The Phnom Penh Post - ENGLISH: “Three days of demonstrations” plus 9 more

A look at the three-day mass demonstrations called for by the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party.

The Phnom Penh Dragons put to work their three-game winning momentum to oust Extra Joss Warriors 60-46 at the Beeline Arena on Sunday in the Cambodian Basketball League sponsored by Western Union and Coca-Cola.

The Dragons victory was built around some solid three-way transition passing between Erik Laughlin, Leng Seng and Jay Bookilin, the latter of whom notched 15 points.

When it came to handling the Warriors' main weapon in the paint and former Philippines professional Chris Bolado, the Dragons had Mat suki Nishikawa (16 points) cracking the code with some amazing under-the-rim moves.

The Dragons swiftly took control of the tempo right at the start and the Warriors were unable to find a basket in the first five minutes of the opening quarter. A brief third session rally by the Warriors, however, saw them get to within nine points of their rivals.

But a couple of sharp breaks from Khan Karakhanov and Martin Regis stretched the lead for the Dragons, whose reward for winning this crucial game was a hop over the Warriors in the ranking order.

None of the Warriors players could hit double digits.

Fred Babida and Carlos Gatdula scored nine each while Josuha Schmitz could only garner seven.

Meanwhile, Sela Meas made good a spate of turnovers to score a thumping 76-47 win over CCPL Heat, who never quite got their rhythm right.

Sela Meas led every minute of the way with the consistent Samnang Sok (21 points) playing havoc with Heat's unsure defence. Support for him upfront came from Try Thalidan (14 points).

The only voice of defiance for Heat was that of Panha Sovann (17 points).

In a high-intensity contest that slipped into overtime, Pate 310 edged past Cellcard Eagles 56-48, after the teams were dead-even on 40 when the regulation buzzer went off.

At the start of the fourth quarter, Pate had a small but significant six-point lead but the Eagles, led by Geoff Harry, hit back so strongly that they were two points in front with seconds left.

A timely interception allowed Pate's Rann Noren to bucket the equaliser.

In the five minutes of overtime that followed, Pate put a totally different complexion on the game and jumped into a lead the Eagles found hard to reverse despite trying to get Pate often on the fouling line.

Taing Peng Kuy was the lead scorer for Pate with 28 points while Sean Looney (18) and Geoff Harry (15) did well for the Eagles.

The last of the four matches charted for the day produced an anti-climax of sorts. IRB the Lord were ready and eager to get going but there was no sign of their rivals Ganzberg. They eventually failed to show up, prompting the organisers to declare a forfeit which under the FIBA rules, results in no points allocation but penalises the team playing truant 20 points.

NSK Dream win replay
In a late Friday evening match-up, NSK Dream defeated Ganzberg 84-65 in a replay of a game played earlier in the season.

Ganzberg's win in the first game was nullified since the team had violated player regulation, having fielded four unauthorised players then.

Meanwhile, the organisers have reframed the Post Buffaloes v NSK Dream match, postponed last week, for today at the Beeline Arena starting from 8pm.

I am not a protester. I hope my leg recovers soon, and then I will join in the demonstration, because I am so angry with our police officials.

The Cambodian Hapkido Federation handed out belt promotions to a group of students after an examination held at Bridgeton School, located near Boeung Trabek market in Chamkarmon district, on Sunday.

During a ceremony at the school, 1st Dan black belts were awarded to six students, 2nd Dans black belts to two students and brown belts to 13 students of the South Korean martial art.

According to CHF general secretary Kong Chan Tina, the students hailed from Eagle Club and Master Seng Club, both in Phnom Penh.

"It's not easy to obtain belts of Hapkido unless you've try very hard because Seng Bun Sung, who is the president of the Cambodian Hapkido Federation and a 10th Dan black belt, takes great care before offering a belt to someone," Kong Chan Tina told the Post.

An International School's Football League will be launched on October 26 featuring futsal-style five-a-side games contested by students representing Phnom Penh's various educational institutions.

The tournament, to be played on Saturday mornings between 9am and noon at a venue to be confirmed, will feature three separate age groups including U12s, U14s and U16s.

Organiser Jimmy Campbell said he plans to host eight teams in each division.

All students will need to verify enrolment at their school and teams can register up to ten players each of mixed gender.

"This tournament offers schools the chance to compete against each other in a sporting environment. It gives students an opportunity to share in something unique and also offers an opportunity to network and to build lasting relationships in a competitive but friendly environment," Campbell stated in a press release.

The competition will follow a round robin format for the preliminary stage in each division, with the sides facing each other twice. Play-offs will then be contested with the top two of each class progressing to title deciders on a finals day slated for March 22 next year.

Winning teams will each be presented with the International Schools Football League Trophy, and there will also be awards for fair play, top goal scorer and player of the tournament.

Cambodia grabbed a consolatory victory, their first of the 2013 AFF U19 Championship, when they came from behind to beat the Philippines 4-1 at the Petrokimia Stadium in Gresik, Indonesia, on Sunday.

The Philippines took the lead through Nikko Benedicto midway through the first half of the game between the two sides already destined for the exit in the regional tournament.

Cambodia's Moung Makara netted the equaliser shortly after the restart and then went ahead on the hour mark as Nub Tola converted a fast break.

Two more goals late on by Va Bottroi and Sok Samnang sealed the rout for the Kingdom, who face Singapore at the same ground today from 3:30pm.

East Timor, who beat Group A leaders Laos 3-1 on Sunday, play the winless Philippines at 7:30pm with just a draw needed to confirm their advance to Friday's semi-finals.

Cambodia's 2013 Davis Cup Asia Oceania Group III campaign ended on Sunday at the Aviation Club Tennis Centre in Dubai with a 3-0 loss to Malaysia in the last of the play-offs to determine the third place behind the top two finishers, Vietnam and Hong Kong.

Cambodia were far from disgraced in defeat, having gone down in bitterly fought three-setters in all of the rubbers.

The Kingdom's Group III status for the 2014 cycle had already been confirmed after Friday's win over Pacific Oceania in the preliminary phase.

For the first time during the week, non-playing captain Tep Rithivit rested Cambodia's No 1 Bun Kenny, pulling him out of the first two contests while pitching in the Mam brothers, Phalkun and Panhara, for the singles rubbers.

Phalkun took a flyer in the first set, firing an ace down the line against Muhamad Asharri bin Zainal Abidin to signal his aggressive intent. The eldest of the Mam siblings, who came into the squad this year in place of his youngest brother Vetu, wrapped up the first set for the loss of just one game.

Phalkun stood his ground well in the second and shot into a 4-1 lead before his Malaysian rival began to assert himself for the first time in the match. As Phalkun was weighed down by some unforced errors, Abidin stroked his way to restore set parity at 6-4 in the second.

Buoyed by this recovery, the Malaysian right-hander continued to pile the pressure on his Cambodian opponent and built up a 4-1 lead in the decider, but in gaining that upperhand, he had also developed cramps.

Seizing this moment, Phalkun bounced back to level at 5-5 and then drove the finish to a tie-breaker only to see Abidin produce a strong effort to polish off the tie 1-6, 6-4, 7-6, the breaker going his way 7-3.

Like his elder brother, Panhara began on a bright note against Assri Merzuki, taking the first set in style at 6-3, consolidating an eighth game break of serve.

But the Malaysian began to string together a series of sound ground strokes, taking the fight right back to Panhara's half of the court. The second set was Merzuki's after breaking Panhara twice and holding his own serve with a degree of comfort.

A flawless surge at the start of the final set gave Merzuki a 3-0 advantage. He kept his end tight and ran out a 3-6, 6-2, 6-2 winner to give Malaysia an unbeatable 2-0 lead and with it third place in the group of eight countries.

The doubles rubber was only of academic interest, yet Bun Kenny and Phalkun put up a stiff fight before going down 4-6, 6-3, 4-6 to the Malaysian pair of Assri Merzuki and Syed Agil Syed Naguib.

"Our players made another strong statement on the court, fighting every inch of the way. Both Phalkun and Panhara gave their all and it all boiled down to a few vital points going the other way at critical junctures," Tep Rithivit told the Post.
"The emotions at the end of this hugely significant week for Cambodian tennis ought to be mixed. There is this disappointment that we could not get past Hong Kong and Malaysia in the promotional play-offs.

"On the brighter side our place in Group III next year is secure and the gains of Doha have not gone in vain," added the captain.

"If you count all the hurdles we had to cross to be where we are here today, I am proud of what our players and coach Braen Aneiros have delivered in Dubai.

"I think Bun Kenny, Phalkun Mam and Panhara have considerably boosted the country's tennis image, fighting against odds and adversities to give us this most satisfying result."

Final Standings

Promoted to Group II
1. Vietnam
2. Hong Kong

Remaining in Group III
3. Malaysia
4. Cambodia
5. Iran
6. United Arab Emirates

Relegated to Group IV
7. Pacific Oceania
8. Oman

At Wat Sansom Kosal, Nou Chamnan picks a small, weepy-eyed young cat and carefully inspects it.

Like most pagodas, the Meanchey district temple is a de facto home for the neighbourhood's unwanted strays, a place where kitten litters and injured or aged cats and dogs are abandoned in the knowledge that they will get some food. But it is no solution to the problem of sick and malnourished strays, an animal welfare organisation says.

While pagodas traditionally care for vulnerable people and animals, many don't have the time or resources to protect them all. And at the moment, the practice of neutering animals is almost unheard of in the city.

Enter the Phnom Penh Animal Welfare Society (PPAWS). A volunteer organisation aimed at protecting the welfare of the city's cats and dogs, it is raising money to buy and fit out a second-hand van, which it will turn into a mobile spay and neuter clinic, to ease the burden of caring for the animals from the pagoda's monks.

Chamnan, an assistant vet at Phnom Penh veterinarian Agrovet Cambodia and PPAWS member, said neutering an animal is the single best decision for long-term animal welfare, where the high number of stray street animals are prone to contagious diseases.

"It's important to neuter animals so that they don't have problems in the future.

"In pagodas, most of the baby dogs and cats that are born never get enough care, and when they bite each other they pass on diseases which can cause death," she said.

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"We are aiming to raise $10,000 so that we can start looking for a van. Once we've got the van, we can start gradually buying more and more equipment, little by little," Nicola Scales, founder and president of PPAWS, added.

Once the group has enough for the van, it plans to recruit Cambodian assistant vets who have been trained by Agrovet Cambodia. Since it began fundraising four months ago, PPAWS has collected $6,000, half of which has come from Australian Phnom Penh resident Charlie Christie, who has used the crowdfunding website Indiegogo.

"It is also to educate people about why it is so important to desex animals, about animal rights, about how to treat animals respectfully and not to harm them," Christie said.

PPAWS is looking for more donations for the a mobile vet van, email Nicola Scales at nicola.scales@gmail.com

Kampong Chhnang Provincial Governor Touch Narim passed away yesterday morning in Phnom Penh at age 57 after a long battle with illness, a provincial police official said.

Narim, an adviser to Prime Minister Hun Sen, had been suffering from liver cancer, said Prak Vuthy, deputy chief of Kampong Chhnang provincial police.

"He has been battling liver cancer for many years," he said yesterday. "He passed away this morning at 11am."

Narim was appointed deputy governor in 1999 and received the top job six years later.

The late governor had received treatment in Singapore and China for his condition before his family made the decision to send him to Vietnam last month. However, doctors found that by that stage Narim's cancer was terminal, and he was soon returned to Cambodia, the official said.

Narim's funeral will be held at his residence in the capital's Russey Keo district.

His position, an appointed one, will be filled by the Ministry of Interior, but no timeline has been set for that process.

Following two dramatic incidents of violence in the capital on Sunday evening, rights groups yesterday pointed to heavy police blockades at dozens of streets around Phnom Penh, including at several city arteries, as being partly to blame.

Clashes broke out at Sisowath Quay on Sunday afternoon when a group of protesters – some of whom were residents trying to return home, according to eyewitnesses – began forcibly dismantling police barricades in the face of massed riot police.

Fighting that left one man dead and several seriously injured later that day at the Kbal Thnal overpass was sparked by protesters pulling down barricades and hurling rocks at police as hundreds unable to cross the flyover looked on.

"I think there were two serious incidents yesterday … and [both of them] were around a roadblock," Amnesty International's Cambodia researcher Rupert Abbott said yesterday.

"We can't say which roadblock was OK and which wasn't, but there did seem to be an excessive amount of these roadblocks. They weren't just around government buildings or in sensitive areas."

A statement released by 26 NGOs and civil society organisations yesterday condemning police brutality highlighted that barricades had created "traffic chaos at key locations" and that police had fired into "a crowd of those caught up in the traffic, including commuters, local residents and demonstrators" at Kbal Thnal.

Am Sam Ath, monitoring supervisor at rights group Licadho, said clashes had been sparked after residents waiting for hours to get home became frustrated.

"Authorities blocking the road at Kbal Thnal overpass and everywhere else is a violation of freedom of movement," he said.

Military police spokesman Kheng Tito said those trying to cross the overpass were not simply commuters but people with subversive intentions who tried to provoke his officers.

"If they are the people who lived in that area, our officers would have known and allowed them to go home. But they were not. They just wanted to make problems. So for the security of our people, we had to block that road," he said.

A statement released yesterday by the Permanent Security Command Committee for the Elections, headed by Interior Minister Sar Kheng, blamed the Cambodia National Rescue Party for Sunday's violence.

"CNRP did not only [not] respect the authorities' deci­sion[s], but also violated its own announcement as well as the agreement on some basic issues made during a meeting between Phnom Penh municipality and its representatives," the statement says, according to state news agency AKP.

It also commended authorities for their "utmost restraint" during the protests, AKP reported.

John Muller, managing director at Cambodia-based Global Security Solutions, said that although the authorities' intention in setting up blockades was to protect the public – a goal they largely succeeded in achieving – they went too far.

"With the [overpass], they made a big mistake and they surely regret it. They may have had some intelligence about what was coming down the road that we don't know about … [as] it completely does not make sense," he said.

Although riot police remained at the overpass yesterday morning, by late afternoon, barricades had been cleared.