Thais hand over ‘terrorists’

Khmer Krom Buddhist monk Thach Kuong (centre) leaves
the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Saturday.
Kuong and five others have been charged with
creating an armed terrorist organisation.
Photograph: Heng Chivoan/Phnom Penh Post

Mar 18, 2013
Phnom Penh Post

Six Khmer Krom men, including three Buddhist monks, were charged by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Saturday with creating an armed terrorist organisation.

The charges came two days after Thai authorities arrested the men — who had been seeking political asylum in Thailand — and sent them to Cambodia.

Chea Vuthy, an internal sec-urity officer at the Ministry of Interior, said the six had been charged with forming a terr-orist group and unlawfully raising an armed force. 

“These six men were members of an illegal armed movement called the Khmer Nat-ional Liberation Front,” Vuthy told the Post yesterday.

“They were arrested by Cambodian internal secur-ity police in collaboration with Thai police in Thailand’s Nonthaburi province.”

The men — Yorn Kimsrun, 27, Yorn Yoeub, 25, Thach Kuong, 37, all monks, and laymen Khem Ma, 28, Yin Yav, 34, and Thach Toeu, 35, were arrested on Thursday and handed to Cambodian police on Friday. Their arrest follows the arrest of two others charged last week with the same crime.

If found guilty, they could face 15 to 30 years in prison.

National Police spokesman Kirth Chantharith said warr-ants had been issued for the group’s arrest last year after they allegedly distributed   anti-government leaflets. In the material, the group had written about forming an armed movement aimed at toppling the Cambodian government, Chantharith said.

All six are members of a Denmark-based dissident group, the Khmer National Liberation Front.

Its president, Sam Serey,  wrote in an open letter that the men had been seeking asylum with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

“They are asylum-seekers in Thailand,” Serey wrote in an email. “[We] would like to reject all the government’s allegation[s] . . . My members are arrested because they are members of the Khmer Nat-ional Liberation Front.”

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY ABBY SEIFF

'Big rice' killing Khmer wetlands

 Mar 18, 2013

Bangkak Post

Around half of Cambodia's tropical flooded grasslands have been lost in just 10 years, mostly to new rice farms by new agrobusiness ventures, according to research published on Monday.

The sarus crane is one of 11 globally threatened bird species native to Cambodia's northwest grasslands, and threatened by massive commercial land grabs. This photo by Dr Charlotte Packman was released as part of a report by the University of East Anglia.

Scientists from England's University of East Anglia said big companies have swept into the region, blocked off local communities, and set up commercial rice farms.

"The loss of this entire ecosystem from Southeast Asia is imminent," they said bluntly.

Researchers around the Tonle Sap great lake in northwestern Cambodia called the loss "catastrophic". The area is a wildlife centre of biodiversity and, equally, "a vital fishing, grazing, and traditional rice farming resource for around 1.1 million people," the researchers said.

The research was summarised on Monday in a media release by UEA.

"Intensive commercial rice production by private companies, involving the construction of huge channels and reservoirs for irrigation, is denying local communities access to the grasslands on which their livelihoods depend and destroying a very important habitat for threatened wildlife," said the UEA researchers.

"This high-speed conversion and land-grabbing has intensified pressure on already threatened species and on the marginalised rural communities that depend on the grassland ecosystem."

The land grab by "big rice" threatens numerous bird species found in the grasslands area. Among them are sarus cranes, storks, ibises and eagles - and the critically endangered Bengal florican, the world's rarest bustard.

UNTAC Legacy Questioned Ahead of Election

 By Lauren Crothers - March 15, 2013
The Cambodia Daily

Cambodia’s fifth national election in July is likely to be the least fair in the 20 years since the U.N. organized the historic 1993 elections, which were designed to usher in a multiparty democracy after years of communist rule and civil war, the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (Comfrel) said on Wednesday.
“This is the start of the least fair elections,” Comfrel executive director Koul Panha said.

“If you compare it to 2008 or 2003 or during UNTAC time, UNTAC time was much better in terms of fairness; much, much better than this,” Mr. Panha said, referring to the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia, which administered Cambodia from 1992 to 1993.

“Now, everything is controlled by the ruling party in terms of mil­itary, police, media—that’s a concern—and the new problem is the leader of the opposition not being able to participate in these elections,” he said.
“And also going into the future, we don’t know what will happen over the next coming five years.”

According to its annual report titled Democracy, Elections and Reform in Cambodia, which Comfrel released on Monday, democratic reform deteriorated so much over the past year that “Cambodia’s political system is in an increasingly fragile state of democracy.”

The political playing field continues to be far from level, and the government’s National Election Committee (NEC) continues to reject the majority of recommendations put to it by independent election monitoring groups, Comfrel said.

This was not what was envisioned 20 years ago when, in May 1993, as decided in the Paris Peace Agreements, the U.N. invested billions to disarm Cambodia’s warring political factions, re­patriate some 300,000 Cambodian refugees from Thai border camps and organize the country’s first national elections in decades.

To a large extent, UNTAC did all three. But the electoral climate two decades on falls far short of what was hoped for in 1993 in terms of a vibrant, participatory democracy.

“It doesn’t show a multiparty system,” Mr. Panha said of the current political landscape. “It should be about the substantial engagement of [lawmakers]…. It’s about how the parties play a role in politics and how they influence decision making.”

Independent political analyst Lao Mong Hay said the legacy of UNTAC was a series of missed opportunities that saw Cambodia segue from communism to neopatrimonialism, where a ruling elite uses state resources to build loyalty and solidify its own economic and political powerbase.

“With regard to the UNTAC legacy, the thing is that all the Cambodians who are elite themselves and the donors, however generous they are, they missed out on what to do to rebuild Cambodian society to build a pluralistic democratic liberal system,” he said.

Despite the ruling CPP’s “systematic control of the system,” how­ever, Mr. Mong Hay said that there is a growing grassroots understanding of the situation.

“I’m more positive in the sense that more and more Cambodians have realized there are more injustices and nepotism is wide and many don’t like it,” he said.

“I think more people have taken action. There is awareness and perhaps we would see that in votes.”
CPP lawmaker Cheam Yeap said claims the forthcoming July election would not be fair were simply the excuses of parties who had no chance of winning against Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ruling party, which has dominated Cambodian politics in one form or another since 1993.

“It is a losers’ culture,” Mr. Yeap said of the pessimistic comparisons between the 1993 and 2013 elections.
“If there are two or more political parties, that is called multiparty. Other political parties should work hard. We work hard, and you should work hard too,” he advised the country’s opposition.

NEC Secretary-General Tep Nytha also denied that the forthcoming national elections would be unfair, noting that international observers had given their stamp of approval to previous ballots.

“This is just an opinion of an individual or a group of people,” Mr. Nytha said.

“We always have national and international observers during each election. And most of them think that the elections have gone very well. Violence has decreased. And this contributes to the process of building democracy and the nation.”

In October, the European Union issued a resolution urging “the Cambodian Government, the National Election Committee and the provincial election committees to implement the recent U.N. recommendations on re­forming the electoral system to ensure it conforms with international standards before, during and after the casting of votes.”

The U.N. recommendations cited were made by the world body’s special envoy to Cambodia, Surya Subedi, in a report released in August 2012.

“There are major flaws in the administration of elections in Cam­bodia and urgent and longer-term reforms are needed to give Cambodians confidence in the electoral process and in the workings of the National Election Committee,” Mr. Subedi stated in that report.

Myanmar affirms commitment to achieve ACMECS objectives

Souce:Xinhua Publish By Jane B. Hatcher Updated 15/03/2013
By Feng Yingqiu

YANGON, March 15 — Myanmar has affirmed its commitment to join hands with fellow members of the Ayeyawaddy- Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy (c) to realize the action plans of the grouping.

It was pledged by Myanmar Vice President Sai Mauk Kham at the 5th summit of the ACMECS in Vientiane, Laos which ended on Wednesday.

The five-member ACMECS countries comprise Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
There are eight sectors that ACMECS is cooperating, namely trade and investment, agriculture, industry and energy, transportation, tourist, human resources development, public health and environmental conservation.
The 5th ACMECS summit adopted the Vientiane Declaration and ACMECS action plan for 2013-15 and approved Myanmar as the next venue for holding the next summit which Myanmar assured of taking concrete step for its successful holding.

Participants vowed to double the efforts of member countries individually and collectively for the sake of ACMECS nations and their people.

The Vientiane summit reviewed cooperation process among the five ACMECS countries approved at the previous summit and the regional leaders reaffirmed their commitment to implementing the targets of the 2003 Bagan Declaration for the sake of good neighborliness, peace, stability and sustainable development in the region.

The summit also reviewed the implementation of the Phnom Penh Declaration in November 2010 and the 2010-12 action plans.

A dialogue between ACMECS leaders and business sector also took place in Vientiane touching on future work plan of ACMECS businessmen meeting.

In November 2003, the original four countries — Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand, which share border with each other, held their first ACMECS summit in Myanmar’s ancient city of Bagan, laying down ACMECS program which provides for cooperation in five main strategic areas of agriculture, industry, trade and investment, transport, tourist and human resources development.
Vietnam joined the ACMECS in 2004.

In May 2007, ACMECS foreign ministers met in Myanmar’s Mandalay and pledged to work for greater competitiveness, narrower economic disparity and promoting socio-economic development in the subregion.
Calling for realization of their 2003 Bagan Declaration efficiently and effectively, the foreign ministers also expressed their desire to strengthen the aims and objectives of the declaration and work for attaining prosperity in the subregion through enhanced solidarity, mutual respect, goods neighborliness and active cooperation among the member countries.

The 5th ACMECS summit was held along with the 6th Cambodia-Laos- Myanmar-Vietnam (CLMV) Summit in the Lao capital.

Death Coming Before Justice for Khmer Rouge Regime

 By AP / Sopheng Cheang and Todd Pitman

(PHNOM PENH, Cambodia) — Decades after Cambodia’s brutal Khmer Rouge movement oversaw the deaths of 1.7 million people by starvation, overwork and execution, the regime’s imprisoned top leaders are escaping justice one by one. How? Old age.

Thursday’s death of 87-year-old Ieng Sary, foreign minister under the Khmer Rouge, has fueled urgent calls among survivors and rights groups for the country’s U.N.-backed tribunal to expedite proceedings against the increasingly frail and aging leaders of the radical communist group, which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.

Ieng Sary’s wife, former Social Affairs Minister Ieng Thirith, was ruled unfit to stand trial last year because she has a degenerative mental illness consistent with Alzheimer’s disease. Only two top Khmer Rouge leaders — ex-head of state Khieu Samphan, who is 81, and the movement’s former chief ideologist, Nuon Chea, who is 86 — remain on trial for charges they carried out some of the 20th century’s most horrific crimes.

There are growing fears that both men could die before a verdict is rendered. Both are frail with high blood pressure and have suffered strokes.

“The defendants are getting old, and the survivors are getting old,” said Bou Meng, one of the few Cambodians to survive Tuol Sleng prison, known as S-21, where up to 16,000 people were tortured and killed during the Khmer Rouge era. “The court needs to speed up its work.”

“I have been waiting for justice for nearly 40 years,” Bou Meng, 70, told The Associated Press. “I never thought it would take so long.”

When the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh in April 1975, they began moving an estimated 1 million people — even hospital patients — from the capital into the countryside in an effort to create a communist agrarian utopia.

(MORE: Khmer Rouge’s Ieng Sary Dies During Genocide Trial)
By the time the bizarre experiment ended in 1979 with an invasion by Vietnamese troops, an estimated 1.7 million people had died in Cambodia, which had a population of only about 7 million at the time. Most died from starvation, medical neglect, slave-like working conditions and execution under the Maoist regime. Their bodies were dumped in shallow mass graves that still dot the countryside.

The tribunal, officially known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, was tasked with seeking justice for crimes committed during that era.

The court was 10 years in the making and opened in 2006. But despite some $150 million in funding, it has so far convicted only one defendant: Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, the commandant of S-21 prison.
Duch was sentenced in 2010 to 35 years in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The sentence was reduced to a 19-year term because of time previously served and other technicalities, a move that sparked angry criticism from victims who said it was too lenient. Cambodia has no death penalty.

Several other major Khmer Rouge figures died before the court even existed, including supreme leader Pol Pot in 1998.

Ieng Sary’s death was no surprise given his age and ailing health, said Ou Virak, who heads the Cambodian Center for Human Rights. But “given the fact that the other two defendants are also in their 80s, it should act as a wake-up call to all concerned — the Cambodian government, the U.N., the international donors and the tribunal itself — that these cases need to be expedited urgently so that justice can be served.”

“The whole future of the tribunal is currently in limbo, and the possibility that hundreds of millions of dollars will have been wasted is now a very real threat,” Ou Virak said. “Most importantly, though, if all three die before their guilt or innocence can be determined, then the Cambodian people will quite understandably feel robbed of justice.”

The court has been criticized before for the sluggish pace of proceedings. But one of its prosecutors, William Smith, said the trial has taken time because the indictments are lengthy and the list of alleged crimes long.
The tribunal has been dogged by other problems, including funding shortages from international donors. Earlier this month, Cambodian translators angry that they had gone without pay for three months went on strike just before the court was to hear testimony from two foreign experts.

Tribunal spokesman Neth Pheaktra said Thursday that the interpreters would all return to work this week after the court administrator promised that they would get paid. But he added that the translators have threatened to strike again if they are not paid by month’s end.

In recent years, the tribunal has also been hit by infighting and angry resignations by foreign judges over whether to try more Khmer Rouge defendants on war crimes charges. Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has ruled Cambodia since 1985, has warned that no more trials will be allowed. Many former members of the Khmer Rouge, including Hun Sen himself, hold important positions in the current government.

After Ieng Sary’s death, Human Rights Watch issued a statement blaming Hun Sen for denying justice.
“(He) asked the United Nations in 1997 for assistance in holding Khmer Rouge leaders accountable – and since then has done everything in his power to stymie the tribunal’s work,” said Brad Adams, Asia director for the rights group. “Hun Sen bears primary responsibility for denying justice to the victims of Ieng Sary’s atrocities.”
The trial against Ieng Sary, his wife and the last two accused senior Khmer Rouge leaders alive began jointly in 2011. All have denied guilt for any crimes and have said they acted in Cambodians’ best interest during the radical communist movement’s rule.

Lars Olsen, another tribunal spokesman, said Thursday that “we understand that many probably are disappointed with the fact that we cannot complete the proceedings against Ieng Sary, and therefore we cannot determine” whether he is guilty or innocent of the charges against him.

But it’s important to remember, he said, that the case against Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan “is not over.” He said it would not be affected by Ieng Sary’s death and proceedings will continue on schedule.

(MORE: At Cambodia War-Crimes Trial, Defendants Are Not All There)
Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent group gathering evidence of the Khmer Rouge crimes for the tribunal, said Ieng Sary’s death “carries little value for the regime’s victims, who patiently wait to see justice done.”Ieng Sary died early Thursday at a Phnom Penh hospital, where he was admitted earlier this month suffering from weakness and fatigue. He suffered heart failure, said one of the prosecutors in his case, Chea Leang, who added that under Cambodian law, all charges against him will now officially be dropped.

Yim Sopheak, a 47-year-old street vendor who said the Khmer Rouge regime had executed her parents, said Ieng Sary “deserved to die in prison, not in a hospital. He should have died in the same way as he executed my parents and other people.”

Yi Chea, a 72-year-old flower seller who says her husband and other relatives were also killed during Khmer Rouge rule, said she was happy Ieng Sary was gone. But, she added that “he did not deserve to die naturally like this.”

Tribunal hearings resume on March 25, said Neth Pheaktra. Foreign medical experts are due to testify on the health status of Nuon Chea, to determine whether the ailing ex-leader is still fit to continue to stand trial.
___
Pitman reported from Bangkok.

ICJ defence plan to head to cabinet

Mar 15, 2013

Bangkok Post

The Foreign Ministry will submit the Thai position to be presented at court hearings on the Preah Vihear dispute to the cabinet on April 2.

This map was prepared by the ICJ in 2011 as a proposed demilitarised zone for Thai and Cambodian troops.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul said Thursday the ministry will ask for opinions from the cabinet before the Thai team leaves for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearings at the Hague in the Netherlands on April 15-19.

Mr Surapong said approval will be sought regarding a live translation from French to Thai at the oral hearings, which will be broadcast via internet from the court.

The hearings will be conducted in French.

He said a translated broadcast in Thai should be aired so the public can receive information directly from the court. That would avoid any misinterpretation in media reports, he said.

The ministry will also brief the public about Thailand and Cambodia's positions at the end of each day of the hearing.

Meanwhile, Mr Surapong said Thailand is planning to develop a special economic zone (SEZ) in Poipet and Koh Kong with Cambodia, similar to the SEZ to be developed with Myanmar in Mae Sot. Under the plan, Thailand will develop transport links between the two countries and upgrade border checkpoints, he said.
Cooperation on agriculture, health, human resources and industrial development will also be part of the plan.
Mr Surapong said Thai and Cambodian officials will talk in detail before he meets his Cambodian counterpart, Hor Namhong, in May or June to discuss the plan.

Mr Surapong said the Defence Ministry will also hold talks with Cambodian officials on illegal logging of Siamese rosewood along the border and will set up a patrol police unit to stamp out the activity.

Hun Sen a 'coward' says Cambodia opposition chief

PHNOM PENH: Cambodia's opposition leader Sam Rainsy on Monday branded strongman Prime Minister Hun Sen a "coward" for barring him from running in a key general election later this year.

Rainsy, Hun Sen's main rival, lives in self-imposed exile in France to avoid prison for a string of convictions that critics contend are politically motivated.

In November the 63-year-old Rainsy was told he could not stand in the polls because of his convictions by the National Election Committee (NEC), a body he says is a tool of the premier.

He accused Hun Sen, who has ruled the country since 1985 and has vowed to stay in power until he is 90, of using the NEC to block his election bid - something the premier has repeatedly denied.

"I think Hun Sen is a coward because there are only two challengers," he told AFP by telephone from Yangon, where he met Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

"But Hun Sen dares not to compete with me. He uses a kangaroo court to blame me so that he can go into the ring and fight alone."

Hun Sen, 61, is routinely accused of suppressing political freedoms and violating the rights of dissidents, but analysts say he remains firmly entrenched in power.

Rainsy, who leads the recently-formed Cambodia National Rescue Party, said he still harboured hopes of running in July's election and expressed confidence his party could end Hun Sen's 28-year grip on power.
Suggesting Hun Sen is committing "political suicide" by not allowing him to compete, Rainsy warned he will "start a strong movement to topple" any government formed by the election.

He also accused the NEC of handing Hun Sen's ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) landslide victories in successive elections.

French-educated Sam Rainsy is one of the most outspoken figures in Cambodian politics but has lived in self-imposed exile in France since 2009, and faces a total of 11 years in prison if he returns.

In 2010 he received a seven-year jail term in absentia for publishing a 'false map' of the border with Vietnam, claiming the neighbour holds Cambodian territory.

Other convictions include accusing the foreign minister of being a member of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in the late 1970s.

The international community has urged Cambodia to allow all political participants, including Rainsy, to compete fairly in the looming election.

Despite his apparently unassailable grip on power, some experts question whether Hun Sen's strong-arm tactics could eventually bring him down.

"How can he rule by fear and at the same time try to keep everybody happy?" Ou Virak of the Cambodia Center for Human Rights recently told AFP. - AFP