The Mekong Time #55.pdf
To read plese click on Download
Short Description:
•NEC to start registration of candidates for election• Ranariddh can stand for election: NEC•Cambodia, n...
Submitted On: 28 Apr 2008
File Size: 1,336.08Kb
Monday, 28 April 2008
The Mekong Times : In Khmer and English Language
The Mekong Time #55.pdf
To read plese click on Download
Short Description:
•NEC to start registration of candidates for election• Ranariddh can stand for election: NEC•Cambodia, n...
Submitted On: 28 Apr 2008
File Size: 1,336.08Kb
Asian finance ministers to map out forex reserve pool
A cash transaction is performed at an unofficial market in HCMCThanhnien News
Monday, April 28, 2008
Vietnam and Japan will co-chair the meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations in Madrid next month to discuss the region’s inflation control and risks from the US economic woes.
Asian finance leaders will aim to upgrade a regional scheme to ward off any future financial crisis when they meet next month, boosting currency-swap deals in a new pooling arrangement and tightening economic surveillance, Japan’s top financial diplomat has said.
Finance ministers from the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) member nations along with China, Japan and South Korea (ASEAN+3) will also discuss how to balance the need to control inflation and risks from a slowdown in the US when they meet in Madrid on May 4, Naoyuki Shinohara, vice finance minister for international affairs, said.
At their last meeting a year ago, they agreed to set up a self-managed reserve pooling mechanism governed by a legally binding single contract as a way to transform the existing web of bilateral currency swaps, called the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI), into a more powerful multilateral scheme.
Ministers agreed last year to set aside part of their US$3.4 trillion foreign reserves for emergencies, without deciding the size and when they would start the fund.
Shinohara told reporters that all the details for the reserve pooling scheme would not be finalized at this year’s meeting as there were “complicated” factors to negotiate, such as how to activate currency swaps while making sure borrowing countries would return the money after a crisis is over.
“We don’t want it to be a mechanism to give out easy money,” Shinohara said.
“The most important issue is how to strengthen surveillance,” he added.
Japan, along with Vietnam, will chair the meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations in Madrid and Shinohara said he wanted to maintain the momentum for creating a more powerful regional scheme to avoid a repeat of the 1997/98 financial crisis.
The existing bilateral swap arrangement network under the CMI totals $84 billion.
But that includes two-way pacts, under which both countries in the deal would come to each other’s aid to prevent a financial crisis.
Shinohara said, however, that if one side were in trouble, that country would not be able to provide the amount earmarked for the bilateral currency swap arrangement.
That means that in reality about $58 billion would be available under the current initiative, he said.
“We aimed to create the multilateral pooling arrangement to be bigger than $58 billion,” he said, adding that $80 billion was one figure to keep in mind.
None of these CMI credit lines has been tapped so far.
The pool will be between $80 billion and $100 billion, State Bank of Vietnam Deputy Governor Phung Khac Ke said earlier this month at the 4th ASEAN Governors Meeting in Vietnam’s Da Nang City.
Ke added members’ contributions would depend on the size of their economies and their ability to pay.
The basic idea is to replace the currency bilateral currency swap network with the new multilateral mechanism, but Shinohara said some countries could still have bilateral frameworks as needed.
Having a “self-managed” reserve pooling arrangement means member countries would still manage their funds at home, rather than having one place to pool their reserves.
The multilateral framework could be a stepping stone to a regional monetary fund, but it would take time before mapping up such ambitious goals, officials say.
Even if the ministers agree on the skeleton of the pooling mechanism next week, it would take at least another year to nail down details to make it as a single contractual agreement, a Japanese finance ministry official told Reuters.
The pooled reserves would still be counted as part of participating countries’ own foreign reserves, he added.
Other sticking points include how much funds from the new multilateral arrangement could be withdrawn without using the IMF-supported program or how to include countries with immature markets, such as Laos, and Cambodia in the scheme.
Source: Reuters, Bloomberg
Monday, April 28, 2008
Vietnam and Japan will co-chair the meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations in Madrid next month to discuss the region’s inflation control and risks from the US economic woes.
Asian finance leaders will aim to upgrade a regional scheme to ward off any future financial crisis when they meet next month, boosting currency-swap deals in a new pooling arrangement and tightening economic surveillance, Japan’s top financial diplomat has said.
Finance ministers from the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) member nations along with China, Japan and South Korea (ASEAN+3) will also discuss how to balance the need to control inflation and risks from a slowdown in the US when they meet in Madrid on May 4, Naoyuki Shinohara, vice finance minister for international affairs, said.
At their last meeting a year ago, they agreed to set up a self-managed reserve pooling mechanism governed by a legally binding single contract as a way to transform the existing web of bilateral currency swaps, called the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI), into a more powerful multilateral scheme.
Ministers agreed last year to set aside part of their US$3.4 trillion foreign reserves for emergencies, without deciding the size and when they would start the fund.
Shinohara told reporters that all the details for the reserve pooling scheme would not be finalized at this year’s meeting as there were “complicated” factors to negotiate, such as how to activate currency swaps while making sure borrowing countries would return the money after a crisis is over.
“We don’t want it to be a mechanism to give out easy money,” Shinohara said.
“The most important issue is how to strengthen surveillance,” he added.
Japan, along with Vietnam, will chair the meeting of the Association of South East Asian Nations in Madrid and Shinohara said he wanted to maintain the momentum for creating a more powerful regional scheme to avoid a repeat of the 1997/98 financial crisis.
The existing bilateral swap arrangement network under the CMI totals $84 billion.
But that includes two-way pacts, under which both countries in the deal would come to each other’s aid to prevent a financial crisis.
Shinohara said, however, that if one side were in trouble, that country would not be able to provide the amount earmarked for the bilateral currency swap arrangement.
That means that in reality about $58 billion would be available under the current initiative, he said.
“We aimed to create the multilateral pooling arrangement to be bigger than $58 billion,” he said, adding that $80 billion was one figure to keep in mind.
None of these CMI credit lines has been tapped so far.
The pool will be between $80 billion and $100 billion, State Bank of Vietnam Deputy Governor Phung Khac Ke said earlier this month at the 4th ASEAN Governors Meeting in Vietnam’s Da Nang City.
Ke added members’ contributions would depend on the size of their economies and their ability to pay.
The basic idea is to replace the currency bilateral currency swap network with the new multilateral mechanism, but Shinohara said some countries could still have bilateral frameworks as needed.
Having a “self-managed” reserve pooling arrangement means member countries would still manage their funds at home, rather than having one place to pool their reserves.
The multilateral framework could be a stepping stone to a regional monetary fund, but it would take time before mapping up such ambitious goals, officials say.
Even if the ministers agree on the skeleton of the pooling mechanism next week, it would take at least another year to nail down details to make it as a single contractual agreement, a Japanese finance ministry official told Reuters.
The pooled reserves would still be counted as part of participating countries’ own foreign reserves, he added.
Other sticking points include how much funds from the new multilateral arrangement could be withdrawn without using the IMF-supported program or how to include countries with immature markets, such as Laos, and Cambodia in the scheme.
Source: Reuters, Bloomberg
Cambodian siege school gunmen are unmasked
Evening News, The Edinburgh Paper
Saturday, 26th April 2008
GRIEF overcomes the parents of a two-year-old boy shot dead during a school siege in Cambodia as they weep over their child's body.
The Canadian boy was shot in the head during an eight-hour stand-off in which 70 people were held hostage by masked gunmen who had demanded $1000. Police today arrested a security guard suspected of masterminding the hostage-taking at the school near the famous Angkor Wat temples.
Ul Samnang, 29, worked at a souvenir shop and did not take part in yesterday's hostage drama at the international school in Siem Reap.
The four hostage-takers, all Cambodians in their 20s who were seized at the end of an eight-hour siege, were also being held in the tourist town.
After a night of questioning by police, the four were paraded battered, bruised and caked in blood in front of the media.
Armed with a handgun and knives, the men stormed into the international school yesterday morning, first demanding $1000 and a van, increasing the sum later to $30,000, police said.
"This group are gangsters and they committed crimes of robbery and kidnap. We are expecting to send them to court to be charged tomorrow morning," Ou Em, chief of Siem Reap's serious crime office said.
The two-year-old Canadian boy was shot in the head after talks to free the 29 infants hit a stumbling block over the kidnappers' demands for weapons, he said.
"The gunmen demanded we give them money, a van and grenades.
"We did not agree to give them grenades and guns, so they got mad and shot the kid in the head," he said.
Doctors at the town's main hospital were setting up a trauma unit for the children, who came from as many as 14 different countries, to help them overcome the ordeal.
Saturday, 26th April 2008
GRIEF overcomes the parents of a two-year-old boy shot dead during a school siege in Cambodia as they weep over their child's body.
The Canadian boy was shot in the head during an eight-hour stand-off in which 70 people were held hostage by masked gunmen who had demanded $1000. Police today arrested a security guard suspected of masterminding the hostage-taking at the school near the famous Angkor Wat temples.
Ul Samnang, 29, worked at a souvenir shop and did not take part in yesterday's hostage drama at the international school in Siem Reap.
The four hostage-takers, all Cambodians in their 20s who were seized at the end of an eight-hour siege, were also being held in the tourist town.
After a night of questioning by police, the four were paraded battered, bruised and caked in blood in front of the media.
Armed with a handgun and knives, the men stormed into the international school yesterday morning, first demanding $1000 and a van, increasing the sum later to $30,000, police said.
"This group are gangsters and they committed crimes of robbery and kidnap. We are expecting to send them to court to be charged tomorrow morning," Ou Em, chief of Siem Reap's serious crime office said.
The two-year-old Canadian boy was shot in the head after talks to free the 29 infants hit a stumbling block over the kidnappers' demands for weapons, he said.
"The gunmen demanded we give them money, a van and grenades.
"We did not agree to give them grenades and guns, so they got mad and shot the kid in the head," he said.
Doctors at the town's main hospital were setting up a trauma unit for the children, who came from as many as 14 different countries, to help them overcome the ordeal.
Unesco calls off joint talks : Separate meetings now on Preah Vihear listing
The Bangkok Post
Monday April 28, 2008
THANIDA TANSUBHAPOL
The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation has cancelled a meeting with Thailand and Cambodia in Paris over efforts to put the Preah Vihear temple on Unesco's World Heritage list.
The meeting was supposed to be this Friday and Saturday, with Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama leading the Thai side in the talks.
The meeting has been tentatively rescheduled for May 13, Mr Noppadon said.
The talks will concentrate on Cambodia's proposal to register the ancient ruins, which are right on the border with Thailand.
The only easy access is through Thailand, and some of the border is not demarcated and claimed by both sides.
Unesco will now send its representative, Francesco Caruso, for separate talks with the Thai and Cambodian governments.
The UN agency gave no reason for the change.
Mr Caruso has been appointed by Unesco as a special coordinator between Thailand and Cambodia on the issue and is due in Bangkok next month.
"The Thai government welcomes the proposal and is ready to meet and discuss in good faith with Cambodia the outstanding issues so as to facilitate the process of registration of the temple," the ministry said.
Thailand and Cambodia have agreed in principle to jointly manage Preah Vihear and other ruins in Thailand in the area, but will not allow the project to affect the plan to demarcate the border there.
Preah Vihear, called Khao Phra Viharn in Thai, is on the Cambodian side of Si Sa Ket's Kantharalak district.
But it does not look like the issue will be easily settled.
On April 10, the government handed an aide-memoire to Cambodian ambassador Ung Sean to protest against the deployment of Cambodian troops at the ancient temple.
The government said the troop deployment violated Thailand's territorial sovereignty in the disputed areas along the border, and was also against the spirit of a memorandum of understanding in 2000 concerning the area around the temple.
The Cambodian government countered by summoning Thai ambassador Viraphand Vacharathit to deny all the allegations a day later.
Monday April 28, 2008
THANIDA TANSUBHAPOL
The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation has cancelled a meeting with Thailand and Cambodia in Paris over efforts to put the Preah Vihear temple on Unesco's World Heritage list.
The meeting was supposed to be this Friday and Saturday, with Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama leading the Thai side in the talks.
The meeting has been tentatively rescheduled for May 13, Mr Noppadon said.
The talks will concentrate on Cambodia's proposal to register the ancient ruins, which are right on the border with Thailand.
The only easy access is through Thailand, and some of the border is not demarcated and claimed by both sides.
Unesco will now send its representative, Francesco Caruso, for separate talks with the Thai and Cambodian governments.
The UN agency gave no reason for the change.
Mr Caruso has been appointed by Unesco as a special coordinator between Thailand and Cambodia on the issue and is due in Bangkok next month.
"The Thai government welcomes the proposal and is ready to meet and discuss in good faith with Cambodia the outstanding issues so as to facilitate the process of registration of the temple," the ministry said.
Thailand and Cambodia have agreed in principle to jointly manage Preah Vihear and other ruins in Thailand in the area, but will not allow the project to affect the plan to demarcate the border there.
Preah Vihear, called Khao Phra Viharn in Thai, is on the Cambodian side of Si Sa Ket's Kantharalak district.
But it does not look like the issue will be easily settled.
On April 10, the government handed an aide-memoire to Cambodian ambassador Ung Sean to protest against the deployment of Cambodian troops at the ancient temple.
The government said the troop deployment violated Thailand's territorial sovereignty in the disputed areas along the border, and was also against the spirit of a memorandum of understanding in 2000 concerning the area around the temple.
The Cambodian government countered by summoning Thai ambassador Viraphand Vacharathit to deny all the allegations a day later.
Sunday, 27 April 2008
Cambodia accepts
2008-04-27
China UnionPay Co said yesterday that UnionPay cards can be accepted in Cambodia, which became the 27th overseas market for the card.
The UnionPay card can be accepted by 500 merchants and 28 ATMs, accounting for half of merchants which accept bank cards and 40 percent of the country's total ATMs.
(Shanghai Daily)
China UnionPay Co said yesterday that UnionPay cards can be accepted in Cambodia, which became the 27th overseas market for the card.
The UnionPay card can be accepted by 500 merchants and 28 ATMs, accounting for half of merchants which accept bank cards and 40 percent of the country's total ATMs.
(Shanghai Daily)
Thai And Finnish Scientists Will Soon Begin Examine Cambodia's Tonle Sap Lake
ScandAsia.Finland News
2008-04-27
Global warming and economic exploitation destabilise key lake's ecosystem. The Great Lake of Tonle Sap has always been Cambodia's spring of life. Abundant fish stock and seasonal flooding to fertilise rice fields have blessed the region long before the builders of Angkor Wat arrived 900 years ago.
But economic development policies are having the reverse effect. Locals are finding it more difficult to survive, a trend that may only worsen as climate change continues to take hold.
Tonle Sap is Southeast Asia's largest lake, and the source of protein-rich food for Cambodia's 14 million people. As such, the government has sought assistance to aggressively exploit its fisheries under the banner of poverty reduction. But Cambodian sociologist Mak Sithirith of the Fisheries Action Coalition Team said it is not the poor who are benefiting.
Under the scheme, the Cambodian government built infrastructure and introduced market economy to Tonle Sap communities. This has resulted in the end of interdependence between fishing and farming communities, Mak said. The traditional barter system between those growing rice and those catching fish disappeared after an industry of middlemen evolved to wander from village to village, exchanging rice and fish for cash.
"Neighbouring communities who used to rely on one another now compete for material consumption and accumulation obtained by cash and loans," Mak said.
The traditional small-scale fishermen are losing out entirely. The Cambodian government sold fishing concessions to large fishing businesses, banning villagers from the waters that ensured their livelihoods.
Scientists also suspect that changes of water flows caused by dam construction on the lower Mekong River and tributaries may affect the delicate relationship between the Mekong and Tonle Sap. During the rainy season, water flows from the Mekong to fill the lake, with the reverse occurring as the dry season settles in.
Climate change is adding a new level of anxiety. A coalition of Thai and Finnish scientists will soon begin a project to examine the potential climate-change impacts that those around Tonle Sap might experience in the next 50 years.
"Tonle Sap's topography makes the lake very sensitive to changes," Suppakorn Chinvanno of the Bangkok-based Southeast Asia Start Regional Centre said. "A water-level rise of just 0.3 metres can mean a kilometre more flooding on land because of the flat landscape."
This article is based in part on a presentation by Mak Sithirith at the third International Conference of the Asian Rural Sociology Association in Beijing.
2008-04-27
Global warming and economic exploitation destabilise key lake's ecosystem. The Great Lake of Tonle Sap has always been Cambodia's spring of life. Abundant fish stock and seasonal flooding to fertilise rice fields have blessed the region long before the builders of Angkor Wat arrived 900 years ago.
But economic development policies are having the reverse effect. Locals are finding it more difficult to survive, a trend that may only worsen as climate change continues to take hold.
Tonle Sap is Southeast Asia's largest lake, and the source of protein-rich food for Cambodia's 14 million people. As such, the government has sought assistance to aggressively exploit its fisheries under the banner of poverty reduction. But Cambodian sociologist Mak Sithirith of the Fisheries Action Coalition Team said it is not the poor who are benefiting.
Under the scheme, the Cambodian government built infrastructure and introduced market economy to Tonle Sap communities. This has resulted in the end of interdependence between fishing and farming communities, Mak said. The traditional barter system between those growing rice and those catching fish disappeared after an industry of middlemen evolved to wander from village to village, exchanging rice and fish for cash.
"Neighbouring communities who used to rely on one another now compete for material consumption and accumulation obtained by cash and loans," Mak said.
The traditional small-scale fishermen are losing out entirely. The Cambodian government sold fishing concessions to large fishing businesses, banning villagers from the waters that ensured their livelihoods.
Scientists also suspect that changes of water flows caused by dam construction on the lower Mekong River and tributaries may affect the delicate relationship between the Mekong and Tonle Sap. During the rainy season, water flows from the Mekong to fill the lake, with the reverse occurring as the dry season settles in.
Climate change is adding a new level of anxiety. A coalition of Thai and Finnish scientists will soon begin a project to examine the potential climate-change impacts that those around Tonle Sap might experience in the next 50 years.
"Tonle Sap's topography makes the lake very sensitive to changes," Suppakorn Chinvanno of the Bangkok-based Southeast Asia Start Regional Centre said. "A water-level rise of just 0.3 metres can mean a kilometre more flooding on land because of the flat landscape."
This article is based in part on a presentation by Mak Sithirith at the third International Conference of the Asian Rural Sociology Association in Beijing.
Cambodia to hold first ever Khmer Chess tournament
www.chinaview.cn
2008-04-27
PHNOM PENH, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The Olympic Committee of Cambodia (OCC) and the Cambodian Chess Association (CCA) will jointly hold the First Khmer Chess Tournament from May 3 to 4 in order to standardize and highlight the national game.
Cash prize for champion is 1,000 U.S. dollars, and those for the second place and the third 700 U.S. dollars and 500 U.S. dollars, said CCA chairman Ly Hout here on Sunday.
Other top 10 winners can respectively win 100 U.S. dollars as well as trophies, he added.
Participating teams can be established on provincial or municipal basis and each team should include no more than five members, two or three of them chess players, he said.
Meanwhile, he raised 10,000 U.S. dollars to mobilize all the Cambodians to find and submit historical relics that can tell the real origin of the centuries-old sport.
Khmer Chess is a popular game among the Cambodians, but there had been no national match for it the its rules not officially certified until OCC and CCA got them done recently, said Ly Hout.
With these actions, OCC and CCA want to preserve and develop the national gem and thus benefit the coming generation, he added.
Editor: An Lu
PHNOM PENH, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The Olympic Committee of Cambodia (OCC) and the Cambodian Chess Association (CCA) will jointly hold the First Khmer Chess Tournament from May 3 to 4 in order to standardize and highlight the national game.
Cash prize for champion is 1,000 U.S. dollars, and those for the second place and the third 700 U.S. dollars and 500 U.S. dollars, said CCA chairman Ly Hout here on Sunday.
Other top 10 winners can respectively win 100 U.S. dollars as well as trophies, he added.
Participating teams can be established on provincial or municipal basis and each team should include no more than five members, two or three of them chess players, he said.
Meanwhile, he raised 10,000 U.S. dollars to mobilize all the Cambodians to find and submit historical relics that can tell the real origin of the centuries-old sport.
Khmer Chess is a popular game among the Cambodians, but there had been no national match for it the its rules not officially certified until OCC and CCA got them done recently, said Ly Hout.
With these actions, OCC and CCA want to preserve and develop the national gem and thus benefit the coming generation, he added.
Editor: An Lu
Kara Lightman '09: 'Peace scholar' aims to help women in Cambodia
Kara Lightman '09
Kara Lightman '09 with So Dany and Prom Savada of Harpswell Dormitory
Children of Tramung Chrum 
Cambodian women are pictured in the Harpswell Dormitory.The Chronicle
April 24, 2008: Volume 73, Number 4
Kara Lightman ’09 took her first trip to Cambodia in 2005 after graduating from high school. The Concord, Mass., native traveled there with her family, who had started a foundation to help the villagers of Tramung Chrum.
“The first time I went, I didn’t quite grasp it. Everything was so different and frightening,” Lightman said. “The second time, I had an overwhelming sense I needed to do something. The country has been so heavily destroyed. You walk down the street and see people whose faces have been burned off.”
This summer, Lightman, who was particularly taken by the plight of the women of Cambodia, will travel alone to the Southeast Asian village. Her mission: to help Cambodian girls escape lives of poverty, ignorance and domestic violence by introducing them to the importance of education.
Lightman’s efforts are being supported by the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Projects for Peace. She is one of 100 students from more than 85 American colleges and universities who will receive $10,000 to help promote world peace.
An interdepartmental major in Anthropology and Political Science, Lightman is the daughter of Jean, an artist, and Alan Lightman, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the 1999 international bestseller, “Einstein’s Dreams.”
In 2006, Alan Lightman created the Harpswell Foundation, a non-governmental organization (NGO), after helping a friend build schools in Tramung Chum, about 50 miles from the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh.
“We became very close with this village,” said Kara. “They have no plumbing, no running water, no electricity; they tell time by when the sun rises.”
Upon learning that many women can’t go to college because there is nowhere safe for them to live (men can stay in monasteries, but Buddhist rules bar women from taking shelter there), Alan Lightman raised money and bought land, and in 2006, Harpswell built the first women’s dormitory in Cambodia, in Phnom Penh. The more than 30 young women who live there also receive room and board and leadership training.
“I have been greatly inspired by this project, and now I want to do my own work to help the women of Cambodia,” Kara Lightman said.
She noted that thousands of women suffer from domestic violence and marital rape, and that by 13, many girls are often sent away to work in the rice fields or as prostitutes to support their families.
“I would like to encourage girls to stay in school and become educated, which will allow them to get reputable jobs and eventually give money back to their families and villages. I want to use education as a tool to given women a voice.”
One of the poorest countries in the world, Cambodia saw almost its entire educated class destroyed when the notoriously brutal government, the Khmer Rouge, took power in the 1970s.
Lightman will spend about six weeks traveling around the country with three women from the Harpswell dormitory who will share their struggles and their stories. Ultimately, she wants her efforts to embody what is inscribed in both Khmer and English on the brass plaque in the Harpswell dormitory: “Our mission is to empower a new generation of Cambodian women.”
Lightman will leave for Cambodia in July. After spending her fall term in Fiji, she will return to campus with a photojournalistic account of her work in Cambodia.
“I’ve been there four times, and I have far more cultural shock now coming back to the States than I do when I go there,” she said. “It’s hard to go and not do anything. The people are so generous, and the thing that is so amazing is that even though they have so little, they have hope.”
At Union, Lightman is a member of Sigma Delta Tau, the Young Democrats Club and the Model UN Club. She credits her Political Science advisor, Darius Watson, and the Anthropology Department for sparking her passion to study other cultures.
Lightman is the second Union student to be named a “peace scholar.” Last year, when the awards were created, Karyn Amira ’08 received funding for her efforts to curb landmines in Cambodia.
For more information about 100 Projects for Peace, visit www.kwd100projectsforpeace.org.
April 24, 2008: Volume 73, Number 4
Kara Lightman ’09 took her first trip to Cambodia in 2005 after graduating from high school. The Concord, Mass., native traveled there with her family, who had started a foundation to help the villagers of Tramung Chrum.
“The first time I went, I didn’t quite grasp it. Everything was so different and frightening,” Lightman said. “The second time, I had an overwhelming sense I needed to do something. The country has been so heavily destroyed. You walk down the street and see people whose faces have been burned off.”
This summer, Lightman, who was particularly taken by the plight of the women of Cambodia, will travel alone to the Southeast Asian village. Her mission: to help Cambodian girls escape lives of poverty, ignorance and domestic violence by introducing them to the importance of education.
Lightman’s efforts are being supported by the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Projects for Peace. She is one of 100 students from more than 85 American colleges and universities who will receive $10,000 to help promote world peace.
An interdepartmental major in Anthropology and Political Science, Lightman is the daughter of Jean, an artist, and Alan Lightman, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the 1999 international bestseller, “Einstein’s Dreams.”
In 2006, Alan Lightman created the Harpswell Foundation, a non-governmental organization (NGO), after helping a friend build schools in Tramung Chum, about 50 miles from the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh.
“We became very close with this village,” said Kara. “They have no plumbing, no running water, no electricity; they tell time by when the sun rises.”
Upon learning that many women can’t go to college because there is nowhere safe for them to live (men can stay in monasteries, but Buddhist rules bar women from taking shelter there), Alan Lightman raised money and bought land, and in 2006, Harpswell built the first women’s dormitory in Cambodia, in Phnom Penh. The more than 30 young women who live there also receive room and board and leadership training.
“I have been greatly inspired by this project, and now I want to do my own work to help the women of Cambodia,” Kara Lightman said.
She noted that thousands of women suffer from domestic violence and marital rape, and that by 13, many girls are often sent away to work in the rice fields or as prostitutes to support their families.
“I would like to encourage girls to stay in school and become educated, which will allow them to get reputable jobs and eventually give money back to their families and villages. I want to use education as a tool to given women a voice.”
One of the poorest countries in the world, Cambodia saw almost its entire educated class destroyed when the notoriously brutal government, the Khmer Rouge, took power in the 1970s.
Lightman will spend about six weeks traveling around the country with three women from the Harpswell dormitory who will share their struggles and their stories. Ultimately, she wants her efforts to embody what is inscribed in both Khmer and English on the brass plaque in the Harpswell dormitory: “Our mission is to empower a new generation of Cambodian women.”
Lightman will leave for Cambodia in July. After spending her fall term in Fiji, she will return to campus with a photojournalistic account of her work in Cambodia.
“I’ve been there four times, and I have far more cultural shock now coming back to the States than I do when I go there,” she said. “It’s hard to go and not do anything. The people are so generous, and the thing that is so amazing is that even though they have so little, they have hope.”
At Union, Lightman is a member of Sigma Delta Tau, the Young Democrats Club and the Model UN Club. She credits her Political Science advisor, Darius Watson, and the Anthropology Department for sparking her passion to study other cultures.
Lightman is the second Union student to be named a “peace scholar.” Last year, when the awards were created, Karyn Amira ’08 received funding for her efforts to curb landmines in Cambodia.
For more information about 100 Projects for Peace, visit www.kwd100projectsforpeace.org.
Cambodia's poor are hard hit by cutbacks in relief agency food aid
Business Report & Independent Online
April 27, 2008
Pin Oudam (13) gets a free breakfast of rice, fish and yellow split peas every morning at his school in Kampong Speu, Cambodia's poorest province. Next week he won't.
The World Food Programme (WFP) cut off rice deliveries to 1 344 Cambodian schools last month after prices doubled and suppliers defaulted on contracts. Schools will run out of food by Thursday, depriving about 450 000 children of meals, the WFP estimates.
"Over time, this will result in higher malnutrition rates and lessen the physical and mental development of these children at a critical period in their lives," says Paul Risley, a Bangkok-based spokesperson for the UN agency.
Record rice prices are forcing some relief agencies to cut rations. The WFP, which helped feed 960 000 people in Cambodia in January, is limiting aid to the neediest people in the country, including tuberculosis and Aids patients, pregnant women and babies. This week, the agency said its representatives in 78 other countries were facing similar choices.
That may leave Pim with an empty stomach. His grandmother, Nov Yim, estimates she will need 180kg of rice to feed a family of nine until the next harvest begins in September. A 50kg bag costs about 150 000 riel (about R290) and may rise further, she says.
"At those prices, I can only afford half of what I will need," says Yim. "Without the extra rice, my children and grandchildren will go hungry.
"The WFP had to end the Cambodian school programme because suppliers did not honour contracts to deliver 4 000 tons of rice at $390 (R2 965) to $450 a ton, says Thomas Keusters, the agency's representative in Cambodia.
Other local dealers quoted prices of $620 a ton that were out of the agency's reach, he says. A year ago, the WFP paid about $260.
The programme aims to keep children in primary school and prevent them being dragged into the workforce or prostitution.
About 69 percent of the children in Kampong Speu province, 50km west of Phnom Penh, leave school before completing the sixth grade.
Te Huoy does not want that to happen to the two grandchildren, ages four and 14, she is raising in a Phnom Penh slum.
Huoy earns 3 000 to 5 000 riel a day selling empty beer cans and other refuse from the streets of the capital and says it is barely enough to pay for rice, fish and sausages. She spends three-quarters of her income on food, up from half six months ago.
"I'm already old and will die soon," says Huoy, who never received an education. "My hope is that my grandchildren can continue to go to school."
The WFP originally budgeted $3.4 billion to feed 73 million people worldwide this year.
Last month, it appealed for an additional $500 million to cover higher food costs. That shortfall was revised to $756 million this week.
In Sri Lanka, two of the Rome-based aid agency's suppliers defaulted on contracts in the past two weeks, Risley says.
In East Timor, where the government supplies rice to the WFP, authorities have not been able to purchase the cereal from Vietnam because of a ban on exports from that country.
Other relief agencies are also feeling the pinch.
Net food aid flows have been declining for more than a decade, and subprime mortgage losses that led to 1.5 million home foreclosures in the US last year may reduce cash donations, says Chris Conrad, a director of World Vision International's food programming group in Johannesburg.
Global food aid deliveries dropped to 6.7 million tons in 2006 from a high of 17 million tons in 1993, according to a 2007 report from the WFP.
"The pie is getting smaller," Conrad says. "For years, everybody was saying the US or other developed economies could feed the world. I don't think they can any more."
April 27, 2008
Pin Oudam (13) gets a free breakfast of rice, fish and yellow split peas every morning at his school in Kampong Speu, Cambodia's poorest province. Next week he won't.
The World Food Programme (WFP) cut off rice deliveries to 1 344 Cambodian schools last month after prices doubled and suppliers defaulted on contracts. Schools will run out of food by Thursday, depriving about 450 000 children of meals, the WFP estimates.
"Over time, this will result in higher malnutrition rates and lessen the physical and mental development of these children at a critical period in their lives," says Paul Risley, a Bangkok-based spokesperson for the UN agency.
Record rice prices are forcing some relief agencies to cut rations. The WFP, which helped feed 960 000 people in Cambodia in January, is limiting aid to the neediest people in the country, including tuberculosis and Aids patients, pregnant women and babies. This week, the agency said its representatives in 78 other countries were facing similar choices.
That may leave Pim with an empty stomach. His grandmother, Nov Yim, estimates she will need 180kg of rice to feed a family of nine until the next harvest begins in September. A 50kg bag costs about 150 000 riel (about R290) and may rise further, she says.
"At those prices, I can only afford half of what I will need," says Yim. "Without the extra rice, my children and grandchildren will go hungry.
"The WFP had to end the Cambodian school programme because suppliers did not honour contracts to deliver 4 000 tons of rice at $390 (R2 965) to $450 a ton, says Thomas Keusters, the agency's representative in Cambodia.
Other local dealers quoted prices of $620 a ton that were out of the agency's reach, he says. A year ago, the WFP paid about $260.
The programme aims to keep children in primary school and prevent them being dragged into the workforce or prostitution.
About 69 percent of the children in Kampong Speu province, 50km west of Phnom Penh, leave school before completing the sixth grade.
Te Huoy does not want that to happen to the two grandchildren, ages four and 14, she is raising in a Phnom Penh slum.
Huoy earns 3 000 to 5 000 riel a day selling empty beer cans and other refuse from the streets of the capital and says it is barely enough to pay for rice, fish and sausages. She spends three-quarters of her income on food, up from half six months ago.
"I'm already old and will die soon," says Huoy, who never received an education. "My hope is that my grandchildren can continue to go to school."
The WFP originally budgeted $3.4 billion to feed 73 million people worldwide this year.
Last month, it appealed for an additional $500 million to cover higher food costs. That shortfall was revised to $756 million this week.
In Sri Lanka, two of the Rome-based aid agency's suppliers defaulted on contracts in the past two weeks, Risley says.
In East Timor, where the government supplies rice to the WFP, authorities have not been able to purchase the cereal from Vietnam because of a ban on exports from that country.
Other relief agencies are also feeling the pinch.
Net food aid flows have been declining for more than a decade, and subprime mortgage losses that led to 1.5 million home foreclosures in the US last year may reduce cash donations, says Chris Conrad, a director of World Vision International's food programming group in Johannesburg.
Global food aid deliveries dropped to 6.7 million tons in 2006 from a high of 17 million tons in 1993, according to a 2007 report from the WFP.
"The pie is getting smaller," Conrad says. "For years, everybody was saying the US or other developed economies could feed the world. I don't think they can any more."
Massive Monkees B-Boy Heading To Cambodia
seatllestApril 26, 2008
It's an absolutely gorgeous day outside, and Seattlest put in some good hours at the park. The sunshine has coaxed our shriveled, hardened, wintry walnut of a soul to begin expanding and warming up in preparation for bona fide Springtime. So forgive us if we're a little over-emotional when it comes to directing your attention to a story in this morning's Seattle P-I about a Massive Monkees crew member named Phanna Nam (Peanut, to friends and fans) who is moving to Cambodia to teach kids break-dancing.
Says Peanut:
"I always had this calling, this sense of destiny to go back to Cambodia. My mom thinks I'm crazy and my dad just tells me to stay safe. But I'm tired of the American dream. It's a fantasy. I feel more real living in the 'hood," said Nam, who's going to Alaska this summer to make money fishing, then making the big move abroad.
"I don't know how to do anything else but break dance. If I'm gonna shed tears, blood and sweat, it might as well be for Cambodia. I can't change Cambodia, but these kids can. ...Through dancing, these kids are going to be inspired to do more."
We often feel powerless in the face of imminent environmental disaster, famine, war, and devastating poverty in the world. What can we possibly do to effect change when it seems like we're at the whim of forces far beyond our control? This story is a reminder that all is not lost, that redemption is possible, and that we do still have choices about how we respond to the grim realities that face us both personally and as global citizens.
And when everything else seems hopelessly desperate? It's time to dance. That is a springtime message worth shouting from the rooftops.
There's a benefit tonight for Peanut and company at the Greenwood Collective, if you're interested.
Tiny Toones B-Boy Benefit for Cambodia // Greenwood Collective // 6pm // $5 donation
B-Boy getting his dance on at the Baltic Room by Life As Art. Thanks!
Cambodia's paradise beach ( Sihanouk Ville Beach )
The Tourism Development in Sihanouk Ville
PR-inside.com
2008-04-27
As Sihanouk Ville takes off as a tourism hub, Cambodia tourism authority and developers say that preserving the natural harmony and health of its beaches and coastline is the a priority. Officials in Cambodia's Ministry of Tourism have echoed concern about pollution as tourism grows in Sihanouk Ville, and say they are trying to take more thoughtful approach to development.
With funding from Asia Development Bank (ADB) the government has advised a wastewater treatment project that will be implemented in coastal area currently under development to make sure water does not become polluted and that waste form development project does not reach the sea. 'We have to develop these beaches with proper environmental protection,' says Dr Thong Khon, Secretary of State of Tourism Ministry. The ADB funding will also go toward training lifeguard and building Watchtowers along popular beaches. Prime Minister Hun Sen himself lunched the project in Sihanouk Ville, on 2 August.
Development plans for the region go well beyond the beach. To make Sihanouk Ville a more attractive destination for tourist the government is working for revamp Sihanouk Ville Kang Keng Airport so tourist can travel a circuit between Siem Reap, Phnom Penh and Sihanouk Ville. The Air port would also make a transit to the airport in Rattanakiri Province, in Cambodia north's east.
According to the Cambodia Travel Agent Association, cruise to Sihanouk Ville are already popular, and carrying passenger from China, Europe and the United States dock at Sihanouk Ville's port at least one each week. Tourism officials are also optimistic that a recent agreement reach by ASEAN to exempt member countries from paying visa fees when visiting other member countries will increase regional visitor traffic.
Kun Kam Eng, a father of two, spent a recent weekend with his family on Ochheuteal Beach ( www.tourismindochina.com/sihanouk-attractionsite1.htm?#Ochheutea ..). 'We are rich in having so many beautiful places to visit,' a 45 old was please to report as he looked out to the water. 'I love the beaches in Sihanouk Ville, so I hope they always stay clean and fresh. Our Seawater is so clean, the sand is very white and the view of the sea is totally paradise.
Sihanouk Ville Governor Say Hak is optismistic that Sihanouk Ville develop will help improve people lifestyles of people living in Sihanouk Ville municipality. As a part of this effort Prime Minister Hun Sen has strongly encourage people to engage in 'home stay' business, renting local home to tourists. With the huge influx of visitors during national holidays, the home stay policy could help put money directly into villagers' pockets.
Sihanouk Ville is not only the paradise on Cambodia coast. Many islands have yet to see development for tourism and the beach in and around Kompot (www.tourismindochina.com/kampot-attractionsite.htm) and Kep are idyllic. Several hotels Mangers in Sihanouk Ville say their businesses base on the beaches and as long as beaches remain the main attraction for domestic and foreign tourists, the hospitality industry will continue to grow.
(Cambodia, Official Magazine of Ministry of Tourism)Prepared by : Samnang
PR-inside.com
2008-04-27
As Sihanouk Ville takes off as a tourism hub, Cambodia tourism authority and developers say that preserving the natural harmony and health of its beaches and coastline is the a priority. Officials in Cambodia's Ministry of Tourism have echoed concern about pollution as tourism grows in Sihanouk Ville, and say they are trying to take more thoughtful approach to development.
With funding from Asia Development Bank (ADB) the government has advised a wastewater treatment project that will be implemented in coastal area currently under development to make sure water does not become polluted and that waste form development project does not reach the sea. 'We have to develop these beaches with proper environmental protection,' says Dr Thong Khon, Secretary of State of Tourism Ministry. The ADB funding will also go toward training lifeguard and building Watchtowers along popular beaches. Prime Minister Hun Sen himself lunched the project in Sihanouk Ville, on 2 August.
Development plans for the region go well beyond the beach. To make Sihanouk Ville a more attractive destination for tourist the government is working for revamp Sihanouk Ville Kang Keng Airport so tourist can travel a circuit between Siem Reap, Phnom Penh and Sihanouk Ville. The Air port would also make a transit to the airport in Rattanakiri Province, in Cambodia north's east.
According to the Cambodia Travel Agent Association, cruise to Sihanouk Ville are already popular, and carrying passenger from China, Europe and the United States dock at Sihanouk Ville's port at least one each week. Tourism officials are also optimistic that a recent agreement reach by ASEAN to exempt member countries from paying visa fees when visiting other member countries will increase regional visitor traffic.
Kun Kam Eng, a father of two, spent a recent weekend with his family on Ochheuteal Beach ( www.tourismindochina.com/sihanouk-attractionsite1.htm?#Ochheutea ..). 'We are rich in having so many beautiful places to visit,' a 45 old was please to report as he looked out to the water. 'I love the beaches in Sihanouk Ville, so I hope they always stay clean and fresh. Our Seawater is so clean, the sand is very white and the view of the sea is totally paradise.
Sihanouk Ville Governor Say Hak is optismistic that Sihanouk Ville develop will help improve people lifestyles of people living in Sihanouk Ville municipality. As a part of this effort Prime Minister Hun Sen has strongly encourage people to engage in 'home stay' business, renting local home to tourists. With the huge influx of visitors during national holidays, the home stay policy could help put money directly into villagers' pockets.
Sihanouk Ville is not only the paradise on Cambodia coast. Many islands have yet to see development for tourism and the beach in and around Kompot (www.tourismindochina.com/kampot-attractionsite.htm) and Kep are idyllic. Several hotels Mangers in Sihanouk Ville say their businesses base on the beaches and as long as beaches remain the main attraction for domestic and foreign tourists, the hospitality industry will continue to grow.
(Cambodia, Official Magazine of Ministry of Tourism)Prepared by : Samnang
Rove and Tasma, the orphan cubs
smh.com.auMatthew Benns
April 27, 2008
TV COMEDIAN Rove McManus and partner Tasma Walton have had two tiny orphan bear cubs named after them in a Cambodian sanctuary.
The TV host, who has been named as a contender to take Conan O'Brien's Late Night chair in the US, visited the Free The Bears Fund Inc sanctuary as a part of a recent wildlife tour.
"Being able to see the amazing work that Free The Bears does in Cambodia first-hand personalised the issue of wildlife trade for me," he said yesterday.
"The people at Free The Bears are passionate and personal advocates for these amazing animals. They need and deserve our support."
The Asiatic black bear cubs were confiscated from a wildlife trader and taken in by the Australian-funded sanctuary. The bears were saved from a trade that cuts off their paws for use in soup.
McManus and Walton visited the Cambodian sanctuary during a tour to prepare for his role as an ambassador for Fauna and Flora International.
Source: The Sun-Herald
A Growing Seedling of Religion
Cambodia Newsby seiha
Six o’clock in the morning, National Road number 5. Rush hour in Chrang Cham Ress district. A motor-tricycle slows down to pick up commuters. Students crowd on the back. Their destination is Eas Ya Oak Tin School, a language-training and cultural center of the Cambodian Cham. Eas Ya Oak Tin means: seedling of religion.
Every day except Fridays and Sundays, 400 students arrive at the old buildings behind the mosque on National Road 5, about ten kilometers north of Phnom Penh. “The school was established in 1998 by the Cham of the region. Today it is one of the oldest Muslim schools in Cambodia,” says the director Mr. HarChei Zakariya Asmat. “The original idea was to keep up the Cham traditions and language.”
Fifteen years ago, there were no Cham schools in the country. Those Cham who wanted to learn their language and study religion, had to go the mosque. Now, Cham schools up to high school level are found everywhere. Students learn the Arabic language and gain an introduction to the Koran - like how to salute Allah, the Muslim God, which they do five times a day during prayers. However, Cham students also have to attend public school.
“I will not drop out of the Cham school,” says fourth grader Mous Slimin. “My teacher told me that only the Koran can give me happiness after I die.” That’s why he squeezes into the motor-tricycle twice every day first to go to the public and later to the Cham school. “It makes me tired”, says Slimin. He fears that one day he will drop out of the state school and run a business like his brother.
Mar Koctry, an 18 year old student, has chosen another direction. “I want to be a religious teacher because I am afraid that the next generation will ignore the Islamic religion and it will disappear in Cambodia.” Koctry studies at the Muslim secondary school An Ni’mah, also on road number 5. Next year he will have finished the second level of Cham studies. “After that, students are able to teach religion, but they can also find work in Islamic countries,” says religious teacher Seat Fin. This might be an option for Koctry.
The educational system of the Islamic schools which operate free of charge - is divided into three levels. If students pass the first level after five years, they can be selected into the second level, which takes another four years. Almost 70 percent of the students who start will make it into the second level.
In second and third level, students have to study hard: The Koran, which includes Allah’s teachings; Hindis, which is the word of Muhammad; Tarhit or Archida knowledge on Muslim belief; Vichock, the practice and Cham children go to two schools in one day to the public and to the Islamic school.
Ahab, the morality of Islamic people along with See Ross, the history of Muhammad, subjects which most ethnic Khmer have never heard of “All nationalities can study here, this school is not only for Cham”, says the religious president. He claims that many ethnic Cham do not even believe in Islamic religion. “Here, no one is forced to study the Koran and to believe.”
Cham Schools in Cambodia
An Ni’mah School and the Highest Council For Islamic Religious Affairs in Cambodia, responsible for Cham-Khmer students, say that in the year 2006, 2,700 students in the country went to a second level Cham school. In 2002, theywere only 150 officially registered Cham students.
Today, around 500 Cham schools exist in Cambodia, 440 villages are registered in which Cham residents hold a strong majority. According to official regulations, each village should have a Cham school. If more than 100 Cham families live there, it should be more than two schools.
The Author: Chey Sambath.
More Than US$100,000 Wasted on ECCC Monitoring
Posted on 26 April 2008.
The Mirror, Vol. 12, No. 557
“On the morning of 25 April 2008, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia [ECCC] held a conference to release the result of the special monitoring over an accusation of corruption in the tribunal of the former Khmer Rouge leaders; it is asserted that there is no fault as had been raised in the accusation.
“The United Nations Development Program [UNDP] Country Director for Cambodia Mr. Jo Scheuer, who participated in the press conference this morning, said that about a year ago, because of different irregularities and accusations, the UNDP pushed for an internal audit of the process of staff recruitments for the tribunal of former Khmer Rouge leaders, to respond to points which were considered to be weaknesses in the management of human resources.
The Mirror, Vol. 12, No. 557
“On the morning of 25 April 2008, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia [ECCC] held a conference to release the result of the special monitoring over an accusation of corruption in the tribunal of the former Khmer Rouge leaders; it is asserted that there is no fault as had been raised in the accusation.
“The United Nations Development Program [UNDP] Country Director for Cambodia Mr. Jo Scheuer, who participated in the press conference this morning, said that about a year ago, because of different irregularities and accusations, the UNDP pushed for an internal audit of the process of staff recruitments for the tribunal of former Khmer Rouge leaders, to respond to points which were considered to be weaknesses in the management of human resources.
“He continued that all weak points were reviewed, in the reports and in the ongoing audits in the ECCC, and some recommendations continued to be raised to be solved. While the audit was continuing, the ECCC had already begun different measures of improvements, such as creating a staff work books and a code of ethics.
“The UNDP Country Director said that in late February 2008, the UNDP hired an independent monitoring team to monitor the management of human resources. This renewed monitoring aimed to assess the management of human resources so far. Among the monitors, two were management experts from India, another team member is Khmer, an expert on human resources. The monitoring took four weeks to be finished.
“The director of the Office of Administration of the ECCC, Mr. Sean Visoth, told reporters that this special monitoring was initiated by the Project Council, and it was implemented since late February 2008 by an independent expert team from the Deloitte company in India. This renewed monitoring aimed mainly to finish the reports of the previous audits of the ECCC.
“Mr. Sean Visoth went on to say that the monitoring is to show clearly whether there is transparency and accountability in the management of human resources, and in the implementation of human resources policies in the ECCC, and whether these are in line with international standards, and whether or not the responses satisfy what was raised by the Project Council. The director of the Office of Administration of the ECCC said that although not everything can be done perfectly, it had been possible to achieve what had been intended. Mr. Sean Visoth claimed that more than US$100,000 was spent on the monitoring team.
“The European Community Charge d’Affaires in Cambodia, Mr. Rafael Dochao Moreno, said that the community has strongly vowed to fight different the culture of impunity and crimes. The ECCC work in the last two years was processed under the strict monitoring of the donor community.
However, what regrettable is the management of human resources in the ECCC. At the same time, the European Community also called for the monitoring on the accusation in order to use the finance correctly. The European Community is also satisfied with the most positive reports by the monitoring team. Nonetheless, the European Community asked for further efforts to promote the management of human resources. Meanwhile, the European Community declared to support the ECCC with both policy and finance.
“According to the monitoring reports, after the evaluation at place within two weeks at the ECCC, the Project Council is pleased to announce that no essentially weak points were found, and the implementation of human resources at this stage meets acceptable standards.
“According to the monitoring reports, after the evaluation at place within two weeks at the ECCC, the Project Council is pleased to announce that no essentially weak points were found, and the implementation of human resources at this stage meets acceptable standards.
“Although the monitoring did not shows any irregularity, the tribunal still has a problem – funding; on that morning, the ECCC and the European Community did not show to have any extra funds.”
Kampuchea Thmey, Vol.7, #1625, 26.4.2008
Who’s your Zimbodian?
The TimesApr 26, 2008
It’s a shame that the entire South African media seems to think that the challenge for Zimbabwe is how to remove Robert Mugabe and replace him with Morgan Tsvangirai.
While Bob is portrayed as a villain, no attempt is made to assess whether Tsvangirai is “fit to govern”. What happened to fair reporting?
And is it out of disrespect or xenophobia that Hogarth calls us Zimbodians? And who’s the Zimbodian? Is it the black Zimbabwean? Let me guess: Zimbabwe plus Cambodia equals Zimbodia.
It’s enough that we have to put up with violent xenophobic attacks in South Africa, but a slur in a respectable paper like the Sunday Times is disgusting, to say the least.
Fire of Cambodia-registered cargo vessel in south China river put out
www.chinaview.cn
2008-04-26
GUANGZHOU, April 26 (Xinhua) -- Chinese maritime vessels put out a fire of a Cambodia-registered cargo ship anchoring at the Pearl River mouth in south China.
The Guangzhou Maritime Bureau received a report at 11:08 a.m. Saturday that a fire broke out on a Cambodia-registered cargo ship when workers were doing repair work in its dining hall. The vessel had 15 crew and 37 repair workers aboard.
After contacting the crew, the vessels dispatched by the bureau helped transfer 13 crew and 37 workers to nearby anchored ships. The captain and another crew member stayed on the vessel to report fire situation.
The fire was put out at 1:45 p.m. by several vessels of the bureau.
No casualties were reported. The cause of the fire is still being investigated.
Editor: Yan Liang
GUANGZHOU, April 26 (Xinhua) -- Chinese maritime vessels put out a fire of a Cambodia-registered cargo ship anchoring at the Pearl River mouth in south China.
The Guangzhou Maritime Bureau received a report at 11:08 a.m. Saturday that a fire broke out on a Cambodia-registered cargo ship when workers were doing repair work in its dining hall. The vessel had 15 crew and 37 repair workers aboard.
After contacting the crew, the vessels dispatched by the bureau helped transfer 13 crew and 37 workers to nearby anchored ships. The captain and another crew member stayed on the vessel to report fire situation.
The fire was put out at 1:45 p.m. by several vessels of the bureau.
No casualties were reported. The cause of the fire is still being investigated.
Editor: Yan Liang
Cambodia : Thai ex-convict defends WBC women's light flyweight title
Convicted Thai drug dealer Samson Sor Siriporn is declared the winner during the WBC light flyweight title fight against Kayoko Ebata from Japan in Phnom Penh April 26, 2008. Siriporn walked out of prison three years early for winning the WBC light-flyweight title earlier this year. Siriporn retained her World Boxing Council by winning against the Japanese challenger in 10 rounds.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA) 
Convicted Thai drug dealer Samson Sor Siriporn (L) is declared the winner during the WBC light flyweight title fight against Kayoko Ebata from Japan in Phnom Penh April 26, 2008. Siriporn walked out of prison three years early for winning the WBC light-flyweight title earlier this year. Siriporn retained her World Boxing Council by winning against the Japanese challenger in 10 rounds.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA)
Siriporn Thaweesuk, right, of Thailand, beats onto the head of Kayoko Ebata, left, of Japan, during their WBC light flyweight title match in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Saturday, April 26, 2008. Thailand's Siriporn Thaweesuk, former female drug dealer from Thailand retained her World Boxing Council crown Saturday in a 10-round bout against the Japanese challenger. In a 2-1 decision, Thailand's Siriporn Thaweesuk beated Ebata in the third defense of her light-flyweight belt, which she won while serving a prison term for selling amphetamines.(AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Siriporn Thaweesuk, left, from Thailand, beats onto the face of Kayoko Ebata, right, from Japan, during a WBC light flyweight title in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Saturday, April 26, 2008. Siriporn Thaweesuk, the former female drug dealer from Thailand retained her World Boxing Council crown Saturday in a 10-round bout against the Japanese challenger. In a 2-1 decision, Thailand's Siriporn Thaweesuk bested Ebata in the third defense of her light-flyweight belt, which she won while serving a prison term for selling amphetamines.(AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
Convicted Thai drug dealer Samson Sor Siriporn (L) punches Kayoko Ebata from Japan during their WBC light flyweight title fight in Phnom Penh April 26, 2008. Siriporn walked out of prison three years early for winning the WBC light-flyweight title earlier this year. Siriporn retained her World Boxing Council by winning against the Japanese challenger in 10 rounds.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA)
Convicted Thai drug dealer Samson Sor Siriporn (L) punches Kayoko Ebata from Japan during their WBC light flyweight title fight in Phnom Penh April 26, 2008. Siriporn walked out of prison three years early for winning the WBC light-flyweight title earlier this year. Siriporn retained her World Boxing Council by winning against the Japanese challenger in 10 rounds.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA)
Convicted Thai drug dealer Samson Sor Siriporn (R) punches Kayoko Ebata from Japan during their WBC light flyweight title fight in Phnom Penh April 26, 2008. Siriporn walked out of prison three years early for winning the WBC light-flyweight title earlier this year. Siriporn retained her World Boxing Council by winning against the Japanese challenger in 10 rounds.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA)
Convicted Thai drug dealer Samson Sor Siriporn (R) fights with Kayoko Ebata from Japan during their WBC light flyweight title fight in Phnom Penh April 26, 2008. Siriporn walked out of prison three years early for winning the WBC light-flyweight title earlier this year. Siriporn retained her World Boxing Council by winning against the Japanese challenger in 10 rounds.REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea (CAMBODIA) The Associated Press
Published: April 26, 2008
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: Thailand's Siriporn Thaweesuk, who won her WBC light flyweight title in prison while serving time for drug offenses, made her third successful defense by beating Japan's Kayoko Ebata on Saturday.
On the day of her 25th birthday, Siriporn won by split decision in the 10-round bout on neutral ground in Cambodia. Two judges gave her the decision and another scored it a tie.
In an evenly contested bout, Ebata fought through swelling around both eyes from early in the fight, with both boxers noticeably fatigued in the later rounds fought in the tropical heat.
Siriporn, also known as Samson Sor, first took the vacant WBC light flyweight title when she outpointed Japan's Ayaka Miyano in a bout at Klong Prem Prison in April last year. She was serving a sentence for selling amphetamines.
She received a pardon after winning the title and was freed from the women's prison in Pathum Thani province, 32 kilometers (20 miles) north of Bangkok, three years before the end of her 10-year sentence.
Saturday's bout was the third time Siriporn had defended her title with decisions over Japanese opponents, having oupointed Anri Nakagawa in August and Momo Koseki in November last year.
Last month she signed a contract selling rights to her story to an independent producer from Los Angeles, who said he would turn her story into a movie.
Siriporn grew up in a poor family in Bangkok, where her family made a living by selling clothes on the roadside.
Red number is not a cause of death
Picture from Koh Santepheap NewspaperIOL.com
April 26 2008
Phnom Penh - Cambodian officials have moved to quell growing hysteria sparked by a rumour that a ghostly red number was appearing on mobile phones and killing people, local media and police said Saturday.
Officials have urged calm in the mobile-phone-crazy country, where rumours spread nationally like wildfire thanks to cheap calls and text messages, and have denied any red number exists.
Posts and Telecommunications Minister So Khun said the rumour was probably due to growing tension prior to scheduled national elections in July, the English-language Cambodia Daily reported.
"Anyone can make this up. In a moment we will hear that fish will grow legs and run away," the paper quoted the minister as saying.
Rumours such as this are not new to Cambodia, where people are deeply superstitious and believe in sorcerers and spirits but have nevertheless embraced texting technology as a national passion.
At the height of the SARS outbreak in 2003, a story circulated that people who did not eat a sugar palm dessert before midnight would die, sparking nationwide mass panic-buying of palm sugar that resulted in several market stalls being damaged.
In January of the same year, a false rumour that a Thai soap actress had claimed the national icon, Angkor Wat temple, was Thai led to an angry mob torching the Thai embassy and businesses.
Police warned Saturday that if the culprit for this latest text- message-fuelled scare was found they would be prosecuted, but admitted Chinese whisper investigations of this nature were virtually impossible to trace. - Sapa-dpa
April 26 2008
Phnom Penh - Cambodian officials have moved to quell growing hysteria sparked by a rumour that a ghostly red number was appearing on mobile phones and killing people, local media and police said Saturday.
Officials have urged calm in the mobile-phone-crazy country, where rumours spread nationally like wildfire thanks to cheap calls and text messages, and have denied any red number exists.
Posts and Telecommunications Minister So Khun said the rumour was probably due to growing tension prior to scheduled national elections in July, the English-language Cambodia Daily reported.
"Anyone can make this up. In a moment we will hear that fish will grow legs and run away," the paper quoted the minister as saying.
Rumours such as this are not new to Cambodia, where people are deeply superstitious and believe in sorcerers and spirits but have nevertheless embraced texting technology as a national passion.
At the height of the SARS outbreak in 2003, a story circulated that people who did not eat a sugar palm dessert before midnight would die, sparking nationwide mass panic-buying of palm sugar that resulted in several market stalls being damaged.
In January of the same year, a false rumour that a Thai soap actress had claimed the national icon, Angkor Wat temple, was Thai led to an angry mob torching the Thai embassy and businesses.
Police warned Saturday that if the culprit for this latest text- message-fuelled scare was found they would be prosecuted, but admitted Chinese whisper investigations of this nature were virtually impossible to trace. - Sapa-dpa
Cambodia hosts opportune investment property
24/7 Press Releases
April 26, 2008
NOTTINGHAM, UK, April 26, 2008 - Situated in the chic riverside French Quarter of Cambodia's capital, its wealthiest city of Phnom Penh, these properties are available now through overseas property specialists David Stanley Redfern Ltd from 29,151 with only 1,000 reservation fee.
There is plenty of leverage as the 65% balance isn't payable until completion and approval of the finished property and an initial 35% post due diligence payment. There are no construction risks whatsoever and this foolproof opportunity to own a highly desirable apartment in an equally alluring region offers all the benefits of any higher risk market, just without the worry.
Rental: Despite democracy and property ownership issues restricting the development of Cambodia's real estate sector, it's somewhat reassuring to know that Phnom Penh is at the centre of it all. Here, the developer is offering a net rental guarantee of 10% for the first 2 years so, along with Cambodia's capital growth hovering around 15% to 20% per year, this investment opportunity is undeniably attractive.
Costs: Cambodia's tax administration is split between registered businesses that are required to submit a monthly tax return and individual taxpayers who do not submit tax returns (though tax on employment income is withheld by their employers), so do not pay income tax on rent. Theoretically, up to 20% income tax is payable by residents from their net rental profits, whilst non-residents will pay 20% flat rate. Administrative practice dictates that companies must pay income tax and deduct 1% turnover per annum. Profit tax is 15% on net profits with the usual depreciation and deductions being allowed. Individuals are not VAT registered either and so are not liable for VAT on rental income. 10% withholding tax is payable by the lessee if the landlord is resident, and 14% if the landlord is non-resident. This tax is increasingly written into new leases. VAT is payable on rental income at 10% in corporate situations. Capital gains tax is currently non-existent, though it is imminent and likely to come into effect by 2008 at around 20%.
Buying: As foreign ownership of land isn't allowed in Cambodia, investors must take 1 of 4 routes around the problem. Buy through a local company, lease the land, acquire governmentally encouraged Cambodian citizenship and land ownership rights as you do so.
Tenancy: Rent is freely negotiable between landlord and tenant in Cambodia, with a deposit of 1 month's rent and 2 months' advance rent for the last two months of tenancy are commonplace. The security deposit is usually refunded 3 days after the tenancy term and all applicable maintenance deductions. Long-term renewable leases that usually last for 1 year are commonly written, though verbal agreements are acceptable for shorter term rentals. Only the law of contracts and the improved revised land law governs the tenant/landlord relationship.
Access: Phnom Penh hosts 2 international airports that offer daily flights along with all the major regional airports in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City, Singapore, Taipei and Laos too, though the nearest is just 11km away from central Phnom Penh.
April 26, 2008
NOTTINGHAM, UK, April 26, 2008 - Situated in the chic riverside French Quarter of Cambodia's capital, its wealthiest city of Phnom Penh, these properties are available now through overseas property specialists David Stanley Redfern Ltd from 29,151 with only 1,000 reservation fee.
There is plenty of leverage as the 65% balance isn't payable until completion and approval of the finished property and an initial 35% post due diligence payment. There are no construction risks whatsoever and this foolproof opportunity to own a highly desirable apartment in an equally alluring region offers all the benefits of any higher risk market, just without the worry.
Rental: Despite democracy and property ownership issues restricting the development of Cambodia's real estate sector, it's somewhat reassuring to know that Phnom Penh is at the centre of it all. Here, the developer is offering a net rental guarantee of 10% for the first 2 years so, along with Cambodia's capital growth hovering around 15% to 20% per year, this investment opportunity is undeniably attractive.
Costs: Cambodia's tax administration is split between registered businesses that are required to submit a monthly tax return and individual taxpayers who do not submit tax returns (though tax on employment income is withheld by their employers), so do not pay income tax on rent. Theoretically, up to 20% income tax is payable by residents from their net rental profits, whilst non-residents will pay 20% flat rate. Administrative practice dictates that companies must pay income tax and deduct 1% turnover per annum. Profit tax is 15% on net profits with the usual depreciation and deductions being allowed. Individuals are not VAT registered either and so are not liable for VAT on rental income. 10% withholding tax is payable by the lessee if the landlord is resident, and 14% if the landlord is non-resident. This tax is increasingly written into new leases. VAT is payable on rental income at 10% in corporate situations. Capital gains tax is currently non-existent, though it is imminent and likely to come into effect by 2008 at around 20%.
Buying: As foreign ownership of land isn't allowed in Cambodia, investors must take 1 of 4 routes around the problem. Buy through a local company, lease the land, acquire governmentally encouraged Cambodian citizenship and land ownership rights as you do so.
Tenancy: Rent is freely negotiable between landlord and tenant in Cambodia, with a deposit of 1 month's rent and 2 months' advance rent for the last two months of tenancy are commonplace. The security deposit is usually refunded 3 days after the tenancy term and all applicable maintenance deductions. Long-term renewable leases that usually last for 1 year are commonly written, though verbal agreements are acceptable for shorter term rentals. Only the law of contracts and the improved revised land law governs the tenant/landlord relationship.
Access: Phnom Penh hosts 2 international airports that offer daily flights along with all the major regional airports in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City, Singapore, Taipei and Laos too, though the nearest is just 11km away from central Phnom Penh.
The Guns May Be Silent But for Some, There Is No Cease-Fire
By DeNeen L. Brown
The Washington Post
April 26, 2008
'The soldiers walked around the neighborhood, knocking on all the doors, telling people to leave. Those who refused were shot dead right on their doorsteps,' Loung Ung wrote in her book 'First They Killed My Father.'
Ung escaped Cambodia as a child when Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge stormed into Phnom Penh in April 1975. She fled with her family.
"Yesterday," she wrote, "I was playing hopscotch with my friends. Today we are running from soldiers with guns. . . . Pa whispers that from now on we are to give the soldiers anything they want or they will shoot us. We walk from the break of day until the dark of evening. When night comes, we rest by the roadside near a temple. We unpack the dried fish and rice and eat in silence. Gone is the air of mystery and excitement; now I am simply afraid."
Ung now lives in Cleveland, where she owns a Belgian beer bar and an Italian restaurant. So far from war, you say. But she says no. "When I hear politicians talk about war ending or not ending, my first thought is, it is really too bad so few of them have personally experienced war," Ung says. "We are ruled by a group of many armchair soldiers. War doesn't end."
The idea for a second book she wrote was prompted by Bush's 2003 "mission accomplished" announcement. At that moment she thought, " 'Oh my gosh, there are people who believe this and think this is true.' But I know 25 years after my war, it doesn't end just because the guns have fallen silent, doesn't end just because peace treaties have been signed. It doesn't end in my life. It is too bad so many people talk about it without having firsthand experience of it."
Her war goes on, living as if it were a close relative who remembers what you remember, someone who was there when the most horrible thing in your life happened, and knows all the details.
"The thing I still feel on my skin and in my heart is the experience of hiding in a bomb shelter," Ung says. "The fear that invades your body, that sets your mind ablaze even when the bomb doesn't hit. Fear. When I was hiding in a bomb shelter, everything is quiet except for the whizzing of cannons and rockets overhead. We are all counting under our breath, hiding from the bombs that were thrown by invisible people. They don't know you. You don't know them. You are counting and counting and waiting.
"When it doesn't hit, there is a moment of disappointment. You know it won't stop. . . . When you are in war, there is no relief."
The Washington Post
April 26, 2008
'The soldiers walked around the neighborhood, knocking on all the doors, telling people to leave. Those who refused were shot dead right on their doorsteps,' Loung Ung wrote in her book 'First They Killed My Father.'
Ung escaped Cambodia as a child when Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge stormed into Phnom Penh in April 1975. She fled with her family.
"Yesterday," she wrote, "I was playing hopscotch with my friends. Today we are running from soldiers with guns. . . . Pa whispers that from now on we are to give the soldiers anything they want or they will shoot us. We walk from the break of day until the dark of evening. When night comes, we rest by the roadside near a temple. We unpack the dried fish and rice and eat in silence. Gone is the air of mystery and excitement; now I am simply afraid."
Ung now lives in Cleveland, where she owns a Belgian beer bar and an Italian restaurant. So far from war, you say. But she says no. "When I hear politicians talk about war ending or not ending, my first thought is, it is really too bad so few of them have personally experienced war," Ung says. "We are ruled by a group of many armchair soldiers. War doesn't end."
The idea for a second book she wrote was prompted by Bush's 2003 "mission accomplished" announcement. At that moment she thought, " 'Oh my gosh, there are people who believe this and think this is true.' But I know 25 years after my war, it doesn't end just because the guns have fallen silent, doesn't end just because peace treaties have been signed. It doesn't end in my life. It is too bad so many people talk about it without having firsthand experience of it."
Her war goes on, living as if it were a close relative who remembers what you remember, someone who was there when the most horrible thing in your life happened, and knows all the details.
"The thing I still feel on my skin and in my heart is the experience of hiding in a bomb shelter," Ung says. "The fear that invades your body, that sets your mind ablaze even when the bomb doesn't hit. Fear. When I was hiding in a bomb shelter, everything is quiet except for the whizzing of cannons and rockets overhead. We are all counting under our breath, hiding from the bombs that were thrown by invisible people. They don't know you. You don't know them. You are counting and counting and waiting.
"When it doesn't hit, there is a moment of disappointment. You know it won't stop. . . . When you are in war, there is no relief."
Last Breakfast in Cambodia
The New York Times
By SICHAN SIV
April 26, 2008
Angkor, Cambodia
CAMBODIANS and other Theravada Buddhists celebrate their New Year in mid-April. They were not always able to do so. Under Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese rule, those ancient traditions were forbidden, impossible. But now Cambodia is free again and the festivities are in the open. As I wander the country of my youth, I see people spending the long holiday praying at temples and visiting relatives.
And I remember. My family used to hold a reunion on April 13 to mark both the New Year and my mother’s birthday. In 1975, we had no idea that it would be our last. We were all apprehensive about the future, and my mother was distraught because I had missed the American evacuation.
The day before, an officer of the United States Agency for International Development had told me that I had to be at the embassy within an hour if I wanted to be airlifted out of Cambodia. (I was a manager for the American relief agency CARE and had been selected for the evacuation.) Instead, I went to a meeting to find a way to help 3,000 families stranded in an isolated province.
“Maybe I can make the meeting and get to the embassy in time,” I thought.
But as I returned to Phnom Penh, the traffic became heavily congested. Thousands of people on ox carts and overloaded bicycles were making their way to the capital to seek shelter and safety.
When I finally reached the American Embassy and gave my name to the security officer, he looked puzzled.
“They are not coming back — they are gone!” The guard shouted his answer to emphasize the hard truth. And he added: “The war is over. We will have peace!”
Speechless, I went to the riverbank and looked at the horizon to see if I could spot the helicopters. The sky was blue and cloudless. I saw nothing. Years later, I learned that I had been looking in the wrong direction. The helicopters had flown westward toward the Gulf of Thailand. And I was looking east.
I was 30 minutes late. My life was going to change forever.
Everyone in the city was in a very somber mood. We prayed that our beloved country would return to the peaceful and stable life of the 1960s. What would happen to us now that the United States had closed its embassy? Two days earlier, President Gerald Ford had announced: “The situation in South Vietnam and Cambodia has reached a critical phase requiring immediate and positive decisions by this government. The options before us are few, and the time is very short.”
Five days later, on April 17, I stopped at a street-side restaurant to have a bowl of Phnom Penh noodles. A waiter took my order in Khmer and shouted in Cantonese loudly enough to be heard all the way to the kitchen: “One bowl of Kuytiev Phnom Penh, no MSG, no fat, blanched bean sprouts, hot tea for the skinny guy with glasses, white shirt, dark pants, table 13!” A different waiter brought my noodles in less than three minutes. Not once had they got the order wrong. It was going to be my last proper breakfast in Cambodia.
I had read gruesome descriptions of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge against enemies of their revolution: babies thrown into the air and caught with a bayonet, children smashed into trees, villagers having their throats cut with the thorns of palm branches, merchants clubbed to death with the back of a hoe. I did not believe them.
The street was lined with city residents, a few still wearing the kramas and sarongs they had slept in. One was brushing his teeth. But all were looking north, waiting for something. They looked fearful.
I spent all day in a temporary emergency room in the Hotel Le Royal doing what I could to help. I came out for fresh air and saw the Khmer Rouge being welcomed. People seemed genuinely happy that the war had ended.
Later that day, the first day of “peace,” I and 15 of my family members left our home after the Khmer Rouge had ordered all cities immediately emptied, and walked to Pochentong, the village where my siblings and I were born. Our house was occupied by strangers, so we went to the temple. The monks were already gone and there were bodies lying around. Mother was sobbing.
The women and girls in our family were choking back tears. The boys and men were all silent.
Shortly thereafter, I was separated from my family by the Khmer Rouge. After a year in slave labor camps, where I survived two death sentences, I escaped to Thailand. Following a few months in a Thai jail, in a Buddhist temple and in a refugee camp, I arrived in Wallingford, Conn., with $2 in my pocket. I later learned I was the only survivor in my close family. The Khmer Rouge had killed everyone else.
Cambodia today is not unlike the Cambodia of my youth — there is deep poverty and enormous wealth, side-by-side. There is unrest beneath the surface, the unrest that helped to make the horrors of the last century possible. And so, as I walk from one memory-filled place to another, I pray for a new year in which Cambodia’s leaders will find a way to bring about peace and stability. And, of course, I pray for my family.
Sichan Siv, a former United States ambassador to the United Nations, is the author of the forthcoming “Golden Bones.”
By SICHAN SIV
April 26, 2008
Angkor, Cambodia
CAMBODIANS and other Theravada Buddhists celebrate their New Year in mid-April. They were not always able to do so. Under Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese rule, those ancient traditions were forbidden, impossible. But now Cambodia is free again and the festivities are in the open. As I wander the country of my youth, I see people spending the long holiday praying at temples and visiting relatives.
And I remember. My family used to hold a reunion on April 13 to mark both the New Year and my mother’s birthday. In 1975, we had no idea that it would be our last. We were all apprehensive about the future, and my mother was distraught because I had missed the American evacuation.
The day before, an officer of the United States Agency for International Development had told me that I had to be at the embassy within an hour if I wanted to be airlifted out of Cambodia. (I was a manager for the American relief agency CARE and had been selected for the evacuation.) Instead, I went to a meeting to find a way to help 3,000 families stranded in an isolated province.
“Maybe I can make the meeting and get to the embassy in time,” I thought.
But as I returned to Phnom Penh, the traffic became heavily congested. Thousands of people on ox carts and overloaded bicycles were making their way to the capital to seek shelter and safety.
When I finally reached the American Embassy and gave my name to the security officer, he looked puzzled.
“They are not coming back — they are gone!” The guard shouted his answer to emphasize the hard truth. And he added: “The war is over. We will have peace!”
Speechless, I went to the riverbank and looked at the horizon to see if I could spot the helicopters. The sky was blue and cloudless. I saw nothing. Years later, I learned that I had been looking in the wrong direction. The helicopters had flown westward toward the Gulf of Thailand. And I was looking east.
I was 30 minutes late. My life was going to change forever.
Everyone in the city was in a very somber mood. We prayed that our beloved country would return to the peaceful and stable life of the 1960s. What would happen to us now that the United States had closed its embassy? Two days earlier, President Gerald Ford had announced: “The situation in South Vietnam and Cambodia has reached a critical phase requiring immediate and positive decisions by this government. The options before us are few, and the time is very short.”
Five days later, on April 17, I stopped at a street-side restaurant to have a bowl of Phnom Penh noodles. A waiter took my order in Khmer and shouted in Cantonese loudly enough to be heard all the way to the kitchen: “One bowl of Kuytiev Phnom Penh, no MSG, no fat, blanched bean sprouts, hot tea for the skinny guy with glasses, white shirt, dark pants, table 13!” A different waiter brought my noodles in less than three minutes. Not once had they got the order wrong. It was going to be my last proper breakfast in Cambodia.
I had read gruesome descriptions of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge against enemies of their revolution: babies thrown into the air and caught with a bayonet, children smashed into trees, villagers having their throats cut with the thorns of palm branches, merchants clubbed to death with the back of a hoe. I did not believe them.
The street was lined with city residents, a few still wearing the kramas and sarongs they had slept in. One was brushing his teeth. But all were looking north, waiting for something. They looked fearful.
I spent all day in a temporary emergency room in the Hotel Le Royal doing what I could to help. I came out for fresh air and saw the Khmer Rouge being welcomed. People seemed genuinely happy that the war had ended.
Later that day, the first day of “peace,” I and 15 of my family members left our home after the Khmer Rouge had ordered all cities immediately emptied, and walked to Pochentong, the village where my siblings and I were born. Our house was occupied by strangers, so we went to the temple. The monks were already gone and there were bodies lying around. Mother was sobbing.
The women and girls in our family were choking back tears. The boys and men were all silent.
Shortly thereafter, I was separated from my family by the Khmer Rouge. After a year in slave labor camps, where I survived two death sentences, I escaped to Thailand. Following a few months in a Thai jail, in a Buddhist temple and in a refugee camp, I arrived in Wallingford, Conn., with $2 in my pocket. I later learned I was the only survivor in my close family. The Khmer Rouge had killed everyone else.
Cambodia today is not unlike the Cambodia of my youth — there is deep poverty and enormous wealth, side-by-side. There is unrest beneath the surface, the unrest that helped to make the horrors of the last century possible. And so, as I walk from one memory-filled place to another, I pray for a new year in which Cambodia’s leaders will find a way to bring about peace and stability. And, of course, I pray for my family.
Sichan Siv, a former United States ambassador to the United Nations, is the author of the forthcoming “Golden Bones.”
Cambodian-Americans are changing their parents' homeland
Tiny Toones performs most Sunday afternoons in the parks along Phnom Penh’s riverfront. The events draw curious onlookers as well as street kids to see the group perform. Such events are used as outreach to the city’s poor and young. ©2007 Stuart Isett. All rights reservedThey're giving at-risk youth a break with dance lessons
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
By ATHIMA CHANSANCHAI
P-I REPORTER
Next time the Massive Monkees mesmerize you with their break dancing, check out the lanky boy with the waves of curly hair, nicknamed Peanut, the one known for his windmills.
He's also the one moving to a country he never visited before last year, the country his parents fled during the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror.
Peanut, whose real name is Phanna Nam, is following a dream to dance in Cambodia and teach poor kids the moves that have been second nature to him since he was a child growing up in Mount Baker. The Franklin High School grad, 23, was born in Tacoma and visited Cambodia for the first time in 2007, for a month.
Behind the moves of Massive Monkees, one of Seattle's top B-boy groups (B-Boy is hip-hop slang for break dancer), is the story of how Cambodian-Americans like Nam are changing their parents' homeland. Although Nam is going back by choice, others forced back by deportation are finding redemption in a country torn apart by genocide, war and violence.
Nam and his crew -- the tight-knit 19 or so young men and women of Massive Monkees -- perform Saturday night at the Greenwood Collective. Proceeds will go toward Tiny Toones, an organization in Cambodia's capital of Phnom Penh that reaches out to about 600 at-risk and street children through break dancing.
Tiny Toones uses any donations it receives to provide food, shelter and education to these kids, who learn about HIV, sex and drugs -- and how those things can't fit into a life of dancing. Kids also meet with other volunteers/deportees and the group's founder, Tuy Sobil (nicknamed KK) every day after he gets off work to practice moves, which can last all night. Nam met Sobil in January on his second monthlong visit to Cambodia -- and they hit it off.
Sobil is an ex-Crips gang member from Long Beach, Calif., who, after a felony conviction for armed robbery at 18, spent a decade in jail and immigration detention centers. He wasn't even born in Cambodia, having come into the world in a Thai refugee camp.
His story isn't so different from that of Many Uch, 32, a local Cambodian man whose life has been in limbo as he waits to be deported. He served 40 months in prison because, at 18, he also was involved in an armed robbery -- as a getaway driver -- and also was running in a local gang. Uch spent an additional 28 months detained by immigration officials after his release from prison in 1997.
"I regret making poor choices, but not that I went to prison. Prison changed my life, in a way that it saved me," said Uch, who will speak at Saturday's fundraiser. "Not religiously, but mentally, in growing up."
Uch is no longer in custody, but his situation hangs over his head daily. As coordinator for the Seattle-based Refugee Justice Project, he works closely with other Cambodian-Americans facing deportation.
The father of a 21-month-old daughter, Uch is engaged to be married and has a full life in this country with all the family he has ever known. He arrived in the U.S. when he was 4, and says he has no memory of Cambodia.
"I feel for KK. He mentioned one time that he would be hanging out in the streets if he was in America and would likely fall back in jail," Uch said. "I admire people that try to make a difference in children's lives. Most deportees are not really making it in Cambodia, and KK tries really hard to change his life and others.
"We made poor choices when we were younger and that's what I can relate to. I spent time in prison and now changed my life. But Immigration doesn't understand that and won't give me another chance. What else can you do but make the best out of it?"
Although he's never been in the kind of trouble that sent Sobil back to Cambodia, Nam knows what it's like to grow up in a rough neighborhood, and is able to relate to the kids in Phnom Penh.
"It's just like the projects, but a lot worse. You gotta be street smart," he said. "I realized I was more Cambodian than American. I don't go to McDonald's. I eat pho or Thai food. I always prefer Asian food. When I was in Cambodia, I ate like a Cambodian, went to the bathroom like one, rode mopeds like one."
Growing up surrounded by other Cambodians, Nam retained his culture and traditions, kept them close. The oldest of four children -- all of whom dance -- he set an example for his siblings by staying out of gangs and finding work taking care of mentally disabled clients. But dancing has always been in his life and being part of Massive Monkees has exposed him to other crews around the world. They've even been world champs, once, in London, in 2004. But Nam jokes, "We're like the Seahawks, we're the masters of second place."
"Seattle B-boys and girls are world class, there's no doubt about it," said Charles Peterson, a counterculture photographer best known for capturing grunge. Later this year a new book on break dancing, "Cypher," comes out. Peterson will be at the fundraiser Saturday, showing his work.
"A large part of the scene are Asian and Hispanic-Americans, and we have such a big Asian-American community here," he said. "There's always a Seattle contingent. They definitely hold their own."
Stuart Isett, another Seattle photographer, who's been working on a 15-year photo essay about Cambodian gangs in the U.S. and the deportation of young Cambodian refugees to Cambodia, also will be showing his work.
Isett's work has concentrated more on B-boys like Sobil, and not as much on B-boys like Nam who choose to go back.
Nam says he will miss his crew in Seattle, but he feels his place is halfway around the world.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
By ATHIMA CHANSANCHAI
P-I REPORTER
Next time the Massive Monkees mesmerize you with their break dancing, check out the lanky boy with the waves of curly hair, nicknamed Peanut, the one known for his windmills.
He's also the one moving to a country he never visited before last year, the country his parents fled during the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror.
Peanut, whose real name is Phanna Nam, is following a dream to dance in Cambodia and teach poor kids the moves that have been second nature to him since he was a child growing up in Mount Baker. The Franklin High School grad, 23, was born in Tacoma and visited Cambodia for the first time in 2007, for a month.
Behind the moves of Massive Monkees, one of Seattle's top B-boy groups (B-Boy is hip-hop slang for break dancer), is the story of how Cambodian-Americans like Nam are changing their parents' homeland. Although Nam is going back by choice, others forced back by deportation are finding redemption in a country torn apart by genocide, war and violence.
Nam and his crew -- the tight-knit 19 or so young men and women of Massive Monkees -- perform Saturday night at the Greenwood Collective. Proceeds will go toward Tiny Toones, an organization in Cambodia's capital of Phnom Penh that reaches out to about 600 at-risk and street children through break dancing.
Tiny Toones uses any donations it receives to provide food, shelter and education to these kids, who learn about HIV, sex and drugs -- and how those things can't fit into a life of dancing. Kids also meet with other volunteers/deportees and the group's founder, Tuy Sobil (nicknamed KK) every day after he gets off work to practice moves, which can last all night. Nam met Sobil in January on his second monthlong visit to Cambodia -- and they hit it off.
Sobil is an ex-Crips gang member from Long Beach, Calif., who, after a felony conviction for armed robbery at 18, spent a decade in jail and immigration detention centers. He wasn't even born in Cambodia, having come into the world in a Thai refugee camp.
His story isn't so different from that of Many Uch, 32, a local Cambodian man whose life has been in limbo as he waits to be deported. He served 40 months in prison because, at 18, he also was involved in an armed robbery -- as a getaway driver -- and also was running in a local gang. Uch spent an additional 28 months detained by immigration officials after his release from prison in 1997.
"I regret making poor choices, but not that I went to prison. Prison changed my life, in a way that it saved me," said Uch, who will speak at Saturday's fundraiser. "Not religiously, but mentally, in growing up."
Uch is no longer in custody, but his situation hangs over his head daily. As coordinator for the Seattle-based Refugee Justice Project, he works closely with other Cambodian-Americans facing deportation.
The father of a 21-month-old daughter, Uch is engaged to be married and has a full life in this country with all the family he has ever known. He arrived in the U.S. when he was 4, and says he has no memory of Cambodia.
"I feel for KK. He mentioned one time that he would be hanging out in the streets if he was in America and would likely fall back in jail," Uch said. "I admire people that try to make a difference in children's lives. Most deportees are not really making it in Cambodia, and KK tries really hard to change his life and others.
"We made poor choices when we were younger and that's what I can relate to. I spent time in prison and now changed my life. But Immigration doesn't understand that and won't give me another chance. What else can you do but make the best out of it?"
Although he's never been in the kind of trouble that sent Sobil back to Cambodia, Nam knows what it's like to grow up in a rough neighborhood, and is able to relate to the kids in Phnom Penh.
"It's just like the projects, but a lot worse. You gotta be street smart," he said. "I realized I was more Cambodian than American. I don't go to McDonald's. I eat pho or Thai food. I always prefer Asian food. When I was in Cambodia, I ate like a Cambodian, went to the bathroom like one, rode mopeds like one."
Growing up surrounded by other Cambodians, Nam retained his culture and traditions, kept them close. The oldest of four children -- all of whom dance -- he set an example for his siblings by staying out of gangs and finding work taking care of mentally disabled clients. But dancing has always been in his life and being part of Massive Monkees has exposed him to other crews around the world. They've even been world champs, once, in London, in 2004. But Nam jokes, "We're like the Seahawks, we're the masters of second place."
"Seattle B-boys and girls are world class, there's no doubt about it," said Charles Peterson, a counterculture photographer best known for capturing grunge. Later this year a new book on break dancing, "Cypher," comes out. Peterson will be at the fundraiser Saturday, showing his work.
"A large part of the scene are Asian and Hispanic-Americans, and we have such a big Asian-American community here," he said. "There's always a Seattle contingent. They definitely hold their own."
Stuart Isett, another Seattle photographer, who's been working on a 15-year photo essay about Cambodian gangs in the U.S. and the deportation of young Cambodian refugees to Cambodia, also will be showing his work.
Isett's work has concentrated more on B-boys like Sobil, and not as much on B-boys like Nam who choose to go back.
Nam says he will miss his crew in Seattle, but he feels his place is halfway around the world.
"I always had this calling, this sense of destiny to go back to Cambodia. My mom thinks I'm crazy and my dad just tells me to stay safe. But I'm tired of the American dream. It's a fantasy. I feel more real living in the 'hood," said Nam, who's going to Alaska this summer to make money fishing, then making the big move abroad.
"I don't know how to do anything else but break dance. If I'm gonna shed tears, blood and sweat, it might as well be for Cambodia. I can't change Cambodia, but these kids can. ...Through dancing, these kids are going to be inspired to do more."
Cambodia takes steps to rein in infaltion
Trading Markets.com
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Phnom Penh, Apr 25, 2008 (Asia Pulse Data Source via COMTEX) -- -- ? Cambodia?s Prime Minister Hun Sen has said that his government is taking appropriate measures to hold back fast price rises, including raising salary and reducing import tariffs on some of the consumer goods.
He told the 13th Government Private Sector Forum (GPSF) opening on April 23 in Phnom Penh that salary levels of government officers will be increased by 20 percent while those for teachers will enjoy a 10 percent rise. The allowances for families of government officers and army servicemen will be doubled.
The Cambodian government has also called on the public sector to curb oil and gas expenses and announced a ban on rice exports for two months in order to stabilise domestic food prices.
PM Hun Sen said he had asked the Finance Committee to cut down import taxes on some of the consumer goods and consider maintaining or raising tariffs on luxury goods such as automobiles, motorbikes and cigarettes to ensure a healthy state budget.
PM Hun Sen said the current price rises in Cambodia are mainly attributed to increasing domestic demand on goods, food, houses and construction due to robust economic growth, a surge in world oil and gas prices and strong economic development in China, India and other Asia.
The US dollar depreciation is also an inflation-causing factor, he added.
The GPSF is annual forum funded by the International Finance Corporation and the Government of Australia through AusAid, its official development assistance agency.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Phnom Penh, Apr 25, 2008 (Asia Pulse Data Source via COMTEX) -- -- ? Cambodia?s Prime Minister Hun Sen has said that his government is taking appropriate measures to hold back fast price rises, including raising salary and reducing import tariffs on some of the consumer goods.
He told the 13th Government Private Sector Forum (GPSF) opening on April 23 in Phnom Penh that salary levels of government officers will be increased by 20 percent while those for teachers will enjoy a 10 percent rise. The allowances for families of government officers and army servicemen will be doubled.
The Cambodian government has also called on the public sector to curb oil and gas expenses and announced a ban on rice exports for two months in order to stabilise domestic food prices.
PM Hun Sen said he had asked the Finance Committee to cut down import taxes on some of the consumer goods and consider maintaining or raising tariffs on luxury goods such as automobiles, motorbikes and cigarettes to ensure a healthy state budget.
PM Hun Sen said the current price rises in Cambodia are mainly attributed to increasing domestic demand on goods, food, houses and construction due to robust economic growth, a surge in world oil and gas prices and strong economic development in China, India and other Asia.
The US dollar depreciation is also an inflation-causing factor, he added.
The GPSF is annual forum funded by the International Finance Corporation and the Government of Australia through AusAid, its official development assistance agency.
Saturday, 26 April 2008
MADONNA - MADONNA CONTEMPLATES SECOND ADOPTION
Caption: Madonna. 2008 Tribeca Film Festival - Premiere of 'I Am Because We Are' at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Centre. New York City, USA - 24.04.08Contactmusic.com
26/04/2008
MADONNA is considering adopting a second child, with Cambodia and the Palestinian territories top of her list of targets.
Despite the furore surrounding her long-drawn-out adoption of Malawian David Banda, the singer insists she has not been put off, and is planning to add to her family with director husband Guy Ritchie.
She still faces an adoption hearing in Malawi next month (May08), 18 months after she took custody of the three year old.
But Madonna says, "I've been visited every six weeks by social workers who come into the house and make sure that you're being a good parent and that David's (Banda) health is thriving."
And (the social workers) ask you all kinds of invasive questions and you have to put up with it and endure it.
"I've been fingerprinted about 20 times and undergone psychological evaluations and I think everybody who goes through adoptions has to do this. I'm not alone. But you know, I would do it again."
In a segment of Madonna's interview with U.S. TV host Ann Curry not aired on the Today Show on Friday (25Apr08), the superstar revealed she is now looking to work in orphanages in other parts of the world - including Cambodia and Palestinian territories.
26/04/2008
MADONNA is considering adopting a second child, with Cambodia and the Palestinian territories top of her list of targets.
Despite the furore surrounding her long-drawn-out adoption of Malawian David Banda, the singer insists she has not been put off, and is planning to add to her family with director husband Guy Ritchie.
She still faces an adoption hearing in Malawi next month (May08), 18 months after she took custody of the three year old.
But Madonna says, "I've been visited every six weeks by social workers who come into the house and make sure that you're being a good parent and that David's (Banda) health is thriving."
And (the social workers) ask you all kinds of invasive questions and you have to put up with it and endure it.
"I've been fingerprinted about 20 times and undergone psychological evaluations and I think everybody who goes through adoptions has to do this. I'm not alone. But you know, I would do it again."
In a segment of Madonna's interview with U.S. TV host Ann Curry not aired on the Today Show on Friday (25Apr08), the superstar revealed she is now looking to work in orphanages in other parts of the world - including Cambodia and Palestinian territories.
ECCC cleared of mismanaging funds in independent audit
Friday, April 25, 2008Nick Fiske
[JURIST] The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) [official website; JURIST news archive] was cleared of financial mismanagement in an independent audit [PDF text; summary, PDF] released Friday. The review was ordered by the ECCC Project Board in hopes that it would quell concerns raised by some foreign donors after the court made a formal request for an additional $114 million [JURIST report] last month that would increase the court's budget from $56.3 million to $170 million and allow it to continue operations until March 2011, past its originally scheduled completion date in 2009. The audit found:
Combating the dual challenges of a past which has left behind a nation still struggling to achieve modern management practices and the daunting task of meeting the expectations of the international community has been an uphill task for the ECCC.
In this critical phase of its operations it was encouraging see that there is a willingness and commitment to meet the expectations of the international community. A great deal of standardization has happened over a very short period which has replaced the ad hoc arrangements that used to be the norm when ECCC commenced its operations. The recent reviews and audits have also helped in highlighting areas of weaknesses which have been improved upon.
Robust HR systems have been developed and implemented to address previous shortcomings, to give effective support to the judicial process and to minimize the risk of questionable HR practices occurring in the future. There is however a degree of hand-holding and capacity building necessary to support ECCC to continue to meet expected international standards. Zero tolerance for non-compliance with HR systems and the Code of Conduct will also support ongoing improvement in the performance of the ECCC.
The ECCC currently has five former Khmer Rouge [JURIST news archive] leaders in custody charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity for their roles in the Communist regime of the 1970s, but to date, no top officials have faced trial. AFP has more.
The Khmer Rouge is generally held responsible for the genocide of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians [PPU backgrounder] who died between 1975 and 1979. The ECCC was established by a 2001 law [text as amended in 2005, PDF] to investigate and try surviving Khmer Rouge officials. In December 2007, Cambodian students and Buddhist monks held protests [JURIST report] over concerns that the trials were moving too slowly and that many former Khmer Rouge leaders in UN custody could die before facing justice.
Child Labor In Cambodia
25 April 2008 According to the latest estimates, fifty-two percent of children aged seven to fourteen-years, or more than one-million-four hundred thousand Cambodian children work. On average, they spend more than twenty hours a week working, mostly in agriculture.
“Excessive and inappropriate work not only stunts the normal development of individual children, it has significant consequences for society as a whole,” said U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia Joseph Mussomeli. “Children who have to work to support their families rather than attend school," he said, "don’t acquire the knowledge and skills they need to obtain quality employment in the future, contributing to a cycle of poverty in their own families, and holding back economic growth in the entire country,” he said.
Ambassador Mussomeli spoke at ceremonies inaugurating the launch of a new U.S.-funded effort to help Cambodia battle child labor, the Children’s Empowerment through Education Services project. Since 2001, the U.S. government has been working together with the Cambodian government to combat child labor through education. In that year, the U.S. Department of Labor funded the International Labor Organization’s International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor to provide education and other services to children engaged in exploitive labor, or at-risk of doing so.
Since then, the U.S. has continued to support other committed organizations, such as World Education and Winrock International, with a total investment of nearly thirteen million dollars to stop child labor. More than thirty-five thousand Cambodian children have been saved from dangerous and exploitive labor.
The four-million dollar U.S.-funded Children’s Empowerment project will withdraw and prevent more than eight-thousand children in four Cambodian provinces from exploitive labor in agriculture. It will also support schooling for the children and provide income generating activities for their parents.
“The Cambodian government has taken many positive steps to reduce child labor since our partnership began, and we applaud these efforts,” said Ambassador Mussomeli. “We all understand," he said, "the importance of taking care of young people and investing in their development."
Cambodia Country for sale
Almost half of Cambodia has been sold to foreign speculators in the past 18 months - and hundreds of thousands who fled the Khmer Rouge are homeless once more. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark report
Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark
The Guardian,
Saturday April 26 2008
Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark
The Guardian,
Saturday April 26 2008
Sang Run, his hair stiff with sea salt, chugs out into the Gulf of Kompong Som in his weather-beaten turquoise boat, looking for blackling. He scours the shallow, blue water, waiting for a shoal to appear, before skimming his net across the water. He does the same every day, taking his catch to auction on Independence Beach in Cambodia's southern port city of Sihanoukville.
It looks like a scene Sang Run was born into. But 20 years ago the beach was deserted, and he was a schoolteacher in Mondulkiri, a forested province hundreds of miles away in the east of the country. Back then, he could talk all day about palm sugar and betel nuts. He was something of an amateur botanist, but had never seen the sea - nor had any of the group who today gather around his silvery haul flapping in the sand on Independence Beach. Former nurse Srey Pov, who runs a Khmer restaurant along the beach, also came from a province many miles away. She still cannot swim, she says, shrugging. Heads nod around her. Cambodia is a nation that would drown if their boat tipped over; it is also a country whose citizens mostly do not belong to the places where they have ended up.
The Khmer Rouge saw to that, eviscerating the kingdom after coming to power. It was a movement that drew inspiration from Mao's Cultural Revolution, collectivising all the land; but it grew to love terror more than ideology. The ferocity of the regime sent more than 300,000 rushing into exile. At least two million urban Cambodians were route-marched into the paddy fields to near certain death. Worst hit was the Eastern Zone, bordering Vietnam, where Sang Run came from. Its people were derided as "duck's arses with chicken's heads" as the Khmer Rouge grew to mistrust the Vietnamese and accused Mondulkiri people of being disloyal - too sympathetic to their neighbours across the border. Their names were added to those who were to be purged; the catalogue of "crimes" became so long, so general, that anyone could stand accused. The wave of random violence and retribution that scythed through the countryside for three years, eight months and 21 days killed one in five of the population.
Sang Run's family all vanished, but he survived, hiding in the forests, living off what he could pluck and hunt. When the Vietnamese invaded in 1978 - overthrowing the Khmer Rouge a year later - Sang Run found his way, like thousands of others, to Cambodia's 300-mile long shoreline. Stretching between Thailand and Vietnam, the region had been a Khmer Rouge stronghold, controlled by Pol Pot's notorious commander, Ta Mok, who was known as The Butcher. In the 80s, when the fishing shacks and noodle stores went up along the Sihanoukville coast, there was no development plan. There had never been a tradition of thriving fishing communities along the coast - few Cambodians lived there except in the old French colonial towns. The shoreline had been empty - miles of palm-fringed beach front interspersed with the few port towns, including Kep, Sihanoukville and Ream.
Survivors began to build new lives there, learning to love the sea. Some took boats to a nearby archipelago of 22 coral-fringed, uninhabited islands, building up clusters of villages on atolls with names such as Rabbit, Snake and Turtle. Within 10 years, the whole coastline had been patchily settled by newcomers, among them a former farmer, Soch Tith, a stocky man with corncob hands, who was sick every time he got in a boat, but still found his way to faraway Koh Rong, the largest of the islands - 7,800 hectares of jungle. There he cleared small patches to grow fruit.
By 2006, these communities had schools, political representation, and many householders even had papers, stamped by the Sihanoukville governor, Say Hak, which guaranteed them the permanent right to stay under the 2001 Cambodian Land Law. The central government in Phnom Penh had in the 90s designated the entire coast and its islands as State Public Land that could not be bartered or developed.
Then, during the past couple of years, a disturbing wave of rumours swept the coastal communities. Sang Run says that in September 2006 he heard that Snake Island, half a mile out to sea, had been secretly sold to Russians. He did not check. Cambodians ask little from their government; a wariness of authority is a legacy of years of blood-letting under Pol Pot. In any case, it was a familiar story. Shortly after Hun Sen, Cambodia's prime minister, came to power in 1985, frenzied landgrabbing began: influential political allies and wealthy business associates raced to claim land that the Khmer Rouge had seized, gobbling up such large chunks of the cities, forests and paddy fields that Cambodians used to say the rich were eating the country. By 2006, the World Bank estimated that 40,000 had been made homeless in Phnom Penh alone. But, until now, no one had bothered with the coast. Sang Run paid no particular attention to the Snake Island rumour. He should have - it signalled a radical new course for the Cambodian government.
Three months later, Sang Run was out in his boat at 7am when disaster struck his village. He arrived back at 11am to find bulldozers had flattened his home and those of the 229 families who lived beside him. He heard from neighbours that it had happened in an instant. Uniformed men, sent in by governor Say Hak, used electric batons to chase terrified residents from the burning ruins; three of Sang Run's neighbours were knocked unconscious. Village Number One - a mundane name that failed to capture the beauty of its uninterrupted sea views and vegetable gardens that ran to the beach - had been erased. Sang Run heard that a hotel was planned, although no information was given to the people evicted from their homes for a further 18 months.
Nurse-turned-restaurateur Srey Pov tells us that, by early 2007, rumours were buzzing around Sihanoukville's covered market that virtually every island in the region was up for sale. Over the following months, Koh Russei and Koh Ta Kiev, Koh Bong and Koh Ouen, Koh Preus, Koh Krabei and Koh Tres were all snapped up by foreigners, who then started negotiating for mainland sites, too, among them public beaches with names such as Serendipity, Occheuteal and Otres. In February, 47-year-old Srey Pov was evicted, too, her Independence Beach restaurant shut down to make way for another rumoured hotel. "All I've got left is the chairs and tables," she says - they're stacked up in the cramped living room of her Sihanoukville home. Former farmer Soch Tith, on Koh Rong, was the last to hear that last month his island had been sold, too, to a British developer.
What none of these people knew was that the troubled kingdom of Cambodia, a precarious debtor-nation underpinned by more than £500m of hand-outs from the international community, had suddenly found itself a refuge for cash and speculators fleeing paralysed western financial markets. As London and New York, overcome by the US sub-prime crisis, began grinding to a halt last year, many in the City had moved on, transferring liquid assets to the east.
Foreign fund managers had started pitching up in Phnom Penh wearing linen shirts and khaki drip-dry jungle wear, alerted by the country's unexpected boom in tourism that in 2006 had seen one-and-a-half million visitors overcome the west's collective memories of Cambodia's recent past to travel to the temples of Angkor Wat. Enticed also by indicators that suggested the feeble economy was turning a corner, super-rich, predominately British, French and Swiss speculators, fuelled by a high-risk machismo, came hunting for profits of 30% or more. Their interest was land speculation: buying up large sites in developing countries that they would then sit on in the hope that, with the influx of tourists, land values would soar.
Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) have, in effect, put the country up for sale. Crucially, they permit investors to form 100% foreign-owned companies in Cambodia that can buy land and real estate outright - or at least on 99-year plus 99-year leases. No other country in the world countenances such a deal. Even in Thailand and Vietnam, where similar land speculation and profiteering are under way, foreigners can be only minority shareholders.
There were other inducements. Many foreign funds - hedge funds, property funds, private equity funds - operating on the outer margins of the financial world thrive on complexity, risk and maximising profit. In Phnom Penh, they found an ideal partner in the prime minister, who has created a unique business environment. Since the mid-90s, Hun Sen and the CPP have declined to enforce money-laundering legislation and have concerned themselves little with the probity of investors. Foreign businessmen were offered nine-year tax holidays, and were allowed to hold their cash in US dollars in banks outside the country.
"Only recently, no one would touch us," Brett Sciaroni, a Phnom Penh-based US lawyer who acts for many new western investors, tells us. "We were dirt. And suddenly we were gold." John Brinsden, a British banker, now vice chairman of Cambodia's national Acleda Bank, agrees: "In 2001, only 200 people came to the government's investment conference. At our most recent, we ran out of chairs."
In July 2007, Hun Sen, gambling on his people's tenuous connection with the land, changed the designation of the southern islands so they could be sold. The forests, lakes, beaches and reefs - and the lives of the thousands of residents - were quietly transferred into the hands of private western developers. Arguing that Cambodia could become a tourist magnet to challenge Thailand, the prime minister began a fire sale of mainland beaches. By March this year, virtually all Cambodia's accessible and sandy coast was in private hands, either Cambodian or foreign. Those who lived or worked there were turfed out - some jailed, others beaten, virtually all denied meaningful compensation. The deals went unannounced; no tenders or plans were ever officially published. All that was known was that more than £1,000m in foreign finance found its way into the country in 2007, a 1,500% increase over the previous four years. It was as if Alistair Darling, the British chancellor, had decided to raise some extra cash by trading the Isles of Wight, Man and the Hebrides, throwing in Formby Sands, the entire Cornish coastline and Brighton seafront - before trousering the proceeds.
It was abundantly clear to observers, including the World Bank and Amnesty International, that by making these private deals, Hun Sen was denying prosperity to most of his people, causing the country's social fabric to unwind like thread from a bobbin. Today, more than 150,000 people are threatened with eviction. Forty-five per cent of the country's entire landmass has been sold off - from the land ringing Angkor Wat to the colonial buildings of Phnom Penh to the south-western islands. Professor Yash Ghai, the UN human rights emissary to Cambodia, warned, "One does not need expertise in human rights to recognise that many policies of the government have... deprived people of their economic resources and means of livelihood, and denied them their dignity." He added, "I believe that the deliberate rejection of the concept of a state governed by the rule of law has been central to the ruling party's hold on power."
It was Hun Sen who, as early as 1989, realised the power of land. Rhodri Williams, a researcher for the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, points out that, as Hun Sen privatised the land, "he simultaneously cut off the rights of 360,000 exiled Cambodians, awarding prime slices to political allies and friends." The exiles were Cambodians who had fled the Khmer Rouge into Thailand and beyond in 1975; they had titles to the land, but this counted for nothing when they returned to claim it. Hun Sen said Cambodia should start again.
Although he bathes his speeches in socialist values, even his closest aides told us that Hun Sen was more often than not a pragmatist. He joined the Communist party in the 60s and enlisted in the Khmer Rouge in the 70s, before defecting to the Vietnamese-backed government in the 80s. In the 90s, he embraced the free market. Tourism was not a promising prospect in the early days - the remnants of Khmer Rouge, violently hostile to outsiders, were too much of a risk. When western travellers did begin to explore, they were taking their lives in their hands. In 1994, Briton Mark Slater, Frenchman Jean-Michel Braquet and Australian David Wilson were kidnapped while riding a train through Sihanoukville, and all of them executed. Two years later, Christopher Howes, a British de-mining expert, together with a Cambodian colleague, were murdered as they worked 10 miles north of Angkor Wat.
By 2006, the country seemed safer, and was finally becoming a tourist destination. That September, the CPP received its first foreign offer in the coastal area: a Russian investor living in Phnom Penh wanted to buy an island. This deal would become the template for every developer to come. Alexander Trofimov created a Cambodian shell company to buy Koh Puos, or Snake Island. With cash apparently no object, he proposed to stunned government officials that he would link the island to a mainland beach - known as Hawaii - with a 900-metre suspension bridge. "He also asked to buy Hawaii beach," the official who oversaw that meeting told us. "And we gave it to him." No figures were published. The official claimed he didn't know them.
Locals who used the beach and island were kept in the dark. No one quizzed Trofimov. He produced a book of cut-and-paste designs that he said would encompass a £150m resort consisting of 900 tightly packed villas, a dolphin aquarium, two hotels, a shopping centre and a marina - all crammed into an egg cup-sized island. It was enticing stuff for the CPP, although the project faltered when Trofimov was accused of having sex with underage girls, and jailed this year. However, two more Russian businessmen seamlessly emerged to take up the reins, representing a Cypriot-holding company that, it later transpired, had owned the Koh Puos project from the off.
Arnaud Darc was quick off the mark, too. A quietly spoken and likeable French businessman, Darc had arrived in Cambodia in the 90s, building a hotel and restaurant business in Phnom Penh. In 2006, after hearing from a French colleague working at Sihanoukville's provincial airport that the runway was likely to be extended, he identified two massive beach-front sites totalling more than 220 hectares that he liked the look of. He brought in Jean-Louis Charon, a Parisian real estate tycoon, whose Nexity company is the largest in France, and whose name brought in "40 French high-net worths", as Darc described them; they raised £12.5m to be held by City Star, a foreign-owned investment company. "The maths was easy, and the returns potentially fantastic," Darc said. City Star's land values quadrupled as soon as the Cambodian government confirmed the airport rumours, a spokesman for the Sihanoukville governor's office told us.
The investors could have sold up and come away rich. But this was development with a difference. City Star investors wanted more, but did not want to go to the trouble of constructing anything. They were speculating on the future value of the land, believing that by adding only modest infrastructure, perhaps attaching big-name hoteliers, they would reap vast profits in seven to 10 years. Darc's group continued buying, snapping up 333 hectares on Koh Russei and Koh Ta Kiev, two islands off Ream. Such was the appetite for easy money that City Star raised a further £30m in a matter of days from a second group of French high rollers last July, this time to buy in Phnom Penh.
Darc's model appealed to British investors behind LimeTree Capital, a Hong Kong-based private equity group that in 2007 bought up chunks of beach front near Ream; sites it planned to leave idle for many years until prices peaked. This spring, a third entrepreneur, Frenchman Alain Dupuis, through his Cambodian company LBL International, bought Koh Sramaoch. Soon after, Koh Tonsay, or Rabbit Island, was auctioned off to Chinese investors; 14 fishing families were evicted to make way for a casino and a golf course.
On the mainland, Sang Run returned to the beach to find his village in Sihanoukville destroyed to make way, supposedly, for a hotel. A few hotels have been built, but generally the sites remain empty. The Cambodian economy has grown by more than 24% over 18 months and land values have in some cases risen by more than 100%, so there are fortunes to be made from doing nothing but wait.
Australians Rory and Mel Hunter were the only investors who made an attempt to incorporate into their plans the people whose land they were buying. An advertising executive, Rory had come to Cambodia to work for an agency in Phnom Penh. During a week-long vacation in 2006, he and his wife, Mel, had set out on a diving trip around the Koh Rong archipelago and fell in love with the twin islands of Koh Bong and Koh Ouen, attached to one another by a coral reef and cupped in a shallow strait - they were known collectively as the Sweethearts. "We dreamed of a beautiful resort where people could immerse themselves in a new part of Asia," Mel said. They began negotiations with two village men to buy their houses and those owned by 60 other families. "They thought we were nuts," Rory said. "The two head guys wanted £7,500 each. We agreed and signed the contract in a boat out in the strait. We helped take down their tin shacks, and slowly relocated all the families and their homes to Koh Rong, across the strait." They worked for weeks to clear 20 years of debris, while beginning negotiations with the government to buy the islands themselves.
The Hunters drummed up backing from a handful of British speculators, including a currency broker who (preferring we didn't use his name) tells us why he leapt at the opportunity. "I loved the deal from the start. Let's be honest, who wants 6%? I wanted a deal that would wake me up in the night, sweating. We could make good money," he says over drinks in Phnom Penh, his City suit exchanged for shorts and a T-shirt. "There was a buzz about Cambodia you don't get elsewhere. It's Cambodia, the killing fields and all that stuff. Something different to show your mates back home. I show them the visa in my passport. I have something they don't."
But the Hunters' enterprise would soon be challenged by a cascade of deals involving neighbouring islands. While they worked on retraining local fishermen on neighbouring Koh Rong, British property developer Marty Kaye bought the ground from under their feet. Kaye, who had spent much of his career working on construction in Hong Kong, had spotted the island while planning an £800m luxury tourist development on a nearby Vietnamese island, Phu Quoc. He told us: "I was walking down the beach on Phu Quoc, seeing where we were going to put the golf course, and I spotted another island. No one knew what it was. We looked on Google Earth and it seemed to be Koh Rong, in adjacent Cambodia. I said, 'Let's see if we can get anywhere on Koh Rong, too.'"
Kaye, who runs Millennium property fund, began negotiating. "Here was a chance to buy an undeveloped island almost as long as Hong Kong," he said. "Nowhere else in the world could you create your own kingdom from scratch - unlike the car-crash planning of Thai islands like Koh Samui." The Cambodian government gave him 18 months to produce more details, and he worked on an outline plan whose initial development would cost £100m. When the government signed the deal, it made no mention of the census it had just carried out recording how many thousands of people (the government won't reveal the figures) live on the 7,800-hectare island.
Kaye is not worried: "Two guys and a lawyer will see everyone. But what most of them don't understand is that even if they have papers, they are not worth anything. All of them are registered only locally, not in Phnom Penh, so they will have absolutely no case. Others are just squatters with no papers at all." It helped that Kaye's Cambodian partner was tycoon Kith Meng, a multi-millionaire with interests in banking, mobile phones and real estate - and a close friend of the prime minister, Hun Sen.
"Kith Meng wants everything done yesterday," Kaye said. "We are going to move as fast as we can. It's fantastically exciting, the opportunity to zone the whole island, to see where the luxury exclusive villa plots will be, for the Brad Pitts, etc." It is an investment that gives the present residents of Koh Rong just over a year to make a solid case for keeping their homes or finding new ones.
If they are evicted, places in the area to make a new home are becoming scarce. With all the big islands sold, even smaller outcrops have gone, too, including a clump of rocks known as Nail Island, bought by Ukrainian entrepreneur Nickolai Doroshenko, who has transformed it into a James Bond-style lair, complete with a giant fibre-glass shark that soars over the fortress-like construction. He already owns Victory Beach, in Sihanoukville, a restaurant stuffed with live snakes and a bar that advertises "swimming girls".
The sale of the century continued with the mainland beaches. At the end of January, the Sokha Hotel Group, run by Sok Kong, a Cambodian oligarch and Hun Sen ally, was confirmed as the new owner of the lion's share of Occheuteal Beach, the largest and most popular public dune in the region, which was closed off to make way for a 1,000-room hotel and golf course. The deal was originally negotiated in June 2006 when, local fisherman told us, bulldozers and 10 trucks of armed men demolished 71 homes and 40 local restaurants.
Not wanting to be left out, Say Hak, Sihanoukville's governor, acquired a small island for himself, on which he built a villa and jetty; while Sbaung Sarath, the wife of his deputy, bought half of Sihanoukville's public Independence Beach in February 2008, evicting scores of families in the process. Among them was Srey Pov. She travelled to Phnom Penh with 27 other families to protest, but returned with nothing. "The developer issued a warning," she says. "They threatened to pay the city authorities to get rid of us. We knew what that meant." Independence Beach now languishes behind high fencing, as Srey Pov feared, waiting for the five-star tourists who will enjoy exclusive access to the powder-white sand.
Days later, Sbaung Sarath struck again, securing part of Sihanoukville's Otres Beach, one of the last public dunes, where Queenco, a London-listed casino company, also announced in February that it had bought 56 hectares. Queenco declined to comment on its Sihanoukville project, but it has already had consequences - 100 fishing families have been evicted. They have built a row of makeshift bamboo shacks, held together with plastic sheeting and whatever rubbish they could recycle, along a 200-yard stretch of a nearby main road. On the day we visited, they were drying out from an overnight storm that had filled their ramshackle homes with rainwater.
Aom Heat, 63, used to have a wonderful view over Otres beach and the gulf beyond. She was forced off her land last April. Now all she can see are the hubcaps and exhaust pipes of lorries that tear by. She and many of her neighbours had arrived on Otres Beach after fleeing the Khmer Rouge in the early 80s, building a fishing village they christened Spean Ches, or Burning Bridge. "When the eviction notices were served on us in September 2006, we were determined to fight," she says. She could not bear to lose everything again. "We lodged a complaint with the Senate Committee on Human Rights that ruled it was a matter for the courts." But the Sihanoukville governor's men did not wait for a court order. They turned up at the seaside village in April last year, Aom Heat says, and, "they burned down 26 houses and bulldozed 86 more, destroying all the pots and pans, clothes and food supplies. We were in a blind panic." Thirteen injured men were arrested and jailed, including one of Aom Heat's sons. Although made homeless, they were charged with "wrongful damage of property", and nine of them found guilty without witnesses or evidence produced. Despite having served their time while waiting for the case to be heard, the men were thrown back into jail pending an appeal from the prosecution, who complained they had been dealt with too leniently.
No one can agree what impact the foreign land sales will have on the Cambodian economy because so little information is made public. Although Cambodia is nominally a democracy that has held three general elections to date, and has a nominal opposition party, the CPP parliamentarians and cabinet are remote and dismissive of their people. They are not required to report on their interests or assets, making it impossible to deduce how much Hun Sen and his cabinet have personally benefited - although the World Bank reported last year that corruption, coupled with a lack of transparency, was "choking economic growth".
Since the land sell-offs, members of the government and its allies have been splashing huge sums around. A Korean developer told us that when he marketed Phnom Penh's first skyscraper, the 42-storey Gold Tower project in February, all two dozen £750,000 penthouse suites were bought within 24 hours by "an honour roll of the CPP and its friends in the military". There are other telltale signs, such as the canary yellow Hummers and hi-spec Range Rovers with blacked-out windows that rumble around Phnom Penh, in a country where the average annual income is less than £150.
Simon Taylor, the director of Global Witness, an international NGO that was forced to leave the country last year, having accused the CPP of running a logging racket, paints a depressing picture: "A shadow state has grown up, a government that misappropriates public assets, extorts from businesses and manages an extensive illicit economy. It is administered by senior ministers who are fluent in the jargon of good governance and sustainable development." One of Hun Sen's closest advisers, who requested anonymity, disagrees, telling us: "Hun Sen believes that liberal democracy is unsuited to a country whose skills have been drained and demographics wildly skewed by the Khmer Rouge."
Everything comes down to how much money you have in your pocket, according to Doug Clayton, from Leopard Asia, a fund of Swiss and British bankers that is about to invest £25m in Cambodia. "This kind of money opens any door," he says. How does Clayton pitch the Hun Sen brand back home? "Candidly? In investment circles, no one knows anything about this place. It's off the radar. In our pitch I talk up the new economic figures. I talk up stability." Clayton adds: "When the dust settles, the government here will probably end up looking something like the one in Singapore." There, Lee Kuan Yew served as prime minister from 1959 to 1990. Cambodian pollsters, looking to the general election that will run this July, predict a clear CPP victory, putting Hun Sen at the helm for many more years, too.
What will this mean for people such as Sang Run, who is now surviving in a makeshift home behind Independence Beach? Has the legacy of the Khmer Rouge been purged? Naly Pilorge, director of Licadho, a local human rights NGO, thinks not: "Everyone claims Cambodia has come through the period of barbarism, but the sadism is still bubbling beneath the surface. Extreme violence, greed and disregard for the most basic human rights - of giving people a place to live - are still with us daily. The methods of the past are being used to dictate our future."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)