The Phnom Penh Post - ENGLISH: “Demolished my house” plus 9 more

They crossed my arms and held them upward and pointed a gun at me. Even when my little children cried … they did not care. They just demolished my house.

Scuffed chances on both sides marked a hard fought goal-less draw between Western University and Ministry of National Defence in a Metfone C-League tie at the Olympic Stadium yesterday.

The university-backed side enjoyed a slight advantage in the first half while the Armymen had greater say in the second session, but neither side could pack a punch that would hurt the other.

Western's attacking spearhead David Njoku came tantalisingly close to a goal twice but on the day the stars seemingly refused to align in his favour. A firm Njoku shot from the top of the box was well anticipated by MND goalkeeper Oum Vichet and next time around, the striker sent the ball soaring over the crossbar from closer range.

The Armymen, somewhat subdued in the first half, came out charging in the second, stumbling upon a fair number of set piece chances. While most of MND's flagkicks created a stir in the Western box, none of the half a dozen posed a real threat.

Western coach Meas Sam Oeun introduced a double substitution on the hour mark to reorganise his attacking formations but none of his schemes would work against a side that put up a stout defence while losing no chance to counter attack. In the final analysis, sharing a point each seemed a fair deal for both.

In Saturday's action at the Old Stadium, last year's runners-up Boeung Ket suffered their second successive defeat, this time at the hands of National Police Commissary following their last week's loss to TriAsia, ironically by the same 2-1 scoreline.

After a first half that produced thrills but no goals, the second half came bustling into life when Tani Reuni gave the Police a 1-0 advantage.

Former Svay Rieng striker Khuon Laboravy, who joined the Boeung Ket ranks this season, leveled the score ten minutes later. But the Police redoubled their effort and Ul Ravy got the go-ahead goal as late as the 88th minute to deal Boeung Ket a serious blow. It may still be early days in the league but for any side, back-to-back defeats should be quite unsettling.

Coming out of last week's goal-less draw against Kirivong Sok Sen Chey, Naga presented a completely different outlook when they met Build Bright United. What followed was a pleasing transformation and a 5-0 victory for the 2009 champions.

It took just 12 minutes for Naga to size up the opposition and Sun Sovannarithy was the first to crack the BBU resolve when he nailed the opening goal and came back bang on regulation time to complete his double.

In between Sovannarithy's deserving brace came goals in the second half courtesy of South Korean Jang In Yong and Choun Chum, with Meak Chordaravuth rounding off the dominant performance.

Naga coach Prak Sovannara's take on the big margin of victory was interesting. "All the clubs this season are stronger and more competitive [than last year],"he told the Post.

"We have learned a lot about our rivals, both their strengths and weaknesses. We could gain an upper hand because we played as a unit and BBU mostly stuck to individualistic play.

"The big obstacles remain heavyweights like Boeung Ket, Svay Rieng and Phnom Penh Crown," added Sonannara, who is back as Naga head coach after spending the last season with the national team.

TriAsia batter Niigata
New entrants TriAsia scored a huge 8-1 win over Albirex Niigata in an evening fixture at the Olympic Stadium on Saturday. The victory took the top tier first seasoners to the top of the table, ahead of some of the big guns at least for that celebratory evening.

An ecstatic TriAsia coach Daisuke Yoshioka said he was pleased with the way the attacking formations he had set out worked.

"My aim was to not only stabilise the side by using experienced players but also to streamline our attack. We had the game our way from the word go," Yoshioka stated in an interview posted on the club's facebook fanpage yesterday.

A hat-trick by hard working midfielder Kouch Dany was the feature of TriAsia's second win in three games. Chan Raksmey chipped in with a double while Chan Rithy, Vy Lika and Kihara Masakazu contributed a goal each. For Albirex, Pen Chanthy scored a solitary consolation goal.

In Saturday's opening fixture, reigning champions Svay Rieng were held to a surprise goalless draw by Asia Europe University.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CHENG SERYRITH

As an artist and political activist, Ung Bun Heang was both an idealist and a passionate, unforgiving Cambodian nationalist.

Under the pen name "Sacrava", he was relentless in firing off scurrilous cartoons attacking not only the prime minister and the Hun Sen regime, but equally the royalists, the late King Father Sihanouk, America, China and all of Cambodia's neighbours, especially Thailand and Vietnam. No one was spared, not even the opposition when he felt they needed a poke with his pen.

But he paid the price. Heang knew he could never return to his beloved homeland from his adopted one, Australia. "I know exactly I am an ugly, black sheep in Cambodia," he once said.

Above all, the artist longed for a new generation of Cambodians that would question, think critically and speak out with the sort of freedoms he had discovered abroad. After surviving the Pol Pot regime, Australia took him in as a refugee together with his wife Phiny and their baby daughter Kreusna.

"I love this country so dearly," he never tired of declaring. He loved that Australian politicians could argue with such vehemence in parliament and yet meet afterwards as "mates" for a beer in the pub. That's what he wanted for Cambodia rather than a politics of fear, revenge and bloodshed.

As the rebel son among five other children born to a wealthy Sino-Cambodian entrepreneur, Heang might have been expected to make a career in medicine or business. But his father accepted one black sheep artist in the family.

Heang first cut his teeth as a cartoonist working on Nokor Thom and other local papers in the war years that followed the overthrow of Prince Sihanouk in 1970. But that apprenticeship came to an end when Pol Pot's silent guerrillas in black peasant garb marched into town as victors in April 1975. A new madness was unleashed in the revolution that followed.

During three and a half years of hell under the Khmer Rouge, the learning curve could not have been steeper for Heang and Phiny, both from privileged backgrounds. They were determined to knuckle down to work, endure and never give in to despair. For Phiny especially, the suffering was immense. Of her closest family, first her father was taken away, then one by one or in pairs, five of her siblings followed.

As the adage goes, what did not kill them made them stronger.

As an artist, Bun Heang's most invaluable legacy is the series of 90 black pen drawings he created from his tortured memories of the everyday madness of what he, Phiny and their families endured in the name of Pol Pot's insane revolution.

When this unique artistic record was passed over to the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia's former foreign minister, Gareth Evans, observed how "the horror of that time is so brilliantly . . . graphically . . . movingly . . . even entertainingly captured by these magnificent drawings".

A selection of the drawings was originally published in 1985 in The Murderous Revolution, the story of Heang and Phiny's survival authored by Martin Stuart-Fox. Once settled in Australia, Heang worked as an animation artist for Walt Disney and other film studios.

When that work dried up after nearly all the animation studios moved offshore to Asia, Phiny and Heang opened a Cambodian restaurant in one of Sydney's wealthiest suburbs. Despite queues of happy customers, hard work and long hours, both this and a subsequent restaurant did not pay off.

Determined to work harder than ever, Heang made a fateful decision to buy a small hardware business on the other side of Sydney. It proved to be a disaster and, when the bank foreclosed, the family lost their prized two-storey dream home. It was their pride and glory, the achievement of all they had worked for. Heang called the loss "our second holocaust".

But he and the family took it on the chin. They stuck together, held their heads high and worked just as hard as ever. While Phiny continued her community liaison work with the New South Wales Police, Heang dedicated himself to a volunteer project. He created and painted a large Aussie-themed mural as an unpaid gift for a local public school.

That was by day. As "Sacrava", he burned the midnight oil firing off his notorious salvos of politically explosive cartoons across the internet. Whether or not they opened minds and pricked consciences, they crystalised the unspoken fears and loathing of many Cambodians at home and abroad.

When his best friend and partner urged him to ease up, he replied: "Phiny, if I don't draw I die!"

It says so much about Bun Heang that when he was stricken with terminal cancer, he laughed in defiance. "I take it as a compliment."

And that he did. That was how he and Phiny had met every challenge and twist of fate since their marriage during the dark days of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. Supported by a continuous vigil of family and friends, Heang fought to the end to make the most of his every last day on earth.

Ung Bun Heang, 60, died on Saturday, February 8. He is survived by wife Phiny, daughters Kreusna and Natalie Sita, sons Jesse and Justin, and three granddaughters. A first grandson is expected in June.

The pool of outstanding loans held by Cambodia's microfinance institutions grew to more than $1.17 billion in 2013, marking a 44 per cent industry-wide increase from 2012, when the figure stood at $813 million, according to new data from the National Bank of Cambodia.

The industry statistics, which take into account the books of all 38 microfinance providers in the country, were detailed in the bank's annual report for 2013.

Consumer deposits grew more than 61 per cent to reach $364 million last year, up from $226 million in 2012. Non-performing loans – loans that are either in or close to being in default – remained steady, accounting for less than one per cent.

Bun Mony, president of the Cambodia Microfinance Association, said the results were not surprising, reflecting an average year-on-year growth range of 40 to 50 per cent for the industry.

"Increasing loan size for existing customers and access to microfinance products in rural areas would be some reasons for the year-on-year growth."

The CMA president added that while customers engaged in agricultural businesses remained the main market for microfinance companies, small shops and street vendors are also emerging as a larger market.

Six men were charged in Kandal Provincial Court with drug distribution yesterday, after police arrested them last week, following a raid on a rental house.

Police in Kandal province's Ang Snuol district arrested the six defendants – Mean Bunthoeun, 25, Moeun Sokny, 26, Keo Sok Kea, 24, Song Pov, 32, Nuon Sam Nang, 22, and Phal Chamnan, 27 – on Saturday after finding six small packages of meth and drug paraphernalia in Bunthoeun's house, said Ang Snuol district police chief Mean Sam Nang.

A woman was allegedly caught smuggling about 1,000 pills of crystal meth over the border from Laos to Stung Treng province on Friday.

Men Noeun, 51, was tried yesterday by Stung Treng Provincial Court for drug trafficking, and allegedly smuggling 929 grams of ice, said Duong Vichet, provincial military commander.

"She carried the drugs from Laos to deliver them to Preah Vihear province," he said yesterday.

Chan Sreynuch, the disgraced owner of a well-known beauty salon in the capital, sentenced last year to three-and-a-half years in prison for sex trafficking, was sentenced by Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Friday to another two years for drug trafficking inside prison.

The madam, and Srun Rotha, 32, also a prisoner, both received two extra years for smuggling drugs into Prey Sar prison in Phnom Penh, though portions of both sentences will be suspended, said Kim Dany, the presiding judge at court.

Rotha had been behind bars since last year serving a four-year prison sentence for previous drug-trafficking offences.

"Based on a hearing, real proof, and under consideration of this case by the law, the court has decided to sentence Chan Sreynuch to two years, but the term of her punishment that is [implemented] will only be 12 months in prison – the rest was suspended – on the accusation of managing to use drugs inside Prey Sar," she said, adding that "Rotha's sentence will be suspended after 14 months in prison".

Last October, prison guards confiscated three small packages of methamphetamines hidden inside an envelope carrying Rotha's name, and addressed to Sreynuch.

Sreynuch, 40, aslo known as Je Mom, is the former owner of Mikasa Coiffure and Beauty, and was convicted last year for recruiting aspiring female singers and students, and delivering them to sleep with wealthy men for her own profit.

Sreynuch, Rotha and their defence lawyers could not be reached for comment.

During a hearing in January, Sreynuch denied the accusations, claiming she had not been involved in the drug trafficking, nor had she known anything about it.

"I deny the accusation. I did not know Srun Rotha. I think this accusation was aimed at destroying me," she said.

Rotha, however, owned up to the deed, asking for his sentence to be reduced.

He said the drugs he had obtained were sent to him from a man named "Pheap" outside the prison.

China donated 26 military trucks and 30,000 military uniforms to the Ministry of Defence at a ceremony at the Trucking Battalion No 99 headquarters on the outskirts of Phnom Penh on Friday as part of China and Cambodia's military cooperation program.

Chinese Ambassador Bu Jianguo, who presided over the ceremony, said she "believe[d] that all the military materials will be useful for the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces".

"We wish for the friendship and cooperation of the two governments and the two armies to be deep," she added.

Ministry of Defence secretary of state Moeung Samphan lauded the handover.

"The aid is timely as Cambodia is facing a shortage of military materials," Samphan said.

Cambodia National Rescue Party spokesman Yim Sovann said yesterday the opposition supports military aid to protect territorial sovereignty, and asked China "to ensure that military aid [is] not [used to] threaten and intimidate human rights".

The National Blood Transfusion Center hopes to boost the Kingdom's blood stocks by targetting youth donors at a second annual Valentine's Day blood drive.

Last year's drive drew 449 donors, almost three times the expected 150 participants.

This year's February 14 campaign will target university students and youth aged 18 and older, who make up about 70 per cent of eligible blood donors, according to Dr Hok Kimcheng, national centre director.

Kimcheng said many would-be Cambodian donors are reluctant to give blood based on misinformation that their health could be negatively impacted. In the past, Cambodian hospitals have relied on donations mostly from foreigners.

Cambodia's demand for blood transfusions has increased steadily, said Dr Sek Marady, the World Health Organization's national officer for blood safety.

Residents in good health aged 17 to 60 are encouraged to participate in the blood drive held at the capital's Preah Ang Duong Hospital on February 14.

The fate of Khim Saphath, the 16-year-old boy missing since clashes between striking garment workers and security forces erupted on Veng Sreng Boulevard on January 3, continues to differentiate fatality lists compiled by rights groups.

He was last seen lying on the ground with a bloody chest wound, according to eyewitnesses, before vanishing without a trace.

After investigation, Adhoc has officially concluded that the boy – who lied about his age to work in a Chinese-owned garment factory – was killed, senior investigator Chan Soveth said on Thursday, with the organisation's death toll thus standing at five.

"We have evidence and witnesses who saw the son shot to the ground on the spot that day," he said.

But Licadho – which counts four dead – still treats Saphath as missing and is yet to conclude its investigation, technical supervisor Am Sam Ath said.

"We still do not have clear sources, so we have kept him on the missing list."

On January 12, Mok Chito, chief of the Interior Ministry's central justice department, told the Post that anyone missing since the clashes would be found if a complaint was lodged with police.

But Saphath's father, Khim Souern, said he has not approached police because he does not trust them to carry out a proper investigation.

He added that small bribes were needed for local authorities to sign a letter allowing him to claim $180 of his son's remaining salary from the Hua Hsi garment factory.

Meanwhile, many of the more than 40 protesters and bystanders injured during the January 3 clashes are yet to fully recover from their wounds.

Factory worker Prom Phearum, 22, who was shot in the leg, said doctors have told him that he might need an amputation, as blood is stuck between fractured bone.

"I need an immediate operation or else it will become more serious and my leg will be cut off.… I am so scared so I want an operation but I cannot afford it because the doctor said it will cost $450," he said.

Only one injured civilian remains in hospital, according to Licadho.

Kheng Tito, spokesman for the military police, said 29 officers were injured during January 2 and 3 clashes, though he did not give further details.