KI Media: “Walk for Peace along the Khmer-Thai border” plus 23 more

Thai Buddhists march from Wat Mai Sai Thong in Sa Kaeo on Visaska Bucha Day to greet a Buddhist group from Cambodia at the Thai-Cambodian Friendship Bridge that links the countries. The pilgrims believe dharma can bring a peaceful solution to the border conflict around the site of Preah Vihear temple. Video by Jetjaras Na Ranong.

Wednesday was the final day for victims of the Khmer Rouge to apply for civil party status in the court's much-criticized third case. But tribunal observers and victims' rights activists fear Case Three is on the verge of being shut down.

Less than three weeks ago, the investigating judges at the war crimes tribunal here announced they had closed their file in the court's third case against former senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge.

Cambodian news media have identified the suspects in the case as two former high-ranking Khmer Rouge military officers.

The tribunal is investigating crimes against humanity and genocide in about 2 million Cambodian deaths from starvation, overwork and executions during the Khmer Rouge's reign between 1975 and 1979.


The tribunal's third case is highly controversial, mainly because the Cambodian government has long said it will permit only the first two cases to proceed to trial. That raised a storm of criticism over allegations the government was meddling in what is meant to be an independent judicial process.

The controversy has not stopped there. Recent comments by the international prosecutor Andrew Cayley indicate that the investigating judges' work in Case Three was deficient. Last week Cayley said Case Three needed much more work.

"If you're asking me how much more investigation needs to be done, I would simply use the words 'a significant amount' of investigation is still left to be done in that case," said Cayley.

The controversy in Case Three goes further still.

The Khmer Rouge tribunal was the first of its kind to allow victims of specific crimes - known as civil parties - to participate.

Nearly 100 people took part in Case One, and around 4,000 have registered for Case Two, in which the Khmer Rouge's four senior surviving leaders will be tried for genocide and other crimes.

But the investigating judges did not release any information about Case Three, which meant people could not know whether the crimes under investigation affected them.

Just over a week ago, Cayley published that information, a move that prompted the international investigating judge Siegfried Blunk to order Cayley to retract his statement, which also pointed out deficiencies in the investigating judges' casework.

Blunk on Wednesday gave Cayley three days to comply, but has not specified what will happen if he fails to do meet that deadline.

Clair Duffy is a tribunal monitor with the Open Society Justice Initiative, an organization funded by U.S. billionaire George Soros. She said Cayley was merely doing his job.

"The international co-prosecutor's acted independently and carried out his legal duty in identifying major gaps in the Case Three investigation, and in seeking further investigative acts," she said.

Duffy also said this episode could damage the tribunal. "The potential message of this kind of action is that those seeking to act independently of political will, and to act with integrity in the pursuit of justice, will be laying themselves open to criminal sanction."

The investigating judges' silence has meant that very few people even know about the case. Around 300 managed to apply by the 4 p.m. deadline on Wednesday.

Blunk's office already has rejected at least two, one of whom is New Zealand Olympic rower Rob Hamill.

His brother, Kerry Hamill, was abducted by the Khmer Rouge from his yacht off the Cambodian coast in 1978, taken to S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, and tortured before being executed.

Rob Hamill was a civil party in Case One, in which the former commandant of S-21 was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He also was accepted as a civil party in Case Two.

But the investigating judges turned him down for Case Three, a decision Hamill says is "incomprehensible and schizophrenic" given that one of those thought to be involved in Case Three was the head of the Khmer Rouge's navy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVabh069oqM&feature=player_embedded

Subject: "Tell Congress: Victims of War Trauma Still Haunted by the Genocide"

Date: 24- 25 May 2011

Location: Capitol Hill, Washington DC

More Information Contact: Ms Theanvy Kuoch , the key speaker at the Summit

Khmer Health Advocates, Inc

Tel: (860) 561-3345

Email: theanvy@aol.com

Visit: www.change.org

Hi everyone,

Please help spread the words, we have the opportunity to meet with Congressional leaders on the issues of Cambodian health on May 24 and 25th 2011. I hope that you can join us to bring a united Cambodian voice to Washington to advocate for our community in health disparity and support based NCAHI Strategic Plan that we developed nationally in 2008.

Note, the event on the 24-25th is a Summit and not a meeting, and if you would like more information please visit the site below.

Thanks!

-------------------------------------------

Click the link below to view the message and reply.

(VOV) - The Vietnamese Association in Cambodia met on May 18 to celebrate the 121st birth anniversary of President Ho Chi Minh and the 100th anniversary of his departure to seek ways to national salvation.

Participants in the meeting highlighted Uncle Ho's devotion to the glorious revolutionary cause of Vietnam.

Tran Van Toi, Chairman of the Vietnamese Association in Cambodia affirmed that Vietnamese residents in Cambodia will always bear in minds his image.

Le Nguyen Hoang Phuong, a pupil at the Tan Tien Khmer – Vietnam primary school, said she has great respect for Uncle Ho, the father of the nation, and will follow his teachings.

If schools are a reflection of society, then they show Cambodia to be a limp and defeated nation. On the first day of class, Cambodian children learn they must bribe their teachers to get good grades, a practice that continues for the 3% of them who make it to college. Teachers, struggling on salaries of less than $100 a month, take their cuts and pass the money up to the principals. The principals then pay off local education officials, and so on to higher circles of government. In the end, those who give the largest bribes eventually win promotions—giving them access to even bigger cash flows.

In this system, students learn few useful skills except how to survive under a corrupt regime, writes journalist Joel Brinkley. For the lucky few who pay, and sometimes even murder, their way to the top of the government, life is good. But for the ordinary farmers and laborers, kickbacks are simply an expensive roadblock to economic and social advancement.

"These demands are humiliating. It pushes a lot of smart kids out to the rice fields instead of helping our country," Sok Sopheap, a high school student who was kicked out of class because he didn't pay a bribe, told me. "This is why Cambodia stays poor."

Mr. Brinkley's depressing book is a mostly illuminating, though sometimes lopsided, chronicle of the politicians and bureaucrats who have plagued Cambodian society for the past 30 years. After the Khmer Rouge regime oversaw the deaths of 1.7 million people and was unseated in 1979, a new group of opportunists took their place. That wily clique, installed by the invading Vietnamese, includes current Prime Minister Hun Sen.

The Cambodian People's Party (CPP) solidified its hold on power in part by manipulating foreign governments and keeping the country poor. Its first big target was the United Nations, which took advantage of the end of a Cold War stalemate in 1989 to attempt a democratic transformation of the country. In 1992, U.N. peacekeepers tried to rebuild the country by launching the most expensive peacekeeping operation at the time—total cost $1.6 billion—and overseeing elections that attracted a remarkable 90% voter turnout.

Mr. Hun Sen lost those elections but refused to step down; four years later, he ended the U.N.'s dream of democracy for Cambodia when he ousted his democratically elected co-prime minister, Prince Norodom Ranarridh, in armed clashes. Since he has consolidated power, Mr. Hun Sen has repeatedly sued and pushed his critics into exile, and has attempted to stall progress of the Khmer Rouge tribunal.

View Full Image

.Cambodia's Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land

By Joel Brinkley

PublicAffairs, 416 pages, $27.99

.Nevertheless, foreign governments funded the CPP-led government with $18 billion in aid and soft loans after U.N. peacekeepers departed. The leaders squandered much of this largesse on mansions, luxury cars, private security forces and political pandering—all to further their power. Today, the country loses $500 million a year to corruption, USAID reports.

Mr. Brinkley won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for covering Cambodian refugees, and he weaves the details of the nation's underbelly into a compelling argument, interviewing powerful figures and foreign officials involved in politics, courts, hospitals, land development, forests and schools. Particularly engrossing is his account of the country's infamous 2010 anticorruption law, something the West pushed Phnom Penh to pass since the early 1990s, which would force government offices to face tougher audits.

For 15 years, Mr. Hun Sen repeatedly promised donor countries and organizations that he would pass the law. But while the donors complained every year that he still hadn't, they nonetheless assented to his requests for more money, raising their annual aid pledges from $770 million in 1994 to nearly $1.1 billion by the time Mr. Hun Sen acceded to their requests in 2010.

But the new law hardly meets international standards. It does not require officials to publicly disclose their holdings, the heart of any anticorruption law, and allows them to offer gifts in exchange for favors "in accordance with custom and tradition." The saga becomes yet one more example of the ineffectiveness of foreign aid, and Mr. Brinkley rightly wonders what foreign officials are up to. When he visits the new anticorruption office, he finds that it sends complaints directly to the institutions that the complainants accuse, with their names attached—leaving them open to threats and intimidation.

Such gifted storytelling makes up for some shortcomings, including some minor errors of fact. For instance, Mr. Brinkley writes that a 1997 grenade attack on an opposition rally occurred at a park across from the National Assembly that is named after Mr. Hun Sen. While the location of the blast is correct, it is actually a separate, nearby park that is named after the premier.

More troublesome are Mr. Brinkley's historical arguments. He suggests, for example, that leaders can act with impunity because most Cambodians will not change centuries-old attitudes. Kings traditionally awarded posts to mandarins who paid kickbacks, a scheme that Mr. Brinkley asserts continues uninterrupted.

It is true that Cambodians do not have a history of popular sovereignty, which may help explain why democracy-building faltered. The Khmer language reflects the fact that most Cambodians have low expectations of their leaders: The verb translated into English as "to govern," for example, literally means "to eat the kingdom."

But that fact is a long distance from Mr. Brinkley's sweeping conclusion that Cambodians, timid and wavering by upbringing, accept tyranny because they see no alternative. "They carry no ambitions. They hold no dreams," he writes. "All they want is to be left alone." The first two statements are patronizing and disproven by the growing number of entrepreneurs. The third gives short shrift to the recognition of many Cambodians that democratic government is the surest path to domestic tranquility.

Mr. Brinkley's grim assessments on issues such as corruption and the ineffectiveness of donor aid ring true. Nevertheless, Cambodia is fast shedding its image as a lawless mafia state. The society is, despite all its problems, becoming more stable. Its economy is improving, thanks to limited regulation and taxation. Once pitied as a basket case, Cambodia may yet prove its critics wrong, despite its governance curse.

Mr. Cain is a writer in Vietnam.

Judges at the international tribunal on Khmer Rouge war crimes have ordered one of the prosecutors to retract a public statement questioning their decisions.

There has been growing dissension within the tribunal over whether to proceed beyond a trial of four top Khmer Rouge leaders in Cambodia this summer.

Andrew Cayley — a Briton serving as the international prosecutor for the tribunal — objected last week after the judges said they had concluded their investigation in one of those cases. He requested further investigation, and implied the probe was deficient.

In a formal order Wednesday, signed by investigating judge Siegfried Blunk of Germany, the judges said Cayley had revealed details about alleged crimes and scenarios in violation of tribunal confidentiality rules.

The order demands that he retract those parts of his statement within three days.

The tribunal is under pressure from the Cambodian government not to proceed with the third case. Prime Minister Hun Sen, like some other Cambodian officials, is a former Khmer Rouge member and has said any more prosecutions will deeply divide the country.

The Cambodian prosecutor on the tribunal has effectively endorsed the prime minister's position, arguing the tribunal should confine itself to the prosecution of five individuals already in its custody. She argued that the suspects in case three do not fall under the mandate of the tribunal to prosecute top Khmer Rouge leaders and those most responsible for their crimes.

In its first case, the United Nations-backed tribunal convicted Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch.

As many as two million Cambodians died from overwork, starvation or execution during the Khmer Rouge's brutal reign between 1975 and 1979.

Phnom Penh - Investigating judges at the UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Cambodia on Wednesday ordered the international prosecutor to retract a statement that highlighted alleged deficiencies in their investigation of a politically-sensitive case.

In a statement German judge Siegfried Blunk and his Cambodian counterpart You Bunleng said it was against the law for prosecutor Andrew Cayley to provide information to the public about the tribunal's third case and gave him three days to comply.

Cayley's comments last week seemed to confirm long-standing rumours that the investigating judges had done little work on a case that the Cambodian government has repeatedly said it would not allow to go to trial.

Cayley had said he would ask investigating judges to do more work on the case file.

But on Wednesday Blunk said the international prosecutor had breached confidentiality by publicly stating what further investigative action he wanted to see undertaken.

And he said Cayley's decision to name the crime sites involved in Case Three was contrary to the tribunal law.

The investigating judges did not specify what penalty they would try to impose if the three-day deadline was missed.

Cayley's deputy, William Smith, said prosecutors were considering whether to appeal the order.

'We have a difference of opinion as to whether the statement (by Cayley) was justified or not,' Smith said Wednesday.

Last week, Cayley, a British national, said Case Three needed 'a substantial amount' of investigation.

He pointed out that during the 20 months the investigating judges had the file, they had failed to interview the suspects or even notify them they were under investigation. They had also neglected to interview numerous witnesses.

'And [there are] a number of other steps, including investigation of crime sites also originally named by the prosecution in the introductory submission, which haven't been investigated at all,' Cayley said.

Tribunal observers have long feared the investigating judges are trying to shelve the tribunal's third and fourth cases, which would suit the Cambodian government and, some believe, the United Nations itself.

The order against the international prosecutor comes at a critical time for the court as it prepares for its second case against four senior surviving Khmer Rouge leaders this year.

Cases three and four involve five unnamed former Khmer Rouge, who between them are thought to be directly responsible for tens of thousands of deaths.

But the investigating judges have refused to make public any details about either case, including which crime sites were under investigation, leading to accusations that they have deliberately excluded victims.

In its first case, the tribunal last year convicted the Khmer Rouge's head of security, Comrade Duch, of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

More than 2 million people are thought to have died under the movement's rule of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — An internal debate over the targets of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal turned into a public dispute Wednesday, when judges ordered a prosecutor to retract his call for further investigations.

The fight at the United Nations-backed tribunal added to mounting fears that prosecutions are being quashed for political reasons.

The two investigating judges, from Germany and Cambodia, on Wednesday ordered British co-prosecutor Andrew Cayley to withdraw a statement he issued last week citing specific crimes that deserved further investigation. They said the statement violated tribunal rules and must be retracted within three days, without specifying the punishment for failure to comply.

Critics fear the judges ended their investigations prematurely into what the court calls Case 003, bowing to Prime Minister Hun Sen's demands that the trial's focus be kept narrowly on the one suspect convicted last year and four set for trial next month.

About 1.7 million people died of starvation, exhaustion, lack of medical care or torture during the communist Khmer Rouge's reign of terror in the 1970s.

Cayley's statement was issued just a few days after co-investigating judges Siegfried Blunk and You Bunleng announced that all investigations into Case 003 had been concluded.

The tribunal follows French-style law, which mandates that investigating judges collect evidence that is then forwarded to prosecutors who decide whether to go to trial. There are parallel sets of Cambodian and international judges and prosecutors working together.

Legal observers and victims advocates complained that the investigations into the new cases were cut short without even the most basic effort being made, such as summoning the suspects for questioning.

"They've basically done a desk study, and it appears that that desk study was a sham," Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said in an interview last week in Bangkok. "It was a political decision, it appears, to shut down this case."

Cayley's statement called the investigation inadequate and detailed previously unreleased information about the yet-to-be-prosecuted cases, including information about mass graves and other alleged crime sites.

The judges' order said that Cayley violated court confidentiality rules and ordered him to publicly retract his statement within three days.

Cayley was traveling and could not be reached for comment Wednesday. But his deputy, Bill Smith, told The Associated Press that Cayley had not decided yet whether to appeal the judges' order. He said Cayley was justified in releasing the information under court rules.

Dear All,

Please find below a statement issued by the Co-Investigating Judges (CIJs) of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal ordering the International Co-Prosecutor, Andrew Cayley, to retract information which the CIJs deem violating the Rule of Confidentiality. Theoretically, this sounds fine, except for one small practical problem: Andrew Cayley's published information was widely distributed to the public. So what the CIJs are saying is something akin to this: "OK, since what you published was confidential, you have to retract that statement even though everybody and their next of kin know what that confidential information is." In summary, Kafka himself couldn't have been more kafkaesque than these 2 CIJs.

We would like to thank the CIJs for enlightening us with today's joke of the century. So much for JUSTICE!

------------------------

The Co-Investigating Judges of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) have noticed the press release entitled "Statement by the International Co-Prosecutor Regarding Case File 003" (the Statement) dated 09 May 2011.

The Statement contained, among other things, information about crimes that according to the opinion of the International Co-Prosecutor required to be judicially investigated, thereby mentioning in detail as part of Case 003 alleged crimes, crime bases and criminal scenarios. Furthermore, the Statement also contained information about intended future actions from International Co-Prosecutor related to the investigative process.

The International Co-Prosecutor lacked legal basis for making the above mentioned information public, and he also violated the Rule of Confidentiality. For these reasons, the Co-Investigating Judges have issued a reasoned Order whereby the International Co-Prosecutor have been ordered to retract the parts of the statements containing this information within three working days.

The Order can be read in its entirety on the ECCC web site:

Hun Xen's cops indicated that numerous leaflets bearing a message critical of Cambodian government leaders have been found in front the NatAss (aka National Assembly) building at about 06AM on Wednesday.

Touch Naroth, the Phnom Penh police commissioner, told reporters that his cops collected about 10 leaflets bearing a cursing message on the current Xmer leaders. He claimed that these leaflets came from the same source which calls itself "Khmer Nationalist Voice".

Accompanied by SRP MPs, Mrs. Cecilia Vikstrom traveled to Om Laing commune, Thpong district, Kampong Speu province, the location where a bitter land dispute is taking place, pitting about 3,000 families against the sugar company owned by Ly Yong Phat, a CPP senator. On the spot, Mrs. Vikstrom witnessed human rights violations against the villagers and she indicated that this case will be raised at the EU Parliament so that sanctions may be taken against companies whose products depend on the EU market.

Mrs. Cecilia Vikstrom, a member of the EU Parliament from Sweden, accompanied by SRP MP Mu Sochua, a member the largest opposition party in Cambodia, questioned villagers who are currently suffering from the use of armed force to grab their land by the Phnom Penh Sugar Company owned Ly Yong Phat and his wife. Ly Yong Phat is a senator of the ruling CPP party.

Mrs. Cecilia Vikstrom considered the eviction of the villagers as a true human rights violation. She also agreed with the findings made by human rights organizations indicating that Ly Yong Phat benefits from duty-free export of sugar to the EU and the minimum price guarantee set by the EU's "Everything but Arms" program whereas [his company is involved in] human rights violations.

Mrs. Vikstrom added: "In my opinion, I think that it must be temporarily stopped. I will meet with other parties involved in the EU Parliament when I will go back and discuss about this problem."

CPP MP Cheam Yeap admitted the human rights mistakes were made by Ly Yong Phat's sugar Company and he said that the visit by this EU MP could have negative impact on trade with the EU. He said that Ly Yong Phat should pay utmost attention to respect of land rights which sometimes Ly Yong Phat violated in the past.

Mrs. Mu Sochua told reporters yesterday that she invited Mrs. Cecilia Vikstrom to Cambodia with the aim of evaluating a number of violations perpetrated in the name of the EU's "Everything but Arms" program.

18 May is the last day for the 15-day period the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (KRT) had set for its co-prosecutors – who are currently opposed to one another – to complete their gathering of proofs for the judges to evaluate whether Case 003 will continue or not.

Dim Sovannarom, spokesman for the KRT, told reporters this morning that it is not known yet as to whether the co-prosecutors will issue their statements in writing or verbally, either publicly or to the judges. However, the co-prosecutors must clearly state their position as to whether Case 003 will proceed forward or not.

Recently, Andrew Cayley, the International co-prosecutor, indicated in his statement the crimes involved in Case 003 and he also called on the victims to bring forth their lawsuits in this criminal case. Subsequently, Chea Leang, the Cambodian co-prosecutor [who is Xok An's niece], rejected this plan, claiming that this case does not fall under the KRT jurisdiction. According to Chea Leang, the KRT jurisdiction can only handle top-ranking former KR leaders who bear the highest responsibility in the genocide.

However, researches have indicated that there are many more KR leaders who hold high responsibility, but currently, they are holding high position in the government, thus outside of any judgment.

Hun Xen used to issue public warnings, saying that he will not allow any additional cases against KR leaders other than the current 5 leaders (Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith and Kaing Kek Iev aka Duch). Hun Xen indicated that charges brought on additional KR leaders will bring political instability and unrest. Hun Xen's warning is a threat when it is well known that the KR organization was destroyed since 1996 and since then, the Cambodian armed forces – both the civilian police force and the army – are in the hand of Hun Xen alone.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (IRIN) – As Cambodia enters its dengue season, with outbreaks in four out of 24 provinces, the National Dengue Control Programme (NDCP) is warning that a repeat of the 2007 epidemic – when about 40,000 people were hospitalized, more than 10,000 in one week – may be imminent.

"Based on my experience, I see the same pattern as 2007 emerging now," said To Setha, a vector control specialist at the NDCP, pointing to the higher number of cases than usual during the final months of last year and the first two months of this year.

Rekul Huy, chief of epidemiology at the NDCP, is also alarmed by the high number of cases during months when dengue is usually rare.

A change in the serotype of the virus (which has four) from DEN2 to DEN1 detected in the middle of last year also concerns him, as does the increase in the percentage of patients with dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) in the first four months of this year: from about 50 percent last year to two-thirds this year.

An increase in DHF patients signals the possible presence of a new serotype, he said.

In Cambodia, where dengue is endemic, the number of cases spikes in June and July – a period NDCP director Ngan Chantha refers to as the "nightmare season" – with major outbreaks occurring in three- to five-year intervals.

Chantha said the number of cases at the beginning of this year had reached the "alert" level, signalling a possible nationwide outbreak during the rainy season.

This year, however, his department faces severe financial constraints to implement the swift interventions necessary to contain local outbreaks before they spiral out of control as in 2007.

The Asian Development Bank, which contributes about three-fifths of the NDCP's less than US$500,000 annual budget, has yet to disburse the funds, while the decentralization of health services that began in 2008 has left the NDCP's 12 staff unclear about what many of their provincial counterparts are doing.

Furthermore, there has been only one test so far this year to detect the prevalent serotype, according to Huy. Testing is not conducted at the hospitals where most dengue patients are treated, which are run by a Swiss foundation that offers free treatment for children and a high level of service but operates outside the state-run system.

National officials do not even know where or when the larvicide Abate, their primary preventative tool, is being distributed because it is now held by provincial officials, Huy said.

Steven Bjorges, team leader of the malaria and vector-borne diseases department of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Cambodia, explained that the high turnover of officials at the provincial level meant that in some provinces they lacked experience in preventing or containing outbreaks.

"Everyone likes decentralization, but the adverse consequences can perversely result in less optimal public health outcomes," he said.

He is, however, less alarmed than officials at the NDCP that a repeat of the 2007 epidemic is imminent because there have been fewer cases reported nationwide this year than last. "But that could change next week," he added.

Bjorges agreed that the chronic lack of funding undermined the NDCP's efforts to prevent or contain outbreaks.

"We're begging for funds year after year. If the dengue programme could get sustained, even limited funding, for a long period, it could accomplish so much more," he said.

"Foreign funding of public health in Cambodia is often not directed at the primary health needs of Cambodians, and it sometimes distorts the delivery of services," Chantha said. "What is more alarming than a dengue outbreak is the lack of funding to deal with it."

The NDCP has been trying to expand its most successful project for preventing dengue for the past four years, using guppy fish to get rid of the larvae of the mosquito that transmits dengue from water storage containers. In the 16 villages where this project has been operating since 2004, there have been no outbreaks, Setha said.

The small amount of funding to expand the project, which costs about $1 per household a year to maintain, has been restricted to either one- or one-and-a-half-year grants, which have been insufficient to allow for its sustainability in other villages, he said.

It takes about four years for a health centre and its surrounding villages to develop the physical and social infrastructure needed to sustain it, he said.

The Ministry of Interior has sent a request for the royal pardon of a handful of prisoners and reduced sentences for others, as Buddha's birthday approaches.

Kuy Bun Sorn, director of prisons for the Ministry of Interior, said he made the request to King Norodom Sihamoni as part of an annual tradition to celebrate Buddha's birthday, known in Cambodia as Visaka Bochea.

Under that request, 19 prisoners would be freed and another 153 would have sentences reduced, Kuy Bun Sorn said.

However, those who hope to be pardoned must have served two-thirds of their sentences already, while those who would have reductions must have served a quarter of their time, he said.

The amount of time reduced depends on the length of the sentence, from a six-month reduction for those with up to 10-year sentences to a reduction to 20 years in prison from a life sentence, he said.

Ek Cheng Hauth, a prosecutor for Phnom Penh municipal court, said only the names of those who have shown good behavior are submitted to the king.

"They'll get amnesty or prison reductions," he said.

However, Am Sam Ath, lead investigator for the rights group Licadho, said Tuesday that the system, where requests are personally made by prison chiefs and other officials, is flawed.

"We want more perfection than this," he said. "The government should establish a commission that is in charge of prisoner amnesties and prison reductions. That is fair and just."

This year's requests, meanwhile, fell well short of those for 2010, when authorities were granted royal pardons for 182 prisoners and reduced sentences for 1,049 others.

Thousands of Buddhists and Buddhist monks on Tuesday morning marched around Preah Reach Trap Mountain, where the relics of Buddha are housed, in order to mark Visak Bochea's day, or Buddha's day.

In Cambodia, the Buddha's relics are housed at the cliff of Preah Reach Trap Mountain, located in Kampong Speu province's Oddong district, some 40 kilometers north of Phnom Penh.

The event was also attended by the President of the National Assembly Heng Samrin and Deputy Prime Minister Kong Sam Ol, minister of the royal palace.

Visak Bochea day is the anniversary of the Buddha's birth, enlightenment and death; it's a religious holiday in Cambodia.

During the event, participants had brought praying stuff such as candles, incense sticks, flowers to pray to the Lord Buddha and offered foods and cash donations to about 800 Buddhist monks in order to dedicate to their ancestors.

In a related event later in the day, 2,600 Buddhist monks marched in Phnom Penh to mark the day. The procession had been participated by Deputy Prime Ministers Yim Chhay Ly and Man Sam An as well as thousands of Buddhists.

Buddhism is the state religion in Cambodia. About 90 percent of the country's 14.3 million people are Buddhists.

According to the figure of the Ministry of Cults and Religion, the country has approximately 4,400 Buddhist pagodas with more than 50,000 monks.

The 5th ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting (ADMM), the highest defense mechanism within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, will officially commence today. The two-day annual event is scheduled to discuss and exchange views on current defense and security issues as well as the challenges faced by ASEAN's 10 member states.

Bringing together the 10 ASEAN member states, which are socio-culturally unique (although many share similar traditions because they are neighbors), is no easy task. One of the main obstacles in establishing a strong and united ASEAN, an association formed on Aug. 8, 1967, are the prolonged border disputes between its members. Almost none of the members are free from territorial problems with their neighbors.

One of the hot current issues in the region is none other than the Thailand-Cambodia border dispute. The conflict began in June 2008 and is the latest round of a century-old dispute between Cambodia and Thailand involving the area surrounding the 11th-century Preah Vihear Temple, located between the Choam Khsant district in Cambodia's Preah Vihear province and the Kantharalak district in Thailand's Sisaket province.

Another conflict is the on-and-off border disputes between Indonesia and Malaysia. After the Sipadan-Ligitan dispute was settled in December 2002 following the issuance of a ruling by the International Court of Justice (which stipulated that both islands belonged to Malaysia), the two neighbors continued to disagree over a number of border regions, the Ambalat Block being the most recent.

Last is the multilateral dispute over the Spratlys — a group of more than 750 reefs, islets, atolls, cays and islands in the South China Sea between Vietnam, the Philippines, China, Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam. About 45 islands are occupied by relatively small numbers of military forces from Vietnam, the People's Republic of China, the People's Republic of China (Taiwan), Malaysia and the Philippines. Brunei has also claimed an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the southeastern part of the Spratlys, encompassing just one area of small islands above mean high water level (on Louisa Reef).

The Thailand and Cambodia border dispute has been intensively discussed at forums within ASEAN, with Indonesia as the current ASEAN Chair taking the initiative to facilitate talks between the two neighbors. Still, there has been no significant progress in this area. Such border disputes, if unsettled properly and in a timely manner, will have significant impacts on the sustainability and success of the already approved agreement to develop the ASEAN Community by 2015.

There are a number of defense and security issues to be discussed at the two-day meeting, including an agreement to strengthen regional defense and security cooperation, to reaffirm a commitment to implement the Declaration of Conduct (DOC), and to work towards the adoption of a COC (Code of Conduct) in the South China Sea.

But above all the urgent tasks, a commitment to settling border problems should be at top of the priorities of ASEAN member states, lest these talks be fruitless and become a mere forum of symbolic diplomacy.

From 1975 to 1979 an estimated 1.4 million Cambodians were killed under the despotic rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

The executions took place on what have become known as Cambodia's Killing Fields. The best known of these is Choeung Ek, 17 kilometers from the center of Phnom Penh. Here, an estimated 17,000 men, women and children were butchered by the Khmer Rouge.

It is a suitably grim and eerie memorial to those who died, an Auschwitz-Birkenau for Asia.

But unlike the Holocaust memorial, Choeung Ek is not a UNESCO World Heritage site and today questions are being raised about the benefit of Killing Field tourism for local inhabitants.

Choeung Ek is run by Japanese company JC Royal, which pays the Cambodian Government an annual US$15,000 levy for the site. Meanwhile, the five million survivors of the Khmer Rouge era appear to derive little benefit from it.

Many live on less than US$1 per day, an injustice that adds to the upset caused by delays in punishing the perpetrators behind Cambodia's darkest era.

Phnom Penh - Authorities in Phnom Penh have told a local advertising firm to take down billboards claiming that May 21 would see the beginning of the end of the world, national media reported Wednesday.

The adverts, posted by a US evangelical group called Family Radio, state: 'Judgement Day, May 21, 2011. The Bible Guarantees It.'

Family Radio predicted that all souls would be judged Saturday with worldwide chaos in store for five months until earth's destruction on October 21.

Pol Sopheap, the general manager of the Cambo Advertising Co, told the Cambodia Daily newspaper that city authorities had ordered his firm to remove the messages from five billboards.

The Information Ministry said the billboards must be removed 'to avoid confusion among the public and to ensure public order.'

Family Radio said its billboards have proven highly effective in transmitting its message.

'They are placed in many US, Canadian and foreign cities not only by Family Radio but other organizations and individuals as well,' Family Radio's website said, adding that there were more than '2,000 billboards, posters, and bus posters throughout the world with many going up weekly.'

Pol Sopheap said the contract for the adverts was scheduled to end Saturday.

Cambodia's 15 million people are predominantly Buddhist. In 2007, the government banned Christian groups from proselytizing after reports that people were being tricked into converting from Buddhism through material incentives.

AKP Phnom Penh, May 17, 2011 –A certain "pro-democracy" group increasingly has called for a popular unrest in Cambodia to overthrow the Cambodian government and change the political regime of Cambodia, affirmed a senior government official.

"The group has become increasingly virulent these past few weeks, has gone as far as publicly calling for the popular unrest against the royal government, in the path advocated by those few known under title of a local newspapers Khmer Post. But, in fact, the title Khmer Post conceals an anti-government recruitment campaign, called for ខ្មែរផុស (Khmer uprising), with the goal of urging the Cambodian population to: ផុសឡើង, ក្រោកឡើង (uprise, stand up) against the government, the same way did the people in Egypt," said Mr. Chhang Song, an Adviser to the Royal Government of Cambodia in his email to Information Minister H.E. Khieu Kanharith.

"This group was initially led by MEACH SOVANNARA of Long Beach, who alleges that you and I (Khieu Kanharith and Chhang Song – Note of the Redaction) were his supporters. Sovannara calls himself journalist and, on his radio, gives himself the title of: bNÐitសាស្ត្រាចារ្យ (Professeur Agrégé – Associate professor – Note of the Redaction)," he said.

Khmer Post has given way to a more violent group, led by a certain SUON SEREY RATHA, a semi-illiterate Cambodian. In reality, this is a group of Suon Serey Ratha by Suon Serey Ratha to support Suon Serey Ratha. On his radio show and in addition to calling for a general unrest against the government, he is calling for a direct attack by the Thais against the Cambodian troops in Preah Vihear. He goes on and legitimizes Thai troops in that area as "Khmer from Surin and Khmer fleeing the repressive Hun Sen regime, all willing to liberate Cambodia from the Vietnamese and change the political regime there." He praises constantly the merits of Thailand in helping Cambodia.

According to Mr. Chhang Song, a former Information Minister, these groups working against the government share some of the following background: