Former Khmer Rouge prison chief S-21, Kaing Guek Eav, better known as "Duch", is pictured in court in 2008. Duch gave his final testimony to Cambodia's war crimes tribunal Wednesday with an unexpected invitation to victims of the regime to visit him in prison.(AFP/File/Tang Chhin Sothy)In this photo taken on July 19, 2009, a Cambodian woman points to a painting depicting torture as she tours the former Khmer Rouge S-21 prison, known as Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. On Monday, Sept. 14, 2009, the museum, formerly a prison and torture center operated by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, has been declared by the U.N. to be an archive of worldwide significance for its historical documents.(AP Photo/Heng Sinith)Tourists look at portraits of victims displayed inside the Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh, where thousands of Cambodian died during the brutal 1975-79 regime. Cambodia's Khmer Rouge court has finished hearing evidence against the regime's prison chief, ending six months of gruelling testimony about atrocities in the jail where 15,000 people died. (AFP/File/Nicolas Asfouri)
[ Click Read More ]
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Officials dismiss Thai protest
Photo by: Heng ChivoanChief Thai air marshal Itthaporn Subhawong (left) sits with RCAF Commander in Chief Pol Saroeun.
The Phnom Penh Post
Tuesday, 15 September 2009 15:03 Vong Sokheng and Cheang Sokha
Royal Cambodian Armed Forces Commander in Chief Pol Saroeun met with Itthaporn Subhawong, Thailand’s chief air marshal, on Monday in Phnom Penh, as officials from both countries dismissed the significance of Thai protests at the border reportedly planned for this Saturday.
Bangkok’s The Nation newspaper reported on Monday that members of the Peoples’ Alliance for Democracy (PAD), a Thai political party, plan to hold a rally on Saturday near the Preah Vihear temple complex to protest the supposed loss of Thai sovereignty in the disputed area.
The Thai military, however, discouraged the protesters from following through on their plans. “We should be careful about the protest, as such an activity, despite its good intentions, could affect operating strategy on the ground,” The Nation quoted Thai Army spokesman Colonel Sansern Kaeowkamnerd as saying.
Cambodian Defence Ministry spokesman Chhum Socheat told the Post that should the protest take place, the PAD protesters will not be permitted to enter Cambodian territory.
“We are not concerned about the protests planned for September 19,” he said. “We will not allow [the protesters] to enter Cambodian soil, and we will exercise our right to self-defence if the situation warrants it.”
In a meeting at RCAF headquarters in Phnom Penh on Monday, Pol Saroeun and Itthaporn reaffirmed the warming of Thai-Cambodian relations that has taken place over the past few weeks.
“This visit is meant to promote understanding and good relations between our two countries and to facilitate training of Cambodian air force members by Thailand,” Itthaporn said. “[Thai air force representatives] have been very warmly received here.”
Pol Saroeun cited Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya’s visit to the border area this past weekend, where he was hosted by Cambodian officials, as an example of cooperation that he hoped to see continue.
“We should forget the conflicts that have happened between us and look forward to improving our relationship,” he said
KRouge jail chief says had brother-in-law tortured
Kaing Guek Eav better known as Duch
By Patrick Falby (AFP)PHNOM PENH — The chief of the Khmer Rouge's main prison told Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes trial Tuesday that he had his own sister's husband jailed and tortured after the man was accused of espionage.
Duch said he had his brother-in-law locked up at the notorious Tuol Sleng detention centre to protect himself and his family, adding that the man was later killed by the hardline communist movement.
"I vouched for my younger sister and I vouched to educate her, but I could not do that for my brother-in-law," said Duch, who acknowledges overseeing the extermination of some 15,000 people at the jail.
"As a principle, when the husband was arrested the wife was arrested as well. But my younger sister was not arrested and she is still alive today," he added.
The 66-year-old Duch said the brutal regime initially arrested his brother-in-law on spying charges but then released him and allowed to stay at Duch's house.
But Duch later had the man arrested again and sent to Tuol Sleng, a former high school in the capital Phnom Penh that was turned into a genocide museum after Vietnamese-backed forces toppled the Khmer Rouge in 1979.
Duch said that the man later confessed, apparently under interrogation, to being "a member of the enemy network" since before the Khmer Rouge had come to power and of marrying Duch's sister to spy on him.
He said that after his arrest, his brother-in-law tried to protect the rest of the family from the Khmer Rouge's spiralling paranoia, which involved witchhunts for suspected agents for the CIA, KGB and Vietnam and other groups.
"What he was afraid of was that when he was arrested and handcuffed, he wanted to know whether I would be arrested. Because if I was arrested, then the whole family would be gone," Duch said.
Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, is the first Khmer Rouge cadre to face trial at the court but denies personally torturing or killing inmates and he insists that he was not a leading figure in the 1975-1979 regime.
Led by Pol Pot, who died in 1998, the Khmer Rouge emptied Cambodia's cities in a bid to forge a communist utopia, resulting in the deaths of up to two million people from starvation, overwork and torture.
Evangelical minister Christopher LaPel told the tribunal Tuesday that Duch was completely changed after the pastor baptised him in 1996 in a river in western Cambodia.
"After he got baptised I can see him as a completely different person... I can see that he (had been) a person that lived in darkness, sadness, with no joy, no love," said Cambodian-American LaPel.
LaPel told the court that although Duch was hiding his identity at the time, the conversion seemed genuine and the pair have prayed and held Bible study together in prison several times since the former cadre's 1999 arrest.
Former maths teacher Duch has regularly expressed remorse to victims and those who worked under him.
One-time Khmer Rouge ideologue Nuon Chea, head of state Khieu Samphan, foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife, minister of social affairs Ieng Thirith, are also in detention awaiting trial at the court
Meditation Touted for Cambodian Victims
Venerable Thach Berong (Photo: NP)By Nuch Sarita, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
15 September 2009
A Cambodian Buddhist monk in the US has applied meditation to help reduce stress disorders for Cambodian-Americans traumatized by the Khmer Rouge.
At his Khemara Rangsey temple, Thach Berong, of the Khmer Kampuchea Krom Federation’s Theravada Buddhist Community, in San Jose, Calif., says he wants to help reduce the stress and illness that can come from prolonged trauma.
Studies show that Cambodian-Americans face special mental and physical health problems resulting from their tragic experiences, especially those of them lived through the extreme brutality of the Khmer Rouge.
Health professionals and others who work with Cambodian-Americans often note that these experiences have left them with a sense of powerlessness that affects many.
“I teach them Satipatthana Sutta courses, or right mindfulness,” Thach Berong said in a recent interview. “A study of the county of Santa Clara had learned that the stress that has led to such illnesses often tends to create a health syndrome for Cambodian-Americans. The syndrome is known as post-traumatic stress disorder, a type of delayed reaction to extreme emotional stress that has been found to affect many Cambodian refugees in the United States.”
Among those who have been resettled in Western countries, a malady known as “Pol Pot syndrome” also has emerged. Pol Pot syndrome includes insomnia, difficulty in breathing, loss of appetite and pains in various parts of the body.
Almost half the adult population of Cambodian-Americans in San Jose and Long Beach, those older than 35 or 40, show symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, said Om Reaksmey, a social worker of Cambodian Association of America in Long Beach.
One medical study of Cambodian refugees in Long Beach, the largest concentration of Cambodians in the United States, found that 62 percent of the adults had symptoms of PTSD, she said.
Meditation is often used in hospitals as a method of stress reduction, especially in cases of chronic or terminal illnesses, to reduce complications associated with increased stress.
At least one doctor at Stanford University, as well as other doctors from Gardner Mental Health Care clinic in San Jose, has been practicing meditation techniques with Thach Berong “to learn Buddha’s teachings,” he said.
Buddhism teaches its practitioners to understand their lives according to dharma, the laws of nature, and seeks to develop generosity and morality, he said, adding that these lessons were good for all nationalities and religions, Thach Berong said.
Roeum Long, vice president of the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia, is a long-time meditator at the Vipassana Meditation Center in Shelburn, Mass.
A person who practices meditation can achieve reduced tension, fear and worry, he said. He meditates at least 30 minutes each day at home, and sometimes for 15 minutes at work.
“Vipassana meditation is called the Great Teacher,” he said. “It helped me to work through understanding. The greater my understanding, the more flexible and tolerant and the more compassionate I can be. I am ready to forgive and forget. My mind becomes still and calm and my life smoothes out. I become like a perfect parent or an ideal teacher.”
Yat Nei Kchao, a worker in Fairfax County, practiced meditation at the Washington DC Buddhist Vihara. She told VOA that she understands others because she understands herself. An accomplished meditator can achieve a profound understanding of life and relate this to the world with a deep and uncritical love, she said.
“You feel love towards others because you understand them,” she said. “Meditation helped me feel calm and gave me a clear awareness about my life. When I learned compassion for myself, compassion for others was automatic.”
Christi Knox, a retiree in Richmond, Va., and a regular meditator at Bhavana Society Temple in Winchester, VA, said she has studied Buddhism in many US temples in the US, having left her Christian upbringing. She practices Buddhism’s eight precepts every day, she said.
“In 2002, I started studying Buddhism, and I really learned to meditate after the third year,” she said. “And before that, I worried about everything. I projected what was going to happen even if it did not happen. I was very stressful and agitated. And now with meditation, I realize that things are as they are, and even the worst of situations we can find the little good in them.”
The practice has reduced stress and worry, she said.
“I’m just really at peace, and I spend each day trying to do something to make somebody else’s life just a little bit happier, whether it be a good deed for them or whether just giving time and conversation, but it is always on the positive note,” she said. “So I really can’t thank Buddhism and the practices of meditation enough for what it really brought to me, which has been inner peace.”
At his Khemara Rangsey temple, Thach Berong, of the Khmer Kampuchea Krom Federation’s Theravada Buddhist Community, in San Jose, Calif., says he wants to help reduce the stress and illness that can come from prolonged trauma.
Studies show that Cambodian-Americans face special mental and physical health problems resulting from their tragic experiences, especially those of them lived through the extreme brutality of the Khmer Rouge.
Health professionals and others who work with Cambodian-Americans often note that these experiences have left them with a sense of powerlessness that affects many.
“I teach them Satipatthana Sutta courses, or right mindfulness,” Thach Berong said in a recent interview. “A study of the county of Santa Clara had learned that the stress that has led to such illnesses often tends to create a health syndrome for Cambodian-Americans. The syndrome is known as post-traumatic stress disorder, a type of delayed reaction to extreme emotional stress that has been found to affect many Cambodian refugees in the United States.”
Among those who have been resettled in Western countries, a malady known as “Pol Pot syndrome” also has emerged. Pol Pot syndrome includes insomnia, difficulty in breathing, loss of appetite and pains in various parts of the body.
Almost half the adult population of Cambodian-Americans in San Jose and Long Beach, those older than 35 or 40, show symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, said Om Reaksmey, a social worker of Cambodian Association of America in Long Beach.
One medical study of Cambodian refugees in Long Beach, the largest concentration of Cambodians in the United States, found that 62 percent of the adults had symptoms of PTSD, she said.
Meditation is often used in hospitals as a method of stress reduction, especially in cases of chronic or terminal illnesses, to reduce complications associated with increased stress.
At least one doctor at Stanford University, as well as other doctors from Gardner Mental Health Care clinic in San Jose, has been practicing meditation techniques with Thach Berong “to learn Buddha’s teachings,” he said.
Buddhism teaches its practitioners to understand their lives according to dharma, the laws of nature, and seeks to develop generosity and morality, he said, adding that these lessons were good for all nationalities and religions, Thach Berong said.
Roeum Long, vice president of the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia, is a long-time meditator at the Vipassana Meditation Center in Shelburn, Mass.
A person who practices meditation can achieve reduced tension, fear and worry, he said. He meditates at least 30 minutes each day at home, and sometimes for 15 minutes at work.
“Vipassana meditation is called the Great Teacher,” he said. “It helped me to work through understanding. The greater my understanding, the more flexible and tolerant and the more compassionate I can be. I am ready to forgive and forget. My mind becomes still and calm and my life smoothes out. I become like a perfect parent or an ideal teacher.”
Yat Nei Kchao, a worker in Fairfax County, practiced meditation at the Washington DC Buddhist Vihara. She told VOA that she understands others because she understands herself. An accomplished meditator can achieve a profound understanding of life and relate this to the world with a deep and uncritical love, she said.
“You feel love towards others because you understand them,” she said. “Meditation helped me feel calm and gave me a clear awareness about my life. When I learned compassion for myself, compassion for others was automatic.”
Christi Knox, a retiree in Richmond, Va., and a regular meditator at Bhavana Society Temple in Winchester, VA, said she has studied Buddhism in many US temples in the US, having left her Christian upbringing. She practices Buddhism’s eight precepts every day, she said.
“In 2002, I started studying Buddhism, and I really learned to meditate after the third year,” she said. “And before that, I worried about everything. I projected what was going to happen even if it did not happen. I was very stressful and agitated. And now with meditation, I realize that things are as they are, and even the worst of situations we can find the little good in them.”
The practice has reduced stress and worry, she said.
“I’m just really at peace, and I spend each day trying to do something to make somebody else’s life just a little bit happier, whether it be a good deed for them or whether just giving time and conversation, but it is always on the positive note,” she said. “So I really can’t thank Buddhism and the practices of meditation enough for what it really brought to me, which has been inner peace.”
PM assigns foreign minister to meet with PAD on planned border protest
BANGKOK, Sept 15 (TNA) - Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said Tuesday that he had assigned Minister of Foreign Affairs Kasit Piromya to meet with the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) and local residents to understand the government's stance to use peaceful means to resolve border disputes between Thailand and Cambodia.
The PAD said it would lead villagers to the border province of Si Sa Ket on Saturday to protest against the Cambodian government, urging the Khmers to withdraw their military and civilians from occupying the contested 4.6 square kilometre contested zone surrounding Preah Vihear, the 11th-century temple.
The prime minister affirmed that the government had no hidden agenda in resolving border disputes with Cambodian government and the involved cabinet ministers were trying to make the people who wanted to use more drastic action to resolve problems to understand that the solution must be found at the negotiating table by strictly following agreements made by the two countries under the United Nations charter.
He urged the public to give the authorities an opportunity to work and refrain from taking any risk that could lead to a clash between the two countries as it would do no good for either party.
"I can guarantee 100 per cent that the government will not do anything that could affect our sovereignty or territory. The government has no hidden agenda or hidden benefit in dealing with Cambodia," he said.
That future approaches to resolving the border disputes would be carried out in accordance with the existing legal framework and negotiations would be made to bring back the situation that both sides living together peacefully, the prime minister said.
The ruins of the temple itself belong to Cambodia, but the most practical entrance begins at the foot of a mountain in Thailand, and both sides claim portions of the surrounding territory.
The International Court of Justice ruled in 1962 that Preah Vihear itself belongs to Cambodia. Tensions flared along the border in July 2008 after the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) granted Cambodia’s ancient temple status as a World Heritage Site. (TNA)
CAMBODIA: Men being exploited, trafficked too
Photo: David Swanson/IRINIn today's economic climate, many Cambodian men are at risk of being trafficked, experts warn
PHNOM PENH, 15 September 2009 (IRIN) - Kou Channyyon's story is typical of many young Cambodian men.
Desperate for work, he was trafficked to Malaysia with the promise of earning more than US$200 a month in a coffee factory.
But after he arrived, his passport was confiscated, and he found himself working 13 hours a day, with barely enough money to cover his living costs.
Barred from leaving the factory premises, he did not know if he would ever be able to escape.
"It was exhausting ... I got very little sleep and was paid less than other workers," the 23-year-old farmer's son from southern Kandal Province, told IRIN.
According to the UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking (UNIAP), thousands of Cambodians are trafficked annually for the purpose of labour exploitation - a figure expected to increase given the global economic downturn.
"The risk factors for an increase are certainly there," Paul Buckley, field operations coordinator for UNIAP, told IRIN in Bangkok, citing job losses, diminished remittances, and rising debt as key indicators.
Cambodian exports have been badly shaken by the global financial crisis, resulting in thousands of workers losing their jobs.
"This makes for an easier environment for traffickers to work in," Buckley said, noting the need for more quantifiable data and research.
Earlier this year, the International Labour Organization (ILO) projected that job losses may surpass 45,000 this year, with a disproportionate burden falling on young workers, who already face few employment opportunities.
"Cambodia confronts a growing problem of providing decent work for this young population," said Ya Navuth, executive director of Coordination of Action Research and Mobility (CARAM), a local NGO working to reduce illegal immigration to other countries.
"I think the government has to solve the problems of labour exploitation or illegal immigration by increasing the domestic market for labour," Ya Navuth said.
Scant research on male victims
Trafficking victims have traditionally been identified by governments in Southeast Asia as women and children. There is scant research on the problem of male trafficking for labour exploitation, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
According to the Cambodian government, men seek longer term work mostly in Thailand in construction, factories, transport, fishing and fish processing.
"Males continue to be another vulnerable group besides women and children," UNIAP's national project coordinator in Cambodia, Lim Tith, told IRIN.
"They suffer abuse and labour exploitation [in a bid] to support their family back home," he said.
A 2008 UNIAP report said the main destination countries for Cambodian labour migrants are Thailand, Malaysia and Taiwan.
Thailand is the top destination country for victims of human trafficking from Cambodia.
Photo: Kounila Keo/IRINKou Channyyon was trafficked from Cambodia to Malaysia
Thai fishing boats
Some of the worst exploited are men and boys who end up on Thai long-haul fishing boats that ply the South China Sea for two years or more at a time, according to a UNIAP study in April 2009.
"The boats become virtual prisons on which the trafficking victims endure inhumane working conditions and physical abuse. Death at sea is frequently reported, sometimes at the hands of Thai boat captains," the study notes.
Until mid-2008, Thailand's anti-human trafficking legislation excluded men from being acknowledged as trafficking victims, which meant that they were counted as illegal migrants instead, and consequently deported.
Some 130,000 individuals are deported to Cambodia from Thailand each year, and evidence is readily available of cases of misidentification by Thai or Cambodian authorities of victims of trafficking departed from Thailand, said the 2008 UNIAP report.
"The fact that the problem remains hidden makes it harder for the NGOs and the government to work on it," Lim Tith said.
New law
Cambodia has undertaken a series of measures to curb trafficking, including a 2008 law that recognizes men as potential trafficking victims for the first time, and provides a better legal framework to prosecute traffickers.
But given the fallout from the global economic crisis, tackling illegal immigration and trafficking may prove difficult for the Cambodian government because of its small budgets and limited human resources, said Lim Tith.
"What's important now is that the government has a political will to solve the problems, although they have very limited options," said Lim Tith.
"With the global economic crisis still continuing or [having an] effect, more men will surely continue to seek jobs abroad and be exploited by the financial crisis," he said.
Child Labor 'Cripples Future'
AFPA woman cries as she is reunited with her son after he was rescued from a group of human traffickers in central China's Henan province, May 6, 2005.
Throughout East Asia, vulnerable children are forced and trafficked into every kind of work.
HONG KONG—Children in East Asia are routinely trafficked internationally and forced into sex work and domestic labor, as well as being made to work in factories in their own countries instead of going to school, according to a U.S. government report.
And while a series of child- and forced-labor scandals have surfaced in China recently, including that of the "brick kiln" children, trafficked minors are also to be found in some of the region's most developed economies.
"The problem with those children working is that those children are not getting an education," Sandra Polaski, deputy undersecretary for international affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB), said in an interview.
"It means when they grow up they are going to be too poor to be able to feed their own families, and they’ll have to send their own children to work," she added.
According to a recent set of reports published by the U.S. Department of Labor, children—especially girls—are trafficked internationally among Malaysia, China, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore.
Better laws sought
Children, according to ILAB, are also required to work in certain industries in their own countries and are taken away from parents who are too poor to put up much resistance.
Polaski called for better rights for adults in developing countries so that they will be better able to protect their children's futures.
"If the children in those countries have to go to work because their families are too poor to feed them, the solution is to pass better laws," Polaski said.
"[Also] to have better law enforcement and have better rights for the adults, so that they can make at least an adequate living so that they can feed their children," she added.
"If we don’t interfere with this vicious cycle of lowering the possibilities of those children because they have never been educated ... we’ll be facing these same problems 20 years from now, 40 years from now," Polaski said.
She called on governments and the private sector to use ILAB information about which products had been made with child labor to revise their supply chain and purchasing policies.
"We think shining a spotlight on this will put a lot more pressure on them to act," Polaski said.
Boys trafficked for fishing
The ILAB report said that girls were primarily trafficked both internationally and internally for commercial sexual exploitation and forced domestic service, whereas boys were often trafficked internally to work on fishing platforms.
It also said it had received reports of children being trafficked to work in organized begging rings.
Children in Burma have reported being forced to work as porters and roadbuilders by government and ethnic minority troops in the Karen border region conflict.
ILAB said child labor had also been used in rice harvesting, rubber plantations, sugarcane, and teak.
'Vulnerable people'
In Cambodia, children were known to work in rubber, brick factories, salt manufacture, and on shrimp farms, while underage Chinese youngsters were employed to make bricks, cotton, electronics, fireworks, textiles, and toys.
"There are still people living in poverty in China, and those people are vulnerable," Polaski said.
"There are unscrupulous businessmen and labor contractors that exploit that vulnerability."
Meanwhile, children in Thailand were found working in the sex trade, rubber plantations, shrimp farms, textiles and sugarcane, ILAB said, noting that many of the children used may have been trafficked from elsewhere in the region, including China, Laos, Burma, and Cambodia.
"Congress felt that in order to address the problem of child labor and forced labor, the public and the global community needed more information about where the child labor and forced labor was occurring, [and in] which countries, which products," Polaski said.
Original reporting in Mandarin by Xi Wang. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.
Copyright © 1998-2009 Radio Free Asia. All rights reserved.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)