Rushed Graft Law a Sham: Opposition Leader

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy (Photo: Reuters)

By Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Washington
24 March 2010

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy on Monday lambasted the country’s new anti-corruption law as a sham, saying those who commit graft in the country will never be jailed for it.

The law, which took 15 years to draft and less than a week to approve, will not have the teeth necessary to rein in Cambodia’s rampant corruption, Sam Rainsy said, as a guest on “Hello VOA.”

The requirement for public officials to disclose assets will be done with a “closed envelope,” Sam Rainsy said, making it more likely that those who seek the information will be punished before corrupt officials.

Officials who “can’t declare where the assets have come from, that should be from corruption and it should be paid back to the nation and the people,” Sam Rainsy said from France, where he remains in exile, facing a jail sentence in Cambodia.

Assets should not be declared secretly, he said.

“We should do it in a transparent way, to let the people know, and see that before [an official] took office, [he or she] was poor, but after taking office for some years became a millionaire,” he said. “That means [the official] committed corruption while in office.”

Anti-corruption legislation was passed by the Senate last week and has been sent to the Constitutional Council, where it must be approved before moving to the king to be signed.

Implementation is not expected until late 2011, when a new criminal law comes into effect.

The anti-corruption law has worried opponents, who say it does not provide enough protection for whistleblowers and will not create anti-graft bodies with enough independence.

Cheam Yiep, a lawmaker for the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, said having a law was a first step.

“If there’s a stalemate in future implementation, we can make amendments,” he said by phone as the show was underway.

Cheam Yiep said the law creates an independent council and puts decisions in the hands of judges.

However, speaking to VOA Khmer ahead of the show, Ny Chaya, chief of monitoring for the rights group Adhoc, said the law will not effectively prevent graft and does not protect those who would report it.

“If the court sees that there is no corruption, then those who are whistleblowers will be charged and imprisoned,” he said. “That would make the whistleblower unable to give information, as the judicial system in our country is not credible.”

READ MORE - Rushed Graft Law a Sham: Opposition Leader

Companies Seek Ways Around Corruption [... by paying under the table to gov't officials?]

By Ros Sothea, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
24 March 2010

It is not easy to get ahead in Cambodia’s business environment. Just ask Sam Sambath, CEO of the country’s largest manufacturer of construction coating materials.

Cam-Paint Manufacturing, which has seen rapid growth since 2004, is able to compete with local businesses and imports alike, through a number of strategies.

But success was not possible without monthly payments of at least $1,000 to government officials to avoid full taxes and to help each of his outlets run smoothly, Sam Sambath told VOA Khmer last week.

“We pay $3,000 monthly for the tax, and 30 percent of it is unofficial,” Sam Sambath said.

Cam-Paint is not alone. Cambodia ranks among countries perceived as most corrupt, according to Transparency International, a watchdog group. Corruption hurts businesses, but finding a solution to the graft problem is difficult.

Last week, international experts from the US and Australian embassies urged the business community to take a stand.

“The place to start is the top,” said Tim Phillips, worldwide managing partner of forensics and dispute services of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu International, an international consulting firm.

“Make sure that government ministers, business leaders and all the important people in Cambodia’s business community talk about the importance of not being corrupt and work through each level, even to the lowest level, and remove as much of that corruption as possible,” he said.

The whole country can benefit, he said, “in particular the people at the lower level who need a prosperous economy to support hospitals and schools.”

Sam Sambath said it is not easy and that companies will lose money if they play by the rules.

“If we try to make ourselves so poor, we will lose our basic competition and our benefit,” he said. “For instance, if one makes corruption, they pay only $1.50, instead of $3, on product tax. So if we pay $3 alone, we will lose $1.50. So we need to increase our product’s price in order to make $1.50 profit. That makes the cost of product higher than others.”

Om Yentieng, head of the government’s anti-corruption body, declined to comment on the concerns.

However, Hang Choun Narun, secretary-general of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, said a new anti-corruption law, passed by the Senate last week, will eliminate unofficial payments inside state institutions.

There are other concerns about business fees and licenses.

“They don’t announce in public how much we have to pay and in how many days we will get the license,” said Prum Soun Praseth, an associate with Allens Arthur Robinson, an international law firm.

Corruption must be fought from within state institutions, he said, giving the business community an even playing field.

“We have to pay them three times more than the original price in order to hasten the procedure,” he said. “If we say no, it will get stuck within the ministry. So what should we do?”

READ MORE - Companies Seek Ways Around Corruption [... by paying under the table to gov't officials?]

Khieu Samphan hospitalized for a cough ... KR victims died when they were sick under Khieu Samphan's KR regime: Justice?

Khieu Samphan Hospitalized With Cough

By Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
24 March 2010

Jailed Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan has been hospitalized since last week, tribunal and hospital officials said Tuesday, providing another reminder that aging leaders could evade justice at a UN-backed tribunal.

Khieu Samphan, now 79, was the nominal head of the regime.He has suffered strokes in the past, but officials said Tuesday he was hospitalized last week with a cough and lung problems.

The tribunal is currently moving toward a trial against Khieu Samphan and four other former regime members, for genocide and other atrocity crimes.

Lars Olsen, a spokesman for the court, said Khieu Samphan did not have serious health problems but was under hospital observation for a cold.

Tribunal observers worry that the aging leaders could die before they see trial.

READ MORE - Khieu Samphan hospitalized for a cough ... KR victims died when they were sick under Khieu Samphan's KR regime: Justice?

Asian countries launch swap agreement

March 24 2010
By Kevin Brown in Singapore
Financial Times

Thirteen Asian countries on Wednesday launched a $120bn currency swaps agreement to provide emergency US dollar liquidity to nations facing a foreign exchange crisis.

The Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralisation agreement, 80 per cent financed by Japan, China and South Korea, is a multilateral extension of a network of bilateral swaps deals reached after the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis.

However, economists said it was unlikely to pave the way for an Asian Monetary Fund that could provide a regional alternative to the International Monetary Fund.

“There is certainly no harm in it, but it is quite a long way from here to any form of AMF,” said Michael Buchanan, Asia chief economist at Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong.

“If you want to have true objective conditional lending, that is quite hard for neighbouring countries. It is much easier to rely on the IMF for that,” he said.

The agreement allows the three main financing countries and the 10 members of the Association of South East Asian Nations to seek emergency dollar funding of between 0.5 and five times their contributions to the fund.

However, 80 per cent of any swaps approved will be subject to IMF conditions, such as economic reform programmes of the kind imposed by the global lender in 1997/98.

This leaves only 20 per cent of the fund subject to a purely Asian decision-making process. As a result no member country will be able to receive more from the fund than it has contributed, unless the IMF approves.

Officials say this restriction may be eased once a proposed regional surveillance unit is established to monitor economic trends and supervise the use of disbursements from the fund.’

However, much of the urgency behind the drive for a broader Asian financial institution has dissipated in the wake of the huge foreign exchange reserves accumulated by many Asian countries since 1997/98 through large and sustained trade surpluses.

The initial proposal for an AMF was made in 1997 by Eisuke Sakakibara, then Japan’s deputy finance minister, but it was never established because of strong opposition from the US.

The idea continues to surface in policy discussions, notably in Japan. Supporters such as Masahiro Kawai, dean of the Asian Development Bank Institute in Tokyo, say an AMF could promote exchange rate stability, encourage regional bond market liquidity and project an “Asian voice” on financial matters.

It also retains some traction in south-east Asian countries such as Malaysia and Thailand that were angered by tough conditions attached to emergency loans extended by the IMF in 1997/98.

The Asean members of the multilateral agreement are Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, Brunei and Laos. Hong Kong participates as a self-governing Chinese territory.

READ MORE - Asian countries launch swap agreement

New cryptic gecko species is discovered in Cambodia

Cnemaspis neangthyi reveals itself

Wednesday, 24 March 2010
By Matt Walker
Editor, Earth News
BBC

A new and extremely well camouflaged species of gecko has been discovered hiding in the forests of Cambodia.

Scientists working for Fauna & Flora International found the olive-green coloured gecko in the foothills of the Cardomom Mountains.

Called Cnemaspis neangthyi, the gecko is only the second species of its kind known to live in the country.

Scientists suspect it has lain hidden for so long due to its camouflage and habit of foraging in rocky crevices.

The new species was found during a reptile and amphibian survey led in June 2007 by Dr Lee Grismer of La Sierra University in Riverside, California, US and conservation organisation Fauna and Flora International (FFI).

Since then, scientific studies have revealed it to be a species new to science, due to its unique combination of colour pattern and scale characteristics.

There are currently 75 species of Cnemapsis known to science, of which 30 live in South East Asia, with only one other species present in Cambodia.

They have a relatively ancient body plan characterised by a broad flattened head, large forward and upward directed eyes, flattened body, long widely splayed limbs, and long inflected digits that help them to climb trees and rock faces and seek refuge within crevices.

Cnemaspis are diurnal species that usually go unnoticed because of their cryptic coloration and habit of foraging on the shaded surfaces of trees and overhanging rock faces.

Cnemaspis neangthyi was found living in the rocky foothills of Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains, and is thought to live nowhere else.

The new species is olive-green with light coloured blotches containing a central black dot.

It also has a distinct light green chevron marking on its nape and a head with a distinct black parietal spot and radiating black lines extending from its eyes.

Its digits also have light yellow and black bands.

The Cardomom Mountains support one the largest and mostly unexplored forest regions in southeast Asia, which are thought to shelter at least 62 globally threatened animal and 17 globally threatened tree species, many of which are endemic to Cambodia.

READ MORE - New cryptic gecko species is discovered in Cambodia

War Journalists to Get Reunion in Cambodia Next Month

Chhang Song, a chameleon-politician (Photo: The Phnom Penh Post)

2010-03-24
Xinhua

Some 40 foreign war journalists who were covering in Cambodia in early 1970s will get together in Phnom Penh next month, Chhang Song, former information minister said Wednesday.

He said for the first time since that horrible war, foreign war correspondents are returning to Phnom Penh for a reunion from April 20 to 23.

The event is organized by Chhang Song, the last Information Minister in the Lon Nol government who now divides his time between Cambodia and the United States and acts as a senior adviser to both the government and public-at-large.

For those who covered the Cambodian War between 1970 and 1975, the memories have always been particularly painful.

Chhang Song said a total of 36 foreign and Cambodian journalists were killed or disappeared, more than in the war in neighboring Vietnam.

Assisting Chhang Song in his quest is former Associated Press ( AP) correspondent U.S.-born Carl Robinson who covered the Cambodian War from neighboring Saigon, today's Ho Chi Minh City, and now lives in Brisbane, Australia.

While several reunions have been held over the past 15 years in Saigon, this is the first one in Phnom Penh. And, considering their age, this reunion will most likely also be the last one.

"Covering the war was so painful that many, even now, are unable to look back on that period," explains Robinson, who has only re-visited Cambodia in the past couple of years.

Cambodian government has granted permission for the construction of a memorial to the journalists who died in Cambodia while covering the civil war in the 1970s, according to local media report on Monday.

The memorial will be located in the Daun Penh district gardens opposite Raffles Hotel le Royal, it said.

READ MORE - War Journalists to Get Reunion in Cambodia Next Month

China-Cambodia Ties Grow Tighter

CICP head Cheang Vanarith says China's economic assistance has proved a boon for Cambodia (Photo: VOA - R. Carmichael)

Robert Carmichael, VOA
Phnom Penh 24 March 2010

In the past five years China and Cambodia have drawn ever closer, with Beijing investing billions of dollars in the impoverished Southeast Asian nation. Cambodians see both benefits and potential risks in the relationship.

In the past five years, China has become Cambodia's most important source of foreign investment: Cambodia has approved $6 billion of Chinese investments since 2006, while China provided at least $2 billion more in grant aid and loans.

Those are big sums for Cambodia, which has a $10 billion economy.

The relationship between the two countries is nothing new. Chea Vannath, an independent analyst based in Phnom Penh, says China's influence goes back at least 1,000 years.

"So it shows a good relationship with China. Since then either during the bad time or the happy time, China and Cambodia always have - you can say - sweet and sour, or long-lasting relationship. Always," said Chea Vannath.

In recent years that relationship is one the Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen has come to value highly.

He has publicly welcomed the rapid increase in Chinese investment. He also says China is his kind of friend since he says, unlike some donors to this aid-reliant nation, Beijing provides cash with no strings attached and without interfering.

Cheang Vanarith is the director of the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, a research body in Phnom Penh. He notes that China's financial interests in Cambodia have other benefits for Beijing.

"But probably China looks beyond economic interests toward more strategic interests in this region. So China used to be the center of the universe. China is the kind of regional hub in terms of strategic (strategy) and economic (economy). Some people call it China returning to the past," he said.

But there are concerns about China's rising influence in Cambodia. For instance, some critics, including witnesses who recently testified in the U.S. Congress, say the money China invests in Cambodia's infrastructure ends up going to state-owned Chinese companies that build the roads and hydropower dams. These contracts are not open to public scrutiny or independent oversight.

The International Monetary Fund, among others, has expressed concern about Beijing's insistence that Phnom Penh pledge to buy all of the power the hydropower dams generate for 30 years.

That could total hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The IMF says Phnom Penh must ensure it does not lock itself into huge open-ended commitments for fear that the liability could harm the fight against poverty.

Despite those concerns, Cheang Vanarith says China will continue to expand its influence in Cambodia. He says China's friendship provides Cambodia with a useful balance against countries such as Thailand, with which it has historical disputes.

He sees few risks to the relationship, and says some of the money from China's aid and investment helps anti-poverty efforts.

But human rights activists say the relationship could be too cozy. They pointed to Phnom Penh's decision last year to send 20 Uighur refugees back to China, at Beijing's request. Days later Cambodia received economic assistance deals worth $1.2 billion.

The United States and other countries sharply criticized Cambodia for deporting the Uighurs, members of a Muslim minority group in China. But Cheang Vanarith says there has been no economic backlash.

"Yes, we got strong negative reaction from the U.S. But later stage it seemed to be O.K. The bilateral relations between Cambodia and the U.S., I could feel it's on the right track - coming back," said Cheang Vanarith.

Chea Vannath, however, like many civic activists, worries about China's effect on Cambodia's environment, and the effort to improve governance and human rights protections here.

China is ranked in 79th in the most recent Transparency International corruption perception survey, out of 180 nations. She says Cambodia ought to learn the lessons of governance from nations with a better track record on democracy and human rights.

"And with the money that goes along with lack of transparency, lack of democratic governance - not just governance, but democratic governance - the participation of people into the state affairs. That concerns us. Yes, it concerns me," she said.

It appears to be less of concern to the Phnom Penh government. Just this month, China and Cambodia agreed to continue strengthening the relationship and to cooperate on projects to develop Cambodia's agriculture, tourism and communications industries.

READ MORE - China-Cambodia Ties Grow Tighter

The Dark Side of China Aid

March 24, 2010
By CHRISTOPHER WALKER and SARAH COOK
The New York Times

The government in Phnom Penh, which has received substantial aid from the United States and other democracies, now receives comparable amounts from China. The Cambodian authorities have used this “assistance competition” to their advantage. Rather than combating corruption and implementing sorely needed reforms to the judiciary and media sector, Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government has shrunk space for alternative voices and independent institutions. Western donors, fearful of losing influence, have been increasingly hesitant to penalize the regime for its failures.

A growing number of developing countries receive billions of dollars a year in assistance, loans, and investments from China. Already in 2010, Beijing has committed $25 billion to Asean nations. In March, Zambia’s president returned from a trip to China with a $1 billion loan in hand.

As Beijing’s levels of foreign assistance swell and its relationship deepens with countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America, a key question emerges: What impact will investments by an opaque and repressive superpower have on governance standards in the developing world?

Findings from a Freedom House analysis, “Countries at the Crossroads,” point to the challenges that many of these recipient countries confront as they struggle to build more transparent and accountable systems. Fighting corruption and safeguarding freedom of expression and assembly are proving especially difficult. The dark side of Beijing’s engagement, with its nontransparent aid and implicit conditions, risks tipping the balance in the wrong direction.

To appreciate the “China effect” on developing countries, it is essential to understand the methods Beijing is using to exert influence and warp incentives for accountable governance.

First, as international financial institutions and donor organizations seek to encourage stronger governance norms, aid from China has become an alternate source of funds. Recipient governments use these as a bargaining chip to defer measures that strengthen transparency and rule of law, especially those that could challenge elite power.

Cambodia is a telling example. The government in Phnom Penh, which has received substantial aid from the United States and other democracies, now receives comparable amounts from China. The Cambodian authorities have used this “assistance competition” to their advantage. Rather than combating corruption and implementing sorely needed reforms to the judiciary and media sector, Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government has shrunk space for alternative voices and independent institutions. Western donors, fearful of losing influence, have been increasingly hesitant to penalize the regime for its failures.

In October, the Guinean government announced a $7 billion deal with the China International Fund just as the international community was considering sanctions following a massacre of opposition supporters. The case underscores how even investments by a private entity, this one with ties to Beijing, can be manipulated to undermine efforts to support human rights standards.

Second, while “no strings attached” is commonly used to describe China’s approach in the developing world, the reality is not quite so benign. A combination of subtle and not-so-subtle conditions typically accompanies this largesse. Included among these is pressure to muzzle voices critical of the Chinese government, often undermining basic freedoms of expression and assembly in these countries. The authorities in Nepal, which have recently received a 50 percent boost in aid from Beijing, have violently suppressed Tibetan demonstrations, including the arrest of thousands of exiles in 2008. In December of last year, Cambodia’s government forcibly repatriated 20 Uighurs to China, where they face almost certain imprisonment and torture. Three days later, Beijing announced a package of deals with Cambodia estimated at $1 billion.

Even more democratically developed countries are not immune to such pressures. In March 2009, the South African government barred the Dalai Lama’s attendance at a pre-World Cup peace conference.

Third, Chinese aid funds are frequently conditioned on being used to purchase goods from firms selected by Chinese officials without an open bidding process. In Namibia, anti-corruption agencies are investigating suspected kickbacks in a deal involving security scanners purchased by the government from a company until recently headed by President Hu Jintao’s son. Beijing’s response has been to stonewall investigations and activate its robust Internet censorship apparatus, sanitizing online references to the case Chinese citizens might stumble across.

Observers such as the scholar Larry Diamond have identified countries that are semi-democratic, rather than autocracies, as the most promising ground for expanding the ranks of consolidated democracies globally. The patently negative aspects of the Chinese Communist Party’s developing world influence could deal a real blow to this aspiration.

Findings from Freedom House’s global analysis of political rights and civil liberties put this phenomenon in perspective. Over the past five years countries with only some features of institutionalized democratic systems have slipped significantly — 57 countries within the “partly free” category have experienced declines, while only 38 improved.

Beijing’s deepening involvement in these cases may generate a number of effects, some perhaps positive for short-term economic development. But the dark underbelly of the Chinese regime’s involvement — the opacity of its aid and the illiberal conditions that underpin it — means that over the long haul, incentives for strengthening accountable governance and basic human rights are being warped, or even reversed.

Christopher Walker is director of studies and Sarah Cook is an Asia researcher at Freedom House.

READ MORE - The Dark Side of China Aid

In Cambodia, unity is strength

March 24, 2010
By Gaffar Peang-Meth
Guest Commentary
UPI Asia Online

Washington, DC, United States, — No stone has been left unturned by writers in Cambodia and abroad in exposing the Hun Sen regime’s violations of human rights and lack of good governance. Endless appeals for change have been made by reputable national and international nongovernmental organizations.

But this is merely water off a duck’s back to the regime. It’s futile. Besides, the duck may even enjoy the water.

A former comrade-in-arms, now in the ranks of Premier Hun Sen’s armed forces – neutralized, sidelined and mistrusted, like others who chose to remain in the country and join Sen to earn enough money to live – tells me of the ruling Cambodian elite’s philosophy: “Write all you want until the cows come home. Nothing will change until we are ready. Besides, we can sue you!”

But Sen and his elite continue to fatten themselves with amassed wealth as they ride above the law, while the poor scavenge city dumps for food and are evicted from their land so it can be developed for others’ profit. The country’s natural resources are looted for personal gain, and many in the international community continue business as usual with Sen because it’s profitable.

It is an evident truth that the 1991 Paris Peace Accords, intended to establish democracy in the country, were never implemented.

Many have been sued by the government; the main opposition leader, Sam Rainsy, faces jail should he return to Phnom Penh from Paris. Earlier, royalist opposition leader Prince Norodom Ranariddh, son of King Sihanouk, half-brother of current King Sihamoni, swore off politics to be allowed to return from self-imposed exile in Malaysia. Ranariddh is quiet; as all the royals are quiet. The king continues to be Sen’s rubber stamp – even signing a royal decree nominating a neighboring country’s fugitive leader as advisor to the government.

Not that Cambodians and non-Cambodians don’t see and don’t know these things. They do, but most don’t think these things affect them directly and personally. Worse, many brush off what is unpleasant as they scapegoat others, assign blame and absolve themselves from culpability.

“There's none so blind as those who will not see,” a saying goes.

Another former comrade-in-arms who has read my columns over the years and is now also with the Sen regime, asked me, “You still want to transform ducks into peacocks?” The Greek philosopher Plato said long ago: “Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.”

Plato’s “fools” are dangerous because they are ignorant. Martin Luther King observed, “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Last week, I emailed an acquaintance two quotes, one from prominent psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, “The system isn't stupid, but the people in it are”; and another from Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” Who and what people are, I wrote, determine their actions. Thus, we must begin change with ourselves.

Back to Hun Sen’s Cambodia. Although Sen and his ruling Cambodian People’s Party do have support inside and outside the country, Cambodian Action Committee for Justice and Equity president Serey Ratha Sourn’s pertinent question deserves consideration. “If Hun Sen and the ruling party have no fear of Cambodians at the grassroots level rising up at the right time in a People Power against them, why did he and the CPP rush a new criminal code limiting the number of demonstrators and block the rights of expression?”

Sourn doesn’t believe that an election in contemporary Cambodia would have any meaning. With power concentrated in the same hands that suppress dissent, trample laws and instill fear, Sen is certain to win and the election is only a tool to legitimize his oppression.

A grassroots activist, Sourn sees “People Power” as possible, and as the only route to bring change. He and his supporters are working to implement a strategy of “One Mission, One Message and One Multitude” – Sourn’s three M’s. So they devote their time to setting up networks of people, monks and youth.

While a Western reader wrote that “most people” in Cambodia “have accommodated to the prevailing political situation” and are moving on “to make ends meet rather than worry about how change could be brought about,” some Cambodians in the country have told me the people need to read my articles, but in the Khmer language – confirming Sourn’s and others’ contention that as Cambodians understand, they will rise up.

Talk of creating a government-in-exile has dissipated. Such an action would be futile. It would be easy to create and announce it. World governments might sympathize with Cambodians’ plight, but realpolitik dictates that they balance between the devil they know and the devil they don’t know.

Some history does seem to repeat. As it was in the 1970s and 1980s with the Cambodian Non-Communist Resistance and the associated coalition government, in the final analysis, foreigners called the shots.

Cambodians, like others in the world, are generally impatient with slow results in an era of push-buttons and of instant gratification. Many want change in Cambodia – and wish a government-in-exile or armed resistance would produce the change.

It is those impatient Cambodians who scoff at retired Johns Hopkins professor Rananhkiri Tith’s call for a “systematic overhaul” of Cambodian society as a way to slow down and perhaps “save” Cambodia from disintegration. Tith’s scheme would take a long time to be successful.

Lasting change has a chance as a population becomes more educated. But it could take 20 years before education bears fruit.

Sadly, while the Sen regime consolidates its power, his critics are in disarray. Cambodians have learned since their youth, “l’union fait la force,” or unity is strength. And many have learned U.S. founding father Benjamin Franklin’s words, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately,” as he called on American rebels either to band together or find themselves hung individually at the British gallows. Thus, E Pluribus Unum – out of many, one: the 13 colonies banded together as the United States of America.

Thus 233 years later, in July 2009, the 44th U.S. president, Barack Obama, told Ghana’s Parliament, “We must start with a simple premise that Africa’s future is up to Africans,” and, “With strong institutions and a strong will, I know that Africans can live their dreams.”

Cambodians should hear Obama’s words.
--
(Dr. Gaffar Peang-Meth is retired from the University of Guam, where he taught political science for 13 years. He currently lives in the United States. He can be contacted at peangmeth@gmail.com. ©Copyright Gaffar Peang-Meth.)

READ MORE - In Cambodia, unity is strength

Cambodia finally drafting laws to curb acid attacks

Wed Mar 24, 2010
By Prak Chan Thul

PHNOM PENH (Reuters Life!) - Keo Sreyvy is scarred for life after hot acid was poured on her in a vicious attack. Her body is covered in burns. She is blind in one eye.

Like scores of other acid attack victims in Cambodia, Keo Sreyvy knows her attacker very well -- her brother-in-law -- but the police have so far done nothing to bring him to justice.

But after years of indifference to a rise in acid attacks across Cambodia, which have disfigured both men and women, authorities are drafting legislation to restrict acid sales and punish perpetrators, part of attempts to tidy up its image as the impoverished country develops its economy.

Often dismissed as fits of jealous rage, the attacks are now at the center of a national debate over how to treat a readily available substance used to clean jewelry, unclog drains, maintain vehicles and, increasingly, to attack people.

After seven attacks in 2008, the number jumped to 28 in 2009. Ten attacks have been reported this year alone, according to the nonprofit Cambodia Acid Survivors Charity.

Legislation in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, where acid attacks are also common, was being studied and a new law would soon be in place, said Ouk Kimlek, a top police general and senior Interior Ministry official.

Authorities say the law would punish attackers with up to life in prison and require all acid sellers be licensed. Both acid sellers and buyers would need to carry identification proving that they are older than 20.

"If he's arrested, I would ask that he is executed," said Keo Sreyvy, who was attacked a year ago by her brother-in-law, who blamed her for the breakup in his marriage.

"This left me a widow with three children. It's destroyed my body and my life," she said.
Rights groups normally critical of Cambodia's law enforcement agencies have heaped praise on the government for its newfound enthusiasm toward curbing the problem.

"We support the government," said Pung Chiv Kek, president of local rights group Licadho. "We want to see a good law."

Ziad Samman, a case coordinator at the Cambodia Acid Survivors Charity, said the attacks often went unpunished because they were dismissed as domestic rows.

The move comes as Cambodia seeks to clean up its reputation for human rights abuses, rampant corruption, and lax law enforcement, factors that have deterred foreign investors.

Strict laws on weapons sales made acid a cheap and readily available alternative, and victims are from both sexes.

Sam Bunnarith a former salesman, is now blind in both eyes after he was attacked by his own wife because of his infidelity.

"She didn't expect I would lose sight in both my eyes, she just wanted my face to look bad," he said, adding his wife wanted to disfigure him so he was no longer attractive to other women.

(Editing by Martin Petty and Miral Fahmy)

READ MORE - Cambodia finally drafting laws to curb acid attacks