Cambodian king calls for post-election harmony

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Cambodia's king has issued a public statement calling for a peaceful resolution of the country's political standoff following contested elections last week.

King Norodom Sihamoni's message Wednesday came a day after the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party threatened to hold a massive protest to demand an impartial investigation of alleged widespread electoral irregularities.

The ruling Cambodian People's Party says it won 68 of the 123 National Assembly seats against the opposition's 55 in the July 28 polls. Long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen has made clear he expects another term.

Hun Sen's tough reputation has raised fears he might use force to quash the protest. Final election results are to be announced next week, or next month if official protests are filed.

$15 Million Funding Available for Empowering Communities for Health

Federal Grant Opportunities
Copyright © Targeted News Service, 2013
2013-08-07

by VARALAKSHMI PULUGURTHA

WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 -- The U.S. Agency for International Development-Cambodia has announced that it expects to award a maximum of three discretionary cooperative agreement grants to enhance the skills of village health support groups, strengthen their technical linkages to health centers and institutionalize them under local government structures for long-term sustainability.

The award ceiling for this funding opportunity is $15 million.

This funding opportunity is open to Cambodian nongovernmental organizations.

A funding opportunity notice from the USAID-Cambodia states: "The Goal of the updated USAID/Cambodia draft Country Development Cooperation Strategy is 'Cambodia's transformation to a healthy, prosperous, democratic country accelerated.' Three Development Objectives (DOs) are defined to help achieve this Goal: DO1: Stable democratization that promotes accountable governance and the rights of the people. This project will promote community awareness of rights related to health care and health care financing, and seek to increase local government accountability in ensuring those rights are respected; DO2: Delivery of health services strengthened for improved health status of vulnerable populations, within which there are 3 Intermediate Results (IR) all of which this project directly addresses: i. Quality of maternal and child health (including RH/FP, WASH and Nutrition) services in communities and facilities improved in a sustainable manner ii. Capacity and accountability of the health care delivery system strengthened; and iii. Effectiveness and efficiency of infectious disease control programs improved; and DO3: Poverty reduced in selected geographic areas and targeted populations. This Project will support the poverty reduction aims of the Health Equity Fund (HEF) by improving the transparency and accountability of beneficiary targeting, in close collaboration with a separate USAID Social Health Protection (SHP) Project."

The funding opportunity number is RFA-442-13-000004. The application closing date is Aug. 30. For more information, contact Honey Sokry, hsokry@usaid.gov. NewsFocusCode FedGrants NWNAgrants federalgrants TNSFG130806

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For more information about Targeted News Service products and services, please contact: Myron Struck, editor, Targeted News Service LLC, Springfield, Va., 703/304-1897; editor@targetednews.com; http://targetednews.com. To subscribe to our Federal Grant Opportunities Newsletters, contact Dona Harms at: Dona@targetednews.com.

Column: Refugees have complicated and messy lives, but my parents were shown compassion

by Phillina Sun
 
The child of Cambodian parents fleeing Pol Pot’s regime, Phillina Sun says her parents’ cultural dislocation was eased by the welcome they found in the US. In a response to assumptions about refugees, she offers a personal account of the ones she knows best – her mother and father.


TODAY I THOUGHT of my parents after reading about a legal challenge to the policy of direct provision here in Ireland.  In the past, I have always been baffled by some Irish comments concerning “asylum-seekers”. There is an antipathy to refugees here, a way of framing them that discounts their experiences and dismisses them as “benefits-seekers” and “job-takers”.

This negative attitude toward refugees in everyday Ireland is, I think, reflected and/or influenced by the detention and exclusion of refugees.  So, today, I felt compelled to list some observations of the refugees I know best, because I want to consider the trajectory of their lives, and the possible life-trajectories of other people like them.

A semblance of the middle-class American dream

In the mid-1970s, my parents arrived in the US as refugees from Cambodia, with assistance from the government and Christian groups.  With advice and loans from kin, they were able to start a doughnut shop in San Diego, where mom worked long hours every day of the week while dad worked in electronics in another city. After they sold the doughnut shop, mom took a night course and became an assembler of robots. Dad works at home, selling secondhand computer parts via the internet.

Through hard work, adaptation, and years of separation and heartbreak, my parents achieved a certain, albeit precarious, semblance of the middle-class American dream: the two-story house in a nice neighbourhood, a good education for the kids, second helpings at dinner, US bus tours for vacation, and life insurance as a psychological bulwark against the uncertainty of their children’s futures.

Culturally, my parents travel between worlds

Physically, my parents live in San Diego. Culturally, they travel between worlds.  They raised my brother and I, US citizens by birth, as Americans, even as my parents were not comfortable with what  being “American” might mean. What is “American” but a mix of improvised signs and gestures?  Mom watches soaps both American and Cambodian, and dad is an avid viewer of Chargers football games and Khmer karaoke videos. (Dad also listens to Spanish radio, which is telling of our proximity in San Diego, geographically and culturally, to Mexico). Mom and dad are comfortable in their improvised world of computer flea markets, Khmer-language Christian meetings, Hawaiian buffets, and seaside festivals.

Although my parents miss the Cambodia of their youth, they return only for brief trips, typified by family reunions and melancholy tours of a countryside forever altered by the depredations of frontier capitalism and de facto dictatorship. Not that they haven’t encountered hardships and hostility in the US.  Although their refugee past is not so urgent a memory for them, my parents are aware that, as immigrants, they are sometimes viewed as newcomers, no matter how long they’ve lived in the US.  There’s always a chance that someone might come up to them and yell, as in the past, “Go back to China!” Belonging, for my parents, is always contingent.

The state is no substitute for society

Nevertheless, my parents have the life they’ve improvised due to their initial treatment in the US  by certain parties who welcomed them. This care was encouraged, in part, by media attention on the plight of Cambodians during the Pol Pot years, which elicited the Christian aid that helped my parents and, with their kinship networks, enabled them to emerge from the limbo of refugee status. (How, I wonder, would their treatment differ now, in post-9/11 America, where that welcome is being retracted in a heightened anti-immigration culture?)

In Ireland, there is scant welcome for the refugees of the 21st century. The refugee or “applicant” is an “asylum-seeker” first, before s/he is a refugee, preempting the realities implied by the statement “I am a refugee”, realities which would otherwise require address. “Asylum” suggests the space and time of safety; the asylum-seeker is caught in an unsafe space and time. Direct provision further delays empathy by segregating the individual into grim, for-profit centres where all aspects of life are fully regimented by the state.

The state is no substitute for society, for the possibilities of community. With his or her life so completely circumscribed via direct provision, the individual has no or little cultural or social capital, consigned as an invisible non-person to a legal and existential purgatory.

What I know about my parents’ time as refugees is little, garnered from anecdotes, legal documents, and a couple of pictures, of children holding hands in a Thai refugee camp. They tell me bit by bit, and I piece their histories together, knowing that these accounts are not exact; some things are deliberately left forgotten. The limbo of the refugee camps was short, alluded to by a couple of photos buried in a box beneath other photos – of my brother and I as children, of visiting family, of trips to the sea – visual markers of survival and resilience in the aftermath of that refugee past.

I offer this account of the refugees I know best as a response to presuppositions about refugees and as a consideration of possible refugee trajectories.  This is not to suggest that every refugee, once welcomed, will eventually become a “model citizen”.  Complicated and messy, lives will not fit into neat, pre-set molds – nor should they.  But every human being deserves recognition of his or her rights and care, regardless of their circumstances and no matter where he or she is in the world.  With the pain of dislocation eased by their welcome, my parents could move beyond the trauma of that moment, free to improvise home and belonging.

Malaysian firms urged to venture into Cambodia's agri sector

 07 August 2013

PHNOM PENH: Malaysian companies have been urged to venture into Cambodia's agriculture sector especially in paddy planting and opening up rubber estates.

In making the call, Raja Saiful Ridzuan, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Malaysian Embassy here, said Malaysian firms, with its vast expertise in agriculture sector, could come in to tap the opportunities available in this Indo-Chinese nation.

"Cambodia is a booming economy and it offers abundant opportunities for development particularly in the agriculture sector.

"They have plenty of land and manpower but not so much technological know-how and expertise that are crucial to develop and modernise the sector further.

"Only one Malaysian company is involved in the agricultural field in Cambodia, while Padiberas Nasional Bhd (Bernas) is currently conducting a feasibility study in this country," he told Bernama, here.
Cambodia is the world's fifth largest rice exporter.

Raja Saiful said other sectors that Malaysian companies could consider venturing into were construction and urban development.

He said the embassy was prepared to provide information and assistance on local regulations to any Malaysian firm keen to set up businesses in Cambodia.

"The business fraternity in Cambodia is a very close-knit one. The Malaysia Business Council in Cambodia is also ready to offer advice and services on the setting up of business ventures here," he said.
Currently, there are about 95 Malaysian companies operating in Cambodia, the majority of them are in banking, tourism and trading.

Trade volume between both countries hit RM1.6 billion last year, a three-fold increase over the 2010 figures.
Malaysia's main exports to Cambodia are electrical and mechanical parts and components as well as industrial raw materials while Cambodia's exports to Malaysia are mainly rice and rubber. -- BERNAMA

Opposition vows mass protest over Cambodian election deadlock

By Prak Chan Thul

PHNOM PENH | Tue Aug 6, 2013
 

(Reuters) - The result remains hotly disputed, but Cambodia's recent general election has put long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen on a collision course with a resurgent opposition and revealed widespread unhappiness with his iron-fisted rule.

While analysts aren't writing off the chances of the politically ruthless Hun Sen ruling for another five years, they said the result signals a restive and youthful Cambodian population eager for change.


Both Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party (CPP) and the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) have claimed victory in the July 28 poll. The official result will not be announced until Thursday, at the earliest.

CNRP president and long-time opposition leader Sam Rainsy declared himself prime minister on Monday and called for a mass demonstration in Phnom Penh on Tuesday that could augur months of political deadlock and possibly violent protests.

Information Minister Khieu Kanharith said the CPP won 68 seats, while the CNRP won 55. The CNRP says it won 63 and the CPP 60. It also claimed 1.3 million names were missing from electoral rolls and that Hun Sen's party stuffed ballot boxes with illegal votes.

Even by Hun Sen's own count, the election represents a dismal performance by an Asian strongman viewed during the campaign as all but invincible.

Many Cambodians feel CPP policies have enriched a select few and created a yawning poverty gap, analysts say. Huge tracts of land have been granted to foreign companies while the poor fight eviction with little hope of justice from the police or courts.

CPP policies are "out of step with a more and more open society", said independent social analyst Kem Ley, adding Hun Sen's control of the media was less effective now many that many people get information from internet social media outlets.

Kem Ley believes a CNRP boycott of parliament could lead to mass protests led by young Cambodians. "It's going to be like Egypt," he said.

Frustrations also fester in the civil service, say analysts, where low-ranking officials have watched their superiors grow rich while their own wages have stagnated.

The CNRP's election promises included pay rises for civil servants and garment workers.

HUN SEN DEFIANT
Hun Sen made conciliatory remarks after the election, saying his party was ready to talk to the election commission and the opposition about alleged irregularities.

He has since reverted to a more familiar tone of defiance, warning that if the opposition boycotts parliament its seats will be redistributed to other political parties.

In a recent speech he publicly scorned U.S. lawmakers for their pre-election threats to cut financial assistance unless the election was deemed fair. "Don't talk so much," he said. "If you want to cut, just cut it."
He also suggested the generosity of China, Cambodia's biggest investor and close diplomatically, would compensate for any cut in $1 million of U.S. military aid.

But Hun Sen's hailing of close ties with Beijing could backfire with many Cambodians, who resent China's economic and political dominance of their tiny country.

Hun Sen, 61, who once vowed to stay in office until his mid-70s, will focus on retaining power rather than addressing popular discontent, said analyst Kem Ley.

"There is no way (the CPP) will reform to gain popularity," he said.

But CPP lawmaker Chheang Vun, who called the election result "a victory for our people", acknowledged his party must pay greater heed to the youth.

"Their thinking is not the same as the old people like us, so we must turn to them ... and give young people what they want," he recently told journalists.

Despite a poor election result, Hun Sen will not face any leadership challenge from inside the CPP, said Lao Mong Hay, a veteran Cambodian human rights activist.

"He has centralised all power and prevented his colleagues from proving themselves and rising to prominence," he said.

Hun Sen has comfortably won every election since Cambodia returned to full democracy in 1998 after decades of war and turmoil that included the 1975-79 "Killing Fields" rule of the Khmer Rouge.
This time, however, he faced formidable opposition from the CNRP, formed after two parties merged last year and boosted by Sam Rainsy's return from exile in July after a royal pardon removed the threat of a jail term hanging over his head.

CNRP allegations of election fraud are being investigated by the National Election Committee, a government body viewed as dominated by the CPP.

"It is inconceivable to me that Hun Sen would allow any investigation that he couldn't control," said Carl Thayer, a Cambodia expert at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra. "This election result will not be the end of Hun Sen for the next five years. But his pledge to say in office until he is in his seventies looks shaky."

Cambodia: Social media fuels new politics

By Marta Kasztelan
Aug 6, 2013

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.

PHNOM PENH - The recently concluded general elections in Cambodia, won narrowly by the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP), highlighted the growing political role of social media. Throughout the election period, Facebook users took to their smart phones and computers to share information and on polling day report electoral irregularities.

Although the vast majority of Cambodians still live in the countryside, changes in technology and demography mean that more and more young people are joining social networking sites. According to social media agency We Are Social, currently one new user joins Facebook every two minutes in Cambodia, translating to an average of 1,000 new members per day.

Social media users were among the 3.5 million 18- to 30-year-olds registered to cast ballots in the July 28 elections for the National Assembly. (Altogether there were 9.5 million registered voters). While many youth voters expressed their discontent with the CPP by voting in large numbers for the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), they also rallied for political and social change online.

"Facebook was a great space for the public to air their concerns about the elections, and it was one of the very few platforms with independent information, because most media are controlled by the CPP and were peddling pro-government news," said Un Samnang, a report writer at election watchdog Comfrel.

Civil society organizations criticized the lack of independent media and censorship measures introduced by authorities ahead of the elections. Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom advocacy group, condemned a government-imposed ban forbidding local radio stations from broadcasting foreign media commentaries and opinion polls during the five days prior to the elections and on the polling day.

"We strongly condemn the failure to rescind this directive, which tramples on freedom of information. The authorities are clearly trying to restrict voter access to radio programs that are outspoken and do not toe the government line. Unobstructed access to independent news and information is the cornerstone of any free election," the watchdog group said in a statement.

Even though the ban did not apply to local media outlets, most radio stations chose to self-censor their news during the week before the election out of fears of losing their operating licenses, Comfrel's Samnang said. He underlined that Facebook helped to fill the news void by allowing people to keep each other abreast of new developments in the days before the election.

When on election day a popular Facebook page "I Love Cambodia Hot News" posted a video of a fight at a polling station after allegations of vote rigging, it was almost immediately shared by 1,326 users and "liked" by 1,663.

Social media users also called on fellow Cambodians to return to polling stations and observe the ballot count. According to a social media specialist at the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, Lach Vannak, young voters posted photographs of their own ballot count and were fearless in reporting irregularities.

"Seventy percent of all Cambodians are below the age of 35. Most of them have no recollection of the horrors of the Khmer Rouge regime. They are young and are not afraid to say what they think. Facebook became a place where they share and discuss the latest news," Vannak said.

Both the CPP and CNRP tapped into social media, with the latter relying more on the platform due to its restricted access to mainstream Khmer media. Opposition leader Sam Rainsy used his Facebook page to reach out to youth voters and to galvanize support for his party. Even the announcement about his return from self-imposed exile a week before the polls first appeared on a social networking site.

Using Facebook for political gains, however, does not come without a cost. Vannak points out that now voters will follow-up on campaign promises. "People begin recording what you promise and they will demand that you follow through," he said. "So Facebook could play a role in making the new government more transparent and accountable."

According to 26-year-old political science graduate Ou Ritthy this trend goes beyond the elections. Ritthy, who is organizing informal discussions about politics for youth in Phnom Penh, believes Facebook is becoming a place for social justice and democracy debates and will eventually lead to a change in political culture.

"We organize small meetings in real life, but the most significant conversations take place on Facebook. I like to post controversial statements and provoke an online discussion. Democracy was born out of discussion," he said.

Ritthy thinks that young people using social media to talk about politics and current affairs are the future of Cambodia. "They will be our leaders. And I am not only talking about political leaders. One day, they will be leaders of a family or a community."

Cambodia opposition party seeks UN help to resolve disputed poll

AFP/Phnom Penh
Cambodia’s opposition leader Sam Rainsy yesterday called on the UN to help resolve the country’s disputed election in order to protect “the victory” of the people.

The nation has been stuck in a political impasse since Premier Hun Sen’s long-ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) claimed it had won last month’s poll - one of the most hotly contested votes seen in the country.
Rainsy, who returned from self-imposed exile to lead the opposition after receiving a surprise pre-election royal pardon, has claimed his Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) actually won the July 28 poll.

“Tomorrow, we will hold a big rally... to demand the UN comes and resolves the election problem in order to protect the victory of the Cambodian people,” Rainsy told a small rally in the capital Phnom Penh.
The CPP said it had secured an estimated 68 of the 123 lower house seats, with CNRP taking 55.

But the result - marking the lowest support for Hun Sen’s party since 1998 - has been rejected by the opposition, who claim widespread voting irregularities.

Rainsy has said his party won a majority of 63 seats and has vowed to prevent the CPP “stealing victory”.
The official result is not expected until later this month.

Rainsy’s CNRP on Saturday agreed to work with the CPP and the National Election Committee to set up a joint committee to probe alleged election fraud.

But Rainsy has since said his party will not be involved in the process until the UN is allowed to referee the investigation, a level of involvement rejected by the government and the NEC. They say the international body can only act as an observer.

“We do not trust NEC at all. We will join the investigation only when the UN comes,” Rainsy told reporters.
On Friday, the UN said that disputes over the election must be “adjudicated fairly” but added it had not yet been asked to join any enquiry.

The US also urged a probe into alleged misconduct but said the opposition gains marked a positive step toward democracy.

Hun Sen - who has been in power for 28 years - has welcomed a probe but has also vowed to establish a government under his leadership if the opposition refuses to join parliament.

The 60-year-old former Khmer Rouge cadre, who defected from the murderous regime, has vowed to rule until he is 74.