Sathyarak, an anonymous reader, commented recently: "Uncle Diep will become the prime minister in the future mandate and his party will be named: 'The Som Niyeay Phorng' (let me talk) party.

KI[-Media], what is your stance? Could it be that KI[-Media] will be nominated as the minister of Information for the government led by Uncle Diep from the Som Niyeay Phorng party?"

Well, Sathyarak, thanks for the suggestion, but NO thanks. In keeping with our promise, we are posting opinions sent to us, however, that does not mean that we agree with all of them. In fact, some opinions accused us of being pro-Sam Rainsy for posting pro-SRP opinions, while others accuse us of being pro-Kem Sokha for posting pro-Kem Sokha opinions. Similarly, we had also been accused of working for Thailand and, at times, we have also been accused of being Vietnamese lackeys. Nevertheless, we would like to invite our readers to reflect on the following quote by Dr. Gaffar Peang-Meth: "Sadly, some regime opponents fall for [Hun Sen's] invite to be distracted from fighting autocracy and involve themselves in wasteful infighting. Doubts and suspicions are sown, gossip and rumors spread to stir and divide opponents."

Have a good weekend!

Its brilliant green rice paddies, thatched-roof huts and overgrown jungle resemble most rural villages in northeast Thailand. But the red sign looming over a quiet dusty road in the community of Nong Hu Ling is something different.

"Red Shirt Village for Democracy," it reads, proclaiming its allegiance to the red-shirted, anti-government movement whose protests paralysed Bangkok last year and sparked a bloody military crackdown that ended with 91 people killed and hundreds of activists arrested.

"After what happened in Bangkok, people were scared to wear red shirts," said Kongchai Chaikang, chief of Nong Hu Ling, a village of 350 people in Udon Thani province, about 450 km (280 miles) northeast of Bangkok. "They feared they would be harassed by police or followed by plain-clothes officers. We want to give them courage by sticking together."

The idea is catching on. Ahead of a July 3 national election, dozens of rural communities are branding themselves a "Red Shirt Village" in this poor northeast plateau, home to a third of the country's population, giving the movement grass-roots muscle to mobilise behind its parliamentary allies, the opposition Puea Thai Party.

The mostly low-income red shirts broadly support ousted populist premier Thaksin Shinawatra in a five-year political conflict against the traditional Bangkok elite that includes top generals, royal advisers, middle-class bureaucrats, business leaders and old-money families who back the ruling Democrat Party.

At least 320 villages in the provinces of Udon Thani and Khon Kaen have designated themselves "Red Shirt Villages" through regional offices of the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD), as the movement is formally known.

The phenomenon underlines the government's failure to pacify opponents ahead of an election many fear will deepen the divide between the urban and rural poor on one side and the elite on the other, a rift that drove Thailand close to full civil conflict last year.

The villages and their defiance also highlight the failure of a year-long national reconciliation effort, heightening concerns that the losers of the election will not accept the results, a tangible risk in a country scarred by 18 coups since the 1930s and five years of sporadic unrest.

The polarisation comes at a delicate time with Thailand's unifying figure for six decades, 83-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej, hospitalised for nearly two years. The military and supporters of the establishment often invoke his name to rally the public against the red shirts, dragging the monarchy into the political melee.

In the balance is Thailand's well-crafted image as "The Land of Smiles", a catchphrase that crumbled last year under a catalogue of horrific scenes: banks on fire, military snipers firing on demonstrators, mysterious black-clad gunmen rallying behind protesters, grenades exploding in the business district, and free-wheeling Bangkok reduced to 9 p.m. curfews.

The red shirts have launched about 50 red villages in the past two weeks alone, said Anond Sangnan, the UDD's secretary-general in Udon Thani. Last week, they inaugurated five at once in Udon Thani's Sam Prao sub-district.

"After we lost last year, we decided we would fight this battle differently," he said at the launch of one village, whose Buddhist leader marked the occasion in a ceremony in which red string was tied to the wrist of each villager in a symbolic show of strength.

"Originally we wanted the villages to show how much support the movement had, a symbol that empowers people. But it is also a mobilising tool," he said.

In total, 129 red-shirt villages have been launched in Udon Thani and another 100 in neighbouring Khon Kaen, he said. The bigger goal, he added, is to carve out entire red districts and provinces.

Inside the villages, slogans on red T-shirts and posters rail against the "double standards" of Thai society, accusing the rich, the Bangkok establishment and top military brass of breaking laws with impunity -- grievances that have simmered since a 2006 coup overthrew Thaksin, a billionaire tycoon-turned-prime minister who is revered by the poor as the first politician to have addressed their needs.

Thaksin's smiling image beams from red signs at the entrance to the red villages. From his villa in Dubai, where he lives in self-imposed exile, he has good reason to smile. His sister, Yingluck, a telegenic 43-year-old businesswoman with no political experience, has electrified supporters since her May 16 nomination to lead the opposition.

'ATTACK ATTACK'

Reuters interviews with a dozen red-shirt leaders, activists and local businessmen suggest the movement has been energised by Yingluck's popularity. Any perceived injustice to her at the polls could be enough to galvanise supporters and touch off a new wave of unrest.

Opposition to Yingluck is fierce among the royalist establishment who toppled her brother. Her supporters fear the courts or powerful behind-the-scenes figures will intervene to prevent her from forming a government if her party dominates.

"If Puea Thai wins and they don't let us form a government, Yingluck should rest first. Brothers and sisters, you come out," veteran red-shirt leader Nattawut Saikua told a recent rally of about 30,000 supporters in Udon ThaniYingluck back to become prime minister."

It is a message that resonates with Wan Suwanpong, a 72-year-old lawyer and radio DJ, who says the election is not about bread-and-butter issues but social justice.

"This is what I have been telling my listeners," said Wan, whose show reaches tens of thousands of listeners in five provinces on one of several red stations in the northeast set up to rival government broadcasters.

"If we win the election, we need to be ready to go to Bangkok quickly. We need to get food ready, transportation ready, and then we head to Bangkok, surround parliament and raise pressure so the party that comes in first is allowed to set up a government." he said.

Pressure is something Wan knows a thing or two about. In October, authorities turned up at his previous studio, cut the mast-wires and hauled off the equipment. Now he operates in a hole-in-the-wall studio with a bright red carpet on a farm.

While he is a populist hero to the poor, Thaksin has been branded a "terrorist" by the government, which accuses him of directing protests that descended into urban warfare last year.

Even among red shirts, he is divisive. He declares himself the embodiment of democracy, but his record tells a different story. Critics accuse him of abusing his electoral mandate to dismantle constitutional checks and balances while cementing his own authoritarian rule during his two administrations from 2001 to 2006.

A 2003 war on drugs burnished his image as a crime-buster and won votes, but human rights groups were appalled at 2,800 deaths in extra-judicial killings in the first three months of the campaign. Corruption scandals, and alleged abuses of power steadily eroded his popularity among Bangkok's middle class.

That was compounded by royalist accusations Thaksin was undermining Thailand's powerful monarchy -- charges he said were politically motivated. Simmering anger exploded in 2006 when his relatives sold off, tax free, their $1.9 billion stake in Shin Corp, his telecoms empire, to a Singapore state company.

But in the northern heartlands, he remains a hero.

His populist policies -- from virtually free healthcare, to easy consumer credit and a system of low-interest loans to the nation's 70,000 villages -- were unprecedented, winning him enough support to become Thailand's first elected leader to complete a full four-year term without being unseated by a coup or pressured into stepping down.

The policies proved so popular the current government is extending them.

Rural, conservative Thais say they are willing to overlook his authoritarianism, actually welcoming his take-charge, CEO-style leadership. His ouster reinforced his image as a mould-breaking outsider who had challenged the Bangkok elite and lost.

Thaksin fled Thailand in 2008, weeks before he was sentenced in absentia on corruption and conflict-of-interest charges, settling in Dubai where he keeps in close touch with supporters through Skype, Twitter and Facebook. A court last year seized $1.4 billion (851 million pounds) of his assets, but he retains considerable wealth after investing in gold, coal and platinum mines in Africa.

THAKSIN'S CLONE

Thaksin describes his sister Yingluck as his "clone" and she does little to dispel that image, hewing to soundbites echoing her brother's populism.

She has rebuffed repeated requests by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva for a debate despite polls showing undecided voters want to see her take on the British-born 46-year-old economist, an eloquent speaker whose debating skills were honed in the halls of England's Eton College and Oxford University.

Thronged by supporters at Udon Thani's airport for her first appearance in the northeast, she stuck to well-worn talking points, vowing to heal the political divide.

That will be difficult. Many red shirts want Abhisit's government to be held to account for civilian deaths during last year's military crackdown. Abhisit denies troops were responsible for any casualties and blames shadowy black-shirted gunmen among the red shirts for the killings.

"I am happy to talk to every side," Yingluck said in an interview with Reuters that was nearly drowned out by cheers in an airport lobby packed with red shirts. "Most importantly, this election is one that will bring true democracy to Thailand so I would like to persuade everyone to accept the result."

That could depend on whether she goes ahead with a general amnesty that would effectively pardon her brother, clearing the way for his return and risking the re-awakening of anti-Thaksin protesters who stormed parliament in 2008, occupied two airports and helped to topple a pro-Thaksin government.

When pressed on this by Reuters, she was non-committal. "I cannot make rules for one person," she said. "I have the interest of the public in mind first."

Yingluck is well managed but not well known beyond her name. She is the youngest of nine children in a family of ethnic Chinese silk merchants, graduated from Chiang Mai University in the north and received a master's degree in political science at Kentucky State University.

She rose swiftly through the ranks of family companies, first as managing director of Advanced Info Service Pcl, a mobile phone provider formerly controlled by Thaksin before it was sold to investors, and then as president of SC Asset Corp, a property developer.

Her affable, relaxed manner and northern dialect connect with rural Thais, but she stumbles occasionally on policy.

From the stage at a rally in Udon Thani, she breezed through promises of Thaksin-style policies before tripping over the price of rice. "What about rice? Are we going to buy rice from farmers?" she said. The crowd, clearly apprised of her party's policies, roared back the answer. "Yes."

"Jasmine rice will be bought at 15,000 baht ($495), right?"

"No, no 20,000 ($660)," shouted the crowd. Yingluck didn't skip a beat. "That's right, 20,000 baht," she said. "See? There are real fans who are listening," she added, to wild cheers.

In a subsequent Reuters interview, she elaborated on her economic priorities, saying she would not interfere in currency trading, vowing to cut the corporate tax rate and to pursue big infrastructure projects in the mould of her brother whose government built Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport, the largest in Asia when it launched in 2006.

Economists praised Abhisit's government for steering the country out of its first recession in 11 years in 2009 and generating economic growth last year of 7.8 percent despite the civil unrest. Thailand's stock market was one of the world's biggest gainers last year, climbing 41 percent.

But the Democrats have not won an election in 20 years.

Abhisit is desperate to change that, promising policies straight out of Thaksin's populist playbook, including a 25 percent increase in the minimum wage, diesel and cooking gas subsidies, and free electricity for the poor. Two years ago he rolled out free healthcare to replace a Thaksin plan in which patients paid just 30 baht (60 pence) a visit.

The campaign platforms of both sides are trying to deal with Thailand's widening wealth gap. The richest 20 percent of Thais earn 55 percent of the country's wealth. That figure is close to Tunisia's, the epicentre of the "Arab spring" uprisings, where the top fifth take in 47 percent of the wealth, according to World Bank statistics.

Thailand's northeast is its poorest and most populous region. Its sons are Bangkok's taxi drivers and its daughters dominate its racy go-go bars. Although poverty in Thailand is down from 27 percent of the population in 1990 to about 8 percent now, many Thais in the red-shirt strongholds of the north and northeast live just above the poverty line.

Per capita GDP in Isaan is about $1,410 a year -- an eighth of Bangkok's. Many red shirts believe Thaksin would have changed that and say they have suffered under Abhisit. But this reflects global trends, not national politics. While Thaksin presided over a period of relative economic stability, the world's fortunes shifted under Abhisit, as the global financial crisis hit.

WILL THE RESULTS BE RESPECTED?

Most polls show Yingluck performing well and suggest the opposition will grab the largest number of the 500 available seats. But Korbsak Sabhavasu, the Democrats' campaign manager, and many independent analysts doubt either party will secure a majority, opening the way for both sides to wheel and deal with smaller parties to form a coalition.

That's where Korbsak reckons Abhisit has an edge. If Yingluck fails to stitch together a coalition, the opportunity passes to Abhisit.

What will happen if Yingluck loses? The answer may lie in the wooden homes in the red shirt community of Nong Hu Ling. Kongchai, the village chief, says he will accept a fair Democrat win, but he is sceptical.

"We stand for democracy so we have to accept what the majority want even if it's not what we want," he said. "But people will mobilise if the election is robbed."

Kongchai and his wife, Kamsan, choose their words carefully -- and for good reason.

They have been under close surveillance since joining Bangkok's protests last year. With their two-year-old daughter, they lived under tents with tens of thousands of protesters occupying Bangkok's main shopping district, showing solidarity with red-shirt leaders.

Three days before a military crackdown, Kongchai returned home. His 18-year-old son, Kittipong, had joined a protest at the governor's office. When the military launched its assault on the red shirts in Bangkok on May 19, riots erupted in Udon Thani, and the governor's office went up in flames.

Kittipong, a quiet boy who worked the eucalyptus fields, was arrested a month later, one of 51 detained in connection with the destruction of the municipal hall. Just over half were released, but Kittipong was held without bail. His case went to court in May. He shares a packed cell with seven other prisoners, some accused of murder and drug trafficking.

Kongchai blames himself. He pulled Kittipong out of school when he was 15 to join an early wave of pro-Thaksin rallies. In December, local red-shirt leaders brought supplies to his village, including blankets and food. A nearby village had branded itself a 'Red Shirt Village' with a red sign.

He liked the idea. The movement was in disarray. This was a way to change that, he said.

"In the beginning, it was 20-30 people talking half-jokingly about this idea over lunch. We weren't going to do anything organised. But then the idea caught on."

The authorities are watching closely. "Officers will drive by, peek in, take pictures, ask our neighbours whether I have gone to Bangkok. They follow me," Kongchai said.

Since April, they've had new visitors: soldiers from a military unit responsible for national security issues that went after Communists in the 1970s. The soldiers, who are well known in northeast, have offered to renovate the poorest house in Kongchai village -- a hut with a thatched roof.

"They always ask for something in exchange," said his wife, Kamsan.

On some visits, the soldiers bring framed portraits of the king as gifts to hang in homes. The villagers find it hard to refuse. In Kongchai's home, the king's picture hangs on a wall next to a poster of Buddhist monks. But a far bigger, life-sized picture of Thaksin is draped along another wall.

Soldiers have asked leaders in the red villages to take down the signs and red flags but the villages have not complied, said an official with Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command in Udon Thani. The signs breached laws forbidding placement of public billboards without official permission, but the villages would not be forced to take them down, he said.

VIEW OF THE MONARCHY

As Thailand's polarisation deepens, views of the monarchy have changed, part of a broader cultural shift in the largely Buddhist country where the king has been revered as almost divine for three generations.

Most still express steadfast loyalty to the king, the world's longest-serving monarch, but his throne is seen as entwined with the political forces that removed Thaksin, especially ultra-nationalists who wear the king's colour of yellow at protests.

Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn has yet to command the same popular support as his father, raising questions over whether royal succession will go smoothly.

Long-simmering business, political and military rivalries are rising to the surface, forcing Thailand to choose sides between supporters of the Bangkok establishment or those seeking to upend the status quo.

For others such as Kongchai, being "red" is a much more simple equation, boiling down to sheer double standards and economics.

His son is one of at least 417 people detained in connection with violating an emergency decree during last year's red-shirt protests, according to Human Rights Watch. But none of the thousands of yellow-shirted supporters of the establishment -- who occupied two airports in Bangkok in 2008 for eight days in a campaign to bring down a Thaksin-proxy government -- have been arrested, and Thailand's army did nothing to prevent the airport siege.

"I am still a red shirt because there is still no justice for my son," he said.

TRIPOLI, Libya — The chess match last week between Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and a visitor from the remote steppe of southern Russia who had traveled to Tripoli to promote chess in Libyan schools was a case of the oddest of couples, at the oddest of times. With NATO bombs and missiles pounding the Libyan capital and Colonel Qaddafi venting on Libya's airwaves only days before that he would choose "death before surrender, it captured something quintessential about the Libyan leader and the oddball qualities he has displayed in decades of repressive one-man rule.

With his days in power now surely numbered — by popular revolt, by the NATO attacks and by escalating defections from his elite — Colonel Qaddafi seems fated to end up as little more than a footnote among our age's dictators. Libya is a country of only 6.5 million people, oil-rich but still in many ways dirt-poor. If it has punched above its weight in the 40 years of Qaddafi rule, it is largely because of his pattern, discarded only in recent years, of promoting terrorism abroad. The pattern included his early embrace of Carlos the Jackal, the Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal and the I.R.A., as well as the bombing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Still, to see Colonel Qaddafi in his oversize sunglasses laboring clumsily over a chessboard with Kirsan N. Ilyinov, president of the World Chess Federation and a fervent believer in cosmic aliens, and then beaming as he was offered a diplomatic draw, was to be reminded of other moments of illusionist denial by autocratic rulers at moments of the most desperate chaos beyond their palace gates: Nero, fiddling in Rome; Stalin, reportedly locked in seclusion in the days after Hitler's tanks invaded; Mao Zedong carousing with concubines as Red Guard zealots convulsed China with their puritanical brand of Maoist egalitarianism.

To sojourn in Tripoli is to travel deep into a world of illusionism and deceit. This is a world where much of the evidence available to an outsider suggests that Colonel Qaddafi, the "Brother Leader" and "Revolutionary Guide," has led his followers into a narrowing cul-de-sac; where few if any with access to the colonel, by their own accounts, seem ready even to whisper that the game may be up; a world where a battalion of official spokesmen, inured to a lifetime of wrenching reality into the shapes commanded by propaganda, seem intent on turning truth on its head — a world, in short, where a leader beset by a murderous civil war thinks it normal to spend his Sunday afternoon playing chess.

For all that, the Qaddafi dictatorship is unusual for its lack of rigor and efficiency. In Libya, at least in the two-thirds of the country not yet lost to the rebels, a dictatorship that has all the standard instruments of suppression and fear seems in some measure to have lost the power to command the fealty of its citizens. This seems true not just in areas controlled by the rebels, and not alone in the areas of Tripoli like Tajura, Souk al-Juma and Feshloom that were fountainheads of the uprising's early weeks and where an active underground survived the sustained use of live fire against protesters in February and early March. Now it seems broadly true among the population at large.

Over several weeks in Tripoli, it has been commonplace to encounter, at random, Libyans ready to speak openly of their contempt for Colonel Qaddafi, and enthusiastically about NATO's ability to bomb targets associated with the most sensitive strongholds of the government. To be sure, there were others, in many places, who offered a ritual defense of him, and a loathing of the rebels. But the much more common response — in bookshops and cafes, in hospitals and hotels, and in the mosques and souks that crowd the winding alleyways of the old Ottoman heart of Tripoli down by the city's ancient port — was to hail the day when the Libyan leader would be consigned to what Trotsky called the dustbin of history.

There was, for example, an educated, English-speaking young man, Muhammad (not his real name, for his own protection), who met this reporter as he sauntered along an alleyway in the Medina, not far from the hole-in-the-wall store where he sells vegetables while hoping for a better job. Smoking a cigarette, he reacted dismissively as a pickup truck packed with pro-Qaddafi demonstrators drove past on one of the few drivable passageways through the district, shouting the Libyan leader's name, waving placards bearing his image and hoisting automatic rifles in the air. "They pay them 10 dinars a day to do that," he said. "It means nothing." Asked what outcome he would favor, he smiled. "Like Martin Luther King, I have a dream, a dream for Libya," he said. "Victory is coming. With Qaddafi gone, everything will be O.K."

On other days, in the atrium of an old Ottoman building, among caged songbirds, men pulling on shisha pipes and playing fast-paced games of baccarat spoke almost casually of their eagerness for change. Over cups of Turkish coffee and glasses of fresh-pressed lemonade, they voiced their anger for Colonel Qaddafi, and their bitterness over the fortune in oil money they said he had squandered while leaving many Libyans virtually destitute. They even spoke of their discomfort at having their country identified with a leader renowned for his earlier links to terrorism. "Before him, we were a proud people," one man who has traveled to America said. "Now, when you show a Libyan passport at a foreign airport, people look at you with an air of concern. And all this because he bombed foreign airplanes, and killed many people overseas. He's a destructive character."

What was surprising in these encounters was that the Qaddafi government has shown from the start its readiness to deal violently with its opponents. Bookshelves of human rights reports, and testimonies from survivors, tell a story of Colonel Qaddafi as a man who might well have studied the grimmest practices of other dictators who built an elaborate machinery of fear to suppress dissent. For decades, Libya has had its ubiquitous secret police, its archipelago of Abu Ghraib-like prisons, and a chilling narrative of "disappearances," extrajudicial murders and summary executions, often after torture. The victims number in the thousands.

The practices were eased, or at least more carefully obscured, after the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, when Colonel Qaddafi apparently decided that the writing was on the wall. With the overthrow of Saddam Hussein sounding a tocsin in his ears, he set out to mend fences with the West. Libya abandoned its secret programs to develop nuclear and chemical weapons and accepted international supervision of their dismantling; Colonel Qaddafi earmarked up to $2.7 billion in compensation to families of the 270 victims of Lockerbie; de-nationalization and foreign investment became watchwords; and Libya's vast oil reserves were reopened to a competitive scramble by Western oil companies.

But just how insubstantial these measures were, in terms of fundamental change in the regime's rule, became evident from the moment that Libyans rose up in mid-February, triggering the civil war that continues now. A new report prepared by an international panel of legal experts for the United Nations Human Rights Council, obtained in draft form by The New York Times, chronicles in painful detail abuses committed by both sides in the civil war.

But for all that it condemns the rebels, the report deals far more harshly with the government, chronicling a pattern of "shoot to kill" attacks that left scores of corpses among protesters, secret police dragnets in which hundreds of people were detained or "disappeared," and the mournful legacy of posters pasted by families on public buildings, courthouses and hospitals seeking any information on the fate of loved ones — posters that, in Tripoli, have been routinely removed or defaced by the government. The document cites a televised speech in late February in which Colonel Qaddafi described the protesters as "rats" who needed to be executed, and an address by Seif al-Islam, his son, vowing to "fight to the last man and woman and bullet."

In the face of this brutality, what is puzzling is the persistence of open dissent on the streets of Tripoli. One theory is that the government's agencies of repression have been forced to accept with smoldering frustration what they would previously have smothered, because they are strained to the limit by the revolt and by defections that have caused hundreds of thousands of Libyans to flee the country.

Another is that a government that set out in the past decade to cloak the old dictatorship with a new and more appealing facade has been hoist with its own petard, with Libyans in large numbers deciding for themselves that they will no longer accept the old repression, and that they no longer need even to pretend to swallow the half-baked political theories in Colonel Qaddafi's Green Book, which sets out a "third way" approach to governance that does away with any pretense of Western-style democracy in favor of "popular rule" through grass-roots committees that turned out to be a formula for one-man rule.

If so, it is a far cry from the grim landscape of George Orwell's "1984," where the totalitarian state has so deeply repressed the human instinct for liberty that it has made impossible any wresting back of power. In Libya, as elsewhere in the dictatorships of the Arab world, just the opposite seems to have been proved true. But if so, it is a message that has yet to register with the officials who speak for the government, who brief foreign reporters every day with a through-the-looking-glass view of reality that has government forces on the brink of final victory over a few weak pockets of rebel resistance, NATO as terminally discredited and hated by Libyans for its targeting and killing of civilians, and Colonel Qaddafi as a leader beloved of the overwhelming majority of Libyans.

It is a gospel that finds perhaps its most passionate disciple in Moussa Ibrahim, the government's chief spokesman, a British-educated, English-fluent loyalist who has ties to Colonel Qaddafi through their common membership in the small Qaddafa tribe. At his regular news conferences for foreign reporters, he routinely describes the colonel as Libya's only hope of resolving the conflict, and of guiding it to the electoral democracy that he is said to have accepted now as the only way forward. "People are rallying behind the leader," Mr. Ibrahim said at a news conference last week. In the new world of threat in which Libyan loyalists like Mr. Ibrahim live, it seems, there is still only one essential reality, the dictatorship of Colonel Qaddafi, and all other facts must be bent, at whatever cost to credibility, to keeping him in place.

An anonymous reader sent us the following leaflet and informed us that hundreds of them have been distributed in Phnom Penh during the night of 17 June 2011. The Cambodian authorities arrested many girls in Phnom Penh and accused them of distributing these leaflets.

Leaflet title: "Cambodia should wake up to free their nation from the Yuons and replace the traitor Hun Xen out in order not to allow the confiscation of their lands, and not to allow the killing of Khmers like what happened on the Koh Pich bridge."

PHNOM PENH — German sportswear giant Puma said long working hours and health and safety breaches were to blame for a mass fainting at one of its suppliers in Cambodia in April.

An independent investigation found that a failure to follow the company's labour standards caused 101 employees to become unwell at the Huey Chuen factory in Phnom Penh on April 9 and 10, Puma said in a statement dated June 16 and seen by AFP on Saturday.

"The breaches of these standards include excessive hours of work as well as multiple occupational health and safety violations," it said, without detailing the nature of the violations.

Puma said it took the findings "very seriously" and promised to educate workers and supervisors about improving working conditions at the factory, which makes footwear for the brand.

While rare, mass faintings occasionally happen in Cambodian garment factories and are often blamed on employees' poor health and bad ventilation in the workplace.

Earlier this week, more than 200 workers needed medical treatment after falling ill at a textile factory in Phnom Penh.

The garment industry is a key source of foreign income for Cambodia and employs more than 300,000 workers, mostly women.

Her pretty Sino-Khmer face sometimes shows a grimace of concern. It is as if a painful memory or a dark thought suddenly flashes through her mind. Theary Seng was a former victim of the Khmer Rouge regime under which 1.7 million Cambodians died between 1975 and 1979.

She joined the civil party in the trial of the four main Khmer Rouge leaders which will take place in Phnom Penh following the conclusion of the ongoing trial for Duch, the executioner. During the preliminary hearing, Theary Seng engaged Nuon Chea, the former number 2 leader of the Khmer Rouge regime and she did not hesitate to point out to the judges of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC): "If Nuon Chea is not responsible, then who is responsible for the death of my parents and other victims?" However, some found her to be "too emotional," if not "misplaced". However, Theary Seng does not want to make up for that.

Covered by an elegant Khmer silk shawl while sitting at her office at the Centre for Social Development, one of the leading Cambodian NGO, she does not want to lose sight on what she considers to be the main interest of the trial and its limitations. "The Khmer Rouge trial has legal significance. This is about the rule of law. People must see that justice is rendered. But the court is only a forum where the evidence is evaluated. This has nothing to do with justice." She deplores the legal wrangling between lawyers and prosecutors behind the ECCC bulletproof windows. "Justice is much broader," she said. "If a Khmer Rouge were to come and meet me right now and he were to apologize for the death of my parents, even without any tribunal, then it would a fuller form of justice, more satisfactory than any legal proceedings."

Theary Seng was 4 years old when the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975. Her father was a senior officer in Lon Nol's Republican army – the weak marshal whom the U.S. presidents, from Nixon to Ford, supported with funds, weapons and military advisers.

The forced evacuation by the Khmer Rouge of the capital were followed by a huge stream of hundreds of thousands of refugees who had to survive in the countryside under constant threat from guns wielded by kids dressed in black; the constant presence of death, disease, starvation and executions was the kaleidoscope of images that was etched into Theary's mind as a young girl. Her father was "summoned" in the weeks following the fall of the Cambodian capital. Her mother soon learned from the mouth of a Khmer Rouge that he "will not return back." Theary's family – her four brothers, mother and grandmother – then fled to Svay Rieng province, near the Vietnamese border, the home of her father's parents. "At first, the reception by the 'old people' – as the Khmer Rouge classified the farmers as opposed to 'new people,' i.e. the arriving city folks – is cordial. However, pettiness soon rained in very quickly. The old people looked at me and my mother's fair skin and they thought that we had led a luxurious life, thus, it was time for them to take revenge on us."

At the end of 1977and early 1978, in their paranoia, the Khmer Rouge leadership ordered extensive purges of "traitors" whom they accused of having "a Vietnamese brain with a Khmer body." The eastern provinces bordering with Vietnam were particularly targeted. "Entire villages were executed. The Eastern zone was the center of cruelty," Theary Seng said. Annoyed by the city folks who took refuge in his territory, the village chief ordered their arrest.

Moved to the Boeung Rei detention center in late 1978, one evening, Theary saw a Khmer Rouge night guard entering their hut with wet ropes in his hands. She asked her mother: "Why do they carry wet ropes?" "Go back to sleep, my daughter," her mother replied. "These were the last words I ever heard from her again." According to the Documentation Center of Cambodia, about 20,000 prisoners were killed in the Boeung Rei prison. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge in January 1979, the family migrated to the United States after they were sponsored by one of her uncles. Haunted by the loss of her parents, Theary Seng now focuses on assisting other victims. Through her own experience, she encourages them to join the civil party.

My taxi driver is speaking rapidly and heatedly. I know exactly what set him off. But I'm still surprised by it.

I had asked my mom, who is from Bangkok, about some of the campaign posters for Thailand's upcoming general election. The roadsides are crammed full of them right now. Some are funny, like the one in the middle of this picture of an older man holding a baby. It's a riff on the Mark Twain quote, "Politicians are like diapers; they need to be changed often."

My mom's explanation of another poster also dropped a famous name: Thaksin. As soon as those two syllables left her mouth, I knew we had just steered into testy political territory. Our taxi driver immediately looked back at her in the rear-view mirror and launched into a fierce debate. I tried to change the subject... but could only come up with "The Hangover II."

The sign that caught my eye showed a water buffalo wearing a suit. (For pictures, click here.) The poster essentially says, don't let animals into parliament; vote no. Some show other animals, but they're all on a bright yellow background. They have been put up by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), also known as the Yellow Shirts.

Some might find that surprising, since the PAD sit-in of 2008 helped bring the current prime minister to power. But Abhisit Vejjajiva is no longer the Yellow Shirts' golden boy. He has been criticized for not being tougher with Cambodia in a long-running border dispute.

Others say he wasn't hard enough on Red Shirt protesters who surrounded Government House last March and later occupied Bangkok's commercial center. (Keep in mind, 91 people were killed in street battles and Abhisit was accused of using excessive force.)

The Red Shirts support former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. He was ousted by a military coup in 2006 and has since been convicted of a corruption charge by Thailand's Supreme Court. Thaksin is widely considered to be leading the Pheu Thai party from exile in Dubai. His sister, Yingluck, is the party's candidate and leads in the polls. She would be Thailand's first female prime minister.

The Red Shirts have rallied behind Yingluck. But the Yellow Shirts are broken into several factions, the "Vote No" campaign being one of them. There is also the New Politics Party, led by a former key PAD leader. In the taxi, my mom told me she thinks that will lead to a spoiler effect and hand victory to Thaksin.

That seems like a long explanation of one poster. But Thai politics are complicated. And contentious. No matter who wins the July 3 election, one side will be left very unhappy. The question is how they will express that discontent... and how damaging will it be for the country?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PIsYznXzJY&feature=player_embedded#at=71

The Chinese navy conducted three days of exercises — including live fire drills — in the disputed waters of the South China Sea this week, escalating tensions over a potentially resource-rich area also claimed by some neighboring countries in Southeast Asia.

The display of naval might hundreds of miles from China's southernmost border was widely seen as a warning to Vietnam, which this week conducted its own live fire drills near the Spratly Islands. Several countries claim sovereignty over the string of uninhabited volcanic rocks, which are ringed by jagged reefs and crusted with bird droppings but rendered attractive by virtue of the surrounding waters that are fertile fishing grounds and may cover significant reserves of oil and natural gas.

Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei all claim jurisdiction over some of the territory. But China contends its sovereignty dates from ancient national maps that show the islands to be an integral part of its territory.

On Friday, state television showed video of Chinese patrol boats firing repeated rounds at a target on what looked like an uninhabited island, as twin fighter jets streaked in tandem overhead. The report said 14 vessels participated in the maneuvers, staging antisubmarine and beach landing drills aimed at "defending atolls and protecting sea lanes.''

China has pressed its claim to the outcrops in the South China Sea more assertively in the last two years. Chinese civilian vessels have increasingly confronted fishing and oil-exploration ships from other countries operating in those waters.

The latest spike in tension began late last month when Vietnam accused a Chinese fishing boat, escorted by two patrol boats, of deliberately severing a cable of a seismic survey ship owned by PetroVietnam, the national oil and gas company. Relations between the two countries are fraught: They waged a border war in 1979, and have since clashed occasionally at sea over the Spratlys as well as another island chain, the Paracels.

The Vietnamese government is under pressure from its own intensely nationalist media and its citizenry to stand up to China. The sea skirmish in May sparked an anti-Chinese outpouring in Vietnam, and the government has permitted rare public demonstrations to allow a mostly youthful crowd to vent anger.

Social media are also fueling anti-Chinese sentiments, including an online petition to change the name of the South China Sea to the Southeast Asia Sea.

"Vietnam has always been in a bad position to have such a large and powerful neighbor as China, but we are also angry that the Vietnamese government takes such a subservient attitude toward China," said Thuc Vy Huynh, a 27-year-old activist and blogger.

Chinese officials say they are merely protecting their national economic interests.

"We cannot avoid dealing with this issue. The Vietnamese are collecting gas and encroaching on our territory," said Xu Guangyu, a retired Chinese military officer and analyst with the China Arms Control and Disarmament Assn.

China has also dispatched its largest civilian vessel to pass through the region, sending the 3,000-ton, helicopter-equipped Haixun to dock in Singapore. And an unidentified Oceanic Administration official was quoted in China's state news media as saying that the civilian maritime surveillance force would be increased to 15,000 from 9,000 personnel by 2020.

With Vietnam and the Philippines issuing sharp warnings against further Chinese encroachment on their commercial ventures, observers say the potential for violence is there.

"The highly charged situation in which vessels with paramilitary capabilities ignore each other's signals and engage in provocative actions could easily devolve into a shooting incident," said Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt of the International Crisis Group's Beijing office. "If bullets fly, we could really see things escalate."

The dispute also has implications for the United States, which is the largest naval power in Southeast Asia and has declared freedom of navigation in the waters to be a U.S. national interest. The Obama administration has called for the competing claims to be resolved through an international diplomatic process involving all countries with a stake in the issue.

China rejects that approach, contending that differences should be resolved with each country individually.

As China adopts a more forceful posture in its international relations, nervous neighbors have become more receptive to U.S. involvement, pushing countries like Vietnam to seek an American counterweight to Chinese power.

But the Vietnamese government is also mindful of the risks of disrupting its growing economic ties with China. It has been careful, so far, to avoid overly provoking Beijing. Its live-fire drill conducted Monday appeared to be an anticlimactic affair, conducted close to land without the firing of anti-ship missiles.

A long process of reconstruction, following genocide and years of instability and civil war, has resulted in substantial progress in Cambodia's education system. Almost all children are now entering school, and far more than before are completing primary. The gender gap in primary and lower secondary has effectively been closed. The rate of improvement has been most notable among girls, in rural and remote areas and among lower income quintiles.

Reconstruction in Cambodia was initially characterised by high levels of political conflict and fragility. Since then, the government has worked with development partners to create more functional and effective sector-wide administration and planning, paired with expanded supply-side investments. Several highly innovative local and international NGOs have worked with the most marginalised to improve the quality and relevance of education, fostering community participation and social capital to expand access to the poorest. Education NGOs are now also more integrated into sector planning.

Bangladesh is set to tie up with Cambodia for promoting investment and development co-operation in agricultural sector aiming to raise food grain production through taking some of the latter's land on lease, officials said.

The Prime Minister of the South-East Asian nation Hun Sen is scheduled to visit Dhaka soon when the two countries are expected to sign a number of deals on bilateral cooperation, mainly on farming, the officials added.

"The major cooperation will be in the agricultural sector as food shortage-stricken Bangladesh seeks to take land on lease from Cambodia to produce rice there and bring the same back to meet local demand," a senior commerce ministry official told the FE.

During Hun Sen's visit, the two countries will form a joint commission at the foreign ministers' level, sign a deal for holding annual advisory meetings at the foreign secretary-level and tie up for bilateral cooperation in the agricultural sector.

They will also sign deals about taking lease of Cambodian land, importing rice from there to Bangladesh, providing visa exemption for diplomats and promoting investment.

Cambodia has sought Bangladesh's investment for establishing rice mills there as the former has no such facility. The Cambodian farmers grow paddy and export the same directly to Vietnam and Thailand.

Sources said a nine-member committee, headed by a joint secretary of the ministry of commerce, has been formed to explore the possibility of leasing land for farming in Cambodia.

The committee has also been tasked with handling the matter about setting up rice husking mills in Cambodia and importing or procuring rice produced there by the would-be Bangladeshi investors.

The members of the committee will shortly visit Cambodia to sort out the matters, the sources added.

Cambodia has already granted lease of some of its lands to other countries for farming and Bangladesh is seeking long-term lease of such land for a period, up to 99 years.

Officials said Cambodian land is ideal for high quality rice production and Bangladesh has large potential to reap gains out of taking land there on lease.

The world's fourth largest rice-growing nation, Bangladesh, with an average annual production of 33 million tonnes, has, however, been one of the major foodgrain importers this fiscal.

For those who care to see it, the world is full of needs.

Radio ministry TWR does not merely see those needs.

It plays an active role in bringing God's answer to the needy around the world.

One of the groups TWR reaches out to is oral communicators.

Oral learners comprise some two-thirds of the world's population.

In that context, TWR-Asia brings the Bible and the Gospel to oral learners in a language they can understand.

Understanding the worldview of its listeners and their approaches to communication and research and design help the organisation develop messages that listeners can relate to.

Another area of need the organisation has been addressing is that of church leadership and development in growing Asian churches.

TWR-Asia's daily programmes provide training and systematic teaching to pastors and lay leaders who would not otherwise have access to them.

The organisation works with local churches where possible to help raise and train new church leaders and strengthen existing ones.

As a case in point, the programmes have helped the pastor of a house church in Vietnam in his church-planting activities. There are currently 800 new believers in his church.

TWR-Asia also develops broadcasts that address basic health and sanitation needs.

The organisation broadcasts a weekly programme in Nepal to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS, prevent its spread and share the Gospel of hope.

TWR-Nepal organises Gospel meetings for affected listeners and their families and distributes food and basic necessities to the needy.

Children and orphans of HIV/AIDS affected listeners receive school supplies like books, pencils, and bags. The organisation even helps pay school fees.

TWR-Cambodia visited victims of a November 2010 stampede in the country which claimed the lives of hundreds during a national festival. The team distributed gift packs containing necessities sponsored by donors.

Another way TWR-Asia helps the needy is through disaster relief. Its efforts in this area include airing programmes on disease control and dealing with grief and loss. The teams also help with on-the-ground efforts however they can.

For instance, after the typhoons in the Philippines in 2009, the TWR-Philippines team worked alongside local government agencies and relief organisations to provide food and emergency relief to victims and rescue workers.

With over 1.2 billion people under the age of 18, TWR-Asia reaches out to children and youth in Asia through radio broadcasts, Internet programmes, youth camps and church leadership training.

Programmes for children and youth present Jesus and the Bible as relevant and vital for the age group. This includes magazine-format programmes that discuss topics teens are interested in and children's programmes that appeal to parent and child alike.

The team in the Philippines has helped many young Filipinos in their struggles.

TWR's children's ministry team in Cambodia does not merely produce a programme. It shares Jesus' love to listener groups and churches through visits, puppet shows, songs and small gifts of practical necessities.

Sometimes, the team would teach children basic hygiene practices like washing of hands and the proper way of bathing. During subsequent visits, the team has seen positive change in the lives and habits of the children and villagers.

The team also works with churches on the ground to provide nourishing food for poor children. Local churches have partnered TWR-Cambodia's children's ministry team to reach out to children and young believers in the villagers.

Another area of work with which TWR-Asia is engaged is ministry to women in suffering.

Its flagship programme reaches millions of women worldwide with a message of hope. Using an interpersonal style, broadcasts share practical advice and insight. This helps listeners know they are understood and loved, especially by God.

Listeners pray alongside women worldwide using a monthly prayer calendar.

The organisation also holds literacy and training classes in Nepal to equip women to earn an income to help provide for their families.

'Couples Camps' in China help couples improve their communication, overcome barriers and renew their commitment to one another before God and other believers.

Natural Resources and Environment Minister Suwit Khunkitti says the People's Alliance for Democracy's demand for Unesco to delist the Preah Vihear temple as a World Heritage site is impractical and unlikely to happen.

Mr Suwit, who leads Thailand's negotiating team on the Preah Vihear issue, insisted the country's position is to convince the World Heritage Committee to delay its adoption of the management plan for the temple expected to be proposed by Cambodia at the WHC meeting in Paris tomorrow.

Mr Suwit made the comment after more than 1,000 PAD supporters submitted a letter to Unesco via its office in Bangkok demanding that the WHC delist the temple as a World Heritage site.

The yellow shirt group argued that World Heritage status had led the two countries into a border conflict.

"Personally, I agree with the PAD. But I don't think the Unesco will agree [with us] on this point," Mr Suwit said.

"What we can do is to negotiate for a delay in the approval of the temple's management plan written by Cambodia."

Mr Suwit yesterday met with Adul Vichiencharoen, a former WHC chairman, to ask his advice before attending the Paris meetings which are scheduled to last for 10 days.

Thailand has insisted that the temple's management plan should be suspended until the land demarcation issue is cleared up between the two countries.

Meanwhile, Cambodia argued that delaying the plan would compromise the integrity of the World Heritage site.

Prapan Koonmee, a PAD leader and spokesman of the Kingdom of Thailand Protection Committee (KTPC), said after a meeting with Unesco's representatives that the cultural body agreed to submit the group's protest letter to the WHC.

"It is clear that the inscription has been completely against Unesco's principle of peace. Before, there were no incidents in which over 50,000 people had to be moved out of their own territory to avoid attacks from Cambodia. This happened after the temple was inscribed as a World Heritage site," said Mr Prapan.

Parnthep Pourpongpan, a member of the KTPC, said a mere postponement of the temple management plan would not be of benefit to Thailand.

Mention human trafficking and most people will immediately think of the horrors of the sex trade. That is understandable because the exploitation of women and children are rarely out of the headlines, making this an issue of deep concern. But a recent surge in slavery cases involving men as the prime victims, has highlighted the need for anti-trafficking agencies to smash criminal gangs illegally exploiting cheap labour.

The fact that young men are trafficked into slavery in the fishing industry and condemned to spend months at sea in appalling conditions, is not new. This has been well documented by the International Labour Organisation, and Mahidol and Chulalongkorn universities. It is the increased scale of this exploitation that is causing alarm. And although police intensified their operations against traffickers in Suphan Buri and Ayutthaya this week and made arrests, some criminal gang members slipped through the net.

A ground-breaking report just released by the aid and development group World Vision International, attempts to counter the common perception that human trafficking is all about the sex trade, as it was in the mid-90s. It found that, in global terms, for every person coerced into the sex trade in the lower Mekong region, nine are forced into work. Youths _ primarily from Burma, Cambodia and Laos _ make up the vast majority of people trafficked into the fishing industry here and in Malaysia. Other victims are illegally sold into domestic service and the food processing industry.

All this is happening three years after our tough law to combat traffickers came into effect and extended its protection to those in danger of becoming victims of forced labour, prostitution, sexual abuse, or trade in human organs. It increased the punishment meted out to traffickers, spared victims from prosecution and concealed their identities. It also freed high-ranking police officers from having to obtain search warrants when actively in pursuit of suspected human traffickers.

So it would be encouraging to see police and public prosecutors making proper use of these powers and penalties. This country has long had to suffer the shame of being branded an international people trafficking hub because gangs illegally trading in sexual exploitation, domestic servitude and other forced labour activity are either based here or use the country as a transit route. Last year it was even upgraded on the US State Department's human trafficking watch list, along with much of the rest of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Collusion has long been suspected between the corrupt influential figures behind the trafficking and their equally corrupt law enforcement counterparts. Passage of the 2008 law was intended to dissolve such relationships, put the culprits in jail and make it clear that any tolerance that might have existed in the past was at an end. Clearly these goals have yet to be achieved, which does raise the question of why legislators bother to enact powerful laws when enforcement is so weak.

Despite the gradual change of tactics by traffickers, the sex trade still gains the most police attention. Brothels masquerading as karaoke bars have been raided this year in Prachin Buri and Suphan Buri provinces and at least 70 Lao girls freed from forced prostitution. The problem is that such cases rarely lead to a serious prosecution of those responsible, including the authorities who found it prudent to turn a blind eye.

So long as wrongdoers see themselves as immune from punishment, the evil of human trafficking, in all its forms, will remain a blight on our society.

Keo Sarath - Lean Aun Chhlorng Den

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67sMxooOA84&feature=related

Keo Sarath - Chumrum Khao-I-Dang

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C26ur-uw26U&feature=related

Keo Sarath: Anuksavery Komsott

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8Y0ry2c4qk&feature=related

Chhun Vanna- Khao-I-Dang Sneh Kam:

Chhun Vanna - Khao-I-Dang Duong Chit

Last Song and last voice of Sos Math - Teuk Phnek Khmer (Khmer tears) - in April 1975 - while the Khmer Rouge were closing in on Phnom Penh, they were on the opposite bank of the Mekong.

I love and used to love the narrator's voice (she was Ms. Huoy Meas). Her voice was just beautiful.

Click on the control below to listen to Sos Math's last song: