Beg the question

Cambodian youngsters are being helped by charities such as Sunrise Angkor Children's Village

There are better ways to help in developing countries than handing out coins to children on the street, advises Christine Retschlag

May 03, 2008

THERE'S hardly a corner of the world where travellers can avoid poverty. Many of us, with just a few short days to experience a destination, grapple with ways in which to address the issue without making situations, such as begging, even worse.

At best, many travellers feel ineffectual and embarrassed and, at worst, some transform into the uncaring ugly Westerner.

But there are many practical and positive ways to make a difference. Kristie Kellahan, a writer who regularly volunteers at an orphanage in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, suggests contacting aid organisations, such as the Red Cross, to assess the needs before you visit a country.

She advises travellers to think about what they are giving and avoid pushing Western values on to different cultures. "People come to visit the orphanage and want to give the children toys, lollies, soft drinks and ice cream," she says. " But what would be useful is nappies for the babies, blank exercise books, pencils, sharpeners and things like that for the older ones."

Kellahan says while it is important not to judge the actions of fellow tourists, there are often more constructive ways to make a difference than handing money to beggars. "By supporting kids selling postcards and chewing gum, it encourages families to send them to the city and they may be missing out on going to school. It's damaging for kids who make money when they are cute and young, but when they get older they can't make money any more."

In countries such as Laos, many children have never owned a book, let alone read one. In June 2006, in Luang Prabang, the Big Brother Mouse program opened its doors, publishing colourful and educational books in English and Lao. Travellers to this charming town can visit two centres -- recognisable by the cut-out mouse outside -- and read or speak in English with local children. Outside the town centre, tourists can purchase packs of educational books that come with a set of useful instructions, such as not to give the books to the most forward children on arrival in a village but consider the shy child in the corner who is likelier to share. Or, where possible, present the books to a local teacher.

In Cambodia's Siem Reap, the gateway town to Angkor Wat, the La Noria hotel has dedicated two massage rooms by the pool where blind masseuses offer massages to guests priced from about $US5 ($5.35). All money goes directly to the masseuses, for whom extreme poverty would otherwise be a certainty. Also in Siem Reap, Raffles Hotel d'Angkor supports the Sunrise Angkor Children's Village, a local orphanage that opened in 1979 after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime and is managed by the Australia Cambodia Foundation. Every Sunday, between 2pm and 3pm, children at the orphanage dress in exquisite costumes and perform traditional Cambodian dance and music. Entry is free but donations are gratefully accepted.

Kerin Ord, World Vision team leader for southern Africa, the Middle East and eastern Europe, warns travellers to be aware of scams that exploit children.

"Be wary of giving money to young children begging, they could belong to a Fagan-like organisation in which children are exploited. The children don't get to keep the money but have to pass it on to the leaders," she says.

"If you want to give something, consider small gifts such as pens or clip-on koalas or offer to buy them a meal or some water. While you may want to buy a soccer ball for the children to play with, what they may really need is food.

"People who are moved by their experiences shouldn't forget about it as soon as they get home. Harness that passion and become engaged in global issues; maybe join the Make Poverty History campaign or volunteer for a reputable charity."

In Code Green: Experiences of a Lifetime (Lonely Planet, $29.95), editor Kerry Lorimer cites "indiscriminate giving by tourists" as a contributing factor behind a "begging culture that undermines traditional culture and social structures" in many countries.

"As a traveller, you're seen less as a human being and more as a piggy bank," she writes.

"Alternatively, you could choose not to give to anyone, but to refuse someone genuinely suffering can border on inhumane. The best approach probably lies somewhere in the middle and where that middle is, is up to you. You might decide that someone (who) performs a small service should be rewarded with a tip, or that mothers with children, entertainers, holy men and women and-or the disabled may deserve a contribution.

"Perhaps best of all, try to give of yourself, rather than your wealth. Share a joke or a meal, start a conversation, pull out photos of your kids or home town or play a game."

Travel wholesaler Peregrine and Geckos Asia destination manager Becky Last advises travellers to try to see beyond the beggar to the person. "It's really hard for us to identify with the people who are tugging at us demanding money, but try to retain your sense of compassion, and playfulness with the kids," she says. "Those truly living hand-to-mouth on the streets can't afford to stop begging, but for those kids who are trying it on with the tourists or to see if it works or what they can get, a game or messing about with a pad and paper for five to 10 minutes is a healthier interaction for everyone."
www.redcross.org.au

www.bigbrothermouse.com
www.lanoriaangkor.com
www.siemreap.raffles.com
www.makepovertyhistory.com.au
www.sunrisechildrensvillage.org

Govt loses millions trying to curb gasoline prices

TANG CHHIN SOTHY/ AFP A vendor fills a motorbike with gasoline in Phnom Penh – an increasingly costly activity but one that could have been even more expensive this year had the government raised taxes on fuel importers as global oil prices rose to record highs.

Courtesy of Phnom Penh Post at http://www.phnompenhpost.com

Written by Cheang Sokha
Friday, 02 May 2008

With gasoline hovering around record highs of 5,000 riels per liter, Prime Minister Hun Sen said the government has struggled to curb pump prices, losing tens of millions of dollars in a bid to keep fuel costs affordable.

Speaking April 23 at the Government-Private Sector Forum, Hun Sen said $240 million in potential tax revenue had been lost since the beginning of 2007, when the government decided not to raise the per-liter tax on fuel importers to keep pace with spiraling world oil prices.

“This factor is behind the less sharp rise of gasoline prices in Cambodia compared to neighboring countries and the price of oil on the international market,” Hun Sen told several hundred Cambodian and international participants at the forum.

Despite global oil trading at all-time highs – prices struck over $119 in late April – Cambodia has kept its tax on fuel at between 1,700 and 2,000 riels per liter, according to officials.

This, however, has not prevented a spike in fuel costs – including cooking gas – that has hit hard in Cambodia, where more than a third of the country’s 14 million people are mired in poverty.

The high prices have also encouraged smuggling from outside of the country, further adding to the burden on consumers, said Yim Sovann, chairman of the National Assembly’s Commission on Home Affairs, National Defense, Investigation and Anti-Corruption.

“This seriously affects the livelihoods of civil servants and workers who earn small incomes,” Sovann told the Post on April 28.“Their income and their expenses are not balanced.”

Prok Yan, a 53 year-old rice farmer in Kampong Chhnang province, said the diesel fuel he is using to run his irrigation pump is now four times as expensive as the dry season rice he is growing.

“If I sell four kilograms of paddy rice, then I can buy one liter of diesel,” he said. “What’s the point? I’m not happy with the price of oil at the moment as it is rising like it will never stop.”

The discovery of offshore oil by the US energy giant Chevron has raised hopes that domestic petroleum production could insulate Cambodia from rising world fuel prices, according to Men Den of the Cambodian National Petroleum Authority.

But with production not expected to start until 2011 at the earliest, Cambodians are going to have to weather out the current inflationary storm that has spread to other consumer goods like food, said Kang Chan Dararot, president of the Cambodian Institute of Development Study.

“People see no solution which could curb the rising price of gasoline,” Dararot said.

“It not only affects farmers but also local and international investors.”

Dengue cases down but risks remain as rainy season looms

CAT BARTON A boy sits on scales while receiving a checkup at Angkor Children’s Hospital in Siem Reap province last November at the tail end of a dengue fever epidemic in which nearly 40,000 Cambodian’s contracted the illness.

Courtesy of Phnom Penh Post at http://www.phnompenhpost.com

Written by Meas Sokchea
Friday, 02 May 2008

The number of dengue fever cases has plummeted in the first four months of this year, compared to the same period in 2007, said health officials who warned, however, that fewer people were taking precautions against the disease and the country could still face an epidemic with the approaching wet season.

Some 427 people had contracted the mosquito-borne illness by the end of April, resulting in eight deaths, said Dr Nga Chantha, head of Cambodia’s dengue program at the National Malaria Center.

That is far fewer than the more than 2,000 people who had fallen ill by this time last year, he told the Post on April 29.

Nearly 40,000 people contracted dengue and hundreds of people – mostly young children – died of the disease during 2007 in one of the worst outbreaks in decades.

To prevent a repeat of last year’s epidemic, Chantha urged better cooperation between the public and health officials conducting education campaigns about the disease, which is marked by high fevers and crippling headaches or joint pain.

In its worst, often fatal form, dengue hemorrhagic fever the disease destroys the blood vessels, causing its victims to bleed profusely and go into shock.

People have been asked to keep their living areas free of standing water, in which mosquitoes breed, as well as received handouts of the insecticide Abate, 200 hundred tons of which are distributed each year, according to Chantha.

“But some people want the experts to carry out the preventative work for them. They do not seem to be taking dengue fever very seriously,” he said.

“Our experts go and try to give people advice but they have not followed through … dengue is neglected here, but in the region, Cambodia has one of the highest risks for this disease,” he added.

Dengue is the most common mosquito-borne viral disease of humans that in recent years has become a major international health concern, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Worldwide, 2.5 billion people live in areas where dengue viruses can be transmitted, leading to the global resurgence of epidemic dengue fever and emergence of dengue hemorrhagic fever in the past 25 years, the WHO said on its website.

PM warns private sector ahead of election

File Photo Prime Minister Hun Sen confidently announced April 23 he would solve a host of economic problems, but warned the nation could slide back into political chaos if his party, the CPP, did not win national elections this July.

Courtesy of Phnom Penh Post at http://www.phnompenhpost.com

Written by Susan Postlewaite
Friday, 02 May 2008

Sitting center stage at the head of a retinue of top government officials, Prime Minister Hun Sen opened this year’s annual Government-Private Sector Forum with an announcement that his finance minister, Keat Chhon, had a laundry list of obstacles hobbling commerce in Cambodia.

He then confidently pronounced to the April 23 gathering of hundreds of foreign and Cambodian business people that, “the prime minister will solve all of these problems.”

Over the next several hours an animated Hun Sen bellowed, joked, cajoled and criticized his way through a characteristically earthy performance usually reserved for building political capital with farmers in some distant province.

But this time he was playing to a crowd of mostly private sector leaders, bluntly soliciting for their backing in upcoming national elections … or else.

“In Southeast Asia no one has been longer in premiership than Hun Sen. But I also need to win the election … I need private sector support,” he said.

“If I lose (and there is instability) you might have to flee the country,” he warned, drawing together business and politics ahead of national elections on July 27 in which the economy is likely to play a key role.

Crime to rise in 2008: expert

Courtesy of Phnom Penh Post at http://www.phnompenhpost.com

Written by Sebastian Strangio and Khouth Sophak Chakrya
Friday, 02 May 2008

Politics, inflation get blame

A steady decline in crimes against people in Phnom Penh since 2001 could be reversed this year because of rampant inflation and rising political tensions ahead of the general election in July, experts have warned.

Changing Crime In Phnom Penh, a recent study by Rod Broadhurst and Thierry Bouhours of Australia’s Griffith University, surveyed 1,092 households in the capital and found that Phnom Penh has lower rates of crimes against people than London, New York, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Buenos Aires.

Just 24 percent of Phnom Penh respondents reported being a victim of crime in 2006, compared with 46 percent in 2001, the study said.

However, while crime in Phnom Penh is down across the board, Broadhurst suggested that the gains were fragile and could easily be threatened by the spiraling cost of basic commodities such as gas, which rose above 5,000 riels a liter for the first time in April.

“Our surveys tell us that there has been a significant drop in street crime, in street corruption, and wealth creation has been very important in contributing to this decline,” said Broadhurst.

_______________________________________

“But I’m concerned about the prices of basic commodities like rice. I’m concerned that there could be a spike (in crime) out of desperation,” he said.

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“I’m concerned about the prices of basic commodities like rice. I’m concerned that there could be a spike (in crime) out of desperation.”

Mok Chito, chief of the Crime Department at the Ministry of Interior, said crime was down by more than 16 percent in 2007, or 724 fewer cases than in 2006.

Chito said the fall was due to community cooperation to eradicate crime.

“NGOs, the police, the media and the people have all cooperated to reduce crime,” he said. “We’ve all done it together – not just the police.”

Chito doubted whether inflation would reverse the decline, arguing that “anger and revenge” cause crime, not the cost of food. “If someone is strongly vengeful, they will commit crime,” he said.

As inflation looms as a key issue in the July 27 national elections, human rights groups have warned the coming months may see an increase in violence against political dissidents, a crime that goes unreported in official statistics.

Ny Chakrya, head of the monitoring section at the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association, is skeptical of Ministry of Interior figures showing declines in crimes against people, from 58.5 per 100,000 in 1998 to 32.4 per 100,000 in 2005.

He could not comment on rates of burglary or theft, but said human rights abuses had already risen this year.

“What the ministry will publicize is not true. It is very selective and very manipulated,” Chakrya said. “I don’t see the Ministry of Interior publishing a report about human rights violations.”
Still, Broadhurst is confident that political stability and economic growth will continue to reduce crime over the long term.

Compared with 26 other cities around the world, Phnom Penh rates among the lowest for violent assault, with less than a tenth of the levels in Johannesburg, while sexual and other assaults against women are also low in global terms.

He also observed a notable increase in the trust shown in Cambodia’s police force.
“There were, particularly in rural areas, pretty significantly positive attitudes towards most police,” Broadhurst said.

“It’s very important not to paint too grim a picture.”

Snakes, turtles seized in Battambang

Courtesy of Phnom Penh Post at http://www.phnompenhpost.com

Written by AFP
Friday, 02 May 2008

Cambodian authorities have seized nearly half a ton of live pythons and turtles that were being smuggled from Thailand to Vietnam, a wildlife conservationist group said on May 1. The animals, which included 11 reticulated pythons, 13 Burmese pythons and 257 turtles, were confiscated on April 28 in Battambang province, the Wildlife Alliance said. Most of the animals had been “illegally collected (in Cambodia) and had been moved to a large-scale holding facility in Thailand before eventually being shipped to Vietnam through Cambodia,” the group said in a statement. Weighing 418.5 kilograms, the haul of creatures included Asian box turtles, Malayan snail-eating turtles, black marsh turtles, 12 threatened yellow-headed temple turtles, and two red-eared slider turtles. The animals were confiscated from a Chevrolet pick-up truck with military license plates, the group said, adding that a 32-year-old military lieutenant was being questioned. (AFP)

Khmer chess tourney to formalize game

Courtesy of Phnom Penh Post at http://www.phnompenhpost.com

Written by The Phnom Penh Post
Friday, 02 May 2008

The Cambodian Chess Association (CCA) and the Olympic Committee of Cambodia (OCC) will jointly hold the First Khmer Chess Tournament from May 3-4 in order to standardize and highlight the game. The winner will receive $1,000 while the runner-up and third place will receive $700 and $500 respectively. Participating teams are to be established on provincial or municipal basis. CCA chairman Ly Hout told China’s Xinhua news agency he had raised $10,000 to encourage Cambodians to find and submit historical relics that could tell the real origin of the centuries-old sport. Khmer chess is a popular pastime here, although there have been no national matches yet as the OCC and CCA only recently certified the rules, Hout said.

Inflation causes voter apathy

Courtesy of Phnom Penh Post at http://www.phnompenhpost.com

Written by Khouth Sophak Chakrya
Friday, 02 May 2008

Spiraling inflation is emerging as a key issue ahead of national polls on July 27, election monitors say, warning that the rising cost of living could keep people from traveling to distant voting booths.

“They are worried that their income is not high enough to pay for food and transportation,” said Koul Panha, executive director of the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia.

He told the Post there were already indications low-income voters would stay away from the polls, citing falling turnout in the 2007 commune council elections that he attributed partially to higher living costs. Only about 70 percent of eligible voters cast ballots last year, compared to highs exceeding 90 percent in previous national elections when living was cheaper, he said, appealing for greater turnout in July.

But some voters say they have become disillusioned with politics and what they see as the failure of Cambodia’s leaders to address the issues affecting everyday life.

“I stopped believing in politicians,” said one vegetable vendor in Phnom Penh’s Tuol Sangke Market, adding that politicians often win office on empty promises. “I won’t vote anymore because I’d rather concentrate on growing vegetables to sell at the market so I can support my family and educate my children,” she said.

Some low-income workers said voting, which required them to travel to their distant home provinces, was a waste of money.

“It will cost me money to travel to the province to vote and I can’t afford to do that because, on my income, I can barely afford enough to eat,” said garment worker Ros Vuthy, who is registered to vote in Svay Rieng province bordering Vietnam.

But Tep Nytha, secretary-general of the National Election Committee, downplayed the effects of inflation, saying it should not deter voters.

“I don’t believe that voters are so ignorant that they will give up their right to vote,” he said.

Govt kept in dark over Preah Vihear talks

Courtesy of Phnom Penh Post at http://www.phnompenhpost.com

Written by Vong Sokheng
Friday, 02 May 2008

Cambodia was unaware of the abrupt cancellation of this week’s talks with Thailand and UNESCO over the disputed Preah Vihear temple, a government spokesman said April 30, adding that the government has been kept in the dark over rescheduling of the mediation session.

Both countries were invited by the UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization to a two-day meeting in Paris starting May 2 to discuss the listing of the ancient temple on the Thai-Cambodian border as a World Heritage Site.

However, less than a week out from the meeting, Thai officials said UNESCO had postponed the Paris talks and the UN organization would now send its coordinator on the matter, Francesco Caruso, to meet separately with the Thai and Cambodian governments.

But Phay Siphan, spokesman of Cambodia’s Council of Ministers, said Phnom Penh had not been informed of any changes to the meeting.

“We did not receive any official notification from UNESCO in Paris about canceling the meeting between Thailand and Cambodia over the listing of the ancient temple,” Siphan told the Post.

He also downplayed the importance of the talks, saying the key issue of ownership over the Preah Vihear ruins had been settled in 1962 when the International Court of Justice ruled they were within Cambodia’s borders.

“We don’t have any conflict with Thailand and it is not necessary to have a coordinator when there isn’t a problem, because the temple is the sovereign property of Cambodia,” Siphan said.

He added that the Cambodian government expected Preah Vihear to be officially approved as a World Heritage Site when the UNESCO committee next meets in early July.

A political dynasty in the making? Meet Lon Rith

VANDY RATTANA Lon Rith, president of the Khmer Republican Party, plays down his political ties to the past, saying, “Don’t think of us as republicans.”

Courtesy of Phnom Post at http://www.phnompenhpost.com

Written by Sebastian Strangio
Friday, 02 May 2008

How much political capital Lon Nol, founder of the ill-fated Khmer Republic, still has in Cambodia is debatable. But his son, Lon Rith, founder and president of the Khmer Republican Party (KRP), thinks his family tree will stand him in good stead for this July’s national elections.

The 46-year-old father of four has not lived in Cambodia for nearly four decades, but now he’s back with a new political party and a self-professed desire to bring “true democracy” to the Kingdom.

Although he left the country just before his father’s 1970 coup against then-head of state Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Rith says he has “pleasant memories” of the “good times” in Cambodia during that period.

Unsurprisingly, King Father Norodom Sihanouk hated Lon Nol, who died in exile in America in 1985, and the passage of years has done little to ease this animosity. On April 26, less than a week after Rith arrived in the Kingdom, Sihanouk issued a statement reiterating his disgust with the Lonnolians who were, he claimed, “world champions in matters of corruption.”

Rith stops short of admitting the abolition of the monarchy was a mistake – “let’s just say that that’s history,” he says – but he does claim he would not repeat such a move. “In this day and age you have to do things diplomatically,” he said.

He spoke to the Post’s Sebastian Strangio at his party’s modest headquarters in downtown Phnom Penh, where photographs of his late father line the walls.

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What has prompted you to return to Cambodia?
I am Cambodian. And just like any other Cambodian, I want to help my country and give everybody a chance to prosper. I believe that there are quite a few things that our party can do to help the people.

What are the core principles of the KRP?
We want to be able to elevate the people, give them a voice, and give them not just hope but the basic needs and necessities: food, education, jobs and a higher standard of living. There are always ways to improve the current system. I, who have lived abroad, have seen how different countries have established democracy and I want to bring that same system here to Cambodia.

Critics say you’ve been away so long you don’t know Cambodia well enough to govern. What is your response?
I don’t mind them criticizing me. I believe that if I had come here when I was in my 20s, the way I would have approached things would have been very different. Before you do something you have to know what you really want to do; you don’t just jump into it on an impulse. The KRP is a result of a long process of thought and the realization of what I can do to help my country.

Where will the KRP get its support?
No party wants to win support with just money. In order for the party to make a difference, you need [to speak with] the people’s voice, and that’s where we draw support, from the people. I believe that Cambodians – regardless of their ethnic backgrounds or their beliefs – all want democracy. And I believe that the KRP can help turn that idealism into a reality.

Do you anticipate success in the July elections?
We feel that we have a very good chance to win a few parliamentary seats and to establish a base amongst the Cambodian people. And if the people want to make a difference and want us to help them, we welcome them with an open heart. I believe that we do have support in Cambodia, and I believe that we will genuinely be able to help people.

What do you remember about growing up in Cambodia in the 1970s?
After I left Cambodia [in 1969], I visited my family every vacation until the country fell and I know what my father tried to do. I personally assisted him, not back in Cambodia, but after the country fell. And I did get some experience seeing the Khmer Republic at the time, [watching] what my father did and how [the Republic] functioned. My main recollection was staying with my parents at our home and going on outings with my father.

What do you think were the greatest successes of the Khmer Republic?
I believe that the Khmer Republic lifted up the people, elevated their pride as nationalists. They did things that no other country at the time would have done. Even though there was a civil war going on, many people did all they could in order to prevent the situation that came afterwards. And I have to give them credit for that.

Do you think history has judged the Khmer Republic harshly?
I believe that the history has not been fully in the open, not for the general public. This period in history is critical, not just because it’s part of the history of Cambodia but because it’s part of the history of the world. Suppose the period from 1776 until the end of the (American) Revolution was erased from American history, and it only continued after the country moved forward, forgetting the period where Americans fought for their freedom – that’s what it amounts to if you erase the era between 1970 and 1975.

Do have a message for Cambodian voters before the elections?
I want to tell the Cambodian people that we are here to help them out. We’re not here as a political party – don’t think of us as republicans. First of all, we’re all Cambodians. And secondly, we want to be able to establish a country that gives the people a voice in the elections. We want to be able to give everyone a fair chance, and we want not only democracy but we want to bring about true democracy, which would help everyone regardless of class, ethnicity, religion or gender.

Beggars to get the boot from top tourist sites

VANDY RATTANA A policeman watches over beggars on the Phnom Penh riverfront April 30, ahead of a nationwide crackdown on panhandling at Cambodia’s most popular tourist sites.

Courtesy of Phnom Penh Post at http://www.phnompenhpost.com

Written by Post Staff
Friday, 02 May 2008

They’re seen in increasing numbers on the streets of Phnom Penh and other tourist destinations in Cambodia; the maimed and whole, children and the elderly, sometimes a mother, one hand outstretched to passersby while the other cradles a limp infant.

Begging is nothing new to Cambodia, where millions are destitute, but as increasing numbers of foreign tourists flock to the Kingdom, those panhandling for their money have also multiplied and, according to some, are threatening the very source of their livelihood.

“If beggars continue to do what they do, we will lose tourist numbers,” said Minister of Tourism Thong Khon, speaking to the Post on April 29 about the government’s plans to clear panhandlers from tourist sites.

Officials are meeting May 5 in Siem Reap province, home to the famed Angkor Wat temples, where they intend to kick off their anti-begging campaign after a recent surge in aggressive panhandling at the popular Chong Khneas floating villages at the mouth of the Tonle Sap Lake.

There, dozens of beggars have begun rowing boats out to the restaurants frequented by foreigners to ask for money.

When none is given, “they throw water on the tourists … they are creating disorder,” said Khon. “They can do many things for money besides begging from tourists … it leaves the tourists with a bad image and they may talk to their friends about this begging.”

Past attempts to remove beggars from popular tourist areas like Phnom Penh’s riverfront promenade have met with mixed results.

The beggars eventually come back, seemingly in larger numbers and still without any other source of income other than to panhandle.

“I wouldn’t try to get rid of the people – (the government) should try to support the people more, it should change something in its political system to help those people to stop begging instead of just removing them,” said German tourist Roland Wenks, who was traveling in Siem Reap.

This time, the government has embarked on an ambitious campaign not just to simply remove beggars, but also to give them an alternate source of income that keeps them from looking for handouts, Khon said.

“The ministry has asked provincial authorities to take beggars to a place where they can start new jobs,” Khon said.

“We have to provide them with jobs such as selling newspapers, books, selling souvenirs or selling drinks for tourists,” he added.

“In general at tourism sites there should be no such thing as poor people because everyone should benefit from tourists.”
In some popular tourist areas the problem is not as acute.

Downtown Siem Reap, with its hordes of foreign visitors, has relatively few beggars compared to Phnom Penh and visitors interviewed there said they were not bothered by the few panhandlers they encountered.

“To a degree I expect them,” said Australian Rick Stevenson.

“You give the occasional one a bit of money when you can afford it, so at the end of the day no, no problems with beggars,” he told the Post.

But giving money to panhandlers is exactly what encourages more begging, say advocates – particularly those working with street children.

Instead, groups like ChildSafe International are urging greater cooperation among the government, NGOs and travelers to aid those who have been reduced to panhandling.

“We don’t want to be critical of the government – we believe the best way is to work with them,” ChildSafe International coordinator Mark Turgesen told the Post on April 30.

“If we have [government] support to promote ChildSafe to travelers in Cambodia we have a better chance of making sure these beggars have a chance to live their lives off their street,” he added

Coalition offers reveal opposition in disarray

TANG CHHIN SOTHY/ AFP SRP leader Sam Rainsy says he wants a mass coalition of all political parties who oppose the ruling CPP, but analysts say the pride of party leaders could hamper any potential merger.

Courtesy of Phnom Penh Post at http://www.phnompenhpost.com

Written by Meas Sokchea
Friday, 02 May 2008

It was only moments after his return on April 29 from a campaign sweep through Canada and the US that political leader Sam Rainsy declared his readiness to merge with Cambodia’s two other major opposition parties as the country races towards national elections in July.

Only such a marriage would have a chance at diminishing the power of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party’s (CPP), which observers expect will become absolute in the absence of the coalition government deals which have resulted from previous polls.

But Rainsy’s offer was not without conditions and accusations aimed at the very partners he is seeking, something analysts say reveals an opposition hopelessly at odds with itself and unlikely to loosen the CPP’s stranglehold over Cambodia’s political affairs.

“They do not have confidence in each other,” said Chea Vannath, the former director of the Center for Social Development who is now an independent analyst.

“They must merge together to compete with the CPP, but ... they cannot call for a coalition only as the election arrives,” she told the Post on April 30.

“A coalition is a very important force, but each (party leader) is too proud and will not agree to work together.”

Corruption, legal problems and even messy personal lives have come into play and Rainsy and leaders of the Human Rights Party (HRP), headed by former activist Kem Sokha, and Prince Norodom Ranariddh’s self-named political organization point fingers at each other, while at the same time pledging to support a coalition.

Upon returning to Cambodia, Rainsy demanded that the “weak points” of both of his potential allies be addressed or all three risked being “held hostage” by the CPP.

Kem Sokha, who has been at the center of a vicious whisper campaign over alleged graft, needed to sort out corruption allegations made by his former employees at the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, according to Rainsy.

The Prince, in self-imposed exile since he was ousted as head of the royalist Funcinpec party amid a flurry of legal assaults, including one for adultery, must tidy up his private affairs, Rainsy said.

“No one else can help him with that,” he told the Post.

These comments have not gone down well, with Kem Sokha shooting back that Rainsy – the long-time darling of foreign pro-democracy campaigners – has no real commitment to form a coalition, as well as legal problems of his own that could jeopardize the opposition’s election chances.

The HRP has long pushed for a coalition with the two other opposition parties, but the plan is still “a failure,” Sokha said, adding that while he would unconditionally join Rainsy, he did not know if he could merge with the Prince’s Norodom Ranariddh Party, or NRP.

“He (Ranariddh) is different from me,” he said, accusing the NRP of shamelessly using a joint meeting with his own group to encourage defections to the NRP.

“This is a divide and rule policy it does not demonstrate the good will you need to form a democratic coalition,” Sokha said.
The disarray is, however, just more evidence of the CPP’s pending election landslide, according to government spokesman Khieu Kanharith.

“This is five riels being divided between three people,” he told the Post on May 1.

The opposition “merged many times before but those mergers were always broken – it is no worry to the CPP,” he said.

Officials at the NRP, while professing to want a coalition, claim that the two other parties simply waited until it was too close to the July 27 elections to realistically merge.

Registration for parties ends on May 12, and NRP spokesman Muth Chantha said, “When the election will arrive so soon why … hold press conferences about coalitions?

“We cannot merge now into one big party, it is too late. It is very deceptive to claim we can.”

Credibility remains elusive for the fractious opposition, said Koul Panha, executive director of the Cambodian election monitor Committee for Free and Fair Elections, and the most recent bickering does not help.

“The merger must be sincere … but do these three leaders have the will to do this?” he said.

Microsoft targeting kids, not criminals

HENG CHIVOAN Pirated versions of Microsoft programs are readily available in Phnom Penh stores.

Courtesy of Phnom Penh Post at http://www.phnompenhpost.com

Written by Brendan Brady
Friday, 02 May 2008

Microsoft will not wage a war on piracy in Cambodia and will instead focus on cultivating a new generation of computer users loyal to the company, the American software giant said.

While Microsoft estimates about 98 percent of its products in Cambodia are bootlegs, the company can still make progress without targeting illegal production and distribution, according to Pily Wong, general manager of Microsoft’s office in Cambodia.

Microsoft can promote its software “by turning people onto it at a young age so they are familiar with the brand and how to use it,” Wong told the Post, predicting greater penetration of programs in the country, even if they are not the real McCoy.

“There can be education in Microsoft software. Even if people are using pirated software, when they get older they might be able to afford the genuine version,” he said.

Legal software costs several hundred dollars and up, while pirated copies sell for about $5 in markets.

There were rumors Microsoft was contemplating a piracy crackdown when the company launched its “Marketing Development Program for Cambodia” in March.

“Microsoft is working along with industry partners to make consumers aware of the increasing risks associated with acquiring and installing counterfeit software, such as exposure to critical issues and identify theft,” Wong said.

“But targeting piracy is not Microsoft’s mission,” he added.

“We’re a business. We’re not the police, we’re not the government. BSA (Business Software Alliance) is doing their job in other countries and it worked, and one day they might come to Cambodia.”

The Business Software Alliance is a privately funded trade group that represents a number of the world’s largest software makers, including Microsoft. Its principal activity is trying to stop copyright infringement – an activity it claims costs the software industry over $11 billion a year.

In March, Microsoft unveiled a market plan for Cambodia to take advantage of what it calls a “budding and opportunistic” environment for IT.

The company has teamed up with local retailers to improve technical support for buyers. It is also planning to provide training sessions for local universities and companies to improve their understanding of Microsoft products.

Wong said Microsoft will use a business model previously applied in Vietnam, where it first opened an office in 1996 and now earns around $10 million annually.

“Cambodia is a developing country with big potential,” Wong said. “Microsoft has had huge success in Vietnam, and the logical next step was to move to Cambodia.

“In Vietnam, the office started with five people and now it has around 160 ten years later.”

Wong said the growing number of computers in Cambodia – it estimates that growth at 25 percent a year – and age demographics, with about half the population under 20 years of age, were promising indicators for Microsoft’s entry.

The country’s economic growth and political stability also helped woo the company, he added.

“The country is very stable now and the government is really open to expanding the IT sector. They believe IT will help the country leap to catch up to its neighbors,” Wong said.

He added that Cambodia’s entry into the World Trade Organization, which in theory holds Cambodia to enforcing international copyright laws, did not factor into Microsoft’s decision to set up shop in the Kingdom.

Cambodia, Laos, Thailand vow to fight drug trafficking

Vietnam Net Bridge
02/05/2008

VietNamNet Bridge – Cambodia, Laos and Thailand have agreed to set up more border liaison offices (BLO) to detect and prevent the transport of drugs from the Gold Triangle to the three countries’ borders.

The agreement was reached at a recent regional forum on cross-border drug control in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

The forum was held by the ASEAN United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) with the participation of Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.

Cambodia and Thailand have jointly set up six BLOs and provided technical equipment to the offices.

Cambodia also held high-level meetings with Laos and Vietnam to discuss the establishment of such BLO. As a result, Cambodia and Laos have set up two BLOs in Cho Tan Thum of Cambodia and Luon Kham of Laos.

The two countries were expected to set up more BLOs in Preah Vihear Province of Cambodia and Champassak Province of Laos.At the forum, UNODC representative Songatit Kittikhunwatchana applauded the cooperation of regional countries in jointly setting up BLOs.

The UN official affirmed the forthcoming BLO cooperation between Cambodia and Laos would help the fight against drugs trafficking in the region and around the world.

(Source: VNA)

Corruption in education sector?

Picture from Centre for Social Development at

http://www.csdcambodia.org/en_index.html

Sam Rainsy Party lead a march with a group of factory workers on strike at City New Garment Factory in Phnom Penh

Heavy presence of anti-riot police forces blocking nearby streets

May 2, 2008 : MPs Sam Rainsy, Ho Vann, Nou Sovath and Son Chhay lead a march with a group of factory workers on strike at City New Garment Factory in Phnom Penh

The Mekong Times : In Khmer and English Language

Courtesy of Mekong Times at http://www.mcdcambodia.com
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Senate confirms first U.S. envoy to ASEAN

www.chinaview.cn

2008-05-02

WASHINGTON, May 1 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Senate has confirmed the appointment of Scot Marciel to become the first envoy to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), U.S. media reported Thursday.

The confirmation of Marciel "is an extraordinary milestone affirming the strong bipartisan commitment of American leaders and the American people to maintain and broaden our relationship with ASEAN," said Dick Lugar, a heavyweight Republican at the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee.

Marciel has been a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of State at the State Department.

The United States has been trying to cement ties with ASEAN, which groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Editor: Mu Xuequan

Cambodian PM urges textile sector unity to fight competition

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Thursday called on the country's textile workers and manufacturers to unite as the industry faces increased competition from China and Vietnam.

"If a factory cannot operate, both sides are lost, but the workers will suffer the most," Hun Sen said in an address to workers in the southwestern beach town of Sihanoukville.

"If there are no investors, there will be no workers and no chance to ask for increased wages because there are no factories," he said.

Hun Sen also urged factory owners "to have good cooperation with unions and workers as well as to take care the welfare of the workers."

The premier appealed to the workers and manufacturers to respect labour law and settle any disagreement peacefully because they were in "the same boat."

Hun Sen also urged factory owners to consider a "maximum increase of wages" for their workers.

Garment manufacturers earlier this month agreed to raise the basic monthly wage of 50 dollars by six dollars after workers threatened to strike as inflation soared.

No protests were reported in the capital Phnom Penh on Thursday as about 300 workers rallied to mark May Day and demand manufacturers respect workers' rights.

They also urged the government to form a "labour court" to deal with their complaints.

"We will demand until our lives end," said Chea Mony, head of Cambodia's largest workers' group, the Cambodian Free Trade Union.

"Our work conditions are not yet good. We are threatened and discriminated against by employers," he added.

The garment industry grew only 8.0 percent last year after suffering a dismal fourth quarter that saw orders plummet by nearly half, according to the World Bank. It previously enjoyed growth of up to 20 percent.

The sector -- the country's largest source of foreign exchange -- faces increased competition from China and Vietnam, with further risks looming due to an economic downturn in the US, Cambodia's biggest market for textiles.

The garment industry employs an estimated 350,000 people in some 300 factories.

But the end of US restrictions against Chinese textile exports in 2009 and greater productivity in Vietnam are likely to erode Cambodia's position, industry officials have warned.

Deteriorating labour relations are also weakening the sector.

Cambodia: Durable solution to land grabbing lies with the due process of law

2/5/2008
(Ch. Narendra)

Land grabbing has been plaguing Cambodia for many years. In early March 2007, a month prior to the commune election, Prime Minister Hun Sen loudly announced a "war against land grabbers", and almost immediately after this announcement several land grabbers were arrested or forced to give up the land they had grabbed.

This war lost almost all its thrust after the election was over and Hun Sen’s ruling party had secured the control of the overwhelming majority of communes across the country.

Hun Sen has not hinted at his war ever since although land grabbing has continued to gain ground, claiming no fewer victims than prior to its announcement. As the next general election, to be held in July of this year, is approaching, Hun Sen has became active again and taken a flurry of decisions in succession to address the issue.

On 24 March he went in person to a disputed land in the seaport town of Sihanoukville on the Gulf of Thailand to meet with the 125 families whose 16 hectares of land had been taken by a company named Thai Bun Rong. While squatting among those victims, he offered them his apologies for the police action to evict them that caused injury to some and led to the arrest of three of them.

He blamed the police for allowing the company to build fence around the land, which led to protest by the victims. He then announced that he took the land from Thai Bun Rong company and returned it to those families. He also ordered the three arrested persons to be released and brought before him immediately. He offered them his apologies and also compensation for their arrest.

The next day, 25 March, in his address to a meeting organized by the Ministry of Land Management, Hun Sen ordered the governor of Banteay Meanchey province and his colleagues to resolve a dispute over a 20 hectare plot of land “within a weak” or they would be sacked.

In the same address he criticized the National Authority for the Resolution of Land Disputes (NARLD) for its “sluggishness” in resolving land disputes and threatened to wind it up. He then noted that land grabbing had the “character of a hot issue” when disputes had not been speedily resolved.

He also noted that some plots of land had up to four different title deeds on each of them, and he warned the Ministry to avoid the issuing of such multiple titles. He threatened to send NARLD officials to jail if found to be dishonest.

Despite its name, NARLD is not a specialized court of justice or administrative tribunal for land disputes. It was created in early 2006 by an executive order and was composed of political appointees from different relevant government ministries.

According to a former member, Eng Chhay Eang, an MP, from the opposition party, who has recently resigned from it, NARLD has no power. It is more like a coordinating body entrusted with the tasks of receiving complaints and conducting investigation with the cooperation of relevant authorities. It mostly entrusts the task of settling the disputes to these authorities.

The creation of NARLD has undermined the jurisdictions of the cadastral commissions created under the 2001 land law for resolving disputes over unregistered land, and the courts of law for disputes over registered land.

However, Hun Sen has preferred, as he put it when meeting with those 125 families in Sihanoukville on 24 March, resolution of land disputes “outside the justice system”. In his address to the meeting of the Ministry of Land Management the next day, Hun Sen was reported to be “accusing courts of law of being corrupt.”

On 23 April, Hun Sen displayed in public his anger with the rulings of two courts of first instance. The first one was the court of Banteay Meanchey province which ruled in favour of a company in its dispute with the government over its construction on public land. The second was the court of Kandal province which ignored his “notification” to return a disputed land to its occupants and the findings of an investigation by the provincial authorities, when it ruled in favour of a company which had claimed to have bought the land from those occupants.

Hun Sen’s direct intervention and show of earnestness in addressing the land grabbing issue can serve as a safety valve to release the pressure of public resentment and protests that has been building up over the years. When made in the approach of the general election, it very much has an electioneering character.

However, these measures, however pleasing to their beneficiaries, are simply momentary political expediencies, not a durable solution to the many cases of land disputes Hun Sen himself has received, let alone the thousands more that NARLD has received and continues to receive.

Nor is NARLD of much help to resolve those disputes “out of the justice system”. Its “sluggishness”, as Hun Sen has acknowledged and criticized, shows it is also a political expediency, ineffective in resolving those disputes.

A durable solution lies with the institutions for the rule of law, that is, the courts of law and the cadastral commissions. These two institutions have respectively constitutional and legal jurisdictions over land disputes.

Accusing the courts of law of being corrupt, as Hun Sen has reportedly done, taking disputes from them to be adjudicated elsewhere, as he has preferred, or being angry with court rulings, as he has been, all this does not address the problem of corruption in courts.

It only undermines their role and further destroys further public confidence in them. It also further compels victims of land grabbing to resort, as they have been doing so far, to Hun Sen to find justice for them and get their land back, and will then create so overwhelming a problem for him to address.

It is high time the Cambodian government brought all land grabbing cases back to the justice system and the cadastral commissions, depending on the status of land involved, to be resolved according to the due process of law. It should enact the long overdue anti-corruption law and urge the Supreme Council of the Magistracy, the supreme judicial body responsible for the nomination and discipline of judges, to stamp out corruption in courts and win public confidence in them.

It should also provide both the courts of law and the cadastral commissions with adequate resources to do their work, and respect their rulings. If the government or anybody else is not happy with any ruling, it should appeal it at a higher court.

mynews.in

Margaret Ryan helps Cambodia’s young women become lawyers.

HEAD OF THE CLASS: Ryan awards scholarships based on girls’ academic ability, maturity and desire to help their rural communities.
Heng Chivoan

Lady Justice
BY Corinne Purtill

Phallikol Phok is a slender girl who looks far younger than her 19 years. She grew up in a one-room wooden stilt house in Cambodia’s Kompong Cham province with her parents and six siblings.

Unlike her parents, and theirs before them, Phok will not spend her adult life tilling the rice and tobacco fields near her home. She is a student at Cambodia’s premier law school, the Royal University of Law and Economics, thanks to her outstanding grades at the provincial school—and to Margaret Ryan, JD ’71.

Phok’s tuition, housing and spending money come from Girls RULE, a scholarship program for female students named for the university’s acronym. Ryan, 61, established the program in 2006, largely with donations from Stanford Law School classmates. Girls RULE awarded nine scholarships in its first two years and plans to grant at least five this fall.

Phok’s scholarship allows her to complete RULE’s undergraduate curriculum, which will enable her to practice law. “Then when I know a lot, I can give the knowledge that I have to all the people,” she says, in careful English.

Indeed, Ryan hopes Girls RULE beneficiaries will return to their roots, bridging the gap between rural communities and an often unfamiliar legal system. Running the scholarship program is the latest twist in a long career that has taken her from the courtrooms of San Francisco to the classrooms of a struggling Southeast Asian nation.

After receiving her law degree from Stanford, Ryan worked in San Francisco on family law, criminal defense, juvenile law and civil rights cases. She represented defendants in several high-profile cases, such as Black Panther Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt and those arrested in the White Night Riots that followed the sentencing of Dan White, who killed San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk.

By the mid-1990s, Ryan was burned out. Even after an 18-month stay on a horse farm in rural Ireland, she couldn’t shake the feeling that there must be more to life. Then, in 1995, a friend offered her a job with a USAID program to develop an English-language law curriculum in Cambodia.

Cambodia was—and still is—recovering from the Khmer Rouge, the brutal ultra-Maoist guerrillas who ruled the country from 1975 to 1979. Roughly 1.7 million Cambodians died during that time from execution, starvation and disease.

Education also was one of the regime’s casualties. The Khmer Rouge abolished schools and executed many professors and intellectuals. The Royal University of Law and Economics was shuttered, and its buildings stood empty until 1982. According to university archives, only six licensed attorneys remained alive in Cambodia at the end of the Khmer Rouge.

Ryan arrived in Phnom Penh for what she expected would be a temporary visit—she even left her car in long-term parking at San Francisco International, she recalls. But she found that she loved the students and her work. When the USAID program lost funding in 1997, she started teaching pro bono at RULE, working consulting jobs to supplement her income. “I thought it was really important to stay and work for basic legal education,” she says.

By that time, she realized she had found her home. She’d also found love, with a Khmer-American man named Ford Thai. Ryan runs the alternative-energy firm Khmer Solar with him, in addition to teaching at RULE.

The idea for Girls RULE came to Ryan on a 2006 field trip with students to rural provinces to study the effects of domestic violence laws. There was a problem: laws notwithstanding, women who wanted to press charges against or divorce their abusive husbands had no idea where to turn. Similarly, victims of illegal land-grabs, rampant in the countryside, did not know how to seek redress. Villagers “don’t even know someone who knows someone they can call for an explanation,” she says.

Ryan contacted her network of Stanford classmates, five of whom pledged $4,000 each. Tuition, housing and spending money for one year costs $1,000 per student. Each girl also gets a secondhand bicycle and helmet to get around Phnom Penh’s busy streets.

Cambodian education is “a very weak system” that often pushes girls aside, says American attorney Patricia Baars, who arrived in Cambodia in 1996 and now advises the government in addition to teaching law. “Getting some women educated is going to make a huge difference.” Ryan will encourage the students to seek further schooling abroad.

Girls RULE “is an amazing story of someone who just kept pushing to help this many young women who would otherwise have never seen a law school,” Baars says. “These kids are going to remember her for the rest of their lives.”

As world grasps for rice, Cambodia's success story

The rice-exporting country has seen a dramatic rebound thanks to years of agricultural research.

By David Montero Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
May 1, 2008 edition

Phnom Penh, Cambodia - For 30 years the rice fields at a commune on the outskirts of Phnom Penh lay mostly barren and unused, a legacy of the Khmer Rouge, the Communist regime that led almost 2 million Cambodians to their death, many from starvation.

But today Cambodia has a rice surplus. And these fields are incubating some of the most advanced rice technology in Cambodia, under the tutelage of the Cambodian Agricultural Research Institute (CARDI), which is at the center of Cambodia's largely unheralded "green" revolution.

As the global food crisis continues to spark riots and rationing, Cambodia's turnaround showcases the power – and the limits – of rice research, experts say. Few countries in modern history have engineered as dramatic an agricultural rebound as Cambodia.

In 10 years, beginning in 1987, by applying the tool suite of the Green Revolution – new rice varieties, improved irrigation, and better fertilizer – the country has risen to a peak of rice output, producing enough rice to be self-sufficient for the first time in 25 years.

"It has been a big achievement for [Cambodia]," says Men Sarom, CARDI's director. "And I think research contributed a lot to that."

The kernel of that research was first planted in the 1960s, when scientists at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), a pioneering agricultural institute based in the Philippines, developed higher-yield varieties of grain and introduced new systems of irrigation and fertilizer. Thus was born the Rice Revolution.

Of particular importance was IR8, a rice variety that had a yield double that of normal rice, was less susceptible to disease and more responsive to fertilizer. Dubbed the "miracle rice," it has been credited with averting massive famine in India, Africa, and throughout the developing world in the 1970s.

Cambodia is home to one of the Green Revolution's greatest successes. In 1969, Cambodia's annual rice production was 4 million tons a year, a healthy output. But by 1980, the 6 million people who had survived the Communist Khmer Rouge era, from 1975 to 1978, were on the brink of starvation. By 1997, however, Cambodia had been virtually reborn: its rice fields were producing nearly as much rice as they had in 1969, but on half the land, making the country rice self-sufficient once again.

The rebound was the result of a collaboration between the Cambodian government, the IRRI, and the Australia government, which together invested millions of dollars in irrigation, infrastructure, and fertilizer beginning in 1987. They also trained 1,300 scientists and support staff to revitalize the country's agricultural system. And the new high-yielding rice varieties allowed farmers to produce more on less land.

Today, experts say, Cambodia's yields have risen from 1.35 tons per hectare to 2.5 tons per hectare. It produces enough to export – more than a million tons this year – but recently imposed export controls to ensure it has enough for its own people.

Still, as Cambodia also illustrates, scientific advances will only take rice production so far.

Although Cambodia's yields have doubled in the last 30 years, they are only almost half that of Thailand and Laos (where better soil conditions, seed varieties, climate and management make for higher outputs). Meanwhile, weeds here still cause rice yield losses of up to 30 percent, and poor seed quality in some areas means that 160,000 tons of rice rot every year, according to a report by the IRRI.

"There are still many problems that need to be addressed – problems from climate change and market changes," say Mr. Sarom.

Scientists also warn that the amount of land being farmed – especially in the developing world – has not increased substantially in the last two decades. Urban sprawl and industrial development continue to compete for farmland.

"Even here in Thailand [the world's largest exporter of rice], even if they wanted to, they can't produce more rice. There isn't much more farmland, and the production level is also already pretty high," says Paul Risley, a spokesman for the World Food Program in Thailand.

The recent global food crisis has sharply underlined that, despite the Green Revolution's benefits, many countries are simply not able to produce enough food for their exploding populations.

But even if the biggest production advances have already been achieved, that doesn't mean scientists are giving up.

CARDI, continues to develop new varieties that can produce better quality rice and withstand inclement weather. Sarom says research is already pointing the way to higher rice yields. "In America and Australia, you have yields of six to eight tons of rice per hectare. Why not here? We still have the potential to increase productivity," he says.

That enthusiasm was echoed by the country's agriculture minister, Chan Sarun, Tuesday when he said he expects Cambodia to produce enough rice to export some 8 million tons a year by 2015. That would make it one of the world's top rice exporters.

And around the world, research still offers the promise of better yields. For example, hybrid rice, a blend of three kinds of rice, grows faster, is more disease resistant, and produces 20 percent higher yields. Hybrids are only just starting to catch on: 800,000 hectares were planted in Asia outside of China between 2001-02, but only 1,000 in Indonesia, for example, and only 20,000 in Bangladesh, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The expanded use of hybrids has particular promise for food security, the FAO adds.

The current food crisis may be creating an investment environment for a second Green Revolution, some analysts say. By averting massive famine, the first Green Revolution helped create an impression among world leaders that investments in agriculture were no longer as vital. Many countries stopped spending on agricultural development. That may be starting to change as Malaysia, the Philippines, and China have in recent weeks announced plans to boost investment in agriculture.

Cambodia seizes smuggled snakes, turtles

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — Cambodian authorities have seized nearly half a tonne of live pythons and turtles that were being smuggled from Thailand to Vietnam, a wildlife conservationist group said on Thursday.

The animals, which included 11 reticulated pythons, 13 Burmese pythons and 257 turtles, were confiscated on Monday in Battambang province, about 300 kilometres (180 miles) northwest of Phnom Penh, the Wildlife Alliance said.

Most of the animals had been "illegally collected (in Cambodia) and had been moved to a large-scale holding facility in Thailand before eventually being shipped to Vietnam through Cambodia," the group said in a statement.

Weighing 418.5 kilogrammes, the haul of creatures included Asian box turtles, Malayan snail-eating turtles, black marsh turtles, 12 threatened yellow-headed temple turtles, and two red-eared slider turtles.

Yellow-headed temple turtles, which are depicted on the walls of the famed Angkor temples, are of special cultural significance in Cambodian folklore and legend.

"They are depicted as divine creatures of royalty. Yet their numbers steadily decrease each year due to habitat loss and the illegal wildlife trade," the group said.

The animals were confiscated from a Chevrolet pick-up truck with military licence plates, the group said, adding that a 32-year-old military lieutenant was being questioned.

Wildlife Alliance officials said most of the animals were released on Wednesday into their natural habitats, including in the kingdom's Tonle Sap lake.

The illegal wildlife trade flourishes in Cambodia, fuelled by corrupt authorities and weak legislation.

Most of the trafficked animals feed the regional demand for exotic pets or traditional medicines, although a growing number are ending up in small private zoos throughout Cambodia.

Conservationists rescue almost 300 Cambodian reptiles from wildlife smugglers

(photo: WN / Renzelle Mae Abasolo)

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Hundreds of reptiles including some endangered species were rescued from traffickers and released into their natural habitat in Cambodia, a conservation group said Thursday.

Twelve endangered yellow-headed temple turtles were among the nearly 300 reptiles - weighing a total of 420 kilograms - that authorities confiscated this week in Cambodia's northwestern Battambang province, the Washington, D.C.-based Wildlife Alliance said in a statement.

The group said the animals were freed Wednesday following their rescue Monday, when Wildlife Alliance members were with Cambodian forestry officials and police who stopped a pickup truck transporting the cargo on its way to Vietnam.

Co-operation between the Wildlife Alliance and various government conservation agencies is "making significant impacts on a multimillion dollar illegal wildlife trade in Cambodia as various trade routes and wildlife stockpile locations have been exposed," the statement said.

"We fairly often have quite large amounts of reptiles rescued from wildlife traders, but this was bigger," said Nick Marx, the group's animal husbandry specialist.

Two dozen reticulated and Burmese pythons were among the cargo, which was mostly made up of various turtle species including the yellow-headed temple turtles, which have cultural significance in Cambodian folklore and legends, the statement said.

"In stone carvings on the walls of Angkorian temples, they are depicted as divine creatures of royalty; yet their numbers steadily decrease each year due to habitat loss and the illegal wildlife trade," the Wildlife Alliance said.

An army lieutenant has been held for questioning about the smuggling, the statement said. But it did not say if the man, identified as Hong Try, 32, was the driver of the truck - which bore military license plates - or what charge, if any, he might face.

The group said the animals had been illegally collected in three provinces in the country's northwest, and then moved to a large-scale holding facility in Thailand before eventually being shipped back through Cambodia on their way to Vietnam.

Sceptism growns over Cambodia's 'jungle' lady

IOL.co.za
May 02 2008

By Tang Chhin SothyThe mysterious woman sits for hours at a time, silently staring at the floor or at the villagers thronging to see her, fear occasionally flashing across her unsmiling face.

She emerged from the thick jungles of northeastern Cambodia more than a week ago, her past an enigma. The family caring for her say she is their daughter, who disappeared 19 years ago, but there are growing doubts over her identity.

Yet the family are adamant she is Rochom P'ngieng, whom they say vanished as a child while guarding water buffalo.

"I dare anyone to wager $10 000 if they think she is not my daughter," said Sal Lou, a policeman in isolated Oyadao village.

He said he recognised his child immediately by an old scar when she was brought from the jungle, naked and dirty, 10 days ago.

The woman had been caught nearby as she tried to steal food from a farmer. She was hunched over like a monkey, scavenging the ground for pieces of dried rice in the forests of Ratanakkiri province, some 600km northeast of the capital Phnom Penh.

The woman has tried three times to escape back into the jungle since being taken to Oyadao, tearing at the dirty white blouse and patterned skirt in which her would-be parents have dressed her.

"Over the weekend she acted crazy - she was scared of the crowds and the journalists trying to take pictures of her," said Rochom Ly, 27-year-old Rochom P'ngieng's younger brother.

Sal Lou said he wanted the woman to be taken to Phnom Penh for medical treatment and asked for the necessary funds.

But rights advocates say the woman has obviously suffered some sort of trauma, and possibly sexual abuse, and should not be taken away from those claiming to be her family.

A psychologist was to travel to the village today to examine the woman.

"After that (the father) will decide what to do," said Kek Galabru of the Cambodian rights group Licadho. "We were advised not to take her away from her family because it would cause new stress.

"We believe she is the victim of some kind of violence," she added.

Pen Bunna of the rights group Adhoc, who visited the woman on Saturday, said she may have experienced a traumatic event around the time she went missing.

"She may have faced a hard incident that caused her to wander from the house," he said, adding that Adhoc would help pay for medical treatment.

Since the weekend, though, the woman appears to have become more settled under the glare of curious villagers and journalists, who have made her an international story.

Scores of people have come to watch her, milling around Sal Lou's ramshackle house, staring silently at the woman as she sleeps, squats against the wall or is spoon-fed by Sal Lou's wife, Rochom Soy.

Many have begun to question Sal Lou's story. How, they ask, could a woman from the jungle have such smooth hands or soft feet? If she had been truly wild, why are her fingernails neatly trimmed and her hair not a matted tangle, they say.

Mysterious scars around her wrist appear to be the result of being bound for long periods of time, further adding to the questions many have over the woman's past.

"I am doubtful that she went missing 19 years ago. I came here to see what she looked like, and she looks normal like us," said Dub Thol, who travelled from a neighbouring district to see the woman.

The woman has offered up no clues as to how she spent the past nearly two decades - uttering unintelligible grunts or gurgles and communicating only her most basic needs with simple gestures.

Sal Lou said that despite her not speaking, she has begun to understand his hill tribe language of Phnong.

"When we talk to her she understands, but she cannot reply to us. This is because she has forgotten the language, she has not spoken it for a long time," he said.

"She follows what we tell her to do. When we tell her to sit, she sits. When we tell her to sleep, she sleeps and when we tell her to stand up, she stands up.

"So, sooner or later, she will know how to speak. From day to day, she has begun to understand."

The jungles of Ratanakkiri - some of the most isolated and wild in Cambodia - are known to have held hidden groups of hill tribes in the recent past.

In November 2004, 34 people from four hill tribe families emerged from the dense forest where they had fled in 1979 after the fall of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, which they supported.

They had lived in the jungle in total isolation for a quarter of a century, limiting speech for fear of detection and moving at any sight of an unfamiliar footprint or a freshly-cut tree. - Sapa-AFP

HCMC-Siem Reap bus route to open this month

A group of young Vietnamese tourists pose for a photograph in Cambodia

Thanhnien News
Friday, May 2, 2008

Kumho Samco Express plans to open a bus route between Ho Chi Minh City and Siem Reap Province in neighboring Cambodia this month, according to a company source.

The firm, a joint venture between the Kumho Construction & Engineering Company of South Korea’s Kumho Asiana Group and Vietnam’s Saigon Transportation Mechanical Corporation, plans to select the backpackers’ area in HCMC’s District 1 as the point of departure and arrival.

The service aims to transport passengers of Kumho’s Asiana Airlines who fly into either HCMC or Siem Reap between the two centers, given the current lack of offered flights by the airline between the destinations.

Kumho Samco Express, with a total investment of US$7.5 million, currently operates high-quality bus routes from HCMC to various domestic towns and cities including Nha Trang, Da Lat, Phan Thiet, Ca Mau and Can Tho.

Cambodia to join OPEC-style rice cartel to stabilize global food prices

http://www.chinaview.cn/

2008-05-02

PHNOM PENH, May 2 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia has an international obligation to participate in stabilizing global food prices, a senior official has declared, as the kingdom moves to join an OPEC-style rice cartel of five ASEAN Nations.

Food must remain affordable if Cambodia is to avoid a "price war" with neighboring countries, Khieu Kanharith, Cambodian Minister of Information and government spokesman, was quoted by the Mekong Times newspaper as saying on Friday.

Referring to recent reports about the formation of a so-called Organization of Rice Exporting Countries (OREC), a proposed price-fixing body similar to the OPEC, he said the issue would be discussed with rice producing nations.

"Because if we do not unite, the world would have a more serious rice market crisis," he added.

Media reported Thursday that Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej had said that Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Thailand and Vietnam need to band together and use their combined influence to exert more control over global rice prices.

Negotiations have not been scheduled so far between the countries but all five have tentatively agreed to join the rice cartel, Thon Virak, deputy director-general of the international trade department at the Cambodian Commerce Ministry, was quoted assaying in the Cambodia Daily newspaper.

The cartel could be expanded to include more ASEAN countries, he added.

The Cambodian government is preparing to conduct research on international rice prices and the possible functioning of the cartel, the newspaper said.

Meanwhile, Hang Chuon Naron, deputy secretary-general of the Finance Ministry, said the rice cartel idea was not new.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen had brought up the idea publicly last year, he said.

During a 2007 meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart in Phnom Penh, Hun Sen suggested rice exporting countries such as Vietnam and Thailand should form an association to strengthen the position of rice exporters as prices skyrocket.

The cartel would share market information and give each other assistance in producing rice, Hang Chuon Naron said, noting that stabilizing rice prices will add more security to the Cambodian agriculture sector and spawn more investment and growth.

"It will have no negative effect on Cambodian farmers," said Agriculture Minister Chan Sarun, who referred recently to Cambodian rice as the country's "white gold".

On April 24, Chan Sarun declared that the country would be able to produce eight million tons of rice for export annually by 2015.

Economic Institute of Cambodia President Sok Hach said the cartel will raise Cambodia's profile as an exporter, opening up its rice to more markets.

Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand last year exported a total of 16million tons of rice: Cambodia 1.5 million tons; Vietnam five million tons; and Thailand 9.5 million tons.

Thailand and Vietnam alone control more than 40 percent of world rice exports, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

Current rice price nearly doubled that of last year in Cambodia, with global prices up from 512 U.S dollars per ton in January 2007to 998 U.S dollars by April 30, 2008.

Editor: Song Shutao

MALAYSIA'S OSK GETS NOD TO SET UP BANK IN CAMBODIA

TradingMarkets
Thursday, May 01, 2008

KUALA LUMPUR, May 02, 2008 (AsiaPulse via COMTEX) -- -- Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) has approved OSK Holdings Berhad's (KLSE:5053) proposal to establish a wholly-owned unit in Cambodia to undertake commercial banking activities.

Malaysia's central bank gave its greenlight in a letter dated 23 April 2008 to OSK's wholly-owned subsidiary, OSK Investment Bank Berhad (OSKIB), OSK said in a statement to Bursa Malaysia on April 28.

OSK also said the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC), in a letter dated 24 April 2008, granted its approval in principle for the incorporation of a commercial bank with the name of OSK Indochina Bank Limited (OSKIBL).

As part of the conditions, OSKIBL is required by Cambodia's central bank to commence operation by 31 October 2008, the statement said.

Cambodian farmers urged to seize opportunity

New Sabah Times
2nd May, 2008

PHNOM PENH: Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday appealed to the country’s farmers to start growing rice and other crops, saying most of the population would benefit from the global food crisis. “The food crisis in the world, instead, offers an opportunity for Cambodian farmers although citizens complain about the soaring price of rice,” Hun Sen said during a ceremony some 50 kilometres (31 miles) north of Phnom Penh.

“But in return, some 80 percent (of the population) who are farmers benefit from this. Now the opportunity for our Cambodian farmers has arrived,” he said. Hun Sen said rain had fallen over most of the country and appealed to farmers to rush to grow a variety of food crops, including rice. “Now the rainy season has started,” he said. “Now the world has a big crisis, so please, our farmers start growing the crops, including rice, corn and beans. All the crops have a market now,” the premier said.

Hun Sen banned rice exports in late March in a bid to halt soaring prices for the staple food. The price of the most commonly purchased grade of rice has hit 90 US cents a kilogramme (2.2 pounds), up from 50-60 cents two months ago, deepening the poverty of the one-third of the population living on less than 50 cents a day.

Hun Sen said on Wednesday, however, that the government was considering exporting rice to find markets for Cambodian farmers and to “fulfil our international obligation in helping other countries… to reduce the difficulty in the world”.

“Cambodia is a small country, but it can help hundreds of thousands of families if we can export the rice,” Hun Sen said. “We cannot survive alone,” he said, urging governments to find ways to ensure “the world has food security”. Officials have said that Cambodia has enough rice with more than two million tonnes stockpiled. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon Tuesday urged countries to drop export restrictions and said the immediate priority must be to “feed the hungry” as he ordered a task force to tackle the global crisis.

World grain prices have rocketed, a trend blamed variously on higher energy and fertiliser costs, greater global demand, droughts, the loss of farmland to biofuel plantations, industry and cities, and price speculation.

Soaring rice prices have forced the UN World Food Programme to indefinitely suspend a programme supplying free breakfasts to 450,000 poor Cambodian schoolchildren.

Better quality rice now sells for more than 700 dollars per tonne in Cambodia compared with 300-400 dollars last year, according to sellers. Cambodia, where more than 30 percent of the population of 14 million lives in poverty, is one of 12 “hunger hot spot” countries, according to the 2006 Global Hunger Index of the International Food Policy Research Institute. – AFP

Cambodian PM urges garment industry unity

Radio Australia

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has urged the country's textile workers and manufacturers to unite in the face of increased competition from China and Vietnam.

Speaking to workers in Sihanoukville, he also called on factory owners to cooperate with unions and workers, and to consider what he called a "maximum increase" in wages.

He appealed for the rapid and peaceful resolution of any industrial disputes.Earlier this month, garment workers received a wage rise of six US dollars a month after threatening to go on strike.

Cambodia's clothing industry could be undermined by greater productivity from Vietnam, and the end to American restrictions against Chinese textile exports due next year.