SRP Mu Sochua and supporters light candles today in front of Appeal Court to call for Justice before the Appeal Court announced verdict today.
(All Photos: SRP)
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Mu Sochua and her supporters lighted candles in front of Appeal Court to call for Justice
Wednesday, October 28, 2009(All Photos: SRP)
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Asia's intra-regional marriage migration on rise
Wed, 28 Oct 2009
DPA
Bangkok/Phnom Penh - When it comes to attracting a potential spouse, South Korean soap operas seem to be the best way to a South-East Asian bride's heart. Over the last decade, thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodian women have left their homes to marry South Korean husbands, lured into dubious unions by dreams of financial security and glitzy, city lifestyles in a modern Asian nation.
Cambodia, alarmed by a report that 1,760 Cambodian women had left the country in 2007 for brokered marriages in South Korea, slapped a ban on all marriages to foreigners in April 2008, lifting it only in December after putting in place restrictions on the nuptials trade.
"Korean men have demographic problems in their own country, particularly in finding wives for rural men who are mainly from the lower-income groups," said John McGeoghan, a human-trafficking expert for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Cambodia.
"In the marketing of this exercise, the Cambodian women are looking at Korean soap operas and thinking they are going to a glamorous life."
It was an IOM report on the exodus of Cambodian brides that sparked Phnom Penh's eight-month foreign marriage ban.
There might be nothing wrong in principle with impoverished women from rural Cambodia or Vietnam choosing to migrate through marriage to South Korea, an industrialized, high-tech country with a rapidly greying population and a lack of womenfolk on the farms.
But the Asian foreign brides business has been a source of disillusionment and outright abuses.
"Part of the reason this is an issue is because it's broker arranged, so they come in and two guys might see 100 Vietnamese girls, and they chose the one they like and are encouraged to sleep with the woman that night," said Andrew Bruce, IOM's Bangkok-based regional representative for South-East Asia.
IOM estimates that some 100,000 Vietnamese women have been brokered to Taiwanese husbands over the last decade. There are some 170,000 brides from mainland China in Taiwan, according to government figures, though the real figure may be closer to 270,000, according to non-government estimates.
South Korea, where brokers formerly recruited wives from rural north-east China, has switched to Vietnamese brides, with about 12,000 arriving every year.
It is big business. A broker charges each would-be husband 5,000- 20,000 dollars for a foreign bride, arranging the introductions, marriages, and processing the visa and passport for the newlywed.
"There was a Vietnamese woman who wanted to get out of it, once the husband had left, and she was told she had to pay all the fees, amounting to 6,000 dollars, and of course she had no money," IOM's Bruce said.
In Taiwan, there are stories of Vietnamese "brides" being used as maids by their new mothers-in-law or shared among several brothers as common chattel.
Alarmed by the horror stories, the Taiwan government has tightened up on immigration controls on Vietnamese women, making it more difficult for them to acquire citizenship.
In South Korea, where four in every 10 marriages in rural areas are cross-cultural, the government has commissioned the Women Migrants Human Rights Centre to run 24-hour emergency help lines for foreign brides in six languages.
Divorces among cross-cultural couples in South Korea have increased from 4,171 in 2003 to 11,225 in 2008, one indication that the soap operas might not be painting an accurate picture of rural lifestyles.
In Ho Chi Minh City and Phnom Penh, the IOM has set up orientation programmes for foreign brides awaiting their visas, informing them of their legal rights and providing them with a smattering of cultural and linguistic preparation for their future marriages.
"These women need information about Korea," IOM's McGeoghan said. "They need to know they are not going to be leading glamorous lives, that sometimes in Korean culture they won't be allowed out of the home or get pocket money."
But IOM regional representative Bruce acknowledged that the programme is more damage control than a solution for the abuses inherit in the marriage trade, which is likely to continue as long as poverty is rampant in the countrysides of Cambodia and Vietnam.
As in all marriages, there is both good and bad.
"On the one hand, these women are open to abuse, and they are almost being bought and sold," Bruce said. "But, on the other hand, the women also earn power, because they have an opportunity then to send money home and become far more important in their own families."
SRP pursues King's help to free editor
Hang Chakra (Photo: The Phnom Penh Post)Wednesday, October 28, 2009
By Meas Sokchea
The Phnom Penh Post
PARLIAMENTARIANS from the opposition Sam Rainsy Party met with King Norodom Sihamoni on Tuesday to request that he grant amnesty to jailed newspaper publisher and edi tor in chief Hang Chakra.
Hang Chakra, who runs the opposition paper Khmer Ma chas Srok, was convicted in June of defamation and pub lishing false information in a series of articles that appeared in his newspaper accusing officials working for Deputy Prime Minister Sok An of cor ruption.
The publisher was sentenced to one year in prison and fined 9 million riels (US$2,187). The Court of Appeal rejected his case on August 11.
SRP lawmaker Son Chhay said that an 18-member del egation met with the King on Tuesday to report on the leg islature's recent activities and to request amnesty for Hang Chakra.
The King did not offer a de finitive statement on the case, Son Chhay said, though the monarch has already written a letter to Minister of Justice Ang Vong Vathana asking that the Supreme Council of the Mag istracy examine Hang Chakra's situation.
"The King is waiting for the government's response. He promised that he will do what he can," Son Chhay said, ac knowledging that he was un sure of whether the King's at tention would be enough to free Hang Chakra.
Council of Ministers spokes man Phay Siphan said the government has no power to intervene in this case, par ticularly because it was the original plaintiff against Hang Chakra.
"The government cannot play both plaintiff and judge," Phay Siphan said. "The court has given Hang Chakra a verdict – it is the court's case."
The government's duty, Phay Siphan said, is to enforce the law rather than to interpret it, and as such, he was unsure that any government body would have the power to grant amnesty to Hang Chakra.
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Foreign brides rejuvenate South Korea's aging society
Wed, 28 Oct 2009
DPA
Seoul - Foreign brides are replacing local women as a major source of vitality in South Korea's greying rural communities, helping to rebuild rural family bonds by providing babies and farm labour and participating in community activities. Lured by the prospect of a higher standard of living, brides recruited from other Asian countries are becoming commonplace in the South Korean countryside.
In rural communities, which once prided themselves on their homogeneity, four in every 10 women married in 2008 were foreign-born, according to data from the Ministry of Public Administration and Security.
In small towns with average ages in the 50s or above, many old farm houses are abandoned or under-utilized by elderly residents after their adult children have left for jobs in the cities.
The farm house of Han Jun-Hee, 44, is a good example. Han said the house used to be a place of "sighs and silence" before his Thai bride arrived in 2002.
Now, the couple's three daughters play in the garden, and wife Onnoi, 36, helps work the family rice paddy. She even takes care of Han's aging parents and works as an English interpreter at a local community centre.
"I cannot imagine our family without her," Han said. "She gave us a new family. She helps me with the rice harvest. She is a good mother. She is a good daughter-in-law."
Onnoi had to work hard to fit in.
"You have no idea how lonely and hard it was when I first started my life here," she said. "I didn't understand what the other family members were saying. I was scared about everything that is different here."
Cultural differences often deepen the homesickness felt by the foreign brides.
"I weep secretly when I think of my parents at home and miss them," said a 25-year-old Vietnamese bride who married a South Korean farmer last year.
The passage of time may ease the homesickness as the young women adapt to their roles as wife and mother.
But some of the marriages, especially those undertaken out of necessity rather of romance, can end with runaway brides after the women discover a huge gap between their fantasies and the reality of life on South Korean farms.
A 2008 survey by the Korea Institute of Health and Society showed that 28 per cent of foreign brides experience verbal abuse from their Korean spouses. Twenty-five per cent feel physically threatened by spouses.
Some foreign brides have even been locked into their houses to keep them from running away. Suicides among foreign brides have been reported.
Divorces among these mixed-marriage couples increased from 4,171 in 2003 to 11,225 in 2008. In 2008 there were 36,204 marriages registered between South Koreans and foreign-born spouses, according to South Korea's Statistics Office.
The offspring of mixed marriages often suffer for being different. Many of these children have a harder time with the Korean language and are subjected to teasing or bullying by peers.
As of the end of 2008, there were 167,090 marriages between South Korean and foreign-born spouses, and those unions have produced more than 100,000 babies over the years, according to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. At least 25,000 of those children have reached school age.
Foreign wives are emerging from the pain of loneliness and prejudice by forging networks among themselves. Across the country are dozens of inter-cultural family centres, where foreign brides get counseling on family welfare, learn about Korean culture and take part in community services.
At the centres, the foreign brides work as interpreters to help recent arrivals adapt to their own new lives.
Some of the foreign mothers are preparing to teach English at community centres or schools.
A 35-year-old Philippine-born woman, mother of a 10-year-old son, is one of 13 foreign brides attending classes to become English teachers at primary school in the Korea Arts and Culture Education Service.
"I want to teach English at primary school, where my son is learning," said the woman, who asked not to be named. "I'd like my son to be proud of his mom when I teach his class."
The state-run Korean National Tourism Organization provides a medical tourism class for 18 brides from China, Japan, Thailand and the Philippines so they can work for local government or medical clinics or travel agents.
"If we have more Asian brides, we may have more of an international mix, or third culture, that is partly Korean and partly Thai or Vietnam or Philippine," said Park Dae-Sik, a researcher for the Korea Rural Economic Institute.
Dong Thap boosts trade cooperation with Cambodia
10/28/2009
VNA/VOVNews
At a workshop on trade and investment promotion held in Phnom Penh on October 27, participants introduced each other to areas of potential and opportunity for cooperation, and ask questions on legal issues, customs, finance and banking.
Sharing a common borderline with Cambodia, Dong Thap province is ideally suited to boost trade promotion, expand into the market and consume products in Cambodia, said the Chairman of the Dong Thap Provincial People’s Committee, Truong Ngoc Han, at the workshop, which was held by the Cambodian Chamber of Commerce and the Dong Thap Provincial Trade and Investment Promotion Centre.
A memorandum of understanding on enhancement of investment and trade was signed right after the workshop by senior officials of Dong Thap province and the Cambodian Chamber of Commerce.
Additionally, companies from both sides agreed trade contracts worth US$1 million at the workshop.
Earlier, at a meeting with Cambodian Vice Prime Minster Men Sam On, Chairman of the Dong Thap Provincial People’s Committee Truong Ngoc Han pledged to push up activities at gates along the borderline between Dong Thap province and Cambodia’s Prey Veng province.
Dong Thap province has helped build infrastructure for provincial road 102 in Cambodia, linking from the Dinh Ba-Bontea Chak Krey border gate to the trans-Asia highway.
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Ancient [Baphuon] temple nearly restored
Oct 28, 2009
AFP
Walled-off from camera-toting tourists, they are finally close to completing an astonishing reconstruction of the fabled 11th century Baphuon Temple.
'This is not easy to plan like a construction project is,' says architect Pascal Royere from the French School of Asian Studies, who is leading the rebuilding team.
Restorers dismantled Baphuon in the 1960s when it was falling apart, laying some 300,000 of its stone blocks in the grass and jungle around the site.
But before the French-led team of archaeologists could reassemble the 34-metre tall temple, the hardline communist Khmer Rouge swept to power in 1975.
Up to two million people died from overwork, starvation and torture as the regime tried to re-set Cambodia to 'Year Zero' by eliminating reminders of its past - including the records to put Baphuon back together.
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Elder Monk Beats 68-Year-old Nun to Death
10/28/2009
ShortNews.com
Two days earlier, two monks beat a fourth-year medical student to death because he had chastised the monks for drinking palm wine (a strong wine made from palm trees).
Chhith Sophay, the chief monk, expressed alarm at the most recent killing, as well as the potential damage such violence could cause to the Buddhist faith.
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Thailand's fugitive former premier to visit Cambodia "soon"
Oct 28, 2009
DPA
Thaksin said he would be paying a visit to Thailand's neighbour 'soon to thank Hun Sen,' the Bangkok Post reported, citing an unnamed source in the Puea Thai opposition party, which has the financial backing of the former prime minister.
Hun Sen last week threw a monkey wrench in Thai-Cambodian relations by claiming that Thaksin, who faces a two-year jail sentence in Thailand and is living in self-imposed exile, was his good friend and would be granted refuge and a job as an economic adviser should be come to Cambodia.
He added that Cambodia would not extradite Thaksin to Thailand, even though the neighbouring countries have signed an extradition agreement.
The former Khmer Rouge cadre went on to compare Thaksin with Myanmar pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.
Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has spent 14 of the past 20 years under house detention and was recently sentenced to another 18 months of house arrest.
Thaksin, a former telecommunications tycoon turned populist politician, was sentenced last year for abuse of power for allowing his wife in 2003 to bid on a plot of land at a public auction when he was still prime minister.
Thaksin was premier from 2001 to 2006 before being toppled in a bloodless military coup on charges of corruption, dividing the nation and undermining democratic institutions.
Thaksin's close ties to Hun Sen date back to when he was still the chairman of the Shinawatra Corp, which won several telecommunications concessions in neighbouring Cambodia.
Hun Sen's open support of Thaksin, made upon his arrival in Thailand Friday to attend a summit of the Association of South-East Asian Nations, was seen as a diplomatic slap in the face to current Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who came to power in December after the downfall of the previous pro-Thaksin coalition government.
Thailand and Cambodia have a long history of animosity and border spats, the latest one being over joint claims to land adjacent to the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple on their border.
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All in the "Hor" family: A Baby Hor will sit at the UN World Heritage Committee
Second Thai candidate makes it to UN Heritage panel
October 28, 2009
The Nation
Twentynine countries had put forward names for the new panel, which will be replacing the current one later this year, and will be in office until 2013.
According to Culture Minister Teera Slukpetch, the UN World Heritage agency reportedly had problems deciding on the new panel because both Thailand and Cambodia - currently in a dispute over the Preah Vihear temple - had put forward candidates.
Eventually, though, the UN agency decided to select candidates from both countries as a way to help solve the conflicts. The son of Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Nam Hong will represent Cambodia.
Somsuda is the second Thai candidate selected to the UN panel, following Adul Wichiencharoen who had served in the panel for two terms.
"From now on, Thailand will play a bigger role in the world stage. More importantly, Somsuda's selection will help push Thai sites to be included in the UN World Heritage listing," Teera said yesterday.
Somsuda will be proposing historical sites to the UN, including the Sriwichai Chaiya - Nakhon Si Thammarat - Sating Phra - Yarang cultural route, Kedah of Malaysia, as well as the Lanna culture.
Initial reports mentioned that the new panel will check out Thai heritage sites in March. It might also visit Preah Vihear.
Thailand is hoping to host the 2011 UN World Heritage Committee meeting, once the summit next year has been hosted by Brazil.
Somsuda, meanwhile, said that she was glad she had been selected and thanked everyone for supporting her. "I will be neutral and work for the benefit of all countries. Sites in many countries have not yet been included in the UN list and I will push for them to be made part of the list," she said.
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Cambodia's killing fields 30 years on: 'They will kill our parents tonight... we must escape'
Orphaned Cambodian children in refugee camp in 1979
Young Somaly Lun
Somaly as she is today
With her daughters (All pics: Harry Page, Getty)27/10/2009
By Ros Wynne-Jones
Mirror.co.uk
It is 30 years since John Pilger revealed the existence of the Cambodian Killing Fields in the Daily Mirror. For Somaly Lun, the anniversary is bittersweet.
Today, customers at the Oxfordshire supermarket checkout where she works have no idea of her extraordinary story.
How she escaped US B-52 bombers as a child, a Khmer Rouge concentration camp as a teenager, and Vietnamese soldiers as a young woman. How she lost her father and six brothers to the Khmer Rouge.
Somaly owes her life in the UK to Oxfam's Marcus Thompson, then a young humanitarian worker who had become friends with Somaly and her husband Borithy.
"England gave me the first safe place I had ever lived," Somaly says.
By the time she was 10, her home town of Kratie was under attack, even though Cambodia was neutral. Kratie was close to the border with Vietnam which was at war with the States, and US President Richard Nixon ordered 100,000 tonnes of secret bombings.
"The B-52s came every day," Somaly recalls. "Every day, shooting and bombing and running." One day a man grabbed her as an F-11 US fighter jet swept low and held her in front of him as a shield. "The plane was so low I could almost see the pilot's face," she says. It permanently damaged her hearing.
Somaly's family fled to Phnom Penh, but by 1975 it had fallen to Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. Backed by the US against the Vietnamese communists, the Khmer Rouge were determined to return Cambodia to Year Zero, to a time before industrialisation.
"My father, a doctor, was in the middle of an operation the day the Khmer Rouge came," Somaly says. "He said, 'What about the patient?' They pointed a gun at him and asked, 'Do you want to die?'"
Somaly's family were herded out at gunpoint with two million other people. The family was taken to Pursat, a concentration camp in the remote countryside. Then the Khmer Rouge came for Somaly's father.
"They said, 'We know you are a doctor'." The first time, they wanted him to treat one of the leaders. But the second time, "they took him away and he never came back". Somaly was forced to spend 20 hours a day as a slave doing hard labour in the rice fields despite starvation, exhaustion and malaria.
Her older brother was caught saving his food rations for her. "They made him confess he was a US spy," she says. "They kept beating him until he died. Then my younger brother was taken. They put him in a prison with other children, and burned it to the ground. The screams have haunted me ever since.
"One day, they came and took 2,000 people. One of the girls came back like a zombie with blood all over her. She said, 'They killed everyone'." Then, one day a pal whispered: "They are killing our parents and we have to escape now, tonight." Somaly says: "After dark we went to where people were gathered with three big boats."
The Khmer Rouge chased them along the river, firing at the boats. She says: "We hid in the mangrove and caught fish and ate it raw as we didn't dare to make a fire. We drank muddy water. We all became sick - just skin and bones."
Everyone on Somaly's boat was drifting in and out of consciousness. "But somehow it arrived by itself at Kampong Chhnang, where the Khmer Rouge was driven out," she says. "They gave us food, water, shelter."
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New escapees from Pursat told Somaly that thousands had been taken to a cliff and forced off at gunpoint. Yet, somehow her mother, sister and brother had escaped. "The day I saw them again was the happiest day of my life," Somaly says.
When they returned to Phnom Penh in 1979 they found a ghost city occupied by the Vietnamese liberators.
Somaly took a job at the hotel Samaki - now Le Royale - as a receptionist, where she met Borithy, who was working for the Cambodian foreign office as a translator.
She also met Marcus Thompson, a 34-year-old British aid worker sent by Oxfam to set up a humanitarian programme. "We became friends," he remembers. "We were all stuck together at the hotel."
But Cambodia was still dangerous - and Borithy was warned to leave Phnom Penh. "He said he was in love with me and refused to leave without me," Somaly says.
On March 16, 1980, the couple married in secret inside a destroyed pagoda. The next day, they escaped. Passing through fields of landmines, they made it through Vietnamese, then Khmer Rouge territory and even past the Thai border guards to Khao I Dang, a squalid refugee camp on the border. Somaly wrote to her family and to Marcus to tell them they were alive.
"I needed to go to those camps as part of my work," Marcus says. Somaly says she will never forget seeing Marcus walking through the camp. "I cried out 'Marcus!' and just hung on to his neck," she says.
Marcus was shocked by their plight. "They couldn't go back to Cambodia," he says. "The Thais wouldn't accept them. We had to do something."
Back in England, Marcus and his Oxfam colleagues went through official channels to ask whether Britain would accept the family as refugees.
"We had no expectation anything would happen," Marcus says. "But then we got a letter saying 'Yes'."
Somaly, 22 and pregnant, arrived in the UK on May 12, 1981, with Borithy, Somaly's mother Moeun, brother Rithy and sister Virak - and settled close to Marcus and his family in Witney, Oxfordshire.
"People at the Oxfam offices donated all kinds of furniture, saucepans, an old TV, carpets," Somaly remembers.
Today, the couple's daughters are success stories in their own right. The youngest, 23-year-old Bophanie, is a teacher in Brighton, while her sister, Mary Thida Lun, 27, is Assistant Private Secretary to the Minister of State for International Development, Gareth Thomas.
At 64, Marcus still works as an adviser to Oxfam, and the charity remains working in Cambodia, still tackling the legacy of the dark days of the Khmer Rouge and facing new challenges from climate change, typhoons and flooding.
Today, 30 years on, when she goes to and from work at the local supermarket, living her British life, Somaly sometimes remembers the words her father said to her before they took him away.
"He said, 'You are going to survive. You are going to go places'." She shakes her head slowly. "I think that was what gave me the strength to survive."
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