‘Secessionist’ Accusations Continue To Worry Rights Advocates

Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer

04 August 2012 

WASHINGTON DC - Prime Minister Hun Sen has said he wants more suspects questioned in an alleged secessionist plot against the government, sparking concern among rights workers they will be stopped from doing their jobs.

A number of suspects have been rounded up for allegedly leading a plot in Kratie province, a government charge widely considered exaggerated. Among them is Beehive Radio owner Mam Sonando, who remains in prison awaiting trial.

Amnesty International said this week they considered him a “prisoner of conscience” and urged his release. But the premier’s continued pursuit of the so-called secessionist plot will create a chilling effect on rights workers, said Ou Virak, head of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights.

“There will be self-censorship,” he said. “When there is self-censorship, that means this fear will affect the effectiveness of NGO work.”

Mam Sonando’s arrest and the subsequent secessionist crackdown are bad precedents, he said, which could lead to less and less oversight of the government by civil society, whose advocates fear being charged in similar plots.

Mam Sonando is charged with leading the Kratie plot through the Association of  Democrats, following a violent government crackdown on villagers there.

Amnesty said in a statement, however, the real reason behind his arrest seemed to be the popularity of his association and his radio broadcasts, including news of an US-based group that has filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court over the government’s displacement of thousands of families in land disputes.

Four out of five men who were arrested in connection with the alleged secessionist plot have put the blame on Mam Sonando, according to Cambodian justice officials. Another man accused of leading the Kratie plot is Bun Rotha, believed to be hiding in Thailand.

Hun Sen said Wednesday he wanted an NGO official brought to court to answer for Bun Rotha’s escape from the country.

In interviews with VOA Khmer, Bun Rotha has denied there was a secessionist plot in Kratie, where villagers violently opposed a land grab, and said Mam Sonando had nothing to do with the demonstrations there.

Independent political analyst Lao Monghay said this week Hun Sen should leave the issue to law enforcement experts, rather than calling for more court action. His involvement makes the issue political, not legal, he said.

New Judge Has Chance to Improve Tribunal’s Legacy, Monitor Says

Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer

04 August 2012 

WASHINGTON DC - Observers of the Khmer Rouge tribunal say they fear the UN-backed court is not going to be able to complete its work, leaving a failed legacy in the face of government opposition to two more cases.

Latt Ky, a monitor for the rights group Adhoc, said he is concerned with the slow pace of progress in cases 003 and 004, which would require five more arrests and indictments, but the recent UN nomination of an investigating judge could signal continued interest in their pursuit.

“I hope the UN will not leave these cases half way, because if they leave them half way, it’s a failed model for other criminal courts,” he said.

The tribunal, which stood up in 2006, has weathered continued funding woes, allegations of corruption and mismanagement and controversy over government interference.

It is now facing donor fatigue, with international funding dwindling, as well as disillusionment among those victims who have sought to participate in the process, Latt Ky said.

With the UN announcement this week of the appointment of Mark Harmon, an American judge, to replace a resigned investigating judge, the court has a chance to continue its work, he said. “But how much further it can go, I don’t know,” he said.

At stake in cases 003 and 004 are the potential indictments of five more Khmer Rouge cadre, whom prosecutors say were most responsible for mass killings at prison camps, in purges and in labor cooperatives.

Prime Minister Hun Sen has said these cases must not go forward, lest they unsettle former Khmer Rouge. Victims say they want the court to try as many responsible as possible.

Three investigating judges have resigned from their position since the tribunal’s inception. The most recent two were over the two cases, with the last judge, Laurent Kasper-Ansermet, claiming he had faced opposition from his Cambodian counterpart. The office has also seen walkouts of international staff over its handling of the cases.

Latt Ky said he wanted to see the two cases pursued to their conclusion, even if that means only officially naming the five suspects—something the court has refused to do, despite name leaks to local and international media.

Tribunal spokesman Neth Pheaktra said he believed the judges will be able to overcome any problems or differences through internal court procedures. “We don’t believe there is anything we can’t solve when there are obstacles in the future,” he said.

Asean Meeting Failures Continue to Ripple

Nash Jenkins, VOA Khmer

04 August 2012 

When the Asean Regional Forum came to a discordant end in Phnom Penh last month, analysts say the aftermath has exposed two brands of failure.

There were the more blatant shortcomings, like the inability to draft legitimate plans for resolving territorial conflict in the South China Sea, and then there were the consequences of these failings: a neglect of timely issues that have now found a place on Asean’s backburner.

Plans for economic integration in Southeast Asia were among the topics to hear little constructive discourse, as has been the case since Southeast Asian foreign ministers first drafted the outline for a “stronger, more united, cohesive Asean” in 2008.

The plans call for the establishment of the Asean Economic Community: a multilateral economic entity that will blanket Southeast Asian countries with a single-market system with the open flow of goods, services, capital, and investment. It is a comprehensive goal, fundamentally economic in theory but inevitably political and sociocultural in consequence, and an ambitious one, Asean officials and representatives have come to realize.

The Roadmap for an Asean Community, published in 2009 as a manual of sorts for the cohesion process, holds 2015 as the point at which the world will see clear results of the efforts in economic integration. The Community’s six-year construction period is now half over, with little marked improvement in terms of economic unification.

The plans themselves are broad-reaching and written with the trademark ambiguity of most Asean initiatives, touting the envisioned body as a “rules-based community of values and norms.”

The most substantive step towards unification since 2009 has been the implementation of the Asean Single Window – a loosening of customs standards, thus far only in certain member states – a process that “took years, step by step by step,” Gregory Poling, a research associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said.

Baby-step progress, Poling said, is par for the course in Asean legislation, and that further steps in the creation of the Asean Economic Community will follow the same tempo. In other words, the 2015 benchmark is an empty one.

“You’re going to see it in every single effort,” Poling said. “Asean will set a timetable and say, ‘we’ll have currency markets linked by X date.’ When X date comes along, they’ll be at step one of five, and then they’ll all agree through consensus that they’ll go through step two, step three, and so on, until it’s finally finished.”

At present, what defines the network of Asean’s constituent countries as a whole is precisely that which does not. The 10 states that belong to the body are politically, financially, and culturally disparate, falling along a spectrum capped on one end by Singapore, with one of the world’s most developed capitalist economies, and on the other by nations like Laos, which appears without fail on the United Nations’ annual list of the world’s least developed countries.

Poling argues that this development gap is fundamentally prohibitive to integration: countries like Cambodia and Laos simply lack the capacity to keep up.

Accommodating the limitations of these countries often proves to be a matter of hindsight, resulting in a regular reevaluation of goals and schedules that ultimately leaves the underdog states – those on the mainland, generally – in the dust.

“Asean is notoriously bad at setting realistic timetables for things, and notoriously bad at changing those timetables when it becomes apparent that they’re not realistic,” Poling said. “[This] is why they make vague pronouncements like ‘the less developed countries will be exempted from these requirements until such a time where they are able to fulfill them.’ This essentially means ‘we’re going to move ahead minus mainland southeast Asia until they decide they’re ready to join.’”

Progress also falls short in the face of the region’s ideological clashes, exemplified by the disorder over the South China Sea issue at the Asean Regional Forum in Phnom Penh. The inability of Asean leaders to draft a clear plan for resolving the issue was amplified by heated disagreements and allegations of corruption, suggesting to many a fundamental lack of concord in Southeast Asia.

In short, Poling said, any real plans for Asean as an integrated, unified economic entity within the designated timeframe are “aspirational.” Progress will be seen most clearly on the upper end of the demographic spectrum, with middle-level countries like Malaysia and Thailand gaining the most traction. Ostensibly, the blueprints depict something similar in both fashion and function to the European Union, a parallel that has drawn concern in the wake of the Eurozone financial crisis.

Poling dismisses this similarity, expounding the words of Asean leaders.

“The EU is an entirely different model of integration than Asean,” reads a fact sheet distributed by Asean officials in 2008 to clarify concerns written in the blueprint for the Asean Economic Community.

Poling elaborates, citing crucial differences between Europe and Southeast Asia. Europe’s history is one of perennial conflict across the borders within it, contrasted with the relative isolationism of each of the individual nations in Southeast Asia. Above all, though, it remains an issue of disparity: the gaps in capacity between certain Asean member states are perhaps too wide to bridge.

“Look at the Eurozone,” Poling said. “Look at a place like Germany compared to Greece. That is one tiny, tiny fraction of the gap between a Singapore and a Laos.”

In the wake of Europe’s financial crisis, Asean leaders have further reevaluated their plans for cohesion. Asean has no plans for the creation of a common currency or political identity – defining hallmarks of the European Union – and if they did, recent history would question their potential efficacy.

For now, Poling said, Asean will continue to pursue the “low-hanging fruit” of integration opportunities: logistically tenable developments that, if nothing else, will tether the weakest countries in the region with stronger bodies.

Cambodia Spring' Unlikely, Political Observers Say

Nash Jenkins, VOA Khmer

01 August 2012 

WASHINGTON, D.C. - In the year and a half of turmoil that has followed the Arab Spring of early 2011, policymakers and analysts have turned to the geopolitical map to assess whether or not the domino-effect revolutionary patterns in the Middle East will catch on in other corners of the developing world.

Southeast Asia, a region with political instability and economic underdevelopment on par with that of pre-revolutionary Syria, has proven prone to this scrutiny.

However, there is little support for the notion of a “Cambodian Spring,” observers say.

The Cambodian government has long held the same characteristics that spurred upheaval after upheaval across the Middle East last year: corrupt processes of lawmaking with roots in patronage, a leader whose power seems to approach permanence in spite of “fair” and “regular” election, and a habit of persecution against those who speak out against it.

Still, that has not been enough to overcome the comforts Cambodians have enjoyed since decades of conflicted ended.

Ultimately, the Cambodian people must decide for themselves when it will be will be worth jeopardizing their hard-won relative security in pursuit of a modern democracy.

Faine Greenwood, Author, "Is a Cambodian Spring Approaching? Not Any Time Soon."

“Cambodians are becoming comfortable for the first time in quite a long time,” journalist and blogger Faine Greenwood told VOA Khmer. “They’re making more money, and they don’t want to mess things up… relatively speaking, things are OK.

Greenwood, who lived in Phnom Penh while reporting for the Cambodia Daily, maintains a blog in which she presents her take on the cultural and political affairs of Cambodia and the surrounding region. In a June 5 post, she responded at length to concerns that the flimsy democracy of longtime Prime Minister Hun Sen would prompt a widespread rebellion by the country’s people.

“As depressing as this may sound to outsiders, things will likely have to get much, much worse in Cambodia before the average citizen becomes even vaguely interested in jeopardizing the nation’s relative peace and stability in the name of revolution,” she wrote.

Greenwood said she was prompted to write her post by an article in Foreign Policy by former Phnom Penh Post reporter Thomas Mann Miller, who argues that a legitimate political shift is not on Cambodia’s horizon. To support this claim, Miller relies on the general inefficiency of the opposition Sam
Rainsy Party.

“Rainsy's strategy is premised on a shaky gamble: That the Cambodian people will risk the stability gained in recent years to confront a powerful and entrenched elite with control over all arms of the state,” he writes. “Analysts describe such a scenario as farfetched.

Greenwood, however, takes a broader approach to her disdain.

“[Miller] focused primarily on Sam Rainsy, but I thought there were some other real cultural issues and historic issues that have precluded any ‘Cambodian Spring,’” Greenwood told VOA Khmer in an e-mail.

In her essay, she highlights the wide disparity between the people of Cambodia and the revolutionary masses in the Middle East. The general lack of technological connectivity in Cambodia prohibits access from the media that largely sustained the Arab Spring, especially social media websites, which were so imperative for discussions and planning in Egypt and Libya that one Egyptian man named his newborn daughter “Facebook.”

“I think as more and more Cambodians get online, which is going to happen, it’ll be much more likely for something like this to happen,” Greenwood said. “It would be very hard to organize a revolution over Facebook or Twitter in Cambodia. Give it 10 or 15 years.”

Some hurdles, however, appear more difficult to break down. She points out the fact that in spite of countless government acts of repression against his people and its sizeable blip on the international human rights radar, Hun Sen ultimately isn’t widely unpopular in Cambodia.

“He does a good job of being a populist,” Greenwood said. “He’ll go out in the rice paddies. He’ll visit people in the provinces. He’ll be at every school opening, he’ll be at graduations, he’ll be at groundbreakings – he’s visible. People view him as a man…who’s been wounded in battle, as someone who understands them better than, say, Sam Rainsy.”

Greenwood concurs with Miller on the weakness of the Sam Rainsy Party as a viable alternative to Hun Sen’s regime, citing the opposition’s struggle to maintain popularity in recent elections. Sam Rainsy has seen a considerable decrease of support in the country’s larger cities, once a bastion for support of the party’s contrarian views.
Beyond the variable factors, however, she points out one crucial deficiency among the Cambodian people: the lack of any sort of revolutionary spirit. The mindset of many Cambodians, she says, is largely a passive one, a response to years under a leadership for whom free expression was a capital
offense.

“Some of the young Cambodians I’ve spoken with have said that their parents have told them all their lives that they shouldn’t fight or speak out – they need to be quiet and keep things as they are,” she said. “So many of these young people are thinking that things are OK right now. That might change.”

Cambodia’s political merger: maximising the potential

Wednesday, 01 August 2012

Ou Virak

 

The announcement last week from Manila that Cambodia’s two largest opposition parties – the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) and the Human Rights Party (HRP) – are to merge under the banner of the Democratic Movement for National Rescue (DMNR) represents a great sign of hope for Cambodia’s beleaguered democracy.

For the first time in two decades, the Cambodian electorate may be given the option of a genuine and viable alternative to the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP).

However, to attract Cambodia’s disenchanted electorate back to the polling booth – turnout for this year’s commune elections was just 60 per cent compared to 87 per cent ten years ago – and to maximise its chances of winning next year’s general elections, the DMNR should take the following steps:

Put party policy before personalities: Political parties in Cambodia have traditionally been projections of party leaders – not only Hun Sen’s CPP but also Kem Sokha’s HRP and Sam Rainsy’s eponymous party. Policy issues are relegated, with voters encouraged to vote for individual personalities rather than the parties that offer them the most.

The merger announcement indicates that Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha – president and vice president of the DMNR respectively – are willing to let their personalities take a back seat to the profile of the new party. It is essential, however, that the DMNR can fulfil this profile.

It must ensure that its members take central stage and are allowed to help determine strategy and policy.

Move to the middle: In order to present itself as a viable alternative to the incumbent CPP, the DMNR must reach out to a broader section of society than the SRP’s and HRP’s current support base. While the DMNR should maintain the social goals of those parties, including reform of the country’s land sector, it should also expand its horizons and promote policies that will attract the business vote.

One way of doing this is to propose policies that appeal to small and medium-sized businesses: a pro-business approach which counters the CPP’s elitist policies that favour a small number of well-connected tycoons.

De-radicalise: The marginalisation of the opposition over the past 20 years has given rise to a tendency to promote radical causes to attract voters’ attention and score cheap political points. The most obvious example is the tendency of some opposition members – most famously Sam Rainsy – to chastise the CPP’s links to Vietnam and condemn the loss of Cambodian land to Vietnam.

While such reactions may have some validity, they have not generally been constructive or discerning. If the DMNR is to be truly democratic, it must steer clear of anti-Vietnamese sentiments.

Engage Cambodia’s youth: The CPP has ruled Cambodia for more than 30 years. The party leadership should be congratulated for its role in defeating the Khmer Rouge and for bringing peace and stability to this country. Rather than dwelling on these points, however, it is time for Cambodian politics – and the DMNR – to move on, reach out to the youth, so many of whom were born after the terrors of the 1970s and to whom the CPP’s achievements hold less resonance, and offer a vision whereby all sectors of society have a role to play and dreams to realise.

Promote gender equality: The CPP is now significantly outperforming the SRP and HRP in the area of female representation in politics. In the recent commune elections, 21 per cent of the CPP’s elected candidates were women, while only 11 per cent of the SRP’s elected candidates were women.

The HRP brought up the rear with a shameful 1.5 per cent. If the DMNR is to take office, it will do so riding the crest of a wave of hope and excitement. No such hope and excitement can exist if the new party is just another old boys’ club with the same backward patriarchal attitudes that are manifested in the SRP and HRP.

The DMNR must overcome these shortcomings and look to further gender balance in politics. It must listen to female perspectives from around the country and empower women to run as candidates in next year’s general elections.

Decreases in voter turnout in recent years have been testament to the growing conviction among the electorate that election results are a foregone conclusion and that real change can never really come from the ballot box.

For too long, the opposition has offered little more than a stamp of legitimacy for elections that they never really stood any chance of winning. After years of talks, the merger of the opposition parties represents the most exciting event in Cambodian politics for a long time.

These two erstwhile opponents must now seize their opportunity and offer the Cambodian voter – and the youth in particular – a viable alternative to the entrenched CPP for the first time in 20 years.

Teachers protest relocation

 Teachers-in-training sit in a lecture hall at the National Institute of Education yesterday in Phnom Penh. Photograph: William Kelly/Phnom Penh Post

 

Friday, 03 August 2012

Chhay Channyda and Stuart White

 

Rong Chhun, head of the Cambodian Independent Teachers’ Association, sent a letter to the Ministry of Education on Wednesday asking Minister Im Sethy to rethink a policy that would strip teachers of the ability to choose where they would be posted at the end of further education.

According to a letter by Chhun obtained by the Post, working teachers who returned to the National Institute of Education to receive their “A” certification – which allows them to teach secondary school – could choose to return to their old posts, unlike teachers with no prior experience.

However, new rules introduced on July 12 place experienced teachers on equal footing with their newly minted colleagues, leaving some to face reassignment to far away posts.

“This point makes new teachers want to show their dissatisfaction to the Education Ministry’s directive, because it causes difficulty for them to be far from home, leaving family, children and old parents with no one to look after them,” wrote Chhun.

An anonymous letter, sent to Chhun earlier in the week, which purports to represent the views of 400 teachers and ministry officials enrolled at the NIE, motivated Chhun to take action.

“If there was post selection [like under the new policy], we wouldn’t have spent money to study for a bachelor’s degree and to apply to the National Institute for Education,” the letter states.

Some “A” certification seekers at the NIE said that while they disagreed with the new rule, they would have preferred to issue complaints through the proper channels.

“I feel disappointed with the letter sent to Rong Chhun,” said one such teacher who declined to be named.

“This kind of letter is not our will.”

Chan Kunthear, another enrollee, said that the policy wasn’t inherently bad, but that its timing – just one month before the new teachers were slated to take their posts – was problematic.

“They should have issued it one year ago, and then we could have seen if we agreed [before we started the program],” she said.

 

 

Push for new traffic law

Friday, 03 August 2012

Khoun Leakhana

 

A draft traffic law that has been as gridlocked in parliament as a traffic jam on Monivong Boulevard  during peak hour could be closer to being green-lighted.

The National Road Safety Committee yesterday urged officials from multiple ministries to hasten approval of the new traffic law, which has been with the Council of Ministers for about two years.

Public Works and Transport Minister Tram Iv Tek, who also chairs the NRSC, told attendees at a workshop at the Sunway Hotel that the previous traffic law, which came into force in 2007, was overly complex, adding that a new law would both streamline the code and improve safety on Cambodia’s roads after the traffic death toll nearly reached 2,000 in 2011.

“The draft of the new traffic law came to existence after it was amended due to the complexity of the content of the old one,” he said, adding that the new traffic law also aims to make enforcement easier.

The new law will be sent to the National Assembly soon,  Iv Tek added. According to a preliminary report from Road Crash and Victim Information System, accidents caused by driver error accounted for 95 per cent of collisions, with almost half resulting from speeding. Motorbike riders accounted for two thirds of casualties.

Khan Savoeun, secretary of state at the Ministry of Interior, said the ministry had done its best to revise the law many times to avert traffic problems.

“The majority of traffic accidents are caused by buses, vehicles carrying workers and carts which are always overloaded,” he said.

“Also, most of the passengers sit on the vehicle’s roof or don’t even fasten their seatbelt. The national police will equip all provinces with speed-controlling devices.”

Almost 70 per cent of all road fatalities resulted from head injuries, prompting Prime Minister Hun Sen himself to issue a video clip airing at the workshop and on a number of TV channels appealing to people to wear their helmets.

Immunity verdict today

Friday, 03 August 2012

David Boyle

 

The fight for SRP lawmaker Mu Sochua’s parliamentary immunity is set to end this morning when the Court of Appeal hands down a final ruling more than three years after she was stripped of it.

In June 2009 Sochua unsuccessfully tried to sue Prime Minister Hun Sen for allegedly making derogatory comments about her during a speech in Kampot province.

Soon afterward the National Assembly stripped Sochua’s immunity, paving the way for Hun Sen to counter-sue for defamation, a case the premier won.

Sochua has long fought to have her name cleared completely in parliament and has continued to fight the case through the courts for three years.

At the time, rights groups criticised the government’s actions, calling it an abuse of power.