In US, Cambodians Mark Peace Accord Date With Pessimism

Photo: by VOA Khmer
More than 100 Cambodian-Americans gathered on Oct. 21 and Oct. 22 to commemorate the anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords, in Alexandria, Virginia.

Friday, 28 October 2011
Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer | Washington, DC

"Opposition lawmakers in the National Assembly “can’t suggest to parliament to change even one comma in a law.”

More than 100 Cambodian-Americans gathered in Alexandria, Va., on Oct. 21 and Oct. 22 to commemorate the anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords, but participants said that two decades later, Cambodia still struggles with issues of human rights, democracy and the encroachment of neighboring Thailand and Vietnam.

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“Democracy in Cambodia has gone backward,” said Yab Kimtung, who helped organize the conference. “Big opposition parties have been oppressed. Information about human rights, democracy, free and fair elections or land grabbing has not been widely spread to the public.”

Kem Sokha, president of the minor opposition Human Rights Party, was a guest speaker. He said Cambodia has become a country with a “unilateral” political system, exactly as it was before the peace accords were signed on Oct. 23, 1991.

“The ruling party won 90 seats in an election that I think was not fair,” he said.

Opposition lawmakers in the National Assembly “can’t suggest to parliament to change even one comma in a law,” he said.

“The government, parliament and the courts are under the control of the communist party,” he added, referring to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, which had its beginnings in communist ideology.

Kimsour Phirith, a lawmaker for the opposition Sam Rainsy Party, also attended the conference. He too said the country’s democratic system has backslid since the signing of the accords.

“I want democracy and human rights respected in Cambodia,” he said in a speech. “The only way we can achieve that is to change the current leader. For any political party to win in the subsequent elections, if you can’t lead the country, the people will change you again. The change will bring real democracy to Cambodia.”

That kind of change has proven difficult for the country’s opposition parties, who have remained divided following the 2008 election.

Conference organizer Prom Sunnora called unity among the opposition a “last resort,” as the country heads toward local elections in 2012 and national elections in 2013.

“Supporters both in Cambodia and abroad have to urge all the opposition leaders to unite,” he said.

In Phnom Penh, government spokesman Phay Siphan said the administration had no plans to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the accords, but he said the government has followed the spirit of the agreement.

The accords “unite” all Cambodians, he said, but the rebuilding of the nation should be “based on the will of the Cambodian people, not that of the diaspora.”

“Every five years, all qualified political parties can stand for election,” he said. “It is unnecessary to do something opposite to the will of the Cambodian people.”

The Paris Accords also set out the boundaries for Cambodia, but critics charge that encroachment from Cambodia’s neighbors continues today.

Seng Pengse, president of the Cambodia Border Committee, an advocacy group based in France, told VOA Khmer that if the government does not honor the agreement, former co-chairs of the Paris Peace Conference, which were France and Indonesia, can intervene “to report to the United Nations.”

The government has not canceled border agreements it made with Vietnam in 2000, he said, which has been problematic. The Cambodia-Vietnam Joint Border Committee has done work “which is opposite from the spirit of the Paris Peace Accords,” he said.

Meanwhile, Cambodia remains in a prolonged military standoff with Thailand, who Seng Pengse said was ignoring a map drawn by the French at the turn of the 20th Century.

“When Thailand sees that Vietnam does not respect the map, it does not want to respect the map either,” he said.

What Spalding Gray Left Us [“Swimming to Cambodia”- a novel written by "The Killing Fields" actor]

Nancy Campbell/IFC Films: Spalding Gray

By RON ROSENBAUM
The New York Times
Published: October 28, 2011

In “Swimming to Cambodia” — the monologue that made Spalding Gray (relatively) famous, about the time he spent in Thailand playing a small role in “The Killing Fields,” the film about the Cambodian genocide — Gray tells a strange, disconcerting story about the death of Thomas Merton. Merton, the Trappist monk celebrated for his devotion to an eloquently spiritualized silence, was “a hero of mine because he knew how to shut up,” Gray, the compulsive verbalizer, tells us.

As Gray describes Merton’s death, “the Trappists sent him to Southeast Asia to research Buddhism. He stepped out of a bathtub, touched an electric fan and died instantly.”

This account, as it happens, dramatizes the conflict found throughout Gray’s extensive journals: between his own relentless search for transcendence (“perfect moments” and the like) and the often shocking absurdity of worldly contingency of the sort that will, eventually, tragically, short-circuit him too.

Absurd contradictions were Gray’s métier. One of the offhand, heartbreaking epigrams to be found in these journals goes like this: “The worst fear is that I’ll learn to be happy at last and then get real sad when I see what I’ve missed.” Better to be miserable! No wonder he called one of his monologues “Terrors of Pleasure.”

It’s distressing to read, the way happiness generates sadness and terror in Gray’s psyche, because his work could be the source of so much pleasure to his audiences. Even offstage: one friend tells the editor Nell Casey — who has done an admirable job knitting together a selection of Gray’s journal entries with interviews and her own thoughtful take — that Gray was so seductive a storyteller that just sitting around a downtown loft, hearing him recount the mundane details of his day, could “torture you with pleasure.”

He made a career, invented a performance genre out of this narrative prowess. But the dark side, the journals reveal, was just how much Gray himself was tortured with, well, self-torture.

He’d make light of it in his monologues. One story line of the journals is the way he evolved the radical form of these performances. They were nurtured at first by Elizabeth LeCompte and the postmodern theater troupe that centered on the Performing Garage (later the Wooster Group) in SoHo, but they were, in many respects, premodern. Stripped to the minimum of voice and story, Homeric in that respect, Gray’s odysseys were performed on a bare stage with a bare wooden desk and chair, no props except a water pitcher and glass. Then Gray, this über-WASP figure who looked as if he’d stepped out of the L. L. Bean catalog with his plaid shirt and pale, ghostly New England transcendentalist mien, would sit down, open a notebook and begin talking.

“Get me out of here!” was my first thought when a friend dragged me to one of Gray’s pre-“Cambodia” monologues. But then, in a funny, charming, self-­deprecatory way he’d start telling rambling, digressive, but observant and intelligent stories that would bare his soul and crack you up, with a repertoire of subtle facial gestures, pauses, double takes and the like, a kabuki that said: “Yeah, I know I’m kind of a jerk, but the fact that I know it makes me a meta-jerk, and admit it, you’re laughing because you recognize yourself. I speak for the metaphysical jerk in all of us.”

Or that’s how I interpreted it. In some ways it was ancient, Gray as the Homer of small things. In some ways it spoke to the moment, with a light touch of philosophical and spiritual consciousness that disclosed itself now and then. It had that artful quality of seeming artless, but somehow he had found the sweet spot where remorse and laughter meet, and it was like attending a therapy session on laughing gas.

Looking backward, he spoke for a generation of people who had learned to doubt everything conventional but couldn’t find sure satisfaction in the unconventional, even as they (and Gray) turned to Eastern spirituality as an alternative to Western tradition.

And looking forward, he helped inspire (for better and worse) a generation of memoirists, most of whom lacked his self-deprecatory humor and, instead of finding the large in the small, found their smallness in the melodramatic, self-congratulatory accounts of their tribulations.

Then again, even Gray didn’t always pull it off. As he reports in his journals, his girlfriend Renée Shafransky (who later became his first wife and his collaborator) summed up this difficulty thus: “She said I was confessional but not honest.”

This is an important distinction, one Gray struggled with often as he sought to embody his persona onstage. He confessed to things in such a disarming way that you’d forgive him, but we learn in the journals he often couldn’t forgive himself.

One problem in assessing the ­confession-honesty divide in this book is that it has been distilled from what Casey estimates are 5,000 pages of writings and journals and that his family — especially his second wife, Kathleen Russo, who has custody of them — reserved the right to remove passages they felt would be hurtful or violate privacies. Understandable, but it leaves us not entirely sure in what ways this Spalding Gray is more or less “real” than the man onstage, or whether there’s a somewhat different creature behind both. He would probably relish the mystery, and not be able to solve it himself.

He certainly was aware of the ways confessing his infidelities, for instance, hurt others, without giving him the feeling of absolution he sought, though he doesn’t seem to have realized that compulsively recounting his affairs and longings for others to those he loved and betrayed wasn’t the best way of being honest. Or indeed to have considered whether honesty of this sort is the highest virtue.

But in some ways the journals help us understand Gray’s obsessive confessional impulse and his haphazard snatching at spiritual consolation. Religion played an inordinately important role in shaping this sensibility from the beginning.

We learn that his mother’s devout Christian Science — a faith that all one had to do was recognize the perfect love that pervaded existence (every moment a perfect moment) — did not prevent her nervous breakdowns and an eventual car-exhaust suicide when Spalding was away, acting, in Texas. All of which bequeathed him a lifelong sense of guilt for not being with her at the end.

And then he plunges into downtown avant-garde New York culture and partakes of what might be called salad-bar Buddhism, a little from here, a little from there, which doesn’t seem to supply much comfort. The confessional impulse is Catholic, the ineradicable guilt sounds Jewish, the stew he makes from them all his own.

Nonetheless he becomes one of America’s great talkers and theatrical raconteurs. Mark Twain, Oscar Levant, Jean Shepherd, Fran Lebowitz, Richard Pryor are his peers. He made holding an audience in the palm of his hand seem effortless, yet his journals reveal how much he rehearsed and revised, how dedicated to acting as much as spontaneity he was — to acting as if it were all spontaneous. The persona he created became beloved — almost too beloved, in a way that sometimes trivialized him into a Seinfeldian curmudgeon — and he jetted all over the world replicating it.

And just when he seemed to have transcended all that guilt and unhappiness over happiness, through family (particularly his love for his two sons and stepdaughter with Russo), one of those absurd contingencies struck the way it struck Merton.

Gray had spent years working on a novel called “Impossible Vacation,” largely about his inability to take a vacation. When he finally did, when he and his family were invited to enjoy the pleasures of a friend’s Irish estate, one night on a lonely road, a speeding veterinary van (of all things) smashed into their car.

He suffers a broken hip, leaving him with a permanent limp, but more awful, a serious head injury that drove skull fragments into his brain and seems to have, over time, exacerbated his lifelong ­depression.

The final sections of the journals are particularly painful to read as Gray struggles to maintain his life while undergoing endless rounds of antidepressive treatments including a week in a locked ward and electroshock, none of which had much effect. He can’t stop obsessing over his decision to move to a larger house isolated from the Sag Harbor Village home where he used to be able to stroll out the door into the streets and entertain his neighbors with stories.

Finally, on a wintry night in 2004, he disappeared. Two months later his body was found on a New York City shoreline, the assumption being that he had jumped to his death from the Staten Island Ferry.

These final pages radiate some of the unbearable sadness of the end of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Gray comes across as a genuinely noble, striving, seeking soul, felled by a malignant fate. Again, prophetically it seems, toward the close of “Swimming to Cambodia,” he tells a story of Sri Rama Krishna, “the last great poor Indian guru”: one who “was seen as a holy man and not as a psychotic. At last a naked sadhu ran out of the jungle, stuck a sharp stone between Sri Rama’s eyes and he saw Nothing.”

The big question Spalding Gray left behind, I believe, is the one raised by “Swimming to Cambodia,” and revisited several times in the journals: Is there a way to engage with genocide in art? While there is a miniaturist’s perfectionism, a minimalist’s grace and modesty, about the other monologues, what are we to make of his applying the method he used to evoke the minor trials of a downtown performance artist, with this material — the murder of millions of Cambodians by their fellow Cambodians, by once peaceful Buddhists turned insane, bloodthirsty Maoists? Even at two removes — a monologue about a minor actor in a film about a major human cataclysm — is it somehow inappropriate for him to tiptoe tipsily (the hash, the Thai whores) around the edges of the abyss as he does, recognizing our divide from it? Or has he found, somehow, a perversely respectful way of approaching the horrific tragedy? Rather than attempting to gaze directly at it, he allows that black hole to cast its malignant shadow over every quotidian act, but conspicuously avoids all but the bare facts — perhaps a rare act of artistic humility that doesn’t diminish but redeems the meta-Conradian horror at its heart?

Having read, and written about, more than my share of Holocaust literature and assimilated the arguments about the perils of its representation, I think a case can be made that Gray did the right thing. He knows the genocide is there but pays about as much direct attention to it as we did as a nation when it happened — or afterward, when (as Gray points out) we temporarily allied ourselves with the Khmer Rouge genocidaires protecting Pol Pot in the jungles. Gray performs a service in recounting the bare facts for many who might otherwise be unaware.

In its own way his monologue is as full of awe and tact, and illuminating about the way we fear to face the full extent of the horror because any response is inadequate. As one of the few responses of art to one of the dismally unusual genocides of the bloody century — auto-genocide: a people who slaughtered their own, not another, people — at the very least it serves as a critique of our superficiality. Gray’s work deserves to last and perhaps in his final dive off the Staten Island Ferry, he was, in his own way, finally bridging that divide, swimming to Cambodia.

Ron Rosenbaum, the author of “Explaining Hitler” and, most recently, “How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III,” is a columnist for Slate.

Holocaust Museum to screen documentary on Cambodian genocide

by Cody Tucker | October 28, 2011

The Holocaust Museum Houston will present a free screening of the documentary "Enemies of the People" on Thursday, Nov. 3.

The award-winning documentary discusses the 1970s genocide in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge, the then ruling party in the country. In the film, Thet Sambath, an investigative journalist, goes on a quest to discover not how but why his family died, and in doing so begins to understand the real story of the country's tragedy.

The film will be screened at 6:30 p.m. in the Museum's Albert and Ethel Herzstein Theater, in the Morgan Family Center at 5401 Caroline St.

Seating is limited and advance registration is required.

To RSVP, visit www.hmh.org/RegisterEvent.aspx.

Military trial of general begins

Friday, 28 October 2011
Meas Sokchea

Photo by: Pha Lina

Weapons allegedly found in the possession of Samuth Virak (pictured), former deputy director of the materials department at the Defence Ministry, were displayed yesterday at the military court in Phnom Penh.

Phnom Penh Post

The Royal Military Court yesterday began the trial of a general and four other soldiers charged with hiding illegal weapons, enlisting illegal soldiers and duping and inciting people to oppose authority.

General Samuth Virak [sometimes called Samith Virak], former Ministry of Defence deputy director, was arrested in January and stands accused as the mastermind of a criminal plan to operate an illegal armed force.

However, deputy prosecutor Mok Sieha dropped two of the four charges against Samuth Virak during yesterday’s proceedings. Samuth Virak now stands accused of imitating a three-star general and hiding illegal weapons, both offences under the Penal Code.

Samuth Virak’s defence lawyer, Nach Try, blocked the prosecutor’s claims in court yesterday, and said the cumulative offences were not enough to charge his client.

“The prosecutor cannot charge my client [with imitating a three-star general] because my client is displaying a three-star general uniform in his home,” Nach Try said.

“If that is the case, the prosecutor must go down to the spot where all the uniforms are sold at the Toekthla market [on Phnom Penh’s Russian Boulevard],” he said, adding that his client had the correct documentation to possess and use the weapons.

Samuth Virak also gave testimony to the military court.

“I have not acted illegally in society. They accused me by unjustly,” Samuth Virak said. “Please, Judge, find justice for me and release me to feed my children, wife and widow mother.”

“I dare to swear before the effective guardian spirit. If I have acted as accused – let me die,” he said.

Vietnam trade passes $2bn

Friday, 28 October 2011
May Kunmakara
Phnom Penh Post

Trade between Cambodia and Vietnam surpassed a US$2 billion trade target for 2011 in just the first nine months of the year, according to the Vietnam Trade Office in Phnom Penh.

Trade between the two countries hit the higher-than-projected $2.07 billion in September, up from about $1.3 billion during the same period in 2010, data from the Vietnam Trade Office showed.

Higher global food prices accounted for the more than 60 per cent increase, not the volume of goods traded, Tran Tu, trade attaché at Vietnam Trade Office, said yesterday.

The resumption of Vietnamese-owned projects in Cambodia, however, led to an increase in imported machinery after a period of economic uncertainty, he said.

“We see the demand for products in both countries recovering. More and more Vietnam-owned investment projects have been continued with a need for imported machinery and materials from Vietnam,” Tran Tu said, adding that investment promotion and international trade fairs had also helped push passed the annual trade target.

The violent border dispute that broke out between Cambodia and Thailand in February redirected some trade toward Vietnam, Ok Boung, secretary of state at the Ministry of Commerce, said yesterday.

“Of course, we had a problem on the border with Thailand, something we didn’t have with Vietnam. So there will be a greater flow of products between our two countries,” he said.

“This is complementary. When we have a problem with one side, the other side will complement it.”

Imports from Vietnam accounted for the majority of the bilateral trade figure, the data showed. Cambodia imported iron, steel, plastics, garments and footwear worth more than $1.7 billion, or a 57 per cent increase, during the first nine months of 2011.

Cambodian exports to Vietnam increased nearly 79 per cent year-on-year, hitting about $342.4 million, according to the data.

The Kingdom’s main exports to Vietnam were food and agricultural products such as seafood, corn, tobacco and rubber.

US military engagement on rise

Reporters and the U.S charge d'affaires were taken to the U.S-Cambodian naval exercise on 22nd October off the Sihanoukville coast.

Friday, 28 October 2011
Kristin Lynch
Phnom Penh Post

A Senior United States defence official denied yesterday that increased US military involvement with Cambodia was a reaction to concerns aired in Washington last month that China was conducting a “charm offensive” in the Kingdom.

Capping off two days of “fruitful” meetings with Cambodia’s Ministry of National Defence, Robert Scher told a press conference the concerns, raised in a report by a Washington think-tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, were not the basis of his visit.

“We are happy to have China as a responsible actor in the regional community, and we really are not basing any of our engagement opportunities in opposition to, or in conflict with, anyone,” he said.

Scher, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for South and Southeast Asia, said the US Defence Department was becoming increasingly interested in what it was seeing as an improved and more receptive Cambodian armed force.

“We now see a Royal Cambodian Armed Force and a Ministry of National Defence that is open and willing and pursuing the right path for how the military fits into the system of governance. Based on that, we are able to engage more,” he said.

Scher’s visit comes amid a flurry of US military engagement in the Kingdom. In August, Brigadier-General Richard Simcock, the US Defence Department’s principal adviser for South and Southeast Asia, paid a three-day visit to the Kingdom.

Yesterday marked the last day of the second Co-operation Afloat Readiness and Training exercise, a military exchange program between the US and Cambodia designed to improve the latter’s naval capacity.

The week of activities included a ceremony at the Sihanoukville Port last Saturday.

Bribery query: Trial under way for PM’s cousin [Hun Sen's cousin charged with corruption]

Friday, 28 October 2011
Buth Reaksmey Kongkea
Phnom Penh Post

Bribery query
A corruption trial against Prime Minister Hun Sen’s cousin Dy Proem, who is alleged to have paid a US$200,000 bribe to sway favour in a land dispute, began yesterday.

Presiding Judge Duch Kimsorn said yesterday that only new evidence would be examined in the court’s retrial of Dy Proem, who allegedly bribed an official to issue a fake March 18 Council of Ministers
statement awarding disputed land to him in Dangkor district’s Kakab Commune.

“This is the second time the court has conducted the trial for Mr Seng Yean and Dy Proem over the allegation of corruption,” he said.

Seng Yean, former deputy general director of the Inspection Department at the Ministry of National Assembly, Senate Relations and Inspection, is the man who allegedly received the bribe.

The charges followed a complaint from Phnom Penh landowner Houth Sarom, who claims that, unlike 120 other families, she never sold her land to Dy Proem.

Long Narin, lawyer for the Ministry of National Assembly, Senate Relation and Inspection, said there is documented proof the pair are guilty.

Neither of the accused could be reached for comment yesterday.

Lopsided election coverage highlighted in new report

Friday, 28 October 2011
Vong Sokheng

Phnom Penh Post

Biased election coverage is under fire in a new study from the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia that found that 71 per cent of political activities aired on evening Cambodian TV over a month-long period showed a rosy picture of the ruling party.

Images of Cambodian Peoples Party members back slapping, hand shaking and ribbon cutting were partnered with routine blastings of the opposition Sam Rainsy Party on the TVK, Bayon and CTN television networks.

In the period from September 1 to October 20, the SRP was afforded just 20 per cent of political coverage on TV between 5 pm and 11 pm, largely with what COMFREL executive director Koul Panha said was less-than-sympathetic analysis.

“I think that there is a lack of equity in broadcasts [about] the … activities of the political parties on the television and radio stations, which will not ensure free and fair elections,” she said yesterday.

The study also found that the SRP fared better on the radio, receiving 35 per cent of coverage – though even this was focused largely on their alleged political misconduct - while the struggling Human Rights Party, with no seats in the Senate, enjoyed 9 per cent of TV coverage and nothing on the radio.

But Tep Nytha, secretary general of the National Election Committee, defended the media’s right to broadcast what they want.

“It is the right of media to broadcast if it is not in the period of an election campaign,” he said, adding that the period for the next Senate election was scheduled for January 7 to 27.

Yim Sovann, spokesman for the SRP, which holds just two seats in the senate but 26 in the National Assembly, took a different view, stating that entrenched ruling party bias extended to the newspaper business as well.

“Even if TV and radio station owners wished to have equality in programming, they would not, because of the intimidation by the ruling party,” he said.

Perhaps more revealing than any of the per centages was the total time spent covering political matters – less than five hours on three TV networks over a month and a half period.

Big Buddha statue found in Cambodian 'Tomb Raider' temple

Monks stand near a tree growing out of the Ta Prohm temple, near Angkor Wat, in Siem Reap July 25, 2008. REUTERS/Adrees Latif

PHNOM PENH | Fri Oct 28, 20112011

(Reuters) - A 2.4 meter (8 foot) headless Buddha statue estimated to be 800 years old was found in the Cambodian temple featured in the Angelina Jolie film, "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider," officials involved in restoration work said Friday.

The sitting Buddha was uncovered by heavy rain at Ta Prohm temple in the Angkor Wat complex in Siem Reap, said Im Sokrithy, deputy director of the local department that oversees the area.

Another statue was found beside a path and that led to the discovery of the bigger statue under a tree.

The temple is undergoing a $4 million restoration by an Indian-led team.

"It is indeed a magnificent example of Khmer art," said Saurav Ray, first secretary at the Indian Embassy in Phnom Penh.

"Both statues are wonderful pieces of Angkorean art and are among the most valuable findings in recent history, beyond doubt," he said.

(Reporting by Prak Chan Thul; Editing by Alan Raybould)

In the war between temples and trees

GREEN INVASION: Many idols at Ta Phrom are now in the firm grasp of tropical trees. Photo: Karthik Subramanian

By Karthik Subramanian

The Hindu

The Angkor Archaeological Park offers enough for the child as well as the adult in you. The thrill of discovering a lost empire is matched by the realisation of the vagaries of human nature

Over twenty full-grown tropical forest trees stand over the Ta Phrom temple in the Angkor Archaeological Park. It appears like a war has broken out between the tropical jungle and the magnificent temples of the Great Khmer Empire. For now, the forests seem to have the upper hand, looking like giant wrestlers just moments away from crushing their foe with bare hands.

The sights at the Ta Phrom temple, more popularly known as the ‘Tomb Raider' temple because of its popularity after the Angelina Jolie-starrer “Lara Croft: Cradle of Life” was shot here, in many ways explain both the splendour and the tragedy of the region.

It begs the question how could such magnificent temples built by one of the greatest empires in the region, one that flourished between the 9th and the 13th centuries, fell to utter ruins. How could such a magnificent city, once inhabited by over a million people, be abandoned for more than three centuries?

The trip to the Angkor Archaeological Park in Cambodia is not just only about the appreciation of the temples there, but also serves as a discovery of the vagaries of human nature. It is not only about great kings who built temples and cities but also about leaders blinded by their own beliefs, bringing to dust the humanity around them and with it all things connected.

The first thing that strikes you about some of the lesser known by equally impressive temples of the region is the tones and the colours. At Preah Khan, an extensive Buddhist complex, full of carvings and photo opportunities, the tone is one of decay. The stones are covered with lichens and it is hard to say where nature has not made its presence felt. The village was once known as ‘Nagarajayshri' (city blessed with victory) but today it is anything but. It is almost like walking straight into a Sepia-toned photograph of the temples as the French found it in the mid-19th century.

Our Cambodian guide Koeu Kheuler points at a bas relief at Preah Khan featuring the statues of meditating Hindu saints. While the statues of the Hindu saints, differentiated by their cross-legged squatting posture, remain intact, the statues of the boddhisatvas (Buddhist monks) the once decorate the panel opposite are missing. “The successor to King Jayavaraman VII, who built this temple, turned to be a Hindu fanatic and chopped off the statues. Jayavarman VII was a Buddhist himself but his brother Jayavarman VIII banished Buddhism from the region. This led to civil unrest and the neighbouring Kingdom of Siam (present day Thailand) attacked at the opportune moment. That was the beginning of the end of the Great Khmer Empire.”

The downfall of the Khmer Empire meant almost all the temples were continually ransacked both by the invaders from Thailand and their neighbouring long-time foes the Chams (region of North Vietnam). The temples were continuously pillaged for precious stones and statues.

In the years that followed, the Khmer people founded another capital for themselves near the present day Phnom Penh. The tropical climate of the region and the fertility of the soil, influenced by various factors such as the freshwater Tonle Sap Lake nearby, allowed natured to completely take over the region. This is no more obvious than at the Ta Phrom temple, where the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is undertaking a joint conversation project with the Apsara Authority of the Cambodian Government which handles the Park.

Members of the Archaeological Team explained to me that the fertile grounds of the region, once its strength during the golden era of the Khmer Empire, also became its curse when the region was abandoned. There was nothing to stop the trees from completely taking over giant complexes of buildings. And since they were built with sandstone, and not granite, like in India, they succumbed faster to the growth of trees.

The eastern gallery in Ta Prohm was reduced to rubble, but thanks to the efforts of ASI today it stands a lot closer to its ancient glory. “As many as 20 full grown trees are there standing on top of the temple here. The conservation work is very tough,” says D.S.Sood, who heads the ASI team at Ta Phrom now.

The other magnificent yet crumbling temple one should not miss is the Bayon Temple or the State temple of King Jayavarman VII. With over 200 giant faces of Buddha staring at you from every corner, it was perhaps the last architectural masterstroke from the great craftsmen of the region.

The Angkor region near Siem Reap in Cambodia has not just survived the downfall of the Khmer Empire but also one of humanity worst genocides in the 20th century under the Communist regime of the person people refer to as ‘Pol Pot' (his real name was Saloth Sar). He ruled Cambodia for less than four years or “three years four months and 12 days” as our Cambodian guide recalled several times during our visit. “But he destroyed it more than any one else”.

He wiped out nearly 20 percent of the country's population and mired it in civil war until the late 1990s. Though Angkor region is today safe, there are still parts of Cambodia that have landmines. Visitors to the temples in the Angkor Park will often find physically disabled musicians playing traditional Cambodian instruments. They are victims of landmine trying to earn a living with some dignity.

Pol Pot tried to recreate the magic of the Great Khmer Empire. And yet all he succeeded was catch the madness of the last of the rulers who ruined that Empire.

A tour group cycles from Saigon to Bangkok

Susan Riley says that travelling from Cambodia to Thailand was like journeying from the Third World to the First. This is a typical rice paddy in rural Cambodia. Photograph by: Susan Riley, for Postmedia News

Photos ( 2 ) One day, the group crossed 51 of these bridges in the lush - and hot - Mekong delta. Photograph by: Susan Riley, for Postmedia News

By Susan Riley, for the Ottawa Citizen

In March, my partner and I cycled from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to Bangkok - a memorable two-week holiday that took us through three distinct countries in hot and humid South-East Asia. The trip was both more, and less, daunting than it sounds.

So don't stop reading. You can do it, too, if you are reasonably fit (if you can easily cover 60 kilometres in a day) and don't mind traipsing through strangers' chicken coops to get to the outhouse. You don't have to be a buff 30-year-old, in other words.

Nor did we cycle every single kilometre: we covered some distance in river boats, an air-conditioned backup van and even an antique "bamboo train." We also enjoyed regular rest days swimming in the hotel pool - when we weren't drinking icy beer at cheerful bars, or poking through glittery, local markets filled with dollar-store junk and all manner of mutant fruits and vegetables.

But the cycling, about 570 kilometres in all, was the highlight. The road is often bumpy, but the terrain is mostly flat. The heat can be draining, but the reward - as with every cycling trip - is an intimate encounter with the culture (including the barnyards, convoys of orangeclad monks who studied us gravely, scooters nearly buried under their cargoes of live chickens, smiling toothless women in cone hats and some very excited children.)

In fact, we rode so close to people's simple thatch homes on the twisting paths through Vietnam's Mekong delta, it felt as if we were pedalling right into their daily lives, disturbing the mid-day siesta, or the friendly curbside cockfight. We thoroughly disrupted recess at countless country schools, and caused a sensation on rural backroads, as squealing kids ran to greet us with high-fives and exuberant cries of "Hello! Hello!" (This must be what it's like for Justin Bieber.)

In the company of our genial tour group - more on that later - we swooped, like some species of exotic bird, through villages buried in jungle, past dusty farmlands, spring-green rice paddies, remote hamlets and into damaged and depressing regional hubs, like Battambang, Cambodia, that look as if they haven't seen a tourist since Pol Pot was mercifully defeated in 1979.

Yet people were unfailingly warm and curious - although I did notice the odd amused smile. No wonder; it isn't every day a peloton of red-faced foreigners, dressed in their colourful native spandex, speeds past your shaded hammock in the noonday sun. Chased by the mad dogs.

Our route also hit the main tourist draws: the sombre temple complex at Angkor Wat in Cambodia; the thriving nearby service town of Siem Reap, where fishes will nibble your toes in giant sidewalk tanks; and Phnom Phen, where a seedier form of massage is widely offered. Only $4. We stopped at a touristic silk factory (practically mandatory on an Asia tour, but fascinating), at stone carvers' yards and smaller, out-of-the-way, rice paper "factories" in simple bamboo sheds.

While cycle touring has become popular, especially in booming Vietnam, it still hasn't spoiled the region - in fact, in 14 days we saw only one other western cycle tour, and, in many places, we were the only foreigners.

On a bike, you get to places those giant tour buses can't manage (and there were many buses; Asia is packed with western visitors). That includes potholed country lanes, or narrow scooter paths weaving through the Mekong delta - not to mention the 10-person "ferries", made of rough planks roped together, that traverse the delta's thousands of rivulets.

Several companies now offer cycle tours of varying duration and ambition, with excursions along Vietnam's scorching coastal highway and in the mountainous interior particularly well-subscribed. (And more demanding than our ride, which only rated three chilies out of five in level of difficulty.)

We wanted to see three countries - Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand - and major attractions like Angkor Wat, along with a "quiet" Thai beach, so we chose a trip offered by SpiceRoads, a Scottish-owned outfit with good reviews and reasonable prices. Our tour cost about $2,500 each and included sumptuous meals, inscrutable snacks, adequate-toexcellent hotels, an air-conditioned support van, rental bikes - serviceable Trek hardtail mountain bikes - and three guides. (That didn't include airfare between Canada and Saigon.)

SpiceRoads turned out to be an excellent choice; the tour was well-staffed and the route well-chosen. The main guide, in particular, a 32-year-old American called Jonathan, was well-informed, professional and endlessly helpful. (So encyclopedic was his knowledge of local customs, languages, history, pharmacology and cuisine, he earned the tag WikiJon.)

We were 12 cyclists altogether, ranging in age from 27 to 63, from Australia, the United States and Canada - including a young American working in Afghanistan. No thanks to me, we were an unusually speedy group: a combination of young riders and some seasoned veterans. Any pressure to keep up was mostly self-generated; ordinarily, Jon assured us, this particular trip proceeds at a more stately pace.

We stopped for picnic lunches at park-like Buddhist temples in various states of disrepair; at ramshackle roadside cafés that, in one unforgettable instance, offered deep-fried tarantulas and crickets; at open-air, but well-shaded restaurants where we watched, slack-jawed, as servers paraded out trays of South-Asian specialties, each dish more enticing than the last. (The salty, tasty Vietnamese chicken noodle soup pho ga turns out to be perfect fuel for a sweaty ride through the tropics.)

The longest day was 92 kilometres (long if you are on a mountain bike), but more often we rode 35 to 65 kilometres, or not at all. Sometimes we were on corduroy dirt roads, sometimes on pavement, sometimes cutting across a rice paddy on a hard mud path, occasionally on busy city boulevards.

It was the heat, rather than distance, that was daunting. It was pushing 38 degrees at Angkor Wat, with intense sun and wilting humidity. In the Mekong delta, we were mercifully shaded by coconut and banana fronds, but on open roads the sun beat down relentlessly. Fortunately, on the longest day - through dusty and impoverished farm country in Cambodia, approaching the Thai border - it was unseasonably cool at 26 degrees, and overcast.

No matter when you travel in this region it is going to be hot, but December to February may be the smartest choice. We also took care: we stopped every 20 kilometres for salty snacks, fresh pineapple and watermelon, soft drinks and water. When it got to be too much - sore knee, bad tummy, imminent heat stroke - there was always the air-conditioned van trailing discreetly behind, equipped with water and yet more pineapple.

If you don't want to do the whole ride, you might consider a shorter trek through the Mekong delta, to me the most fascinating part of the trip. The delta is a lush maze of thatch homes, mango farms, temples, banana groves and hamlets that is home to 17 million people. It isn't the sandy, flat farmland, interspersed with broad Amazonian rivers, that I imagined. (It looks like an inhospitable venue for a war, by the way.)

A hundred spidery trails lead through this jungle - many paved and wide enough to accommodate two scooters, which, along with local cyclists and pedestrians, are the only traffic.

The twists and turns force you to slow down; so do the many small bridges, that rise suddenly, over chocolate-coloured, slightly menacing currents. One day, we crossed 51 of these little arched bridges; it felt like a tropical skateboard park. On top of one such bridge, we had to ride over drying rice while dodging young boys eager to show us the live mice they had dangling from strings. We momentarily lost one rider in the swamp, but she had never been on a mountain bike before.

Best of all are the small ferries - which are really just rafts with tattered canvas coverings. Sitting on the plank floor, crossing a turbulent channel the width of the Rideau Canal, eight bikes leaning on the flimsy bamboo railing, the driver operating the small submerged engine with a string tied to his bare toe, I thought to myself: I can't imagine a more exotic destination.

Cambodia was immediately different: poorer than Vietnam, drier, less forested and still haunted, somehow, by the memory of Pol Pot's brutal social experiments of the mid-'70s. I will always associate the country with human skulls and fanatically insistent child vendors.

We cycled to and through some of the famous killing fields - park-like, mass graves of the victims of Pol Pot, with glassed towers of skulls arranged according to gender and age.

The roads in Cambodia were mostly packed dirt and we shared them with water buffalo, scooters and luxury SUVs bearing Phnom Phen plates - evidence of a deeply inequitable society. We passed wooden houses on stilts and many, many children with torn, dirty clothing and poor teeth - but wide, excited smiles.

Despite the obvious poverty, we encountered few beggars. Instead, children swarm tourists like killer bees at every temple, or roadside attraction - thrusting their scarves, T-shirts and trinkets right through bus windows or into your face. They set up an irritating drone: "One dollar. Only one dollar, madame." (They don't get much education, but speak a confident English, tailored to ingratiate. One bright nine-year-old identified "David" Harper, as prime minister of Canada, when we quizzed him. Not bad.)

For many visitors, the celebrated rubble of Angkor Wat - the largest complex of religious buildings in the world, dating from the 12th century - is a historic and spiritual highlight. Maybe, but it was a fiendishly hot 30-kilometre cycle around the sprawling sight.

We arrived before sunrise - along with a few hundred other international tourists and early-rising coffee vendors - to watch the gloomy temples emerge from darkness in the rosy dawn. (Its one of those tourist fetish things.)

We breakfasted, wandered around, but by the time we got on our bikes at 10 a.m. to see the rest of the complex, it was already unbearably hot. Fortunately, it was only seven kilometres back to the hotel pool in Siem Reap.

What I will remember just as vividly is the less exalted "bamboo" train - a removable bamboo raft attached to rail wheels that whistles down a crooked track between two remote villages, an easy 10-kilometre cycle outside of Battambang. When you encounter a similar contraption coming the other way, one "train" stops, the driver moves the platform and wheels to the side, lets the oncoming "train" pass, then reassembles his own rolling platform.

There is no bug screen, no sides, no seats - just boards on wheels, travelling at bone-jarring speed. It was particularly exciting when a wandering cow got her rope caught in the track right in front of us and jerked free only moments before collision.

Travelling from this forgotten part of Cambodia to Thailand was like journeying from the Third World to the First. The moment we traversed the rural border crossing, the roads were better (than here, actually), the food exquisite, the mango groves lush and the bathrooms much fancier - even rivalling those in chic restaurants in Toronto. (We used all manner of toilets on our journey, mostly ceramic stand-ups in sheds behind cafés, temples or farmhouses. They were basic, but, unlike in India, did not smell.)

Our trip ended with a couple of days at a Chantchalao beach resort, mostly frequented by residents of nearby Bangkok and relatively free of the sex tourism so common throughout this part of the world.

A final easy cycle ride around the sleepy resort (including a visit to the King's mangrove swamp, a restoration project) and a magnificent, final moonlit banquet on the beach - featuring a stunning array of Thai seafood and yet more beer and pineapple - and our trip was over.

As I watched a rosy sunset over the ocean fade to black in the company of convivial new friends, sipped my Thai beer and felt the cooling breeze, I had to admit: that wasn't really daunting at all, as cycle tours go.

Susan Riley is a freelance political columnist for the Citizen and enjoys cycle touring. Email: smiley.work@gmail.com

IF YOU GO

Tour company: SpiceRoads

Cost: About $2,500 for the cycle tour, accommodations, meals, support van, rental bikes and guides, but not airfare to Asia.

When to go: December to February may be wisest in terms of temperature.

More: www.spiceroads.com

SRP's appeal for assistance for freed 5 party members wrongly convicted

M&V factory to fire about 300 workers at the end of October

In the afternoon of 28 October 2011, the President of the FTUWKC learned from workers at the M&V factory in Kampong Chhnang that the factory owner will fire about 300 workers at the end of October.

Currently, the workers are very concerned about the loss of jobs.

Contact: Daneth 0972352602, Chea Mony 012 941 308
ពត៌មាន
រសៀលថ្ងៃទី28 តុលា 2011 ប្រធាន សហជីព សេរីកម្មករ បាន ទទួលដំណឹង ពីកម្មករ-កម្មការិនី រោងចក្រ អឹមវ៉េ កំពុងឆ្នាំង ថៅកែ រោងចក្រ នេះ បញ្ឈប់ កម្មករ បន្តទៀត នៅ បំណាច់ ខែតុលានេះ ប្រហែលជា300នាក់។

ឥលូវ នេះកម្មករ-កម្មការិនី មានការ ព្រួយបារម្មណ៍ យ៉ាងខ្លំាង ចំពោះការ បាត់បង់ ការងារ ធ្វើ។

សូម ទំនាក់ ទំនង កម្មការិនី ដាណែត 097 235 260 2 ប្រចាំរោងចក្រអឹមវ៉េ
លោកជា មុនី ប្រធានសហជីពសេរីកម្មករ 012 941 308

Thanks
Lina

--
Free Trade Union of Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia (FTUWKC)
Social Justice is the Foundation of Peace


Address: House No.16A, Street 360, Sangkat Boeung Keng Kang 3,
Khan Chamkar Mon, Phnom Penh


Tel/Fax: +855 0 23 216 870
Mobile: +855 0 12 941 308
http://www.ftuw.org/ http://ftuwkc.webs.com/

Backyard beauty [Cambodia in my Backyard]

Daily News, South Africa

October 28 2011

Durban designer Terrence Bray’s Cambodian-inspired range was a hit at the SA Fashion Week Summer 2012 collections in Johannesburg earlier this year. Bray drew inspiration from his Berea garden to create “Cambodia in my Backyard”, combining dreams of faraway places and the beauty of a KZN garden, complete with his cats. He then linked up with photographer Vaughn Trevellyn to take pictures of plants in his garden, and these were supersized to create dramatic prints on soft natural fabrics.

Now his fabulous fashion range has been translated into a range of gifts. Bray has partnered with Pearson & Howard to translate his concepts into a line of gift bags, cards and notepads. All the prints follow on from his “Cambodia in my Backyard” theme. The range of gifts will run concurrently with seasonal launches of Terrence Bray clothing to offer an alternative to current gift solutions.

“My cousin Deanne Gomes has the Pearson & Howard gifting company. She saw the prints and suggested they would translate well into gifting, so I reworked the prints and we are thrilled with the results,” said Bray.

They are available at Exclusive Books and Dis-Chem.

Terrence Bray designs are also available now off the peg at his new boutique in Ballito. Bray has been a driving force on the fashion scene with international and local clients clamouring for his creative couture. British Vogue named his South African label to buy and his creations have appeared on the covers of Paris Match and Pointe de Vue. The garments that he designed for Princess Charlene of Monaco put him further in the international fashion spotlight and he was one of three designers whose garments are in the Nordstrom store in New York.

The Ballito boutique is a partnership between Lyzette Kotze, an entrepreneur with an eye for fashion, and Bray, and is at The Well. Enquiries: 032 586 3228.

What's Cambodian For Caveat Emptor? Ask Angelina Jolie

Simon Montlake, Forbes Staff
Forbes writer in Asia

Wall Street
28th October, 2011

Investing in postwar countries requires a certain leap of faith. War and revolution play havoc with legal titles to land and property, so figuring out who owns what is tricky. Caveat Emptor, in other words. There’s also the reputational risk of doing business with unsavoury characters. That seems to have been the case with Angelina Jolie, Hollywood actress and high-profile philanthropist. According to an investigative report in the Global Post, Jolie may have erred when she expanded her charitable operations in Cambodia. The accusation relates to the purchase of two plots of land for her Maddox Jolie Pitt Foundation, which is named after her adopted Cambodian son. The seller of the land in northwest Cambodia, a final redoubt of the notorious Khmer Rouge (KR), was Yim Tith. In 2002, Jolie paid him over $25,000 for a total of 225 acres, according to sale documents cited by Global Post. The land was then used as a base of operations for the foundation’s work in the area.

Who is Yim Tith? An alleged mass murderer. In 2009, prosecutors at the slow-moving KR tribunal in Phnom Penh indicted him for crimes against humanity. As a senior KR cadre, he oversaw purges of other party officials and “cleanings” of the general population. In short, he was in a position of authority during the 1975-79 KR regime when an estimated 1.7 million people died of famine, overwork, torture and executions. That’s why he was in a docket presented to the investigating judges at the joint UN-Cambodian tribunal. Yet the judges have effectively squelched the case, to howls of dismay from human-rights groups and victims of the genocide. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has made it clear that he wants the tribunal to wrap up its work after the latest trial of four elderly leaders. That means that Yim Tith and his fellow accused would be off the hook.

Of course, Jolie’s transaction predates the tribunal’s existence and Yim Tith was a free man at the time. He had title to the land, as did other KR cadre in the area under a peace deal in the 1990s with Hun Sen. Yet the Global Post makes the case that Jolie should have known better.

Tith’s sale of the land to Jolie is no secret among government officials in Samlot. In Saorith, a deputy governor, said in a telephone interview that Tith had sold the land to Jolie because he was short of cash.

“The Prime Minister had given the land in this area to former Democratic Kampuchea soldiers and he [Yim Tith] sold the land to her because he badly needed money,” he said by telephone. “She has title of ownership.”

“She usually provides some support to school children such as clothing and educational equipment.”

Yem Yorn, chief of Samlot’s Meanchey commune, not far from the area of Jolie’s operations, described himself as a 20-year acquaintance of Tith, and said he was also aware of the land deals with Jolie.

“He had land here but now it is sold and it is sold to Angelina Jolie,” he said in an interview at his office.

According to Sarath, while Jolie may not have known precise details about Tith’s past, he made her aware of the fact that the seller had held a senior position in the government of the communist leader Pol Pot.

“She knows that Yim Tith and everybody are the Khmer Rouge,” he said by telephone. “We talked like we have to, like Mr. Yim Tith is a big man there and he’s very important person. … So she knows that.”

via Hollyworld: Angelina Jolie’s legacy in Cambodia | GlobalPost.

Sarath is Mounh Sarath, a former partner of Jolie’s in her Cambodian charitable work. They had an acrimonious split in 2006 when he claimed that she reneged on a contract. Sarath, in turn, was accused of mismanaging the foundation’s finances. So he’s clearly got an axe to grind. Jolie’s representatives have declined comment. The timing is noteworthy, given the brewing controversy over the KR tribunal (a German judge recently resigned and accused the Cambodian government of interference). Yet the revelation, such that it is, has no bearing on the indictment against Yim Tith. What it does demonstrate is that Hollywood celebrities need to tread carefully in their overseas philanthropic work. When that path leads to the door of unsavoury ex-warlords, don’t expect the details to remain quiet.

From Asheville to Cambodia: Literacy volunteers visit a student's homeland

An elephant walks through the crowds on the road to the gateway of the Angkor Thom temple in Cambodia. Special to the Citizen-Times / Special to the Citizen-Times

Literary Council volunteers visit a student's homeland

Oct. 27, 2011 |
Written by Cheryl Dietrich
Special to the Citizen-Times

She moves with massive grace, a slight wiggle from side to side like a big-bottomed woman in stiletto heels. My husband, Lynn, and I perch on a platform that rests on her shoulders and sway with her.

The gate into the large complex known as Angkor Thom is narrow and ancient but extends high into the air, built in an age when elephants comprised the main mode of transportation. As we enter the ancient land of the Khmer god-kings, the face of Jayavarman VII, carved into the top of the gate, smiles beneficently upon us.

The elephant’s driver dresses in traditional Cambodian costume, silk tunic over baggy trousers, but presses an undeniably 21st-century cellphone to his ear the whole ride. The elephant is obviously in charge, so for half an hour we go where she takes us.

She passes through the gate and off the paved road, onto a narrow path through ancient spung trees whose roots reach above ground. Like Tolkien’s Ents, they seem to walk.

We pass temple ruins that are being tugged up like stubborn roots. Long-tailed monkeys scamper up and down, stare and chatter, perhaps wondering how we came to be on the back of an elephant in a country halfway around the world from home. Good question.

Lynn and I both volunteer with the Literacy Council of Buncombe County as tutors of English as a Second Language. Between the two of us we have tutored adults from Brazil, Cambodia, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, El Salvador, France, Germany, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, Russia, South Korea and Ukraine.

We eat their food, hear their music, listen entranced to their folk tales. They give us little gifts from their countries and big gifts from their hearts. They hold a mirror up to us, show us America through fresh eyes, show us ourselves.

Lynn and Wann Near, a native of Cambodia, worked together for three years until, in November 2009, Wann received his American citizenship. In February, he and his American-born wife, Rebecca, visited the homeland he left years earlier. He was delighted when we asked to join them.

Khmer Rouge tribunal rejects Kiwi case

FAIRFAX NZ.

ROB HAMILL: His brother was captured and murdered by the Khmer Rouge after his yacht strayed into Cambodian waters in 1978. This year Mr Hamill tried to take a civil case against five people under investigation for his killing, and other war crimes

NICOLA BRENNAN-TUPARA
www.stuff.co.nz

Last updated 27/10/2011

Trans-Atlantic rower Rob Hamill, whose brother was murdered by the Khmer Rouge, has failed in his appeal to bring civil proceedings against several of those he believes were involved.

However, his case has raised serious concerns of judicial misconduct, and serious procedural irregularities, by investigating judges at the Khmer Rouge tribunal.

Olympic rower Hamill's elder brother Kerry was abducted by the Khmer Rouge in 1978 when his yacht strayed into Cambodian waters. He was taken prisoner at Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh, where he was tortured and murdered. Early this year Mr Hamill, who lives in Te Pahu, tried to take a civil case for his killing, and other war crimes, against five people under investigation by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, known as the Khmer Rouge tribunal.

In April that application was rejected by the Office of the Co-Investigating Judges (OCIJ) on the grounds that he did not demonstrate that he suffered psychological injury as a direct consequence of his brother's death.

Mr Hamill appealed against that decision, but this week found out he had failed. However, his lawyer, Lyma Nguyen, said the considerations of two international judges on the appeal panel raised serious concerns about the investigation of the case by the Khmer Rouge tribunal. They said the investigating judges refused to recognise civil party lawyers, in breach of Cambodian and international practices, and refused to give reasons for that stance.

They also kept victims in the dark about the case, preventing them from filing applications to become civil parties, and denied victims' lawyers access to the case file despite repeated requests.

Mr Hamill said "It has serious ramifications and the United Nations, or someone, is going to have to take a pretty good look at this now."

- Waikato Times

Mass faintings at H&M factory in Cambodia

The Local Sweden
Published: 28 Oct 11, 2011

Over 200 Cambodian workers fainted this week in a factory which manufacturers clothes for Swedish fashion giant H&M.

“They suddenly felt sick and got headaches,“ said Keo Pisey of the local police, reported news agency TT.

According to police, almost 240 workers suddenly lost consciousness on Monday and Thursday. This is the third time this year something similar happens in the clothing chain’s affiliated factories.

“I was shaking, I couldn't breathe and I vomited. Many vomited,” said 29-year-old Chea Chanry, one of the affected, to news agency Reuters.

The company which operates the factory, Anful Garments Company in the Kompong Speu province, located about 50 kilometres from the nation’s capital Phnom Penh, has recently been using chemicals to get rid of cockroaches, reported the local police.

About 136 employees fell ill on Thursday when the workers returned to the factory after a three-day closure following about 100 other staff fainting on Monday.

H&M said that it had started an investigation into why workers are fainting and is interviewing the employees about their experiences.

"The workers' wellbeing is of importance to us, and we are concerned about the situation at the suppliers," H&M said to Reuters.

Several other large clothes manufacturers operating in the country have experienced similar incidents and mass faintings have occurred twice already this year at two other suppliers of H&M garments in the region.

The Cambodian textile industry employs around 300,000 workers and grew by 28 percent last year. Most of the factories are owned by Chinese or Taiwanese companies.

The workers are mainly low paid women and the unsatisfactory working conditions have led to a slew of strikes and protests in the last few years.

TT/Rebecca Martin (news@thelocal.se)

Cambodia calls

SUPPLIED

HELPING CAMBODIANS: Wainui nurse Bev Hopper with a Cambodian baby. The photo was taken last year when Ms Hopper went to Cambodia with a team of five nurses teaching basic health hygiene.

Last updated 28/10/2011

Bev Hopper cannot wait to return to Cambodia.

The Wainui nurse, who works at North Shore Hospital, wants to go back for nine days from November 6 to 17.

Ms Hopper received a grant from the New Zealand Orthopaedic Nurses Association last year to travel to Cambodia and teach "all things orthopaedic" at Sihanouk Hospital, a centre providing free medical treatment to poor and disadvantaged.

"We focused on educating and training the nurses at Sihanouk, and the nursing students at a local university so we could make a long-term impact," Ms Hopper says.

She is also inviting her Waitemata District Health Board colleagues to join her this time round.

"In a short space of time we were able to make a difference, so I want to invite other staff members to join us for this year's trip," Ms Hopper says.

Ms Hopper's Cambodian trip was featured in last year's North Harbour News.

She says Cambodians would "travel for miles around, sometimes taking days" just to reach Sihanouk Hospital, and wait at the outpatients clinic a marquee with plastic chairs for hours before they are seen by a doctor.

"But they waited patiently. They'd wait for the whole day and when evening comes and a doctor is still not able to see them they would just sleep on the ground or under a tree and come back the next day," she says.

Ms Hopper says this year's trip focuses on developing post-graduate nursing papers, leaving behind a "legacy of education and training".

Joining her is Mason Clinic's educator Raewyn Somers, who was in Cambodia five years ago for an Oxfam fundraising cycling trip.

"I want to go back because it's such an incredible place," Raewyn says.

"I plan to run mental health needs assessment and post-traumatic stress disorder training."

Raewyn will be joined by partner Shane who works at Counties Manukau DHB mental health unit.

North Shore emergency department doctor Adrian Kerner sees the trip as part of a long-term commitment.

"I want to build relationships and make a difference. It's about teaching, learning and educating."

Donations of educational DVDs for children, old laptops and nursing books are sought by the team.

Rotary Orewa has gifted Ms Hopper $500 for her travelling costs. North Shore Hospital chipped in $400 towards the $1130 medical charity organisation Impact Charitable Trust hopes to raise for use of facilities to carry out assessment courses.
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Contact Beverly Hopper, email beverley.hopper@waitematadhb.govt.nz if you can help or for information.

- North Harbour News

Daytripper: View more than 90 colorful statues at Stockton's Cambodian Buddhist Temple

Top: There are more than 90 colorful and giant jewel-encrusted statues at the Buddhist Temple. (Lauren Nelson/News-Sentinel)

Top: The Stockton Cambodian Buddhist Temple features Buddha displays to view. (Lauren Nelson/News-Sentinel)

Posted: Friday, October 28, 2011
By Lauren Nelson lodi living editor

Destination: Stockton Cambodian Buddhist Temple (Wat Dharmararam)

What is the attraction? More than 90 colorful and giant jewel-encrusted statues that tell the life and story of the Cambodian Buddha. The largest statue is a 50-foot-long recumbent Buddha.

What to do there: The temple off of Carpenter Road, between Stockton and Manteca, is a wonderful place to wander around for an hour or two. Even if you are not a Buddhist, the statues are so colorful and intricate that you can't help but appreciate the art.

Start at the entrance, and wander through the stories told through paint and stone. You can walk around by yourself, or the monks are very friendly, and willing to speak with you and answer any questions.

One of the most intricate displays is Buddha sitting on a platform, teaching his first Dharma to his five Acetic friends. It takes you through images that appeared in his mind before he became very calm, like a pond of water that surrounds him.

The largest statue is 54 feet long and 12 feet high. It represents a closed-eye Buddha in an orange robe, his head resting on a green pillow structure, as he leaves the earth for Nirvana at the age of 80. It is the most important statue on the temple grounds.

When you look around, you will see statues of goddesses holding real gems and wearing real earrings.

When to go: Visitors are welcome daily during daylight hours. My friends and I went at sunset, and it was the perfect time as we could see the moon rising behind some of the statues.

How to get there: The Stockton Cambodian Buddhist Temple is located at 3732 Carpenter Road in Stockton. Exit Highway 99 at Mariposa Road.

Cost: Entrance is free, but donations are accepted.

Extract from . . .

John Stuart Mill's On Liberty

On Freedom of Expression of Opinion  
(Source: Serendipity.li)

(Source: OWNI.EU)

But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ...

We have now recognized the necessity to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all their other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion, on four distinct grounds; which we will now briefly recapitulate.

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.

Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.

(Reproduced from 'Reformed Liberal').

And not only this, but fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but encumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.

Population control: Is it a tool of the rich?

 BBC (Extracted version) 28 October 2011

As the world population reaches seven billion people, the BBC's Mike Gallagher asks whether efforts to control population have been, as some critics claim, a form of authoritarian control over the world's poorest citizens.

Vivek Baid thinks he knows how to help them. He runs the Mission for Population Control, a project in eastern India which aims to bring down high birth rates by encouraging local women to get sterilised after their second child.

As the world reaches an estimated seven billion people, people like Vivek say efforts to bring down the world's population must continue if life on Earth is to be sustainable, and if poverty and even mass starvation are to be avoided.

There is no doubting their good intentions. Vivek, for instance, has spent his own money on the project, and is passionate about creating a brighter future for India.

But critics allege that campaigners like Vivek - a successful and wealthy male businessman - have tended to live very different lives from those they seek to help, who are mainly poor women.

These critics argue that rich people have imposed population control on the poor for decades. And, they say, such coercive attempts to control the world's population often backfired and were sometimes harmful. 

Inverview with Venerable Loun Sovath - Part 2

Inverview with Venerable Loun Sovath - Part 1 here.
(Via Camwatchblogs.blogspot.com).

Following on from last week, part 1, interview with Venerable Loun Sovath, below is part 2 of the interview by CamWatch at Wat Bonnyrigg Sydney Australia - October 2011.

There are three parts to the video clip as followed:

1. Now that you have come to Australia, have you ever thought of what people in Cambodia think about you? and do you plan to go back to Cambodia?
2. General preaching.
3. Issue at Phoum Chi Kreng and land grabbing issue.

Peace agreement: Official hits back at SRP over accords

Keo Remy (Photo: Pha Lina) - លោក​កែវ រ៉េមីនៅ​ក្នុង​សន្និសីទ​កាសែត​កាល​ពី​ម្សិលមិញ​។ រូបថត ផា លីណា
Thursday, 27 October 2011
May Titthara
The Phnom Penh Post

Peace agreement

A government official yesterday criticised opposition politicians and certain NGOs for reportedly accusing the government of not respecting the Paris Peace Agreements, struck in 1991.

Keo Remy, deputy spokesman for the Press and Quick Reaction Unit at the Council of Ministers. said at a press conference in the capital yesterday the government had successfully followed the Paris Peace Agreements of October 23.

“The United Nations just helped for the national election but the Cambodian government finished the civil war in this country,” he said. “We cut off October 23 from the [holiday] calendar because we have a lot of holidays [already].”

On the 20th anniversary of the accords on Sunday, opposition leader Sam Rainsy said via video from Paris that the ruling party did not respect the Paris Peace Agreements.

The accords, signed by 18 countries including Cambodia, ushered in the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia and the contentious 1993 UN-monitored elections.

“The government controls the power by himself as soldier, police and court system, so it’s different to the Paris Peace Agreement,” SRP lawmaker Son Chhay said.
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កែវ រ៉េមី ចេញមុខ​ការពារ​រដ្ឋាភិបាល​រឿង​២៣​តុលា

Thursday, 27 October 2011 12:01
ម៉ៃ ទិត្យថារ៉ា
The Phnom Penh Post

ភ្នំពេញៈ លោក​កែវ រ៉េ មី អនុប្រធាន​អង្គភាព​ព័ត៌មាន និង​ប្រតិកម្ម​រហ័ស​នៃ​ទីស្តីការ​គណៈ​រដ្ឋ​មន្ត្រី​ បាន​ចេញមុខ​ការពារ​រដ្ឋាភិបាល​ទប់ទល់​ទៅនឹង​ការ​រិះគន់​របស់​គណបក្ស​ប្រឆាំង និង​អង្គការ​សង្គម​ស៊ីវិល​មួយ​ចំនួន ដែល បានចោទ​ រដ្ឋាភិបាលថា ​មិន​បាន​គោរព​ទៅ​តាម​កិច្ច​ព្រមព្រៀង​សន្តិភាព​ទីក្រុង​ប៉ារីស​នា​ថ្ងៃ ២៣ តុលា ១៩៩១។

នៅ​ក្នុង​ខួប​ទី២០ឆ្នាំ នៃ​កិច្ច​ព្រមព្រៀង​សន្តិភាព​ទីក្រុង​ប៉ារីស លោក​សម រង្ស៊ី​ បាន​ថ្លែងពី​ក្រុង​ប៉ារីស ​មក​ថា រដ្ឋាភិបាល​កម្ពុជា​ដែល​ដឹកនាំ​ដោយ​លោក​នាយក​រដ្ឋ​មន្ត្រី​ហ៊ុន សែន មិន​បាន​គោរព​ទៅ តាម​កិច្ច​ព្រមព្រៀង​សន្តិភាព​ទីក្រុង​ប៉ារីស​ទេ ដោយ​មេ​បក្ស​ប្រឆាំង​រូបនេះ​បាន​លើកឡើង​ ពី​សន្ធិ​សញ្ញា​ព្រំដែន​បំពេញ​បន្ថែម​ ដែល​បាន​ធ្វើឲ្យ​ស្រប​ច្បាប់នូវ​សន្ធិសញ្ញា​ព្រំដែន​ កម្ពុជា​វៀតណាម ឆ្នាំ ១៩៨២-៨៣-៨៥ ដែល​កិច្ច​ព្រមព្រៀង​ក្រុង​ប៉ារីស​បាន​តម្រូវឲ្យលុបចោល​ទៅ​ហើយ​នោះ​ ជាហេតុនាំឲ្យ​មាន​ការ​បោះ​បង្គោល​ព្រំដែន​ដែល​ធ្វើឲ្យ​បាត់បង់​បូរណ​ភាព​ទឹកដី​កម្ពុជា ទៅលើ​ប្រទេស​វៀតណាម​។ ជាមួយ​គ្នា​នេះ អង្គការ​សង្គម​ស៊ីវិល​ជា​ច្រើន​ ក្នុង​នោះ​ក៏​មាន​លោកស៊ូ​ប៊ឺឌី អ្នក​រាយ​ការណ៏​ពិសេស ​ផ្នែក​សិទ្ធិ​មនុស្ស​ របស់​អង្គការ​សហ​ប្រជាជាតិ​ប្រចាំ​នៅ​កម្ពុជា​ផង​ដែរ ​បាន​បន្ទរ​ថា ជម្លោះ​ដីធ្លី​ដែល​កំពុង​បន្ត​កើតឡើង ​យ៉ាង​ក្តៅ​គគុក ប្រព័ន្ធ​យុត្តិធម៌​នៅ​មាន​កម្រិត បាន​ធ្វើឲ្យ​មាន​ការ​រំលោភ​បំពាន​យ៉ាង​ធ្ងន់ធ្ងរ ​ទៅ​លើ​សិទ្ធិ​ជា​មូលដ្ឋាន​របស់​ប្រជា​ពលរដ្ឋ​ ជា​ពិសេស​សិទ្ធិ​មាន​លំនៅដ្ឋាន​សមរម្យ ដែល​មាន​ចែង​នៅក្នុង​កិច្ច​ព្រមព្រៀង​សន្តិភាព​ទីក្រុង​ប៉ារីស​ ប៉ុន្តែ​រដ្ឋាភិបាល​មិន​បាន​គោរព​។

នៅ​ក្នុង​សន្និសីទ​កាសែត​កាលពី​ម្សិលមិញ​ លោក កែវ រ៉េមី ​មិន​បាន​ធ្វើ​ការ​បកស្រាយ ទៅ​លើ​ការ​ចោទ​ប្រកាន់​ទាំងនេះ​ទេ ប៉ុន្តែ​បាន​ថ្លែង​ថា រដ្ឋាភិបាល​បាន​បំពេញ​កិច្ចការ​ច្រើនជាង​កិច្ច​ព្រមព្រៀង​ក្រុង​ប៉ារីស​ទៅ​ទៀត​ ពីព្រោះ​រដ្ឋាភិបាល​ បាន​បញ្ចប់​ពួក​ឧទ្ទាម នៅតាម​បណ្តោយ​ព្រំដែន។ លោក​បន្ថែម​ថា៖ «អង្គការ​សហ​ប្រជាជាតិ​គ្រាន់តែ​ជួយ​រៀបចំ​ការ​បោះឆ្នោត​ថ្នាក់​ជាតិ ប៉ុន្តែ​រដ្ឋាភិបាល​កម្ពុជា​ជា​អ្នក​បាន​បញ្ចប់​សង្គ្រាម​ស៊ីវិល​នៅ​ក្នុង​ប្រទេស»។ លោក​បាន​បន្ត​ថា ​នៅឆ្នាំ ១៩៩៩ ​មាន​សន្តិ​ភាព​នៅ​ទូទាំង​ប្រទេស​ ព្រោះ​ខ្មែរ​ក្រហម​ទាំងអស់ ​បាន​មក​ចូលរួម​ជាមួយ​នឹង​រដ្ឋាភិបាល​ ដូច្នេះ​កម្ពុជា​គ្មាន​ខ្មែរក្រហម​ ឬ​ខ្មែរខៀវ​ទៀត​ទេ។ ​លោក​បន្ត​ថា៖ «ទាក់​ទង​នឹង​សេរីភាព​បញ្ចេញ​មតិ ​វា​ហួស​កម្រិត​ អ្នក​អាច​មើល​ឃើញ​នៅ​លើ​គេហទំព័រ ​ពួកគេ​រិះគន់​រដ្ឋាភិបាល​តាម​ដែល​ពួកគេ​ចង់ ហើយ​យើង​កាត់​ថ្ងៃ​២៣ តុលា ចេញ​ពី​ប្រតិទិនបុណ្យ​ជាតិ​ ព្រោះ​យើង​មាន​ថ្ងៃ​ឈប់​សម្រាក​ច្រើន​ក្នុង​ប្រតិទិន»។

លោក ស៊ុន ឆ័យ តំណាង​រាស្រ្ត​គណ​បក្ស សម រង្ស៊ី បាន​ថ្លែង​កាល​ពី​ម្សិល​មិញ​ថា អ្វី​ដែល​គណបក្ស​ប្រឆាំង​និយាយ​គឺ​ជា​ការ​ពិត ​ដែល​គេ​អាច​មើល​ឃើញ​នឹង​ភ្នែក​ នៅ​ក្នុង​ប្រទេស​នេះ​ ហើយ​​របាយការណ៍​របស់​អង្គ ការ​សហ​ប្រជាជាតិ​បាន​បង្ហាញ​ពី​ការ​រំលោភ​សិទិ្ធ​មនុស្ស​ ចំណែក​ការ​បោះឆ្នោតវិញ សហគមន៍​អឺរ៉ុប​បាន​បង្ហាញ​ថា វា​មិន​ត្រឹម​ត្រូវ​ទេ ខណៈ​គណ​បក្ស​នយោ​បាយ​ស្ថិត​នៅ​ក្រោម​សម្ពាធ។ លោក​សុន ឆ័យ​ បាន​បន្ថែម​ថា៖«​រដ្ឋាភិបាល​គ្រប់​គ្រង​អំណាច តែ​ម្នាក់​ឯង​ ទាំង​ទាហាន ទាំង​នគរ​បាល រួមទាំង​ប្រព័ន្ធ​តុលាការ​ ដែលការ​ធ្វើ​ដូច្នេះ វា​ផ្ទុយ​ទៅ​នឹង​កិច្ច​ព្រម​ព្រៀង​សន្តិភាព​ទីក្រុង​បារីស​»។ លោក​សុន ឆ័យ បាន​បន្តថា រដ្ឋាភិបាល​មិនត្រូវ​មាន​ប្រតិកម្ម​ទៅ​នឹង​ការ​រិះគន់​ទេ ប៉ុន្តែ​គួរ​ពិនិត្យមើល ​ដើម្បី​រក​ដំណោះ​ស្រាយ។

លោកអ៊ូ វីរៈ ប្រធាន​មជ្ឈ​មណ្ឌល​សិទិ្ធ​មនុស្ស​កម្ពុជា បាន​ថ្លែង​ថា ចំណុច​មួយ​ចំនួន ​នៅ​ក្នុង​កិច្ច​ព្រមព្រៀង​សន្តិភាព​ទីក្រុង​ប៉ារីស ​រដ្ឋាភិបាល​ បាន​ធ្វើ​រួច​ហើយ ទើប​ធ្វើ​ឲ្យ​កម្ពុជាមាន​សន្តិភាព និង​ការ​អភិវឌ្ឍ ប៉ុន្តែ​ចំណុច​មួយចំនួន​ទៀត​ រដ្ឋាភិបាល​មិនទាន់​បាន​ធ្វើ​នៅ​ឡើយ​ទេ។ លោក ​អ៊ូ វីរៈ បាន​បន្ថែម​ទៀត​ថា៖ «​រដ្ឋា​ភិបាលកម្ពុជា​ ​មិន​បាន​គិត​ពី​កិច្ច​ព្រម​ព្រៀង​សន្តិភាព​ទីក្រុង​ប៉ារីស​ទេ ពីព្រោះ​បើ​រដ្ឋាភិបាល​គិត មិនមែន​លុប​ថ្ងៃ​នេះ​ចេញ​ពី​ប្រតិទិន​បុណ្យ​ជាតិ ហើយ​រដ្ឋាភិបាល​មិន​បាន​ធ្វើ​អ្វី​សោះ​ នៅ​ក្នុង​ថ្ងៃ​ដ៏មាន​សារៈសំខាន់​បែបនេះ​»៕