The Phnom Penh Post - ENGLISH: “Started to boil again” plus 9 more

The opposition brought it up as part of their campaign, it started to boil again, and now you see this killing.

Two Chinese nationals and three Cambodian women were sent to court yesterday after they were arrested on Sunday, accused of trying to sell two Cambodian women as brides in China, anti-trafficking police said. In what police say is the latest example of women being lured to China for illegal purposes, police arrested one of the alleged brokers at Phnom Penh International Airport as he prepared to board a flight with the two victims.

"Police rescued two Cambodian women at the airport and arrested one Chinese broker there," said Keo Thea, chief of Phnom Penh's anti-human trafficking and juvenile protection unit.

Thea identified the alleged Chinese brokers, both men, as Xujinlong, 34, and Suzhisheng, 40, and the arrested Cambodian women as Sok Bora, 25, Sat Srey Laut, 25, and Lam Lana, 45.

All five have been charged with human trafficking.

The two victims, he added, were women from a provincial area who were yesterday awaiting their families to come and take them home.

"We appeal to all families in the provinces: Do not believe brokers who promise to help you marry. This is not the first time brokers have cheated women seeking to be married in China," Thea warned.

In the past year, the Post has reported other cases of police swooping down on brokers at the airport and families contacting NGOs for help having family members returned home from China after they were abused or forced into domestic or sex slavery.

In response to a growing number of such reports, Pol Pithey, chief of the Ministry of Interior's anti-human trafficking and juvenile protection department, said in December that authorities were trying to address what was becoming a "big problem".

"Our people are still being cheated, because they lack knowledge about what it is they are entering into – while others know, but they take the risk anyway," he said.

Lim Mony, deputy head of the women's section at rights group ADHOC, said Cambodians faced a number of risks when signing up with marriage brokers, especially if information available to them was limited.

The Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA) announced the construction of a fifth water treatment station yesterday, saying that without an additional plant, the capital could face a severe clean-water shortage as soon as 2017.

Speaking at a press conference organised by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, PPWSA deputy director Samreth Sovithchea told reporters that the capital's current clean-water capacity will be around 460,000 cubic metres per day by 2016 – when a still-unfinished treatment station is completed – but by 2017, increases in demand will leave residents high and dry again.

"We survey that water use is increasing by two per cent every year. Since we know that the population in the city will have increased, and the capacity of our four water stations will be limited in 2016, we found that there will be a shortage of water in the city by 2017," Sovithchea said.

The proposed project will include a station with a capacity of 130,000 cubic metres per day, as well as a 700-kilometre expansion of the city's pipe network, Sovithchea added, with the $50 million price tag paid by the government and donors. The price of water for consumers will not change, he continued.

The PPWSA's last announced project, "Niroth 2" in Phnom Penh's Meanchey district, is scheduled to begin construction at the end of the year, and to begin producing 131,000 cubic metres of clean water daily by 2016.

According to a JICA operation summary, Cambodia has a goal of achieving 80 per cent penetration for clean water nationwide by 2015 – a roughly 30 per cent increase from the current figure.

Chan Samtha, a resident of Dangkor district on the city's outskirts, said that access to free-flowing water for her neighbours was hampered by the fact that residents must pay for their own pipes to connect to the grid.

"Poor people who live far away from the city find it difficult to get clean water, because [the pressure] is so weak," she said. "That is because we do not have enough [money] for the pipe network."

Sou Sotheavy, founder of the Cambodian Network for Men Women Development, an organisation dedicated to advocating for the rights of the LGBT community, has been awarded the David Kato Vision & Voice Award.

Presented annually at the Berlin film festival, the award goes to an individual who has demonstrated unparalleled leadership and courage in advocating for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals.

Sotheavy experienced horrific persecution at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, including torture, rape and a forced marriage to a woman, despite identifying as a woman herself. Now in her 70s, she plans to invest the $10,000 prize into the organisation she founded.

"I will fight until the end of my life. I will not stop until the rights for LGBT exist like for other people," Sotheavy said at Friday's award presentation.

The award was inspired by the efforts of David Kato, a Ugandan human rights activist, murdered in Kampala in 2011.

Wing yesterday launched its first prepaid Visa card with the Foreign Trade Bank of Cambodia (FTB), almost six months after it was initially slated for release.

Wing, the mobile payment and money transfer company, is not allowed to issue its own Visa cards without collaboration from a financial institution.

The new prepaid cards, identifiable by their Angry Birds cartoon designs, were supposed to launch in August last year, but licensing issues set down by the banking regulator delayed the process, said Wing CEO Anthony Perkins in an email.

"That took a while to pull together, as we always saw a bigger relationship with FTB going forwards than just Visa cards," he said. "Short term pain, long term gain I guess."

The prepaid card can be used locally and overseas, anywhere Visa is offered. To top up, customers transfer funds from their accounts in Cambodia using mobile phones, or through direct deposits at one of the 1,000 Wing Cash Xpress outlets nationwide.

Driven by its domestic money transfer services, Wing posted transaction volume figures of $1.5 billion last year.

Perkins said the company is on track to post profits for the first time in its five-year history in 2014.

Cambodia's rice exporters are eager to sell more of their goods in the United States and tap into the world's largest economy.

Speaking at the International Export Market Research for Cambodian Rice seminar in Phnom Penh yesterday, Song Saran, CEO of Amru Rice Cambodia, one of the country's largest exporters, said Thailand's jasmine rice has already made inroads into the US, and Cambodia's fragrant variety was on a par in terms of quality.

"We are going to [export] to the US, of course, 100 per cent, because the US is a very big market and has potential for Cambodia," he said.

Despite being a major export destination for garments manufactured in Cambodia, the US is still low on the totem pole when it comes to rice, government data show.

Of the nearly 379,000 tons of rice exported last year, just 1,780 tons went to the US, ranking it 26th among 66 countries.

Dear Editor,

Rape and sexual violence are very real daily problems in Cambodia. And the article, "Valentine's Day rape fears" – and the dubious research that informs it – are problematic and work to exacerbate these issues – not help them.

The article is dangerous not only because it misreports (already questionable) data on young Khmer men and "rape", but also because it creates exaggerated hysteria related to youth sex on Valentine's Day.

This, in turn, gives fuel to the state to promote problematic abstinence-only campaigns (which we know don't work in addressing rape) and allows them to further justify useless activities like policing guesthouses, and ultimately the sex lives of young people – who instead need reality-based sex education, not further policing.

It's exactly the kind of journalism and research that creates unproductive moral panic around youth sexuality and trivializes the very real problems and causes of non-consensual sex in Cambodia, by carelessly throwing around bogus numbers.

The article states that "among the 376 men surveyed, 47.4 per cent said they would be willing to engage in sexual intercourse without their partner's consent on February 14". This is, in fact, wrong, and not what the study states.

Instead, based on one very poorly worded and "leading" question that attempted to measure coercive sexual "intentions" (not "actual" sexual behaviour), the study found that 47.4 per cent of only 61 single men who were hoping to have sex on Valentine's Day, reported that they would potentially engage in coercive behaviours to get women to have sex.

While it is disconcerting that even 29 out of 61 men reported that they were willing to potentially behave coercively (in a study that sampled 15-24 year-old "wealthy-looking" men hanging out in parks), this is hardly representative of all young men in Phnom Penh – or even the 376 men in the study.

Yet, it is now a statistic that is being widely circulated in global media. Not only does this further pathologise an already-pathologised group of young men, but the entire country as a whole – a country which is often only ever associated internationally with violence and sex trafficking because these are the only stories that get media attention.

In addition, research studies and media that target behaviour on one particular day of the year (ie, the report itself implies that increases in unsafe sex, HIV, rape, unsafe abortions and suicide are related to sex on Valentine's Day) are problematic because they distract attention away from rape as a daily concern in Cambodia, and project blame for all these evils onto "Western" influence – as opposed to promoting thoughtful cultural self-reflection on the "homegrown" reasons why these issues perpetuate.

If male attitudes and behaviours around non-consensual sex are to change, a return to "conservative Khmer culture" (as suggested in the report) is not the answer, as is it precisely Khmer gender norms that reinforce the idea that young women should remain submissive and subordinate to men.

Nor does the answer lie in the policing of guesthouses and the sex lives of young people. Nor in conducting – and disseminating on a global scale – hasty and poor-quality research and media, which is then used to fuel moral panic around youth sexuality and turn it into a thing that should be ultimately "feared" and "controlled".

We know that abstinence campaigns don't work. One only has to look at the high teen pregnancy, rape and STI rates in the US to see that these programs are failures. Anti-sex crusades, and the research and media that drive them, are dangerous because they disempower young people, whom are left fending for themselves without proper understanding and tools that would help them make better decisions.

Exaggerated media campaigns create hysteria, reinforce stereotypes and exacerbate pre-existing inequities, which ultimately serve to justify the agendas of those in positions of authority – not the young people who are in desperate need of good quality sex education and information.

Perhaps a better solution to addressing rape and sexual violence among young people in Cambodia would be to create high-quality research and programming that focus on promoting meaningful cultural reflection and change regarding unequal gender ideals, as well as on creating tools that young people themselves view as important in helping them to make safer sexual decisions and healthier relationship choices.

This would then lead to a shift away from fear-based abstinence programming and toward more youth-centered, reality-based sex education programs – programs that are actually implemented and not just put down on paper.

Only then might the daily concerns of rape and sexual violence begin to diminish.

Heidi Hoefinger, PhD,
author of Sex, Love and Money in Cambodia

Editor's note: When reporting the figure questioned above, the Post relied on information provided by the report's author in an executive summary of his findings. This figure was different from the one later distributed by the author when he released his report to a wider audience.

Cambodian southpaw Rieng Sophon stunned his Brazilian opponent Jose Neto on Sunday at TV3 arena, landing a flurry of punches and kicks to prevail by judges' decision.

Meanwhile, Sophon's compatriot Long Sophy was stopped in round three by a vicious series of knees to the face from another Samba fighter Anday Ton, who had beaten Thailand's Pongthong Jetsada in 2012 to claim the CBF title at TV3.

National Police Commissary emphatically carbon-copied league leaders Phnom Penh Crown's exploits on Sunday with the day's second successive 5-0 scoreline at Olympic Stadium.

Newly established Japanese franchise Albirex Niigata Phnom Penh held their own against the high-flying Police team until injury time of the first half, when goal machine Tith Dina opened the scoring.

A brace from Japanese import Tani Reijin in the space of five minutes shortly after the restart swung things firmly in the favour of the Police, with Tith Dina adding another in the 67th minute before substitute Ly Arifin put a gloss on proceedings with a goal three minutes after his introduction.

The result sees Police snuggle up behind Crown in second in the table, with both sides on 10 points from four games but Crown having scored two more and conceded one less. Albirex remain rooted to the bottom, without a point and with serious defensive concerns to address.

Three foreign nationals and a Cambodian woman arrested last week for allegedly attempting to smuggle more than 2.5 kilograms of cocaine through Phnom Penh International Airport remained in the hands of investigating judges for questioning as of last night. Soeung Nol, chief of the Ministry of Interior's anti-drug police, said they smuggled the cocaine from Brazil to Cambodia.

The cocaine was allegedly found in a bag belonging to Macoy Mavill, a Filipino national, at the airport, where she was arrested. Her interrogation led police to arrest Michael Sunshine and Emmanuel Thankgod of Ghana, and Cambodian Meng Sinoun at Luxury World Hotel in Daun Penh district.

Defence lawyer Pheng Heng yesterday said the three were falsely accused. "They have known nothing about this, nor were they related to this case of drug trafficking."