Villagers clear land claimed by military in Banteay Srei

Villagers clear land claimed by military in Banteay Srei

A villager cuts through brushwood on disputed land in Siem Reap province’s Banteay Srei district on Sunday to clear a site for the construction of a house. (Photo by: Rann Reuy)

Tuesday, 04 May 2010
Rann Reuy and Tep Nimol
The Phnom Penh Post
Siem Reap Province

MORE than 50 families in Siem Reap province’s Banteay Srei district cleared sections of a 150-hectare area of disputed land on Monday, despite efforts by Royal Cambodian Armed Forces soldiers to prevent them from doing so, villagers said Monday.

Sor Sovann said Prime Minister Hun Sen had awarded the land to the families in 2006, but that there had been ongoing disputes with soldiers who claim it is state-owned.

He said villagers had waited for four years before trying to use the land because they had been afraid of confrontations with soldiers.

However, because the dispute had not been resolved, despite numerous complaints to provincial and other authorities, they finally decided to begin clearing the land on Sunday, he said.

“We have no choice this time. That’s why we decided to clear that land to build the houses on, because we don’t have houses or land to make rice,” he said.

Ouk Aun, the second deputy director of the Banteay Srei office of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, who is responsible for protecting forest areas there, maintained that the land had never been awarded to the families. Nevertheless, he ordered his soldiers to retreat from the confrontation on Monday in order to avoid violence.

“I just told my soldiers to be calm, but if the villagers come with machetes, and the soldiers go with guns, we cannot predict the result,” he said.

Heab Tha, the chief of Tbeng commune, where the land is located, also said it belonged to the state, and that the villagers were already living on the land that had been issued to them.

“The prime minister gave them land nearby the disputed land, and they are living on it. I don’t know why they went to clear the disputed land,” he said.

Bun Tharith, deputy governor of Siem Reap province, said Monday that officials hope to resolve the situation quickly.

“It is state land, and the soldiers asked permission from Forestry Administration officials to plant some trees on that land because it is located in the Phnom Kulen National Park,” he said.

Siem Reap provincial Adhoc monitor Suos Narin also sided with the soldiers, noting that they had planted trees in the area since 2002.

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Land Dispute: Villagers in Svay Rieng demonstrate

Tuesday, 04 May 2010
May Titthara
The Phnom Penh Post

About 200 residents of Svay Rieng province’s Romeas Hek district staged a protest in front of the district police office on Monday to demand the release of a representative who was arrested in the morning in connection with a land dispute involving a rubber company. Pao Chhat, one of the protesters, said Yea Yeoung had been arrested one day after he and 100 residents of Tras commune gathered in front of the Peam Chaing Rubber Company in an effort to convince the company to reopen a road that had been cut off for five days. “We want to ask district police why they arrested him. They should arrest all of the villagers because we went together. It wasn’t just him,” he said. Roughly 400 families in Romeas Hek have accused the company of impinging on their cassava and cashew plantations. Representatives said they filed a complaint with the district governor against the company in December 2009 but have yet to receive a response. District police chief Chum Ry accused Yea Yeoung of threatening military police during Sunday’s protest. Company owner Neang Sarin could not be reached for comment.

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Publisher calls for arrests to stop

Hang Chakra (Photo: Zakariya, RFA)

Tuesday, 04 May 2010
Cameron Wells and Khouth Sophak Chakrya
The Phnom Penh Post

AN opposition-aligned publisher who was recently released from prison after being convicted of disinformation was among those who marked World Press Freedom Day on Monday by calling for a moratorium on journalist arrests and condemning the government for a spike in such arrests over the last 12 months.

“Hopefully after the World Press Freedom Day, no journalist will be arrested or imprisoned due to reporting the critical inaction of government and law enforcement,” Hang Chakra, publisher of Khmer Machas Srok, said during a ceremony marking the inauguration of a new office for the Press Council of Cambodia.

Hang Chakra was imprisoned in June of last year after the paper published a series of stories alleging corruption on the part of officials in the cabinet of Deputy Prime Miniser Sok An. He was released last month after being given a Royal pardon.

A report released Monday by the Club of Cambodian Journalists stated that 24 journalists have been arrested in the past 12 months, up from 10 arrests reported during the same period a year earlier.

In a statement Monday, Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, condemned what he described as “the gag on Cambodian journalists”, saying it was “stifling democracy and human rights in Cambodia”.

Speaking at the same ceremony as Hang Chakra, Information Minister Khieu Kanharith said the government stood behind all journalists, even those who are critical of its policies.

“We want to see journalists join together to develop journalism in Cambodia and report the facts of each story to help the government eliminate corrupt people from our country,” he said.

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Thailand's Multiple Revolts

Tuesday, 04 May 2010
Written by G.M. Greenwood
Asia Sentinel (Hong Kong)

The crisis is even more complex than thought, and probably less open to solution

The spectre of civil war is now routinely discussed as a possible outcome to Thailand's now-systemic political and social crisis. This is an improbable outcome in the current phase of the protest cycle given the widely differing and frequently opposed expectations, grievances and fears that underpin the motives and issues driving the country's protracted political instability.

Thailand is not simply experiencing a binary struggle between pro- and anti-government forces but is in the midst of a complex series of revolts that now involve much of the population and most institutions. The depth and force of commitment may vary, but disentangling the now exposed divisions between classes, regions and within key organisation cannot be dealt with through a superficial compromise between already discredited political leaders

The crisis, which began for the more perceptive members of the country's traditional elite in January 2001 with Thaksin Shinawatra's first election victory, now defines Thailand's political and social system.

Thaksin's massive popular reaffirmation in the February 2005 polls, an existential threat to Thailand's established order, ignited a series of revolts that now engulf the country. These largely passive rebellions are largely concealed by the noisier narrative that Thailand's crisis is a simple struggle between the impoverished, neglected and marginalised countryside seeking redress from the wealthy, distant and disdainful city.

The now familiar colour-coded ur-revolt – reds, yellows, with occasional sightings of blues, pinks, as well as the ever-present green of the military, the mysterious and murderous ‘blacks' and the growing involvement of saffron-clad Buddhist monks – give an impression of order and symmetry. In reality, the Thai crisis more closely represents at its present stage the ‘million mutiny' phase of social and political upheaval rather than the coherent coalescence and radicalisation required to move general disorder into nation-breaking anarchy.

Rather than presenting unified ideological or structural fronts, the organic components of the Thai drama have often conflicted beliefs and sentiments towards the other players and within their own groups.

The professional military leadership may, for reasons of conviction and ambition, be firmly aligned to maintaining the status quo. The army, in particular, is traditionally in a near-permanent state of revolt against any civilian government – which includes Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's creaking administration that owes its position to military leverage. The military is also divided within, with many senior officers seeking advantage over intra-service rivals while doubting the willingness of enlisted personnel to act decisively against their own class.

These competing tensions are regarded as responsible for the army's reluctance to support successive governments in restoring order – either against the pro-establishment yellow-shirted People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) when they occupied Bangkok for months in 2008 or now against the red version of this similar strategy.

The much reviled police are, by contrast, seen as supporting the Red Shirts – no doubt partly due to Thaksin's links with the force that he served for many years, but also because of the animosity between the police and the military. The police, therefore, have frequently failed to act against the Red Shirts out of solidarity and against the well-connected yellows out of professional reticence and the fear of personal retribution.

Even the monkhood is riven between what many junior clergy appear to view as the contradiction between Buddhism's high status at the apogee of Thailand's elite pantheon and its mission to bring succor to country's most disadvantaged. This raises the possibility that some of the clergy may take to the streets with reds, much as Buddhist monks did in Burma during the doomed 2007 anti-government protests.

The reds' appeal to the rural population of the northern and northeastern provinces reflects economic, class, social and even ethnic divisions between the hardscrabble lives most lead, in contrast to the reality and perceptions of those in distant Bangkok. Ideological mobilisation may be evolving, but the principal catalysts for revolt are for improved personal outcomes based on more stable income, affordable health and education provision and freedom from usury and indebtedness.

Assuring such expectations - raised and partially met by Thaksin - is the most readily achievable resolution at an economic and administrative level, but opposition to such largesse from the country's still narrow tax base stirs counter- revolts.

The yellows – created, funded and protected by the military, the aristocracy, bureaucracy and largely ethnic Chinese urban professional and commercial classes – represent the status quo and reflect an unwillingness to share status and wealth with the masses. This group forced Thaksin and his successor governments from power by staging a protracted revolt in 2008 that, unlike the reds, drew no warnings that the country faced civil war.

The unintended consequence of the Yellow Shirt uprising was to produce an operational and moral template for the reds to follow and use to claim the protection of precedence. Until the first fatalities occurred in Bangkok in April, the red case was beginning to receive more favorable – or at least sympathetic – coverage in the mainstream Thai media, revealing conflicted opinions within the elite.

The ‘royal institution' – the respectful term used to refer to the monarchy – is at the heart of the present national melee. King Bhumibol Adulyadej, hospitalised since September last year, made a rare public comment in late April in which he repeated a message to the nation's judges to do their work well.

The king's failure to deliver even a runic phrase or comment that could be directly linked to the present crisis and serve as a keystone in forcing compromise between his divided subjects has disappointed and confused many Thais and foreign observers. However, the king's call to uphold the law may also be interpreted as a warning to the country that without a recognizably equitable legal system Thailand faces a future dictated by the arbitrary use of power and force, with the unspoken implication that it will be unmediated by a benign monarch.

Such après moi le deluge sentiments and the king's removal from worldly events – which may be viewed as a regal strike - can be added to the numberless revolts that now characterise Thai society.

This maze of passive and active revolts complicates any resolution to the crisis. Millions of Thais have incrementally abandoned or ignored the bonds – or shackles – that had traditionally defined relations between classes and within the country's key institutions. In the absence of any new charismatic leader emerging - Thaksin is extremely unlikely to return to Thailand and prosper - who can complete either the red agenda of mass democracy or enforce the yellow intent to reserve political power for a small elite, Thailand risks slipping into an era of sullen apathy that leaves grievances to fester and petty ambitions to flourish. The response to such a period, which may well combine Burma's ruthless authoritarianism with Cambodia's past displays of hysterical nativism, may serve as the precursor for a coherent populist revolt that could violently shatter Thailand's mythic national consensus for generations.

G.M. Greenwood is an Associate with Allan & Associates, a Hong Kong-based political and security risk consultancy.

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Cab driver killed on birthday

Ty Tang

Tuesday, May 4, 2010
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer (Honolulu, Hawaii)

Cambodian immigrant Ty Tang was hard worker with 2 young children

WANT TO HELP?
Donations in the form of checks can be sent to:
University Avenue Baptist Church
2305 University Ave.
Honolulu, HI 96822
In the memo line, write: For Ty Tang's Family

Cambodian immigrant Ty Tang was driving a taxi out of Waikīkī to help raise his two young children when he was found beaten and dying in the middle of the night Saturday in the parking lot of the Waipahu Times Super Market.

It was Tang's 41st birthday.

His family had been planning a celebration for Tang at Magic Island on Saturday to coincide with a gathering of other struggling, but hardworking immigrants from Cambodia.

Instead, Tang's children — a 12-year-old boy and 10-year-old girl — were told they could not deliver a birthday cake to their father's hospital bed at The Queen's Medical Center on Saturday "so he could blow out the candles," said Tang's best friend, Richard Ung, who also emigrated from Cambodia and also drove a cab out of Waikīkī.

Since Honolulu police called Ung around 2:15 a.m. Saturday with the news that Tang was found dying with head and facial injuries, "I cry all the time," Ung said. "He's a nice person, a good man, a good father, a good friend."

Detectives yesterday continued to search for two men who were seen fleeing from the direction of Tang's white, 2004 Ford Crown Victoria after he was found beaten at 1:50 in the morning. He died later on Saturday.

Tang had picked up two men around 1:15 a.m. on Kūhiō Avenue near Seaside Avenue then drove them to the Times Super Market, police said.

Police asked anyone with information to call CrimeStoppers at 955-8300, or *CRIME on their cellular phones.

Worried Honolulu cab drivers — most of them immigrants themselves — and their even more frightened wives and children were wondering aloud yesterday about the safety of hustling for fares in hard times during yet another Hawai'i slow tourism season.

At a waiting area for 200 to 300 cab drivers outside Honolulu International Airport yesterday, one immigrant cab driver after another said they have to wait eight to 12 hours per day for their turns to pick up what averages out to two fares per day.

On a typical shift this time of year, drivers said, they can generate about $100 per day, which means they take home about $65 every day after paying for gas and maintenance on their cars, which they own.

"It's slow, really slow," said Tony Nguyen, 36, who was raised in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. "Every day worse."

Jimmy Lieu, 44, who is from Vietnam's Mekong Delta area, only drives his cab during the day "because it's dangerous. My wife always tell me to be safe. My wife, she keep checking on me, checking on me."

Lieu considers "night time" to be after midnight.

Many of the drivers waiting around for fares yesterday said they have been ripped off by passengers who bolt from their cabs — or have worried about sketchy, fearsome passengers.

"When people get in your cab and say, 'You got change for $100?' that's a sign," Nguyen said. "But there's not much else we can do when English is second language. No career jobs."

Waneka Davis refuses to pick up passengers after 9 p.m. and won't ever make what she calls "the long trip" to the Windward and Leeward Coasts, giving up the chance for a lucrative trip.

Davis, a mother and grandmother of two, is constantly being warned by her family to be safe.

"They say, 'Mom, be careful.'"

The Honolulu medical examiner's office yesterday identified the victim in Saturday's taxi cab beating as Charlys Ty Tang.

But everyone called him Ty, (pronounced Tee).

Like his friend, Ung, Tang lived in Waikīkī and occasionally worshipped with Vietnamese and Cambodian parishioners at University Avenue Baptist Church.

Pastor Hong Ly Khuy yesterday was collecting donations for Tang's family, which includes an ex-wife Tang remained friendly with and Tang's new wife.

Before he turned to driving a cab, Tang had worked as a cook at several restaurants that closed because of slow business, Khuy said.

Then about four years ago, Khuy said, Tang turned to driving a cab, one of the primary sources of income for struggling immigrants.

"It's a job for when you're new and don't speak English that well," Khuy said. "But all the time, people talk about how dangerous it is."

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.
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Two men sought by police

Police yesterday released sketches and descriptions of two men wanted for questioning in Sunday's fatal beating of cab driver Ty Tang in the parking lot of the Waipahu Times Super Market.

Suspect 1 is described as 17 to 23 years old, 5 feet 4 to 5-7, and 140 to 155 pounds. He has black hair and brown eyes.

Suspect 2 is described as 17 to 23 years old, 5-8 to 5-11, and 155 to 180 pounds. He has black hair and brown eyes.

Anyone with information of this incident may call CrimeStoppers at 955-8300 or *CRIME on a cell phone.

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Japanese oil company to survey Cambodian basin

May 4, 2010
The Associated Press
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia

A state-affiliated Japanese oil company was Tuesday granted rights by the Cambodian government to survey for oil around Southeast Asia's largest freshwater lake.

The Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation will conduct a study over 6,500 square kilometers (2,509 miles) of the Tonle Sap basin, located about 200 kilometers (120 miles) northwest of Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh.

The lake covers about 250,000 hectares (618,000 acres) during the dry season and expands to about 1.25 million hectares (3 million acres) during the rainy season.