The Phnom Penh Post - ENGLISH: “Sonny Krishnan on just how serious bird flu is” plus 9 more

In the fourth episode of this ongoing series World Health Organization Cambodia communications officer Sonny Krishnan dissects this year's off-season outbreak of H5N1

It is the right of the people, if the law allows them, to hold peaceful demonstrations.

Cambodia's U23 national team will begin training together today ahead of participation in the 2013 BIDC Cup at home in November and the SEA Games in Myanmar in December.

The 26-strong squad released last Thursday by the Football Federation of Cambodia includes many familiar names favoured by head coach Lee Tae Hoon during his previous stint, which
ended last year.

The South Korean and his local assistants Meas Channa, Ieng Saknida and Oum Savong will switch between training sessions at Olympic Stadium and the National Football Centre in Cheng Meng village on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.

Fresh call-ups to the national side include Boeung Ket Rubber Field pair Ros Samoeun and Keo Sokpheng, Kirivong Sok Sen Chey's Nhem Sovannara and Svay Rieng goalkeeper Aim Sovannarath, who was judged best gloves in the most recent Metfone C-League season.

An interesting addition to the team is Phnom Penh Crown's French-born attacking midfielder Bin Chantha Thierry, who was forced to curtail a visit to his hometown of Paris to come back and join his compatriots.

Should Thierry goes on to make the final selection for the SEA Games, it will be the first time in nine years that a foreign-born player has represented the Kingdom at an overseas international football tournament.

Cambodian-French stars Stephane Pen and Hing Darith were in the side that suffered four straight defeats in the 2004 Tiger Cup (now the Suzuki Cup).

Thierry, along with fellow French-bred imports Boris Kok and Dani Kouch as well as Cambodian-American Alex Kem, have appeared for Cambodia in friendly fixtures in the past year.

Thierry expressed his pride at the chance to represent his ancestral homeland.

"This is really important to me, as my first goal by coming and playing in Cambodia was to join the national team.… All the efforts I have been through this season were worth it," he told the Post.

The 22-year-old cited his experience as a semi-professional in France and his discipline on the pitch amongst the strengths he can bring to the national team.

"I know when to speed up a game and when to stay put. I can help with my technical skills, and also my mentality – I never let my team-mates down," he said.

Thierry claims to have maintained his match fitness during the off-season with daily runs and notes there will always be a chance of success at the SEA Games despite a poor record of recent results against regional opposition.

"We are not the favorite for sure. We have nothing to lose, so let's see," added Thierry.

According to assistant coach Ieng Saknida, the squad will remain at 26 players for the BIDC Cup, which will be held at Olympic Stadium in November. Between four and six players will be trimmed from the side bound for Myanmar the following month, while injured members will be replaced as and when necessary.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CHHORN NORN, TRANSLATION BY CHENG SERYRITH

Cambodia U23 Squad List
Goalkeepers: Samrith Seiha (Phnom Penh Crown), Aim Sovannarath (Svay Rieng), Sar Sophea (SR), Sou Yaty (Ministry of National Defence)
Defenders: Say Piseth (National Police), Nhem Sovannara (Kirivong Sok Sen Chey), Sok Rithy (SR), Nen Sothearoth (SR), Keo Sokpheng (Boeung Ket), Touch Pancharong (BK), Khiev Vibol (BK), Sok Sovan (BK)
Midfielders: Srey Oudom (Pol), Chhin Chhoeun (MND), Khek Khemarin (MND), Ke Vannak (MND), Ung Dara (MND), Prak Mony Udom (SR), Tum Saray (SR), Chan Vathanaka (BK), Chhun Sothearath (BK)
Forwards: Bin Chantha Thierry (PPC), Sos Souhana (PPC), Phoung Soksana (MND), Keo Sokngon (BK), Ros Samoeun (BK)

King Norodom Sihamoni has called on people to remain calm and allow the dispute over July's national election to be resolved using the constitution and relevant public institutions – a move some say shows he has sided with the ruling Cambodian People's Party.

"History shows us our nation has been divided and suffered a lot as a result. So I would like to call on all people to continue to stay calm and dignified," Sihamoni wrote in a statement, his second since the election, issued from Beijing on Friday. "Resolution of national issues should be based on the constitution and carried out by relevant institutions under the constitution and law."

But political analyst Lao Mong Hay said many people had no faith in such institutions and that he believed the King's statement showed he had sided with the CPP.

"The substance of the letter is in line with the CPP's strategy of resolving this issue as quickly as possible so they can form the National Assembly and a new government afterwards," he said, adding the CPP may have asked the King for his support.

"I would like the King to have issued the letter after the final decision of the Constitutional Council and the announcement of the election results."

Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan said it was offensive to the King to suggest he had taken sides.

"The King is a representative of unity and peace," he said. "His statement … reflects the rule of law and the constitution."

Son Soubert, an adviser to the King, said Sihamoni's statement was likely a response to the military's presence on the streets.

"I think it's because of the presence of the army and armoured vehicles," he said.

Soubert said the King had been in Beijing since August 12 for medical reasons and would be back "in time for the National Assembly to resume".

Sihamoni is required to open the first session of the new National Assembly 60 days after the election.

After nearly 50 garment workers were killed last year while travelling to or from their respective factories, the Ministry of Labour has urged truck drivers who cram dozens into the back of vehicles each day to take more care on the roads.

In an information session in the capital's Dangkor district on Saturday, officials from the ministry's National Social Security Fund spoke to some 200 private drivers about the importance of having a licence and the huge responsibility they have when transporting so many workers.

"Sometimes there are 30 to 50 workers in a truck, so if a driver is not careful, he could kill or injure them all," said Cheav Bunrith, the NSSF's policy office chief.

Rather than place the burden of responsibility solely on truck drivers, though, Bunrith said the NSSF had also appealed to factory owners to only allow licensed drivers with a strong knowledge of traffic laws to transport their workers.

Trucks overloaded with garment workers are a familiar sight, especially on the outskirts of the capital.

According to NSSF figures, 49 garment workers died last year during a journey to or from work, 359 were seriously injured and more than 3,000 were slightly injured.

Involved in the information session was Kong Ratanak, deputy program manager at NGO Handicap International, who said the training had focused on drivers because workers "depended on them" for their safety.

Dave Welsh, country manager for rights group Solidarity Center/ACILS, said the Labour Law held employers liable for accidents involving workers travelling to and from their factories.

"But the problem is the application," he said, adding some employers didn't realise their responsibility and some workers didn't understand their rights.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SHANE WORRELL

With three months' worth of national side salaries still unpaid, about 100 Cambodian staffers temporarily left their posts at the Khmer Rouge tribunal yesterday, leaving the court to cope with almost-certain delays in its work just as the current case enters its crucial final stage.

According to court spokesman Neth Pheaktra, without such essential staff as translators and administrators, the court "take[s] the high risk" of delaying the issuance of closing briefs due later this month, and closing arguments currently scheduled for mid-October.

Civil party lead co-lawyer Elisabeth Simonneau-Fort said yesterday that the strike would definitely slow down civil party lawyers' work due to the lack of translators, but was still "absolutely justified".

"We hope we will be able to file [closing briefs] in due time, but we cannot be sure of this at the moment," she said in an email.

Nonetheless, she added, "Not being paid for three months is unacceptable."

Prosecutor Bill Smith said that the impact on his office would depend on the strike's duration, but noted in an email that the law "requires joint participation, and without [that it] cannot achieve its goals".

"For our office, in the short term, the impact will be manageable, but if it continues for more than a few weeks, the impact may have a significant effect," he said.

Khieu Samphan defender Arthur Vercken said yesterday that pending requests about – among other things – the use of some 1,400 newly admitted witness statements were likely to remain unanswered until the strike ends, making it impossible for his team to properly draft a closing submission.

"We are pleading in these requests on very serious grounds, and the bulldozer is still moving, and if they don't say anything before the 19th of September, then it's a big problem," Vercken said. "How can we write a closing brief if we don't know the scope of the trial?"

At sundown in Phnom Penh, if you go up high enough, you can often see children playing on the rooftop of the White Building.

While their home, once a celebrated social housing project designed by one of the country's most acclaimed architects, has fallen into disrepair, a small community of artists is
flourishing.

The latest work to come out of the building, a multimedia project titled Through a Child's Eye View which opened there on Friday night, makes use of animation, photography, video and mapping.

Some 14 children, between the ages of seven and 14, spent three weeks documenting their home. The results range from colourful collages mapping floors of the building to photos of everyday events that capture the children's outlook, all shot from the low angle of a child's eye.

"This is something that only those children can see from their perspective, so we wanted to give them the opportunity to reflect from their part of view," said Emma Ota, the Tokyo-based British artist who has spent the past five weeks living in the building. She organised the project in conjunction with the not-for-profit artist-run space Sa Sa Art Projects.

The perspective of children can help adults see their surroundings more clearly, she added. "How can we use simple technology to reopen our eyes and see our everyday in a different light?"

Constructed in 1963 as housing for low-income civil servants on Sothearos Boulevard, the White Building's gritty appearance makes it a local symbol of urban poverty. It is also home to Sa Sa Art Projects, which regularly hosts selected artists for its six-week Pisaot artist residency program.

"The White Building has a bad name in terms of its looks, and because there are some issues about prostitution, drug use and dealers," said Lim Sokchanlina of Sa Sa, who added that much of the crime problems were exaggerated and limited to certain parts of the building.

"We hope that our activities and motivation can bring back the art to this community, and hopefully improve the Cambodian art scene too."

For her Pisaot residency, Ota decided to equip children she recruited from a computer class at the Aziza School. In addition to giving the students tools to document the building, Ota also instructed the students to complete various tasks, such as going to parts of the building that they were unfamiliar with to photograph residents.

"That made them a little bit nervous to enter into a different kind of zone for them. But I think when they gained their confidence, they were excited to be able to use a camera and think what it means to point the camera in the world."

Ota also had the students create maps of the building, which she said illuminated their comforts and anxieties through the use of a colour code. "The place where they like to play and run about, we made green. The place where they like to relax and chill out, we like to make orange. We also discussed places where they feel uncomfortable, which was brown. The roof was coloured green to reflect its status as a popular play place, but many of the stairs leading to the roof were brown, indicating that the children are uncomfortable there.

"They take a round route to get up to the roof because there are certain areas they don't want to go. Maybe some areas they feel they can't enter that space because of the people who are there, they feel it's not their space to enter or they've been told to avoid that space."

In her time in the White Building, Ota said she has come to appreciate its community. "I was very impressed by the energy and vibrancy of the building."

'Top up $2 and get 30 free minutes daily for 20 days. Top up $5 and expand the same offer for a month. And, for a $10 recharge, that half-an-hour freebie lasts 50 days."

Mobile operator Beeline, which announced the promotion in August, called it "another amazing offer to our subscribers". But it's an amazing offer in a market flooded with amazing offers.

Four months after the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications scrapped a publicly unpopular restriction on lucrative mobile phone promotions – the order was an attempt to stave off a price war – the battle is raging once again.

While popular among consumers, the bonuses and promotions will inevitably reduce the operator's profit margins, analysts and market observers say. In the long run, those who can't afford to keep up with the pace will fall by the wayside.

"Directionally, we are headed towards the last men standing," Anthony Galliano, CEO of Cambodian Investment Management, said in a recent interview. "I am surprised at the ferocity of the promotions, which will probably accelerate the pruning process."

In January, local operator Mfone filed for bankruptcy, and analysts predict the market will shrink further to three or four players.

"Their balance sheets will get them through this phase of market development," Galliano said. "The others will likely just burn shareholder cash for a predictable result."

Whether on TV, online or on big posters, the advertisements, some of which seem too good to be true, speak for themselves. Just to name a couple: Cellcard advertises the $1 Thom Thom SIM Card, where subscribers get 10,000 minutes and, for every 30 of those minutes, subscribers pay 10 cents.

Under Smart's Xchange program, $2 can buy in-network calls worth $30. Qb's Data Xchange offers 10 cents for 70 megabytes worth 70 cents, or $1 for 1.5 gigabytes worth $15. Metfone advertises with the SIM Met4ever promotion, where subscribers get a 300 per cent bonus for the first top up.

"The SIM card is becoming equivalent to a frequent flyer or credit card loyalty program," Galliano said.

The deals bazaar is a product of oversaturation. There are currently eight mobile phone operators in the market, which could increase to nine once Beijing-based Xinwei Telecom obtains its licence from the government.

Ministry statistics released in March show that Cambodia, which has a population of about 14.6 million, had 19 million mobile phone subscribers in 2012. Many users have more than one phone.

Viettel, parent of operator Metfone, had the largest market share, counting 9.5 million subscribers in 2012. Latelz, parent of Smart, counted 3.2 million last year.

Smart merged with Hello in February, increasing the number of subscribers to more than five million. Cellcard parent CamGSM counted three million subscribers in 2012, according to the Ministry's statistics.

"In this kind of situation the only way to make a profit without losing market share is by providing more value to consumers than simple price-cutting," said Kevin Der Arslanian, business analyst at China Market Research (CMR) Group.

"Phone subsidies, unlimited data or calls under certain situations, additional services such as operator app markets, can all help operators drive additional revenue or lock in consumers to long contracts."

Some mobile phone operators defend the strategy, saying it's just part of doing business. Smart CEO Thomas Hundt said that what's happening in the sector is nothing unusual.

But Amsterdam-based Vimpelcom, the former parent company of Beeline, with operations in 18 countries, gave a different impression.

"In most of the markets where we operate, we try to steer away from excessive engagement in such activities," Artem Minaev, head of media relations of Vimpelcom, said in an email when asked if the number of promotions was higher than in their other markets.

In April, Vimpelcom, the sixth-largest provider of telecommunication services in the world, announced that it had sold its entire indirect stake in the company that runs Beeline to a local partner, Cambodian tycoon Huot Vanthan, after reviewing the value of operations.

"The bonuses and promotions do reduce margins since they reduce the possible revenues that can be generated if these freebies were not offered, while costs are the same," Minaev said. "In the short run this can be a favorable tactic to attract customers, but it has an adverse affect on a company's profitability when it becomes constantly practised."

Ian Watson, CEO of Cellcard, said the practice is profitable, but "it just reduces the margin, and anybody who says it doesn't is lying, basically".

Michael Fitzpatrick, who runs marketing for qb, said the smaller company differs slightly from the rest of the competition by focusing more on data as opposed to minutes, or "voice".

He said building a mechanism that drives customers on spending a bit more can be profitable, but giving it away for minimum recharge, as the majority of the operators do, is not clever marketing.

"In this market, voice is very much what I would call a commodity product; it's one of those things you give away for free but there's hardly any value in it," he said.

Alaxan FR Patriots notched their seventh straight victory, elegantly taking the all-Cambodian Sela Meas in their stride 66-63 at the Beeline Arena on Saturday in the Cambodian Basketball League sponsored by Western Union and Coca-Cola.

[img]

Coming out of a tight first quarter, three points behind Sela Meas, the Patriots virtually pitched the tent in their rivals half and posted a 25-8 turn-around to grab a 14-point first half lead.

If Aimar Sabayo (24 points) and Dexter Arcenas (18 points) took charge of the scoring, Nigel Doughan and Curran Hendry held the Patriots paint so tight that Sela Meas could hardly find baskets.

But once the Patriots slowed down the offensive tempo in the second session, presuming that they had the game in their bag, Sela Meas sensed a possible comeback and began to whittle the lead down.

With a few seconds to go, Sela Meas got to within a three-point basket of forcing extra-time, but Chao Prohors missed that life line and Patriots were safely home.

Peng Dara (24 points) and Sok Samnang (15) came out best for Sela Meas, who can take some comfort in the fact that they had run the Patriots closer than any of the other six teams before them.

In other action, Cellcard Eagles nosed out Ganzberg 62-61 in an exciting finish. Circumstances were a bit strange when the players took the court. Eagles showed up with just six and the Ganzberg roster had 11.

The all-Filipino side were quick to seize this advantage by playing a zone press and a setting a fast pace in the hope of tiring out the Eagles' tall players.

This strategy didn't work the way Ganzberg had hoped, or at least not for long as the Eagles put their height advantage to good use in dominating the rebounds.

Despite their best efforts, Ganzberg were unable to open up a gap on their opponents, who could still go toe-to-toe with a near non-existent bench.

With eight seconds to go, the game was dead even at 61 each, but the Eagles had possession. As was to be expected they took a time out, charged in for the offence with Geoff Harry eliciting a foul.

Four seconds to play and two free throws to shoot, Harry got one right and that was enough to give Eagles a breathtaking win, their third in seven games.

Harry was not only the man of the moment but was also the Eagles top scorer with 26 points. Keith Kelly was next best with 13. For Ganzberg Jeff Cruz 20 and Chavez 15 performed well.

For the first time, Galaxy showed up with a full line up, something that hadn't happened with the side for a long time. Yet the all-Chinese side could not contain Extra Joss Warriors, who recorded a comfortable 83-68 victory.

In the first three minutes of play the Warriors had shot to a 10-0 lead and omens of a blow out were there for the Galaxy to see.

But gradually the Warriors got stuck in slow traffic forced on them by Galaxy, allowing too many turnovers for the team to make good.

The Warriors were clearly taken aback by the swiftly changing patterns, leading by just two points in the third quarter. But they gathered themselves through Ken Gadaffi, whose blocks, rebounds and baskets killed Galaxy hopes.

The star of the Galaxy show was inevitably Kelvin Chan with 29 points. For the winners, Ley Denestrosa's 20 points, Fred Babida's 17 and Gadaffi's 11 showed out.

In a dominant display, Pate 310 proved too wily and strong for NSK Dream in a 71-50 victory. Pate maintained an impressive scoring rate from around the perimeter while employing a narrow zone defence to throttle Dream players from touching the paint.

Pate got going with six consecutive three-pointers in the second quarter.

It was a hot contest for a play-off seat and the victory pushed Pate to eighth in the rankings, the cut off for the next phase with four matches still to play.

The consistent Sok Tour was on the mark for Pate with 23 points. He was well assisted by Taing Peng Kuy 18 points. For Dream, Chin Chandara and Meas Pich scored 11 points each.

The 2013 National Bokator Championships wrapped up four days of competition at the Dambol Touk indoor hall of the National Sports Complex on Friday afternoon, with the event featuring both forms performances and combat events hailed a success by some, while others slammed the seemingly tiny cash rewards for class winners.

A bonus of 120,000 riel ($30) was handed to those topping the podium in each performance division, 70,000 riel was granted to runners up, and 50,000 riel for third.

The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports' physical department deputy director Beoung Kim Tao hit back at suggestions of corruption by organisers.

"We don't take even a single dollar from the prize fund, which is sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport," he told the Post. "Some people may get confused about the fact that the moves performers get [roughly] 70 per cent of the prize money of combaters."

Green Gecko Club members triumphed in eight out of 15 men's and women's events, the majority of which were in forms performances.

Combat competitions were held in two men's weight classes. White Lion Club's Hin Sopheaknit was champion at 56kg, with Thach Thavica of Angkor Reach Club as runner up and Toch Si Sovan from University of Puthisastra Club in the third place.

At 65kg, Tep Sophos Reatry of PSE Club reigned supreme, while Dambang Daik Club's Jey Sovanchan took second and Mean Rith Kampot Club's Phan Khea and White Lion's Saran Vichet shared third.