Khmer Audio | Khmer Chapey

Electronic Choun Nath Khmer Dictionary 2nd Version

2010-10-09T04:28:00.000-07:00

វចនានុក្រមខ្មែរអេឡិចត្រូនិកសកបរិវត្តន៍ទី២

ប្រសិនបើកុំព្យូទ័របស់អ្នកមិនមានWinRAR Download Win RAR (1.7MB)

កាលពីថ្ងៃអង្គារ ទី២ខែមិថុនាឆ្នាំ២០០៨ វិទ្យាស្ថានពុទ្ធសាសនបណ្ឌិត្យដែលនៅ ក្រោមការគ្រប់គ្រងរបស់ក្រសួងធម្មការ និងកិច្ចការសាសនា នៅក្នុងប្រទេសកម្ពុជា បានបើកសម្ពោធចេញឲ្យមានការប្រើប្រាស់នូវ វចនានុក្រម ខ្មែរអេឡិចត្រូនិក សកបរិវត្តន៍ (កំណែ)ទី២។

ការបើកសម្ពោធវចនានុក្រមខ្មែរអេឡិចត្រូនិកកំណែទី២នេះគឺដើម្បីជា់ប្រយោជន៍ ដល់សាធារណៈជនមានភាពងាយស្រួលក្នុងការប្រើប្រាស់ ស្រាវជាវ និងស្វែងយល់ ពីអក្សរសាស្ត្រខ្មែរ ឲ្យបានកាន់តែប្រសើរឡើង។

កម្មវិធីវចនានុក្រមខ្មែរអេឡិចត្រូនិកនេះ អាចប្រើបានជាមួយកុំព្យូទ័រដែលដំណើរការដោយកម្មវិធី Window XP និង Window Vista តែប៉ុណ្ណោះ ។

Dhamma Talk in Khmer Audio

2010-10-09T04:12:00.000-07:00

Dhamma Talk in Khmer Audio
1.	Pre-Sermon
2.	New Year Ceremony
3.	Visakha Puja Ceremony
4.	Kann Benda Ceremony
5.	Prachum Benda Ceremony
6.	Kathina Ceremony
7.	Cheyvor Offering
8.	Magha Puja Ceremony
9.	Maha Vessanta Jataka
10.	Four Offerings
11.	Phka Sammki Ceremony
12.	Memorial Ceremony
13.	Five Preachers
14.	Good & Evil
15.	Five Precepts
16.	Eight Precepts
17.	Ten Precepts
18.	Children
19.	Husband & Wife # 1
20.	Husband & Wife # 2

21.	Parent # 1
22.	Parent # 2
23.	Parent # 3
24.	Parent # 4
25.	Human differences
26.	The Next Buddha
27.	Nirvana

Khmer Monks Pray

2010-10-09T04:09:00.000-07:00

Monks Pray in Pali-Khmer Audio
1.	Paying Respect to The Triple Gems
2.	Taking 5 Precepts
3.	Taking 8 Precepts
4.	Abhidhamma
5.	Paritta
6.	Paraphava Sutta

Buddhist Story in Khmer Audio

2010-10-09T04:05:00.000-07:00

Buddhist Story in Khmer Audio
1.	Buddha's Life
2.	Contunue...
3.	Pheah Vesandor
4.	Continue...
5.	Pheah Sovann Sam
6.	Golden Bird
7.	Continue
8.	Preah Neang Visakha
9.	Continue...
10.	Preah Angkolima
11.	Continue...
12.	Preah Moklean
13.	Continue...
14.	Preah Neang Badacha
15.	Continue...
16.	Reading for the Sick
17.	Reading in Funeral

Chapei: A Khmer Traditional Music

2010-10-09T04:02:00.000-07:00


1.	Krom Ngoy (1) ក្រមង៉ុយ
2.	Krom Ngoy (2) ក្រមង៉ុយ
3.	Krom Ngoy (3) ក្រមង៉ុយ
4.	Ajah Chong អាចារ្យចុង
5.	Gratitute ការដឹងគុណ
6.	Chapei Conversation ចាប៉ីឆ្លងឆ្លើយ
7.	Ayai Conversation (1) អាយៃឆ្លងឆ្លើយ
8.	Ayai Conversation (2) អាយៃឆ្លងឆ្លើយ
9.	Kodavong (fairy-tale)
10.	3 Colors Snail (fairy-tale)
11.	Continue…
12.	Chan Mony (fairy-tale)
13.	Tip Sodachan (fairy-tale)

Cambodian Recent History and Contemporary Society: An Introductory Course

2010-10-09T04:00:00.000-07:00

Dr. Judy Ledgerwood

Department of Anthropology and Center for Southeast Asian Studies

Northern Illinois University

Cambodian society today is a complex interplay of social forces that include pre-revolutionary cultural and social patterns, DK and PRK communist/socialist influences, and the repercussions of the recent re-opening to the world with the reintroduction of a market economy and a form of democracy. This essay provides a brief overview of some of these influences. First, we discuss some of the social consequences of genocide and initial efforts to reconstitute society in the aftermath of DK. (This includes some discussion of the PRK period, though for more detail on the PRK the reader may look back to the PRK section of the Essay One). Second, we examine the dramatic economic changes in the 1990s, particularly after the UN Peacekeeping mission. Third, we explore some of the social problems that remain, including: growing landlessness, a lack of effective health care, and over exploitation of natural resources (in background essays we also examine problems with the education system and the issue of landmines).Full text

History of NACS

2010-10-09T03:54:00.000-07:00

The National Association of Cambodian Scouts (NACS) is the national Scouting organization in Cambodia. It was founded in September 2005 through the merger of the Scout Organization of Cambodia and the Cambodian Scouts and became a member of the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM) on 1 July, 2008. The coeducational association serves 3,763 members (as of 2007).

Earlier Scouting organizations

The original Khmer Scout Association Angkar Khamarak Kayarith (AKK) was created in 1934, under the direction of Prince Sisowath Monireth and other leaders. This first era of Cambodian Scouting spread over several provinces and numbered more than 1,000 members.André Lefèvre, chief of the Eclaireurs de France, set up a training camp for 60 Scoutmasters from all over French Indochina. At the end of 1937, French Scouting sent Scoutmaster Raymond Schlemmer to the Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese areas of Indochina to oversee the setting up of the Fédération Indochinoise des Associations du Scoutisme (FIAS, Indochinese Federation of Scouting Associations) in all three regions.

From 1939 through 1945, the political situation affected Scouting activities all across the country, as World War II engendered a movement for an independent Cambodia. The French began to lose control and were finally overthrown by Japanese intervention. This ceased the French Scouts’ activity in Cambodia, as well as all Scouting activities.

In 1956, the Cambodian Scouting movement was transformed into the Scouts of the Queen. That year, there were 500 active Scouts and Guides in Phnom Penh, and some 700 Scouts in the provinces of the Kingdom of Cambodia.

In 1957, under the direction of socialist-leaning Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the Angkar Khamarak Kayarith was transformed into the Jeunesse Socialiste Royale Khmer (JSRK, the Royal Socialist Khmer Youth), with Sihanouk himself serving as president of the state ruled organization, now controlled by the Royal government. The 2,000 members and the leaders of Cambodian Scouting were permitted by the government to carry on activities. Scouts and Scout leaders attended the 8th World Scout Jamboree in 1955 in Canada and the 10th World Scout Jamboree in 1959 in the Philippines, among them Prince Norodom Yuvaneath, the son of Norodom Sihanouk.

On 1 November, 1964, Prince Sisowath Essaro, then President of the Angkar Khamarak Kayarith, announced the dissolution of the Cambodian Boy Scout Association, whose members were subsequently integrated into the Jeunesse Socialiste Royale Khmer, a government-sponsored socialist youth movement.

In 1972, the Cambodian Scouts were reestablished for a short period with ten groups, confined to the capital in Phnom Penh. In 1975, the movement was banned by the Khmer Rouge communist regime.

Cambodian Scouting in exile existed at least into the early 1990s in Los Angeles, alongside fellow Vietnamese Scouting in exile and Laotian Scouting in exile groups.

Reemergence of Scouting after 1990

As the political system changed in the country, Scouting was gradually reestablished and Scout groups were organized in the refugee camps at the Thai border. After the 1993 election supported by the United Nations, Beat Gruninger, a Swiss Scout leader was commissioned by the World Scout Bureau to coordinate with Cambodian leaders for the possible rebirth of Scouting in the recovering land.

In 1994, two visits were made by the Asia-Pacific Region to assess the development of the Cambodian Scout movement. As with Afghanistan, Scouting was conducted under the auspices of a government agency, in this case the Department of Youth and Sports. Asia-Pacific Region staff met the Minister of Education, Youth and Sports and several other government officials, after which full government support was assured.

In April 1996, the first Basic Unit Leaders Training Course was held in Phnom Penh, assisted by the National Scout Organization of Thailand and the Asia-Pacific Regional office.

Subsequently, two main Scout groupings emerged in Cambodia and were registered in July 2000: the Scout Organization of Cambodia and the Cambodian Scouts. Both Scout associations were run by rival political parties. For this reason, WOSM could not admit either of them as a member. In the effort to unite these into a new single national association, the Coordinating Scout Committee of Cambodia (CSCC) was created on 21 April, 2000. A working group composed of leaders from the two groups was established in May 2005 to work on a new constitution and new bylaws. In September 2005, the National Association of Cambodian Scouts was created. It sought formal government recognition to launch it as a nongovernmental organization.

The World Scout Bureau Asia Pacific Regional Office reported in their May 2006 Newsletter, that the first annual general meeting of the National Association of Cambodian Scouts was held on 27 April, 2006 in Phnom Penh, at which the constitution was adopted and the first office-bearers were elected.

The World Scout Bureau received an application for membership in the World Organization of the Scout Movement from the National Association of Cambodian Scouts in 2007. Members of the World Scout Bureau and of the Asia-Pacific Regional Office assessed the organization in November 2007; they proposed its admission to WOSM. Full WOSM membership was granted on 1 July 2008.

Chan Dara, Ith Thong Nguon & Pen Nearovi - Kampuchea Neung Sahakpoan Induchin

2010-10-09T03:44:00.000-07:00

Title: Kampuchea Neung Sahakpoan Induchin (Kampuchea and the Indochinese Federation)
Authors: Chan Dara, Ith Thong Nguon & Pen Nearovi
Publishing date: 1983
Genre: History, Politics
Keywords: Khmer, History, Politics, Vietnam, Vietnamese invasion
Format: PDF (Adobe Acrobat Reader is required)
New Typesetting by: Khun Pimoj (USA)

Please click on the following to read the book online. To download each file, right click on the link, and select "Save Target as"

Kampuchea Neung Sahakpoan Induchin

Bun Chanmol - Charet Khmer

2010-10-09T03:43:00.001-07:00

Title: Charet Khmer (Khmer Behavior)
Author: Bun Chanmol
Publishing date: 1973
Genre: Memory
Keywords: Khmer, Memory, History, Khmer Issarak, Bun Chanmol
Format: PDF (Adobe Acrobat Reader is required)
New Typesetting by: Khun Pimoj (USA)

Please click on the following to read the book online. To download each file, right click on the link, and select "Save Target as"

Charet Khmer

Bun Chanmol - Kuk Noyobay

2010-10-09T03:43:00.000-07:00

Title: Kuk Noyobay (Political Jail)
Author: Bun Chanmol
Publishing date: 1971
Genre: Memory
Keywords: Khmer, Memory, History, French colonial regime, Bun Chanmol
Format: PDF (Adobe Acrobat Reader is required)

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Kuk Noyobay

Ly Theamteng - Seksa Sangkheb Ampi Aryak-thor Khmer

2010-10-09T03:42:00.001-07:00

Title: Seksa Sangkheb Ampi Aryak-thor Khmer (A Short Study of Khmer Culture)
Author: Ly Theamteng
Publishing date: 1969
Genre: Khmer Culture
Keywords: Khmer, Culture, Short Study, Ly Theamteng
Format: PDF (Adobe Acrobat Reader is required)
New Typesetting by: Koy Chandararith (Adelaid, Australia)

Please click on the following to read the book online. To download each file, right click on the link, and select "Save Target as":

Seksa Sangkheb Ampi Aryak-thor Khmer

Teav Chhay Sok - Seksa Vob-thor Arey-thor Khmer-Indea

2010-10-09T03:42:00.000-07:00

Title: Seksa Vob-thor Arey-thor Khmer-Indea (Khmer-Indian Culture-Civilization Studies)
Author: Teav Chhay Sok
Publishing date: 1971-1972
Genre: Khmer Culture and Civilization
Keywords: Khmer, Culture, Civilization, Short Study, India, Teav Chhay Sok
Format: PDF (Adobe Acrobat Reader is required)
New Typesetting by: Koy Chandararith (Adelaid, Australia)

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Seksa Vob-thor Arey-thor Khmer-Indea

Ith Sarin - Sranos Proleung Khmer

2010-10-09T03:41:00.000-07:00

Title: Sranos Proleung Khmer (Khmer Spirit Nostalgia)
Author: Ith Sarin
Publishing date: 1973
Genre: History, Politics, Khmer Rouge
Keywords: Khmer, History, Politics, Khmer Rouge
Format: PDF (Adobe Acrobat Reader is required)
New Typesetting by: Khun Pimoj (USA)

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Sranos Proleung Khmer

Nuon Khoeun - Damneur Chhpous Tov Toeus Khang Lech

2010-10-09T03:40:00.000-07:00

Title: Damneur Chhpous Tov Toeus Khang Lech (Westward March)
Author: Nuon Khoeun
Publishing date: 1970
Genre: History, Politics
Keywords: Khmer, History, Politics, Vietnam, Vietnamese expansionism
Format: PDF (Adobe Acrobat Reader is required)
New Typesetting by: Khun Pimoj (USA)

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Damneur Chhpous Tov Toeus Khang Lech

Khing Hoc Dy - Bandam Ta Meas (Ta Meas' Recommendations)

2010-10-09T03:39:00.000-07:00

Title: Bandam Ta Meas (Ta Meas' Recommendations)
Author: Khing Hoc Dy
Publishing date: 2007
Genre: History
Keywords: Khmer, History, Politics, Vietnam, Vietnamese occupation, Colonial France
Format: PDF (Adobe Acrobat Reader is required)

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Bandam Ta Meas

Mrs Treoung Ngea - Areythoar Khmer (Khmer Civilization)

2010-10-09T03:38:00.001-07:00

Title: Areythoar Khmer (Khmer Civilization)
Author: Mrs. Troeung Ngea
Publishing date: 1974 (3rd Ed.)
Genre: Study, High School text book
Keywords: Khmer, Civilization, Culture, Custom
Format: PDF (Adobe Acrobat Reader is required)

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Areythoar Khmer Part 1

Areythoar Khmer Part 2

Sou Chamroeun - Achar Sva

2010-10-09T03:38:00.000-07:00

Title: Achar Sva
Author: Sou Chamroeun
Publishing date: 1968
Genre: History
Keywords: Khmer, History, Anti-monrachy, Rebellion, Monarchy
Format: PDF (Adobe Acrobat Reader is required)

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Achar Svar

A Short Study of Khmer Culture

2010-10-09T03:36:00.000-07:00

(click on Book Cover Image to download)

Book Title: Seksa Sangkheb Ampi Aryak-thor Khmer (A Short Study of Khmer Culture)
Author: Ly Theamteng
Year: 1969
New Typesetting by: Koy Chandararith (Adelaid, Australia)

Source: khmerbooks

"T-55 Pracham Tuol Krasaing" a Poem in Khmer by Sék Sere

2010-10-08T23:47:00.000-07:00

Cambodians hold buffalo race to honour the dead

2010-10-08T23:45:00.000-07:00

A Cambodian villager rides a buffalo during the Pchum Ben festival or Ancestors' Day

08 October 2010
AFP

VIHEAR SOUR, Cambodia — Thousands of Cambodians descended on a small village northeast of the capital Friday to cheer on the annual water buffalo race that marks the end of the 15-day festival for the ancestors.

"We hold the race to ask the Neakta Preah Srok (pagoda spirit) to protect us and to keep the people and animals in the village from illnesses," said farmer Sam Sen, who was also a judge in the race.

Around 20 villagers rode their buffaloes up and down a short stretch of road leading to the pagoda, to huge cheers from the crowd.

The buffaloes were adorned with colourful masks, their horns carefully bandaged to keep them from injuring anyone.

"I am happy, it was fun," said 23-year-old contestant Chan Ny after the race, still sitting on his buffalo. "I will be back next year."

The numberof buffaloes taking part in the race has steadily declined over the last few years.

Sam Sen said this was because "many big buffaloes have been sold off" by families struggling to make ends meet.

Some of the village's buffaloes had also been struck by disease, organisers said.

Cambodians believe their dead ancestors emerge to walk the earth during the Pchum Ben festival, and they honour and remember them with prayers and food offerings at Buddhist pagodas.

Vihear Sour village, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) northeast of Phnom Penh, began holding the race more than 70 years ago. It is followed by a traditional wrestling match.

Open Letter to Prince Sihanouk by Sisowath Sirik Matak dated August 27, 1973 (Repost)

2010-10-08T23:39:00.001-07:00

Click here to read the letter in Khmer (PDF)

Onus on Japan to lead world into next stage of capitalism

2010-10-08T23:39:00.000-07:00

By Yoko Kato, professor of Japanese history at the University of Tokyo
The Mainichi Daily News (Japan)

Every time I watch the news or read the paper, I'm struck by the falling number of reports we receive from correspondents based abroad. Born in 1960, I still remember the unfamiliar ring of names like "the Ho Chi Minh trail" and "Parrot's Beak" coming from the television set next to our kitchen table in the mornings. Time has passed since the Vietnam War spilled over into Cambodia in 1970.

Today, the worldwide financial crisis is probably the most frequently reported-on topic. That in itself is fine. What's unbearable is the fact that these "reports" are merely questions asking whether we're going to experience a double-dip recession or whether there will be an end to the rising yen. It feels like the captain of our plane has just announced the inevitability of a crash landing due to technical problems, and we're waiting in the brace position for the moment of impact.

These questions are not what we are seeking. The questions that should be asked are how the major economic changes taking place today will change us and continue to change us in the future.

There's nothing historians can do if asked to predict the future of the global economy. However, what the American Pulitzer-winning historian John Dower said when asked about what it means to be a historian -- seeking "patterns in complexity" -- provides food for thought. It is when figuring out how a global economic shift will change our society becomes the issue that the historian's modus operandi of finding patterns is infused with meaning.

Former chief economist for Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Kazuo Mizuno -- who in early September became the Cabinet Office's deputy director-general for economic and fiscal analysis -- discusses the ongoing upheaval using this very method. He has adjusted statistics derived from countless studies for timeless comparability, and created a graph in which the vertical axis comprises the world's real GDP per capita, and the horizontal axis the long history of humankind. Illustrating the changes that have taken place in the past 1 million years in one graph could not have been an easy task.

From the data, Mizuno has managed to tease out a thrilling argument. The modern period began in the 1600s, with the age of exploration in full-swing. The principle on which society was based during this period was capitalism, a system in which a handful of people in the first world comprising less than 20 percent of the global population bought cheap resources from people in the third world constituting 80 percent of the global population, in turn selling products at high prices.

The system worked well for 400 years, which was why developed countries flourished until the 1970s. However, Mizuno argues, as the emerging self-assertiveness of oil-rich countries, falling profit rates among major corporations, and stalling crude steel production accurately suggested, capitalism entered a stage of stagnation after peaking in 1974.

Leading the world in this modernization race were the U.S. and Japan. When real investment hit a wall, they had nowhere to turn but bubbles. First, Japan dove straight into a real estate bubble in the 1980s, with the U.S. following suit in the 1990s in the realm of finance. The bursting of both bubbles brings our economic history to the present day.

As a result of the globalization of the world economy, the system based on 20 percent of the world exploiting the remaining 80 percent is proving no longer viable. Mizuno says in his book, "Hitobito wa naze gurobaru keizai no honshitsu o miayamaru noka" (Why do people misread the global economy?), that if this major upheaval represents what economic history can teach us about the future, Japan -- which has heretofore been at the head of the pack -- should be the very nation to move onto the next stage first.

If this is true, what is the future that awaits us? To answer this question, it is worthwhile to look at how during the oil crisis of the 1970s, Japan became the first to overcome the crisis through energy-efficient technology. Next, factor in the reality that a scramble for rare resources, including fossil fuels, has already begun. With that in mind, try to envision a future in which 3 billion consumers from emerging countries demand technologies, products, and systems appropriate for a society no longer dependent on fossil fuels. In order to be able to sell any such products and systems overseas, Japan must pull off its own full-fledged disengagement from fossil fuels ahead of anyone else.

What I find so intriguing about Mizuno's argument is his presupposition of Japan's position as a global forerunner. At one time, it was common for us to explain Japan's capitalism using words like "unconventional" and "exceptional." As a result, exposure to Mizuno's unique theory which places Japan's real estate bubble on the same level with the U.S. financial bubble evokes an oddly profound emotion.

Japan as a nation is worthy of in-depth analysis in that it has served as a "preview" of what is to come in the rest of the world. What the U.S. has directed toward Afghanistan and Iraq after Sept. 11, 2001, is more a gaze aimed at the subject of punitive action than at countries with which one is at war. The way the U.S. sees Afghanistan and Iraq is similar to the way in which Japan saw China during the Sino-Japanese War. It is precisely because Japan has set so many precedents for the world that it bears the responsibility of paving the way to a new stage of capitalism. No, this is not an attempt at satire. This is hope.

Download Khmer Unicode

2010-10-08T22:57:00.000-07:00

How to install Khmer Unicode (KhmerUnicode2.0.0.exe) on Your Window XP and Vista 32-bit (Click Khmer Unicode for Microsoft Window Vist 64-bit (x86))

Download KhmerUnicode2.0.0.zip (version 2.0.0)
Use a Zip softwares to Extract the KhmerUnicode2.0.0.zip
Installation:

Download Khmer Fonts

2010-10-08T22:50:00.000-07:00

Khmer Image takes advantage of the newest embedded font technology from Microsoft to display Khmer fonts correctly in your browser, but only Microsoft Internet Explorer is able to correctly use this technology. If you are using any other browser you will need the proper fonts installed.

All Khmer fonts used on Khmer Image.blogspot.com are from the "ABC-Zero-Space" and "Limon" font families.

To install these fonts, please download and install the fonts from the locations listed below.

Download ABC-Zero-Space fonts

Download Limon fonts

School Year Begins, With Struggling Teachers Absent

2010-10-08T21:16:00.000-07:00

Young students in Cambodia (Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Cheng Lita, VOA Khmer
Phnom Penh Friday, 08 October 2010

“If we cannot fill our stomachs, we can't stay focused on our work. I don't know what the government really thinks. But we don't dare ask for an increase in salary. We just like teaching for the sake of teaching.”

Banoy primary school sits on a bumpy road about 50 kilometers from Takeo town, the provincial capital. A ringing bell means the end of class, and schoolboys and schoolgirls on a recent afternoon filtered out of the school and began heading home.

October marks the beginning of a new school year, but students interviewed recently in Takeo say they lack teachers. Their teachers are also farmers or market vendors, supplementing their incomes with outside work that keeps them out of the classroom.

Peang Khyang, the co-director of the school, walked nearby with an old, grey bicycle. He said teachers here have a hard time making ends meet.

“If we cannot fill our stomachs, we can't stay focused on our work,” he said. “I don't know what the government really thinks. But we don't dare ask for an increase in salary. We just like teaching for the sake of teaching.”

Teachers currently make different monthly salaries according to the level of school they are in: 100,000 riel, or $20, for primary, $50 for secondary and $70 for high school.

Peang Khyang said a teacher needs between $200 and $300 a month to maintain a decent standard of living. (By comparison, garment factory workers are currently fighting for incomes of about $90 per month, up from $61.)

On Oct. 5, which is International Teacher's Day, the Independent Teachers Association announced it wanted a raise for educators to $250 per month. They had planned a march for Oct. 6, but local authorities prevented it.

“The main problem of teachers in the matter of making a living,” said Rong Chhun, president of the association, which has made repeated requests for salary increases over the years.

Thong Boran, director general of finance for the Ministry of Education, said the request by the teacher's association did not follow the government's plan for teacher salaries.

“We work following a strategy and plan,” he said. “Rong Chhun is different.”

From Dictatorship to Democracy - Chapter Five: Exercising Power

2010-10-08T21:14:00.000-07:00

KI Media is starting a series on From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp whereby a chapter from this book in both English and Khmer is published every 2-day interval, with prior submissions listed in the menu bar for easy recall. The emphasis is that of KI Media. For its original complete text go to:

http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD.pdf

This book has been translated into KHMER and its full version is available at:

http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD-Khmer.pdf

Be inspired! Be coordinated! And take action!

KI Media
. . . . .

Click here to read the Khmer version of this chapter (PDF)

From Dictatorship to Democracy

CHAPTER FIVE

Exercising Power

In Chapter One we noted that military resistance against dictatorships does not strike them where they are weakest, but rather where they are strongest. By choosing to compete in the areas of military forces, supplies of ammunition, weapons technology, and the like, resistance movements tend to put themselves at a distinct disadvantage. Dictatorships will almost always be able to muster superior resources in these areas. The dangers of relying on foreign powers for salvation were also outlined. In Chapter Two we examined the problems of relying on negotiations as a means to remove dictatorships.

What means are then available that will offer the democratic resistance distinct advantages and will tend to aggravate the identified weaknesses of dictatorships? What technique of action will capitalize on the theory of political power discussed in Chapter Three? The alternative of choice is political defiance.

Political defiance has the following characteristics:

It does not accept that the outcome will be decided by the means of fighting chosen by the dictatorship.
It is difficult for the regime to combat.
It can uniquely aggravate weaknesses of the dictatorship and can sever its sources of power.
It can in action be widely dispersed but can also be concentrated on a specific objective.
It leads to errors of judgment and action by the dictators.
It can effectively utilize the population as a whole and the society’s groups and institutions in the struggle to end the brutal domination of the few.
It helps to spread the distribution of effective power in the society, making the establishment and maintenance of a democratic society more possible.

The workings of nonviolent struggle

Like military capabilities, political defiance can be employed for a variety of purposes, ranging from efforts to influence the opponents to take different actions, to create conditions for a peaceful resolution of conflict, or to disintegrate the opponents’ regime. However, political defiance operates in quite different ways from violence. Although both techniques are means to wage struggle, they do so with very different means and with different consequences. The ways and results of violent conflict are well known. Physical weapons are used to intimidate, injure, kill, and destroy.

Nonviolent struggle is a much more complex and varied means of struggle than is violence. Instead, the struggle is fought by psychological, social, economic, and political weapons applied by the population and the institutions of the society. These have been known under various names of protests, strikes, noncooperation, boycotts, disaffection, and people power. As noted earlier, all governments can rule only as long as they receive replenishment of the needed sources of their power from the cooperation, submission, and obedience of the population and the institutions of the society. Political defiance, unlike violence, is uniquely suited to severing those sources of power.

Nonviolent weapons and discipline

The common error of past improvised political defiance campaigns is the reliance on only one or two methods, such as strikes and mass demonstrations. In fact, a multitude of methods exist that allow resistance strategists to concentrate and disperse resistance as required.

About two hundred specific methods of nonviolent action have been identified, and there are certainly scores more. These methods are classified under three broad categories: protest and persuasion, noncooperation, and intervention. Methods of nonviolent protest and persuasion are largely symbolic demonstrations, including parades, marches, and vigils (54 methods). Noncooperation is divided into three sub-categories: (a) social noncooperation (16 methods), (b) economic noncooperation, including boycotts (26 methods) and strikes (23 methods), and (c) political noncooperation (38 methods).

Nonviolent intervention, by psychological, physical, social, economic, or political means, such as the fast, nonviolent occupation, and parallel government (41 methods), is the final group. A list of 198 of these methods is included as the Appendix to this publication.

The use of a considerable number of these methods — carefully chosen, applied persistently and on a large scale, wielded in the context of a wise strategy and appropriate tactics, by trained civilians — is likely to cause any illegitimate regime severe problems. This applies to all dictatorships.

In contrast to military means, the methods of nonviolent struggle can be focused directly on the issues at stake. For example, since the issue of dictatorship is primarily political, then political forms of nonviolent struggle would be crucial. These would include denial of legitimacy to the dictators and noncooperation with their regime. Noncooperation would also be applied against specific policies. At times stalling and procrastination may be quietly and even secretly practiced, while at other times open disobedience and defiant public demonstrations and strikes may be visible to all.

On the other hand, if the dictatorship is vulnerable to economic pressures or if many of the popular grievances against it are economic, then economic action, such as boycotts or strikes, may be appropriate resistance methods. The dictators’ efforts to exploit the economic system might be met with limited general strikes, slowdowns, and refusal of assistance by (or disappearance of) indispensable experts. Selective use of various types of strikes may be conducted at key points in manufacturing, in transport, in the supply of raw materials, and in the distribution of products.

Some methods of nonviolent struggle require people to perform acts unrelated to their normal lives, such as distributing leaflets, operating an underground press, going on hunger strike, or sitting down in the streets. These methods may be difficult for some people to undertake except in very extreme situations.

Other methods of nonviolent struggle instead require people to continue approximately their normal lives, though in somewhat different ways. For example, people may report for work, instead of striking, but then deliberately work more slowly or inefficiently than usual. “Mistakes” may be consciously made more frequently. One may become “sick” and “unable” to work at certain times. Or, one may simply refuse to work. One might go to religious services when the act expresses not only religious but also political convictions. One may act to protect children from the attackers’ propaganda by education at home or in illegal classes. One might refuse to join certain “recommended” or required organizations that one would not have joined freely in earlier times. The similarity of such types of action to people’s usual activities and the limited degree of departure from their normal lives may make participation in the national liberation struggle much easier for many people.

Since nonviolent struggle and violence operate in fundamentally different ways, even limited resistance violence during a political defiance campaign will be counterproductive, for it will shift the struggle to one in which the dictators have an overwhelming advantage (military warfare). Nonviolent discipline is a key to success and must be maintained despite provocations and brutalities by the dictators and their agents.

The maintenance of nonviolent discipline against violent opponents facilitates the workings of the four mechanisms of change in nonviolent struggle (discussed below). Nonviolent discipline is also extremely important in the process of political jiu-jitsu. In this process the stark brutality of the regime against the clearly nonviolent actionists politically rebounds against the dictators’ position, causing dissention in their own ranks as well as fomenting support for the resisters among the general population, the regime’s usual supporters, and third parties.

In some cases, however, limited violence against the dictatorship may be inevitable. Frustration and hatred of the regime may explode into violence. Or, certain groups may be unwilling to abandon violent means even though they recognize the important role of nonviolent struggle. In these cases, political defiance does not need to be abandoned. However, it will be necessary to separate the violent action as far as possible from the nonviolent action. This should be done in terms of geography, population groups, timing, and issues. Otherwise the violence could have a disastrous effect on the potentially much more powerful and successful use of political defiance.

The historical record indicates that while casualties in dead and wounded must be expected in political defiance, they will be far fewer than the casualties in military warfare. Furthermore, this type of struggle does not contribute to the endless cycle of killing and brutality.

Nonviolent struggle both requires and tends to produce a loss (or greater control) of fear of the government and its violent repression. That abandonment or control of fear is a key element in destroying the power of the dictators over the general population.

Openness, secrecy, and high standards

Secrecy, deception, and underground conspiracy pose very difficult problems for a movement using nonviolent action. It is often impossible to keep the political police and intelligence agents from learning about intentions and plans. From the perspective of the movement, secrecy is not only rooted in fear but contributes to fear, which dampens the spirit of resistance and reduces the number of people who can participate in a given action. It also can contribute to suspicions and accusations, often unjustified, within the movement, concerning who is an informer or agent for the opponents. Secrecy may also affect the ability of a movement to remain nonviolent. In contrast, openness regarding intentions and plans will not only have the opposite effects, but will contribute to an image that the resistance movement is in fact extremely powerful. The problem is of course more complex than this suggests, and there are significant aspects of resistance activities that may require secrecy. A well-informed assessment will be required by those knowledgeable about both the dynamics of nonviolent struggle and also the dictatorship’s means of surveillance in the specific situation.

The editing, printing, and distribution of underground publications, the use of illegal radio broadcasts from within the country, and the gathering of intelligence about the operations of the dictatorship are among the special limited types of activities where a high degree of secrecy will be required.

The maintenance of high standards of behavior in nonviolent action is necessary at all stages of the conflict. Such factors as fearlessness and maintaining nonviolent discipline are always required. It is important to remember that large numbers of people may frequently be necessary to effect particular changes. However, such numbers can be obtained as reliable participants only by maintaining the high standards of the movement.

Shifting power relationships

Strategists need to remember that the conflict in which political defiance is applied is a constantly changing field of struggle with continuing interplay of moves and counter-moves [Sam Rainsy is brilliant at this]. Nothing is static. Power relationships, both absolute and relative, are subject to constant and rapid changes. This is made possible by the resisters continuing their nonviolent persistence despite repression.

The variations in the respective power of the contending sides in this type of conflict situation are likely to be more extreme than in violent conflicts, to take place more quickly, and to have more diverse and politically significant consequences. Due to these variations, specific actions by the resisters are likely to have consequences far beyond the particular time and place in which they occur. These effects will rebound to strengthen or weaken one group or another.

In addition, the nonviolent group may, by its actions exert influence over the increase or decrease in the relative strength of the opponent group to a great extent. For example, disciplined courageous nonviolent resistance in face of the dictators’ brutalities may induce unease, disaffection, unreliability, and in extreme situations even mutiny among the dictators’ own soldiers and population. This resistance may also result in increased international condemnation of the dictatorship. In addition, skillful, disciplined, and persistent use of political defiance may result in more and more participation in the resistance by people who normally would give their tacit support to the dictators or generally remain neutral in the conflict.

Four mechanisms of change

Nonviolent struggle produces change in four ways. The first mechanism is the least likely, though it has occurred. When members of the opponent group are emotionally moved by the suffering of repression imposed on courageous nonviolent resisters or are rationally persuaded that the resisters’ cause is just, they may come to accept the resisters’ aims. This mechanism is called conversion. Though cases of conversion in nonviolent action do sometimes happen, they are rare, and in most conflicts this does not occur at all or at least not on a significant scale.

Far more often, nonviolent struggle operates by changing the conflict situation and the society so that the opponents simply cannot do as they like. It is this change that produces the other three mechanisms: accommodation, nonviolent coercion, and disintegration. Which of these occurs depends on the degree to which the relative and absolute power relations are shifted in favor of the democrats.

If the issues are not fundamental ones, the demands of the opposition in a limited campaign are not considered threatening, and the contest of forces has altered the power relationships to some degree, the immediate conflict may be ended by reaching an agreement, a splitting of differences or compromise. This mechanism is called accommodation. Many strikes are settled in this manner, for example, with both sides attaining some of their objectives but neither achieving all it wanted. A government may perceive such a settlement to have some positive benefits, such as defusing tension, creating an impression of “fairness,” or polishing the international image of the regime. It is important, therefore, that great care be exercised in selecting the issues on which a settlement by accommodation is acceptable. A struggle to bring down a dictatorship is not one of these.

Nonviolent struggle can be much more powerful than indicated by the mechanisms of conversion or accommodation. Mass noncooperation and defiance can so change social and political situations, especially power relationships, that the dictators’ ability to control the economic, social, and political processes of government and the society is in fact taken away. The opponents’ military forces may become so unreliable that they no longer simply obey orders to repress resisters. Although the opponents’ leaders remain in their positions, and adhere to their original goals, their ability to act effectively has been taken away from them. That is called nonviolent coercion.

In some extreme situations, the conditions producing nonviolent coercion are carried still further. The opponents’ leadership in fact loses all ability to act and their own structure of power collapses. The resisters’ self-direction, noncooperation, and defiance become so complete that the opponents now lack even a semblance of control over them. The opponents’ bureaucracy refuses to obey its own leadership. The opponents’ troops and police mutiny. The opponents’ usual supporters or population repudiate their former leadership, denying that they have any right to rule at all. Hence, their former assistance and obedience falls away. The fourth mechanism of change, disintegration of the opponents’ system, is so complete that they do not even have sufficient power to surrender. The regime simply falls to pieces.

In planning liberation strategies, these four mechanisms should be kept in mind. They sometimes operate essentially by chance. However, the selection of one or more of these as the intended mechanism of change in a conflict will make it possible to formulate specific and mutually reinforcing strategies. Which mechanism (or mechanisms) to select will depend on numerous factors, including the absolute and relative power of the contending groups and the attitudes and objectives of the nonviolent struggle group.

Democratizing effects of political defiance

In contrast to the centralizing effects of violent sanctions, use of the technique of nonviolent struggle contributes to democratizing the political society in several ways.

One part of the democratizing effect is negative. That is, in contrast to military means, this technique does not provide a means of repression under command of a ruling elite which can be turned against the population to establish or maintain a dictatorship. Leaders of a political defiance movement can exert influence and apply pressures on their followers, but they cannot imprison or execute them when they dissent or choose other leaders.

Another part of the democratizing effect is positive. That is, nonviolent struggle provides the population with means of resistance that can be used to achieve and defend their liberties against existing or would-be dictators. Below are several of the positive democratizing effects nonviolent struggle may have:

Experience in applying nonviolent struggle may result in the population being more self-confident in challenging the regime’s threats and capacity for violent repression.
Nonviolent struggle provides the means of noncooperation and defiance by which the population can resist undemocratic controls over them by any dictatorial group.
Nonviolent struggle can be used to assert the practice of democratic freedoms, such as free speech, free press, independent organizations, and free assembly, in face of repressive controls.
Nonviolent struggle contributes strongly to the survival, rebirth, and strengthening of the independent groups and institutions of the society, as previously discussed. These are important for democracy because of their capacity to mobilize the power capacity of the population and to impose limits on the effective power of any would-be dictators.
Nonviolent struggle provides means by which the population can wield power against repressive police and military action by a dictatorial government.
Nonviolent struggle provides methods by which the population and the independent institutions can in the interests of democracy restrict or sever the sources of power for the ruling elite, thereby threatening its capacity to continue its domination.

Complexity of nonviolent struggle

As we have seen from this discussion, nonviolent struggle is a complex technique of social action, involving a multitude of methods, a range of mechanisms of change, and specific behavioral requirements. To be effective, especially against a dictatorship, political defiance requires careful planning and preparation. Prospective participants will need to understand what is required of them. Resources will need to have been made available. And strategists will need to have analyzed how nonviolent struggle can be most effectively applied. We now turn our attention to this latter crucial element: the need for strategic planning.

Dictators are Wimps Series

2010-10-08T21:13:00.000-07:00

By Khmer Democrat, Phnom Penh
Dictators are Wimps Series

China, the patron of the Khmer Rouge and the role model of Dictator Hun Sen's CPP (full of former Khmer Rouge cadres who still hold the same mentality of repression, violence, fear), is throwing a tantrum in response to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize 2010 to jailed dissident professor/writer Liu Xiaobo. Boo-hoo-hoo...

"Blasphemy!"

- Chinese Dictators to Nobel Committee (CNN)

"They [Beijing Dictators] are very fragile; they are more afraid than we are."

- Liu Xia (Liu Xiaobo's wife; CNN)

DICTATORS ARE WIMPS!
Dictators are Wimps!
DICTATORS ARE A BLAST TO THE PAST!
Dictators are bullies!
DICTATORS ARE JACKASSES!

See CNN video

www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/10/08/china.nobel.react

Regional 'Liberal Democrats' Meet in Phnom Penh

2010-10-08T21:11:00.000-07:00

Mu Sochua, an opposition National Assembly representative for Kampot province. (Photo: Mean Riddh, RFA)

Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer
Washington, D.C Friday, 08 October 2010

Members of the Coalition of Asian Liberal Democrats met in Cambodia this week in an effort to form stronger bonds across the region.

Representatives came from Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand. The event was hosted by the opposition Sam Rainsy Party.

“In our view, building a network among democrats has given the Sam Rainsy Party the hope and confidence that someday the Sam Rainsy Party will be in power,” said Mu Sochua, an opposition National Assembly representative for Kampot province.

The meeting covered methods of managing party finance, as well as building grassroots support. The Sam Rainsy Party discussed ways that women can become involved in politics.

Mu Sochua said some coalition members had only come to power after years of effort, something Cambodia's opposition would learn from by focusing on its key messages, especially an independent judiciary and equal opportunities for men and women.

Samnok Meada - "Mother's Lament": A Poem in Khmer by Ung Phiny (Repost)

2010-10-08T15:47:00.001-07:00

Click on the poem in Khmer to zoom in

IPU Examines Abuses of Legislators’ Rights in 35 Countries [including Cambodia]

2010-10-08T15:47:00.000-07:00

Le texte en français se trouve en fin du texte anglais

IPU EXAMINES ABUSES OF LEGISLATORS’ RIGHTS IN 35 COUNTRIES

Geneva, 6 October 2010 - No. 2

Senator Rosario Green (Mexico), President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians, presented her report to the IPU Governing Council on the last day of the 123rd IPU Assembly. The Committee has examined the individual predicament of 306 parliamentarians in 35 countries. These include the public cases of 118 legislators in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burundi, Cambodia, Colombia, Ecuador, Eritrea, Iraq, Lebanon, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Palestine/Israel, Philippines, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Zimbabwe.

At a press conference held after the presentation of the report, the Committee President, accompanied by Canadian Senator Sharon Carstairs (a former President of the Committee), focussed on cases concerning Cambodia, Eritrea, Myanmar and Rwanda.

In her report to the IPU Council, Committee President Green referred in particular to the situation in Myanmar. “In a little over a month” she said, “the citizens of Myanmar will take part in elections, the first in twenty years. This should be a reason for joy, but it is not. In Bangkok, the IPU called on the Myanmar authorities to do everything possible to ensure inclusive, free and fair elections. There are currently 2,100 political prisoners still waiting for their release. This includes the twelve parliamentarians whose cases are being examined by the IPU and who remain imprisoned for merely having exercised their freedom of expression. They have all been sentenced on the basis of legal proceedings which blatantly disregarded their right to a fair trial. They are not the only ones, however, who are excluded from the political process. In the past, the Committee examined many other cases of parliamentarians in Myanmar who at one time or another ended up in prison for speaking their minds. None of them can stand in the elections, because all those who have been the subject of a conviction are automatically disqualified. Take a clear stance in support of the release of your detained colleagues for a credible political transition in Myanmar.” urged Ms. Green.

Some 500 parliamentarians from 119 countries, among them 23 Speakers of Parliament, are attending the 123rd Assembly. At today’s close they adopted a resolution on an emergency item to call for immediate action to support international relief efforts in response to natural disasters, in particular for flood-stricken Pakistan.

The legislators urged the both the private sector and the international community, particularly donor countries, international financial institutions and international organizations, to extend their full support and assistance to the Government of Pakistan and to mitigate the adverse impact of the floods. Actions recommended included writing off and/or rescheduling Pakistan’s debt, providing market access to revive Pakistan’s economy and investing in medium and long-term rehabilitation and reconstruction projects. They also encouraged the Government of Pakistan to continue its own efforts to introduce the financial and economic reforms required for successful reconstruction.

The parliamentarians also called upon governments to provide adequate and accessible resources to United Nations agencies involved in funding and providing disaster assistance, and upon the IPU to support the UN by developing a parliamentary programme on disaster-risk reduction that encompasses mitigation, prevention and preparedness.

The IPU Governing Council also adopted a zero growth budget for 2011, for a total amount of 18.1 million Swiss francs, taking account of budgetary constraints to which national parliaments are subject during the current period of economic difficulty.

The next IPU Assembly will be held in Panama City (Panama) from 15-20 April 2011.

Established in 1889 with Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the IPU - the oldest multilateral political organization in the world - currently brings together 155 national parliaments and nine associated regional assemblies. The world organization of parliaments also has an Office in New York, which acts as its Permanent Observer to the United Nations.

Contacts:

- Mr. James Jennings, IPU Head of Communication. Mobile: 079 819 92 63; e-mail: jj@mail.ipu.org

- Ms. Luisa Ballin, IPU Information Officer. Tel. at the CICG: +41 22 791 94 42. Mobile: +41 79 649 71 45

IPU website: www.ipu.org

=====================

L’UIP EXAMINE LES ATTEINTES AUX DROITS DE PARLEMENTAIRES DANS 35 PAYS

Genève, le 6 octobre 2010 - N°2

La sénatrice Rosario Green (Mexique), Présidente du Comité des droits de l’homme des parlementaires de l’Union interparlementaire (UIP), a présenté son rapport au Conseil directeur de l’Organisation le jour de la clôture des travaux de la 123ème Assemblée de l’UIP. Le Comité a étudié la situation de 306 parlementaires, dans 35 pays. Il a examiné 118 cas publics dans les pays suivants : Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burundi, Cambodge, Colombie, Equateur, Erythrée, Fédération de Russie, Iraq, Liban, Madagascar, Malaisie, Mongolie, Myanmar, Palestine/Israël, Philippines, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Turquie et Zimbabwe.

Lors de la conférence de presse qui a eu lieu après la présentation de son rapport, la Présidente du Comité, accompagnée de la sénatrice canadienne Sharon Carstairs (ancienne Présidente du Comité), a mis l’accent sur les cas touchant le Cambodge, l’Erythrée, le Myanmar et le Rwanda.

Dans son rapport au Conseil directeur, Mme Green a insisté sur la situation au Myanmar. « Dans à peine plus d’un mois, a-t-elle dit, les citoyens du Myanmar prendront part aux élections, les premières depuis vingt ans. Ce devrait être une raison de nous réjouir, mais ce n’est pas le cas. A Bangkok, l’UIP a appelé les autorités du Myanmar à tout mettre en œuvre pour que les élections soient libres, régulières et sans exclusive. Deux mille cent prisonniers politiques attendent toujours d’être libérés. Parmi eux figurent les 12 parlementaires dont l’UIP examine le cas et qui sont détenus pour le simple fait d’avoir exercé leur liberté d’expression. Ils ont tous été condamnés à l’issue de procédures judiciaires constituant une atteinte caractérisée au principe de procédure équitable. Pour autant, ils ne sont pas les seuls à être exclus du processus politique. Le Comité a examiné nombre d’autres cas de parlementaires du Myanmar qui se sont retrouvés en prison, à un moment ou à un autre, pour avoir osé dire ce qu’ils pensaient. Aucun d’entre eux ne peut se présenter aux élections car quiconque a fait l’objet d’une condamnation est automatiquement frappé d’inéligibilité. » Mme Green a exhorté les membres du Conseil à prendre une position claire en faveur de leurs collègues détenus, afin de permettre une transition politique crédible au Myanmar.

Quelque 500 parlementaires de 119 pays, parmi lesquels 23 Présidents de parlement, participent à la 123ème Assemblée. Aujourd'hui, à la séance de clôture, ils ont adopté une résolution sur un point d'urgence appelant à une action immédiate de soutien aux secours internationaux face aux catastrophes naturelles, en particulier pour le Pakistan victime d'inondations.

Les parlementaires ont exhorté le secteur privé et la communauté internationale, et en particulier les pays donateurs, les institutions financières internationales et les organisations internationales, à apporter tout leur appui et toute leur assistance au Gouvernement pakistanais et à atténuer les effets dévastateurs des inondations. Parmi les mesures recommandées, on citera l'annulation ou le rééchelonnement de la dette du Pakistan, un accès au marché propre à relancer l'économie pakistanaise et l'investissement dans des projets de relèvement et de reconstruction à moyen et à long terme. Le Gouvernement pakistanais a été encouragé à poursuivre ses efforts pour adopter les réformes économiques et financières nécessaires à une reconstruction réussie.

Les parlementaires ont aussi appelé les gouvernements à fournir des moyens suffisants et accessibles aux institutions des Nations Unies s'occupant du financement et de l'assistance post-catastrophes et ont demandé à l'UIP de soutenir l'action de l'ONU en mettant au point un programme parlementaire sur l'atténuation des catastrophes naturelles qui inclue la réduction des risques, la prévention et la préparation.

Par ailleurs, compte tenu des contraintes budgétaires que connaissent les parlements nationaux en cette période de difficultés économiques, le Conseil directeur a adopté pour 2011 un budget à croissance nulle d'un montant total de 18,1 millions de francs suisses.

La prochaine Assemblée de l'UIP se tiendra à Panama (Panama) du 15 au 20 avril 2011.

Etablie en 1889 et ayant son siège à Genève(Suisse), l'UIP - l'organisation politique multilatérale la plus ancienne au monde – compte actuellement 153 Parlements membres et neuf Membres associés (Assemblées parlementaires régionales). L'organisation mondiale des parlements a également un Bureau à New York, qui exerce la fonction d’observateur permanent auprès de l’ONU.

Contacts et informations :

M. James Jennings, Chef de la Communication à l'UIP. Tél. : 079 819 92 63 courriel : jj@mail.ipu.org

MmeLuisa Ballin, Chargée de l'information à l'UIP. Tél. : +41 22 919 41 16 ou +41 79 649 71 45.

Site internet de l’UIP: www.ipu.org

Anti-Corruption Unit Considers 90 Tax Complaints

2010-10-08T15:45:00.001-07:00

Om Yentieng, the director of the Anti-Corrupiton Unit. (Photo: VOA Khmer)

Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer
Phnom Penh Friday, 08 October 2010

“The tax agents overcharged for the annual vehicle tax with invoices and without. We are putting the complaints on the table to prepare a procedural process.”

The Anti-Corrupiton Unit is preparing to examine some 90 complaints of graft by tax officials from the Ministry of Finance.

Ninety complaints from 2,700 people across 14 provinces were filed with the unit last month, after a watchdog group claimed people were paying too much for annual vehicle tags.

Om Yentieng, the director of the ACU, told a roundtable of media representatives on Tuesday the unit had prepared all of the complaints for formal processing.

“The tax agents overcharged for the annual vehicle tax with invoices and without,” he said. “We are putting the complaints on the table to prepare a procedural process.”

Om John, deputy chief of the Ministry of Economy and Finance's tax department, said the department too is studying the complaints for possible investigation.

San Chey, a project coordinator for the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability In East Asia and the Pacific, which helped collect and file the complaints, welcomed the news.

“This unit is not ignoring the complaints from people” he said. “I strongly encourage the Anti-Corruption Unit in helping an additional investigation and taking action to eliminate corruption in the collection of annual vehicle taxes.”

San Chey said he had not included the names of tax officials in the complaints but would provide them if requested.

The Origins of the Khmer Republic…look back, how Sihanouk screwed up Cambodia

2010-10-08T15:45:00.000-07:00

Thursday, October 7, 2010
By Kok Sap
Originally posted at http://khamerlogue.wordpress.com/

"Cambodia is me"

Khamerlogue finds it informative and educational to relearn and to share with readers of what and who caused Cambodia internal break up and repeated invasions then occupation from Viet of all stripes. This extract was part of the 50 page monograph written by the very official of both Sihanouk Socialistic and newly founded Republic regimes. Until present it's disturbing to listen and hear Sihanouk justifying himself, all the times, that the Republic brought war from Hanoi on home. It's Sihanouk had expelled and displaced hundred of thousand refugees from Cambodia. It's he who dared to declare "Cambodia is me." It's Sihanouk who committed treason to the highest degree in the eyes of Cambodian people. The conscionable ones would not buy Sihanouk readjusted arguments according to wind of victors.

28 November 1978 by Lt. General Sak Sutsakhan

The political leadership of the Cambodia of 1970 clearly had one foot firmly planted in the Communist camp. The policy of "double dealing" practices by Prince Sihanouk favored the Vietnamese and Khmer Communists with disastrous results for Cambodia, a fact not lost on Sihanouk who did not fail to vehemently denounce before the entire world and on many occasions the continuous infiltrations and subversion of the Communists and the peril for Cambodia which they posed.

The divorce of Cambodia from the United States of America (USA) and its subsequent marriage with the People's Republic of China (PRC) constituted before the world and within Southeast Asia a new level of Communist penetration into the Indochinese peninsula. It changed significantly the face of the war in South Viet and provoked in Cambodia's neighbors a sense of the danger of Communist expansion. Within Cambodia this marriage signified the victory of Communist factions, who began to appear little by little from their hiding, and the defeat of the pro-imperialist factions.

The trickery of the political games played by Sihanouk from 1954 to 1970 earned for him a certain standing on the international scene as "leader of his country"; but in his own country these tactics met with total defeat. What was unpardonable in Khmer religious and intellectual circles was Sihanouk's practice of abruptly changing loyalties or a policy of "consistent inconsistency" (politique de constance dans l'inconstance) an expression used by Lt. General Sisowath Sirik Matak in an open letter to his cousin, Prince Sihanouk, dated August 27, 1973.

This gap between reputations at home and abroad widened with time for the situation within Cambodia gave scarcely any reason for satisfaction. Actually, Viet Communist forces had already occupied large portions of Khmer territory in the east, southeast, and south. The Cambodian population of these regions, weary of bearing the violent persecutions and exactions of the invading forces, were forced to abandon everything and seek refuge farther in the interior, away from the Viet Communists.

A silent rage began to spread through the population as the people came to realize the political trickery of Prince Sihanouk, a trickery which led to an aggravation of the situation. That peace of which Cambodia had prided itself on being the sole beneficiary in Southeast Asia was rapidly fading. In vain, Sihanouk publicly and repeatedly denounced the exactions of the Viet Communists. Finally he announced to the nation that he would depart on January 6, 1970 for France to take the cures dictated by his physical condition, following which he would travel to the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China to discuss economic and military aid.

In intellectual circles in Cambodia there was general agreement that the two latter visits had no other real purpose than to find some way to resolve the political difficulties caused on the one hand by the Viet Communists and by the activities of the Khmer Communists on the other, activities which were becoming more widespread all the time.Sihanouk's absence from Cambodia provided the pretext for several demonstrations. On the 8th and 9th of March 1970 there were demonstrations in the capitals of the provinces of Svay Rieng and Prey Veng.

Even in Phnom Penh there were frankly violent demonstrations organized by university students against the Embassies of North Vietnam and the PRG and supported among intellectual circles.

Mr. Cheng Heng, acting Chief of State, and General Lon Nol, Chief of Government (Prime Minister), tried in vain to make Prince Sihanouk aware of a situation which was worsening day by day in Cambodia. When the Prince refused to receive the delegation sent to brief him, Lon Nol and Cheng Heng turned to the National Assembly and the Council of the Kingdom.

The two legislative bodies assembled to consider the problem of Sihanouk's conduct and absence. They were the same two bodies which had ten years earlier, in 1960, designated the Prince as Chief of State.

On March 18, 1970, after a long and historic debate, the two bodies by unanimous vote withdrew their confidence in Prince Sihanouk and removed him from office.

The members accused him, among other things, of having authorized North Viet and South Viet Cong troops to illegally occupy Khmer territory and establish bases (sanctuaries) during the latter half of the 1960's, an occupation in flagrant violation of Khmer neutrality as provided by the Geneva Accords of 1954.

The occupation was characterized as well, as an attack on the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of the country.

Following action by the legislative bodies, the Prince Chief of State was tried by the High Court of Justice and condemned to death in absentia for high treason.

Two important events which followed the removal of Sihanouk deserve noting at this point. The first was the meeting on March 16, 1970 between representatives of the Cambodian Government ministry of Foreign Affairs and the General Staff of the Armed Forces) and representatives of the Embassies of North Viet and the Provisional Representative Government (of Viet Cong), a meeting which had as its purpose the securing of Communist agreement to evacuate their forces from Cambodia in accordance with the demand contained in the Cambodian government's official note of March 12, 1970.

Unfortunately, the two hour meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs produced no results.

The second event was the initiative of the PRC after having broken diplomatic relations with Cambodia on May 5, 1970. Chinese Communist emissaries sent from Peking for the express purpose declared to General Lon Nol, by then head of the government, that the "matter between Sihanouk and the Khmer government was nothing more than an internal problem" and that Peking could overlook personalities' involved so long as the Cambodian side accepted the following three conditions:

Permit China to continue to use Khmer territory to resupply the NVA/VC with weapons, munitions, and material so as to continue the war against South Vietnam.
Authorize the NVA/VC to establish their bases in Cambodia as before.
Continue to support North Viet and the Viet Cong with propaganda. This demarche by China met with total rejection on the part of the Cambodian government.

In a note dated March 25, 1970 the Khmer invited the North Viet to discuss for a second time the problem of the evacuation their forces. The meeting was set for the 27th of March. But on the 25th of March the Republic of Poland advised the Khmer officially of the departure from Phnom Penh of the Embassies of North Viet and the Viet Cong PRG, to take place on 27 March when the two groups would travel by International Control Commission aircraft to Hanoi.

Immediately after the armed aggression by North Viet Armies/Viet Cong forces, which was launched against Cambodia from their sanctuaries along the South Viet border, the Khmer Republic government made countless appeals to the United Nations (UN) Security Council for an end to that aggression.

Instead of taking action on the Cambodian request, this international organ (the UN Security Council) merely replied that in view of Cambodia's being governed by the 1954 Geneva Accords, the Khmer Republic had better apply to the co-chairmen of the 1954 Geneva Conference (Soviet Union and Great Britain).

On 31 March 1970, therefore, in a memorandum addressed to the ambassadors of the Soviet Union and Great Britain, the Cambodian government expressed its deep concern about increasingly flagrant and repeated violations of the 1954 Geneva Accords by the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Viet (DRV) and those of the PRG of South Viet. These forces, the memorandum said, not only refused to withdraw from the Cambodian territory, they were now launching overt attacks against Khmer outposts and defense forces within the Khmer national boundaries. The Cambodian government' then demanded the re-installment of the International Control Commission on an urgent basis.

On 6 April 1970, the United Nations Secretariat announced that Secretary General U Thant had decided "to deal with the authorities who effectively controlled the situation in Cambodia"; in other words, with the Phnom Penh government and not with the former Chief of State. This first and only positive response by the UN constituted, in effect, an answer to the claims made by Prince Sihanouk who, in a message addressed to His Excellency U Thant, represented himself as the only legal holder of Cambodian authority.

In addition to the events described above, the chronology of political activities in Cambodia after March 18 can be established as "follows:

March 26 and 27. Trouble provoked by the Viet Communists in Kompong Cham Province, and particularly in the provincial capital, where two deputies who tried to calm the demonstrators were knifed to death in broad daylight and in the midst of the crowd. The office of, the governor was partially burned.
March 29. The North Viet and Viet Cong Embassies announced the unilateral rupture of diplomatic relations with Cambodia and their refusal to resume' discussions concerning the withdrawal of their forces.
March 29 Launching of North Viet and Viet Cong aggression in several Cambodian provinces.
April 11 Popular manifestation called "The March of National Concord" at the National Sports Complex in Phnom Penh as a sign of support for the government of Lon Nol; the manifestation also demanded the establishment of a Republican regime for the country.
April 14. Lon Nol appealed to the countries of all world blocs to aid him in the fight against Viet Communism.
April 30. American and South Viet troops launched their attacks against NVN and VC sanctuaries located along the frontier in the eastern provinces of Cambodia.
May 5. The PRC broke diplomatic relations with Cambodia.
May 13. Reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Siam, which had been broken in 1961.
May 16 and 17. Indonesia brought ten nations together at a conference in Djakarta aimed at finding a way of restoring peace in Cambodia.
May 19. Restoration of diplomatic relations with South Korea, broken since 1966.
May 27. Restoration of diplomatic relations with the Republic of South Viet, broken since 1963.
June 25. "General Mobilization" of Cambodia in order to deal with the invasion.
June 30. Final date set for ending the cross-border operations of U.S. forces against NVA/VC sanctuaries in Cambodia.
August 28. Mr. Spiro Agnew, Vice President of the U.S., made an official visit to Cambodia.
September 15. Mr. Emory C. Swank, the first U.S. envoy of ambassadorial rank since resumption of diplomatic, relations in 1969, presented his credentials to Mr. Chang Heng, Chief of State. Before that date, the U.S. Mission was presided over by Charge d' Affairs Lloyd M. Rives.
October 9 Proclamation of the Khmer Republic. The above chronology explains in itself the initial reaction of certain nations to the entry of Cambodia into war.

Cambodian efforts to promote silk weavers

2010-10-08T03:41:00.001-07:00

(Photo: The Phnom Penh Post)

October 08, 2010
Fibre2Fashion

Cambodian handmade silk remained the centre of attraction at a conference organized by the National Silk Centre on the outskirts of Siem Reap at Pouk District, with funding from the European Union.

The main aim behind organizing the Silk Day was to foster the quality of handmade silk items, while giving an idea about the industry and the issues confronting it. The occasion also commemorated conclusion of a project for establishment and promotion of silk sector in Siem Reap and Bantey Meanchey districts.

The project that came along with the EU funding was executed by the Khmer Silk Villages and Chantiers-Ecoles de Formation Professionelle.

Experts at the conference informed that, Khmer silk all in all produces 19 different items for exports.

Also that, the US $25 million worth Cambodian silk industry, provided employment to around 20,500 weavers, this year.

Experts even said that, visitors get drawn towards the Cambodian silk items as it is handwoven.

The silk industry in the country is a vital source of employment for women in Cambodia, and even helps to scale down poverty in rural provinces. Customarily, the silk production task is being carried out by women weavers, who constitute 99.54 percent of the workforce.

The country uses around 400 tons of imported industrial white silk yarn, each year to churn out three tons of superior quality handmade golden silk.

Sacrava's Political Cartoon: The Undiplomatic Hyena

2010-10-08T03:40:00.000-07:00

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

Trade union told to go to the moon by [Cambodian] Embassy official

A trade union leader claims he was told to go to the moon by a Cambodian Embassy official after he asked about human rights abuses.

Freedom and Imagination - Vargas Llosa

2010-10-08T03:39:00.000-07:00

By Khmer Democrat, Phnom Penh
Expanding our Mind Series

Here's for all the Khmer artists, the Khmer novelists, the Khmer journalists, the Khmer poets in the house - BE THE CHANGE!

"Two related themes, however, thread their way through all the novels of Mr. Vargas Llosa, who won the Nobel literature prize Thursday. These themes are a fascination with the human craving for freedom (be it political, social or creative) and the liberation conferred by art and imagination. Indeed, storytelling itself remains a central concern in the author’s work, in both his taste for willfully complicated narratives and his philosophical preoccupation with the ways in which subjectivity acts as a distorting prism for our apprehension of the world."

- "A Storyteller Enthralled by the Power of Art", International Herald Tribune, 8 Oct. 2010

Nobel Peace Prize 2001: Kofi Annan and UN

2010-10-08T03:38:00.000-07:00

Today (Oct. 8), the Norwegian Nobel Committee (appointed by the Norwegian Parliament) will announce the 2010 laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Peace Prize is the only award hosted by Norway; the other Nobel prizes for Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Literature and Economic Sciences are awarded in Sweden, home of the founder Alfred Nobel. The Sweden connection is the main reason for choosing the regal global statesman, Kofi Annan, in this series on Nobel Peace Prize laureates; his lawyer wife Nane is Swedish. Also, it serves as natural background research for me before my upcoming 10-day stay in Sweden (then continuing on for another week in Italy) for meetings and the screenings of Facing Genocide, a brilliant documentary feature-length film on Khieu Samphan by the Swedish Story Production. Kofi Annan is also fresh in my memory from a brief encounter with him at the Review Conference of the International Criminal Court this past June 2010 in Uganda – his regal stature more palpable in person than anything the media can project.

- Theary C. Seng, Phnom Penh, 8 Oct. 2010

Kofi Annan at the Review Conference of the International Criminal Court this past June 2010 in Uganda

. . . . .

Award Ceremony Speech by Gunnar Berge, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Oslo, December 10, 2001.

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, and, not least, this year's and past year's Peace Prize Laureates. Let me begin by extending a warm welcome to this year's special Peace Prize award ceremony.

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2001 is awarded to the United Nations (the UN) and its Secretary-General Kofi Annan for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world.

This year we are celebrating the centenary of the Nobel Prizes, including the Peace Prize. That makes it natural to consider historical continuities where both the better organized world and the Nobel Peace Prize are concerned. The idea that mankind has common interests, and that this should find expression in some form or other of shared government or rules, can be traced back to the Roman Empire. In the twentieth century, Woodrow Wilson was a vigorous early spokesman for the belief that we people need each other. Such a belief means that, whether as states or as individuals, we should treat one another in ways that do not make us less able to live together. Tolerance, justice and humanity are essential to the unity of mankind.

Alfred Nobel had no self-evident place in this tradition. At one time, he believed that dynamite, his great invention, could do more to prevent war than any peace movement. Nevertheless, the will he made in 1895 was inspired by belief in the community of man. The Peace Prize was to be awarded to the person who had done most for "fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".

Over the one hundred years that have passed since the first Peace Prize was awarded in 1901, the foremost sustained intention of the Norwegian Nobel Committee has been precisely that: of strengthening international co-operation between states. In the period before World War I, the majority of the Peace Prizes went to representatives of the organized peace movement, either at the parliamentary level through the Inter-Parliamentary Union, or at the more popular level through the International Peace Bureau. But the prizes do not seem to have helped much. The first world war broke out in 1914.

In the words of Woodrow Wilson, the first world war was to be "the war to end wars", and should "make the world safe for democracy". The new League of Nations was to be the body that resolved conflicts before they led to war. Once again, the Norwegian Nobel Committee sought to promote this greater commitment in international co-operation. In the years between the wars, at least eight Peace Prize Laureates had clear connections with the League of Nations, although the League as such never in fact received the prize.

Again the world, and not least Wilson himself, was to be disappointed. The 1919 Peace Prize Laureate was unable to persuade his own United States to join the League of Nations. For would not binding obligations to an international organization also limit American sovereignty?

Practically all of us wish to avoid the horrors of war. But we have different notions about how this can come about. All non-pacifists seek other things in addition to peace. There is not necessarily anything wrong with that. Nor can peace be absolute. That was why so many took up arms against Hitler Germany and the Emperor's Japan.

The horrors of World War II made the hopes people pinned on the new world organization, the United Nations, all the greater. The new organization was set even higher targets than the League of Nations. The preamble to the UN Charter thus speaks of "We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind...". There were many points of organizational similarity between the League of Nations and the UN. But the League of Nations had failed. The answer was to give the Security Council a much more prominent role than the corresponding council had had in the League of Nations. Universal membership would be combined with special rights exercised by the Great Powers. The Security Council could use military force to maintain peace. It was even to have standing armed forces at its disposal, to be established by member states in cooperation. We have not reached that goal even today, fifty-six years on.

The UN has achieved many successes, not least in the humanitarian and social fields, where its various special organizations have done such important work. In some respects, the UN achieved more than its founders believed possible. It found itself in the thick of the process of decolonization which in a few short decades swept away centuries-old colonial empires. The UN set important standards, which influenced developments for the majority of people all over the world. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN in 1948, became one of the major documents of our time. Article 1 gives clear expression to the hope for a better organized and more peaceful world: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and human rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood".

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to give these successes the credit they deserve. Since 1945, at least 13 of the Peace Prizes have had links to the UN. Some have gone to UN organizations such as the High Commissioner for Refugees, winner of two awards, UNICEF, the ILO, or the UN's peace-keeping forces. Others have gone to individuals like Cordell Hull, reputed to have provided the inspiration underlying the UN, John Boyd Orr, the first head of the FAO, Ralph Bunche, first of many UN mediators in the Middle East and, in 1950, the first non-white Peace Prize Laureate, Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN's second Secretary-General, or René Cassin, main author of the Declaration of Human Rights.

In its most important area, however, preventing war and ensuring peace, the UN did not turn out to be all that its supporters had hoped for. In many serious conflicts, the organization remained on the sidelines or was used as a tool by one of the parties. The five Great Powers had all agreed that they had to have a veto. But it is not the veto itself, of course, that explains the UN's inability to act, but rather the fact that the interests of the two super-powers diverged so radically throughout the many years of cold war.

Seeing that the main theme in the history of the Peace Prize has been the wish for a better organized and more peaceful world, it is surprising that the UN as such has not been awarded the Peace Prize before. One reason may be disappointment that the UN did not quite live up to all the expectations of 1945. Another may be the many UN-related prizes, which made it less necessary to give the award to the organization itself. A good deal can be attributed to chance: the UN could have won the award so often that in the end it never did. Until a suitably important occasion arrived. In connection with this year's centenary, the Committee once again felt a need to emphasize the continuous theme of the history of the Peace Prize, the hope for a better organized and more peaceful world. Nothing symbolizes that hope, or represents that reality, better than the United Nations.

The end of the Cold War meant that the UN became able to play more of the role in security policy for which it was originally intended. The Great Powers still had diverging interests; so, too, of course, had the smaller states, but they had less impact on the international climate. Although the USA provides the clearest illustration, all countries are more or less selective in their attitudes to the UN. They favor an active UN when they need and see opportunities to obtain its support; but when the UN takes a different stance, they seek to limit its influence. Since the Cold War, however, greater and smaller powers have to a significant extent been able to unite in meeting the most serious common challenges: to prevent wars and conflicts; to stimulate economic development, especially in poor countries; to strengthen fundamental human rights; to promote a better environment; to fight epidemics; and, in the most recent common endeavor, to prevent international terrorism.

No one has done more than Kofi Annan to revitalize the UN. After taking office as the UN's seventh Secretary-General in January, 1997, he managed in a very short time to give the UN an external prestige and an internal morale the likes of which the organization had hardly seen in its over fifty-year history, with the possible exception of its very first optimistic years. His position within the organization has no doubt benefited from his having devoted almost all his working life to the UN. Experience in a bureaucracy is not always the best springboard for action and fresh approaches to the outside world, but Annan has brought about both. The UN structure has been tightened up and made more efficient. The Secretary-General has figured prominently in the efforts to resolve a whole series of international disputes: the repercussions of the Gulf War, the wars in the former Yugoslavia and especially in Kosovo, the status of East Timor, the war in the Congo, and the implementation of the UN resolutions concerning the Middle East and "land for peace".

On the basis of renewed emphasis on the Declaration of Human Rights, Annan has given the Secretary-General a more active part to play as a protector of those rights. Time and again, he has maintained that sovereignty is not a shield behind which member countries can hide their violations. He has shown the same activist approach to the struggle against HIV/AIDS, a struggle which he has called his "personal priority". Since the terrorist attack on New York and Washington on the 11th of September, he has urged that the UN must be given a leading part to play in the fight against international terrorism. The Secretary-General's report on the role of the UN in the 21st century formed the basis for the UN's Millennium Declaration. Here, too, the agenda is ambitious: to put an end to poverty, to provide better education for the world's billions of people, to reduce HIV/AIDS, to protect the environment, and to prevent war and armed conflict.

The only one of the UN's previous six Secretaries-General who can be compared to Annan in personal force and historical importance is Dag Hammarskjöld, the organization's second Secretary-General and the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961. For Kofi Annan, Dag Hammarskjöld has been a model. In his Hammarskjöld Memorial Lecture in September this year, Annan said, "There can be no better rule of thumb for a Secretary-General, as he approaches each new challenge or crisis, than to ask himself, 'how would Hammarskjöld have handled this?'". Annan is nevertheless more of a team player than Hammarskjöld was. In other respects, too, Annan goes further than Hammarskjöld could: "I suspect he would envy me the discretion I enjoy in deciding what to say, and what topics to comment on". This can occasionally be a bit much, however, even for Annan: "I find myself called on to make official statements on almost everything that happens in the world today, from royal marriages to the possibility of human cloning!"

Wars between states have grown quite rare in recent decades. This can be regarded as a victory for norms which the UN has stood for throughout its existence. But many wars are still fought in our time. The new development is that wars within states, civil wars, have become relatively more frequent. This is confronting the UN with major challenges. The UN has traditionally been a defender of the sovereignty of individual states. The principle of state sovereignty is laid down in the UN Charter, especially in Article 2.7. but even that Article contains a qualification: "this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII" (the chapter on action to preserve peace). Now that we are attaching ever-increasing importance to "human security" and not just to the security of states, it makes little difference whether a life is lost in an international or a civil war.

If the UN is to prevent civil war, the question soon arises of intervention from outside. Many see intervention as equivalent to invasion. Small states are naturally afraid that big states will use it as a pretext for interfering in their domestic affairs. The policies of colonial powers in Africa and Asia, the Soviet Union's entries into Eastern Europe, and the USA's various interventions in the Western hemisphere all illustrate the need to protect the sovereignty of small states. On the other hand, the present situation, with civil wars in numerous countries, is a high price to pay for regarding state sovereignty as absolute. The massacres in Rwanda taught us all, and not least Annan, that the world does not necessarily get any better if one refrains from intervening. As Annan himself has said, we applaud the policeman who "intervenes" to stop a fight, or the teacher who tries to prevent bullying and fighting; and a doctor "intervenes" to save patients' lives. "A doctor who never intervenes has few admirers and probably even fewer patients." Where humanitarian concerns are uppermost, Doctors without Borders (MSF) in particular, the 1999 Laureate, has argued that the global community has "a duty to intervene", a principle which the UN General Assembly has accepted in several important resolutions.

The debate on "humanitarian intervention" raises difficult questions to which there are no pat answers, especially when the debate shifts from purely humanitarian to more political ground. Under Annan's leadership, the UN has shown itself willing to participate in this difficult discussion, with significant results in the last few years. Developments have taken a favorable turn in Kosovo, though there is still a long way to go. The UN played a leading part in the process which in a short space of time advanced East Timor from the status of a colony to, before long, that of an independent state. Maybe the 1996 Peace Prize awarded to Belo and Ramos-Horta also contributed. Today large and small states alike are almost competing in urging the UN to take the lead in developing Afghanistan away from a Taliban regime that has been a leading supporter of international terrorism, and towards a broadly-based government that can lead the country back into the international community.

So we have already moved well into the discussion of what steps to take to achieve a better organized and more peaceful world in the next hundred years. It has been repeated again and again that the UN can not become anything more than the world's ever so multifarious governments wish to make it. But in the light of the many common tasks that lie ahead, we must at least see to it that the very slowest movers among the nations are not allowed to set too much of the future pace. As globalization expands, the question will be asked even more loudly than at present of who is to manage this development and by what means. In the view of the Nobel Committee, that will be a task for the UN, if not in the form of a centralized world government then at least as the more efficient global instrument which the world so sorely needs.

For that to come about, it will help if nations as far as possible have a shared platform. Democracy is stronger today than at any time in history; over half of the world's population lives under democratic government. This marks a great victory for the principles in the Human Rights Declaration. One need go no further than back to the inter-war years, when democracy was a threatened species of government, to realize how dramatic this progress has been. Democracies rarely if ever go to war with each other.

The strong position of democracy today gives grounds for optimism. But much remains to be done, not least in the economic field. We have made very few advances in solidarity between countries that are growing ever richer, and the many countries and individuals who either are not benefiting to the same extent from globalization or are even suffering from its economic and social consequences. The number of poor people in the world is ever-increasing.

There were many reverses in the twentieth century, for the world as a whole and for the idea of a better organized and more peaceful world. Two world wars, and a cold war that lasted more than forty years and spread into every corner of the world, set a limit to how optimistic we can feel about the future. On the other hand, we have witnessed a remarkable development, from the scattered and rather private peace initiatives at the previous turn of the century to the ever stronger and more efficient United Nations we have today. The Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes both to honor the work that the UN and its Secretary-General Kofi Annan have already done, and to encourage them to go ahead along the road to a still more forceful and dynamic United Nations.

DEFIANCE REWARDED - Chinese Dissident Liu Xiaobo

2010-10-08T03:35:00.000-07:00

By Khmer Democrat, Phnom Penh
Expanding the Mind Series

Power to the dissidents! Power to the outcasts in repressive societies! Power to democratic reforms! Power to the Norwegian Nobel Committee in recognizing Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo! BE THE CHANGE!

Chinese Dissident Awarded Nobel Peace Prize
International Herald Tribune
8 October 2010

LONDON — The Nobel Committee awarded its annual peace prize on Friday to the imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

A year after the committee, based in Oslo, Norway, stunned many people by awarding the $1.46 million prize to President Obama, it said on Friday that it had been awarded to Mr. Liu for his long nonviolent struggle for human rights in China.

Mr. Liu won over rumored challenges from contenders in Afghanistan and Russia. The prize is often contentious when it is awarded to candidates from divided or repressive societies whose governments are angered by the honor given to their adversaries.

The Chinese authorities had urged Norway not to award the prize to Mr. Liu.

While the candidates usually provoke a wave of advance rumors, the committee shrouds its deliberations in near-hermetic secrecy. The five-member committee said in advance of Friday’s award that it had received a record 237 nominations, 38 of them for organizations before nominations closed in February. Mr. Liu had been the favorite.

The prize-giving ceremony is to take place in December.

Mr. Liu Xiaobo is a Beijing writer and former literature professor who was given an 11-year prison sentence on subversion charges on Dec. 25, 2009, after urging Chinese leaders to embrace democratic reforms.

Khmer Intelligence News - 7 October 2010 KHMER INTELLIGENCE NEWS

2010-10-07T22:54:00.000-07:00

7 October 2010 Maneuvers to choose a new prime minister for Cambodia (3) With the support of Vietnam, a faction in the leadership of the Cambodian People’s Party is maneuvering for the appointment of a new prime minister to replace Hun Sen who has been in office since 1985, By contrast, Vietnam’s leadership has gone through a noticeable turnover over the same period of time. The deteriorating economic and social situation worryingly beyond repair, the much-decried cronyism and corruption, the growing popular discontent, the mishandling of border issues, Hun Sen’s involvement in exposed crimes and the growing influence of China are among the reasons cited as behind the push for a leadership change. Men Sam An, an able female member of the CPP Standing Committee, very close to Hanoi, seems to be the favorite candidate for premiership. Hun Sen is reportedly getting more and more paranoid, fearing the same fate as Pen Sovan’s, Chan Si’s or Hok Lundi’s. Newly-acquired tanks to prevent anti-Hun Sen coup (2) At a high cost for its poor national budget Cambodia has recently bought from Eastern Europe nearly 100 tanks and armored personnel carriers to allegedly boost its defense capacity against a foreign aggression. In fact, prime minister Hun Sen decided to acquire those thanks to equip those military units which, he thinks, are mot loyal to him. In effect, most of the tanks are not deployed along the border line to defend Cambodia’s territorial integrity; they are instead stationed in and around Phnom Penh to defend Hun Sen’s personal power against a more and more feared internal coup. Campaign to revive Paris Agreements on Cambodia (1) Cambodian communities all over the world are organizing an unprecedented campaign to revive the 1991 Paris Agreements on Cambodia. In their view, the eighteen signatory countries including all the western powers have not only the right, but the obligation to intervene in Cambodia to stop a totalitarian drift, human rights violations and the derailment of the democratization process as guaranteed in the Agreements. See related Appeal at http://tinyurl.com/2w7fyxo Retired King Norodom Sihahouk accuses Var Kim Hong of map forgery (1) While opposition leader Sam Rainsy is being accused by the government of forging a map to support his claim that Vietnam has been encroaching on Cambodia’s territory – accusation for which he was condemned last month to ten years in prison –, Var Kim Hong, the government border negotiation team head has been accused by King-Father Norodom Sihanouk of … forging the same map showing the border line between Cambodia an Vietnam. See royal statement in French at http://tinyurl.com/33xv5jh The map in question was produced by the French Indochina colonial authorities in the 1920’s and updated throughout the subsequent years until 1952. Its different versions and relevant portions can be consulted in France at the Institut Géographique National. Also in France, three map experts at the Centre national de la Recherche Scientifique have confirmed that an alleged border post that Sam Rainsy pulled out last year was in fact located in Cambodia’s territory. Government admits “mistake” in border demarcation (2) At a Phnom Penh appeal court hearing on Sam Rainsy’s case on 5 October 2010, a government representative acknowledged that a number of “temporary” border posts, such as the one pulled out by Sam Rainsy last year, were wrongly located and planted at the wrong spots. More and more Cambodian farmers living along the border with Vietnam have been complaining about new “border” posts being forcibly planted on their ancestral rice fields. The government now recognizes there were “technical” errors in the border demarcation process. See arguments at http://tinyurl.com/2wff7jn Reasons behind the sensitivity of the border issue (2) In successive border treaties, Vietnam and Cambodia had agreed that, besides consulting relevant maps for border delimitation on paper, border demarcation on the spot must respect the principle of “effectivité” reflecting a practical approach whereby the national status, properties, customs and practices of the local populations living along both sides of the border line are NOT to be affected. Therefore, Vietnam could manage to displace border markings into Cambodia’s territory -- with weak Cambodian authorities turning a blind eye -- only in very scarcely populated areas (such as in Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri provinces) or when affected Cambodian people/citizens are forced to keep quiet and nobody draws any attention to their fate (such as in Kampong Cham, Takeo and Svay Rieng provinces) so that the principle of “effectivité” is APPARENTLY respected. But by speaking out for the victims and alerting the public opinion about continuous effective border encroachments by Vietnam, Sam Rainsy has been a troublemaker for the Hanoi government and their complacent friends in Phnom Penh. King was forced to sign controversial border treaty with Vietnam (2) Since he was the actual Monarch, King-Father Norodom Sihanouk has asked for an amendment to the Kingdom’s constitution whose inconsistencies he has denounced: For instance, on the one hand the supreme law states that the King is the Guarantor of the Kingdom’s territorial integrity, but on the other hand the King is constitutionally deprived of any power. The now Retired King has logically asked for the deletion from the constitution of any reference to any royal role as the Guarantor of anything he actually cannot ensure or guarantee. See royal statement at http://tinyurl.com/33xv5jh However, Hun Sen’s CPP has continuously rejected the royal request for a constitutional amendment because they want to maintain a misleading confusion allowing them to use the King’s name to endorse and legitimize anything they want, such as the ratification of a controversial border treaty with Vietnam in 2005. On 17 July 2005, Hun Sen publicly threatened to abolish the monarchy if the King did not sign off such the treaty. [End]

Happy Pchum Ben Festival

2010-10-07T22:52:00.000-07:00

Local residents throw food on the ground at a Buddhist pagoda in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, early Thursday morning, Oct. 7, 2010, as part of a ritual to honor the spirits of those who died without relatives. The 15-day traditional festival, known as the Pchum Ben festival, which commemorates the spirits of the dead, began

Sierra Leone and Cambodia establish diplomatic relations

2010-10-07T22:46:00.000-07:00

The Permanent Representatives of the two countries, Ambassador Shekou Momodu Touray of Sierra Leone and Ambassador Kosal Sea of Cambodia toasting the new relations.

October 8, 2010
By Leeroy Wilfred Kabs-Kanu
Cocorioko News

Sierra Leone’s international stature and outreach under the progressive leadership of President Ernest Bai Koroma continue to broaden. Yesterday, at a colourful ceremony held at the Permanent Mission of Cambodia to the United Nations in New York, Sierra Leone established diplomatic relations with the Kingdom of Cambodia , about two weeks after the country entered into similar relations with the South American nation of Uruguay.

The Permanent Representatives of the two countries, Ambassador Shekou Momodu Touray of Sierra Leone and Ambassador Kosal Sea of Cambodia signed the communique on behalf of their respective nations.

In his remarks, the Cambodian Permanent Representative hailed the new diplomatic relations between the two countries. “We are glad to establish diplomatic ties with Sierra Leone”, he said and expressed optimism that the two nations will establish areas of cooperation that will be fruitful to both countries. He said that he will do everything within his power to ensure that the two countries achieved the highest level of cooperation to the benefit of both countries.

In response, Ambassador Touray of Sierra Leone also said that he was also happy with the decision by Sierra Leone and Cambodia to establish bilateral and multilateral relations at the diplomatic level .He stated that both countries had gone through the same turbulent histories but he was optimistic that the two countries have many areas where they can cooperate fruitfully. He mentioned some of these areas as the socio-economic sphere, agriculture and ameliorating the adverse effects of Climate Change which is affecting the two countries. He said that both Sierra Leone and Cambodia have a lot to offer each other and he expressed the hope that the two countries will make maximum use of their diplomatic relations.

Also representing Cambodia at the ceremony were Mr. Seyla Eat. Ambassador, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of Cambodia to the United Nations; Mr. Sokveng Ngoun, First Secretary; Lt.Col. Dara Him, Military Attaché; Mr. Sambo Has, Second Secretary; and Mr. Saravann Ung, Third Secretary.

Apart from Ambassador Touray, Sierra Leone was also represented by the Director -General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs , Mr. Soulay Basiru Daramy ; the Minister Plenipotentiary to the UN, Mr . Leeroy Wilfred Kabs-Kanu; and Counselor Victoria Sulimani, also of the Sierra Leone Mission to the UN .

Opinion on the nomination of Jr. as the deputy-commander of Papa’s bodyguard unit

2010-10-07T08:37:00.000-07:00

Papa Hun Xen and Jr.

06 October 2010
By Phorn Ryna
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Soch
Click here to read the article in Khmer

Cambodia’s leader, also known as the Strongman, nominated Hun Manet, his son, to the position of deputy-commander of his bodyguard unit.

The young Hun Manet is Hun Xen’s eldest son. He received his master degree in the US and his PhD in England. He is now in charge of his papa’s safety.

Human rights officials and political analysts expressed their regret to see Hun Manet for accepting this position. These observers believe that, based on his education, Hun Manet could do a lot to improve Khmer society, and doing so would be better for him than serving in his father’s bodyguard unit whose renown is dubious.

Click here to listen to Phorn Ryna’s report in Khmer

Wait, wait, is there room for one more?

2010-10-07T08:33:00.000-07:00

City dwellers are returning in drove to their villages to celebrate Pchum Ben (All Photos: DAP-news)

Khmer Super Star Ampor Tevi

2010-10-07T05:03:00.000-07:00

From Dictatorship to Democracy - Chapter Four: Dictatorships Have Weaknesses

2010-10-06T18:01:00.000-07:00

KI Media is starting a series on From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp whereby a chapter from this book in both English and Khmer is published every 2-day interval, with prior submissions listed in the menu bar for easy recall. The emphasis is that of KI Media. For its original complete text go to:

http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD.pdf

This book has been translated into KHMER and its full version is available at:

http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD-Khmer.pdf

Be inspired! Be coordinated! And take action!

KI Media
. . . . .

Click here to read the Khmer version of this chapter (PDF)

From Dictatorship to Democracy

CHAPTER FOUR

Dictatorships Have Weaknesses

Dictatorships often appear invulnerable. Intelligence agencies, police, military forces, prisons, concentration camps, and execution squads are controlled by a powerful few. A country’s finances, natural resources, and production capacities are often arbitrarily plundered by dictators and used to support the dictators’ will. [Sounds familiar?!]

In comparison, democratic opposition forces often appear extremely weak, ineffective, and powerless. That perception of invulnerability against powerlessness makes effective opposition unlikely.

That is not the whole story, however.

Identifying the Achilles’ heel

A myth from Classical Greece illustrates well the vulnerability of the supposedly invulnerable. Against the warrior Achilles, no blow would injure and no sword would penetrate his skin. When still a baby, Achilles’ mother had supposedly dipped him into the waters of the magical river Styx, resulting in the protection of his body from all dangers. There was, however, a problem. Since the baby was held by his heel so that he would not be washed away, the magical water had not covered that small part of his body. When Achilles was a grown man he appeared to all to be invulnerable to the enemies’ weapons. However, in the battle against Troy, instructed by one who knew the weakness, an enemy soldier aimed his arrow at Achilles’ unprotected heel, the one spot where he could be injured. The strike proved fatal. Still today, the phrase “Achilles’ heel” refers to the vulnerable part of a person, a plan, or an institution at which if attacked there is no protection.

The same principle applies to ruthless dictatorships. They, too, can be conquered, but most quickly and with least cost if their weaknesses can be identified and the attack concentrated on them.

Weaknesses of dictatorships

Among the weaknesses of dictatorships are the following:

1. The cooperation of a multitude of people, groups, and institutions needed to operate the system may be restricted or withdrawn.

2. The requirements and effects of the regime’s past policies will somewhat limit its present ability to adopt and implement conflicting policies.

3. The system may become routine in its operation, less able to adjust quickly to new situations.

4. Personnel and resources already allocated for existing tasks will not be easily available for new needs.

5. Subordinates fearful of displeasing their superiors may not report accurate or complete information needed by the dictators to make decisions.

6. The ideology may erode, and myths and symbols of the system may become unstable.

7. If a strong ideology is present that influences one’s view of reality, firm adherence to it may cause inattention to actual conditions and needs.

8. Deteriorating efficiency and competency of the bureaucracy, or excessive controls and regulations, may make the system’s policies and operation ineffective.

9. Internal institutional conflicts and personal rivalries and hostilities may harm, and even disrupt, the operation of the dictatorship.

10. Intellectuals and students may become restless in response to conditions, restrictions, doctrinalism, and repression.

11. The general public may over time become apathetic, skeptical, and even hostile to the regime.

12. Regional, class, cultural, or national differences may become acute.

13. The power hierarchy of the dictatorship is always unstable to some degree, and at times extremely so. Individuals do not only remain in the same position in the ranking, but may rise or fall to other ranks or be removed entirely and replaced by new persons.

14. Sections of the police or military forces may act to achieve their own objectives, even against the will of established dictators, including by coup d’état.

15. If the dictatorship is new, time is required for it to become well established. [No problem for Cambodia here!]

16. With so many decisions made by so few people in the dictatorship, mistakes of judgment, policy, and action are likely to occur.

17. If the regime seeks to avoid these dangers and decentralizes controls and decision making, its control over the central levers of power may be further eroded.

Attacking weaknesses of dictatorships

With knowledge of such inherent weaknesses, the democratic opposition can seek to aggravate these “Achilles’ heels” deliberately in order to alter the system drastically or to disintegrate it. [Sam Rainsy is brilliant in doing this, this is the reason the CPP wants so much to replace him with a less strong opposition leader.]

The conclusion is then clear: despite the appearances of strength, all dictatorships have weaknesses, internal inefficiencies, personal rivalries, institutional inefficiencies, and conflicts between organizations and departments. These weaknesses, over time, tend to make the regime less effective and more vulnerable to changing conditions and deliberate resistance. Not everything the regime sets out to accomplish will get completed. At times, for example, even Hitler’s direct orders were never implemented because those beneath him in the hierarchy refused to carry them out. The dictatorial regime may at times even fall apart quickly, as we have already observed.

This does not mean dictatorships can be destroyed without risks and casualties. Every possible course of action for liberation will involve risks and potential suffering, and will take time to operate. And, of course, no means of action can ensure rapid success in every situation. However, types of struggle that target the dictatorship’s identifiable weaknesses have greater chance of success than those that seek to fight the dictatorship where it is clearly strongest. The question is how this struggle is to be waged.

Opposition Preparing Atrocity Crimes Case Against CPP

2010-10-06T17:59:00.000-07:00

Fleeing Phnom Penh residents carry their belongings after a fuel dump exploded on Sunday July 6, 1997. (Photo: AP)

Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Washington, D.C Wednesday, 06 October 2010

“There has been much evidence that remains of those who used cruel power to torture before killing Funcinpec officials after the coup.”

Click here to listen to the audio program in Khmer (MP3)

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy says he is prepared to sue Prime Minister Hun Sen for crimes against humanity, for killings alleged committed in the 1997 coup and for the treatment of civilians during the civil war in the 1980s.

“There has been much evidence that remains of those who used cruel power to torture before killing Funcinpec officials after the coup,” Sam Rainsy said Monday.

The fighting in July 1997 led to the crippling of the royalist Funcinpec party, as the Cambodian People's Party seized power from a brokered coalition.

Sam Rainsy said as many as 100 Funcinpec officials were killed or executed in two days of fighting. Spouses of the deceased fled the country, he said, and many now live in dire conditions.

Sam Rainsy recently filed a complaint in the state of New York accusing Hun Sen of collusion in a 1997 grenade attack on an opposition rally, which killed 16 people and injured nearly 100, including one American.

Prior to those incidents, when Cambodia was occupied by Vietnam, he said, civilians and children were forced to the front lines in Cambodia's civil war, where they cleared the forests and were injured by land mines or fighting. Such acts constitute crimes against humanity, he said.

“There was conscription of civilians to clear the forest, living and working in areas with malaria and land mines,” he said. “That's a criminal policy.”

CPP lawmaker Cheam Yiep dismissed the allegations. During the 1980s, the country was at war with the Khmer Rouge and needed people's help building barricades, assisting the Vietnamese troops and laying mines, he said.

“The volunteer Vietnamese soldiers were like brothers,” he said. “They helped us because we did not have weapons in our hands and had no army.”

He said there is no evidence linking the CPP leadership to crimes that Sam Rainsy has alleged. Hun Sen “does not have any involvement in those issues.” Cheam Yiep said the 2008 election, which the CPP won in a landslide, had been a determination of justice by the public.

“Sam Rainsy has the right to file complaints in the US court, to any courts, even to God, but they will not be able to interfere in Cambodia's internal affairs,” he said.

Sam Rainsy said Monday he was collecting evidence from widows, orphans and the disabled in preparation to file in court.

“Even if it was a long time ago, the courts have the capability to receive complaints [for killings],” he said, citing the arrest of the leaders of Fiji and Panama accused of similar crimes.

Sam Rainsy is currently in exile, facing a prison of 12 years on forgery, disinformation and incitement charges related to public claims he has made of Vietnamese border encroachment. He is currently traveling in the US and will stop next in Canada, where his party is expected to hold a congress.

Government Unveils Five-Year Anti-Corruption Plan [-All talk no action?]

2010-10-06T17:58:00.000-07:00

VOA Khmer
Washington, D.C Wednesday, 06 October 2010

“We're using a zero-tolerance principle in our fight against corruption. This means that there are no exceptions, no matter how big or small a case is.”

The government says it now has a five-year strategy to fight corruption that will allow new agencies to punish perpetrators of graft.

The strategy, released by the National Council for Anti-Corruption last week, includes provisions for prevention and punishment, as well as a plan to raise awareness.

The new policy is the result of an anti-corruption law that was passed earlier this year.

“We're using a zero-tolerance principle in our fight against corruption,” said Keo Remy, a spokesman for the anti-corruption body. “This means that there are no exceptions, no matter how big or small a case is.”

Keo Remy said the strategy is built around integrity, accountability and confidentiality, which will encourage public participation.

The in the near-term, officials will began to educate people about the anti-corruption law and the penal code, he said. By early next year, government officials, lawmakers, judges and heads of non-governmental organizations—even security guards for the anti-corruption council—will have to declare their assets.

“Our main goal in doing all of these is to boost our economic growth,” he said. “We want to build confidence among big investors and promote the living conditions of the people.”

Anti-corruption officials have been “carefully recruited,” he said, and can be punished for a range of ethical offenses, including having meals with alleged offenders. Infractions are punishable with up to five years imprisonment, for leaking information to informants.

Supreme Court Upholds Acid Attack Verdict

2010-10-06T17:56:00.000-07:00

Chea Ratha (Photo: The Phnom Penh Post)

Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer
Phnom Penh Wednesday, 06 October 2010

“I still worry about the safety of myself and my family because the offenders have not yet been arrested.”

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the conviction of a former military police commander for the acid attack in retribution against a former lover.

Chea Ratha, the former deputy chief of military police, and five accomplices, were released by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court in August 2009, whose not guilty verdict was reversed by the Appeals Court in November that year.

The Appeals Court issued an 18-year prison sentence against the six suspects in absentia and fined $100,000. They all remain at large.

They were accused of attacking Ya Sok Nim, the aunt of beauty queen In Solida, the reported lover of Chea Ratha, in May 2008. In Solida, who was not harmed, has said she was forced into a relationship with Chea Ratha until she finally refused.

Ya Sok Nim, whose face was disfigured in the attack and who has gone into hiding since Chea Ratha's release, told VOA Khmer by phone the courts had “provided me and my family justice.”

“I still worry about the safety of myself and my family because the offenders have not yet been arrested,” she said.

Her lawyer, Huang Sopheak, said the verdict was right but the compensation was not enough. However, lawyer for the defense, Nach Try, said the courts had made their decision with insufficient evidence or witnesses.

Am Sam Ath, lead investigator for the rights group Licadho, said the conviction sent a positive message that could deter future attacks.

Me, Hun Xen, Yoohoo! You, Who?

2010-10-06T17:55:00.000-07:00

(LtR) EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy, Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen, EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Laos' Prime Minister Bouasone Buphavanh hold a joint news conference after an Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Brussels October 5, 2010 REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

The Bamboo Wall or the K5 Plan in Cambodia in the 1980s

2010-10-06T17:54:00.000-07:00

HUN SEN MUST BE PROSECUTED FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

Current Cambodian strongman Hun Sen is more and more beleaguered on the international arena. The US Senate is expected to pass a resolution in January 1999, as the US House of Representatives did on October 2, 1998, supporting judicial proceedings against the former Khmer Rouge officer and present dictator for serious violations of international laws on human rights since 1979.

The investigation of Hun Sen's past should lead to examination of a relatively little-known period in Cambodian history: the time just after the Pol Pot regime, the Vietnamese occupation and the People's Republic of Kampuchea (1979-1989).

Although overshadowed by the great genocide which took place between 1975 and 1978 under Pol Pot, the subsequent period also brought genocide of the same form, though of lesser scope. It was perpetrated by Pol Pot's successors and former colleagues, among them Hun Sen.

From 1984 to 1988 the pro-Vietnamese authorities implemented a deadly plan called "K5". This more recent bloody chapter of the history of Cambodia is opened in doctor Esmeralda Luciolli's book "Le Mur de Bambou - Le Cambodge après Pol Pot" (The Bamboo Wall: Cambodia after Pol Pot) published in 1988 by Regine Deforges Edition - Medecins sans Frontières (Distributed by Albin Michel).

The K5 plan killed tens or hundreds of thousands of victims. Cambodians sent into forced labor died of starvation, exhaustion, disease (particularly malaria) and lost their limbs and lives to the antipersonnel mines scattered on the sites where they were sent. Many of these laborers were executed for trying to escape.

During that period Hun Sen was a member of the central committee of the communist party and was promoted from Minister of Foreign Affairs to Prime Minister. As one of the main leaders he must bear responsibility for the massacre.

There are still thousands of families in Cambodia whose missing father, husband or son reminds them of the K5 plan, and there are thousands of handicapped people whose missing eye, hand or leg reminds them of the K5 plan. Will justice be rendered one day to these victims?

We have translated the most significant excerpts from "The Bamboo Wall" in the following paragraphs.

THE BAMBOO WALL

The decision to build what would be soon called the "bamboo wall" was never publicly announced. In July 1984, mysterious rumors some bits of which reached us circulated among the Cambodians. From now on each one must go to the border for several months a year, in regions mined and highly infected by malaria, to build some new sort of Chinese Wall between Cambodia and Thailand. The idea looked so foolish that many foreigners thought they were seeing only an example of the Khmers' supposed tendency to exaggerate. After a few weeks, they had to accept the facts: departures began and these labors soon became an obsessive fear of all Cambodians.

The Vietnamese army had started to enlist Khmer civilians to do strategic work since 1979. Early on, in the autumn of 1982, the population was made to participate in "socialist service". This work consisted of building dams, roads and earthworks near their dwellings and proved to be useful to the inhabitants. But very quickly, this task took a strategic turn and the peasants were ordered to clear the surrounding forests and build protective barriers around the most important dwelling centers. Starting in 1983, the population was made to create fences out of two or three rows of prickly shrubs or bamboo, sometimes lined by mine fields, around the villages. The people were also forced to set up defensive barriers along the railroads, around the bridges and at strategic points of the highways. (...) However, the first chores lasted only a short time and did not require any displacement of the population.

In 1984, a new stage was reached: the population of the country was mobilized for gigantic labors officially designated as "work to defend the fatherland". At the beginning of that year, the Vietnamese authorities decided to seal the Thai border. The dry season offensive of 1984-1985 destroyed the major camps of the resistance located in those areas. To reinforce this victory they had to tightly seal the country against infiltration by the guerrillas and prevent the population from fleeing to the border.

To this end, the decision to set up a "defense line" eight hundred kilometers long was made in Hanoi, in early 1984, by the Vietnamese Communist Party's central committee. (See "Cambodia, a new colony for exploitation" by Marie- Alexandrine Martin, Politique internationale, July 1986 and "The military occupation of Kampuchea", Indochina Report, September 1986). The construction of that Asian "wall" was to be implemented in several steps : first, clearing of a strip of land three to four kilometers wide along the border, through forests and mountains; then excavating trenches, setting up dams, building bamboo fences lined with barbed wires and mine fields; and finally opening a strategic road running along the "wall", to convey troops and ammunition and monitor the frontier.

Cambodian authorities were in charge of the project implementation. Everything leads us to believe that this work was to be done as rapidly as possible, whatever the cost in human lives and the economic consequences, in order to "fight against Polpotist bandits in the forest, who since the destruction of their camps all along the Thai border infiltrate the country to steal food and please their masters in Peking or Washington" (Radio Phnom Penh, 21 September 1986). These Herculean labors recall the gigantic ones undertaken during Pol Pot's time. Haven't the present leaders a common past and ideology with the ones in charge of the preceding regime?

The requisitioning of civilians started in September 1984. The Cambodians often refer to the departure to the "clearing" duty as a new "April 17". (17 April 1975 marks the entry of the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh and to most Cambodians the beginning of an ordeal).

The work is designated by the mysterious acronym "K5", which the Cambodians, when asked, did not know the meaning of. Each Cambodian province was assigned the task of building a section of the wall. Twice or three times a year a contingent of workers, so-called "volunteers", were recruited for periods varying from three to six months, according to the quota set by the central government for each province in proportion to the local population. The provinces in turn determine the quotas for each district, the districts doing the same for the communes and the communes for the villages. In theory, only men aged 17 to 45 years old were requisitioned but it frequently happens that women or teenagers are designated for want of any other person available in the family. For the whole country, each departure gathered an average of 100,000 to 120,000 persons. (...)

According to an official of the Ministry of Defense who took refuge in Thailand, the work, at the national level, is placed under the responsibility of Bou Thang, Hun Sen and Heng Samrin, respectively Minister of Defense, Secretary General of the Communist Party and President of the Republic. (...)

When they arrive at the sites, nothing is planned to accommodate and shelter the workers. "When we arrived", said Touch Saroeun (a participant), "thousands of workers had preceded us. We were maybe ten thousand coming from several provinces. There was no shelter at all. It was useless to seek to build a cabin, because we were moved every day. Some of us had hammocks, others had nothing. They slept on the ground, on bits of plastic sheets or even on the soil." (...)

Food remains very insufficient. (...) The stocks run out quickly. "We were told that there would be every thing on the spot, tells a villager from Takeo. But once there, there was nearly nothing to eat." (...) Thory, a young woman from Battambang, said that in her group, "several people died of starvation.

It was like under the Pol Pot regime." (...) It was forbidden to seek food during work time. A Khmer Krom who participated in the clearing work in Non Sap area, a site renowned for its hardship, recalls: "One day, I walked away for a short while to try to fish in a pond. The soldiers saw me. I was caught and beaten for a long time. That often happens because many people were hungry." (...)

In some areas, the local authorities were unable to supply food to the workers. These starvation rations were supposed to be enough to carry out an exhausting and dangerous work: the "volunteers" have to clear mined lands, excavate trenches, build roads, carry equipment, ammunition, corpses, demine the land and put mines in it again along the "wall".

Everywhere the testimonies are identical. The workers are dispatched in small teams and worked eight to ten hours a day. Each one is assigned a determined amount of work to be accomplished during the day, otherwise the penalties such as blows or extra chores are frequent. In Samrong, Nong Rus had to "clear the land, carry crates of ammunition and sometimes corpses of soldiers or workers blown up on a mine". (...)

The sites were watched over by Khmer soldiers, themselves supervised by the Vietnamese army. Fleeing, practically excluded, was impossible during day time, and very risky at night time because of the mines. Several refugees told of having been herded for the night on lands surrounded by mines. "Any attempt to escape amounted to a suicide. A mine belt had been laid around the camps which were accessible only through a narrow path. A few Vietnamese soldiers were enough to watch over us", said Chhay. In another group, "seventy people were given the order to watch over the others. They were given guns. They were themselves monitored by the Vietnamese. If anyone tried to flee, he was often shot on the spot. Others have been caught and taken to jail in Battambang."

Sunnara, from Prey Veng, was obliged to guard the "volunteers". "We did not have any choice, the Vietnamese were after us. The rare persons who tried to escape were recaptured and savagely beaten, then taken to jail. Some have been executed." Sareth, from Pursat, was demining: "Often those who were blown on the mines were accused of wanting to flee. In fact, these were accidents because we did not know at all where the mines were." (...)

Since the beginning of the work in September 1984, the K5 plan, described by some people as a "new genocide", made tens of thousands of victims. (See "Un nouveau genocide", Philippe Pacquet, La Libre Belgique, 26 May 1986).

Accidents caused by mines were frequent. Nobody knows where they are laid because the Khmer-Thai frontier has been successively mined for years by the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese, and the non-communist resistance. (...)

Many died on Non Sap site during the first year of work, toward the end of 1984. "Corpses could be found in several places", said Thory. "We had to cremate them. Sometimes I had to carry ammunition for quite long distances. Along the way, in the forest, we found corpses of the workers who preceded us and blew up on mines." Her testimony is confirmed by that of other persons who had worked in the same area. In a group of villagers from Bavel, ten people died that way, and eight in another group.

It also happened that trucks carrying "volunteers" blew up on mines. In Sitha's convoy, two trucks were disintegrated. Out of the hundred people carried by each truck, more than half of them died and most of the others were injured. In March 1985, on the way to Pursat, a nurse from Prey Veng saw the truck that preceded his blow up. About twenty "volunteers" were killed and another fifty wounded. (...)

The victims of landmines had little chance of surviving their injuries. First- aid posts located on the sites did not have the required personnel or equipment to tend them. It took sometimes several days to evacuate a wounded person to the nearest provincial hospital. Moreover, competent surgeons are rare. Like all their colleagues they devote part of their time to political activities and are not always available. Even if they were, they did not have any blood for transfusion, or antibiotics or oxygen, or sometimes even gauze and disinfectant. The people severely injured die. (...) In 1985, in Kandal, about a hundred injured people from the first contingent died and tens of others had amputations. In Prey Veng, fifty-six workers from the second contingent died on landmines. (...)

However, mines did not take the heaviest toll on human lives, but malaria did. This is not surprising at all, when the areas where the clearing were done were known to be infested by malaria. (...) Since the beginning of the labor at the border, the same phenomenon occurred as during deportations by the Khmer Rouge regime: "volunteers" [coming from the central plains where malaria is rare in normal time] uprooted overnight to severely malaria-infested zones are very sensitive to the disease. Virtually all of them are infected in no time and the development of serious cases is furthered by malnutrition and exhaustion. All the witnesses talk about malaria as a real scourge. Moreover, once ill, the "volunteers" are forced to continue to toil to the point of exhaustion. (...)

While in the beginning the K5 plan was very secret and little mentioned on the radio, by mid-1985 reports similar to those celebrating enthusiasm on the working sites of the Khmer Rouge regime started to be heard: "Our people now live in joy. They thrive to overcome all the obstacles by voluntarily participating in the work of defense of the fatherland, at the same time building a new life on this earth they have become the master of." (Radio Phnom Penh, 22 August 1986).

Of all of the contingents, the first one, leaving on September 1984, was hit the hardest. These first "volunteers" were decimated by malaria, starvation and landmines. During the first semester of 1985, tens of thousands of workers returned home, as well as they could. (...) During our outings in the provinces, the sight of infirmaries recalled the Thai borders during 1979: everywhere malnourished men, exhausted, often packed on the bare ground. Wherever we went, in the provinces, in the districts, 80% to 90% of the "volunteers" returned ill. The mortality rate was very high, between 5 and 10%. In Kandal province, out of 12,000 workers, there were 9,000 cases of malaria and 700 dead. In a district of Takeo, out of 1,100 who left for labor, 900 came back with malaria and 56 died. In one of Kompong Chhnang's districts, 10% of the "volunteers" had succumbed to malaria. (See "Malaria decimates border workers", AFP, Lucien Maillard, 27 August 1985; "Forced Human Bondage", Far Eastern Economic Review, 22 August 1985; Marie-Alexandrine Martin, "Une nouvelle colonie d'exploitation", Politique internationale, summer 1985). (...)

A few officials were reported to have shown some opposition to the continuation of the work notwithstanding the cost in human lives. The then- Prime Minister himself, Chan Sy, would have been one of those, which was why many Cambodians saw with suspicion his sudden demise in 1985. (...)

The toll for the first two years of the K5 plan was heavy. According to the least alarming estimates, at least one million people participated in the labor from September 1984 to end of 1986. (The ninth contingent left for the border in October 1986. Let us bear in mind that each contingent numbered an average of 120,000 persons). The mortality rate from malaria amounted to around 5%, so there would have been a minimum of 50,000 dead during this period. According to an official from the Ministry of Defense, now a refugee in Thailand, his department estimated in March 1986 that 30,000 people died since the beginning of the labor. This assessment does not take into account tens of thousands of sick, wounded and crippled people. (...)

In Phnom Penh, at the orphanage for "juniors", the number of abandoned children has considerately increased since the beginning of the work . The death of the husband at the clearing work constitutes the main reason given by the mothers who can no longer work and take care of the child a the same time. (...)

During our outings in the provinces, it was rarer and rarer to see men tilling the fields and most of the time women planted, bedded plants or harvested, on their own. In each home, the departure of a person, most of the time a man, for many months, lowers the family production and even after their returns, the men often lack the strength to work again for many weeks. (...)

(In 1985, according to an official of the Ministry of Agriculture), only 60 to 70% of the rice fields cultivated the preceding year were being sown, because the workforce was considerably decreased by the requisitions for clearing, armed forces and the defense militia of the villages. (...) At the end of 1985, the Ministry of Agriculture forecast a deficit of 250,000 tons of paddy for the harvest to come. (...) General mobilization of the population for labor at the border was responsible for a great deal of the agricultural deficit. (...)

Of all the aspects of the Vietnamese occupation, the K5 plan is no doubt the most worrying. Officially, the construction of the wall was to meet the need to defend the country against infiltration by the resistance forces based at the Khmer-Thai border. (...) Even if we suppose that the resistance constitutes a real threat to Phnom Penh, all the military experts, all the observers agree to say that the "wall", a mere bamboo fence, is incapable of stopping infiltration. Besides, no defense line is efficient unless it is guarded all along its length. The construction itself went more slowly than planned, and, three years after the work started, only a few sections were completed. (...) The defense line could not benefit from any strategic credibility in so far as infiltration from outside was concerned.

Under these conditions, it would be wise to look elsewhere for the reason for this murderous extravaganza. The "defense line", if it did not hamper the resistance, constitutes a real obstacle for the population to escape to Thailand. (...)

Among the Cambodians, a few people believe the Vietnamese intended by this means to insidiously eliminate one part of the life force in Cambodia. This premise can be questioned all the more by the reminiscence of Khmer Rouge methods in the construction of this wall. But adversely, it is undoubtedly true that through this undertaking the regime was able to maintain the population in a permanent state of mobilization and maybe this is where we should find the main justification of this undertaking.

Whatever it was meant for, the K5 plan looks like a strategically absurd undertaking, triggered mainly by internal political reasons, hard to explain, for which the Khmer people have already paid the tribute in tens of thousands of human lives. (See "A fence to be tested", Jacques Beckaert, Bangkok Post, 15 May 1986, and "The military occupation of Kampuchea", Indochina Report, September 1986). Maybe the rationale behind the K5 plan was one of the self- contradictions of this regime, which leads many Cambodians to compare it to the Khmer Rouge.

In 1986, thousands of refugees arrived at the Khmer-Thai border. Fear of returning to the labor of "defense of the fatherland" came first among the reasons that made them flee. (...) Despite the testimonies of these refugees, the K5 plan raised little interest abroad. A few rare journalists have described the work without triggering any international reaction to this new tragedy of the Khmer people. (The first journalist to have mentioned it at length in a French daily was Jean-Claude Pomonti, in an article entitled "Le mur vietnamien" (the Vietnamese Wall) published in Le Monde, 5-6 May 1986). Shortly before my departure from Phnom Penh, a Cambodian bitterly confided to me: "Nobody did anything for us during Pol Pot era, the same now, you can bet!".

Additional lawsuits piling up against Hun Xen: VOA

2010-10-06T17:52:00.000-07:00

VOA reported that opposition leader Sam Rainsy and the Cambodian people will bring up two additional lawsuits against PM Hun Xen for crime against humanity and several other crimes. The two additional lawsuits against Hun Xen will bring the total number of lawsuits against the latter to 3. The two latest cases stem from Hun Xen's involvement in the Bamboo wall (Kor-5) crime, and in the killing of numerous Funcinpec officials during the 1997 coup d'état.

Listeners to this VOA audio program should also pay attention to the claim made by CPP MP Cheam Yeap: In trying to defend his boss, Mr. Cheam Yeap ended up contradicting him by openly claiming that it was the Vietnamese army which drove Pol Pot out of power and that members of the puppet Heng Samrin regime only took the back seat. In more recent speeches, the CPP always credits itself as being the one driving Pol Pot out of power. Apparently, it was not so.

Click here to listen to the VOA audio program in Khmer by Khemara (MP3)

Locals fuelling child prostitution

2010-10-06T17:50:00.000-07:00

AFP

THERE is a persistent belief among Cambodian men that sleeping with a virgin has rejuvenating powers and can even cure HIV/Aids.

Of the 19 respondents who sold their virginity, 13 said it was to Cambodian clients. 'It's a stupid idea where they think that sex with a young girl will bring them good luck, strong energy or a long life,' said Sao Chhoeurth, executive director of anti-trafficking NGO AFESIP.

Sex with a virgin can cost up to US$2,000 (S$2,617) 'depending on how pretty or young the girl is,' he said, a large sum in a country where more than 30 per cent of its 14 million people live on less than 50 cents a day.

Chin Chanveasna added that aid groups had yet to work out a strategy on how to deal with the problem.

The research, carried out in January, was small-scale but Sao Chhoeurth said the findings reflect the situation across the country.

'If a girl works in a brothel for a long time, most of her customers will be locals,' he said.

PHNOM PENH - CAMBODIA'S child prostitution problem is usually associated with foreign paedophiles, but the majority of clients paying for sex with children are Cambodian men, campaign groups said on Wednesday.

Foreigners' sex crimes grab the headlines, but the problem of homegrown offenders can be overlooked by authorities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), according to Chin Chanveasna of End Child Prostitution, Abuse and Trafficking in Cambodia (ECPAT).

In a new study commissioned by ECPAT, an umbrella group for a number of NGOs, 43 out of 44 former child sex workers in Phnom Penh said their regular clients were Cambodian men.

Chin Chanveasna said the police and the government 'have not taken enough measures against Cambodian perpetrators.' But General Bith Kimhong, the director of the Interior Ministry's anti-trafficking unit, said the government was tackling the problem.

'We have taken a serious action against both Cambodian and foreigners who are seeking sex with underage people,' he told AFP.

According to the report, local demand for prostitutes is estimated to contribute between 49 to 70 per cent of the demand for commercial sex in Cambodia. A 'high demand for virgins from Cambodian men fuelling the flow of underage girls into Cambodia's sex trade' was also cited as a concern.

Relations with US snagged over debt issue

2010-10-06T17:49:00.000-07:00

Thomas Miller
The Phnom Penh Post

DESPITE signs of progress in areas ranging from military cooperation to development aid, comments in recent weeks from Cambodian and American officials underscore the fact that bilateral relations remain snagged on an issue some three decades old: Cambodia’s wartime debt.

Before the US-ASEAN summit two weeks ago, Prime Minister Hun Sen called upon the United States to cancel the debt, calling it “dirty”. But a US State Department official said last week the US would not do so for fear of setting a “bad precedent” for countries in similar positions.

The principal sum of the debt, according to the US State Department and the International Monetary Fund, is US$162 million for shipments of cotton, rice, wheat flour and other agricultural commodities in the 1970s. Interest has ballooned the total debt to $445 million.

The Kingdom had an overall debt burden of $3.2 billion in 2009, according to the IMF, which noted in an assessment that year that Cambodia is at “moderate risk of debt distress”.

In congressional testimony Friday, Joe Yun, deputy assistant secretary for the US state department’s bureau of East Asian and Pacific affairs,

said the US would not forgive Cambodia’s debt because it considers Cambodia both able to pay and obligated to do so under international law.

Officials at the Ministry of Economy and Finance did not respond this week to requests for comment about the debt.

Beyond the debt issue, Yun observed a “generally positive trend” in bilateral relations in his remarks last week, noting that the US has been Cambodia’s top trading partner since 1998. Moreover, under President Barack Obama, he said, the US would provide US$72 million to Cambodia this year, making it the fourth-largest recipient of foreign aid in the East Asia-Pacific region. But the debt could be a “spoiler” in the countries’ relationship, said Carlyle Thayer, a professor at the Australian Defense Force Academy who called on the US to forgive it.

Cambodia incurred the debt under Lon Nol, who came to power in a 1970 coup d’etat. The US subsequently supported Lon Nol with economic, food and military aid, including an infamous bombing campaign.

Historians have long said that the bombs, believed to have killed tens of thousands of civilians while devastating the Cambodian countryside, may have slowed the Khmer Rouge in the short term, but also likely strengthened them as well.

Kenton Clymer, a professor at Northern Illinois University and an expert on US-Cambodia relations, said in an email yesterday that a reduction of the debt would be appropriate in view of the countries’ tumultuous history. “I suspect that the American legal position is correct, that a change of government does not relieve a country of previous debts. On the other hand, US bombing of Cambodia and American policy during the Khmer Republic did help create conditions that made a Khmer Rouge victory more likely,” Clymer said.

The US dropped 2,756,941 tons of ordnance in Cambodia, according to historians Ben Kiernan and Owen Taylor. William Shawcross put the cost of the bombing at $7 billion.

But an argument based on the historical injustice of the debt in view of the American legacy in the region was “not going to work politically” in negotiations with the US, Thayer said.

Phay Siphan, a spokesman for the Council of Ministers, indicated yesterday that the government viewed debt forgiveness as a potential way to move beyond their contentious past.

“We don’t want to put the blame and point a figure at each other,” he said. “Right now we have a new chapter.”

Thailand, Cambodia to hold border talks in Hanoi [-Another 15-minute border talk?

2010-10-06T17:48:00.000-07:00

VOV News/Xinhua

Thailand and Cambodia will hold talks on the disputed border area on the sidelines of the 17th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Hanoi late this month, said Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva on October 5.

According to MCOT news online, Mr. Abhisit said he had met his Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen on the sidelines of the 8th Asia- Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit, in Brussels during October 4-5. He said they discussed the border dispute over the 4.6-square-km area near the ancient temple Preah Vihear.

"There was no conclusion in the latest discussion, which mainly exchanged views over the dispute in an effort for progress, he said.

That is apart from current efforts being made through parliamentary procedures and the Thai- Cambodian Joint Commission on Demarcation for Land Boundary (JBC)," he added.

The PM said the two countries would prepare information related to the conflict and would hold talks again when they meet on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Hanoi on October 28-30.

The Prophecy Buddha has arrive 2012 and end 2014

2010-10-06T03:34:00.000-07:00

Are you man enough to take my challenge?

2010-10-06T02:15:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,

I am greatly saddened by the amount of negative, expletive, sexist, racist, discriminatory, violent comments posted on KI-Media.

But, before going further, let me reply to a few of questions asked of us first:

1- Is Ms. Theary Seng involved in the daily operation of KI-Media? The answer is NO. Like many others who sent us their op-eds, opinions, etc… to post, Ms. Seng is kind enough to share with our readers some of the articles that she found interesting and that could be of interest to some, if not all, of us. However, that does not mean that she is part of our team, even though we wouldn’t mind seeing activists like her joining our team, but that is just a wishful thinking. Based on perusing some of the negative comments on Ms. Seng, it appears that even the various photos we posted of her are topic of irritation to some. On the other hand, not too long ago, a reader posted a comment berating Dr. Peang-Meth for always posting the same photo of his with his article. What this reader did not seem to realize is that (1) Dr. Peang-Meth has nothing to do with KI-Media’s posting, and that (2) our posting of the only photo of his is the only recourse we have since we do not have any other photo of him. Personally, I am very puzzled and dismayed by such reactions.

2- Is KI-Media merely a nest for opposition followers to come out and curse the government? By the look of it, KI-Media seems to attract a large audience of government critics and detractors simply because our comment section is not moderated. Why didn’t we remediate this issue? The answer is very simple: we simply do not have the staff necessary to do the policing and cleaning up of the comments posted by our readers. Look at it this way: most of us are students who still have to attend classes or who have to work at a fulltime job to earn a living etc…, therefore KI-Media is just a hobby, albeit a passionate one, for all of us, therefore, we simply cannot afford to spend large amount of time policing the comment section. Without an income to provide us with our daily bowl of rice, it would be impossible for us to offer the free service of KI-Media.

From a historical standpoint, because we use the free service of Blogspot to host KI-Media, in the past, we were very limited on how we can control the posting of comments by readers: unmoderated, fully moderated or not allowed. As explained above, full moderation is impossible for us to handle. Ideally, our best choice would be unmoderated with selective moderation for language, and that option was not available until recently. Even at that, because of our limited number of volunteers, we simply cannot monitor all the comments 24/7, therefore, some of these “pesky” comments may linger a while before we catch them and zap them out.

3- KI-Media only serves as an aggregator of news, there are better news aggregator services than that – such as Google or Yahoo – so what’s the use of having KI-Media at all right now? True, we wouldn’t deny this fact, while the amateurish KI-Media offers less news than those professional and commercially funded outlets, on the other hand, we also offer Khmer and French news and articles translated into English as well. We also post community news as well as information that are not usually found in the traditional circuit or that would be censored in Cambodia, such as Sacrava’s cartoons. Do these justify our existence? Most likely not, but as we said it earlier, KI-Media is a passion to some of us, we would pursue it even if it only serves a single reader in the whole wide world.

4- Should KI-Media borrow a page or two from that temple thug Hun Sen by just blowing away irrelevant, nonsensical comments by CPP/Hun Sen's supporters here on KI-Media? Other team members may disagree with me on this topic, but personally, I refuse to stoop to the same level as my oppressors. I’d rather put my life on the line to defend the right of my oppressors to speak freely than forcing silence on them. It’s just my choice and my principle, and I do not expect everybody to agree with me on this issue.

5- Why does KI-Media sometimes twist the title to criticize the government? Well, simply speaking, the fact that you are asking this question shows that our twisted approach works: they got your attention, they invite you to read the true title (included) of the article and the article itself. If the title is plain and boring, you may not read that article at all, therefore, one of our tasks is to challenge our readers and force you to react, even if in the process we will earn your curses. We strongly believe that an engaged audience is much better than an adoring audience: debate, refute, contest, protest. Those are the essence of democracy, please put them to use to your advantage, woo the readers with your comments, challenge our team back, can you do that?

That being said, I would like to return to my initial consternation. As I indicated above, I am very disturbed by the sexist comments against women: is it wrong for women to express their opinion? Why do some have to use very sexist and derogative words to attack women? Didn’t we all come out of a woman’s womb one way or another? Furthermore, being a man, I simply cannot imagine a world without women. Can you imagine how boring a male-only world would be? The thought of it makes me shudder between my legs (no pun intended). Therefore, I challenge you all to rise to the occasion: you may not agree with a woman’s opinion, however, are you man enough to explain your reasons with civility? I sincerely hope you do.

I thank you for your attention,

Heng Soy

PS: To the person who kept on repeating, like a broken record, that KI-Media’s father is gay, let me simply say that you lack basic judgment: (1) If someone’s father is gay, how could that gay father naturally procreate a child as this “natural” process usually requires the interaction between a man and a woman?, (2) KI-Media does not have a father as KI-Media is not a person. Now, can you come up with more intelligent comments in the future?

Sacrava's Political Cartoon: KI - Shadow

2010-10-06T02:14:00.000-07:00

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

Rockin' the Wall - Rock n' Roll as a Force of Liberation

2010-10-05T21:06:00.000-07:00

By Khmer Democrat, Phnom Penh
Expanding our Mind Series

For all the artists in the house, here's a little bit of inspiration for you! Be the change! We look forward to the sequel when Cambodia's very own praCh Ly is featured.

Bringing down the wall.
Smashing the curtain.
Rock n' Roll as a force of liberation.

Rockin' the Wall is the compelling story of rock and roll's part in bringing down the Berlin Wall and smashing the Iron Curtain. Told from the perspective of rockers who played at the time, on both sides of the Wall, and from survivors of the communist regimes who recalled the lifeline that rock music provided them, Rockin' the Wall features new interviews and several original songs written exclusively for the film.

The message that emerges is that music is a force of liberation, and in a society like America's, where it was seldom (if ever) truly suppressed, music failed to ignite a social revolution. But behind the Iron Curtain, where the mere act of expressing one's individuality constituted a potential act of revolution, music provided the key thread upon which the anti-communist struggle gained ground.

To see the trailer, visit:

www.rockinthewall.com

"Oss Dei" a Poem in Khmer by Kho Dararith

2010-10-05T21:04:00.000-07:00

People must know they have power

2010-10-05T21:02:00.000-07:00

By A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
PACIFIC DAILY NEWS (Guam)

The Khmer blog KI-Media recently has been publishing in sections Gene Sharp's "From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation," by the Albert Einstein Institution, that provides significant guidelines to "assist thought and planning" in the fight against dictatorship.

Sharp hopes his study on "how a dictatorship can be disintegrated" would be useful "wherever people live under domination and desire to be free."

Sharp presupposes people who live under a dictatorship can distinguish between a dictatorship and a democracy, and there are those with a "desire to be free."

Enormous work and effort are required from fractious democrats and rights activists who fight powerful ruling tyrants. In Cambodia, deeply rooted old habits and thoughts stand opposite imaginative, creative and innovative thinking.

Some 70 percent of the people polled said Cambodia under autocracy is headed in "the right direction." Khmer and foreign partisans of political "stability" ignore civil rights violations, while opponents of autocracy speak of "people power."

Yet power doesn't exist until the people understand it is actually in their hands; until democrats and rights activists help them to believe the truth that no power, force or barrier can withstand their determined efforts for rights and freedom.

More than ever, Cambodians need democrats and rights activists to lead them. Through enlightened and efficient leadership, the citizens become aware of the parameters of oppression and develop the confidence that will bring down any dictator.

'Pigs don't fly'

Some readers complain that I write a lot about better thinking but don't tell them what and how it will help defeat Cambodia's autocracy and keep Khmers Khmer. In some ways, the complaint itself is evidence of a lack of analytical thought.

I don't normally read comments posted by anonymous bloggers, whose expletives, racial slurs or demonization of opponents affirm the bloggers' true values, but every now and then I peruse them.

Some people blog to relieve their frustration and unhappiness -- which is useful to detect the symptoms of a disease, if not the disease itself.

A blogger took offense at my remarks that all minds can be taught, and responded with "pigs don't fly" -- i.e., some minds simply cannot improve, just like a horse refuses to drink even if led to the water. There can't be change without a belief that it is possible. Are some unredeemable intellectually?

Pigs don't fly. We know that. But human minds do develop and grow. We know that, too.

Pol Pot decided that a people so "stupid" as to refuse his ways and thoughts must be destroyed and re-educated through forced labor and "tbaung chawb" (hoe blade) to strike the necks of those with "incorrect" thinking. There is no gain to keep them, no loss to eliminate them, the Khmer Rouge said. Thus, Pol Pot killed the nation.

When I was a child, my father often reminded me that if I didn't use my brain to read and reflect, the brain's lack of exercise would kill me, just as if I denied my stomach food, the stomach would contract and shrink and I would die.

Peasants, businessmen, the elite and those of royal heritage are human, each with "one kilo of brain" that can think. Royals may know much about the throne, but peasants know much about the rice that feeds the royals.

Pigs won't fly. But the human brain has taken man to the moon and back.

True stories

I had just passed my doctoral comprehensive examinations and defended my dissertation proposal at the University of Michigan when Cambodia's republican regime tapped me to take a post at the Khmer Republic Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Long Boret, the foreign minister, who examined a political bulletin I edited in Ann Arbor, called me to join his delegation to the United Nations, observed my work, and I agreed to serve the republican embassy under Ambassador Um Sim. Both Boret and Sim gave me enough room to apply my creativity, innovation and analytical thinking in my work. They saw some tangible change. Both were interested in results and not gossip and backbiting.

In his last words to me before the collapse of the republican government, Long Boret told me to prepare to join him in Phnom Penh. Boret was executed by Pol Pot's men on April 17, 1975.

The situation was different after I joined the Khmer People's National Liberation Front in the field in 1980. With a degree of freedom to think and act as a member of the front's executive committee, I applied my creativity, innovation and analytical thinking. Objective observers could affirm some positive change.

But those qualities also gained me enemies, even within our ranks. My problems mounted. But that is a story for another day, if ever I have the desire to share my perspective.

Better thinking

I subscribe to Edmund Burke's philosophy that traditions link the dead, the living and those to be born. But I distinguish those traditions that are barriers to surviving in an advancing world -- like blind obedience and unquestionable loyalty -- and those that uphold a people's culture and integrity -- like taking off shoes when entering home or clasping hands to say thank you.

It's anyone's prerogative to prefer one regime over another. But I think it's not good thinking to hate a monarchy or a republic. Professor Thomas Szasz once said, "A system is not stupid, the people in it are."

A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. Write him at peangmeth@yahoo.com.

Obituary for Mr. Huch Hon in California

2010-10-05T20:51:00.000-07:00

New Funding Jumpstarts HRRCA Activities

2010-10-05T09:44:00.000-07:00

Jakarta, September 27 – The Human Rights Resource Centre for ASEAN (HRRCA) has received three new funding commitments from the United States Government, the Embassy of Switzerland to Indonesia, and the MacArthur Foundation, which will be used to carry out the HRRCA's mission to provide research, education, and training on human rights issues in the ASEAN region.

The US Government-sponsored ASEAN-US Technical Assistance and Training Facility announced today that it will support the HRRCA’s first research program on rule-of-law, as well as its official launch, which will be held in Jakarta on October 19. Senior officials from Indonesia, ASEAN, the United States and the Embassy of Switzerland are scheduled to attend.

"The establishment of the Human Rights Resource Center for ASEAN is a potent demonstration of the important role civil society can and should play in regional policymaking. One of ASEAN's objectives is the creation of a people-centered community in Southeast Asia, and we are proud to support this initiative, which has been driven by Indonesian and regional civil society," said United States Ambassador to Indonesia, Scot Marciel.

The Embassy of Switzerland to Indonesia announced a grant to the Centre to support its first research activity on the rule of law for human rights. This study will examine the interconnected relationship between rule of law and human rights in ASEAN and provide a basis for the development of regional training and capacity building human rights programs.

“Switzerland welcomes the opportunity to support the HRRCA activities in order to further strengthen the important role of the regional civil society to promote human rights in South East Asia,” said Swiss Ambassador to Indonesia, Heinz Walker-Nederkoorn.

The HRRCA also confirmed a grant from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to support the core operations of the HRRCA. These funds will enable the Centre to more effectively design and implement programs to promote and protect human rights in ASEAN.

“It is gratifying to see the work of the Human Rights Resource Centre for ASEAN being supported by governments and organizations around the world. This is a recognition of the importance of promoting and protecting human rights in the region,” said Marzuki Darusman, the Founding Chairman and Director of the Centre.

HRRCA’s work aims to complement and support the work of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) and provide a strong regional focus on human rights research, capacity building, training and teaching.

The HRRCA encompasses a network of partner and affiliated an institution that taps into the region’s rich academic research community. Current partner institutions include the University of Indonesia, Ateneo University School of Law (Philippines), the University of Malaya (Malaysia), and the Law School of the National University of Singapore. The Islamic University of Indonesia, which has a strong interest in human rights education, is the HRRCA’s first affiliate institution. The HRRCA offices are located at the Depok Campus of the University of Indonesia.

Through collaboration with these partner and affiliated university-based institutions across ASEAN, the HRRCA’s research, training, and capacity building projects will contribute to the development of human rights throughout the region.

For background and more information please call Rully Sandra, +62-815-912-7075 or email at rullysandra@gmail.com; www.hrrca.org

15-minute speed border negotiation in Brussels? Bravo?!?!

2010-10-05T09:41:00.000-07:00

(Photo: Reuters)

Everyday.com.kh
Translated from Khmer by Soch

Hun Xen of Cambodia and Abhisit Vejjaiva of Thailand met for 15 minutes outside of the 8th ASEM meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on 04 October. Sry Thamrong, Hun Xen’s minion minister, indicated that during the meeting, Abhisit informed Hun Xen that Thailand had invited Cambodia’s minister of Information (Khieu Kanharith) and reporters to visit Thailand in mid-October for a cultural and art exchange between the two countries. The two leaders focused on the arrangement for troops from both armies to return back to normalcy, just like how it was prior to 15 July 2008 (the date of Thai troops invasion to Preah Vihear). The pair considers the presence of Thai troops at Wat Keo Sekha Kiri Svarak and a number of other regions as a powder keg and that armed clashes could take place if a misunderstanding occurs. The two promised to continue the discussion during the upcoming 17th ASEAN summit meeting in Vietnam at the end of October in order to continue to resolve the remaining issues.

Xi'an encourages more investment in Cambodia

2010-10-05T09:38:00.000-07:00

Oct. 5, 2010 (China Knowledge) - Xi'an, the capital of China's Shaanxi Province, will encourage more local businessmen to invest in the electronics and technology sectors in Southeast Asia's Cambodia, sources reported, citing Hao Mangxi, head of Xi'an Bureau of Trade and Commerce, as saying.

Hao, who is leading a delegation of seven large companies from Xi'an to visit Cambodia, and the Director General of Cambodia Chamber of Commerce, Nguon Meng Tech, have signed memorandum of understanding to further enhance the economic and trade cooperation between Xi'an and Cambodia.

"We are interested in the technology and electronic sectors in Cambodia", said Hao, adding that the bureau will encourage more businessmen in Xi'an to invest in the country.

Nguon Meng Tech said Cambodia's agricultural sector is very potential for foreign investment, and Cambodia has a lot of young-educated labors with cheaper labor cost, adding that Cambodia needs investors with expertise in technologies to develop agricultural products for exports.

Trade between Xi'an and Cambodia was around US$100,000 per year, which is still low compared with other regions of China.

“Cambodia is not a democracy, as there is no opposition”: Youk Chhang

2010-10-05T09:36:00.000-07:00

How Will Post-election Burma Look?

By SIMON ROUGHNEEN
The Irrawady (Burma)

Sam Rainsy, the main opposition leader, now lives in exile and on Sept. 22 was handed a 10-year jail sentence by a Cambodian court for a comment he made about a border dispute with Vietnam. The sentence was only eight years less than the real term handed down to “Comrade Duch” in July, the first conviction at Cambodia's war crimes tribunal which is looking into abuses perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge.

BANGKOK—The run-up to Burma's Nov. 7 election has left observers and policy wonks wondering whether the vote will facilitate some opening-up inside the military-ruled country, despite the seemingly overwhelming bias in favor of the army and its allies.

Some clues, it could be argued, might be found in the experiences of other countries in the Southeast Asia region.

Indonesia left a long era of military dictatorship behind it in 1998, when the Asian financial crisis precipitated the collapse of the Suharto regime. Since then, the vast, multi-ethnic archipelago has undergone a largely successful—if hardly flawless—transition to being southeast Asia's best-functioning democracy.

In 1986, soldiers refused to fire on protestors on the streets of Manila, as mass protests backed by the Catholic Church helped bring about the end of the Marcos dictatorship. During the 2007 Saffron Revolution in Burma, some views held that a similar dynamic might prevail once Buddhist monks took to the streets. Just as the armed forces of the Philippines backed down when confronted by priests and nuns, then surely the Tatmadaw would not harm the Sangha?

Events proved otherwise, and Dr Maung Zarni, a scholar at the London School of Economics and an exiled Burmese dissident, says that the military rulers of Burma are operating from a different template than other Asian leaders, no matter how despotic.

“Even absolute monarchs and rulers elsewhere were constrained by the Buddhist or Confucian norms that required them to rule in a paternalistic manner,” he said. His remarks were part of a seminar titled “Transitions to Democracy in Southeast Asia: Similarities and Differences with the Upcoming Elections in Burma/Myanmar,” at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University on Tuesday.

In contrast, “Burma is ruled by a form of military feudalism that involves junking or misusing the country's own religious and cultural traditions,” he said, pointing to images of Burmese consular staff in China prostrating themselves, in a display of faux Buddhist devotion, before senior junta figures such as Shwe Mann and Than Shwe.

While Burma remains something of an embarrassment for Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) leaders, many of whom are in Brussels now for a summit with European Union counterparts, other Asean members cannot point to a linear or seamless transition from authoritarian rule to democracy.

Youk Chhang, a survivor of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia and now executive director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, reminded the gathering that the 1993 United Nations-backed elections in his country were won by the Royalist Party, from its exile in Thailand.

“However the UN allowed the losers to form a government, after they resisted the result, and after the international community spent US $2 billion on the elections,” he said.

That result reversal came three years after the Burmese military ignored the landslide win for Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy in Burma's last election.

“Cambodia is not a democracy,” said Youk Chhang, “as there is no opposition.”

Sam Rainsy, the main opposition leader, now lives in exile and on Sept. 22 was handed a 10-year jail sentence by a Cambodian court for a comment he made about a border dispute with Vietnam. The sentence was only eight years less than the real term handed down to “Comrade Duch” in July, the first conviction at Cambodia's war crimes tribunal which is looking into abuses perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge. Like Maung Zarni, Youk Chhang spent time as a refugee in Thailand after fleeing persecution at home.

Thailand, alongside the Philippines, was for a time held up as a beacon of democracy in the region and has long offered a support base and refuge for oppressed people from neighboring countries. The Thai military has occupied a largely background role since a failed attempt at governing after the September 2006 coup, but remains hugely influential, part of what scholar Dr. Thitinan Pongsudhirak calls it a long-established “holy trinity” of bureaucrats and royalists, who are now “afraid to make any concessions” to opposition groups such as the Redshirts, “for fear that one may lead to losing all.”

Coupled with the use of emergency laws and a system whereby citizens can randomly sue one another on lese majeste charges, the result is declining freedom of speech and deteriorating democratic standards, he warned.

The Thai Army reserves a right for itself to intervene politically, as outlined by new army head Gen. Prayuth recently, who commented “the army would like to stay out of politics, but is willing to come in, if necessary.”

Ethnic conflicts inside Burma remain unresolved, with calls for reconciliation before elections going unheeded by the ruling military. More fighting would see more refugees flow into Thailand, on top of the 140,000 already in camps along the border.

“I don't see much happening in the way of contingency planning by the Thai authorities or the military for this,” said Thitinan.

For Indonesia, resolving ethnic conflict has been a key aspect of its democratic transition, according to Ambassador Mohammed Hatta, the country's representative in Thailand.

“We have 465 ethnic groups, with different languages and religions,” he said, and claimed that “once we found out the core issues of ethnic conflict,” the country tried to resolve them, pointing to the example of Aceh. However, human rights abuses continue in West Papua, according to activists.

The ambassador pointed out that Indonesia has elections at all levels of government, and that associated institutions, such as an anti-corruption commission, the judiciary, parliament, are working to entrench democracy in the country.

Such an over-emphasis on institutions is flawed, according to Zarni, who pointed out that the proliferation of councils and commissions under Burma's Ne Win regime remained under strict junta control. He said he anticipates the same under the post-election system, where Burma will have regional parliaments, as well as a central upper and lower house, all dominated by the military and allied parties.

Thailand, Cambodia to Hold Border Talk in Hanoi: Thai PM

2010-10-05T09:35:00.000-07:00

Thailand and Cambodia will hold talks on the disputed border area on the sidelines of the 17th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Hanoi late this month, Thai media on Tuesday quoted Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva as saying.

According to MCOT news online, Abhisit said he had met his Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen on the sidelines of the 8th Asia- Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit, being held in Brussels during October 4-5, and discussed with him the border dispute over the 4.6-square-km area near an ancient temple Preah Vihear.

"There is no conclusion in the latest discussion which has mainly exchanged views over the dispute in an effort to press ahead for progress in tackling the issue apart from current efforts being made through parliamentary procedures and the Thai- Cambodian Joint Commission on Demarcation for Land Boundary (JBC), " he said.

The prime minister said the two countries would prepare information related to the conflicts and would hold talks again when they meet on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital, on Oct 28-30.

Regarding concerns over encroachment in overlapping areas, Abhisit conceded that there were some groups of people in both countries wanted to deal with the issue in an aggressive way, which may lead to clashes. Their leaders are duty-bound to reach better understanding among their peoples to prevent violence.

Thailand and Cambodia have age-old dispute over the 900-year- old Hindu Preah Vihear Temple, a World's Heritage site, and its adjacent area of 4.6 sq.km.

The international court ruled the temple belonging to Cambodia more than 40 years ago, but border dispute over the area around the temple has remained a fuse in the two countries' relationship.

The bilateral relationship between the two countries was strained as Cambodian government filed a management plan for the Preah Vihear temple to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which was supposed to be discussed on the World Heritage Committee's 34th annual meeting in July.

On the meeting in Brasilia, the Thai delegation said the layout of the plan enclosed with the document did not clearly specify the area and apparently violated the Thai border.

World Heritage Committee (WHC) on July 30 decided to postpone the discussion on Cambodia's management plan to its meeting next year in Bahrain.

Cambodia's Freedom Park worries rights groups

2010-10-05T06:15:00.000-07:00

A Cambodian worker building toilet building for a freedom park in Phnom Penh. Photo courtesy: AFP.

Cambodian children holding portrait photos of Prime Minister Hun Sen and his wife Bun Rany during a protest in front of Prime Minister Hun Sen's residence in Phnom Penh. Photo courtesy: AFP.

Cambodian children holding portrait photos of Prime Minister Hun Sen and his wife Bun Rany during a protest in front of Prime Minister Hun Sen's residence in Phnom Penh. Photo courtesy: AFP

Cambodian women shouting as policemen try to disperse them during a protest in front of Prime Minister Hun Sen's residence in Phnom Penh. Photo courtesy: AFP

Cambodian workers laying bricks for a freedom park in Phnom Penh. Photo courtesy: AFP.

Cambodian workers pushing a cart loaded with bricks for a freedom park in Phnom Penh. Photo courtesy: AFP

Monks' Community Forest in Cambodia wins prestigious Equator Prize

2010-10-05T06:13:00.000-07:00

ព្រះ តេជគុណ ប៊ុន សាលួត គង់នៅវត្តប្រាសាទរាជា ស្ថិតនៅខេត្តឧត្ដរមានជ័យ។ ព្រះអង្គ ទទួលពានរង្វាន់ Equator នៅបូរីញីវយ៉ក សហរដ្ឋអាមេរិក ដោយស្នាព្រះហស្តក្នុងការដឹកនាំព្រះសង្ឃ និងពុទ្ធបរិស័ទការពារព្រៃឈើ។

Angry Asian Grandparent Shooting In Seattle

2010-10-05T05:04:00.000-07:00

Grandma Saroeun Sok family photo

Donations to the family may be sent to: Thyda Luellen Benevolent Account BECU P.O. Box 34044 Seattle, WA 98124-1044

October 2, 2010 By Arthur Hu Asian Week
Chalk up one more angry Asian American shooter, but it wasn’t the first angry old Asian. Not too many people noticed when 69 year old “uncle” John Chong went bananas April 2009 at the Korean Christian Kkottongnae Retreat Camp southeast of Los Angeles. He shot a woman and wounded a man before his next victims fought back and beat him senseless

On Thursday September 23, Seattle suffered its most horrific shooting in four years as 60 year old much loved Cambodian “grandma” Saroeun Sok came down the stairs dressed in white with an eerie smile and suddenly opened fire on her daughter and family in her West Seattle home. Four were killed as she shot herself, her son-in-law, and two teen grand-daughters. In Cambodia, Sok took pleasure in dressing up young women and bridesmaids for weddings. She would spend fitting gowns and taking care of hair and makeup. But she became troubled, perhaps during the time of the Killing Fields, and Sok stabbed her sister in a fit of rage. She would rarely speak of those times, but it claimed the lives of two of her children and her parents before she escaped to camps in Thailand and then the Phillipines and Philadelphia with her husband Chhoey Sok, and surviving daughter Thyda Phan. Now In West Seattle, Sok was the matriarch of a crowded house with 11 people, but she fell into mental illness as Thyda’s second husband left and got custody of her boys. Sok was hospitalized for schuizophrenia and depression, and in previous weeks, she had a phobia about colors and would only wear white. Sok was upset when they were evicted and had to move to a crowded 3 bedroom house. She could not find her things, felt nobody liked her, and thought the television was talking and shooting at her. After she was mugged walking home, she learned to fire a gun, but her husband carefully hid his two handguns from her. Then on the fateful day, Saroeun Sok again donned white and took one of the guns from its hiding place. Then warned auntie Lisa Sun (28) to go into her room and shut the door as she headed down to hunt down the rest of the family. Granny calmly walked down the stairs to greet her son-in-law Choen Harm (43) who was back from scarce work, and had said “even if they had only a penny among them, if the family was together, it was OK”. She calmly pulled out a gun from her jacket and shot him. Thyda heard a pop and wondered who was playing with firecrackers when 16 year old son Kevin shouted “Mom, grandma’s killed Dad!” as granny shot at Kevin and 7 yr old Nevaeh ducked under a blanket. As teen daughter Jennifer (17) ran down to help her father, she was also shot in the back. The gun jammed, as grandma seemed possessed. A woman would could barely walk was running upstairs like a demon upstairs and nobody could catch her. Kevin pushed everybody to the downstairs basement. As Thyda called police, granny came down with the other gun and shot her. She was seen running out yelling her mother had gone crazy. Then she ran back inside to help her children, where she was shot two more times trying to take the gun away. Granny chased the others downstairs to the basement where she stood blocking escape at the sliding door to shoot the children along with Jennifer’s boyfriend Allen Green, 18. Kevin punched out a window where the teens scrambled out, and pulled the little girl out. Then the mortally wounded Jennifer stumbled into the bedroom where granny was shooting. Kevin urged 14 year old Melina to get out, but she stayed at her sister’s side where granny shot through the window to kill little Melina. Kevin later said “She wouldn’t leave her older sister. Her older sister is her best friend” after Kevin had been missed five times. As officers formed a police line outside the house, granny’s husband shot past into the house. He was just in time to see his wife shoot herself in the head, sadly coming out to say that he was too late. The next day, when Tony Sun (17) walked through the house after the investigation, all he had to say was “Oh my God” as he surveyed the blood stains where his uncle and cousins were killed. That evening a hastily organized memorial service was held at Khemarak Pothiram Temple. Pink packages with pencils, books and drinks were prepared for their journey into the afterlife. Monks in orange chanted and burned incense. Sitting on rugs under a white tent without shoes, they prayed for forgiveness of grandma Sok, who could not be reborn as a human after killing another. They prayed for the release of the spirits of the others who might later return, perhaps to their own family as a new baby child nephew or niece. Survivor Thyda told reporters “I hope they come back”. This story is based on news articles by the Seattle Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, KIRO-TV and KOMO-TV

Brain Food

2010-10-05T04:59:00.000-07:00

By Khmer Democrat, Phnom Penh
Brain Food, in celebration of World Teachers' Day

Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind. The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another.

- Marva Collins

Cambodian court hears appeal case by opposition leader

2010-10-05T04:35:00.000-07:00

DPA

Phnom Penh - Cambodia's appeal court on Tuesday heard the case brought by opposition leader Sam Rainsy against his two-year jail term imposed in a dispute over border markers with Vietnam.

The court said it would announce the verdict on October 13.

Sam Rainsy, who lives in France, was sentenced in absentia in January on charges of racial incitement and damaging public property after he uprooted border markers along the Cambodian-Vietnam border in October 2009.

Two Cambodian villagers were jailed for a year over the same incident.

Yim Sovann, a spokesman for the Sam Rainsy Party, said the party felt that the court would likely uphold the conviction.

'We understand that this is political, and that the ruling party wants to muzzle all the people who have different opinions from the government regarding the border issue,' Yim Sovann said.

'This is a kind of intimidation to those who live along the borders,' he said.

The opposition party has charged that land rights of Cambodian farmers in the area were not being respected by the demarcation process along the 1,270-kilometre border, which is scheduled to be completed by 2012.

The incident riled Hanoi, which is a close ally of Prime Minister Hun Sen's government. Vietnam has significant interests in agribusiness, aviation, telecommunications and banking in Cambodia.

Teachers prevented from marching on World Teachers' Day

2010-10-05T04:33:00.000-07:00

Teachers holding banners asking for better pay and better treatment. The cops prevented them from marching and from gathering in front of the old National Assembly building (All photos: Cambodia Express News)
Rong Chhun (Front right) and Chea Mony (Front left, holding a microphone) led the celebration of the World Teachers' Day
Numerous cops can be seen standing in the public park facing the old NA building to prevent the teachers to gather there.
Roads were blocked to prevent the teachers from gathering in front of the old NA building.

Appeal Court delays Sam Rainsy’s verdict delivery to 13 October

2010-10-05T04:32:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Meas Srey, a victim of Vietnamese encroachment in Svay Rieng, was seen escorted to the Appeal Court on 09 September 2010 (Photo: The Phnom Penh Post)

Sean Kosal
DAP-news
Translated from Khmer by Soch

Phnom Penh – The Appeal court judge announced this Tuesday morning that the delivery of the verdict in Sam Rainsy’s appeal case in the border stakes removal in Chantrea district, Svay Reing province, will be delayed to 13 October 2010 instead.

The decision to delay the delivery of the verdict was made after the Appeal court convened for the case on Tuesday morning. Two of the co-defendants, Mrs. Meas Srey and Mr. Prum Chea, were present during the hearing. The pair was sentenced to 1-year of jail time each. On the other hand, the Svay Rieng provincial court sentenced Sam Rainsy to 2-year of jail time and fined him by more than 60 million riels. Sam Rainsy was charged with uprooting of border stakes in Svay Rieng province on 25 October 2009, and also with falsification on public document in the border dispute between Cambodia and Vietnam.

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2010-10-04T09:35:00.000-07:00

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