Jailed Activist Writes Songs for Freedom

By Khuon Narim and Simon Lewis - January 2, 2013

Incarcerated since September 4, 29-year-old Yorm Bopha has languished for more than 100 days inside the walls of Prey Sar prison. Her supporters say her conviction on charges of assault was designed to silence an outspoken activist, but even in jail, her voice is being heard in the form of songs Ms. Bopha has been writing from her prison cell.

Anti-eviction activist Yorm Bopha attends her trial at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court last week. (Siv Channa)

Ms. Bopha, who was sentenced to three years in jail on widely derided assault charges on December 27, composes her songs in freehand on paper, then gives them to her husband, Luos Sakhorn, who takes them from Prey Sar and distributes them to Ms. Bopha’s supporters and fellow activists.

“I thought wrong, I thought there was justice in society,” goes a line from “Life Like a Bird in a Cage,” a song penned by Ms. Bopha during her jail stint that uses the melody from a traditional Khmer song called “Your Heart Has Changed.”

“Citizens suffer and cry because the authorities have brutal hearts/ Citizens are at pains to help, to protect land, homes, to keep for children,” go the lyrics from the song.

“Beat up, arrested, detained/ Citizens cry almost until death/ Who can resolve the problem for poor villagers?/Or will they just wait and die?”

Ms. Bopha’s jailhouse blues have been taken up by her supporters as they rally for her release, and for a resolution to the long-running dispute over Boeng Kak, where thousands of people were evicted to make way for a real estate project headed by CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin.

As they awaited the verdict in her case last week, fellow activists, hemmed in by riot police, joined in a chorus of the songs.

“The police, when they hear that song, they really pity her and understand,” said Sia Phearum, director of Housing Rights Task Force. “Their commanders order them to beat the women, but they reject.”

Videos of the protesters singing Ms. Bopha’s songs have been posted online and shared by sympathizers. In the tradition of protest songs, they hope that Ms. Bopha’s blues will inspire solidarity with the activist and her cause.

“She is suffering, but in prison she wants the public to help her,” Mr. Phearum said. “When the leaders [of the protest] sing that song, it really affects my heart, it inspires the people’s hearts.”

Ms. Bopha’s lawyer is set to file an appeal today, amid widespread calls for the court to reconsider the verdict.

Another song from the jailed activist, “What Day Will There Be Freedom?” rails against the corrupt government officials and ruthless companies that activists blame for forced evictions. This song uses the melody from the traditional tune “What Day Will You Get Married?”

“The days of smiles turn to sadness/Brutal officials have no mercy/There were comfortable lives at Boeng Kak before the horrible company moved people away/They developed but why is there no change/for the poorest people.

“What day will there be freedom?/Please, officials, tell the people/or does the man just hunger for dollars and make the citizens suffer.”

And in the song “Very Painful Without Justice,” Ms. Bopha laments her own predicament.

“I wanted to advocate for land and housing, but I am poor and I have no rank, so I was violated/Officials, help the citizens in poverty to get freedom.”

Ms. Bopha was convicted alongside her husband and two other family members—who have not yet been apprehended by police—for taking part in the beating of two motorcycle-taxi drivers in August.

At the trial last week, Judge Suos Sam Ath had to choose between the word of the two victims, who admitted to having been drinking in the hours running up to the incident, and Ms. Bopha. He sided with the victims.

Amnesty International considers Ms. Bopha a prisoner of conscience and supporters have staged several protests since the verdict.

“We hope that these songs will make officials aware of our suffering, and find justice for Yorm Bopha,” said Boeng Kak resident Tep Vanny, pledging to continue the fight, both for Ms. Bopha’s release, and for a resolution to the Boeng Kak issue.

“We are not afraid to face arrest because we haven’t yet reached a result.”

Corruption Campaign Will Require Clear Fees for Services, Advocate Says

WASHINGTON DC - Cambodia must do more to put clear “price tags” on services it intends to charge people for government services and set clear timelines for delivery of those services, if it is to advance its fight against corruption, a leading transparency advocate says.

San Chey, Cambodia representative for the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability in East Asia and the Pacific, told “Hello VOA” on Monday that people are tired of paying bribes that are made easy because officials have no set prices for some services and no deadlines.

http://www.voacambodia.com

With Election on the Horizon, Politicians Defend Land Policies

National parliamentary elections are scheduled for July 28, and Cambodia’s land problems are emerging as a key issue.

Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer

03 January 2013

WASHINGTON DC - Cambodian politicians have begun a public campaign to defend their records on land policies, as they prepare for the run-up to July elections.

Politicians from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, as well as the opposition Sam Rainsy and Human Rights parties, have said they will give free land titles and not take land or tax from farmers.

But Cambodia has been plagued with ongoing land grabs, forced evictions and bitter disputes since the last national election, in 2008, and the issue is likely to be a main political battleground in the parliamentary elections.

http://www.voacambodia.com

Barack Obama: Dump These 8 Unsavory Allies

by

 

Kenneth Roth

Published in: 

Foreign Policy

January 2, 2013

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  U.S. President Barack Obama addresses the 67th United Nations General Assembly at the U.N. headquarters in New York on September 25, 2012.
  © 2012 Reuters

During the U.S. presidential campaign, challenger Mitt Romney famously accused President Obama of having "thrown allies like Israel under the bus." It was an odd characterization of a policy that saw Obama make a brief, abandoned effort to limit settlement expansion, no serious attempt to stop the Jim Crow-like separate-and-unequal treatment of Palestinians in Israeli-controlled parts of the West Bank, and a determined push to ensure that the International Criminal Court won't get jurisdiction over war crimes in Palestinian territory.
But plenty of governments deserve, if not being directed to the bus, at least being shown the door when it comes to unconditional U.S. support. So-called realists will offer the usual rationalizations for ignoring that prescription. Their view of the national interest, however, is outdated in a world where modern communications make it easy for people to coalesce around grievances and perilous for governments to ignore them. The Arab Spring showed nothing if not the folly of relying on strongmen to bring stability.
In this new world, standing up for human rights reflects not only America's values but also its interests. It should be at the heart of U.S. policy, not an option of convenience. If Obama wants to bolster his legacy in his second term, he can and should get tough on some of the United States' most unsavory friends and allies. Here is a good start:
Afghanistan: As the Pentagon bows out, it is counting on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to see through the planned 2014 transition. But the Obama administration hasn't used its considerable leverage to dissuade Karzai from undermining women's rights, appointing an alleged torturer as intelligence chief, tolerating rampant corruption, and blocking efforts to hold accountable his warlord allies.
Uzbekistan: During the 2005 uprising in the town of Andijan, President Islam Karimov ordered troops to surround the demonstrators and shoot everyone in sight. Hundreds were slaughtered. His government routinely tortures dissidents and imprisons them for 15 or 20 years. Some have even been boiled alive. Yet the Obama administration soft-pedals his brutality -- and waived restrictions on selling him military equipment -- because Uzbekistan provides an alternative to Pakistan for resupplying the troops in Afghanistan. Especially as this rationale disappears, the Faustian bargain should end.
Cambodia: In 28 years as prime minister, Hun Sen has presided over the killing of countless political opponents while increasing his control of the army, police, and courts. But the Obama administration has done little to discourage him from building a one-party state, such as insisting that exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy be allowed home without fear of arrest, and has placed no conditions on increased military ties or aid. Cambodia is where Obama should demonstrate that his Asian "pivot" isn't a competition with China for the loyalty of autocrats but a vision for Asian democracy.
Rwanda: Led by President Paul Kagame, the Rwandan government has long benefited from Washington's genocide guilt (Bill Clinton's administration sat on its hands during the 1994 massacre of more than half a million people) and admiration for its progress rebuilding the country. But the Rwandan Patriotic Front, which became the national army, itself murdered tens of thousands of civilians in the 1990s; the government uses detention and violence to shut down political opposition; and the military, despite persistent government denials, has actively supported a succession of rebel groups in neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo. At the U.S. Congress's insistence, the Obama administration has finally suspended some military aid to Rwanda, but it continues to run political interference for the government and downplay its crimes, most recently its military support for the murderous M23 rebellion in eastern Congo.
Ethiopia: Washington had a blind spot for growing repression under the late Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who died in August. In return for Ethiopia's help fighting terrorism and battling al-Shabab militants in Somalia, the Obama administration muffled its criticism of the security forces' war crimes and the government's restrictions on civil society, detention of journalists, violence against demonstrators, and pursuit of development policies that penalize political opponents.
Saudi Arabia: Yes, it has lots of oil. But the Saudis, who need cash to fuel their welfare state, are going to sell it regardless of how Obama treats them. Meanwhile, the Saudi monarchy holds thousands in arbitrary detention, imposes archaic restrictions on women, suppresses most dissent, mistreats its Shiite minority, and insists that the neighboring Bahraini monarchy crush its pro-democracy movement. Obama has been silent.
Bahrain: Saudi Arabia's next-door neighbor is the most glaring exception to Obama's generally supportive posture toward Arab Spring demonstrators. The ruling Al Khalifa family uses lethal force, torture, and arbitrary detention to crush protests. Yet out of deference to Saudi sensibilities and fear of losing the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet base, the Obama administration has allowed its security relationship with Bahrain to trump its concern for the rights of Bahrainis -- a selectivity that undermines its broader support for Arab freedom.
Mexico: The country's drug cartels have committed horrific crimes, but so have the security forces that former President Felipe Calderón sent to combat them. Obama routinely praised Calderón's "great courage" in fighting the cartels with nary a word about widespread military and police abuses. Instead, the administration has sent some $2 billion to support Mexico's counternarcotics efforts, despite ample evidence of human rights violations and security forces so corrupt that the Mexican government has turned to its navy to crack down on the cartels.

Chinese Firms Sign Deal to Build 400-km Railway Line

By Sun Mesa and Simon Lewis - January 1, 2013

Two Chinese firms yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding, overseen by the Minister of Transport, to start work later this year on a massive project to build an entirely new 400-km railway line, a steel mill and a seaport.

The project, valued at an astonishing $9.6 billion, will be carried out by Cambodia Iron and Steel Mining Industry Group, a consortium of Chinese metal firms, which has contracted China Railway Group to conduct construction work on the railway.

The venture would link a steel mill in Preah Vihear province’s Rovieng district, which is believed to have deposits of iron ore, with a brand-new port on an island off the coast of Koh Kong province, Zhang Chuan Li, chairman of Cambodia Iron and Steel Mining Industry Group, told reporters at a ceremony in Phnom Penh.

“Work will begin in July 2013 on all three parts of the project. It will employ more than 20,000 local workers and 3,000 Chinese experts,” Mr. Zhang said, adding that the project would take an estimated four years to complete.

He explained that 404 km of railway would be constructed from Rovieng, where a 14-square-km steel plant would be built, to Koh Smach off Koh Kong’s Kiri Sakor district. The track will run through Preah Vihear, Kompong Thom, Kompong Chhnang, Kompong Speu and Koh Kong provinces.

The project also includes plans to build 11 railway stations along the line and a 3,192-meter railway bridge onto the tiny island, where a port for exports would be constructed.

Despite the project’s vast scale and ambitious nature, no officials from the Ministry of Commerce or Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy were present at yesterday’s ceremony. Officials also provided no details on what displacement could result from the project.

China Railway Group—China’s “largest integrated railway construction contractor,” according to its website—in 2011 conducted a feasibility study on the route, which has not been made public.

Mr. Zhang said Cambodia Iron and Steel Mining Industry Group already has a 1,300-square-km iron-ore exploration license in Rovieng.

The steel mill would take two-and-a-half years to build, and would produce 1 million tons of steel a year in its first three years of operation, he said.

“The steel company will be able to supply the Cambodian market entirely—it already imports 900,000 tons of steel every year from outside—and the company will also export,” he said, offering no exploration results to back up his claims.

Transportation Minister Tram Iv Tek, who clinked champagne glasses with Chinese executives of Cambodia Iron and Steel Mining Industry Group and China Railway Group during the ceremony, said the railway would not only help to transport steel, but could carry agricultural products, other industrial goods and passengers.

“If this huge project is successful, it will help the Cambodian economy to develop and grow and help a lot of people to get work,” he said.

Rovieng district has attracted numerous companies looking to find iron ore and other minerals, but none have managed to develop a large-scale mine.

Cambodia Iron and Steel Mining Industry Group donated $200,000 toward the construction of a new CPP office for the district, which was completed in January, and is paying for the construction of a park in Preah Vihear City. Officials have said the largess of the project would not influence decision-making.

Kong Makara, director of the provincial industry, mines and energy department, confirmed that Cambodia Iron and Steel Mining Industry Group had held an exploration license since October 2009.

“But it does not have the license to dig a mine yet,” he said.

Another Chinese company, Guangxi Nonferrous Metal Group, began work on its own $500 million steel plant in Rovieng in 2012, but progress has frozen, Mr. Makara said.

The purported scale of the investment—worth about three-quarters of Cambodia’s entire gross domestic product last year—will raise questions, especially considering that no large-scale mining is currently taking place in Cambodia.

Richard Stanger, president of the Cambodian Association for Mining Exploration Companies and CEO of Liberty Mining International, said he had heard the company was conducting exploratory drilling and magnetic imaging for iron ore in the area, but that he did not know details of how much iron ore was there.

“There are a lot of iron ore exploration licenses in that area. But I don’t know how extensive the resources are,” he said.

Peter Brimble, senior country economist at the Asian Development Bank, said the price tag on the Chinese-led project seemed “very high.”

“How can it cost that much?” he said, noting that a rail link between Vientiane and the Lao-Chinese border that was approved by Laos in October, and includes numerous tunnels through mountains, is only valued at $7 billion.

The project would at some point have to cross the northern line of the existing Cambodian rail network, which is currently being rehabilitated, but no talks appear to be under way to link the two lines.

David Kerr, chief executive of Toll Royal Railways, the company holding the concession to operate the rehabilitated railway network, said he had not heard about the Chinese-led project.

“I wasn’t invited,” he said. “I don’t know anything about it.”

Mr. Kerr added that, due to a confidentiality clause, he could not say whether or not Toll Royal had to be consulted first before another company was given the right to operate trains in Cambodia.

HOUSING IS THE HUMAN RIGHT: Sugar and Spice, And Everything Nice? January...

ដកស្រង់ពីអាសីុសេរី
លោក សៀ ភារម្យ អគ្គនាយកនៃក្រុមការងារពិសេសសិទិ្ធលំនៅដ្ឋាន


ការ បោះឆ្នោតជាតិខែកក្កដា គឺមានសារៈសំខាន់ណាស់ ចំពោះរដ្ឋាភិបាល។ ខ្ញុំមិនគិតថា ពួកគេនឹងបណ្តេញប្រជាជនចេញពីផ្ទះសម្បែង ដីធ្លី ក្នុងចំនួនច្រើន ដូចពីមុនទៀតឡើយ គឺចំនួននោះមិនកើន ឬថយចុះ ដូចអ្វីដែលយើងបានមើលឃើញ កាលពីឆ្នាំមុនឡើយ។ ប៉ុន្តែ យើងព្យាករថា ក្រោយការបោះឆ្នោត ករណីនៃការបណ្តេញចេញនឹងកើនឡើង។ យើងព្រួយបារម្ភថា នៅក្រោយការបោះឆ្នោតអាណត្តិថ្មីប្រហែលសកម្មជនដីធ្លីជា ច្រើនថែមទៀត នឹងត្រូវបញ្ជូនទៅពន្ធនាគារ ដោយសារការអនុវត្តសេរីភាពបញ្ចេញមតិ។ រដ្ឋាភិបាលនឹងបន្តបំភិតបំភ័យសកម្មជន ព្រោះរដ្ឋាភិបាលភ័យខ្លាចថា ការតវ៉ារបស់ពួកគេ នឹងប៉ះពាល់ដល់អ្នកគាំទ្ររបស់ខ្លួន នៅមុនការបោះឆ្នោត។ ប៉ុន្តែ ខ្ញុំគិតថា ប្រសិនបើរដ្ឋាភិបាល មិនចង់ឃើញការតវ៉ាថែមទៀត ក្នុងឆ្នាំ ២០១៣ ទេនោះរដ្ឋាភិបាលត្រូវដោះលែងសកម្មជនដីធ្លី ដូចជា អ្នកស្រី យ៉ោម បុប្ផា បើមិនដូច្នោះទេ ប្រជាជននឹងបន្តធ្វើបាតុកម្មដូចដែលពួកគេបានឃើញស្ទើរពេញ មួយឆ្នាំកន្លងមកនេះ។ ជម្លោះដីធ្លីភាគច្រើន មិនទាន់បានដោះស្រាយទេ ដូចជា បឹងកក់ និងបុរីកីឡា។ ទាំងនេះនៅតែជាបញ្ហា។

Sugar and Spice, And Everything Nice?

January 2, 2013 · by freethe15 · in Boeung Kak, Solidarity Action, Yorm Bopha. ·

Boeung Kak and Borei Keila community members held a cursing ceremony outside Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Dec. 31, 2012, accusing the judicial system of being unjust in sentencing Yorm Bopha to three years in jail. Community members threw salt, dollar bills, and chilis inside the court grounds to invoke a curse. Riot police on the scene donned masks to cover their faces. The action ended peacefully, when the community broke into song and returned home.

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