the time make me smile with p'pun somlanh

Outgoing U.S. Ambassador William Todd met with Foreign Minister Hor Namhong on Thursday in his final official meeting, bringing an end to a tenure that saw visits from the U.S. president and first lady, as well as the disputed 2013 national election and violence that followed.
The ambassador chose to end his three-year spell in silence Thursday, leaving the meeting at the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Phnom Penh without taking questions from reporters.

Foreign Affairs Minister Hor Namhong shakes hands with US Ambassador William Todd during their final meeting in Phnom Penh on Thursday. (Siv Channa/The Cambodia Daily)

Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Chum Sounry said Mr. Namhong thanked Mr. Todd for more than three years of service, and for helping Cambodia’s young democracy grow.
“Deputy Prime Minister Hor Namhong told the ambassador about the government’s commitment to building democracy and the state of law in Cambodia,” he said.
Mr. Sounry said the two men discussed several issues facing the government, including efforts to ease tensions over the country’s border with Vietnam, the “culture of dialogue” between the ruling and opposition parties, and the NGO law, which Mr. Todd has said poses a threat to human rights in the country.
The South China Sea, where tensions are mounting between the U.S. and China, was also discussed, according to the spokesman.
Asked about the meeting, U.S. Embassy spokesman Jay Raman declined to comment and said Mr. Todd had “decided not to give any more interviews before his departure.”
Mr. Todd’s blog and weekly newspaper column proved to be a controversial platform for the ambassador, with his commentary on Cambodia’s democracy and human rights situation occasionally bringing stern rebuke from the government.
Phoak Kung, president of the Cambodian Institute for Strategic Studies, said Mr. Todd’s regular criticism was symbolic of a broader tendency of the U.S. to be unfairly negative toward the Cambodian government.
“Cambodian leaders feel that there is a lack of appreciation on the U.S.’ side for all the progress the government has achieved, economically and politically, over the past decade,” he said.
Mr. Kung was reluctant to assess whether Mr. Todd could have done more to improve relations between the countries, but said the next ambassador needed a new strategy.
“I hope the next ambassador would be able to bridge the gap and work together with the government to find the common ground, not just the differences,” he said.
Sophal Ear, a Cambodian-American academic who analyzed U.S.-Cambodia relations in his book “Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines Democracy,” said Mr. Todd’s term had not been a failure.
“Ambassador Todd had some successes, some failures. He’s human. Grading him on a curve, he was better than his immediate predecessor by far,” Mr. Ear said, referring to former Ambassador Carol Rodley.
“If Todd’s mission was to pull Cambodia away from China, then it hasn’t worked out yet,” he added. “If his mission was to promote democracy in Cambodia, then he had more success.”
© 2015, The Cambodia Daily. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced in print, electronically, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without written permission.

By Mech Dara and Ben Woods | August 10, 2015

Chhouk Bundith, the former Bavet City governor who shot three factory workers in 2012, turned himself in to police in Phnom Penh on Saturday morning after more than two years on the run and has begun serving his 18-month prison sentence, officials said.
“He surrendered to the Phnom Penh police commissariat and now we sent him to the Svay Rieng prosecutor to implement the procedure of the court,” National Police spokesman Kirth Chantharith said on Saturday afternoon.

Former Bavet City governor Chhouk Bundith leaves the Appeal Court in Phnom Penh on February 27, 2013. (Pring Samrang/Reuters)

According to Lieutenant General Chantharith, Mr. Bundith showed up at the municipal police headquarters on Saturday morning and was promptly transferred to the Svay Rieng Provincial Court in police custody.
He said Mr. Bundith had been hiding in Vietnam since mid-2013, when the provincial court convicted him of unintentional violence over the triple shooting, but that he had since made several short trips back to Cambodia.
“We have information that…he crossed the border to Vietnam, and sometimes we heard he…came back for a few hours, a few days,” Lt. Gen. Chantharith said, adding that a special police team assigned to his case tried and failed to arrest him in Cambodia on multiple occasions.
“We followed him many times,” he said.
Mr. Bundith’s arrest on Saturday comes amid a burst of renewed interest in his case, which has been derided as a mockery of Cambodia’s judicial system.
On July 27, his victims—Nuth Sokhorn, Bun Chenda and Keo Nea—submitted a petition to the National Assembly calling for his arrest and demanding the same treatment as Ek Socheata, a television personality whose assault last month was followed by high-level intervention and the quick arrest of her attacker, real-estate mogul Sok Bun.
The next day, the National Police released a video in which Lt. Gen. Chantharith denied that authorities had been negligent in locating Mr. Bundith and announced that the former governor was placed on Interpol’s list of most-wanted persons in March.
In a speech on August 3, Prime Minister Hun Sen called for the disgraced former governor’s arrest. “Even in the case of Chhouk Bundith, if police do not make an arrest, the police would be wrong,” he said.
Lt. Gen. Chantharith said on Saturday that he believed Mr. Bundith turned himself in when he realized that authorities were still searching for him.
“He knows that we take all the measures and we are committed to arresting him,” he said. “So maybe he thinks that maybe if he hides himself, it [is] like he is in the prison for life.”
Phan Ratana, a deputy prosecutor at the Svay Rieng court, confirmed Sunday that Mr. Bundith was received by the court on Saturday afternoon, then transferred to the provincial prison.
“He arrived at the court at about 4 p.m.,” he said. “We asked him some questions and sent him directly to the prison to serve 18 months.”
“It’s good that he showed up, because he could not have run away for the rest of his life,” he added.
Mr. Ratana said that Mr. Bundith would face no additional prison time for evading arrest.
“There is no law to punish a person who runs away from a final decision,” he said. “There are many people who have run away like him. Why would we punish only him?… This would be injustice for him.”

Chhouk Bundith sits at the Phnom Penh police headquarters on Saturday. (National Police Newspaper)

Mr. Bundith, who injured the three workers—employed by a factory supplying German sportswear giant Puma—when he fired into a crowd during a protest in a special economic zone in Bavet City in February 2012, was charged with unintentional violence two months later but was never apprehended. In December of that year, the charge was dropped without explanation.
The Appeal Court later ordered a reinvestigation of the case, and the Svay Rieng court eventually found Mr. Bundith guilty and sentenced him to 18 months in prison in June 2013, but he had already disappeared. In his absence, the decision was upheld by both the Appeal Court and the Supreme Court.
On Sunday, legal experts said the fact that Mr. Bundith turned himself in on Saturday—less than a week after Mr. Hun Sen called for his arrest—was further proof of the prime minister’s influence over cases involving wealthy or well-connected individuals.
“We can see that he came to confess when the prime minister announced that he should be arrested,” said Moeun Tola, head of the labor program at the Community Legal Education Center, who described Mr. Bundith’s 2013 conviction as a “slap on the wrist.”
“He came to confess himself, so we will never know how hard authorities were trying to arrest him,” he said.
Ms. Nea, one of the workers shot by Mr. Bundith, said she was glad to hear that the ex-governor had been imprisoned, but reiterated that his “small punishment” did not fit the crime.
“He intended to kill us…and it took about three years to arrest him,” she said.
“Without the prime minister calling for his arrest, the authorities would not have been able to arrest him and punish him, because powerful people helped him.”
dara@cambodiadaily.com, woods@cambodiadaily.com

© 2015, The Cambodia Daily. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced in print, electronically, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without written permission.

the best song of cambodia

More Cambodian migrant workers headed to South Korea in the first half of this year than in all of 2011, data from the Ministry of Labour shows.
A suspension on Vietnamese migration, coupled with an improving Korean economy, primarily accounted for the jump, officials say.
More than 6,300 Cambodians migrated to the East Asian nation between January and June, against 4,957 for all of 2011.
“This year, we notice the agriculture sector has absorbed [Cambodians] very well,” Heng Sour, chief of overseas manpower at the Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training, said. “If there wasn’t an increase in the [agriculture] sector, the number of our workers would have been the same as during the last period. The ban on Vietnamese also helped the increase.”
Cambodians were eager to work abroad for potentially higher salaries, Ya Navuth, executive director at Coordination of Action Research on Aids and Mobility (CARAM), said yesterday.
Working conditions in South Korea had gained recognition for being better than some of the destinations Cambodian migrants flocked to, such as Malaysia, he said.
“If there are enough jobs, people will go abroad to work – no question about it. Although there are more domestic jobs, many people don’t know about them. Low salaries here are also pushing them abroad to work," he said. “I never get complaints from Cambodians who go to work in Korea, compared with those who work in Thailand and Malaysia.”

Reports of abuse, death and the use of under-age Cambodians in Malaysia have rocked that country’s reputation as a place for migrants to safely earn higher wages.
Cambodia first sent workers to South Korea in 2002 and signed a memorandum of understanding on migrant exchange in 2007.
Cambodian migrants go to Korea under government-to-government deals. Unlike Malaysia, South Korea does not allow private companies to recruit labour.
There could soon be a slow-down in the number of Cambodia’s heading north, Heng Sour said.
The ban on Vietnamese workers was recently lifted and would cut into the Kingdom’s labour exports, he said.