The Phnom Penh Post - ENGLISH: “Ten years, no answers” plus 9 more

They are hired by City Hall. We call them 'police agents'. They are working at private security [firms] and are hired by City Hall to enforce public order. I don't see what's wrong with that.

One of the men suspected in the seven-year-old murder of a Phnom Penh garment factory union representative was tried at Phnom Penh Municipal Court yesterday, nearly two years after his conviction in absentia.

Chan Sophon, 35, stood before presiding Judge Kor Vandy in a re-trial of a December 2012 hearing that found him guilty in the February 2007 shooting death of Hy Vuthy, late president of the Free Trade Union at Dangkor district's Suntex.

Witnesses testified seeing Sophon carry a pistol while shadowing Vuthy on a motorbike for several days leading up to the deadly shooting. Alleged accomplice Phal Vannak, 34, was convicted of the crime in 2012 and is now serving 18 years in Prey Sar prison.

In court yesterday, Sophon – arrested at his parents' Phnom Penh home last year – said he could not have participated in the murder, because he was living with his wife in Kampong Speu at the time.

A verdict is due on February 6.

It wasn't speedboats that thieves were targeting in Stung Treng province – it was the boats' motors.

The provincial court charged four men on Monday with the theft of four motors from boats in Thalar Borivat district.

Police arrested three of the men, aged 23, 26 and 33, on Saturday as they tried to deliver the motors to a 34-year-old man, who was later arrested himself.

The suspects confessed they had stolen more than 10 boat motors. KAMPUCHEA THMEY

Cambodian rice will soon make its way to South Korean shores after an agreement was inked yesterday between local exporter Amru Rice Cambodia and South Korean conglomerate Hanwha Corporation.

The two companies will come together and start exporting to South Korea this month.

"Our market in Europe is at its peak, so we are trying to diversify our markets in Asia, especially Korea," Song Saran, chief executive officer of Amru Rice, said.

The agreement was finalised yesterday in Phnom Penh at an official signing attended by company representatives and government officials from Cambodia and South Korea.

An initial investment of $2 million from Hanwha will ensure that close to 5,000 tonnes of Cambodia's jasmine rice will be sent to South Korea, a market traditionally dominated by Thai, US and Chinese exporters, according to Saran.

Though the immediate focus is on exports to South Korea, Park Jae-hong, CEO of Hanwha, hinted at a potential rice mill investment in the future that would utilise the company's global network.

"Hanwha will consider to further extend its business in Cambodia, in the rice sector," Park said.

According to government data, Cambodia exported close to 379,000 tonnes of rice last year, an increase of 84 per cent from 2012.

Amru Rice Cambodia exported about 51,000 tonnes, the second-largest among 84 exporters in the country.

Last year's national election and opposition demonstrations against the results were the reasons behind an 11 per cent decline in the number of new business registrations in Cambodia for 2013, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

The most recent figures released from the National Bank of Cambodia, however, indicate that the ongoing political turmoil — the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party still refuses to take its seats in parliament until a variety of election-related grievances is addressed — has not crimped economic growth.

Official data from the ministry showed that nearly 3,000 new business registrations were received during 2013, down from 3,386 in 2012. Of the 2013 registrations, foreign businesses accounted for 1,448, an 8.9 per cent decrease from the 1,590 foreign registrations in the year before last. Local registrations fell 14.25 per cent, from 1,796 in 2012 to 1,540 in 2013. Ken Ratha, spokesman for the commerce ministry, said July's elections protests, which were driven by the opposition party until a ruling party crackdown last month, factored significantly in the drop.

"Of course the election contributed to the decline. Businessmen and investors – especially foreign – keep watching the situation here and are concerned with political stability."

Ratha added that "procedure tightening," such as the enforcement of customs duties in November, may also have played a role in the slumping figures. Foreign business registrations largely originated from China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam, with a primary focus on the agriculture and tourism sectors, according to the data. Grant Knuckey, CEO of ANZ Royal Bank, echoed Ratha's view.

"I suspect the post-election period uncertainty would be the major driver of this. In a less certain environment, some prospective businesses will not go ahead. One could also speculate that the tougher enforcement environment around tax and customs duties may also have played a role in driving down registrations, but it would be difficult to prove that correlation," he said, adding that he remains optimistic.

So does the National Bank of Cambodia, whose data from an annual report released last week show that Cambodia achieved seven per cent GDP growth in 2013, on track with IMF and World Bank outlooks.

The NBC attributed the solid growth to a stable exchange rate, a "manageable" four per cent inflation rate over five years, increases in government revenues, decreasing budget deficits and a favourable
investment climate.

"Such a performance comes from an increase in investments in the country, particularly in construction and tourism sectors," the report said.

We started our study of crime and violence in Cambodia in 1998, and after 15 years of research have completed a manuscript titled Violence and the civilising process in Cambodia, which should be published at the end of the year.

The book documents and discusses the types, patterns and trends of crime and violence in Cambodia since the mid-19th century. Based on official police statistics, media reports and crime victims surveys, our findings show a dramatic and consistent decline in crime and violence in the contemporary period (1993-2012).

For example, the rate of homicide victims has fallen from 23.5 per 100,000 population in 1993 to 2.4 in 2012.

A recent US State Department advisory issued by the US mission in Cambodia painted a grim portrayal of the violent crime situation in Cambodia, which is in many respects quite contrary to our evidence of a progressive decline in violence.

It noted an upward trend in robberies and shootings between 2010 and 2012 and an increased menace of violent youth gangs, which our evidence confirms.

It associated this isolated spike with the poor performance and ineffectiveness of the police and the continuation of "vigilante justice", and commented: "Corruption within the Cambodian National Police (CNP) and the judicial system and low police wages have contributed to criminal activity.

"The majority of the crimes committed are for financial gain and opportunistic. Youth gangs continue to operate unimpeded throughout Phnom Penh.… Violent crimes, especially armed robberies, continue to occur.

"A government effort to control access to firearms has had limited success. While military weapons are no longer sold openly in the city, they are still available to criminal elements" .

The advisory did not mention that robberies and shootings have consistently and dramatically declined in Cambodia since 1999 and that the modest 2012 spike occurred only in Phnom Penh. As for vigilante justice, the evidence we have gathered shows a significant decline between 1993 and 2008 when it had almost disappeared (our limited resources have precluded further investigation post-2009).

However, the last sentence in this advisory about "the limited success of the [Cambodian] government effort to control access to firearms" is puzzling, even if understandable given the atypical US gun ownership policies.

Puzzling, because in 2011 the also atypical US rate of homicide (compared to most developed countries) was 4.7 per 100,000 (UNODC Global Study on Homicide), that is, double the Cambodian rate of 2.2 per 100,000, and armed robberies and shootings were far more prevalent in the US.

For instance, the United Nations International Crime Victims Survey (UNICVS) showed a rate of 2.3 per cent for robbery victims in New York in 2003 compared to 1.5 per cent in the UNICVS that we conducted in Phnom Penh in 2005.

For the same years, the national US robbery victimisation rate was 0.6% compared to the combined rate of 0.7% for the three most populated provinces of Cambodia (Phnom Penh, Kandal, and Kampong Cham), which overestimates the correct Cambodia national rate.

In addition, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimated that in 2003, 36.7 per cent of homicides in Cambodia were due to firearms (down from 58.4 per cent in 1998); by comparison that proportion for the US was 66.8 per cent and it has remained constant until 2012 (www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/statistics/ Homicide/ Homicides_by_firearms.xls).

In Cambodia, like almost everywhere else in the world, criminal elements manage to obtain guns illegally.

In the US, both criminal elements and ordinary citizen can purchase guns legally in shops. On evidence, the gun control effort has had more than a "limited success" in reducing violence in Cambodia.

Professor Roderic Broadhurst, Dr Thierry Bouhours and Brigitte Bouhours are criminologists at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. They have been conducting research on crime and violence in Cambodia and are in the process of publishing the results of this long- term project.

The Tennis Federation of Cambodia has added another novelty to the smoothly running grassroots programme by setting up camp sites for players from provinces visiting Phnom Penh as part of its attempt to drive to teach life skills along with tennis lessons.

Phnom Penh players taking part in national tournaments in other provinces will also go through similar camping experiences so that all players are well prepared to cope with challenges that tennis travel often throws up.

The camping idea was born out of accommodation issues that up to a dozen players from Kep faced during last week's national junior tournament, and it quickly turned into a popular reality when they got under the tents put up on the lawns close to the tennis courts at the National Training Centre.

The TFC purchased four tents and nicely padded bedding, and arranged food for the visitors.

"The idea of tennis camps and camping right next to the tennis courts is to get all the kids together. They eat, sleep and wake up to tennis courts in the morning and that oneness has lot of advantages on and off the court," TFC's head of schools and junior tennis initiatives and Cambodian Davis Cupper Mam Phalkun told the Post yesterday. TFC Secretary General Tep Rithivit noted that "a lot of thought" had gone into the activity. "We realised that players would most certainly bond better this way," he said. "[The] TFC has always believed in the notion that tennis builds life skills like no other. I am very happy that the players enjoyed these camps and felt very comfortable."

Horn Vannak from Acadamie de Kep was one of the campers and he spoke for the rest of his tent friends when he said: "We loved every minute of our stay. We had lot of fun and we sure want more."

But one player who sneaked into one of these camps was Khlang Ponlok, who made it to the semi-finals of the Boys U14 singles.

Ponlok lives in Phnom Penh but he chose to stay with his Kep friends.

Asked by the Post as to why, Ponlok said: "It is so easy and so good. I don't have to go all the way home and come back. In the morning I can play tennis right away."

It is this thought of being next to a tennis court and the overwhelming desire to get on with the game that is what has endeared these campers to the tents, albeit in middle of nowhere. For them it is somewhere they love to be all the time, closest to a well-marked court.

Phnom Penh Crown yesterday announced the signing of three more foreigners to boost their ranks ahead of their opening fixture of the 2014 Metfone C-League on Sunday.

Crown coach Sam Schweingruber and club owner Rithy Samnang welcomed the trio – which include Zimbabwean striker Newton Ben Katanha, attacking midfielder Rafael Souza de Oliveira of Brazil and South Korean forward Jeong Ho Kim – during a signing ceremony held yesterday at Askap Gold offices.

"I am very excited," Schweingruber said in a press statement released yesterday.

"This is a new situation for me to have five good foreign players and it gives me a good selection headache. I'm relieved to have gone through the long process of exploring the market for foreign faces, but happy that we waited for the right players and I think we have five very strong players that will provide a competitive environment in training and help to make us a real contender for the championship this season." The two other players who make up Crown's foreign contingent are Nigerian defender Odion Obadin and compatriot striker George Bisan. Welsh centre half Liam Hutchinson, who joined the club two months ago after spells in his homeland and Australia, has left the club for personal reasons.

Zimbabwe-born Katanha, 30, joins the four-time Cambodian league champions with an excellent reputation, having represented his country on 12 occasions, scoring six goals, and spending 13 years as a professional in Europe, including stints with Austrian sides SV Austria Salzburg and BSV Bad Bleiberg, German club Arminia Bielefeld, Russia's PFC Spartak Nalchik and Swiss outfits FC Schaffhausen, Wettswil-Bonstetton and FC Winterthur.

"I like what I heard about the club from the coach. I have a lot of experience. I want to help the club and my teammates and I know what needs to be done to be successful. I have come here to win the championship," Katanha said in a press release.

25-year-old De Oliviera has bounced between the Premier Leagues of Brazil and Vietnam, playing for clubs such as Fluminense RJ, Atletico MG, The Cong, Navibank Saigon and Than Quang Ninh.

"He's very good with both feet, has good instinct and can produce that special bit of magic," coach Schweingruber said of the Brazilian.

Meanwhile, 22-year-old Kim completed a successful month-long trial with Crown after returning from injury that ended his time at the prestigious Kwangoon University.

"[Kim] has shown enough signs that he will be a good asset both as a striker but in other positions as well. He is strong, has good technique and his fitness is improving all the time. He will be a good addition," said Schweingruber.

The final group phase of the 8th Samdech Hun Sen Cup kicks off today with four matches split between Olympic and Old Stadiums. Eight hopefuls have battled their way through provincial preliminaries to join the top eight sides from last year's Metfone C-League.

They include Asia Europe University, Western University, Tri-Asia, Chamkarmon, Oddar Meancheay, Kampong Chhnang, Sihanoukville RCAF and Kratie from the qualifiers and Naga Corp, Ministry of National Defence, Phnom Penh Crown, Boeung Ket Rubber Field, Svay Rieng, Kirivong Sok Sen Chey, National Police Commissary and Build Bright United from the top tier. The teams have been bracketed into four groups of four, with games playing each Wednesday. Quarter-finals will also be contested on a Wednesday, while the semi-final is slated for Sunday March 9 and the grand final on Saturday March 15.

Today's match-ups see Group A clashes at Olympic Stadium. Last year's MCL runners-up Boeung Ket take on Kratie from 3:30pm, while Sihanoukville meet Cup holders Naga at 6pm.

Over at the Old Stadium, Group D fixtures have BBU against Oddar Meanchey at 1:30pm before Western face last year's beaten finalists MND at 3:15pm.