Ceremony of a new railway at Sisophon town in Banthey Meachey province

Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen (C) and Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Haruhiko Kuroda (R) depart on a helicopter after the ground breaking ceremony of the new railway at Sisophon town in Banthey Meachey province, 469km (291 miles) northwest of Phnom Penh, February 18, 2008. Cambodia launched on Monday a $73 million project for the restoration and reconstruction of over 600 km of railway track which will become part of the rail transportation route linking Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam to Kunming, China.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA)

Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen (L) waves while walking with Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Haruhiko Kuroda during the ground breaking ceremony of a new railway at Sisophon town in Banthey Meachey province, 469km (291 miles) northwest of Phnom Penh, February 18, 2008. Cambodia launched on Monday a $73 million project for the restoration and reconstruction of over 600 km of railway track which will become part of the rail transportation route linking Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam to Kunming, China.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA)

Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen speaks at the ground breaking ceremony of a new railway at Sisophon town in Banthey Meachey province, 469km (291 miles) northwest of Phnom Penh, February 18, 2008. Cambodia launched on Monday a $73 million project for the restoration and reconstruction of over 600 km of railway track which will become part of the rail transportation route linking Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam to Kunming, China.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA)

Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen is greeted upon hisarrival at the ground breaking ceremony of a new railway at Sisophon town in Banthey Meachey province, 469km (291 miles) northwest of Phnom Penh, February 18, 2008. Cambodia launched on Monday a $73 million project for the restoration and reconstruction of over 600 km of railway track which will become part of the rail transportation route linking Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam to Kunming, China.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA)

Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen (L) speaks with Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Haruhiko Kuroda at the ground breaking ceremony of the new railway at Sisophon town in Banthey Meachey province, 469km (291 miles) northwest of Phnom Penh, February 18, 2008. Cambodia launched on Monday a $73 million project for the restoration and reconstruction of over 600 km of railway track which will become part of the rail transportation route linking Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam to Kunming, China.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA)

Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen (C) is greeted Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Haruhiko Kuroda (L) looks on upon their arrival at the ground breaking ceremony of a new railway at Sisophon town in Banthey Meachey province, 469km (291 miles) northwest of Phnom Penh, February 18, 2008. Cambodia launched on Monday a $73 million project for the restoration and reconstruction of over 600 km of railway track which will become part of the rail transportation route linking Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam to Kunming, China.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA)

People shield themselves from the dust as the helicopter of Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen takes off after the ground-breaking ceremony of a new railway at Sisophon town in Banthey Meachey province, 469km (291 miles) northwest of Phnom Penh, February 18, 2008. Cambodia launched on Monday a $73 million project for the restoration and reconstruction of over 600 km of railway track which will become part of the rail transportation route linking Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam to Kunming, China.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA)

Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Haruhiko Kuroda drives a bulldozer during the ground breaking ceremony of a new railway at Sisophon town in Banthey Meachey province, 469km (291 miles) northwest of Phnom Penh, February 18, 2008. Cambodia launched on Monday a $73 million project for the restoration and reconstruction of over 600 km of railway track which will become part of the rail transportation route linking Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam to Kunming, China.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA)

Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen participates in the ground breaking ceremony of a new railway at Sisophon town in Banthey Meachey province, 469km (291 miles) northwest of Phnom Penh, February 18, 2008. Cambodia launched on Monday a $73 million project for the restoration and reconstruction of over 600 kmof railway track which will become part of the rail transportation route linking Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam to Kunming, China.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA)

A train runs in Kampong Chhnang province, some 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Sunday, Feb. 17, 2008. Asian Development Bank launched a multimillion dollar project Monday, Feb. 18, to restore Cambodia's dilapidated railway network as part of its larger goal to boost regional rail traffic and trade. The project worth about US$73 million (euro 50 million) will help rehabilitate some 650 kilometers (400 miles) of Cambodian rail track part of which can also be described as a 'bamboo railway,' an ADB statement said.(AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Cambodia to Start Restoring Decades-Old Railway System

Sunday, 17 February 2008
Text of report in English by official Chinese news agency Xinhua (New China News Agency)

Phnom Penh, Feb. 16 (Xinhua) - Cambodia will hold a ceremony on Monday in Siri Sophon, Banteay Meanchey province, next to the border with Thailand, to restore its decades-old national railway system, an official said here on Saturday.

Budget for the rehabilitation is from grant aid and loan package of the Asia Development Bank (ADB), said Ou Pheak Von Mony, director general of the Royal Cambodian Railway Company.

Upon completion, the railway will become part of the Asia network which links Singapore and China, national television network TVK quoted the official as saying.

The ceremony will be presided over by Prime Minister Hun Sen and visiting ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda, said an ADB press release.

The total cost stands at 73 million US dollars, with 42 million US dollars of loan from ADB, 13 million US dollars of grant aid from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries ( OPEC), 15.2 million US dollars from the Cambodian government, and 2.8 million US dollars of grant aid for iron materials from Malaysia, it said.

The project aims to support Cambodia's economic development and strengthen sub-regional integration by enabling cost-effective and efficient railway transport within Cambodia and between Cambodia and Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, it said.

Access to efficient railway services would substantially improve the efficiency of Cambodia's transport system by enabling efficient and safe railway transport for heavy, bulky, and hazardous cargo, such as cement, containers, and fuel, which are currently carried by more expensive and less safe road haulage, it added.

The 264-km Phnom Penh-Sihanoukville route and the 386-km Phnom Penh-Poipet route were respectively built in 1960 and 1931. They are the only two railways of the kingdom, currently providing transportation for trains at a speed as low as 15 km an hour.

The Asia railway network is expected to run 5,500 km, linking Singapore and China and including Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam en route.

Source: BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific

Sacravatoons: US's Aids?

Courtesy of Sacravatoon: http://sacrava.blogspot.com/

Khmer Citizens That Cannot Speak Khmer

Posted on 17 February 2008.

The Mirror, Vol. 12, No. 547

In two communes at the northern border of the country, people are far away from the national society

“Preah Vihear: Khmer citizens living at the northern border of the country, including in Sralau Muoy and Sralau Pir communes, situated along the upper Mekong river bank bordering the Laotian side of the Mekong river, have until now not yet received any influence in terms of any dissemination of information from their own society and the cultural relations of their own country, because they are in a remote area next to the border of Laos.

“The people in the two communes of Sralau Muoy and Sralau Pir live very far away from the Khmer society ever since the border was set between the two countries of Cambodia and Laos during the French [colonial] era. The area is around 150 kilometers far away from the provincial town. There are no roads there connecting them to the town. In the dry season, the two communes can only be reached by trucks, because they can use cow-cart roads. It is very difficult to reach Kompong Sralau village, located in Sralau Muoy commune, at the Mekong river bank. In the rainy season, both communes cannot be reached, neither by car nor by motorbike or even cow-carts, because vehicles would get stuck, and many creeks cannot be crossed.
“In the two communes, all Khmer people were under the ideological influence of Siam [Thailand] during the time of control by Siam. Currently, in their villages and communes, their general language is 95% Laotian, while the Khmer language is used only when they meet with guests coming from outside once in while. Recently, a reporter from Koh Santepheap has traveled to the Khmer-Lao border with a delegation of the Provincial Department of Education, Youth and Sports, to Sralau Muoy and Sralau Pir. ‘At that time, we met a Khmer woman named Sen Mi. She is 36 years old, living in Kompong Sralau village, in the Sralau Muoy commune.’ She told Koh Santepheap in Khmer, with a Laotian accent, that she is Khmer, living in this village since she was very young. She had completed school with grade 6 (in the Laotian language), but she does not know any single Khmer letter, because in her village, a Khmer school existed only since 2000. So older people do not know the Cambodian language. Most of them can only speak Laotian.

“The people, who live in Sralau Muoy commune, have close relations with Laotian people, where they live on each side of the Mekong river bank, and they regularly cross the river by small boats to do business and exchange information with each other. Regarding their occupations, besides farming, the Kompong Sralau villagers enter the forest to seek non-timber forest products such as limes, rattans, and vines etc. All of these products are brought to the Laotian side of the river bank for Laotian businesspeople, because all of them have more trust in Laotian people, more than in their own Khmer people living nearby. Almost all of their life depends on business with Laotians. Most of those villagers also use mobile phones connected to Laotian services provider companies, to contact other people in Laos, and they travel by boat to reach each other, both Khmers and Laotians, without any document. As for the currency, people in both of Sralau’s communes generally use, the Kip, the Laotian currency only. There is hardly any Riel used in the area. However, if they want to relate to business more closely to Cambodia, they exchange their Laotian Kip into Dollars in a Laotian market.

“It is to note again that 95% of the children 10 years old and below do not know Khmer, they know only the Laotian language. Nowadays, when a delegation or tourists come and look at the upper areas of the Sralau communes, they see the area where our Cambodian citizens live next to the Great Mekong river border: at night, the other side of the river bank at the Smao island in Laos, has a lot of electricity, but if one looks back to our Khmer Sralau commune, it is dark and quiet…
“Monks, who stay at Wat Botom Phallaram in Kompong Sralau village, as well as commune councilors, and people in the Sralau Muoy commune, appeal through Koh Santepheap to the Royal Government to build a road connecting the Preah Vihear provincial center to Kompong Sralau village, a distance of around 150 kilometers, and they hope that Samdech Akak Moha Senapadei Dekchor Hun Sen will respond to this request, in order to enable them to have easier communication in all fields with the present society of Cambodia as well as in the future. They want this area to regularly get connected to the Khmer community again, and to reduce the use of the language and culture of another nation.”

Koh Santepheap, Vol.41, #6273, 16-17.2.2008

DEVELOPMENT-CAMBODIA: Urban-Rural Divide Set To Widen

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Feb 18 (IPS) - Phnom Penh’s skyline is set for a dramatic change, now that South Korean companies have confirmed plans to build two skyscrapers in the Cambodian capital. The 42-storey Gold Tower is scheduled to be completed by 2011, while a 53-storey structure will be ready the following year.

Such a transformation will invariably serve as visual symbols of the direction this nation has taken on the road to development. It will add to the impressive numbers Cambodia’s has recorded over the past two years, with the economy growing by 11 percent in 2006 and nine percent in 2007.

The likelihood of more tall towers wrapped in glass following these two appears possible. The South-east Asian country ‘’received more than 1,500 requests for construction projects worth 1.5 billion US dollars in the first nine months of 2007,’’ the ‘Phnom Penh Post’ newspaper reported recently, quoting Urban Planning and Construction Minister Im Chhum.

Yet such a picture only confirms why Cambodia is increasingly becoming a country with deep economic divisions, with the economic boom concentrated in only three urban centres -- Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Sihanoukville -- at the expense of its rural areas, where 80 percent of the country’s 14 million people live.

A new study by a U.N. agency lays bare the extent of food insecurity, high malnutrition and the ‘’food poor’’ in one of this region’s poorest countries still struggling to put behind it the nightmare of a brutal war and oppression that lasted over two decades. ‘’The mix of food products available in Cambodia should normally be adequate for a balanced diet, but productive capacity or purchasing power of many households is limited,’’ states the World Food Programme’s (WFP) ‘Food Security Atlas’.

Currently, close to 35 percent of Cambodians, or some 4.6 million people, live below the poverty line of one U.S. dollar a day. Of that, 90 percent come from rural areas, states findings by the WFP. ‘’In 2005, over 630,000, or 37 percent of Cambodian children aged under five years were suffering chronic protein-energy malnutrition ( or stunting),’’ adds the WFP, quoting figures from the Cambodian Demographic and Health Survey Report.

Cambodian’s classified as ‘’food deprived’’ amount to 21 percent of the population, close to three million people, states the WFP, drawing on the 2007 Food Insecurity Assessment, conducted by, among others, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation. The ‘’food poor’’ are those who eat less than the minimum diet to supply basic energy requirements.

The appearance of Siem Reap among the 10 provinces described as ‘’hot spots’’ due to ‘’high malnutrition rates’’ by the WFP in its mid-February study illustrates the two faces of Cambodia’s development story. For years, the city of Siem Reap has seen rapid growth, with many plush hotels coming up, to cater to the planeloads of tourists flying into the city. Its main draw: the majestic Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples built during the 14th century and before.

Yet the tourist dollars that have been pouring in have not trickled beyond the city’s borders. ‘’Siem Reap is one of the poorest provinces in the country,’’ Thomas Keusters, head of WFP’s Cambodia office, told IPS by phone from Phnom Penh. ‘’Tourism is only focused in the city. But only 15 miles away from the city centre, people are very poor.’’

The Cambodians left out from the city’s growth are those with little education in the province who cannot find jobs in the hotels, adds Keusters. ‘’The people who have found employment are those who can read and write and can help the tourism sector.’’

Cambodia’s weak education system beyond the main urban centres was highlighted Thursday in a report on education trends in the region released by the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). It has one of the ‘’highest repetition rates’’ of school children in the first grade, at 24 percent, revealed the ‘2008 Education for All Global Monitoring Report’.

In addition, Cambodia and Laos ‘’have the lowest early childhood care and education coverage in South-east Asia, with only nine percent and eight percent of children aged three to five enrolled in pre-primary school, respectively,’’ added the UNESCO study.

Even the World Bank admits that despite Cambodia’s success on some fronts -- such as reducing the number of people living in poverty from 47 percent of the population in 1994 to 35 percent a decade later -- inequality is a problem. During the past 10 years, the consumption power of the country’s richest 20 percent grew by 45 percent, as against an only eight percent rise in the consumption power of the poorest 20 percent, the Bank noted in its 2007 study of equity in Cambodia.

This economic divide exposes what ‘’growth rates do not show, about who is benefiting and who are the losers,’’ says Shalmali Guttal, a senior researcher at Focus on the Global South, a Bangkok-based think tank. ‘’The ordinary people in the rural and urban areas have been losing for years. There is a systemic problem in the distribution of resources.’’

The prospect of immediate change for the economically marginalised appears remote, she explained in an interview, because of the poor being deprived or denied access to land in the rural areas or even to fish in the country’s largest lake. ‘’Fishing concessions have been sold to private companies and the local fishing communities have a little catch, depriving them of income and their main source of protein.’’

Amnesty International (AI) is the latest human rights group to raise the alarm about the harsh measures used by the administration of Prime Minister Hun Sen to support a trend of forced evictions in the urban and rural areas to acquire land for commercial ventures and ‘’development’’ projects. It warned that 150,000 Cambodians are in danger of losing their homes and lands to projects that cater to the whims of the country’s wealthiest.

Vireak and Sopheap are just two people from a village of subsistence farmers near the coastal town of Sihanoukville who were affected last April, said the London-based rights lobby in a mid-February report. Most of the village ‘’was burned to the ground by law enforcement and military officers, forcibly evicting more than 100 families,’’ states AI.

‘’The Cambodian government has adopted policies, supported by international donors, aimed at developing and improving the lives of the poor. But such policies are in stark contrast to the realities experienced by Vireak, Sopheap and other victims of forced evictions, who sink deeper into poverty through the actions of the authorities,’’ added AI.

A "nory", also known as a bamboo train

A Cambodian boy stands along a railway track in Pursat province, about 200 km (124 miles) northwest of Phnom Penh, February 17, 2008. Cambodia will launch on Monday a $73 million project that will see to the restoration and reconstruction of over 600 kilometres of railway track.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA)

Cambodians prepare to set up a "lorry", also known as a bamboo train, on a railway track in Pursat province, about 200 km (124 miles) northwest of Phnom Penh, February 17, 2008. Cambodia will launch on Monday a $73 million project that will see to the restoration and reconstruction of over 600 kilometres of railway track.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA)

Cambodians travel on a "nory", also known as a bamboo train, along a railway track in Pursat province, about 200 km (124 miles) northwest of Phnom Penh, February 17, 2008. Cambodia will launch on Monday a $73 million project that will see to the restoration and reconstruction of over 600 kilometres of railway track.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA)

A Cambodian woman pushes her bicycle next to a railway line in Pursat province, about 200 km (124 miles) northwest of Phnom Penh, February 17, 2008. Cambodia will launch on Monday a $73 million project that will see to the restoration and reconstruction of over 600 kilometres of railway track.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA)

Cambodians wait to alight a "nory", also known as a bamboo train, along a railway track in Pursat province, about 200 km (124 miles) northwest of Phnom Penh, February 17, 2008. Cambodia will launch on Monday a $73 million project that will see to the restoration and reconstruction of over 600 kilometres of railway track.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA)

Cambodian family finds home in Restaurant Row

GRAIG T. KOJIMA , middle, with daughters Kelly Nou, left, and Laura Chum.

CRAIG T. KOJIMA , Sovan Boun Thuy, of Chez Sovan Express in Restaurant Row, cooks in the kitchen. "I was not sure people in the United States would like my food," she recalled before opening her first restaurant in 1987.

CRAIG T. KOJIMA. Sovan Boun Thuy, left, of Chez Sovan Express in Restaurant Row, helps guide a customer to the drinks. With her are daughters Kelly Nou, middle, and Laura Chum.

starbulletin.com
Sunday, February 17, 2008
By Jennifer Sudick

Noodle soups and amok curries are the staple dishes at the popular Chez Sovan Express

Sovan Boun Thuy has always loved feeding people.

That's been good news for hungry people in California in the 21 years since she opened her first restaurant in San Jose.

For the past four years, she and her family also have filled the stomachs of Honolulu's lunch crowd with signature dishes such as amok curry and noodle soup.

Cooking is a self-taught talent that Thuy, 66, has perfected at the three restaurants she started after arriving in Long Beach, Calif., from Thailand in 1975 with little money and five children.

Thuy's youngest child, Laura Chum, 30, and Chum's husband, Edison Beltran, now help her run the Restaurant Row location, while her second son manages her first restaurant in San Jose. All of Thuy's now-six children have worked at her eateries.

Her restaurants are something she wants to keep alive for years to come.

"I would like to help pass it down from generation to generation," she said.

When Sovan Boun Thuy opened her first restaurant in a ramshackle area of San Jose, Calif., in 1987, she worried few Americans would eat the native Cambodian fare she had cooked all her life.

So she grilled hamburgers.

"I was not sure people in the United States would like my food," she said.

She was partly right -- the tiny corner restaurant drew only a few dozen people each day -- "mostly bums, the homeless" she said. "I came here bare-handed, right? So I looked for a cheap (location)."

That changed when a friend from the San Jose Mercury News newspaper, where Thuy helped translate Cambodian interviews for reporters, begged her to cook what she knew best. Those noodle soups and amok curries are now the staple dishes served at her newest location, Chez Sovan Express, at Restaurant Row.

The restaurant, opened by Thuy's eldest daughter Kelly Nou, celebrates its fourth anniversary this winter. Not much has changed from the initial recipes perfected two decades ago in California -- lunch items range from the popular curry chicken to stir-fried vermicelli noodles and cost less than $10.

"I see people eat good and I'm happy," Thuy said. "I like to feed people. It has always been that way, since I was born, I think."

Thuy, 66, runs the restaurant now with her youngest daughter Laura Chum, 30, and Chum's husband, Edison Beltran. She spends seven days a week prepping, preparing and shopping for food. Maintaining the restaurant, which costs more than $7,000 a month in rent and utilities, is expensive and time-consuming, she said.

"We try to tell her to relax a little bit," Chum said. "She enjoys her work so much."

Chum has worked in Sovan's eateries since she was a teenager, first in the original restaurant her brother still owns on Oakland Avenue in San Jose and then in Sovan's second -- and much bigger -- location in the city's Campbell neighborhood that Thuy opened in 1990 and sold to a friend upon moving to Hawaii in 2005. All of Thuy's six children have worked in her restaurants, as well as her now-retired husband, Ytthan Chum, 68, who once served in the Cambodian air force.

"We can fight and bicker all we want, and I can't get fired," Laura Chum said. "It's nice. It's family. We kind of work on our own pace at our own time. It's a little different."

Thuy evacuated her then-five children, ranging in age from 1 1/2 to 11 years old, to Long Beach, Calif., in 1975 after the communist Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot took over Thailand, where she had been living with her husband for five years. A member of the Cambodian army, he was killed when he returned to Cambodia that year for work.

"My house, my farm over there -- they took it," she said. "I cannot take it back. It's OK because we ran away from home."

After a year, Phnom Penh, Cambodia-born Thuy moved her family to Washington, D.C., where she met her second husband and had Laura, followed by a move to Portland, Ore., and then San Jose.

Thuy said she owes much of her success to a restaurant review published a few months after she opened her first restaurant.

"I cried that day. I cried," she said. "People were 15 tables full and outside was a long line. I had only one son help in the front of this small place and one cook inside, that's it."

Business has remained strong, drawing praise from foodie bloggers throughout the Bay Area.
"It was very successful," she said. "And then too many people were looking for my food, so I eliminated the hamburger."

Phnom Penh hits the heights

In the market for a million-dollar penthouse suite? Thinking Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok or Singapore? Try Phnom Penh.

February 18, 2008

South Korean-funded Yon Woo Cambodia announced in January the plan to offer Gold Tower 42, skyscraper apartments from about US$500,000 (Bt16.7 billion) to $1.6 million, and the development - scheduled for final completion in 2011 - will become the tallest in the city.

The Cambodian capital's rocketing real-estate prices have encouraged construction to reach for the skies, government spokesman Khieu Kanharith told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

"Five years ago another company began planning a 32-storey tower, which has yet to be built, on the outskirts of the capital, and we expect many more such projects," Kanharith said.

David Simister, chairman of property consultant CB Richard Ellis Thailand, agreed. He said that post-crisis Phnom Penh was now as attractive a property development destination as Ho Chi Minh City.

"Rules are quite clear on the back of a strong government. Between Thailand and Vietnam, Cambodia is quite liberal," Simister explained.

A condominium in Phnom Penh now sells for $2,000 per square metre, approximately the same as the Bt75,000 which is quoted for condominiums along Sukhumvit Road. According to Simister, demand is also strong as Cambodians are repatriating overseas earnings while the number of foreign businessmen in the city is growing.

The property market there is set to expand further with the growing tourism industry, following the expansion of the airport and the marketing of new tourist destinations.

Simister said that due to contacts for consulting and marketing services for properties in Phnom Penh his company would later this year open an office there, in the wake of others in Danang and Ho Chi Minh City.

He noted that foreign investors were now looking to do business in the city, thanks to the relaxed market requirements. Phnom Penh's maximum lease for foreigners is 99 years, against a maximum 70 years in Vietnam and 30 years in Thailand. "In Thailand, the ownership issue is not helpful for foreigners. Hopefully the new government will look into that," he said.

Kim Tae Gon, general manager of Yon Woo Cambodia, told DPA: "The investment climate is good. Cambodia is eager for development. We have sold 40 per cent of our apartments in Gold Tower 42 off the plan already, and the majority of buyers are Cambodians, although Koreans, Chinese and British have also bought," he said.

Cambodia's building industry is booming on the back of double-digit growth and hopes that revenue - and businesses - will begin rolling in on the back of the expected oil and mineral revenues due to be tapped within the next two to five years. A stock market is also in the offing within a year.

Achara Deboonme

The Nation

Archaeologists study Angkor's demise

The famed Angkor Wat temple is seen through branches of a palm tree in front of the monument in Siem Reap province, Cambodia, on Tuesday Jan. 22, 2006. An international research group is now trying to dig up answers to the question about Angkorian hydraulic network as part its quest to shed more light on the puzzles left since the demise of the Angkor city centuries ago.(AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Australian archaeologists Damian Evans, left, and Roland Fletcher, right, study a map of Angkorian city during a tour of excavation site in Siem Reap province, Cambodia, on Wednesday Jan. 23, 2008. An international research group is now trying to dig up answers to the question about Angkorian hydraulic network as part of its quest to shed more light on the puzzles left since the demise of the Angkor city centuries ago.(AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Associated Press
February 17, 2008

SIEM REAP, Cambodia - By destroying vast tracts of forest to enlarge their farmland, inhabitants of the wondrous city of Angkor lit the fuse to an ecological time bomb that spelled doom for what was once the world's largest urban area.

So believe archaeologists engaged in groundbreaking research into the ancient civilization of Angkor.

And they are warning that history could repeat itself through reckless, headlong pursuit of dollars from tourists flocking to see Angkor's fabled monuments.

"It's just a weird cycle. It seems like Angkor is repeating itself," said Mitch Hendrickson, who recently led an excavation as part of research into Angkor as a human settlement.

Conservationists have long expressed concerns about the state of the monuments, especially the stress from the tourist invasion. They also say the uncontrolled pumping of underground water to meet the rising demand of hotels, guesthouses and residents in the adjoining town of Siem Reap might be destabilizing the earth beneath the centuries-old temples so much that they might sink and collapse.

"There's just so much building going on without any concern about the long term. Things are moving so fast in Siem Reap today that it's going to chew itself up very quickly and become unsustainable," said Hendrickson, an archaeologist from the University of Sydney in Australia.

From their city, Angkorian kings ruled over most of Southeast Asia during their pinnacle between the ninth and 14th centuries, overseeing construction of architectural stone marvels, including Angkor Wat, regarded as a marvel of religious architecture.

While the 1431 invasion from what is now Thailand has long been regarded as a major cause of Angkor's fall, archaeologists from the Australian university's Greater Angkor Project believe earlier ecological forces led to its demise.

Their findings support a theory in the early 1950s by Bernard-Philippe Groslier, a French archaeologist, that the collapse of Angkor resulted from over-exploitation of the environment.

Angkor's inhabitants started rice farming in the low-lying area near the Tonle Sap lake just south of Siem Reap town, said Roland Fletcher, another archaeologist with the project.

But gradually, they cut down natural forest to extend their farmland up to the slope of Kulen mountain, 50 miles to the north, said Fletcher, who led 10 archaeologists to excavate various sites near the Angkor complex.

Flooding ensued, and huge amounts of sediment and sand were washed down to fill up canals - thus probably choking the vital water management system.

Using NASA's airborne imaging radar data, the project has conducted numerous aerial and ground surveys across nearly 1,200 square miles, which revealed that the city - with about 1 million inhabitants - was far larger than previously thought.

It covered 385 square miles and featured a sophisticated hydraulic system that proved too vast to manage.

Angkor was "a huge low-density, dispersed urban complex" comparable to Los Angeles and "by far the most extensive pre-industrial city on the planet," Fletcher said.

Its water network included an artificial canal used for diverting water from a natural river about 15 1/2 miles north of Angkor and two vast, man-made reservoirs called the East and West Barays.

The populace "probably didn't necessarily need any of this extra water ... because just a rain-fed rice agriculture is quite sufficient to feed a very substantial population," said Damian Evans, a project member.
One theory, he said, was that the Angkorian kings built the water system "to demonstrate their power and their authority to rule."

But he said only excavations and soil analysis could tell more.

Armed with a printed digital map of the Angkor area, Evans and Fletcher toured an excavation site at the West Baray where archaeologists dug trenches to seek traces of an ancient channel through the bank. They were trying to determine whether the channel really existed and could have served as both water inlet and outlet.

The reservoir is walled by four banks - now covered with jungle - each 40 feet high, 110 yards wide and about 12 miles in length. It can store up to 1.8 billion cubic feet of water.

Fletcher called it "the single largest artifact and piece of engineering in the pre-industrial world."

"All of this work is aimed at understanding how the water management system of Angkor functioned ... and how it stopped working," he said, adding that forest clearance is "the current key piece of information" about the ecological peril that caused Angkor to tumble.

Although past environmental problems were associated with deforestation, they also underline the menace the tourism boom is posing to the temples, the researchers say.

"The same types of things which we knew were problems of Angkor are essentially being repeated in our modern-day context in the Angkor area - things like unsustainable use of water, massive overdevelopment without any consideration of the long-term effects," Evans said.

"There's definitely lessons to be learned from what happened here before."

Cambodia comes to terms with its past

Cambodian and International co-prosecutors Chea Leang and Robert Petit work in the courtroom during the hearing of former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav on the outskirt of Phnom Penh. Cambodia's Khmer Rouge court opened its first public hearing late last year in what many see as a landmark moment for a country trying to overcome its brutal past.
TANG CHHIN SOTHY, AFP, GETTY IMAGES

Accused ringleaders of Khmer Rouge regime go on trial

Norma Greenaway, Canwest News Service
February 17, 2008

Youk Chhang remembers being aflame with an all-consuming desire for revenge when he settled in Texas in the 1980s as a survivor of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime in his native Cambodia.

The young refugee hated the people responsible for the extermination of about 1.7 million Cambodians -- 25 per cent of the population -- from April 1975 through January 1979, among them a beloved sister and countless other relatives.

But mostly, Chhang says, he hated them for making his mother's life a living hell. Now 74, she spent decades as a single mom haunted by the feeling she had failed to protect her children.

At one point, for example, she walked away as Chhang was being beaten within an inch of his life by Khmer Rouge enforcers because he was caught picking mushrooms to take to his pregnant, starving sister.

His mother reasoned that if she went to his defence, both of them would be killed. But Chhang was puzzled and hurt by his mother's behaviour and they became estranged for many years.

Once in the United States, Chhang says his days on the Texas A&M campus in College Station were peppered with crazed, solo protests about the brutality of the Khmer Rouge that fell mostly on deaf ears.

"I was young, I was naive," Chhang said of his lonely attempts to awaken fellow university students to the crimes against humanity committed by Pol Pot's forces.

He said the genocide seemed worse because it was Cambodians murdering and torturing other Cambodians -- not some foreign invader -- in a claimed quest to create a communist utopia where money, schools and religion were abolished.

The Khmer Rouge emptied the cities, exiling millions to vast collective farms where many died.
"It's the deepest, most horrible feeling -- living in a society where the nightmare is homemade," he said.

Almost three decades later, Chhang's anger has subsided and the wounded country is about to finally embark on a major turning point in its mending process -- the UN-backed prosecution of five accused Khmer Rouge ringleaders for their involvement in what the world has come to know as "the killing fields" of Cambodia.

The tribunal includes both Cambodian and foreign justices and prosecutors, among them Canadian lawyer Robert Petit.

"This is the last chapter of the Cambodian genocide," the soft-spoken Chhang said over the phone from Phnom Penh, where he has lived since he returned to Cambodia in the early 1990s.
"It's not about revenge anymore. It's about the future. We don't want it to be repeated ever again."

Chhang, 47, has spent the last decade collecting more than 1.5 million pages of documentary evidence and witness accounts of the genocide, murder, torture and religious persecution Cambodians endured under the Khmer Rouge.

Some of the material collected by the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, a private research body Chhang helped found, will be used during the prosecution of the five aging members of the former regime now in custody.

First up is Kaing Guek Eav, 66. Also known as Duch, he was head of the infamous Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh and is accused of directing the deaths of thousands of men, women and children. His case is expected to open before the tribunal in June or July.

The prosecutions come a decade too late to get Pol Pot, the infamous leader of the Khmer Rouge forces. He died in a jungle hideout in 1998.

Cambodians at home and abroad are divided over the merits of bringing even a handful of players to trial for atrocities committed so long ago.

Some say there is no justice that would make up for what happened to their families. Others say the trials only will serve to polish -- unjustifiably, according to them -- the current government's image. Still others say prosecution of at least a few of the villains is needed to achieve understanding and true forgiveness.

Political infighting and resistance from within the current government of Prime Minister Hun Sen, who only broke with the Khmer Rouge when he was about to be killed, have delayed the process.

Despite the setbacks, there is still a thirst for justice in the country, said Petit, the tribunal's co-prosecutor.
"It's 30 years after the fact. Presumably, most people have found a way, working or not, good or not, to deal with what happened," Petit said in an interview from Phnom Penh, where he has been preparing for the trials for the last 18 months.

"But as a nation, it is important. It will allow the nation as a whole to see some justice for what happened here."

ADB president arrives in Cambodia for visit

chinaview.cn
2008-02-17

PHNOM PENH, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Haruhiko Kuroda arrived in Phnom Penh Sunday for his first official visit to Cambodia.

Kuroda is scheduled to meet with senior Cambodian government officials on Monday to discuss ADB's assistance programs in this country and the important role of regional cooperation in the Southeast Asia region, an ADB news release said.

Kuroda will also travel to Sisophon in northwest Cambodia to launch a new railway rehabilitation project and will sign a package of five grants and loans that will help spur job creation, expand educational opportunities, and enhance growth, it said.

Cambodia has received over one billion U.S. dollars in assistance since joining ADB in 1966, according to the news release.

Between 2004 and 2007, ADB has provided six grants and nine loans to Cambodia totaling 250 million U.S. dollars, it said, adding that ADB plans to provide an additional 50 million U.S. dollars in assistance this year.

Editor: Bi Mingxin

Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia meet on development triangle

vietnamnet.vn
17/02/2008

VietNamNet Bridge - Strong pledges were made at a two-day meeting on trade and investment promotion into the “Development Triangle” comprising 10 border provinces of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia concluded in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, on Feb. 17.

Pledges showed the three countries’ resolve to boost investment into the region, strengthen internal link and put into full use potential and available resources of each and every province for economic development, especially production of commodities.

“No stone will be left unturned so as to reach the goal for high and sustainable economic growth ratified by the Prime Ministers of the three countries in Vientiane , Laos , on November 28, 2004,” they said in an agreement.

The Vietnamese head delegate, Deputy Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Bich Dat, said the country has issued open policies, offered numerous stimuli and upgraded infrastructure facilities to boost investment from the three countries as well as other countries into the Vietnamese provinces lying in the “Development Triangle.”

“The Vietnamese Government has also taken measures to encourage domestic investors to invest in Lao and Cambodian provinces lying in the Development Triangle,” he added.

The meeting, the second of its kind to date, was marked with a speech by Senior Minister and Trade Minister of Cambodia Cham Prasith. He emphasised the important role played by the “Development Triangle of Cambodia , Laos and Vietnam ” in the socio-economic development of each province in the region and the common future of the three countries as well.

He said the conference would be a good opportunity for businesses and authorities from the three countries’ provinces sharing the borderline to promote trade and investment so as to turn the “Development Triangle” into a region of socio-economically sustainable development.

The meeting drew in over 100 businesses, plus authorities, from the three countries who shared experiences and informed each other with their own countries’ policies and stimuli for foreign investment.

The region has been highly evaluated for its great potential in hydro-power industry, mining, industrial crops growing and processing, and tourism.

(Source: VNA)