Ieng Sary ill; hearing postponed

Written by Georgia Wilkins
Friday, 27 February 2009

In his absence, lawyers argue for his release

DETAINED former Khmer Rouge minister Ieng Sary's bail hearing was postponed to April 2 after he was deemed unfit by doctors to attend the Khmer Rouge tribunal for the scheduled hearing on Thursday.

The 83-year-old was admitted to hospital Monday after doctors found blood in his urine. He was discharged Wednesday.

Lawyers for the accused octogenarian continued to press for his release in his absence on the basis that insufficient medical care was available at the court's detention centre.

"Pre-trial detention is not a form of punishment," co-lawyer Michael Karnavas told the court.

"One cannot discuss the health issue if one does not know what the heath issue is," he added on the issue of getting doctors to provide information as "experts" to the case.

It was also debated whether or not the court could have a hearing in his absence, with civil party lawyers arguing that a video link to the former leader's jail cell could be set up.

This was dismissed by defence lawyers, who claimed it would give a false sense of justice and strip Ieng Sary's right to participate in his trial.

In a press conference after the hearing, Karnavas criticised the pace of decisions at the UN-backed tribunal.

"When it takes 11 months to make a decision, it is unacceptable," he added, calling the chamber a "black hole".

However Cambodian co-prosecutor Tan Senarong said, "We don't intend any delay of the hearing but unfortunately, as you know, Ieng Sary's health is not good."

Tribunal graft charges spread

Written by Cat Barton

Friday, 27 February 2009

German delegation exposes results of secret UN probe; staff concur Photo by: HENG CHIVOAN Monks file into the Extraordinary Chambers on the opening day of Duch's trial on February 17. IT became a monthly ritual: Employees on the Cambodian side of the Khmer Rouge tribunal would get paid, and then they would - somewhat grudgingly - hand over some of their salaries to their supervisors. "You get paid in full, but when you [collect] it, you put it in an envelope and give it to the collector," a former employee at the UN-backed court told the Post in an interview late last year, describing how many of those working at the court were forced to hand over a percentage of their paychecks to higher-placed officials.

"In front of people, you're told to say, ‘No one is taking away my money,' [and] the money transferred into your account is the full amount, but then you have to ... give over the percentage," the employee said.

These kickback allegations are at the heart of a corruption scandal that has plagued the tribunal since they first came to light in 2006.

Despite denials from Cambodian court officials, the accusations were of enough concern to spark a review by the UN - the results of which have never been made public.

But a report from a German parliamentary delegation, written in November after its members met with the tribunal's deputy director of administration, Knut Rosandhaug, has shed some light on the graft allegations, detailing a bleak assessment of the court's corruption problems.

"A serious problem is the grave corruption which impedes on the work of the hybrid court," the report cites Rosandhaug as saying.

"Cambodian employees are required to pay kickbacks in order to be able to work," the report says, with the authors - members of the Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid Committee of the German parliament - using the German term schutzgelder, which literally means protection money.

Rosandhaug told the Post Thursday that he had no comment, as the “document referred to is issued by an entity outside the UN and the ECCC.”

“It is now for the Germans to comment,” he added.

The report had been available on the Bundestag website but was unavailable Thursday afternoon with no explanation. Rainer Buescher, the delegation’s press officer, did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.

The report’s findings, however, support accounts given by tribunal staffers and the concerns of lawyers for Brother No 2, Nuon Chea, who have sought to launch a criminal investigation into the alleged graft.

“It certainly confirms some of our worst suspicions,” Andrew Ianuzzi, a legal consultant for Nuon Chea’s defence team, said Thursday.

One court staffer explained in a series of interviews conducted with the Post how the kickback operation worked.

“For the first four months [of my contract], I paid 70 percent [of my salary in kickbacks], then it went down to 10 percent,” said the employee, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution.

“Let’s say you are the supervisor. You have 30 people under you, so the people under you know to give their envelope [containing the kickback] to you, and you hand it to Sean Visoth,” the employee said, referring to Cambodia’s top court administrator who is implicated in the Bundestag report. “In all the sections, it’s the same thing.”

The scheme was deeply unpopular – “Would you like it if you got paid, then your money got taken away?” the employee asked – but was maintained by a climate of fear.

“I’m afraid, if they know I talk to you, they’re not going to take a gun and shoot me in my face, but they will find some way [to fire me] … or they [will hurt] my kids,” the employee said.

“I can tell you until the day you close the door, the corruption will still go on,” the employee added.

“Anyone who speaks, they will be terminated.... They will set up their committee and find a way to get rid of that person who has talked, and that is why up to now” no information has come out.

Included in the Bundestag report are details of last July’s UN probe.

“It is deeply troubling – everyone had been placing blame for corruption on the Cambodian government, but now it seems like someone or some officials with the UN are involved in a potential coverup,” Ianuzzi said.

“It is very damaging for the credibility of the tribunal. Why are international officers protecting corrupt Cambodian officials?” he added.

The report cites Rosandhaug as saying that “the United Nations should withdraw from the tribunal, in case the national government continues to object following up on the corruption allegations”.

“Until today, the government categorically denies the existence of that problem. The United Nations would suffer from a loss of credibility if they’d support a tribunal which is characterised by corruption,” he said, according to the report.

In January, the Nuon Chea defence team filed a complaint to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, claiming unresolved graft allegations threatened the legitimacy of the tribunal and violated their client’s right to a fair trial. The lawyers accused Sean Visoth and the court’s former chief of personnel, Keo Thyvuth, of violating criminal law by “perpetrating, facilitating, aiding and/or abetting an organised regime of institutional corruption at the ECCC during the pending judicial investigation”. They also demanded the results of the UN investigation be released.

The complaint prompted a criminal investigation, but this was abruptly dropped in February.

Sean Visoth has been on sick leave since November, and the head of the court’s public affairs department, Helen Jarvis, said she knew of no date for his planned return to work.

“As far as I know, the UN does not have authority to conduct investigations into Cambodian staffers,” she said Thursday, adding that she knew nothing about the report and could not comment on it.

Sean Visoth could not be reached Thursday, but a woman answering his phone said he was too busy to speak to a reporter.

“It is unclear from the [German] report what exactly the UN found Visoth to be guilty of – did he pay money from his position? Or did he demand money from others? From our perspective ... the latter is more complicated, as it suggests more ECCC officials may be involved,” Ianuzzi said.

“We have some information that the UN has a sectional list” of officials involved in corruption, he added.

The team says this is troubling, as the office of administration is responsible for nine sections of the court, including court management and victim support.

“If everyone in the office of administration is paying kickbacks, everyone is compromised,” Ianuzzi said.

He said the defence team now planned to write a follow-up letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and forward a copy of the delegation’s report to the Phnom Penh Court of Appeal’s prosecutor general in a bid to reopenthe criminal investigation.

In addition, the delegation’s report quotes Rosandhaug as saying the Cambodian government “tries to interfere in the work of the tribunal”.

“The government of Cambodia has already signalled that it will not allow for additional criminal investigations to be opened,” the report says.

The court’s international co-prosecutor, Robert Petit, has sought to try an additional six suspects, but his Cambodian counterpart, Chea Leang, has voiced opposition.

The key question now, however, is what the response – other than further hushing up of the issue – will come from the UN, Ianuzzi said.

“There is a lot of momentum. Things are moving forward. The Duch hearing last week was a success, [and] many people are emotionally and professionally invested in the tribunal, and they want to see it succeed,” he said.

“But everyone needs to take a long hard look at what are the allegations, [and] I hope Knut makes a comment. What this institution really needs is leadership, and no one is leading the ECCC at the moment.”

"...what we're seeing here is exclusive development for the super-rich, while the poor get pushed ever deeper into poverty"

(Photo: Licadho)

Land grabs in Cambodia push poor out

Rights groups press government to end forced resettlement as parcels sold off `to highest bidder'

Feb 21, 2009
Bill Schiller
Asia Bureau
Toronto Star (Ontario, Canada)

Click here to learn more about Licadho Canada

PHNOM PENH–When military police sealed off the ramshackle, inner-city neighbourhood of Dey Krahorm at 2 a.m. one day last month – preparing to forcibly remove its remaining residents to make way for a plush, new commercial development – Lee Robinson, of Victoria, B.C., was inside.

"We knew there was going to be trouble," says Robinson, who runs a small non-governmental organization here called Licadho Canada.
Robinson and a handful of other Canadians, Americans and Germans had come to show their support for the people of Dey Krahorm, many of whom had been fighting for years to cling to what they believed was their rightful property.

Robinson and her foreign colleagues are part of a small but vocal throng of international youth that has converged on Cambodia, to press international donors and their governments to call Cambodia's government to account over its continued seizure of neighbourhoods populated by the poor and to press for civil rights.

But that day last month, they could do little when the neighbourhood of Dey Krahorm was laid to waste by the developer, with the backing of military police, the riot squad, and a band of about 100 "hired hands" clutching crowbars and clubs.

When the sun finally rose over Phnom Penh, the developer's group pushed its way through barricades of wood, metal and vendors' carts mounted by residents, and cleared a path for a massive steam shovel that swung its arm like a baseball bat, crushing every structure in its path.

Tear gas boomed, fires erupted and people were dragged screaming from their homes. Police endured a rain of rocks in retaliation.

"Everything kind of went into a war zone," Robinson recalls. "It was chaos."

By noon it was over. Dey Krahorm, a neighbourhood that began in the mid-1980s and was once home to musicians, actors, comedians and even a few civil servants, was no more.

The defeated were trucked off to a resettlement site some 20 kilometres outside the city, and once again, the development of Cambodia's capital marched on.

International human rights groups here say this is happening with increasing frequency across one of the world's poorest countries.

As international aid floods into Cambodia – aimed at reducing poverty and helping to build infrastructure – the rich elite are growing ever more powerful, while the poor are getting pushed aside.

"Cambodia is basically up for sale," says David Pred, one of the founders of Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia, a spinoff of a U.S.-based human rights organization.

"It's being parcelled up and sold to the highest bidder."

He says it's time the international community called a halt to it. And it's in a position to do so, he adds.

"International donors provide half of this government's national budget," he notes. "It's time they demanded accountability."

Pred and a growing number of non-governmental organizations and human rights defenders say aid to the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen should be made conditional on its respect for law and human rights.

Once counted among the Dey Krahorm community's staunchest defenders was former Canadian ambassador to Phnom Penh, Donica Pottie.

"People here still remember her," says Naly Pilorge, a French, Canadian and Khmer national who heads Cambodia's largest human rights organization, The Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights. "She stood up for the people of Dey Krahorm and for the poor."

While here, Pottie worked to free jailed human rights defenders and pressed the government to end forced removals and halt widespread land expropriation.

But Pottie returned to Ottawa in 2007 and Canada's mission here was downgraded from full-fledged embassy status following cutbacks from Ottawa.

This month, British-based environmental watchdog Global Witness issued a stinging report detailing what it alleges is the parcelling out of the nation's oil, gas and mineral reserves mainly to the family, friends and trusted associates of the government of Hun Sen.

Opposition parties here immediately seized on the report to demand an accounting from the government. But following national elections in July last year, in which Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party took 91 of 123 seats – elections that were criticized by the European Union and the United Nation's Special Representative for Human Rights as seriously flawed – the opposition is weak.

The government has promised to look into the matter, but with no stated timetable.

Meanwhile, as Cambodia's rich elite get richer, the nation continues to do without.

Cambodia has no national electricity grid.

Its highways are in a shambles.

And more than 60 per cent of Cambodians have no access to clean water.

The land on which Dey Krahorm once stood – the words mean "Red Soil" – was actually granted to the community by the government as a so-called Social Land Concession in 2003, one of several under a plan announced by Hun Sen himself to provide secure land tenure and on-site upgrading for Phnom Penh's poor.

But, as is so often the case in the developing world, the developer persuaded a tiny band of community leaders to affix their thumbprints to documents, turning over the entire parcel for their own lucrative private gain and a remote relocation outside the city. The deal was done without any consultation with the Dey Krahorm residents.

Some gave in. But a rump group of more than 150 families took a stand. They fired the leaders, elected their own and refused to move. Some 250 small retailers and renters stayed with them.

"In our view it (the land grab) was completely illegal," says German lawyer Manfred Hornung, who works for Pilorge's human rights organization and is now defending the leaders of the remaining residents who have been taken to court by the developers.

He warns, too, that forced removals like Dey Krahorm come with significant social costs, costs that may simmer now – and come to a boil later.

"Resettling people so far outside the city disrupts families, forces people to abandon jobs and takes children out of school."

And it's part of a pattern in recent years, he notes.

The forced removal of other Phnom Penh neighbourhoods like Sambok Chap, Mitheapheap and Russy Keo have all forced the poor from the city. And yet another target is Boeung Kak – a lake in the city's north end that developers plan to backfill and build on, pushing as many as 4,000 families in the surrounding area out of the city.

The plans for Boeung Kak constitute a social and environmental disaster in the making, says Pred of Bridges Across Borders.

"International aid is supposed to be about poverty reduction. But this epidemic of land theft is undermining the international community's best efforts.

"We're absolutely not anti-development," he says.

"But what we're seeing here is exclusive development for the super-rich, while the poor get pushed ever deeper into poverty. It's creating conditions for instability."