Ismail Not Deprived Position Share

The majority of the representatives who attended the monthly meeting of Kedah in Complex Pass Pass Mile 9, yesterday, also expressed concern about the difficulties that may be encountered if the two deputy commissioners Pass, Datuk Ir Phahrolrazi and Dr Zawawi Ismail Salleh, remains in committee.

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Woman voice free goverment

the street around the Petaling Jaya. Saangor today.

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Wages of peace

Cambodia's Curse: The modern history of a troubled land by Joel Brinkley

Reviewed by Sebastian Strangio

PHNOM PENH - In June 2010, diplomats and donors converged on a conference hall in Cambodia's capital for a meeting with senior government officials. Seated in rows with headphones beaming in live translations, donor representatives listened to key ministers speak about the country's progress on a series of agreed to good governance reforms.

Despite concerns raised about a spate of illegal land grabs, persistent human-rights abuses and legal harassment of government critics - all of which prompted the usual vague assurances from officials that the situation would improve - donors offered development aid totaling an unprecedented US$1.1 billion for fiscal 2010-11.

Aid to Cambodia has increased more or less consistently since the United Nations Transitional Authority's (UNTAC) departure from the country in 1993. A child of the 1991 Paris Peace Accords, UNTAC was designed to bring an end to Cambodia's long civil war, establish a functioning electoral system and eventually usher in economic development.

For any observer of contemporary Cambodia, however, the optimism of the UNTAC era now seems almost quaint. If one accepts political commentator Fareed Zakaria's dictum that a democratic system is better symbolized by the impartial judge than the mass plebiscite (Cambodia, after all, has elections), then one glance at the judicial system - where bribery and political interference are more or less the norm - is all it takes to conclude that the country is not meaningfully democratic.

While the Khmer Rouge era has produced reams of historical accounts and personal memoirs, most books focused on contemporary Cambodia peter out in the late 1990s following the death of the Khmer Rouge insurgency and the end of the country's bloody civil war. How Cambodia has since dealt with the wages of peace remains largely unexamined.

It is therefore welcome that American journalist Joel Brinkley chose Cambodia as the subject for his fifth book, Cambodia's Curse: the modern history of a troubled land. Brinkley, a 25-year veteran of the New York Times who shared a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the refugee crisis that followed the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979, returned to Cambodia in 2008 to examine what it had done with UNTAC's $3 billion "gift". What he finds is a country bereft of the rule of law and plagued by grinding poverty, where human development indices are among the lowest in Asia.

Brinkley does a commendable job in sketching out the contours of Cambodian society. His narrative is enlivened by the voices of individual Cambodians who have been marginalized by the country's corrupt political system. Traveling around the country, he examines Cambodia's courts, schools and health system, all of which have been bled dry by graft and hollowed out by years of official neglect.

He visits ramshackle settlements on the edges of Phnom Penh, where thousands of residents have been dumped after being illegally uprooted from valuable land in the city center, and highlights the nexus of corrupt officials and businessmen who have plundered Cambodia's natural resources for personal gain. In one of the book's more memorable passages, Brinkley interviews tycoon and senator Mong Reththy at his luxurious Phnom Penh villa, listening to the businessman proffer a series of thin excuses about the origins of his lavish wealth.

Unfortunately, the book's text is marred by a series of small factual errors. Officials or political parties are occasionally misidentified (Deputy Prime Minister Sok An is not a member of the government's ruling triumvirate, whose three-headed insignia Brinkley spots on the wristwatch of a government official); the now daily Phnom Penh Post was never published weekly, though it was previously a fortnightly publication.

Brinkley also errs when he describes Pol Pot as having died a "free man" in 1998. In fact, the Khmer Rouge leader was living under house arrest at the time of his death after facing a kangaroo court set up by the last remaining members of his Maoist movement. His preface ends with the puzzling assertion that Cambodians "remain the most abused people in the world", a phrase that invites rather aimless comparison with other unfortunate nations in the developing world.

The book's best passages deal with the complex relationship between Cambodia and its Western aid donors. The author deftly charts the process by which government officials, through a combination of flattery and feigned outrage, have learnt to manipulate foreign governments into pledging ever-higher amounts of development assistance, all the while presiding over a system that has consigned the majority of Cambodians to poverty. He also pours acid on those foreign aid workers who, attached to the country's comfortable expatriate lifestyle - Phnom Penh's parallel economy of "espresso bars and stylish restaurants" - see little incentive to rock the boat.

The text falters, however, when Brinkley attempts to answer the questions posed by his own narrative: why, in the final analysis, do contemporary Cambodians seem unable to struggle against those who exploit them? Why do so many seemingly accept poverty and exploitation as their natural lot in life? His thesis, built into the title of his book, is that Cambodia is somehow "cursed" by cultural hand-me-downs from its feudal past. "Far more than almost any other state," he writes, "modern Cambodia is a product of customs and practices set in stone a millennium ago".

"Given their history, given the subservient state Cambodians have accepted without complaint for more than a millennium, they don't seem to care," he adds. "Now, once again, most expect nothing more than they have. They carry no ambitions. They hold no dreams. All they want is to be left alone."

This is hardly the case. The country's modern history is rife with examples of rebellion, of which the Khmer Rouge, while representing its bloody apotheosis, was far from the only significant manifestation. Brinkley's assertion also fails to account for the villagers who have fought back against land grabbing by corrupt officials and the continuing efforts of those human-rights activists, trade union leaders and opposition figures who have stood up to demand more official accountability, often at threat to their lives.

For Brinkley, Cambodia's great hope lies in its foreign donors. If only such governments and international institutions put pressure on prime minister Hun Sen's government to enact key reforms and respect international human-rights law, he reasons, Cambodians might "after 1,000 years" be delivered from their perpetual suffering.

Given Brinkley's emphasis on foreign countries - some of his main sources, tellingly, are former US ambassadors to Cambodia - it is surprising that the rise of China rates only a brief mention in the book's epilogue. In recent years, Beijing has risen to become Cambodia's main source of investment and economic aid, a development that has undoubtedly complicated the West's ability to take a principled policy stand. The related point is that Western donors may actually have wider strategic objectives than promoting human rights or good governance.

By appealing to cultural essentialism and putting much of the onus for change on Cambodia's foreign donors, Brinkley leaves little scope for the possibility that Cambodians themselves may be able to forge their own path to a better life. As the yearly government-donor meetings play out year after year with much the same effect, there may, at the end of the day, be little in the way of an alternative.

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China Leads in Assistance to Cambodia

2012-03-17
Xinhua

China is the largest donor in infrastructure development assistance to Cambodia, Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Keat Chhon said Saturday.

"China is the No. 1 donor for infrastructure development here, and Japan comes at the second," he told reporters after opening a regional economic forum.

He said that China's aid on infrastructure is vital for Cambodia to boost its long-term economic growth.

According to the Finance Ministry, since 1992, China has provided a total of 2.1 billion U.S. dollars to Cambodia, mainly for the construction of roads, bridges, and irrigation system.

Of the amount, 125 million U.S. dollars is grant, 152 million U. S. dollars is non-interest loan, and the rest is concessional loan.

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Cambodian New Year Festival 2012 - San Jose, California

The Cambodian-American community of Santa Clara County will celebrate its

27th Annual Cultural New Year,

Year of the Dragon,

on

Saturday, April 14th, 2012 (3pm to midnight)

at the

Unify Event Center

765 Story Road, San Jose, CA 95122

(Behind Walmart)

We will be sponsoring this event for a fun evening of excitement. The celebration of "Khmer New Year" is a symbol to remind us of our culture and heritage. The Cambodian New Year Festival showcases the richness of Cambodian life in our community. The treasured folk culture and history of Cambodia delight the senses in colorful display of art, music, and dance.

This year, Cambodian New Year Festival 2012 Committee lead by Miss Davy Chea and, will bring us two parts of events. Part-I will feature Khmer Classical Dance & Folk Dances and Traditional Games. Part-II, the social dance, will feature Angkorwat Band and Ms Pinaly.

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Human trafficking rackets thrive [in Thailand]

Chawalit: Abuse is increasing

Foreign workers are still being targetted

19/03/2012
Wassayos Ngamkham
Bangkok Post

The cruelty inflicted on them can be extreme. Pol Maj Gen Chawalit recalls a recent rescue of a Cambodian boy in Pattaya who had lost his tongue, after traffickers cut it out to ensure he could not identify the gang.

Human trafficking rackets thriving on deception, fraud and brutality target largely foreign nationals from neighbouring countries and are responsible for placing Thailand on a US watch list, police say.

The Anti-Human Trafficking Division has found the human trafficking rackets smuggle people and supply them as slave or forced labour to the flesh trade, fishing industry, and gangs of street beggars.

Pol Maj Gen Chawalit Sawaengpuet, the division commander, said the traffickers use various methods for luring their targets.

Most common are the rackets which con young girls, most of whom are from Laos, to work as prostitutes.

He said the traffickers pose as brokers to meet the girls, mostly from poor families, in Laos. They promise them jobs as domestic helpers or shop assistants in Thailand.

Pol Maj Gen Chawalit said the rackets give the girls forged passports which make them out to be older than their real age, for easier border clearance.

Soon after they enter Thailand, the girls are taken by another group of traffickers to bars where they are locked up and made to work as prostitutes.

The bars often double as karaoke parlours. They are scattered across the country, from Nong Khai and Udon Thani in the Northeast, to Hat Yai in the South and also Bangkok.

The commander said procuring and trafficking the girls is not a complicated process as the victims arrive in Thailand overland.

In the fishery industry, a similar trafficking ruse is employed to recruit targets _ young Thai men.

At the end of the rice harvesting season, they migrate from the Northeast looking for jobs in the city.

Pol Maj Gen Chawalit said the traffickers seek out the men at the bus terminal at Mor Chit or at interchanges in Sanam Luang or the Victory Monument.

The traffickers befriend the men who are persuaded into joining them for a drink at a karaoke bar.

The bar owner, who is working in collusion with the gang, overcharges the men. Unable to pay the bills, the men are threatened with legal action and most eventually agree to work in the fishery business to pay off their debts.

Pol Maj Gen Chawalit said once aboard the fishing trawlers, the men endure harsh living conditions and mistreatment at the hands of the captain and crew.

In other labour-intensive jobs which hire alien migrant workers, the working conditions are no less cruel.

The commander said the workers, particularly those employed illegally, have no choice but to accept unfair terms of employment.

"It's one form of exploitation after another," he said.

In some cases, women and children from Cambodia are housed together in squalid environments in secret locations. Some are tortured physically for so long they became permanently disabled.

The cruelty inflicted on them can be extreme. Pol Maj Gen Chawalit recalls a recent rescue of a Cambodian boy in Pattaya who had lost his tongue, after traffickers cut it out to ensure he could not identify the gang.

"Sadly, the boy couldn't give us much information," he said.

The disabled victims were forced to beg at intersections and the gang would take all their money.

A 13-year-old Cambodian was forced to work as a garland seller at a busy intersection in Bangkok. Pregnant from rape, she was told by the gang to sell the garlands in the scorching summer heat for many hours almost every day.

Trafficking of humans and drugs often go together. The gangs hook victims on the substance and make them work for it.

Thailand is seen as a key origin, transit point and destination of the gangs.

Last year's annual report on the human trafficking situation in Thailand prepared by the US embassy places Thailand on the Tier 2 watchlist of countries.

Thailand is among 41 countries in Tier 2, Pol Maj Gen Chawalit said.

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Thaksin meets with Hun Sen [-So Hun Xen is defending a Thai fugitive?]

18/03/2012
Bangkok Post

Fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra visited Cambodia on Thursday to meet Prime Minister Hun Sen on a personal matter and left the country the next day, a Cambodian news agency said on Friday.

Thaksin visited the kingdom to ask about the health of Hun Sen’s 90-year-old father who is sick.

He left Cambodia on Friday morning, Cambodian Express News (CEN) quoted Cambodia’s government spokesman Phay Siphan as saying.

Mr Phay declined to say if business matters were discussed during the meeting and insisted Thaksin’s trip was personal. He said the former Thai premier only came to meet Hun Sen to inquire about his father’s health, according to CEN.

A Pheu Thai Party source also said on Thursday Thaksin had arrived in Cambodia to visit the sick father of Prime Minister Hun Sen,

Many members of the Pheu Thai Party flew to Cambodia to meet Thaksin, the source added.

Thaksin was spotted by reporters at Phokeethra Golf and Spa Resort in Siem Reap. He was accompanied by former Thai Rak Thai executive Yongyuth Tiyapairat, red shirt leader Suporn Attawong and National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department chief Damrong Pidech.

Noppadon Pattama, Thaksin's legal adviser, said it was normal for Pheu Thai members to go and see Thaksin when he arrives in a neighbouring country for a visit. Mr Noppadon insisted Thaksin's stay in Cambodia had no political motive. Now is not the time for any major reshuffle of the cabinet or government officials, he said.

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