Asean, Armed With New Charter, Remains Far From EU Dream

Bloomberg.com

By Daniel Ten Kate and Shamim Adam

March 2 (Bloomberg) -- Southeast Asian governments want to speed the formation of a European Union-modeled economic grouping, as the global recession slows their export-driven economies. They may not be willing to make the hard choices required to achieve it.

Leaders from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, who met in Thailand Feb. 27 to March 1 for their annual summit, signed trade deals and agreements to form an integrated economic community, without a common currency, by 2015. Absent from the agenda were the deep concessions analysts say are necessary to boost growth in the region.

“Asean’s biggest problem is that individual members haven’t been willing to sacrifice for the common good,” said Michael Montesano, a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. “Every European Union member has given up sovereignty to be part of a stronger union, and we haven’t seen that in Asean.”

Wide economic disparity among Asean members has hindered the region’s ability to leverage its market of 570 million people and compete for investments with China and India, the world’s fastest growing economies. Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who chaired the summit, called on the bloc to “accelerate” the formation of an “attractive single market.”

Common Standards ‘Difficult’

Southeast Asian leaders agree that closer regional integration would boost growth, Thai Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij said in an interview. Still, the large differences in wealth among Asean members “makes it difficult to create common standards because our national standards remain so far apart,” he said.

“We’ve got to be realistic in the kind of goals that we set for 2015,” Korn said. “We’re not talking about the level of integration that has taken place in the EU.”

The push for more integration comes at a time when the EU is straining under the pressures created by a similar disparity in the strength of its constituent economies.

Multinational companies have scaled back spending plans because of the global recession, leading to fiercer competition among governments looking to attract investment and create jobs. Singapore has cut corporate taxes for the second time in three years, Malaysia has pledged to liberalize its services sector and Cambodia extended tax breaks for garment makers.

Trade deals such as the one Asean signed with Australia and New Zealand Feb. 28 “won’t make a difference in the short term as long as the drop in global demand doesn’t stabilize,” said David Cohen, director of Asian economic forecasting at Action Economics. “There is no magic bullet.”

Foreign Direct Investment

Two years ago Asean saw foreign direct investment jump 18 percent to more than $60 billion, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Aug. 26. China attracted about $83 billion of foreign direct investment that year. The bloc includes Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

Singapore, Asean’s richest country, said fixed-asset investments may fall as much as 44 percent this year to S$10 billion ($6.5 billion) as the island slides into recession. By contrast, China announced a 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) stimulus plan to boost the economy, which the government expects to grow 8 percent in 2009.

The region’s four largest economies -- Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia -- account for almost 90 percent of all foreign investment into Asean. The purchasing power of the group’s four poorest countries was five times less than the other members in 2007, according to statistics on the bloc’s Web site.

No Enforcement Mechanism

Asean’s new charter, which came into force three months ago, has no mechanism to stop member countries from implementing protectionist policies. Earlier this month Indonesia ordered civil servants to use local products, and Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said it was “normal” for countries to resort to protectionist measures in a slowdown, according to local media reports.

For four decades, Asean made decisions mainly by consensus, refusing to interfere in the affairs of individual countries. Two years ago the bloc’s leaders signed a charter, the first legally binding document since the group’s founding in 1967.

Governments found to be in violation of its rules will be referred to Asean leaders to come up with a consensus on action. The group rejected proposals to add voting, expulsion or sanctions on its members.

Later this year, Asean plans to finalize a human rights body that cannot tackle country-specific issues. At the summit, Asean leaders sidestepped concerns about the treatment of Myanmar migrants who reportedly died after Thai authorities towed them out to sea, though said “the welfare and well being” of Palestinians in Gaza “was of paramount importance.”

‘Bite the Bullet’

Asean will never become similar to the EU because the political and institutional differences between the countries are too large, said Razeen Sally, a director of the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels. Individual countries must “bite the bullet” and make structural reforms on their own to benefit when the global economy recovers, he said.

“The problem with Asean is that they can only arrive at a very low common denominator,” Sally said. “It’s not going to be a strong collective body and we can’t expect it to come up with a strong collective response to global challenges.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Daniel Ten Kate in Cha-am, Thailand at dtenkate@bloomberg.net; Shamim Adam in Cha-am, Thailand at sadam2@bloomberg.net

Judging the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

Far Eastern Econimic Review

by John A. Hall
Posted March 2, 2009

Nobody would accuse the Khmer Rouge tribunal—the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC)—of moving with undue haste. Nevertheless, the court in Phnom Penh is on the verge of beginning a trial of one of its five defendants, that of Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, the former commander of an infamous torture facility.

Unfortunately there is little reason to rejoice. Despite years of ineffectual handwringing by the U.N., donors and monitors, the ECCC has failed to adequately address persistent accusations of corruption and political interference. The following four steps are the minimal prerequisites for the ECCC to regain a semblance of legitimacy before the trials officially start this month:

1) Limit opportunities for political interference in judicial decision making.

Fears about political influence in the ECCC’s work were heightened in December last year when Cambodian co-prosecutor, Chea Leang, would not agree to the investigation of additional suspects beyond the five named defendants. The reasons she provided to justify this position had nothing to do with the sufficiency of the evidence or the legal basis for additional investigations, but were political in nature and aligned with the long-held views of the Cambodian Prime Minister who has long wanted to limit the trials to his political enemies and resisted efforts which might see people in positions of power (or whose patrons are) brought before the court.

The Pre-Trial Chamber is set to resolve the dispute between the international and Cambodian co-prosecutors, and has an opportunity to visibly assert the court’s independence. Under the ECCC’s rules, this decision is set to be made in secret and it is unclear whether its decision would be made public. Judges need to change this rule, and ensure the court operates with total transparency on a question which will go a long way towards determining whether the court is seen as one which is credible and not simply a tool of the government, in the same way that domestic courts are often viewed. At a minimum, the ECCC must allow domestic and international monitors to witness this secret proceeding.

2) Create an independent investigation mechanism for accusations of wrongdoing.

In June 2008, Cambodian staff brought to the UN specific complaints of corruption. These complaints followed a call by watchdog NGO Open Society Justice Initiative for an investigation into allegations that ECCC Cambodian staff had to pay kickbacks in exchange for their jobs. In response to the U.N. report, which reportedly found merit in the complaints in its initial review, apparently asked the Cambodian government to investigate. However, with reports of retaliation against suspected whistleblowers—and a history in Cambodia of threats against those who challenge corrupt practices, a national investigation is unlikely to inspire confidence in local staff to come forward.

On February 23, a high-level U.N. delegation met with Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Sok An, and issued a joint statement that an agreement has been reached involving continuing parallel domestic and international mechanisms to investigate corruption. The statement was ambiguous and unclear as to specifics. In so far as it appears to rely on Cambodian staff being willing to report wrongdoing to ethics monitors appointed by the Cambodian tribunal management, the parallel structure would seem to chill rather than encourage such reports. The joint statement reeks of political compromise.

Preferable to parallel mechanisms would be an entirely independent procedure for investigating corruption at the ECCC—one that does not rely for its success on the honest participation of Cambodian officials. One solution is an auditing model, which has already been used in a limited fashion at the tribunal. An independent auditing company acceptable to both the U.N. and the Cambodians could conduct a detailed investigation with the specific mandate of identifying corrupt practices. The initial audit report would be circulated to the U.N. and the Cambodian government, senior ECCC management, and donor nations, with only an executive summary made public. Subsequent quarterly audits would, however, be published in full. This would provide an incentive to quietly “clean house” of the corrupt individuals and practices identified in the first report. Absent cooperation on this matter, however, the U.N. should make public its prima facie review of the June 2008 allegations, suitably redacted to protect the identities of named individuals.

3) Human rights monitors, NGOs and reporters must be allowed to keep their sources confidential.

Civil society, including human rights monitors and journalists, often play a critical role in calling out wrongs and abuses of power by institutions funded by public money. While this role is often a necessary pre-requisite to action—like investigations—their unique role must be respected. This includes ensuring that their ability to protect their sources—those who come forward with information about potential wrongdoing—remains intact. With the ECCC, a real danger exists that NGOs and other monitors may be compelled in the course of the legal proceedings at the tribunal to identify their confidential sources. Such disclosure would undermine the tribunal by imperiling the safety of sources and chilling potential critics and whistleblowers.

Such a testimonial privilege need not be absolute. Rather, a qualified privilege should be recognized in those situations where the communications were made in the course of a confidential relationship producing a reasonable expectation of privacy and non-disclosure, and that confidentiality is essential to the nature and type of the relationship with the confidant. The risk of being compelled to reveal sources may result in NGOs and monitors choosing to leave Cambodia or face a jail sentence rather than be forced to identify their sources. The departure of such groups would be a disaster for anyone who values the watchdog role such groups perform.

4) Ensure adequate whistleblower protections for those reporting wrongdoing.

In those situations where a whistleblower is willing for her identity to be made public, or where her identity becomes known without her permission, there must be a clear guarantee that such persons will be free from all forms of retribution. Absent this assurance, those brave individuals who have come forward with allegations of corrupt practices lay dangerously exposed. These protections must carry the full weight of the international community – empty promises from the Cambodian government alone to not persecute whistleblowers will ring entirely hollow without international mandate.

The choice before the tribunal is quite clear: Proceeding with the trials without adequately addressing the allegations of corruption and political interference risks tainting the entire process and casting a shadow over any legal outcomes. That would be a disservice to the people of Cambodia—for whom the ECCC should provide an exemplar of a court operating to international standards. It would also be a disservice to the future of international justice, and would establish a precedent of U.N. acquiescence to regimes seeking to profit from and control internationally-backed tribunals.

John A. Hall is a professor at Chapman University School of Law, Orange, Calif., and a research fellow at the Center for Global Trade & Development.

The Association of South East Asian Nations wants to become an integrated organisation like the European Union by 2015.

Radio New Zealand
2 March 2009

The 10 countries ended their annual meeting in Thailand on Sunday.

However, the BBC reports they stressed that the EU was an inspiration and not a model.

The group endorsed measures to stimulate economic activity, ease access to credit, and stand firm against trade protectionism.

Ministers on Sunday also signed an energy agreement to allow members to buy oil at a discount during times of crisis.

A free trade deal with Australia and New Zealand was signed on Friday.

Foreign ministers from ASEAN and China, Japan and South Korea agreed a week ago to extend a regional emergency fund set up in 2000 to $US120 billion.

ASEAN members are: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Burma, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Their combined gross domestic product is around $US1.4 trillion.

ASEAN rights talks blocked

Burma, Cambodia air boycott threats

Philippine Daily Inquirer
03/02/2009

Filed Under: Human Rights, ASEAN, Summit, Foreign affairs & international relations, Diplomacy

HUA HIN, THAILAND—An attempt by Southeast Asian leaders to prove their commitment to human rights backfired at their weekend summit, mainly due to Burma’s military junta, analysts and activists said.

The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian nations (ASEAN) had been hoping to use its annual gathering in Thailand to hold rare face-to-face talks with campaigners as part of its preparations for a planned human rights body.

But the threat by the prime ministers of Cambodia and Burma (Myanmar) to boycott the talks if two campaigners were allowed to take part instead exposed the bloc’s limitations, analysts said.

“It is truly sad that an organization known for ‘talk’ won’t even talk to those working to expand freedom in the region,” said Bridget Welsh, a Southeast Asian specialist at the Johns Hopkins University in the United States.

In the end, the two activists were barred from the dialogue.

“The pandering of ASEAN to its authoritarian members’ demands over a simple dialogue with civil society groups shows how disingenuous the support of human rights is within the organization,” she said.

Human rights have been a perennial challenge for ASEAN in the 42 years since it was founded as a bulwark against the spread of communism. Its members now include a monarchy, a dictatorship and two communist states.

The bloc has repeatedly been pressed to use its influence to improve the rights situation in Burma but to little avail. Its soft approach contrasts with the sanctions imposed by Western nations, but neither has worked.

A push by ASEAN to get the rights issue on its agenda would likely face continued opposition from Cambodia and Burma, due to the bloc’s long-held principle in non-interference in each other’s affairs, activists said.

“It is very clear in this case that the governments of Cambodia and Myanmar have basically sabotaged the efforts of Thailand,” said Debbie Stothard, from the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, which refers to Myanmar by its former name.

Human rights body

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has been pushing hard for the creation of the rights body this year, as laid out under the group’s landmark charter, which came into force in December.

In its current form, the body has no powers to investigate or prosecute rights abusers and is packed with provisions rejecting external interference, according to a draft seen by Agence France Presse.

“We want to make it clear that ASEAN will not go far,” if individual members can hijack the group’s proceedings, added Soe Aung, deputy coordinator of the rights group Burma Partnership.

Burma’s junta has been accused of committing widespread human rights abuses, including the extended detention of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and has been a constant thorn in ASEAN’s side.

“As long as the changes do not take place in Burma, ASEAN will not change at all. Burma’s human rights violations, continued arrest and imprisonment [of suspected dissidents] will not bring ASEAN any further,” Soe Aung said.

Principle of non-interference

“ASEAN must abandon its principle of non-interference. Until then this human rights body or ASEAN charter will not be effective at all.”

ASEAN is comprised of more relatively developed countries like Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand as well as strong-arm ruled Cambodia, Laos, Burma and Vietnam.

The United States and Europe have long pressed ASEAN to use its influence to press for change in Burma.

Most recently, the junta was criticized for its treatment of refugees from the Muslim minority Rohingya.

Many have been rescued in Indonesian and Indian waters in recent weeks. Thailand’s army has been accused of towing them out to sea after they washed up on Thai beaches, but scores are feared to have died.

Amnesty International’s Donna Guest was unequivocal in what it would take for ASEAN’s rights body to be taken seriously.

“To be worthy of its name, the body must be empowered to effectively address human rights in Myanmar.”

Agence France-Presse

Opinion: 'Progress' means trash the poor in Cambodia

DigitalJournal.com

by ■ Paul Wallis

It’s called progress, anyway. Most crimes have at least some euphemisms. Teams of workmen arrive at a residential location near Phnom Penh. They’re carrying axes. At 6AM they move in and start demolishing the houses. With the people still in them.

The idea? High rises. You know, those obvious essentials to people whose annual income would perhaps buy a week’s rent in the average Western home.

Bulldozers move in, and hit people trying to find their possessions. At least one woman is hospitalized. The residents react, and throw things at the bulldozer. Fire extinguishers are turned on them. A cat is killed in the process, and people wander around what looks like Stalingrad.

The land, as you will have guessed, is prime land. The residents were offered compensation of about $20,000. They said it wouldn’t buy them another place to live, and they knew their land was worth more.

Australia’s SBS current affairs show Dateline got a first hand view of this blatant violation of human rights and property laws.

*** Please note, this is a pretty infuriating, upsetting video.

A moment of farce was achieved by an interview with the Australian ambassador, who was asked if she was embarrassed that was happening practically on the doorstep of the new Australian Embassy. She was diplomatically not embarrassed.

As an Aussie, I, however, was embarrassed. We led a peacekeeping mission in the 90s to try and get Cambodia back into the current part of human history. We, like many other countries including the US, donate a lot of money to support Cambodia.

It turns out that as usual with international aid, we’re supporting the rich, not the majority of the population. Obviously, Cambodia’s poor have no rights, and less future. We’re clearly not supporting human rights, international law, or anything resembling sanity.

Cambodia is a mirror of the truth of all the international aid. That’s progress, folks. If you happen to remember all the visions of global development, pulling the Third World out of poverty, building a better world, this is what happened to it, just about everywhere on Earth.

This is where 50 years of talkfests has got the human race. Four billion people living in the Middle Ages with cell phones. Wars, revolutions, genocides, political and business babble, followed by what is basically oppression in another form. It’s infallible. One collection of corrupt vermin is replaced by another. Aid becomes a matter of protecting people from the following sets of disasters.

All the good intentions seem to be paving others’ roads to hell.

The world needs to start setting standards for international aid. Things have to be achieved, not just said to be achieved. It’s not enough to simply allow another pack of vultures to set up shop in disaster areas. The message has to be, “Do the job right, run the place according to law, or we pull the plug on you.”

My guess would be that we don’t need saints running aid programs. We need cynical bastards who wouldn’t trust their own grandmothers with a baby.

I don’t think you can be simultaneously determined to save the world and equally determined to look under every rock to find out who’s causing what’s wrong with it.

Then maybe we'll see some real progress.

This opinion article was written by an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily intended to reflect those of DigitalJournal.com

Journeys East at Isabella

metrowestvideos

"Journeys East: Isabella Stewart Gardner and Asia" is on exhibit at the ISG Museum. It showcases the objects she acquired during and after a 15-month trip with her husband, Jack, to Asia from 1883-1884. Here, curator Alan Chong discusses the collection.

www.metrowestdailynews.com

Luxury Travel Promotes Vietnam and Cambodia in a Single Destination

Hanoi, Vietnam, March 01, 2009 --(PR.com)-- Luxury Travel has launched a Crème de la Crème Best of Vietnam and Cambodia 14 days from Hanoi to Saigon and ends in Siem Riep.

Vietnam and Cambodia increasingly are being recognized as a destination for high-end global tourists. With the steady growth of business, Luxury Travel continues to create new niche market tourism products.

Guests will discover the old and new capital of Vietnam and 3 world heritages listed sites: the wonders of Ha Long Bay, Hue, the Imperial City of the 18th and 19th centuries, the picturesque port town of Hoi An, a favorite with many travelers.

Also on tour the lush Mekong Delta, the amazing Cu Chi tunnels network underground and the vibrant Ho Chi Minh City.

Leave Saigon guests fly to Seam reap, Cambodia to discover the marvel of the Angkor Complex including Angkor Thom, Angkor Wat, Bayon, Banteray Srei and countless others masterpieces of Khmer architecture.

The trip concludes with a boat cruise on the Great Lake Tonle Sap and tour ends in Siem Reap.

“We love its destinations, and we do my best to make sure that our customers feel the same way. This is absolutely fabulous trip of 2 countries in One Single destination. Our team is there to ensure you a great memorable trip in the luxury in Indochina with our hotels selection with guests’ choice, we bring guests to most stylish shops, trendy restaurants. We provide discerning guests a personal service with attention to details. Our guides know how to make your travel experience truly special, truly hassle-free, and truly enriching.” said Luxury Travel’s Product Manager Tony Pham.

Guests enjoy added-value benefits as well: a special Luxury Travel gift, free laundry and complimentary sweets and greeting at the airport by a representative of the company, chocolate and flowers in the room. The Lux’s package includes early check-in and late check-out along with upgrade to more luxurious rooms depending upon availability.

These special packages are available until Dec 30th, 2009 and priced from 4344 USD for 14 days from Hanoi to Saigon and ends Siem Riep, based on a twin sharing, daily departure on private basis from 2 people.

The company secret code is lux4lux, you must cite it to enjoy this special discount. Check it out at www.luxurytravelvietnam.com

ASEAN leaders urge unity to beat financial crisis

Protesters rally outside the Department of Labor in Manila demanding job security and employment for retrenched overseas Filipino workers. Southeast Asian leaders called Sunday for urgent cooperation and reform to tackle the global financial crisis, as they pushed on with their dream of forming an EU-style community by 2015.(AFP/File/Romeo Gacad)

by M. Jegathesan

HUA HIN, Thailand (AFP) – Southeast Asian leaders called Sunday for urgent cooperation and reform to tackle the global financial crisis, as they pushed on with their dream of forming an EU-style community by 2015.

Leaders from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) issued a joint statement on the meltdown on the final day of a summit that has been dominated by concerns about their export-driven economies.

In the statement they called for "bold and urgent reform of the international financial system" to tackle the worsening crisis, while agreeing to "stand firm against protectionism."

They further urged developed and developing countries to show "more coordinated action... to restore financial stability and ensure the continued functioning of financial markets."

The leaders also signed a declaration on setting up an ASEAN community within the next six years that is aimed at protecting the diverse bloc of around 570 million people from future economic turmoil.

Thai Premier Abhisit Vejjajiva, who is also currently chairman of ASEAN, said the leaders "have sent a clear signal about our guidelines to solve economic problems in the region."

He outlined further steps in a press conference, including that ASEAN members should keep each other informed of their economic policies and closely monitor for any hints of protectionism.

ASEAN, with a combined gross domestic product of around 1.4 trillion dollars (1.1 trillion euros), had until recently been a relative bright spot in the world economy.

But because the region is largely dependent on exports, it is at the mercy of the chaos in the rest of the world's economies. Singapore is already in recession and Thailand's economy shrank in the last quarter of 2008.

Leaders underscored the importance and urgency of the so-called Chiang Mai initiative -- a regional emergency fund set up in 2000.

Foreign ministers from ASEAN and from China, Japan and South Korea agreed one week ago to extend the initiative to 120 billion dollars, but gave no date.

ASEAN signed a free trade deal with Australia and New Zealand Friday.

Ministers on Sunday also signed an energy agreement to allow members to buy oil at a discount during times of crisis.

Analysts warned however there was little the group could do to counteract slumping demand for its exports.

"They can try to keep a brave face," said David Cohen, Singapore-based regional economist with research house Action Economics.

Splits over protectionism have also called the 42-year-old organisation's unity into question.

Abhisit and Singapore Premier Lee Hsien Loong have repeatedly urged against protectionist tendencies but Malaysian Premier Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has said it is normal during a crisis.

The economic crisis has been overshadowed at times during the summit by human rights issues, even as ASEAN leaders attempted to talk up a regional rights body that will be set up under the group's new charter.

Activists were angered Saturday when the premiers of Cambodia and military-ruled Myanmar barred two civic representatives from attending rare face-to-face talks with the 10 ASEAN leaders.

The proposed rights body has also come under fire for being effectively toothless with no powers to investigate or prosecute abusers.

Rights are a perennially thorny issue for ASEAN. The bloc has been accused of failing to use its influence to effect change in Myanmar, which has been ruled by the army since 1962 and is accused of gross rights violations.

Leaders said they had urged Myanmar at the summit to continue its so-called roadmap to democracy. Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah said elections had been discussed with Myanmar's rulers but no one brought up the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who symbolises the democracy movement under the junta.

"Nobody mentioned the name of Aung San Suu Kyi," Abdullah said.

An end-of-summit statement issued by Abhisit also did not mention Suu Kyi by name, but said the release of political detainees would "contribute significantly" to the national reconciliation process.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The end of gambling in Cambodia: Cambosix on the receiving end of teething troubles

Phnom Penh (Cambodia), 26/02/2009. Cambosix betting office shut down after a speech pronounced by prime Minister Hun Sen.
©Vandy Rattana

Ka-set

By Ros Dina

The Cambodian government has declared war to gambling. Its first measure was to order on Wednesday February 25th the closure of Cambosix, the only offices enabled by the authorities to accept bets on football games. The government put an abrupt end to the company's licence. The company had started operating in Cambodia in February 2002, according to its website, and its licence was due to be valid till 2011. Slot machines and other gambling activities are also in the firing line of the government, who obtained in the space of two days the closure of all the Cambosix branches, the shops signs of which have been dismantled one after the other.

Hun Sen to local governors: shut it down or you'll be fired!
The prime Minister announced it on Tuesday February 24th during a graduation ceremony in Phnom Penh, after having explained the wrong effects of gambling. Hun Sen then quickly raised his voice and warned governors of city sections (khan) in Phnom Penh who would potentially fail to abide the new instructions in their own jurisdiction. : “Who do you fear? The prime Minister or the people who have a lot of influence and hide behind those gambling establishments? If you do not do that, you will lose your job; is that what you want?” the prime Minister asked.

A question of security and morality
The forecast goal of this repression was a strengthening of public order and social morality, Hun Sen explained. He said that gambling games were a source of problems, and generated disputes, domestic violence at home and petty crime within the society. And he is not the only one who came to such conclusions. The prime Minister reported that the Council of Encouragement of Morality for Women, of which Hun Sen's wife is the honorary president, became worried at a meeting because of a decline in moral values in the Cambodian society, due to gambling. These games for money are forbidden to Cambodians, but companies turn a blind eye to this misconduct towards the law and gladly accept local customers, the head of government deplored.

On top of that argument come more practical considerations, i.e. these activities only bring back little money to the country, Hun Sen said. Last week, secretary of state at the Ministry of Economy Chea Peng Chheang declared to journalists that the industry of gambling had nonetheless brought more than 20 million dollars of internal revenue to the Cambodian state and predicted even greater revenue in 2009. Besides, the high-ranking governmental official added that the government had no intention of banning such activities and preferred legal control rather than a prohibition policy. The prime Minister's decision therefore appears as scathing denial to the secretary of state.

The governmental Circular was followed by a Circular from the Ministry of Economy, issued on Wednesday February 25th which, in turn, ordered the closure of all gambling places, whatever they are, in the whole of Cambodia, as well as the pure and simple cancellation of their still valid licences. The Circular, signed by the hand of Minister Keat Chhon, warns that all those who will not comply with the order would face sanctions with regards to the law. The Ministry calls all local authorities to take the appropriate measures to eradicate this industry which does not enjoy success any more.

No compensations for Cambosix
After a meeting held with development partners of the United Nations at the Council for the Development of Cambodia on Wednesday February 25th, Keat Chhon said to journalists that tax collected with Cambosix, which has some twenty branches in the country, amounted to about a million dollars per year. As for the question of knowing whether Cambosix will receive compensation for this breach of licence without notice, the Minister replied that if the government had indeed granted a licence to that company, which runs through the year 2011, “no particular contract links both parties”... This would mean that Cambosix will not receive any indemnity or compensation. Keat Chhon confirmed that all betting offices and illegal gambling, including street lottery, were from then on targeted by the authorities.

A measure implemented in urgency
In December 2008, Hun Sen had already ordered the national and military police to proceed to the verification of the licences of all offices with slot machines and close down any that were not in order. The prime Minister had also asked the Ministry of Economy to inspect hotels offering the use of electronic games to be played with money, in order to make sure that access was indeed forbidden to Cambodians, otherwise they would see their licence confiscated within 24 hours. The results of this crackdown operation were not mentioned afterwards... In this case, the network of Cambosix offices was swiftly dismantled, with formidable efficiency.

... And apparently popular
A young electrician, a chronic gambler and devoted to Cambosix where he used to bet the equivalent of $5 every week, says he is stunned by the news. “Me and my friends, we cannot believe it. It was our favourite hobby! I was even ready to sacrifice my breakfast money to invest it in bets… As for my parents, they are over the moon, on the contrary. They told me that at last, I would be able to start saving some money and electricity by watching television less often. I never used to miss a football game...” With the exception of gamblers, deprived of their vice, Cambodians, like this young man's parents, seem to welcome the measure in a rather favourable way.

Khmer Rouge Trial: Where is Jacques Vergès?

Kambol (Phnom Penh, Cambodia). 27/02/2009: Sa Sovan, co-lawyer for Khieu Samphan, during the press conference following the hearing of the pre-Trial Chamber at the ECCC. ©John Vink/ Magnum

Ka-set

By Stéphanie Gée

The pre-Trial Chamber of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal was due to examine on Friday February 27th an appeal filed by Khieu Samphan, former president of Democratic Kampuchea, against the extension of his provisional detention. The Court was scheduled to start one hour later than initially planned, a delay announced on the previous day and requested by the defence. The alleged reason: the plane of international co-lawyer, Jacques Vergès, would only land at 9am at the Pochentong airport in Phnom Penh. The hearing thus opened at 10am... but with no French lawyer on the defence side, while his client asked for an adjournment.

“The situation is unexpected,” explained Sa Sovan, the Cambodian co-lawyer for Khieu Samphan. He explained that his colleague was held up in Paris to stay with a relative – it was later found it was the director of his law office – who was rushed to hospital and was allegedly between life and death. The Cambodian lawyer handed the Court a medical certificate before continuing. He said he was unable to inform the Tribunal of the latest development, because he himself was advised by his colleague late in the afternoon on the previous day, “in other words, too late to notify the Tribunal” and even his client was apprised of the news only 30 minutes before the hearing started. Apologising to the ones attending the hearing, he also requested an adjournment until April 3rd.

“We were only notified yesterday of a one-hour delay of the hearing. So, where is the international co-lawyer?”, asked Belgian deputy co-Prosecutor, Vincent de Wilde d'Estmael, irked with the disruption. “In Paris, at the bedside of a relative who is in hospital,” Sa Sovan replied firmly. The deputy co-Prosecutor then expressed his surprise and questioned the seriousness of the state of the patient, who – according to him – reportedly fell in the stairs and fractured his neck of femur. “Was this really a serious enough reason to prevent [Jacques Vergès] from being here today?”

Shortly afterwards, Sa Sovan invited magistrates and lawyers to debate “as legal practitioners” and not to use the Court to discuss about vengeance. He carefully recalled that he had also lost relatives under the Khmer Rouge, “50 members of [his] family.” In addition, he pointed out the total imbalance of power in the court room. “I am faced with a great number of lawyers for the civil parties, while I am on my own.” He later hammered his point during a press conference, “That is not right. And their number [civil parties lawyers] is expected to increase in the future... I feel like I am a thief!”

After deliberating in camera, the judges decided to adjourn the hearing until April 3rd. The announcement sparked weary reactions in the court room. “At this rate, the trial is going to take 20 years,” a victim ranted, while a journalist ironically pointed out that the defence was bound to win in any case scenario. “The Court has accepted their request, so the defence wins extra time. If the Court had refused, it would have offered them a chance to cause a scandal.”

Ny Chandy, one of the lawyers for civil parties, noted in a press conference that this was not the first adjournment requested by Khieu Samphan's lawyers. He expressed his hope that they would stop doing that in the future, otherwise civil parties would call the Court to continue its proceedings, whether the international co-lawyer was there or not.

For Khmer Rouge guard, it was kill or be killed

Him Huy, a former guard at the Khmer Rouge prison Tuol Sleng, in Anlong San, Cambodia, on Tuesday, participated in thousands of executions from 1975 to 1979. (Seth Mydans/International Herald Tribune)

International Herald Tribune

By SETH MYDANS
Published: March 1, 2009

ANLONG SAN, Cambodia:

"We were victims, too," said Him Huy, the head of the guard detail at the Tuol Sleng torture house, who took part in the executions of thousands of people at a Khmer Rouge killing field.

As the prisoners knelt at the edges of mass graves, with their hands tied behind them, executioners swung iron bars at the backs of their heads - two times, if necessary - before they toppled forward into the pits.

"I had no choice," said Him Huy, 53. "If I hadn't killed them, I would have been killed myself."

In the severe and paranoid world of the Khmer Rouge prison, guards and torturers themselves worked under threat of death, and Him Huy saw a number of his colleagues kneel at the edges of their graves for that blow to the back of the neck.

"I used an iron bar about that long," he said, spreading his hands wide as he sat in a dry rice field to tell his story late last month, "and about as thick as my big toe."

Him Huy, guard and executioner at the most prominent Cambodian torture house, personifies the horror of the Khmer Rouge years, from 1975 to 1979, when at least 1.7 million people died of starvation and overwork as well as torture and execution.

As the trials of five senior Khmer Rouge figures get under way in Phnom Penh, they raise questions about the guilt - or victimhood - of lower-ranking cadre, the people who carried out the arrests, killings and torture, and who are unlikely to face trial.

Late at night, sometimes two or three times a week, Him Huy said, he drove trucks full of prisoners to the Choeung Ek killing field, where he logged them in - 20 or 30 or 80 at a time - and then confirmed that they had been killed.

He asserted that he had personally killed only five people, as demonstrations of loyalty to his superiors.

At least 14,000 people were arrested and interrogated at Tuol Sleng prison, which was known officially as S-21 and is now maintained as a museum. Only a handful survived.

Him Huy is back home now in this village 80 kilometers, or 50 miles, south of Phnom Penh - a farmer and father of nine, optimistic, hard-working and quick to smile, seemingly comfortable to be who he is and at ease with his memories. His neighbors seem to like him.

"Even the young people, when they have a party they always invite him," said his wife, Put Peng Aun. "If there's a party, he's got to be there."

Asked to describe himself, Him Huy said, "I'm not a bad person. I'm a good man. I never argue with anyone. I never fight with anyone. I have good intentions as a human being."

But some of those who knew him at the prison remember him harshly. One survivor, Bou Meng, says Him Huy beat and tortured him, poking at his wounds with a stick. "His face was so mean," he told interviewers at the Documentation Center of Cambodia, a private research center. "Today he looks gentle."

Two of Him Huy's co-workers at Tuol Sleng, quoted by the historian David Chandler in his book on the prison, "Voices from S-21," remembered him as "a seasoned killer, an important figure at the prison and a key participant in the execution process."

One prison document that bears his signature, from July 23, 1977, reports the execution of 18 prisoners. Scribbled at the bottom is a note reading: "Also killed 160 children today for a total of 178 enemies killed."

Him Huy is evasive about the extent of his duties at the prison. But whatever he did there, he said, he performed on pain of death.

"I am a victim of the Khmer Rouge," he said without hesitation.

"I did not volunteer to work at S-21." "We were all prisoners, those who killed and those who were killed," he said. "And in fact, for a lot of the staff there, the day came when they were killed, too. In the daytime we'd be eating together, and in the evening some were arrested and killed."

In a book about the prison staff called "Victims and Perpetrators?" the Documentation Center calculates that at least 563 members of the staff of Tuol Sleng - about one-third of the total - were executed while working there.

In a distilled and horrific way, Tuol Sleng was a microcosm of the nation, where half-starved and overworked people lived in constant fear of being arrested and killed, often for reasons they never learned.

The first defendant in the United Nations-backed tribunal is Him Huy's former boss, the commandant of Tuol Sleng prison, a tough, sharp-eyed man named Kaing Guek Eav and generally known as Duch. His trial began two weeks ago.

It was Duch who signed execution orders for both prisoners and errant staff. Indeed, Him Huy rose to become fifth or sixth in the chain of command after his superiors were pulled from their jobs and killed.

"Yes, I did kill people," Him Huy said. "I did transport people to Choeung Ek. I did verify lists of people at Choeung Ek. But Duch ordered me to do all of that."

Many Cambodians appear to accept this common defense among former Khmer Rouge cadre: that they had no choice but to be cruel, fearing for their own lives. It is a defense Duch himself has made in the past.

Visiting the prison recently, Chum Mey, another survivor of Tuol Sleng, described 12 days and nights of torture and terror, but without bitterness toward his abusers.

"My thought is not to put the blame on Him Huy because I don't know what I would have done in his place," he said. "I don't think I would have been able to disobey."

Thirty years have passed since the Khmer Rouge were ousted by a Vietnamese invasion. Him Huy is no different from his neighbors, raising a big family and tending to his beans and corn and rice.

At the end of a long interview, he headed back to his bean field, filling a cannister with pesticide and marching down the rows of long yellow beans, swinging a hose from left to right.

He made sure, he said, to walk with the wind behind him so that none of the pesticide would blow back in his face.

14th ASEAN Summit ends in Thailand

xinhuanet.com
www.chinaview.cn 2009-03-01

HUA HIN, Thailand, March 1 (Xinhua) -- The 14th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit closed here Sunday after leaders of ten member states ended their annual discussions on a series of issues including the economic crisis and signed the declaration on the roadmap for an ASEAN Community.

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, whose country currently holds ASEAN's rotating chair, said after the conclusion of the summit that the leaders had a very productive meeting on a series of issues which matter not only to the region but to the international community as a whole.

During the two-day summit, leaders of the ASEAN member states focused their discussions on economic crisis, human rights body, ASEAN integration, and other regional issues like Myanmar and immigration.

On economic crisis, ASEAN leaders said that while ASEAN's economic fundamental remain sound, the deepening global economic downturn, coupled with heightened risk aversion in financial markets, have adversely impacted trade and investment in the region.

The leaders stressed the necessity of proactive and decisive actions to restore market confidence and ensure continued financial stability to promote sustainable regional economic growth.

They also agreed to stand firm against protectionism and to refrain from introducing and raising new barriers.

On ASEAN integration, the leaders signed Cha-am Hua Hin Declaration on the Roadmap for an ASEAN Community (2009-2015), setting out the guidelines for the creation of a single free trade area for the region of 800 million people by 2015.

According to the declaration, the ASEAN leaders emphasized that "narrowing the development gap shall remain an important task to ensure the benefits of ASEAN integration are fully realized through effective implementation of the Initiative for ASEAN Integration and other sub-regional framework."

A total of 24 ASEAN related documents were signed or adopted by ASEAN leaders, foreign ministers and economic ministers. These documents include, among others, the issues relating to the ASEAN community building, trade and investment, sub-regional economic cooperation, food and petroleum security.

ASEAN consists of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Editor: Bi Mingxin

Asean leaders urge economic reform

Al Jaseera
Asia-Pacific
Sunday, March 01, 2009

Southeast Asian leaders have vowed to avoid economic protectionism and called for increased co-operation and reforms to deal with the global financial crisis.

At a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' (Asean) that concluded in Thailand's Hua Hin beach resort on Sunday, leaders of the 10-member nation bloc also signed a free trade deal with Australia and New Zealand.

In a joint statement on Sunday, Asean leaders called for "bold and urgent reform of the international financial system," and they agreed to "stand firm against protectionism".

Asean ministers also signed an energy agreement to allow members to buy oil at a discounted price during times of crisis, and a declaration on setting up an EU-style Asean community by 2015.

Human rights body

An Asean free trade deal with Australia and New Zealand, which could eventually add $48bn to economies in the region, was signed on Friday.

Economic growth is slowing rapidly in the region, which is largely dependent on exports, and many jobs are at risk.

Singapore is already in recession and analysts say Thailand and Malaysia might be next.

Meanwhile, the leaders broadly agreed on the terms of reference for a much-debated human rights body which will be made operational by the end of this year, but is unclear if it will have the power to punish violators.

Activists were angered on Saturday when the prime ministers of Cambodia and Myanmar refused pro-democracy activists from their countries to attend the summit.

Abhisit Vejjajiva, Thailand's prime minister and currently head of the Asean, said the bloc would "try to ensure that there is civil society participation" in its future work.

Abhisit said on Sunday that leaders held an "open discussion" with Myanmar's prime minister, encouraging the country to co-operate with the United Nations on reform and release of political detainees.

ASEAN vows to stand firm against protectionism

Associated Press - March 1, 2009

CHA-AM, Thailand (AP) - Southeast Asian leaders have wrapped up their 14th annual summit by deciding to become more like the European Union.

The 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations has decided to push ahead with ambitious plans to become an EU-style economic community by 2015.

Leaders have agreed to refrain from imposing new trade barriers and say they'll stand firm against protectionism in their quest to create a single market in the next seven years.

The decision comes despite the dual obstacles of the global economic crisis and a dismal human rights record in member country Myanmar.

Myanmar's military junta has ignored global demands to free an estimated 2,100 political prisoners, including a Nobel laureate.

Myanmar and Cambodia refused to hold prearranged talks during the summit with pro-democracy activists from their countries.

ASEAN's goal of forming a single economic market mainly involves lifting trade barriers but not, at this point, adopting a common currency.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Family going around globe to help others survive

Melissa HanelineThe Post and Courier
Joseph, Cara and Samantha Garcia are packing up for the journey of a lifetime — a two-year move to impoverished Cambodia to bring a semblance of basic health care to the central region of the country.

Charleston.net

Healing fields

BY BRIAN HICKS
Sunday, March 1, 2009

SUMMERVILLE — Their house is nearly empty, and there's a "For Sale" sign in the yard.

In the past few months, James and Cara Garcia have sold nearly everything they own, taken the rest to Goodwill or the dump.

They got rid of the BMW just last week.

Now they can fit everything they own into a few suitcases and duffle bags — one each for them and their two daughters.

These are not victims of the recession. This is a family that has found a new purpose in life, and it lies on the far side of the world.

This week, the couple — one a paramedic, the other a registered nurse — are moving to the jungles of Cambodia, where they will open a clinic to serve thousands of people who have no medical care and few modern conveniences.

"They've got an old hospital that sits empty most of the year," James said, watching Cara and their oldest daughter, Sam, inventory medical supplies for a shipping manifest. "They said, 'If you come here, we'll let you use it.' The plan is to be there for two years."

Their family members are not thrilled, and they get strange looks from some people when they explain their mission, but the Garcias don't much care.

They have seen a need, something far more significant than a world of shopping malls and fast food, stock markets and bailouts.

"We learned what poor really means," Cara said. "We found out how hard it is for some people just to live."

It all started last April, when James and Cara took a 2 1/2-week vacation to Cambodia, ostensibly to see 1,000-year-old temples. Cara had read a book about them.

The sights that impressed them most had nothing to do with ancient architecture.

For Cara, it was a man lying in the street, too weak to pick up the money people had dropped at his feet.

James was touched most by a 5-year-old girl holding her 3-week-old brother, begging for money to buy some formula, her mother too emaciated to stand and ask for herself.

"We thought all the formula in the world wouldn't help them if they were going to mix it with that dirty water," James said. "That's why two out of 10 kids die there before they are 5 years old."

When they returned to Summerville, neither James nor Cara could stop thinking about what they had seen, that beautiful but impoverished country a world away.

They had learned about the country's sad and violent recent history, killing of between 1 million and 3 million people under a Communist dictatorship that moved in during the Vietnam War.

Things that had meant little when recited on the evening news — Pol Pot, the Killing Fields — took on new meaning when James found the tooth of one of the victims lodged in the sole of his shoe.

It made some of the things here seem virtually meaningless. Cara grew sick of hearing people talk about how to divvy up a more than $700 billion federal bailout when there were some people who died from infection after getting a simple cut.

At first they thought they would take work at a hospital, and then learned there weren't any in the worst parts of the country. They considered joining a missionary, but could not abide by groups that offered medicine only to people who would give up their Buddhist religion.

So they started their own nonprofit, Share the Health Cambodia, and began to collect donations. They picked up surplus supplies from local hospitals, such as a load of vacuum-sealed syringes that the American health care system declares "expired" after a few monthys.

"Tell me how this can expire," Cara said.

Regardless, it is better than what anyone there has now.

The Cambodian government has been welcoming, thanks in part to a member of the country's version of a congress.

The couple is scheduled to meet with the vice president at the royal palace later this month.

Of course, they are expecting a bit of culture shock. They have been promised that they will have electricity, and then they laugh, knowing there are no guarantees in the Third World. The place they are going is called Baray, in the Kampong Thom province, in the middle of the country.

They expect culture shock, and to eat a lot of fish and water buffalo, which is what passes for beef there. They plan to live in a hut on stilts. It has to sit high because of the rainy season, monsoons that last four hours a day for several months. The monsoons bring the snakes, including king cobras.

Samantha, 12, jokes that she wants to get a pet mongoose to protect her — the kid apparently has been reading Rudyard Kipling. Her father jokes that a mongoose is nothing but a super-aggressive ferret, perhaps not the best pet.

The move will be, the Garcias admit, hardest on the girls. Moira, 10, is content to follow her mother to the end of the earth, but Sam was not crazy about the idea at first.

She's better with it now, mainly because "all my friends have moved away." At first, she was adamantly opposed to the move.

"I gave in," she joked.

The Garcias expect that it will take two years to get things going. They have enlisted a Buddhist monk to help ingratiate themselves to the locals because many are understandably wary of Americans. After all, they are the ones who left the land mines that injure and kill so many of them.

"We don't want to put a Band-Aid on it, we want to train the locals to do it," James said.

They expect to have the help of doctors to handle procedures beyond their abilities. Mainly, the things they can do — stop infections, administer first aid — will save many lives.

The Garcias are putting their own money into this, and taken donations, but those are hard to come by in these times. They will make do. Nothing is very expensive there, and they figure now, with the recession, it's the perfect time to take a timeout.

"I'm trying to think of what I'm going to miss," James said. "I'll be glad to get away from CNN and Fox News."

The nearest McDonald's will be hundreds of miles away, in Thailand, but they expect to have satellite phones and Internet for medical and schooling purposes. And that, coupled with the knowledge that they are doing something meaningful — saving lives — is enough.

And they will always know that, no matter what, they tried to make a difference.

"If it doesn't work, and we come back with our tails between our legs, so be it," Cara said.

But watching the family pack medical supplies, inventorying every syringe, every IV tube, it seems like the Garcias can do whatever they put their minds to.

Cambodia’s missing criminals

Green Left Weekly

John Pilger
28 February 2009

At my hotel in Phnom Penh, the women and children sat on one side of the room, palais-style, the men on the other. It was a disco night and a lot of fun; then suddenly people walked to the windows and wept.

The DJ had played a song by the much-loved Khmer singer, Sin Sisamouth, who had been forced to dig his own grave and to sing the Khmer Rouge anthem before he was beaten to death. I experienced many such reminders in the years following Pol Pot’s fall.

There was another kind of reminder. In the village of Neak Long, a Mekong River town, I walked with a distraught man through a necklace of bomb craters.

His entire family of 13 had been blown to pieces by an American B-52. That had happened almost two years before Pol Pot came to power in 1975. It is estimated more than 600,000 Cambodians were slaughtered that way.

The problem with the United Nations-backed trial of the remaining Khmer Rouge leaders, which has just begun in Phnom Penh, is that it is dealing only with the killers of Sin Sisamouth and not with the killers of the family in Neak Long, and not with their collaborators.

There were three stages of Cambodia’s holocaust. Pol Pot’s genocide was but one of them, yet only it has a place in the official memory.

It is highly unlikely Pot Pot would have come to power had president Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, not attacked neutral Cambodia.

In 1973, B-52s dropped more bombs on Cambodia’s populated heartland than were dropped on Japan during all of the Second World War: the equivalent of five Hiroshimas.

Declassified files reveal that the CIA was in little doubt of the effect. “[The Khmer Rouge] are using damage caused by B52 strikes as the main theme of their propaganda”, reported the director of operations on May 2, 1973. “This approach has resulted in the successful recruitment of a number of young men [and] has been effective with refugees.”

Prior to the bombing, the Khmer Rouge had been a Maoist cult without a popular base. The bombing delivered a catalyst.

What Nixon and Kissinger began, Pol Pot completed.

Kissinger will not be in the dock in Phnom Penh. He is advising US President Barack Obama on geo-politics. Neither will Margaret Thatcher, nor a number of her comfortably retired senior ministers and officials who, in secretly supporting the Khmer Rouge after the Vietnamese had expelled them, contributed directly to the third stage of Cambodia’s holocaust.

In 1979, the US and British governments imposed a devastating embargo on stricken Cambodia because its liberators, Vietnam, had come from the wrong side of the cold war.

Few Foreign Office campaigns have been as cynical or as brutal. At the UN, the British demanded that the now defunct Pol Pot regime retain the “right” to represent its victims at the UN and voted with Pol Pot in the agencies of the UN, including the World Health Organisation, thereby preventing it from working inside Cambodia.

To disguise this outrage, Britain, the US and China, Pol Pot’s principal backer, invented a “non communist” coalition in exile that was, in fact, dominated by the Khmer Rouge. In Thailand, the CIA and Defence Intelligence Agency formed direct links with the Khmer Rouge.

In 1983, the Thatcher government sent the SAS to train the “coalition” in landmine technology — in a country more seeded with mines than anywhere on Earth except Afghanistan.

“I confirm”, Thatcher wrote to opposition leader Neil Kinnock, “that there is no British government involvement of any kind in training, equipping or co-operating with Khmer Rouge forces or those allied to them.”

The lie was breathtaking.

On June 25, 1991, the John Major government was forced to admit to parliament that the SAS had been secretly training the “coalition”.

Unless international justice is a farce, those who sided with Pol Pot’s mass murderers ought to be summoned to the court in Phnom Penh: at the very least their names read into infamy’s register.

Cambodia to apply ASEAN Single Window programme

Thai News Agency MCOT

PHNOM PENH, March 1 (VNA) – Cambodia set to implement a major ASEAN agreement that would drastically cut customs clearance times and allow importers to access the entire region through Sihanoukville Port.

Starting in May, authorities will apply the ASEAN Single Window (ASW), which synchronises customs information systems and allows traders to forward goods to any ASEAN country after clearing one regional port of entry, according to local media.

Under the plan, clearance times would be cut to 30 minutes, from a regional average of four hours, The Phnom Penh Post quoted Ma Sunhout, Deputy Director General at the Sihanoukville Autonomous Port, as saying.

ASEAN Single Window programme is the single most important customs initiative that will ensure expeditious clearance of goods and reduce the cost of doing business in the regional grouping.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. (VNA)

4 Parties Registered to Join Local Election of Cambodia

CRIENGLISH.com

2009-03-01
Source: Xinhua

Four parties have registered themselves with the National Election Committee (NEC) to participate in the upcoming local poll of Cambodia, Chinese- language daily newspaper the Commercial News said on Sunday.

The major ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP), the major opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP), the co-ruling Funcinpec Party and the opposition Norodom Ranariddh Party (NRP) were the first batch of political forces ready to join the commune councils election, the paper quoted a NEC press release as saying.

Dozens of other small parties haven't responded yet.

The deadline for registration with NEC is March 2 and altogether 193 polling offices have been set all over the country to serve the process.

On May 17, Cambodia will hold its election for positions of district, provincial and municipal councils as part of the government's drive to transfer more decision-making powers to the local level.

The government has planned to deploy 27,133 police forces nationwide to safeguard the election and guarantee safety and order.

Cambodian oil wealth threatens democracy

The National

Jared Ferrie, Foreign Correspondent

March 01. 2009

PHNOM PENH // When oil was discovered off the Cambodian coast in 2005, the government promised to use the profits to lift the country out of poverty. Now, politicians are reacting angrily to warnings that corruption could turn oil into a curse rather than a blessing.

“If mismanaged through corruption or ineptitude, the money generated runs the risk of widening the gap between rich and poor and weakening democracy still further by entrenching the positions of the ruling elite,” said Eleanor Nichol, of Global Witness, a London-based non-governmental organisation that monitors the exploitation of natural resources and international trade systems.

The group’s recent report, Country for Sale, accuses officials of negotiating deals that would benefit “members of the ruling elite and their family members”.

The government barred Global Witness from operating in the country after a 2005 report documented involvement of officials in illegal logging.

Ms Nichol said copies of Country for Sale have been detained at customs. “It is unclear whether this is the result of an official government ban on the report.”

Chan Sophall, president of the Cambodia Economic Association, said he had not read the report, but he shares similar concerns. “The experience in the developing world is that there could be what is called a ‘resource curse’ – too much money wasted, rather than used for economic development.”

Although Cambodia’s oil reserves are relatively modest, they could be a windfall for this impoverished country of 14 million people. But organisations such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the Asia Development Bank have urged Cambodia to put systems in place to make sure the money is used as it should be, Mr Sophall said.

A Feb 5 World Bank report pointed to expected growth in oil and gas extraction, as well as mining. But it warned: “There needs to be a significant upgrade of the sector’s management which, at the moment, is ineffective and opaque.”

Officials have not taken kindly to such criticism, Mr Sophall said. “Advice on how to use the funds didn’t seem to be appreciated by the government.”

He pointed to a comment made by Cambodia’s deputy prime minister, Sok An, in response to a question about how petroleum revenue would be managed. Sok An was quoted in local media in 2007 as saying: “No question is more stupid than this question.”

After Global Witness published its report on Feb 5, Cambodia’s ambassador to the UK, Nambora Hor, accused the organisation of engaging in “smear campaigns”. He urged funders to review the group’s policies and activities.

On Feb 16, Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Sen, lashed out at non-governmental organisations that were critical of his government’s management of oil reserves, calling them “crazy”.

“How could we have committed corruption if the oil resources are still in the seabed?” he asked during an economic conference in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Global Witness and others say the government has failed to build institutions strong enough to monitor the oil industry and make sure the profits are invested in development.

“That’s why we are calling for a moratorium on oil and mining concessions until the basic legal, social and economic frameworks are in place,” Ms Nichol said. “Without this, Cambodia’s extractive industries will be operating in a regulatory vacuum.”

Hun Sen said his government was drafting a new tax revenue law that would include oil, gas and mining. Cambodia’s ambassador to the United Kingdom said the government intends to use oil wealth to fund “improved health, education and social conditions”.

Such assurances have failed to quell the concerns of groups, including the World Bank and Global Witness, that point out that the government has refused to release details about deals signed with oil companies, among them Chevron and BHP Billiton.

Ms Nichol said Cambodia is in danger of following the same path as other developing countries that have discovered oil.

“Newly oil-rich countries with fragile state institutions have repeatedly fallen victim to slow growth despite vast earnings with no ‘trickle down’ effect to benefit the impoverished,” she said. “The risk is that this will exacerbate corruption and authoritarianism.”

In countries from Latin America to Africa and Asia, the discovery of oil has been hailed as the key to moving from poverty to prosperity. But rarely, if ever, has that been the case.

Instead, many developing countries tend to follow the same pattern when oil begins to flow: promises are forgotten as elites pocket the profits; residents of oil-producing areas remain impoverished and often find themselves living in the midst of an environmental catastrophe; social and political unrest follows.

Nigeria, for example, has been forced to cut production by about one-quarter since 2006 because of attacks by insurgent groups in the Niger Delta.

It is Africa’s top oil-producing country, but most Niger Delta residents lack electricity and running water.

And they have lost a valuable source of food as oil has spilt out of pipelines, poisoning soil and polluting waterways where they once fished.

Cambodia’s reserves are nowhere near the size of Nigeria’s, but they could provide enough revenue to help the government wean itself off of international aid, which currently accounts for more than 50 per cent of its annual budget.

In an Aug 2007 report, the International Monetary Fund estimated that Cambodia could gain $174 million (Dh640m) from oil returns when the wells start producing in 2011, rising to $1.7 billion by 2021 before dropping rapidly.

Ms Nichol urged the government to act on the Global Witness report’s concerns. “Cambodia is on the verge of an oil and mining corruption disaster unless governance within the sectors dramatically improves.”

Emerging from decades of conflict, Cambodia’s economy has grown by an average of seven per cent over the past 14 years, the World Bank says. The bank estimated that the number of people living in poverty fell to 30 per cent in 2007 from 50 per cent in 1994. But it predicted that economic growth will slow because of the global economic crisis.

Transparency International ranked Cambodia 166 out of 180 countries on its 2008 annual corruption index.

Diplomacy: Keep the engine running

SFGate
Joel Brinkley
Saturday, February 28, 2009

Even before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began her trip to Asia last week, she acknowledged that "perhaps we didn't pay an appropriate amount of attention" to the region in recent years.

In fact, the Bush administration insulted Southeast Asia by failing to attend regional meetings that the United States had never missed before. And as Clinton toured the area, she could see that the United States is paying the price.

In all of the states that the Bush administration ignored, China has stepped in as the irreplaceable rich uncle.

From Borneo to Burma, it is China, not America, that Southeast Asian nations now look to whenever they need to build a bridge, a dam, a hospital or have another problem they cannot easily resolve. China's leaders are usually more than happy to oblige.

Consider Indonesia. Clinton spent a day there and praised the nation's democratic institutions. In contrast, Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang spent four days there in December, in part to have a look at a new bridge China is building between Madura Island and the mainland, at a cost of $230 million.

China's largesse does not stop there. Country by country throughout the region, senior Chinese leaders are constant, smiling visitors, and while on these visits they invariably strike new trade deals or make generous financial-aid offers, including these in recent weeks:

-- In Thailand, China provided $500,000 for treatment of victims in a nightclub fire, while also pledging to continue buying most of Thailand's rubber production, despite the economic downturn.

-- In Malaysia, China agreed to a joint venture for pharmaceutical research and pledged funds to pay for new navigational aids in the Straits of Melaka.

-- In Cambodia, China promised $215 million in new aid this year, more than any other country, and is already helping to build roads, dams and other infrastructure.

Of course, the United States also provides many millions of dollars of aid, most of it through the U.S. Agency for International Development. But there's a difference. American aid comes with numerous strings attached. To get it, nations must respond to understandable questions about human rights, women's issues, clean government, environmental concerns ... the list can seem endless.

For example, the United States and dozens of other nations, nongovernmental agencies and donor groups give hundreds of millions of dollars to Cambodia each year - almost $1 billion for 2009. But most of them say they are conditioning that aid on progress tackling endemic corruption, government impunity and other daunting problems.

China worries about none of that. Its foreign policy philosophy of noninterference with other nations' internal affairs proves to be most congenial for the countries it aids. It had only one condition for Cambodia. To get the $215 million, Phnom Penh had to say it agreed with Beijing's one-China policy, a slap at Taiwan.

"Loans or grants from China have released Cambodia from certain kinds of political pressure from international countries," a government spokesman said in December, quoting from a recent speech by Hun Sen, Cambodia's prime minister.

In Washington, meanwhile, before Clinton visited last week, leaders of all the State Department bureaus competed with each other to get their issues, requests and concerns into her talking points. In truth, however, when Clinton first planned her Asian trip, she had no intention of visiting Indonesia, her only Southeast Asian destination.

Her initial plan was to visit Japan, China and South Korea - the very same destinations former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited on her frequent visits to the region.

A senior administration official in Washington told me she added Indonesia to the itinerary only after President Obama asked her to. (He grew up there.)

How did Washington find itself in this fix?

On one of her Asian trips four years ago, Rice flew into a storm of criticism for her decision not to attend the upcoming annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations convention. I was traveling with her, and a senior Asian diplomat told me: "'Lots of people were offended by this decision."

So, to make amends, she took a quick detour from China to visit a Thai school ravaged by the tsunami, rebuilt with U.S. help. Rice's visit lasted 41 minutes; her driver stayed in the car and kept the engine running.

As she left, a Thai reporter asked her: "Why aren't you going to ASEAN?" Thailand's deputy prime minister, who had come along for the visit, snapped: "'Tsunami questions only!'"
Rice said, "I am here to show that I care about Southeast Asia."

Joel Brinkley is a professor of journalism at Stanford University and a former foreign policy correspondent for the New York Times.
To comment to him, e-mail brinkley@foreign-matters.com.

To comment, e-mail us at forum@sfchronicle.com.

Cambodia forms politics, foreign affairs department within defense ministry

www.chinaview.cn

2009-03-01

PHNOM PENH, March 1 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia has established a special department within its Ministry of National Defense for politics and foreign affairs earlier this week, Chinese-language newspaper the Jian Hua Daily said on Sunday.

The department is obliged to watch and research the political side of the national defense, promote military cooperation with foreign countries, help process visas for the military force, and strengthen international, multi-national and bilateral security cooperation in the framework of the general policy of the government, said the paper.

It will have one director general and 4 vice directors, it added.

For 2009, the Ministry of National Defense has won about 160 million U.S. dollars of government allocation, a 29.6 percent rise over that of 2008, according to the national budget approved by the National Assembly in Dec. 2008.

Editor: Bi Mingxin

Cambodia, Vietnam install one third of all border posts

www.chinaview.cn

2009-03-01

PHNOM PENH, March 1 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia and Vietnam have installed one third of all their border posts and the whole work will be completed in 2012, Chinese-language newspaper the Sinchew Daily said on Sunday.

Over 100 out of a total of 314 posts were already erected to mark part of the border, the paper quoted officials of the Cambodian National Border Committee as saying.

The process started in 2005 and is expected to finish in 2012 to fully demarcate the 1,270-km-long border, it added.

Cambodia has altogether nine provinces bordering Vietnam.

Editor: Du

Cambodia asks U.S. to help boost its tourism sector

www.chinaview.cn

2009-03-01

PHNOM PENH, March 1 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia has asked U.S. to provide some help to boost its tourism sector, one of the kingdom's pillar industries, Chinese-language newspaper the Jian Hua Daily said on Sunday.

Tourism Minister Thong Khon made this request while meeting with U.S. Ambassador Carol Rodley here earlier this week, said the paper.

Cambodia expects U.S. to help Cambodia establish a training school of vocational skills and promote its eco-tourism, especially in face of the global financial crisis, said the minister.

Rodley expressed her support of the idea, saying that she will relay the message to the U.S. government in order to help Cambodia develop its human resources in the tourism sector and push forward its eco-tourism.

Cambodia received around 2 million foreign tourist arrivals in 2008, a 5.5 percent rise over 2007, but slightly lower than the government's expectation, according to official figures.

Editor: Bi Mingxin

Door closed for Cambodia, Myanmar reps

Jakarta Post
March 01, 2009

Lilian Budianto, The Jakarta Post, Cha-am, Thailand

The governments of Cambodia and Myanmar have banned two representatives from their own countries from meeting with Southeast Asian state leaders during the official meeting between ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and civil society organizations scheduled Saturday at Cha-am.

Cambodia has refused to let in Pen Somony, a program coordinator for the Cambodia Volunteers for Civil Society. The Myanmar junta has barred the door for Khin Ohmar, the Bangkok-based chair of the Network for Democracy and Development. The two will not be able to join their seven counterparts in the meeting, held as part of the 14th ASEAN Summit program.

The injunction from Cambodia came as a last-minute surprise. Country representatives voiced their objection only a day before the meeting though the list of representatives had been submitted to the ASEAN Secretariat last November, said Yuyun Wahyuningrum of the Bangkok-based Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development, which represented Laos and Brunei.

Yuyun said they had anticipated the ban from military-ruled Myanmar but had not expected Cambodian to follow suit, especially since the latter did not specify any reason for a ban that could undercut freedom of expression in the region.

"The Cambodian [NGO] representative feels a bit threatened by the ban and fears returning to his country and has concerns for his safety. The Myanmar representative is based in Thailand and had expected the government's ban because it frequently limits civil society voices this way," she said.

She added only groups from eight of the 10 ASEAN countries had sent representatives to attend the 30-minute meeting, which included statement reading and a question-and-answer session.

"Laos did not participate because of concerns over government crackdowns on activists and Brunei Darussalam did not delegate a representative because it may not have any civil groups," said Yuyun, who was delegated to represent the two absent countries.

She said the meeting - attended by the 10 ASEAN state leaders and the six representatives from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam - ran smoothly despite the bans. Yuyun expressed regret afterward that only Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung answered the five questions put forward by the civil society leaders.

The Malaysian NGO representative, Wathshlah G. Naidu from Asia Pacific International Women's Rights Action Watch, said their questions included public participation in the good governance process, representation on the ASEAN human rights body, migrant workers, the status of Burma (Myanmar) and gender issues.

"In response to the question on the ASEAN human rights body, they said they realized civil society leaders needed to be involved. They also recognized the [current bylaws] draft had no protective mechanisms. They affirmed that, in subsequent discussions, protections should be incorporated within the ASEAN human rights charter as part of its terms of reference," Naidu said.

Naidu said further Abhisit had not responded directly on the issue of Burma but mentioned that ASEAN leaders would have an open discussion to address it. Yuyun added the Thai government had said they would ensure that political development in Burma would continue.

Yuyun also said the Vietnamese government had said it supported the participation of the civil society in community building but it should be within the scope of the ASEAN principle of noninterference.

"Prime Minister Abhisit agreed there is a deficit in the people's participation in ASEAN forum that he wanted to improve. Hopefully, in the future, ASEAN is moving forward into a single society under the new charter," she said, referring to the charter put into force last December.

"However, he emphasized that cooperation between civil society organizations and the ASEAN should be based on the principle of respect for national sovereignty and noninterference."

The King Sends a Letter to Samdech Dekchor Hun Sen - Saturday, 28.2.2009

Posted on 1 March 2009

The Mirror, Vol. 13, No. 601

“Preah Karuna Preah Bat Samdech Preah Boromneath Norodom Sihamoni, the King of the Kingdom of Cambodia, sent a letter with some documents to Akkak Moha Senapadei Dekchor Hun Sen, the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Cambodia, asking him to check the cutting down of trees and of the forest clearance to claim land ownership, as the report of the president of a Natural Resource Observation and Protection Organization of Cambodia, Mr. Chea Hean, said, in order that Samdech Dekchor takes action according to the law.

“The letter signed by Preah Karuna Samdech Preah Boromneath Norodom Sihamoni dated 26 February 2009 to Samdech Akkak Moha Senapadei Dekchor Hun Sen, the head of the government, says that he received a letter dated 24 February 2009, as well as some documents from a Natural Resource Observation and Protection Organization of Cambodia, signed by Mr. Chea Hean, asking the King to intervene with Samdech Akkak Moha Senapadei Dekchor Hun Sen, regarding collusion of the authorities and of certain officials of the Oral Mountain Animal Refuge, and the authorities in Kiri Sakor district in Koh Kong to cut down trees and to clear forest, to take state land in national natural reserves which are protected by Royal Decree.

“Relating to the letter of the Khmer King, asking Samdech Dekchor Hun Sen to intervene, we could not contact the cabinet of the Prime Minister to know whether this letter has arrived there or not, and whether the King’s letter to Samdech Akkak Moha Senapadei Dekchor was sent while Samdech Dekchor had already left Cambodia to Thailand to attend the 14th ASEAN summit in Hua Hin, and if so, it is expected that Samdech will become aware of this problem only after returning to the country.

“The writer of the letter, Mr. Chea Hean, said on 27 February 2009 that he and his officials are pleased that the letter was sent to Samdech Akkak Moha Senapadei Dekchor Hun Sen. This provides confidence from His Majesty for the report and for some documents which this organization had sent to him, signed on 26 February 2009 and send to Samdech Dekchor Hun Sen, to report to him about the cutting down of trees, and the clearing of forest, to claim land for private ownership, conducted by officials who are directors of the Oral Mountain Animal Refuge in Kompong Speu, and of the Botum Sakor National Park in Kiri Sakor district in Koh Kong.

“It should be recalled that the cutting down of trees in the Oral Mountain Animal Refuge had occurred repeatedly since 2002, with collusion between the director of the Animal Refuge, Mr. Chhun Chhea Heng, and the Oral district police chief, Mr. Dos Sim, as well as district governors and village and commune chiefs. The cutting down of trees in the Botum Sakor National Park, which is protected by Royal Decree, is conducted by the Botum Sakor district police chief, Mr. Touch Sovannarith, who hires citizens to clear forest - and even though the director of the Botum Sakor National Park prohibits it, the activities of the police chief Touch Sovannarith cannot be stopped.”

Khmer Aphivaot Sethakech, Vol. 7, #352, 28-2.2.2009
Newspapers Appearing on the Newsstand:
Saturday, 28 February 2009

ASEAN increases counter-terrorism effort

The West Australian
1st March 2009

ASEAN states will intensify efforts to fight militants and pledge to work for the full implementation of a regional counter-terrorism pact this year, according to a draft document.

The document, seen by AFP on Saturday, is to be adopted by the Association of South-East Asian Nations leaders at the end of an annual summit on Sunday.

It says the bloc will "promote effective implementation" of a comprehensive plan of action to fight terrorism and cooperate to address its root causes.

South-East Asia is the base for Jemaah Islamiyah, the militant network blamed for a string of bloody attacks in the region including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed more than 200 people - many of them foreign tourists.

Muslim separatist insurgencies are meanwhile being waged in southern Thailand and on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.

The counter-terrorism plan is contained in a blueprint for an ASEAN Political-Security Community to be adopted by South-East Asian leaders on Sunday in the Thai resort town of Hua Hin.

The draft of the document says ASEAN will "work towards the entry into force of the ASEAN Convention on Counter-Terrorism by 2009".

The convention, signed in January 2007, provides a framework for regional cooperation to "counter, prevent and suppress terrorism in all its forms and manifestations".

It calls for the exchange of intelligence and the prevention of one ASEAN member's territory to plan, finance or facilitate attacks on another.

The wide-ranging blueprint also contains ASEAN's commitment to fight corruption, combat maritime piracy and develop an "early warning system to prevent the occurrence/escalation of conflicts".

ASEAN chair and summit host Thailand is embroiled in a border dispute with fellow ASEAN member Cambodia.

ASEAN members Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and the Philippines have competing claims on the Spratlys island chain in the South China Sea along with China and Taiwan.

AFP

ASEAN agrees measures to ease economic crisis: draft

ASEAN heads of state join hands as they gather on stage for a group photo during the opening ceremony of the 14th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in the Thai resort city of Hua Hin, about 200 km (125 miles) south of Bangkok February 28, 2009. The heads of state are (L-R) Thailand's Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, Myanmar's Prime Minister General Thein Sein, Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah and Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen. REUTERS/Adrees Latif

EasyBourse.com
Saturday February 28th, 2009

(Source : Reuters - Saturday February 28th, 2009 / 19h58)

By Nopporn Wong-Anan

HUA HIN, Thailand (Reuters) - Leaders of Southeast Asian nations have agreed to ease monetary policy and resist protectionism as they fight the financial crisis that is hurting their export-dependent economies, a draft statement showed.

The 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations also vowed to work with the Group of 20 on reforming international financial institutions.

"We agreed that counter-cyclical and more coordinated macroeconomic policies are the best response to this global financial crisis," said the draft chairman's statement to be issued after the summit ends on Sunday.

"Some governments have already implemented fiscal stimulus packages to boost domestic demand and accommodative monetary policy that enable the banking sector to continue their function."

The statement said the leaders were committed "to resist any protectionist measures which would further dampen global trade and slow down the economic recovery" and urged major players in the World Trade Organization to bring about an early conclusion of the Doha round.

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said at the start of the summit on Saturday in Thailand's royal seaside resort of Hua Hin: "We will be severely tested from now on, both as a group and as a part of the broader Asia region. As the financial crisis deepens, the world will look toward our region for action and for confidence."

SLOW GROWTH

ASEAN has moved toward becoming a single community of 570 million people with a combined GDP of $2 trillion in six years, he said. But leaders are worried about rising unemployment.

Some countries are preparing for elections this year or next. Thailand, which has had four prime ministers in the past year, offers lessons to its neighbors about the dangers of festering political rifts in deteriorating economic conditions.

The summit, scheduled for December in Bangkok, was postponed and moved to Hua Hin due to street protests that included the seizure of Bangkok's main airports.

Singapore's prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, said the world could be in for several more years of slow growth unless the banking system at the core of the crisis was fixed.

"I think the U.S. recession will last this year, maybe a bit longer," he told the Bangkok Post in an interview published on Saturday. "But the concern is what happens after the U.S. recession: whether there is a strong recovery or whether in fact the difficulties will take several more years to work out."

ASEAN officials have argued against protectionism in world trade but have defended their own buy-local campaigns by saying they are consistent with trade rules.

ASEAN signed a Free Trade Agreement with New Zealand and Australia on Friday that Australia says will add $48 billion eventually to economies in the region.

CIVIL DIALOGUE

This year's summit theme of "ASEAN Charter for ASEAN Peoples" was meant to introduce a dialogue between the leaders and civil society groups. But it got off to a wobbly start when Cambodia and Myanmar refused to recognize the groups representing their countries.

Exiled Myanmar politician Soe Aung said ASEAN must abandon its tradition of non-interference if such dialogue was to work.

"Until and unless then, this ASEAN human rights body and ASEAN charter will not be effective at all," Soe told reporters.

Abhisit said: "We must take gradual steps and encourage wider participation. This is something new. This is the first time and we will continue to make more progress."

The draft declaration vowed to make a Human Rights Body operational by the end of the year.

A loose informal grouping formed in 1967 under an anti-communist banner at the height of the Vietnam war has now become a legal entity under its landmark charter. But abandoning consensus to become a rules-based group is sorely testing ASEAN's tradition of non-interference.

ASEAN comprises Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Brunei and the Philippines.

(Additional reporting by Nopporn Wong-Anan; Writing by Bill Tarrant; Editing by Janet Lawrence)