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2011-11-01T15:33:00.000+09:00

Shiki Restaurant, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Cambodia seeks to uplift workers as it sets up college

2011-11-01T15:27:00.004+09:00

By Guy De Launey BBC News, Phnom Penh

This is not school the way many of us would remember it. For starters, heads are not lolling on desks, willing the bell to ring and bring the agony to an end.

Instead the rows of students are bright-eyed, alert and turned out in eye-catching white-and-orange polo shirts.

They respond eagerly to the teacher's prompts and questions, occasionally breaking into good-natured laughter.

The bonhomie is all the more impressive considering this is a Sunday and classes started not long after six in the morning.

But the students are aware that the Garment Factory Supervisors' College offers an opportunity for something rarely seen in Cambodia: career progression.

And these young people - mostly women in their 20s - have willingly given up their weekends for a crash course in subjects like the labour law and occupational health and safety.

'Lot of conflict'
The garment and footwear industry is Cambodia's biggest employer. Almost 400,000 people work in the factories, producing clothes for big names like Gap, Adidas and Marks & Spencer.

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It will maintain high productivity, bring better communication and ensure the labour law will be clearly communicated to the workers”

Nov Dara
Better Factories Cambodia
Almost all of them are on the lowest pay grade, earning a minimum basic wage of $61 (£38) a month.

Overtime and seniority bonuses can push that into three figures, but until recently there was little chance of workers moving out from behind their sewing machines and into better-paying jobs.

The "us and them" divide between workers and management was stark. With little history of industrialisation before the garment industry took off a decade ago, there was a serious local skills shortage.

So not only were the garment factories largely owned by non-Cambodian companies, but most of the supervisory staff were expatriates as well, brought in from countries like China, Singapore and Bangladesh.

With little in the way of shared language or culture, workplace misunderstandings were frequent and so were the resulting disputes.

"Working across cultures they might have a lot of issues, a lot of conflict," says Nuon Laong.

Usually a factory adviser for the Better Factories Cambodia programme run under the auspices of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Laong indulges in some officially-sanctioned moonlighting as a teacher at the Supervisors' College on Sundays.

"Often problems start from a small issue - but they don't understand each other, and then it becomes a big issue. But if there are local people [working as supervisors] they can understand each other and any problems are going to be smaller."

Ensuring sustainability
Promoting local staff to supervisor status also makes sense for the people without whom Cambodia's garment industry would not exist: the buyers.

The backs of the students' polo shirts bear the names of some of the most familiar global fashion brands - showing their support for the college set up by the ILO.

The college hopes to provide garment workers with better career opportunities
This is not entirely altruistic. Local staff are less expensive than expats - lowering costs for factories and buyers alike.

But with price pressure always a factor in the garment sector, it is a measure which could ensure the long-term health of the industry in Cambodia.

"To ensure the sustainability of the garment industry, we need Cambodian supervisors to take over the role of the foreigners," says Nov Dara, the Better Factories Cambodia training manager.

"This is the goal for the Cambodian government and the Chinese factory management. It will maintain high productivity, bring better communication and ensure the labour law will be clearly communicated to the workers."

That idea is clearly getting across to the trainees at the college. A supervisor from one nearby factory rattled off a few facts about the labour law as she enjoyed her lunch break.

Morale booster
But perhaps the most important contribution could be to morale on the factory floor.

A recent series of well-publicised mass-fainting incidents has left question marks over Cambodia's hard-won image as a country which guarantees decent working conditions in the garment sector.

The college addresses this by adding pastoral care to the curriculum.

The new supervisors get information about issues ranging from reproductive health to career development, which it is hoped they will pass on to their junior colleagues.

To make the message stick, the facts come wrapped in a music and comedy performance, courtesy of a local performing arts group, which has the audience hooting with laughter and clapping along.

Hundreds of new supervisors will have received training by the time the college finishes its short run of Sunday classes in November.

If they can put what they have learned into practice, they may play an important part in making sure Cambodia's garment industry has a healthy future.

Land for Sale 5x16m at 16,700$

2011-08-20T16:06:00.002+09:00

I have a plot of land 5m x 16m to sell at $16,700 near North Bridge Int'l School and Street 2004 (Maida Road), in Sleng Rorleung village, Khan Sen Sok. It's a very nice area for living because it's a safe area with water-electricity and sewage systems are all connected.

The road to the land is 6m. The land also has Plang Roeng (LMAP) so you feel secure to buy this land.

Please contact me for further details if you are interested. Thanks.
012-515-747, 012-403-940, 015-397-310

Pi nis Pi nus

2011-06-24T18:21:00.002+09:00

I miss this road...
Activities at the ELSA Moot Court on WTO Law, Taiwan, 2011

Recently renovated house.

'Bad history' not helping attitudes on both sides

2011-02-14T17:52:00.001+09:00

Mon, Feb 14, 2011
The Nation/Asia News Network

While some national media are quick to cast Cambodians as people not to be trusted, locals in Si Sa Ket have a more complex view of their neighbours. This doesn't stop some national papers espousing archetypal bias towards Cambodians, though such popular misconceptions may backfire and hinder mending ties between the people of the two nations well into the future.

"Elderly people in the areas along the border who for long have been trading with their neighbour often remind their children and grandchildren that they have never trusted Cambodians because [Cambodians] are not predictable. 'They may be friends in the morning but by the evening become enemies'," wrote a columnist last Tuesday.

While some locals say they do not trust Cambodians and will demand cash upfront when trading with them, others say such stereotyping is simply wrong. "There's no absolutely good Thai or absolutely evil Cambodian and vice versa," Niphon Polsaet-rerk, a school teacher in Kantharalak, said yesterday.

What's more, some villagers are married to Cambodians and surely none would have done so if all Thais believe Cambodians are not to be trusted.

But history textbooks and popular beliefs among Thais and Cambodians perpetuate prejudice and distrust. A scholar like Thibadi Buakamsri, of Kasetsart University, explained in a chapter of the Thai-language book "Nationalism in Thai Textbooks" how Thai history books made Thai students regard Cambodians with prejudice and distrust. A heavy reliance on historical accounts written by Siam's elite meant Thai history books gave Cambodians short shrift, he said.

"Cambodia [in the past] is just a small protectorate that often seeks to exploit moments of Ayutthaya's weakness by taking away some people [as captives] and declaring independence."

Contemporary writing in newspaper columns, feature stories and other popular media is very much moulded by this narrow-minded perspective in school textbooks, he said.

Sarnti Pakdeekham, a Cambodian studies expert at Srinakharinwirot University, also wrote that Cambodian textbooks more often than not remind their readers that Thais are ruthless foreign aggressors.

Sarnti, writing in his Thai-language book published in 2009 entitled "Khmers debate about Siam", said that while Cambodians' attitude towards Thais (and Siamese of the past) was rather complex, it might best compared to the negative attitude Thais hold toward the Burmese, who twice attacked and burnt down Ayutthaya.

"The way Thai history portrayed Burma as the historical 'bad guys' is not that different from the way Cambodian history writes about 'Thailand'," Sarnti wrote on pages 3-4 of his book.

Given that Thai-Cambodian relations are based on deeply rooted beliefs, historical wounds and nationalism, the ongoing conflict should be treated most carefully in order not to exacerbate the situation further. The conflict also should serve as a wake-up call for people in the two societies to think about how they can best overcome past wounds and present prejudice and distrust. This will be no easy task, but the other option of going to war and hating each other even more should certainly be less desirable.

The challenge for both Thais and Cambodians is to learn not to become a prisoner of their past while also questioning the prison that current nationalist thinking lock us in.

IMF Urges Cambodia To Boost Revenue

2011-02-09T21:32:00.001+09:00

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), at the end of the 2010 Article IV Consultation with Cambodia, has agreed that enhancing revenue collection and administration procedures were essential to ensure internal fiscal sustainability, while also providing room for the country to meet its medium-term development objectives.

It was reported that, following a significant easing in 2009, it is probable that Cambodia’s 2010 budget target will be bettered and a gradual fiscal consolidation is on track. The rebound in tax revenue is broadening, with a rise in both direct and indirect cumulative tax revenue. In particular, profit tax collection has gained momentum, supported by the ongoing economic recovery. Continued efforts to strengthen revenue administration, and reduced incentives for smuggling due to diminishing regional disparities in gasoline and diesel prices, have also helped contain tax evasion.

The Cambodian government is committed to further improving revenue administration. It concurred with the IMF that gains in tax collection offer the best hope for Cambodia to meet the dual objective of securing fiscal sustainability and mobilizing resources for its large development needs. Specifically, there was agreement that the scope to improve the productivity of the tax system is significant.

The IMF estimated that, based on its experience in similar countries, Cambodia’s tax revenue to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio is about 5%-7% below its potential. Since the mid-1990s, the tax revenue to GDP ratio has doubled, but at 12%, it is still the second lowest among Asian low-income countries (LICs) that average 17%. According to the IMF, bringing the productivity of the value-added tax alone to a level comparable with other Asian low-income countries would yield an additional 1.5% of GDP.

The IMF, therefore, supported the government’s target of improving the tax revenue to GDP ratio through better administration by 0.5% per year, which means that about one-third to one-half of the revenue enhancing potential would be realized over the medium-term.

There was also agreement that much will depend on following through with detailed action plans of the revenue collecting agencies, including: the enhancement of taxpayer compliance through auditing; information sharing among revenue-collecting and law-enforcement agencies; taxpayer education; and improved governance within the agencies (notably through better protection of enforcement officers and disclosure requirements under the recently adopted anti-corruption law).

The IMF recommended that a comprehensive strategy to enable a more aggressive collection of tax arrears, which rose 20% in the year ending July 2010, be put in place.

It was suggested that reducing the scope for evasion will also critically enhance the effectiveness of tax policy changes that are currently considered with a view to raise revenue. For example, the IMF estimated that replacing the reference price for taxes on petroleum imports to the current transactions price level would yield about 1% of GDP, and higher “sin” taxes on alcohol and tobacco could generate an additional 0.2% of GDP.

However, it was pointed out that these calculations assume that the resulting increase in domestic retail prices over those in neighbouring countries does not erode the tax base. This requires that greater incentives for smuggling are effectively curbed by the envisaged improvements to customs control. It was agreed that better information sharing and transfer of know-how in the fight against tax evasion from the General Customs and Excise Department to the General Tax Department will also be needed in light of trade liberalization commitments and the growing reliance on domestic taxes relative to trade taxes.

Source: http://www.tax-news.com/cyprus/cyprus_review_2010.asp

Ministry accused of graft

2010-12-16T19:38:00.001+09:00

The Phnom Penh Post
WEDNESDAY, 15 DECEMBER 2010 20:06
MOM KUNTHEAR

A woman has filed a complaint to the Anticorruption Unit accusing Interior Ministry officials in Phnom Penh of extorting money from her after wrongfully arresting and detaining her son.

Teng Sokchea, 46, said yesterday that she filed a complaint to the ACU on Monday after her 22-year-old son and three of his friends had been arrested in Russey Keo district on Sunday, and accused of buying a motorbike with fake licence plates.

She said the four suspects were detained in a cell at the Ministry of Interior overnight, and were only released the following morning when family members arrived to pay fees of up to US$400 demanded by officials.

“They accused my son and his friends of buying a motorbike with fake number plates and they tried to force my son to admit the crime they accused him of,” she said.

“I gave $250 to the officer for the release of my son. At first I told them that I have only $200, but they asked me for $50 more,” she said, adding that she had had to borrow the extra $50.

She said her son had bought the motorbike in question from his uncle, and denied that it had fake number plates.

“I still wonder why the police arrested and detained my son that night,” she said. “He is a good person and he did not do anything wrong from the law.”

But Horm Kunthy, director of the Investigations Bureau at the Interior Ministry’s Criminal Police Department, said yesterday that the arrests were justified.

“We got information from the local police [that they] suspected that [the four accused] bought a motorbike from a thief to sell in the province, and then we went to arrest them in order to question them,” he said.

He said he had accepted money from Teng Sokchea in exchange for her son’s release, but claimed that Teng Sokchea had offered the money freely.

“Actually she agreed to give me $250 [in exchange] for taking her son back home,” he said, adding that officials had only agreed to accept the money and release Teng Sokchea’s son because they “felt pity for her”.

He said he was not concerned about the possibility of an ACU investigation.

“I don’t care or worry about her complaint to the ACU because it is her right to do that and I will prepare myself to appear to answer all the questions about her case if the ACU officers invite me for questioning,” he said, adding that he was not worried “because I am not wrong”.

ACU head Om Yentieng, and spokesman Keo Remy could not be reached for comment yesterday.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2010121545413/National-news/ministry-accused-of-graft.html

Taxing problems remain for Kingdom’s government

2010-12-03T17:46:00.001+09:00

Friday, 03 December 2010 15:02
The Phnom Penh Post
Steve Finch

THE latest budget disclosure this week by the government showed a 13.8 percent rise in tax revenues in the first three quarters of the year, compared to 2009, another sign the Kingdom is tackling one of its greatest budgeting headaches.

Generating some 3,462.35 billion riels, or US$834.3 million, in the first nine months of the year again represented the highest-ever tax revenue collection by the government, a promising sign given that Cambodia must significantly raise domestic revenues to offset donations by the international community.

Nevertheless, major tax collection problems exist that must be addressed, not least because the collection of taxes remains at the epicentre of Cambodia’s complex corruption challenges.

The new Anticorruption Unit is investigating road tax officials as one of its first cases, amid allegations motorists are being overcharged in Phnom Penh. But this case is unlikely to touch on the much wider problem associated with teams of policemen that levy informal fees on motorists.

Ask foreign investors about the negatives associated with doing business in Cambodia and usually top of the list are the charges levied as an informal tax within the system.

Cambodia’s taxation problems therefore represent under-enforcement of official taxes combined with over-zealous extraction of informal fees. In terms of enforcement, the country continues to enjoy successes and failures.

Law firm DFDL Mekong noted in its October update that authorities have stepped up tax enforcement in the case of international schools which are subject to the same taxes as private businesses.

However, a new property tax that was supposed to be set up this week has thus far failed to get off the ground amid reports the authorities are unprepared and questions over exactly how the Ministry of
Finance subcommittee responsible for evaluations is supposed to grade properties when there are few transactions to help define values.

Cambodia needs to make sure that taxation is fair otherwise enforcement becomes even more difficult.

Aside from these problems are the classic cases of disappearing taxes and a pervasive lack of transparency. The budget declaration for the first nine months by the Ministry of Economy and Finance does not list any revenues generated from airport tax. Yet anyone that has travelled through Phnom Penh and Siem Reap airports knows foreign adults are charged a hefty $25 to leave the Kingdom, while Cambodian adults pay $18.

Ministry of Tourism figures showed some 835,000 people arrived by air in the first eight months of this year.

If we assume they all left by air and for arguments sake 75 percent were over 12 years old, then in this category alone the government would have generated some $18.37 million, or roughly 2.5 percent of the total tax revenue that appeared on the budget balance sheet for the same period. Where is this money?

If the government is really intent on accounting for taxation revenue, which by its actions it seems to be, then accounting for these blatant omissions must surely become a priority.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2010120345140/Business/taxing-problems-remain-for-kingdoms-government.html

APEC summit ends with drift toward trade war

2010-11-15T19:44:00.001+09:00

World Socialist Web Site
By James Cogan
15 November 2010

Two days of talks in Yokohama, Japan by the leaders of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) ended yesterday with a clear divergence between the United States and China over the future of regional trade. Following the failure of last week’s G20 summit to resolve festering currency disputes, the APEC meeting further underscored the drift toward a breakdown of relations between the major powers in the Asia Pacific region.

The Obama administration, backed by the Japanese government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan, pushed over the weekend for APEC to commit to the establishment of a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP). The perspective of a FTAAP, which would include the US and attempt to supplant various bilateral pacts operating in the region, is intimately bound up with Obama’s perspective of doubling US exports in five years. Such a transformation could be achieved only by American-based corporations seizing the markets of rivals the world over, and particularly from Chinese companies.

As he had at the G20 summit, Obama used the APEC meeting to attack China and other major exporting countries over their trade surpluses with the US. Addressing a business forum on Saturday, Obama declared: “One of the important lessons the economic crisis taught us is the limits of depending primarily on American consumers and Asian exports to drive economic growth. Going forward, no nation should assume that their path to prosperity is simply paved with exports to America.”

Obama’s repeated demands that countries reduce their trade imbalances with the US contain the implicit threat of trade sanctions if they fail to take measures to raise the value of their currencies and open their markets to American companies. US National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon announced to reporters that Obama had told Chinese President Hu Jintao that the US expected China to lift the value of its currency, the yuan, before a scheduled meeting between the two leaders next January.

To pursue an agenda of expanding US trade in the Asia-Pacific, Obama announced at APEC that the US had joined the little-known Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), which until the weekend had formally consisted only of Brunei, Singapore, New Zealand and Chile. The TPP had the vague aim of removing all tariffs between its members by 2020. Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Peru announced that they too had been admitted to the group. Japan’s Kan declared “interest” in joining.

US Trade Representative Ron Kirk told Bloomberg: “TTP members aim to create the most forward-leaning, high standard trade agreement ever engaged in.” The Obama administration, he said, would keep its “foot to the pedal” throughout 2011 to finalise the terms of a pact by the time the US hosted the next APEC meeting in Hawaii next year. Kirk declared that the TPP would be the basis for the largest trade agreement entered into by the US since the 1994 NAFTA pact with Canada and Mexico.

The subtext of the APEC talks and final communiqué was the beginning of a free trade agreement on January 1 this year between China and the member-states of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). China and six ASEAN countries—Brunei, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines—have slashed tariffs on roughly 90 percent of trade items to zero. Over the coming years, the remaining ASEAN states—Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Burma—will follow suit.

Partly as a result of this free trade pact, two-way trade between China and ASEAN members has grown by more than 50 percent this year. China has also initiated a trade agreement with Taiwan and is moving to finalise one with South Korea. Across the Asia-Pacific, there are some 120 bilateral and regional free trade pacts now operating, few of which include the United States. A web of relations is emerging that places China at the centre of what is expected to emerge as the largest economic region in the world, with China surpassing the US as the world’s largest economy by 2020.

The US agenda spelt out at APEC follows intense diplomatic activity by both Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to reassert US interests in the Asia-Pacific. Obama’s visits to India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan, and Clinton’s trips to Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Australia were aimed at shoring up or forging economic and military alliances against China’s growing influence. (See: “US diplomatic offensive tightens strategic encirclement of China”)

While Hu Jintao signed the final APEC communiqué—which declared mutual support for the concept of a region-wide free trade agreement—he pointedly did not signal any intention to take part in the TPP talks. Few commentators expect anything concrete to come from them. Over recent years, the US has failed to make any progress toward bilateral trade pacts with South Korea, Thailand and Malaysia. In a significant blow to Obama, his attempts to renew talks with South Korea collapsed during the G20 summit.

Moreover, the Obama administration is increasingly advocating protectionist measures against its more competitive rivals. In the process, the US is provoking widespread opposition. At the G20 summit, numbers of countries condemned the US policy of pushing down the value of the dollar though “quantitative easing”—or massive bond purchases by the US Treasury.

The depth of international tensions was revealed at the G20 summit when the US received only scant support for its demand that China revalue its currency. Germany and Japan instead joined with China to oppose a proposal by US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that countries limit their current account surpluses or deficits to 4 percent of gross domestic product.

The Chinese regime, on behalf of the emergent Chinese capitalist elite, is not responding passively to the US attempt to force it to pay for the crisis and decline of American capitalism. It is seeking to strengthen its existing trade and strategic partnerships that exclude the US. Even as APEC was meeting, the Chinese transport minister was finalising an agreement with ASEAN member-states in Brunei on opening up greater access to each other’s airports, ports and sea-lanes.

Talks also began yesterday in the Chinese city of Wuhan between the foreign ministers of China, Russia and India. A Russian foreign ministry spokesman told journalists that the talks would focus on “issues of forming a new, better security and cooperation architecture for the Asia-Pacific Region” and the role of the three countries “within the network of multilateral regional associations”. China is matching US overtures to India by urging New Delhi to play a greater role in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and stressing its interest in an eventual free trade agreement.

During the APEC meeting, China even made efforts to calm relations with Japan, with which Beijing is engaged in a bitter territorial dispute over islands in the East China Sea. Hu and Kan held brief talks, as did the two countries’ trade ministers. According to Japanese trade minister Akihiro Ohata, China gave an undertaking to step up its exports to Japan of rare earths—critical raw materials for high tech industries. Japan had accused China of slashing rare earth exports in retaliation for the island clashes.

A strategic battle has emerged in the Asia-Pacific for market share, profit and geo-political dominance, centring on the struggle between the US and China. The repeated failure of international talks, such as the G20 and APEC, to establish any new framework to regulate relations stems from the conflicting interests of rival capitalist cliques and the governments that serve them. What is developing is the prospect of antagonistic trade blocs and outright protectionism.

Cambodia's Small Debt: When Will the U.S. Forgive?

2010-10-01T15:04:00.001+09:00

Joe Yun
Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs
Statement before the Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the Global Environment House Foreign Affairs Committee
Washington, DC
September 30, 2010
Source: http://www.state.gov/p/eap/rls/rm/2010/09/148427.htm

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Manzullo, and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me here today to testify about the growing U.S.- Cambodia bilateral relationship and, in particular, Cambodia’s outstanding bilateral debt to the United States.

Cambodia in Context

Given the many challenges that Cambodia faced as recent as a decade ago, the country has come a long way in recent years. It is enjoying increasing political stability and is slowly recovering from 30 years of war, including the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge era. Cambodia’s economy was the seventh fastest growing economy in the world over the past decade. While Cambodia experienced a recession in 2009, current predictions call for a return to strong growth in 2010 and 2011.

There has been meaningful progress on political and social issues as well. National elections in July 2008—while falling short of international standards on several counts—were peaceful and allowed the Cambodian people to express their preferences in an open and fair manner. The Cambodian government allowed significantly greater freedom to the political opposition during the 2008 elections than in previous elections and showed some willingness to engage on civil liberties and human rights issues. The government recently passed anti-corruption legislation and revised its massive penal code—significant steps in Cambodia’s fight against corruption. Cambodia has also made commendable progress in combating human trafficking, increasing prosecutions and convictions of traffickers, and launching a new National Committee to combat human trafficking, as well as establishing new national minimum standards on victim protection. According to an August 2009 public opinion poll, 79 percent of the Cambodian population believes that the country is headed in the right direction.

In regional and global arenas, Cambodia has sought a larger role in recent years, as illustrated by its participation in international peacekeeping efforts, its involvement in the Lower Mekong Initiative in partnership with the United States, and its campaign for a rotating seat on the UN Security Council. Cambodia’s main foreign policy challenge is, not surprisingly, managing relations with its larger neighbors. Cambodia-Thailand relations have been strained since 2008, in part related to border disputes, but bilateral dialogue has begun to diminish that tension. Relations with Vietnam are good, but final resolution of an ongoing Cambodia-Vietnam border demarcation process remains elusive. China is an increasingly important provider of assistance and foreign investment in recent years, a fact that encourages Cambodia to keep relations with China on a positive footing.

Despite a generally positive trend on most of Cambodia’s domestic matters, several economic and political issues continue to cause significant concern among local populations as well as the international community. Most Cambodians remain poor, with endemic corruption and impunity limiting efforts to improve their standard of living. Political expression is stifled, including by employing criminal defamation and disinformation laws to intimidate and prosecute politicians and journalists. The judiciary remains weak, politicized, and overwhelmed. Arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings remain a problem. Land disputes and forced evictions, sometimes accompanied by violence, persist. HIV/AIDS and maternal mortality as well as persistent gender based violence stand as critical areas for continued improvement. All of these issues must be successfully and fully addressed for Cambodia to achieve its full democratic and economic potential.

U.S.-Cambodia Bilateral Relations

U.S.-Cambodian relations have continued to improve over the past few years. The tempo of interaction has quickened, and there has been both a broadening and deepening of positive engagement in a number of key areas. We benefit from Cambodia’s cooperation on law enforcement issues, human trafficking, counterterrorism, demining, and efforts to account fully for Americans missing from the Indochina conflict. Our security cooperation with Cambodia is maturing, allowing us to focus even more on such areas as defense reform and professionalization, regional cooperation, international peacekeeping, border and maritime security, counterterrorism, and civil-military operations. The Global Peace Operations Initiative “Angkor Sentinel” exercise in 2010 was a milestone in our growing military-to-military cooperation and exemplifies Cambodia’s commitment to international peace and stability. With United States encouragement and support, Cambodia has taken increasingly responsible positions on the world stage, including sending de-mining teams to participate in UN missions to the Central African Republic, Chad, and the Sudan.

We have actively supported the Khmer Rouge Tribunal’s efforts to bring perpetrators of that era’s atrocities to justice, and commended the tribunal’s handling of the Kaing Guek Eav, aka “Duch,” case. We paid close attention to previous allegations of mismanagement and corruption within the court administration, and successfully pushed for the appointment of an Independent Counselor function in August, 2009. Since then, the Independent Counselor has developed as a credible oversight and preventive mechanism. We and other donors are satisfied with its work. On March 31 of this year, Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Stephen J. Rapp announced a U.S. contribution of $5 million in FY2010 Economic Support Funds to the court, and we will seek ways to continue our support. Former Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Clint Williamson was recently appointed by the UN as Special Expert to the court in order to provide legal and administrative expertise as it continues its work.

Unfortunately, Cambodia’s December 2009 forced removal to China of 20 Uighur asylum seekers, in contravention of its international obligations and long-standing cooperation with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, has complicated our efforts to further deepen the bilateral relationship. We have called on the government publicly and privately to uphold its international obligations to asylum seekers and refugees in the future, and seek assurances that cooperation on these issues in the future will be the norm.

We also continue to push the Cambodian government on human rights and rule of law. We have targeted our foreign assistance to support programs that strengthen civil society’s ability to address legal and judicial reform, land rights, anti-corruption, the rights of women and children, prevention of human trafficking, and improving the quality of and access to education. We have also supported reform-minded institutions and individuals, sought to build capacity of public and private institutions, and encouraged expanded political participation by youth and women in elections and political processes. Our foreign assistance is also directed at a broad array of other important issues, including HIV/AIDS, maternal health, demining, professionalization of the military, and promoting economic development. Cambodia’s identification as a “focus country” under the Administration’s “Feed the Future” Initiative allows us to consider ways to expand our assistance into agriculture, food security, and resilience to climate change. The Peace Corps has been active in Cambodia since 2007 and is so popular that the Deputy Prime Minister spoke at the swearing-in ceremony of the most recent group of volunteers. In all, we are aiding Cambodia’s development in FY2010 with more than $72 million, which makes it the fourth largest recipient of Department of State and USAID assistance in the East Asia and Pacific region.

Economy and Trade with the United States:

In 2004 Cambodia joined the World Trade Organization. Between 2004 and 2008, Cambodia was the seventh fastest-growing economy in the world. This rapid development was driven largely by expansion in the garment, tourism, and construction sectors. The global economic crisis had a particularly painful impact on Cambodian economic growth. Because of a slowdown in external demand and foreign investment, Cambodia’s growth dropped from 10.2 percent in 2007 to negative 2.5 percent in 2009. However, there is a positive sign for recovery: International Monetary Fund (IMF) growth predictions for the Cambodian economy currently range from 4 to 7 percent in 2010 and 2011.

The United States has been Cambodia’s top trading partner since 1998, with exports to the United States accounting for approximately 17 percent of Cambodia’s GDP last year. Garments dominate Cambodia’s exports—especially to the United States—and accounted for over $2.6 billion, or 70 percent, of the country’s overall exports between 2007 and 2009. The garment industry employs roughly 350,000 workers, mostly women. Cambodia has developed a relatively good labor record in the garment sector, built through close cooperation with the International Labor Organization and the United States under the Better Work Program. Since the expiration of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Multi-Fiber Agreement in 2004, Cambodian garment exports have grown by nearly 20 percent, due in part to safeguards placed on imports of certain apparel from China permitted under China’s WTO accession agreement. These safeguards expired at the end of 2008. Due in large part to poor external demand, merchandise exports contracted by 8.6 percent in 2009, the first annual contraction since the mid-1990s. The Cambodian government, the garment industry, and labor unions are strong supporters of legislation that would allow duty-free access for garments from Cambodia and other less developed countries.

Cambodia’s liberal investment regime has led to increased investment from Asian countries, particularly South Korea and China. American investors have lagged behind this trend, but a U.S. commercial presence is starting to expand rapidly. A weak business environment, poor infrastructure, inadequate enforcement of labor laws, and the highest energy costs in the region pose significant challenges to private sector-led growth. The government needs a more comprehensive, coordinated response to improve the competitiveness of Cambodia’s economy. Moreover, irregular adherence to rule of law, endemic corruption, an incomplete regulatory framework, and underdeveloped human resources prevent Cambodia from becoming more economically competitive and hinder its full development potential. For all its growth over the past decade, Cambodia remains one of the poorest countries in Asia, relying on close to $1 billion per year in foreign assistance.

Under the United States-Cambodia Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) and the Economic Growth Bilateral Assistance Agreement, the United States is seeking to deepen and expand bilateral trade and investment ties. We support Cambodia’s efforts to implement its WTO commitments and other domestic economic reforms, and seek ways to assist Cambodian authorities in areas such as Intellectual Property Rights enforcement, transparency, anti-corruption, and effectiveness of the banking and financial sectors.

U.S. Policy on Restructuring Official Foreign Debts

Debt relief can be an important means of achieving U.S. goals of promoting economic growth, well-functioning financial markets, and economic reform abroad. Longstanding United States policy is to coordinate sovereign debt restructuring internationally, primarily through the Paris Club group of official creditors. This multilateral approach is a good value for the U.S. taxpayer because it increases recoveries from countries that are not paying their debts to the United States while maximizing benefits of debt relief for heavily-indebted, low-income countries that are unable to meet their payment obligations.

The United States provides debt cancellation only in limited circumstances, the majority of which are through the Enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. This approach provides U.S. resources to pay for the budgetary cost of debt relief for countries that are facing an unsustainable debt burden. To be eligible, HIPC countries must face a debt-to-export ratio greater than 150 percent and a debt-to-revenue ratio above 250 percent, among other factors. In the first stage, debtor countries commit to implementing economic reforms aimed at reducing poverty and avoiding a new build-up of unsustainable debt. Upon successful completion of the first stage, the United States and other Paris Club members jointly evaluate requests for debt cancellation and then reach individual implementation agreements with the debtor country. Throughout the process, State and Treasury officials rely heavily on International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank assessments of a debtor country’s financial need for debt relief and willingness to undertake reforms. Congress has reinforced this need-based approach to debt relief by enacting statutes such as the Special Debt for the Poorest authorization (enacted this year as Section 7033 of Division F, Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Program, of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2010, P.L. 111-117) and the Enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (Title V of Appendix E of H.R. 3425, as enacted into law by Section 1000(a)(5) of P.L. 106-113, as amended). These statutes authorize the Executive Branch, under specific circumstances and criteria, to reduce sovereign debts.

Cambodia’s External Debt

Cambodia’s public debt is almost entirely external. In 2009, Cambodia’s debt outstanding to foreign creditors was nearly $3.2 billion, over one-quarter of which is owed to the United States and Russia. At the end of 2008, Cambodia’s external public debt was 25 percent of its GDP. According to the most recent assessment by the IMF, Cambodia is at a moderate risk of debt distress, with rising contingent liabilities warranting increased vigilance. IMF data indicate that in 2008, Cambodia’s debt-to-exports ratio was 37 percent and its debt-to-government revenues ratio was 167 percent (net present value terms). Cambodia, therefore, does not qualify for HIPC status. In 2005, HIPC was supplemented by the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), under which the IMF and the World Bank grant full debt forgiveness to any country that has completed its HIPC program. Cambodia, however, was granted an exception to the usual eligibility criteria for MDRI and benefited from $82 million in IMF debt relief in January 2006.

Cambodia’s Debt to the United States

Cambodia’s bilateral debt to the U.S. government remains an irritant to the relationship. A satisfactory resolution of Cambodia’s debt would accelerate the development of an already improving bilateral relationship and enhance Cambodia’s own economic development by improving its creditworthiness and access to international capital markets.
Cambodia’s debt stems from shipments of U.S. agricultural commodities, such as cotton, rice, and wheat flour, financed with low interest-rate loans by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) under Title I of the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954, or P.L. 480 (now entitled the Food for Peace Act). The United States and Cambodia signed three P.L. 480 Title I agreements in 1972, 1973, and 1974, during the Vietnam War and Cambodia’s turbulent Lon Nol era. The United States accepted significant payments in local currency under a “Currency Use Payment” provision commonly included in such agreements; the remainder of the debt was to be paid in dollars. The Lon Nol regime never consolidated its hold on the country and in 1975 Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge, which ceased servicing this debt. Arrears and late interest have accumulated since that time. By the end of 2009, Cambodia’s total debt to the United States totaled approximately $445 million. About $405 million of that amount is in arrears and would be due immediately upon the implementation of any agreement to pay the debt.

In 1995, the Paris Club group of creditor nations and Cambodia reached an agreement to restructure Cambodia’s debt on Naples terms – then the most generous treatment in the Paris Club’s “toolkit.” At the time, the United States was by far Cambodia’s largest Paris Club creditor. Cambodia benefited from a 67 percent reduction of certain non-concessional debts and a long-term rescheduling of certain concessional debts. Since all of Cambodia’s debt to the United States was contracted on concessional terms at below-market interest rates, the Paris Club agreement called on the United States to consolidate arrears and future payments scheduled between January 1, 1995 and June 30, 1997 into a new loan payable over 40 years following a 16-year grace period. Debt service falling due on or after July 1, 1997 was to be paid according to the original schedule. Cambodia eventually signed debt agreements with France, Germany, Italy, and Japan to implement the 1995 Paris Club agreement and began paying those countries accordingly. The United States and Cambodia never concluded a bilateral implementing agreement, in part because the Cambodian government refused to accept responsibility for debts incurred by the Lon Nol regime and also because of a disagreement at the time over the amount of debt owed.

After several years of deadlock, debt negotiations resumed over the 2001-2005 period, with the active involvement of the U.S. Departments of State, Treasury, and Agriculture, and U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh. After carefully examining the available legal authorities, the U.S. negotiating team's offer to the Cambodian government showed significant flexibility on the amount of debt owed, offering concessions of nearly $100 million from USDA.

In February 2006, the Cambodian Minister of Finance indicated that Cambodia agreed with the United States, in principle, that the amount of principal it owed was $162 million. He also agreed to move forward in drafting a Bilateral Agreement implementing the 1995 Paris Club Agreed Minute. Based on this understanding, the United States drafted a bilateral agreement that retroactively implemented the 1995 Paris Club agreement, including USDA’s concessions, and presented it to the Cambodian government in the summer of 2006. The proposed U.S.-Cambodia bilateral debt agreement would reschedule the consolidated P.L. 480 debt at the original interest rate of 3 percent – a highly-concessional rate given the interest rate environment of the early 1970s.

To date, the Cambodian government has been unwilling to sign the draft bilateral agreement and now seeks additional concessions. Specifically, it seeks a lower interest rate and/or a debt swap arrangement. Longstanding U.S. debt policy, in keeping with Paris Club principles and U.S. budget rules, is to retain the same interest rate of the original loans in any rescheduling of those loans. Offering a lower interest rate would be an unauthorized form of debt reduction.

Cambodian officials have also indicated that domestic political obstacles still make the government reluctant to accept responsibility for debts incurred by the Lon Nol regime. Although some Cambodian observers may argue that this debt is illegitimate, the United States has on its side the international law principle that governments are generally responsible for the obligations of their predecessors. The government of Iraq accepted the debts incurred by Saddam Hussein. The civilian government of Nigeria accepted responsibility for debts accumulated by military governments that ruled the country in the 1980s and 1990s. Similarly, Afghanistan accepted the heavy debt burden left by decades of foreign occupation and civil war. There are many other examples.

Senior U.S. government officials have repeatedly encouraged Cambodia to live up to the 1995 Paris Club agreement it signed with the United States and other creditors, and urged it to sign the pending U.S.-Cambodia bilateral agreement without further delay. However, Cambodia may be reluctant to accept the current proposal to settle the bilateral debt issue if it believes there are good prospects of converting a significant amount of the debt service it would otherwise pay to the United States into a form of increased U.S. assistance.

In past years Cambodia has expressed interest in a debt-for-assistance swap. The only general debt swap program that the United States currently offers is through the Tropical Forest Conservation Act, for which Cambodia is not eligible because of its arrears. Cambodia, however, has focused on the swap arrangement that the United States established with Vietnam in 2000, and is seeking a similar statutory program. Observers often compare Vietnam and Cambodia for geographic and historical reasons, but several distinctions about the treatment of the debts these countries contracted with the United States are worth highlighting. In 1993, Paris Club creditors provided Vietnam a debt rescheduling on terms similar to Cambodia’s 1995 Paris Club debt agreement. Vietnam signed a bilateral implementing agreement with the United States in 1997, resumed making scheduled payments, and was in good financial standing when Congress created the Vietnam Education Foundation several years later. This program directs about 40 percent of Vietnam’s total debt payments to the Foundation for joint education initiatives. Because Cambodia is not making scheduled payments, such an individualized debt-swap program is not a possibility.

The Administration is concerned that creating a special statutory debt reduction program for a country that is unwilling, rather than unable, to pay its debts sets a poor precedent for other counties in similar circumstances and sends the wrong message about prudent debt management. Cambodia has accumulated arrears to the United States while paying other creditors on time, and in at least one case, early. Every year, both within and outside of the Paris Club context, the United States reviews and declines similar requests for debt-for-assistance swap arrangements from debtor countries that are current on their debt service and may owe billions of dollars of debt.

The Administration has therefore urged the Cambodian government to sign the pending bilateral debt agreement and re-establish a track record of timely repayments under that agreement. We have told the Cambodian government that if it makes scheduled payments for at least one year, the U.S. government would communicate to the IMF that efforts are underway to resolve official arrears. This action could pave the way, should Cambodia then obtain an IMF program and a future Paris Club debt treatment, for a rescheduling of the accumulated arrears. Unfortunately, the Cambodian government has not responded to this overture and continues to accumulate arrears on debts owed to the United States.

Congress has also expressed its view on the importance of maintaining orderly creditor-debtor relations in a number of statutes, including Section 620(q) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Brooke Amendment (enacted this year as Section 7012 of Division F, Department of State, Foreign Operations and related Programs, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2010, P.L. 111-117). These statutes provide for an automatic cutoff of U.S. economic assistance to a country that is in default on certain loans for certain periods of time. Although Cambodia’s USDA debts are not subject to these default sanctions, these statutes reflect Congress's expectation that countries repay their debts to the United States in a timely manner.

Another concern about funding foreign assistance programs through the principal and interest payments of debtor counties is that it circumvents normal budget rules. Congress passed the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990 requiring U.S. creditor agencies to make realistic estimates about recoveries when calculating the true cost of lending programs. This approach saves U.S. taxpayers money by creating transparent incentives for agencies to manage credit programs efficiently and effectively. Accordingly, the Administration requests, and Congress annually appropriate, funds to be used to pay the U.S. budget cost of cancelling a country’s debt obligation or providing a debt swap. The Cambodian proposal would circumvent this congressional budget oversight mechanism.

In sum, Cambodia’s prompt agreement to resolve U.S. debt claims by drafting a Bilateral Agreement implementing the 1995 Paris Club Agreed Minute, as Cambodian officials proposed in 2006, would eliminate this long-standing dispute in a scenario of otherwise improving bilateral relations. A Cambodian agreement would also enhance the country’s creditworthiness and its ability to access international capital markets. Other countries following this path have benefited enormously.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate this opportunity to appear before you today and welcome any questions you may have. Thank you.

What do we mean when we talk about an emerging middle class?

2010-09-30T21:46:00.001+09:00

The Phnom Penh Post
Thursday, 30 September 2010 15:01 Michael Hansen

Dear Editor,

Noeleen Heyzer’s article about the Millennium Development Goals (“People key to MDG success”, September 23)was thought-provoking, but to assert that every country needs a new middle class surely needs some qualification.

In all states of the developed world, and in many of the developing world too, there are a considerable number families with prosperity rooted in entrepreneurship, the professions or the management of public and private organisations.

The fruits of their affluence are generally invested in property, improved healthcare, educational provision, leisure pursuits and pension funds.
However, I am not sure if these are the people Ms Heyzer refers to when she writes about the “new middle class” in Asia.

Last year, The Economist, the influential London-based magazine, promulgated the idea that the term middle class could be applied to a growing number of people taking the first steps out of poverty and able to spend about a third of their income in a discretionary way.

This definition may be the one that Ms Heyzer was using when writing about the new middle class. We might look at this idea in the context of the present dispute in the garment industry.

I would say, by any standard applied in the West, that most workers in the garment industry are poor.

Let us imagine the demand for US$93 a month, an increase of about a third in the agreed basic wage, is granted. Given the present minimum rate is set at virtually subsistence level, would this increase really project many thousands of workers into a middle class? I don’t think so.

The garment workers would still be relatively poor and accumulating the wealth, qualifications and property of most Western middle-class people, or even those of a similar status in Cambodia, would not be something they could reasonably achieve in a whole lifetime of work. Most are unlikely to become globally connected either, or internet savvy.

It would, perhaps, be better if organisations involved in trying to achieve the MDGs were more precise in their definition of what middle class actually means when they use it and make this clear in their published documents.

To use the term middle class as defined by The Economist may lead those unaware of the nuances of the terminology to assume greater positive changes are under way than is actually the case.

The growth of regional “traditional” middle classes will not necessarily expedite achievement of the MDGs.

History seems to show that an emerging middle class does not always have great sympathy with those lower down the social hierarchy.

In early 19th century Britain, for example, a new middle class, using wealth created by the British industrial revolution, began to flex its political muscle as it steadily increased its purchasing power and accumulated property.

Throughout the 1820s, agitation grew for a fairer electoral system that resulted in the Reform Act of 1832. Immediately afterwards, however, middle-class pressure for further change virtually evaporated. Working-class movements, like the Chartists of the Hungry Forties were not successful in extending the franchise, which only came slowly, later in the century.

The great danger of the way things are developing in Asia is that the middle classes cast in a traditional mould will see themselves increasingly set apart from those not so fortunate. They will be quite happy to benefit from, but largely indifferent to, a large and growing pool of inexpensive labour, and when pressure for fair treatment grows they will tend to support strong government against organisations, such as trade unions, perceived as a threat to the status quo.

In this sense the term middle class may become rather misleading in another way, as it assumes a three-class system when there are, in effect, only two: the haves and have-nots. Isn’t this part of the problem in Thailand?

It is fair to say that a growth in consumer demand from the traditional middle class might increase job opportunities, but it is also true that an increasing desire for expensive imports may lead to a flight of capital and the worsening of a trade balance.

Large new property developments may add a modern patina to the suburbs of an established city, but if constructed on land taken from rightful owners by nefarious means and built by cheap labour with little regard to the personal safety of workers who lack any kind of job security, is it likely this situation will contribute to real social progress, which after all is what the MDGs are all about?

What every country actually needs is a traditional middle class in which both the entrepreneurial spirit and a sense of public service is fostered and properly paid for. However, it is important that consciousness of privilege is cultivated too, and this should manifest itself in a willingness to support opportunities for the sons and daughters of those lower down the economic ladder.

Education is the key to progress in this respect, with well-funded scholarships for the brightest children from poor families.

When these young people, boys and girls, seek to enter the job market, they may need to be supported in order to feel their background is no barrier to interview success.

One way to help in this, in the Cambodian context, is for nongovernment organisations working in the development field to review the wording of their job advertisements in the English language press, ensuring that members of the lowest socio-economic groups are always encouraged to apply.

A poor boy from a village in Stung Treng or a girl who knew the dismal conditions at Stung Meanchey may well have struggled long and hard to get to the position from which they could make an application, but be nervous about doing so.

In my view, purely because of their class background, they are worthy of specific encouragement. The stairway leading upwards to the traditional middle class needs to be well-constructed, well-maintained and always in place.

Michael Hansen
Phnom Penh

Send letters to: newsroom@phnompenhpost.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or PO?Box 146, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The Post reserves the right to edit letters to a shorter length. The views expressed above are solely the authors’ and do not reflect any positions taken by The Phnom Penh Post.

Kingdom ranks 109th for business climate

2010-09-10T20:43:00.001+09:00

Friday, 10 September 2010 15:01
The Phnom Penh
Catherine James

CAMBODIA’S business environment competitiveness has marginally improved, according to the World Economic Forum’s ranking of 139 countries, but the Kingdom continues to lag far behind its regional neighbours.

The forum’s annual competitiveness study scores 110 factors across 12 areas affecting an economy’s business climate: institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic environment, health, education, goods and labour market efficiency, financial market development, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication, and innovation.

Cambodia, which was ranked 109th, was the worst performer of the 10 countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, excluding Laos and Myanmar which were not included in the survey.

This year’s rank is one better than last year’s 110th position.

Singapore was ranked third in the world, behind only Switzerland and Sweden – first and second respectively. The United States fell from its second place in 2009, to fourth place. Japan was the only other Asian nation to make the top 10.

Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand and Indonesia – in order of rank – made it into the top 50, all maintaining a fairly steady grade from last year. Vietnam, however, noticeably improved its position to 59 from 75. The Philippines was the second-worst ASEAN performer, coming in at 85, up from 87.

Of the 111 factors assessed, Cambodia’s standout strengths were ranking 12th in the world for inflation, 15th for total tax rate in the goods market, 33rd for female participation in the workforce, 35th for pay and productivity, and 37th for business impact of rules on foreign direct investment.

Cambodia’s competitiveness continues to be strangled by corruption and inefficient bureaucracy and infrastructure, the study said.

Of 139 countries, the Kingdom ranked 124th for irregular payments and bribes, 125th for transparency in government policy-making and 132nd for time required to start a business.

Its worst grade among the 111 factors was “fixed telephone lines”, for which it ranked the fifth-worst in the world at 135.

In an opinion survey on the most problematic factors for doing business in their country, found corruption topped the list in Cambodia, closely by inefficient government bureaucracy, inadequately educated workforce and inadequate infrastructure.

1,757 got jobs via 'amakudari' from '07 to '09

2010-08-24T12:02:00.001+09:00

Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010
Kyodo News

Between 2007 and 2009, 1,757 active and former ranking bureaucrats found employment at organizations and companies that in fiscal 2008 received subsidies or business contracts from the government, the internal affairs ministry said Monday.

Ministries and other agencies will be required to examine whether those subsidies and contract awards, worth a combined ¥7.2 trillion, were used to fund the employment of the former bureaucrats or wasted on unnecessary projects, officials said.

A total of 1,676 officials landed jobs between 2007 and 2009 at entities administered by their former ministry or agency in the practice known as "amakudari," according to a probe conducted by the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry starting in March.

The Democratic Party of Japan suspects ministries and agencies award contracts to businesses and other entities on condition that they give jobs to retired bureaucrats.

Government offices are due to inspect organizations that have hired former officials or received government funding totaling ¥5 million or more to find out whether they got business contracts in money-for-favor deals and wasted taxpayer money as a result. Their findings, to be reported to the internal affairs ministry, are to be taken into account in drawing up the fiscal 2011 budget.

Meanwhile, another internal affairs ministry survey points to yet more evidence of cozy amakudari ties between ex-bureaucrats and firms offering them lucrative positions.

Some 1,528 senior positions at government-linked organizations are being occupied by former government officials for at least the third successive time from the same ministry or agency, according to the ministry survey, which covered up to April 1.

Of the officials working at such government-affiliated organizations or other entities, whose work is subsidized by or carried out on behalf of the government, 4,916 were former government officials aged 65 or older.

The government intends to ban in principle the hiring of retired civil servants as senior officials of government-affiliated agencies and open up recruitment to the public.

Bodies that receive at least ¥5 million in taxpayer money annually will be called on not to fill their senior positions with ex-bureaucrats coming from the same ministries or agencies three times in succession.

The DPJ-led government is trying to eradicate amakudari, but experts say the party's efforts to ban job replacements won't get anywhere without fundamental changes in the civil servant system, in which only a limited number of top positions are available and officials who fail to advance have no choice but to take early retirement.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100824a5.html

Having faith in Cambodia’s youths

2010-08-12T20:11:00.002+09:00

The Phnom Penh Post
Thursday, 12 August 2010 15:01 Richard Bridle

Analysis

Richard Bridle

Today marks our celebration of both the annual International Youth Day and the launch of the International Year of Youth, under the theme “Dialogue and Mutual Understanding”.

The United Nations in Cambodia recognises the importance of Cambodia’s young people to the future of this country, and we welcome this spotlight on the needs and aspirations of one-third of Cambodia’s people.

It is our duty to listen to those voices and engage in that dialogue, to include Cambodia’s young people in the development process and in the future of their country.

The UN General Assembly defines youths as individuals aged between 15 and 24 years, and young people between 10 and 24 years of age. The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, however, takes a broader view and defines youth as those between the ages of 14 and 30 years of age.

Cambodia’s population iof young people, proportionately one of the largest in Southeast Asia, presents significant opportunities, but it also presents tremendous challenges.

Despite recent rapid economic growth, there are simply not enough jobs for youths.

Unemployment among youths is higher than for any other age group. At the current pace of job creation, Cambodia will not have the capacity to place the increasing numbers of young people who are entering the workforce each year.

Currently estimated at 250,000-300,000 new entrants to the labour market each year, this number is expected to rise to 400,000 in the coming years.

The significant numbers of young people who find themselves unemployed or underemployed are all vulnerable to trafficking, entry into illegal sectors and use.

Rural poor who migrate to cities for work are more likely than others to be homeless and unemployed, and are more likely to turn to criminal behaviour or to migrate in search of employment as unskilled labourers.

We know that education is one of the best options to link youths with decent employment opportunities, but access to education at all levels in Cambodia continues to be unevenly distributed between urban and rural areas, as well as between rich and poor.

Additionally, poverty and economic shocks force many young people to leave school without acquiring the basic skills they need for work and for life. Only half of young people complete primary school, and only a quarter proceed to lower secondary school.

And it is important to note that school attendance alone is not a panacea. The quality and substance of their education is what will allow the young people of Cambodia to take their place in an increasingly competitive region.

Education will also enable the youth of Cambodia to make valuable contributions to their country’s development. Soon today’s youth will be Cambodia’s leaders, educators, businesspeople and farmers. If youths are to become an engine of growth for this country, much more needs to be done to ensure their meaningful participation in education, employment, development and governance.

The United Nations system in Cambodia works with youths to ensure that their voices are heard and that their needs and concerns are addressed in our work. The issues and concerns affecting youths are integrated into each area of the UN Development Assistance Framework 2011-2015, and this will continue to inform the work we undertake.

For example, in education, the UN in Cambodia is supporting government to: strengthen and implement policies and strategies for technical and vocational education and training; increase the quality of training programmes through developing skills standards, testing, accreditation and certification procedures; and increasing the evidence base for monitoring equitable access to quality basic education.

The UN Youth Advisory Panel, the first of its kind in the world, gives youths an opportunity to become more informed about development, the United Nations, and our ongoing commitment to the issues that affect young people. And it also serves to remind us of the importance of youths to development.

The Situation Analysis of Youth in Cambodia, published by the UN in Cambodia in October 2009, laid the groundwork for future work in this area, and the findings of this study contributed to the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport’s crucial work on the National Youth Policy.

Cambodia’s youths are the most affected sector of society in terms of coping with rapid economic growth and social change, but they are also the most resilient and adaptable segment of the population.

The UN in Cambodia will continue to work with young people as they strive to create a better future for themselves, for their families and for their country.

Richard Bridle is acting UN resident coordinator for Camboadia.

Older civil servants facing pay cut

2010-08-11T12:19:00.001+09:00

Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2010

Kyodo News

The National Personnel Authority on Tuesday proposed cutting the salaries and annual bonuses of national civil servants for the second year in a row.

The personnel board proposed that the reductions focus on workers in their late 50s while keeping intact wages of young employees to forestall declines in their morale and in interest in public-sector jobs among new recruits.

In its recommendation to the Cabinet and the Diet, the board proposed an average cut of 1.5 percent, or ¥94,000, in the annual salaries of public servants for the year to next March 31, bringing them in line with the private sector.

The authority recommended that annual bonuses be cut to 3.95 months worth of salary from 4.15 months, the first time in 47 years that the amount would fall below the four-month level, as the private sector reduced bonuses last winter amid the economic slump.

If the proposals are adopted, the annual income of a 40-year-old section chief who is married with two children would come to ¥5.13 million and that of a vice minister, the top bureaucrat in a ministry, to ¥22.77 million.

The government will decide on the recommendations at a meeting of related Cabinet members and seek a legal revision during this autumn's extraordinary Diet session to put the approved proposals into practice.

But the Democratic Party of Japan may call for larger pay cuts than recommended. It has pledged to reduce central government personnel expenditures by 20 percent.

According to the authority, the monthly salaries of public servants are ¥757, or 0.19 percent, higher on average than those in the private sector because of an increase in older, highly paid bureaucrats. Many of them have stayed in the government sector longer as a result of efforts to curb arranging postretirement positions for them in the private sector.

The authority proposed maintaining the salaries of public servants in their 30s and younger because they are lower than those of their private-sector counterparts.

In contrast, it proposed cutting the salaries of officials aged 40 and older by an average of 0.1 percent and imposing an additional cut of 1.5 percent in principle on the salaries of those who will be 56 or older in fiscal 2010.

The personnel authority makes recommendations on salary and bonuses for government-sector workers to bring them in line with those offered in the private sector. Such recommendations are made because government workers are denied the right to strike and have limited basic labor rights.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20100811a3.html

Cambodia seeks investors to boost milled rice exports

2010-08-05T12:11:00.002+09:00

PHNOM PENH/BANGKOK, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Cambodia is looking for foreign investors to boost its fledgling rice milling sector so that it can reap higher dividends from its grain crop, much of which is currently sent to Vietnam to be milled and re-exported.

Its short-term goals are modest: it has exported 15,000 tonnes of milled rice this year and is aiming for 20,000, said Commerce Secretary of State Mao Thura.

That is an increase on last year, he said. "This is because we have more decent-standard rice millers. Before we had none."

But the government knows it must find foreign investors to have any hope of getting into the same league as neighbours Thailand and Vietnam, respectively the world's biggest and second-biggest rice exporters.

Thailand aims to export at least 8.5 million tonnes of rice this year and Vietnam is targeting 6.1 million.

"We have good rice but we don't have the quality millers or warehouses to produce milled rice for exports" Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen told students in Phnom Penh on Wednesday.

Indeed, it has plenty of rice, ranking as the world's 15th biggest producer with around 7 million tonnes of paddy each year. Of that, around 3 million tonnes is for domestic consumption and the rest for export, according to the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

After decades of political turbulence, including civil war and the deadly Khmer Rouge years, its economy was in tatters by the end of the 1980s. In some years it has had to import low-quality rice from Thailand.

With renewed stability, it has made great strides in the past decade and exported 500,000 tonnes of unmilled rice under its own brand in 2009, according to United States Department of Agriculture data.

But the bulk of its crop transits via Vietnam.

"Nowaday, there are only a few good-quality millers in the capital," said a Thai commercial diplomat in Phnom Penh. "That's why we always see Vietnamese rice traders come to buy rice directly from the fields in Cambodia to be milled, packed and re-exported in Vietnamese sacks."

MARKETS

Exporters hope to find more buyers in the European Union as the European market has been duty-free for Cambodian rice since last September under the EU's "Everything But Arms" initiative aimed at supporting exports from poor countries.

"Since our equipment is getting more modern, more people are coming and we're exporting to places like Russia, Europe and the United States," said Phou Puy, president of the Cambodian Rice Millers Association

But Cambodia needs money to invest in milling and irrigation systems to help boost production and rice quality, said premier Hun Sen, adding he had discussed this recently with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.

He said he also planned to talk to new Philippine President Benigno Aquino. The Philippines is the world's top rice importer.

A panic over food scarcity that pushed up the price of rice and other commodities in 2007/08 has already encouraged investors from Gulf countries to invest in rice fields and irrigation systems in Cambodia, in the interests food security.

Cambodia’s Struggle With Globalization

2010-08-03T06:57:00.001+09:00

The Jakarta Blobe
August 02, 2010

Hal Hill, Jayant Menon & Chan Sopha

The charming riverside capital of Phnom Penh, home to about 1.5 million inhabitants, has seen a lot in its turbulent history. But arguably nothing is on the scale of its first skyscraper, the 42-floor Gold Tower now nearing completion, not to mention the university and bank complexes mushrooming throughout this ancient city.

This changing physical landscape reflects broader developments across the country, which has been experiencing rapid economic growth — the sixth fastest in the world in the decade to 2007 — for the first time in its history.

More than two million tourists now visit this country of 14 million, a 20-fold increase over the figure in the early 1990s.

The Cambodian people have better nutrition and access to education and health services than ever before.

Since the cessation of internal hostilities almost two decades ago, life expectancy has risen by almost a decade and infant mortality has fallen significantly.

The macroeconomy is stable, with inflation under control, underpinned by very high levels of dollarization, currently about 90 per cent.

Debt service is almost negligible and public debt has fallen sharply, to about one-quarter of GDP.

The economy is highly open, with exports plus imports equivalent to more than 120 per cent of GDP. The investment climate is welcoming, with generous tax incentives and low tariffs.

Aid flows are very large, currently almost $1.1 billion in a $10 billion economy. The country’s openness meant that growth dried up in 2009 as the global financial crisis hit, but the economy is now rebounding.

So much for the good news. Cambodia, however, also faces many daunting problems.

The country ranks 166th and 135th respectively out of 181 countries surveyed in the Transparency International corruption perception index and the World Bank’s Doing Business indicators.

Deforestation and what is referred to locally as “land grabbing” have also been rampant.

The local dailies abound with reports of land being awarded to the politically powerful for nominal amounts, and a startling detailed account is presented in the 2008 study by Global Witness entitled “Country for Sale.”

In addition, the land price boom has often made some of the most vulnerable worse off, as they have been evicted or forced off their land. The periodic household expenditure surveys report a significant increase in inequality.

The country will also miss some of its Millennium Development Goal targets.

These problems are illustrative of the challenges faced by poor transitional economies in the process of opening up without the institutions to manage the complex process of globalization.

In this environment, the recent discovery of oil and gas could complicate things, as articulated in the resource curse thesis put forth by Richard Auty.

The central challenge is to achieve growth that is durable, equitable and environmentally sustainable. This in turn requires the development of institutions which, while they may be rudimentary, are effective, trusted and clean.

Where to start? Consider the following, for example:

• Cambodia has no shortage of laws, especially after its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2004. But businesses view the courts as the most expensive last resort when all else fails. Legal judgements are routinely for sale.

• Civil service salaries are meagre. A mid-level senior employee with a foreign masters degree receives $70 per month, compared to a private sector alternative of about 20 times this amount. Ministers receive about $500 per month, but some seem to live quite lavishly.

• The country’s tax effort (its tax revenue as a percentage of GDP) is a paltry 11 percent, despite the introduction of a broad value-added tax. Thus the country’s infrastructure remains inadequate, in spite of the very large aid flows, and notwithstanding recent improvements.

• The number of banks has increased rapidly due to unfettered entry. The lax prudential supervision carries with it the possibility of a future meltdown.

• Shipping a container from factory to port costs about double the regional average owing to widespread “facilitation” costs, a feature apparently of most transactions with the government.

Five general lessons for late reformers stand out from the Cambodian experience.

First, liberal and open economies cannot function without due respect for property rights, as exemplified by the widespread land grabs.

Second, these liberal regimes need adequate regulatory capacity to manage a modernizing market economy, as illustrated by the banking example above.

Third, large inflows of foreign aid and natural resource revenues ought to be viewed as transitory, and invested wisely for broad-based development.

Fourth, donors need to better coordinate their work and avoid imposing excessively on a weak bureaucracy.

Fifth, civil service reform has to be undertaken early, with clear incentives and disciplines.

Unless these conditions are met, the danger is that in Cambodia, and many other similar states, the achievements over the past decade in particular could be undone by economic crises, or rising civil unrest driven by outrage at the political and bureaucratic excesses.

Hal Hill is a professor of economics at the Australian National University; Jayant Menon is principal economist at the Asian Development Bank; and Chan Sophal is president of the Cambodia Economic Association.

East Asia Forum

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/cambodias-struggle-with-globalization/389063

New plan for civil servant salary top-up

2010-07-23T01:12:00.002+09:00

Thursday, 22 July 2010 15:03
The Phnom Penh Post
Irwin Loy

THE government has approved a revamped compensation scheme for civil servants, though observers say it remains unclear how quickly authorities and NGOs will be able to implement it.

The Priority Operating Costs scheme was approved July 12 as a replacement for a previous salary supplement programme that was abruptly cancelled last year.

Paul Pidou, deputy secretary general of the Council for Administrative Reform, confirmed that Prime Minister Hun Sen approved the sub-decree, which will be implemented retroactive to July 1. CAR officials were not available for comment yesterday.

A copy of the sub-decree obtained by the Post yesterday shows the new scheme will be more complex than the programme it is replacing. Under the POC scheme, development groups will be required to obtain permission to supplement civil servant salaries for each individual programme.

The sub-decree also outlines two broad levels of pay scales: “national” and “sub-national/public service delivery” .

Jeroen Stol, country director for Handicap International Belgium, said the new definitions could help equalise payments offered by NGOs under the old scheme.

“In the past, different organisations paid different incentives for the same types of jobs, which caused ... jealousy in some cases,” he said.

However, many details are still unclear, he added, including the payment levels in which civil servants will be grouped.

Authorities will need to add a new management layer to administer the scheme, according to its implementation guidelines. Each POC scheme will require its own director and must be approved by the relevan ministry, the development partner, the CAR and the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

Sharon Wilkinson, country director for Care Cambodia, said her NGO still has not received any official word about the new scheme. “I still do not feel there’s sufficient information available for us to implement this within the timeframe designated,” she said.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CHHAY CHANNYDA

Fresh census targets RCAF’s ‘ghost soldiers’

2010-07-13T19:07:00.001+09:00

The Phnom Penh Post
By Sam Rith
Tuesday, 13 July 2010 15:03

DEFENCE Ministry officials say a more “thorough” census of the military currently under way will reduce the number of “ghost soldiers” on the government payroll.

Ministry spokesman Chhum Socheat said yesterday that officials were confident this year’s census would be more accurate than those carried out in previous years, in large part because of a new computerised storage system that includes information on each soldier.

“It is the annual census to find out the real number of soldiers ... by cutting the number of soldiers who have retired, died or did not appear,” he said.

As part of the census, which began last week, every soldier in the military will be required to show up in person at regional offices to verify their identities and salary claims.

Those who failed to do so by the end of the month would forfeit their salaries, Chhum Socheat said.

The problem of ghost soldiers – those who are on the military payroll yet serve no function – has plagued the country for years, sparked by the aftermath of the peace process in the early 1990s that saw fighters from various factions amalgamated into the national military.

But it remains unclear how many such soldiers there are. A 1999 survey eliminated more than 15,000 ghost soldiers and 160,000 nonexistent dependents from the records and declared a total force of 131,227, according to a 2008 World Bank report on a donor-funded demobilisation scheme. Yet those results were “widely discredited”, the report stated. By September 2002, Ministry of Economy and Finance statistics showed the defence payroll had been reduced to 112,359.

A security assessment on Cambodia released this year by defence publisher IHS Jane’s suggested that the military has an on-paper strength of 110,000, but a field strength of 70,000 troops.

Cheam Yeap, a senior parliamentarian with the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, said the new census procedure was implemented after Prime Minister Hun Sen urged all institutions, including the military, to reduce “the number of people who do not have names”.

“We are doing this more thoroughly than before. No one can fake,” he said.

Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, described the problem of ghost soldiers as “critical”. “Many soldiers ... are not active and they’re not trained. Who are these people? I don’t think the government itself even knows,” he said.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY IRWIN LOY

Canadia Bank agrees to manage pensions

2010-07-09T22:10:00.001+09:00

The Phnom Penh Post
Friday, 09 July 2010 15:01 Soeun Say

THE National Social Security Fund for Civil Servants agreed yesterday to cooperate with Canadia Bank in offering a pension and social security fund to civil servants.

The agreement was signed in Phnom Penh.

The new NSSFCS fund aims to manage and insure a social security fund for when a civil servant retires or becomes handicapped, pregnant, or is involved in an accident at work resulting in disability or death, according to Chou Ratanak, the director for the Fund, speaking at Canadia Tower.

“We will be offering the social security fund to them in order to reduce their difficulties while living with certain conditions,” he said.

The fund is to be tested initially in Phnom Penh, and will be available through the bank as a standalone bank account with its own ATM card, he said, and added that having the account accessible through the bank would allow the correct funds to get to the end-user in a timely manner.

“Moreover, they can save their money through the fund, which will also have an interest rate with Canadia Bank,” Chou Ratanak said.

The NSSFCS is also looking for a way to make it easier to provide health insurance, possibly in conjunction with a bank, in a partnership similar to the agreement signed with Canadia.

“NSSFCS is looking at issuing a sub-decree on health insurance social security for civil servants,” he said.

Bombs away! Remember Cambodia

2010-07-09T17:26:00.002+09:00

Jul 9, 2010
By Ben Kiernan and Taylor Owen
Asia Times Online

The United States war in Afghanistan is "going badly", according to the New York Times. Nine years after American forces invaded to oust the repressive Taliban regime and its al-Qaeda ally, "the deteriorating situation demands a serious assessment now of the military and civilian strategies".

Aerial bombardment, a centerpiece of the US military effort in Afghanistan, has had a devastating impact on civilians there. Along with Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents and suicide bombers, who have recently escalated their slaughter of the Afghan population, US and North Atlantic Treaty (NATO) aircraft have for years inflicted a horrific toll on innocent villagers.

When US bombs hit a civilian warehouse in Afghanistan in late 2001, then-secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld responded, "We're not running out of targets, Afghanistan is." There was laughter in the press gallery.

But the bombing continued and spread to Iraq in 2003, with the United States determined to use "the force necessary to prevail, plus some", and asserting that no promises would be made to avoid "collateral damage".

Afghan and Iraqi civilian casualties, in other words, were predictable if not inevitable. The show of strength aside, didn't the US underestimate the strategic cost of collateral damage? If "shock and awe" appeared to work at least in 2001 against the Taliban regular army, the continued use of aerial bombardment has also nourished civilian support for the Taliban and al-Qaeda anti-US insurgency.

In March 2010, the New York Times reported that "civilian deaths caused by American troops and American bombs have outraged the local population and made the case for the insurgency." Beyond the moral meaning of inflicting predictable civilian casualties, and contravention of international laws of war, it is also clear that the political repercussions of air strikes outweigh their military benefits.

This is not news. The extension of the Vietnam War to Cambodia, which the US Air Force bombed from 1965 to 1973, was a troubling precedent. First, Cambodia became in 1969-1973 one of the most heavily-bombarded countries in history (along with North Korea, South Vietnam, and Laos). Then, in 1975-79, it suffered genocide at the hands of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge communists, who had been military targets of the US bombing but also became its political beneficiaries.

Despite key differences, an important similarity links the current conflict in Afghanistan to the 1970-1975 Cambodian war: increasing US reliance on air power against a heterogeneous insurgency. Moreover, in the past few years, as fighting has continued in Afghanistan supported by US air power, Taliban forces have benefited politically, recruiting among an anti-US Afghan constituency that appears to have grown even as the insurgents suffer military casualties.

In Cambodia, it was precisely the harshest, most extreme elements of the insurgency who survived the US bombing, expanded in numbers, and then won the war. The Khmer Rouge grew from a small force of fewer than 10,000 in 1969 to over 200,000 troops and militia in 1973.

During that period, their recruitment propaganda successfully highlighted the casualties and damage caused by US bombing. Within a broader Cambodian insurgency, the radical Khmer Rouge leaders eclipsed their royalist, reformist, and pro-Hanoi allies as well as defeating their enemy, the pro-US Cambodian government of Lon Nol, in 1975.

The Nixon Doctrine had proposed that the United States could supply an allied Asian regime with the materiel to withstand internal or external challenge while the US withdrew its own ground troops or remained at arm's length.

"Vietnamization" built up the air and ground fighting capability of South Vietnamese government forces while American units slowly disengaged. In Cambodia from 1970, Washington gave military aid to General Lon Nol's new regime, tolerating its rampant corruption, while the US Air Force (and the large South Vietnamese Air Force) conducted massive aerial bombardment of its Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge communist opponents and their heterogeneous united front, across rural Cambodia.

United States policy in Afghanistan has shown a similar reliance on air strikes in fighting the motley insurgency there. These strikes, while far more precisely targeted than the earlier bombing campaigns in Indochina, inflicted substantial civilian casualties in the first year of the Afghan war in 2001-02.

The Project on Defense Alternatives estimated that in a three-month period between October 7, 2001 and January 1, 2002, between 1,000 and 1,300 civilians were killed by aerial bombing, and The Los Angeles Times found that in a five-month period from October 7, 2001 to February 28, 2002, between 1,067 and 1,201 civilian deaths were reported in the media.

Deaths reported in newspapers should be treated with caution, but not all are reported, and the total was undoubtedly high. And the toll has continued long after the initial US invasion. According to Human Rights Watch, air strikes by the US Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and its NATO-led coalition, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), killed 116 Afghan civilians in 2006, and 321 civilians in 2007.

And the number rose again in 2008: according to a United Nations study on the humanitarian costs of the conflict, air strikes accounted for 530 of the 828 civilians killed that year by US or Afghan government forces. The same study found that between January and June 2009, 200 of the 310 recorded civilian deaths were caused by air strikes. Overall in 2009, the UN reported that 2,400 civilians were killed in Afghanistan, though the number killed by foreign and Afghan troops was down 25%.

While their large-scale killing of civilians presented a moral challenge to the US-led coalition forces, there has also been increasing acknowledgment of strategic costs accompanying these casualties.

In mid-2007, the London Guardian reported that "a senior UK military officer said he had asked the US to withdraw its special forces from a volatile area that was crucial in the battle against the Taliban" after the US forces were "criticized for relying on air strikes for cover when they believed they were confronted by large groups of Taliban fighters".

The paper added: "British and NATO officials have consistently expressed concern about US tactics, notably air strikes, which kill civilians, sabotaging the battle for ‘hearts and minds'."

NATO's secretary general added that NATO commanders "had changed the rules of engagement, ordering their troops to hold their fire in situations where civilians appeared to be at risk". More recently Command Sergeant Major Michael Hall, the senior NATO soldier in Afghanistan, has argued that many of the insurgents being held at Bagram air base had joined the insurgency due to deaths of people they knew.

He told the troops, "There are stories after stories about how these people are turned into insurgents. Every time there is an escalation of force we are finding that innocents are being killed." The same report cited a village elder from Hodkail corroborating this argument: "The people are tired of all these cruel actions by the foreigners, and we can't suffer it anymore. The people do not have any other choice, they will rise against the government and fight them and the foreigners. There are a lot of cases of killing of innocent people."

Yet the bombings have continued and the civilian death toll has mounted. In 2008, after US aircraft killed more than 30 Afghan civilians in each of two bombardments of rural wedding parties, the top US commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, "ordered a tightening of procedures for launching air strikes" and proclaimed that "minimizing civilian casualties is crucial". In December 2008, McKiernan issued another directive, ordering that "all responses must be proportionate".

Again new procedures failed to stop the slaughter from the air. Following an investigation into a 2009 air strike in Farah province that killed at least 26 civilians (the Afghan government reported a much higher toll of 140 dead), McKiernan's replacement, General Stanley McChrystal, issued new guidelines meant to minimize civilian casualties.

In earlier testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, McChrystal had stressed the strategic importance of civilian protection. "A willingness to operate in ways minimizing causalities or damage ... is critical," he argued. "Although I expect stiff fighting ahead, the measure of success will not be enemy killed. It will be shielding the Afghan population from violence." So far the cost of failure, for instance by inflicting more civilian casualties, has included a political windfall for Taliban insurgents, who by 2009 posed a much stronger threat than they had in 2005.

Since the issuing of McChrystal's 2009 directive, however, air strikes have continued to kill civilians, the toll increasing with the escalation of the US ground war in response to the greater Taliban threat.

In February 2010 alone, 46 Afghan civilians were killed in just three strikes. An errant rocket attack on February 14 killed 12 civilians. Four days later, a NATO air strike mistakenly killed seven Afghan police officers. Another NATO strike on February 20 killed 27 civilians.

In comparison to the previous year, the three-month period from March to June 2010 saw a 44% drop in civilian casualties caused by the coalition. Yet, nine years after the US went to war in Afghanistan, bombing remains part of US strategy and the death toll in aerial strikes continues. In a March incident, a US air strike killed 13 civilians and in June, 10 more civilians, including at least five women and children, were killed in a NATO air strike.

One reaction to the McChrystal directive has been an increased US use of unmanned aerial drones to deliver air strikes. While proponents of targeted drone strikes argue that they offer greater precision, and therefore minimize civilian casualties, it is also possible that the greater ease with which they can be deployed could instead increase the number of raids and thus the civilian casualty rates.

An Alternative for Cambodian NGOs: Democracy or Poverty Reduction?

2010-07-06T01:12:00.016+09:00

Cambodia is well-known to the outside world for its human right violation, crime, corruption and poverty. There are hundreds of local NGOs working on human right protection and promotion of the rule of law. Bingo! they are dealing with one of the pressing issues in Cambodia. They produce good reports for international donors and Western media and convene public forums every month to disseminate and educate people about their civic and political rights and freedom. Every year, they spend hundreds of million USD to support their activities.

In return, they spread the knowledge of democracy to Cambodians, who are hungry for both Western values and lifestyle, and unfriendly behavior of the Cambodian government towards Western values. More and more Khmer rural people are aware of their unspeakable rights and freedom. They are no longer patient with suppression and exploitation by the ruling elites and powerful. Everyday, you can see they protest and gathering in public places to demand justice for illegal eviction and unfair judgement by the corrupt judicial system. Moreover, garment workers are on strike almost everyday both in the capital and provinces to ask for better pay and working condition. More importantly, in the Western media like AFP, AP, CNN or BBC everything about Cambodia is corruption, illegal eviction and poverty. They often quote or refer to reports produced by local and international NGOs or personalities that are not happy with the government actions. It is understandable that usually Cambodian government under Prime Minister Hun Sen is not so friendly with Western media (Sic!)

Do they have anything to do with ECONOMY or BASIC SERVICES? In short, RARELY! Why? Cambodia is a very poor country why economic growth and necessary services are not prioritized by the civic groups? Well, to be honest, I dont know as I never work with any NGOs. However, what I strongly agree is economic development and basic services should be pursued first. When people are better off their children will better education and they will have higher demands from the government for better service delivery and performance from the public officials. What is the effect from hundreds of million USD spent by those NGOs if they turn them into economic development? Why don't we nurture rural Cambodians about entrepreneurship and small business knowledge? How important it is to educate poor family about the importance of health and education! How useful it is to spend some portions of their funds to build roads, schools and health centers for rural Cambodians!

Experiences of East Asia Miracle (Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong) and later some new industrialized countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia, show that democracy is not the definitive reason behind these economic successes. On the contrary, when countries become more develop there is an emerging class of the society called MIDDLE CLASS who always press their governments for better performance and efficiency in handling public affairs. Poor economic performance or low revenue are no longer an excuse by the government as it is obvious that the countries develop.

Balancing out development

2010-07-02T00:21:00.006+09:00

The Phnom Penh Post
Thursday, 01 July 2010 15:00
By Nicola Crosta

Cambodia has made strides in sustainable development, but progress will hinge on bridging existing disparities that separate the rural and urban populations

Over the last decade, Cambodia has been successful in achieving sustained economic growth, but this has been narrowly based and continues to be challenged by stark social and territorial disparities. Alongside these challenges, there is enormous unexploited potential for sustainable economic development and diversification across both rural and urban Cambodia. Clearly, many of the key factors influencing the country’s development dynamics – both positive and negative – are localised, and are thus best understood and addressed at the sub-national level. This is one of the main conclusions we reached in the Local Development Outlook: Cambodia, launched on Wednesday by the UN Capital Development Fund in Phnom Penh at the UNCDF/UNDP Local Development Forum.

On the one hand, modest progress towards some of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is concentrated in specific regions and dependent on local circumstances. On the other, Cambodia possesses significant unexploited potential. Notably, some of its strongest assets are localised just where poverty and exclusion is the greatest. For example, despite its strong tourism and construction industries, Siem Reap remains one of the country’s poorest provinces.

In this context, a strong consensus is emerging across both developed and developing countries that a new policy approach is needed – one that builds on local knowledge to tailor public policy to locally specific circumstances. This should allow the provision of public goods when they are needed and where they are needed, in an integrated fashion. This logic is behind recent efforts to use more disaggregated data, such as that gathered in Cambodia through the already existing commune database, to localise the MDGs and attack poverty traps via deliberate, place-based strategies. For instance, in many countries, local MDG “scorecards” are being developed to track progress at the local level and provide input to national and sub-national planning processes. This approach also guides local development strategies that seek to harness endogenous potential and capitalise on opportunities for economic diversification and development. Additionally, this localised approach is increasingly being adopted to drive policy responses to climate change that has significant – and territorially asymmetric – impacts across developing countries.

What does this mean, in practice, for Cambodia? As argued in the Outlook, action is needed on at least two fronts. First and foremost, decentralisation reforms must advance. This will provide the necessary governance infrastructure to empower local actors as agents of change and development. Decentralisation is not just about promoting local democracy and participation; it is also a key tool to promote economic development. Second, policy that clearly outlines a localised approach to development is needed at the national level. This doesn’t mean top-down planning. It means adopting a strategic approach that is sensitive to the different characteristics of different parts of the country. This includes – for instance – developing the government’s capacity to tailor its sectoral policies to the specific context of rural areas, urban areas and cross-border or coastal provinces.

But realising local development potential is not just the responsibility of government. Private sector and financial institutions have a critical role to play to ensure local economic development opportunities are harnessed. Development partners can also do more to make sure their support is strategically targeted where it is needed and in ways that maximise synergies and integration, rather than duplication.

This local perspective may not be the solution to Cambodia’s economic, social and environmental challenges. But it is certainly part of the solution. Anyone who has travelled across Cambodia knows that this is a land of immense opportunities. A future is possible where rural areas thrive and where Cambodian cities act as hubs for development. But for this to happen, efforts need to be localised: Economic growth in Phnom Penh does not automatically translate into development in Ban Lung. In other words, growth is necessary, but it doesn’t necessarily imply balanced, sustainable development. If sustainable development is the objective, key actors need to act collectively, strategically and deliberately towards it.

This will allow all Cambodian regions, and their populations, to participate in national growth and development.

Nicola Crosta is chief technical advisor to the UN Capital Development Fund, the UN’s investment agency for least developed countries.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2010070140195/National-news/balancing-out-development.html

Workplace bans on beards raise hairy questions

2010-06-22T13:42:00.001+09:00

Tuesday, June 22, 2010
By MIKI NAKANISHI
Kyodo News

MAEBASHI, Gunma Pref. — The issue of men with facial hair in the workplace has recently prompted serious discussions as well as actual bans based on "decorum."

News photo
Hairy issue: A bearded shopkeeper is given a "no" sign by a customer in an illustration addressing the issue of banning facial hair in the workplace. TARO ARAI ILLUSTRATION / KYODO

In May, the city of Isesaki, Gunma Prefecture, banned all male municipal employees from sporting beards in the office on the grounds that public servants should look decent. The city took the action after some residents complained about its bearded workers.

In response to the news, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said it had never heard of any municipality introducing such a rule.

Isesaki's move, however, is nothing new. A growing number of Japanese, including athletes, are being prohibited from turning up for work unshaven so they won't "offend" the public.

Seven-Eleven Japan Co. is particularly strict about the appearance of its employees and says it won't hire men with beards.

"We might fire workers growing beards regardless of whether they are regular staff or part-time workers," a public relations official said.

Oriental Land Co., owner of the Tokyo Disney Resort, also bans beards, like its U.S. counterpart.

"It's important that workers serving our guests maintain an immaculate image," an official said. "But the rule doesn't apply to the man playing the role of Captain Hook in our park."

The manufacturing arm of razor maker Kai Corp. tests the quality of its products almost every month on its male workers. They grow facial hair until the monthly test date arrives and get back to work cleanshaven after the tests.

Some men take issue with the bans.

An employee of Japan Post Service Co. sued the firm to protest a pay cut imposed because of his beard.

In March, the Kobe District Court ordered the company to pay him ¥370,000 on grounds that a person's appearance is a matter of personal freedom and a uniform ban on beards is unreasonable.

In sports, the Yomiuri Giants baseball club is well known for its ban on beards. When he left the Nippon Ham Fighters for the Giants in December 2006, infielder Michihiro Ogasawara made his fans gasp by shaving his trademark beard.

The baseball star said abiding by his team's rules was a matter of manhood.

No regulations exist regarding facial hair in the world of sumo, the most tradition-bound of sports in Japan.

According to the Japan Sumo Association, some non-Japanese wrestlers have taken flak in the past because they tend to be more hairy than most Japanese and some fans found their bushy facial hair unseemly. By and large, not wearing a beard is a tacit rule.

The association, however, is rather flexible regarding the issue.

"We work in the world where luck counts a great deal, so some wrestlers don't shave during a winning streak" because they fear it would change their luck, an association official said.

"It is said that growing a beard or not should be a matter of personal freedom and left to each individual to decide, but organizations fail to function well if they lack a certain measure of discipline," said Mitsuru Yaku, a cartoonist and commentator on various social issues who himself sports a beard.

"A beard is a symbol that is the polar opposite of a virtue associated with a serious-minded adult, and many people equate beards with decadence or moral laxity," he said.

World Bank applauds Cambodia for success in financial industry

2010-06-09T16:09:00.001+09:00

People's Daily Online
15:34, June 08, 2010
World Bank applauded Cambodia on Tuesday for a success in financial industry.

Delivering speech at the opening of the workshop on corporate governance in Phnom Penh on Tuesday, Qimiao Fan, World Bank's country manager said "the success of Cambodia's finance industry is proof that improving corporate governance works. Thanks to the national bank of Cambodia's regulations and standards, and close supervision, many of Cambodia's commercial banks and microfinance institutions have raised their standards of corporate governance and been rewarded with greater investment."

Qimiao Fan also prospected that Cambodia will have a promising future due to its geographical location and the growth in many sectors.

"Along with a number of sectors with strong growth potential, a young population with a lifetime of work ahead of it, a stable society and a good geographic location close to much large markets in Asia, Cambodia has a promising future, and especially so if its financial institutions and enterprises offer the comparative advantage of good corporate governance," he said.

Chea Chanto, governor of the National Bank of Cambodia said the recent bad experience of the world financial crisis taught Cambodia the hard way about how the failure of bank and financial system can impact livelihoods. "It is important that countries such as Cambodia take stock of this lesson and seek to avoid a repeat in our own banking and financial system," he said at the workshop titled "Corporate Governance for Banking and Financial Institutions."

He said having learned from the Asian financial crisis, the National Bank of Cambodia has taken a series of measures to better supervise and regulate the banking and financial system in the country.

Chea Chanto, meanwhile, said banks have an overwhelmingly dominant position in the country's financial system, representing more than 90 percent and are extremely important engines of economic growth, citing they are the source of finance for the majority of firms.

Source:Xinhua

Donors to give near $3 billion in 2010-12

2010-06-08T18:50:00.003+09:00

The Phnoom Penh Post
Tuesday, 08 June 2010 15:03 Sebastian Strangio

INTERNATIONAL development assistance to Cambodia is expected to top US$2.8 billion for the three years ending 2012, according to indicative financing estimates released during government-donor meetings in the capital last week.

According to a copy of the estimates obtained by the Post, the figure includes the $1.1 billion in pledges announced at the close of the Cambodia Development Cooperation Forum (CDCF) on Thursday, in addition to indicative financing totalling $958 million for 2011 and $750.5 million for 2012.

But observers say the figures do not necessarily point to a decline in aid payments, and that the indications could rise if new donor-funded projects come online over the next two years.

“The indicative financing for 2011 and 2012 could increase a little because donors require some time to confirm their commitments with their respective governments,” said Sin Somuny, executive director of Medicam, an umbrella organisation for health-sector NGOs.

Hady Riad, a councillor at the German embassy, said Germany’s indicative aid figures, which show a decrease from $65.6 million this year to $50.5 million in 2011 and $27 million in 2012, consisted of disbursals for pre-existing aid projects and would be subject to change. “These figures are not to be equated with any new commitments,” he said.

German development assistance spiked in 2010 because of some projects that have had a “long period of implementation”, he said. He added that Berlin would undertake its biannual assessment of projects in Cambodia next year, and that the approval of new projects could potentially boost indications.

Masafumi Kuroki, Japan’s ambassador to Cambodia, said the 2011-12 figures indicated “an overall trend” of donor support for the government, but that his country’s aid figures would also likely be revised. Japan has indicated it will maintain its level of development assistance at $131.8 million each year from 2010-12.

“Our intention is to maintain almost the same level of assistance for the coming years, but it may increase or decrease,” Kuroki said.

The list of aid figures also gives a breakdown of the record $1.1 billion pledged by donors last week. Japan continues to be the country’s largest bilateral donor, pledging $131.8 million for 2010, followed by China ($100.2 million), the US ($68.5 million) and Australia ($61 million).

UN agencies will shell out $86.8 million for 2010, while the World Bank will contribute $122.7 million, the Asian Development Bank $153.8 million and the Global Fund $75.8 million. The figures also show South Korea pledging $26.8 million in aid for this year, a figure that is indicated to rise to $69.4 million in 2012.

This year’s record $1.1 billion aid pledge was an unprecedented signal of strong donor support for Cambodia, but some civil society activists have argued that development partners have done little to pressure the government to meet good governance benchmarks in exchange for aid.

At the close of the CDCF meeting Thursday, Minister of Economy and Finance Keat Chhon praised the support of the donor community, saying the funds would help support the government’s National Strategic Development Plan (NSDP) update for 2009-13, which will require around $1 billion in external funding annually for its five-year duration.

Sin Somuny from Medicam said that the aid slated for the next three years would benefit the country, but that there needs to be improvements in aid effectiveness.

“The country needs this money for development,” he said. “The question is, how do we improve accountability, transparency, efficiency and effectiveness?”

PM talks on govt salary reforms

2010-06-03T22:53:00.002+09:00

Thursday, 03 June 2010 15:03
The Phnom Penh Post
Cheang Sokha and James O’toole

PRIME Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday defended the government’s controversial decision to end salary supplement programmes for civil servants, saying such programmes breed corruption and create inequity among government workers.

Speaking before the Cambodia Development Cooperation Forum, a meeting with international donors and development organisations to assess the government’s progress on a number of reforms and finalise new aid pledges, Hun Sen called the cancelled programmes “dangerous” and said they risked “breaking our administration”.

“Regarding the issue of salary supplements and why the government decided to cancel the priority packages and the salary supplements, I have already ordered my colleagues to discuss this with the development partners,” Hun Sen said. “At this point, it will help prevent corruption.”

Under several kinds of salary supplement programmes, donors had been assisting the government in bolstering the often-paltry salaries of civil servants across a variety of sectors. Two such supplement programmes – Priority Mission Groups (PMGs) and Merit-Based Performance Incentives (MBPIs) – were implemented in recent years to allow donors to target specific projects and promote a culture of meritocracy among government workers.

In December, Minister of Economy and Finance Keat Chhon said the government was cancelling all such programmes as part of a broader administrative reform effort effective January 1. NGOs and development organisations responded that they had been given little time to prepare for the reforms, and in January, Keat Chhon announced a six-month transition period in which straightforward salary supplements, though not PMGs or MBPIs, would be allowed to continue.

Officials from NGOs and development organisations have warned that, in response to the supplement cuts, low-level government employees such as doctors and nurses may leave their jobs or charge more for services to supplement their incomes.

In a letter dated May 25 and addressed to ministers and secretaries of state at “all ministries [and] institutions of the Royal Government”, Deputy Prime Minister Sok An said that a replacement compensation system called the “Priority Operating Costs scheme” (POC) is to be implemented in July. The letter says that POC will operate “within the framework of the cooperative financial contributions of the development partners”, though it does not specify what sort of oversight donors will have of their funding.

Operating expenses under the POC system, Sok An’s letter explains, are to be tabulated by totalling “daily expenses”, “expenses on communication” and “expenses on transportation”. Monthly expense limits for employees at different levels of government are presented in a table, with limits ranging from US$50-$70 for “operational” expenses at the provincial level and below to $350-400 for “programme management” expenses at the national level.

“This expense table shall be implemented as the common, standard expense table for all ministries and institutions running the Cooperative Financial Contributions programmes or projects of the development partners and shall be reviewed every 18 months at the latest,” the letter reads.
Hun Sen said in his remarks to donors on Wednesday that the Kingdom’s previous reliance on salary supplements had created an environment in which employees of the same government office were forced to compete with one another to work on donor projects and receive the attendant bonuses.

“Imagine if you had a military unit with 100 soldiers and only three of them received the salary supplements – the other 97 will say, ‘Let those soldiers fight!’” Hun Sen said. “They will withdraw, leaving the other three soldiers to be killed, so if we continue this system, Cambodia’s administration will be broken in the near future.”

Sin Somuny, executive director of the local health group Medicam, said he agreed with the prime minister’s concerns about preserving equity in civil servant compensation. He said, however, that further discussions are necessary to clarify how the POC scheme would work in practice.

“I don’t fully understand the details of both the rate and the arrangement of POC, and I think it needs to be fully understood,” he said, adding that he was unsure whether expense levels could be adjusted depending on the needs of a particular office.

In a presentation at a conference in April, National AIDS Authority vice chairman Tia Phalla said POC payments “are not compensation or salary supplements” and emphasised the need to maintain salaries for government workers at acceptable levels.

“There is a real risk that the huge [public health] gains made in Cambodia over the last 15 years might be reversed if staff remuneration is inadequate,” Tia Phalla said.

Donors and development organisations referred questions to the German Embassy, which they said had been the leading international organisation working on the Kingdom’s public administration reform. Embassy officials could not be reached for comment.

Love is really something you've to learn

2010-06-03T14:42:00.003+09:00

I am born with struggle and persistence for whom/what i want but I've never prepared to lose love. I've tried tried but i still lose s.o. I feel mentally tired.

I've been successful with my wish. God grants everything i want but NOT everyone.

I dont know how she feels when she said like that to me. I just wanna talk with her normally even though we cannt no longer be close. I feel sad, lonely and hurt. It's the unhappiness in life that you cannt express. I dont want anyone to listen to my sorrow. Anyway, I can speak my feeling with writing so that I'll have better feeling :).

Feel depressed......

2010-06-01T02:00:00.004+09:00

These days I often feel depressed when I cannot achieve what I've planned to do. I have three or four presentations related to my thesis every month. I find it quite difficult and challenging to develop new papers once a week like that. However, shou ga nai (cannot help) as it's required by my academic supervisor and school. I've to read, read and read.

After I finish my thesis, still, I have many challenges waiting to be solved.

Action on ‘ghost’ pay uncertain

2010-05-24T17:20:00.002+09:00

The Phnom Penh Post
Chhay Channyda and James O’toole
Thursday, 20 May 2010 15:03

GOVERNMENT officials say they are unsure whether individuals profiting from payments to “ghost” civil servants will be prosecuted under the Kingdom’s new Anticorruption Law, sparking questions about how the long-awaited legislation will be implemented.

Ngo Hongly, the secretary general of the Council for Administrative Reform at the Council of Ministers, said this week that a census of civil servants begun last month had uncovered around 2,000 ghost civil servants – workers who are still on the government payroll despite having left their jobs – after having probed 21 of the 26 government ministries. He declined to comment on whether individuals profiting from salaries for ghost civil servants would be prosecuted under the Anticorruption Law, though he said the ghost names discovered thus far were costing the government an estimated US$2 million each year.

Cambodian People’s Party parliamentarian Cheam Yeap said Wednesday that the Anticorruption Law “mentions this issue”. If individuals are discovered pocketing the salaries of ghost civil servants, he noted: “The law says prosecutors may file a complaint to punish those people.”

Cheam Yeap, added, however, that he did not think it would be prudent to immediately punish government officials and others caught committing graft violations, saying they may not realise they are breaking the law.

“For our enforcement, we must first only warn those individuals who are getting money from ghost names,” he said. “We must proceed step by step.”

Ngo Hongly said Wednesday that no officials currently working in the government have yet been discovered pocketing ghost civil servant money.

A two-day census of the Ministry of Education is to begin today, Ngo Hongly said, and the Ministries of Interior, Health, Tourism and Agriculture are to be surveyed by the end of the month. After the census of the ministries, he said, government officials will survey offices at the provincial level, with the work to be completed “around October or November”.

The Anticorruption Law is to go into effect in November.

Yeng Virak, executive director of the Community Legal Education Centre, said that in principle, those who are caught siphoning the salaries of ghost servants “should be prosecuted”. For the anticorruption effort to succeed in the long-term, however, he said targeted enforcement would likely be more effective than arresting every single offender.

“You need to address the higher level, not the junior guys that somehow need to make a living,” Yeng Virak said. “If you are talking about prosecutions, you need to talk about those who are most responsible.”

Cheam Yeap said the government “sees many kinds of ghost names”, and offered the following taxonomy:

“First, there are dead officials’ names, but living officials take their salary, like in the police and military forces and in other offices. Second, there are people who work at private companies but still come to take their salary from the government. Third, there are people who don’t come to work, and their bosses take their money. Finally, there are ghost civil servants whose salaries go to the budget of the ministry or office where they work.”

According to an unofficial translation of the Anticorruption Law from the development NGO Pact Cambodia, suspects may be prosecuted for embezzlement, a punishment under the Kingdom’s penal code, as well as for “illicit enrichment”.

“Petty” corruption offences, defined as acts committed “for daily survival” that are “not harmful to society”, carry jail terms of anywhere between seven days and five years, whereas “abuse of power” offences by elected officials can fetch up to 10 years in prison.

Along with a mandate to investigate these and other offences, the law gives the new Anticorruption Unit at the Council of Ministers the power to “conduct mass education and awareness with regard to the negative impact of corruption and encourage public participation in preventing and combating corruption”.

SRP spokesman Yim Sovann said Tuesday that this approach could be the best way of addressing many of the Kingdom’s graft issues.

Particularly if offences of higher-ranking officials are ignored, Yim Sovann said, prosecutions at the grassroots level could do more harm than good.

“For the low-ranking officials, education should be done first, and then train them again, again, to make them aware of the law,” he said. “The corrupt officials must be prosecuted starting from the top. Sometimes they just prosecute the small, the petty corruption.”

Civil service recruits slashed 39%

2010-05-22T14:56:00.002+09:00

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Kyodo News

The government said Friday it will reduce the hiring of national civil servants by 39 percent in fiscal 2011 from fiscal 2009, which ended in March.

The reduction still represents a setback for the government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who instructed his ministers last month to halve new hiring in the public service in the next fiscal year starting on April 1, 2011.

As the hiring of prison, coast guard and immigration officers will be exempted from the cut, the rate of reduction for other types of civil servants would stand at 50.7 percent.

Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Kazuhiro Haraguchi told reporters the government exempted public safety and security sectors from the cut, saying the hiring for other sectors would be halved.

By organization, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry topped the list with a 50 percent cut, followed by the Finance Ministry at 45 percent.

Haraguchi said the government will try its hardest to hold down personnel costs, as it has long been under severe financial conditions.

The government plans to terminate "amakudari" practices by early retirees and allow civil servants to work until the age limit, Haraguchi said.

Amakudari is the practice of retiring government officials taking highly paid posts at government-affiliated organizations or private-sector firms.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100522a6.html

Reach for the sky

2010-05-22T14:43:00.004+09:00

A street of new housing in Phnom Penh

The city’s Canadia Tower

May 21 2010
By Elaine Moore
Financial Times (UK)

Above the tumultuous streets of northern Phnom Penh, the new Canadia Tower reaches 30 storeys into the sky, dwarfing the palaces and temples that grace the rest of the city’s skyline. The glass-fronted tower is now the highest building in Cambodia and marks the start of an ambitious plan to attract increased foreign investment to this small Asian market.

Known as the “pearl of Asia” in the early 20th century, Phnom Penh has suffered years of civil war and a repressive communist regime, but its architecture of golden-tipped temples, red-roofed houses and French colonial mansions is still distinctive. The Canadia Tower, also known as the OCIC Tower, is instead designed to imitate and rival the sort of modern office space available in bigger neighbouring countries such as Vietnam and Thailand.

The soaring structure will soon be joined by other high-rises across the city, offering homes as well as offices. Some are being funded locally, others by foreign investors (mostly Korean) but all the financial backers hope they will attract wealthy foreigners and persuade locals to forgo their traditional two-storey Khmer villas for an apartment (or an office) with a view.

A new law permitting foreigners to buy condominiums in these skyscrapers will for the first time, the government hopes, encourage a wave of overseas interest.

But the new style of living might take some adjustment, according to local property experts. “Living in a condo is a new concept for Cambodian people,” says Bun Phearith, sales agent at Bonna Realty Group, one of the largest estate agencies in Cambodia. “But it’s an idea that is gaining popularity. Among our younger clients the first properties they ask about are apartments in multi-storey buildings.”

The Canadia Tower stands on Monivong Boulevard, down which Khmer Rouge soldiers marched in April 1975 when they took over Phnom Penh and began to systematically destroy all traces of urban modernity in Cambodia. In just three years, eight months and 20 days, the terrifying success of their vision caused the deaths of millions. By the time the Khmer Rouge were driven out, Phnom Penh was a ghost town.

Senaka Fernando, chairman of the British Business Association in Cambodia, arrived in the capital in 1994 as peace was finally taking hold. “Back then, when planes landed in Phnom Penh at night there was nothing to see – no lights, no large buildings,” he recalls. “The changes that have taken place here over the past 16 years are remarkable.”

Between 2000 and 2009 economic growth in Cambodia averaged 8 per cent. To reflect its success, gleaming high-rises were planned at the height of Cambodia’s property boom. The real estate sector was suddenly awash with money, and prices rose accordingly. Between 2005 and 2008 the cost of property in some areas of Phnom Penh rose from $550 per square metre to $5,000 (Cambodia’s property prices are routinely quoted in US dollars).

Developers planned a series of huge towers and a ring of satellite towns on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Speculators bought up land for better roads, more shopping malls and larger office blocks. The tallest building planned was the International Finance Centre (IFC). This $1bn complex, backed by South Korean company GS E&C, was to have housed a shopping mall, 1,064 apartments, 275 serviced apartments and a school within its 52 storeys.

Then the bubble burst. As the global recession hit south-east Asia, building works ground to a halt and land cleared for work remained empty. Investors took their money away and, according to the International Monetary Fund, the Cambodian economy contracted by 2.5 per cent in 2009. Buildings such as the IFC tower were put on hold or scaled back and property prices in the city centre fell by up to a third.

Not even the Canadia Tower has escaped the downturn. Overseas Cambodian Investment Corporation (OCIC), owner of Canadia Bank, had hoped to persuade the country’s biggest organisations to set up shop inside. But much of the building remains empty and prospective tenants are now being offered a 50 per cent discount if they agree to lease space for a year or more.

Yet there are signs that the Phnom Penh property market is finding its feet again. Those who held on to properties as investments are now looking to sell, real estate agents say. Acleda Bank, a Cambodian commercial bank, has also reported an increase in the number of mortgages issued for residential property at the end of 2009.

Although the number of property transactions is nowhere near the heady levels of 2008, there is a feeling that the market is settling down. Thomas Sterling, country director of Cambodian property managers Sterling Project Management, believes the price crash was in some ways a good thing. “There was so much speculation that it became questionable whether there was any real market for property in Phnom Penh,” he says. “The recession has acted as a natural correction to cap prices.”

Properties in the most desirable areas, such as the riverfront, now fetch around $2,500 per sq metre, according to Bonna Realty. In the north of the city, along the wide streets of what used to be the French quarter, buyers can expect to pay around $1,250 per sq metre.

Rather than new and large-scale projects, the renewed interest is in select projects that are already under way, such as Gold Tower 42. Twenty storeys of the $300m South Korean project, financed by DaeHan Real Estate Investment and built by Yon Woo, are already up and the tower should be complete by late 2011. All of the office space, and half of the residential space has already been sold.

Across town, developers of the Diamond Island project are hoping to finish ahead of schedule. About half of the 168 homes built in the first phase of the project, on sale for $200,000-$1m, have been sold according to managers for developers OCIC. The rest was slated for completion in 2016 but the developers hope to bring this forward by two years. Other satellite towns include the Grand Phnom Penh International City, which will contain 4,000 residential units, and the $2bn Camko City project.

Interested overseas buyers have been given a helping hand by new government regulations. Previously, foreigners who wanted a stake in land had to establish a joint venture with a Cambodian national. But Cambodia still has a way to go before it attracts large numbers of overseas investors. Electricity prices are high and blackouts are not uncommon; phone networks can be unreliable and corruption is still a problem.

Foreign investors might also have qualms about buying into developments that have had a negative impact on the country’s poorest people. The losers in the evolution of Phnom Penh from backwater to international city are the citizens evicted from property that was sold to developers with minimal compensation.

But with the IMF now predicting growth of 4.8 per cent in 2010 and Cambodia’s links to the rest of the region strengthening, investors who choose carefully could find themselves first into a country attracting more international attention each year.

Elaine Moore is a personal finance reporter for the FT

KRT rules on legal doctrine

2010-05-22T01:14:00.001+09:00

JUDGES at the Khmer Rouge tribunal on Thursday partially granted an appeal by defence teams against the use of Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE), a controversial kind of criminal liability that could aid the prosecution at trial.

In a decision dated Thursday, the court’s Pre-Trial Chamber ruled on the use of the three forms of JCE in Case 002, upholding the use of types I and II but rejecting the third and most far-reaching.

Though Pre-Trial Chamber decisions cannot be appealed, the issue may be raised again before the Trial Chamber. Case 002 is expected to go before the Trial Chamber in early 2011.

Anne Heindel, a legal adviser at the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, said that even though the Trial Chamber is not bound by the 69-page decision, it may nonetheless “find it very persuasive”.

Michael Karnavas, the international co-lawyer for Ieng Sary, called the ruling a “wise and courageous decision” in an email on Thursday.

The court’s Co-Investigating Judges ruled in December that JCE, under which suspects can be held responsible for crimes committed as part of a common plan, could be applicable for international criminal charges at the tribunal.

The first form of JCE may apply when participants share intent to commit a crime, the second when a criminal plan is implemented in “a common concerted system of ill-treatment”, and the third when crimes occur as a “natural and foreseeable” consequence of a common plan.

Friday, 21 May 2010 15:03
The Phnom Penh Post
James O'Toole

Under the third form, for example, four people who plan to rob a bank together could all be charged with murder if one of them shoots a security guard, even if this shooting was not part of the original plan.

The Pre-Trial Chamber said Thursday that this third form was not “part of customary international law at the time relevant to Case 002”, and thus should not be applied.

Heindel said the third form of JCE could play a crucial role in the prosecution’s Case 002 argument if its use is permitted.

“The whole reason you have JCE III is so that you can make that link between senior leaders and lower-level perpetrators,” she said. “If this is the final ruling, it will make it much harder for the prosecution to tell the full story of all the crimes that happened in Cambodia and to link what happened at the lower level to the centre.”

The Beijing consensus is to keep quiet

2010-05-11T19:46:00.003+09:00

The Economist
May 6th 2010

The China model

In the West people worry that developing countries want to copy “the China model”. Such talk makes people in China uncomfortable

CHINESE officials said the opening of the World Expo in Shanghai on April 30th would be simple and frugal. It wasn’t. The display of fireworks, laser beams, fountains and dancers rivalled the extravagance of Beijing’s Olympic ceremonies in 2008. The government’s urge to show off Chinese dynamism proved irresistible. For many, the razzmatazz lit up the China model for all the world to admire.

The multi-billion-dollar expo embodies this supposed model, which has won China many admirers in developing countries and beyond. A survey by the Pew Research Centre, an American polling organisation, found that 85% of Nigerians viewed China favourably last year (compared with 79% in 2008), as did 50% of Americans (up from 39% in 2008) and 26% of Japanese (up from 14%, see chart). China’s ability to organise the largest ever World Expo, including a massive upgrade to Shanghai’s infrastructure, with an apparent minimum of the bickering that plagues democracies, is part of what dazzles.

Scholars and officials in China itself, however, are divided over whether there is a China model (or “Beijing consensus” as it was dubbed in 2004 by Joshua Cooper Ramo, an American consultant, playing on the idea of a declining “Washington consensus”), and if so what the model is and whether it is wise to talk about it. The Communist Party is diffident about laying claim to any development model that other countries might copy. Official websites widely noted a report by a pro-Party newspaper in Hong Kong, Ta Kung Pao, calling the expo “a display platform for the China model”. But Chinese leaders avoid using the term and in public describe the expo in less China-centred language.

Not so China’s publishing industry, which in recent months has been cashing in on an upsurge of debate in China about the notion of a China model (one-party rule, an eclectic approach to free markets and a big role for state enterprise being among its commonly identified ingredients). In November a prominent Party-run publisher produced a 630-page tome titled “China Model: A New Development Model from the Sixty Years of the People’s Republic”. In January came the more modest “China Model: Experiences and Difficulties”. Another China-model book was launched in April and debated at an expo-related forum in Shanghai. Its enthusiastic authors include Zhao Qizheng, a former top Party propaganda official, and John Naisbitt, an American futurologist.

Western publishers have been no less enthused by China’s continued rapid growth. The most recent entry in the field is “The Beijing Consensus, How China’s Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century” by Stefan Halper, an American academic. Mr Halper, who has served as an official in various Republican administrations, argues that “just as globalisation is shrinking the world, China is shrinking the West” by quietly limiting the projection of its values.

But despite China’s status as “the world’s largest billboard advertisement for the new alternative” of going capitalist and staying autocratic, Party leaders are, as Mr Halper describes it, gripped by a fear of losing control and of China descending into chaos. It is this fear, he says, that is a driving force behind China’s worrying external behaviour. Party rule, the argument runs, depends on economic growth, which in turn depends on resources supplied by unsavoury countries. Politicians in Africa in fact rarely talk about following a “Beijing consensus”. But they love the flow of aid from China that comes without Western lectures about governance and human rights.

The same fear makes Chinese leaders reluctant to wax lyrical about a China model. They are acutely aware of American sensitivity to any talk suggesting the emergence of a rival power and ideology—and conflict with America could wreck China’s economic growth.

In 2003 Chinese officials began talking of the country’s “peaceful rise”, only to drop the term a few months later amid worries that even the word “rise” would upset the flighty Americans. Zhao Qizheng, the former propaganda official, writes that he prefers “China case” to “China model”. Li Junru, a senior Party theorist, said in December that talk of a China model was “very dangerous” because complacency might set in that would sap enthusiasm for further reforms.

Some Chinese lament that this is already happening. Political reform, which the late architect of China’s developmental model, Deng Xiaoping, once argued was essential for economic liberalisation, has barely progressed since he crushed the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. Liu Yawei of the Carter Centre, an American human-rights group wrote last month that efforts by Chinese scholars to promote the idea of a China model have become “so intense and effective” that political reform has been “swept aside”.

Chinese leaders’ fear of chaos suggests they themselves are not convinced that they have found the right path. Talk of a model is made all the harder by the stability-threatening problems that breakneck growth engenders, from environmental destruction to rampant corruption and a growing gap between rich and poor. One of China’s more outspoken media organisations, Caixin, this week published an article by Joseph Nye, an American academic. In it Mr Nye writes of the risks posed by China’s uncertain political trajectory. “Generations change, power often creates hubris and appetites sometimes grow with eating,” he says.

One Western diplomat, using the term made famous by Mr Nye, describes the expo as a “competition between soft powers”. But if China’s soft power is in the ascendant and America’s declining—as many Chinese commentators write—the event, which is due to end on October 31st, hardly shows it. True, China succeeded in persuading a record number of countries to take part. But visitor turnout has been far lower than organisers had anticipated. And queues outside America’s dour pavilion have been among the longest.

Cambodian lessons for South Korea

2010-04-29T00:31:00.001+09:00

Apr 29, 2010
By Donald Kirk
Asia Times Online (Hong Kong)

SAIGON - North Korea's apparent torpedoing of a South Korean navy ship and getting away from the scene of the crime with no more than recriminations and oratorical flourishes ringing in the ears of the perpetrators demonstrates a reality from which there is no escape. The North still has thousands of artillery pieces within range of metropolitan Seoul and the nearby port of Incheon as well as missiles with the range to reach anywhere in the South, and nobody in South Korea really wants to challenge that kind of threat.

South Korea is doing so well economically and living standards are so high that the idea of seeking anything other than rhetorical revenge for the sinking of the Cheonan with a loss of 46 lives on March 26 appears almost unthinkable. Certainly South Korea would get no support for such a venture from its American ally, bogged down in wars in the Middle East and attempting to force South Korean generals reluctantly to believe they should take full command of all forces in the South in the event of a second Korean war.

While South Korea's economy grows at a pace ahead of that of the rest of the industrial world, South Korean military people worry over what they see as the North's alarming new strategy. That is, to chip away at the South Koreans with attacks such as that on the hapless navy corvette in the West or Yellow Sea - and maybe bold quick hits on Seoul and Incheon.

The point, according to JoongAng Ilbo, one of South Korea's major newspapers, would eventually be to occupy a portion of metropolitan Seoul and then to negotiate a ceasefire. The paper quoted a military intelligence source as saying North Korea had strengthened its mechanized forces near the line with South Korea. At the same time, North Korea is bolstering naval forces on its southwest coast and threatening new attacks on South Korean vessels along the Northern Limit Line below which the South bans all North Korean boats.

While reluctant to do anything that might provoke armed conflict with North Korea, US and South Korean analysts wonder how long the North can carry on with such impunity. They see no let-up in the harshness of life for the vast majority of North Koreans - and ask whether any system can endure forever while the economy deteriorates, citizens gain slightly more knowledge of the outside world via illicit cell phones and short-range radios and ailing Dear Leader Kim Jong-il smoothes the way for transition of power to his youngest son.

For precedent, it's tempting to turn to the case of Cambodia after the victory of the Khmer Rouge in April 1975.

The Dear Leader's rule may not be cruelest the world has seen since the defeat of Adolf Hitler's Germany in 1945 or the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1953. That distinction probably belongs to Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, who ruled from the once tranquil capital of Phnom Penh until December 1978 when Vietnamese communist troops drove them out. About two million people are estimated to have died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge from starvation, executions, torture and disease.

Although comparisons may seem far-fetched, the suffering under the Khmer Rouge is reminiscent of that endured for many more years in North Korea.

Today, however, Phnom Penh is bustling, alive with shops selling an incredible range of exotic silk, statuary, silver objects and souvenirs. Restaurants offer any kind of menu. The streets are swarming with traffic as motor scooters dart in and out and larger vehicles carry people and commercial products. Motorcycles pulling what look like small old-fashioned carriages offer taxi services. Internet cafes thrive in every market place. Casinos and nightclubs lure those in search of higher-priced fun, and the National Museum and Royal Palace offer lush and rich glimpses into Khmer civilization and heritage going back 2,000 years.

So what lesson is there in the transformation of Cambodia from a frightening dictatorship into a hustling if not exactly democratic society? Cambodia's present system, in which Hun Sen has ruled as prime minister with the backing of Vietnam almost constantly for 25 years, is obviously not ideal. Many of the country's 15 million people continue to suffer economically.

And it's fair to assume that torture and killing go on, although not on a mass scale. In an imperfect world, however, Cambodia gives every appearance of having recovered its erstwhile reputation as an "oasis of peace". That was how then prince Norodom Sihanouk - who before and after ruled as king - described Cambodia when it was navigating a treacherous course of neutrality as American and South Vietnamese forces fought the North Vietnamese until the US-backed regime fell in Vietnam two weeks after the defeat of that in Cambodia in 1975.

Incredibly, Sihanouk has survived, so much so that in his old age he endures as a kind of king emeritus above the tawdry power politics that periodically shakes up the elite of the capital six years after his eldest son, Norodom Sihamoni, was crowned as his successor.

The survival of the throne, however, represents a grand compromise in which momentous changes had to occur before Cambodia could begin to reach its current level of peace and prosperity. The Pol Pot regime had to fall, and the men around him, those responsible for forms of torture matched and exceeded only by the security apparatus of Kim Jong-il, had to flee, be killed or captured, to disappear forever. The lesson here may not be lost on South Koreans or their American ally.

There is, however, another irony here: that communist Vietnam, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, united between North and South Vietnam, drove out the Khmer Rouge. How was it that the forces of a communist country, against which the Americans and South Vietnamese, supported by two divisions of South Koreans, had fought for a generation, could have accomplished such a stunning success for the everlasting benefit of the Cambodian people?

The answer in part is that Vietnam, after the communist victory in 1975, was never a terrible dictatorship on the scale of North Korea. As Vietnam's leadership went through its own tortuous policy shifts, market capitalism began to flourish. Vietnamese gained a level of cultural and economic freedom that had not appeared possible in 1975. Moreover, Ho Chi Minh, who led Vietnam's communist regime until his death in 1969, never gained a reputation for pervasive cruelty over his own people even as he ruthlessly suppressed opponents.

Vastly different though the societies and cultures of Cambodia and North Korea undoubtedly are, the conclusion seems clear. There can be no real compromise with the Kim Jong-il regime. The history of regimes such as that in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge is they do not willingly yield, do not suddenly adopt humanitarian policies and do not give up the props of their rule, notably their weapons. It's wishful thinking to expect North Korea to shift its policies or honor any agreement on much of anything, including its nuclear weapons program. It took an upheaval to bring about relief from suffering in Cambodia, and it will take another to reform North Korea.

Donald Kirk, based in Seoul, covered the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia for newspapers and magazine, writing two books about them. He has also written three books on Korea, most recently Korea Betrayed: Kim Dae Jung and Sunshine.

Cambodia is Facing up to its Genocide says Youk Chhang

2010-04-25T12:54:00.001+09:00

More than 30 years after the darkest chapter in its history, Cambodia remains a damaged and fragile society, Youk Chhang, an expert on the Cambodian genocide and the man leading the Documentation Center of Cambodia told an audience at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

April 2010

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS — More than 30 years after the darkest chapter in its history, Cambodia remains a damaged and fragile society, a leading Cambodian genocide expert told an audience at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Cambodia is still suffering from the legacy of the Khmer Rouge, the brutal, ultra-communist regime that ruled the Southeast Asian country from 1975 to 1979. Cambodia is like shattered glass, said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam). "It's a fragile, broken society as a nation. People are divided," he said in an April 22 talk. "You drop a glass on the floor. It’s broken."

DC-Cam, a Phnom Penh non-profit group founded in 1995, gathers and researches information and materials related to the Khmer Rouge regime. DC-Cam's twin missions are preserving Cambodia's historical memory and helping to bring justice for victims of Khmer Rouge atrocities. The group has collected more than one million documents, interviewed thousands of former Khmer Rouge cadres and identified or mapped 20,000 mass graves and nearly 200 prisons. Its documentation has served as evidence in the United Nations-backed genocide tribunals being held in Cambodia to try former regime leaders. It has the world's largest repository of Khmer Rouge-related materials, much of it available online for free.

At Stanford, Chhang also had a positive message about Cambodia's progress toward renewal and reconciliation. Cambodian schools are beginning to teach the full history of the Khmer Rouge period, a step toward confronting the past and moving on. The genocide tribunals are underway, potentially bringing justice and closure. And DC-Cam's mission of educating the world about the Cambodian genocide could help prevent such atrocities in the future.

"The job of the whole nation is to pick up all the little pieces to put back together," said Chhang. Cambodians, can "be proud of the genocide that we have lived through." "I’m proud to tell you that I have survived genocide and can tell you the story. I am no longer a victim," declared Chhang, who was named one of the world’s 100 "heroes and pioneers" by Time magazine in 2007.

The Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, ruled Cambodia from April 1975 to January 1979, aiming to build an agrarian utopia based on Maoist ideals. About two million Cambodians lost their lives under the Khmer Rouge to execution, starvation, disease, or overwork. Thousands of Cambodians were forced to labor in the countryside. Political enemies were slaughtered, giving rise to the term "killing fields", portrayed in a 1984 movie of the same name.

Chhang was 14 when the Khmer Rouge came to power, forcing him and other teenagers into hard labor in the countryside. Chhang's brother-in-law died after a public beating to punish him for stealing leftover cucumbers to feed his pregnant wife, Chhang's sister. The sister was accused of eating the stolen food and perished after her stomach was cut open.

The genocide has left Cambodians deeply divided. Chhang said his niece, who lost her mother in the butchering, is now in her late 30's and living in Maryland. She refuses to return to her homeland and disagrees with Chhang's work in support of the genocide tribunal. Chhang's mother, who lost her own parents, siblings and some of her children, has forgiven the Khmer Rouge perpetrators and is indifferent toward the tribunals. "In the same family, my niece, mother, and I are divided about how justice should be done," said Chhang. "I support the tribunal. I want justice. I would not reach for forgiveness without prosecution."

The Cambodian genocide tribunal, established in early 2006 with support from the UN, so far has tried one defendant, the former chief of a notorious torture prison. Four other top Khmer Rouge officials are being held for a second trial. Donor countries have provided more than $100 million to support the proceedings, according to the Associated Press. Although some have criticized the tribunal as too little, too late, Chhang sees it as necessary step in Cambodia’s healing process. "The tribunal is about the future, basically."

He also believes that teaching history to a new generation of Cambodians will promote reconciliation. To that end, DC-Cam has published the first Cambodian textbook on Khmer Rouge history, a topic long ignored in the nation's classrooms. Fourteen years after the idea for the textbook emerged, the history book is finally being used in Cambodian high schools this year.

Chhang's talk was sponsored by at the business school's Public Management Program; the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law in the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies; and MBA student participants in a recent service learning trip to Cambodia and Thailand. In addition to speaking to GSB students, Chhang was scheduled to speak with Hoover Institution officials about digitizing and archiving DC-CAM's materials.

DC-Cam was founded as an office of the Yale University Cambodian Genocide Program. It became an independent institute in 1997. It employs about 50 people and has funding from the U.S. and Swedish governments.

— Maria Shao

http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/headlines/chhang-Cambodia.html

Rebellious Mood Takes Root in Rural Thailand

2010-04-24T15:19:00.006+09:00

Red-shirted protesters in Bangkok on Friday. Farmers who say they were never interested in politics are donating large sums to the red-shirt movement. (Agnes Dherbeys for The New York Times)
The widow of Praison Tiplom, a protester killed in Bangkok, held a picture of her husband during his funeral last Saturday. (Thomas Fuller/The International Herald Tribune)
The red shirts have a core of support in Khon Kaen. (The New York Times)

April 23, 2010
By THOMAS FULLER
The New York Times

KHON KAEN, Thailand — Six weeks of demonstrations by red-shirted protesters turned violent this week in Bangkok, but the capital is not the only place with a whiff of insurrection in the air.

On this poor and rugged plateau in Thailand’s hinterland, farmers who say they were never interested in politics are donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to the red shirt movement. In at least three northeastern cities, red shirts are holding nightly rallies, sometimes drawing thousands of people.

This week, Red Station Radio, an antigovernment FM station based here in Khon Kaen, about 280 miles north of Bangkok, broadcast a warning that a train was heading to Bangkok carrying military vehicles. In no time, hundreds of red shirt supporters, who have followed the protests daily with the broadcasts, mobilized to block it.

Indeed, this rural region — home to a third of Thailand’s population — forms much of the core of the red shirt movement, demonstrating the magnitude of the challenge facing Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, whom the protesters are pressuring to step down and call new elections.

On Friday, protest leaders in Bangkok offered to negotiate an end to the standoff if Mr. Abhisit would dissolve Parliament within one month, instead of immediately. The gesture eased tensions slightly a day after one person was killed and scores were wounded when grenades exploded near red shirt barricades in the capital.

But the anger here in the countryside will not be easily dissipated after simmering for more than three years since the military coup that overthrew Thaksin Shinawatra, the billionaire tycoon turned prime minister, who is seen as the first politician to have seriously addressed the concerns of the poor.

Mr. Thaksin’s wealth and patronage network remain important drivers of the protests, but the movement also appears to be taking on a grass-roots character, with farmers and villagers finding common cause and demonstrating a new assertiveness.

The people of this northeastern plateau, known as Isaan, speak dialects similar to the Lao and Cambodian languages and generally work as farmers, manual laborers and factory workers.

The red shirts have railed against the “double standards” in Thai society — the wealthy, the Bangkok elite and the top military brass break laws with impunity, the protest leaders say, while the poor are held to account.

Radio stations like Red Station Radio have played a crucial role in spreading that message in the countryside. Red Station Radio, which operates from an unmarked office, has rapidly expanded since it started operating in November, and now has six affiliates in and around this city.

Its disc jockeys urge supporters to disrupt visits by senior government officials. One D.J. is even a full-time police officer, who uses the on-air name Noi Tamrung to protect his identity and, he says, avoid being fired. Many other police officers also back the movement, its supporters say.

“Don’t come here — that’s the message,” said Noi Tamrung. “We reject anyone from this government.”

Government supporters have called for the stations to be shut down, and the government has already banned some Web sites of the red-shirt movement, including the site of Red Station Radio. But the red shirts here have vowed to physically block any attempt to close the station, such is its support among farmers.

One farmer, Takum Srihangkod, listens constantly to broadcasts of protests in Bangkok with a cheap Chinese-made radio that he tucks into his waistband, next to his slingshot.

“Abhisit doesn’t want anything to do with poor people,” Mr. Takum said of the prime minister as he tended his cattle. His radio even stayed tuned to the protests as he muscled out a newborn calf in a difficult birth.

Supporters of the government often portray the red shirts as a mob for hire, mercenary protesters who receive a daily stipend. In a country with a long tradition of vote buying, that may be true for some.

But villagers bristle when asked if they are being paid to protest. Local officials and police officers describe a widespread fund-raising effort to support the demonstrators in Bangkok.

“We help each other,” said Triem Tongkod, a farmer who grows sticky rice in a village outside Khon Kaen. Pickup trucks with loudspeakers travel through his village periodically asking for donations. “You give what you can afford,” Mr. Triem said.

Last Saturday, at a Buddhist temple about 35 miles outside Khon Kaen, Mr. Triem was one of thousands of people who attended the funeral of Praison Tiplom, a protester killed in the April 10 crackdown on the red shirt protests in Bangkok. A total of 25 people died, including five soldiers, in circumstances that remain under investigation.

The deaths of protesters have become an opportunity to rally support and gather donations. At the funeral last Saturday, organizers collected about $9,400 for Mr. Praison’s widow, according to Num Chaiya, a D.J. at Red Station Radio who helped organize the funeral.

It was far from a typical somber ceremony, the crowd cheering loudly as Mr. Praison’s coffin, draped with the Thai flag, was carried around the crematorium three times. “Give a big hand to a warrior of the people!” Mr. Num exhorted the crowd. Almost all wore red.

Organizers of the red shirts have begun selling DVDs eulogizing the dead protesters and showing scenes of the April 10 crackdown. Along the highway, one DVD salesman, Pornchai Nanthaphothi, operates a stall festooned with red flags and other red shirt paraphernalia. A bandanna he sells is embossed with the words, “I’m not scared of you.”

“This area is nearly 100 percent red,” Mr. Pornchai said.

Successive Thai governments, including the current one, have tried to develop the Isaan region, but persistent income inequality and the need for more doctors, universities and jobs have fueled the protest movement, said Krasae Chanawongse, a medical doctor by training who has worked as a minister in four previous governments.

Thailand’s centralized political system has engendered a “colonial attitude of governors” posted here, he said. “They are more or less dictating, not consulting,” he said.

Some analysts question the durability of the red shirts, because of their close affiliation with Mr. Thaksin, but supporters here in the northeast say the movement has taken on larger goals.

In a country that has seen more than a dozen coups over the past eight decades, Chaisawat Weangwong, a 42-year old rice farmer, said the crisis had opened his eyes to the influence of the military in Thai politics and the need for a system where “the majority chooses the winner.”

“This is not for Thaksin,” he said. “This is for democracy.”

BHP faces investigation into $2.7m Cambodia graft claim

2010-04-22T01:28:00.001+09:00

April 22, 2010
Matt Chambers and Matthew Stevens
The Australian

BHP Billiton yesterday joined Rio Tinto in battling graft allegations, saying it had uncovered evidence of possible corruption by employees on an overseas project.

The Australian understands the conduct, now under investigation by the powerful Securities and Exchange Commission in the US, relates to a bauxite exploration project in Cambodia.

BHP has admitted making a $US2.5 million ($2.7m) payment to the community near the bauxite project, in the northeastern Cambodian province of Mondulkiri, near the Vietnamese border.

A Cambodian government minister described the payment as "tea money", a local term for unofficial payments to government officials.

BHP has rejected this, saying the money was put into a development fund investing in local social welfare programs. The company said it had paid $US1m in September 2006 to the Cambodia government for bauxite exploration rights.

BHP yesterday declined to reveal where the alleged corruption occurred, stressing only that it was not China. It would not comment on what the behaviour involved and whether employees had stood down or been fired but it said the activities involved mineral exploration, not marketing its products.

Last month, Rio sacked four workers, including Australian Stern Hu, after they were convicted of bribery and stealing commercial secrets related to deals to sell iron ore to Chinese steel mills. Rio has introduced sweeping changes to its Chinese operation and is conducting a review to avoid a repeat of the scandal.

Yesterday, BHP said the alleged corruption was uncovered after the SEC queried it during an investigation into mineral exploration projects.

"The company has disclosed to relevant authorities evidence it has uncovered regarding possible violations of applicable anti-corruption laws involving interactions with government officials," BHP said yesterday in a statement.

According to a report in The Cambodia Daily in July 2007, the nation's National Assembly was told BHP had paid $US2.5m to the government to secure exploration rights to a bauxite deposit in Mondulkiri with Japanese industrial giant Mitsubishi.

The claim was made by the then water minister, who described the payment as "tea money".

The minister's comments informed a report into Cambodian corruption by the non-government organisation Global Witness. The report, Country for Sale, details the claims and BHP's rejection of them.

Global Witness wrote to BHP in October 2008 requesting details of any and all payments made to the Cambodian government.

BHP responded saying it had put $US2.5m into a development fund and it had paid $US1m in September 2006 to the government for bauxite exploration.

"BHP Billiton has never made a payment to a Cambodian government official or representative, and we reject any assertion that the payment under the minerals exploration agreement is, or amounts contributed to the Social Development Projects Fund are, `tea money'," the miner said.

While Global Witness did not draw any negative conclusions about the management of the development fund, it did identify an issue with the $US1m payment to government, although one outside the control of BHP.

Tech giant EMC seeks to take advantage of emerging opportunity

2010-04-21T19:12:00.002+09:00

Wednesday, 21 April 2010 15:01
The Phnom Penh Post
Ellie Dyer

MULTI-NATIONAL technology infrastructure firm EMC hopes to invest in Cambodia in order to make the most of emerging market opportunities, the company’s Asia Pacific president said Tuesday.

Steven Leonard told the Post, via phone from Singapore, that the US-based business has put US$2 billion aside to invest in the Asia-Pacific region by 2014.

He said the company, which competes with brands such as IBM and HP, is now looking to Cambodia for potential opportunities.

A group representative added via email that the Kingdom “has been identified as one of EMC’s fast-emerging growth markets across the Southeast Asian region”.

“We need to be in Cambodia and we want to do that in a more meaningful and substantial way,” said Leonard on Tuesday.

He added that EMC is working with a number of Cambodian telcos, which he declined to name.

"We need to be in cambodia and want to do that in a more meaningful way."

EMC provides businesses with both hardware and software to secure or encrypt data such as billing records, bank systems and archives. It has 43,000 employees across the world and earned $14 billion in revenue in 2009. Around 12 percent of revenue is currently derived from the Asia-Pacific region.

On Sunday, 400 representatives of the company completed a two-day event detailing their achievements in Siem Reap. Leonard, who returned from the Kingdom to Singapore days ago, has carried out several fact-finding missions to see where potential opportunities may lie and has met with government officials.

He added that EMC as yet has no permanent presence in the Kingdom, an issue they are currently considering.

“Cambodia is at a real transition intersection. There are so many opportunities. The country is rising up from a difficult past.

“A lot of companies have been here since the 1990s, but in terms of multi-nationals there is still an opportunity to get in early. I hope we can be a part of Cambodian growth,” said Leonard, before adding that software provision is “at the ground floor” of development in Cambodia.

The president added that, to his knowledge, no similar firms yet have a presence in the Kingdom. He said he believes that multinational entry into Cambodia has “an important part to play” in creating a diverse business community.

“It’s a foundation for Cambodia, or any other country, to continue to develop IT to help give opportunities to citizens,” he said, citing the benefits for education and knowledge expansion that technology can bring.

He was unable to say how much money EMC is set to invest in the Kingdom.

EMC has already announced investment in India, where it is expanding infrastructure at the India Center of Excellence, and Singapore, where it is opening its first technology development lab outside of North America. It has also sought out investment opportunities in China.

Finance officials come up with work-habit ideas

2010-04-20T14:06:00.002+09:00

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

The Japan Times
By KAZUAKI NAGATA
Staff writer

A Finance Ministry project team compiled a set of proposals Monday to reform the ministry, focusing on achieving a more efficient working style and better work-life balance for its bureaucrats.

The ministry's officials are generally considered the elite of the nation's bureaucrats, but they also have a policy-wonk image.

Some of the 50 proposals encourage officials to use their paid vacation, take parental leave and have family members visit the ministry once in a while.

"In our ministry, not many male workers have had child-care leave, but I think if the situation is right they should take it more," said Hidenori Sakota, director of the ministry's policy planning and research division.

Sakota is part of the project team that has 20 members from various sections of the ministry.

The workload for central government bureaucrats is notoriously heavy. For instance, when budget-related bills are deliberated in the Diet, some Finance Ministry officials often have to work all night to prepare notes so Cabinet ministers can answer questions during committee sessions.

When Naoto Kan became finance minister in January, he instructed the bureaucrats under his sway to create an in-house project team to come up with suggestions for reforming the ministry and its work style, with the catch phrase "bureaucrats can go out on dates on weekdays."

The team's report calls for other reforms as well, such as more interaction with the private sector and other ministries.

Kan said that while the report is well-written, it should have addressed more specific issues.

"I'd give it a 77" out of 100, he said.

Population shrank by record 183,000 in '09

2010-04-17T14:42:00.002+09:00

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Kyodo News

Japan's population has entered full-scale decline and shrank by a record 183,000 people over the past year, government data showed Friday.

As of Oct. 1, the population stood at an estimated 127,510,000 after shrinking by a record 0.14 percent, contracting for the second year in a row.

The year-on-year drop is the third to strike Japan since 1950, when comparable data first became available, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said in the report. The other two shrinkages occurred in 2005, when it fell by 19,000, or 0.01 percent, and in 2008, when it contracted by 79,000, or 0.06 percent.

The ministry said its estimate was based on the results of the 2005 national census, annual data on births and deaths, and immigration data on entries and departures.

The female population stood at 65,380,000, down 61,000, or 0.09 percent, as deaths outnumbered births by 5,000, marking the first natural decline.

The male population stood at 62,130,000, down 121,000, or 0.20 percent, for the fifth consecutive annual decline as deaths exceeded births by 54,000.

Japan's population has entered a stage of full-scale decline as both men and women recorded natural decreases, ministry officials said.

The figures in the latest report included foreigners who stayed in Japan for 91 days or more and foreign students. The number of Japanese came to 125,820,000, revealing a decline of 127,000, or 0.10 percent.

The number of people who entered Japan totaled 3,114,000, up 250,000 from the previous year, while those who left the country stood at 3,237,000, up 329,000, meaning that social factors caused the total population to shrink by 124,000.

Of the 124,000, foreigners accounted for 47,000, marking the first decline in 15 years linked to social factors.

The officials attributed the decline in the foreign population to the recession triggered by the collapse of trading house Lehman Brothers in the fall of 2008.

Many foreigners lost their jobs and returned to their home countries as the financial crisis unfolded, the officials said.

The number of people aged 65 and older came to 29,005,000, up by 789,000 and accounting for 22.7 percent of the population.

In contrast, those aged 14 or younger fell by 165,000 to 17,011,000. The productive segment of the population, or those between the ages of 15 and 64, came to an estimated total of 81,493,000, shrinking by 806,000.

Redress OK'd for Minamata sufferers

2010-04-17T14:41:00.001+09:00

Saturday, April 17, 2010
Kyodo News

The government on Friday adopted the redress measures for unrecognized Minamata disease sufferers at a Cabinet meeting, including a ¥2.1 million lump-sum payment and ¥12,900 to ¥17,700 in monthly medical allowances per person.

Under the scheme, the sufferers, expected to total more than 35,000, are relieved of medical expenses for treatment, including acupuncture and moxibustion therapy.

The government plans to start accepting applications as early as May 1, the anniversary of the official recognition of Minamata mercury-poisoning disease in 1956, when a memorial service for the victims is held each year in Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture.

It will be the largest settlement since a rescue package was compiled in 1995 by the government for unrecognized sufferers of the nation's worst industrial pollution case.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama told reporters: "I feel pain when I think about the hardships of those who have suffered for a long time. As a state, I apologize for that."

The neurological illness caused by mercury-tainted water that was released into the sea by chemical maker Chisso Corp. has affected coastal residents in Kumamoto and Kagoshima prefectures. It was also confirmed in Niigata Prefecture in 1965, which was found to be caused by wastewater from a Showa Denko K.K. plant.

Redress applicants are required to submit medical certificates.

The move came after the Kumamoto District Court presented settlement terms, including the lump-sum payment and medical allowances, in a damages suit filed by unrecognized sufferers against the central and Kumamoto Prefectural governments, as well as Chisso.

Both sides have basically agreed to accept the court-brokered settlement plan.

Analysts lift GDP estimate for 2009

2010-04-08T21:15:00.002+09:00

The Phnom Penh Post
Thursday, 08 April 2010 15:01 Ellie Dye

THE World Bank has readjusted upwards estimates for Cambodia’s GDP performance in 2009 after unexpected signs of improvement emerged in the economy late last year.

Economists who drew up the biannual economic update on East Asia and the Pacific, released by the World Bank Wednesday, estimated that the Kingdom’s GDP contracted by 2 percent in 2009, 0.2 percent less than an estimate five months ago.

This contrasts with the government’s official assessment that GDP expanded 0.1 percent last year. The government has previously rejected estimates of recession in the Kingdom. Other international analysts including the International Monetary Fund and the Economist Intelligence Unit have estimated contractions in GDP last year.

The World Bank report released Wednesday forecast GDP growth of 4.4 percent in 2010, up from a 4.2 percent prediction in November. Garment exports – Cambodia’s main earner – are expected to expand 2 percent this year, after contracting 16 percent in 2009.

Huot Chea, the World Bank’s country economist, told the Post via email Wednesday the adjustments were made after aspects of the economy “improved unexpectedly in the last quarter of 2009”.

A doubling of agribusiness exports, a halt in the decline in tourists arriving by air, and signs that domestic credit and inflows of foreign domestic investment had “begun rebounding” were indicators of change, he said.

“The other crucial point was that garment exports were previously expected to drop by a 20 to 25 percent range, but ended up by declining less than 20 percent,” he wrote.

The World Bank report said Cambodia’s economy suffered “a serious setback” after the global economic downturn, but “signs emerged [in] late 2009 that the winds were shifting”.

The adjustments also reflect feelings among World Bank economists that the region has weathered the credit crunch.

“East Asia has recovered from the economic and financial crisis, largely thanks to China,” the report said, a viewpoint reiterated by leading economists Wednesday.

Speaking via video from Tokyo, the World Bank’s chief economist for East Asia and the Pacific, Vikram Nehru, congratulated ASEAN leaders in advance of the 16th annual summit, to begin in Hanoi today, on their handling of the economic crisis.

Nehru advised leaders to stay on top of regional development through better trade facilitation and managed migration and likened the economy to a bicycle.

“You have to continue reforming or else you fall off,” he said.

He also advised developing economies like Cambodia to look towards middle-term economic goals in the year ahead.

The report likens Cambodia’s situation to that of Vietnam a decade ago, when Vietnam chose to open its economy to foreign investment and began ambitious structural changes that boosted fixed investment to 32 percent of its GDP.

The World Bank estimates Cambodia’s foreign direct investment will grow to US$725 million in 2010, up from $515 million in 2009 and nearly rebounding to 2008 levels, when investments came in at $795 million.

The report’s principle author, Ivailo Izvorski, said through videolink Wednesday that developing nations should continue to make structural changes and increase capacity to make the most of prospective growth.

“Now developing countries have to get used to slower growth of their exports,” he said. “Before the economic crisis we were in a bubble.”
In its report, the World Bank also warned Cambodia of potential challenges in the year ahead.

Cambodia’s growth forecast could be put at risk by “the fragility of the global recovery, the uncertain capacity of the economy to diversify and the limited scope for a stronger recovery in credit”.

Huot Chea said after Wednesday’s conference that Cambodia could further protect itself from external shocks by diversifying its export markets, especially in garments, which are currently concentrated in the United States, which was hit especially hard by the economic crisis.

Cambodia managed to significantly raise exports to markets including Japan and Laos last year. However, trade rose from a small base in most cases.

Civil servant who handed out JCP paper cleared

2010-03-31T01:26:00.002+09:00

Kyodo News
Tuesday, March 30, 2010

A former government agency employee was acquitted Monday of civil service law violations for passing out copies of the Japanese Communist Party newspaper in 2003.

Akio Horikoshi, 56, who worked at the Social Insurance Agency, received a rare suspended fine by the Tokyo District Court in 2006, but Monday's ruling by the Tokyo High Court reversed that decision, saying his actions did not undermine the administrative neutrality of a public servant.

"The defendant's actions were sporadic and unrelated to his work, and it is difficult to recognize that there were risks of hurting the neutrality of administrative management and public trust," said presiding Judge Takao Nakayama, adding it would be an "excessive restriction" of freedom to punish Horikoshi.

Nakayama also made a rare note that the freedom of public servants to engage in political activities has grown and "it is time to re-examine" what actions should be subject to punishment.

Horikoshi was arrested and indicted in March 2004 for distributing extra editions of the Akahata Shimbun in neighbors' mailboxes in October and November 2003, shortly before a Lower House election.

It was the first time a government official was accused of violating Article 102 of the civil service law since the Supreme Court found a postal worker guilty in 1974 of involvement in an election campaign for a Japan Socialist Party candidate.

Article 102 of the law bans civil servants from engaging in political activities.

Horikoshi argued in court that passing out the newspaper was a private action because it was done on a weekend and away from his workplace.

The district court sentenced Horikoshi in June 2006 to a ¥100,000 fine, suspended for two years, after ruling his actions violated the National Civil Service Law but did not immediately undermine the neutrality of a public servant.

"It is my greatest joy that the judge recognized my actions did not constitute a crime at all," Horikoshi said after the high court ruling.

Saying he was relieved to hear the decision, he added, "Although Japan has been left behind in the field of democracy, I think Japanese history changed" with the ruling.

The ruling was welcomed by Horikoshi's supporters and others related to the JCP.

"Looking at it from the standpoint of freedom of expression ensured under the Constitution, it is a righteous ruling," said Tadayoshi Ichida, secretary general of the JCP, adding the prosecutors should not appeal.

Horikoshi lost his public servant status after he was employed at the Japan Pension Service, which in January succeeded the Social Insurance Agency.

Cambodia temple ruins spur wider question: Are there time limits to the greatness of a nation?

2010-03-24T19:08:00.004+09:00

Nature is winning its battle with Cambodia's Ta Prohm temple.

SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA — "Welcome to the Angelina Jolie temple," our guide said as we climbed stone steps toward Ta Prohm, one of the most beautifully eerie sites in Cambodia's ancient Angkor ruins.

I felt a stab of sadness. Not because the jungle was winning its battle with the 800-year-old temple. Yes, the massive roots of strangler-fig and silk-cotton trees were spectacularly crushing the temple's intricately carved corridors and pillars.

What saddened me was his eagerness to define this amazing icon of his once-great country by deferring to American pop culture. To be sure, he could have done worse than to associate Ta Prohm with the actress-humanitarian who visited here to shoot the 2001 adventure film "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider."

But this ancient wreck of a temple was the work of the mighty Khmer empire that once controlled vast reaches of Southeast Asia. It deserved respect in its own right.

Here and everywhere else in Cambodia, I couldn't stop thinking about how and why great civilizations have failed. The questions had puzzled me before I left Minnesota in February. And they've hounded me since my return.

Was Jared Diamond correct when he said in his book "Collapse" that societies fail because they inadvertently choose to do so?

Losing its mojo?

One reason the question nags is that so many Americans have lost confidence in their own prominence and prosperity. We're surrounded these days by headlines like the one in Newsweek a few months ago: "Is America losing its mojo?"

We still pile up the Nobel prizes (won mostly by American scientists in their 70s, Newsweek noted).

Look deeper, though, and it's clear that America "is like a star that still looks bright in the farthest reaches of the universe but has burned out at the core," Newsweek said.

One of many points it offered in support of that statement came from a study [PDF] last year by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington. It analyzed 40 countries on various measures of what they were doing to make themselves more innovative in the future. The United States came in dead last.

Of course, doomsday predictions are nothing new in this country. Give me any national crisis, and I think I could find a related political cartoon featuring a variation on the theme "The end is near."

But polls find an epidemic of pessimism in the country today. "The 'American Century' was sooo last century, as many Americans see it," ABC news said about a poll it conducted with the Washington Post last month. About half of those polled expect the United States to play a diminished role in world affairs and the global economy.

Those findings are consistent with other recent polls in which as many as two-thirds of Americans have said they do not believe our future will be as good as our past.

Lifespan of a great state

At Ta Prohm, I was torn. Much as I hated to see the destruction, I couldn't help admire those tenacious trees that were snaking their roots around the hand-carved walls and columns of the Buddhist temple.

Maybe there are natural limits to the greatness of a state — sort of like the limits on a human lifespan. Live right, and you can live a bit longer. But just as death is inevitable, so has been the history of great nations eventually slipping from the pinnacle of power.

There are different ways to fall from power, though. As Diamond put it in his best-selling book, a few empires have collapsed catastrophically, and the monumental ruins they left behind "hold a romantic fascination for all of us."

In the evening vendors sell food for riverside picnics in Phnom Penh.

Others have managed to decline with minimal damage, even with grace. Former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan famously marked the end of his country's dominance over Africa with his eloquent "Wind of Change" speech before the South African parliament in 1960.

"The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account of it," he said.

Britain may have fallen from world dominance, but life in what's left of the U.K squares with my standards for quality.

Cambodia, though, kept falling, falling, falling — right through the 20th century. And it fell so hard, so far.

Some historians blame an excess of self-indulgence. (Ring any alarms for modern-day America?) This temple and its magnificent neighbors — especially the granddaddy of them all, Angkor Wat — demanded an unbelievable investment of labor and resources. Impressive as they are as public works, some of that human power could have gone into farming and defending the land.

The ravages of war

Another cause was the ravages of war. After repeated battles with the Siamese, the Cham (now a fallen people in their own right) and the Vietnamese, almost all of the great temple communities in this part of Cambodia were abandoned by the 15th century.

By the 19th century, the country was on the verge of dissolution, and it fell under French control.

The 20th century brought independence, but neither peace nor prosperity. In the 1960s, supposedly neutral Cambodia allowed the North Vietnamese to use parts of the country for the resupply and training it needed to support its operations in the war next door. And the United States bombed Cambodia, killing thousands of people.

Finally, the unstable country fell under the control of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime headed by Pol Pot. One in every five Cambodians — some 1.7 million people — died during the 1970s. The educated were murdered, the cities were emptied and the people were forced into a living a tragic delusion of idealized peasantry. Starvation and disease reigned.

Cambodia has made remarkable strides toward recovery in the past decade.

It takes time, though, and immense effort to rebuild a shattered society. Someone born in Cambodia can expect to live about 60 years, compared with nearly 80 years in the United States. One in four Cambodians is illiterate. And a baby born here is nearly as likely to die before its first birthday as one born in Haiti.

The sun setting on Cambodia's Tonle Sap lake.

You still see too many gaunt people sleeping on sidewalks in Phnom Penh, the capital. Too many toddlers are begging — some under the direction of adults who drape the tots in snakes to attract the attention and dollars of tourists. Too many treasures in this temple and others nearby have been plundered for sums that couldn't be anything but paltry considering their priceless historic and architectural value.

Such is the state of a country which once was so advanced that the French naturalist Henry Mouhot declared [PDF] its buildings to be "grander than anything left to us by Greece or Rome."

I still was haunted when I got home from Cambodia by the contrast between the great Khmer empire and the sorry state of the country today.

Thinking about the broader implications, I pulled from my shelf a slender book by David Boren. A Democrat, he was a U.S. senator, governor of Oklahoma and president of the University of Oklahoma.

"The country we love is in trouble," Boren begins his 2008 book, "A Letter to America."

"In truth, we are in grave danger of declining as a nation," he said.

Boren doesn't pull his punches. Among other points, he said:

• Our political system is broken. Bipartisanship, with the parties working together to solve urgent problems, is viewed with nostalgic romanticism.

• Grassroots democracy is being destroyed by a flood of special interest money being poured into politics.

• Shockingly, we as citizens are becoming incapable of protecting our rights and democratic institutions, because we do not even know our own history.

• The greatest risk to our economy is posed by continued budget deficits.

• The middle class in our country is shrinking, with many falling into the category of poor or nearly poor. ... Continuing to pursue an economic policy driven by greed will destroy us socially.

Scary stuff.

Did any wise man ever give such pointed warnings to the people of ancient Angkor? Did they, maybe, ignore the wisdom to their great peril? Did they laugh when some bearded sage said, "The end is near?"

A strategy for the future

Still, Boren reassured me somehow — partly because he offers a bold strategy for pulling the nation back on a sound footing. Here's a sampling of his suggestions:

• Amend the Constitution to restrict campaign contributions to those who are eligible to vote in a given candidate's election. Congress never will do it. Either will the courts (And Boren wrote this before the U.S. Supreme Court recently cut restraints from corporate contributions.)

• Get a grip on entitlement spending by raising the retirement age for full Social Security benefits and also raising the taxes well-off recipients pay on their benefits. Use means testing to end Medicare for millionaires and raise premiums for other high-income earners so that they aren't subsidized by struggling young workers.

• Launch a nationwide American history crusade and require all college and university students to study government and our nation's history before they graduate.

Because of tough-minded Americans like Boren — people with the guts to say everyone has to contribute and sacrifice for our collective future — you won't see me wearing an "End is near" T-shirt anytime soon.

Maybe giant trees will take back Capitol Hill one day. But I don't believe we are even close to being finished at this point.

By Ancient Ruins, a Gay Haven in Cambodia

2010-03-20T01:27:00.003+09:00

In Siem Reap, Bon Theorne serves a drink at old-Shanghai-themed Miss Wong. (Arantxa Cedillo for The New York Times

March 21, 2010
By NAOMI LINDT
The New York Times

IT was 10 p.m. in Siem Reap, and while most tourists were tucked in after a long, hot day exploring the temples of Angkor, things were just getting going at a bar called Linga. Pairs of European men in their 30s and 40s wearing unbuttoned collared shirts and checkered krama scarves sipped fruity cocktails and jostled for space with the young Khmer crowd, who huddled around small tables in anticipation of the main event: the Saturday night drag show.

A statuesque Khmer performer who went by the name Beyoncé took to the stage draped in a black, body-skimming floor-length gown and wearing a blond Afro wig. Soon, everyone was on his feet, belting out a song from “Dreamgirls.” The traffic outside literally stopped. Curious travelers, Khmer families and little girls peddling red roses craned their necks to get a better view as the song’s syrupy melody wafted into the jasmine-scented evening air.

Homosexual acts are not outlawed in Cambodia, as they are in a few Southeast Asian countries, but outward displays of affection and untraditional lifestyles are rare. Yet in Siem Reap, a small town that gets about a million tourists a year, gay visitors and locals are carving out a little haven. In the last few years, a small flurry of gay-friendly bars, restaurants and hotels has opened up in the city’s center and beyond, with wink-wink names like the Golden Banana and Cockatoo.

The scene is bolstered partly by Web sites like Cambodia Out (cambodiaout.com), which started in early 2009 and is believed to be the first commercial site in the country devoted to the gay community. Other sites like Utopia (utopia-asia.com) and Sticky Rice (stickyrice.ws), which appeal to gay people throughout Southeast Asia, have also raised the city’s profile.

But the new spots also reflect a growing acceptance, in a country that still hews to age-old Khmer values and where the concept of homosexuality seemed nonexistent until recently. In fact, there is no word for “gay” in Khmer. The most commonly used term is kteuy or ladyboys, based on the misperception by many Cambodians that homosexuals and transvestites are one and the same.

The stereotypes are slowly fading. In 2004, after watching thousands of same-sex couples in San Francisco rush to the altar, Cambodia’s much-loved King Norodom Sihanouk wrote on his Web site that gays should be allowed to marry because God loved a “wide range of tastes.”

His successor and son, King Norodom Sihamoni, holds similar views. “The Cambodian Royal Family, as a whole, share the same point of view as the King-Father,” Sisowath Thomico, a spokesman for the royal family, wrote in an e-mail message. “We’ve always been very tolerant about sexual preferences as some Khmer Royals are/were openly gays/lesbians.”

And last year, a lesbian-themed film by the Khmer novelist and director Phoan Phuong Bopha, “Who Am I?” was a sleeper hit. “Love between people of the same sex is a very new topic in Cambodia,” the director was quoted as saying in The Phnom Penh Post, in an article headlined “Who Am I? Brings Same Sex Issues Out Into the Open.”

The new open-mindedness is attributed to Theravada Buddhism, the predominant religion in Cambodia. “When you’re looking at Buddhist countries, you’re going to encounter an openness and tolerance,” said Caroline Francis, a spokeswoman for the Cambodia field office of Family Health International, a public health organization involved with gay-related health issues. “The religious teachings aren’t being used to arrest or persecute people because they’re gay or lesbian.”

One of the first gay bars to open was Linga, an airy cocktail lounge with artwork on the walls and large windows that face the Passage, a bustling and prominent street. Linga draws a mostly male crowd that’s both Khmer and Western and seems to signal a newfound openness for gay Cambodians. And like many nightclubs throughout Cambodia, prostitution and sex tourism are not hidden from view.

“I grew up in a small town, so I know what it’s like to think, ‘I’m the only one,’ ” said Martin Dishman, 48, a former hotel manager from Greenfield, Ind., who opened Linga in 2004. Perhaps not surprisingly, many of Siem Reap’s most visibly gay bars and hotels are owned by Westerners.

A more refined newcomer is Miss Wong, an old-Shanghai-themed boîte with cherry-red walls and gold silk lanterns. While its owner is gay, it caters to a broader clientele. On a typical night, a mix of men and women, expatriates and tourists, artists and entrepreneurs, and straight and gay people all mingled over lemon-grass-infused vodka concoctions and mocha martinis topped with dollops of chocolate.

But Siem Reap isn’t really a party town. Town life revolves around Angkor Wat, and by sunrise the streets hum with tuk-tuks whisking tourists to the temples. “This will never be the place to swallow four tablets of ecstasy and stay up until 4 a.m., dancing under a full moon in sequin hot pants,” said Dean Williams, an expatriate from New Zealand who owns Miss Wong.

That might explain why there are more gay-owned hotels than bars. The newest and arguably most flamboyant is a male-only resort called Men’s, which features 10 sleek rooms decorated with male nude paintings, a large outdoor swimming pool and a sprawling, black-and-gold tiled sauna and a Jacuzzi.

Upscale travelers prefer Viroth’s Hotel, a graceful seven-room haven in a renovated 1960s modernist house. While Viroth’s does not promote itself as a gay hotel per se, the owners Fabien Martial and Kol Viroth do nothing to hide their 10-year relationship.

And the word seems to be out. On a recent Friday night, the hotel’s nearby restaurant, also called Viroth’s, was filled with a sprinkling of male couples sharing bottles of French wine and dishes like chicken curry and minced pork grilled in kaplou leaves.

But for gay Khmers seeking a home, the place to be is the Golden Banana. It started as a humble B & B that opened in 2004 and has since expanded to three properties, including a stylish boutique resort with 16 rooms that feature platform beds constructed of flecked sugar palm wood and soaking tubs on the terrace.

Guests might include backpackers in T-shirts or silver-haired male couples in matching polo shirts, who mingle freely at the palm- and bamboo-fringed swimming pools, sipping lime and mint iced tea. But under the direction of Dirk de Graaff, an expatriate from the Netherlands, the resort has taken on a second role: as a sanctuary for young Cambodian men exploring their sexual identity.

IN a poor country where traditional family remains strong, young Cambodians are encouraged to marry and have children early. Many same-sex couples in Siem Reap still keep their relationship a secret; some have wives for appearance’s sake. Khmer men who visit gay saunas often conceal their faces behind motorcycle helmets until they’re safely inside. And lesbians remain largely invisible.

Still, things are looking up for the city’s younger gay generation. On a recent evening, young staff members from the Golden Banana — which include both straight and gay men in their early 20s — were laughing it up at the newly opened Heart Rock Bar, an unpretentious dance club across the street from Miss Wong that’s become a popular spot for gay men.

Beyond the glow-in-the-dark hearts on the walls and the stainless-steel cocktail tables, the dark and spacious club offered little décor or ambience, but the crowd of mostly younger Cambodian men didn’t seem to mind. They drank cans of Angkor beer, grooving to Top 40 hits by the Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga, smiling broadly late into the night and dancing freely with whomever they liked.

IF YOU GO

HOW TO GET THERE

Flights to Siem Reap from New York require a stopover. A recent online search found a Korean Air flight from Kennedy Airport to Siem Reap, via Seoul, starting at about $1,500.

WHERE TO STAY

* Hotels in Siem Reap commonly give prices in U.S. dollars.
* The Cockatoo Resort (104 Wat Damnak Village; 855-89-986-872; thecockatooangkor.com). Doubles from $80.
* Golden Banana Boutique Resort (Wat Damnak Village; 855-12-654-638; goldenbanana.info). Doubles from $60.
* The One Hotel and Hotel Be Angkor (the Passage; 855-63-965-321; theonehotelangkor.com and hotelbeangkor.com) are separate hotels with one owner in a single building. Doubles from $95.
* Men’s Resort & Spa (near Wat Po Lanka; 855-63-963-503; mens-resort.com). Doubles from $55.
* Viroth’s Hotel (Street 23; 855-63-761-720; viroth-hotel.com). Doubles from $80.

WHERE TO EAT AND DRINK

* Linga Bar (the Passage; 855-12-246-912; lingabar.com).
* Miss Wong (the Lane; 855-92-428-332).
* Viroth’s Restaurant (246 Wat Bo Street; 855-12-826-346; viroth-hotel.com).

Cambodia's Mobile Market Had Passed the 4 Million Subscriber Milestone Earlier In 2009

2010-03-19T14:10:00.002+09:00

Research and Markets: With 29% Mobile Penetration in Cambodia by March 2009, Cambodia's Mobile Market Had Passed the 4 Million Subscriber Milestone Earlier In 2009

March 18, 2010
By Business Wire

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/b821be/cambodia_telecom) has announced the addition of the "Cambodia - Telecoms, Mobile, Internet & Forecasts" report to their offering.

Executive summary

Despite its status as a least developed country and remaining one of the poorer countries in Southeast Asia, Cambodia’s efforts to expand and upgrade its telecom infrastructure are bearing fruit. There was very little infrastructure remaining from before the tumultuous Khmer Rouge days. As a result, Cambodia bypassed rebuilding the fixed-line market and quickly launched into alternative technologies, jump-starting its telecommunications infrastructure with digital technology. Not surprisingly, mobile services have completely overwhelmed the market. By early 2009, there were nine mobile operators vigorously competing with each other in a market segment that was growing at an annual rate of more than 50%. There were 4.3 million mobile subscribers (penetration 29%) in the country by March 2009. The market was still in a very strong growth phase, as evidenced by the keenness shown by foreign operators seeking to be part of it.

Some limited fixed-line growth had earlier come about through investment under foreign assistance, but this has mainly benefited Phnom Penh and geographical coverage has not increased significantly since that effort in the 1990s. The number of fixed-line services was relatively static at around 40,000 by 2008. In the absence of any real fixed-line growth, mobile telephone services continue to completely dominate the overall telecom market in Cambodia, with mobiles representing more than 99% of the total number of telephone services in the country. This disparity has been growing more significant each year.

The expansion of Internet services has also been overshadowed by the mobile phenomenon. In fact Internet take-up remains disturbingly low, one of the lowest penetrations in the region. Of course, the limited fixed line infrastructure has been a major inhibiting factor in the roll-out of both dial-up and ADSL Internet services. One encouraging feature has been the general availability of Internet access in provincial towns.

It is worthwhile noting that wireless technology has been especially advantageous for Cambodia in achieving rapid network rollout and replacement of a fixed network badly damaged by 20 years of war. In addition to the thriving mobile networks, Wireless Local Loop has been useful for rapid provision of a limited number of fixed-line services. However, while Cambodia has exemplified the fact that WLL offers a viable option for rapidly expanding telecom access in developing countries with low levels of fixed infrastructure, the potential of this technology has yet to be fully exploited in the country.

Key highlights:

The year 2008 saw Cambodia's mobile market continue on its positive expansion path, with annual growth of 56% for the year and continuing at 50%+ into 2009;

With 29% mobile penetration by March 2009, the mobile market had passed the 4 million subscriber milestone earlier in 2009;

With 3 new mobile operators coming to the market in 2008/09, Cambodia has a total of 9 operators in what has become a crowded and highly competitive market;

The development of fixed-line and Internet services continue to languish; the latter is particularly disconcerting as online access is crucial to national growth;

On the broader political front, National Assembly elections were held in 2008, with Hun Sen being returned to power; while the elections were generally regarded as credible, deficiencies remain.

Bloody desperation for Thailand's reds

2010-03-17T01:55:00.002+09:00

Asia Times Online
By Shawn W Crispin
Mar 17, 2010

BANGKOK - Despite a made-for-television mass rally, rousing speeches, a phone-in from their exiled leader and a bizarre bloodletting ritual, Thailand's United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) ultimately lacks the means and legitimacy to force Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's 15-month-old coalition government from power.

Intense media coverage of the red shirt-wearing protest currently assembled in Bangkok's old town has often portrayed the rally as indication of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's enduring political clout. But as the rally loses steam in its third day and stokes new tensions among prominent members of his political camp, it now more accurately appears a reflection of Thaksin's growing political and personal desperation than an organic pro-democracy movement.

While the red shirt-wearing protest group has failed to mobilize anywhere near the one million protesters its organizers had vowed to truck from the provinces to the national capital to pressure the government to dissolve parliament and hold new elections, it has succeeded in rallying Thaksin's popular support base, which hails mainly from the poor northern and northeastern provinces.

A series of strategic missteps, including Thaksin's antagonistic alliance with Cambodian Premier Hun Sen and his open association with rogue military elements who have threatened to launch bombing and assassination campaigns across Bangkok, has sown deep divisions in his disparate political camp, consisting of the UDD, the opposition Peua Thai party and networks among active police and retired military officials. Some in his camp have questioned the coherence and relevance of the UDD's current drive to draw blood from weather weary protesters to splatter in protest at Government House.

That said, the rally has at least temporarily remobilized Thaksin's populist symbolism and served as a potent reminder to the sincere pro-democracy faction in his camp that has angled to disassociate the movement from his personality that they remain reliant on his popular, if not financial, pulling power. It's unclear to analysts how many of the 100,000-plus protesters on Sunday came of their own accord and how many were paid to participate, as certain news reports and Thaksin critics have suggested. But Thaksin's likeness clearly featured more prominently than pro-democracy or universal justice themes on protesters' red shirts and signboards.

Based on the memory of last April's UDD-led riots in Bangkok and Pattaya, many feared the current mass rally might tilt towards violence and that the military would be called in to suppress it. Last year's riots were sparked partially by Thaksin's call to his red-shirt supporters to launch a "social revolution" against the government. Many analysts wonder if the exiled fugitive from justice will resort to brinksmanship to push his agenda and restore his wealth after a Thai court ruled on February 26 for the seizure of US$1.4 billion of his assets on charges of abuse of power.

The government has strategically played up the threat, citing intelligence it apparently received from the United States that the protests could turn violent, as justification for pre-emptively invoking the Internal Security Act (ISA). Abhisit has repeatedly invoked the draconian measure that gives the military special powers to maintain law and order, since last April's riots. That's raised UDD criticism that he is presiding over a slow but steady militarization of Thai society.

Since the current UDD rally commenced, security forces have raided two factories allegedly involved in the production of parts used in M-79 grenade launchers. The weapon has been used in various unexplained but clearly politicized attacks, including a blast last month that damaged a military headquarters near army commander General Anupong Paochinda's offices and a remote assault on Tuesday against Bangkok's 1st Infantry Division in which two soldiers were injured.

A UDD core member, Weng Tojirakarn, told Asia Times Online that the government has manufactured the attacks and weapons seizures to justify the suppression of red-shirt demonstrators. Yet another UDD organizer confirmed in November - when the protest group first threatened but later retreated from organizing a self-styled "million man" march - that a Peua Thai parliamentarian from Bangkok had organized and paid motorcycle taxi drivers to stir violence during the rally.

Simple symbols

Against the backdrop of real or imagined threats, UDD leaders have proclaimed throughout to be fighting non-violently for democracy and universal justice - made clear to foreign reporters through the English language signboards posted and strategically held by demonstrators at the front of the protest's main stage. They have portrayed Abhisit as a puppet of the military and bureaucratic elite, which they claim played a behind-the-scenes role in cobbling together his coalition government.

Thaksin touched on those same themes during a phone-in address on Sunday night in which he criticized the Supreme Court verdict that ruled to seize his assets as an indication of the entrenched double standards in Thai society that favor the rich and powerful over the poor. (Although he has publicly criticized the verdict, Thaksin has yet to refute in detail why the verdict lacked legal merit). He implied that a "bureaucratic elite" that opposes democracy and conspired in toppling his democratically elected government in 2006 was behind the verdict.

What strikes many long-time observers of the country's politics is the UDD's apparent collective amnesia of Thaksin's own anti-democratic record, marked by his efforts to bypass parliamentary processes, undermine checking and balancing institutions and pressure the free press, and the benefits he reaped through close relations with the bureaucratic elite, including the privileged state-granted telecom concessions he leveraged into a multi-billion dollar personal fortune.

While the UDD clamors for Abhisit to dissolve parliament and hold new elections it has failed to give voice to the fact that a controversial Peua Thai politician, Chalerm Yoobamrung, would most likely run as the party's prime ministerial candidate. His son, Duangchalerm, was accused of murdering an off-duty police officer in 2001 and many say Chalerm epitomizes the double standards that favor the powerful over the poor. Duangchalerm was acquitted due to insufficient evidence in 2004 and is now a father-propelled, rising political star.

Those glaring oversights to the UDD's self-styled pro-democracy agenda have led many royalists to the conclusion that group leaders have a hidden anti-royal agenda - a charge UDD stalwarts deny. They believe the pressure group's sustained criticism of previously untouchable royal advisory privy councillors is the front edge of a campaign to diminish the royal institution's role after the eventual succession from the highly revered Bhumibol Adulyadej to his heir-apparent son, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn.

As the UDD ratcheted up tensions in the run-up to Thaksin's asset case verdict, including a never-realized threat to march on a local hospital where the ailing 82-year-old monarch is recuperating from a long spell of ill-health, Bhumibol resumed several of his ceremonial roles, including a symbolic meeting with local judges whom he encouraged to rule with "righteousness" in the cases in which they adjudicated.

Ahead of the current UDD rally, local newspapers ran on their front pages a portrait of Abhisit sitting with Bhumibol and the monarch's adopted stray dog. One palace insider claimed that Bhumibol called the meeting to assure the prime minister that under no circumstances would Thaksin be given a royal amnesty - similar to the one granted to restore stability after the military's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in 1992.

The lines of democratic division are less clear now and Thailand's grinding political conflict is best understood as a power struggle between competing elite camps with divergent visions for the country's post-Bhumibol future. Thaksin's and the UDD's calls for democracy and social justice mask a game of non-ideological power politics that his side is clearly losing to the conservative forces that have coalesced against him. It's thus perhaps symbolic that the blood the UDD plans to pour in protest at Government House will spring from self-inflicted wounds.

Shawn W Crispin is Asia Times Online's Southeast Asia Editor.

U.S. to help train Cambodia's peacekeeping forces

2010-03-16T01:11:00.004+09:00

For the last several years, Cambodia has sent hundreds of its peacekeeping force to Sudan, Chad and Central Africa (blogger's)

March 15, 2010
Xinhua

Visiting U.S. high-ranking military officer Gen. William Crowe has accepted a request by Cambodia's National Center for Peacekeeping Forces and ERW Clearance (NPMEC) to train Cambodian forces on peacekeeping mission, official news agency AKP reported on Monday.

The request was made by Gen. Sem Sovanny, general director of the NPMEC, during a visit to the Oudong military training school on Mar. 11 by Gen. William Crowe who is in charge of South Asia and ASEAN affairs office under the U.S. Department of Defense, AKP said.

The visit to Cambodia is made according to the advice by leaders of the U.S. Department of Defense after a meeting in Washington between a Cambodian military delegation led by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense Gen. Tea Banh and the U.S. Secretary of Defense Gen. Robert Gate, said Gen. William Crowe.

He said that the U.S. Secretary of Defense fully supported the activities of mine-clearance by the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces ( RCAF).

Visiting to several activities of mine-marking in the artificial minefields along with the slide show of the past mine- clearance activities made by the RCAF in Sudan and the RCAF joining the Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI) held in many countries such as in Mongolia, Bangladesh, Indonesia .., Gen. William Crowe highly valued the RCAF's potentiality and remarkable achievements.

He said that he will attend the GPOI-2010, which is due to be held in Cambodia in July this year, as a member of the U.N. high- ranking delegation.

Asia's Tourists Hit the Beaches, Warming Region's Economy

2010-03-15T13:38:00.002+09:00

The Wall Street Journal
By ALEX FRANGOS

SIEM REAP, Cambodia—Resurgent tourism within Asia is helping to drive economic recoveries, and demonstrating the growing power of regional consumers.

Just ask Kwong Meng Geip, a purveyor of a medicinal mushroom spirit a few miles from the ancient temples of Angkor Wat. South Koreans who arrive on tour buses are the biggest buyers of the unique brew he makes in clay barrels. And the Koreans are flowing back after a slow 2009.

"My business is better than before," says Mr. Kwong, as he presides over displays of the yellow-tinged liquor at the Angkor Rice Wine Workshop, a distillery and souvenir shop he owns. "It releases the hurt," he says of the liquor.

Mr. Kwong attributes the medicinal benefits to the special 150 pound soo krom mushrooms used to make the mild-tasting liquor, which sells for $25 a bottle.

What's happening at Mr. Kwong's shop is playing out across the region. Unlike the U.S. and Europe, where unemployment remains high and consumers are cautious, Asia's unemployment rates are falling. That has given Asians the confidence to travel, some for the first time.

Tourism generally accounts for a relatively small share of economic output. But it signals an important willingness among consumers to spend.

Consumption spending more broadly has been driving growth across Asia. Government stimulus spending and subsidies for consumers to buy big-ticket items such as cars and appliances have helped economies expand at healthy rates. Chinese consumers bought more cars than Americans last year, for instance.

But the shift into travel spending, seen as a big-ticket discretionary item, is a sign perhaps of the next stage of the recovery.

Unlike government-encouraged car purchases, "personal travel is a real indicator of consumer spending, in the sense that there are no subsidies involved," says Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, chief economist for MasterCard Worldwide, based in Singapore.

He says Asian consumers, not burdened by debt as were many in the West, socked away money during the downturn and are now spending some of those savings on travel.

Like auto purchases, tourism is a spending multiplier that puts money in the hands of a diverse set of actors in the economy, from airline pilots to taxi drivers and chambermaids. "It's a very good industry as a growth stimulus for the destination countries," says Mr. Hedrick-Wong.

The rise in intra-Asia tourism may help achieve a long-term goal sought by many policy makers around the world: a rebalancing of the global economy in which consumer spending becomes a bigger driver of Asia's growth.

To be sure, Asia's export-dependent economies still need American and European demand for their goods. And that goes for tourism. High-spending Americans and Germans are a critical source of demand in places such as Thailand and Indonesia. But more intra-Asian travel helps to ameliorate the sluggish travel recovery among Western consumers as they pay off home loans and credit-card bills.

An important source of tourism revenue for the rest of the region is China. During the Lunar New Year holiday in February, a popular time for travel in the Chinese world, the number of mainland Chinese who went abroad increased nearly 21% from the year before to 2.4 million, according to government statistics.

Zu Hui, 28 years old, a worker at an oil-trading company in Beijing, recently took her honeymoon trip to the beach island of Phuket, Thailand. It was her first exploration outside China, and she called it "a great trip" filled with romance and water sports.

She says going abroad can be cheaper than traveling within China, and it allows her to avoid the crowds in China during peak holiday periods. She's now planning a trip to Dubai.

In Malaysia, tourist arrivals have "not been disrupted because most of them come from Asia and the Middle East and from the emerging world," says central bank governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz.

Malaysia bucked the global downtrend in travel and managed to attract 22 million tourists in 2009, a 7% increase from the year before. Tourism spending helped boost fourth-quarter growth to 4.5%. More than a million tourists came from China for the first time. India sent nearly 590,000 tourists to Malaysia.

Overall, Southeast Asia saw a 2% increase in international visitors in 2009, according to the Pacific Asia Travel Association. Global international travel fell 4%, says the World Travel Organization, led by Europe and North America, both down 6%.

The return of tourism activity is especially important to parts of Asia where the leisure travel industry is a key component of growth.

Tourism expenditures made up 13.6% of GDP in Cambodia in 2008, 9.5% in Malaysia, and 8.4% in Thailand, according to the United Nations World Travel Organization. Taiwan credited its stronger-than-expected growth to a surge in tourism after rules were relaxed on visitors from mainland China.

In the dusty colonial town of Siem Reap, visitors from South Korea, China and Taiwan have begun to stream in again after a sharp downturn in 2009. The number of Korean tourists venturing to Cambodia dropped 26% in 2009, as Korea's currency lost almost a third of its value during the financial crisis.

By December, however, Korean arrivals to Cambodia bounced back 21% compared to 2008 lows. Visitors from China and Taiwan also rebounded sharply in December, up 14% and 34% respectively, according to Cambodia's Ministry of Tourism. Tour guides, motor-taxi drivers and folks like Mr. Kwong, the winemaker, are starting to get busy again.

"More and more people are coming," says Lee KyungMi, owner of Damnak Spa, a small hotel and spa in Siem Reap that caters to Korean visitors. The native of Seoul cautions business is still not where it was two years ago, when a quarter-million Koreans visited Cambodia, many to see the Buddhist temples around Angkor Wat.

The main drag in Siem Reap is lined with Korean-owned hotels and Korean barbecue restaurants. And three new golf courses are also a magnet.

"Korean golfers are our major market," says Adam Robertson, manager of the Angkor Golf resort. They make up 70% of his customers. "When the Korean won devalued, that was hard to take." January and the first half of February was "very good."

High-end hotel operators in the area say they have seen a pickup in travelers from the U.S. and Europe, but they are aiming their biggest growth at Asian travelers.

"The last two months a lot more Koreans are coming," says Emmett McHenry, general manager at the Sokha Angkor Resort in Siem Reap. He has offered special deals to Chinese and Korean travel agencies and figures one-quarter of his visitors are from the two countries.

The rebound in travel spending points to a possible sweet spot in Asian growth. A modest demand recovery in the U.S. and Europe, combined with a confident Asian consumer, could be enough to keep Asia's economies humming for awhile.
—Juliet Ye contributed to this article.

Write to Alex Frangos at alex.frangos@wsj.com

Asia's Most Corrupt Countries

2010-03-11T00:52:00.002+09:00

03.10.10
Hana R. Alberts
Forbes Asia

A new report shows business executives look down on Indonesia in favor of Singapore and Australia.

HONG KONG--Investors seem to have a love-hate relationship with Indonesia. Many are confident, boosting the country's benchmark stock index 115% in 2009. At the same time, Asian business executives just voted it the most corrupt country in the region.

The world's largest archipelagic nation ranks worst on the list of 16 Asia-Pacific regions, according to a report released Wednesday by the Hong Kong-based Political & Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC).

PERC asked 2,174 middle and senior executives--both expatriates and those who hail from Asia--to rank the behavior of their political, civil and economic agencies, including leaders, police, courts, stock markets, taxation systems and militaries.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, commonly known as SBY, was overwhelmingly re-elected for a second term last July by a populace that craved not only economic stability but growth. And he delivered: Global demand for the nation's natural resources fueled the uptick in many fortunes on Forbes' ranking of Indonesia's richest people. (See the complete list.)

But not six months later Yudhoyono and officials he appointed came under fire when the government's bailout of a small bank was criticized as a means of funneling money into other politicians' pockets. Further dinging public confidence was the ruling Wednesday by Indonesia's House of Representatives that Century Bank's 2008 rescue was unjustified.

Ranked barely less corrupt than Indonesia in PERC's ranking were Cambodia and Vietnam, followed by the Philippines, Thailand, India and China. The cleanest places were Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong and the U.S. (America was included as a benchmark.)

The economic downturn increased respondents' perceptions and criticisms of corruption in their midst, according to the study.

"It is so much easier to link cause and effect when people can relate rising unemployment and falling incomes to acts by greedy businessmen, civil servants and politicians that go unchallenged when economies are booming and everyone is making money," PERC's report says.

Indeed, in a separate survey by Transparency International that measures corruption in 180 countries, the latest corruption index shows that 75 of the nations surveyed scored below 3 on a scale of governmental honesty where 10 is the top mark--an increase from 72 countries in 2008. (See Transparency International's ranking of the world's most corrupt countries.)

Perceptions of corruption have increased over the last year, PERC's report says, in part due to political elections in which contenders lay bare opponents' misdeeds and in part due to the increasing publicity of civilian-generated complaints aired through the Internet or text messaging.

The problem is not limited to Asia. Corruption is a fixture in countries like Egypt, India, Indonesia, Morocco and Pakistan, where 60% of executives surveyed reported having been solicited for a bribe, according to Transparency International. That organization figures bribes consume an estimated $20 billion to $40 billion a year worldwide.

While PERC cautions that its study captures merely the beliefs of a slice of the Asian business community, it believes the results are useful to investors.

"They help to determine where individuals and companies select their investment sites and the magnitude of risk premiums they attach to investments in certain locations. They influence the choice of partners, suppliers and joint-venture partners," the report says. "Politicians that ignore the perceptions of their populations and foreign investors do so at their own risk."

Smarting from PERC's report, the Jakarta Globe published a story joking that Indonesia "has made it onto a list of superlatives. Unfortunately, not for something the nation should be proud of." It seems, though, that residents of the world's fourth-most population nation hold out hope for Yudhoyono and his cronies. In response to a solicitation for reader comment, Julius Phang wrote the paper: "Why would anyone be surprised? Come on Indonesia, it's time we show the world that we, too, can be clean."

JETRO opens office in Cambodia to promote trade, business ties

2010-03-11T00:15:00.002+09:00

PHNOM PENH, March 10 (AP) - (Kyodo)—The Japan External Trade Organization officially opened its office in the Cambodian capital Wednesday to promote trade and business ties between Japan and Cambodia.

Cambodian Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh said at the opening ceremony in Phnom Penh that JETRO will play an important role in "bridging business ties" between Cambodian and Japanese businesspeople, and expressed his strong hope that two-way trade as well as and Japanese investment in Cambodia will rise in the near future.

JETRO Chairman Yasuo Hayashi said at the ceremony that the new office in Cambodia will focus not only on promoting Japanese investment in Cambodia and bilateral trade, but also on developing Cambodia's export industries.

The Japanese government-backed organization, which was set up in 1958 to promote Japanese exports, changed its charter after Japan became a major exporting country and now helps Japan's trading partners to tackle the Japanese market.

Hayashi said two-way trade between Japan and Cambodia has more than doubled over the past decade, from $104 million in 2000 to $255 million in 2009.

Japanese exports to Cambodia declined by 39.4 percent in 2009 year on year to $112 million, mainly because of the financial crisis, but imports from Cambodia grew by 18.3 percent to $143 million, he said.

Japan's main exports to Cambodia are vessels, machines and transportation equipment, and its main imports are footwear and sewn products.

Hayashi said the number of Japanese companies investing in Cambodia has increased from 36 in 2008 to 57 as of the end of January this year, a growth of over 20 in less than two years.

Cham Prasidh noted that Japan ranks 14th among foreign countries investing in the country, far behind China and South Korea which rank first and second respectively in terms of size of capital investment.

He said Cambodia can offer Japanese investors a central location in Southeast Asia, a good seaport and cheap labor.

Including the newly launched office in Phnom Penh, JETRO now has offices in eight of the 10 ASEAN countries -- all except for Brunei and Laos.

Surin Pitsuwan to Hun Sen and Hor Namhong

2010-03-10T15:26:00.002+09:00

US ponders China's Southeast Asian rise

2010-03-10T01:17:00.001+09:00

Mar 10, 2010
By Peter J Brown
Asia Times (Hong Kong)

The United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) last month held a lengthy hearing on China's activities in Southeast Asia and the implications for US interests in the strategic region. The USCC was addressed by five members of the US Congress, a pair of senior US government officials and 10 experts and came at a time the US has promised to re-focus its diplomacy towards Southeast Asia.

USCC commissioner Larry Wortzel emphasized China's rising economic influence in the region, noting that numerous China-funded resource extraction projects were underway "with the goal of fueling China's continued economic development". He noted that Beijing also provides low-interest loans to fund infrastructure projects, especially in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia.

While China's economic overtures in the region are well documented, Wortzel noted that China has recently expanded its security interactions with Southeast Asia, including through arms sales and joint military exercises. "High-level military visits between China and Southeast Asia have been on the rise, as have port calls from Chinese naval vessels," said Wortzel.

The hearing followed a trip in December by USCC members to Taiwan and Vietnam, where discussions were held regarding China's growing presence in the region. While security ties are expanding, the USCC was frequently reminded in Vietnam that there was increasing anxiety in Hanoi about China's growing assertiveness in the South China Sea, where several regional countries have overlapping claims.

"As the Chinese navy improves its strength to include a possible aircraft carrier fleet in the near future, the balance of power in the region will swing strongly in China's favor,” said Wortzel. "Already some nations are beginning to react, as demonstrated with Vietnam's recently announced plans to purchase from Russia six advanced submarines and 12 fighter aircraft. The confirmed presence of oil and natural gas in the region only exacerbates this trend," said Wortzel.

US congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a ranking member of the House's Foreign Affairs Committee, was more outspoken in his criticism of Beijing's rising regional influence, referring to China as "a totalitarian country seeking to become a totalitarian empire [and] spreading its influence and domination throughout the region, particularly in Southeast Asia".

Of all the countries in Asia, "perhaps the most friendly relationship [China] has is with the gangster regime that now controls Burma [Myanmar]. China has armed the Burmese junta to the teeth and in exchange it has ripped off the Burmese people, taking their great natural resources," said Rohrabacher.

Ellen Frost, visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said Southeast Asian governments are keeping a watchful eye on China's growing military might. While they have been greatly reassured by China's recent behavior, some are still unsure of China's ultimate goals, she said.

"Older leaders remember the time when China was actively supporting insurgencies in their countries. Rather than seeking to build a coalition against China, Southeast Asian statesmen have opted to 'embed' China in organizations whose location and agenda are in their control," said Frost.

"They calculate that enmeshing China in a plethora of agreements and committees encourages peaceful and cooperative behavior and bolsters regional stability. But just to be safe, many ASEAN governments are reaffirming or strengthening their military ties with the United States." The Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) countries are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Frost emphasized that ASEAN leaders are seeking to maximize their collective voice in the region and in the wider world. "They calculate that giving China a leading role in regional organizations makes it more likely that other powers will pay more attention to the region and engage with ASEAN countries on even more attractive terms," said Frost.

Double-edged economics

According to David Shear, US deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, "It is clear that both [China] and the ASEAN countries see mutual benefits to be had from expanded trade," and, "China's economic ties to the region will likely grow further under the China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement [CAFTA] that became effective [on] the first of this year."

Shear also contended that in the process "China has produced local economic dislocation and tensions for some Southeast Asian economies" and there is growing concern "that competition from low-cost goods from China could adversely affect their domestic industries". Shear noted that Indonesia has already called for a revision to the agreement due to those concerns.

While Southeast Asians "recognize big opportunities in China, they continue to see economic ties with the US and others as vital", said Shear.

China's total trade with the region reached US$193 billion in 2008, up from $45.5 billion in 2001. While Beijing's direct investment in the region still pales compared with the US and Japan, its direct aid has been considerably larger.

Beijing has put forward a $10 billion infrastructure investment fund to improve roads, railways, airlines and information-telecommunication links between China and ASEAN countries, according to ASEAN secretary general Surin Pitsuwan. Beijing has also provided a $15 billion credit facility to promote regional integration and connectivity, he said.

Chinese diplomacy, often referred to as "soft power”, has also emphasized cultural connections. For example, more Thai students - some 10,000 - now study in China than in the US. Shear noted that China opened its first Confucius Institute in Asia in 2004 and that today there are 70 across Asia and 282 globally. "There are 12 institutes in Thailand alone, and China recently opened the first institute in Cambodia," said Shear.

The competition for hearts and minds has also taken to the airwaves. While the US has long promoted Radio Free Asia and Voice of America radio programs in the region, China launched China-Cambodia Friendship Radio in December 2008. "The actual effects of China's efforts on local views of and sensitivities to Chinese interests remain an area of US interest," said Shear.

"It has been said that in order to pursue successful diplomacy in Southeast Asia, all you have to do is show up. This is too low a standard and this administration will do more," said Shear. He acknowledged that previous US presidents had missed Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summits, secretaries of state had bypassed ASEAN Regional Forum meetings and senior US officials had not spent enough time tending to regional bilateral relationships.

"The [Barack] Obama administration's message to resolve this problem has been simple: we're back and ready to be actively involved," said Shear, noting that Washington intends soon to name a Jakarta-based ambassador to ASEAN and begin consultations on how the US can play a role in the East Asia Summit, a grouping of 16 countries in the East Asian region that meets annually.

Ernest Bower, senior adviser and director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies emphasized that "Southeast Asia wants and needs the US [to] step up its game and articulate a strategy to advance its interests in the region. Only then will Southeast Asia's atavistic hunger for balance be fed."

Bower said China is not perceived in Southeast Asia as "a very large, awkwardly ideological, self-focused, security concern to the north", but rather "an engaged and interested neighbor providing significant benefits in trade, aid, tourism and the promise of increased investment and prosperity".

"China has made it easier for Southeast Asian students to travel and study in China and is providing scholarships at several levels, including master's and doctorate degrees. Chinese policies toward Southeast Asia over the last 15 years have transformed from ideological to opportunistic and pragmatic," said Bower.

He said on occasion China has overplayed its hand to its disadvantage, including in the South China Sea or when it pressured the government in Cambodia to send Uyghur refugees back to China late last year.

"The region's leaders recognize these examples as the iron fist that flexes under the velvet glove of China's new diplomacy," said Bower. "Southeast Asia's primary concern, as it was 15 years ago, remains maintaining balance among the major powers ... Perhaps the most significant difference between China and the US in Southeast Asia is that China has a clear strategy for the region, and the US does not," he said.

Divergent diplomacies

Walter Lohman, director of the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, noted key differences in how the US and China conduct diplomacy towards the region.

"You simply cannot understand ASEAN's decision-making process the way we learned it in school, with countries strategically seeking to maximize advantages without consideration for the domestic, sometimes personal, demands on leaders. The Chinese approach to economic diplomacy accounts for this dynamic in a way that ours does not," said Lohman.

"The US cannot replicate the Chinese effort in Southeast Asia. Obviously, American officials are accountable to the American people in a way that the Chinese are not to their own. We cannot structure trade agreements in ways that choose winners and losers by diplomatic or industrial policy imperative.

"The Chinese are also closer and have more diplomats to throw at ASEAN. We can do better than we are in covering ASEAN, but we cannot match the Chinese diplomat for diplomat, forum for forum," Lohman added, saying that the US should not "buck the current economic order", but instead "leverage" into it.

"If the Chinese want to invest in ASEAN's infrastructure, fine. The US should have relationships in the region that help ASEAN determine its priorities and voice its concerns. If Chinese multinationals want to invest in ASEAN, great. Work to bring them into compliance with US-friendly standards and integrate them into American supply chains," said Lohman.

"If there is to be more ASEAN-China trade, American companies ought to be invested in it on both sides of the border and integrated into markets back home. Fighting current economic trends undermines the credibility of our leadership."

Catharin Dalpino, visiting associate professor at Georgetown University, addressed Beijing's sub-regional strategies and how China's role in mainland Southeast Asia "is increasingly distinct from its relationship to maritime Southeast Asia".

"This is primarily a matter of degree rather than dramatic differences in Chinese policy toward the two sub-regions; however, China's greater focus on and penetration of the mainland has created a de facto separation," said Dalpino. "This growing edge in mainland Southeast Asia has not developed in a vacuum; it was facilitated by the unevenness of US policy toward these two sub-regions for several years and Washington's relative neglect of mainland Southeast Asia."

She noted, for instance, that "the alliance with Thailand has been on auto-pilot for several years".

"On a more fundamental level, younger-generation Thais do not grasp a rationale for the alliance relationship and point to the reluctance of the United States to offer bilateral aid to Thailand in the 1997 financial crisis and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which are remote to many Thais, as examples of the dissonance between the two countries," said Dalpino.

Bronson Percival, senior advisor at CNA's Center for Strategic Studies in Virginia, contended that "the US is well-balanced in Southeast Asia" and that it had consistently insisted that the "theme is not the US versus China in Southeast Asia".

"Moreover, the Obama administration has now reversed popular anti-Americanism during the [George W] Bush administration and the widespread perception of US neglect through several symbolic gestures, including signing ASEAN's Treaty of Amity and Cooperation. The US Pacific Command has built a dense network of military-to-military ties, particularly in maritime Southeast Asia," said Percival, who called for the US to "shift its focus in Southeast Asia from humanitarian issues such as Burma to critical security issues such as the South China Sea.

"We don't know if Beijing is launched on a process of 'nibbling imperialism' in the South China Sea, but preventing Chinese domination of this sea and maintaining free passage for US armed forces and for energy supplies is critical for US alliances in Northeast Asia and, indeed, for the maintenance of the entire US position in East Asia." he said.

Peter J Brown is a freelance writer from Maine USA.

Cambodian Formal Reaction towards ASEAN Secretary General

2010-03-09T22:56:00.001+09:00

Detainees allege abuse at Kansai holding center

2010-03-09T14:32:00.003+09:00

Welcome to Japan: Ugandan visa overstayer Moses Ssentamu says he was beaten up by a group of guards at the West Japan Immigration Center in Ibaraki City, Osaka Pref., in January. DAVID McNEILL PHOTO
THE ZEIT GIST

Guards meting out harsh treatment behind the walls of Ibaraki immigration facility, say inmates

By DAVID McNEILL
Special to The Japan Times
Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The only way to see or speak to Moses Ssentamu is through a Plexiglas window at the West Japan Immigration Center in Ibaraki City, so there is no independent way to verify his claims of physical and psychological abuse. But if true, they raise serious concerns about Japan's treatment of visa overstayers and asylum seekers.

Did a group of security guards at the center punch and kick Ssentamu in a coordinated assault in January? Are the authorities at the complex in Osaka Prefecture refusing medical treatment to another inmate, Mujahid Aziz Iqbal, a wheelchair-bound Pakistani? And, most serious of all, do detention centers here deliberately dole out harsh treatment in the hope that detainees will leave the country?

Ssentamu, 35, has been locked up here for over a year since being arrested for overstaying in 2008. Back in his homeland, he says he was active with the opposition Forum for Democratic Change Uganda, and claims to have been arrested and tortured by the authorities. Facing a trial for sedition he knew he couldn't win, he decided to flee the country, leaving behind his wife and four kids.

"It was not my decision to come here," he explains. "I didn't know anything about this country, but a sympathizer got me a visa — he said it was the easiest place to get one at that time."

Arriving on a three-month visa in May 2006, Ssentamu says that he found his way via a local Ugandan contact to Nagoya, where he slept rough and sold imported jeans around the city for a living. Friends told him the only way to stay in Japan "was to marry a Japanese woman," he recalls, and then apply for political refugee status. But on Nov. 29, 2008, before he could do either, he was picked up by the police.

Fifteen months later, he has no idea when he will get out, or if the Ministry of Justice will buy his argument that going back to Uganda could be dangerous, even fatal.

"I'm not a criminal. I want to be released and given a chance to produce evidence of my political treatment and persecution."

While the authorities process that claim, however, they have another one to ponder. On Jan. 15, Ssentamu says that he was assaulted after he mildly protested during his transportation to a hospital outside the center.

"I was being taken for a doctor's appointment and I was handcuffed by two guards," he recalls. "When I complained that my handcuffs were too tight and (asked) that the guards loosen them a little, one insisted that he could do nothing about them. Given that the entire journey to the hospital takes an hour or so, I said I couldn't endure the discomfort, so I told them I was not willing to go."

Ssentamu's guards responded angrily to the challenge, he says, shoving and pushing him back into his room, where he admits he "tried to protest" — verbally, he insists. After the guards had subdued him, they returned sometime later, he says, with "20 or more" officers, all clad in black gloves, who told him they were there to help him change rooms. As he began to prepare, the guards grabbed him and "manhandled" him out of the room.

"In no second or minute, I was in the air with showers of kicking under my back, blows on my stomach," Ssentamu later wrote in a letter sent to The Japan Times, Amnesty International and several other organizations that deal with refugee and asylum issues. "(As) all this was happening, one of the first two officers was blocking my face with the palm of his hand to prevent me from recognizing the faces of the officers who were assaulting me."

Ssentamu says he was then dumped in a "punishment room" where the officers pushed his head down a toilet bowl as they struggled to handcuff and subdue him. A guard later told him, as he lay on the floor with his "pants around his ankles," that he was being punished for refusing to go to hospital. He would spend five days in solitary confinement.

The detention center denies any such assault took place.

"That's a lie," says spokesman Norifumi Kishida. "Guards may handcuff or subdue an inmate if he is doing harm to himself or others, but there is no way that so many guards would deliberately harm an inmate."

Nearly two months after this alleged assault, Ssentamu is unable to show any visible scars, except for marks on his wrists he says were left by the tight handcuffs.

"I was not badly hurt; I was humiliated," he says.

Without proof, there remains the possibility that it is a fabrication, albeit an elaborate, detailed one that risks further worsening his relationship with the authorities or even prejudicing his asylum application.

In 2005, Japan deported two members of a seven-member Kurdish family who had been "recognized as refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees under its own rules," according to a recent report by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA). Many believe the family's decision to publicly protest and speak to the media about their treatment was a factor in the deportation decision (Zeit Gist, April 29, 2003; March 29, 2005; July 3, 2007).

The JFBA says Japan gave refugee status to just 6.5 percent of 3,292 asylum applicants from 1985 to 2005. The federation notes that while hundreds of applications from Kurds, Chinese and Africans were rejected, applicants from Myanmar were given preferred status, concluding: "It is inferred that the government have paid diplomatic consideration in the background." In other words, Japan's refugee selection process is nakedly political.

Ssentamu's lawyer, Shiro Sadakane, refused to back his client's claims of abuse, except to say that he has heard of "similar cases." Amnesty International and the Japan Association for Refugees acknowledge that they have received the Ugandan's letter. Makoto Teranaka, Amnesty Japan's secretary general, declined to comment on its specific claims, but said the secrecy surrounding Japan's detention system is a problem.

"It means we can't see what's going on inside. The detention system is much less organized than the prisons, and we've noted quite arbitrary treatment of people inside."

He says his office receives a steady stream of letters and calls from refugees alleging mistreatment in detention centers.

"The number of complaints has been growing since about 2000. It's quite common now."

Another inmate at the west Japan center, 37-year-old Mujahid Aziz Iqbal, says he has lost over 14 kg in weight and the use of his legs since last October, probably because of a psychosomatic disorder. He was convicted of selling stolen cars and faces deportation back to Pakistan. In addition to specific claims of mistreatment by some of the guards, he says the center has refused his demand for treatment and responded to his condition by offering "useless" painkillers.

"They keep saying that I have to wait my turn to go to hospital, but I need help now."

Both men admit that their ordeal would end if they simply told the Ministry of Justice that they want to return home. But for the Pakistani, who has been in Japan for 15 years and has two children to his ex-wife, leaving is not an option.

"I want to see my children. Relations with my wife are bad, but my kids love me."

Ssentamu, meanwhile, believes that the conditions inside the center, including rooms with single toilets shared by eight to 10 inmates, serve a purpose: deterrence.

"These are deliberate acts aimed at breaking down the will to seek refuge in this country." He says some inmates have been inside the center for over two years.

According to the Japan Association for Refugees, detention center inmates can apply for provisional release, but the bar is set very high. They need a Japanese guarantor and bail of ¥500,000 to ¥1 million.

"Most do not have that kind of money and they cannot find a guarantor," explains Soojin Hyung, the association's program officer. On average, therefore, Hyung says, it takes about a year to be released.

"Many people suspect that because the Japanese government is afraid to deport people in case of international criticism, they would rather detain them. It's a means of deterrence — foreigners know that if they come here without a visa, they're going to suffer. It's sending out a message: Don't come here."

Ssentamu is still in a cell by himself — punishment, he claims, for protesting and urging others to speak out. Confinement is worsened by a myriad of petty official humiliations including cold food and a lack of water to flush toilets. Is he just making life hard for himself by breaking the rules and refusing to accept his punishment?

"Civil activists the world over who fight for their rights are called troublemakers," he says from behind his Plexiglas wall. "I'm fighting for my rights."

Send comments on this issue and story ideas to community@japantimes.co.jp

Good manners for Japanese students

2010-03-08T01:35:00.002+09:00

Universities give pointers on how to behave, separate garbage, obey law

Features Desk
The Yomiuri Shimbun
Publication Date : 05-03-2010

ILLUSTRATION FROM THE YOMIURI SHIMBUN

A growing number of universities and colleges in Japan have started providing information on good manners to their students, especially freshmen, including how to behave as they travel to and from university, how to separate garbage for disposal and recycling, and why they should not break the law.

Most of the advice might seem like common sense, but many university officials say they have had to train their students in good manners because many do not seem to have much awareness of what behaviour is considered socially acceptable.

Students at Tokyo Women's College and Junior College of Physical Education in Kunitachi, western Tokyo, are to be posted at 10 spots along the 800m-long route from JR Nishi-Kunitachi Station to their campus for a week in April to watch whether fellow students, especially freshmen, behave appropriately.

According to officials of the university, some students have been seen behaving badly in the past, such as cycling while using a cell phone or eating cup noodles while walking.

About a year ago, after receiving a number of complaints from people who live between the station and campus, the school decided to place student representatives along the route to monitor the behavior of the other students at the beginning of the academic year and other occasions.

"It's effective because the message sinks in when you receive advice from your peers," sophomore Saki Mikawa, 20, said.

Kyoto University, where in recent years some students have been arrested for cannabis possession and other crimes, holds a special lecture in April to inform students of the importance of complying with laws.

The lecture, which includes a video on the hazards of taking illegal drugs, is going to be counted for credit from the next school year.

At Kanazawa University, professor Toru Furuhata teaches freshmen such things as how to take notes and how to separate garbage in a course that addresses social and university life.

"Some students asked me why I teach such basic things," Furuhata said. "But we have received complaints about the way some students put out their trash. I want them learn such commonsense skills before going out into the real world."

A lack of good manners among university students is behind such moves.

At International Christian University in Mitaka, western Tokyo, many students do not return library books before the end of lending periods. The university decided to charge 10 yen per day as a late fee and does not allow students to graduate if they have outstanding late fees. One student owed 70,000 yen in late fees as of Tuesday (March 2), officials of the university said.

In 2008, three Kyoto Sangyo University students were found to have written their names and other messages on a column of a World Heritage-listed cathedral in Florence. The university's guidebook now tells freshmen not to litter, grafitti or use drugs.

At North Asia University in Akita, some staffers regularly walk around the campus to check if students have dyed hair or are wearing piercings, both of which the university forbids in principle.

Snowboarder Kazuhiro Kokubo, who participated in last month's Vancouver Winter Olympic Games, is a student of Tokai University. Unfortunately for the university, Kokubo became famous for wearing the Japanese Olympic uniform in a manner deemed inappropriate and for his subsequent nonchalant apology for doing so at a press conference.

The university released a statement apologising for Kokubo's actions. Though it does not have a dress code, it said it would take steps to improve the behaviour and clothing of its students via instruction from teachers or varsity sports club coaches.

Professor Motohisa Kaneko of Tokyo University, an expert in higher education and a member of the Central Council for Education, said: "Many universities are seeking ways to help students act in a more mature way. One of the reasons they have begun focusing on good manners and morality is the tight employment situation in recent years. Students who lack common sense likely will fail to find a job."

Q+A: What's the Good Practice Project?

2010-03-07T19:27:00.001+09:00

05 Mar 2010
Written by: Thin Lei Win

PHNOM PENH (AlertNet) - Advocacy and aid groups in Cambodia have expressed concerns about a proposed law regulating non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the Southeast Asian country.

The issue has raised a wider question about governance in the sector crowded with hundreds if not thousands of players.

Here are some questions and answers about a home-grown system aimed at self-regulation.

What is the Good Practice Project (GPP)?

Launched two years ago, the Good Practice Project (GPP) is an attempt by Cambodia's NGO community to clean its own house before the NGO and Associations Law comes into force. Under the GPP, NGOs undergo a voluntary certification system and agree to comply with a set of ethical principles (the Code of Ethical Principles and Minimum Standards for NGOs in Cambodia).

The NGOs must first be registered with relevant ministries and have been operating for three years at least.

Cooperation Committee for Cambodia (CCC), a two-decade old umbrella group for over 100 local and international NGOs helped developed GPP.

Why is it needed?

Twelve years after the end of a brutal civil war, Cambodia now boasts thousands of NGOs and associations. Figures vary -- the government says there are over 3,000 while an NGO umbrella group says around 1,000 exist. There has been criticism over the conduct of some NGOs and the NGO community concedes there is a need for accountability.

What is the Code of Ethical Principles and Minimum Standards for NGOs in Cambodia?

This is a set of principles and minimum guidelines for NGOs on a host of issues ranging from mission and values and governance to accountability and transparency and human resources.

GPP team members say the idea is to guide NGOs to become more professional in their everyday practice as well as to inform public and interested parties about the principles they can expect NGOs to uphold.

The NGOs who wants to be certified by the GPP has to ensure they comply with the code. The first version of the code was drafted in 1995.

How does it work?

The NGOs who have decided to get the certification need to go through a series of steps including submitting a written application and documentation such as annual audit statements, annual reports and organizational statues.

Before they receive certification as Good Practice NGOs, GPP staff will review the documents and the NGOs' programmes through field visits. Once all the criteria have been fulfilled, they will receive a certification lasting three years.

What does it mean for organizations to be certified?

In theory, the certification will act as a stamp of approval of the NGO and an assurance to the general public as well as the government over the integrity of the individuals and organizations involved and the effectiveness of its programmes.

Increasingly, it will also become an asset with the donors. Already, the Australian government's aid agency Aus AID lists the certification as a requirement when calling for NGOs to send in proposals for aid projects.

How many have been certified under the GPP?

So far only 17 have been certified out of 51 applications. These include a wide range of NGOs such as the Non-Timber Forest Products Organisation, street children charity Mith Samlanh and Salvation Center Cambodia where Buddhist monks provide spiritual and practical support to HIV/AIDS patients.

Although the number may seem miniscule given the size of the NGO community in Cambodia, GPP said it had seen an increase in applications, possibly due to concerns over the impending NGO law.

Woman starved son, 5, to death because he looked like husband?

2010-03-06T00:53:00.001+09:00

Friday, March 5, 2010

NARA (Kyodo) A 26-year-old Nara Prefecture woman who was arrested together with her husband Wednesday for allegedly starving their 5-year-old son to death has told investigators she could not feel any affection for him because of his resemblance to his father, police sources said Thursday.

Mami Yoshida, a part-time worker, also told investigators her relationship with her husband, Hiroshi, 35, a corporate employee, had soured. The investigators reckon the couple's worsening relations led to the abuse of their son, Tomoki.

Yoshida said she felt affection for the couple's other child, a daughter, 3, who shows no signs of having been abused.

Her husband was quoted as saying he was aware their son had been getting weak, but did nothing to protect him.

They are suspected of having failed to give sufficient food or provide necessary medical care for their son since early January.

On Wednesday, the boy was found unconscious by a municipal official who visited the family home after Yoshida called a child counseling center. The boy was lying on a futon wearing a diaper and looking emaciated, the city said.

The official called an ambulance to take the boy to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Although the average height of a 5-year-old is 110 cm, their son was only 85 cm tall and weighed just 6.2 kg, a third of the average weight.

On Thursday, the police conducted an autopsy and also raided the couple's home in Sakurai, Nara Prefecture, in search of evidence.

According to the police, while the couple took their daughter to a day care center while they worked, they left their son alone at home and did not take him to a kindergarten or a day care center.

The Sakurai Municipal Government said the boy underwent a regular health check for 10-month-old babies in 2005. But the parents failed to ensure their son had regular checkups in 2006, when he became 18 months old, and in 2008, when he turned 3 1/2 years old.

In response to the municipal inquiries on those occasions, Mami told officials she needed rest as she was pregnant and could not take her son to the health checkups because she was busy caring for a relative.

Fatal abuse arrest

SAITAMA (Kyodo) Police arrested a couple Thursday in Warabi, Saitama Prefecture, on suspicion of failing to provide sufficient food for their son, who became weak and died in February 2008.

The 4-year-old son of Masami Shindo, 47, and his wife, Sanae, 37, weighed only 10 kg and was 94 cm tall at the time of his death, the police said.

The couple are suspected of failing to bathe and feed the boy, making it difficult for him to walk. They did not take him to see a doctor despite his poor health, the investigation found.

An autopsy showed that the boy, who was hospitalized on Feb. 11, 2008, following an emergency call, suffered from malnutrition and died of acute encephalopathy.

The boy and his brother, 10, lived with their parents at the time. The older son now lives in a child nursing facility.

ANZ CEO predicts healthy recovery (for Cambodia)

2010-03-05T20:03:00.006+09:00

The Phnom Penh Post
Ellie Dyer
Friday, 05 March 2010 15:03

ANZ Banking Group’s global chief painted a positive picture of Cambodia’s economic future during a key-note speech Thursday in Phnom Penh.

Speaking to the Australian Business Association at the capital’s Intercontinental Hotel, ANZ’s Chief Executive Officer Mike Smith predicted Cambodia would see 5 percent economic growth in 2010 after “a difficult” 2009.

The forecast is higher than the 4.25 percent GDP growth predicted for the Kingdom in December by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which warned that “risks are clearly tilted to the downside”.

The World Bank has estimated that Cambodia’s GDP was US$9.4 billion in 2008.

When quizzed about his estimate by a member of the 170-strong audience, who described it as “the most bullish we have heard”, Smith said: “I think we can be more optimistic.”

The financial heavyweight, who was once president and CEO of HSBC, said the Kingdom was experiencing infrastructure development and rising productivity in the agricultural sector.

He said he believes that an awareness of the need for nations within the Greater Mekong area – consisting of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam – to work together, coupled with “more significant” inter-country trade, will provide a boost for the economy.

“What made 2009 so difficult was the export dependency Cambodia had with the US and Europe. There is an opportunity now to focus on trade within the region,” he said, before pointing to statistics released last week which indicated that Cambodia and Indonesian bilateral trade rose 24 percent in the first 10 months of 2009 from the same period in 2008, increasing to $165 million from $133 million.

Smith’s confidence comes as Cambodia has entered into free-trade agreements with its fellow ASEAN member nations and China.

Both pacts came into effect on January 1 this year and ensure that the Kingdom will gradually decrease trade levies on many goods to zero by 2015.

Cambodia railway to be fully open by 2013

2010-03-05T17:21:00.001+09:00

PHNOM PENH, March 5 (AFP) – Cambodia's rail network should be restored by 2013 with the help of millions of dollars in international aid, the country's finance minister said.

Trains have only run sporadically in Cambodia since the country's civil war ended in the 1990s, but finance minister Keat Chhon said workers will complete an overhaul of the rail system in the next few years.

''The project implementation started in 2007 and expects to be complete in 2013,'' Keat Chhon said during a ceremony in which the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Australian government gave more funds to complete the rail network.

Officials hope patching up Cambodia's railways will boost the country's economic growth and facilitate trade with other countries in Southeast Asia.

The total cost to reconstruct the 600 kilometers (373 miles) of rails, connecting them to highways and ports, is expected to be 141.6 million dollars, Keat Chhon said.

The minister made his remarks after receiving an additional loan of $42 million from the ADB and a grant of $21.5 million from Australia for the project.

The ADB has provided $84 million in total loans to restore Cambodia's railway, he said.

Another $13 million come from the OPEC Fund for international development, while Malaysia had contributed 106 kilometers of track worth $2.8 million, Keat Chhon added.

It has long been a regional dream to connect Asia by rail, and many of the gaps in the railway are in Southeast Asia, with only Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand operating cross-border links.

UN Set to Boost ICT Capacity of Cambodia

2010-03-05T16:35:00.001+09:00

UN ESCAP

Launch of the Academy of ICT Essentials for Government Leaders in Cambodia Opening Session at the Intercontinental Hotel, Phnom Penh, Tuesday 9 March, 8:30 am

Cambodian human resource capacity in the use of information and communication technology (ICT) for socio-economic development is set to make a great stride with the launch of a United Nations ICT capacity building programme. High-level officials are to attend the inaugural National Workshop of the “Academy of ICT Essentials for Government Leaders” (Academy), a core ICT for development curriculum developed by the United Nations Asian and Pacific Training Centre for Information and Communication Technology for Development (UN-APCICT/ESCAP), at the Intercontinental Hotel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia from 9 to 12 March. The event is co-organized by APCICT and the National Information Communications Technology Development Authority (NiDA) of Cambodia.

H.E. Leewood Phu, Secretary General of NiDA, and Dr. Hyeun-Suk Rhee, Director of APCICT will preside over the signing ceremony. Over fifty participants are expected to attend, including senior government officials responsible for ICT and or e-Government projects, officials from over twenty government ministries, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Ministry of Rural Development, and the Ministry of Women, as well as academics from numerous universities, and representatives from international development agencies based in Phnom Penh.

In identifying ICT for development as a national objective, Cambodian officials have targeted ICT human resource capacity building as a key priority. Equipping policymakers and project managers with the necessary ICT skills and knowledge to develop and deliver effective public services is the primary objective of the Academy. The Academy includes a comprehensive curriculum on ICT for development, currently with eight standalone but interlinked modules. The Academy has been adopted and institutionalized into national ICT human capacity building frameworks in a dozen countries in Asia and the Pacific since its official launch at the OECD Ministerial Meeting on the Future of the Internet Economy in June, 2008. More partners are working with APCICT to roll out the Academy at the national level throughout Asia and the Pacific.

The launch event in Phnom Penh will be immediately followed by a four-day Academy training workshop. Three Academy modules will be delivered throughout the workshop: Module 1 – The Linkage between ICT Applications and Meaningful Development; Module 2 – ICT for Development Policy, Process and Governance; and Module 3 – e-Government Applications.

The workshop comes at a time when Cambodia’s recently established e-government system, the Provincial Administration Information System (PAIS) has grown to serve 10 out of the country’s 24 provinces. In coordination with ACPICT, NiDA will continue to implement and disseminate the comprehensive Academy training curriculum in order to increase ICT human resource capacity at various levels of the Cambodian government, secure sustainable funding for future training and ICT related projects and programmes and enhance e-governance capabilities.

Japan's top forum an outlet for free speech, and hate

2010-03-05T16:28:00.002+09:00

AFP – A man opens the the www.2ch.net website on a computer in Tokyo on March 4, 2010. Japan's top Internet …

by Hiroshi Hiyama Hiroshi Hiyama

TOKYO (AFP) – Japan's biggest Internet forum, where anonymous netizens trade anything from cooking tips to death threats, has long been an anarchic zone of uninhibited free speech and a magnet for controversy.

This week the raw commentary on 2channel -- which with 10 million visits a month is one of the world's largest online bulletin boards -- saw tempers flare anew.

A massive hacker attack from South Korea crippled the site in retaliation for users' online slights against Olympic skater Kim Yu-Na, after she beat Japanese rival Mao Asada to take gold at the Vancouver Winter Games.

The site was attacked on Monday, the anniversary of a 1919 uprising in Korea against Japanese colonial rule, and shut down for two days.

Japanese web users counter-attacked by bombarding South Korean sites, including that of the presidential office, according to South Korea's JoongAng Daily, which called the tit-for-tat flaming "infantile".

The Japanese site, www.2ch.net, does not ask for personal ID details and hosts unfiltered views, in contrast to most chat forums where registration and vetting have become the norm in a bid to keep discussion orderly.

"This is a vast group of bulletin boards on everything from hacking to porn," the site tells users. It boasts about 1,000 topics, from politics to sport to manga comics.

"Sender information cannot be detected, so you can access it from your office, school or prison," users are told. "Please write as you like."

The site was launched in 1999 by a college student, Hiroyuki Nishimura, who has since written several books and is a regular on television shows.

Not counting online role-playing games, it is easily Japan's biggest bulletin board by number of users and page views, according to research firm NetRatings Japan.

The site has given space for discussion on touchy subjects, including Japan's royal family, and gay and lesbian life.

Companies and pollsters review the site to build marketing strategies and study the raw pulse of users and consumers.

At their best, the site's postings have spawned books and movies, including a passionate chronicle by a shy man known as the Train Guy who dated a woman and sought advice from fellow 2channel users.

But no-holds-barred messages also voice sexist, nationalistic and xenophobic sentiments, many targeting Chinese and Koreans.

South Koreans were furious recently when a writer said the mob killing of a Korean college student in February in Irkutsk was "Russia's good deed".

At times, users have threatened crimes on the site.

One of them was Tomohiro Kato, who sent messages from his cellphone shortly before he killed seven people in a stabbing frenzy in Tokyo's neon-lit electronics district in 2008, Japan's bloodiest crime in years.

Nishimura, who gave up control of the site last year but maintains interests in many Internet companies, is unabashed about the darker side of 2channel.

"Ten million people come to the site every month. There is no city in the world with a population of 10 million that has no crime," he said.

Tsutomu Kanayama, professor of journalism and communications at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, said 2channel laid bare the pluses and minuses of the social media revolution.

"Mainly because of the anonymity system, it has gone too far and is now full of offensive and meaningless comments," he said.

"But on the other hand, it's a positive trial for a future cyber-forum where anyone can pose real opinions freely. It has both a light and a dark side."

Let the world see through your LENS

2010-03-04T00:57:00.005+09:00

The Phnom Penh Post
Wednesday, 03 March 2010 15:02

Many Cambodians in the blogosphere use their writing skills to shed light on the social and political issues in Cambodia, but there are also a growing number of cloggers (Cambodian bloggers) who are using their cameras to share their daily experiences with the world over the Internet.

These young Cambodians living in the country and abroad can be trusted to post new photos nearly every day, sometimes capturing important events and other times capturing the details of their life that would otherwise go unnoticed.

According to Borei Sylvann, a 25-year-old freelance producer who started a photo blog in January, it is not difficult to begin a blog, and once it is started it can provide daily encouragement to take photos. “First I talked with my friend about starting a photography Web site that we could use to show our photos and share our ideas with the world, but time went on and it never happened,” explained Borei Sylvann. “But then I started looking at other blogs and realised that it is a simple way to have a place to put my photos and write about them.”

Now Borei Sylvann uses his free time to shoot photographs, some planned and others taken spontaneously, that he is able to show off to his followers online. “Before the photos were just sitting in my computer and no one could see them,” he said, adding that he hopes his blog will become popular among people besides his friends and family.

While Borei Sylvann has just begun his blog, there are many other young Cambodians who have been at it for years. Chea Phal has been blogging since 2006, and you can see the progression of his photos over time by viewing the archives on his Web site. Chea Phal is not a professional photographer. He works with a Japanese NGO focusing on educational and cultural rehabilitation, but he is very passionate about his photography, and it shows in his work.

Chea Phal says that photography has become a central part of his life. “Photography made my life more meaningful and delightful. To me, having a hobby or passion for something is an ingredient to live a good and happy life.” He explained. “Robert Adams says ‘no place is boring, if you've had a good night's sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film’.”

Starting your own photo blog will undoubtedly make it easier for your friends and fans to understand what is going on in your life, but according to Chea Phal, it might change the way that you see things as well. “Through the lens, I can have better eyes to admire our world’s magnificence.”

Check out these photoblogs!

Borei Sylvann:
http://spikroom.blogspot.com

Chea Phal:
http://tumnei.wordpress.com

Borin
http://www.borin.ws

Eng Sothy
http://sothy-eng-pictures.blogspot.com

Spk Plus Co.
http://spkplus.com/blog/

http://limbiz.blogspot.com/

And visit flickr.com and trekearth.com to see what the growing community of Cambodian photographers are sharing with the world.

Revamped railway set for October restart: Toll

2010-03-04T00:55:00.002+09:00

The Phnom Penh Post
Wednesday, 03 March 2010 15:04 Nguon Sovan

Australian logistics company Toll Holdings, which will manage the revived railway, aims to significantly expand rail services

THE first day of October has been billed as the date when commercial rail operations are to recommence between Kampot and Phnom Penh, according to the regional director of Australia’s largest trucking and freight company Toll Holdings Ltd (THL), the firm that will eventually manage the renovated Cambodian railway.

Photo by: RICK VALENZUELA
An old railway carriage sits idle at the Phnom Penh Railway Station in January. Cambodia's decrepit rail network will finally resume service from Phnom Penh to Kampot on October 1, if renovations are completed, a manager at logistics firm Toll Holdings said Tuesday.

Speaking after the signing of Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) US$42 million supplementary funding agreement for the rehabilitation of Cambodia’s dilapidated rail network Tuesday, THL’s Brian Warry said he wanted the first commercial train to run between the two towns in just seven months time.

THL will operate trains on the network, while the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation acts as an executing agency, responsible for developing railway infrastructure and stations.

“There is a lot of work happening on the track at the moment,” he said. “The critical date is October 1, when the section of rail from Kampot and Phnom Penh is due to be finished in order to begin some modest train operations.”

Warry added that he hopes the setup of the railway will become an “entry point” for THL to widen its operations in the country. He said wanted THL to cover logistical activities such as warehousing, road transportation and freight-boarding. The firm operates a small business in the Kingdom providing offshore oil and gas support.

Cambodian officials were positive about extra funding for the Kingdom’s railways.

Minister of Economy Keat Chhon said after the signing ceremony that the supplementary funding will be used to partially upgrade 254 kilometres of line from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville and 338 kilometres from Phnom Penh to Sisophon, for construction of new rail links to the container port in Sihanoukville and two dry ports in Phnom Penh, building of new freight facilities on the outskirts of Phnom Penh and to provide institutional support and capacity building.

According to an ABD press release, the entire system will be operational by 2013.

Kunio Senga, ADB director general for the Southeast Asia Department, said the upgraded rail network will position Cambodia as a subregional transport hub, creating new jobs and business opportunities in the manufacturing and logistical services sectors.

The agreement consists of a $42 million supplementary loan from ADB and a $21.5 million grant from the Australian government through the Australian Agency for International Development.

The total cost of the project is estimated at $141.6 million of which ADB’s loan accounts for $84 million and an OPEC fund for international development loan accounts for $13 million. The Australian government’s grant accounts for $21.5 million, and the government of Malaysia’s donation of 106 kilometres of rail is worth $2.8 million. The Cambodian government has contributed $20 million.

The move could be a positive one for THL after its stock fell 18 percent in Sydney on February 25 after posting A$147 million (US$131 million) in earnings before items for the six months ending December 2009. Revenues fell 6 percent from a year earlier, Bloomberg reported.

Education on the Internet 03-03-2010

2010-03-04T00:52:00.001+09:00

The Phnom Penh Post
Wednesday, 03 March 2010 15:02 Sidaroth Kong

Learning 2.0 is the next generation of learning that involves the effective integration of communication technology in education to improve information sharing, knowledge exchange, social networking and strengthening communication skill.
The communication technology that supports Learning 2.0 is commonly called Web 2.0. With this technology, you can easily create and fully manage your own Web page on the Internet, create an information network, form a group, join existing social networking groups, link with your friends, share information and work collaboratively. Some of my suggestions for useful sites for Learning 2.0 are:

www.facebook.com: One of the largest social networking sites in the world, with more than 400 million active users. On Facebook, you can create a Web site for your personal use or for a learning group or an organisation. Its special feature is the availability of many applications that you can add to your Web site. It also allows you to connect easily with your friends, stay informed about what they are doing, and much more. LIFT also has a Facebook page, which you can easily view by searching for Lift Cambodia once you are a member of Facebook.

www.twitter.com: Twitter is an Internet SMS system that allows you to share and receive short messages, called tweets, of up to 140 characters each. You can follow your friends, groups and organisations who use Twitter. Twitter is a very useful information network and allows you to share what is happening within the network and with yourself.

www.delicious.com: Delicious is an Internet bookmarking and favorites Web site. Saving a page that you like in your Internet browser is called a bookmark. With delicious, you can have your favorite sites stored online so that they can be accessed from wherever you are in the world, as long as you have an Internet connection.

http://groups.google.com: A simple and effective means of forming a group and to communicate electronically. You can start a group, invite members to join in or join the groups of your friends. Members can easily communicate to the group through their email addresses. If you already have a Gmail account, it is easy to join and since this is a fairly new feature for Google, there are many new members joining everyday.

Sidaroth Kong, 28, coordinates the Open Learning (E-Learning) Program at the Open Institute

Billion-dollar Chinese hydropower projects get go-ahead in Cambodia

2010-03-03T22:05:00.001+09:00

Wed, 03 Mar 2010
DPA

Phnom Penh - Construction of two Chinese-funded hydropower dams costing more than 1 billion dollars is to begin in south-western Cambodia in the coming weeks, local media reported Wednesday. A report from the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy said work would begin this month on a 246-megawatt dam costing 540 million dollars on the Tatai River.

And building would start in April on a 338-megawatt dam costing 496 million dollars on the Lower Russei Chrum River.

The Phnom Penh Post newspaper quoted Suy Sem, the minister for industry, mines and energy, as saying the dams would take up to four years to complete.

"We hope that the two hydroelectricity dams will help complement local demand for electricity in the future," Suy Sem said.

Cambodia suffers from high electricity prices, which have long been a hindrance to foreign investors and economic growth. A number of overseas companies are studying the feasibility of around 20 hydropower dams in the country.

But the opacity surrounding hydropower deals has long made opposition legislators uncomfortable, and they have unsuccessfully called for the contracts to be made public.

Environmentalists too are worried that projects could be pushed through with insufficient consideration given to their social and environmental impacts.

National media last year quoted a senior energy ministry official as saying the government had agreed to buy electricity at 7.45 cents per kilowatt-hour from the Tatai dam, and for 7.35 cents per kilowatt-hour from the Lower Russei Chrum dam.

That commitment has at least one multilateral institution worried.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently warned Phnom Penh against taking on open-ended financial commitments - particularly in the power-generation sector - that could burden the impoverished nation with significant ongoing liabilities.

In its annual country report released in December, the IMF noted it had been given assurances by the authorities that "no explicit government guarantees have been provided" for such projects.

But it said greater transparency was required to monitor the potential risk of contingent liabilities.

"The staff urged the authorities to thoroughly review existing contracts for potential liabilities, and exercise caution when evaluating new investment projects that carry an explicit or implicit government guarantee," the IMF stated.

Cambodia currently operates two hydropower dams which have a combined capacity of 13 megawatts. A third dam - which is being constructed by Chinese firm Sinohydro Corp - is partially operational with a projected final capacity of 193 megawatts.

The Tatai River dam is reportedly to be built by China National Heavy Machinery Corporation, while the Lower Russei Chrum dam is due to be built by China Huadian Hong Kong Limited.

Cambodia rebuilds railway with Australian, ADB aid

2010-03-02T17:49:00.002+09:00

PHNOM PENH, March 2 (Reuters) - Cambodia will rebuild its entire railway system by 2013 with the help of the Asian Development Bank , the Australian government and others, its finace minister said at a signing ceremony on Tuesday.

"The project began in 2007 and it will be completed in 2013," Keat Chhon said as the Southeast Asian country received an additional $42 million loan from the ADB and a $21.5 million grant from the Australian government.

Keat Chhon said the ADB had already provided a total of $84 million in loans to help revive the 600 km network.

Another $13 million had come from the OPEC Fund for International Development and Malaysia had contributed 106 km of track worth $2.8 million.

"The railway has played a central role in Cambodia for more than 75 years and many Cambodians see it rightly as a symbol of development and a means of integration with Cambodia's neighbors in the Greater Mekong Sub region and the world beyond," said Kunio Senga, director general of the ADB's Southeast Asia Department.

He said the Cambodian railway would connect with the railway in Thailand, and through it with Malaysia and Singapore.

Australian Ambassador Margaret Adamson said railways would bring new investment.

"Good railways also help the environment and a community's safety by reducing carbon emissions and road accidents."

Toll Holdings of Australia signed a 30-year concession to operate the railway last June, she said.

"They will build Cambodia's human resources capability as well as deliver the railway services. Their presence, I am sure, will also encourage investment by other quality Australian and other foreign companies in Cambodia." prak.chanthul@thomsonreuters.com; +855 2 399 2102; Reuters Messaging: prak.chanthul.reuters.com@reuters.net))

A taste of Cambodia in Vietnam

2010-02-19T17:26:00.004+09:00

Num banh choc, a Cambodian breakfast staple, is also a much-loved dish in southern Vietnam Courtesy of Mon Ngon Viet Nam Magazine

Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Compiled by Hong Nguyen
VietNews (Hanoi)

Num banh choc, a fish and rice noodle soup from Cambodia, has won a place in the hearts of many in Ho Chi Minh City, the bustling southern metropolis crowded with food lovers.

The fish noodle soup is a breakfast staple for people from the land of Angkor Wat. The dish, which includes freshwater fish and herbs, reflects the Cambodian fondness for fish, one of the country’s cheap and abundant sources of food.

The dish gets its distinctive flavor from prahok, a type of fermented fish paste, commonly used in Cambodian cuisine as a seasoning or a condiment.

A bowl of num banh choc not only satisfies the taste buds but also the eyes of gourmets.

It is consisted of a subtle yellow fish and coconut milk broth with fresh rice noodles, paper-thin chopped banana blossom, cucumber and cabbage and topped off with prahok.

A wide variety of fresh vegetables, herbs and even flowers, including watercress, snake beans and water lily stalks, are also used to add more color and flavor to the sweet, sour and salty fish broth.

The noodles are served with fillets – and the head and guts - of freshwater fish. The fish guts are thoroughly cleaned with salt before being cooked to maintain their crunchy texture.

Fish guts are definitely an acquired taste but are also the most-ordered extra ingredient at num banh choc restaurants.

Num banh choc is on the menu of several restaurants in HCMC’s “Cambodian Town” in District 10.

The Tu Xe Restaurant has been a familiar destination for num banh choc fans since it opened in 1972. The owner of the restaurant is a 74-year-old Vietnamese woman who learned the art of Cambodian cuisine while living in Cambodia.

More and more Vietnamese visit Cambodian Town to sample the rich tastes of cuisine from neighboring Cambodia. Cambodian cuisine is said to be influenced by Chinese and Thai cooking, although Cambodian dishes are not as spicy as Thai food.

Some housewives even travel to Cambodian Town to buy ingredients to create their own Vietnamese versions of Num banh choc at home.

Another Cambodian dish, Hu tieu nam vang (Phnom Penh Noodle Soup), is also near the top of the list of favorite breakfast foods of southern Vietnamese.

Hu tieu nam vang is most often prepared with shrimp, pork, squid, fried spring onions and fresh herbs, although different variations can include pork liver and wonton dumplings.

The increasing popularity of cuisine from Cambodia and other countries is unarguably a reflection of the welcoming nature of HCMC.

The city embraces different cultures and people from all around the world, making it an attractive destination for all adventurous spirits who seek to explore the diversity of the world’s cultures and cuisines.

Seoul, Korea

2010-02-12T15:28:00.004+09:00

Unexpected Visit, Feb. 2010

10% of university students don't get money from folks

2010-02-12T15:26:00.001+09:00

The Japan Times
Friday, Feb. 12, 2010
Kyodo News

More than 10 percent of university students living away from home don't receive an allowance from their parents, the first time that benchmark has been reached since such information was first compiled in 1970.

According to the National Federation of University Co-operative Associations in Japan, the economic slowdown that started in September 2008 has continued to affect students' lives as those without allowances from parents hit 10.2 percent in a survey conducted in October and November, up from 8.3 percent the previous year.

The average amount that parents give their children each month fell to ¥74,060, a level last seen in 1983 and 1984 before the emergence of the bubble economy and down 27.6 percent from the record high of ¥102,240 in 1996.

The survey found a growing dependency among students on scholarships, with 37.2 percent of the respondents receiving aid. The scholarships averaged ¥60,650 a month, topping the ¥60,000 mark for the first time.

With limited money at their disposal, students living on their own spent an average of ¥23,350 on food each month, down ¥1,080 from the previous year and the lowest amount since 1976.

Slightly more than 14 percent of students said a change in their parents' financial situation during the past year had affected their financial situation, up 4.2 percentage points from a year earlier.

The survey was conducted on 9,660 students at 31 universities around the country.

Man goes undercover to combat child sex slavery

2010-02-09T14:48:00.002+09:00

By Leif Coorlim, CNN Producer
February 9, 2010 -- Updated 0323 GMT (1123 HKT)

Phnom Penh, Cambodia (CNN) -- Aaron Cohen first met Jonty Thern and her older sister, Channy, in 2005 while singing in a karaoke bar in Battambang, Cambodia. He has come back to see them every year since.

The California native often schedules his trips for November, the month when Cambodians celebrate the Bonn Om Teuk water festival, marking the end of the rainy season.

"The whole country comes together for boat races. Hundreds of thousands of people descend on the waterfront and it's filled with colors and flags," said Cohen. "You know my thoughts about the water festival always include Jonty, because she and her sister would get a day pass during the festival."

There was a smile on his face when he started the sentence, but by the time he had finished, it was gone.

Abolishing slavery

Cohen is a human rights advocate. He founded a charity called AbolishSlavery.org last year, but his work freeing victims of human trafficking began more than a decade ago.
Video: Untold Stories: Innocence for sale
Fact Box
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World's Untold Stories: Innocence for Sale (all times in GMT):

At 6'5" (195 cm) with long, black hair, he stands out in almost every crowd. But Cohen often goes undercover to obtain the information needed for law enforcement officials to conduct raids and make arrests.

His trips have taken him around the world, from Sudan to Nicaragua to Israel. But, he says, in Southeast Asia the problem is especially bad.

"I would rank Cambodia right up there with India as one of the worst places in the world for sex-trafficking."

A bad problem getting worse

According to the NGO, End Child Prostitution, Abuse and Trafficking (ECPAT), as many as one-third of all sex workers in Cambodia are children. Government entities, including the U.S. State Department, are pressuring countries like Cambodia to do more to stop the modern-day slavery epidemic.

"We are making major strides in the fight against human trafficking. But it is a major problem, we know that," said Ambassador-at-Large Luis CdeBaca, who leads the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. "You have estimates as to the number of people in servitude worldwide and it's anywhere from 12.3 million on the low end as cited by UN's International Labour Organization -- to as many as 27 million people on the high end. That's a number coming from the research done by (the aid organization) Free the Slaves. But 12.3 million is a baseline number that everybody agrees that there are at least that many people in forced labor, and that's far too many."

In its comprehensive 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report, the State Department put Cambodia on its Tier 2 Watch List. The ranking means the Cambodian government does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, but is making an effort to do so.

"[In Cambodia] the number of victims is increasing and the number of prosecutions has gone down from the previous year," says CdeBaca. "The report shows that despite the overall effort, the government has not shown enough progress in convicting and punishing human trafficking offenders or protecting trafficking victims."

Cambodia is categorized as a destination country for foreign child sex tourists, with increasing reports of Asian men traveling to Cambodia in order to have sex with underage virgin girls. The State Department report states a significant proportion of trafficking victims in Cambodia are ethnic Vietnamese women and girls who are forced into prostitution in brothels and karaoke bars.

A chance encounter

Jonty Thern's short life could be a case study for that assessment. Jonty's family immigrated to Cambodia from Vietnam shortly after the Vietnam War.

Faced with gripping poverty and a debt, Jonty's mother sold her daughter, who was 10-years-old at the time, to a person on Cambodia's border with Thailand.

That person told her mother Jonty would be selling flowers and candy to customers in bars and nightclubs. It was only later, the mother says, that she learned while there, Jonty would be repeatedly raped and beaten.

After three years of physical and sexual abuse, Jonty was released by her captors and allowed to return home to Battambang. Soon after, she and her sister willingly went to work at a karaoke bar to help the family pay off their debt, according to her parents.

The scenario in which Cohen describes meeting Jonty Thern, then 13-years-old, is as appalling as it is prevalent.

"I was working as an undercover sex vice," Cohen said. "I was posing as a sex tourist, going from karaoke bar to karaoke bar, massage parlor to massage parlor, looking for underage workers, to see if I could get them on camera soliciting me for sex."

As evidenced in the State Department report, it is a poorly-kept secret in Cambodia that many of these establishments are also operating brothels.

"I went to a number of karaokes and about my second or third karaoke of the night and I immediately notice this one really young looking girl. I requested Jonty and her sister and a group of other girls," Cohen said.

"In these bars, the girls are told to drink as much as they can, because they'll charge you for the beers. So this girl comes in and I noticed, man, she downed that beer in like 2 seconds. She seemed to be having a good time, she didn't seem unhappy or anything. But here she is nonetheless, a 13-year-old girl in a brothel drinking 10 beers in the time that I drank two," he added.

He said he invited several friends who work at a nearby victims' shelter to come join him. They posed as partiers as well, until Cohen felt comfortable to ask the manager an important question.

"After the girls began to dance and sing, I asked the mamasan what more can I get besides karaoke and so then she says 'well, for sex it's $50.'"

Cohen used the solicitation video from that night, recorded on a cell phone camera, to provide police with the information they needed to raid the karaoke brothel.

More than a dozen girls, including Jonty and her sister, Channy, were freed that night and sent to live in a victim's shelter, where they received counseling, care and an education.

Final Respects

Cohen's most recent trip to see Jonty and Channy in Cambodia was not a happy reunion. It was a trip planned so that he could say goodbye to one of them.

Three days before arriving in Phnom Penh for the water festival, Cohen and Channy, along with Channy's mother, spent the morning in an 8th century pagoda in Siem Reap, watching as monks conducted an ancient funeral ceremony. They were transferring Jonty Thern's ashes into a marble urn.

Jonty died of liver failure at age 17. Her family claims it was the result of years of alcohol and drug abuse she was subjected to while working first in the nightclubs as a 10-year-old, and then later in the karaoke bars.

"The ashes of my goddaughter are the symbol of why we have to do this. This doesn't have to happen. These girls do not have to be enslaved," Cohen said.

"We tried our best with Jonty and we failed because we lost her. But if there's meaning in her death, the meaning is that there is more work to be done. When I'm in that karaoke now, or when I'm in that massage parlor, she's my little angel. She's watching over me and she's protecting me," he added.

That evening, after watching the festival's fireworks display and saying goodnight to Channy, Cohen strapped an undercover watch camera to his wrist, and went to a karaoke bar.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/02/08/cambodia.wus.child.sex.trafficking/index.html?section=cnn_latest

Operation Breakfast Redux: Could Pakistan 2010 Go the Way of Cambodia 1969?

2010-02-09T00:08:00.001+09:00

Sitting in air-conditioned comfort, cans of Coke and 7-Up within reach as they watched their screens, the ground controllers gave the order to strike under the cover of darkness. There had been no declaration of war. No advance warning, nothing, in fact, that would have alerted the "enemy" to the sudden, unprecedented bombing raids. The secret computer-guided strikes were authorized by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, just weeks after a new American president entered the Oval Office. They represented an effort to wipe out the enemy’s central headquarters whose location intelligence experts claimed to have pinpointed just across the border from the war-torn land where tens of thousands of American troops were fighting daily.

In remote villages where no reporters dared to go, far from the battlefields where Americans were dying, who knew whether the bombs that rained from the night sky had killed high-level insurgents or innocent civilians? For 14 months the raids continued and, after each one was completed, the commander of the bombing crews was instructed to relay a one-sentence message: "The ball game is over."

The campaign was called "Operation Breakfast," and, while it may sound like the CIA’s present air campaign over Pakistan, it wasn’t. You need to turn the clock back to another American war, four decades earlier, to March 18, 1969, to be exact. The target was an area of Cambodia known as the Fish Hook that jutted into South Vietnam, and Operation Breakfast would be but the first of dozens of top secret bombing raids. Later ones were named "Lunch," "Snack," and "Supper," and they went under the collective label "Menu." They were authorized by President Richard Nixon and were meant to destroy a (non-existent) "Bamboo Pentagon," a central headquarters in the Cambodian borderlands where North Vietnamese communists were supposedly orchestrating raids deep into South Vietnam.

Like President Obama today, Nixon had come to power promising stability in an age of unrest and with a vague plan to bringing peace to a nation at war. On the day he was sworn in, he read from the Biblical book of Isaiah: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks." He also spoke of transforming Washington’s bitter partisan politics into a new age of unity: "We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another, until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices."

Return to the Killing Fields

In recent years, many commentators and pundits have resorted to “the Vietnam analogy,” comparing first the American war in Iraq and now in Afghanistan to the Vietnam War. Despite a number of similarities, the analogy disintegrates quickly enough if you consider that U.S. military campaigns in post-invasion Afghanistan and Iraq against small forces of lightly-armed insurgents bear little resemblance to the large-scale war that Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon waged against both southern revolutionary guerrillas and the military of North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, who commanded a real army, with the backing of, and supplies from, the Soviet Union and China.

A more provocative -- and perhaps more ominous -- analogy today might be between the CIA’s escalating drone war in the contemporary Pakistani tribal borderlands and Richard Nixon’s secret bombing campaign against the Cambodian equivalent. To briefly recapitulate that ancient history: In the late 1960s, Cambodia was ruled by a “neutralist” king, Norodom Sihanouk, leading a weak government that had little relevance to its poor and barely educated citizens. In its borderlands, largely beyond its control, the North Vietnamese and Vietcong found “sanctuaries.”

Sihanouk, helpless to do anything, looked the other way. In the meantime, sheltered by local villagers in distant areas of rural Cambodia was a small insurgent group, little-known communist fundamentalists who called themselves the Khmer Rouge. (Think of them as the 1970s equivalent of the Pakistani Taliban who have settled into the wild borderlands of that country largely beyond the control of the Pakistani government.) They were then weak and incapable of challenging Sihanouk -- until, that is, those secret bombing raids by American B-52s began. As these intensified in the summer of 1969, areas of the country began to destabilize (helped on in 1970 by a U.S.-encouraged military coup in the capital Phnom Penh), and the Khmer Rouge began to gain strength.

You know the grim end of that old story.

Forty years, almost to the day, after Operation Breakfast began, I traveled to the town of Snuol, close to where the American bombs once fell. It is a quiet town, no longer remote, as modern roads and Chinese-led timber companies have systematically cut down the jungle that once sheltered anti-government rebels. I went in search of anyone who remembered the bombing raids, only to discover that few there were old enough to have been alive at the time, largely because the Khmer Rouge executed as much as a quarter of the total Cambodian population after they took power in 1975.

Eventually, a 15-minute ride out of town, I found an old soldier living by himself in a simple one-room house adorned with pictures of the old king, Sihanouk. His name was Kong Kan and he had first moved to the nearby town of Memot in 1960. A little further away, I ran into three more old men, Choenung Klou, Keo Long, and Hoe Huy, who had gathered at a newly built temple to chat.

All of them remembered the massive 1969 B-52 raids vividly and the arrival of U.S. troops the following year. "We thought the Americans had come to help us," said Choenung Klou. "But then they left and the [South] Vietnamese soldiers who came with them destroyed the villages and raped the women."

He had no love for the North Vietnamese communists either. "They would stay at people's houses, take our hammocks and food. We didn't like them and we were afraid of them."

Caught between two Vietnamese armies and with American planes carpet-bombing the countryside, increasing numbers of Cambodians soon came to believe that the Khmer Rouge, who were their countrymen, might help them. Like the Taliban of today, many of the Khmer Rouge were, in fact, teenaged villagers who had responded, under the pressure of war and disruption, to the distant call of an inspirational ideology and joined the resistance in the jungles.

"If you ask me why I joined the Khmer Rouge, the main reason is because of the American invasion," Hun Sen, the current prime minister of Cambodia, has said. "If there was no invasion, by now, I would be a pilot or a professor."

Six years after the bombings of Cambodia began, shortly after the last helicopter lifted off the U.S. embassy in Saigon and the flow of military aid to the crumbling government of Cambodia stopped, a reign of terror took hold in the capital, Phnom Penh.

The Khmer Rouge left the jungles and entered the capital where they began a systemic genocide against city dwellers and anyone who was educated. They vowed to restart history at Year Zero, a new era in which much of the past became irrelevant. Some two million people are believed to have died from executions, starvation, and forced labor in the camps established by the Angkar leadership of the Khmer Rouge commanded by Pol Pot.

Unraveling Pakistan

Could the same thing happen in Pakistan today? A new American president was ordering escalating drone attacks, in a country where no war has been declared, at the moment when I flew from Cambodia across South Asia to Afghanistan, so this question loomed large in my mind. Both there and just across the border, Operation Breakfast seems to be repeating itself.

In the Afghan capital, Kabul, I met earnest aid workers who drank late into the night in places like L'Atmosphere, a foreigner-only bar that could easily have doubled as a movie set for Saigon in the 1960s. Like modern-day equivalents of Graham Greene's "quiet American," these "consultants" describe a Third Way that is neither Western nor fundamentalist Islam.

At the very same time, CIA analysts in distant Virginia are using pilot-less drones and satellite technology to order strikes against supposed terrorist headquarters across the border in Pakistan. They are not so unlike the military men who watched radar screens in South Vietnam in the 1960s as the Cambodian air raids went on.

In 2009, on the orders of President Obama, the U.S. unloaded more missiles and bombs on Pakistan than President Bush did in the years of his secret drone war, and the strikes have been accelerating in number and intensity. By this January, there was a drone attack almost every other day. Even if, this time around, no one is using the code phrase, "the ball game is over," Washington continually hails success after success, terrorist leader after terrorist leader killed, implying that something approaching victory could be somewhere just over the horizon.

As in the 1960s in Cambodia, these strikes are, in actuality, having a devastating, destabilizing effect in Pakistan, not just on the targeted communities, but on public consciousness throughout the region. An article in the January 23rd New York Times indicated that the fury over these attacks has even spread into Pakistan's military establishment which, in a manner similar to Sihanouk in the 1960s, knows its limits in its tribal borderlands and is publicly uneasy about U.S. air strikes which undermine the country’s sovereignty. "Are you with us or against us?" the newspaper quoted a senior Pakistani military officer demanding of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates when he spoke last month at Pakistan's National Defense University.

Even pro-American Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has spoken out publicly against drone strikes. Of one such attack, he recently told reporters, "We strongly condemn this attack and the government will raise this issue at [the] diplomatic level."

Despite the public displays of outrage, however, the American strikes have undoubtedly been tacitly approved at the highest levels of the Pakistani government because of that country’s inability to control militants in its tribal borderlands. Similarly, Sihanouk finally looked the other way after the U.S. provided secret papers, code-named Vesuvius, as proof that the Vietnamese were operating from his country.

While most Democratic and Republican hawks have praised the growing drone war in the skies over Pakistan, some experts in the U.S. are starting to express worries about them (even if they don’t have the Cambodian analogy in mind). For example, John Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School who frequently advises the military, says that an expansion of the drone strikes "might even spark a social revolution in Pakistan."

Indeed, even General David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, wrote in a secret assessment on May 27, 2009: "Anti-U.S. sentiment has already been increasing in Pakistan… especially in regard to cross-border and reported drone strikes, which Pakistanis perceive to cause unacceptable civilian casualties." Quoting local polls, he wrote: "35 percent [of Pakistanis] say they do not support U.S. strikes into Pakistan, even if they are coordinated with the GOP [government of Pakistan] and the Pakistan Military ahead of time."

The Pakistani Army has, in fact, launched several significant operations against the Pakistani Taliban in Swat and in South Waziristan, just as Sihanouk initially ordered the Cambodian military to attack the Khmer Rouge and suppress peasant rebellions in Battambang Province. Again like Sihanouk in the late 1960s, however, the Pakistanis have balked at more comprehensive assaults on the Taliban, and especially on the Afghan Taliban using the border areas as “sanctuaries.”

The New Jihadists

What happens next is the $64 million question. Most Pakistani experts dismiss any suggestion that the Taliban has widespread support in their country, but it must be remembered that the Khmer Rouge was a fringe group with no more than 4,000 fighters at the time that Operation Breakfast began.

And if Cambodia's history is any guide to the future, the drone strikes do not have to create a groundswell for revolution. They only have to begin to destabilize Pakistan as would, for instance, the threatened spread of such strikes into the already unsettled province of Baluchistan, or any future American ground incursions into the country. A few charismatic intellectuals like Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot always have the possibility of taking it from there, rallying angry and unemployed youth to create an infrastructure for disruptive change.

Despite often repeated claims by both the Bush and Obama administrations that the drone raids are smashing al-Qaeda's intellectual leadership, more and more educated and disenchanted young men from around the world seem to be rallying to the fundamentalist cause.

Some have struck directly at American targets like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian who attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day 2009, and Dr. Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, the 32-year-old Jordanian double agent and suicide bomber who killed seven CIA operatives at a military base in Khost, southern Afghanistan, five days later.

Some have even been U.S.-born, like Anwar al-Awlaki, the 38-year-old Islamic preacher from New Mexico who has moved to Yemen; Adam Pearlman, a 32-year-old Southern Californian and al-Qaeda spokesman now known as "Azzam the American," who reportedly lives somewhere in the Afghan-Pakistan border regions; and Omar Hammami, the 25-year-old Syrian-American from Alabama believed to be an al-Shabaab leader in Somalia.

Like the Khmer Rouge before them, these new jihadists display no remorse for killing innocent civilians. "One of the sad truths I have come to see is that for this kind of mass violence, you don't need monsters," says Craig Etcheson, author of After the Killing Fields and founder of the Documentation Center of Cambodia. "Ordinary people will do just fine. This thing lives in all of us."

Even King Sihanouk, who had once ordered raids against the Khmer Rouge, eventually agreed to support them after he had been overthrown in a coup and was living in exile in China. Could the same thing happen to Pakistani politicians if they fall from grace and U.S. backing?

What threw Sihanouk's fragile government into serious disarray -- other than his own eccentricity and self-absorption -- was the devastating spillover of Nixon's war in Vietnam into Cambodia’s border regions. It finally brought the Khmer Rouge to power.

Pakistan 2010, with its enormous modern military and industrialized base, is hardly impoverished Cambodia 1969. Nonetheless, in that now ancient history lies both a potential analogy and a cautionary tale. Beware secret air wars that promise success and yet wreak havoc in lands that are not even enemy nations.

When his war plans were questioned, Nixon pressed ahead, despite a growing public distaste for his war. A similar dynamic seems to be underway today. In 1970, after Operation Breakfast was revealed by the New York Times, Nixon told his top military and national security aides: "We cannot sit here and let the enemy believe that Cambodia is our last gasp."

Had he refrained first from launching Operation Breakfast and then from supping on the whole “menu,” some historians like Etcheson believe a genocide would have been averted. It would be a sad day if the drone strikes, along with the endless war that the Obama administration has inherited and that is now spilling over ever more devastatingly into Pakistan, were to create a new class of fundamentalists who actually had the capacity to seize power.

Pratap Chatterjee is a freelance journalist and senior editor at CorpWatch who has traveled extensively in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has written two books about the war on terror, Iraq, Inc. (Seven Stories Press, 2004) and Halliburton's Army (Nation Books, 2009). For more information on Nixon’s secret campaign, he recommends Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia by William Shawcross. (Simon and Schuster, 1979)

Copyright 2010 Pratap Chatterjee

US panel examines Kingdom’s China ties

2010-02-08T23:54:00.002+09:00

The Phnom Penh Post
Monday, 08 February 2010 15:05 Steve Hirsch

WASHINGTON
EXPERTS testifying before a US government panel on Thursday described China’s relationship with Cambodia as part of a broader effort to deepen its influence in mainland Southeast Asia, and cited the December deportation of 20 Uighur asylum seekers – which came two days before the two countries signed aid agreements worth US$1.2 billion – as proof that the effort was working.

Speaking before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Donald Weatherbee, a leading American scholar on international relations in Southeast Asia, said China’s “accelerating” economic penetration of Cambodia was “a prime example of ‘RMB diplomacy’”, a phrase that refers to the Chinese currency, the Renminbi.

“In China,” he said, “the government of Hun Sen has an enabler, not concerned with issues of human rights, corruption, environmental degradation, the rule of law and the other kinds of nontraditional and human security issues with which Cambodia’s US and other Western [Cambodia Development Cooperation Forum] partners are concerned.”

Referring to the December deportation, he said: “Although both countries deny any connection between the signing of the economic package and the extradition of the Uighurs, it is clear that Cambodia was not going to allow its obligations under the United Nations Refugee Convention – to which it is a signatory – to put a shadow over the signing ceremony for the new agreements.”

The 12-member commission, established in 2000, submits an annual report to the US congress “on the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between” the US and China, as well as providing “recommendations, where appropriate, to Congress for legislative and administrative action”.

Members are appointed by leaders in the US senate and house of representatives.

The hearing on Thursday, titled “China’s Activities in Southeast Asia and the Implications for US Interests”, was its first of the year.

Catharin Dalpino of Georgetown University told the panel that it was increasingly possible to detect “an emerging Chinese sphere of influence” in mainland Southeast Asia, especially in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, and to a lesser extent in Thailand and Vietnam.

She said China’s ties with mainland Southeast Asia had strengthened as the US, particularly under President George W Bush, focused on the region’s maritime countries, a trend she attributed in part to American emphasis on counterterrorism.

She also said that China was “adept” at exploiting differences in US and Chinese policies with respect to human rights and the promotion of democracy, citing Cambodia as an example.

“In Cambodia, when the West criticised Prime Minister Hun Sen for his part in the 1997 rupture of the government coalition, it put Beijing’s relations with the prime minister on a new, more positive footing,” she said, referring to the factional fighting between Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party and Funcinpec.

Bronson Percival, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic Studies at the nonprofit research company CNA, said ties between Cambodia and China were in part linked to defence agreements, calling China the “main patron” for the militaries in Cambodia and Laos.

However, he added, “Despite speculation that China would like to eventually develop a naval base along Cambodia’s coast, these security relationships are limited to the usual array of visits, training, and the transfer of unsophisticated Chinese military equipment.” China has reportedly been interested in establishing naval bases in Cambodia, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan and Thailand to protect shipping supply routes.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Koy Kuong on Sunday took issue with some of the experts’ assertions, notably the attempt to link the Uighur deportation with the economic assistance agreements. He said, as he has previously, that the Uighurs were deported for no other reason than that they had entered the country illegally and without documentation.

“No, it is not related to each other,” Koy Kuong said. “The relationship between Cambodia and China is apart from the deportation of the Uighurs.
The Uighurs in Cambodia were illegal immigrants, and Cambodia implemented the Immigration Law against them because they were illegal.”

He also said that Cambodia’s relationship with China was no different from its relationships with other countries that give economic assistance.
“Cambodia is a sovereign state, and China is also a sovereign state, and no one has influence over the other,” he said. “We treat each other equally.”

The US and Chinese embassies both declined to comment on Sunday.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY ROBBIE COREY-BOULET

Yuon: What’s in a xenonym?

2010-02-08T23:45:00.003+09:00

The Phnom Penh Post
Monday, 08 February 2010 15:02 Sophal Ear

A version of this article first appeared in Vietnamese in the online journal Talawas (Autumn 2009)

Someone once said, “To understand others, you must first understand yourself.” We believe that understanding the Khmer language alone and living in Cambodia is necessary but not sufficient to truly open up the Khmer soul to non-Khmers. Khmerness is speaking the language, understanding Khmer idioms, appreciating Khmer jokes and their nuances, and enjoying Khmer music and poetry. It is a feeling that resonates with Khmer people living in Cambodia. Being Khmer should not be synonymous with Pol Pot. The actions that Pol Pot committed are complete anathema to the Khmer soul. A Khmer is someone who is proud of the civilization that Angkor has left as its legacy.

The Khmer have lived under threat of extinction (perhaps even saved by French colonialism), and who have witnessed the disappearance of Khmer territory to their powerful neighbors, Vietnam and Thailand. This is the context within which we write.

As Ronnie Yimsut has elaborated in a 2005 online essay: “These [invader] perceptions about Vietnam are also quite valid, historically speaking. The so-called Kampuchea Krom (area in … southern Vietnam including Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong delta region), and the former “Kingdom of Champa” (area in northern Vietnam) are two historical examples of successful Vietnamese annexation and expansionism.”

Pol Kang wrote in a 2004 article, “During the period 1813-15, Vietnamese perpetrated the infamous massacre known to every Khmer as prayat kompup te ong. It involved the most barbarous torture technique, in which the Khmer were buried alive up to their neck. Their heads were used as the stands for a wood stove to boil water for the Vietnamese masters.

Let us consider only the issue of language and the word used by Cambodians for the people of Vietnam: yuon. This remains a bone of contention because many non-Khmer have argued that the word is fundamentally racist in common parlance.

The word yuon may have come from the word yueh, what the Mandarin Chinese call Vietnam, yueh nam. The word nam means south in Chinese. Yueh indicates the name of the people of that region. Therefore, yueh means Viet or Vietnamese in Chinese, and yueh nam means the yueh people of the south. In this case, south means south of China. South Vietnam pronounces it yeaknam.

Chou Ta-Kuan (Zhou Daguan), the celebrated Chinese ambassador to Cambodia in the 13th century, indicated in his report that there was already a large population of Chinese settling in Cambodia at that time. He said that the Chinese preferred life in the Khmer Empire because it was easier than in China. There were a lot of Chinese men marrying the native Cambodian women. The word yuon may have derived from the Chinese word yueh to indicate the Vietnamese.

George Coedes, an expert on Southeast Asia, found evidence of the word yuon inscribed in Khmer on a stele dating to the time of the Khmer King Suryavarman I (1002-1050). Adhémar Leclère, a colonial French governor of Cambodia who lived there 25 years, used the word yuon throughout his book Histoire du Cambodge depuit le 1er siècle de notre ère (Librairie Paul Geuthner, 1914: 99, 413, 432, 434, 435, and 469).

While yuon has been equated with the word “savage” by David Roberts in a 2002 article for the Washington Times, in fact, the word savage in Cambodian translates to pourk prey or phnong (which unfortunately also refers to an ethnic hill tribe minority living in Cambodia). Cambodians call Vietnamese yuon the same way they call Indian khleung, Burmese phoumea, French barang and Chinese chen. These are all xenonyms and Khmer transliterations.

When the Vietnamese sometimes call Khmer people ngoi mien (when they should use ngoi campuchia), this is inaccurate because the word mien is the name for a minority group that is not ethnically Khmer. According to the Mien Network (http://www.miennetwork.com/miencommunity/history.html), “The Mien are a sub-group of the Yao in China, and they originated from Southwest China. According to 1995 population figures published by the Tribal Research Institute of Chiang Mai, there are over 40,000 Mien living in 173 villages in Northern Thailand. Larger numbers are found in Laos (85,000) and Vietnam (474,000), with the majority still in China. According to the 1990 census, there are about 2.1 million Yao living in China.”

Thus, it would be like saying of an Englishman that he is Basque. The geography is completely off, but the possible connotation may be of a nation without a state. In the late 17th century, the Vietnamese court of Hue changed the names of the Cambodian princesses Ang Mei, Ang Pen, Ang Peou and Ang Snguon to the Vietnamese-sounding names of Ngoc-van, Ngoc-bien, Ngoc-tu, and Ngoc-nguyen, respectively. Phnom Penh is also known in Vietnamese as Nam Vang. Indeed, our venerated Phnom Penh noodles are otherwise advertised in Vietnamese as heu tiev nam vang.

Moreover, while we call Chao Doc and Saigon (what is now HCMC) Mot Chrouk and Prey Nokor, respectively, this is the equivalent phenomenon in use when it comes to the word yuon, that of a xenonym in current use.

We surmise that confusion over the word yuon arises from the fact that the word Vietnam(ese) exists. The misunderstanding is that for Khmer people to opt for using the word yuon instead of the word Vietnam(ese) gives non-Khmer the impression that we are racists. To say this would be the equivalent of saying that anyone who uses the word Cambodian instead of Khmer is racist.

When we speak in Khmer, it is very awkward and does not sound right to the ear to use the word Vietnam, and even less so Vietnamese.

However, when we speak in English or French, it is more natural to use the word Vietnamese or Vietnamien, and it would become awkward to use the word yuon.

For example, if we want to say that “fishermen are mostly Vietnamese”, and both words, yuon and Vietnamese, are used in a Khmer sentence, the result would be as follows: pourk neak nisart trey keu chreun tè youn, or pourk neak nisart trey keu chreun tè choun cheat vietnam. It therefore requires more syllables to use the word Vietnam to describe the Vietnamese because we have to say choun cheat vietnam (literally National of Vietnam) to describe a Vietnamese person. We cannot say pourk neak nisart trey keu chreun tè vietnam because Vietnam is a country. In Khmer, the word Vietnamese per se does not exist unless one uses the word yuon.

It is rare in the Khmer language to have a racist word attributed to different ethnic groups. However, this does not mean that salty language does not exist. To the contrary, when wishing to disrespect someone, we add an adjective “a” in front of the word that we intend to use. If we say a yuon, then it is a sign of disrespect, but not necessarily a racist remark. To be racist requires that the following words be used: a katop (equating a Vietnamese to a diaper), a gnieung (a probable play on the common Vietnamese family name Nguyen) or a sakei daung (equating a Vietnamese to a coconut husk). Some might compare the word yuon to the word “nigger”, but that is too strong and ahistorical a comparison. In any case, to have called someone in 1860 racist for using the word nigger would be historically inaccurate. These were conventions then, and evolved out of fashion later.

The only basis to this is when, during the Lon Nol period (Khmer Republic 1970-1975), yuon was indeed used in a derogatory fashion during attacks on Vietnamese people. Thus, the word took on a negative connotation in the 1970s and was allegedly banned in the 1980s when Cambodia was occupied by Vietnam. Sour Vietnamese soup, samlar machou yuon, became samlar machou vietnam, but reverted to its original name in the 1990s. Of course, the Khmer Rouge also used the word yuon, as when they characterised the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) as yuon-TAC, an agent of the Vietnamese-backed Cambodian People’s Party. But again, just because the Khmer Rouge and the Khmer Republicans hijacked the word does not mean it must now be abandoned in everyday language.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ alone and do not represent the views of their employers or the US government.

Sophal Ear is an assistant professor of national security affairs in Monterey, California. Kenneth T So is an engineer and Khmer historian.

Finding real beauty far away from Angkor Wat

2010-02-08T16:41:00.003+09:00

A structure related to the Central Sanctuary of Prasat Preah Vihear stands at the edge of a cliff. (Photo Source: Shanghaidaily.com)

Beijing, Feb. 8 (Shanghai Daily) -- Bus trips, motorbike adventures and hikes. When you travel in Cambodia, you need more than a pair of sturdy shoes and a guidebook. You also need determination, persistence and a discerning eye that can discover the real beauty.

Just as Angkor is more than its wat, so too is Cambodia more than its national pride Angkor Wat. Far more than that, indeed.

This Southeast Asian country can be an adventurer's paradise, if you are tough enough, physically and mentally.

Leave behind touristy Siem Reap where the magnificent Angkor temples are and venture further to the far-flung areas and mountains, and you will find nature and history telling a different story.

That amazing story, however, comes at a cost - most of the inspired temples, lost to all but the intrepid for decades, are tucked away well off the beaten track; some so far away that there's hardly a road you can track.

Prasat Preah Vihear (Preah Vihear Temple), in northwestern Cambodia's Preah Vihear Province, is a sublime spot but is only for those with a serious thirst for adventure. The vast area borders Thailand and Laos to the north, much of it heavily forested and extremely remote.

It's all about location, location, location - a mountain temple perched precariously atop a cliff-face on the Thai border.

In this tough but rewarding two-day trip on rough, dusty roads, you will see the real life of ordinary Cambodians - harsh, bitter yet vibrant.

My pilgrimage began with a two-and-a-half-hour bus trip from Siem Reap to Anlong Veng, a transfer where I stopped over to get fully prepared for the next day's odyssey.

For almost a decade this small town was the ultimate Khmer Rouge stronghold: home to Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan and Ta Mok, among the most notorious leaders of Democratic Kampuchea.

Today Anlong Veng is a poor, dusty place with little going for it except the nearby Choam-Choam Srawngam border crossing, which takes you to a pretty isolated part of Thailand. The average visitor will find little to see or do here, but for those with a keen interest in contemporary Cambodian history, some Khmer Rouge sites are an important - if troubling and enigmatic - part of the picture, through which you can feel the pain and tears the people once suffered.

On a peaceful lakeside site, Ta Mok's house (admission US$2) is a Spartan structure with a bunker in the basement, five childish wall murals downstairs and three more murals upstairs, including a map and an idyllic wildlife scene. About the only furnishings that weren't looted are the floor tiles - on these very bits of ceramic, the men who killed 1.7 million Cambodians used to plan offensives, pass death sentences, and joke with friends.

From the turnoff to Ta Mok's house, my local driver/guide Noon (who speaks English) drove a further 7 kilometers north to Tumnup Leu, where a right turn and 400 meters brought me to Ta Mok's grave.

"Mind your feet and closely follow me, if you don't want to lose any part of your body," Noon warns, referring to a nearby minefield.

The tomb has no name or inscription of any sort, but this doesn't seem to bother the locals who stop by to light incense sticks and - in a bizarre new local tradition - hope his ghost grants them a winning lottery number.

The real challenge presented itself when early next morning we hit the road heading to Prasat Preah Vihear. The transport situation was as dire as the state of the dirt road, with through-traffic virtually nonexistent.

Before getting started, Noon suggested I wear a mask. I didn't put it on until half an hour later when the dust and dirt were everywhere in the air.

For the next two and a half hours, my eyes didn't open for even a minute. The dust went all the way through the mask - into my eyes, nose, mouth and ears. My hair became sticky, face turned brownish, hands got dark. Even worse, my clothes, trousers, scarf, bag - everything exposed - were covered all over with thick dust.

I became a "dust girl."

When we finally reached the foot of the mountain after the non-stop bumpy journey, Noon and I changed to a bigger, more powerful motorbike (rental US$5) for a hair-raising, 20-minute ride up gradients of up to 40 percent.

I held on tight to Noon to keep from falling off. My heart was racing.

But the moment I got off the motorbike, stood on the mountain top, and took in the panorama, I felt that all the hardship paid off. I was overwhelmed by the satisfaction of knowing that I had completed a modern-day pilgrimage almost the equal of one undertaken at the height of the Angkorian empire.

The views are breathtaking: lowland Cambodia, 550 meters below, stretching as far as the eye can see, with the holy mountain of Phnom Kulen looming in the distance.

For generations, Prasat Preah Vihear has been a source of tension between Cambodia and Thailand.

During my recent visit soldiers holding rifles were everywhere: patrolling or standing guard right on the border or around the temple. Flags of both the United Nations and Cambodia flapped high in the wind.

"Just two weeks ago, there was a big fight right here on the border," Noon told me.

That's maybe why very few people want to come here - even if they want, they are most likely to think twice, for the journey and for their own safety.

"You are the only tourist here in two weeks," said one stationed soldier among a group who gathered around looking in curiosity and surprise at me. "Very few people come here, not to mention women; you are probably the first one.

"The whole journey up here is very hard, not everyone can make it, you are very brave and strong-willed," he added.

The most dramatically situated of all the Angkorian monuments, 800-meter-long Prasat Preah Vihear (admission US$5) perches high atop the south-facing cliff face of the Dangkrek Mountains.

The height of Angkorian architectural audacity, its foundation stones stretch to the edge of a precipitous cliff. Breathe in the views as they are simply enormous.

Prasat Preah Vihear, an important place of pilgrimage during the Angkorian period, was built by a succession of seven Khmer monarchs, one of them being Suryavarman II, builder of Angkor Wat, which is also why in some aspects this mountain-top temple is similar to the "mother of all temples" in Siem Reap.

Like other temple-mountains from this period, it was designed to represent Mt Meru and was dedicated to the Hindu deity Shiva.

Start a visit at the monumental stairway, if possible from the bottom (near the market and the crossing from Thailand). As you walk south, you come to four cruciform gopuras (sanctuaries), decorated with a profusion of exquisite carvings and separated by esplanades up to 350 meters long.

At the entrance to the Gopura of the Third Level, look for an early rendering of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk, a theme later depicted awesomely at Angkor Wat. The Central Sanctuary and its associated structures and galleries, in a remarkably good state of repair, are right at the edge of the cliff, which affords stupendous views of Cambodia's northern plains.

Completing my pilgrimage with a deep breath, I looked into the distance, feeling my body and soul never before so closely connected.