Cambodia's king heads to China for medical exam

Cambodia's royal palace says King Norodom Sihamoni has gone to China for a medical checkup, but no details about his health have been given. -- PHOTO: AP


PHNOM PENH - CAMBODIA'S royal palace says King Norodom Sihamoni has gone to China for a medical checkup, but no details about his health have been given.

The palace says in a brief statement that the constitutional monarch flew to Beijing on Monday. The statement does not say how long he'll stay or whether there's a particular reason for his checkup.

Keo Puth Puth Reasmey, a brother-in-law of the king, told reporters at the airport that the king was advised by his Chinese doctors to have a medical checkup every six months.

The 57-year-old King Sihamoni assumed the throne in October 2004 after his father, King Norodom Sihanouk, abruptly abdicated due to ill health. -- AP Read more!

Master Leads Emerging Students in US Dance Tour

The Children of Bassac Classical and Folk Dance group perform in front of the National Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

“The Children of Bassac,” a troupe of emerging Cambodian classic and folk dancers, is touring the US through May 10.

The performance is led by master artist Ieng Sithul, who told “Hello VOA” on Thursday he wants to see Khmer dance showcased internationally.

“We put on several performances a day,” he said. “We are all tired, but we have a mission and that is to promote and explain Khmer culture.”

Ieng Sithul is traveling with one other musician and 10 students, including 21-year-old Neang Visal.

“Last night I was so moved and so proud to be able to perform on the international stage, to show the world Cambodian arts and its rich culture,” said Neang Visal, following a performance in New York.

Eighteen-year-old Duong Dara Penh, another dance student, said she was moved by the applause from the audience.

“I was so moved,” she said. “Tears almost came to my eyes. It was such an amazing crowd.”

Ieng Sithul said Thursday he formed the group in 2003 with the support of the government and Cambodian Living Arts, an NGO.

The idea was to support artists with great potential but few means to study. There are now 15 students studying under Ieng Sithul, who is a master of numerous Cambodian classical insruments.

“The Children of Bassac” will also perform at the Khmer temple in Brooklyn, New York, before moving on to Vermont, Connecticut, Boston and Lowell.
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'Cambodia's Curse,' by Joel Brinkley

Cambodia's Curse
The Modern History of a Troubled Land

By Joel Brinkley (PublicAffairs; 386 pages; $27.99)

This year Arab leaders have been caught off balance by their citizens, who have shown unexpected courage and come out in force to demand democracy and an end to corruption and cruel inequities. Those protests are proof that the truism that Arabs needed "strongmen" to rule them was wrong. In just weeks, the nonviolent demonstrators overthrew the ruling tyrants in Tunisia and Egypt, inspiring other uprisings in Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria. Now, no matter how these revolts play out, Arabs have broken out of racial and cultural stereotypes that said they were unfit for democracy.

In his new book "Cambodia's Curse," the former New York Times journalist Joel Brinkley comes very close to offering a similar dead-end theory to explain why he thinks the people of Cambodia are "cursed" by history to live under abusive tyrants. In his telling, Cambodians are passive Buddhists who have accepted their stern overlords since the days of the Angkor Empire. "Far more than almost any other state, modern Cambodia is a product of customs and practices set in stone a millennium ago," he writes, blaming that history for the ability of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen to squash meaningful dissent against his corrupt regime.

As a young reporter, Brinkley won a Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for his coverage of the Cambodian refugee crisis. Returning to the region 30 years later, Brinkley - now a professor of journalism at Stanford - chose his subject well. Hun Sen deserves a thorough examination. Along with his cronies, he has amassed extraordinary wealth selling off the country's assets to the highest bidder. Everything is up for grabs - land wrested from peasants to be sold to corporations and turned into plantations or tourist resorts, young girls and boys sold into prostitution, and dense forests cut down and the lumber sold abroad. Corruption is everywhere. Underpaid schoolteachers demand bribes from their students, judges issue rulings based on the amount of money paid on the side or the dictates of the government, businesses flourish by paying handsome bribes for licenses and to avoid unwelcome regulations.

Brinkley admirably highlights nearly all of these crimes and demonstrates that Hun Sen's administration has been a disaster for many Cambodians. His portrait of the businessman Mong Reththy is a gem, showing how businessmen enrich themselves through corrupt government concessions and then underwrite charities or schools in the areas impoverished by their corruption.

Yet there are only two types of Cambodians in these pages - either victims (passive, poverty-stricken Cambodians for whom Brinkley shows great sympathy) or villains (cruel, selfish politicians and businessmen). Missing are normal Cambodians who work day jobs and study at night to get ahead; Cambodians who return from abroad with dreams of a better life; Cambodians who promote human rights or flourish in the arts and sciences.

The few people painted in full, heroic strokes are American diplomats who served as ambassadors to Cambodia. Brinkley focuses on them and the foreign community of aid groups and governments who spend billions of dollars to improve the lives of Cambodia's poor. He correctly asks whether much of that money has gone to waste or into bank accounts of corrupt officials, and chastises foreign governments for not demanding real reforms for the aid.

Undermining his reporting is his thesis that thousand-year-old traditions are to blame for this state of affairs rather than 21st century realities. Brinkley fails to track the extraordinary sums of foreign investment fueling official corruption. Crooked signing bonuses and commissions, money laundering, selling off government land to foreign investors, human trafficking - these modern plagues are hardly confined to Cambodia. International businesses are pouring billions into Cambodia. China and South Korea are at the top of that list, giving them an outsize influence in Cambodia, yet they barely appear in Brinkley's book.

To retain control over all that money, Hun Sen has amassed a monopoly on power through the army and police, buying off or killing off dissidents. His path to power has been anything but democratic: Trained as a young Khmer Rouge officer, Hun Sen defected and was installed as prime minister by the Vietnamese occupiers; later he bullied the United Nations into appointing him a co-prime minister even though he lost the country's first election, then rigged subsequent elections.

Brinkley makes the blanket claim that Cambodians accept this because they are a people who "could not, would not, stand up and advocate for themselves," forgetting Cambodia's history of revolts or movements against French colonial rule, King Sihanouk's autocracy, the corrupt Lon Nol regime, the Khmer Rouge, Vietnam's occupation and Hun Sen himself. In more recent times, Chea Vichea led a free-trade union movement and became a serious challenger to Hun Sen's power until he was gunned down by thugs. Brink- ley mentions Vichea's murder in a short paragraph without fully describing his impact or the courage and skill he showed organizing Cambodia's textile workers.

And countless Cambodians have fought back when soldiers and police have thrown them off their lands. Cambodian activists like Dr. Pung Chhiv Kek have been so successful defending against human rights abuses that the government issued a draft law in December to effectively put them under government control. Brinkley might have also given greater weight to Cambodia's short experience with fully free elections and the legacy of the Khmer Rouge revolution, which could put a damper on anyone's desire to revolt again.

Further clouding his book are frequent errors. He describes the United Nations' 1993 peacekeeping operation as an "occupation," and then compares it unfavorably to the Allied occupation of Germany. He claims it is "rare to see Cambodians laugh." He confuses the Hindu faith with the Hindi language. He has China invading Vietnam in 1989, rather than in 1979. And why does he make the exaggerated claim that Cambodians are "the most abused people in the world"?

By arguing that Cambodians are passive and that the "Buddhist notion of individual helplessness" is a central factor holding them down, he dismisses the possibility that Cambodians could reform their own country. Instead he concludes that the country's best hope is in the hands of foreigners. He challenges the foreign governments to withhold aid money until Hun Sen lives up to his promises to enact reforms and respect human rights. "Maybe, just maybe, after 1,000 years, Cambodia's rulers might finally be forced to give the people their due," he writes.

Or maybe Hun Sen doesn't need that money so desperately and those donor governments are not such disinterested parties.

Brinkley may blame the legacy of Angkor kings for Hun Sen's ability to keep down Cambodians. But the Cambodian leader's recent actions suggest otherwise. When Egypt's Hosni Mu- barak started tottering under the demands of protesters, Hun Sen shut down the opposition websites in Cambodia.

Elizabeth Becker, a former correspondent for the New York Times and Washington Post, is the author of "When the War Was Over" (1986), a history of Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. E-mail comments to books@sfchronicle.com. Read more!

Aid to Cambodia rarely reaches the people it’s meant to help

By Joel Brinkley

Representatives of more than 3,000 governments and donor organizations are meeting in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Wednesday. If past experience is indicative, they will pledge to provide hundreds of millions in aid.

Most of these donors should simply stay home.

Year after year, smiling Cambodian government leaders attend these pledge conferences, holding out their hands. But first they have to listen as ambassadors and aid officers stand at the podium, look them in the eye, and lambast them for corruption and jaw-dropping human rights abuses.

Each year Prime Minister Hun Sen promises to reform. The donors nod and make their pledges — $1.1 billion last year. Then everyone goes home and nothing changes. In the following months, officials dip into the foreign aid accounts and build themselves mansions the size of small hotels, while 40 percent of Cambodia’s children grow up stunted for lack of nutrition during infancy.

This year should be different. Over the past two decades, the Cambodian government has grown ever more repressive. Now it is actually planning to bite the hand that feeds it: The legislature is enacting a law that would require nongovernmental organizations to register with the government, giving venal bureaucrats the ability to shut them down unless they become toadies of the state.

Eight major international human rights organizations are calling on Cambodia to back down, saying the bill is “the most significant threat to the country’s civil society in many years.” Donors, they say, should hold back their pledges. But they say that every year, and each year the donors ignore them. Meanwhile, the status of the Cambodian people the aid is supposed to help improves little if at all. Nearly 80 percent of Cambodians live in the countryside with no electricity, clean water, toilets, telephone service or other evidence of the modern world.

All of this might surprise most Americans. It has been decades since many people here have given Cambodia even a thought. Forty years ago, Cambodia was on the front pages almost every day as the United States bombed and briefly invaded the state during the Vietnam War. Then came the genocidal Khmer Rouge era, when 2 million people died.

How many know what has happened there since? Last month, the Nexis news-research service carried 6,335 stories with Thailand in the headline. Vietnam had 5,196. For Cambodia, 578.

Most people don’t know that Cambodians are ruled by a government that sells off the nation’s rice harvest each year and pockets the money, leaving its people without enough to eat. That it evicts thousands of people from their homes, burns down the houses, then dumps the victims into empty fields and sells their property to developers.

That it amasses vast personal fortunes while the nation’s average annual per capita income stands at $650. Or that it allows school teachers to demand daily bribes from 6-year-olds and doctors to extort money from dirt-poor patients, letting them die if they do not pay.

This is a government that stands by and watches as 75 percent of its citizens contract dysentery each year, and 10,000 die — largely because only 16 percent of Cambodians have access to a toilet. As Beat Richner, who runs children’s hospitals there, puts it, “the passive genocide continues.”

You wouldn’t know any of that from the donors’ behavior. You see, for foreigners Phnom Penh is a relatively pleasant place to live. Rents are cheap and household help is even cheaper. Espresso bars and stylish restaurants dot the river front — primarily for diplomats and aid workers.

Donors have largely been able to pursue whatever project they wanted without interference. They knew that the government would steal some of their money. But so what?

“Some money goes this way or that way,” said In Samrithy, an officer with a donor umbrella group. “But it’s useful if some of it reaches the poor. Not all of it does but some does. That’s better than nothing.”

Even with that, many donors feel the way Teruo Jinnai does. He’s the longtime head of the UNESCO office in Phnom Penh. “Here I have found my own passion,” he told me. “Here, I can set my own target. So that gives you more power, more energy, more passion.”

Well, Mr. Jinnai, the noose is tightening. If, as expected, the NGO bill becomes law, government repression will reach out for you, too. Isn’t it time, then, for all those donors to make a statement? On Wednesday stand up and tell the government: I am withholding my aid.

Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is the author of “Cambodia’s Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land.” Read more!

International community condemns Thailand's use of landmines on Cambodia border

These cluster munitions have already robbed two men of their lives, two more have lost their arms and a further five were injured", said Sr Denise Coghlan, director of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Cambodia.

Based on two separate on-site investigations, the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) has concluded that Thailand used cluster munitions on Cambodian territory during the February 2011 border conflict. Thai officials confirmed the use of cluster munitions in a meeting with the CMC on April 5.
This is the first use of cluster munitions anywhere in the world since the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions entered into force and became binding international law. The CMC, of which the Jesuit Refugee Service is an active member, condemns any use of cluster munitions, and urges Thailand and Cambodia to immediately accede to the global treaty banning the weapons.

In February and April of this year, CMC members conducted two separate missions in cluster-munition contaminated areas in Cambodia including in Svay Chrum village, Sen Chey village and around the Preah Vihear temple hill. Members found unexploded submunitions, as well as fragmentation damage caused by cluster munitions. Norwegian People's Aid confirmed that unexploded M42/M46 and M85 type DPICM submunitions have been found.

"These cluster munitions have already robbed two men of their lives, two more have lost their arms and a further five were injured. The area must be cleared immediately to prevent more suffering. Cambodia must make every effort to ensure the safety of civilians", said Sr Denise Coghlan, director of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Cambodia, who took part in the first mission.

"It's appalling that any country would resort to using cluster munitions after the international community banned them. Thailand has been a leader in the global ban on antipersonnel mines, and it is unconscionable that it used banned weapons that indiscriminately kill and injure civilians in a similar manner", said Laura Cheeseman, director of the CMC.

In a meeting on 5 April, the Thai Ambassador to the UN in Geneva confirmed the nation's use of 155mm Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munition (DPICM) cluster munitions. The Ambassador said Thailand used cluster munitions "in self-defence" as a response to the alleged heavy use of rocket fire on civilians in Satisuk, the Khun Khan district of Thailand by Cambodian forces.

The ambassador alleged Thailand's use of cluster munitions were used according to the principles of "necessity and proportionality and were in compliance with the military code of conduct".

"There are around 5,000 people living in Sen Chey village that are at risk from these unexploded weapons. Thailand must supply information to help clear affected areas and make them safe for civilians to return home", said Atle Karlsen of Norwegian People's Aid.

The CMC has urged Thailand to provide detailed information on the results of its inquiry, specifically including the location of all cluster munition strikes. With such information, civilians can be adequately warned of the dangers and steps can be taken to remove submunition remnants, which are as dangerous as landmines.

Cambodia and Thailand are not among the 108 countries that have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions. However, both joined the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty and participated in the "Oslo Process" to negotiate the Convention on Cluster Munitions and attended its First Meeting of States Parties in neighbouring Lao PDR in November 2010.

"This conflict should spur both countries to take urgent action to denounce the weapons and join the ban treaty," said Cheeseman.

The Convention on Cluster Munitions entered into force as binding international law on 1 August 2010, banning the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of cluster munitions, while requiring states to destroy stockpiles, clear contaminated land and assist victims and affected communities. Of the 108 countries that have signed the Convention since it opened for signature in December 2008, 55 states have already ratified.

Background
Both Thailand and Cambodia possess stockpiles of cluster munitions, but little is known about their status or composition. The Cambodian government has in the past cited an ongoing review of its defence and security situation as the reason for a delay in joining the treaty. Thailand has cited concerns over its ability to destroy its stockpile as a roadblock to joining the Convention, as well as security concerns. Thailand announced in 2008 that it had no intention of using the weapons in the future.

Cambodia and Thailand are States Parties to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty and Cambodia will host that treaty's 11th Meeting of States Parties in November 2011.

Southeast Asia is more heavily contaminated by cluster munitions than any other region after the United States dropped large numbers of cluster bombs on Cambodia, Lao PDR and Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s.

Source: JRS.net

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Cambodia celebrates traditional New Year's night with fireworks, concerts

PHNOM PENH, April 14 (Xinhua) -- Colored explosion of fireworks has lighted up the sky over Wat Phnom, the capital's historical and cultural tourism site at Thursday's night to celebrate the first day of the traditional Khmer New Year.

The fireworks had been shot for about 15 minutes, catching the eyes of hundreds of thousands of the New Year revelers.

Meanwhile, concerts have been performed at three different places - one at Wat Phnom, another at Wat Botum Vatey Park near Independence Monument and the other at the Prime Minister Hun Sen' s Park at the riverside in order to entertain the New Year revelers at night.

Cambodia observes Khmer New Year for three days on April 14-16. It is one of the country's most important cultural festivities and is a holiday that's a nice reunion between relatives, close and distant alike.

During the occasion, families bring food, cash, and praying things to offer to Buddhist monks in pagodas in order to dedicate to their ancestors and wish for longevity, good luck, happiness and prosperity in the New Year.

Also, the New Year celebration is the time for young girls and boys gather and enjoy playing a variety of traditional games, dancing and singing in vicinities of pagodas and tourism sites throughout the country.
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Sumner Redstone Donates $500,000 to Cambodian Children’s Fund

The fund “can provide hope and a path to a new life for thousands of young lives,” he said of his latest donation.
NEW YORK - Viacom and CBS Corp. chairman and controlling shareholder Sumner Redstone on Thursday announced his second donation of $500,000 to the Cambodian Children's Fund via his Sumner M. Redstone Charitable Foundation as he continues to donate some of his money.

The non-profit program, to which Redstone donated the same amount in 2007, provides health and educational services to impoverished and abused children in Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh.

The fund was founded by executive director Scott Neeson, a former Sony executive who knows Redstone, a spokesman said.

Redstone’s initial 2007 commitment established CCF's child rescue center. The latest grant will help fund continued operations.

"The Cambodian Children's Fund is bringing life saving services to innocent children who live in a world of poverty, sickness and ignorance," said Redstone. "With this additional funding, the CCF can grow their programs to serve a wider range of children and to help sustain its operations for the long term. Through the consistency and expansion of its health care and education services, the CCF can provide hope and a path to a new life for thousands of young lives."

Redstone added that "I hope this gift will encourage others to join me in supporting the amazing work of the Cambodian Children's Fund."

Said Neeson “On any given day, our center provides food and health care to over 300 of the country's most vulnerable population. As the demand on our services has increased, so have the costs.”

Last year, Redstone donated $1.5 million to schools he attended and also made a $1 million contribution to advocacy group Autism Speaks. The latter was his largest donation to the group that he has supported in the past.
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OZ may pull out of Cambodia gold search

By Berry Fitzgerald

OZ Minerals is reviewing its Cambodian gold exploration program, which has failed to find the 2 million-ounce resource base that could have become a starter project there.

The latest drilling at the Mesam prospect has failed to excite.

Mesam is adjacent to the Okvau deposit, which OZ last year ranked as a 605,000-ounce gold find.

Advertisement: Story continues below It was hoped Mesam would get OZ closer to the 2 million-ounce threshold. But managing director Terry Burgess said yesterday that results to date had ''not been particularly spectacular.

''We have three or four holes to go but I guess like all these exploration endeavours, you're always waiting for the successful hole,'' he said. He confirmed that the gold assets could be sold after the review was completed.

Apart from the lack of a major discovery in Cambodia, gold assets in the country have fallen dramatically in overall importance to OZ.

After the group's drastic restructuring in 2008, its mining portfolio was reduced to ownership of the Prominent Hill copper/gold mine in South Australia and the Cambodian gold play.

Analysts have previously valued the Cambodian assets at between $40 million and $120 million, with the higher amount dependent on the so-far-elusive additional exploration success. Prominent Hill is now well established as a 100,000 to 110,000-tonne-a-year copper producer.

Cambodia also became less important for OZ after the miner's recent acquisition of the undeveloped Carrapateena copper/gold/uranium deposit in South Australia.

Carrapateena has the potential to be a similar sized copper producer to Prominent Hill. But its development is some way off. A pre-feasibility study could start in 2012 and would take at least a year.

This would lead to full feasibility studies, which take another 18-24 months. After allowing for mine construction time, first production would be in 2017 at the earliest.

Mr Burgess dismissed the suggestion the Carrapateena acquisition meant the group's acquisition hunt to replenish its mining portfolio would be reined in. OZ is holding $750 million cash.
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Communities Want More Information on Mekong Dam

A Western construction worker surveys ongoing work to build a power plant for the Nam Theun 2 dam, south of Vientiane, Laos, (file photo).

As a decision nears for Mekong River countries over approval of a hydroelectric dam in Laos, Cambodian civic groups say they have been given few chances to have their voice in the matter heard.

Laos is proposing to build a dam along the Mekong in Xayaburi province, but it needs the approval of other Mekong countries, including Cambodia, in a meeting scheduled in Laos next week. Critics of the dam say it will hurt ecosystems in the river that provide a major source of fish for Cambodians.

Sun Mao, executive director of Kratie province’s Cambodian Rural Development Team, told “Hello VOA” last week that many people still do not understand the dam project or the process for its approval.

“No member of the affected communities were present at the [Kratie] consultation,” he said of a meeting held in the province in February. “But local authorities were invited instead the represent these communities.

The Kratie consultation meeting was the first of two held on the dam. The second was held in Preah Sihanouk province later in February.

The Xayaburi dam is a proposed 810 meters long, 32 meters high and expected to produce 1,260 megawatts of power. The Mekong River Commission, which is made up of committees from all Mekong River countries, will decide on the project April 22.

Sun Mao said there is still little understanding of the dam’s likely impact on a variety of factors, including fish migration and safety concerns in a quake-prone region. The impacts have been “understudied,” he said, “and the dissemination of information on the environmental, social, and cultural impacts, etc. has not been adequate to either civil society groups or affected communities.”

At the February consultations, participants were briefed on the designs of the dam and the decision-making process for its construction, but Sun Mao said the environmental impact report was not distributed.

A Mekong River Commission official recently told VOA Khmer that Cambodia could lose as much as 63 percent of the total regional fisheries loss, if six proposed dams went ahead in Laos. The Xayaburi dam would be the first of those.

International Rivers, and environmental group that opposes the dam, said recently that consultations took place in Thailand and Vietnam over the proposed dam, but it is unclear whether any took place in Laos.

In March, 263 non-governmental groups from 51 countries submitted a letter to leaders from Laos and Thailand, which will derive power from the dam, asking that they scrap the Xayaburi project.

Sun Mao said more studies are necessary, especially now that Cambodia’s own civic groups have a better understanding of the issue.

“If there is construction of a mainstream dam, we are certain that we will be affected,” he said. “The scale of this we do not know.”
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Groups Unite To Push Changes to NGO Law

More than 300 local and international organizations have now joined cause in opposition to a controversial draft law to regulate NGOs.

The groups said in a statement the law threatens civic freedoms and could curtail the activities of NGOs that are critical to the development of the country.

“NGOs and Associations stand ready to use our democratic rights to express our discontent through democratic and peaceful means,” the groups said. “The draft law we now see before us is unacceptable, and we cannot support it in its current form.”

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other major international groups have called on the government to spike the law entirely, and US officials say they fear it is “unnecessary” and could curb basic freedoms.

Government supporters of the law, which is being drafted by the Ministry of Interior, say it is necessary to regulate a huge sector, where thousands of NGOs operate.

Opponents say the draft opens organizations to legal attack without redress for government dissent and could hurt smaller groups that want to form associations.

“We would like to point out three main areas of concern in the current second draft Law,” the groups said in their joint statement. “Registration is mandatory and complex, rather than voluntary and simple. There is no appeal process for the denial of registration and key terms in the law are left undefined, and many sections are vague.”

“I think that it can affect the freedom in the establishment of associations that is guaranteed by the constitution and the freedom in expression that is guaranteed by the constitution,” said Sok Samoeun, executive director of the Cambodian Defenders Project.

NGOs say their recommendations made during a consultative process were not given credence and that new drafts did not address their concerns.

In their statement, the 300 groups did not call for a scrapping of the law altogether, but urged the government to “reconsider” their key requests and redraft the law.

Nouth Sa An, secretary of state for the Ministry of Interior, said he was accepting recommendations before sending the draft for approval from Interior Minister Sar Kheng. After that, the law will be sent to the Council of Ministers for approval before debate. Read more!

JSM completes sale of Cambodia portfolio

StockMarketWire.com - JSM Indochina has completed the disposal of its Cambodia assets with agreed sale of its Siem Reap leasehold interest to Hongkong Land (Singapore).

Siem Reap is currently held by JSM's subsidiary, JSM Holdings (Cambodia).

The deal follows the conditional sale of Colonial Mansion I&II land and buildings, the Embassy land, and the Ounalom land announced on 7 April.

These, together with Siem Reap, represent all of JSM's assets in Cambodia.

The gross consideration payable to JSM for the disposal of Siem Reap is $2,000,000 in cash.

This includes an amount in respect of certain indirect taxes which may be payable.

If applicable, the indirect taxes are expected not to exceed $200,000.

Read more!

Costello linked to environmental controversy

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Reporter: Zoe Daniel

A company associated with Peter Costello has been accused of threatening endangered wildlife in Cambodia.


Transcript

ALI MOORE: A $600 million agribusiness proposal by a company associated with former treasurer Peter Costello is facing opposition from environmental activists in Cambodia who claim it will disrupt a significant wildlife corridor and put endangered animals at risk.

The company behind the banana plantation and reforestation project in Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains says it will be sustainable while providing jobs and generating much needed export income.

But there's concern about the location of the project, on one of the last unbroken forest corridors in the region.

South East Asia correspondent Zoe Daniel reports.

ZOE DANIEL: It's about an hour by chopper from the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh to the Cardamom Mountains.

Factories and then rice paddies stretch from the city to the foothills. But the mountains are barely accessible by road and apart from illegal timber cutting, these forests have been regenerating since they were last logged more than a decade ago.

Why is this area so important?

SUWANNA GAUNTLETT, CEO, WILDLIFE ALLIANCE: It's very important. It's the last left between these two bodies of the forest.

ZOE DANIEL: With its own rangers and government backing, NGO Wildlife Alliance has been protecting the area from poachers, illegal settling and logging. Now the NGO’s founder, Suwanna Guantlett, is opposing the Australian proposal for a 5,000-hectare banana plantation and 20,000-hectare reforestation project.

The issue is the location.

SUWANNA GAUNTLETT: This is the continuous forest cover.

ZOE DANIEL: The company planning the developments says there's no forest of value on the site. But the unbroken tree link between the two mountain ridges is clearly visible from the air.

The southern Cardamom Mountains have been selectively logged in the past, but this area is said to be one of only seven unbroken elephant corridors in Asia and the planned plantation is right on it.

According to environmental groups, the increasing number of land concessions granted for farming nearby mean Asian elephants, unique turtles and crocodiles are all struggling for habitat. Despite obvious signs of prior clearing, activists see this as a sensitive area that's slowly recovering.

SUWANNA GAUNTLETT: As you can see, it is a forest with grass land and bushland. It was indeed a former logging concession.

ZOE DANIEL: Plans for a high-tech drip-irrigated plantation to export bananas as well as a replanting project to give migrating elephants a new pathway have so far failed to win support from critics.

SUWANNA GAUNTLETT: That reforestation they're talking about doing alongside the banana plantation is also where the company says the elephant corridor will be moved to. My first answer is no because that is a populated area and elephants will not migrate and move through a populated area. They won't.

ZOE DANIEL: Would it be fair to say that it is the location that you have a problem with, so no matter what safeguards the company put in place, you still won't be happy with the location that they've picked?

SUWANNA GAUNTLETT: I think you've summarised it exactly.

ZOE DANIEL: Elephants are already increasingly in conflict with humans in Cambodia. A few like this female, Lucky, are in the care of rescuer Nick Marx. She was being attacked by village people for roaming through their small scale banana plots.

NICK MARX, WILDLIFE ALLIANCE: She had serious battery acid burns on her head because they were trying to get rid of her, throwing car battery acid on her.

ZOE DANIEL: He says plans to divert elephants away from the planned plantation by reforesting land near local villages which villages will not work.

NICK MARX: More and more elephants are going to come into conflict with humans. This is inevitable.

ZOE DANIEL: Australian company BKK partners is a corporate and financial advisory service with expertise in areas such as foreign investment and governance. Former treasurer Peter Costello is listed as managing director and partner. The company has an office in Phnom Penh which is advising Indo-China Gateway Capital on developing the $600 million agribusiness fund planning the plantation.

Our requests for an interview were declined. The company also denied that Mr Costello is involved in the project, although he was in Cambodia promoting it last year.

PETER COSTELLO, FORMER TREASURER: One of the things that BKK does is it is managing an investment by Indo-China gateway which is raising funds for a very major agricultural investment here in Cambodia.

ZOE DANIEL: He gave this interview to the Phnom Penh Post which is still on the newspaper's website.

PETER COSTELLO: BKK has established a presence here in Phnom Penh. We have a full time resident director.

ZOE DANIEL: Cambodia desperately needs economic development to increase the standard of living. The company says the banana project will generate up to 7,500 jobs. But when we visited these local villages they were still unsure whether the impact will be positive. They hunt and forage in the forest to survive.

CHAN SAO, VILLAGE CHIEF (translated): Also, we can't raise animals in the forest like cows and Buffalo. If we lose our land this is our big concern.

ZOE DANIEL: This man told us other developers have promised jobs at their sugar cane plantations on the forest edge, but initial wages were soon cut.

VILLAGER (translated): The company provides people with jobs, but they don't last long. At the beginning wages are good, but sooner or later the amount paid goes down.

ZOE DANIEL: Potential Chinese and Korean investors have visited this village, but the people say no one from an Australian company has been to see them.

Departing the area, we fly over clear-felled land being prepared for sugar cane plantations just outside the boundary of the forest reserve.

Indo-China Gateway submitted a formal application to develop the banana plantation in December and is now awaiting a permit.

Zoe Daniel, Lateline.

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The Eccentricity of Evil: A Khmer Rouge Leader Goes on Trial

How did a math teacher come to help orchestrate one of the worst genocides since the Holocaust?

If a courtroom is a theater, the star of the show at Cambodia's Khmer Rouge tribunal for the past two years has been a gaunt and balding former math teacher whose favorite word to describe himself is "meticulous."

Kaing Guek Eav, best known by the revolutionary alias Duch, is also a war criminal and mass killer. He has freely admitted he was responsible for the murder of over 12,000 people as head of the Khmer Rouge secret police and commandant of the S-21 security center, where perceived enemies of the regime were sent to be tortured into submission and "smashed." Over two years and ten months at the helm of the notorious prison, Comrade Duch ordered his captives to be waterboarded, their genitals electrocuted, and their toenails pulled out before sending nearly all of them, blindfolded, to be stabbed in the neck or clubbed to death in a field outside of Phnom Penh.

The case initially looked like a slam dunk -- a simple trial that could be wrapped up fast, initiating a cathartic national discussion in a country that was mired in civil war with the Khmer Rouge until 1998. The evidence against Duch, after all, was overwhelming: when the Khmer Rouge fled Phnom Penh in January 1979, Duch--a compulsive record-keeper -- left behind thousands of forced confessions that he had annotated in red ink: "beat her 40 times with the rattan stick," "medical experiment," "smash them to pieces." In the confessions, known as "autobiographies," Duch's prisoners inevitably admit to being agents of the KGB, CIA or the Vietnamese government and to having undermined the regime's radical plans for agricultural productivity and social harmony. The documents are mesmerizing today for their utter implausibility (one 19-year-old nurse, after being tortured, claimed the CIA had sent her on a mission to defecate in the operating theater of a Phnom Penh military hospital).

It was partly because of this extensive evidence that the UN-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal--established in 2006 to try senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime and "those most responsible" for crimes committed under it--decided to prosecute Duch first. The regime's four top living leaders--including "Brother Number 2" Nuon Chea and Foreign Minister Ieng Sary--remain in jail awaiting the beginning of their own trial this summer. They are all older and frailer than Duch, further removed from the killings, and far less contrite, having largely denied the accusations against them.

Duch's trial, which unfolded over the course of nine months in 2009, at first proceeded smoothly. Following a strategy devised by Francois Roux, his French defense lawyer and an experienced practitioner of judicial stagecraft, Duch apologized to his victims dozens of times, sometimes in dramatically self-lacerating fashion.

Under Roux's tutelage, Duch cried in court, made a tearful pilgrimage to the Killing Fields, and even--after an extended and theatrical courtroom dialogue with his lawyer--invited victims to visit him in his jail cell. It was an elaborate defense modeled on the precedent of Albert Speer--the Nazi architect who escaped a death sentence at Nuremberg because of his acceptance of moral responsibility.

Throughout the trial, Duch systematically upstaged everyone with his extraordinarily active participation in his own defense, and his odd zeal for setting the record straight, even at his own expense. Never deviating from a math-teacherish uniform of slacks and button-down shirts, he offered the court extensive commentary and analysis on his own life and character, and at times made helpful corrections -- serving variously as historian, analyst, mathematician, expert witness, character witness and trial monitor.

Nearly every day he would rise, clutching a binder full of the court documents and mimeographed S-21 confessions he had been poring over, to highlight inaccuracies in witness testimony, correct the courtroom translators, or admonish lawyers for repetitive questioning. He frequently recited eight-digit documentation ID numbers from memory, while some lawyers struggled to produce the numbers at all.

Inexact figures seemed to irk him in particular. When a prosecutor referred to a length of time as "26 or 27 years," Duch retorted, "Could you please make a proper mathematical calculation?" Earlier, he told judges that had selected his revolutionary name from a children's book about a very obedient child called Duch. "I liked the name Duch because I wanted to be a well-disciplined boy who respected the teachers, who wanted to do good deeds," he said. He was in his mid-20s at the time.

Duch explained to the court that he was chosen to be a prison chief because of his ability "to pay attention to whatever I was assigned to do meticulously." "In my entire life, if I do something I'll do it properly," he said.

The Open Society Justice Initiative wrote in a report on the trial, "Duch's behavior at trial again displayed a desire to be seen as exceedingly cooperative with the court, as if he were attempting to exchange his old role with that of the perfect defendant." A particularly telling moment, the report continued, "occurred when Duch thanked expert David Chandler for praising his professionalism in running S-21, seemingly still believing that professionalism in the running of a torture and execution camp was a high compliment."

Out of hundreds of hours of testimony from prison survivors, experts, and Duch himself, a clear and unnerving portrait of him emerged: this killer of thousands was, above all else, a good student. It seems to have been this quality, rather than greed or blood lust or even pure revolutionary fervor, that drove him to manage operations at S-21 so carefully, so meticulously, that only a handful of prisoners survived.

That's why everyone was stunned when, on the 77th and last day of his trial, Duch took on the most unlikely role of all: the bad student.

When called upon to give a final statement, he abruptly abandoned Roux's strategy of remorse and, and instead demanded that the court release and acquit him. Duch's behavior and public statements up to this point had been as good as a guilty plea, and his trial had seemed to be headed toward a predictable ending: a commuted sentence in exchange for cooperation, contrition and conversation.

But instead of apologizing once again to his victims, he launched into a dry, technical discourse on the history of the Communist Party in Cambodia and its leaders--which did not include him. He said that as he was not a senior leader he could not have been "most responsible" for crimes committed at S-21. He asked to be acquitted in the name of national reconciliation--the favored buzzword here for the process of integrating former Khmer Rouge cadres into Cambodian society.

Stunned judges asked him to clarify his statement. He obeyed: "I would like the chamber to release me."

Duch subsequently fired Roux and tried to replace him with a Chinese lawyer who understood Communism (Defendants at the tribunal, which is jointly administered by the Cambodian government and the UN, have the right to one local and one international lawyer). When a Chinese defender could not be procured, he engaged a second Cambodian. Together, the new defense team has pursued a one-note legal strategy: insisting over and over again that Duch was a mid-level cadre and therefore should not be prosecuted.

In July 2010, the tribunal found Duch guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, sentencing him to 35 years in prison. (Due to mitigating circumstances and time served, he will spend less than 19 years in jail; prosecutors have called this figure "manifestly inadequate.")

Late last month, appeal hearings were held, bringing Duch before the court once again. Reading from copious handwritten notes and once again deftly reciting long strings of document ID numbers, he argued on his behalf better than his own bumbling lawyers, urging judges to release him "for the sake of national reconciliation among my people."

"You must...seek justice and truth for the Cambodian people as well as for the former Khmer Rouge soldiers and cadres, especially the middle class who do not fall within the jurisdiction of this tribunal," he concluded.

It was a poor legal argument, but one that was cleverly phrased to echo the government's stance on the tribunal: that, in the name of national reconciliation, no further prosecutions will be allowed to take place, period. Hun Sen, Cambodia's strongman prime minister, who was himself a Khmer Rouge cadre before internal purges prompted him to flee to Vietnam in 1977, announced in 2009 that more trials could revive the civil war and kill "200,000 to 300,000 people."

Although United Nations prosecutors have identified five additional suspects they would like to see tried for genocide and war crimes, those cases have been stalled in the tribunal's investigation chamber, hindered by the fact that Cambodian staff refuse to participate in them. Court observers say the cases are likely to be dismissed soon.

Out of paranoia or pride, the government has also refused to allow several top officials who are former mid-ranking members of the Khmer Rouge to give evidence before the tribunal, although none of them has been implicated in crimes. Hun Sen flatly told visiting UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in October that no new trials would be permitted. Neither Mr Ban nor the international community, which funds the court's multi-million dollar budget, seemed to particularly care.

Because of all this behind-the-scenes political wrangling, Duch's dramatic change of stance has raised persistent whispers that he may now be taking orders from someone else--especially since his lead Cambodian counsel, Kar Savuth, also happens to be Hun Sen's family lawyer. But a large part of his turnabout can likely be attributed to his idiosyncratic personality. With his penchant for calculation, astonishing head for detail, and incapacity to process human emotion, he often comes across as mildly autistic. Decades after he committed his crimes, Duch is still unable to understand how the behaviors he values most--dedication to a higher cause, unfailing obedience to superiors, and pride in a job well done--can be entirely wrong.

Given his defiant new stance, his victims are unlikely to get the contrition they seek. But thanks to Duch¹s loquacity throughout the trial, and his obsession with getting the facts right, Cambodia and the world have gleaned not just a fuller understanding of the machinery of death he headed, but also a portrait of one brutal regime's slavishly obedient, ferociously meticulous executioner.



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Good News for Cambodian Gibbons!

This week, the Cambodian Prime Minister, Sandech Hun Sen, cancelled a significant titanium mining project because of it's potential negative impacts on some of the country's last remaining intact rainforests, located in the beautiful and remote Cardamom Mountains.

Pleased that the prime minister has taken the environmental impact into account, Suwanna Gauntlett, of the conservation NGO Wildlife Alliance, says: "We applaud the courageous decision of the prime minister to see the greater value of the forest as it currently stands."

The move has been welcomed by locals and environmentalists who were concerned for both the biodiversity of this forested area and also the continued well-being of nearby communities who depend on it. The proposed project had planned to locate the mine in the way of a migration trail used traditionally by Cambodia's largest population of Asian elephants.

The local communities have spent years avoiding deforestation and poaching to develop alternatives such as viable eco-tourism packages. These forests are famously rich in wildlife and, according to the IUCN Red List , there are several endangered species found in the Cardamom Mountains. These include: the Asian elephant (Elephas maximums), Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris corbetti), Malayan sun bear (Helarctos malayanus) and Pileated gibbon (Hylobates pileatus). Also in this forest, the Siamese crocodile (Crocodylus siamensis), classified as "critically endangered", has one of its last refuges.

Wildlife Alliance and a Cambodian newspaper had questioned a claim by the mining company that its project would generate US$1.3 billion dollars a year.
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NGOs in Cambodia set to struggle for survival

Excessive regulation of NGOs is threatening to undermine the efforts of aid agencies in Cambodia, warns the new head of a leading German development foundation in Phnom Penh.

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other NGOs say Cambodia's draft law regulating associations and non-governmental organizations should be abandoned on the grounds that it will undermine rather than promote civil society in the country. Dozens of international organizations working in Cambodia have called on international donors to make strong public and private statements opposing the law. Deutsche Welle spoke to the new head of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Phnom Penh, Manfred Hornung, about the implications of the legislation.

Deutsche Welle: You've been living in Cambodia for several years now. Some rights groups say that there's been a pattern of repression in the country over the last decade. What do you feel is the current situation in the country as far as democracy, human rights and civil society are concerned?

Manfred Hornung: There has been a very obvious trend in several sectors to restrict political and societal freedom on a large scale. A number of laws have been passed, among them the laws on NGOs and the passage of the criminal procedure law which was supposed to regulate certain sectors but turned out to be very restrictive in many ways.

A new law that Cambodia is set to put in practice this month will make it even harder for NGOs and foreign organizations to get registered. What does it mean for civil society in Cambodia if unregistered NGOs are prohibited from operating?

Informal groups are taking over roles and services that are really vital for Cambodian society. These groups are now being forced to register under very stringent conditions. Many individuals forming these groups are illiterate and have no connection to government structures, which will put a huge burden on civil life in Cambodia. The main problem is that no civil society life will be possible without registration, which is unconstitutional and in practical terms will curtail a lot of freedom in Cambodian society.

Will it also impact on foreign NGOs such as the Böll foundation and the work they do?

It's not a major problem for us as such, what I'm worried about is the future of our counterparts and partners. We work very closely with informal groups, students, rural communities in the north east that are now being forced to register. It will be very interesting for us to see if these groups become illegal because they don't have the capacity or might be frightened to register.

What are the biggest challenges in the areas that the Böll foundation wants to tackle in Cambodia?

We focus on gender democracy; we want to encourage women to become more pro-active and active in the political process of the country, and we are also working on resource governance issues with a focus on the north east. We try to combine these two issues, to give women the opportunity to become active in the resource governance sector in political institutions of the country. This is a very controversial area, as there is a lot of land grabbing happening at the moment.

You mention land-grabbing, how difficult or dangerous is it to work under these kinds of conditions?

Again I'd like to focus on our partners, on the people in the countryside. The allocation of land, the granting of land concessions is very opaque and it goes to the core of the livelihoods of the people. And this is why it is so important that these people who work on these issues and topics for the benefit of their communities are allowed to remain active and stay in the process. This [NGO] law will kill a lot of the initiatives to protect the communities in these areas.

Half of the national budget of Cambodia comes from development assistance. Do you think donors could influence the government not to implement this law?

I think we are talking here about responsibilities. Clearly the international community has funded a lot of projects targeted towards building up civil society after the tragic period in Cambodia's history. A lot of effort and money has been poured in. And with that, I think the international donor community should take this responsibility to try its upmost to find a law that serves the people in the countryside and helps them to remain active in this societal area. Influencing the government is outside the control of the donor community.

So they shouldn't pull out of Cambodia and stop financing?

You shouldn't pull out, but staying also means taking responsibilities, it means you work in specific sectors, if you see a negative trend or one that is not in line with your vision and mission, you need to intervene, you need to work in the political sphere. I think political dialogue needs to continue, real dialogue, where you get to the core of these issues.

How hopeful are you that the conditions for democracy, human rights, and an active civil society in Cambodia are going to improve?

There are many variables in that question. It is about political development, future of the government in general. At the moment I have the feeling that many of these organisations try to anticipate things and then take action accordingly, and these actions are not in line with their visions or missions or mandates. And this should not happen. I see it as a process, you work and if you stay true to yourself and your partners, they will realise and cherish that.

Interview: Sarah Steffen/tkw
Editor: Guy Degen Read more!

Thai-Cambodian conflict sets precedent for ASEAN, chairman says

Bangkok - The Thai-Cambodian border dispute has set a precedent for regional problem solving by the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Indonesian foreign minister said Monday.

Indonesia, which now holds the rotating chairmanship of ASEAN, has been active over the past two months in promoting a ceasefire and facilitating talks between Thailand and Cambodia over their joint claims to a plot of land adjacent to an 11th-century Hindu temple on their border and hosted talks Thursday and Friday between them in Bogor.

'I think we have the potential for this episode to have a silver lining, a positive long-term impact in the sense that we are setting a precedent,' Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said in Bangkok.

ASEAN has in the past maintained a stance of non-interference in it 10 member states' internal or bilateral affairs, raising questions about the group's effectiveness as a regional problem solver.

'I think it has had a potentially positive impact, for it shows ASEAN for the first time addressing an issue of this type directly and not simply producing documents,' Natalegawa said.

Both Cambodian and Thailand are members of ASEAN, which also includes Brunei, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam.

Preah Vihear temple has been a bone of contention between Thailand and Cambodia for the past five decades, leading to a cessation of diplomatic ties in 1958.

The two countries agreed to have the sovereignty spat settled at the International Court, which in 1962 ruled that the temple belonged to Cambodia.

Fighting broke out between Thai and Cambodian troops near the temple February 4-7, killing three Thais and five Cambodians and leaving dozens wounded on both sides.

The conflict raised questioned about solidarity within ASEAN, which is striving to be an economic community similar to the European Union by 2015.

Although Indonesia has played a role in bringing both sides to the negotiating table, Thailand and Cambodia remained at loggerheads over joint claims to a 4.6-square-kilometre plot of land adjacent to Preah Vihear that was not including in The Hague's 1962 ruling.

Nalalegawa was in Bangkok to lead an ASEAN foreign ministers meeting on the upcoming East Asia Summit, one of Asia's pivotal security forums, which Indonesia is to host in October or November.
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CAMBODIA: Rural poor most at risk from rabies

KAMPOT, 1 April 2011 (IRIN) - Yinn Siet, 65, recalls in horror when a snarling dog bit her husband four years ago. Before he died, the farmer hallucinated and convulsed. “He barked like a dog,” she said. “We put a chain on him and locked him up.”

He had contracted rabies, a virus that kills nearly all victims who develop symptoms.

Yinn could not afford to bring her husband to the capital Phnom Penh, the only city in Cambodia that has a centre offering free treatment.

Even if she had, it would have been too late.

He left behind his family of seven, who are struggling to make ends meet through farming.

Cambodians in the countryside have little access to treatment for rabies, a preventable disease that disproportionately affects the rural young and poor.

If dog-bite victims do not seek immediate treatment, they are likely to die. The virus is untreatable after symptoms appear, which can be anything from 10 days to a year after being bitten.

“The loss of a family member to rabies has a profound psychological impact on the family,” said Deborah Briggs, head of the Global Alliance for Rabies Control, a US-based NGO. “The disease is frightening and it is devastating to watch a loved one die.” In 2007, the most recent year data are available, 810 human rabies deaths may have occurred in Cambodia, says a study in Neglected Tropical Diseases, a science journal.

The number is only an estimate. Hundreds of cases in the countryside go unreported, because patients are rarely hospitalized and tend to die at home.

The estimated rabies mortality for 2007 exceeded that of malaria (240 deaths) and dengue fever (400 deaths), the study said.

The report concluded that free post-exposure prophylaxis, an injection after a bite that prevents infection, is really only relevant for residents of Phnom Penh. Injections must be administered promptly, usually within 10 days of an infection.

The Pasteur Institute, a non-profit medical research and treatment centre in Phnom Penh, is the only institution in Cambodia offering free post-exposure treatments.

The rural poor often cannot afford lengthy and expensive visits to the capital and therefore miss out on the free treatment.

“We see maybe five patients per year who arrive with symptoms,” says Philippe Buchy, head of the virology unit at the Pasteur Institute, “and the only thing we can do is to send them to Calmette Hospital where they will die after few days.”

The fact that poor people are most susceptible to rabies means campaigns against the virus tend to be given lower priority, said François-Xavier Meslin, the Geneva-based team leader for neglected zoonotic diseases at the World Health Organization (WHO).

Epidemiology

Warm-blooded mammals, mostly dogs, spread the virus through bites, scratches, and licks on open wounds.
Typically between 10 days and a year after exposure, patients experience insomnia, headaches, a fever, and twitching around their wound.

Two to 10 days after those first signs appear, they hallucinate, have seizures, become fearful at the sight of water and experience paralysis. Most rabies patients die from respiratory failure.

Each year, about 55,000 people around the world die from rabies. More than 80 percent of cases are in Asia, according to WHO, which says half of all human rabies deaths occur in children under 15.

“Every one of those deaths could have been prevented as we have the vaccines… available to save their lives before clinical signs begin,” Briggs told IRIN.

In Bali, Indonesia, authorities culled 100,000 dogs to prevent the spread of rabies by shooting poison blow darts at them, but the authorities halted this policy last September in favour of a mass inoculation programme of 400,000 dogs (70 percent of the island’s dog population).

WHO’s Meslin does not advocate killing dogs because it is “inhumane,” he told IRIN.

In Cambodia, the Pasteur Institute recommends setting up a national rabies control programme to improve disease surveillance and access to treatment. It also recommends starting vaccination campaigns for dogs.
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RPT-Cambodia probes mass fainting of workers at Puma suppliers

By Prak Chan Thul

PHNOM PENH, April 10 (Reuters) - Cambodian authorities began an investigation on Sunday into the mass fainting of about 800 workers at two factories that produce footwear for German sporting goods group Puma .

Workers suddenly fell sick on Saturday night and again on Sunday morning at Universal Apparel (Cambodia) Co Ltd and Huey Chuen (Cambodia) Corp Ltd, which labour officials and workers identified as suppliers to Puma.

"I was just feeling exhausted and dizzy," Keopich Panha, a hospitalised 19-year-old shoe stitcher at Huey Chuen.

Phnom Penh Police Chief Touch Naruth told Reuters his officers and the Labour Ministry were investigating the factories, where workers such as Keopich Panha typically earn about $61 a month.

"It could have been the workers were too tired. We will also look at work environment issues and whether there was enough air or oxygen," he added. "We don't know the conclusion yet."

Worker Soeum Ny, 24, said the smell from materials used in the manufacturing of sport shoes may have made workers sick.

"We are used to it now. This affects our health but there is nothing we can do," she said.

Moeun Tola, head of the labour unit at the nonprofit Community Legal Education Center, said mass fainting is a problem in Cambodia's textile industry because rules requiring factories to be monitored are not enforced.

"The government has to strictly monitor these factories," Moeun Tola said.

Garment manufacturing is Cambodia's third-biggest currency earner after agriculture and tourism. More than 210,000 textile workers went on strike last year over the government's attempt to regulate trade unions.

Cambodian factories produce clothes for many Western brands, including Gap Inc , Nike Inc and Inditex Group , the world's biggest clothing retailer and owner of Zara.

Officials at Puma were not immediately available to comment. (Editing by Jason Szep and Miral Fahmy)
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Turtle Known Only From Asian Markets Finally Found in Wild

By Brandon Keim

In the early 1990s, biologists in southeast Asia discovered a species of turtle unknown to science. But there was a catch: They didn’t know where it came from. Cuora picturata, as the new turtle was formally named, was found only in markets where it was sold for food.

Nearly two decades later, a clever piece of biological sleuthing has found the native home of C. picturata. The discovery offers hope not just to C. picturata, but to other turtle species known only from markets.

“It’s frustrating. You see this animal being exploited, and likely facing extinction,” said Bryan Stuart, a biologist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, whose search for C. picturata’s home was described April 1 in Biological Sciences. “But there’s little that conservation can do, because we’re missing the basic information necessary for conservation: Where does this species occur in the wild?”

Stuart and other researchers weren’t starting from scratch, however. From the location of markets where C. picturata was sold, they figured the turtles were captured in southern Vietnam or across the border in Cambodia. The turtle also resembled two other known box turtle species, Cuora galbinifrons and Cuora bourretti. Genetic comparisons proved their relation.

Those other turtles live in wet forests with closed canopies. The place best fitting that description in southern Vietnam was the Langbian plateau, at the southern tip of the Truong Son mountains — and C. bourreti lived in the central part of the mountains, with C. galbinifrons to the north.

The puzzle pieces were coming together, and there was one more clue. Where C. galbinifrons lived, so did Hylobates leucogenys, a species of gibbon, and Pygathrix nemaeus, a species of douc langur. Likewise, where C. bourretti lived, so did a Hylobates species closely related to the northern gibbons, and a Pygathrix species closely related to the northern doucs. Such so-called “co-occurences” result from historic events — a new river, a climate change — that split ancestral populations into separate groups. The Langbian plateau also had its own unique gibbon and douc langur; if the pattern held, C. picturata should be its box turtle.

But though Stuart could guess where C. picturata might be, he still needed help finding it. Enter Tri Ly, a biologist at the University of Science in Ho Chi Minh City, who had just finished his undergraduate studies and approached Stuart in search of a project.

Ly traveled to the Langbian plateau, where he interviewed villagers and met with hunters. In July of 2010, the first expedition set off. Hunting dogs were used to find turtles in the dense jungle foliage, but their barks were often false alarms: the group found king cobras, mouse deer, squirrels, monkeys — but no turtles.

Finally, on July 5, 2010, hiding from the dogs under a pile of dry leaves at the base of a rattan bush on the slope of a hill, was a single female C. picturata, seen for the first time in the wild. “I was totally amazed and elated,” said Tri Ly.

Three separate expeditions recovered a total of eight turtles, firmly establishing the Langbian plateau as their home. Unfortunately, the turtles’ habitat is being lost to agriculture and coffee plantations, but the findings are an essential first step toward conservation.

Beyond knowing what places need protection, conservationists now know where turtles bred in captivity can be released. Without this knowledge, C. picturata could end up in the conservation equivalent of life support, bred in captivity in perpetuity.

Stuart and Ly hope their efforts will inspire other biologists in southeast Asia, which is currently experiencing what’s known as the “Asian turtle crisis“: Millions of turtles are sent each year to China, threatening many species with extinction. At least three other box turtle species — C. zhoui, C. mccordi and C. yunnanensis — are known only from markets.

“It is hoped that focused field efforts such as ours will soon identify the mysterious origins of these other rare species that are known to scientists only by turtles bearing price tags,” wrote Stuart and Ly.

Images: 1) Female Vietnamese box turtle (Biological Conservation). 2) A map of southeast Asia and the box turtles’ ranges (Biological Conservation).

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Monkeys main reservoir of human malaria in Southeast Asia

A study led by an Indian-origin scientist has warned that monkeys infected with an emerging malaria strain are providing a reservoir for human disease in Southeast Asia.

It confirmed that the species has not yet adapted to humans and that monkeys are the main source of infection.

Previously thought to only infect monkeys, the researchers have shown that human P knowlesi infections are widely distributed in Southeast Asia and that it is a significant cause of malaria in Malaysian Borneo.

Until now, it was not clear whether the infection is transmitted from person to person, or is passed over from infected monkeys.

Researchers led by Prof Balbir Singh at the Malaria Research Centre, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, collaborating with Sarawak State Health Department, St George's University of London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, examined blood samples from 108 wild macaques from different locations around the Sarawak division in Malaysian Borneo.

Their results revealed that 78% were infected with the P knowlesi species of malaria parasite, and many were infected with one or more of four other species of monkey malaria parasites that have not yet been found in humans.

By comparing the molecular identity of the parasites from monkeys and those isolated from patients with knowlesi malaria, the team were able to build a picture of the evolutionary history of the parasite and its preferred host.

Their analysis reveals that transmission of the knowlesi species is more common amongst wild monkeys, than from monkeys to humans, and that monkeys remain the dominant host.

"Our findings strongly indicate that P knowlesi is a zoonosis in this area, that is to say it is passed by mosquitoes from infected monkeys to humans, with monkeys acting as a reservoir host," said Singh.

"However, with deforestation threatening the monkeys' habitat and increases in the human population, it's easy to see how this species of malaria could switch to humans as the preferred host. This would also hamper current efforts aimed at eliminating malaria," he added.

Based on the molecular data, the researchers estimate that the knowlesi malaria species evolved from its ancestral species between 98 000 and 478 000 years ago.

This predates human settlement in the area, meaning that monkeys are mostly likely to have been the initial host for the parasite when the species first emerged.

This estimate also indicates that the species is as old as, or older than, the two most common human malaria parasites, P falciparum and P vivax.

The study is published in the journal PLoS Pathogens. Read more!