KI Media: “Too much oppression in Nambodia, the royal oxen refuse to predict rice harvest for the dictatorial regime anymore?” plus 10 more |
- Too much oppression in Nambodia, the royal oxen refuse to predict rice harvest for the dictatorial regime anymore?
- Obscenely expensive for CHEAP, SOILED JUSTICE
- Cecilia Wikstrom's Interview on Candle Light Radio: "Blood" Sugar in Kampong Speu
- In Search of Real “Angkar”
- Cambodia’s up-and-coming seaside towns
- WHC urged to delay temple plan debate [-Another Thai excuse?]
- ASEAN Defence Ministers summit wraps up in Jakarta
- My Rights, My Responsibility (Constitution) Series
- Brain Food for Knut Rosandhaug and Siegfried Blunk
- ECCC Law
- "Prei Prumcharei" a Poem in Khmer by NhiekKiri
| Posted: 21 May 2011 02:09 PM PDT
Saturday, May 21, 2011 AFP PHNOM PENH — Cambodia's royal oxen shunned rice grain on Saturday during an ancient ceremony to predict the country's agricultural fortunes -- prompting fears of a poor rice harvest among superstitious farmers. King Norodom Sihamoni presided over the ritual in a park outside the palace where thousands of people watched royal astrologers observing the animals' behaviour. After a symbolic ploughing of a portion of the field, a pair of oxen were led to seven dishes -- rice, corn, beans, sesame, grass, water and alcohol -- laid out on trays. They were seen eating only corn and beans, allowing the palace's chief astrologer Kang Ken to declare that this year's corn and beans harvests will be bountiful. The astrologer did not spell out to the crowd what it meant for the rice yield, sparking concern among farmers. "I am very worried that we will not have a good rice harvest," farmer Ros Makara, 52, told AFP after the ceremony, which marks the start of Cambodia's rainy season, traditionally the time to plant rice. "But I will try my best to grow rice. I do not totally rely on the prediction," he added. While still taken seriously by many rural Cambodians in this deeply superstitious country, ploughing ceremony predictions have been called into question in recent years.  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Obscenely expensive for CHEAP, SOILED JUSTICE Posted: 21 May 2011 12:39 AM PDT During the last few weeks, several media reports have suggested that the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) has spent more than USD 200 million to date. This information is incorrect, and the source for this information is not the ECCC. From the inception of the court in 2006 until the end of 2010, the total cost for the ECCC operations were USD 109.1 million, and by the end of 2011, the total expenditure is estimated to be USD 149.8 million.
Source: ECCC Budget and Finance Offices (May 2011) * Note: Above figures for the revised budget are exclusive of contingency Kind regards, ECCC Public Affairs Section . . . . . "The ECCC is likely to be one of the most expensive experiments of transitional justice ever, with the cost per indictee particularly high." "If cases 003 and 004 are investigated and prosecuted, resulting in a total of ten accused over the court's lifetime, the cost per indictee is $33.8 million. If, currently seems far more likely, case 002 will be the ECCC's second and last trial, that figure doubles to $67.6 million per accused. To put this into perspective, the estimated cost per defendant at the Special Court for Sierre Leone is between $23 and $25 million, and $21 million at the ICTR and $17.5 million at the ICTY. The ICC aside, the ECCC is the most expensive of all the international and internalized courts." - Alex Bates, ATLAS consultant and former UN Senior Assistant Prosecutor at ECCC . . . . "A hybrid court, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, has spent over $200 million since it was set up in 2003 with both international and local judges and prosecutors. It has tried only one person: Kang Kech Eav, or Duch..." - James Goldston, executive director of Open Society Justice Initiative . . . . . There is a real fear that only Duch and 1 or 2 of the current four senior KR leaders in Case 002 will be fully tried. That will make the cost per defendant even more OBSCENE, with the QUALITY OF JUSTICE DISGUSTINGLY CHEAP AND SOILED. This is how the ECCC wants you to remember your loved ones, SOILED WITH THEIR INSOLENCE AND ARROGANCE. Fight for your honor and dignity. Fight for your parents' honor and dignity, so they may rest in peace. It's not a number we want, it's INTEGRITY and QUALITY in the ADMINISTRATION of JUSTICE. Fight for Case 003 and 004.  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cecilia Wikstrom's Interview on Candle Light Radio: "Blood" Sugar in Kampong Speu Posted: 21 May 2011 12:06 AM PDT
Click the control below to listen to MP Cecilia Wikstrom  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 20 May 2011 11:53 PM PDT | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cambodia’s up-and-coming seaside towns Posted: 20 May 2011 11:49 PM PDT    Friday, May 20, 2011 By Dustin Roasa The Washington Post As the sun sank over the tree-lined Kampong Bay River, Kampot, a town on Cambodia's southern coast, stirred to life. The locals, who'd spent much of the day hiding from the heat in their homes and shaded alleys, emerged into the atmospheric streets, where sun-stained, mustard-colored French colonial shop houses provide the backdrop to the rhythms of daily life. Old men with fedoras and graying sideburns gathered at a corner cafe to play chess, triumphantly thwacking hand-carved pieces against thick wooden boards. Small groups of boys fished on the banks of the river with homemade bamboo poles, while groups of teenagers with mussed and shaggy haircuts and wearing glittery T-shirts yelled "Hello!" and giggled at strolling tourists, who are a small but growing presence in this largely unexplored corner of Southeast Asia. My wife and I had come here to escape the grit and bustle of Phnom Penh, where we live, and to show my visiting mother-in-law a slice of authentic provincial life. With crumbling historic architecture, largely unspoiled countryside and specialty regional cuisine, Kampot and Kep, seaside towns separated by a 30-minute car ride, are unlike anyplace else in Cambodia. Although tourism has taken off in the past decade — for much of the 1980s and '90s, the area was off limits due to the presence of the Khmer Rouge — the two towns have avoided the dizzying and sometimes tacky growth of places like Siem Reap, where busloads of visitors swarm the ancient Angkor temples, and Sihanoukville, which caters to backpackers looking for a cheap alternative to coastal Thailand. Instead of mega resorts and budget dives, Kampot and Kep have attracted a smattering of boutique hotels, bars and restaurants that draw on the area's history as a stylish retreat in the last century, when the French and Khmer elite spent weekends here soaking up the Riviera-like vibe. Now, a new wave of expats and tourists is discovering the place. Ben O'Reilly, an Irishman who runs Mea Culpa, a guesthouse and wood-fired pizza restaurant set in a shady garden in Kampot, arrived as a tourist in 2004 and never left. "It stole my heart," he said. "The stunning beauty of the people and the area makes it stand out unlike anywhere else I've ever been." A large part of the area's appeal is its time-capsule quality: While much of Southeast Asia has been eager to demolish remnants of the past and modernize, Kampot and Kep have preserved a century of Cambodian history in their streets and surrounding hills. As we rode into Kampot with our taxi driver, a 56-year-old local named Eav, we watched the past flash by through the windows of his Toyota Camry. There, on the left side of the road just outside town, Eav pointed out a salt plant built by the Khmer Rouge. "They exported salt to the Chinese in exchange for arms," Eav said. Farther in was the columned and pleasingly dilapidated governor's mansion, a symbol of colonial power, and its necessary counterpart, the French-built prison, which is still in use. Next came the Chinese school with its elegantly curved roof, a reminder of the sizable influence of the entrenched Chinese-Cambodian community here. "The people here are proud of these buildings, and we want to keep them," said Eav. "The local authorities are doing their best to preserve them." So, too, are the entrepreneurs who have come here, many of whom have restored old villas and shop houses. One such business is Epic Arts Cafe, a nonprofit that employs people with disabilities, where we had coffee and fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies. After a stroll through the streets surrounding the abandoned market at the center of town, we reserved seats on a boat trip down the Kampong Bay River and into the Gulf of Thailand. As we puttered along the mangrove-lined river in a long-tail fishing boat with Capt. Chim, a man in his early 30s, we passed villages of wooden shacks with corrugated metal roofs suspended over the water on stilts. Although Kampot is not as cosmopolitan as it once was — it was the country's primary port until the emergence of Sihanoukville in the 1950s — its access to the ocean continues to draw a mixed crowd. We passed a fishing village with a white minaret poking out from a clump of palm trees, home to Cham Muslims, an ethnic minority that makes up 5 percent of Cambodia's population and tends to live apart from the majority Khmer. Several minutes later, on the opposite bank, ethnic Vietnamese fishermen waved to us from moored boats as they prepped their nets for the night's work ahead. Gradually, the river widened until it deposited us into the Gulf of Thailand. Capt. Chim stopped the boat at a large sandbar some distance from land. Nearby, a hulking sand-dredging barge, pitched on its side, sat idle, a sign that the area's small-scale approach to development would not last forever. A joint Cambodian-Vietnamese firm is building a resort and casino here on reclaimed land, Capt. Chim told us. That night, back on Kampot's sleepy riverside, we had well-made gin and tonics at the breezy Wunderbar before sampling the area's famous fresh seafood at open-air and candlelit Rikitikitavi, where the fish amok, a coconut-milk mousse made with white fish, was superb. The next morning, we were ready to tackle the nearby Elephant Mountains, a series of jungle-covered hills that rise toward the coast before sloping dramatically into the sea. A trip up Bokor Mountain, which can be arranged through travel agencies in Kampot, is one of Cambodia's essential experiences. As our car wound its way up the mountain, gaps in the thick roadside foliage revealed breathtakingly clear glimpses of the flat rice plains and salt fields that stretch for miles below. Near the top, tucked away in a small valley, is Bokor Hill Station, which the French built in the 1920s as a retreat from the sweltering Phnom Penh heat. They abandoned the area during fighting with Cambodian nationalists after World War II, and apart from some short-term stays by Khmer Rouge guerrillas, the Catholic cathedral, villas and four-story Bokor Palace Hotel have sat empty. Rust-colored lichen and green moss have made primitive splatter canvases of the buildings' gray stone and reinforced concrete exteriors. As I wandered through the empty hotel, the wind whistled down empty corridors, the hand-painted floor tiles covered in layers of dust and grime. On the back veranda, where colonialists would have sipped aperitifs and enjoyed the fresh air, I chatted with a large family of Cambodian tourists from Phnom Penh. "There are ghosts in there," said a man named Hang, to nervous laughter from his family members. "People lost money at the casino and jumped to their deaths. They haunt these buildings." Kep, the seaside retreat 15 miles southeast of Kampot, has its share of ghosts, too. Less a town than a collection of small resorts and seafood shacks, in the post-World War II years it was a glamorous weekend getaway for the Khmer elite, who vacationed in Le Corbusier-inspired villas built by the country's premier architects. These villas reportedly hosted wild parties with actors, pop stars and artists who were driving a cultural renaissance in the 1950s and '60s. Now they've been reduced to little more than their foundations and a few walls. You can wander through them and imagine their former grandeur, but the only signs of life are the graffiti scrawled on the walls and the disused clotheslines left by squatters. One exception is Villa Romonea, a six-room hotel that was designed as a private villa by leading Cambodian architect Lu Ban Hap in the late 1960s. The modernist-style house was the lifelong dream of a local businesswoman who grew up across the road. But she lived in the house for only a few years before the Khmer Rouge took over the area and eventually executed her. Her vision lives on, though, in the house's exquisite design, with its curved rear facade, which mimics the bend of the shoreline it faces, and the walls of windows that keep the minimalist interior airy, cool and light. Life in Kep revolves around its rocky beaches, so in the late afternoons, it's best to head there to watch the locals gather to buy snacks such as the scrumptious num ompong, tubular rice cookies covered in black sesame seeds, from street vendors. The cookies go well with Campari and sodas at the Sailing Club, a nearby sky-blue bar and veranda. Kep is known for its fresh crab, and the best place to sample it is Kim Ly restaurant, where metal cages containing the day's catch bob in the gentle surf. Sitting at a table facing the water, which glistened through tiny cracks in the floor below us, we devoured a heaping plate of crab, which is prepared with fresh green peppercorns from local farms. The way the sweetness of the crab meat interacts with the richness of the coconut milk and the spiciness of the peppercorns has made this dish a local institution. The area's peppercorn is also renowned. Once a prized ingredient in the world's best kitchens — particularly in France — the crop was all but destroyed during Cambodia's 30-year civil war. It has made a comeback in recent years, and in 2010 the European Union and the Cambodian government granted it "geographical indication" status, which has raised its profile. I wanted to see these farms firsthand, so we rented motorbikes and drove up into the low hills half an hour outside Kep, where peppercorn plantations thrive. Down a rutted dirt road is the Heng Kimean farm, run by 55-year-old Saem, who showed us around the clumps of vines growing on wooden poles spaced several feet apart. He pulled a fresh sprig from a mature vine and offered it to us. We munched happily, the spice's mild piquancy tingling in our mouths. "I'm selling more and more to France," said Saem. "The chefs in Paris have found us again." After years of inaccessibility, the world is also once again discovering the charms of Kampot and Kep. Roasa is a writer based in Phnom Penh.  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| WHC urged to delay temple plan debate [-Another Thai excuse?] Posted: 20 May 2011 11:30 PM PDT 21/05/2011 Apinya Wipatayotin Bangkok Post Thailand will ask the World Heritage Committee to postpone consideration of a management plan for the Preah Vihear temple until there is a ruling from the International Court of Justice on the border conflict. Natural Resources and Environment Minister Suwit Khunkitti yesterday said he would also ask Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Sok An to wait for the court's ruling before moving forward with the management plan. Mr Suwit is scheduled to meet Sok An on Wednesday in France in preparation for a World Heritage Committee (WHC) meeting on June 19-29. Thailand will stand firm on its position that the management plan must not be on the WHC's agenda as long as the border dispute between the two nations has not been resolved, Mr Suwit said. The WHC has already put the Preah Vihear management plan on the agenda, but Mr Suwit said he believed it would be dropped. "I would like Cambodia to wait for the court's clarification on its 1962 verdict and for the Joint Border Commission to complete border demarcation work. Otherwise, problems will escalate, which is not good for both countries," Mr Suwit said.  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ASEAN Defence Ministers summit wraps up in Jakarta Posted: 20 May 2011 11:12 PM PDT May, 21 2011 VNA/VNS (Hanoi) JAKARTA — The fifth ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM-5) ended in Jakarta yesterday. The meeting issued a joint declaration calling for increased security-national defence co-operation among ASEAN members to ensure and boost regional peace and stability, advancing towards an ASEAN Community by 2015, with one of the most three important pillars being security-political community. The declaration affirmed freedom of navigation in the East Sea in accordance with international laws, including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. It also reiterated ASEAN member states' commitment to fully and effectively implement the Declaration on the Conduct of the Parties in the East Sea, looking towards the approval of the Code of Conduct to further promote peace and stability in the region. The ministers agreed to establish a joint committee to coordinate the use of ASEAN military assets for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. They agreed with three proposals on the ADMM working plan between 2011 and 2013, the establishment of an ASEAN peacekeeping centre network and a mechanism for ASEAN Defence Industry Collaboration. Addressing the closing ceremony, Indonesian Defence Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro affirmed the importance of increasing ADMM role in ASEAN, saying that ADMM is also a forum to boost bilateral co-operation. The positive development of the forum has improved the transparency, mutual trust and respect among ASEAN members, which is considered as an important premise for increased ASEAN defence co-operation in the future. Yusgiantoro added that ASEAN should maintain its centrality in developing the ADMM Plus forum with such partners as the US, Russia, India, China, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand and Australia to strengthen cooperation, ensure regional security and stability and affirm the effectiveness of joint actions in the fight against piracy, smuggling and terrorism in order to consolidate international community's trust in ASEAN. He also stressed the necessity of increasing practical co-operation among ASEAN member states to cope with non-traditional security issues and conflicts in the region. Apart from bilateral talks between Thailand and Cambodia's Defence Minister, and the tripartite meeting between Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia Defence Ministers on Thailand-Cambodia border dispute, ADMM-5 also discussed the issue, and agreed that solutions needed to be implemented via peaceful negotiation. VN, Indonesia ties Viet Nam and Indonesia agreed to further boost defence and security co-operation during their defence ministers' talks in Jakarta on Wednesday. Vietnamese Defence Minister Phung Quang Thanh and his Indonesian counterpart Purnomo Yusgiantoro agreed to soon implement the memorandum understanding on defence co-operation signed in October 2010. General Thanh, who paid an official visit to Indonesia where he also attended ADMM-5, stressed that naval co-operation would lead the two countries' defence co-operation, and invited Indonesian naval experts to visit Viet Nam to discuss the launch of joint patrols and set up a liaison channel between the two navies. He expressed his hope that naval forces of the two countries would sign an agreement on the field this year. Yusgiantoro agreed with Thanh's viewpoints and affirmed that Indonesia would set up a working group in charge and send the Deputy Naval Commander to work with the Vietnamese Navy on the issue. On co-operation at multilateral forums, Thanh affirmed that Viet Nam had always supported Indonesia as the ASEAN Chair, saying Indonesia's successes were of the whole bloc, including Viet Nam. On the border dispute between Cambodia and Thai, the two sides shared the same view that it was unfortunate for the process of building the ASEAN Political and Security Community, affecting the bloc's internal connectivity and solidarity. Thanh also said that as a member of ASEAN, Viet Nam had hailed the two countries' ceasefire agreement. He expressed his wish that no conflict recurrence would take place and the two countries would continue implementing the commitments reached at the informal meeting of ASEAN Foreign Ministers in Jakarta on February 22, 2011. Viet Nam had supported ASEAN in playing its role in assisting Cambodia and Thailand to settle those disputes peacefully and backed Indonesia in the role as the ASEAN Chair to proceed efforts and assistance on the basis of abiding by fundamental principles of the ASEAN Charter, especially consultation and consensus, Thanh said. Viet Nam wished that Indonesia, as the ASEAN Chair, would soon send observers to help solve border disputes between Cambodia and Thailand and continue to contribute actively to the process, he added. The Indonesian Minister said Indonesia was willing to send observers to the disputed area when gaining an agreement from Cambodia and Thailand. He agreed that ASEAN problems must be solved on the grounds of ASEAN's principles and on the basis of the ASEAN Charter. Regarding the East Sea issue, Thanh said that despite disputes over sovereignty in coastal areas and in the waters, all concerned countries shared a common aspiration of maintaining peace and stability for co-operation and mutual development. He reiterated Viet Nam's viewpoint that disputes must be handled by peaceful measures and based on international laws, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and that ASEAN member countries and China need to fully observe the Declaration on Conducts of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), which was signed by ASEAN and China in Cambodia in 2002. ASEAN and China should move to compile the Code of Conducts in the East Sea (COC)." Yusgiantoro stated that Indonesia wishes that the East Sea would be stable with security and maritime freedom ensured. He said his country included the issue on the draft joint declaration of ADMM-5 and expected the concerned parties would have their COC in the future. The same day, Vietnamese military officers paid a courtesy visit to Indonesian Vice President Boediono.  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| My Rights, My Responsibility (Constitution) Series Posted: 20 May 2011 10:16 PM PDT Cambodian Constitution (Sept. 1993) CHAPTER XII: THE CONSTITUTIONAL COUNCIL Article 142- New (Previously Article 123)Provisions in any article ruled by the Constitutional Council as unconstitutional shall not be promulgated or implemented. The decision of the Constitutional Council is final.  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Brain Food for Knut Rosandhaug and Siegfried Blunk Posted: 20 May 2011 10:11 PM PDT In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same [whether they are poor voiceless Cambodians or of the developed world with clout]. - Albert Einstein  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 20 May 2011 10:07 PM PDT Law on the Establishment of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for the Prosecution of Crimes Committed During the Period of Democratic Kampuchea ("ECCC Law") with inclusion of amendments as promulgated on 27 October 2004 CHAPTER VI: CO-PROSECUTORS The Supreme Council of the Magistracy shall appoint Cambodian prosecutors and Cambodian reserve prosecutors as necessary from among the Cambodian professional judges. The reserve prosecutors shall replace the appointed prosecutors in case of their absence. These reserve prosecutors may continue to perform their regular duties in their respective courts. One foreign prosecutor with the competence to appear in both Extraordinary Chambers shall be appointed by the Supreme Council of the Magistracy upon nomination by the Secretary-General of the United Nations. The Secretary-General of the United Nations shall submit a list of at least two candidates for foreign Co-Prosecutor to the Royal Government of Cambodia, from which the Supreme Council of the Magistracy shall appoint one prosecutor and one reserve prosecutor.  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| "Prei Prumcharei" a Poem in Khmer by NhiekKiri Posted: 20 May 2011 08:39 PM PDT   | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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