the MRC, instead of just dialogue partners, in order to truly participate in cooperative river management. China may be right that its dams are not causing the current drought, but suspicions linger over Beijing's actions precisely because it has refused to share data with downstream nations or sign on to the 1995 Agreement on the Cooperation for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong River Basin. If China does not show signs of addressing other riparian states' concerns, the perception -- accurate or not -- will remain that Beijing is reaping the upstream benefits of hydropower while leaving downstream nations to bear the costs.

Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos must themselves strike a better balance between their individual economic needs and environmental responsibilities. At times, government planning and decision-making reportedly takes place without adequate local input or comprehensive cost-benefit evaluations. In Cambodia and Laos, experts complain that government officials lack the governance capacity and skills necessary to conduct or comprehend research about the scale of potential environmental damage. Commercial or geostrategic imperatives may also lead these governments to disregard knowledge even when it is available, since some dam proposals are linked to powerful domestic interests in Laos or to the Chinese government, Cambodia's largest aid donor. Greater participatory planning and more-detailed assessments must be conducted before decisions are made about mammoth infrastructure projects, in order to accurately assess their implications and make plans to address any fallout.

Trans-boundary river management also ought to extend beyond research and contingency planning. Countries must consult each other about any major development projects they are undertaking as outlined in the 1995 agreement, since the Mekong is a shared resource. Riparian states should also try to agree on a basin-wide standard for environmental and socio-economic impact studies, as the Stimson Center report advocates. As for the MRC, it should broaden its cooperation with countries such as the United States, which could potentially assist Lower Mekong Basin states with human-capacity-building or research technology. The introduction of the Lower Mekong Initiative by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the 2009 ASEAN ministerial meeting in Thailand, as well as the addition of a position on Mekong affairs to the staff of the State Department's East Asia/Pacific Bureau, means that sufficient political will, interest and resources exist in Washington for engagement on this issue.

The threats to the Mekong should be clear to all by now. It is up to riparian nations, international organizations and other interested countries to cooperatively ensure that these grim scenarios and gloomy predictions do not crystallize into reality. Otherwise, one of the world's greatest rivers will be endangered, with profound implications for the region.

Prashanth Parameswaran is research assistant at the Project 2049 Institute, a Washington-based think tank that covers Asian security issues. He is also a research fellow for Asia Chronicle, a daily online journal, and blogs about international affairs at GlobalEye.
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Cambodia to boost global rice sales

PHNOM PENH (Commodity Online) : In an attempt to boost its international rice sales, Cambodia has decided to axe rice export licenses to exporters.

Country’s Prime Minister Hun Sen issued a new order in this regard to replace an old order of 2008.

The document ordered would-be exporters to apply to a Ministry of Commerce-run company called Green Trade for a permit.

All traders who wanted to sell more than 200 tones of the grain had to apply for a permit, in an attempt to secure Cambodia's rice and paddy supply.

The government wants to sell more rice into international markets to develop the economy.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Cambodia plans to increase paddy yield by as much as 3 tones per hectare by 2012.

This farm year, April statistics show, the Kingdom could have 3.5 million tones of paddy left over for export, a 10.75 percent increase from the 3.16 million tones last year.

Cambodian Small and Medium Industries Association (CSMIA), said four rice buyers from Sweden, Lithuania and Belgium will arrive in Cambodia on May 9 to meet with 100 rice mill representatives to discuss export capability.

CSMIA said Russian company Prod Gamma is set to order 20,000 tones of rice from Cambodia this year. The company wants to order 10 percent broken rice from Cambodia at $430 per tone.

The CSMIA has exported 2,500 tones of rice to European markets since the beginning of the year.

The association plans to export another 1,200 tones in May. The group has also signed export agreements with companies from Germany, Lithuania and Latvia.
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Cambodia court rejects bail for K.Rouge leaders

PHNOM PENH: Cambodia's UN-backed genocide court on Friday denied bail for three former Khmer Rouge leaders, saying they may commit serious crimes and their detention was necessary to prevent trial tampering.

Judges rejected appeals from former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan, foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife, minister of social affairs Ieng Thirith, who all asked for release ahead of their trial expected next year.

The three leaders, who have been charged with genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, murder, torture and religious persecution, appealed against their detention late last year and earlier this year.

"The Pre-Trial Chamber of the (tribunal) dismissed appeals lodged by the charged persons," a statement from the court said.

The tribunal said detention of the ageing suspects "remains a necessary measure" to prevent the suspects from fleeing the trial and to ensure their security.

Khieu Samphan, 78, Ieng Sary, 84, and Ieng Thirith, 78, were arrested in November 2007 over their roles in the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge government, and have appealed annually for release from detention at the court.

The three leaders are being held along with the Khmer Rouge former "Brother Number Two" ideologue Nuon Chea and the regime's main prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch.

Up to two million people were executed or died of starvation, disease and overwork as the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge movement emptied cities and enslaved the population on collective farms in its bid to create a communist utopia.

Final arguments in the court's first trial, of Duch, ended in November and a verdict is expected later this year.

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Scientist: China avoiding honey tariff

COLLEGE STATION, Texas, April 30 (UPI) -- Honey from China is being shipped into the United States illegally to avoid expensive tariffs, a Texas scientist who tracks the origins of pollen alleges.

China, the world's largest honey producer, is sending honey to other countries for labeling and then into the United States to avoid paying U.S. tariffs of up to 500 percent, Vaughn Bryant, a Texas A&M professor, said.

Bryant, a palynologist or a pollen specialist, analyzes honey samples from around the world to determine their origin.

Honey samples labeled as coming from Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Laos usually turn out to be "a little honey from those countries" with the majority of the blend coming from Chinese sources, Bryant said in a release Thursday.

The high U.S. tariffs on Chinese honey were instituted about two years ago when China nearly ruined the U.S. market by selling its honey for about half of what it costs U.S. honey producers to sell their product.

"Now there are lots of shenanigans going on to avoid having to pay those tariffs," Bryant said.
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Ways to Celebrate National Arbor Day 2010

Today, Friday, April 30, is officially Arbor Day 2010, which means it’s time to break out the shovels, seeds, and water and plant a tree. Arbor Day first began in the United States in 1872, and has since spawned similar tree planting days around the globe from China to Brazil and Cambodia.There are dozens of ways to celebrate Arbor Day this year, and here are just a few.

Buy a tree. The national Arbor Day 2010 website offers a simple and straight forward tree buying shop. Click on their ‘Tree Store’ link, and you’ll be guided to an online shop filled with a variety of flowering trees, fruit trees, nut trees, shade trees and other popular trees to choose from. Prices start from as low as $6.

Or buy a gift tree. If not for yourself, give the gift of a tree to a friend, family, guests or even employees. The Arbor Day website includes a variety of trees for all climates and hardiness zones. Custom labels and packaging is also available.

* UN Program Aims To Plant One Billion Trees

Go local. See what Arbor Day events are going on in your town and check them out. Often, libraries will have special Arbor Day readings for kids; and cities will hold special tree planting ceremonies.

Whatever you choose to do, celebrate Arbor Day 2010. Be creative. Be a leader. It’s a way to give back to the Earth and help the community out too.

Written by Lani Shadduck

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Cambodia's tourist arrivals surge in first Q1

PHNOM PENH, International tourist arrivals surged by almost 10 percent in the first quarter of this year, compared to the same period in 2009, showing key growth in the number of visitors from South Korea, China and Japan, local media reported on Thursday.

Government figures quoted by the Phnom Penh Post as showing that 683,692 tourists came to Cambodia from January to March 2010, a rise of 9.87 percent on the 622,288 arrivals in the same period of 2009.

Potentially high-spending visitors from South Korea were up 31. 5 percent, Chinese arrivals were up 27.2 percent, and Japanese visitors rose by 4.7 percent.

Air arrivals increased 10.83 percent to 371,506, up from 335, 213 last year, with 10 percent more visitors entering the Kingdom at Siem Reap airport.

Total arrivals in the home province of Angkor Wat rose 22.8 percent, to 366,102.

Kong Sophearak, director of the Statistics and Tourism Information Department at the Ministry of Tourism, attributed the rise to the resurgence of global travel following "the darkness" of the financial crisis.

Luu Meng, president of Cambodia's Hotel Association (CHA), was quoted as saying that occupancy within the hotel industry had risen by up to 10 percent quarter-on-quarter.

Ang Kim Eang, president of Cambodia's Association of Travel Agents (CATA), predicted that the trend will continue. "I am optimistic that the foreign tourists will keep increasing. People are just getting to know our country after the long-lasting civil war," he was quoted by the Post as saying.
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Tigress gives birth to quadruplets at Thai nature reserve

Bangkok - A 7-year-old tigress has given birth to four cubs at a nature reserve in west-central Thailand in the country's largest tiger delivery to date, media reports said Thursday.

Khao Chi delivered the cubs last month in the Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary, which is home to South-East Asia's largest population of wild tigers, the Bangkok Post reported.

"It is unbelievable to experience the astonishing delivery of four tigers at one time," National Parks Department officer Sakit Simcharoen said.

"Usually, a tiger delivers one or two cubs at a time," he said.

The birth has given hope to park officials at Huay Kha Khaeng, 175 kilometres north-west of Bangkok, that they might achieve their ambitious goal of doubling the sanctuary's tiger population by 2022.

The park's wild tiger population of 100 is under constant threat from poachers, who killed three of the animals last month alone.

At a meeting in Hua Hin, Thailand, in January, ministers from 13 countries where Asian tigers are still found in the wild committed themselves to doubling the wild tiger population to about 7,000 by 2022 and protecting their fast-diminishing habitats.

The countries - Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam - are scheduled to meet again for a tiger summit planned for September in Vladivostok, Russia, to map out their plans for saving the species.

There were an estimated 100,000 wild tigers in Asia 100 years ago, but now about 3,500 are left. Read more!

Cambodia tells diplomats it is no 'banana republic'

PHNOM PENH — The Cambodian government has told all foreign diplomatic envoys to avoid criticising the country, insisting it is not a "banana republic", in a letter seen by AFP Wednesday.
The foreign ministry letter sent to all diplomatic missions in Cambodia asked them to "avoid interfering in the internal affairs" of the country, regardless of the power of their home nations.

"There have been many occasions, in which some heads of diplomatic missions behaved like a 'proconsul' of his/her country to the Kingdom of Cambodia. They indulged themselves to criticise or to give lessons to the Royal Government of Cambodia," the letter said.

"Such behaviours are not acceptable for Cambodia as a sovereign country and a member of the United Nations. Cambodia is not a BANANA REPUBLIC," it added.

Asked about the letter dated April 26, foreign ministry spokesman Koy Kuong told AFP it was issued to remind all diplomats not to "exceed the limit of their mandate".

Cambodia last month threatened to expel a United Nations envoy if UN agencies continued "unacceptable interference" in the country.

The move came after UN agencies in Cambodia urged "a transparent and participatory" process as parliament debated an anti-corruption law that was criticised by the opposition and rights groups.

Ranked one of the world's most corrupt countries, Cambodia passed the anti-graft law in parliament on March 11, more than 15 years after legislation was first proposed, but only days after the draft was shared publicly.
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CAMBODIA: Strict penalties planned for acid attacks

Source: IRIN
Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.

PHNOM PENH, 28 April 2010 (IRIN) - Keo Srey Vy's brother-in-law had been planning to sell his child so he could buy a new motorbike. When she threatened to tell the police, he went to the restaurant where she worked as a cook and doused her face with acid.

She reported the attack to police, but gave up after they demanded a bribe to investigate.

"I didn't consider revenge, but I wanted a law that would catch him and bring him to justice, and that law did not exist," Keo Srey Vy, who is severely scarred, told IRIN. A year after the attack, she may have reason for hope.

While countries such as Bangladesh and India have enacted severe laws and banned the open sale of chemicals, Cambodia had not taken any serious steps to curb the crime.

Under a new draft law on the use and management of acid, perpetrators of acid attacks would receive life sentences, the government said. Attacks resulting in minor injuries would come with a minimum five-year sentence.

"The law that we have today is not enough," Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak said. "I think that stronger punishment will make them [perpetrators] more afraid of the law."

Statistics on acid attacks are unreliable since many cases go unreported. For most years since 2000, the Phnom Penh-based Cambodian Acid Survivors' Charity (CASC) [http://cambodianacidsurvivorscharity.org/index.htm] recorded 12-24 attacks. But between December 2009 and January 2010, 11 cases were recorded, raising the national profile of the problem.

Comprehensive law

The new law, according to the drafting committee, includes improved medical care and social integration programmes for survivors. The opening of a state-run medical centre for acid survivors is also being considered, although funding resources remain unclear.

Drafting committee deputy chairman Ouk Kimlek, who is also deputy national police commissioner, told local media the committee was planning to create "an acid foundation to generate money from all sources and NGOs to help provide skills and capital for them". He did not elaborate on the level of the government's contribution.

Rights groups believe acid attacks abound in part because the caustic chemicals are readily and cheaply available. The draft law thus stipulates that importers and sellers of acid have to be at least 20 years old and licensed to carry out any transaction involving the chemical.

To assist police in criminal investigations, vendors would also have to record the details of anyone who buys acid. Retailers who fail to comply would be subject to fines and lose their licence to sell the product.

Enforcement

Local rights and survivors' groups hailed the legislation as a necessary step in curbing attacks but sceptics questioned the government's ability to ensure police enforcement of the new law.

"We have impunity in Cambodia for rape and murder; most victims are paid compensation, or the criminal is never caught," Pung Chhiv Kek, president of the local rights group Licadho [http://www.licadho-cambodia.org/] said. "If you have a good law but it's not enforced, it's useless."

Illegal out-of-court settlements are common practice in Cambodia, and rights groups say they undermine efforts to discourage the crime.

"They pay US$200 or $300, which is hardly anything. When you have to eat, buy medicine, feed your family, [financial compensation] is never enough," said Chhun Chenda Sophea, CASC's programme manager. "They need to enforce the law strictly. If it's being enforced, then people will be scared of committing the crime."

Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak agreed, saying the new legislation needed to coincide with an effort to "make the court system more responsible".

The government has yet to set a deadline for completion of the final draft, which needs approval from two government offices, followed by a vote at the National Assembly.

Meanwhile, Keo Srey Vy sold her home to pay her medical fees, and now, at 36, she depends on the CASC. Three of her children live with her mother, and another boards with an NGO.

"I was very happy to hear about this new law because it can help reduce this crime," she said. "I believe that if people know about the law, they wouldn't dare attack people." Read more!

Cham Son Seeks Tribunal ‘Justice’ for Father

Cambodian Muslim, known as Chams visiting Choeung Ek S21 prison of Khmer Rouge



Sann Math Ly was a villager leader, well known, and he was unhappy with the Khmer Rouge and their treatment of the Chams.

Ly Sukei’s father was a well-educated Cambodian Muslim who died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge in 1975.

Now Ly Sukei is one of 228 Chams filing as civil parties at the Khmer Rouge tribunal, as the UN-backed court prepares to try at least four jailed leaders of the regime for genocide and other atrocity crimes.

“I filed a complaint to find justice for my father,” Ly Sukei told VOA Khmer at his home in Kampong Cham province, where many Chams lived and died under the Khmer Rouge.

He remembered the day soldiers came looking for his father, Sann Math Ly, in the village of Svay Klaing in Krouch Chhmar district.

Sann Math Ly was a villager leader, well known, and he was unhappy with the Khmer Rouge and their treatment of the Chams.

By 1975, the Khmer Rouge were shuttering mosques and forcing Muslims to cut their hair, burn their Qurans and eat pork. They were not allowed to prayer or wear head-coverings. Anyone who refused was the target of arrest.

“A group of around 20 armed Khmer Rouge cadre surrounded my house, and one of them ordered me in the Cham language: ‘You, go call upon your father,’” Ly Sukei said.

As his father left the house and walked toward the waiting soldiers, he made a sign behind his back telling his son to go home and not follow. Ly Sukei, who is now 44, never saw his father again.

Sann Math Ly became one of an estimated 500,000 Chams killed under the Khmer Rouge. Tribunal judges are now trying to determine whether such killings can be prosecuted as genocide.

Ly Sukei has been haunted by that day and has frequently followed the tribunal process by TV and radio. He wants to know what happened to his father.

“He was killed without any reasons, so I cannot do nothing,” Ly Sukei said. “I must allow him to rest in peace.”

Now a father of five, Ly Sukei has tried to find out more about Sann Math Ly and even searched for his photograph among those hung at the Tuol Sleng torture museum. He found nothing there and expects to find little else.

Still, he attended the tribunal proceedings last year against Kaing Kek Iev, or Duch, who underwent a trial for atrocity crimes committed at Tuol Sleng when it was a torture center for the Khmer Rouge. Ly Sukei said he has faith the tribunal can at least help him.

“I just want one word from the tribunal: that’s ‘justice,’” he said. “For those killed, including my father.”
Read more!

Rare Khmer Bronzes To Show in Washington

An art exhibition of Cambodian bronzes to open in Washington next month, featuring Khmer sculptures and ritual objects from late prehistory through the Angkorian period.

An art exhibition of Cambodian bronzes opens for the first time in Washington next month, featuring Khmer sculptures and ritual objects from late prehistory through the Angkorian period.

Thirty-six masterworks from the National Museum of Cambodia’s collection of some 7,000 bronzes will show at the Smithsonian’s Sackler Gallery under “Gods of Angkor: Bronzes from the National Museum of Cambodia.”

“This exhibition presents the stunning accomplishments of Khmer bronze casters,” Louise Allison Cort, the gallery’s curator of ceramics, said in a statement. “These bronzes are among the most exquisite expressions of Khmer ideals of religious imagery and ritual implements.”

The works include a rare and highly valued urn and bell, seven diverse bronze figures, ritual paraphernalia and Buddhist and Hindu sculpture.

The exhibition, a collaboration between the Freer and Sackler galleries and the National Museum of Cambodia, explores significant developments in bronze casting, as well as cultural and religious developments that coalesced during the Angkor period into a recognizable Khmer style.

The exhibition will show from May 15 through Jan. 23, 2011, in Washington and is scheduled to travel to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in February 2011. Read more!

World Bank To Inspect Lake Land Management

The World Bank’s inspection arm will conduct an inquiry into a land administration project, following complaints that the plan failed to protect the land rights of residents around the Boeung Kak lake development.

The World Bank’s inspection arm will conduct an inquiry into a land administration project, following complaints that the plan failed to protect the land rights of residents around the Boeung Kak lake development.

The Center of Housing Rights and Eviction says the $23.4-million Land Management and Administration Project failed to register land titles for the lake residents and in fact weakened their rights to customary land ownership.

The center requested an inquiry last year, and in a final report on the World Bank Web site, the Inspection Panel said the request warranted an investigation to assess management’s compliance with World Bank policies and procedures “and related issues of harm” with the project.

“The Panel would need to conduct an appropriate review of all relevant facts and applicable policies and procedures,” the report concludes. “This can only be done in the context of an investigation of the issues of compliance and harm raised by the Request.”

Some 4,000 families in the Boeung Kak community, the majority of them impoverished, face eviction from their land around the lake, which is slated for residential and commercial development by Shikaku, Inc. Some of them say they have lived in the area for 20 years.

The Center of Housing Rights and Eviction, which filed the complaint on behalf of the residents, welcomed the decision, but urged immediate action.

“The housing rights of hundreds of families are at stake at this very moment,” Salih Booker, the group’s executive director, said in a statement Friday.

World Bank officials have previously met with government officials, including within the Phnom Penh municipality, to address the concerns of Boeung Kak residents, but so far the sides have not been able to break the impasse.

Some residents say they have received fair compensation for moving, while others say they don’t want to move to a relocation site on the far outskirts of the capital.

Nonn Theany, director general of the Ministry of Land Management, the key government partner in the land management project, said the World Bank had a right to inspection but should inspect “its own staff.”

“The government has already terminated our partnership on the LMAP project,” she said.

The government ended the program in late 2009, claiming it contained too many conditions. Nonn Theavy said when the government worked with the World Bank on the project, “they didn’t say how we were doing.”

“But when there was an inspection team coming, they would just find our faults,” she said. “We had annual evaluation reports. Only recently, when an NGO spoke out about the eviction at Boeung Kak lake, they linked the work to that case.”

The project could only register undisputed land, she said.

“When we saw a disputed piece of land with the ownership not clearly determined, we had to skip that place,” she said.

David Pred, Cambodia’s director for Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia, which works with the lake residents, said the Cambodian government had “walked away from these families and refused to partner with the World Bank to find a positive solution for them.”

“The Bank cannot walk away from these families now just because the government has closed the door,” he said. “The Bank has a moral and a legal responsibility to provide reparations to the people it has acknowledged have been harmed by this project. This is an important test of the accountability of the World Bank.”
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Cambodia re-allows S. Korean men to marry Cambodian women+

PHNOM PENH, April 27 (AP) - (Kyodo)—Cambodia has lifted its suspension of processing of marriages between South Korean men and Cambodian women after revising its marriage regulations in an effort to prevent human trafficking, a government official said Tuesday.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong told Kyodo News his ministry has notified all foreign embassies in Phnom Penh of the new marriage regulations that require a foreign man wanting to marry a Cambodian woman to be present with her in Cambodia during all stages of the marriage process.

The temporary suspension was announced last month for fear that Cambodian girls from the countryside were still being trafficked as prospective brides for foreign men, South Koreans in particular.

In 2008, Cambodia issued a similar temporary suspension on international marriage processing but it applied to all marriages with foreign men, not specifically those involving South Korean men.

That move followed a report by the International Organization for Migration that warned about networks of brokers or matchmaking businesses that had been arranging "fake, deceitful" marriages to bring Cambodian women to foreign places like Taiwan or South Korea to work as housemaids or prostitutes.

The report said from 2004 through 2007, some 2,500 Cambodian women had married South Korean men through brokers, while a Cambodian fact- finding mission sent to Taiwan in 2007 showed that 5,219 Cambodian women were living there, some of whom had been trafficked outright and many of whom claimed they had endured abuse.
Read more!