The Phnom Penh Post - ENGLISH: “Silence broken at last” plus 9 more

Notification that her son is being detained at Correctional Centre 3 in Kampong Cham came as a relief to Touch Sart yesterday, after spending nearly a week wondering whether he was even alive.

Since her son, Theng Saroeun, was arrested along with 22 others at demonstrations last Thursday and Friday, police, court and prison officials have refused to confirm the identities or whereabouts of those detained. After six days of silence, prison officials yesterday finally allowed family members, lawyers and a doctor to visit them.

"My son is badly hurt, he was beaten seriously and could not eat," Sart said. "He received seven stitches."

The fact that they have spent nearly a week of detention without access to their families or lawyers – a violation of defendants' rights in Cambodia – and held in an isolated prison far from their Phnom Penh homes indicates the government's strong desire to keep them cut off from supporters, Naly Pilorge, director of rights group Licadho, said.

The defendants – one of them a 17-year-old – were arrested on Thursday and Friday amid protests in Por Sen Chey district. Ten were arrested during a rally in front of Yakjin (Cambodia) Inc on Thursday, after, witnesses said, military officials guarding the factory initiated clashes with demonstrators.

Another 13 were arrested on Friday, when authorities opened fire with automatic rifles on protesters in and around Canadia Industrial Park. Licadho and rights group Adhoc have reported that the shootings killed four people, but Cambodia National Rescue Party lawmaker-elect Ho Vann said on Monday that six people were killed in the crackdown, according to families who notified him.

All 23 defendants were charged with intentional violence with aggravating circumstances and intentional damage with aggravating circumstances.

If convicted of both crimes, each person could receive up to five years in prison and fines of $1,000 to $2,500.

Keeping the prisoners without access to their families or legal representation for as long as authorities did is an outrageous departure from normal due process in Cambodia, Dave Welsh, country director for labour rights group Solidarity Center, said.

"It's completely outlandish, and I think that the stakeholders who are responsible for this behaviour have underestimated the blowback from the international community," Welsh said yesterday.

Attorney Choung Choungy, who is representing some of the defendants, echoed that the conditions of their detention were contrary to Cambodian law, adding that he will file a complaint.

CC3 director Chea Vanna declined to comment yesterday, referring a Post reporter to Kouy Bunson, director of the General Department of Prisons, who Vanna said ordered the detainment.

Bunson could not be reached yesterday.

A doctor who visited the prisoners yesterday examined 20 of the detained protesters, Pilorge of Licadho said. Some of the defendants, including Vorn Pov, president of the Independent Democracy of Informal Economy Association (IDEA), had been severely beaten and were treated at the military base at which some were initially detained – also a violation of the law, Pilorge noted.

When Prak Sovanary visited her husband, Pov, yesterday, she learned that in addition to head wounds, for which he received stitches, soldiers had hit him in his kidneys when beating him during and after his arrest, Sovanary said.

Pov underwent kidney surgery in March last year.

"My husband said that he ate nothing and he cried every day since he was kept from his family and an attorney; he is hopeless," Sovanary said. "He said that he has not done anything wrong, he just went there to observe the protest."

NGOs have provided all 23 defendants with attorneys, whose next course of action is to request bail, Pilorge said.

Palm sugar farmers in Kampong Speu province will soon export their goods to South Korea, the senior officer of a grower's network said on Monday.

Sam Saroeun, president of the Kampong Speu Palm Sugar Promotion Association, said an agreement with the Korea Trade Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) will be signed in early February.

The agreement potentially widens the province's export total to 300 tonnes per year, dwarfing the 2013 total of 35 tonnes. Saroeun said the price of palm sugar exports could increase 10 to 15 per cent as a result.

Two districts with palm trees in Kampong Speu province were granted geographical indication (GI) status in 2010 under the WTO's agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.

Palm producing season runs from December to May. The association contains 142 families producing palm sugar with six companies buying and exporting the GI product to countries including Japan, the United States, France and England.

Phnom Penh authorities on Monday found the body of a foreign national they believe could be the suspect in the brutal murder of a young Cambodian woman found in a guesthouse last month, municipal police official Mom Sitha said yesterday.

Sitha said the body was found without identification in a guesthouse in Phnom Penh's Daun Penh district, where the man had apparently smashed a window, then used a shard of glass to cut his own throat.

Police, he added, believed that the man is British national Stuart James Green, the prime suspect in last month's killing.

"The dead foreigner, we suspect 70 to 80 per cent that it is [Green]," Sitha said.

Police said the guesthouse owner reported that the room had been rented by a friend of the man at 3am on January 5, but that the friend had left soon after.

Sitha said that the British embassy was investigating, but an official there said yesterday that the embassy was not able to comment at this time.

A juvenile suspect held on charges of violence and criminal damage for his part in the SL Garment workers strike last November has been released on bail.

The 15-year-old suspect was released under court supervision yesterday, after an appeal was launched against his pre-trial detention.

A lawyer for the prosecution, who wished to remain anonymous, said the youth suffered from mental illness.

"He has a mental problem, and he is a juvenile," she said. "We wait to discuss with the attorney whether we should keep filing against him or not."

Vanny Vannak, 19, who was charged along with Ton, remains in detention.

Thirty-eight people, only one of whom was an SL Garment worker, were arrested after violence broke out at a strike in Phnom Penh's Stung Meanchey district on November 12.

A woman, Eng Sokhom, was killed and at least six others shot when police fired live ammunition into a crowd of hundreds of rioting garment workers.

Only two days after the Cambodia National Rescue Party announced it would seek to file a complaint against the government at the International Criminal Court, Foreign Minister Hor Namhong likened the opposition's efforts to a balloon on a breeze – destined to fall when the wind dies.

The CNRP said on Monday that it had secured the services of international lawyer Richard Rogers to investigate alleged criminal action on the part of the government in its much-maligned crackdown on opposition and garment worker rallies, and to see whether the government's actions could form the basis for a complaint to the ICC.

Namhong, however, dismissed the investigation and maintained that Cambodians were happy with the government's restoration of order.

"[The investigation] is like a balloon: when there is wind, it flies, but when there is no wind, it will drop down anywhere, even if it is a dirty place," Namhong told reporters at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"Public opinion in the country has shown that it welcomes the decision of the government to suspend the violent demonstrations," he added.

At least four people were killed and dozens injured when authorities opened fire on unruly protesters on Veng Sreng Boulevard on Friday, and Rogers yesterday said his investigation would examine murder as a possible charge – along with forcible transfer, illegal imprisonment and persecution.

"We have already started to collect public source documents relating to the violence committed by state security forces against Cambodian civilians," he said in an email yesterday. "Initially we will consider all the criminal acts committed by security forces since the last national election. We will then move onto the most serious crimes committed by state forces prior to the election."

Rogers, who has defended clients before the ICC, also cautioned Namhong against doubting the court prosecutor.

"It is too early to tell whether or not the ICC Prosecutor will initiate an investigation," he said. "But the Foreign Minister should not underestimate the determination of the ICC Prosecutor to address mass human rights violations, even those committed under the authority of sitting governments."

Cambodian Justice Initiative program officer Panhavuth Long agreed yesterday that it was too early to know whether the effort would succeed, but noted that "the ICC is not an easy place" to lodge a complaint, and that plaintiffs must first exhaust all domestic judicial options.

But Rogers, who has worked in Cambodia – first as the head of the Defense Support Section at the Khmer Rouge tribunal, then in an unsuccessful bid to represent a client in the government-opposed Case 004 – said that attempts to go through domestic channels would likely fail.

"What I learned in my five years working in Cambodia is that there are very good Cambodian judges and prosecutors, but they are prevented from doing their work properly due to the interference from the Cambodian government," he said.

"Any investigation carried out by Cambodian authorities into the crimes committed by state security forces would not be credible."

A captain in the Ministry of Interior's Anti-Drug Department was killed in a traffic accident on Monday that injured three others in Stung Treng province, police officials said yesterday.

Mok Sarin, Thala Barivat district chief, confirmed the death of Phnom Penh native Captain Moeung Vuthy, 40, but had no information on the identity of the three injured men.

According to witnesses, the car departed from Preah Romkil commune and veered off into a 12-metre-deep canal after swerving away from an oncoming vehicle, Sarin told the Post yesterday.

Vuthy died at the scene while two of the men suffered serious injuries and a fourth sustained minor injuries.

Rav Vongdoeun, a provincial deputy police chief, said yesterday that the three injured men as well as with Vuthy's body had been sent back to the capital.

The Ministry of Interior's anti-drug department could not be reached for comment.

It may be decades away yet, but if all goes according to plan, the Kingdom will see more than 2,000km of roads joined in an elaborate national freeway system by 2040.

Speaking at a workshop in the capital yesterday, Tram Iv Tek, minister of the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, lauded the release of a research report showing the feasibility of a planned freeway system.

"In view of the rapidly developing regional cooperation among GMS [Greater Mekong Subregion] and ASEAN countries and the economic growth of Cambodia in recent years, it is proposed the expressway master plan be prepared so that the expressway will be in service [and on par with] the economic structure of Cambodia in the future," Iv Tek said in reference to the report, examining the feasibility of the project.

Conducted by Henan Provincial Communication Planning Survey and Design Institute Co Ltd, a Chinese company specialising in highway engineering, the study lays out the early steps for the project.

While the route and measurements of the national freeway system layout is couched in the report as in the "initial stages of planning", the report stipulates that "the rational scale of [the] Cambodian expressway is determined roughly as [getting up to] 2,200 kilometres by 2040", and will be modelled on Chinese expressway construction standards.

Initial planning blueprints reveal that if the plan is approved and financing located and pinned down, the new expressways could be formally incorporated into the national highway system.

The report also notes the Cambodian government's "limited financial resources" are unable "to support the investment of expressway construction" and suggests the government buttress the costs by "adopt[ing] the investment and financing mechanism of a toll charging highway", along with "bank loans" and "foreign capital".

Nget Vanna, a project officer at NGO Urban Voice, said he was hopeful but encouraged more study.

"A project like this could improve road safety and decrease traffic accidents in Cambodia, but would require serious study on how it would change the nature of driving [here]."

The leader of an organisation of monks from Kampuchea Krom, the part of southern Vietnam that once belonged to the Khmer Empire, accused security officials at the recent crackdowns at Freedom Park and last Thursday's garment protest of singling out Kampuchea Krom monks for arrest and torture.

The Venerable Sieng Sovanara, 33, acting executive director of the Khmer Kampuchea Krom Monks Association, said the Khmer Krom monks had attended the protests along with Cambodian monks and garment workers, but had been specifically targetted for detention and torture and were framed for breaking Buddhist codes.

"Our monks did not use violence, but why were they arrested for torture. Why not arrest the ones that acted violently?" Sovana told journalists at a press conference yesterday.

According to Sovana, the monks had been framed for breaking Buddhist rules regarding chastity by police officials, who produced a bag of condoms and purported sex-enhancing drugs, and accused the monks of bringing them. "But in fact, we did not have it. They were framed," he said. "They treated us like animals and it is not acceptable. Such an unreal accusation will be unforgettable for our entire lives."

Son Chum Chuon, the program manager of the Khmer Kampuchea Krom for Human Rights and Development Association, said at the conference that six Khmer Krom monks were badly beaten by members of the military even after they had been detained.

The Khmer Krom groups said yesterday that they had also submitted a three-page statement to the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia seeking intervention.

"The monks were tortured by the soldiers by hitting them with wooden sticks and electric batons, kicking them and forcibly defrocking them and detaining them for more than 13 hours," the statement read.

Officials at the Ministry of National Defence could not be reached for comment.

A trio of prominent political analysts have called on the King to serve as a referee for ending the post-election deadlock, saying they believe intervention from the palace is the only way to prevent more bloodshed.

In a joint letter sent to King Norodom Sihamoni on Monday, analysts Sok Touch, Lao Mong Hay and Kem Ley urged the King to invite both parties back to the negotiating table; they separately called on each party to reach out to the King.

"We made this letter when we saw the blood being shed by Cambodians," said Touch. "When two persons want to both sleep in the middle, it is impossible unless we look for a third person to help compromise.

"We do not have any asset [to help], we only have our intelligence. If the politicians or King needs us, we would volunteer to join without condition at any time so that society can see the end of bloodshed between Khmer and Khmer."

Amid the fallout of the July election, analysts repeatedly suggested the King could step forward as a neutral arbiter. But when the CNRP boycotted the National Assembly and the CPP pushed forward with opening a new government regardless, that possibility dimmed.

Son Soubert, an adviser to King Sihamoni, said he had not seen the letter but welcomed it.

According to Touch, a palace official told the group that the King had received their petition and encouraged them to write to the leaders of both parties and ask them to invite the King to serve as an arbitrator.

Cambodia National Rescue Party spokesman Yim Sovann said the party had received the letter and was prepared to join a negotiating table chaired by the King, but their demands remained unchanged.

"Re-election is the end of the problem," he said. "It's very simple, but the CPP does not keep the national interest in the forefront."

Prum Sokha, CPP spokesman and secretary of state at the Interior Ministry, declined to address the letter, but said negotiation was impossible if the CNRP refused to back down from its call for new elections.

Factories in Svay Rieng province's Manhattan Special Economic Zone have fired or suspended more than 200 workers – and are pursuing legal action against some – for participating in a strike last month that saw some 30,000 walk off the job.

An accountant at Kingmaker (Cambodia) Footwear Co, Ltd – which supplies to California-based Skechers USA Inc – confirmed they fired 200 workers on December 27, while heads of the Collective Union of Movement of Workers (CUMW) and Cambodian Alliance Trade Union (CATU) told the Post yesterday that 50 members of their unions were dismissed last week.

"The accusation is not right, because we did nothing wrong," said Chorn Thieng, a factory worker in the economic zone who said he was suspended and is earning half his regular pay until a lawsuit his factory filed against him reaches court. "We just demanded [a $160 minimum monthly wage], and we still demand it."

Workers at factories in the Manhattan and Tay Seng Special Economic Zone in Svay Rieng province started striking for a minimum wage hike – from the current government mandate of $75 plus a $5 health bonus – a week before a larger collection of unions called for an industry-wide strike on December 24.

The larger strike was called the same day the Ministry of Labour set the 2014 minimum wage for garment and shoe factories at $95; the ministry raised 2014 wages to $100 per month a week later.

The firings and suspensions of CUMW and CATU workers occurred last week, prior to January 3, when military officials opened fire on demonstrators on Veng Sreng Boulevard, killing at least four and injuring dozens.

"[Firing workers] is just sort of in keeping with this incredible blanket trend of an assault of the garment trade unions of Cambodia and the garment workers of Cambodia," said Dave Welsh, country director for labour rights group Solidarity Center.

In the wake of the firings and suspensions of 45 CUMW workers, the union plans on filing a complaint in Svay Rieng Provincial Court, CUMW president Pav Sina said yesterday. With the court and authorities' recent aggressive actions toward unions – including surrounding CUMW's Svay Rieng office at times – the suit faced little likelihood of success, he admitted.

"We will file the complaint against the factories that sacked our members … but my complaint would be useless if I filed now," Sina said.

Has Bunthy, director of Svay Rieng's provincial Labour Department, yesterday said he had urged local factories to reinstate their workers to no avail.

"I tried my best to negotiate with factories to accept [workers] back, but the factories rejected," Bunthy said.