A High Ranking Official of the Government Criticizes that Foreign Officials Interrupt the Process of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal - Thursday, 12.3.2009

Posted on 15 March 2009

The Mirror, Vol. 13, No. 603

“A high-ranking official of the Cambodian government stated on Tuesday that the Khmer Rouge Tribunal is at present being interrupted and hindered by some foreign officials. The Minister of Information and government spokesperson, Mr. Khieu Kanharith, criticized that some foreign officials are making money rather than coming to seek justice for Khmer citizens. The government spokesperson reprimanded them, saying, ‘One case has not yet been finished, and they raise another case. This group wants to extend the time of the court proceedings for their salaries… Many of them try to oppose some of the court actions, so that it cannot proceed. Therefore, we think carefully about all elements of our Article 46, and nobody can block this court.’

“Moreover, Minister of Information Khieu Kanharith warned that the Cambodian side might move ahead alone, if foreign officials continue to interrupt the process of seeking justice. He said, ‘We have many elements to consider. If no one does it, we do it. The government has money to do it, but we may do it alone, because the government cannot afford tens of thousands of dollars for the salaries for foreign officials. According to Article 46, as a last resort, the Cambodian government can do it alone, but first, we need to work with the United Nations and then with countries that are members of the United Nations. Then we work with partner countries, and if the third way cannot work, the forth way is that Cambodia will proceed alone.’

Note:

Further information about the history and some arrangements for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal:

Cambodia’s Position on the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

Presentation by His Excellency Sok An, Senior Minister, Minister in Charge of the Office of the Council of Ministers, President of the Task Force for Cooperation with Foreign Legal Experts and Preparation of the Proceedings for the Trial of Senior Khmer Rouge Leaders, to the Stockholm International Forum Truth, Justice and Reconciliation, 23-24 April 2002

Your Excellencies, Diplomatic Representatives and Participants in this third Stockholm International Forum .

Firstly, I would like to thank the Swedish government for making it possible for the Cambodian delegation to participate in this Forum, giving us the valuable chance to meet and exchange views with scholars, diplomats and legal experts from around the world. Learning from others’ experiences and sharing our own is a precious opportunity for us…

The Paris Peace Agreements of 1991 accorded political legitimacy to the Khmer Rouge and, when UNTAC left Cambodia in 1993, the new coalition government had to cope with the Khmer Rouge continuing policy of civil war and destabilization. We then launched a multifaceted strategy involving political, legal, economic and military campaigns, including the 1994 Legislation to Outlaw the Khmer Rouge, and efforts to encourage its members to defect and split. What Prime Minister Hun Sen has described as a “win-win” policy that has formed the bedrock of the political platform of the Royal Government of Cambodia involves five facets: “divide, isolate, finish, integrate, and develop” in which the Khmer Rouge political and military structure was ended, but those Khmer Rouge who defected were assured of their physical safety and survival, the right to work and to carry out their professions, and the security of their property…

The fifth compromise arose because the United Nations wanted the Law explicitly to exclude the possibility of any amnesty or pardon for those who may be indicted or convicted. According to our 1993 Constitution, the King has the right to give amnesty and pardon and we did not wish this law to contradict our Constitution. As a compromise we agreed to state in the law that the Royal Government of Cambodia will not request the King to grant any amnesty or pardon. Our Prime Minister and I have repeatedly stated that no one is above the law, and it will be entirely up to the Extraordinary Chambers to decide who shall be indicted or convicted…

But we cannot wait forever. Article 46 of our Law makes perfectly clear that, while primacy is given to United Nations participation in the process, if it pulls out, Cambodia is entitled to go ahead to establish the Extraordinary Chambers without the United Nations, hopefully with the participation and support of individual member states and foreign legal personalities, or in the last resort to carry out the trial entirely on its own.

[Bold face highlighting added during editing]

“It should be noted that recently, the foreign co-prosecutor of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, Mr. Robert Petit, had asked to open investigations on more former Khmer Rouge leaders, besides the five former Khmer Rouge leaders already detained in the special detention facility of the tribunal, waiting for hearings. However, the above request of Mr. Robert Petit was strongly opposed by the Cambodian co-prosecutor, Ms. Chea Leang, by strongly raising different reasons . [The US based organization] Human Rights Watch criticized the disagreement between Ms. Chea Leang and Mr. Robert Petit on his request, saying that this is political interference, raising the accusation that there is intervention by the Cambodian government.

“The investigating judges of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal have not yet made a decision after the request of Mr. Robert Petit to investigate additional former Khmer Rouge leaders. In the meantime, Khmer citizens inside and outside of the country requested the investigation of more former Khmer Rouge leaders, in order to seek justice for the victims of the Killing Fields regime. It is regretted that high ranking officials of the Cambodian government accused foreign officials of the Khmer Rouge tribunal of interrupting the process by requesting to hear more former Khmer Rouge leaders, to be detained at the special detention facility of the tribunal.

“On the other hand, last week, the Khmer Rouge Tribunal amended 27 points of its internal regulations, but did not consider any request by non-government organizations. This results in further criticism of the hybrid tribunal by non-government organizations, for trying to conceal information, related to the process of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Moreover, the fact that the Khmer Rouge Tribunal did not consider the requests by non-government organizations shows that the special tribunal is under strong political influence.

“It should be noted that in late 2008, many organizations submitted detailed requests for changes in the internal regulations of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Those organizations had said that their requests will lead to more openness: like allowing the public to attend, when those who are arrested are presented for the first time, and like the request to publish information about decisions how differences of opinion between prosecutors and investigating judges in the tribunal were solved. But during the plenary session of the investigating judges of the tribunal last week, these requests by non-government organizations were not raised for discussions.

“In a joint request by five non-government organizations, including the Center for Social Development - CSD, the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association – ADHOC, and the Cambodian Open Society Justice Initiative, they ask for solutions for apparent problems of interpretation between the Agreement to establish the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, with the United Nations signed in 2003 with the Cambodian government, and the internal regulations of the tribunal. This request was not taken up for discussion during the plenary session of the judges of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, while an official hearing of Kaing Gek Iev, called Duch, will be held in late March. This problem creates distrust among national and international observers of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, while corruption allegations at the tribunal are not yet clarified.

“A former US ambassador in charge of war crimes, and an important negotiator to establish the tribunal, Mr. David Scheffer [as ambassador, he participated in the creation of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia], said Tuesday that it was not sure whether policy makers of this tribunal consider to publish such decisions or not. Mr. David Scheffer wrote in an email that it is important that they should not conclude and express views in writing about such sensitive points controversial among prosecutors. He added that the 2003 Agreement should be consulted.

“Some of those who observe the Khmer Rouge Tribunal since its beginning said that this tribunal cannot help Khmer citizens, who have been waiting for justice for more than 30 years, to see the real light of justice, because since it was created, the hybrid tribunal, established together with the United Nations, had to encounter various obstacles, especially corruption allegations, which almost makes this tribunal to lose its value. In addition, attacks between Cambodian government officials and foreign officials in the Khmer Rouge Tribunal lead to further postponement the hearings of former Khmer Rouge leaders.

“Some analysts criticized that both the United Nations and the Cambodian government seem not to have the will to prosecute the former Khmer Rouge leaders soon, and to provide justice to the victims who lost their lives during the Killing Fields regime. That is why the recent hearing of Duch on 17-18 February proceeded in a way which was useless [no explanation given why this newspaper comes to this opinion], and then the Cambodian side announced that it will completely run out of money in March. This announcement from the Cambodian side is a shame, since so far, not any Khmer leader has been prosecuted, while millions of dollars were already spent wastefully.

“Anyway, Khmer citizens inside and outside of the country want the hearings of former Khmer Rouge leaders to be conducted soon, to find out who created the Khmer Rouge, and to reveal the reasons that led to the crimes where more than 1.7 million Khmer citizens were killed during the Killing Fields regime.”

Moneaksekar Khmer, Vol.16, #3709, 12.3.2008
Newspapers Appearing on the Newsstand:
Thursday, 12 March 2009

Cambodia loosen entry rules for Vietnamese

MCOT English News

HANOI, March 14 (VNA) - Vietnamese, Lao and Thai nationals holding travel warrants will now be allowed to stay in Cambodia for one week and travel within its three provinces.

The decision, made by the Cambodian government, is aimed at luring more foreign visitors and investors to the Indochina country, Minister of Tourism Chan Thon said on Mar. 11.

Accordingly, Vietnamese, Thai and Lao people holding passports are permitted to stay in Cambodia for one month and take legal means of transportation along with them.

Cambodia also plans to open new international border gates with Vietnam , Laos and Thailand to draw more tourists from these neighbouring countries, Minister Chan Thon said.

In 2008, Cambodia welcomed 210,000 Vietnamese visitors, 109,000 Thai visitors and nearly 61,000 Lao tourists, according to its Tourism Ministry. (VNA)

Family unearths clues to missing Texas soldier's fate in Cambodia

ERICH SCHLEGEL/DMN
Mary Nolan, with son Rodger, believes the government should compensate her for the loss of her husband, McKinley, who disappeared in November 1967 while serving in Vietnam. “I should have been given a good explanation as to what happened, when, why,” she said.

Dallas Morning News

Saturday, March 14, 2009
By GREGG JONES / The Dallas Morning News
gjones@dallasnews.com

McKinley Nolan's letters from South Vietnam to his wife in Texas hinted at his anguish. He wrote of playing dead to survive on the battlefield and the suffering of Vietnamese civilians.

"He was just telling me how bad it was over there, all the fighting, all the killing," said Mary Nolan.

There was no clue of what was to come.

On Nov. 9, 1967, weeks from completing a two-year hitch in the Army, McKinley Nolan disappeared from his First Infantry Division unit. Communist Viet Cong propaganda broadcasts and leaflets later featured Nolan urging fellow black soldiers to lay down their weapons. The Army branded the missing Texan as one of the war's two confirmed defectors, but offered no explanation as to why Nolan deserted or what happened to him.

Now, McKinley's younger brother, Michael, has joined forces with a New Jersey journalist, a Vietnam War veteran, a New York City filmmaker, a Hollywood star and a Houston congresswoman in hopes of finally unraveling the mystery.

Their combined efforts last month pushed the Pentagon's MIA search unit, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, to act on an eyewitness account and dig for McKinley Nolan's remains in a Cambodian village.

Michael Nolan, an Austin wood pallet manufacturer, flew to Cambodia to watch the U.S. team chip away at the hard Cambodian clay. It was the latest stop in a long journey to find his missing brother and understand who he was: a deserter who turned his back on his country and his family, or a hero who stood up to the Viet Cong and Khmer Rouge and paid with his life.

•

The Nolan case has long fascinated POW-MIA aficionados. It has spawned such varied tales as Nolan quietly slipping back home to the Brazos River bottomlands of Washington County, Texas, to him living the high life in Cuba as a guest of Fidel Castro.

"In the world of the conspiratorial POW-MIA guys, McKinley Nolan is like Bigfoot," said journalist Richard Linnett, who has spent years tracking missing Americans in Cambodia. "He's spotted everywhere."

As a rifleman in the Army's 16th Infantry Regiment, Nolan was based in Tay Ninh province, near the border with Cambodia. His veiled references to haunting battlefield experiences are supported by a Pentagon document that shows Nolan earned a Purple Heart and a Combat Infantry Badge. Linnett made the document available to The Dallas Morning News.

The Army didn't respond to questions submitted by The News.

By November 1967, Nolan was one of about 500,000 U.S. military personnel in Vietnam. A poll that autumn found that 46 percent of Americans believed U.S. military involvement in Vietnam was a mistake. Black GIs openly questioned why they should die for South Vietnamese freedom when they were denied equal rights at home.

If McKinley Nolan shared those sentiments, he didn't tell his wife.

"If he had a job, he did it," she said.

But Nolan's commitment to the Army was flagging. He was AWOL – absent without leave – from Sept. 7 to Nov. 6, 1967, according to the Pentagon document.

He was jailed for two days. And then, on Nov. 9, the 22-year-old disappeared.

•

Mary Nolan said the Army revealed little about her husband's disappearance. Months passed before she received a letter stating that Nolan had defected to communist Viet Cong forces, she said. In January 1975, three months before the war ended, the Army notified her that her husband had been seen alive in Cambodia.

In 1992, a U.S. military team thought they had found McKinley Nolan's remains in Cambodia. DNA tests, however, proved negative.

Eight years later, Linnett, a journalist in Newark, N.J., stumbled onto Nolan's trail. Linnett was working on a book about a 1970 mutiny carried out by two crew members of an American freighter transporting napalm to U.S. forces in Thailand. One of the mutineers, Clyde McKay, sought refuge with Khmer Rouge guerrillas and was later executed by the communist group.

Linnett was searching for McKay's grave site in eastern Cambodia when a local resident pulled him aside. "Are you talking about the black man?" the villager asked. He told Linnett an intriguing story about an American GI who supposedly lived in the area during the time of the Khmer Rouge.

Back in the United States, a Pentagon investigator revealed to Linnett that the Cambodian man was talking about a missing soldier named McKinley Nolan.

"I thought this story was truly amazing," Linnett said. "This guy had lived with the Viet Cong and the Khmer Rouge."

Working sources in the U.S. and Cambodia, Linnett pried loose U.S. military intelligence documents and began sharing information with Michael and Mary Nolan.

•

In 2006, Michael Nolan phoned Linnett with incredible news.

"He said, 'Richard, someone saw McKinley in Vietnam,' " Linnett recalled.

That someone was a Vietnam veteran named Dan Smith, and he had contacted the Washington County sheriff in search of Nolan's family.

Linnett was skeptical. He phoned Smith.

A retired 911 operator in the Pacific Northwest, Smith said he had lost a leg serving with the First Infantry Division in Vietnam. In 2005, he made one of his periodic trips to Vietnam to deliver medical supplies.

In the city of Tay Ninh, near the Cambodian border, Smith encountered a black man, about 60 years of age, with rotted teeth and jaundiced eyes. The man told Smith that he had served with the First Infantry Division in Vietnam in 1967.

When Smith mentioned that he was going home soon, the stranger sighed.

"Man, I wish I could go home," he said.

"Where's home?" Smith asked.

"Washington, Texas," the man replied.

Smith reported the encounter to U.S. officials in Vietnam. After he returned home, the Pentagon MIA search unit sent an investigator to his home. Smith said he picked two photographs of McKinley Nolan out of a mugshot book.

Afterward, Smith said the investigator refused to take his calls. So did the MIA unit.

But Linnett heard him out, and he arranged for Smith to tell his story in person to the Nolans.

In the meantime, Linnett had piqued the curiosity of New York City documentary filmmaker Henry Corra. When Smith arrived in Washington-on-the-Brazos, Texas, to meet the Nolans, Corra's camera was rolling.

After a tearful meeting with the Nolan family, Smith vowed to return to Southeast Asia to find the missing GI.

A series of trips to Cambodia followed, first Smith alone, and then together with Michael Nolan, Linnett and Corra. What they learned convinced Smith that the man he encountered in Tay Ninh was another U.S. deserter who had assumed Nolan's identity.

But the search continued, financed in part by actor Danny Glover, who agreed to produce Corra's documentary on the search for McKinley Nolan after seeing footage from Texas and Cambodia.

The group tracked the missing GI to a village outside the town of Memot, in eastern Cambodia, where a man named Cham Son recalled Nolan's life during the tumult of war and Khmer Rouge genocide.

McKinley Nolan's missing years emerged from the mists.

•

When he arrived in Vietnam in 1966, Nolan was happily married, the proud father of a 2-year-old son. He was a friendly, muscular guy who loved baseball and horses.

By the time he disappeared in 1967, he had grown disillusioned with the war, said Linnett, citing interviews with Nolan's friends in Vietnam and Cambodia.

A Vietnamese girlfriend "convinced him to go with her," said Linnett.

It's unclear whether Nolan willingly worked with the Viet Cong, Linnett said. In any event, Nolan grew disenchanted with the group and in 1973 slipped into Cambodia with his Vietnamese wife and their baby, Linnett said.

In eastern Cambodia, Nolan drove a truck and farmed, local residents told Linnett and Smith. When the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975 and emptied cities to return Cambodia to "Year Zero," Nolan was forced to move to a village deeper in the jungle.

"Because of his size and strength, they made him pull an oxcart loaded with people being taken to an interrogation center," Smith said. "Villagers said he would beg for their forgiveness."

Nolan told jokes and sang songs in pidgin Cambodian to lift people's spirits.

"He would literally step in front of guards to keep them from beating people," Smith said. "McKinley was a hero. Everybody there loved him."

In 1977, the villager Cham Son recounted, Khmer Rouge soldiers took Nolan away.

"He saw McKinley being marched off," said Linnett, "and knew when the soldiers came back without him that he had been killed."

•

In April 2008, after hearing Cham Son's account, Linnett and his comrades gave the Pentagon's MIA search unit precise information on the suspected grave site. The agency still didn't seem interested, Linnett said.

Last month, after the Nolans enlisted the help of U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston, a JPAC team began excavating the site identified by Cham Son.

The team completed two weeks of digging in late February without finding any remains, said Air Force Lt. Col. Wayne Perry, JPAC spokesman. Cham Son told the team as it was wrapping up that the terrain had changed, and he wasn't sure of the precise burial spot, Perry said.

The Nolan family and Linnett, with Lee's help, are trying to force the Pentagon to release McKinley Nolan's personnel file and classified documents on the case. Linnett and Corra are tracking leads that they believe will lead to Nolan's remains in eastern Cambodia.

Mary Nolan, now 62, has never remarried. She believes the government should compensate her for her husband's loss, regardless of the circumstances.

"I should have been given a good explanation as to what happened, when, why," she said.

After years of anger at "the system" for taking his brother away, Michael Nolan said he found peace retracing McKinley's footsteps and seeing him through the eyes of Cambodian villagers who revered him.

"Whether he's dead or alive," said Nolan, "I feel he would be happy that we're bringing the truth to light."

Moriarty’s medical missionary team made a difference in Cambodia

Buffalo Reflex

By Michelle Bell
michelleb@buffaloreflex.com
Friday, March 13, 2009

“There is no single person’s soul that is more important than anyone else’s,” said Donna Moriarty, speaking to the First Baptist Church congregation on Feb. 15 about what inspired her to take a medical-missionary trip to Cambodia in January. Moriarty has been a women’s health nurse practitioner at the Dallas County Health Department for 20 years, and she also works in Lebanon in an ob-gyn’s office.

Moriarty, Buffalo, traveled to the southeast Asian country on her first international mission trip from Jan. 8-18, and her team helped treat more than 500 people in the process. The team — made up of Moriarty; Neila Kraft, registered nurse in Lebanon; Christi Wilson, family nurse practitioner in Lebanon; and Rick Howerton, associate pastor at First Christian Church in Phillipsburg as well as Christ in Youth, an organization in Joplin — worked together to help the “very patient and grateful” Cambodians.

American Rehabilitated Ministries was the host and helped coordinate interpreters.

Cambodia, known for its tight visa regulations, requires missionaries to follow a 50-50 law: 50 percent of the missionaries’ time must be used for humanitarian in nature efforts and 50 percent can be used for evangelism.

The team set up clinics in three different areas, and Moriarty used her expertise in women’s health to educate Cambodians about hygiene and ways to prevent disease. Although team members brought their supplies from the States, they bought most of the medications in Cambodia.

“Customs could have been tricky with a lot of prescription drugs,” she said.

Health concerns encountered in Cambodia were “mostly related to dehydration and malnutrition,” according to Moriarty, as well as the environment. The Cambodians’ drinking water is to blame for many of the ailments.

“The water was nothing I would put near my mouth,” she said.

The team also “wormed every patient we saw,” said Moriarty; however, they couldn’t do anything about some of the chronic conditions.

Moriarty said the team helped educate their patients about the warning signs and dangers of human trafficking, a growing problem in the area, and spent time at Rapha House, a rescue home for girls who are at risk of being taken into human trafficking.

Rapha House also teaches the girls various trades, including salon services.

“On our last day we needed to support Rapha House, so we got pedicures and manicures,” she said.

At each clinic the members ministered to the people.

“So many times you plant a seed, but you never know if there was a harvest,” said Moriarty. “However, we were able to hear that 17 people said they wanted to become baptized and follow Jesus.”

Moriarty feels Christianity could grow in Cambodia if more missionaries were allowed in.

“One of the main things I received from this trip is that their Buddhist religion takes and takes and takes and gives them nothing, not even hope.” she said. “Christianity gives them something back.”

Day in pictures

A general view of the 900-year-old Preah Vihear temple, a world heritage site, during sunrise in Preah Vihear province, 543 km (337 miles) north of Phnom Penh March 13, 2009.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA RELIGION TRAVEL POLITICS)

A Cambodian vendor waits for her costumers while selling her deep-fried spiders at the town of Skun, about 75 kilometers (46 miles) northeast of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Saturday, March 14, 2009. The town is well-known for selling deep-fried spiders to travelers who stop by on their way to and from the country's northern and northeastern provinces.( AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

A Cambodian girl demonstrates to travelers how to touch a live spider at the town of Skun, about 75 kilometers (46 miles) northeast of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Saturday, March 14, 2009. The town is well-known for selling deep-fried spiders to travelers who stop by on their way to and from the country's northern and northeastern provinces.( AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Grim economy hits RI Southeast Asian youth group

Danbury News Times

By HILARY RUSS Associated Press Writer
03/14/2009

PROVIDENCE, R.I.—Sophea Pheap felt ignored, alone and always one step behind in her old GED class.
She thought the teachers went too fast without making the difficult material any fun. And the 26-year-old daughter of Cambodian refugees said she just never fit in with the other students.

Then Pheap found the Providence Youth Student Movement, where Southeast Asian-American teenagers and young adults get paid $100 a month to attend classes every weekday for two hours.

"Here, I'm not shy," said Pheap who wants a better job than the one she used to have at a sandwich shop. "I'm a single mom, and that's what I need. A GED."

The state's fiscal crisis and national recession have stretched social service and noprofit groups thin, with a double-digit unemployment rate that has pushed already stressed families closer to the financial brink. But this group is helping give struggling Southeast Asian youngsters—whose families are often from war-torn countries—education, job skills and tools for staying off the streets. Some supporters say it's the one place they feel safe and welcome.

But the weakening economy is taking its toll on the group's funding.

Kids who participate in the group's leadership and community organizing program get a stipend of up to $400 a month. But those stipends, as well as money others get for taking GED classes, are getting cut by 10 percent because the recession has stretched resources thin. Staff salaries

and the overall budget will also shrink, said executive director Kohei Ishihara.
The cuts leave the group's new headquarters, where they moved in December, unfinished for now. While they have chairs, couches, tables and computers, they still need lighting, additional construction and other furnishings—small items that add up, Ishihara said.

"What's difficult right now is the anxiety of not knowing what's going to happen in the future," he said, adding that they've been getting letters from funders who are reducing and suspending grants because foundations' portfolios have taken such a hit in the stock market.

"A lot of kids who normally hang out in different places, they come to hang out in (the group) where they have self-comfort and they have each other," said Molly Soum, a counselor at The Genesis Center, which helps Southeast Asian refugees in the city.

Some members are young men affiliated in varying degrees with different gangs. But here, they get along, Pheap and others said.

The group's agenda is diverse. Operating out of a converted warehouse in Providence, it offers GED classes, a youth leadership and community organizing program, and a support group for gay and lesbian teenagers.

The group was founded in 2001 after several Cambodian-gang related clashes and killings in the city. Makna Men, chair of the mayor's Southeast Asian Advisory Council, called the younger generation "the missing link" to solving a host of problems in the community.

In the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of refugees fled Southeast Asia to escape the violent Khmer Rouge regime and civil unrest. U.S. Census Bureau estimates from 2007 show about 11,000 people of mainland Southeast Asian descent living in Rhode Island. Advocates say the number is closer to 20,000.

Many struggled to adapt and couldn't relate to their increasingly Americanized children, who sometimes found themselves the targets of discrimination.

Ishihara and Sarath Suong, the program's founders, were roommates and students at Brown University in 2001.

Ishihara, 29, grew up in suburban Washington, D.C. as the son of a Japanese father and white mother. His mixed heritage made him feel isolated when classmates and teachers at his Episcopal high school couldn't figure out whether to think of him as white or Asian.

He disclosed he was gay when no one else at his school had come out.

Suong, of Revere, Mass., who has 10 brothers and sisters, was born in a Thai refugee camp after his parents fled Cambodia. He's the only sibling to go to college, though he had to drop out in part because of financial difficulties.

"My brothers and sisters should be able to get an education, should be able to hold police accountable, should be able to communicate with their elders, should be able to think there was a better way to treat each other," Suong said.

At first, the group tried to fight the deportations of several Cambodians, including some "original gangsters" in Providence, back to a country they barely knew.

"We created something too big to manage," Ishihara said of that campaign. "It was all idealism and all passion, and very little practicality."

Organizers decided to get serious, and the group became a nonprofit in 2004. They're urging schools to translate codes of conduct and put out guides that will help parents understand how to read report cards.

And they've criticized Gov. Don Carcieri for cutting interpreters from the Department of Human Resources staff. One group member called that decision "racist," prompting Carcieri's wife last year to compare the teenagers to suicide bombers and their mentors at the group to terrorist leaders.

The group demanded, but never got, an apology.

At a recent meeting, the two-dozen attendees were as diverse as the group's mission.

Some older, unsmiling men sat on a worn couch. One, arms crossed, never removed his sunglasses.

But there were also squeaky-voiced girls, teenage boys, parents and the adults who run the group's programs. Six members described their goals for community organizing.

Pheap, whose daughter, brother and nephew were also there, said she wanted to pursue a career in the fashion industry.

"They really want this," she said of her fellow group members and classmates. "They really want to change their lives."

The Other Cambodia

THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Gulf of Thailand from Kep.
Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times

A fisherman returns from a day at sea in the waters off Kep, which was founded in the 1920s and was the resort of choice for French Cambodia's jet set.
Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times

In its heyday in the 1960s, Sihanoukville used to draw visitors like Jackie Kennedy and Catherine Deneuve.
Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times

A stroll down Serendipity Beach in Sihanoukville will bring you in contact with fruit vendors, fire throwers, mystics and British Vogue photographers.
Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times

Dishes are set out at Knai Bang Chatt.
Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times

Kimly, a restaurant at the Crab Market in Kep. The shrimp tom yum soup and the shrimp with Kampot pepper are dishes worth trying.
Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times

Rabbit Island, reachable by boat, is lined with knobby pine trees and mangroves.
Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times

The Veranda in Kep is a series of funky bamboo and wood treehouses, many with terrific views of the Gulf of Thailand.
Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times

Rajana in Sihanoukville is one of a chain of nonprofit stores with wonderful textiles and some clothing and knickknacks. Proceeds go to teaching young Cambodians handicraft skills.
Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times

The Cambodian Children's Painting Project in Sihanoukville gives free language and painting lessons to kids who are kept out of school and forced into selling wares or themselves on the beach.
Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times

The remnants of war are still evident on Bokor Mountain, where the Khmer Rouge left a shell of a casino. About one fifth of Cambodia's population, including most anyone educated, was wiped out by Pol Pot in the 1970s.
Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times

Rice fields outside of Sihanoukville.
Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times

To many Americans, Cambodia means only two things: The majestic temples of Angkor Wat and the Killing Fields of Phnom Penh. But there's another Cambodia, the southern coast, that is beginning to emerge as a popular alternative to the heavily trafficked beaches of Thailand. Left, overlooking the Gulf of Thailand at the hotel Knai Bang Chatt in Kep.
Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times

CWS Taps Affordable Clean Water Solutions in Tight World Economy

Worldwide Faith News

Fri, 13 Mar 2009

Church World Service
475 Riverside Drive, Suite 700
New York, NY 10115
(212) 870-2061

For Immediate Release

Media Contacts

Lesley Crosson, (212) 870-2676, media@churchworldservice.org
Jan Dragin - 24/7 - (781) 925-1526, jdragin@gis.net

Simple Bio-Sand Filters Delivering Clean Water to Cambodia's Poorest

Church World Service Taps Affordable Clean Water Solutions in Tight World Economy

SVAY RIENG PROVINCE, CAMBODIA - Friday, March 13, 2009- For Cambodians in rural Svay Rieng province, a little sand goes a long way in helping make water safe for consumption. According to a report by humanitarian agency Church World Service, residents in 19 villages of Svay Rieng have been significantly reducing incidences of typhoid and diarrhea by drinking water filtered through affordable, user-friendly bio-sand water filter devices small enough to place in a home or office space.

CWS has provided 1,216 of the filters to date in 56 Svay Rieng villages for use by people in some 1,900 households, schools, pagodas and commune halls. The effort is part of a multiple-solution Water and Sanitation Cooperation Project by Church World Service Cambodia that has benefitted thousands of the poorest and most vulnerable people in remote rural areas.

The simple bio-sand water filters are a lifeline in a country where it's estimated that 74 percent of all deaths comes from water borne diseases. Despite advances in recent years made by Cambodia's public water utility in converting Phnom Penh's war-degraded water supply system into a model safe-water utility serving the capital city, rural areas of Cambodia still suffer from lack of clean water resources, sanitation, and related hygiene awareness and education.

Given the region's soaring inflation and the toll of the global financial meltdown on funding to aid agencies-- bio-sand water filters are proving a more affordable option for rural water problems than are larger, community well constructions.

Church World Service staff in Cambodia had initially planned to provide a certain number of wells and latrines in the Svay Rieng communities they serve, but couldn't justify suppliers' escalating higher prices for materials. Instead, they reduced the number of wells and latrines on their list and increased the number of much cheaper bio-sand water filters.

The cost for a typical bio-sand filter can range from US$15 to $20, depending on regional costs for materials. In the CWS program, those who receive the filters are encouraged and given training to build their own filter devices.

Bio-sand filters are compact, household-sized box devices, usually built on a concrete base, containing a layer of gravel topped by a layer of sand. When water is poured through the top of the device, it's filtered by the sand and gravel. But it's the shallow layer of water remaining on top of the sand which forms a biologically dynamic wet film, or Schmutzdecke, that makes the critical difference-by trapping and consuming the micro-organisms and contaminants in the water. The filtered water flows out through a pipe at the base of the device into a clean container for safe consumption.

Developed in 1990, bio-sand filters are increasingly being used by humanitarian agencies in developing countries. Research indicates that under optimal operating conditions and maintenance, bio-sand filters can remove most E. coli, worms and parasites, iron and manganese, and other toxicants from contaminated water. *

Non-governmental organization Church World Service, with relief and development offices in Cambodia since 1979, was one of the first aid agencies permitted to work there after the fall of the Khmer Rouge. In 2005 CWS launched its comprehensive water, sanitation, health and hygiene cooperation project for vulnerable, under-served residents in two Svay Rieng districts near the Cambodia-Vietnam border, in partnership with Cambodia's Provincial Departments of Rural Development (PDRD). The effort is part of the CWS international Water for All initiative.

Bio-sand water filters are fast becoming star offerings.

In Thmei Village, about 400 villagers- including women, teachers and 1,384 students at Kokir Primary School- attended trainings on bio-sand filter use and maintenance and clean water and sanitation practices. CWS staff subsequently monitored 156 households and found that those drinking water from the filters experienced a significant decrease in diarrhea and typhoid, according to CWS Cambodia Country Representative Josephine Barbour.

In village commune halls, the water filters are available to everyone. Reports one commune hall clerk, "Now our commune stop [sic] buying pure drinking water from the market. When we organize meetings or other events, we can use filtered water. So we can save some money for other purposes."

Villagers who had bio-sand filters now have spread the word about the dangers of drinking unclean and un-boiled water and other poor hygiene practices-and, at requests from their neighbors, are sharing their water filter like a fountain of life.

Church World Service, which also conducts agriculture, education and livelihoods development programs throughout Cambodia in concert with local partners, is now planning to expand its water and sanitation program in 20 more villages.

Church World Service is an international relief, development, refugee protection and advocacy agency funded by public donations, grants and through the support of 35 Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican denominations and communions in the U.S.

How to help: Contributions to help bring clean water and other self-help assistance to families and communities around the world can be made online (www.churchworldservice.org/donate), by phone (800.297.1516) or by mailing to Church World Service, P.O. Box 968, Elkhart, IN 46515.

Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia friendship charity golf tournament 2009

The Long Thanh Golf Course

14/03/2009

VietNamNet Bridge - The Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia Friendship Charity Golf Tournament will be organised at the Long Thanh Golf Club in Dong Nai on March 28.

The tournament aims to raise fund for poor and vulnerable people as well as to promote the special friendship relation among the three countries.

The proceeds raised by the tournament will be used to provide free eye surgery for poor people, heart operations for children, houses for homeless people, aid relief for helpless rural elderly, scholarships for poor pupils and victims of natural disasters.

Around 200 professional and amateur golfers from the three countries are expected to take part in the event.

VietNamNet/ND

A tribute to Ghosananda

Providence Journal

Sunday, March 15, 2009
By Karen Lee Ziner

Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — Nearly 30 years ago, one of the fraction of Buddhist monks to survive the Cambodian genocide quietly settled in a tenement on the city’s west side. Few outsiders knew that the humble man in their midst — the Venerable Maha Ghosananda — was already considered a worldwide Cambodian spiritual leader.

At his home at 178 Hanover St., Ghosananda and supporters established the first Cambodian Buddhist temple — Wat Thormikaram — in the United States. It served as spiritual and communal anchor for thousands of Cambodian refugees who resettled in Rhode Island in the 1980s, as well as elsewhere in the country.

But the building burned in 1997, and the communal hall was moved to an adjacent converted garage. Two years ago, Ghosananda died in Massachusetts at age 85. By then the “Gandhi of Cambodia” had been nominated four times for the Nobel Peace Prize, including by the late Sen. Claiborne Pell.

Now local Cambodians are building a new “Preah Maha Ghosananda” worship hall in the late monk’s honor at the original Hanover Street location, in the neighborhood where Cambodian refugees first settled.

The hall had been conceived as a surprise gift to Ghosananda while he was alive, but the project was delayed for years before last summer’s groundbreaking, said John Chea, vice president of the Cambodian Society of Rhode Island and project manager. The structure has been framed, and interior work is proceeding bit by bit, Chea said.

“We were hoping to get it done by next August but it’s not going to happen,” said Chea. “The economy — it’s so tough to raise money.” He said more than $150,000 has been raised, “but we are short approximately $200,000.” Fundraising is continuing.

When the project is completed, the temple will add decorative presence to a blighted area.

Chea said the temple architecture “is a resemblance of the temple at home [in Cambodia].”

The building reflects traditional design, with steeply pitched, tiered roofs, a door facing east toward the sunrise, and symbolic serpents that angle upwards from each corner of the roof. Inside, there will be a traditional altar, six-foot bronze and granite statues of the Buddha, and a life-like statue of Ghosananda that now sits inside the monks’ residence across the street where daily prayers are held. Community members are also considering bringing an artist from Cambodia to paint murals on the walls.

A pre-existing ornate gateway representing the 12-year cycle of the zodiac features small animal statues for each of the 12 years. A miniature temple arching over the gateway represents the temple at Angkor Wat, a national symbol of Cambodia.

Those who knew Ghosananda –– who became the “Supreme Patriarch of Cambodian Buddhism” –– say the new worship hall will be a fitting tribute.

“We are very excited to have this as a permanent location for worship. ... It is in Maha Ghosananda’s honor, and we want to keep his memory alive,” said the Venerable Ros Mey, who is the Cambodian community’s senior monk.

“He was a very compassionate, joyful, unhurried, selfless human being who lived in the present moment and had no possessions,” said Philip Edmonds, a Providence peace activist who was a secretary at Wat Thormikaram. “He gave away everything he was given.”

The architects are Suarez & Suarez Design Group of Providence; the Hanover Group is the main contractor.

THE LATE Dith Pran, the Cambodian genocide survivor whose story inspired the film The Killing Fields, called Ghosananda “the dream keeper of Cambodia.”

An estimated 2 million people died from torture, starvation or disease under the Khmer Rouge regime, including all but about 6,000 of Cambodia’s 80,000 monks who were targeted in the communists’ attempt to eradicate Buddhism. The Khmer Rouge also destroyed or desecrated most of the country’s Buddhist temples.

During the first years of the campaign, Ghosananda was on a forest retreat in Thailand. But he left in 1978 to help survivors who were pouring into refugee camps just inside Thailand’s border with Cambodia. His attempts to re-establish Buddhism included conducting a famous prayer ceremony in a Khmer Rouge controlled refugee camp that was attended by 20,000 people; he also established temples — in shacks — in all of the border camps.

As Chea explained, Ghosananda “became noted for his works of reconciliation in the refugee camps. Even faced with violence, he was able to get tens of thousands of Khmer Rouge soldiers to defect … some even became monks.” Chea added that Ghosananda “was prepared to stop violence, even in the battlefield.”

Ghosananda arrived in Providence in 1980 or 1981, as the first of thousands of Cambodian refugees resettled in Rhode Island.

He and others formed the Khmer Buddhist Society of Rhode Island, and founded Wat Thormikaram in the three-decker house on Hanover Street. The temple was a source of solace for traumatized Cambodians struggling to survive in a new country, and part of a worldwide effort to restore Buddhism to the Cambodian people.

In sandals and saffron robes, Ghosananda led children on meditation walks around the temple.

“We walked for peace. [Ghosananda] would say, ‘Come children, walk behind me,’ ” said Makna Men, chairman of the mayor’s Southeast Asian Advisory Council in Providence, who is involved in the worship hall project. “That’s my memory. It was very comforting.”

Beginning in the 1990s, Ghosananda divided his time between Providence and other Cambodian communities in Massachusetts and Philadelphia. He traveled frequently to his homeland, and in 1991 led a 16-day pilgrimage across the country to restore the hopes and spirit of Cambodian people. It was the first of what became known as the “Dhammayietra Walks for Peace and Reconciliation.”

When the Prheah Maha Ghosananda temple is complete, monks will consecrate the worship hall with a traditional Buddhist ceremony. Chea said, “Worshipers will offer their special, sacred items; the monks will bless them and dig a hole around the building, and place them properly.”

For more information contact John Chea at (401) 699-1222. Donations to the temple project can be made by check to Wat Thormikaram, 177 Hanover St., Providence, RI 02907.

Vietnam, Cambodia boost legislative ties

VOV News
03/14/2009

Vietnamese and Cambodian legislators met in Phnom Penh on March 12 to discuss plans to promote the two legislative bodies’ cooperation.

Tong Thi Phong, vice chairwoman of the Vietnam National Assembly, and Nguon Nhel, first vice chairman of the Cambodia National Assembly briefed each other on the current situation in their respective countries. They agreed that cooperation and information exchanges between their legislative bodies have been promoted effectively over recent years. They agreed to support each other at multilateral and international parliamentary forums.

During the March 12-15 visit, Ms Phong was received by the Cambodia NA Chairman Heng Samrin, President of the Senate Chea Sim and Prime Minister Hun Sen. She also paid a courtesy visit to King Norodom Sihamoni.

During these meetings, the Cambodian leaders expressed hopes that the two countries will encourage their young generations to respect and nurture their friendship and good neighbourliness.

Lost in the ruin of Cambodia

Globe and Mail

Kim Echlin's masterful novel of meetings, partings and cross-cultural love

CHARLES FORAN
March 14, 2009

THE DISAPPEARED

By Kim Echlin

Hamish Hamilton Canada, 235 pages, $29

'Tell others," commands the epigraph to Kim Echlin's third novel. Concise and eloquent, the words, belonging to Cambodian genocide survivor Vann Nath, are a fitting portal into the precise, expressive story set to unfold.

Anne Greaves is a precocious 16-year-old. It is 1979 in Montreal, and she is at a club with friends listening to Buddy Guy play the blues. A man joins their table, his eyes on her. She asks where he comes from and he names the Asian nation of Cambodia, then at the mercy of the Khmer Rouge. "Things are unimaginably free here," he says of Canada.

He is 21, a musician, now in his sixth year in exile in the West. The attraction is immediate. For her, it is "that animal feeling, the smell of your leather jacket, the quiver in my stomach, Buddy Guy's voice and your breath on my ear." For him, it is, in part, the dare, "an Asian guy with a white girl," and "all of us pretending nothing was forbidden." They are soon lovers.

The affair is reckless and Anne's father, her only parent, is disapproving. But the two are magnetized, the pull at once erotic and spiritual. "I love you with or without a name," he tells her on their first night. She mentions his name, Serey, one of the few instances in The Disappeared when he is so identified. Another night, she dreams that she calls for him but he cannot hear. "Do not worry, oan samlanh," he says, mixing Khmer with English, "I will always be here."

Her premonition, it turns out, is well founded. Montreal, the title of the novel's opening section, ends in the wake of Serey's return to Cambodia after the fall of the Pol Pot regime. Its buoyancy, capturing the lightness and charge of first love, gives way to the weighted adult textures of the dominant middle part, Phnom Penh. Echlin's storytelling, shifting continents and years in a paragraph, gathers much of its pace and grace equally from her lyrical prose.

A decade has passed. Anne, who has not heard from her lover in all that time, has likewise never ceased being in love. She appears in the Cambodian capital on the eve of contentious elections, with the government brutalizing the opposition. The ragged city, still in shock - like the entire nation - from its recent waking nightmare, is finely rendered: "Phnom Penh. The leisurely put-put sway to the traffic, rickshaws drawn by skinny barefoot men who run or pedal bicycles, four-wheeled remorques drawn by motorcycles, white UN vans, Red Cross trucks, military jeeps and buses, an elephant carrying lumber, the streets wrinkling up from the waterfront ..."

In the city, she meets first a driver named Mau, with "a scar across his left cheek," and then a fellow Montrealer who is in Cambodia helping chronicle the genocide. Forensic worker Will Maracle is actually from Kahnawake, the Mohawk reserve south of the city. "I like the intuition it takes to get bones together," he explains, "to make sense of the scene."

In Phnom Penh, Anne Greaves does finally locate her own "disappeared." The reunion of lovers is human and sad, a meeting of adults now separated by experiences and fates more than cultures or proprieties. In the book's final section, titled Ang Tasom, after a village outside the capital where Anne, Mau and Will Maracle travel, events turn harrowing - bone stripped of all flesh.

Emerging from those final pages is an act of love, and an image of horror, that elevates The Disappeared to a level of tragic intensity that it had been bound for from its opening sentences. To describe the act apart from its setting as the climax of a powerfully vivid narrative would be ruin its extreme beauty.

Readers of Kim Echlin's earlier books, Elephant Winter and Dagmar's Daughter, will be familiar with the tension in her fiction between a literary anthropologist's interest in archetypes and a poet's rendering of the sensory world. By the close of her luminous new novel, it becomes apparent that for her the two perspectives, or truths, are in harmony.

For all its brevity, The Disappeared still attends to the skulls and bones and slaughterhouses of Cambodia's agony. Anne's defiant visit to Tuol Sleng, the school-turned-prison where 14,000 men, women and children were killed - and from which Vann Nath, who provided that two-word entreaty to "tell others," emerged, one of just seven survivors - is about witness and record: "In Tuol Sleng," she writes, "a person is asked to stare."

But for the penultimate scene, the truth is definitely poetic. It may also be dramatic. The book, which can be read in a single sitting, builds toward a complex expression of annihilating loss and eternal love that is best experienced, in a sense, like the final act of a tragic play: as something inevitable and beyond the calculations of reason. The final line certainly speaks to that variety of wild human truth. "Come and I will whisper your name to you one more time."

Contributing reviewer Charles Foran's latest book is Join the Revolution, Comrade.

The Impossible Solo...

The Financial Times (FT.com)

By Ben Bland
Published: March 14 2009

In a concert hall not far from Cambodia's majestic Angkor temples, a Swiss paediatrician is playing the cello. Beat Richner squeezes his eyes shut and breathes audibly, a picture of concentration. He has chosen one of Bach's complicated cello suites, and the sound of his unaccompanied instrument is both intimate and haunting. The audience of 200 is transfixed, apart from one girl wrapping herself in her mother's shawl to keep warm; the air-conditioning in the auditorium is on full blast - this must be the coldest place in Cambodia.

As Richner finishes the piece the audience, mostly composed of middle-aged European tourists visiting the Angkor temples, applauds warmly. With his cello resting against his burgeoning waist, Richner reaches for a microphone and, after a polite greeting and a quip about Barack Obama, shatters the atmosphere of pleasant indulgence. "Without our hospitals, 90,000 children a year would die in a passive genocide," he announces. "The creed of the World Health Organisation and Unicef is that medical treatment must correspond to the economic reality of each country - but the economic reality of most Cambodians is zero."

Richner, aged 61, has built five hospitals that meet international standards for cleanliness and quality and that provide free care to 85 per cent of Cambodia's children. Now, sitting at the cello, he points his finger in accusation. "If we followed the advice of the international community" - by which he means the intergovernmental organisations he has just cited - "which travels the world telling people what to do, we could not save one single child infected with dengue fever or tuberculosis."

Richner also built this concert hall, a simple construction of brick and bamboo nestled around several elegant ponds. It is part of the Jayavarman VII hospital in Siem Reap - a rapidly growing city of 140,000 people in the north of Cambodia. Richner's foundation, Kantha Bopha, completed the hospital in 1999. Tonight's concert is one of two Richner performs weekly; the money he raises by playing helps generate the $25m a year he needs to run the foundation.

He intersperses Bach cello suites with further lecturing and hectoring: "We only had 7,000 cases of dengue this year compared to last year's epidemic, when we had 22,000. But we still need blood to treat them." Sweat beads on his balding pate as he becomes more animated. "I ask the younger guests for blood, especially type B and O. I ask the older guests for money. So, blood or money: that is the question."

One in three Cambodians lives on less than a dollar a day, and even in a country riven by war, corruption and political infighting, medical expenses remain one of the biggest causes of poverty. Richner first came to Cambodia in 1974 as a young Red Cross doctor. He worked at the Kantha Bopha hospital in the capital, Phnom Penh, which had been set up by King Norodom Sihanouk. But in April 1975, Richner was forced to flee ahead of the murderous Khmer Rouge entering the city. Most of the doctors he worked with then were killed - only 50 out of 950 survived as Pol Pot's regime closed hospitals as well as banks and schools and targeted anyone with an education as an enemy of the state.

Richner compares this experience with that of a concentration camp survivor: he feels guilty for making it out alive. It's that guilt, coupled with his humanitarian convictions, that brought him back to Cambodia. After a chance meeting in Paris in 1991, Sihanouk asked him to rebuild the ruined hospital he'd fled almost two decades earlier. (The king was in the French capital for the negotiations that would eventually bring peace to Cambodia; Richner was there to see a friend star in an opera.) He accepted the invitation and, though he initially planned to stay only for a year or two, he has been here ever since.

On the night of the concert Richner was worn down, suffering from a fever. He has locked himself into a seemingly endless struggle to find money, and this has taken its toll on a man who was once best known in Switzerland as an entertainer, singing comical songs in his stage guise as "Beatocello", part musician, part clown. At the end of his performance, however, the entertainer is nowhere in sight: after a few cursory bows before a standing ovation, Richner flees to his office.

Half an hour later he appears in the lobby to greet lingering supporters, donors and medical students. But he appears awkward. "Sometimes it's difficult for me to talk with my audience," he admits later. "They are from a different world. But it's my mistake. I'm alone here and all I do is work. I go to Switzerland two or three times a year for concerts but I've had no holiday in 17 years and never really have a day off."

Twelve hours earlier, at seven o'clock on Friday morning, all 650 seats in the concert hall are full, but with doctors, nurses and cleaners at the hospital's main daily conference. Richner sits at a table in front of the stage, flanked by his two key lieutenants in Siem Reap, Yay Chantana, the hospital's 41-year-old medical director, and Keo Sokha, the 39-year-old head of surgery. As the staff shift about in their seats - wearing flip-flops and sandals, they find the intense cold even more uncomfortable than the tourists will - the heads of department update Richner on the previous day's events. "Were there any deaths overnight?" asks Richner. Luckily not, Chantana responds. After a brief teaching session, Chantana calls the meeting to an end and escorts his boss out of the hall.

Richner strides into the intensive care ward, followed by Chantana and a gaggle of junior doctors. As he walks up to the first patient, an 11-year-old girl suffering from severe pain in her right hip, the other physicians manoeuvre to get out of his way - no easy task in the cramped ward. Richner refuses to turn away sick children, so when the beds run out, patients are treated on mats on the floor.

Chantana explains that the girl has advanced tuberculosis, which has already destroyed much of her hip. Her family lives more than 100 miles away, and like many other Cambodians who cannot afford time away from work, they put off coming to the hospital. "She walked with a wooden stick for five months before coming here," says Chantana. "Because of the late presentation, she needs surgery to save her hip. It's a two-hour operation and she will have to remain in hospital for eight weeks afterwards." Using an MRI scanner that is part of the new $12m wing opened by the Cambodian king in December, the doctors have been able to ascertain exactly how much of her hip has been destroyed, allowing them to save the rest.

Watching Richner stomp around the wards, you wouldn't guess it, but his donor-reliant model, which aims for excellence over affordability, and his stance on Cambodia's medical priorities have put him on a collision course with the international health establishment. One development consultant who works for the WHO in Cambodia, but asked not to be named, explains: "My main concern is the sustainability of his operation. Richner is nothing if not an excellent fundraiser - he's got a lot of charisma - but what happens when he dies? Who will raise the money then?"

Richner's critics also accuse him of failing to provide value for money by not making enough use of cheaper, generic drugs and by relying on the most expensive medical supplies. "It's wonderful that he uses such sophisticated equipment but even in his own country, much of this stuff would only be available in private hospitals," says a doctor who recently toured one of Richner's hospitals but also asked not to be named. People within Cambodia's NGO community are reluctant to speak publicly against Richner, for fear of escalating the clash. They are also eager not to generate adverse publicity at a time when Cambodia's Prime Minister, Hun Sen, is pushing ahead with a new NGO law that some feel is designed to restrict their ability to operate in the country. Some NGOs are also concerned that Richner's focus on child medicine could be diverting money, doctors and attention from other severe health challenges, such as the high rate of maternal mortality and the growing HIV epidemic.

The received wisdom among international public health experts is that development aid is best spent on education and the provision of basic rural clinics. But Richner argues that all people have the same fundamental right to good healthcare. He characterises the other approach as "poor medicine for poor people". "When I got my first CT machine in Cambodia 10 years ago, there was an outcry from the WHO and Unicef," he says. "They said it was stupid to spend so much money on this machine. But you need a CT scan to diagnose and treat TB."

He is fond of recounting anecdotes that demonstrate the idiocy and hypocrisy - as he sees it - of his critics. "Princess Anne came here a few years ago as president of Save the Children," he says. "I showed her our laboratory and she said that we must not have such hi-tech machines in such a poor country. 'You must work on the base and Cambodian people must learn how to wash their hands first,' she said. "Then, when I showed her our new maternity ward, she told me it's better to offer birth control than maternity care - but this was stupid. There was a genocide here so there's no problem with overpopulation."

This open antagonism to the mainstream NGO community is extremely unhelpful, his critics argue. "He's merely building up a host of enemies so the fact that no one wants to work with him becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy," says the WHO consultant. "But there's always a tension between innovators doing good things on a small scale and the more sluggish public health systems." The clashes between competing humanitarian organisations can be as bitter as corporate rivalries. Richner's insistence that Kantha Bopha remain independent of the public health system and his refusal to bow to the prevailing corruption in Cambodia has put many noses out of joint, and even led to his receiving death threats. And in 1995, the health ministry tried to close the first Kantha Bopha hospital because health officials and their international advisers believed it was undermining attempts to build a national health system. Only the personal intervention of the king saved it. In 2002, Richner threatened to close the foundation himself unless the health minister stopped criticising his work.

The king eventually brought about another truce and although relations with the health ministry have improved since then, the small amount of funding that Richner receives from the Cambodian government is still paid directly to his foundation, bypassing the ministry. >

No one disagrees about one fact: that many of the children in intensive care at Richner's hospitals would die without the treatment they receive there. As Chantana and Sokha observe an operation to remove a nine-year-old girl's appendix, they talk about what her options would be without Richner. Sokha explains that this girl would not have been able to obtain proper treatment anywhere else in Cambodia, let alone in a state-of-the-art operating theatre. "In a government hospital," he says, "you have to pay under the table to see the doctor, you have to pay for an X-ray, you have to pay for the surgeon and the anaesthetist and then you have to find a doctor to look after the follow-up. Altogether, it would probably cost $400 and there's no way her family could afford this."

In a private hospital, the situation would be even worse. "If you complain of abdominal pain, they'll just remove your appendix for the money without properly diagnosing the problem, and the patient will still suffer from the same untreated pain."

When Richner stepped on to one of the last US flights out of Cambodia in 1975, it was with the expectation that he would be back in three weeks. He was doing important work in extremely difficult circumstances: half of the children treated at the Kantha Bopha hospital did not survive. In the spring of that year, a tired-looking 28-year-old Richner told a British TV journalist: "Last week, I cannot say how many children were dying as they didn't come to the hospital because rockets were falling down all around. At the moment, it's very dangerous to bring the children here and it can only get worse. Worse and worse."

Within days it became obvious that Phnom Penh would fall to Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge fighters and the hospital was abandoned. And yet no one at that stage envisaged the terror and suffering that was about to be unleashed as Pol Pot proclaimed "Year Zero" and launched a brutal, all-encompassing Maoist revolution. It would lead to the deaths of as many as two million Cambodians.

Given the destruction that was wrought, the scale of what Richner has built is impressive. Since 1991, the Kantha Bopha foundation has raised and spent more than $370m, with the vast majority of his funding coming from private donors, many of whom live in Switzerland. All five hospitals constantly operate at capacity, with around 300 admissions of seriously ill children every day, 60 operations, 3,000 outpatients, 1,500 vaccinations and 50 deliveries at the maternity unit in Siem Reap. Meanwhile, Richner's drive to cut the rate of transmission between HIV-infected mothers and their newborn children has met with huge success: the normal mother-to-child HIV transmission rate in Cambodia is 40 per cent, but at Jayavarman VII they have reduced it to less than 5 per cent by performing caesarean sections, treating the mother and child with anti-retroviral drugs and insisting that they stop breast-feeding.

Victories like these make a case for the argument that one committed person can achieve more than scores of bureaucracy-laden NGOs. Richner employs 2,100 people but spends just 5 per cent of his annual budget on administration (his 180 doctors take a central role in running the hospitals; they earn about $1,000 a month compared with the $40 they would get from a state hospital). Richner imports all his drugs and medical supplies directly from Thailand to avoid the counterfeit pharmaceutical products flooding Cambodia. The head nurses personally distribute the medicines every day, to ensure no thefts. This vigilance goes for the patients as well as the staff. Chantana points out a young girl who is being treated for TB with a nine-month course of drugs. Like every other patient, she has returned to the hospital for her check-up carrying the empty blister packets to prove that she has taken her medication rather than sold it to a back-street pharmacist.

The problem, then, is not the medicine but the money. Richner only has five months' funding left in the kitty and, unlike many charitable foundations, he has no endowments other than a commitment from the Swiss and Cambodian governments to cover 8 per cent of his annual budget each. He spends everything he gets on new buildings, machinery and drugs, as well as day-to-day expenses. In the past three years he has spent $34m on new construction projects. "The hospitals are working well and everything can continue without me, but the ongoing nightmare is the money," he discloses as he puffs on a Davidoff mini cigarillo, well away from the main hospital buildings. "I can only start to think of my [succession] plan when I get the money - this $200m I need to save Kantha Bopha for 20 years. Then I will be a free man."

It is this attitude that disturbs Richner's critics at the WHO and other international health organisations in Cambodia. They have seen countless maverick humanitarians fall by the wayside when the funding for their donor-heavy projects ran out. "I can think of at least three or four other great individual initiatives in Cambodia that have atrophied when donor funding has dropped off," says one long-standing NGO worker in Phnom Penh. "It would be nice to think that someone else would come in to the fill the gap if funding drops off, but you can't just assume that."

As he's showing me the hospital, Chantana at one point confides: "We don't have to look for God as we consider Dr Richner a god." Richner was named "Swiss of the Year" in 2003 but his work remains little known outside his homeland - where his name often comes cloaked in controversy. Last year, he was criticised in a number of newspapers for turning down a $91,000 donation because it had been raised from the sale of the infamous nude portrait of Carla Bruni, the French first lady, by the Swiss photographer Michel Comte. Although he needed the money, Richner said that nudity offended Cambodian sensibilities and he dismissed the offer as a publicity stunt.

This incident and a number of more serious clashes with the media have left their mark on Richner. In 1997, he was accused of breaking his Hippocratic oath by failing to treat some of the more than 150 people injured in a lethal grenade attack on an opposition political rally - a charge he dismisses. He has since been the subject of highly critical documentaries in Switzerland. He very rarely grants interviews these days.

Last year, about $7m of the foundation's annual budget came from concert donations, with one anonymous Californian couple giving $1m after seeing Richner perform in Siem Reap. But his love of music has withered in recent years. "I don't have the mood to sing songs now," Richner explains as he taps away at the keyboard in his small office. On top of all his medical, administrative and fundraising duties, he is busy writing another book (his first, Kantha Bopha: A Children's Doctor in Cambodia, outlined his philosophy of medicine and his early clashes with the health establishment). Richner's two large desks are overflowing with papers, books, DVDs and videos. Gifts, many of them still unopened, are piled on the floor: statues of Buddhas still in their boxes, bottles of champagne and chocolates. The obligatory kitsch painting of Angkor Wat fills almost the entire length of one wall.

Richner's 200-year-old Italian cello rests on the floor in its blue soft case. As he talks, he gets up to close the door, anxious to ensure that the air-conditioned room stays cool and dry so that "his wife", as he calls it (Richner is single and lives alone), does not deteriorate in the sticky climate. "The cello has a very human voice, like the saxophone," he says. "You can express better what's going on with the cello than by talking. It's not aggressive or accusatory, like me."

Although his protracted struggles have darkened his character, he remains determined to continue. "When I'm frustrated and angry with the government and the evolution of health policy in the poor world, I visit the wards with my colleagues and then I don't doubt that what I'm doing makes sense."

While the future of Kantha Bopha in Cambodia is far from secure, Richner still hopes to take his model to other damaged nations, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burma. He is launching a new academy to train young paediatricians from Asia and Africa in his methods, so they can recreate what he has achieved in their own countries. "I want to show people that it's possible to do this elsewhere," he says. "After Cyclone Nargis, I went to Burma and got a visa even though the NGOs did not. The hospitals are very poor, they have no equipment and a lot of dengue fever, but we could do the same there that we did here."

He is not put off by the rampant corruption in Burma or the malign influence of the military junta. "It was difficult here, too, but it would be possible in Burma," he says. "The only condition is that Bill Gates, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama gives me $200m, because if I leave Cambodia, it will be harder to keep raising money."

Ben Bland is a freelance journalist based in Singapore.

Cambodian boy's luck points to home

Alex Morales shows pictures to Cambodian heart surgery patient Soksamnang "Lucky" Vy, 14 months, and his mother, Ratha Pang, during a goodbye dinner at Sophy's Restaurant in Long Beach on Thursday. (Jeff Gritchen / Staff Photographer)

Soksamnang "Lucky" Vy sleeps while waiting for his flight early Friday as the toddler and his mom begin the journey back to their village outside Phnom Penh, following his recovery from heart surgery. (Jeff Gritchen / Staff Photographer)

Mother and her 14-month-old son board plane after his recovery from open heart surgery.

Long Beach Press-Telegram

By Greg Mellen, Staff Writer
Posted: 03/13/2009

LOS ANGELES -- For a young Cambodian boy whose name translates to "Lucky Friday," leaving the comforts of the United States for a bamboo hut in Cambodia on Friday the 13th, no less, might seem like a turn of bad luck.

But Ratha Pang, the mother of the 14-month-old boy, was all smiles early Friday morning as she prepared to take her son home after his successful December open heart surgery and recovery.

Soksamnang Vy, called Lucky by most who have come to know him in past months, had a dime-sized hole in his heart near the aorta repaired and has been declared fully fit to return to his village outside Phnom Penh.

Vy was brought to the United States for the operation, virtually unavailable to him in his home country, by Hearts Without Boundaries, a fledgling Long Beach nonprofit.

Without the surgery, Lucky would have lived a life of gradually reduced heart function, chronic fatigue and shortened life expectancy.

At his last checkup in February, cardiologist Dr. Paul Grossfeld declared Lucky's open- heart surgery a "100 percent success."

As Pang stood among a dozen or so family members and well-wishers and waited for her 12:40 a.m. flight at Tom Bradley terminal at Los Angeles International Airport, she continually steepled her fingers in the Cambodian gesture of respect and

expressed her thanks in both Khmer and English.

Meanwhile, Lucky snoozed peacefully in a stroller.

"I've been waiting for tonight for a long time," she said through translation. "I think tonight it's really true that my son will have a regular life and I'm ready to go home."

Pang said she was eager to see her mother, her family and her husband.

She added that she hoped Hearts Without Boundaries and other organizations would be able to continue their work for poor families with no access to life-saving procedures.

"Thank you so much," she concluded in English.

Before leaving for the airport, Pang and Lucky were joined by about 20 friends and family members at Sophy's Restaurant in Long Beach, where they laughed and talked excitedly.

The scene was markedly different from last July when Davik Teng, the first patient saved by Hearts Without Boundaries, and her mother, Sin Chhon, returned home.

Chhon wept repeatedly and didn't want to return to the hardships of her life in Cambodia.

Pang, although she returns to an uncertain work and economic future, was able to remind herself that the journey was for her son and his health, according to friends and family.

"She says `America is nice, but Cambodia is home,"' Leakhena Chhuon, a board member of Hearts Without Boundaries, said of Pang.

Peter Chhun, founder of Hearts Without Boundaries, said he is beginning fundraising for a third child.

Chhun said there is a boy in Cambodia named Bunlak Song who is 14 months old and has several holes in his heart and is in dire need of surgery.

Chhun, a member of the advisory board at Miller Children's Hospital, says he has been negotiating with the Long Beach hospital to host the procedure.

Sunrise Children's Hospital in Las Vegas provided its staff and facilities for Lucky's operation and Childrens Hospital Los Angeles donated its services for Davik.

Chhun estimated it cost his organization $10,000 to pay for Lucky's trip, medications and incidentals and $16,000 for Davik.

However, as he made his way toward the departure area for the flight back to Cambodia, Chhun couldn't imagine doing anything else.

"Just to see another child breathe normal and live a normal life, that's a great thing," Chhun said. "There's no end, we'll continue to do this."

The Ministry of Culture Says It Is Not Able to Bring Back Khmer Artifacts Put Up for Sale in the United State of America - Tuesday 10.3.2009

Posted on 14 March 2009

The Mirror, Vol. 13, No. 603

“Phnom Penh: A high-ranking official of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts stated that the Cambodian government is not able to bring back artifacts which are not listed here and lost, but are reported now in the United State of America and in some other countries.

“A secretary of state of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, Mr. Chuch Phoeun, told Deum Ampil on Monday evening 9 March 2009, ‘The Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts is not able to collect Khmer artifacts that are lost and not yet listed as Cambodian cultural heritage, even though those artifacts are claimed to be property of Cambodia.’

“The statement was made after the Internet website TwinCities.com reported that many types of artifacts are offered for sale at the eBay company, based in the United States of America, which were brought from Cambodia, China, Egypt, Italy, and many other countries. Mr. Chuch Phoeun added, ‘Though we have national and international laws, we lack money for the listing of such artifacts as objects of cultural heritage of Cambodia, in order to provide proper identification of those artifacts.’

“The Secretary of State went on to say, ‘We can only list artifacts at the National Museum as objects of cultural heritage, but artifacts at other museums in the provinces are not yet well listed. We lack money.’

“According to the Secretary of State, the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts receives Riel 500 million [approx. US$124,000] per year from the Ministry of Economy and Finance for conserving and maintaining temples around Cambodia. He continued to say that Cambodia needs hundreds of millions of dollars for the conservation and maintenance and the development of thousands of cultural sites countrywide, and to comply with this task, it is necessary to receive and to requests more aid from partner countries, while Cambodia cannot yet provide these resources.

“However, the above report did not state the number of artifacts put up for sale at the eBay Internet auctions company. The report said that the government of China, an Asian country with an old civilization, is trying to demand those artifacts back to its country in whatever condition.

“Regarding what was mentioned by the Secretary of State, Khmer citizens regret that the government does not make as much efforts as possible to return those artifacts to the country as other countries do, to return the rich and invaluable cultural property of the nation. In late 2008, Thailand announced to return to Cambodia artifacts illegally trafficked to Thailand.

“It should be noted that until now, some partner countries assist so that some temples and artifacts are repaired and preserved, like temples of Angkor Wat, Banteay Srey, and Ta Prum.”

Deum Ampil, Vol.3, #135, 10.3.2009
Newspapers Appearing on the Newsstand:
Tuesday, 10 March 2009