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Cambodia's News for May 2004

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24-Aug-2005
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"The immortal gods, when they intend to punish some men for their sins, sometimes grant them temporary prosperity and prolonged immunity to make them suffer more severely from a change of fortune." -- Julius Caesar

May 29, 2004 - Pakistan To Extend US $ 10m Loan To Cambodia

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan : May 29 (PNS) - Pakistan will provide a soft term loan of US $ 10 million to Cambodia for the development of small water reservoirs. Agreement to this effect was signed here at the Economic Affairs Division on Saturday night. The agreement on behalf of Government of Pakistan was inked by Secretary Economic Affairs Division, Dr.Waqar Masood Khan while from the Cambodian side, Ouk Rabun Secretary of State Ministry of Economic signed the agreement. Dr.Waqar Masood Khan, speaking on the occasion said Cambodia is an important regional country and there is strong desire on part of both the countries to increase trade and economic relations between them. He added that Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali during his visit to Cambodia in April this year pledged US $ 10 million concession loan for the country for its reconstruction and socio economic development. Dr. Waqar said the visit of Cambodian delegation was a follow up Visit to finalize the agreement. He said Cambodians are keen to develop their water projects for agriculture sector and want to utilize Pakistan's expertise in this area. The Secretary said the delegation also visited Tarbala Dam project today and evinced keen interest in the project. Soon a technical team from NESPAK will visit Cambodia and undertake project feasibility for development of water project there. Speaking on the occasion leader of the Cambodian delegation, thanked Pakistan for its financial support for a priority sector of his country. He called for enhancing bilateral trade and economic relations between Cambodia and Pakistan.

May 28, 2004 - Pak, Cambodia agree to boost ties in Power sector

TARBELA, May 28 (Online): Cambodian Minister for Planning and Economic Affairs Mr Evcrowdon called on Federal Minister for Water and Power Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao at Tarbela Rest House on Thursday and agreed to boost relations in power sector between the two countries. During the meeting Cambodian Minister hoping that Pakistan could play an important role in enhancing Cambodian economic growth, added, “We want to get maximum benefit from Pakistan especially in the dams constructions, power generating and irrigation projects” . Mr Evcrowdon said Cambodia wanted better economic ties with Pakistan . Meanwhile Minister for Water and Power said that Pakistan would cooperate with Cambodia in different uplift projects and to provide it every possible support especially in power sector . During his talk with Cambodian dignitary, Mr Sherpao apprised him about the present situation of country’s dams . He said a new dam would be constructed at Tarbela soon due to which total number of large dams in country would reach four . Minister also hoped of better relations between two countries in future also . Earlier Cambodian Minister visited Tarbela Lake and viewed the power generating process .

May 23, 2004 - Cambodia's crucial garment industry braces for end to quota system

PHNOM PENH : Cambodia's crucial garment sector is bracing for the end of a 30-year-old global textile quota system in December, hoping to position itself as a labour-friendly alternative to China. The highly mobile garment manufacturing industry contributes more than 90 percent of
Cambodia's export earnings and employs an estimated 240,000 mostly female workers, making it the linchpin of one of the world's poorest economies. The expiration of the multi-fibre agreement (MFA), which allocates textile quotas to developing nations for export to rich countries and gave Cambodia its entree into the global market, is expected to see giant China elbow out competitors. Read more...

May 23, 2004 - The lures of Cambodia's waterfronts, beaches

By Simon Romero - New York Times

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - The chocolate-colored waters of the Tonle Sap River, one of Indochina's richest sources of freshwater fish, unfolded around the hydrofoil as it
sped toward Phnom Penh. Along the river's margins, fishing villages and pagodas melted into the landscape. Fishermen were slinging their nets in search of that day's catch, their tiny skiffs plying the water a contrast to our sleek
Malaysian-operated boat. Read more...

May 10, 2004 - CAMBODIA: Ambassador seeks added security at Thai mission

PHNOM PENH - Thailand has asked for more security at its mission in the Cambodian capital after a protest over a Thai national’s alleged claim that Angkor Wat belonged to her country, the ambassador said today. Erroneous reports of a similar claim by a Thai actress led to violent rioting at the embassy in January 2003 in which one Cambodian was killed and the building looted and burned. "The number of security forces provided remains the same although we have asked the responsible authorities to strengthen, or strictly enforce, the protection of the embassy," Thai ambassador Piyawat Niyomrerks said.
Hundreds of garment factory workers reportedly protested in the Cambodian capital last Thursday, accusing a Thai garment inspector of making the claim after seeing a poster that said the famed temple complex belonged to Cambodia. While the inspector departed before the protest began, her Thai colleague was trapped inside and emerged later in the evening to read a statement in Khmer apologizing, the Cambodia Daily said. The ambassador said some local reports conflicted with the facts that the embassy had gathered, but it was nonetheless important to keep the mission protected. "Whatever the circumstances may be, we have to be very cautious on protection for the embassy," Piyawat said. The embassy was burned and looted during last year's riots, prompting Piyawat's predecessor to flee over a back fence for his safety and hundreds of Thais to be airlifted out of the capital. Dozens of Thai businesses were also looted during the mayhem.

May 8, 2004 - Raffles hotel in Cambodia settles row

A RAFFLES Holdings hotel in Cambodia which found itself mired in staff trouble appears to have resolved its problem amicably. The luxurious Raffles Grand Hotel d'Angkor yesterday said the management and new workers' representatives have agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement. This resolution comes more than two weeks after the hotel, owned by Singapore-listed Raffles Holdings, terminated the services of 196 Cambodian staff on April 19. The hotel yesterday said the 12-month agreement, signed yesterday, covers more than 200 unionised employees and will remain in effect until April 30, 2005. It is aimed at strengthening the working partnership between management and workers, preventing future labour disputes and ensuring that the benefits of both parties are protected, it added. 'It enables us and our employees to move forward and build a successful future,' said Riaz Mahmood, hotel manager at Raffles d'Angkor. The new representatives of the Employees' Committee at Raffles d'Angkor was elected by an 83 per cent turnout on April 30. According to the hotel, the first order of the committee's agenda was to resolve outstanding issues between management and workers in an amicable way. This peaceful settlement, however, comes on the heels of a dramatic confrontation. The 131-room hotel was reported to be turning away guests since April 8 after half of its staff went on strike earlier to protest the fact that most of a 10 per cent service charge levied on guests was not passed on. After the termination of the 196 staff, d'Angkor's general manager said the hotel would stay closed to guests until it could find sufficient staff to bring the level of service back to pre-strike days.

May 7, 2004- Cambodian PM replaces ministry heads

Cambodia's prime minister, Hun Sen, says he has appointed two members of his party to head ministries previously held by former coalition partner FUNCINPEC. The move comes amid a continuing deadlock over forming a new government, 10 months after inconclusive national elections. The prime minister says he was forced to act because some FUNCINPEC ministers were not working properly or attending cabinet meetings. Ruling Cambodian People's Party member and current secretary of state for education, Im Sithy, has been appointed acting education minister. He replaces Tol Lah from FUNCINPEC, who died in April. Ang Vong Vathana, the CPP's secretary of state for justice, was appointed minister, replacing FUNCINPEC's Neav Sithong.

May 7, 2004 - Cambodia's traditional ploughing ceremony held

Phnom Penh, May 7 (VNA) - Thousands of people in Phnom Penh and surrounding provinces took part in the traditional ploughing ceremony at Veal Preahmein square on Friday morning.

Acting Head of State Chea Sim and other senior officials of the Cambodian Royal family, Paliarment and Government also attended the ceremony. The ploughing ceremony, held nationwide, marks the end of the dry season and starts the rice-planting one with rituals spraying for timely rains, favourable weather and a bumper harvest.--

May 7, 2004- SINGAPORE BUSINESS BRIEFS: Raffles Cambodia Staff OK Deal
SINGAPORE (Dow Jones)--Raffles International, which is part of Raffles Holdings Ltd. (R03.SG), said Friday that management and staff of the Raffles Grand Hotel d'Angkor in Siem Reap, Cambodia, have penned a new collective agreement. The pact will remain effective till April 30, 2005. Raffles International didn't give further details about the agreement, which puts to rest a long-standing labor dispute. Credit Suisse First Boston has appointed Sailesh Jha as senior regional economist covering Southeast Asia and India. Jha, who is based in Singapore, joined CSFB from DBS Bank, a unit of DBS Group Holdings Ltd. (D05.SG).
May 5, 2004 - President appreciates Viet Nam - Cambodia security cooperation

Ha Noi, May 5 (VNA) - President Tran Duc Luong praised the results of the cooperation between the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security and the Cambodian Interior Ministry, saying their close coordination has contributed to ensuring border security and building a common borderline of peace, friendship and stability. As neighbours and ASEAN members, Viet Nam and Cambodia should help each other in national development and defence President Luong told Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sar Kheng in Ha Noi on Wednesday. Sar Kheng has been in Ha Noi since Tuesday for a four-day visit to Viet Nam as guest of Vietnamese Public Security, Minister Le Hong Anh. The President also asked Sar Kheng to convey his best regards to Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk. The Cambodian official congratulated the Vietnamese people on their socio-economic achievements in the renewal process, and briefed his host about the results of talks between the two ministries and their cooperation plan for 2004.-Enditem

May 3, 2004 - UN threatens 'sex and sleaze' authors

By Charles Laurence
New York

The United Nations has threatened to fire two officials who wrote an expose of sleaze and corruption during its peacekeeping missions of the 1990s. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is believed to have favoured an attempt to block publication of the memoir, Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures, a True Story from Hell on Earth, due to be published next month. Still reeling from the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal, UN officials are alarmed by the promised revelations of wild sex parties, petty corruption and drug use - diversions that helped peacekeepers cope with alternating states of terror and boredom. Other senior officials, however, have argued that any attempt to gag the book's three co-authors - Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thomson, who are still on the UN payroll, and Kenneth Cain, who is now a writer - would prompt more negative publicity. Under UN staff rules, writers must submit manuscripts for scrutiny. Authors may be disciplined if their work is not approved but they insist on publication. Last week, a UN spokesman admitted that the book had been judged not to be within the interests of the organisation. "We can't stop them publishing, but the rule means that the two who still work for us can be disciplined and dismissed," he said. The co-authors, who met in Cambodia in 1993 and later worked in Haiti, Kosovo, Liberia and Somalia, claim that petty corruption over expense accounts and living allowances was rife. Ms Postlewait was in her early 30s when she went on her first trip abroad for the UN, supervising elections in Cambodia. There, she soon worked out that she could save enough money from her expense account to set herself up nicely back in New York. In other frauds, UN staff were said to quote blackmarket currency exchange rates to pad out their expenses. The authors also complain that they encountered "bureaucratic betrayal" on missions, as the UN allegedly struck cynical deals with corrupt local officials. One senior UN official, who defended the book, said that he believed it belonged in the "contemporary tradition of gritty war reporting", and would do little damage to the reputation of UN peacekeepers. Last week, none of the three authors were available for comment.

May 2, 2004 - Cambodia may invite tourists to study its horrors

Alan Sipress, Washington Post

May 2, 2004POLPOT0502

ANLONG VENG, CAMBODIA -- All that remains of Pol Pot's last abode is a dozen bottles emptied of the medicine he was taking in his final days and the broken bits of a toilet seat. But when Thong Khon, Cambodia's state secretary of tourism, stood beside the small rubbish pile in a forest clearing last month, he saw much more. He explained eagerly how he would rebuild the house, restoring it to its condition before the Khmer Rouge despot died six years ago and was cremated on a nearby pyre of old tires. The original carpenter will be hired, Thong said. Local officials have located Pol Pot's looted sofa, table and chairs. It would be the first step toward Thong's vision of restoring the entire Khmer Rouge complex in Anlong Veng, the redoubt deep in the northern jungle that was overrun by Cambodian government troops in 1998. Under a master plan completed several weeks ago, Cambodia would rebuild and refurbish the villas, headquarters and offices, courthouse, jail, guard posts and other facilities of the Khmer Rouge oligarchs. Tourists would pay up to $2 to see each of 30 attractions. New hotels and restaurants would follow. "That's the dream," Thong said. But while Thong plans to promote Anlong Veng to foreigners as part of a package tour including the famed temples of Angkor Wat 60 miles to the south, some Cambodians are asking whether a Khmer Rouge version of Colonial Williamsburg is an appropriate way to mark the darkest chapter in the country's history. "Memory cannot be commercialized. It has to be preserved a different way," said Youk Chhang, whose Documentation Center of Cambodia collects documents and personal testimonies about the Khmer Rouge atrocities. "Buying a ticket to see the grave of Pol Pot undermines the value of the memories and the suffering we've been through." The mandate to develop the Anlong Veng Historical Tourist Area, Thong said, came directly from Prime Minister Hun Sen, a Khmer Rouge defector who became their adversary. For Thong, 53, it is also personal. Among the estimated 1 million Cambodians who died during the Khmer Rouge terror of 1975 to 1979 were 13 members of his family, including his father, three siblings, their spouses and six nieces and nephews. Thong, a peasant's son who became a physician, said he survived the slaughter of intellectuals and professionals only by fleeing the capital, Phnom Penh, for the countryside and posing as a bicycle rickshaw driver. He didn't dare utter a word in either the English or French he had learned as a student. "You speak a foreign language, you die," he recalled. "Almost every family had people killed by Pol Pot, but the young generation doesn't know what happened," he said. "My son doesn't know. What about my granddaughter? What does she know?" The main obstacle to developing Anlong Veng, however, is not public debate over its propriety but the absence of a decent road. The location, near the northern border with Thailand, was selected by the Khmer Rouge as their haven precisely because it was so hard to get to. Setting out from the northwestern city of Siem Reap early one morning last month to survey the site, Thong deemed the direct route impassable. He ordered the driver of his Toyota Land Cruiser to take the "good road," a roundabout, 120-mile-long, bone-jarring track of red dirt that runs through fallow rice fields before entering the jungle. "The good road's not so good," Thong conceded. After five hours, the Land Cruiser reached the dusty town of Anlong Veng, with its large billboard welcoming the few tourists, and began the steep climb into the wooded hills that separate Cambodia and Thailand. Thong gestured toward the forest on the left. "Over there is one of the sites," he said in the tone of a tour guide. "That's where Pol Pot produced land mines." The site was on the restoration list. The villagers have their own version of history. They were the few favored by the Khmer Rouge, benefiting from their patronage and provision of imported rice. One of those was Unkhemara Sophorn, 25. "I tell people who come here that the Khmer Rouge were good. People are surprised because they think the Khmer Rouge were bad men," Unkhemara said. Thong, who hopes local residents wll be tour guides, acknowledged that the contested history poses a challenge. "Most of the people here are Pol Pot people," he said. "The question is whether they will follow our political line or say whatever they want."

May 2, 2004 - Suddenly, Angkor Wat Is Asia's Hot Destination

SIEM REAP, Cambodia

Seemingly lost to war and jungle only a quarter-century ago, the ancient temples of Angkor Wat are fast becoming one of Asia's top tourist destinations. On April 1, the number of hotel rooms in Siem Reap, the town nearest the site, reached 5,000, a 50 percent jump over the number six months earlier. The newer places include the Angkor Palace Resort and Spa, the Victoria Angkor Hotel and the Goldiana Angkor Hotel. To fill these hotel rooms, entrepreneurs are opening new land, sea, and air routes to Siem Reap, now Cambodia's No. 1 tourism destination. - Read more.

May 2 2004 - GLITTER BATTLES TO STAY

POP pervert Gary Glitter will face a judge next month to fight for the right to stay in Cambodia. Glitter, 60 - jailed in Britain in 1999 for downloading 4,000 child porn images from the internet - was deported last year. But he slipped back into Cambodia and is now living in a luxury mansion in the capital Phnom Penh. Minders keep strangers away from the three-storey home. Glitter - real name Paul Gadd - has launched a civil action claiming he has the right to stay because he has committed no crimes in Cambodia. A local judge, Tan Senarong, is on record as saying he will make a "fair" decision, based on the evidence. But the Cambodian Women's Affairs Minister Mu Sochua is fighting to get the shamed star deported again. She said last night: "I will continue to push this case."

1 May, 2004 - Jamali Hopeful of ARF Entry

Huma Aamir Malik • Arab News

ISLAMABAD, 1 May 2004 — Pakistan’s prime minister said yesterday he had received a “positive response” from all three nations during a Southeast Asian tour to drum up support for entry into a regional security form. “We tried and got a positive response from Laos, Cambodia and Thailand,” Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali told reporters after returning from a nine-day trip. “In all capitals there is tremendous goodwill and support for Pakistan. They appreciate Pakistan’s East Asia initiative and reiterated support for our efforts to become a member of the ARF and establish full dialogue partnership with ASEAN.” Pakistan has been campaigning to join the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) security grouping of 23 countries, but has been blocked in the past by India, already an ARF member. Jamali said ASEAN members had earlier supported Pakistan’s admission to the ARF but were reluctant to act due to India’s opposition. “Now after the start of composite dialogue between Pakistan and India this reluctance has gone and I am confident that India will not oppose our membership,” Jamali said. The prime minister denied international pressure was applied on Pakistan to reduce the size of its army. On Tuesday, the country’s military leaders said the armed forces would be restructured, reducing the overall size by 50,000. Neither the United States nor any other country pressured Pakistan to reduce its army, Jamali said. Foreign donors and international financial institutions have in the past asked Pakistan to downsize its armed forces and divert funds to social development.

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