Stock market still on course

AFP
A stock index at the Korea Exchange (KRX) in Seoul. KRX says it will sign an agreement next week to establish an exchange in Cambodia.

COMMODITY Prices

Prices shown are aggregates of Phnom Penh market rates collated on Thursday, Feb 12.Prices are indexed using the January 1, 2009, base rate.
Rice 2,460 riels/kg -1.6 percent
Paddy 1,120 riels/kg +12 percent
Beef 23,600 riels/kg -1.67 percent
Pork 16,600 riels/kg +3.75 percent
Chicken 18,600 riels/kg +3.33 percent
Tomatoes 1,620 riels/kg -53.71 percent
Bananas 1,960 riels/hand +22.5 percent
Gasoline 3,150 riels/ltr +6.78 percent
Diesel 2,900 riels/ltr +1.75 percent
Water 550/cubic metre unchanged
Steel 2,645 riels/kg +11.32 percent
Gas 61,950/cubic metre +30.21 percent Source: Ministry of Commerce

STOCK RESPONSE
KRX’s announcement it will sign a joint venture agreement next week with the government on a proposed bourse follows a period of uncertainty over the exchange after the Finance Ministry said last month plans were delayed due to the global crisis.

The Phnom Penh Post

Written by Chun Sophal and Nathan Green
Friday, 13 February 2009

KRX says it will sign official agreement with Cambodia next week to set up stock exchange by year’s end, despite warnings over economic climate

The Korea Exchange (KRX) and the Cambodian government will sign an official joint venture agreement on Cambodia's proposed stock exchange Thursday next week, KRX project director Inpyo Lee told the Post, but there remained caution given the current economic climate.

The agreement, to be signed by KRX chairman and CEO Lee Jung-hwan and Finance Minister Keat Chhon, sets out requirements for both parties and contains penalty clauses, although Inpyo Lee declined to say what they were. He also refused to list the requirements, but said that the capital contribution was a key one.

He added that the exchange was on track for a December launch, provided the three state companies slated to be listed prior to opening complete preparations on time.

Some observers have warned that the timing of the initiative could create problems as Cambodia faces reduced economic growth, increased unemployment and the threat of increased nonperforming loans.

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We won't abandon our plans to establish an exchange due to the crisis.
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"I think that currently, the environment is not good enough to proceed with the stock market in Cambodia," said economist Kang Chandararot, president of the Cambodia Institute for Development Study.

He said that to rush prematurely into establishing an exchange risked losing investor confidence "because the risks will be higher for participants".

Nguon Meng Tech, director general of the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce, urged the government to postpone launching the exchange until 2012, saying that not enough Cambodian investors understood how a bourse works.

"Most Cambodian business old hands have little knowledge about a stock exchange. So, how can they throw money at it?" he said.

Keat Chhon acknowledged Thursday that while the government "cannot set an official date for the establishment of the stock market. We will put our efforts into achieving a [December] target".

"The global financial crisis, of course, impacts the stock market," he said. "But we won't abandon our plans to establish an exchange due to the crisis."

Lee said he expected institutional investors and foreigners to be the main source of liquidity in the early stages of the exchange. Investment and retail banks had expressed interest as institutional investors ,he said, although there had been no formal agreements signed.

He confirmed the exchange would initially use the US dollar but could also introduce riels at a later date depending on demand.

Foreigners would be able to invest in the exchange and foreign companies would be able to list, he said.
Lee also said the launch would not be affected by the global downturn, as he anticipated it would be "three or four years" until the exchange was operating at full capacity, by which stage the financial crisis would likely be over.

He anticipated that about 30 companies would be listed by the time the exchange was operating "normally".

KRX, the world's No 3 derivatives exchange, became the sole bourse operator in South Korea in 2005 after it absorbed the Korea Futures Exchange and the junior Kosdaq market.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY NGUON SOVAN

Buddhist, Hindu clergy convene in Cambodia

Photo by: HENG CHIVOAN
Participants at the three-day conference "Giving Global Voice to Eastern Wisdom", which began on Thursday in Phnom Penh.

The Phnom Penh Post

Written by Sarah Whyte and Khouth Sophak Chakrya
Friday, 13 February 2009

At international interfaith meeting, religious leaders pledge global cooperation and lash out at ills they say are afflicting their faiths.

GREATER spiritual freedom for women and a renewed dedication to world peace were the messages preached Thursday at a mixed-faith Buddhism and Hindu forum at Svay Pope pagoda in Phnom Penh.

In a pledge at the three-day conference, titled "Giving Global Voice to Eastern Wisdom", nearly 100 Hindu and Buddhist leaders from India, Sri Lanka, Japan and Cambodia vowed to cooperate to promote international peace in a world of "greed and self-ignorance" and where Eastern ideals were seen to be "marginalised" by the West.

The first day's speakers also addressed more specific problems they said were plaguing their religions, including "aggressive" conversion practices by evangelical Christian groups and the marginalisation of women in the way the faiths are practiced.

"In our religion, women are not given a voice," Jetunama Tenzin Palmo, an ordained Buddhist nun of British origin who has spent the last 25 years in India, told the audience. "Women comprise half of the one billion Buddhists and Hindus in the world, but we have a very inferior place compared to men."

"We have a long way to go before women are respected in the spiritual world," she told the Post.

Dena Merrian, founder of the Global Peace Initiative of Women, said that although women are crucial according to the scriptire of Eastern religions, in reality they are given a secondary role in the way the faiths are practised.

Omalpe Sobhita Thero, a Buddhist monk from Sri Lanka, lashed out at Christian missionaries who, he said, "come in and take our land and ruin our traditions and religions".

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We have a long way to go before women are respected in the spiritual world.

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"Together, Buddhism and Hinduism must collaborate and stand against Western Christianity," he added,

While Cambodia is 95 percent Buddhist, organisers said Cambodia was the chosen location for its historical mix of Buddhism and Hinduism, which was the dominant religion in the Khmer empire until the 13th century.

"Buddhism is the national religion of Cambodia, but Hinduism is the traditional culture of Cambodian," said Bour Kry, the Supreme Patriarch of the Dharma Yuttikanikaya Order, one of the two biggest sects in Cambodia.

Phon Phalla, a secretary of state for the Ministry of Cults and Religions, said the conference was important to stop religious discrimination in the countries represented.

"I hope this event will reinforce the friendship between the Hindu and Buddhist faiths and therefore reduce religious conflict in the world," he said.

With friends like these...

Photo by: TRACEY SHELTON

The Phnom Penh Post

Written by Tracey Shelton
Friday, 13 February 2009

A young construction worker helps prepare the second floor of the new South Korean friendship building under construction at the East end of Hun Sen Park. Workers say the building is due for completion in eight months.

FINDING DUCH

Photo by: NIC DUNLOp/PANOS
One of the few surviving photos of Duch during the regime, in 1977.

The Phnom Penh Post

Written by Georgia Wilkins
Friday, 13 February 2009

The Post's Georgia Wilkins speaks to photojournalist Nic Dunlop about the man he found and exposed to the world as Kaing Guek Eav, Cambodia's most notorious prison chief.

What were your impressions of Duch when you met him for the first time?
He cut a small and somewhat eccentric figure. When he talked about the violence of the regime, it was never clear to me if he was aware of the consequences of what he was saying. He seemed a little distracted and distant. I think he felt safe talking with foreigners.

Duch described himself to you during your first meeting as a "technician" of the communist party. What do you think he meant by this?
I think he wanted to give the impression that he simply followed orders and didn't have the authority to give them, lessening his responsibility.

Duch has expressed guilt and remorse for what he did during the regime. Why do you think he waited to be found rather than confessing his crimes on his own behalf?
He was worried for his life. He expressed concern when he began to talk. He believed some Khmer Rouge leaders would be only too happy to have him killed. The war in Cambodia had only just ended, so there was still tension with the shifting of allegiances. I don't think he ever thought he'd end up in prison, but he believed that he might be killed.

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"When he talked about the violence of the regime, it was never clear to me if he was aware of the consequences.

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You heard and saw Duch confess in person for the first time. What will it mean to you to hear him confess again before the court and a national and international audience?
When I stumbled on Duch, it was a chance encounter. Yes, I carried a photograph of him with me, but there was a part of me that thought that I'd never actually find him. And I never set out to bring people to account. Rather, I wanted to reach an understanding about what had happened under the Khmer Rouge. The fact that Duch was willing to talk the way he did was extraordinary. But I don't feel in any way central to this. I was just a small, accidental part of something much, much bigger. I'm sure that it would have been a question of time before someone else stumbled upon him.

It will only mean something to me if it means something to Cambodians. This is their story and their history. But I worry that ordinary Cambodians don't feel that they have ownership over the process of bringing people like Duch to account. In my experience, they have little understanding of what it means and how it relates to them. It would be a real shame if we have Duch telling the court important things that people need to know and few people are actually aware of it.

When you met Duch, he admitted guilt, but he also suggested that the killings were "the rule of [the] party". What do you think Duch will reveal at the trial about the regime and his place in it?
I would expect him to be able to explain how the orders for the killings were made and how the security apparatus worked and who was ultimately responsible.

Did you get the sense, when you met him before he was arrested, that Duch genuinely felt remorse for what he had done during the regime?
Very hard to say. It was difficult to get a sense of anything, to be honest. It just seemed so ordinary and, of course, it wasn't. I think the fact that he accepted his own role as well as pointed the finger elsewhere was significant. All the others blame others and shirk all responsibility. Duch, by contrast, said he was responsible, but so were others. So, I think that there has to be some remorse, but its hard to say. Having said that, it's important to remember the backdrop to this expression of remorse is thousands of innocent lives.

As the person who searched for and found Duch, do you have personal hopes or expectations about what the trial will reveal?
I hope that the process isn't lost on Cambodians, and I think there is a real danger of that. There is overwhelming support for this court among the population. They want it to happen and to succeed. But because donors have failed to put enough emphasis on making this widely accessible, there is a danger of it being irrelevant. I
really hope it isn't.

Do you believe that there are other people of Duch's rank who are free and should be put on trial?
Absolutely.

In an article you wrote shortly after Duch's arrest, you ask the question, "Would a full account from Duch's lips make any difference?" Do you still ponder this question?
Of course. It would be a shame if Duch said important things and really answered questions that Cambodians would like answered and only a handful of people took any notice.

There are universal questions here. I think we can often learn much more from perpetrators than victims - that is, if we're serious about preventing these things from happening again.

Translating a trial into a narrative

Photo by: Tracey Shelton
The former Tuol Sleng (S-21) torture centre in Phnom Penh, headed by Duch from August 1975 until the regime's fall in January 1979.

The Phnom Penh Post

Written by Georgia Wilkins and Neth Pheaktra
Friday, 13 February 2009

The KRT's first trial opens next week, but what will having Duch in the dock mean?

THREE decades after he presided over a bloody reign of terror at the Khmer Rouge's notorious Tuol Sleng prison, Kaing Guek Eav, the math teacher-turned-prison chief, will take his place in the dock and answer questions about his alleged role in the systematic torture and extermination of up to 16,000 men, women and children.

As the first senior Khmer Rouge figure to be brought to justice for his role in the atrocities committed during the ultra-communist group's 1975-79 rule, the trial of Kaing Guek Eav, better known by his revolutionary name of Duch, will no doubt prompt an unprecedented flurry of international media attention. The issue now, observers say, is how the court will ensure the trial has meaning that resonates with those it has been set up to serve.

"I worry that ordinary Cambodians don't feel that they have ownership over the process of bringing people like Duch to account," said Nic Dunlop, the photojournalist who discovered Duch in 1999 working for NGOs in the border regions.

"It would be a real shame if we have Duch telling the court important things that people need to know and few people are actually aware of it," Dunlop told the Post via email.

According to Philip Short, historian and author of Pol Pot: History of a Nightmare, comprehensive Khmer-language coverage of the trial, coupled with grassroots-level discussion of the proceedings is essential.

"But the government has little interest in that kind of nationwide self-questioning and it will in any case be difficult to generate in a society like Cambodia's," he told the Post via email.
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THE start of the ECCC's first trial is an important, if overdue, step towards the goal of accountability.
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"If, as is more likely, the hearings remain a distant event, confined to the courtroom in Phnom Penh, their significance will be very limited," he adds.

A population-based survey conducted by the University of California, Berkeley, earlier this month indicated that indeed this may be the case.

According to the report, 85 percent of Cambodians interviewed had "little or no knowledge" of the court as of last September, a statistic that was disputed by the court's public affairs officers, who claimed it was "not consistent with [their] own feedback in the field". In addition to a lack of knowledge, the survey pointed to public doubts about the court's objectivity: One-third of respondents familiar with the tribunal said they did not believe the court was neutral, with 23 percent saying it was corrupt.

While the trial itself may be a significant step on the path to justice, historian Ros Chantrabot of the Royal Academy of Cambodia says that whether legal procedures can be translated into meaningful narratives remains to be seen.

Translating truth into justice

"This hearing is very important for Cambodia and the world. But we don't know yet whether the hearing can bring the truth," he said.

Regardless of whether it can, the opening of the Extraordinary Chamber's first public trial ratchets up the pressure on the court to deliver.

But many argue that expectations are too high, and that the court - however successful its first public trial - was never going to be able to meet them.

"If reconciliation were the aim, there are other ways of going about that, as South Africa has shown," said Short.

"This tribunal has nothing to do with reconciliation. How can the condemnation of a few elderly men, no matter how appalling their acts, reconcile people in the villages with those who, during KR times, murdered their relatives, and who still live a few houses away from them?" Short asked.

Moreover, the court's legitimacy remains dented, and observers hope the start of a trial will be used by the court to boost its credibility.

"The start of the ECCC's first trial is an important, if long overdue, step toward the goal of accountability for serious crimes in Cambodia," James Goldston, executive director of New York-based Open Society Justice Initiative, said in an email.

"[But] the court must take aggressive action to respond to repeated allegations of corruption and provide adequate protection to those who come forward to report corruption," he said.

However, international co-prosecutor Robert Petit argues that, as the most public manifestation of the tribunal so far, the trial would refocus attention back to its original goal.

"These trials are by nature very complex but I'm confident in the Court's abilities to see them through to the highest standard," he said by email.

Despite numerous caveats, the first public trial of a Khmer Rouge leader could further knowledge and understanding of the workings of the still-mysterious regime.

"We know what S21 did; we know much less about why it did it," Philip Short says of the torture centre headed by Duch.

"What one would like the trial to reveal is the political mechanism behind S21: the role of Nuon Chea and other members of the Security Committee, Pol Pot and Son Sen; and the extent to which the political leadership controlled what was done there," he adds.

Historian David Chandler says the trial is significant because of the weight of documentary evidence linking Duch to the executions at S-21.

"A full account, if we got one, would deepen our understanding of the DK era," he said.

Even Duch, a converted Christian, has acknowledgesd the need to reveal the truth.

"The killings must be understood. The truth should be known," he told Dunlop as his arrest was imminent.

According to Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, the public trial itself is a key part of getting the truth about the Khmer Rouge to the public.

"It will indeed contribute to our history and how we confront the past," he said. Whether victims are content with the verdict is immaterial, as "they will be able to make their own decision".

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Photo by: DC-CAM

Duch (left) and a colleague photographed at Tuol Sleng in this undated photo.

DUCH: PROFILE OF A REVOLUTIONARY

Duch (left) and a colleague photographed at Tuol Sleng in this undated photo. AGIFTED maths teacher before he turned revolutionary, Duch, the man who oversaw the Khmer Rouge's security apparatus, ran the regime's killing machine with cold, numerical precision.

"Duch oversaw a precise department of death," journalist Elizabeth Becker says in her book When the War Was Over. "Duch even set aside specific days for killing various types of prisoners: one day the wives of ‘enemies'; another day the children; a different day, factory workers," she writes.

Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, oversaw the torture and extermination of 16,000 men, women and children at the Khmer Rouge's Tuol Sleng prison during the regime's 1975-79 rule. He was arrested in 1999 after photojournalist Nic Dunlop uncovered him earlier that year working for a Christian relief agency in western Cambodia.

Born in 1942 in Kampong Thom province, Duch's revolutionary roots were laid early. In the mid-1960s he studied for his teaching certificate under Son Sen, a fiery activist who would later emerge as the Khmer Rouge's defence minister and Duch's immediate superior.

He was remembered not as a committed teacher but as a committed communist, and he fled to the Khmer Rouge following the March 1970 toppling of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, when Cambodia's political environment became more volatile.

Inside the "liberated" zones, Duch is said to have been appointed head of special security. He allegedly oversaw a series of prisons before consolidating his power in Tuol Sleng after in 1975.

What began as only a few dozen prisoners each day turned into a torrent of condemned coming through Tuol Sleng as the regime repeatedly purged itself of its "enemies".

Ever meticulous, Duch built up a huge archive of photos, confessions and other documents with which the final horrible months of thousands of inmates' lives can be traced.

His alleged last act before slipping away from advancing Vietnamese troops was to oversee the murder of Tuol Sleng's few remaining prisoners, whose mutilated bodies were found still chained to their beds.

Shortly after his wife was murdered in 1995, Duch began attending Christian prayer meetings and was later baptised by Christopher LaPel, a Khmer-American minister.

In a 1999 interview with Time magazine, LaPel remembered Duch as an enthusiastic convert, but said there were signs of his dark past.

"Before he received Christ, he said he did a lot of bad things in his life. He said: ‘Pastor Christopher, I don't know if my brothers and sisters can forgive the sins I've committed against the people'," LaPel was quoted as saying at the time.

Hong Kimhong, Duch's younger sister, living in Battambang's Somlaut district, told the Post on the eve of his hearing that she had mixed feelings about the trial. "As Duch's sister, I was not happy when [he] was accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes. As I know him, my brother Duch is a good person," she said.
"But I will let the court decide."

NETH PHEAKTRA AND AFP

__________________________

April 17, 1975
The Khmer Rouge enter Phnom Penh, launching a reign of terror that leaves an estimated 1.7 million people dead.

January 7, 1979
The Khmer Rouge regime falls to the Vietnamese, who install a new regime in Phnom Penh. Civil war begins, pitting the Vietnamese-backed People’s Revolutionary Party of Kampuchea (PRPK) against an alliance of Khmer Rouge, nationalist and royalist factions. October 23, 1991

A peace treaty is signed to end the conflict. Cambodia is placed under UN supervision until elections are held. UN peacekeepers begin operations almost five months later.

March 1998
The Khmer Rouge’s last stronghold, Anlong Veng, falls to government forces, but top leaders including Pol Pot escape.

April 15, 1998
Pol Pot dies in mysterious circumstances at his jungle base on the Thai border.

March 6, 1999
Ta Mok, the last of the top Khmer Rouge rebels, is arrested and accused of genocide. May 10, 1999
Duch is arrested by Cambodian police for his role as head of the Khmer Rouge S-21 interrogation centre.

June 6, 2003
After tough negotiations, the United Nations and Cambodia agree to an international tribunal for former Khmer Rouge leaders.

October 4, 2004
The National Assembly approves a law paving the way for the Khmer Rouge tribunal.
December 2004
The court’s budget is finalised at US$56.3 million.

March 28, 2005
In New York, 13 nations contribute a total of $38.4 million – $5 million short of the UN’s target. Japan’s $21.6 million contribution is more than all other donor contributions combined. March 30, 2005

Cambodia requests assistance in meeting its stipulated share of the budget – $13.3 million.

May 4, 2006
Cambodia’s highest judicial body approves 17 Cambodian and 13 international judges and prosecutors for the Khmer Rouge tribunal. July 3, 2006
Judges for the Khmer Rouge tribunal are sworn in.

July 21, 2006
Ta Mok, known as “The Butcher”, dies before appearing in front of the tribunal.

February 2007
The Open Society Justice Initiative, an independent court monitor, accuses senior ECCC officials of taking kickbacks. All claims are vehemently denied by the ECCC. September 19, 2007
Top Khmer Rouge leader Nuon Chea (below), known as “Brother No 2”, is arrested at his home close to the Thai border.

POST ARCHIVES
November 12, 2007
Ieng Sary, former KR foreign affairs minister, is arrested along with his wife, Ieng Thirith, the regime’s former social affairs minister.

November 19, 2007
Former KR head of state Khieu Samphan is arrested.
February 2008
Co-investigating judges hold on-site investigations at Choeung Ek “killing fields” and Tuol Sleng prison.

June 24, 2008
Khieu Samphan’s request for release from pretrial detention refused; ECCC seeks additional $43.8 million to see it through to the end of 2009. January 19, 2009
The date for the start of the first trial, that of Duch, is announced for February 17, 2009.

SOVANN PHILONG

Union leader Chea Mony nominated for human rights award

WHO WAS ENNALS?
The first secretary general of Amnesty International, Martin Ennals, was "a fiercely devoted activist" who "devoted his whole life to human rights", according to the award's website. He died in 1991. The award was first given in 1993.

The Phnom Penh Post

Written by Neth Pheaktra and Robbie Corey-Boulet
Friday, 13 February 2009

The nomination of the brother of slain union leader Chea Vichea recognises ‘courageous' work in dangerous labour environment.

UNION leader Chea Mony has been nominated for the 2009 Martin Ennals Award, a prize given by 10 leading human rights NGOs to an individual who has "demonstrated an exceptional record of combating human rights violations by courageous and innovative means", the London-based charity One World Action announced in a press release distributed Thursday.

Chea Mony, president of the Free Trade Union of the Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia (FTU), is the brother of Chea Vichea, a union leader who was shot and killed near Wat Lanka in 2004.

"This award would mean the world would recognise my hard work defending garment factory workers as well as human rights and justice in Cambodian society," Chea Mony told the Post Thursday.

"Every day I work and protest against social injustice without worrying about my personal security."

"Cambodia is a very dangerous place in which to be a trade unionist," reads the release announcing Chea Mony's nomination. "Even though the constitution guarantees citizens the right to establish and belong to trade unions, labour unions face severe pressure and intimidation."

Organisations behind the award, which will be given in May, include Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Federation of Human Rights.

One World Action describes itself as a partner of the FTU and presented it with the Sternberg Award in 2007 for its "outstanding commitment to human rights".

Adoption restrictions to rule out single, gay foreign applicants

The Phnom Penh Post

Written by Vong Sokheng
Friday, 13 February 2009

In meetings with French, US officials, the government asks that such applicants be screened out after draft law is approved.

IN meetings with representatives from France and the United States, Cambodian officials this month expressed their opposition to adoptions involving single parents, gay parents, low-income parents and parents who already have two children.

This opposition will become an outright ban when a draft law on adoption, currently being reviewed by the Council of Ministers, is approved by the National Assembly, said Koy Kuong, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who added that he hoped the law would be passed "soon".

Minister of Foreign Affairs Hor Namhong met with Jean-Paul Monchau, the French official responsible for overseeing international adoptions, on February 3 and voiced concern about the potential psychological effects such adoptions can have on children, according to a ministry press release issued Tuesday.

Ouch Borith, a secretary of state at the ministry, raised largely the same points in a Monday meeting with Janice Jacobs, the assistant secretary of state for consular affairs at the US State Department.

Cambodian officials asked the French and American officials to screen out adoption applicants who would no longer qualify once the draft law on adoption is passed.

The adoption law would also make it legal for Cambodian parents to give up their children for adoption, Koy Kuong said. Currently, only Cambodian orphans can be adopted.

Foreign response

Koy Kuong said Jacobs told Ouch Borith at the meeting that the United States would consider supporting the new legal framework for international adoptions.

John Johnson, a spokesman for the US embassy in Phnom Penh, declined to discuss in detail the meeting between Ouch Borith and Jacobs, saying the US is waiting to see whether the adoption law passes.

Tuesday's press release said France had recently expressed interest in increasing the number of Cambodian children adopted by French parents.

Researchers locate two of four child S-21 survivors

Photo by: CHY TERITH/DC-CAM
Norng Chan Phal and his daughter.

The Phnom Penh Post

Written by Neth Pheaktra and Georgia Wilkins
Friday, 13 February 2009

RESEARCHERS have found two of four living former child prisoners of Tuol Sleng prison, one week after evidence first emerged suggesting they were still alive.

Brothers Norng Chan Phal and Norng Chanly have been confirmed as two of the five children the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam) identified in archival footage donated by Vietnam last month.

DC-Cam has confirmed that one of the five is dead.

"I have met with the older bother, Norng Chan Phal. They were both detained at S-21 with their mother in 1977," DC-Cam Director Youk Chhang said.

Youk Chhang said DC-Cam has long thought there were more than seven prisoners who escaped S-21, although just seven had been identified.

Contacted by the Post Thursday, child survivor Norng Chan Phal, now 39 years old, confirmed he would present himself at prison chief Kaing Guek Eav's trial, which begins next week.

"I present myself now to join the hearing," he said. "I haven't presented myself before because I felt hesitant. The [Khmer Rouge tribunal] has been delayed and left victims to feel hopeless about justice. It has meant that the regime's top leaders died one by one."

Keat Bophal, director of the court's Victims Unit, said it was "not possible" for the child survivors to participate as civil parties in the trial of Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, because the deadline, according to internal rules, has passed.

"However, they can still file a complaint so their information is sent to the trial chamber, who will decide whether to call them as witnesses," she told the Post.

New traffic calming measures for bridge

The Phnom Penh Post

Written by Chhay Channyda
Friday, 13 February 2009

MUNICIPAL officials plan to build a roundabout at the east end of the Japanese Friendship Bridge in Russei Keo district in an attempt to alleviate traffic congestion, Kob Sles, the district's deputy governor, told the Post Thursday.

Kob Sles referred further questions to Nhem Saran, director of the Phnom Penh Municipal Department of Public Works and Transport, who could not be reached for comment Thursday.

In an interview on the television station TV3 last week, however, Nhem Saran said construction of the roundabout would begin this month.

Kob Sles said he did not know how many families would be affected by the project. But he said municipal authorities had already told families living in temporary settlements near the project site that they would likely be relocated.

"Residents should know that the affected land will be given for development," he said, adding that he did not yet know what form of compensation would be offered to those displaced by the project.

Pech Saroeun, Chruoy Changvar commune chief, said a report he received said 150 families would be displaced, but added he believed the department was trying to reduce the number of families that would be affected.

Chan Touch, 35, who lives on National Road 6 just 50 metres from the bridge, said he supported the project because heavy traffic during rush hour each day "causes traffic jams for hours". But he also said he believed "authorities should discuss the impact with people before they start".

Pol Pot's Khmer R: "Not a Clear-Cut Murder Case

Scoop.co.nz

Friday, 13 February 2009, 9:01 am
Article: Richard S. Ehrlich

Defending Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge: "Not a Clear-Cut Murder Case"

By Richard S. Ehrlich

BANGKOK, Thailand -- An international trial starts next week in Cambodia, against five of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, but the British head of the Defense Support Section warns "it is not a clear-cut murder case" despite skeletons in mass graves and survivors who describe torture and executions.

"The prosecution will say that the Khmer Rouge evacuated people from the cities, as part of a master plan to imprison them. There is another theory that will say they evacuated them to protect them from the American bombing, which had been going on for many, many years," Richard J. Rogers said in an interview on Wednesday (February 11).

Mr. Rogers is Officer-in-Charge of the Defense Support Section at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, which is the U.N.-backed international trial against five former Khmer Rouge officials.

Mr. Rogers said he "put together a team of varied and very competent defense lawyers" for the trial, which begins on February 17 on the outskirts of Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.

When Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge guerrillas toppled Cambodia's U.S.-backed regime in 1975, Pol Pot suddenly forced all Phnom Penh residents at gun-point into the jungle, where many perished after they were enslaved, tortured, starved, or executed.

"With the starvation, a lot of people with the prosecution might say that the Khmer Rouge intentionally starved people, or was negligent," Mr. Rogers said.

"One alternative theory is that there simply wasn't enough food around, because of the five-year civil war before the Khmer Rouge took power.

"There are plenty of alternative theories to most of the allegations. For example, the mass graves. We don't know that they were killed under the Khmer Rouge," the U.N.'s Defense Support officer said.

In 1998, American investigator Craig Etcheson said in an interview he found nearly 10,000 mass graves "dating from the Khmer Rouge era, containing an estimated 500,000 victims of execution," which could be used as evidence.

"They could have been killed by the American bombing," Mr. Rogers said.

"None of them have been properly excavated. The numbers in the mass graves have been estimated. There aren't accurate numbers. So it is very difficult to tell exactly what happened."

An estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died under the Khmer Rouge's leadership, which was ousted by Vietnam's 1979 invasion.

In January 1979, the Vietnam News Agency said the Khmer Rouge murdered Cambodians "with hammers, knives, sticks and hoes, like killing wee insects."

Mr. Rogers said the Khmer Rouge's "killing and torture" is "accepted by most people," so defense lawyers will focus their strategy elsewhere.

"Most people condemn all those [five Khmer Rouge] that are in custody at the moment, and I think the evidence is much less clear than that.

"For example, the regional leaders used a lot of their discretion, or disobeyed orders, and a lot of the crimes were committed in the regions.

"One thing we do know is that the leaders spent most of their time in Phnom Penh, they weren't out in the fields knocking people on the head and shooting them. That simply didn't happen," he said.

"It is not a clear-cut murder case."

One of the accused, Khieu Samphan, enjoys support from French lawyer Jacques Verges, who defended several infamous criminals, including a beautiful Algerian bomber who killed French military officers in the 1950s, and who Mr. Verges later married.

Mr. Verges also defended "Carlos the Jackal" who led a 1975 assault on OPEC in Vienna, and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, known as "The Butcher of Lyon," in 1987.

Mr. Verges did not win those cases.

"I think Jacques Verges is an excellent lawyer," Mr. Rogers said.

"He's done amazing work in the past, and I'm sure he's going to do a great job defending Khieu Samphan."

Former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan, and Mr. Verges, 83, became friends in the early 1950s when several Khmer Rouge, including Pol Pot, were scholarship students in Paris.

Another accused, Kaing Guek Eav commonly known as Duch, has confessed and repented.

Duch, 65, is expected to reveal horrific details about how he ran the S-21 Tuol Sleng torture chambers in Phnom Penh, which sent at least 16,000 people to their death.

Pol Pot died in 1998. But others on trial include his so-called "Brother Number 2" ideologue Nuon Chea, plus former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary, and his wife Ieng Thirith, who was "social affairs" minister.

Mr. Rogers expects the trial to be complicated.

"I run the Defense Support Section, which fits together the defense team, supports them legally with logistics and administration, and runs the legal aid system. We help ensure fair trials for the accused."

Prosecutors will insist the five Khmer Rouge were responsible.

"This is something the prosecution are very keen on, because it means that it is far easier to convict. That is, when a group of people make a decision to carry out certain acts for a criminal purpose, and then they could be held liable for all the acts that were done in furtherance of that purpose.

"The prosecution have charged 'joint criminal enterprise' in their introductory submission," he said.

On February 17, the trial opens with a scrutiny of the witness list, and confirmation that everything is ready. A date will be set for testimony, probably in March.

Cambodia no longer metes out the death penalty, so maximum punishment would be life imprisonment.

*****

Richard S Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist who has reported news from Asia since 1978. He is co-author of "Hello My Big Big Honey!", a non-fiction book of investigative journalism, and his web page is http://www.geocities.com/asia_correspondent

Trial at hand for former torture chief

Vann Nath, a former prisoner of the Khmer Rouge, stands beside a painting of himself and other prisoners being led into the S21 torture centre. Jared Ferrie / The National

The National
Jared Ferrie, Foreign Correspondent
February 13. 2009

PHNOM PENH // Vann Nath has rendered his country’s painful history in brush strokes. One of a handful of survivors of a prison where about 17,000 people were tortured, Mr Nath documented the year he spent there in a series of oil paintings titled Endurance.

On Tuesday, three decades after Vietnamese troops ousted the Khmer Rouge, the man who ran the S21 torture centre goes on trial at an international war crimes tribunal in Cambodia’s capital.

Kong Keach Eav, better known as “Duch”, faces charges of crimes against humanity. He is the first of five Khmer Rouge leaders to be tried for their roles in the regime that killed as many as two million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979.

At the preliminary hearing on Tuesday, judges will decide on the nature of participation in the trial of “civil parties”, or victims who have asked to be included in the proceedings. Court officials said Duch’s trial will continue in March, although an exact date has yet to be announced.

For Mr Nath the trial comes late, but better than never.

“The time it has taken is very long and it makes me feel tired of waiting,” he said. “If we can get the trial as soon as possible it is the best thing.”

Mr Nath was tortured before entering S21, but not while he was at the prison. His art saved his life.

“That’s the only reason they kept me alive – because I could do the painting,” he said.

When his captors discovered he was an artist, they put him to work painting portraits and sculpting busts of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader who died in April 1998 in his stronghold in western Cambodia.

Every day was a struggle to please the overseers of the prison and Mr Nath lived in constant fear he would be tortured.

“I never had any hope that I would survive there,” he said. “The only way was to try to work hard to please all the cadre so they would let us stay alive and work for them.”

Lawyers have not publicly outlined their cases in detail, but the prosecution is likely to point to the central role that S21 played as the headquarters of the Khmer Rouge’s security network, which executed about 500,000 people. (Many more died of starvation and sickness in labour camps.)

In her book When the War was over, Elizabeth Becker wrote that Duch rose to become “one of the half dozen most important leaders in the country” as his S21 facility became “the nerve centre of the system of terror” that extended to torture prisons throughout the country.

According to Ms Becker, a former Washington Post reporter and one of only two journalists to interview Pol Pot, Duch answered only to Pol Pot and a few other high-ranking Khmer Rouge leaders who began to kill suspected enemies within their ranks in Stalinist-like purges.

The Khmer Rouge wanted to turn Cambodia into an agricultural utopia, but when they failed, leaders looked for enemies inside the party that could be blamed for undermining the revolution.

Duch led the witch-hunt. He and his torturers extracted false confessions from party officials and mapped out elaborate spy networks that did not exist. And they documented their work in meticulous detail, producing hundreds of thousands of pages of confessions and photographs of victims.

As head of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, Youk Chhang has spent 12 years collecting those and other records of Khmer Rouge atrocities. Many documents from the centre have been submitted as evidence to the tribunal.

Despite years of research into S21, Mr Chhang said mysteries remain.

“I’m hoping that the hearing will allow us to understand what happened there. Right now we just don’t know,” he said.

As more material is unearthed, more questions arise. For example, Mr Chhang recently tracked down the only known footage of S21. Vietnamese soldiers filmed it when they liberated Phnom Penh and it shows four children that were living at the prison.

The identities of the children are unknown, as are the reasons they were kept alive, said Mr Chhang.

While being sent to S21 meant almost certain death, records also show that Duch decided to release 177 prisoners.

“I want to know why he released them,” Mr Chhang said. “Is there any act of humanity in such horrible conditions?”

During his nine years of detention, Duch has kept silent about what happened at S21 and what his role was, Mr Chhang said.

Mr Nath said when he was detained at S21, he did not know Duch was sending prisoners who survived torture to be executed at the Killing Fields on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. He thought prisoners were being sent to work camps.

“Back then the man that ran S21 seemed to be a smart man, an intellectual man,” Mr Nath said. “After 1979 when we discovered that so many crimes had been committed, so many people had been killed, I realised he was a very cruel man, killing people without any sympathy.”

David Chandler, a former US diplomat turned-Cambodia historian, said Duch was complying with orders from superiors.

“There is no way he could have been acting on his own,” said Mr Chandler, who is the author of Voices from S21 and now teaches at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

“I think he was well educated, smart and completely dedicated to the Communist Party and to his macabre work,” he said. “Cruelty has nothing to do with it, and there was no room at S21 for compassion.”

Before S21 was taken over by the Khmer Rouge it was a school. These days it is a museum where tourists stroll sombrely through rooms filled with instruments of torture and thousands of black and white photos of prisoners. Some stare at the camera wide-eyed in terror, while others can barely open their eyes from the beatings they have received from torturers answering to Duch.

Now a born-again Christian, the 67-year-old former head of S21 is the only one among the five suspects to confess his role in carrying out purges.

Mr Nath said he was reserving judgement on whether Duch is sincere in his conversion to Christianity, or whether he regrets the atrocities he committed.

“I just have to wait until the court makes verdict and then I will have to decide whether he is a good man now or a bad man,” he said.

If found guilty, Duch and the other former Khmer Rouge leaders face a maximum sentence of life in prison and a minimum sentence of five years imprisonment.

Police Question 2 About Australia Fires

AssociatedPress

Police detained 2 suspects Thursday after they were reported acting suspiciously in an area burned out by last weekend's fires, some of which authorities suspect were set by arsonists. (Feb. 11)

What kind of believe to drink the urine of a cow ?

Cambodia villagers collect the urine of a cow believed to have healing powers in Kompot province, about 100 km (62 miles) south of the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, on September 26, 2002.(Chor Sokunthea/Reuters)

Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world

A landmine victim stands in the cafeteria of a school in Cambodia's western city Battambang on February 12, 2009. Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.REUTERS/Adrees Latif (CAMBODIA)

A man wearing prosthetics sweeps near a man on crutches in the courtyard of a school for landmine and polio victims in Cambodia's western city Battambang on February 12, 2009. Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.REUTERS/Adrees Latif (CAMBODIA)

A landmine victim rests his foot on a ball in the courtyard of a school for landmine and polio victims in Cambodia's western city Battambang on February 12, 2009. Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.REUTERS/Adrees Latif (CAMBODIA)

Unexploded ordinances sit displayed in a land-mine field in the outskirts of Cambodia's western city Battambang on February 12, 2009. Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.REUTERS/Adrees Latif (CAMBODIA)

Intercountry Adoptions Under the Hague Adoptions Convention

Media-Newswire.com

WASHINGTON th U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) today clarified that it continues to be unable to approve any Form I-600, Petition to Classify Orphan as an Immediate Relative, filed for a child to be adopted from Cambodia. Also, the Department of State (DOS) has advised USCIS that DOS has determined that Cambodia is not currently meeting its obligations under The Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (Hague Adoption Convention).

(Media-Newswire.com) - WASHINGTON – U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services ( USCIS ) today clarified that it continues to be unable to approve any Form I-600, Petition to Classify Orphan as an Immediate Relative, filed for a child to be adopted from Cambodia. Also, the Department of State ( DOS ) has advised USCIS that DOS has determined that Cambodia is not currently meeting its obligations under The Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption ( Hague Adoption Convention ). As a result, DOS consular officers cannot issue the required Hague Adoption Certificate or Hague Custody Declaration. Therefore USCIS is unable to approve any Form I-800, Petition to Classify Convention Adoptee as an Immediate Relative, filed for a child to be adopted from Cambodia at this time.

Certification of compliance with the Hague Adoption Convention and the Intercountry Adoption Act of 2000 is required under the procedures for Hague Convention adoptee cases. Since prospective adoptive parents cannot complete the immigration process for an adopted child from Cambodia at this time, they are strongly urged not to file Form I-800A, Application for Determination of Suitability to Adopt a Child from a Convention Country, identifying Cambodia as the country from which they seek to adopt.

The Hague Adoption Convention entered into force for the United States on April 1, 2008. The Hague Adoption Convention provides important safeguards to protect the welfare of children, birth parent( s ) and adoptive parent( s ) engaged in intercountry adoptions. Effective April 1, 2008, new intercountry adoptions between the United States and other Hague Convention countries must comply with the Hague Adoption Convention standards. Cambodia also ratified the Hague Adoption Convention in 2007. In the United States, Hague Convention adoptions are processed on USCIS Forms I-800A and I-800.

Before the United States and Cambodia ratified the Hague Adoption Convention, Cambodian intercountry adoption cases were processed on USCIS Forms I-600A,Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition, and I-600, Petition to Classify Orphan as an Immediate Relative. However, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, USCIS’ legacy agency, suspended U.S. orphan visa petition processing in Cambodia on Dec. 21, 2001 due to fraud, irregularities, and allegations of child-buying in the Cambodian adoption process. Because these concerns persist, DOS has determined it is not able to issue Hague Adoption Certificates or Hague Custody Declarations in Cambodia. It is important to note that this Cambodian suspension remains in effect for all Form I-600 ( orphan ) petitions filed before April 1, 2008.

USCIS will promptly advise the public when it can commence processing of Forms I-800 for Hague Convention adoptions from Cambodia.

On a mission

Contributed photo
Carol Buhrman, left, takes a traditional cyclo ride with her friend, Amy, in Prey Veng.

By Gracie Hart
Review Staff Writer
Published: February 12, 2009

The quest to find one’s self is nothing new but few travel halfway around the world and find themselves like Carol Buhrman has. Buhrman, who works in the provincial town of Prey Veng, Cambodia and is in her final year of a three-year mission with the Mennonite Central Committee, credits her mission with changing her life and helping her to find out who she is.

Burhman first heard about the MCC program, which is the relief and development branch of the Mennonite church, through her church. The MCC’s main goal is to relieve and help people around the world. Burhman, having already graduated from college, was ready to get involved.

“I picked where I wanted to go,“ she said. “I knew that I didn’t want to go to Africa and I didn’t know Spanish so South America wasn’t a choice. I saw the job [for Cambodia] online and it looked like the most interesting.“

She arrived in Cambodia in November 2006 as a girl who had logged very little travel time in her life. Now, her travel time is extensive with a very long and very expensive trip from Orange County to Prey Veng, Cambodia.

“It’s mentally tiring in that you say goodbye but then you don’t arrive until about a day and a half later,“ she said. “That’s a long time to think and imagine and process things.“

Buhrman has a lot to think about during the long trip including the family and friends that she left behind at home and also the people she has met during her time in Cambodia. After living with a host family in Prey Veng for two years, she has become accustomed to life there. But it hasn’t always been easy.

“Leaving my family was one of the hardest parts and it was hard to leave in general because Prey Veng is so far away; it’s literally halfway around the world,“ she said. “I miss having good people to connect to; it took a while for me to build a group in Cambodia and it wasn’t easy with my support system halfway around the world.“

Having moved to Orange County when she was just three years-old, making the switch from rural town to a whole new place proved interesting.

“There are actually lots of similarities,“ she said. “[You’re] going from one rural town to another and everyone knows what you’re doing so they follow you around. But there’s no comfort food, very little internet access and dirt roads without many cars.“

Buhrman also admits that she misses the little things like the convenience of running to a store and buying yogurt. However, she enjoys the works she’s doing as a rural health advisor and an advisor to Women’s Peace Makers. Burman writes proposals for grants, edits reports and talks to donors out of her office in the provincial capital of Prey Veng town.

“Cambodia is a developing country,“ she said. “Half of them live on less than a $1 a day. We’re trying to get them to diversify farming.“

Buhrman lights up when she talks about the people that she’s met there.

“They are some of the most generous people I’ve ever met,“ she said. “It also helps when you’re trying to learn the language and you practice with them. They have a strong sense of community [and] they want to know everything about you if you’re riding with them in a taxi.“

Buhrman, who recently came home for a friend’s wedding, was thankful to come home but she’s ready for her last year in Cambodia.

“I was ready for a break and it was good to come back but now I’m ready to go back,“ she said. “I’m not ready to end that period of my life yet. I did this for me and I knew this was something I wanted to do; other people are blessed through that.“

Next up for Buhrman, after her year of service, is applying to graduate school to study dietetics and possibly another extended trip.

“I will probably go back to visit Cambodia once my mission is over,“ she said. “I would like to do another overseas appointment somewhere. Asia is a good fit for my personality.“

For people interested in signing up for a mission overseas, Buhrman suggests taking the risk and doing it.

“I would defiantly say do it,“ she said. “It’s a great experience. It’s good to experience other things and cultures. You figure out what you want and how to live your life. Know that if you do something like this you’ll be changed. You won’t come back the same.“

For more information on the MCC and Buhrman’s time in Cambodia, visit her blog at

http://carolincambodia.blogspot.com/.

Former U.N. ambassador recalls journey

By Chris Cobb
The Herald-Zeitung
Published February 12, 2009

It has been more than three decades since Sichan Siv escaped the horrors and hardships of the Killing Fields of Cambodia and arrived in the United States with $2 to his name.

And after picking apples, selling ice cream and driving a cab around New York City, he eventually worked in the White House and served as an ambassador in the United Nations.

Members of the New Braunfels Rotary Club had a chance Wednesday to hear him recount his remarkable ascendancy from near death under Cambodia’s brutal Khmer Rouge regime to international diplomat.

“We were very lucky to have someone not only of his stature come here, but also someone who can remind us how lucky we all truly are,” Rotary Club President-elect Sharon Staats said.

Siv, who now lives in San Antonio, stopped by the Seekatz Opera House not only to tell his story but also promote his book, “Golden Bones” — an in-depth description of his flight from bloodshed in Cambodia and eventual rise to international prominence.

The former teacher fled a labor camp in Cambodia in 1976 shortly after Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge had taken power.

“They turned Cambodia into a land of blood and tears,” he told Rotarians Wednesday.

During its four-year regime beginning in 1975, the communist Khmer Rouge party killed around 2 million people, including Siv’s mother and 15 brothers and sisters.

Siv persevered in a labor camp for a year before hopping on a logging truck and then making a three-day trek across the border into Thailand.

“I was sick, tired, exhausted, but my heart was full of hope,” he told the crowd Wednesday.

He eventually would make a flight to Wallingford, Conn., where an American family had agreed to sponsor his citizenship. After arriving almost penniless, he worked on an apple farm and scooped ice cream for a living before moving to New York and becoming a cab driver.

In 1988, he volunteered for George Bush’s campaign for the presidency.

Because of both his work ethic and incredible background, he was tapped by Bush to serve as deputy assistant to the president for public liaison and to serve as deputy assistant secretary for South Asian affairs, which he did from 1989 to 1993.

In 2001, he was appointed by George W. Bush to serve as ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

“His journey is just incredible,” Rotarian John Dierksen said.

Siv’s stop in New Braunfels was one of many speaking engagements around the country he currently has planned on his calendar to promote his memoir.

Despite being somewhat reluctant to write what at times can be very painful memories, he said the response from readers has been “heartwarming.”

“People thank me because sometimes they truly don’t realize that America can be such a benefactor and such an inspiration for someone like me,” he said.

Brother Duch in the dock

International Herald Tribune
By Peter Maguire
Published: February 12, 2009

Last week, the controversy-plagued UN-Cambodian war crimes court announced that the trial of Khmer Rouge prison camp commandant Kaing Guek Eav, better known as "Brother Duch," would begin in March.

Almost as an afterthought, the court added that proceedings against the regime's political leaders, Ieng Sary, Noun Chea, and Khieu Samphan - the cases that will make or break these proceedings - would be delayed for yet another year.

While it is heartening to see Cambodia's war-crimes tribunal do something other than field pre-trial motions, Duch is a garden variety war criminal who could be quickly and easily convicted by a basic military tribunal for his well documented violations of basic human rights norms.

If Cambodia's unwieldy mixed tribunal cannot speedily convict this bloodstained butcher, it stands no chance in the cases against the well-defended and unrepentant Khmer Rouge leaders, whose legal guilt is far more difficult to prove.

Duch, although a key functionary, was not a policy maker. The former teacher lorded over a prison, Tuol Sleng, that 16,000-20,000 entered and less than 20 survived. Before prisoners were killed, most were photographed, tortured and interrogated. When the Vietnamese liberated the prison in 1979, a large portion of these meticulous photographic and documentary records were recovered. Even guards at Tuol Sleng feared for their lives - according to prison records, over 500 guards and staff members were killed for such seditious acts as breaking a shovel, screaming in their sleep or destroying a hornet's nest.

Duch told his staff at one meeting in 1976, "Kindness is misplaced. You must beat him to get at the deep things." A former Tuol Sleng guard and alleged "killing fields" executioner, Him Huy, told me in 1998 that if Duch ordered the killings of high ranking prisoners, he "also went with us to check."

Once the paperwork was complete and the executioners had "gathered their strength," Huy told me, the victims were "ordered to knee on the edge of the hole. Their hands cuffed behind them, then they were beaten on their nape with an oxcart axle - an iron tube."

When I asked Tuol Sleng survivor Bou Meng in 2003 what he would say to Duch if given the chance, he began to fish through his pocket and pulled out a photograph of a young woman. It was his wife, who had been killed at the prison. Bou Meng had found her photograph in the prison archive the day before.

"She was tortured and killed," he said as tears began to well in his eyes, "I would demand the return of my wife and child."

Unlike the Khmer Rouge political leaders who continue to deny knowledge of atrocities and even of Tuol Sleng Prison, Duch is now an evangelical Christian who has stoically accepted his fate, admitted his guilt, and taken responsibility for his actions.

"I am sorry," Duch told Nic Dunlop, the journalist who found him in 1999, "The people who died were good people."

Today, the former Tuol Sleng Prison chief freely admits that many of the prisoners were innocent. But he adds, "whoever was arrested had to die. It was the rule of the party."

However salacious the gory details of the Duch case might be, it is legally and politically simple. Some speculate that the Cambodian government is serving up this easily convicted thug as a sacrificial lamb in the hopes that the other over-80 defendants won't live long enough to see the inside of the courtroom. If nothing else, we might finally learn whether or not there were "Chinese advisors" inside Tuol Sleng.

The announcement of the start of the Duch trial was quickly overshadowed by UN prosecutor Robert Petit's decision to open new criminal investigations and possibly issue more indictments.
Given that Cambodia's mixed tribunal has already burned through its original budget and taken longer to erect a court than it took the United States, Britain and France to try more than 6,000 suspected war criminals in Europe and Asia after World War II, Petit's announcement was oddly presumptuous.

It did not take the Cambodian co-prosecutor Chea Leang (niece of Deputy Prime Minister Sok An) long to reject the move on both practical and political grounds. If nothing else, the UN's attempt to broaden this criminal inquiry will serve both as a test of the mixed tribunal's legitimacy and its ability to function as a court.

For many years, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen was firmly in control of these proceedings, but by opening further criminal investigations, the UN has challenged his control. What remains to be seen is whether or not the Cambodian prime minister has the political will to try the Khmer Rouge political leaders.

If nothing else, the Cambodian strongman and his minions at the mixed tribunal are quickly learning a point best made by German political theorist Otto Kircheimer in his classic 1961 study, "Political Justice": "Justice in political matters is more tenuous than in any other field of jurisprudence, because it can so easily become a mere farce."

Peter Maguire, author of "Law and War: An American Story" and "Facing Death in Cambodia," has taught the law and theory of war at Columbia University and Bard College.

Khmer Rouge Tribunal's Credibility Jeopardized by Corruption and Political Interference on Eve of First Trial

The Earth Times

Thu, 12 Feb 2009
Author : Open Society Justice Initiative

NEW YORK, Feb. 12 Khmer-Rouge-trial

NEW YORK, Feb. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Ahead of its first trial, the Cambodian government and international actors must immediately address grave flaws in the tribunal set up to try senior members of the Khmer Rouge for crimes against humanity, warns a report released by the Open Society Justice Initiative today.

The long-awaited trial of Kaing Guek Eav (a.k.a. Duch), the commander of the infamous Toul Sleng S-21 Prison where thousands of Cambodians were tortured and killed, is scheduled to begin next Tuesday in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. The tribunal has charged four other suspects in the murder of almost two million people between 1975 and 1979. Recent reports, however, suggest the Cambodian government is attempting to block further indictments.

"The court must demonstrate that it is not a tool of the Cambodian government and ensure a fair and transparent judicial process," said James A. Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative. "The court must show it is relying on law and facts, not politics, in deciding how many suspects will be investigated."

The court has also been plagued by unresolved allegations of corrupt employment practices. A confidential United Nations report in August 2008 detailed complaints of the court's staff paying kickbacks to political overseers. To date, the United Nations and the Cambodian government have yet to put in place a plan to address the problem.

"The court should take aggressive action to respond to the allegations of corruption and provide protection for whistleblowers," said Goldston. "Donor governments supporting the court--including Japan, France, and the United States--should continue to do so as long as the tribunal operates as a court of law."

Recent Developments at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia: February 2009 is the latest in a series of regular Justice Initiative publications offering news, analysis, and recommendations on the ECCC. Previous reports and other background information on the court are available here:
http://www.justiceinitiative.org/activities/ij/krt.

Click here to read or download the full February report:

http://www.justiceinitiative.org/db/resource2/fs/?file_id=20443

The URL for this page is:

http://www.justiceinitiative.org/db/resource2?res_id=104202

The Open Society Justice Initiative, an operational program of Open Society Institute, pursues law reform activities grounded in the protection of human rights, and contributes to the development of legal capacity for open societies worldwide. The Justice Initiative combines litigation, legal advocacy, technical assistance, and the dissemination of knowledge to secure advances in the following priority areas: anticorruption, equality and citizenship, freedom of information and expression, international justice, and national criminal justice. Its offices are in Abuja, Budapest, London, New York, and Washington DC. www.justiceinitiative.org.

SOURCE Open Society Justice Initiative

Fear of Flu Keeps Bird Business Down

By Pich Samnang, VOA Khmer
Original report from Battambang province
12 February 2009

Lim Tri, a 26-year-old university student, waited for a fruit shake on a recent evening along a stream in Battambang town. The frozen dessert usually calls for the addition of a raw egg, which gives the shake texture and, some believe, provides a power boost. Lim Tri, however, didn’t dare put a raw egg in his shake. He’s afraid of bird flu.

“I watch TV every day,” he said. “They publicize information about the H5N1 virus. So I don’t eat raw eggs, because they can affect us.”

Preparing a fruit shake nearby, proprietess Chhan Mom said now most of her customers follow Lim Tri’s habits.

“Some nights I don’t sell even a single egg,” Chhan Mom said.

The H5N1 virus has killed seven Cambodians since outbreaks began in 2003. One man fell ill and recovered from the disease, which is typically carried in birds, in Kandal province in November, renewing fears of the disease.

Even though bird flu has never broken out in Battambang province, people here fear the disease, avoiding eggs and poultry, in large part due to an informational campaign by local health officials. Health experts worry the disease could mutate to be spread from human to human, leading to a pandemic.

Fear of the disease has meant businesses here have been forced to cut back their operations, or even stop production.

Herding his ducks along a rice field in Or Mal commune, Battambang district, egg farmer Or Rith, 49, complained about a drop in demand in his business: he now only raises 2,000 ducks, compared to 3,000 last year.

“I lost $4,000 last year, but I still raise eggs, based on my fortunes,” Or Rith said.

About 5 kilometers down the road, chicken farmer Hem Seak, 52, sat near a recently emptied hen house. He said he decided to stop chicken farming because he was losing too much money.

“I raised eggs for a long time, but this is the first time that I lost,” he said. “Seeing that the market situation is not good, I stopped this business. People nearby doing the same thing as me have gone bankrupt and sold their cars to pay debt.”

According to the local Ministry of Agriculture veterinary office, the number of large-scale poultry farms decreased from 152 in the province in 2007 to 136 last year.

However, the director of the provincial agriculture department, Cheam Chan Sophoan, said the quantity of the poultry produced in the region was in surplus, despite some exports from the province to Phnom Penh.

He said that even though in the past people have avoided eating poultry because of the bird flu virus, some were beginning to feel less afraid.

“We have measures to prevent an outbreak of the disease,” he said.

Ouk Vithia, head of the provincial office of communicable disease control for the Ministry of Health, said his team has been sending out H5N1 educational messages through television and radio and by placards on motorcycle carriage taxis.

The messages encourage people to wear masks and gloves when they touch dead or sick birds. When they eat, they should order eggs and birds to be cooked well.

However, he said he wasn’t sure how many people remain afraid of eating poultry for fear of the disease.

Child of Khmer Rouge Prison Emerges

By Kong Sothanarith, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
12 February 2009

Sitting at a small table in the office of the Documentation Center of Cambodia Wednesday, Nang Chan Sophal, 39, waited to watch a film of Tuol Sleng prison shot by Vietnamese soldiers in January 1979.

He is one of four children depicted in the film.

“They brought my father, but I don’t know when,” he said. “And three or six months later, Khmer Rouge soldiers came in two jeeps with five or six persons and arrested my mother in Phnom Sruoth district, Kampong Speu province.”

He gazed at the floor.

He is the first former child prisoner of Tuol Sleng to be publicly announced, just ahead of the trial of the man who once ran Tuol Sleng prison, Kaing Kek Iev. An initial hearing in his tribunal trial opens Feb. 17. More than 12,000 Cambodians were tortured at the site, to be later executed and dumped into mass graves.

Nang Chan Sophal was taken with his mother to the prison with his two younger brothers and sister, sometime in the middle of 1978. He was 7 or 8 years old.

For nearly one year, Nang Chan Sophal and his siblings stayed in Tuol Sleng with four or five other children. They were separated from the adults. They were not tortured or forced into labor, he said.

Every day, however, he would hear the tortured cries of prisoners as they begged their jailers to tell them what they had done wrong.

On Jan. 7, 1979, the day the Vietnamese ousted the Khmer Rouge from Phnom Penh, cadre of the regime tried to carry children with them in flight. He and his siblings hid in a pile of prisoners’ clothes, behind a building in Tuol Sleng. One soldier in particular came looking for them, passing the pile of clothes two or three times.

“I was waiting for my mother,” he said Wednesday. “I pictured her watching us through the window of the building as we hid. And then as the liberation came, all the gates of the prison were opened. Khmer Rouge soldiers went out, and then I was trying to find my mother everywhere in the prison. I couldn’t find her. I saw many bodies of those who had died very recently, on the beds, covered in documents, near typewriters. I sifted through the papers to see the bodies.”

He never found his mother. He was taken along with his siblings to a state orphanage. One brother, as well as his sister, were adopted by “foreigners” during the State of Cambodia. He has lost touch with them. Now a resident of Phnom Penh, Nang Chan Sophal drives a bulldozer for a living. His younger brother drives a tractor.

Earlier this month, he prepared a complaint against Kaing Kek Iev, better known as Duch, who faces a number of atrocity crimes charges for his role as Tuol Sleng chief.

“I heard that Duch would be tried soon, and it interested me to prepare the complaint for justice of the death of my parents, and for the nation, for other victims,” Nang Chan Sophal said.

A Cardamom Commune Looks to Tourism

By Pich Samnang, VOA Khmer
Original report from Koh Kong province
12 February 2009

Home to rare wildlife species, including the endangered Siamese crocodile, the Cardamom mountains are also the habitat of about 25,000 people. Most of the people live in complete poverty and depend on the sale of illegal timber for their survival. Consequently, one can hardly see big trees in the region these days.

“If we talk about forest, there has been almost no trees until now because of lawless deforestation in the region during the 1980s and the 1990s,” said Uy Ai, chief of Chi Phat commune in Thmor Bang district, Koh Kong province.

In order to prevent the people from cutting down trees, an eco-tourism community was set up in his commune in early 2007 with the support of Wildlife Alliance, an NGO working on conservation in the area.

Touch Nimith, Wildlife Alliance’s head of the Community-Based Eco-Tourism project, said it is vital to change the commune into a tourism site so that the people will stop their dependence on trees and wild animals. Villagers are being encouraged to switch from their forest-dependent jobs to tourism-service careers.

“With eco-tourism, we can protect our existing natural resources,” he said. “So we need a mechanism, where tourists are needed in our preservation and protection efforts.”

“Community-Based Eco-Tourism in Chi Phat commune enables people to have extra work. We use guides, boats, moto-taxis, forest cooks, and ox carts for tourist services,” said Chi Phat CBET committee head Chhang Sok.

Chi Phat takes about five hours to reach from Phnom Penh. It is a commune composed of four small villages with 506 families, or 2,280, people, according to commune chief Uy Ai.

The villagers live by working on rice fields, picking up tree rubber in the forest and selling groceries on the roads in the villages. However, this work cannot guarantee their sustainability, so they have to go back to their traditional careers: cutting down trees.

However, after the Chi Phat CBET project came into existence, most of the people turned their attention from cutting down trees to serving tourists for profit.

Phiev Channy, who has run a guesthouse since the beginning of the CBET project here, said after the community opened its door for tourists, she could earn on average $100 per month from her guesthouse.

“I am happy because this job is not difficult,” she said. “We just clean the house and welcome guests.”

Most of the tourists coming and staying in the commune are Americans, British, Australians and Israelis, Phiev Channy said.

Rising from a hammock in the middle of the forest and sitting beside a pile of burning wood, an American tourist from California, Adam Waught, said he was amazed by his trip in the southern Cardamoms.

“It’s been good,” he said. “I mean everything I had expected, sleeping out here last night, listening to the sound of the jungle. It is amazing for someone like myself. I am from a city in America. We don't have a lot of opportunities to spend the night in a place like this, to see the sky full of stars and to spend the night in the middle of nowhere.”

Chi Phat had so far done a good job, but the community would do well to control the number of tourists coming in, he said. “Too rapid an increase in the number of tourists can spoil the untouched nature in the region.”

Textbook on Khmer Rouge

Asiaone News

Thu, Feb 12, 2009
Reuters

PHNOM PENH - CAMBODIA unveiled its first textbook on the 'Killing Fields' genocide on Thursday to raise awareness among those too young to remember the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge era in which 1.7 million people died.

Thirty years after the fall of Pol Pot's ultra-Maoist regime, many young Cambodians know little about one of the darkest chapters in the 20th century, education officials say.

'When we tell students about the Khmer Rouge genocide, they don't believe it and think it's fiction,' Deputy Education Minister Ton Sa Im told Reuters.

'But now when they see the United Nations help Cambodia put Khmer Rouge on trial, they start believing,' she said of the first trial of a top Pol Pot cadre due to start on Feb 17.

More than 500,000 copies of the text book will be distributed in the impoverished Southeast Asian country, where more than half of its 14 million people were born after the Khmer Rouge were ousted in a 1979 Vietnamese invasion.

'For the first time in Cambodia's history, the genocide will be taught in high school,' said Youk Chhang, director of the US-funded Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam), which has documented Khmer Rouge atrocities.

The centre played a key role in bringing out the textbook, which includes chapters on other genocides such as the 800,000 people killed in the central African country of Rwanda in 1994.

Seng Nary, an 18-year-old student who only heard about the Khmer Rouge from her parents, said she knew little about the joint Cambodian-United Nations court set up in 2006 to investigate and prosecute Pol Pot's surviving henchmen.

'I saw something on television about the Khmer Rouge tribunal, but that's it,' she told Reuters.
A recent survey by the Human Rights Center of the University of California, Berkeley, found 85 per cent of respondents 'had little or no knowledge' of the tribunal.

'On the eve of the first trial, more Cambodians should be aware of the court's work, especially as there is a strong desire for justice,' director of research Phuong Pham said in the report, entitled 'So We Will Never Forget'.

It recommended that educational material combining historical texts and visual material from the forthcoming trials be created for use in primary and secondary schools.

Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, head of the S-21 torture centre under the Khmer Rouge, will go on trial on Tuesday for his role in the deaths of an estimated 16,000 people.

Another four senior Pol Pot cadres have been charged with crimes against humanity but their trial dates have not been set. -- REUTERS

Patience Wears Thin on Corruption Law

By Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
12 February 2009

More than ten years have passed since officials and the donor community recommended that an anti-corruption law be put in place, and despite the recognition of its importance, the long-awaited law is still not out.

The draft anti-corruption law is still moving back and forth between the administration and the National Assembly, without a definite finish date.

Human Rights Party President Kem Sokha recalls the process of making a law that was started in 1994 to look at different aspects of fighting corruption.

The drafting originally looked at two aspects of the law, he said, one focusing on curbing corruption and the other on revealing personal assets. He said it is time the law is passed.

“Starting from 1994 till now it seems too long,” he said.

Tired of waiting, some officials point to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s administration and his Cambodian People’s Party for unwillingness to pass the law.

Yim Sovann, a National Assembly lawmaker from the Sam Rainsy Party and former chairman of the Assembly’s anti-corruption committee, expressed little expectation the law would be passed in the near future.

“The anti-corruption law that Cambodia and the international community have been waiting on for a long time is still in the hands of the Cambodian People’s Party and the government, and I don’t expect the law will be out too soon,” he said. “The government leadership, dominated by the CPP, has not enough political will and commitment to release the law.”

The anti-corruption law has been an effective promise touted by the government to secure assistance at every annual donor meeting in the past, even though it has failed to materialize.

“From one year to another the promise was the same,” said Chea Vannath, an independent analyst and former head of the Center for Social Development. “It was only later that the government said Cambodia needs to finish the penal code first, before working on the anti-corruption law.”

Cambodia ranks 166 out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s 2008 corruption perceptions index, one place above Burma in Southeast Asia. The country’s trend in fighting corruption has worsened in the past few years; it ranked 151 in 2006.

A senior CPP lawmaker, Cheam Yiep, admitted that the process has taken a long time, but he cited other factors outside the CPP or government.

“There is also some reluctance among other organizations…involved in drafting the law,” he said, citing the UNDP, the Japan International Cooperation Agency and other organizations.

Cheam Yiep said he hoped the law would pass within this mandate of the government, which ends in elections in 2013. The law requires a review of the penal code, he said, which is being looked at by the Council of Ministers.

Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan, however, said the council’s legal team has finished reviewing the penal law and is awaiting government approval before sending it to the National Assembly.

A draft of the anti-corruption law did reach the floor of the National Assembly, in 2003, but it was soon sent back to the executive branch, controlled by Hun Sen, for further review. The administration has since said the law must clarify the term “corruption.”