Rights groups urge Cambodia to end mass evictions

PHNOM PENH: Five leading human rights groups on Tuesday urged ASEAN chair Cambodia to end all forced evictions in the country and free seven people who were detained after a recent land protest turned violent.

“As the chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for 2012, Cambodia should abide by its legal obligation to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms… and end the practice of forced evictions that is a blot on the country’s reputation internationally,” the campaigners said in an open letter to Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Cambodia recently took over the rotating chairmanship of the 10-member regional ASEAN bloc.

The signatories of the letter, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Witness, also called for the release, “pending further investigation”, of seven residents who were arrested during an eviction of some 300 families from an area in the capital Phnom Penh on January 3.

Locals in the Borei Keila neighbourhood reacted to the demolition of their homes by throwing rocks and bottles at police, who fired back with tear gas and rubber bullets.

The five rights groups also voiced their “serious concern” over the treatment of 22 women and six children who were sent to a notorious rehabilitation centre more commonly used to hold sex workers and drug users, after they protested peacefully on January 11 against the eviction.

Four were freed after reaching a deal with the private company that is responsible for their resettlement, while the remaining women and children escaped by climbing over the facility’s walls last week.

“In today’s Cambodia, it’s clear that one of the most dangerous places for an ordinary Cambodian to be is living on a piece of land that a rich man and his government cronies want,” Phil Robertson, HRW’s deputy Asia director, told AFP.

There was no immediate comment from the Cambodian government, which has faced mounting criticism in recent years over a spate of evictions nationwide that have displaced tens of thousands of mostly poor people.

Land ownership was abolished and many legal documents were lost during the 1975-1979 rule of the communist Khmer Rouge, complicating land titling efforts. AGENCIES

Floods drown Asia’s rice bowl

HANOI: Massive floods have ravaged vast swathes of Asia’s rice bowl, threatening to further drive up food prices and adding to the burden of farmers who are among the region’s poorest, experts say.

About 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) of paddy fields in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos have been damaged or are at risk from the worst floods to hit the region in years, officials say.

In Thailand, the world’s biggest rice exporter, where 237 people have died in the floods, about one million hectares of paddy — roughly 10 percent of the total — have been damaged, they say.

Heavy rains in Laos and Cambodia have also led to big losses in recent weeks, and experts say flood waters have now drained into Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, a key global rice producer, making it the latest to be inundated.

Further west, flooding of rice and other farmland in Pakistan’s arable belt has cost that country nearly $2 billion in losses.

“The whole region will now suffer from rising food prices as potential harvests have now been devastated. The damage is very serious this year and it will be some time before people can resume normal lives,” Margareta Wahlstrom, the United Nations chief of disaster reduction, said in a statement.

The flood damage comes on top of worries about the impact on global rice prices of a new scheme by the Thai government to boost the minimum price farmers receive for their crop.

Vietnam meanwhile is the world’s number-two rice exporter and the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam accounts for half the country’s production.

“The upstream waters have begun to drop slightly but here they are rising three to five centimetres (1.2 to two inches) daily,” said Duong Nghia Quoc, director of the agriculture department in Dong Thap province.

Dong Thap and neighbouring An Giang, which abut Cambodia, have been the worst affected in the delta.

The UN, citing government sources, says 11 people have died, more than 20,000 homes are flooded and 99,000 hectares of rice are at risk in Vietnam.

“Agricultural production is seriously affected this year by the floods that were, in fact, worse than our forecasts,” said Vuong Huu Tien, of the flood and storm control department in An Giang, where thousands of soldiers have been mobilised to reinforce dykes and help residents reach safer ground.

In Cambodia, more than 330,000 hectares of rice paddy have been inundated, of which more than 100,000 hectares are completely destroyed, said a senior official at the Ministry of Agriculture.

Ngin Chhay said the “big loss” was likely to affect this year’s rice surplus, which was expected to reach some three million tonnes.

Cambodia, where more than 160 people have been killed in the floods, exports only a fraction of total rice production but the crop accounts for about 7.5 percent of gross domestic product.

Laos, one of Asia’s poorest nations, has also suffered, according to reports in state-controlled media there.

Tropical storms which struck since June killed at least 23 people in the country and damaged more than 60,000 hectares of paddy, the reports said.

In late September more crops suffered after a dam on a tributary of the Mekong released water to lower its rain-swollen levels, the Vientiane Times reported.

Vo Tong Xuan, a Vietnamese rice expert based in the Mekong Delta, said a major contributor to this year’s floods has been the unusually heavy rains in Thailand and Laos, which drain down through the Mekong.

Experts say the delta’s expanding system of dykes adds to the problem. They “prevent water circulation in some places but provoke floods in others,” said Bui Minh Tang, a weather forecaster.

Vietnam News, the communist state’s official English-language daily, reported that the lost rice crop in Dong Thap province alone was worth $2.7 million.

“The floods have seriously affected life and production of the farmers in our district, notably because of a shortage of drinking water and electricity,” said Vu Tien Quang, who belongs to a farmers’ association in the province. AGENCIES

Cambodian monks bless dead after night of horror

PHNOM PENH: Saffron-robed Buddhist monks chanted as onlookers gazed silently across a bridge piled with the shoes and torn clothing left behind by victims of a stampede in Cambodia’s capital.

The body count stood at 375 by sunset on Tuesday and was expected to rise. Many people were missing and Cambodians had many questions about one of the darkest days of their country’s

recent and troubled history.

The cause of the stampede on the Diamond Gate bridge late on Monday, the last day of an annual three-day Water Festival, remained a mystery.

“Everyone is shocked that this can happen to us,” said Chhun Sreypong, 45, clutching her one-year-old baby and looking out across Phnom Penh’s Tonle Sap river, from where scores of limp bodies were dragged.

“Those who died were mostly youngsters. Many mothers have lost their children. No one knows why this

Malarial drug resistance spreads in Asia

GENEVA: The World Health Organisation warned Thursday that resistance to malaria drug artemisinin appeared to be spreading in the region from the Cambodia-Thailand border, where it was first detected.

“There is some early evidence that resistance to artemisinins may also be emerging on the Myanmar-Thailand border,” said the WHO in a statement.

“There is also concern that resistance could spread from the Cambodia-Thailand border to Africa, as it did with anti-malaria drugs such as chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine in the 1960s and 1970s,” it added.

Pascal Ringwald, who co-authored a WHO study into the issue, said the WHO is undertaking “complementary studies to confirm that it is indeed drug resistance. That should take a year.”

In February 2009, anti-malarial drug resistance was confirmed by the WHO at the Cambodia-Thailand

Khmer Rouge prison chief handed 30 years in prison

PHNOM PENH: A UN-backed war crimes court on Monday sentenced a former Khmer Rouge prison chief to 30 years in prison for his role in Cambodia”s “Killing Fields” atrocities in the late 1970s.

Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, is the first Khmer Rouge cadre to be convicted in an international tribunal over the deaths of up to two million people through starvation, overwork and execution at the hands of the regime.

The 67-year-old was initially given 35 years but the court reduced the jail sentence after ruling that he had been detained illegally for years before the UN-backed tribunal was established. Duch apologised during his trial in Phnom Penh for overseeing the murders of around 15,000 men, women and children at Tuol Sleng prison, also known as S-21, but shocked the court in November by finally asking to be acquitted.

US aircraft carrier ups pressure on NKorea

SEOUL: A massive nuclear-powered U.

Read the original post: 
US aircraft carrier ups pressure on NKorea

Harry Potter preview draws big crowd

SAN DIEGO: Beloved boy wizard Harry Potter comes face to face with Voldemort in the first cinematic installment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Read the original post:
Harry Potter preview draws big crowd

Khmer Rouge prison chief awaits verdict

PHNOM PENH: A UN-backed war crimes tribunal was expected to issue a decision Monday in the trial of the Khmer Rouge’s chief jailer and torturer the first verdict involving a leader of the genocidal regime that created Cambodia’s killing fields.

Read more: 
Khmer Rouge prison chief awaits verdict

Thailand recalls envoy from Cambodia

Thailand and Cambodia recalled their ambassadors from each others’ countries, deepening a diplomatic row after Cambodia made fugitive former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra an economic adviser.

The tit-for-tat spat threatens to worsen a political crisis in Thailand by giving Thaksin and his red-shirted anti-government supporters an ally just across the border, causing a diplomatic embarrassment for Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

It also suggests deepening enmity between leaders of the two countries after Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen soured the start of an Asian summit hosted by Abhisit last month by turning up and offering Thaksin the job of adviser.
“We will also review all of the agreements between the two countries along with any other cooperation with them,” Chavanont added.

Clashes in Thai-Cambodia border

Clashes in Thai-Cambodia border, Thai “Yellow Shirt” protesters have clashed with police and villagers at an ancient temple in territory at the centre of a dispute between Thailand and Cambodia.

At least 15 people were injured in north-eastern Sisaket province after members of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) tried to march to the gates of the temple near land claimed by both Thailand and Cambodia, demanding the Thai government seize the disputed territory.

Protesters broke through barricades in attempts to reach the 11th century Preah Vihear temple near the border with Cambodia on Saturday.

Thai riot police used their shields to push back protesters armed with sticks who were trying to beat local villagers.

---

Clashes in Thai-Cambodia border was first posted on September 19, 2009 at 11:27 pm.
©2009 “News Trends“.