The Phnom Penh Post - ENGLISH: “Not the National Assembly” plus 9 more

This is not the National Assembly.

A Nigerian woman alleged to have smuggled 1.5 kilograms of methamphetamine through Phnom Penh International Airport was charged yesterday following her weekend arrest.

Tollin Onions Bosede, 34, was charged at Phnom Penh Municipal Court with international drug trafficking, said Major General Sok Chour, vice-director of the Interior Ministry's anti-drug police.

"[Bosede] was arrested by our police at Phnom Penh International Airport on Sunday afternoon," he said

"She was arrested when police checked her luggage and found a big package of drugs hidden inside clothes in her luggage."

Early last month, 30-year-old Indian woman Judith Pudaite was charged after she was caught allegedly carrying 3.38 kilograms of meth into Siem Reap International Airport.

Less than two weeks before that, four Thai women were found guilty of smuggling more than eight kilograms of cocaine through Cambodia on their way from Ecuador and Ghana last August and sentenced to life.

The Sovann family took a dynastic approach to the 2013 National Shorinji Kempo Championships, claiming a haul of seven golds and one bronze from the four-day tournament which concluded on Sunday evening at the Dambol Touk indoor hall of the National Sports Complex.

Eldest sibling Sovann Kiry, who along with credentials as a Kempo coach is also on the national taekwondo team, triumphed in three categories including individual men's combat fighting at 65kg, individual male kata forms performance, and performance pairs with his partner Un Sovannara.

Sovan Rachana teamed up with her sister Sovan Rathanak to clinch gold in women's performance pairs. Rathanak also topped the podium in U13 girl's combat fighting at 53kg and took bronze in individual women's performance.

More than 140 NGOs have called on the Mekong River Commission to freeze all hydropower dam construction in the Lower Mekong River.

"The degradation of fish production in the river can't be replaced and the blockage of sediment will affect the fisheries resources in the river's flood plain areas and the Great Lake of Cambodia," notes the open letter, released late last month and signed by 149 international and local groups including Adhoc, the 3S Rivers Protection Network, and the Fisheries Action Coalition Team.

"[We] would like to request to the four MRC governments of the Lower Mekong mainstream not to construct any hydropower dam in the Mekong mainstream now or in the future," the letter says.

An estimated 80 per cent of the 60 million people living in the Lower Mekong River rely on it as a source of livelihood and food.

Clearly, the stakes are high, said Youk Senglong, a program director at FACT, who pointed out that there has been insufficient research by the companies involved in delineating the impacts of the dam construction.

"We need a more high-quality impact assessment, which is why we asked [in the open letter] for a delay in construction," Senglong told the Post.

Though environmental groups have lambasted their construction and a 1995 Mekong Treaty requires consensus from the four affected governments, hydropower projects on the river's mainstream have been moving forward.

Construction has begun on Laos' controversial Xayaburi dam, while the second of 11 planned mainstream dams – the Don Sahong – has also recently seen development.

Te Navuth, secretary-general of the Cambodia National Mekong Committee, said no notification of any preliminary building at Don Sahong dam had been confirmed or received by the committee.

"We are issuing a request to the committee's Laos representatives" for further information about any preliminary building at Don Sahong dam, he said.

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court found two men, including a former publisher of a defunct pro-opposition newspaper, guilty of drug trafficking yesterday and sentenced them to six and eight years in prison.

Sierra Leone national John Philip Conteh, 33, was sentenced to eight years in prison and fined 10 million riel ($2,500).

Former publisher of Sid Serei Pheap Newspaper (The Freedom Newspaper), So Meng Hav, 62, was sentenced to six years in prison and fined 10 million riel.

Meng Hav and Conteh were arrested last year for selling drugs to an undercover agent of the anti-drug police force near Chroy Changvar Bridge in Chamkarmon district on September 25.

Following their arrest, police seized 270 grams of cocaine and 32 grams of marijuana from Conteh, also confiscating 300 grams of methamphetamines from Meng Hav.

Presiding Judge Kim Dany dropped charges against three men, two Nigerian nationals and one South African, citing a lack of evidence. "There was no evidence or proof of the involvement of Jude Obi Oyebuchukwu, 24; Paul Ani Nnbabuike, 30; or Leonard Amazodo, 29. All charges have been dropped and they are now free to go," Dany said.

"I think the court's decision was unjust, because [the sentence] was so high for me," Conteh told the Post. "I was using the drugs, not selling the drugs."

Last month during trial proceedings, Meng Hav claimed he used drugs to medicate chronic tuberculosis.

Thousands of striking workers rejected an offer from a Kampong Cham-based footwear company that met most but not all of their demands on Saturday and vowed continued disruptions.

More than 4,000 workers from Chinese-owned Juhui Footwear Co, Ltd who walked out on Friday were unimpressed by the firm's offer to meet 15 of their 18 point demands, Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Union (C.CAWDU) vice-president Kong Athit said yesterday.

"I think [Juhui has] lower-quality working conditions than the others [factories] in the city," Athit said yesterday.

Though Juhui agreed on key points, including paying sick leave and overtime transportation costs and introducing onsite doctors, the firm stood firm against a $3 top-up to their monthly transportation payments and a $5 monthly healthcare allowance.

During negotiations on Saturday Juhui officials also shot down a demand that the firm calculate absence deductions proportionally rather than stripping the worker of their entire attendance bonus for the month regardless of how much time they actually missed.

Meng Lik, an administrative manager at Juhui declined to comment.

But Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia secretary-general Ken Loo condemned the demonstrators for their inflexibility.

"We have never supported workers that strike to strike and demand such payments," Loo said.

Athit said most of the workers had joined C.CAWDU in June, and since that time, numerous reports of abuses at the factory, including physical attacks by supervisors, had been reported to the union.

He said workers had decided to continue their strike for at least another week, at which point they would reassess their bargaining position.

Employees reportedly working for the controversial Company 72 have allegedly been illegally felling timber in a community forest in Ratanakkiri province's O'Yadav district and shipping it across the Vietnamese border, community members and Adhoc said yesterday.

Romas Svat, a community representative in Paknhai commune's Lom village, said he and three other villagers who were patrolling the community forest on Sunday came across a camp of Vietnamese loggers in possession of as many as 40 logs, each up to 10 metres long.

"We saw six Vietnamese men at the camp, a truck and two tractors," Svat said. "We took video and photos of the camp and timbers as evidence."

Upon seeing the forest patrol, Svat added, the men left the camp after asking patrollers not to take photos.

"We asked them why they logged our jungle. They said it is the company's forest," he said, adding that the community had reported the logging to the rights group Adhoc.

Company 72, which has been sub-contracted by Men Sarun Company to clear land for a rubber concession in the area, has repeatedly been accused of illegally logging community forests by locals and officials.

The company was summonsed in February by the Ratanakkiri Provincial Court for questioning, and in May, angry villagers went so far as to sieze the keys and batteries of bulldozers owned by the company.

Adhoc coordinator Chhay Thy said yesterday that he planned to go investigate the allegations by Thursday after receiving multiple complaints from the community.

"The Vietnamese [loggers] crossed the border and have logged illegally since early July," he said. "They felled big trees and transported them to Vietnam at nighttime."

The felled timber, he said, was taken into Vietnam through a border checkpoint without intervention from authorities.

However, Sen Voeurn, the police chief in nearby Yatung commune, denied allegations of logging.

"The forest in that area has been cleared and planted with rubber since last year. There's no forest there," he said.

Bassac and Victory FC continued their unbeaten streaks in the 2013 Anvaya League on Sunday with commanding wins at Mekong University field. In the morning match-up, Bassac pounded PSE 3-0 in a combative affair.

Victory then knocked down KhmerDev 9-2 in a game that saw Bun Sokha shoot himself up the scoring charts with a magnificent seven goals.

PPIA beat Tiger FC 5-2 in the concurrent mid-afternoon fixture. The day's action was concluded by a perfect 10-0 destruction of league whipping boys Red Cowboys FC by championship contenders Anvaya Sporting Club.

A second string squad secured a 2-0 advantage by half-time before the big guns were introduced to finish off the rout, with Gary Ruffini netting a neat four. Next Sunday's schedule welcomes an intriguing clash between Anvaya and Victory.

In late 2009, two months after graduating with a degree in economics, Heng Piseth found a job as a credit officer with a microfinance institution in Kampong Thom province.

Nearly four years later, his responsibilities at the office are the same as when Piseth started: loan disbursement, loan collection and following up with clients whose payments are due.

"I see that the room to grow into a higher position gets narrower and narrower," Piseth said. "The competition is tough."

The story reflects a larger trend confronting young Cambodians entering the financial sector's job market. While thousands graduate university and move into entry-level jobs, the upper rungs are becoming increasingly scarce.

There's little room for the ambitious to emerge from a crowded playing field.

Grant Knuckey, CEO of ANZ Royal Bank, said the Cambodian banking sector has a significant "talent deficit". He said there is simply not the capacity for the industry to absorb the drove of inexperienced employees and train them adequately.

"The market is in fact growing significantly, but the ability for individuals to get promoted may be more difficult than in the past because the competition is more intense as more people join the industry," he said.

"This is a good thing for the banking sector, because it raises the overall calibre of employees. At ANZ Royal we always promote on merit rather than length of service, and it seems the industry overall is headed more in that direction."

The dim promotion prospects aren't scaring job hunters. According to Knuckey, some 4,000 new hires moved into the financial sector in 2012, and more than 1,500 of those chose to work in commercial banking.

As a result of growth, demand for junior staff is increasing. Virac Socheata, business operations manager at human resources consultant Great Alliance, said the numbers are going up by 30 to 35 per cent year on year.

This wasn't always the case.

"In 2005, the potential staff was limited and opportunities large," Socheata said. Now, however, "it is very challenging to catch a chance at middle-management or higher".

According to a recent report from the Cambodian Microfinance Association, the number of employees who work at the 35 microfinance institutions and Cambodia's biggest commercial bank, Acleda, was about 23,000 at the end of June, a 6.6 per cent increase from an estimated 21,700 at the end of December 2012.

Sim Senacheert, chief executive officer at Prasac, said it is hard to distinguish among fresh graduates coming out of university because skill levels are similar. At Prasac, applicants must go through a rigorous recruitment process, including a screening, writing test, interview and reference checks.

"There are many newly graduated students looking for jobs at the moment. It is a bit hard to recruit staff who have banking experience for high positions." Senacheert said.

For openings, Prasac receives a deluge of applications, not all up to standard.

"I think that to get jobs, students should focus on the quality of their knowledge instead of just focusing on having the degree," he added.

'Sometimes an airplane crosses the sky," says the narrator in Rithy Panh's film The Missing Picture, as the camera hovers above a lone clay figurine, lying in the grass. "Is it observing us? Will it parachute a camera to me? So the world knows at last? The missing picture: That's us."

For decades, the award-winning director has examined characters in the shadow of the murderous Khmer Rouge – at sometimes uncomfortably close range. The perpetrators: S21: the Khmer Rouge Killing Machine and Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell; the defiant victims: Vann Nath and Bophana, or other survivors living in the aftermath of war: One Evening After the War.

Throughout his career, says Rithy Panh, he has been obsessed with finding an image that lays bare the crimes of the Khmer Rouge, either in the material proof of photographs (which he knows to exist) or as an essential quest in his filmmaking.

"The 'missing picture' is the thing that you are looking for, film after film. Each film you are looking for a missing picture, and after you make one, you find another," he told the Post in May.

His new film, which took home the Un Certain Regard award at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and is now showing at the Bophana Center, turns the camera lens on the artist himself.

His story, narrated in French (by Randal Duoc) and told through the unusual medium of clay figurines and archival footage, is based on his 2013 book The Elimination and follows his four years as a teenager in the forced labour programs of the Khmer Rouge – to which he lost his parents, siblings and their children.

The film doesn't follow a strict chronology, but is a combination of memoir and historical record – and a more fundamental meditation on the genocide that Panh lived through.

Though the story dips back and forth into Panh's pre-Khmer Rouge boyhood, to bring to life the intense inner world that in some ways sustained him during his years in hell, the narrative avoids incoherence.

The film begins, symbolically, with churning waves (and it concludes on a no less unsettled note) before introducing 13-year-old Panh's clay figurine family and childhood in a colourful, banana-fringed home in Phnom Penh, where books are loved, poetry quoted by Panh's teacher father, and Golden Era rock and roll played by Panh's cool older brother

At first as the camera pans the miniature set where the figurines stand fixed in frozen scenes, you might wonder if the static figures will be able to convey a whole 90-minute film. Soon the narration (with English subtitles) and black and white footage of a black-and-white Phnom Penh, April 17, interrupts and in their painted expressions and stiff arms, the little hand-carved people become imbued with meaning.

As Panh's family are evacuated to the countryside and don the dyed black garb of the Khmer Rouge, the set switches from grim labour camp scenes to the Khmer Rouge's revolutionary fantasies of industrial rice fields surrounded by bicycle roadways and cement towers, to bizarre visions of self-feeding machines for the elderly – propaganda endlessly forced upon the workers.

"Our daily life is combat, against nature, against words," the narrator says. The revolutionary chants and endless slogans still haunt him.

Soon starvation – the "beginning of dehumanisation" – and ceaseless labour sees the figurines grow gaunt and dull. Panh's father, who was previously shown in a white suit, refuses to eat the food 'not fit for humans', and not long after dies.

Rather than witness his callous burial, Panh's mother tells him in careful detail about the funeral he should have had.

In between harrowing scenes (depicted by what have now become a captivating cast of characters), the story moves back to normal pre-regime life. A particularly lovely image is of real colour footage of classical dancer Princess Bopha Devi, imposed on one of the film's model sets.

Combined with the long-lived grief and anger of the older narrator, the young Panh never lets go of powerful memories like this – or his disbelief at what is happening to him and why.

Whether or not the question of the "missing picture" is meant to be resolved in the film, Panh's unusual and moving documentary successfully draws us into his compelling question.

The Missing Picture is showing every day at the Bophana Center at 6:30pm until August 10.