'Breaking the Silence' in Cambodia

INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE

Richt Martens / AMRITA Performing Arts

The play is very sympathetic to the perpetrators whose stories it tells, portraying them as victims in their own right. "We don't blame anyone," said Suon. "We want the community to start a dialogue."

Richt Martens / AMRITA Performing Arts
To this end, after each show, Suon or an emissary invited audience members to come forward and tell their stories. After one performance, a man took the microphone. "Those who killed should come and see this show," he said, going on to say that he lived near a man who had killed several members of his family. "Sometimes I try to talk to this man who killed my family," said the speaker. "But he just turns away." Pictured, Pok Sovanna, Kov Sotheary, and Morm Sokly.

Jim Mizerski / AMRITA Performing Arts
Performing concurrently with the Khmer Rouge tribunals, "Breaking the Silence" is an appeal to Cambodians on both sides of the divide to speak up about what happened to them. "We want this to be in the service of the community," the Amrita's program director, Suon Bun Rith said on a recent weekend. Pictured (from left to right) Morm Sokly, Kov Sotheary, Chhon Sina (covered), Pok Sovanna, dancer Khiev Sovannarith, singer Yin Vutha, musician Ieng Sakkona in a scene from the play.

Richt Martens / AMRITA Performing Arts
The audience in this heavily former Khmer Rouge area watched with attention as "Breaking the Silence," the Phnom Penh-based Amrita Performing Arts' new play, proceeded on Sunday night. "Breaking the Silence" is based on oral testimony from Khmer Rouge members and victims who had taken part in interviews at the Documentation Center of Cambodia. Pictured, the singer Yin Vutha leading the actors in a Khmer Rouge children's song.

Richt Martens / AMRITA Performing Arts
Another said, "How did it happen that Khmer killed Khmer?" "You must try," said a third, "To help us think this through." Pictured (clockwise from left), actresses Kov Sotheary, Pok Sovanna, and Morm Sokly rehearsing a scene in which a mother and son reflect on his torture and subsequent betrayal of others during the Khmer Rouge period.

Richt Martens / AMRITA Performing Arts-
In Cambodia's Takeo Province, night fell on a field across from the village pagoda. Women cooked crispy cakes over open fires to sell to the crowd. By the time the lights came on, several hundred villagers had assembled in front of a portable stage. The Cambodian actors, dressed in street clothes, began speaking in Khmer. "So many stories. We have to tell our stories," said one. Pictured, audience members waiting for the performance to begin in Kampong Cham province.

Armed forces pledge mutual understanding and solidarity

(13-03-2009)

HA NOI — The People’s Army of Viet Nam and the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces have pledged to continue their co-operation on training, land border demarcation and marker planting, as well as on other issues of mutual concern, thus contributing to the strengthening of solidarity and mutual understanding between the peoples and armed forces of the two countries.

The pledge was made yesterday while Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Khac Nghien, Chief of the General Staff of the People’s Army of Viet Nam, received General Pol Saroeun, Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, who was on a three-day official visit beginning on Wednesday.

Nghien also spoke highly of his guest’s contributions to the consolidation and nurturing of the fine traditional friendly relations between the two armies and peoples.

Committee meets

The Viet Nam-Cambodia joint committee for land border demarcation and marker planting held its third session in HCM City on March 11 and 12.

The Vietnamese delegation was led by Ho Xuan Son, Deputy Foreign Minister, head of the Foreign Ministry’s National Border Committee and Chairman of the Viet Nam-Cambodia joint committee for land border demarcation and marker planting.

The Cambodian delegation was headed by Va Kim Hong, senior minister and Government advisor in charge of border issues, and Chairman of the Cambodia-Viet Nam joint committee for land border demarcation and marker planting.

The two sides reviewed and assessed the work on Viet Nam-Cambodia land border demarcation and marker planting since 2006 and agreed on measures to implement an overall plan for the 2009-12 period.

The meeting took place in an atmosphere of friendship and co-operation. — VNS

The Rent-A-Country

Albert Moldvay / National Geographic / Getty

TIME

By KRISTA MAHR

Take a moment to consider breakfast, the most important meal of the day. Maybe you grabbed a banana or ate a bowl of granola. Whatever it was, chances are that some — if not all — of your morning meal came from a country you don't live in.

Food isolationism is dead. It collapsed in a messy, public heap last year when oil hit $100-plus per bbl. and the world's crush on biofuels pushed food prices to unprecedented highs. Thirty-six nations needed food aid. Twenty-five imposed export bans or restrictions to keep staple crops like rice and wheat at home. As prices shot up 50%, food riots erupted in Haiti, killing at least five, and eventually brought down the government. (Read about Russia's "recession diet".)

And then something else happened. A few diplomats and business leaders quietly boarded their jets and got to work. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and South Korea — well-off states without enough good land or water to feed their people — started to look outside their borders. "It's economically not viable to grow food in the desert," says David Hallam, deputy director of trade and markets for the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization. "They said, 'If we can't grow our own food, we'll grow it somewhere else.'"

Their words did not fall on deaf ears. In April, diplomatic relations between Cambodia and Qatar were officially established. In May, the Presidents of South Korea and Sudan discussed food cooperation at the launch of the Korea-Arab Society in Seoul. The Saudi Binladin Group penned nonbinding agreements with Indonesia to plant rice on some 1.5 million acres (607,000 hectares) of island paradise, and millions more have reportedly been earmarked, from Pakistan and Kazakhstan to Burma and the Philippines. Alwi Shihab, a special economic adviser on the Middle East to the President of Indonesia, sees this new investment as a boon to the nation's agricultural sector. "We have large, sizable, fertile -land and good water," says Shihab.

Growing crops for strangers, of course, is nothing new. The long, grim march of colonialism was driven by Europe's penchant for sugar, tea, tobacco and other crops that don't flourish in northern climes. But as climate change and growing populations put ever more pressure on the earth, state-backed searches for land and food contracts as part of a national food-security strategy strike many as fundamentally new. "We're talking about a whole different logic," says Renée Vellvé, a researcher for Grain, an organization that has been compiling media reports of these deals. Vellvé's group sees a downside. When farmers in food-insecure countries like Laos and Cambodia are scrambling to feed their children, does it make sense to lease out vast tracts to grow rice for foreign governments? "These are not fallow fields," says Paul Risley, a World Food Program spokesman based in Thailand. "These are villages where families have farmed for centuries."

And for investors, moving into regions where so many depend so fiercely on the land can translate into risk. "You see a backlash," says Rajesh Behal, a principal investment officer for International Finance Corp., which has just put $75 million into an emerging-market agribusiness fund. "People say, 'Who are these people, and how long will they be there?'" In July, South Korea's Daewoo Logistics signed contracts to lease more than 2.2 million acres (900,000 hectares) in Madagascar — more than a third of the island nation's arable land — to grow corn and oil palms. A violent political dispute erupted in the capital soon after, complicating the deal. "Farming is a pretty dirty business," says Behal. "You have to know the nuances and withstand the volatility."

But in countries where governments can't afford — or don't prioritize — significant domestic agricultural investment, foreign money has the power to deliver better roads, irrigation, technology and training. "One thousand times we say yes on private and public agricultural investment, but done in a certain way," says Jean-Philippe Audinet, acting director of the policy division at the U.N.'s International Fund for Agricultural Development. "It's very important not to look negatively at this trend. We have to try to look at the win-win."

After all, is there a choice? Some of these deals are probably doomed to fall under the ax of the global credit crunch, if they haven't already. But for land-poor countries, the underlying problem of relying heavily on imports will remain. Encouraging a new generation of deals to come out of the diplomatic closet may be the best chance we have to make sure that people on both ends of the bargain end up with food on their plate.

—With reporting by Jennifer Veale in Seoul

DIC boosts Cambodian timber harvesting and building materials exports to Cambodia

Voice of the Armed Forces and People

The Ho Chi Minh City based Trade and Investment Joint-Stock Company (DIC) has just held a working session on Cambodian timber harvesting and building materials exports to the Cambodian market with Cambodian business representatives.

And the session DIC announced that it expected to exploit some 50,000 ha of forests in Cambodia and that the exploitation time will last 10 years.

Chief of the Timber Products Section of DIC Nguyen Thanh The said that, in addition to Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos also have long been traditional markets providing timber materials to the company.

Regarding the export of building materials, the officials from the company said that DIC will export some 20,000 tonnes of cement and 300,000 square meters of colored ceramic tiles to Cambodia.

Source: TT

Translated by Thu Nguyen

ASEAN-EU FMs to Cambodia

Phnom Penh, Mar 13 (Prensa Latina) Foreign ministers from the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the European Union (EU) will meet in this capital May 4-6 to analyze the global crisis.

Official Cambodian sources stated that guests from United States, Japan and China are also expected to attend the meeting.

They will analyze a group of measures aimed at boosting cooperation and reducing effects of the current global crisis.

Also on the list is the signing of a treaty of collaboration and friendship between both groups.

The event will take place in Siem Reap, 186 miles north-east of Phnom Penh.

The 10 ASEAN member countries, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Brunei, Singapore, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar keep regular contacts with the EU Commission in the ASEM forum, a process of informal dialogue also extended to Oceania states.

According to an official announcement, the ASEM meeting will be run in Postdam, Germany, on March 16-17, with an agenda focused on labor and social issues. A conference on development will be held in Manila, Philippines April 20-21.

Also included is the Group of 20 Summit, which ASEAN will attend as a guest on April 2, and an expected summit of 16 countries from Asia and Oceania on April 10-12.

In two chapters, ASEAN + 3 (China, Japan and South Korea) and ASEAN + 6, also including India, Australia and New Zealand, regional leaders will also debate economic plans to face the impact of the world financial crisis, in the Thai city of Pattaya.

Killing Fields executioner faces justice

ADREES LATIF/AFP/Getty Images
The former Khmer Rouge prison commander, 66-year-old Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, at his trial before the Extraordinary Chamber in the Courts of Cambodia

The Independent

By Miriama Kamo
Friday, 13 March 2009

He may be the most prolific torturer and executioner the modern world has known. Kaing Guek Eav, otherwise known as Duch, sits behind a wall of bullet-proof glass, headphones on, listening to the court's proceedings. The 66-year-old has a choice of three languages to choose from: Khmer, English and French.

He's a wiry, compact man, expressionless, his silver hair combed tidily to the side.

Today he is wearing small, neat glasses and all the markers of advancing years - his impressively large teeth have degenerated into tombstones, his long face emphasised by the loose skin of his neck pouching into the collar of his light blue shirt.

It's been at least 30 years since Duch committed the last of the many acts which see him here today. He has confessed to atrocities, but insists he was acting under orders.

Upon this trial, the first of five for former Khmer Rouge leaders, lies the hopes of millions that justice might finally be found. But there remain serious doubts whether this can be achieved.

The the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia lies on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, about 25 minutes by taxi.

When my partner Mike, a former refugee laywer, and I first came last July, it took 24 hours to find a driver who knew where the courts were. No one seemed to know anything about the war crimes trials of the Khmer Rouge leadership. But by February this year, as the world's media descended upon Phnom Penh, tuktuk, taxi, and bus drivers were confidently touting for business.

The long, hot drive is distinguished by kilometres of building sites, elaborate mansions soaring from rickety bamboo scaffolding, sprouting between the shacks, dust and roadside waste. Somewhere among the poverty is money; cynics say war crimes trials are big business, as diplomats flood into town.

The court is a military base specially converted to host the trials. The impressively appointed courtroom is ordered and organised. A wall of attack-proof glass separates the court officials from the 500-seat gallery. Security is paramount. Outside, some 50 metres from the courthouse, is a benign cream and yellow villa which houses the cadres who will stand trial.

These five defendants are deemed the most responsible for crimes committed under the Khmer Rouge regime, and have been charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes: Nuon Chea "Brother No. 2", Ieng Sary, "Brother No. 3" and the former Minister for Foreign Affairs, his wife Ieng Thirith the former Minister of Social Affairs, Khieu Samphan, the former President of Democratic Kampuchea, and Kaing Guek Eav.

Missing is Brother Number 1, the infamous Pol Pot, who died in 1998.

Duch is the former commandant of Tuol Sleng (S21), the once-secret, now notorious prison where up to 20,000 lost their lives. Among those killed there was New Zealander Kerry Hamill, brother of Olympic rower Rob Hamill, whose yacht was captured by the Khmer Rouge in 1978.

Now a museum, the walls are lined with photos of hundreds of victims, each one in black and white, most staring blank-eyed into the lens. Tortured and forced to confess to startling offences - being KGB, CIA, or Vietnamese spies - most victims were peasants who were "smashed".

They had their fingernails ripped out, were beaten, raped, electrocuted, suspended, near drowned, then finally murdered at the infamous Killing Fields. This is the legacy of the Khmer Rouge's attempts between 1975-79 to return their people to Year Zero, an agrarian utopia of equality, where "enemies" of the unsparing regime were "re-educated" through slavery, starvation, and torture. Up to two million lost their lives.

Some 20 years after the fall of the regime, Duch was tracked down in the jungles near the Thai border. He was working, ironically, for ARC (the American Refugee Committee).

The irony was all the more perverse for his conversion to Christianity, a faith he at least credits with accepting some responsibility for crimes committed under the Khmer Rouge. Last year Duch was taken back to the Killing Fields by court officials. He sank to his knees, apparently sobbing as he recalled the babies and children who were smashed to death against trees there, allegedly at his command. When Duch's lawyer, Francois Roux, announces his admission of responsibility in court, Duch's composure is broken. He sits upright, his eyes widen, then sinks back.

Speculation has it that he's the first defendant to stand trial because this admission increases the likelihood of a conviction, thereby taking the pressure off the trials of the more senior cadres. Thirty years have now passed since the fall of the regime and the five accused are now elderly, a couple quite ill. There is a real fear that, like Pol Pot, they'll die before justice can be meted out. The theory serves as a pointer to the controversies which have besieged this process.

The ECCC, a joint initiative by the Cambodian Government and the United Nations, has laboured under persistent allegations of corruption and political interference, which last year saw crucial funding frozen.

When we were there court officials were in a flap, crying impending bankruptcy. "If this happens," worried spokesman Sambath Reach, "The court will collapse ... justice will be denied."

Information Minister Khieu Kanarith brushed aside the concerns, declaring the international funding unnecessary - "We can hold the trials ourselves." But whether Cambodia can conduct trials that deliver justice to international standards is highly arguable and unlikely, requiring, as it does, a degree of independence, extensive funds and the ability to employ the raft of lawyers, researchers, officials, and judges needed.

What does Cambodia want?

Khieu Kanarith says the ordinary Cambodian neither knows, nor particularly cares, about the trials. Their significance lies only in "reminding people" of the horrors to avoid a repeat performance.

But for those at the court, like rare Tuol Sleng survivor Vann Nath, the memories are fresh and the trials crucial: "I have waited for this day for 30 years. I want the world to know what happened."

Perhaps some hope might be found in the remarks of Francois Roux at the end of his Duch's initial hearing. "Duch wishes to ask forgiveness from the victims and the Cambodian people. He will do so publicly ..."

From The New Zealand Herald. Miriama Kamo is a journalist with TV2's 20/20 programme

When justice is delayed

International Herald Tribune

By Elizabeth Becker
Published: March 13, 2009

The United Nations seems paralyzed over what to do about the indictment of Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on charges of war crimes by the International Criminal Court. There are warnings of humanitarian crises and dire consequences for Darfur. History suggests, however, that postponing justice could be even worse.

A case in point is Cambodia, where Khmer Rouge leaders are finally being tried 30 years after they were overthrown. (That is the equivalent of waiting until 1975 to try the Nazis.) Cambodia is the classic example of what happens when the international community puts off the hard work of justice in the name of realpolitik.

Trials for Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge leaders were delayed for all the reasons that are being used today for Sudan. A trial would be impractical while war was still raging; a trial would disrupt the peace process; a trial would upset a hard-won equilibrium and reopen old wounds.

Pol Pot and his comrades were among the worst monsters of the 20th century. But they knew how to work the system, especially in defeat.

First, there was no trial in 1979 because a Soviet ally, Vietnam, overthrew the Khmer Rouge. So instead of imprisoning Pol Pot, the United States, China, Western Europe and Southeast Asia got together and underwrote a guerilla coalition, including the Khmer Rouge, to fight Vietnam. That allowed the Khmer Rouge even to retain Cambodia’s seat at United Nations.

In 1992, a UN peacekeeping operation, UNTAC, arrived to separate the warring parties and hold elections.

The UN also decided that a trial would hinder the establishment of peace. The elections were free and fair. Cambodians voted despite threats from the Khmer Rouge an they voted solidly against keeping Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who had become Cambodia’s prime minister under the Vietnamese.

But Hun Sen refused to give up power. Understanding the UN’s preoccupation with stability, his allies threatened a coup and a war against UNTAC. So UN officials allowed Hun Sen to become co-prime minister, a position he made up for himself.

Hun Sen made good on his coup threat anyway and pushed out Prince Norodom Rannaridh, the man who had actually won the election. Hun Sen has been the leader ever since, overseeing a corrupt government with little respect for human rights or the rule of law. And he has had no interest in a serious trial of the Khmer Rouge.

The UN negotiated for nearly 10 frustrating years to arrive at the hybrid tribunal for crimes against humanity — The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodian — slowly getting underway in Cambodia. In the meantime, Pol Pot and some of the seniormost leaders of the Khmer Rouge have died, some murdered.

A new generation of Cambodians has grown up largely ignorant of their country’s history, which is concealed under official propaganda. Many younger Cambodians believe that the Vietnamese or the Chinese are to blame for the killings. They can not imagine Cambodians willfully killing off nearly one-fourth of the population, undermining their country’s society, culture and future in the name of a radical revolution.

The trial was supposed to help remedy that national ignorance. But the UN has had to make critical compromises just to get the Hun Sen government to agree to a tribunal in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capitol, with a mixed set of Cambodian and international jurists, prosecutors and lawyers and staff.

Questions of corruption have already slowed the proceedings, as have restrictions on investigations and procedures that other courts would have never accepted. It is dubious that the tribunal can really set the historical record straight.

Only one conviction is certain. The first defendant, Kaing Guek Eav, known by his alias as Duch, was the junior official who ran the regime’s central torture chamber. He admitted guilt years ago after converting to Christianity.

The next proceeding is supposed to cover four of the most senior living Khmer Rouge officials. They deny their guilt, and their crimes may never be fully investigated.

I have interviewed all the men who led Cambodia through its catastrophic modern history — King Norodom Sihanouk, Lon Nol, Pol Pot and Hun Sen — as well as several senior Khmer Rouge officials. They played different roles at different times with different allies. Not one of them admitted any responsibility for the terrible suffering inflicted on their people.

At the rate things are going, the few Khmer Rouges leaders facing trial, aged and in declining health, will die protesting their innocence. There will be no apology or restitution to Cambodians, today among the poorest and most poorly treated people in the world.

This is what awaits Sudan if charges against President Bashir do not go forward and trials against him and others are postponed.

Elizabeth Becker, a former correspondent for the Washington Post, National Public Radio and The New York Times, is the author of “When the war was over, a history of the Khmer Rouge and Modern Cambodia.”

Proskauer Associate Joins Cambodian War Crimes Legal Team

The American Lawyer

March 13, 2009
Posted by Brian Baxter

Thirty years after the totalitarian Khmer Rouge regime headed by the notorious dictator Pol Pot was forced from power, proceedings in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) have finally begun.

Pol Pot's dream of an agrarian utopia resulted in a genocide that's thought to have claimed the lives of nearly 2 million people--about a third of Cambodia's population.

While Academy Award-winning films would capture the horror of the massacre, it wasn't until Pol Pot's death in 1998 and the eradication of the last vestiges of the Khmer Rouge that Cambodia began the process of bringing former regime figures to justice.

The venue will be the ECCC, which has its roots in a Cambodian government task force formed in 1997, and which under an agreement with the United Nations is now a "hybrid" tribunal consisting of both Cambodian and international judges and lawyers.

Daniella Rudy, a third-year litigation associate with Proskauer Rose in New York, will soon be a part of that international legal team. Rudy leaves in two weeks for Cambodia, where she will work for British barrister Karim Khan in trying a civil case against Kaing Guek Eav, a former Khmer official nicknamed "Duch" who ran the regime's most notorious prison.

We caught up with Rudy to chat about her decision to head to Phnom Penh, the ECCC, and international living.

Hi, Daniella. So, why are you doing this?
I've always been interested in this type of work, having been active in Proskauer's pro bono program and working closely with [international legal counsel] Eric Blinderman, who heads a program here assisting Iraqi refugees. He's always known about my interests--I was a former intern at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague--and when he saw the application [for the ECCC job] he forwarded it to me. I thought it sounded like a fantastic opportunity and the firm's been really supportive and encouraging.

Did you apply through the UN for this position?
No, I actually went through the legal team [in Cambodia]. I'm going to be working with one of the legal teams representing a group of victims who are civil parties to this trial. And they sent out an application through a variety of different means and channels. And through that it got to Eric Blinderman and then it made its way to me. As a team, they made the selection.

The individual going on trial is called "Duch" (pronounced "doik")?
Yeah. Pretrial hearings commenced February 17, which dealt with the procedural aspects of the court, and the actual substantive trial is set to start on March 30. So we're definitely going ahead and it will be quite fascinating to see how it all goes, especially with respect to my case, where the civil parties will have a pretty substantial part in these proceedings.

It's my understanding that Duch has admitted some guilt. Is that correct?
That's right, he has said that he's sorry and not denying what has happened. A large part of this process is certainly seeking justice in a retributive system, but it's also a court that seeks reconciliation. Since this whole country was affected, [reconciliation] is something this whole country is committed too.

(Note: Former American Lawyer colleague Claire Duffett is now a freelance journalist based in Cambodia. You can find a detailed account of the charges against Duch in this piece she penned for The Economist as well as in a Q&A with a former Coudert Brothers patent litigator turned ECCC defense chief, available on Law.com's international page.)

This being a civil case, are you seeking damages from Duch?
There are moral collective damages. The basic structure is based on Cambodian law, which is in turn based on French civil law. In this case parties can join the criminal proceedings as civil parties. So it's not a true civil case as we would know it here, but a hybrid form whereby the civil parties seek moral damages and reparations for what has occurred.

Have you been to Cambodia before?
No I have not. I've been to Thailand but I'm sure [Cambodia] is quite different and unique.

When do you leave?
March 24th and I'll get there on the 25th. With the trial starting five days later, I'll definitely hit the ground running. Hopefully there won't be a delay.

How long do you expect to stay there? Is it just for this trial?
Yes. All of the attorneys out there on this case are working pro bono, including myself, so I'm planning to be there for five months. The trial is expected to last three to four months, give or take, and if possible I'd like to see it through. But it depends on how things go.

I understand that Mr. Khan is British. How about the rest of the trial team?
We've got Alain Werner, who worked as an assistant prosecutor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone on the Charles Taylor case. He's Swiss. Then we've got a fantastic Cambodian attorney named Ty Srinna. And we have Brianne McGonigle, who is a U.S. attorney that will be returning to Holland soon, where she is working at the University of Utrecht. So I'm going to be filling in for her, more or less. All of them have been working extremely hard to this point. We might get two more interns joining, but we're not sure yet.

And what's your status with Proskauer? Are you still on the payroll?
I will be taking a leave of absence but I will still receive a stipend. I plan on returning to the firm in September.

What do you hope to gain from this experience?
I'm looking forward to the hands-on experience since the team is very small, but the responsibilities will be great. And just working on a trial of such significance and being a part of that will help me [as a litigator], especially one that's representing the victim's in this case. I feel privileged to be a part of it.

All interviews are condensed and edited for style and grammar.

Late Cambodian monk's poems detail homeland terror

Samkhann Khoeun, of Lowell, Mass., holds a Khmer language manuscript of poetry by the Buddhist monk Ly Van Aggadipo, that features his photo on the cover, at the Glory Temple, in Lowell, Nov. 20, 2008. Ly Van's internal struggles from his experiences under the Khmer Rouge remained a mystery until some of his followers found a collection of his poetry left behind in his quarters at the temple. Buddhist monks Bo Chhuom, 75, behind left, and Voeun Vann, 35, behind right, look on. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Buddhist Monk Bo Chhuom, 75, of Lowell, Mass., originally of Cambodia, right, looks on as Samkhann Khoeun, hands only at left, examines a Khmer language manuscript in the former living quarters of the Monk Ly Vann, at the Glory Buddhist Temple, in Lowell, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008. VannÕs internal struggles from his experiences under the Khmer Rouge remained a mystery until some of his followers found a collection of his poetry left behind in the temple after his death in January of 2008. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

A portrait of the Buddhist monk Ly Van Aggadipo, center, originally of Cambodia, hangs on a wall in the Glory Buddhist Temple, in Lowell, Mass., Nov. 20, 2008. Ly Van's internal struggles from his experiences under the Khmer Rouge remained a mystery until some of his followers found a collection of his poetry left behind in the temple after his death in January of 2008. Other photos are unidentified. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Samkhann Khoeun, of Lowell, Mass., left, speaks with a reporter as Buddhist Monk Bo Chhuom, also of Lowell, looks on at the Glory Temple, in Lowell, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008. The elderly Buddhist Monk Ly Vann, who lived at the temple until his death in January of 2008, wrote about his internal struggles from his experiences under the Khmer Rouge in poetry that was only recently discovered in his former living quarters at the temple. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Kowith Kret, of North Chelsmford, Mass., and formerly of Cambodia, speaks with a reporter at the Glory Buddhist Temple, in Lowell, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008. The elderly Buddhist Monk Ly Vann, who lived at the temple until his death in January of 2008, wrote about his internal struggles from the Khmer Rouge in poetry that was only recently discovered in his former living quarters at the temple. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

By RUSSELL CONTRERAS

LOWELL, Mass. (AP) — For years, Ly Van Aggadipo served as the spiritual mentor to many Cambodian refugees in this old mill city, guiding followers at the Glory Buddhist Temple through family issues, work problems and recurring nightmares from the horrors of the Khmer Rouge.

But his own internal struggles from the Khmer Rouge remained a mystery, and those who knew him say he rarely spoke of his own story of fleeing war-torn Cambodia.

Then, soon after his death last year, friends found a collection of the monk's poetry tucked under stacks of old Buddhist texts. On worn pages were handwritten, carefully crafted poems describing his memories of witnessing infant executions, starvation at labor camps and dreams of escaping to America.

Now followers are seeking to publish the poetry, even as the discovery of this vivid historical record of the atrocities has reopened for many a painful time they still have not reconciled in their own lives.

"It put us in tears again," said Samkhann Khoeun, 45, who studied under Ly Van. "We couldn't believe it. When I read (the work), it was so vivid. It refreshed the memory."

Everyone knew the basics of Ly Van's life, Khoeun said. "But we didn't know the details and no one ever asked. He was so busy helping us," Khoeun said.

Born in 1917 in a small Cambodian village, Ly Van and his family lived through the Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s, which perpetrated one of the worst mass genocides of the 20th century. An estimated 1.7 million people died from starvation, disease and executions due to the radical policies of the communist group. According to the temple's biography of Ly Van, he was forced to work on agricultural and public projects for 14 hours a day. It was during this time that the monk witnessed mass executions and large-scale starvation.

In early 1979 when Vietnamese soldiers invaded Cambodia, Ly Van and thousands of others fled to Thailand through dangerous terrain and later ended up in Lowell, a community second only to Long Beach, Calif., for the largest number of Cambodian residents living in the United States.

While in Lowell, Ly Van helped establish the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association and was invited to lead the Glory Buddhist Temple in 1988, a position he held until his death in January 2008.

Khoeun and others found the manuscript just days after Ly Van's body was cremated.

In one translated verse, Ly Van writes about how he and other refugees fled to Thailand by traveling through a treacherous mountain range packed with thieves and land mines. It was a well-known trek where Thai soldiers pushed refugees over cliffs at gunpoint while refugees tumbled over each other trying to escape.

"Surrounded by corpses as we walked, slept and ate; an unbearably foul smell/Emanated from the swollen, rotten bodies, most of which were missing limbs and heads."

Ly Van also writes of the conditions of a refugee camp in Thailand where women were constantly raped, men were frequently beaten and families combatted filthy living facilities.

"...we had to sleep on the bare concrete floor, like animals/Dirty water and stench-filled raw sewage floated everywhere/We were swarmed by mosquitoes constantly, resulting in rashes all over our bodies."

Kowith Kret, whose parents were executed during the Khmer Rouge, said it was hard to read the monk's account because it brought back the past. "But it is the fact," said Kret, who also studied under Ly Van. "People have to accept the experience they've been through."

George Chigas, a political science professor at UMass-Lowell who has seen copies of the poems, said the monk wrote in a rare 11-syllable meter style that is more than 1,000 years old in Cambodian literature. "It showed great devotion to cultural tradition and, at the same time, tries to preserve something that had been lost," Chigas said.

That's important, Chigas said, especially since the Khmer Rouge regime burned old texts and killed scores of writers and artists.

He compared Ly Van's writing to Loung Ung's memoir, "First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers," as an act of "trying to put old demons to rest."

Today, an estimated 20,000 Cambodian Americans live in greater Lowell.

So far more than half of Ly Van's poems have been translated from Khmer to English, Khoeun said. Members of the Glory Buddhist Temple are selling a CD of Ly Van's work read in Khmer and expect the rest of the manuscript to be translated by the end of the year. They also are aiming to raise $40,000 to get 5,000 bilingual copies published by April 2010.

So far, two publishers in Cambodia have expressed interest and the group still is searching for a U.S. publisher.

After reading the poems, Khoeun said, he and other refugees have more questions for Ly Van. Questions, such as, when did he have time to write? What was life like in a refugee camp right before coming to America? And how many late relatives of the refugees did Ly Van know?

"He knew my grandfather who died right when I was born. I never asked him about that," Khoeun said. "I guess I always took him for granted."

Around Annapolis: Visit to Cambodia life-changing for Annapolis mom

Diane M. Rey — For The Capital

Suzanne Cary of Annapolis Cove smiles as she displays some of the photographs and mementos from her recent trip to Cambodia, but the journey to help impoverished children brought a wide range of emotion.

The Capital

By DIANE M. REY, For The Capital
Published 03/13/09

Annapolis resident Suzanne Cary suddenly sees her life in a whole new light.

Tasks she once considered mundane, like driving around in the family minivan, doing laundry or waiting in line at the grocery store, now seem extraordinary.

With her chin-length bob and broad smile, the 41-year-old stay-at-home mother of three may look the same as always to friends and neighbors, but inside, she's changed as a result of what she witnessed on a humanitarian trip to Cambodia last month.

Suzanne sat down recently in her spacious and well-appointed home in Annapolis Cove, with pictures and mementos from the experience spread out before her on the dining room table, and tried to sum up her thoughts and feelings about the 10 days she spent in Phnom Penh working with officials from the Cambodian Children's Fund.

"It's hard to communicate the trip to someone who wasn't on it," she said. The 23-hour flight took her not just to a new time zone, but to a different world far outside her normal comfort zone as well.

Her journey actually started more than a year ago.

A yoga devotee, she accepted a challenge by an organization called Off the Mat, Into the World to raise $20,000 by the end of 2008 to qualify to make the trip. Through donations, fundraising and help from the Annapolis yoga community, she exceeded her goal by $3,000 and joined 14 other women in Cambodia from Feb. 6 to 15. All together, the women raised $350,000 to help children living in squalor and to provide clean water for their families.

The Cambodian Children's Fund was founded in 2003 by Scott Neeson, a former Hollywood film industry executive who now devotes himself full-time to the plight of Cambodian children, who are among the most impoverished in the world.

Currently, the organization provides food, shelter, medical care, education and vocational training for 400 children who come from a makeshift village built on top of a garbage pile.

"I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to personally travel to Cambodia and see first-hand where this money is going," Suzanne wrote in a letter to supporters.

The Seva Challenge was led by nationally-known yoga instructor and activist Seane Corn.

The visiting group toured the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, a former high school that became a notorious prison, and viewed the grounds where some of the mass murders took place. Today, the area looks as peaceful as a park; however, teeth, bones and bits of clothing still rise to the surface during heavy rains, Suzanne said.

"We were fortunate to meet with a few of the genocide survivors who shared their stories with us, asking us to never forget. In that moment, it was hard for me to breathe," Suzanne wrote.

The next stop was what the visitors came to see. They donned tall boots to wade through the 11-acre Steung Meanchey garbage dump, where hundreds of families eke out a living by sifting through the loads of trash that arrive each day to find recyclables.

"I will never forget the smell or the faces of the children who were desperately following us looking for help," Suzanne said. "They live in unimaginable circumstances that are beyond words . . . It took all of my strength to continue walking through what felt like a war zone."

The day's events stood out in sharp contrast to the group's elegant accommodations at the historic Raffles Hotel Le Royal in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital city. There they were served sumptuous meals featuring French and local Khmer cuisine. "We drank coconut milk from the coconut," during some of the trip's lighter moments, Suzanne said.

She spent Valentine's Day at the CCF complex, teaching English and yoga to children who had been rescued from the trash heap and showing them how to make valentine cards. The group handed out lollipops, Beanie Babies, and 200 toothbrushes. They also brought new clothes for the children in the center's daycare facility, which generated a lot of excitement, Suzanne said.

The Cary family, including Suzanne, her husband, Miles, and their three children, Austin, 10, Shannon, 7, and Patrick, 4, have decided to sponsor one of the children at the CCF center - an 8-year-old girl named Sam-Oeurn who was born in the local Kampong Cham Province to a farming family with eight children. They could not afford her care, and she moved to the garbage dump with her brother, where she earned 50 to 75 cents a day finding bits of plastic and metal. To make up for the income they lose when the children are in school, the CCF pays their families in rice, Suzanne said.

Now that she's back home, Suzanne also is trying to find retail stores to sell colorful tote bags made in Cambodia from recycled rice and flour bags. The cottage industry raises funds for the CCF and helps young adults ages 18 and up, who fall outside the CCF's regular programs, gain valuable skills.

Amidst it all, Suzanne is trying to reconcile her experiences in Cambodia with the rest of her life.

She said the trip has inspired her to do more in her own community. She'll soon begin teaching yoga at Sarah's House, an emergency shelter located at Fort Meade. The trip also has given her a new outlook, she said, one filled with gratitude and a desire for living more simply.

"I try not to sweat the small stuff," she said.

For more information about the Cambodian Children's Fund, visit their Web site at

www.cambodianchildrensfund.org.

Energy delegation from Cambodia is in New Orleans to study the oil and gas industry

New Orleans Times-Picayune

Posted by The Times-Picayune
March 13, 2009

A delegation from the Cambodian National Petroleum Authority is in New Orleans this weekend meeting with representatives from the local energy industry and preparing for its own foray into oil and gas production.

Oil was discovered off the coast of Cambodia several years ago, but the country has yet to begin active energy production. The purpose of the delegation's two-week trip, which includes stops in Washington, D.C., New Orleans and Houston, is to learn more about the industry Cambodia hopes to break into.

Ho Vichit, vice chairman of the Cambodian petroleum authority, said it's too soon to predict when his country will begin production. Still, he said, "Cambodians are ready to begin oil production."

The development of an energy industry would boost the impoverished Cambodian economy by generating income and encouraging infrastructure development, said Kem Reat Viseth, an advisor to Cambodia's Deputy Prime Minister. It would also stimulate reforms in the country's educational system.

Though the price of oil has declined after hitting all-time highs last year, the delegates said Cambodia remains committed to pursuing energy exploration.

After spending the earlier part of the week in Washington, D.C., the twelve-member delegation arrived in New Orleans on Thursday for a reception at the World Trade Center. The group is spending today at the Morgan City facility of McDermott International, Inc, an energy services company, and leaves for Houston on Monday.

Dog sniffs for tiger droppings in Cambodia

A Bengal tiger in captivity. A dog trained in Russia to sniff for tiger droppings has begun searching for the big cats in a protected area in Cambodia, conservationists said Friday.(AFP/File/Luis Robayo)



PHNOM PENH (AFP) – A dog trained in Russia to sniff for tiger droppings has begun searching for the big cats in a protected area in Cambodia, conservationists said Friday.

The German wire-haired pointer named Maggie last week began to search for signs of tigers in Seima Biodiversity Conservation Area.

"Normally, a dog can smell very far. So we are using the dog to find the presence of the tigers in the area," said Men Soriyun, a project manager for the north-eastern protected area.

Conservationists are uncertain how many of the big cats remain in Cambodia's jungles.

A second dog will be brought from Russia to the protected area later this year, according to conservationists at the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society.

Tigers originally ranged over much of Asia, but are now scattered across parts of south and southeast Asia, with a few populations in the Russian far east and China, according to the group.

It said up to 500,000 tigers likely roamed the Asian continent 200 years ago, but poaching and habitat loss has reduced the population to about 5,000.

In 2006 the group and conservation outfit Panthera, also based in New York, launched a 10-million-dollar initiative called "Tigers Forever."

The use of sniffer dogs is part of the programme, which aims to increase tiger populations by 50 percent in key sites across Asia over ten years.

Unesco Delegation Inspects Border Temple

Olabiyi Babalola Joseph Yai, center, president of executive council of UNESCO, views Cambodia's Preah Vihear temple site.

By Kong Sothanarith, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
13 March 2009

A high-level Unesco delegation traveled to the temple of Preah Vihear Friday morning, in what Cambodian officials called an effort to protect the structure, which has been at the center of a military standoff since July 2008.

The delegation, led by Olabiyi Babalola Joseph Yai, executive counselor for Unesco, was the first visit of its kind since the temple was recognized as a World Heritage site by the UN cultural organization, sparking protests in Bangkok and at the temple that led to the massing of troops from Thailand and Cambodia on the border.

Yai “inspected the real situation at Preah Vihear temple, over the Heritage site, and the flag of World Heritage,” said Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan, who accompanied the delegation.

Yai also examined a damaged statue “affected by the attack of the Thai military” and visited the Keo Sikha Kiri Svara pagoda near the temple, Phay Siphan said

Yai did not comment on the military situation nor visit any military bases, he added, but a group of experts would come later in March to evaluate the development plans for the temple.

Thousands of soldiers remain at the border, despite several rounds of talks between the two countries and skirmishes that have left at least four soldiers dead.

Yai returned to Siem Reap Friday afternoon and is scheduled to remain in Cambodia through March 18. On the remainder of his visit, he will tour the temples of Angkor Wat and Koh Ke temple in Preah Vihear province.

Vietnam, Cambodia Assemblies Forge Ties

By Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
13 March 2009

National Assembly President Heng Samrin on Friday called for stronger economic ties between Cambodia and Vietnam, following talks between the two parliaments.

Vietnam’s National Assembly vice president, Tong Thiphong, met with Heng Samrin and other officials, including Senate President Chea Sim, Prime Minister Hun Sen and King Norodom Sihamoni, on a four-day visit.

“We have exchanged our experiences and opinions focusing on parliament’s role as the people’s representative,” National Assembly First Vice President Nguon Nhil said. “We agreed to strengthen the cooperation between the national assemblies of Cambodia and Vietnam, and we approved mutual support in international fora.”

Nguon Nhil said there remained “success, friendliness, solidarity and good cooperation with our Vietnamese counterpart.”

Meanwhile, Heng Samrin urged from Vietnamese parliamentarians the continued strengthening of investment, tourism and the economy.

Prime Minister Hun Sen signed a trade agreement with Vietnam in 2008 to increase cross-border commerce and Cambodia’s export of beans, corn, palm sugar and cashew nuts.

Trade between the two countries was estimated at $1.7 billion for the first eight months of 2008, up from $1.19 billion for all of 2007. Both countries hope to reach $2 billion by 2010.

Man held over heroin smuggling bid in Cambodia

THE STANDARD

(03-13 18:12)

A Hong Kong man has been arrested at Cambodia's main airport for trying to smuggle more than 800 grams of heroin out of the southeast Asian nation.

Lo Ching-hang, 22, was detained at Phnom Penh International Airport after police carried out a body search and found the drugs strapped around his waist, airport police chief Chhour Kimny said.

The man was trying to board a morning flight to Guangzhou.

If convicted he faces a maximum term of life imprisonment.

Although drug arrests have increased, Cambodia is becoming an increasingly popular trafficking point for methamphetamines and heroin, particularly since neighbouring Thailand toughened its stance against illegal drugs in 2002.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Cambodia's garment workers hit by recession, too

(Elyse Lightman photo)
Outside the Legends factory in Phnom Penh, garment factory workers alight from the motorized cart they ride to work.

Posted by Kenneth Kaplan
March 12, 2009

But for young women supporting families, meager wages are still much sought-after

Elyse Lightman, a former resident of Concord, Mass., is a Trustee and Director of Special Projects for the Harpswell Foundation, which provides educational opportunities for disadvantaged young people in Cambodia. She has been travelling to Cambodia for the past five years from her home in Brooklyn, NY.

Boston Globe

By Elyse Lightman
March 10

PHNOM PENH -- At 5:00 a.m., when Hap Saly and the four other young women with whom she lives wake up, the sky is still dark, and just a few early risers are outside sweeping their steps and cooking rice. The air, usually heavy, is cool and light. The roommates roll up their brightly colored sleeping mats, blankets, and pillows with pink fringe on the edges, and stack them in the corner of the room, raggedy teddy bears on top. Using a plastic cup and a bucket filled with cold water, they take turns washing in the tiny bathroom with the missing doorknob.

Five years ago, Hap Saly, now 25, came to Phnom Penh to work at the Chinese-run Eternal Way garment factory. As a child growing up in Tramung Chrum, a remote village without running water or electricity, sixty miles northwest of Phnom Penh, there was no school for her to attend. She studied Cham -- her ethnic minority’s language -- with her grandfather, the imam, but she never learned how to read or write in Khmer and didn’t learn basic math.

Some of the young women with whom Hap Saly lives left their village after a few years of schooling, some with none, in search of an income. Sen Nary, 20, studied up to grade 3. “My parents are so poor,” she said. “I needed to find a job to support them and to help my younger siblings study.”

While the monthly income for one third of Cambodians is $30, and the average is $50, garment factory workers make at least $55 a month, typically $77 with overtime. Hap Saly used to be able to save as much as $50 per month to send home to her families, but recently, as the prices of food, electricity, water, and rent have increased, that number has plummeted to $10-15.

And yet, even with garment factory workers’ dwindling savings, they would rather stay in Phnom Penh than return home. “It’s a small amount that we can save, but during the growing season we can send it to our parents to support them. If we return to our village, we have no work to do,” said Hap Saly.

Just two months ago, the two-story apartment building where Hap Saly lives was filled with thirty other garment factory workers. Now, Hap Saly and her four roommates are the only ones left on their floor -- everyone else lost their jobs. So they switched rooms, from one side of the building to the other. “The old room was too quiet,” they said. The new one overlooks a dirt road dotted with small houses, and a vacant lot littered with rubble.

(Elyse Lightman photo)

The scene outside the Legends garment factory.

Thirty years after the end of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, when a quarter of the population, including the entire educated class, was killed, Cambodia is just beginning to recover. And so it is especially troubling that the previously robust garment industry -- which provides two-thirds of Cambodia’s export earnings -- is taking a hard hit from the global financial crisis. The Ministry of Commerce said on Tuesday that from January 2008-9, garment export revenue fell from $250 million to $70 million, and the Free Trade Union reported that over 20,000 garment factory workers have already lost their jobs this year, and 10,000 more are in danger of being unemployed as more factories threaten to close.

Garment factory workers’ savings will last them, on average, about one or two months in Phnom Penh. Some young women will return to their villages; some will seek jobs in other factories; some will become beer girls (where women wear outfits promoting beer brands, often going home with their customers at the end of the evening); some will join the sex industry; some will be construction workers -- jobs which are demoralizing, unsafe, or both.

Hap Saly says that when the first young women from her village began leaving to work at garment factories, some villagers looked down upon them and made assumptions about the work they would be doing. But now the girls are valued more because people realize they are able to support their families. Hap Saly says she doesn’t know of anyone from her village who works in the sex trade, but this is an anomaly for Cambodia.

The garment factory women are the breadwinners for their families, and the heaviness of their responsibility is palpable. But they are still animated and youthful. As they prepare to leave for work they peer into tiny hand-held mirrors and comb their long hair. The walls of their room are covered in photos of them at weddings, wearing make up and elaborate outfits, far from their usual pajama sets. Their single possession is a bottle of skin-whitening lotion that costs $0.50; they share it among the five of them.

Most young women who work at the factories don’t know how long they will stay in Phnom Penh: until they lose their job or get sick and need to leave. One garment worker who returned to her village told me she would follow in her ancestors’ footsteps, cooking, cleaning, marrying, and raising children. With a wistful look on her face she said, “everything is over.”

(Elyse Lightman photo)

Hap Saly, 25, who has worked in Phnom Penh's garment industry for five years.

Hap Saly gathers her uniform -- a yellow vest that says “Legends, Ltd.” on the sleeve, and an ID card. Referring to Eternal Way, the factory where she used to work, she claps her hands together, as if shutting the pages of a book: “Closed.” As a Cham Muslim, she usually wears a krama around her head, but, at least for now, she replaces it with the signature pink scarf of the garment workers.

Possessing a refreshing amount of ambition and hope, a quality hard to find in many of these young women with limited opportunities, Hap Saly confided in me that her dream is to learn how to sew and to set up a small shop in her village, perhaps training other girls in the skill.

For information about the Harpswell Foundation, please visit their website, at www.HarpswellFoundation.org. To learn how you can contribute to the Passport blog, contact the Globe's assistant foreign editor, Kenneth Kaplan, at k_kaplan@globe.com.

The Globe's Alan Taylor showcased a series of evocative -- and occasionally harrowing -- photographs from Cambodia last week on his blog, The Big Picture. Here's the link:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/cambodia_and_its_war_tribunal.html

Vietnamese investment in Cambodia down by 85 pct in 2008

PHNOM PENH, Mar. 13, 2009 (Xinhua News Agency) -- The Vietnamese investment in Cambodia fell sharply by some 85 percent in 2008 over 2007, the Chinese-language daily newspaper the Commercial News reported on Friday.

The Vietnamese investment approved by Cambodia stood at 21 million U.S. dollars in 2008, over 139 million U.S. dollars in 2007, according to the annual report issued by the Cambodian Investment Board (CIB).

2007 was a big year for Vietnamese investors because they opened a giant telecommunication project in the kingdom, the Viettel, the paper quoted CIB officials as saying.

The Vietnamese investment focused on the agricultural and telecommunication sectors, said the officials, adding that they have opened over 100 companies in Cambodia.

China, South Korea and the United States are listed as the top three investing countries in Cambodia, which have poured 6.3 billion U.S. dollars into the kingdom, according to CIB.

(Source: iStockAnalyst )

Diversify economy, says PM

Photo by: HENG CHIVOAN
Prime Minister Hun Sen called for economic diversification Thursday at the 2009 Outlook Conference at the Phnom Penh Hotel.

The Phnom Penh Post

Written by Kay Kimsong
Friday, 13 March 2009

Hun Sen calls for end to reliance on struggling export markets

WITH some analysts expecting Cambodia's economy to contract for the first time in recent memory, Prime Minister Hun Sen urged the private sector Thursday to diversify beyond traditional export markets and announced more government help for crisis-stricken families.

"We have a large pool of talented people available to help Cambodia - they are from the government, development partners, and research and policy institutes," he said, speaking in front of more than 100 representatives from the government, the private sector and international development agencies gathered at the 2009 Outlook Conference at the Phnom Penh Hotel.

He said the government would make more funding available to unemployed urban workers looking to relocate to the countryside. He also announced further support for small and medium-sized enterprises in rural areas.

"We owe it to these vulnerable groups to ensure that our responses to the crisis meet their needs through sustained economic activity and access to employment and livelihoods, and the development of social safety nets ... through mechanisms such as food relief and cash transfers," he said.

Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh said he believed the crisis would soon come to an end, but he pressed the private sector to diversify and expand into sectors other than tourism and agriculture.

He said that the crisis had led to 5 percent drop in Cambodian exports and the loss of 51,000 jobs. He also said that the value of exports had dropped 50 percent since January 2009.

But he added that some sectors, including tourism were still putting in strong performances.

"Tourism used to grow 20 to 25 percent a year, but now it is growing by about five percent. That is still a good rate of growth," he said.

But Tith Chantha, director general at the Ministry of Tourism, said he expects the tourism sector to decline further. According to ministry figures, 218,691 tourists visited Cambodia in January, down 2 percent compared with 2008.

The ministry is predicting that tourist arrivals will stay flat or decline as much as three percent, Tith Chantha said. He added that a 3 percent drop in tourist arrivals could cost Cambodia US$50 million and 10,000 jobs. Each job in the tourism sector, he said, supports three people living in the provinces. Last week the International Monetary Fund predicted that the economy would contract 0.5 percent this year.

Heng Pov sentenced to 16 years

The Phnom Penh Post

Written by Chrann Chamroeun
Friday, 13 March 2009

But defence raises questions about prosecution evidence

PHNOM Penh Municipal Court sentenced former Phnom Penh police chief Heng Pov to 16 years in prison during a hearing Thursday after finding him and five other suspects guilty of the attempted murder of Military Police Commander Sao Sokha in 2003.

Judge Iv Kimsry also sentenced suspects Ly Rasy, Hang Vutha, Am Samkheng and Prum Sophearidth to 15-year terms each for their part in the attempted murder, while Hang Vuthy, a former policeman who is still on the run, also received a sentence of 15 years.

Heng Pov, who is already serving 58 years in prison for a variety of murder, extortion and kidnapping convictions, was not present for the verdict.

But the latest conviction comes amid claims the prosecution's case was based purely on an anonymous letter linking them to the attempt on Sao Sokha's life.

"It's strange for the court to convict Heng Pov based only on an anonymous letter without enough proof or evidence for the charge," Heng Pov's lawyer Kav Soupha said Thursday, adding that he would appeal the case.

"Although the court's conviction of Heng Pov is wrong and filled with injustice, I will still appeal the verdict in case it gets a sympathetic hearing from a higher court." The other four men present at the hearing said they would also appeal the verdicts.

One court official, who declined to be named, also cast doubt on the final verdicts.

"It is very funny for Judge Iv Kimsry to sentence Heng Pov to 16 years based only on an unidentified letter, sent to Sao Sokha, that pointed out the above men for attempting to kill him," he said.

"So if an unidentified letter happens to come to Phnom Penh Municipal Chief Judge Chev Keng or Judge Iv Kimsry alleging their plan to kill top leaders, what will [they] do?"

Long Dara, defence lawyer for Hang Vutha and Am Samkheng, also said the case was "unjust" and the letter should not be considered credible evidence in a court of law. "I will advise my clients to appeal the rulings soon," he said.

National Military Police Chief Sao Sokha said he had no comment, except to thank the court for "seeking justice according to the law".

Gov't silent on payouts to gambling industry

The Phnom Penh Post

Written by Chhay Channyda and Brendan Brady
Friday, 13 March 2009

FOLLOWING last month's state-imposed ban on licensed gambling establishments in the Kingdom, the government has remained tight-lipped over its handling of compensation requests from the companies it forced to close.

Cambo Six sent a letter to the Ministry of Finance last week requesting compensation for lost infrastructure investments, according to the sports betting company's head office manager, Nancy Chau. Sporting Live Group followed suit Wednesday, according to a former employee.

Mey Vann, director of the Financial Industry Department, the ministry office most directly involved with the issue, said Thursday he had not received any petitions. He would only say his office was "not thinking about compensation until complaints are received." However, a day earlier, Chea Peng Chheang, a secretary of state at the ministry, said the government was in negotiations with former gambling companies but did not say whether compensation had been offered or which companies would be eligible.

Meanwhile, Oum Mean, a secretary of state at the Labour Ministry, said there were no plans in place to provide compensation to workers laid off by the ban.

The Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission Wednesday called on the government to bear the brunt of the costs to companies and workers caused by its decision.

Chea Mony, president of the Free Trade Union, which did not represent any of the laid-off workers, said the government was wrong to implement the move so abruptly that thousands of people were put out of work with only a day's notice.

Less gambling, fewer papers

Photo by: SOVANN PHILONG
A man reads one of the Kingdom's many sporting papers, which say they are suffering from a recent gambling ban.

The Phnom Penh Post

Written by Khuon Leakhana and mom kunthear
Friday, 13 March 2009

Vendors say sales of sports newspapers are down and that some have ceased printing altogether following recent gambling bans .

LOCAL newspaper vendors say they have seen a dropoff in sales in the wake of last month's gambling ban, with fewer customers showing an interest in publications dedicated to local and international sports.

"I used to sell 20 sports newspapers per day, but now no one comes to buy them. I couldn't even give them away," said You Leakhena, 40, who sells newspapers near Wat Phnom.

Although she agreed with Prime Minister Hun Sen's February 24 order that all the Kingdom's sports-betting outlets and slot-machine parlours cease operations, she said it was having a significant effect on her bottom line.

"It is good for our society, but it really impacts my business," she told the Post.

"I am worried about losing more customers."

Ny Srey, 25, a newspaper seller working near the Independence Monument, said that she had not even received sports newspapers since last week.

"I think they stopped printing because they are afraid of government
complaints that maybe their news is making more people gamble," she said.

"I regret it because I sold well with this newspaper."

While relaxing with friends in a cafe on Norodom Boulevard, Ly Sopheak, 22, said he spent 2,000 riels (US$0.48) a week on a local sports rag in order to keep track of the sport news prior to placing bets.

But he said that sports newspapers were now "useless" tohim now that the gambling ban was in force, and that he didn't have enough interest to read them otherwise.

"Not only newspaper sellers will lose income. I will also lose because I usually won a lot of money from football betting," he said.

"I could win $100 to $150 per month, although sometimes I also lost."

One source involved with a sports newspaper, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that printing had been stopped "temporarily" due to the sudden disappearance of sport-hungry punters.

"We have seen our readership decrease following the government order to close all games and sports betting," the source said, but added that printing could recommence soon if business again became profitable.

But Minister of Information Khieu Kanharith said Thursday that the closure of sports newspapers was a rumour, confirming that "no newspaper companies" had yet stopped printing.

"I don't believe that when the gambling was banned newspaper sellers lost customers," Khieu Kanharith said.

"I don't know why it should impact newspaper sellers when the government closes Cambo Six or slot machines."

He added that the Ministry of Information would provide advance notice before the closure of any local newspaper or magazine.

Siem Reap kidnapping spurs ban on sales of toy guns

Photo by: SOVAN PHILONG
Toy guns, freely available in city markets, have been banned by authorities.

The Phnom Penh Post

Written by May Titthara
Friday, 13 March 2009

Officials cite increased use of plastic guns in ‘armed' robberies

CITY authorities have banned the sale of plastic guns in markets following the kidnap and ransom of a senior military officer's teenage daughter in Siem Reap last week, according to police.

Has Phearum, Phnom Penh's public order police chief, said the suspects in the Siem Reap case had used plastic guns to carry out the kidnapping, as had the perpetrators of other recent crimes.

"We are strictly enforcing this ban and will punish those vendors if they don't listen to us," he said.

"In the past Phnom Penh has suffered from crimes involving plastic guns, so we must ensure this doesn't happen again."

Ky Phally, a police officer who controls security around the Olympic Market, said police had confiscated more than 400 plastic guns at eight markets and deposited them at the city's central police station.

Vendors were not amused. Chhay Leang, who has a stall at the Olympic Market, doubted it would make any difference to national security. She said the confiscation of her stock, which she imported from Vietnam, had cost her money.

"These guns have no power and can't kill people. The authorities should crack down on the black market that sells real guns," she said. "These guns are just toys for kids."

The city's police chief, Touch Naruth, insisted that plastic guns could be mistaken for genuine weapons, particularly at night, and said some robbers had taken advantage of that.

"We have collected 436 plastic guns, and on March 17 we will celebrate this by burning all of them at a party," he said.

"As for the vendors, those who don't listen to us will first be brought to our office, but eventually we will send them to court."

The city experienced a drop in crime using real guns in 2008, with officials reporting 128 cases of armed robbery compared to 175 in 2007.

Victims were shot in 42 armed robberies last year, of which 12 died and 41 were injured. In 2007, 23 victims died and 63 were injured in 75 violent armed robberies.

Vietnam rights review neglects Khmer Krom

The Phnom Penh Post

Written by Georgia Wilkins
Friday, 13 March 2009

A UN study makes no mention of the group

DESPITE promises earlier in the year that the widespread rights abuse of Khmer Krom minorities in Vietnam would be put on the UN's agenda, a periodic review of the country has excluded any mention of the persecuted ethnic group.

In a document dated February 23 and recently posted on the UN Human Rights Council's website, nongovernmental groups assessing Vietnam's human rights record made mention of its treatment of minorities, including the ethnic Buddhist group, numerous times.

However in a summary prepared by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights based on these comments, the group wasn't mentioned at all.

"For centuries and specifically since June 1949, the Vietnamese government instituted practices and policies to discriminate against Khmer Krom people and decrease the possibility for Khmer Krom to exercise the right to self-determination," the development community report noted.

"Through every phase of the occupation, Khmer Krom people resisted to perpetuate their culture, language and continued existence as a collective identity," it added.

The report included the abuses of the group's right to education and health, citing the fact that the government has ignored reports that approximately 3,000 Khmer Krom have been affected by an epidemic of blindness.

Meeting raises hopes
In meetings with the UN's special rapporteur on human rights defenders, Margaret Sekaggya, and the UN refugee office in Bangkok last month, Ang Chanrith, executive director of the Phnom Penh-based Khmer Kampuchea Krom Human Rights Organisation, was told the international body would call on Vietnamese officials to defend charges against its treatment of Khmer Krom and Montagnard hill tribes, as well as other indigenous groups.

The news renewed hope for Khmer Krom activists, amid a fresh stream of criticism against its government's treatment of ethnic groups living within its borders.

The review, completed for each UN member state every four years, will be subjected to public scrutiny at a working group in Geneva on May 4.

Hotel Renakse saved

The Phnom Penh Post

Written by May Titthara
Friday, 13 March 2009

THE Phnom Penh Municipal Court ruled Thursday that the French colonial-era Hotel Renakse should not be demolished, siding with the hotel's former manager, who has been ensnared in a legal tussle with government officials over the fate of the building for more than two months.

Kem Chantha, who managed the hotel for nearly two decades, was barred from its premises on January 6 by police and officials wielding a court order stating that the hotel had fallen into an unacceptable state of disrepair. She filed a case to save the hotel from demolition, and the Cambodian People's Party filed a case arguing that her lease on the building should be revoked because she had failed to adequately maintain it.

Ignoring court summonses, Kem Chantha decided not to show up for hearings in both cases last month. She said Thursday that she planned to ask the Court of Appeal to reinstate her as manager.

But Ke Sakhorn, deputy director of the Municipal Court, said it had not made any ruling regarding Kem Chantha's lease. He confirmed that the court had ruled to prevent the building's demolition.

Crisis threatens poverty reduction

Photo by: ROBBIE COREY-BOULET
Chen Naren, evicted from Phnom Penh's Sambok Chap community, at the Andong relocation site.

A four-part look at cambodia's mdgs
Last year marked the midway point for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, benchmarks for developing countries established in 2000 that cover everything from poverty to environmental sustainability. Last year also marked the five-year anniversary of the adoption of Cambodia's Millennium Development Goals, the localised versions of the global goals. In a four-part series, the Post looks at the progress made and the challenges that remain in achieving targets set for 2010 and 2015, drawing on government data as well as interviews with officials, NGO workers and Cambodians who stand to benefit from the effort. Part Four focuses on MDG No 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

The Phnom Penh Post

Written by Robbie Corey-Boulet
Friday, 13 March 2009

Efforts to halve poverty by 2015, one of Cambodia's nine Millennium Development Goals, could by stymied by low or negative economic growth and a lack of rural resources.

CHEN Naren, 36, knew the morning she was evicted from the riverfront Sambok Chap community that her days hawking sugarcane juice on Sisowath Quay were over.

Along with 1,600 other families, she and her husband and children were moved in June 2006 to a relocation site in Andong in one of several recent mass evictions that have separated poor city dwellers from the jobs that sustained them.

The cost of getting from Andong, 20 kilometres outside central Phnom Penh, to Sisowath and back would have all but erased the US$5 profit Chen Naren earned each day, she said.

So, after moving her family into a shack of bamboo, tarpaulin and palm leaf that lacked electricity, water and any means of sewage disposal, she set out to find new work.

For awhile, she earned 7,000 riel ($1.70) per day planting rice in nearby fields. "But it wasn't regular," she said in an interview. "Each week I would work for a few days only."

Only through the NGO Friends International did she manage, after six months, to find a steady job. For the past two years, she has earned $20 per week making beads from scraps of cigarette cartons and stringing them into necklaces, which Friends sells in local stores and abroad.

As she sat in her shack Tuesday rolling scraps into beads, the Prey Veng province native reflected on the evolution of her once-unstable circumstances.

When she sold sugarcane, she said, her workday began at 8am and ended at midnight. "Now, I have time to take care of my children," she said, as her two-year-old son, Khorn Sreyly, stricken with an undiagnosed illness and lying in her lap, stirred in his sleep.

Though things have improved, Chen Naren still lives without a safety net. Her husband divorced her shortly after the eviction, leaving her to raise their two sons and three daughters. Having sold the small piece of land she owned in Prey Veng to pay for her husband's malaria treatment, she has no provincial home to return to should she need to relocate again.

She said she also has no long-term job plans and wants to stay with Friends as long as she can.

Hoy Leanghoin, a Friends project manager who regularly visits Andong, said he would like to see more independence on the part of the workers Friends trains there. Even those who can now make necklaces and handbags on their own are dependent on the NGO, he said, as they would have no idea how to market their goods without its help.

This, he said, is symptomatic of one factor that perpetuates the Kingdom's cycle of poverty: the lack of business training available to the poor, particularly in rural provinces, from where he estimated 30 percent of Andong's residents originally came.

The poverty MDG
Combating poverty in the provinces is at the heart of Cambodia's effort to achieve Millennium Development Goal No 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

On the strength of rapid economic growth, Cambodia reduced the proportion of people living below the national poverty line from an estimated 45 to 50 percent in 1994 to 34.7 percent in 2004, according to the Ministry of Planning's 2005 assessment of MDG progress. Though higher than the 2005 interim target of 31 percent, the Ministry of Planning termed the 2004 statistic "commendable". By 2007, the rate had fallen further, to 30 percent, according to that year's Cambodian Socio-Economic Survey (CSES).

"This is quite an achievement," said Tim Conway, senior poverty specialist at the World Bank's Cambodia Country Office. "It means that some 650,000 people escaped poverty between 2004 and 2007."

In recent interviews, though, experts emphasised that poverty reduction largely has been limited to urban and accessible rural areas, excluding whole sections of the population and contributing to the nation's growing income inequality, which is high for the region.

Moreover, they said, the economic crisis casts serious doubt on whether poverty will fall fast enough for Cambodia to meet its 2015 MDG target of 19.5 percent, which some considered ambitious even when high growth seemed inevitable.

In 2006, for instance, the World Bank concluded that Cambodia would not meet the goal even with a 7 percent growth rate unless sectoral growth patterns changed.

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IF THE CRISIS PASSES RELATIVELY SOON ... THEN IT MIGHT BE FEASIBLE TO HIT THE POVERTY TARGET.
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Since then, growth projections have plummeted, with the International Monetary Fund predicting last week a 0.5 percent contraction in 2009 and warning that the actual contraction could be even more severe.

As a result, "we don't know what will happen" about the poverty rate, said Poch Sovandy, a Ministry of Planning official who tracks poverty statistics.

Rural poverty
Regardless of the economy, Conway said, poverty reduction efforts should target remote rural areas, where the poverty rate stood at 45.6 percent in 2005, according to the Ministry of Planning assessment.

Citing the high rural poverty rate as one of the chief shortfalls of the entire MDG effort, the ministry reported that more than 90 percent of the Kingdom's poor lived in rural areas. By 2007, according to the CSES, the concentration of the poor had been exacerbated.

Wisal Hin, assistant country director and poverty reduction unit leader for the United Nations Development Program, said the Kingdom's greatest challenge going forward "lies in equitably sharing the benefits of economic growth, centred mainly in urban areas, with those rural communities".

Conway called for rural poverty-reduction efforts that would increase the agricultural productivity of small landholders and reduce their vulnerability to the vagaries of the weather.

He also stressed the need for policies that would clarify land ownership and protect land titles held by the poor, echoing a point made by every expert interviewed for this article.

Chhith Sam Ath, executive director of the NGO Forum, said the rising number of economic land concessions in rural areas in recent years posed a grave threat to security of tenure.

Karin Schelzig Bloom, a social sector specialist for the Asian Development Bank, described land as "a key determinant of access to economic opportunities and livelihood" for the poor.

Like Chen Naren, many of the residents in Andong originally came to Phnom Penh because they did not have land in the provinces on which to eke out a living, Hoy Leanghoin said.

An urban issue, too
A large part of Phnom Penh's appeal, notes the most recent Cambodia Human Development Report provided by the Ministry of Planning, stems from the fact that it has benefited from a high rate of public and private investment.

The report - which calls for "a substantial increase" in funding for rural irrigation, electricity and roads projects - argues that much of the Kingdom's recent growth "has been urban-based and narrowly focused on surging garment exports that may be vulnerable, record levels of tourism and a boom in the construction industry".

But to view the capital as strictly wealthy and the provinces as strictly impoverished, said Friends Executive Director Sebastien Marot, is to overlook the plight of the urban poor.

While the CSES found Phnom Penh's poverty rate to be less than one percent, Marot said poor city dwellers often face greater risks than their rural counterparts, citing the higher prevalence of drugs, HIV/Aids and violent crime in the capital.

Nevertheless, he said, "an increasing number of children" from the provinces, many inspired by mass media depictions of "wealthy families with beautiful homes and cars", have opted to move to the capital in recent years without fully thinking through how they would survive once they arrived.

The effect of the crisis
Looking ahead, Conway said the global economic slowdown posed the biggest challenge to meeting the poverty MDG. Continuing improvements to aid effectiveness - a component of MDG No 8: Develop a global partnership for development - could in part mitigate the effects of the slowdown on poverty reduction, he said, though he added that analysts were not yet able to project what those effects might be.

"What we don't have yet is national figures to tell us whether the poverty headcount is falling but at a slower pace, whether poverty levels are now stagnant, or whether in fact poverty has started to rise again," he said.

As analysts wait on the results of the 2008 national household survey, which Conway said would provide "a better picture" of recent trends, anecdotal evidence suggests a potentially grim outlook. Dennis Barbian, a business adviser for Friends, said international orders for the NGO's products were down. But he said he believed this was "not a real result" of the slowdown.

"I think it is a fear of the crisis," he said. "I think it will go up again and that orders will increase."

Marot said the effects of the crisis had not been severe enough to cause migrants to leave the city, even those who had been laid off.

"They are staying and trying to find jobs - often risky jobs," he said, citing as examples jobs in beer halls and karaoke bars.

Conway, however, found some cause for optimism, saying that the initial effects of the crisis could spur the government into adopting more effective policies designed to help the poor.

"If the crisis passes relatively soon rather than settling in for several years, and if Cambodia then manages to restore rapid growth and ensure that the poor benefit from this growth," he said, "then it might be feasible to hit the poverty target".

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY MOM KUNTHEAR