The Phnom Penh Post - ENGLISH: “Chea Vichea scapegoat "killers" acquitted” plus 9 more

THE courtroom erupted in applause this afternoon after the Supreme Court acquitted two men falsely charged with the murder of unionist Chea Vichea nearly a decade ago.

In January 2004, days after the Free Trade Union president was gunned down in broad daylight on the streets of Phnom Penh, Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun were arrested and charged with the murder.

Though the case was marred with irregularities and multiple witnesses exonerated the pair, they were sentenced to 20 years in prison. Provisionally released in January 2009 by the Supreme Court, Samnang and Sok Oeun lived nearly four years in freedom before the Appeal Court had them remanded into custody in December of last year.

This afternoon, after four hours of hearings and more than an hour of deliberation, the panel of judges ordered all charges to be dropped and the immediate release of the men.

"We have no evidence to say that Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun were guilty," presiding judge Khem Phon said. "Furthermore, the two people could not have been present at the scene, as they were both in the provinces."

As the pair were led out of the courtroom, a beaming Sam Oeun said he felt justice had finally been served.

"I feel so happy that the Supreme Court at last provided justice for us."

Turning to journalists as he was led into the prison van, Samnang urged them to pass on thanks to "Samdech Hun Sen, Samdech Chea Sim, Samdech Heng Samrin."

The case is the first high-profile trial to take place following Tuesday's instalment of the new government and many rights groups were looking to it as a litmus test. Shortly after the July 28 national election, the ruling party vowed that judicial reform would serve as a cornerstone of its fifth mandate.

"Whatever the reason [for the verdict], I like that justice has been given to the people. The courts need to take this case as an example – that they need to consider testimony, witness statements, judicial procedure. I appeal to all judges to follow this," said Nay Vanda, Adhoc's deputy head of human rights monitoring and legal aid section.

Though the judge in his verdict nixed the possibility of compensation for the duress both men faced, Vanda said he hoped the judicial system would reconsider its "moral responsibility" to the pair.

With the courts at last recognizing the innocence of two men widely believed to be scapegoats, however, the question remains of who are the real killers of the outspoken activist.

Vanda, for his part, said the exoneration should allow for a new investigation.

"The government needs to find the real killers now. At least, they need to try their best."

Read the full version of this story in tomorrow's edition of The Phnom Penh Post.

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy has threatened to call for a nationwide general strike if the ruling party does not make concessions that would induce opposition lawmakers to take their seats in parliament.

Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Rainsy said the CNRP would not join the National Assembly until "guarantees" are made on a committee to investigate election irregularities and a comprehensive program of reforms.

"If we join now without having anything concrete prior to joining it will be totally useless. Because once we have joined we will be powerless [as] the CPP would control both the government and the national assembly," he said.

"I think our leverage is strongest now outside the parliament."

Rainsy also threatened further mass demonstrations and said he would call on the international community and businesses to stop dealing with the "illegitimate government" in order to ramp up pressure on the CPP.

He added that a general strike was one course of action being floated.

"So the whole country for one day we will hold a strike. All factories, all civil servants, all shopkeepers will stop working that day. This is one possible idea," he said.

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday said that the CNRP had asked for the National Assembly presidency during negotiations between leaders last week.

While Rainsy today maintained his party was "not interested" in leadership positions until the "truth" was found, he did, however, suggest that the CNRP should be in control of the National Assembly in order to provide a check on the ruling party's executive power.

"In order to take responsibility together, to have a balance, [we] must have divided positions. One is in the legislative, and the other one is the executive, which can resist each other."

Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan could not be reached because he was in a meeting.

I think by 2015, Cambodia will become the daughter of a rich family. We will no longer be the daughter of a poor family that no man wants to marry with.

Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong says much work is still needed to establish the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), a single market for trade and development in 2015.

"From what our officials told me, I think on the economic side, we have 80 to 85 per cent of the work done," Lee told reporters at an ASEAN program in Singapore last week.

"The rest of it depends on how urgently the countries see this as a priority."

Lee, head of the most advanced economy in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, said agreements have yet to be reached on rules for investments, services, market access and opportunities for professionals moving from one country to another.

"Singapore is a small member of ASEAN, a small country, and we'll do our part to encourage all the others to come along and to help to reach a constructive understanding and to move ahead."

When asked how Singapore will contribute to reducing the development gap between itself and emerging markets such as Myanmar and Cambodia, he said several programs will be available.

"In terms of development, we have initiatives, like the initiative for ASEAN integration. We have human resource development programs, we have technical cooperation programs where many officials from the new members of ASEAN come and get exposed in Singapore to our developments, our work, how we are doing things, and pick up ideas which they can implement back home," he said.

Cambodian economists had mixed reactions on prospects for economic integration, when borders across the region come down allowing for the free flow of labour, goods and services.

Kang Chandararot, director of the Cambodia Institute of Development Study, said businesses in the country aren't equipped to compete with the rest of ASEAN, and that problem should be solved locally first.

"If you look at the private sector, I haven't seen that they are strong enough. The entrepreneurial reputation is still at the level of family businesses," he said. "It is not a happy time for us while rule of law is not in place, and you may know all international business standards demand rule of law," Chandararot said on Monday.

But Sok Siphana, head of the Cambodia Development Research Institute and former secretary of state for the Ministry of Commerce, said he's bullish on economic integration.

"I am looking at a macro policy instead of a micro issue. This is a golden opportunity. We will not be talking about 15 million Cambodians. We will consider us part of a market of 600 million people," he said.

Siphana argued that once Cambodia's economy is interwoven into ASEAN's, Cambodia can absorb any company that wishes to partner with local businesses for production and export.

He dismissed concerns that endemic corruption would hinder the ASEAN plan.

"We don't need a headache about corruption. Come on, corruption is everywhere and you should be aware that whether investors want to invest in your country or not depends on the advantages they get, the money they make and the market availability to sell their products," Siphana said, capping his argument with a metaphorical flourish.

"I think by 2015, Cambodia will become the daughter of a rich family. We will no longer be the daughter of a poor family that no man wants to marry with."

Management at the Chhin Chin garment factory yesterday agreed to meet workers' demands to receive their wages before the Pchum Ben holiday after a 150-worker demonstration briefly blocked National Road 4 in front of the factory.

Workers at the factory, which is located in Phnom Penh's Por Sen Chey district, began demonstrating the previous day after management said it would pay workers half their salary in advance, rather than their entire month's pay, said Va Sarorng, deputy chief of Por Sen Chey's Choam Chao commune, who observed the negotiation.

"The workers need money … because the date they receive their salary is after Pchum Ben," Sarorng said.

After a four-hour negotiation, management conceded to the early payment, Sarorng said.

Elsewhere in the capital, hundreds of workers at SL Garment Processing (Cambodia) Ltd gathered at one of the factory's two Meanchey district locations, demonstrating for the first time since strikers clashed with military police hired to stand guard on Friday.

SL will remain closed all week while equipment damaged by strikers is being repaired, said Wong Hon Ming, SL's owner.

Workers who were absent between September 1 and September 20 will receive half their salaries ahead of the Pchum Ben holiday. Employees who worked those days will receive their whole salary, plus a 50 per cent bonus.

Phnom Penh Crown coach Sam Schweingruber said the club was "looking to develop the Buffon of Cambodia" after they announced the signing of Ministry of National Defence team's top-rated goalkeeper Sou Yaty on Monday ahead of January's start to the next Metfone C-League season.

Gianluigi Buffon earned his 135th cap for Italy on September 6 at the age of 35, and Crown hope their new 21-year-old recruit will go on to emulate the Italian keeping legend by playing for the Cambodian national team "when he's well in to his 30s".

"The reason we are excited to work with Sou Yaty is because we believe he has great potential to improve to the next level.

"He speaks decent English and we are preparing some special opportunities for him outside the country, to reach much higher levels than where he is at right now," coach Schweingruber was quoted as saying on the club's official Facebook fanpage.

A post yesterday on the Crown fanpage revealed that their regular first team stopper Samrith Seiha, who is currently training alongside Yaty with the U23 national team in preparation for November's 2013 BIDC Cup, has handed in a request for early release from his contract, effectively signalling an imminent transfer to another club.

The post stated that Crown have agreed to Seiha's request as a recognition of his services to the club. "We wish Seiha all the best in the future," it added.

Sou Yaty has featured in the past two SEA Games U23 competitions in Laos and Indonesia and is set to take the number one spot in the squad bound for the Myanmar edition this December.

He made his senior team debut against East Timor in the 2012 AFF Suzuki Cup qualifiers in Myanmar and in 2010 was voted as the Cambodian league's best goalkeeper.

Born in Phnom Penh, Yaty attended Wat Koh High School and joined Build Bright United in 2006. After a couple of years he took a break to concentrate on studies but was persuaded to resume his position between the sticks with MND in 2009.

With Yaty's safe pair of hands, the Army team grasped the Samdech Hun Sen Cup trophy the following year and were also finalists in this year's competition.

"I'm very happy to try and help the club win trophies. That is my aim in making this move. I'm really pleased to join Crown," Yaty was quoted as saying on the Crown fanpage on Monday.

The Football Federation of Cambodia announced a revision to the Division A1 promotion play-offs, with all four teams vying for the two places in the 2014 Metfone C-League to play each other in a round-robin format.

The play-offs, slated for October 12-16 at Olympic Stadium, were originally to be played as a pair of two-leg contests between Division A1 winners Tri-Asia Phnom Penh FC, runners-up Takeo and MCL demotees Senate Secretariat and Asia Europe University.

Instead, the top two teams from the mini league-style format will progress to the top tier.

FFC general secretary Kul Sophana told the Post yesterday: "We want to give the chance for these four teams to do their best by meeting all the other hopefuls looking to go to the top league of Cambodia, even though we need to spend much more money [on hosting the play-offs]."

The stone monuments of Angkor may be awe-inspiring, but they don't tell the full story of what was once the world's largest city. Although architectural evidence is sparse, experts have determined that the temples once bore colour and stood in the midst of an urban centre of up to one million people.

Now artist Bruno Levy has combined established facts with educated guesses to illustrate what Angkor may have looked like at its peak, in order to recapture the essence of the cityscape for an upcoming pocket guidebook to the ancient civilisation. It is tentatively scheduled to be published at the end of October.

"This book will be revolutionary, not a copy-and-paste of other texts," Levy said, speaking at cultural centre Meta House, where an exhibition of his illustrations titled Angkorevealed will open tonight.

The 51-year-old Parisian, who holds a master's degree in Southeast Asian languages and civilisations with a focus on Cambodia and Thailand, did not say much about the book's content, but added that it was being written "under the authority" of Damian Lewis, an Australian archaeologist. In June, Evans made international headlines after discovering a "lost city" near Phnom Kulen.

Angkorevealed builds upon previous computer-generated 3D images of Angkor that Levy originally exhibited in 2009. To update the pictures, he superimposed the old images on background photographs of landscapes, as well as foreground shots of people, animals, plants and various props.

The resulting images display a peculiar juxtaposition of beautifully rendered buildings and realistic, life-like objects that manage to tease the viewer with snippets of established knowledge, such as the size of the temples, while reminding us that there is still a lot on which we can only speculate.

Architectural evidence, such as traces of gold, stucco and paint, has revealed a few certainties about the temples' original appearances.

"It is proven by archaeologists that the place was painted. Some of them had a layer of stucco and there are traces of gilding," said Levy.

But the artist was forced to take creative licence when it came to selecting colours. Many temples show remains of paint, but not much else is known, although laser analysis inside Angkor Wat shows evidence of red, white and orhre paint in successive layers.

To guide his guesswork, Levy based his colour selection on the designs of modern pagodas in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, as well as active Hindu temples in India. The deeply carved sections of the temples, such as bas reliefs, are extensively coloured, while slick surfaces are left white or just lightly coloured.

It is not just the temples, however, that Levy aimed to illuminate. Using Angkorian bas reliefs and the accounts of Zhou Daguan, the Chinese emissary who visited Angkor in 1296 and left the only first-hand account of the civilisation, Levy filled the spaces in front of the magnificent temples with quaint wooden houses and ordinary Khmers going about their business.

For Levy, it is the long-dead residents who ultimately defined Angkor.

"I fell under the charm of the ruins, but I was much more interested in what the ruins mean in terms of civilisation."

Angkorevealed opens at Meta House on September 25 at 6pm and will run throughout October.

The Cambodian Wrestling Federation hosts its Friendship Training course from today at the Dambol Touk indoor hall of the National Sports Complex.

The six-day course, funded by the Olympic Solidarity Commission and sanctioned by the National Olympic Committee of Cambodia, will tomorrow welcome 10 athletes from Laos and Myanmar to join the 20-strong Cambodian squad, who are vying for places in the delegation bound for December's SEA Games in Myanmar.

"We're all enthusiastic about promoting the sport of wrestling and glad to exchange our modest experience," NOCC General Secretary Vath Chamroeun told the Post.

Sessions will be held from 9-11am and 4-6pm at the hall. Laos and Myanmar federations are covering the travel costs of their representatives, while the NOCC will cover food, accommodation and training costs during their stay.

ONE Fighting Championship, Asia's leading mixed martial arts organisation, announced yesterday that Yahoo has become its official digital partner, hosting exclusive editorial and video content of the Singapore-based promotion on a dedicated MMA section on its sports website.

According to a press release yesterday, the Southeast Asia-wide partnership will mean a steady stream of ONE FC content – such as interviews with fighters, videos, match highlights and promotional trailers – will be published along with breaking news regularly on the webpage.