The Phnom Penh Post - ENGLISH: “A family’s anguish” plus 9 more

It's been a week since Khim Saphath's family held a funeral for their missing son, last seen with blood pouring from his chest during clashes between striking garment workers and authorities on January 3.

Without a body to place in a casket, framed photos had to suffice as a physical reminder of a baby-faced 16-year-old who lied about his age to work at a Chinese-owned garment factory for $8 a day.

But although they say they have accepted the worst, Saphath's doting parents haven't stopped looking for him.

"I look for my son at pagodas, hospitals and clinics. Wherever we go, we ask people about him, but we have found nothing," Saphath's father, Khim Souern, 41, said yesterday outside the sparse rental room that the youngster shared with his older sister, a few hundred metres away from the factory where he worked. "We just want to know what happened to him, if he survived or died. If he is dead, we need to see his corpse."

Turning up to work that Friday morning, Saphath had found the factory shuttered and followed his fellow workers to Veng Sreng Boulevard, where hundreds were caught in clashes with military police.

His friend and co-worker, 18-year-old Srey Ry, said other protesters were throwing rocks at soldiers when security forces opened fire with live ammunition.

"I ran for my life and jumped to the ground, and when I got up, I was shot in the arm. My neighbour helped me get out of the scene to our rented room or else I would have been taken away by the soldiers like Chrouk was," Ry told the Post from hospital yesterday, using Saphath's nickname, meaning pig.

"Chrouk was about 30 metres from me. I did not see him getting shot with my own eyes. I just saw him lying on the ground with a serious wound to his chest. Blood was coming out. A neighbour tried to get him away but more and more blood was coming out and he asked him to leave him there."

Ry said that others told him Saphath was taken away on a military police truck, but this could not be corroborated with eyewitnesses. Still, the story of a possible arrest gave the family hope that Saphath would be one of 23 protesters secretly detained at CC3 prison in Kampong Cham. But when rights groups were finally given access on Wednesday, they said he wasn't among the arrestees.

"We've all been looking for him, and he hasn't appeared yet, so we now have asked the family if they want to do an announcement on the radio," Naly Pilorge, director at Licadho, said.

Chan Soveth, an investigator at Adhoc whom the family filed a complaint with on Monday, said he was calling on the government to investigate the case.

"His body has not been found, so he [can be considered] missing. [But] we can say that we are 99 per cent sure he has not survived, so he was put onto our list of dead [numbering five from the protests]," Soveth said.

Licadho has not added Saphath to its confirmed list of four dead from the crackdown and is still treating him as a missing person, although he was not at CC3 or one of the 39 injured the group has spoken to, Pilorge said.

The opposition party's list of six dead also does not contain Saphath's name nor the fake name he used to secure work at the factory – Ang Chanthoeurn.

Mok Chito, chief of the Ministry of Interior's central justice department, said yesterday cases of missing people taken away by the military and military police were just rumours, emanating in particular from the opposition party.

"We do not know whether it is true or not. They just said that, mainly the opposition party," he said, asking the parents of those missing to file a complaint with police.

"We will find the missing persons for them if they lodge a complaint with our police. Do not just say it."

Saphath's family say they are too scared to ask the authorities for information and will continue to search for their son, despite acknowledging he is likely dead.

"I don't have hope to find him alive. He's disappeared without a trace," Souern said, his vacant eyes staring down, his head resting on one hand.

"I am still continuing to look for him."

Watching John Pirozzi's documentary Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock and Roll is both a joyful and unsettling experience. In the space of two hours the film lets you fall in love with the vibrant and talented characters of Cambodia's 1960s and 1970s music scene and then relates how almost all of them were killed.

Splicing together contemporary interviews with films from the period, archival footage, home movies, old newsreels, photos and cleverly animated record covers, Don't Think I've Forgotten spans the period from Cambodian independence in 1953 to 1979, when the Khmer Rouge were driven out of Phnom Penh.

A co-production between Pirozzi and the Documentation Center of Cambodia, the film had its world premiere on Saturday night at Phnom Penh's historic Chatomuk Theatre. The packed invite-only screening was followed by a question-and-answer session with the filmmaker and some of those interviewed in the film, and then a concert outside featuring some of the surviving musicians and Dengue Fever singer Chhom Nimol.

Filmmakers conducted more than 70 interviews across Cambodia, the United States, France and Singapore, although only a fraction of them ended up being used. Highlighted in the film is a selection of the more influential figures like crooner and songsmith Sinn Sisamouth, the golden voice Ros Serey Sothea, cheeky and rebellious Yol Aularong and the members of the guitar bands Drakkar and Baksei Chamkrong. In the years the regime was in power, records were destroyed and singers murdered.

At a basic level, the film serves as a digestible primer on a period of Cambodian history, touching on the major figures and events that precipitated Pol Pot's takeover and delivering the full horror of the mass murderer's reign. Prince Norodom Sirivudh and historian David Chandler provide historical context and narrative while musicians give first person insights into the effects the war that lead up to the Khmer Rouge takeover and the horror of living in Pol Pot's "agrarian utopia".

The newly discovered footage of Phnom Penh alone makes the film worth watching: from the clean and modern-looking city of the 1950s to the overgrown streets left deserted after the Khmer Rouge. Shots of life in the street from the 1960s and 1970s – cyclos gathering outside the National Radio Station to listen to Sisamouth's songs, people shopping at the Central Market – provide a rare glimpse into the vibrant and hopeful community torn apart by outside forces and ultimately wasted by the Khmer Rouge.

But it's the musicians who are at the heart of the film. Among the survivors interviewed was the bashful Mol Kagnol – lead guitarist for Baksei Chamkrong, Cambodia's very first guitar band – who talks about watching his brother and lead singer Mol Kamach get all the girls while Kagnol was followed around by the guitar nerds.

Then there are the interviews with the families of those musicians who didn't survive, including Sinn Sisasmouth's son, who never found out the true circumstances of his father's death. Two of Ros Sereysothea's sisters remember how she was called the "little cicada" because she would never stop chirping as a child.

One of the most engaging interviewees is Thida Mam, the mother of Cambodian-American singer Laura Mam, who provides a fan's perspective on the scene. She idolised the likes of Sereysothea and the free-spirited singer Pan Ron and later bonded with other city folk toiling in the fields by singing pop songs when out of earshot of Khmer Rouge cadre.

Hopeful images like these are scatted through the film which, despite the tragic subject matter, doesn't dwell on sadness. It was fitting, then, that the mood in the theatre after Saturday night's screening was an ebullient one – a happy reflection of its endearing, enduring stars.

On December 29, more than 100,000 Cambodians – garment workers, teachers, farmers and students from all over the country – marched through the streets of the capital calling for Hun Sen, our long-serving prime minister-dictator, to step down or allow an independent investigation into the flawed national elections that took place in July.

The massive demonstration was the culmination of months of non-violent rallies and marches led by the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP). It was also the most significant challenge to Hun Sen's 28-year reign of exploitation and corruption.

And he could not tolerate it. He would sooner draw blood than enact real reform.

For almost three decades, Hun Sen – a Khmer Rouge defector who was put in power after Vietnam toppled Pol Pot's regime in 1979 – has convinced foreign governments to pour aid into the country, even while the ruling Cambodian People's Party has rigged elections, sold off our natural resources, imprisoned journalists, union leaders, opposition politicians and human rights activists.

Some 250,000 people have been evicted because of land concessions that favour the rich and well-connected.

On July 28, vast swaths of the country – civil servants, indebted farmers, educated youth from both the cities and the countryside – tried to vote for change. But the election was neither free nor fair.

A recent report by the Electoral Reform Alliance, a group of independent local and international nongovernmental organisations, describes massive irregularities, including fraudulent voter registries, which may have disenfranchised 1.25 million eligible voters.

So the peaceful protests began.

Factory workers joined the movement a few weeks ago. About 500,000 Cambodians are garment workers; most are employed by factories owned by foreigners with the backing of high-ranking Cambodian officials or the military and produce clothes for international brands like H&M, Nike, Gap and Adidas.

After the government refused to raise the minimum wage to $160 per month, some unions called for a general strike and workers started staging non-violent sit-ins in front of the Labor Ministry and the Council of Ministers.

Then, on January 3, in an industrial area on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, hundreds of military policemen and municipal police forces opened fire with AK-47s and handguns on a crowd of protesters.

At least four people were killed and more than 29 were injured, mostly garment workers. The human rights group Licadho called the shootings "the worst state violence against civilians to hit Cambodia in 15 years".

The next day, police forces, municipal security guards and thugs wearing motorcycle helmets and red armbands stormed Freedom Park, a park the government had designated as a haven for peaceful protest. They evicted its occupants, wielding axes, hammers, metal pipes and wooden sticks.

They then destroyed what had become, for the country's myriad marginalised citizens, a rare zone for free speech, a meeting place, a sanctuary. They tore down the stage and levelled a Buddhist altar.

They smashed loudspeakers, metal donation boxes and first-aid tents.

Fear, and memories of past crackdowns, rapidly spread beyond Freedom Park that afternoon as thousands of security forces patrolled Phnom Penh to break up public gatherings and threaten bystanders, while military helicopters, newly purchased from China, buzzed overhead.

That same day the Interior Ministry revoked freedom of assembly. And the municipal court issued a summons for CNRP president Sam Rainsy the CNRP's vice-president Kem Sokha and the head of the Cambodian Independent Teachers' Association, Rong Chhun, to appear next Tuesday for questioning about incitement of criminal acts and social disturbance.

Yet blame for the chaos and the violence lies with the government.

On December 20, after the CNRP announced it would call for sit-ins on main thoroughfares if the stalemate continued, Hun Sen issued this warning: "Blocking roads is blocking one's own blood vein."

The government, he added, "would not allow action that would jeopardise national security, and I would urge precaution of the third hand", a euphemism for government repression. It wouldn't be the first time the authorities had sent in agents provocateurs among the protesters in order to cause disturbances that could then justify the government's intervention.

Despite the government's attempt to scare them into silence, the Cambodian people remain strong and united in their desire to see their country move out of the shadow of the Khmer Rouge and into the light that is genuine democracy.

In this, they deserve more support than they have received. The international community, long content to take Cambodia's apparent economic and social stability at face value, must now recognise the brutality of this government's methods and help put an end to them and their underlying causes.

Foreign governments could provide technical and financial support for electoral reforms, including reform of the voter-registration system, so that a new election could be held within two years.

An investigation must be conducted into the government's use of lethal force against protesters, perhaps by the International Criminal Court itself.

Foreign companies also have a role to play, by easing the despair of under-paid factory workers: If they reduced their profit margins just slightly, the workers could be paid a living wage without jeopardising Cambodia's long-term competitiveness in the garment sector.

Gap, Adidas and other companies took a welcome step last Tuesday by condemning the use of force in an open letter to the government and calling for "a robust minimum wage review mechanism based on international good practices".

Freedom Park now stands empty, save for the military police who watch over it. Must it become a symbol of another dark day in Cambodia's history, made darker by those who watched and did nothing?

Mu Sochua, a former minister of women's affairs, is a member-elect of the National Assembly for the Cambodia National Rescue Party.

A hotel catering to foreign investors and expatriate employees is being built inside the Phnom Penh Special Economic Zone (PPSEZ), management confirmed yesterday.

"We target ex-pats, now there are 250 ex-pats working [within the zone], plus hundreds of businessmen visiting factories abroad for their business," said Hiroshi Uematsu, CEO of the special economic zone, which houses mostly garment factories.

The project will be constructed through a joint venture between PPSEZ and the Tokyo Stock Exchange-listed Tama Home.

Takeuchi Toru, a representative of Tama Home, said in an email yesterday that the hotel will be ready in September of 2015.

As for why it's being built, Toru said that "there are no good hotels for foreign business people around PPSEZ".

Many of the factories inside the zone are owned by Japanese companies.

"Cambodia is enjoying economic growth that has been created by companies in developed countries sending their employees to Cambodia on long-term assignments," a statement from Tama Home's annual report says.

With concerns about a slowdown hitting the Japanese housing market, Tama is expanding its presence overseas – in particular in developing markets, according to the annual statement.

News of the hotel comes just weeks after the Post reported that PPSEZ plans to go public on the Cambodia Securities Exchange (CSX). The PPSEZ listing is intended to raise money for an expansion of the zone, Sok Dara, deputy director general of the exchange commission, said last month.

There are close to 50 factories in full operation, and the number is growing.

Construction on a four-year, $150 million commercial and residential development that will transform 70,000 square metres of land on Koh Pich into Parisian-style apartments with a replica of the Arc de Triomphe at the centre is reportedly scheduled to commence in the coming months.

The Élysée, partially named after a boulevard in Paris leading up to the Arc de Triomphe, is the latest plan from the Overseas Cambodia Investment Corporation, the same group behind the ambitious 555-metre-high Diamond Island Tower. Details about the tower, advertised as one of the world's tallest, are scant, though an official with the company said in May last year that engineers are studying the site before outlining a construction schedule.

The new French-style development will be located on the eastern edge of the island, in front of the $100 million commercial and residential project Elite Town (also from OCIC).

The Élysée includes 266 units spread over a number of nine-storey buildings, and is targeting local Cambodian buyers in an attempt to offer more flexible business spaces such as apartments, condominiums and hotels, according to the January and February issue of Phnom Penh's Construction and Property magazine. In the issue, Samnang said that the sale of buildings within The Élysée will be aimed at middle class and "well-off" Cambodians.

While the project is still in the planning stage, Samnang told the Post yesterday that he envisions a combination of shops, apartments, condominiums and hotels populating the new precinct. "Each building will cost between $800,000 and $1.3 million . . . We are aiming to start selling next month," he added.

The development was welcomed by deputy director at Vtrust Property Co, Chrek Soknim, who cited Phnom Penh's increasing population and shortage of living space as rapidly growing concerns.

"There is a huge shortage of quality apartment accommodation in the city, and this project, if and when it is completed, will help to alleviate the pressure in [the] Phnom Penh city centre," he said.

"In 10 years time, I hope Phnom Penh has many more large-scale developments aimed at the wealthy and foreign population."

Soknim's evaluation of Phnom Penh's real estate climate were reflected in CBRE Cambodia's latest market growth report.

Despite increases in both occupancy and leasing rates, the market is still subject to intense demand from the foreign population.

"Foreign nationals continue to boost the demand for serviced apartments in Phnom Penh, and with levels continuing to increase, demand will remain strong and absorb the new supply allowing rents to remain stable," the report said.

Stung Treng province police are searching for suspects after authorities found more than six tonnes of luxury-grade timber buried near a remote home in Siem Pang district last week.

After receiving a tip from villagers, a multi-department coalition of police on Thursday unearthed 6,044 kilograms of rosewood and thnong wood, Stung Treng provincial court deputy prosecutor Chea Pich told the Post yesterday.

"The timber was buried in four different plots, more than one metre underground," Pich said.

A 10-year-old girl was the only person inside the nearby home when authorities discovered the illicit wood, Pich said. The provincial court will issue a search warrant for the house once the provincial Forestry Administration files its report of the incident in court.

Siem Pang district Forestry Administration chief Ly Korn declined to comment on the case yesterday.

Kandal provincial court will this week summons five suspects held in detention since December 10 last year for a fresh round of questioning over relics stolen from Oudong Mountain last month, even as police said the investigation is now "quiet".

Judge Lim Sokuntha said yesterday that he had no choice but to question them again after the investigation failed to determine the whereabouts of the missing artefacts.

Additionally, Sokuntha said, the court has issued a warrant allowing police to increase inspections at checkpoints and in known points in the movement of goods.

"[Since the discovery] the police have not found anything suspicious, because the relics are small and are hard to find," he said.

In December, four security guards protecting the Royal Treasury on Oudong Mountain and one villager were arrested and charged with stealing an unknown number of relics – including an urn said to contain the ashes of the Buddha.

The theft led to allegations of corruption and several protests by monks and civilians who say the government and religious leaders should have taken more care to protect the sacred relics.

Provincial police chief Eav Chamroeun said that the investigation had not progressed, and was up to the judge at this point. "For police, we have followed the judge's order, but it's still quiet."

The president of the Independent Monks Network for Social Justice, But Buntenh, said that he had planned to gather monks to march from Phnom Penh to Oudong Mountain in protest, but had to delay the march after the January 2 arrest of rights activists Vorn Pov and Theng Savoeun.

"We are a bit busy with that, but we still plan to march to Oudong with thousands of monks, because it's the nation's soul," he said. "I think police and court are not working, they are busy arresting our rights activists, not finding the relics."

Kampong Thom's Sambor Prei Kuk temple complex will be the next Cambodian site nominated for inclusion on UNESCO's World Heritage List, Deputy Prime Minister Sok An announced yesterday at the 20th Congress of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association (IPPA).

The seventh-century complex, which predates Angkor Wat by at least 200 years, was first submitted to UNESCO as part of a tentative list of Cambodian sites in 1992, but its inclusion on the body's official World Heritage List has been stalled in recent years.

Government spokesman Ek Tha was unable to say yesterday what changes, if any, had been made to the management plan for Sambor Prei Kuk, but said the bid will likely be submitted "later this year, or early next year".

"I think for Sambor Prei Kuk, I do not see any difficulty at all" in securing inclusion on the list, Tha said. "The cultural aspect is there; preservation is there; the management plan, we're working on it."

"I've been to that temple in December 1999," he continued. "I can tell you, it's amazing. It's a marvellous historical temple hiding in a big jungle. I thought Angkor Wat is amazing to me, but I was thrilled to see Sambor Prei Kuk."

According to Tha, the government hopes that inscription on the World Heritage List will help "mobilise donations" to contribute to the restoration of the temple complex and to foster the development of sustainable tourism at the site.

Cambodia already has two sites included on the UNESCO list – Angkor, which was inscribed in 1992, and Preah Vihear temple, which was inscribed in 2008.

The government announced on Friday it would set up two commissions headed by Interior Minister Sar Kheng to investigate clashes between police and protesters early this month that left at least four dead, more than 20 injured and 23 arrested, a move criticised by rights groups, which said the government was incapable of carrying out an independent investigation.

One will focus on investigating the damage caused by "anarchic demonstrators", while the other will investigate how the incident occurred. A third commission will study the minimum wages of garment workers and be headed by Minister of Finance Keat Chhon, according to a statement from the Council of Ministers.

Pointing to the creation of similar fact-finding commissions formed after violent police incidences in the past, senior Licadho monitor Am Sam Ath said there was virtually no chance these groups would uncover the truth.

"Have a look at what happened on Kbal Thnal flyover; the crackdown at Stung Meanchey bridge; the case of Chut Wutty. Those investigation commissions have never got any results," he said.

Unless the commissions are run separately from the government, he continued, they would be unable to operate independently.

Senior Adhoc investigator Chan Soveth echoed these statements, saying that without the participation of civil society, the commissions couldn't be expected to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation.
"What is necessary at this time is for the government to release all 23 workers and rights activists," he said.

On January 2, three activists and seven workers were arrested – and some badly beaten – after the elite 911 paratrooper brigade was sent in to quash demonstrations outside Yakjin factory.

A day later, at least four people were killed, more than 20 injured and 13 arrested during clashes between riot police and protesting workers who had blocked Veng Sreng Boulevard.

The 23 arrested were sent to Kampong Cham prison's CC3 and their whereabouts withheld from families and lawyers for almost a week.

As protests in Cambodia become scarce in the wake of authorities opening fire on demonstrators near Canadia Industrial Park, killing at least four people, labour and human rights advocates across the globe are showing solidarity with demonstrations of their own.

Since the deadly incident on January 3, protesters have gathered at Cambodian embassies in more than a dozen countries to publicly condemn the shooting of unarmed demonstrators.

"The shooting against the protesters cannot be justified at all," said Mikyung Ryu, international director of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, which has organised three demonstrations in South Korea.
"On no grounds should the military fire on protesters."

About 2,000 demonstrators attended the protest at the Cambodian embassy in Seoul yesterday, Ryu said. Their first demonstration was held at the embassy a few days after the shooting, and they held a second rally outside South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where they decried the country's alleged complicity in the shooting.

Before the crackdown, the South Korean government allegedly encouraged Cambodian authorities to take a hard line against striking garment workers.

Protests have also occurred at Cambodian embassies in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Bangladesh, the United Kingdom, Malaysia, the United States, India, Germany and Turkey, said Joel Preston, a consultant with the Community Legal Education Center.

An international group of at least 10 labour groups, calling themselves in a letter the World Solidarity Action to Support Garment Workers and Release Union Activist and Workers in Cambodia, have coordinated with each other to compel government officials and clothing brands that buy from Cambodia to launch an investigation into the incident.

In a rally at the Cambodian embassy in Washington, DC on Friday, Cambodian Ambassador Hem Heng met with organisers, said Jeff Hermanson, director of Global Strategies for Workers United, Service Employees International Union.

"We told him we would continue protesting until the workers' rights were restored . . . and negotiation resumed," Hermanson said in an email.