Drug-resistant malaria 'growing' in Cambodia

Thursday, 25 February 2010
By Guy DeLauney
BBC News, Phnom Penh

Parasites are developing resistance to one of the most important anti-malaria drugs, according to experts.

Artimisinin has been highly effective, particularly in places where resistance to other drugs has developed.

But now some patients along Cambodia's border with Thailand are taking longer to respond to the treatment.

Experts on the disease are meeting village health workers in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, to discuss ways to stop drug-resistant malaria spreading.

Malaria Consortium technical director Dr Sylvia Meek says it must be eliminated before it spreads.

"There is a lot of population movement - people coming for instance from Nigeria to Asia - and it's growing and growing," she said.

"It would only take a few people carrying the resistant parasites travelling one way or the other to actually get the parasites in.

"And once they're in they're likely to spread quite fast."

READ MORE - Drug-resistant malaria 'growing' in Cambodia

Mekong River Runs Dry; Cargo Ships Grounded For 10 Days

CHIANG RAI, Feb 25 (Bernama) -- Thailand's exports via Chiang Sean district in this northernmost province have been affected by a severe drought affecting the Mekong River, the 12th-longest river in the world and the 7th-longest in Asia, according to Thai News agency on Thursday.

According to Winai Chintongprasert, head of the Chiang Saen customhouse, the river, which forms the border of Thailand with Laos and Cambodia, and Laos with China, has run completely dry, with a very long line of sand dune islands in the middle of the river.

With such conditions, it forced freighters from Thailand's Chiang Saen Port to China's Guanlei Port in Yunnan province and vice versa to have halted their runs for over 10 days.

Thai cargoes valued at more than Bt150 million are stranded aboard ships. The cargoes included palm oil, energy drinks and dehydrated longan.

The water level in Mekong River has fallen since the end of December and continued to decrease dramatically during February.

READ MORE - Mekong River Runs Dry; Cargo Ships Grounded For 10 Days

Vietnam can export many kinds of farm products, especially vegetables, to Cambodia ... That says it all!!!

An Giang expands agricultural cooperation with Cambodia

02/25/2010
VOV News (Hanoi)

Many businesses in the southern province of An Giang provide aquatic varieties and technical assistance to help Cambodian farmers reap higher profits.

Under an agricultural cooperation programme between An Giang and neighbouring provinces in Cambodia, Vietnam can export many kinds of farm products, especially vegetables, to Cambodia, Sai Gon Giai Phong newspaper reported on February 24.

Cambodia is calling for the cooperation of Vietnamese farmers boosting in farm production on its 6,000-7,000 ha of land, according to the newspaper.

READ MORE - Vietnam can export many kinds of farm products, especially vegetables, to Cambodia ... That says it all!!!

Cambodia court warns lawyers for KRouge leader

Former Khmer Rouge deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs Ieng Sary sits in the courtroom during a public hearing at the Extraodinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC) in Phnom Penh on February 11. Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes court on Thursday warned lawyers for Sary to follow court rules or face possible sanctions for misconduct.
26/02/2010
AFP

Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes court on Thursday warned lawyers for the former foreign minister of the Khmer Rouge regime to follow court rules or face possible sanctions for misconduct.

Ieng Sary's defence team, which includes US lawyer Michael Karnavas and Cambodian lawyer Ang Udom, received the warning after they filed three documents on matters already addressed by the tribunal.

Ieng Sary, 84, is one of five top regime figures detained in connection with the Khmer Rouge's bloody rule over Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, when up to two million people died from starvation, overwork or execution.

His team has raised several issues concerning their request to conduct their own investigations, access to the entire trial dossier and their alleged "lack of confidence" in the co-investigating judges and their staff.

But court documents released Thursday said communications from them showed disregard for the rules for the filing of documents, for judicial investigations procedures and warned against "duplicitous filings".

It said that breaches of the court's warnings "will result in the application of sanctions against them."

The judges warned Ieng Sary's lawyers that "they are prohibited from submitting duplicitous filings or filing made against matters already addressed on appeal..."

They also warned the lawyers that "they are prohibited from conducting their own investigations."

Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998. Final arguments in the court's first trial, of former prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, ended in November and a verdict is expected after April this year.

Besides Ieng Sary and his wife, former social affairs minister Ieng Thirith, the other ex-leaders in jail awaiting trial for genocide are "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea and former head of state Khieu Samphan.

READ MORE - Cambodia court warns lawyers for KRouge leader

Cambodia pushes out the poor

February 25, 2010
By Joel Elliott
Special to GlobalPost

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Rumbling bulldozers at 2 a.m. sent residents of the Dey Krahorm community scrambling from their beds. The time for eviction had come — not of an individual, or of a family, but as the final stage in the demolition of a 1,400-family neighborhood.

Neighbors and family members tried to stop the bulldozers and excavators from tearing down their homes by linking arms and forming a human wall around their neighborhood. But they could not withstand the tear gas. They broke ranks, choking and coughing. Besides tear gas, police beat residents with electric batons and fired rubber bullets into crowds.

The January 2009 incident was caught on videotape and set the tone for a year that brought the largest number of mass evictions in Phnom Penh since 1975, when Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge evacuated the entire city in the process of killing more than 2 million Cambodians.

Over the past year, according to the Cambodia Housing Rights Task Force, a NGO dedicated to the issue, the Phnom Penh government has evicted and relocated an estimated 20,000 people, part of an increasing trend over the past decade in which poor people are being forcibly moved out of the city, and rich and powerful private companies take the land.

About 133,000 people have been evicted since 1990 from Phnom Penh alone, according to Licadho, a human rights organization, and an estimated 250,000 more have been displaced in the provinces since 2003.

“My neighbor, when he saw the truck breaking his house, he tried to jump in front of the truck and die, but another neighbor stopped him,” a 19-year-old former resident, who gave only her first name, Lina, said. “The people were crying. They did not have time to take their possessions out of their homes before the men broke them down.”

Lina told her story as we stood atop a nearby building, looking down on the site, now a dusty lot filled with rubble.

While those evicted in Phnom Penh are the most visible victims, land-grabbing and forced displacement is happening all over the country at an unprecedented rate, said David Pred, director of Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia, an organization that promotes human rights in the region.

“This is the most serious human rights problem in Cambodia today,” Pred said of the land-grabbing. “It is not getting nearly the attention it deserves.”

Pred said that more than one quarter of Cambodia’s arable land has been granted to private corporations in the form of economic land concessions, displacing people from their farm lands and forests that they depend upon for their subsistence. If they have paperwork proving ownership, they might receive some sort of compensation, but most do not, according to Phearum Sia, director of the Housing Rights Task Force, another advocacy group in Phnom Penh. Renters are not compensated.

In Phnom Penh, the government usually loads those it evicts onto buses and transports them to a distant point and drops them off. The government sometimes ensures adequate housing; other times, the former residents find themselves in an empty field with nothing.

At some relocation sites, residents who worked in the city said they sometimes paid more per day in fuel costs traveling to Phnom Penh and back than they earned in a day.

Community members have occasionally protested, but these efforts sometimes backfire. A 2008 land dispute in Siem Reap between poor rice farmers and the government ended in multiple arrests and the police opening fire on a crowd of about 200 people, injuring four. Other protests fizzle before confrontation. Ghosts of the Khmer Rouge terror linger in the national psyche, Sia said.

“We work to empower the people, but the people are poor, and weak in their solidarity,” Sia said. “Our communities are still affected by the Pol Pot regime. He killed without law and without justice.”

Mann Chhoen, deputy governor of Phnom Penh, said he is responsible for land rights issues, but twice declined comment for this article.

Phnom Penh city police guard the sites of impending evictions and attempt to keep out NGO workers and journalists. At one site on Boeung Kak Lake, where a Cambodian development company known as Shukaku seized 3.6 hectares of land and began using the city’s police force to evict the occupants, police on three occasions barred our way and threatened us with arrest for even approaching the site where several evictions were in progress.

At Dey Krahorm, 200 former residents observed the one-year anniversary of their eviction, Jan. 24, with a procession to the edge of the wall surrounding their former neighborhood. Police officers in plain clothes, their walkie-talkies peeking from beneath their polo shirts, monitored the gathering and photographed the faces of those present, but didn’t try to break up the gathering.

There was no point.

The government had already destroyed their homes.

READ MORE - Cambodia pushes out the poor

Migrants face abuse, extortion in Thailand

http://www.rnw.n/

via CAAI News Media

Published on : 23 February 2010

By International Justice Desk (wikimedia commons)

Migrant workers in Thailand face extortion, arbitrary detention, forced labour and physical abuse, sometimes at the hands of officials in a climate of impunity, a rights group said on Tuesday.

"Migrants in Thailand have been subjected to various forms of abuses, ranging from extrajudicial killings, torture to arbitrary arrests and sexual violence," said the group's representative in Thailand, Sunai Phasuk.

He was speaking at the launch of a report based on 82 interviews with people from neighbouring Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos, who make up a large part of the estimated 1.8 million to 3 million migrants in Thailand.

Migrant workers are a key source of manual labour in the $264 billion economy, Southeast Asia's second biggest, employed widely in the construction, tourism and manufacturing sectors.

"Migrant workers make huge contributions to Thailand's economy, but receive little protection," said Brad Adams, Asia director of HRW.

Abuse and arrests

Migrants "suffer horribly at the hands of corrupt civil servants and police, unscrupulous employers and violent thugs, who all realise they can abuse migrants with little fear of consequences", he added.

HRW said many migrants were treated like "walking ATMs", or cash machines, and faced arbitrary arrest and extortio

In one case in 2007, a migrant from Myanmar, Su Su, said she saw two policemen in south western Ranong province kick a young Burmese man to death because he did not respond to their inquiries, made in Thai.

The report accused law enforcement authorities of failing to investigate ordinary crimes against migrants, including those perpetrated by employers that police are sometimes complicit in.

In another case, two assailants killed a Burmese man working at a rubber plantation before raping his wife. Although semen was collected and a suspect named in a police report, investigators suspended the case after a year, saying more evidence was needed.

Government against abuse

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva insisted the government did not condone abuse by officials. "If there are cases of violation [of human rights], we will not ignore them," he told reporters.

The report warned that enforcement of the government's 28 February deadline for nationality verification could lead to mass deportations, which would increase the risk of abuse.

The process is complicated, prohibitively expensive and unrealistic, HRW said, particularly for migrants from military-ruled Myanmar, many of whom entered Thailand illegally after suffering political and economic repression at home.

Abhisit said there were no plans for mass deportations and workers had two years to complete the process.

Source: Reuters

The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) also raised concern about the 28 February deadline for more than a million migrant workers to start a process to verify their nationality, or face immediate deportation from Thailand.

READ MORE - Migrants face abuse, extortion in Thailand

Vietnamese Gamblers Make Beeline For Cambodia

Feb 23rd, 2010
NAM NEWS NETWORK

PHNOM PENH, Feb 23 (NNN-CIC) — Vietnamese gamblers, who are prohibited from entering local casinos in their country, are flocking to casinos and other gambling venues in neighboring Cambodia, with the influx peaking during the Lunar New Year this month.

Vietnamese casinos are open only to foreigners and overseas Vietnamese and it is a tradition during Tet for Vietnamese to gamble. Winning is great and brings luck during the rest of the year but the popular belief is that losing just means they will be lucky at other things like love.

Cambodia, Thailand, and Macau have become beneficiaries as Vietnamese go in droves to these places to gamble.

Cambodia has nine large casinos along the Vietnam border.

The casinos operate legally and attract the moneyed lot who are willing to splurge hundreds of thousands of dollars to test their luck while enjoying luxurious service.

B., a frequent visitor to the Chrey Thum Casino — which is only a few hundred meters from the Khanh Binh border gate in An Giang Province — told Tuoi Tre that more than 100 Vietnamese go there every day.

Each brings tens of millions of dong to bet on cockfights or play Chinese dice games, he said.

The venue also has a cockfighting ring and hotel and is blanketed with cameras while a team of armed guards keep an eye on the gamblers.

Regulars to the casinos get free pickups and VIP cards that come with free meals and accommodation when they run out of money.

The Garden Stones Casino in Takeo Province attracts Vietnamese punters interested in playing poker and blackjack.

But the casinos are not the only venues attracting Vietnamese gamblers.

?If you don?t want to reveal your identity by playing at fancy casinos,? Th. a veteran gambler from Tinh Bien District, An Giang, said, ?just cross over from Tri Ton District into Cambodia and you will find a casino in a field where every type of game is available.?

Rich people from rural areas often go there to play, he said. ?There are security guards, so you don?t have to worry about anything.?

The so-called casino is an ordinary-looking house in the middle of a rice field surrounded by a metal net.

Its parking lot is packed with motorbikes with license plates from Vietnamese provinces like An Giang, Kien Giang, Dong Thap, Hau Giang, and Can Tho.

?When police in southwestern Vietnamese provinces tightened control over the operation of local casinos, a gangster named S. in An Giang teamed up with Cambodians to open this casino,? Th. said.

?More and more border residents are flocking to this place. On the first few days of the New Year, there were 400 to 500 people daily.?

The main language used at the gambling places is Vietnamese because of the high concentration of Vietnamese.

Th. said some well-heeled gamblers like U. and L. from Can Tho city often bet VND5 million ($267) to VND10 million on a single game.

?L. lost VND200 million in three days and so has come back today, hoping to win back some of the money.?

A number of people lost billions of dong, he added.

The illegal casinos charge each gambler an entry fee of VND10,000 and have security guards who keep a watchful eye.

They also have some rules: gamblers cannot play without money in their pockets, cheat, or take photos.

It is estimated that each of these illegal casino earn VND100 million ($5,333) a day while most of its Vietnamese patrons go home empty-handed.

Casinos made a considerable contribution to Cambodia?s tourism industry, the country?s second-biggest earner after agriculture.

Cambodia generated revenues of $19 million from its 29 casinos in 2008, according to its Finance Ministry.

It fell to $17 million last year, with the decline attributed to a fall in tourist arrivals and rising border tensions with neighboring Thailand, according to Reuters.

A 10th casino on the Vietnamese border is expected to open its doors on February 26.

The Titan King Casino is just a kilometer from the Moc Bai border gate, and Kith Thieng, the owner of the $100 million casino, said Vietnamese gamblers are the prime targets.

READ MORE - Vietnamese Gamblers Make Beeline For Cambodia

Vietnamese Gamblers Make Beeline For Cambodia

Feb 23rd, 2010
NAM NEWS NETWORK

PHNOM PENH, Feb 23 (NNN-CIC) — Vietnamese gamblers, who are prohibited from entering local casinos in their country, are flocking to casinos and other gambling venues in neighboring Cambodia, with the influx peaking during the Lunar New Year this month.

Vietnamese casinos are open only to foreigners and overseas Vietnamese and it is a tradition during Tet for Vietnamese to gamble. Winning is great and brings luck during the rest of the year but the popular belief is that losing just means they will be lucky at other things like love.

Cambodia, Thailand, and Macau have become beneficiaries as Vietnamese go in droves to these places to gamble.

Cambodia has nine large casinos along the Vietnam border.

The casinos operate legally and attract the moneyed lot who are willing to splurge hundreds of thousands of dollars to test their luck while enjoying luxurious service.

B., a frequent visitor to the Chrey Thum Casino — which is only a few hundred meters from the Khanh Binh border gate in An Giang Province — told Tuoi Tre that more than 100 Vietnamese go there every day.

Each brings tens of millions of dong to bet on cockfights or play Chinese dice games, he said.

The venue also has a cockfighting ring and hotel and is blanketed with cameras while a team of armed guards keep an eye on the gamblers.

Regulars to the casinos get free pickups and VIP cards that come with free meals and accommodation when they run out of money.

The Garden Stones Casino in Takeo Province attracts Vietnamese punters interested in playing poker and blackjack.

But the casinos are not the only venues attracting Vietnamese gamblers.

?If you don?t want to reveal your identity by playing at fancy casinos,? Th. a veteran gambler from Tinh Bien District, An Giang, said, ?just cross over from Tri Ton District into Cambodia and you will find a casino in a field where every type of game is available.?

Rich people from rural areas often go there to play, he said. ?There are security guards, so you don?t have to worry about anything.?

The so-called casino is an ordinary-looking house in the middle of a rice field surrounded by a metal net.

Its parking lot is packed with motorbikes with license plates from Vietnamese provinces like An Giang, Kien Giang, Dong Thap, Hau Giang, and Can Tho.

?When police in southwestern Vietnamese provinces tightened control over the operation of local casinos, a gangster named S. in An Giang teamed up with Cambodians to open this casino,? Th. said.

?More and more border residents are flocking to this place. On the first few days of the New Year, there were 400 to 500 people daily.?

The main language used at the gambling places is Vietnamese because of the high concentration of Vietnamese.

Th. said some well-heeled gamblers like U. and L. from Can Tho city often bet VND5 million ($267) to VND10 million on a single game.

?L. lost VND200 million in three days and so has come back today, hoping to win back some of the money.?

A number of people lost billions of dong, he added.

The illegal casinos charge each gambler an entry fee of VND10,000 and have security guards who keep a watchful eye.

They also have some rules: gamblers cannot play without money in their pockets, cheat, or take photos.

It is estimated that each of these illegal casino earn VND100 million ($5,333) a day while most of its Vietnamese patrons go home empty-handed.

Casinos made a considerable contribution to Cambodia?s tourism industry, the country?s second-biggest earner after agriculture.

Cambodia generated revenues of $19 million from its 29 casinos in 2008, according to its Finance Ministry.

It fell to $17 million last year, with the decline attributed to a fall in tourist arrivals and rising border tensions with neighboring Thailand, according to Reuters.

A 10th casino on the Vietnamese border is expected to open its doors on February 26.

The Titan King Casino is just a kilometer from the Moc Bai border gate, and Kith Thieng, the owner of the $100 million casino, said Vietnamese gamblers are the prime targets.

READ MORE - Vietnamese Gamblers Make Beeline For Cambodia

Duck Shot's (aka Tea Banh) kowtow visit to Hanoi

Vietnamese and Cambodian Armies boost cooperation

02/23/2010
VOV News (Hanoi)

The Vietnam People’s Army and the Royal Cambodian Army will strengthen their cooperation in visit exchanges, training, border management and security, and the location and repatriation of Vietnamese martyrs’ remains.

The agreement came at a recent meeting between Vietnam’s Minister of National Defense, General Phung Quang Thanh, and his counterpart, General Tea Banh, who was on an official visit to Vietnam.

At the meeting, the generals discussed regional and global issues of common interest and evaluated the past cooperation between the Vietnam People’s Army and the Royal Cambodian Army.

General Thanh said General Banh’s visit has helped improve mutual understanding and promote the traditional friendship between the two countries.

READ MORE - Duck Shot's (aka Tea Banh) kowtow visit to Hanoi

Cambodian garment exports drops to 2.6 bln USD in 2009

PHNOM PENH, Feb. 23, 2010 (Xinhua) -- The total value of garment, textiles and shoes exported last year dropped to 2.6 billion U.S. dollars compared with 3.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2008 as a result of global financial downturn, according to the figures of Commerce Ministry on Tuesday.

It said the total exports to the United States, which is Cambodia's biggest garment market, reached 1.5 billion U.S. dollars last year, down from 1.9 billion U.S. dollars in 2008.

The country's Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia ( GMAC) officials would not see the industry to pick up this year.

Kaing Monika, GMAC's spokesman, said "the international financial crisis has greatly impacted us, especially for our garment exports to the U.S. market."

"It is too early to say if exports of the products will increase for this year given the purchasing orders from overseas reserve for exports till June, not through out this year," he said.

The products exported to the EU also dropped to 718 million U.S. dollars last year from 786 million U.S. dollars in 2008, said the report.

The total value of exports to Canada also lowered to 190 million U.S. dollars in 2009 from 202 million U.S. dollars in 2008.

Exporting of the products to Japan and other Asian countries increased to 233 million U.S. dollars last year from 178 million U. S. dollars in 2008, it said.

READ MORE - Cambodian garment exports drops to 2.6 bln USD in 2009