Arresting the cops

Local police, working with the American FBI, have charged another high-ranking cop for drug crimes.

Touch Muysor once held one of the highest positions in the Cambodia police force… Now he’s facing drug and corruption charges. $US100,000 worth of methamphetamines was found in Touch Muysor’s office. He’s the second senior police officer this month to be charged with drug related offences. … the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Dr Anand Chaudhuri, says the arrest of Touch Muysor is evidence that Cambodia is now taking drug prevention very seriously.

Excellent. Now if they could just get rid of those punks on the riverfront.

Vendor bender

At the new City Mall, sellers are up in arms about the cost of rents.

MORE than 100 vendors protested outside the City Mall Shopping Centre in Prampi Makara district on Wednesday to demand that the owner, Taiwan’s Fu Yang Investment Co, lower the rents on its retail space.

… “If we compare the rent on a store here with those of other shopping centres, City Mall is the most expensive,” [shopkeeper Rin Manith] said, adding that City Mall charged between US$40 and $65 per square metre each month, whereas other malls charged as little as $28.

Is that right? Hundreds of market vendors are angry because they agreed to what they thought was a fair deal, but then later found out that they had been overcharged?

Oh, the heart bleeds.

Cambodia and Myanmar talk guns

This is not good news.

Cambodia and Myanmar will work together to strengthen and expand the military cooperation between the two countries, the local media reported on Sunday.

Pol Saroeun, commander-in-chief of Royal Cambodian Armed Forces(RCAF) told visiting Ye Myint, chief of security affairs department of Defense Ministry of Myanmar that under recommendation of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, Cambodia has purpose to build up areas along border with neighboring countries into a peace, security, safety and development area, the Khmer language newspaper Raksmei Kampuchea reported.

Myanmar is a pariah state for good reason. Cambodia can learn nothing helpful from such monsters.

Paper, blog, politics

In a story about KI-Media, the Phnom Penh Post gives short shrift to the copyright issue.

Soy Sopheap, publisher of the Deum Ampil newspaper, said he was one of many local and international journalists who regularly check KI-Media. He expressed frustration at the blog’s aggregating style, however, saying its contributors are siphoning revenue from professional journalists.

[...]

Heng Soy, another KI-Media blogger, dismissed this allegation. Though the site does post and translate articles from other news outlets, he said, this is done only with proper attribution to the original source. As for theft of revenue, Heng Soy noted that he and other contributors refuse paid advertisements “to avoid criticisms that we are trying to make a profit from this blog”.

This borders on journalistic malpractice. Because no matter what bad luck Heng Soy thinks, there is absolutely no question that the people behind KI-Media are a bunch of thieves. Roughly 95% of the site’s content is stolen property. That copyright holders do not assert their rights does not change the fact. Nor does letting people know where you stole the content. It’s still stolen, pure and simple.

Cambodia, not too shiny

The Wall Street Journal says Cambodia has lost its frontier-market shine.

In the private equity world, Cambodia just isn’t what it used to be.

At one point in early 2008, fund managers were expecting to raise as much as $500 million for investment in the country. Instead, interest from investors evaporated with the financial crisis, forcing several funds to shut down or scale back.

American venture capitalists were never going to save Cambodia’s economy, but their absence will be felt. In addition to truckloads of money, foreign investment funds also provide business expertise.  When funds such as Emerald or Foreign Investment buy stock in a company, with their purchase comes their substantial business knowledge. That, more than anything else, is what Cambodia’s businesses lack.

Not all money is created equal. Money from investment firms comes beholden to smart management and accounting practices, thus helping to ensure that financing gets used to maximum benefit. The same cannot be said of China’s no-string-attached millions or the tons of charity dollars pumped annually into the country. The proof is in the prahok. Investment capital tends to encourage employment, economic growth and innovation. Unchecked financial windfalls tend to foster dependency and corruption.

Typhoon kills 8

Eight dead in Kompong Thom from Typhoon Ketsana.

Shoot to kill, says PM

Prime Minster Hun Sen says border troops at Preah Vihear will use deadly force to stop Thai encroachment.

Hun Sen had said that Thai “yellow T-shirt” protesters rallied at the area near Preah Vihear temple to demand Cambodian troops and villagers to move out from the land of 4.6 square km near the temple. “They are extremists and have ambitions,” he said.

State-run Xinhua said Hun Sen warned that he has told his military commander that if the Thai “yellow T-shirt” protesters forced their way into the area, Cambodian troops could use force.

He said he has ordered his troops to shoot anyone found illegally crossing a disputed border with Thailand.

Deadly force sounds a bit extreme. Surely there are laws that address the illegal entry of foreign nationals into the country. Just as surely, death by firing squad is unlikely a penalty for any of them. People caught entering the country without the proper paperwork should be arrested and jailed, and then, once they have served their sentence, deported.

Military leaders barred from U.S.

VIA Khmerization: When it comes to human rights abuses, the founders of Gitmo and Abu Ghriab draw the line at Cambodia.

In regard to human rights abuses raised by the US officials, Mr. Tea Banh told Radio Free Asia like this: “Let me say in short: when the United States does (say) something, they don’t do it lightly, they do it very thoroughly. I want to say that, if there is something inappropriate has happened that affects the US policy, the US will inform us immediately. In fact, right now, there are a number of Cambodian army officers who are refused entry to the US. There are a number of them…”

Tea Banh is obviously just a greedy, money-grubbing foreigner trying to get donor money to fund his own immoral lifestyle. He is likely a Sam Rainsy Party member, in league with Mu Sochua, Ho Vann, and the rest of those uppity NGO do-gooders.

Accusing the Cambodian military of human rights abuses dishonors the Kingdom. The law forbids any action that incites, divides society, causes anarchy in society, or violates the rights of another person. The government absolutely cannot allow Mr Banh to so flagrantly flout the rule of law.

Street-biting monks

More tales of the bizarre from the newspaper of record.

A PROMINENT monk who acts as an adviser to Supreme Patriarch Tep Vong could be defrocked, provincial officials said Tuesday, after he was accused by fellow monks of getting drunk and biting them.

Kiet Chan Thouch, chief monk at Wat Leu, Preah Sihanouk province’s main pagoda, is alleged to have attacked his colleagues over the weekend.

Koa Suon, a 76-year-old monk in the same temple, said Kiet Chan Thouch bit him after becoming intoxicated.

“Kiet Chan Thouch got drunk and ordered me to come out of my room, otherwise he would shoot me and lock me in the room forever,” Koa Suon said.

He said that Kiet Chan Thouch fought with four monks, two clergymen and a nun during a 48-hour bender spanning Friday and Saturday.

A follow-up story in today’s edition reports that victims “dare not” file a formal complaint out of fears for their personal safety. “If I complain, I will die,” said a clergyman.

Boys are trafficked too

The U.N. looks at the other side of trafficking.

Kou Channyyon’s story is typical of many young Cambodian men.

Desperate for work, he was trafficked to Malaysia with the promise of earning more than US$200 a month in a coffee factory.

But after he arrived, his passport was confiscated, and he found himself working 13 hours a day, with barely enough money to cover his living costs.

Barred from leaving the factory premises, he did not know if he would ever be able to escape.

[...]

Some of the worst exploited are men and boys who end up on Thai long-haul fishing boats that ply the South China Sea for two years or more at a time, according to a UNIAP study in April 2009.

“The boats become virtual prisons on which the trafficking victims endure inhumane working conditions and physical abuse. Death at sea is frequently reported, sometimes at the hands of Thai boat captains,” the study notes.

While horror stories like these crop up from time to time, no one really seems to care about the plight of trafficked men. When males are made slaves, their are no MTV concerts or well-intentioned church groups, international missions or outrage. The planet just shrugs. Who should we blame for that?

To catch a fat man

ABC went undercover with Action Pour Les Enfants as they closed in on American pedophile Harvey Johnson.

Unbeknownst to Johnson, he has been under surveillance by a local non-profit group called “APLE,” who’s made it its mission to identify suspected foreign pedophiles and to help gather enough evidence for the police to make an arrest.

… APLE used an undercover “spy agent” to befriend Johnson. Their hidden cameras catch Johnson allegedly selling child pornography to the agent. The agent recorded hours of conversations in which APLE claims Johnson talks freely about molesting young girls.

The latest sweep of suspected American pedophiles has garnered massive media attention. The glare of the spotlight, and the fear of returning to face U.S. justice, one prays, will help deter other American pedophiles from visiting Cambodia.  The Americans, finally, are doing their part. Too bad the same cannot be said of other countries.

Headline of the day

From the Cambodia Daily: Hell Awaits Those Who Lie, Hun Sen Says

People who go overseas to tell “lies” about Cambodia could end up in the lowest level of hell, Prime Minister Hun Sen said in a speech yesterday.

The premier added that people in foreign countries now have access to television feeds from Cambodia, and would not be tricked by the “liars.”

Prime Minister Hun Sen was referring to his recent trip to Europe, where he told foreign leaders that Cambodia has great respect for human rights and the rule of law. Hun Sen did not name names in his speech, but everyone knows who he was talking about. Last week, Mu Sochua, Licadho President Kek Pung, and Moeun Tola of the Community Legal Education Center spoke to the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in Washington D.C. Topics included forced evictions, the recent arrests of Cambodian journalists, and government lawsuits aimed at silencing its critics.

Lips moving at World Bank

The World Bank considers thinking about talking about thinking about doing something in regards forced evictions.

A senior World Bank official held talks with the Cambodian government over the forced eviction of people from their homes and said the development bank would continue to work with it on land reform to tackle the problem. …

The World Bank joined with other aid donors in July to ask the government to halt forced evictions and the problem was raised again by its vice-president for East Asia and the Pacific Region, James Adams, during a visit last week.

“A major focus of the visit was Cambodia’s urban land sector and the increasing numbers of disputes and evictions of poor people in urban settlements,” the bank said in a statement.
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“The discussions on land reform were constructive and it was agreed to continue these discussions over the coming week to agree next steps,” it said.

No hurry. There’s plenty of time.

Not fade away

Pen Sovan speaks to The Post.

Leading by example

Traffic accidents kill five people everyday.

Student Chhin Sothea found out the hard way that it’s not enough just to take care when crossing the street in Phnom Penh—a motorcycle ploughed into him from behind as he strolled down the sidewalk.

“Now I keep an eye on street traffic all the time and when I get on a fast motorbike, my stomach turns,” says the 23-year-old, who spent most of his savings recovering in hospital.

Stories like Chhin Sothea’s are common in Cambodia, a rapidly developing country where traffic fatalities have more than doubled over the past five years, becoming the second-biggest killer after Aids.

Nearly everyone blames sloppy police work for Cambodia’s deadly streets. But the truth of the matter is that lax law enforcement is merely a symptom of a much greater illness. Leadership comes from the top. The country’s rulers have never shown anything but contempt for the rule of law. The rest of the country is just following in their footsteps.

Challenging the Strongman

Opposition parliamentarian Son Chhay gives some perspective to Mu Sochua’s fight with Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Son Chhay, another outspoken opposition parliamentarian, says the recent crackdown is a symptom of a government that is trying to address the issues facing the country, such as corruption, land seizures and economic stagnation.

“Like many dictatorial regimes in the region, because they are unable to solve the problems, they resort to measures to control the people and shut them up,” he said.

“If he allowed Mu Sochua to challenge him, other people might go down the same path,” said Son Chhay.

Yep.

The power to protect

Seth Mydans takes stock in the government’s efforts to strengthen the rule of law. He finds Prime Minister Hun Sen less than persuasive.

Mr. Hun Sen dismisses, and even appears to parody, his critics, declaring earlier this month that he was acting in the interests of democracy by stripping the two lawmakers of their parliamentary immunity so that they could face prosecution in the courts.

“From now on we are strengthening democracy and the rule of law,” he said. “This is not an anarchic democracy. Democracy must have the rule of law.”

The leaders of Cambodia’s single-party democracy have long been prone to authoritarian fits. In previous outbursts, politicians and journalists from opposition parties have been swept away, sometimes to jail, sometimes to the afterlife. Eventually, once everyone is sufficiently terrified, The Strongman will lighten up.

Totally blackened

Reuters has the latest on Prime Minister Hun Sen’s visit to France

Cambodia’s government is drawing up an agreement to give France’s Total (TOTF.PA) rights to look for oil in its offshore block 3 in the Gulf of Thailand, officials said on Monday.

A provisional agreement was reached last week when Prime Minister Hun Sen was in Paris.

“Hun Sen told the French prime minister that Cambodia had decided to award block 3 to the French company, Total, for oil drilling after lengthy consideration,” Prak Sokhon, a senior government official who was in the delegation, told reporters.

What does a backroom oil deal with Total look like? It’s not pretty.

Enemies of the state

Robert Carmichael surveys the Kingdom’s crumbling facade of democracy.

One editor of a newspaper affiliated with the opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) is now serving a one-year jail term for publishing a story the government objected to. The publisher of another newspaper, ‘Moneaksekar Khmer’, was told this week he would be sued and could go to jail after publishing a series of articles allegedly designed to incite conflict between government ministers.

On the political front, two opposition MPs are being sued by senior officials of the ruling party for defamation after having their immunity stripped by the lower house. Their lawyer recently quit their cases and the SRP and crossed over to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) after being told he would be sued.

Two other opposition MPs have been told they could have their immunity taken away too. Two non-government organisations have also received legal threats.

Some observers fear the country’s democracy is under threat, as the CPP – which won more than two-thirds of the seats in last year’s general election and which controls all the organs of state and the judiciary – moves against dissenters.

As veteran opposition MP Son Chhay said: “We are being treated like the enemies of the state. It’s a crisis in this country.”

Carmichael’s list doesn’t include the recent defemation case filed against The Cambodia Daily, either. It really is a near total silencing of public dissent.

Winning friends

Mu Sochua, the CPP’s favorite opposition politician, is in the United States this month meeting with the new clan in Washington. She remains unrelenting in her criticisms of the ruling “dictatorship.”

“I needed to see the people in the new administration to urge them to re-assess U.S. foreign policy,” says Sochua in an interview with The Daily Beast. “Cambodia is a democracy on paper but in reality a dictatorship. Our party activists are murdered because they fight for justice-life is still cheap in Cambodia. Human trafficking, drug trafficking, land grabbing, and forced evictions are all carried out under the nose of the government.”

She doesn’t stop there.

“It is now common practice for powerful corporations and government officials to utilize armed forces to push citizens off their rightfully and legally held land,” says Sochua. “These evictions are often violent, with soldiers wielding guns, tear gas and Tasers and burning houses to the ground, while citizens are beaten, maimed and arrested.”

Don’t tell Nguon Nhel.

Degrees of benevolence

The Post has the latest in the unfolding Mu Sochua saga. It’s not pretty.

PRIME Minister Hun Sen said Tuesday that he had withdrawn his legal complaints against Kong Sam Onn, a lawyer representing Sam Rainsy Party lawmakers Mu Sochua and Ho Vann, after the attorney resigned his post and defected to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party.

When SRP politicians jump ship in the run up to elections, their motives are, if not admirable, at least understandable. When SRP lawyers defect under legal threat, however, that’s much more than a guy just trying to get by. That’s the ruling party trying to make a point. While no one would argue that such jack-booted political tactics aren’t better than murdering your adversaries outright, the political effect is, for all intents and purposes, the same.

Quote of the day

VIA The Daily: Prime Minister Hun Sen, on his commitment to the nation.

“I lie awake at night thinking about ways to help people.”

Maybe Samdech should take a pill. After two decades in power, and presumably of lying awake at night “thinking about ways to help people,” the prime minister’s government is still one of the poorest, most dysfunctional regimes on the planet.

A return to bellicosity

Prime Minister Hun Sen, speaking to a group of new college grads, waved his rockets around yesterday.

“I told the Thai deputy prime minister and minister of defence frankly to be careful about not flying across the border into Cambodian territory,” Hun Sen told an audience of new graduates at the National Institute of Education in Phnom Penh on Tuesday.

“I am afraid that I won’t be able to control the shooting if the ground soldiers lose patience.”

[...]

“We are waiting to shoot because we are not invading [Thailand]. Cambodia is not showing muscle, but to defend the nation we will play it until the end,” Hun Sen said.

Inspirational oratory of war and death for the graduating class. How uplifting.

Feeding the poor

The CPP-dominated government doesn’t get many kudos, for obvious reasons. But its recent contribution to the World Food Program deserves some praise.

Cambodian government on Wednesday donated 1.2 million U.S. dollars to World Food Program to help reduce the hunger and malnutrition in this country, according to WFP statement.

The statement released Wednesday said the donated fund will help provide food assistance to over 800,000 poor rural Cambodian people affected by food insecurity brought on by last year’s high food prices and this year’s global economic crisis.

Every little bit helps.

The road to Myanmar

The control freaks in the CPP are losing their grasp of reality.

LAWMAKERS for the ruling Cambodian People’s Party on Tuesday threatened to file a complaint against opposition lawmakers who claim that the National Assembly is controlled by the CPP or “one powerful man”.

Nguon Nhel, first vice president of the National Assembly and a member of the CPP, said at a meeting to sign an extradition treaty with India that he would file a complaint against Sam Rainsy Party lawmaker Yim Sovann and “other SRP parliamentarians” if they “continue to call the National Assembly the ‘dictated National Assembly’ or ‘under the control of the CPP or one powerful man’”.

“If you [Yim Sovann and other SRP's parliamentarians] say these things again, we will file a complaint to the court against all of you,” he said.

Members of the CPP occupy 90 of the National Assembly’s 123 seats. Threatening to sue people for pointing out the obvious has all the hallmarks of  a government well on the decent into madness.

Too stupid to live

The big news of the weekend was the blast at the ammunition dump just outside the Prime Minister’s compound in Takhmau. Headlines are everywhere. Reuters explains.

Rockets exploded on Sunday at a Cambodian military base near the prime minister’s residence, state-run television said, and military officials said the incident was an accident.

Military and police officials said the explosion was caused by a fire started accidentally by a mechanic working on a truck at the base on the southern outskirts of the capital, Phnom Penh.

The Cambodia Daily has the scoop.

Nuon Rom, 46, a village officer in Samrong village, Takhmau commune, said that he watched the explosion from nearby, and spoke directly with military officials inside the camp by walkie-talkie immediately afterwards.

He said he was told that two truck drivers were trying to gas up a truck filled with B-40 rockets bound for the disputed border area at Preah Vihear temple. At about 7:15 pm, one of the men flicked his cigarette lighter to get a better look at how full the tank was and ignited the gasoline fumes.

Both men died, Rom added.

God flu

Teen missionaries bring deadly “swine flu” to Kingdom.

Four American teens who went on a mission trip to Cambodia to help the needy, wound up needing help as they became the first cases of swine flu in that Southeast Asian country, officials with the youth ministry said Thursday.

… The teens came down with fever after arriving in Phnom Penh on June 18, according to a statement from Ron Luce, president of Teen Mania, the Christian youth organization based in Garden Valley in East Texas that sponsored the group.

… “This group raised money for months and months to go to Cambodia and serve the lord Jesus … and they’re stuck in a house in Cambodia,” said Ed Hale of Escondido, Calif., whose nephew is one of their hosts in Cambodia. “They can’t do what they were sent to do. It’s a tragedy.”

Yet another reason to give wide berth to the brimstone brigade.

Immunity vote postponed

Vote to lift the immunity of Mu Sochua will go before the full National Assembly on June 22.

THE National Assembly’s Permanent Committee met Monday to consider a court-sanctioned request to lift the immunity of opposition lawmaker Mu Sochua and allow Prime Minister Hun Sen’s defamation suit against her to go ahead, officials said.

“The issue of lifting [Mu Sochua's] immunity has been included in the agenda for this session of the Permanent Committee, and a decision will come on June 22, when the Assembly will [decide whether to] adopt” the committee’s recommendations,  senior Cambodian People’s Party lawmaker Cheam Yeap told the Post Monday.

A two-thirds majority is required to pass the motion. The CPP holds more than two-thirds of assembly seats. Mu Sochua remains adamant that she will not be cowed.

“I have said again and again that my case is a symbol of the entire justice system in Cambodia, and I repeat: I will not pay…. I am ready to go to prison, and I would like to emphasise I will not flee,” said the former Minister of Women’s Affairs, who has a US passport.

Democracy

The CPP model.

THE Khmer Civilisation Foundation president, Moeung Sonn, has fled to France to avoid arrest, he said, after the Cambodian government sued him for incitement and disinformation over his public accusations that the installation of new lights at Angkor Wat had damaged the temple.

Moeung Sonn is part of the Global NGO Conspiracy to make the government look bad, and a law-breaker who has absconded from justice. He should be considered armed and dangerous.

Echoes from the past

The government says Lichado is un-Cambodian.

PHNOM Penh Deputy Governor Mann Chhoeun has criticised a recent land rights report by the advocacy group Licadho, calling it biased and un-Cambodian.

“I think that NGO is not Khmer, and I want to tell them that no one loves Khmer [more] than Khmer,” he told the Post.

“You come from outside, so you don’t understand Khmer people, and when we didn’t have food to eat, you were not with us. So you should look at our achievements and what we have done,” he said.

The government can continue to lash out at its critics, instead of addressing their concerns. But as long as it does, it will continue to be judged unkindly by the world. No sentient human being will ever buy the line that putting destitute families on the street constitutes development. Any member of the government who believes such a notion should have his or her soul checked.