The Phnom Penh Post - ENGLISH: “Man with a press pass” plus 9 more

When I saw his press pass, I was wondering, 'Why does a man with a press pass have a gun with him?'

The government has promised to cover the $1.8 million shortfall in the Khmer Rouge tribunal's national side budget, allowing this month's closing arguments to proceed unimpeded and theoretically ensuring that the court will continue to function through to the end of the year.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs Secretary of State Kao Kim Hourn made the announcement on Wednesday night, but officials at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia said yesterday that they have yet to receive confirmation of the disbursement.

Court spokesman Neth Pheaktra said yesterday that "until now I have not received any official letter or confirmation". But he maintained that the funding would cover the court's costs through to the end of the year.

The government has long deflected calls for more funding to the court, saying it lacked the money, and government spokesman Ek Tha yesterday declined to comment on the matter.

Panhavuth Long, a program officer for the Cambodian Justice Initiative, called the donation "a very positive step", but added that the new money "only guarantees the court proceedings until the end of the year", when new funding demands will need to be met.

"We worry that the court may not be able to proceed, particularly with the new panel [of judges] to sit on [the remainder of] Case 002, and in Case 003 and Case 004," he said. "So we call on the government to put more money in so that the funding crisis can be averted … and as an indication of their commitment to ending impunity."

Spokesman Pheaktra said yesterday that the court's two halves are scheduled to draft a new budget plan to be submitted to donor countries.

A husband and his mistress were arrested yesterday, three days after the wife they allegedly conspired to kill was found stabbed to death in her Meanchey district home.

Second police lieutenant Hun Sophal said Kour Lichou, 34, who was three months' pregnant, was at home with her one-year-old son when her husband killed her in her sleep at about 9:30pm on Thursday.

Sy Lou Heng, 32, and Prak Sovann Leak, 23, were arrested in Phnom Penh's Chamkarmon district in connection with the killing. After killing his wife in Chbar Ampov I commune, Lou Heng attempted to make the scene appear like a burglary, Sophal alleged.

"[Sy Lou Heng] collected a number of valuable things including a diamond bracelet, two diamond rings, $13,000 and many millions of riel before he escaped."

He added that both suspects confessed and said they killed the victim because they wanted to marry and live together.

The pair face between 20 years and life imprisonment if convicted.

The coming cassava harvest is increasingly threatened by flooding as about 25 per cent of the crop in prime growing provinces is or has been submerged, according to authorities.

Taking up more cultivated area than any other crop in Cambodia except for rice, cassava is especially vulnerable to flooding because it can't hold up very long against water.

As a result, farmers can expect a much-reduced yield this season when they harvest the crop in late December and early January.

"It is a serious issue for many farmers," Heng Bunhor, director of the agriculture department in Banteay Meanchey province, said. "Many fields were under water for 20 days."

Bunhor said that farmers planted a total of 47,100 hectares of cassava in the province, and floods affected some 12,000 hectares.

Although it is difficult to say how much of these crops is beyond salvaging, odds are not good.

Cassava, a root plant, needs just five days submerged under water before it is considered damaged.

Production is centred in heavily flooded areas of the northwest, in Battambang, Banteay Meanchey and Pailin provinces.

"The extent of damage is very wide and is difficult to fix," said Cambodian Economic Association president Srey Chanthy, who has been visiting flood-affected areas. It will be difficult to cover production costs with revenue from plants that can be salvaged, Chanthy added.

Authorities in the provinces estimate that between 20 and 30 per cent of cassava crops are at risk.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, rice paddy fields took up 2.9 million hectares last year, cassava were planted across 337,000 additional hectares, while corn accounted for 215,000 hectares.

In Battambang province, where cassava farmers are growing 61,000 hectares, Chem Vichara, director of the agricultural department, said that 17,000, or about 27 per cent, was doomed.

"The production this year will be decreased. It is unlikely to be fixed because the harvest time is nearly here," Vichara said yesterday. Chev Tav, a cassava farmer in Banteay Meanchey province, said that even though flooding has damaged five of his 50 plots so far, he'll continue to plant the same crop next season.

"It is unlikely that I'll plant another crop as a substitute. I will still plant it next year."

More than a year after plans to ramp up training in the aviation sector were announced, Cambodia and South Korea have finally signed off on an agreement detailing the project.

Cambodia's Deputy Prime Minister Sok An and Baek Sook Hee, a representative of the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), pushed the deal through at the Office of the Council of Ministers on Friday.

Under the plan, KOICA will provide $10.1 million for the Civil Aviation Training Center (CATC), which is set to open at the eastern compound of Phnom Penh International Airport in 2015.

"The project … is very crucial in assisting Cambodia to acquire the knowledge and technology necessary to improve its aviation industry," Ek Tha, deputy director of the press department at the Council of Ministers, said.

Chea Aun, under-secretary of state of the State Secretariat of Civil Aviation as well as the project manager for the centre, said that it will provide thorough training for ground staff, flight crews and air traffic controllers.

In the second half of 2015, South Korea will send experts and instructors to conduct the training.

KOICA could not be reached for comment yesterday.

In the first nine months of the year, Cambodia's tax revenue increased more than 17.3 per cent from the corresponding period in 2012, data from the General Department of Taxation show.

Total tax revenue rose to $678.1 million from $578 million. Of the whole, salary tax increased by 24.4 per cent, income tax went up by 19.5 per cent, value added tax by 18.1 per cent and special tax went up by 16.1 per cent.

Opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party whip Son Chhay, an outspoken critic of the allegedly insufficient tax collection system, said that revenue is low compared to Vietnam and Thailand, countries that bring in taxes of roughly 20 and 30 per cent of GDP, respectively. Cambodia, by contrast, collects only 11 per cent, he said.

Tax department director general Kong Vibol said in September that he is strengthening tax collection to increase revenue and attract investors to Cambodia.

A Cambodian farmer was among eight women from rural areas across Asia who last week shared their views with global food policy-makers.

The Travelling Journal project, led by a coalition of NGOs, was presented to international leaders at the 40th edition of the Committee on World Food Security, which ran between October 7 and 11 in Rome.

Chey Siyat, 56, was one of the women to record her anxieties. A 56-year-old farmer from Kampot and a widowed mother with five children, Siyat reported that climate change had become a "challenge for women farmers, resulting in low crop yields, which means less income and ultimately migration for women to look for 'greener pastures'".

Female leaders from the Philippines, Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and China also shared their stories in the journal.

The womens' concerns consisted of the loss of native land due to land and resource grabbing, pollution of the environment and food sources by toxic chemicals, and decreasing incomes of rural families, due to the rising costs of seeds and inputs.

The project was organised by the Asian Rural Women's Coalition (ARWC), Pesticide Action Network Asia & the Pacific (PAN AP), and Oxfam's East Asia GROW Campaign.

Sarojeni Rengam, executive director of PAN AP and a steering committee member of the ARWC, said: "The journal comes at a time when Asian rural women are increasingly marginalised and food is insecure, facing the onslaught of corporate agriculture and neo-liberal policies which benefit a few corporations, countries, and elites.

"The impact of these policies has caused the loss of livelihoods, destruction of the ecosystem and increased hunger and malnutrition.

"But women are confronting these challenges with strong determination for change, and providing solutions that protect their rights and safeguard their livelihoods, environment and their communities."

Walk into a dark room and leave your phone and your reservations at the door: that's what customers will be told tonight at the launch of Phnom Penh's first in-the-dark dining experience.

Following the lead of restaurants around the world that have capitalised on the trend for dining in darkness, Dine in the Dark restaurant is opening its doors inside Botanic Café, allowing customers to enjoy a meal with only their senses of taste and smell.

"Your senses automatically increase when you take away one sense, your taste buds increase and your sense of smell increases," said Jay Smith, a co-founder of Dine in the Dark, the day before the launch.

When the customers arrive at the restaurant, they will place their orders in a lighted area before being escorted to the dining room by the wait staff. These guides are all visually impaired students from Krousar Thmey, a school for the blind and deaf in Phnom Penh.

Guests will be told to leave any possessions that produce light with the staff, and will not be told what they are eating. Three three-course options ($18) are available: Western, Khmer and vegetarian. The plan is to rotate the menu monthly.

This new restaurant is Dine in the Dark's second venture, after its first location opened in Bangkok last year. Although that branch closed shortly afterward due to disagreements with the landlord, Smith said that the idea proved popular.

The concept of dining in darkness was launched by a Zurich restaurateur in 1999, and popularised by the Dans le Noir chain, which has branches in Paris, London, Barcelona, St Petersburg and New York.

Dine in the Dark is located upstairs in Botanic Restaurant at #126 Street 19. It is open daily from 6pm to 10:30pm. Reservations can be made a 077-589-458.

A bunch of club level tennis players from Australia turned their passion for the game into an unforgettable 16-day cultural tour of Cambodia at the end of which yesterday, a unique relationship had been established between the six members of the New South Wales-based Umina Tennis and Sporting Club and local players.

Led by Umina president Neil Packer, a level two coach with Tennis Australia, the visiting team was made up of retired police inspector Terry Fischer, jeweller Phil Allota, grocery assistant Rhett Websdale, retired electrician John Barker and painter and decorator Peter Doherty.

"Tennis is a common thread which is binding us all, and we are proud to uphold the best Umina traditions of such exciting cultural exchanges with tennis as a medium," Packer told the Post after a final round of friendlies against members of the Devenco Tennis Club at the Villa Romonea court in Kep on Saturday.

"Though we come from different backgrounds and walks of life, tennis has brought us together on this trip, and for each one of us it has been an amazing experience in exploring this wonderful country while enjoying the game we are so passionate about in our lives. Some of them don't want to go back.

"This was not about winning or losing. It wasn't even about how well or badly we played. What was important to all of us is that we played tennis, we enjoyed it and we had this great opportunity to know the people, traditions and the cultural riches."

The group praised the organisational support extended by the Tennis Federation of Cambodia and its secretary- general Tep Rithivit.

"We played against several players in Phnom Penh and then we made a trip to Angkor Wat which was very exciting. We travelled to Kep and had another round of tennis and the local hospitality was excellent," Terry Fisher told the Post.

One of Kep's well-known tennis players, Jeroen van Vliet, hosted the group to lunch at his popular Breezes restaurant after sweating it out on the court playing against some of the visitors.

The Umina members welcomed with great enthusiasm the prospects of a team of club level players from Cambodia visiting Australia in the near future.

Before they left Kep for Phnom Penh ahead of their return home, the group visited two orphanages where the TFC is currently running a successful junior tennis program. Packer and his team-mates presented to the tennis- playing kids shirts and caps provided by Tennis Australia along with two portable nets.

"This visit by Neil Packer and his fellow Umina members could not have come at a better time when we are set to launch a massive tennis-for-all project. It just shows that TFC is for players at every level," Tep Rithivit told the Post.

The inaugural Tiger National Futsal Championship will be held at the multipurpose indoor facility Beeline Arena from October 28 to November 2, paving the way for the Football Federation of Cambodia to regulate and promote the shorter version of the game in a structured format.

The first edition of the five-a-side competition, which is open to all, is being sponsored by Tiger beer with Cambodia Coca Cola and Ezecom serving as co-sponsors.

"We have signed a two-year memorandum of understanding with the FFC to stage the championships in 2013 and 2014," Beeline Arena general manager Charles Julliard told the Post yesterday.

"Established teams or newly formed ones can register for free to participate in this event, however the total number of teams will be restricted to 32," he added.

The listing of teams is set to start today while a meeting of team leaders is to be held at the FFC head office a week before the start of the championship to lay out the tournament's rules and complete participation contracts.

The competition will take a one-day break on October 31, with matches on all other days to be played between 1pm and 7pm.

The semi-finals and final on November 2 will be telecast live from 4pm to 6pm on local channel MyTV.

A futsal side comprises five players including the goal-keeper. In accordance with changes made by FIFA in 2012, each team is allowed nine substitutes on the bench and unlimited substitutions can be made during a game.

Matches are played over two eight-minute halves with a four-minute half-time break. Five minutes of preparation time will be allowed from one match to the next.

The championship-winning team will be awarded a cash prize of US$2,500 along with a trophy and gold medals for all team members.

The runner-up is assured of $1,000 and silver medals while the team finishing third will pick up $500 and bronze medals.