S-21 photographer ditches KR museum

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Monday, 18 May 2009
Written by Sam Rith
The Phnom Penh Post

$1m to buy all of the exhibits, says Nhem En.

FORMER Tuol Sleng photographer Nhem En is putting all of his Khmer Rouge-era possessions - once destined for a museum in Anlong Veng - up for sale for US$1 million, saying that the global economic crisis is to blame for scuppering his monument to the regime whose most brutal moments he helped to document.
"I am calling on all interested individuals and companies, both inside and outside the country, to bid on more than 10 varieties of Khmer Rouge materials. The starting price is US$1 million," said Nhem En, who is deputy governor of Anlong Veng district in Oddar Meanchey province.

The items on offer include two cameras purportedly used to photograph prisoners at Tuol Sleng; 2,000 photographs of Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge leaders; what he claims are Pol Pot's sandals, toilet, clothes and hat; a piece of car tyre that was used in Pol Pot's 1998 cremation; videos of military commander Ta Mok and other top regime cadre; and 1,000 songs on original tapes and pirated CDs.

"I spent all my spare cash trying to build the museum and I can't borrow from the bank because they are suffering from the global economic crisis," he said.

Nhem En said he had spent more than US$200,000 buying and clearing 50 hectares of land in Anlong Veng, but had garnered no support. He said the museum would cost $1 million to complete.

The announcement follows his April offer to sell what he said were Pol Pot's sandals and his cameras for US$500,000. But early interest faded after provincial officials reacted negatively.

Oddar Meanchey provincial Governor Pich Sokhin declined Sunday to comment on the revised offer, but added that he also had no objection to the museum being built.

But S-21 survivor Chhum Mey said people who might consider buying the items should instead give that money to the cash-strapped Khmer Rouge tribunal.

Hor 5 Hong lambastes Dey Krahorm evictees ... while keeping silence on the illegal land-grabber: Hun Sen's no rights-no law rule?

Minister Lambastes ‘Professional Squatters’

By Taing Sarada, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
18 May 2009

While rights groups seek to find fair deals for families displaced in Phnom Penh developments, the foreign minister says many of the capital’s squatters are “professionals,” moving from place to place to demand money when they are expelled.
In remarks at the opening ceremony of a consulate in Lowell, Mass., last month, Foreign Minister Hor Namhong said residents of the Dey Krahorm community, who were evicted earlier this year, were squatters living on state land that had been granted to a private company for development.

“Nowadays, there are many squatters in Phnom Penh, and these squatters always grab people’s land,” he said. “When they push them out, the squatters always demand money. When they get the money, they go build another hut to live in, then demand money again. They are professional squatters.”

In fact, the situation is more complicated, and, critics say, indicative of the abuses suffered by many of the displaced.

Rights and opposition officials objected to the minister’s portrayal of the displaced.

The Dey Krahorm community was a cluster of shacks on 4 hectares of land in Phnom Penh’s Tonle Basaac commune, Chamkarmon district. Around 6,000 people had lived in the neighborhood before they were gradually pushed out, starting from 2003 and ending in January 2009.

Residents, many of whom were resettled on 3 hectares of land outside the city, claimed they had lived in the area since the 1980s.

Land was granted to development company 7NG as a social land concession, a move opposed by Dey Krahorm residents.

In July 2003, ahead of national elections, Prime Minister Hun Sen granted rights to some families in the neighborhood to live on the land. 7NG, however, continued with evictions, and many families were forced to settle in Choam Chao commune, in remote Dangkor district.

Residents complained they were being compensated below market price for their land. Protesters were evicted by Phnom Penh security forces, military police and soldiers, armed with electric batons, rifles and bulldozers, tractors and water trucks. Several were injured.

Meanchey District Governor Kouch Chamroeun told VOA Khmer he has never experienced forcible evictions and prefers peaceful negotiations.

Rights groups claim the evictions were a contradiction of a 2001 land law and blamed the government for a lack of responsibility.

Lao Monghay, a senior researcher at the Asian Human Rights Commission, in Hong Kong, questioned Hor Nahmong’s accusations.

The authorities had been careless, and the ownership of the land was questionable, he said.

“Whose land is this?” he said. “How did they grant the land to the company? Was there any transparency? Any bid? How much did the company pay to the government? So the top government officials who have big houses and land in Phnom Penh, did they really build them by themselves? Don’t you think they also took someone’s house and someone’s land after the Khmer Rouge regime?”

If the people of Dey Krahorm were illegal, under which law was it, he asked. When people began to return to the city following the Khmer Rouge, no one in the country possessed a thing, he said.

“The Khmer Rouge revoked all land and house possession,” he said. The people of Dey Krahorm lived freely after into the 1990s under the State of Cambodia.

“If they first moved to live in that area, why didn’t the government immediately prohibit this?” he said. “So this is the authority’s mistake, not the people’s mistake. The people did nothing wrong.”

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy said Hor Namhong’s remarks “are to protect the big, evil companies and businessmen who depend on the dictator leader in order to steal and rob the Khmer people of their property.”

“The people can’t accept such language, because the people are the owners of the country,” he said.

Thun Saray, president of the rights group Adhoc, told VOA Khmer the people in Dey Krahorm were not to blame, but the company had taken their land away.

“People lived there for a long time before the company existed,” he said. “When the people oppose the company’s policy, it is their right to do so because they have their own plot of land in the Dey Krahorm community. They should respect their land rights.”

Resources watchdog Global Witness has reported that 45 percent of Cambodian land belongs to private companies or powerful individuals, while millions of dollars from land concessions disappear from national coffers.

The UN, meanwhile, has urged Cambodia to cease forced evictions across the country, warning that such policies do not meet international rights standards and are against UN conventions.

Nhem En intends to become a millionaire: More Pol Pot's memorabilia put on sale ... including Pol Pot's toilet

Khmer Rouge photographer wants to sell Pol Pot's sandals, toilet

Mon, 18 May 2009
DPA

Phnom Penh - A former Khmer Rouge official photographer has put on sale for 1.5 million dollars what he claims to be Pol Pot's clothes, sandals and toilet, along with thousands of photographs and other artifacts he collected during the genocidal regime's 1975-79 rule. "I will sell Pol Pot's sandals, toilet, his uniform and cap, thousands of photographs and the two cameras I used during the Khmer Rouge period," said Nhem En, who was recruited to take photographs of detainees when they arrived at Tuol Sleng torture prison in Phnom Penh.

"I am asking for 1.5 million dollars, but the price is negotiable," he added.

Nhem En said he would use the money to establish a Khmer Rouge museum in Anlong Veng, a small town near the Thai border where the Maoist group hid in a jungle fortress until it disbanded in 1998.

"I am selling these items, but I have others that will be housed in the museum," he said. "I have already asked for donations for this museum from the US, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Vietnam, South Korea and Thailand, but none have provided funding."

His appeal came as the trial of the former head of Tuol Sleng prison resumed before Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes tribunal.

Kaing Guek Euv, known by his revolutionary alias Duch, faces charges of crimes against humanity, torture, premeditated murder and breaches of the Geneva Conventions, allegedly committed at the school-turned-prison, where at least 15,000 men, women and children were imprisoned and tortured before being murdered in the "killing fields" on the outskirts of the capital.

Nhem En said the millions of dollars in international donor funding spent on bringing Duch and four other Khmer Rouge leaders to trial would be better invested in his museum.

"Nobody in the Cambodian government supports my museum plan, so it will need a great deal of international funding to be established," he said.

In April, Nhem En offered to sell Pol Pot's shoes and toilet for 500,000 dollars and said he would keep the other items to be housed in the museum.

Up to 2 million people died during through execution, starvation or overwork during the Khmer Rouge's rule.

CAMBODIA: Mine accident survivor becomes deminer

"[My work] has a lot of benefits. One, we receive salary from MAG to feed ourselves and families and two, we can rid our villages of landmines." - Chea Sia

18 May 2009
Source: MAG (Mines Advisory Group)
Website: http://www.maginternational.org

MAG Cambodia Chea Sia, a 48-year-old amputee, has worked for MAG for 14 years as a deminer. He lost his right leg to a landmine explosion in 1982, when he served a soldier for the Khmer People's National Liberation Front, led by the late former Prime Minister Son Sann.
The accident took place in Batttambang province whilst patrolling the area around his camp.

"I stepped on a landmine laid by the Khmer Rouge. We didn't realise [they] had laid mines in the area," he says.

His fellow soldiers fired a few times into the air as a distress signal, and other soldiers came to assist them.

"They arrived and sent me to the camp where I received first aid from the paramedics," he recalls.

After receiving first aid, Chea Sia was put on a tractor and sent to a French hospital in Thailand near the Cambodian border, and was then transferred to a hospital in Khao-I-Dang refugee camp run by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

He stayed at the hospital for about three months and was then sent to a refugee camp in Thailand, where he lived for the next decade.

Along with many other refugees, he was repatriated to Cambodia in 1992.

"During the first four or five months [back] in Cambodia, I didn't do anything but depended on some money I had left from the camp," he says. "When I returned to Cambodia, we had big problems....we needed everything, unlike life in the camp where we were given food."

Chea Sia and his wife struggled to survive and eked out a living by buying and selling small items and farming. Then he heard about MAG.

"Initially, I wasn't aware that MAG recruited amputee deminers. My friend asked me to join. Frankly speaking, at that time I knew nothing about demining. While I was a soldier, I only knew that mines are dangerous. But I was assured that I would be sent to be trained."

Currently, Chea Sia carries out demining tasks in Pailin province, the former stronghold of the Khmer Rouge.

He says that it is difficult for disabled people with little education to find good jobs, and that he is lucky to work for MAG.

"I don't have any knowledge or education, so I depend on my physical strength to get a job. It would be difficult for me to find a better-paid job than the job I have with MAG."

As a deminer, Chea Sia has to wear a special prosthetic leg, which will not affect or disrupt a metal detector.

"Prosthetic limbs usually have a metal bar inside but those provided for amputee deminers contain no metal," he explains.

Chea Sia says that amputee deminers sometimes find it difficult when they have to walk up or downhill to get to a minefield, and said that they may work marginally slower than able-bodied persons.

"But it's not a big deal at all. We can perform our job. We are not asked to work where disabled people find it difficult to perform their tasks."

Chea Sia says that he is very happy to work with MAG, an organisation which has benefited people from the communities affected by landmine contamination.

"It has a lot of benefits. One, we receive salary from MAG to feed ourselves and families and two, we can rid our villages of landmines."

For more information on MAG's work in Cambodia, please visit
www.maginternational.org/cambodia

Doubts cast over veracity of ECCC personnel audits, observers say

Monday, 18 May 2009
Written by Robbie Corey Boulet
The Phnom Penh Post

US ENVOY to arrive in Cambodia for tribunal talks

ATOP US war crimes representative will meet with government and Khmer Rouge tribunal officials this week to discuss the UN-backed court, an embassy spokesperson confirmed Sunday. Clint Williamson, the US ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, is to arrive in Cambodia today, however a schedule for meetings with senior government officials, including Cabinet Minister Sok An, could not be confirmed. "We don't have a schedule confirmed yet," US embassy spokesperson John Johnson told the Post, adding that he could not specify what would be on the agenda for the talks. This week's visit will mark Williamson's second since he took office in 2006, and he is expected to also hold talks with NGO representatives and embassy personnel amid growing concern over allegations of graft at the court that have resulted in a UN review and the freezing of donor funding. Negotiations between the UN and Cambodia over an anti-corruption mechanism at the hybrid court were abandoned last month, with the UN saying Thursday it had "no more meetings scheduled" - Georgia Wilkins

Lawyers and court monitors maintain that reviews of UN-backed tribunal's human resources practices ‘not designed' to unearth evidence of kickback scheme at the centre of graft row.
ON FEBRUARY 4, Andrew Ianuzzi, a legal consultant for the defence team of former Khmer Rouge leader Nuon Chea, visited Phnom Penh Municipal Court for his third meeting in less than three weeks with Deputy Prosecutor Sok Kaliyan.

The topic of the meeting was a criminal complaint - filed in January by Ianuzzi and two other international lawyers for Nuon Chea - accusing officials, including then-director of administration Sean Visoth, of "perpetrating, facilitating, aiding and/or abetting" a kickback scheme in which Cambodian employees were forced to hand over portions of their salaries to top tribunal officials.

Government officials have repeatedly claimed that no evidence of such a scheme has ever surfaced, citing a series of international audits assessing, among other things, the court's human resources and management practices.

But lawyers and tribunal observers have dismissed this argument as disingenuous, saying that the audits were not designed to assess kickback allegations in the first place.

During the February 4 meeting, Ianuzzi recalled in an interview last week, Sok Kaliyan indicated - not for the first time - that the complaint would be thoroughly investigated.

But one week later, while at Phnom Penh International Airport to catch a flight to Bangkok, Ianuzzi saw a front page newspaper article reporting that the Municipal Court had abruptly ended the investigation on February 5.

When Ianuzzi returned to Phnom Penh and reviewed the case file, he noticed documents that weren't there when he checked the file on February 4: reports on the audits, which he and others insist don't actually clear the accused officials of anything.

"The audits ... were never intended to detect the type of corruption that has been alleged," John Hall, an associate professor at Chapman University School of Law in California who has written extensively about the tribunal, said via email.

"It is misleading to claim otherwise."

Court spokeswoman Helen Jarvis declined to answer questions for this article.

All reports indicate that staff were paid their full salaries on the books and that it was only after ... that they made a kickback payment.

"I think we have canvassed this issue extensively, and there are reports on our website about all this, so I would refer you to that," she said.

Clean review

The website includes the 25-page Human Resources Management Review, an independent review released in April 2008.

"Robust [human resources] systems have been developed and implemented to address previous shortcomings, to give effective support to the judicial process and to minimize the risk of questionable HR practices occurring in the future," the review said in its conclusion.

"Zero tolerance for non-compliance with HR systems and the Code of Conduct will also support ongoing improvement in the performance of the ECCC."

Sean Visoth said during the press conference announcing the review's release that it was designed "to recap all the separate audits and reviews carried out during the past year, and to assess whether HR management policies and practices of the Cambodian side of the ECCC are transparent, accountable, meet international standards and provide consistent and effective measures against any mismanagement".

At the same press conference, Jo Scheuer, then the country director for the UN Development Program, said, "Based on audits conducted from 2006 to present, there have been no questionable financial transactions, no misallocated resources and no incomplete or missing documentation in support of disbursements made by [the tribunal]. All of their financial transactions have passed audit scrutiny."

But Scheuer said in an interview last month that any kickback scheme would have been "off the books", meaning "there are no figures" that would surface in an audit.

"All the audits are clean because the books are clean," Scheuer said.

Heather Ryan, who has been monitoring the tribunal for the Open Society Justice Initiative, also said it would be impossible to assess kickback allegations with an audit of financial records.

"All reports indicate that staff were paid their full salaries on the books and that it was only after they received them that they made a kickback payment," she said in a May 10 email.

"If this is in fact the case, an audit of the books would not reveal anything about the practice."

Scheuer argued that the only way to investigate the alleged kickbacks would be to interview those making the allegations.

Ianuzzi also said investigators looking to effectively assess the kickback allegations would need to "interview witnesses and try to obtain" all relevant documents.

Several lawyers and observers said the nature of the audits - which they described as inadequate - underscored the need for the government to release the results of a UN review of the most recent kickback allegations, which surfaced last June.

The review was given to government officials last September but has not been made public.

Civil party lawyer Alain Werner said the government's refusal thus far to release the review results was fuelling "the constant speculation, the allegations and the rumours that are going on".

"Let's just disclose this report," he said.

Phay Siphan said in an interview Tuesday that he did not know which government officials had seen the UN review, but argued that its release could sour relations between UN and Cambodian officials.

"We respect each other, as a husband a wife, to create a new baby: the ECCC," he said.

He also reiterated the government's position that there is no need for further investigations into the kickback allegations.

"There have already been audits," he said, "and the findings showed that not a penny has been lost."

Cambodian ruling party wins majority in local election

PHNOM PENH, May 17 (Xinhua) -- The ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) won majority in local election held on Sunday to select the members of the new provincial, municipal and district councils, according to preliminary result announced by the National Committee of Election (NEC) on Monday.
CPP won over 75 percent of members of councils of provinces and municipality, and has also won over 74 percent of members of councils of district and cities, Im Suosdey, chairman of NEC, announced at the press conference.

The largest opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) won over 20.49 percent of members of councils for provinces and municipality, while over 20.58 percent in districts and cities, he said.

Meanwhile, co-ruling Funcinpec party won over 2 percent in provinces and municipality, and over 2.36 percent in districts and cities, while Norodom Ranaridhh Party (NRP) won over 1.85 percent and 2.33 percent respectively for the members of the new provincial, municipal and district councils.

The local election, lasted only one day, were carried out smoothly and peacefully, Tep Nytha, secretary general of NEC, told news conference Sunday. Final official results could be made public on May 29, according to the NEC.

There are only 11,353 members of commune councils have rights to vote for, while most of them from the CPP. Altogether four parties participated in the election, namely the major ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP), the major opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP), the co-ruling Funcinpec Party and the opposition Norodom Ranariddh Party (NRP).

Tep Nytha said that the election was very important because the new provincial, district and municipal councils would govern within their territory according to the government's policy of promoting democratic development.

The Interior Ministry has arranged more than 13,000 police and military police force to ensure peaceful balloting.