Tag Archives: Phnom Penh

Cambodian opposition leader returns from exile

July 19, 2013 Bartle Doo Leave a comment

Thousands of cheering supporters greeted Cambodian opposition leader Sam Rainsy as he returned from self-imposed exile Friday to spearhead his party’s election campaign against well-entrenched Prime Minister Hun Sen.

“I have come home to rescue the country,” Rainsy told the crowd gathered at Phnom Penh’s airport, after kneeling to kiss the ground.

“I am happy to be here!” Rainsy shouted to be heard through a microphone as the supporters chanted, “We want change!”

The French-educated leader of the Cambodia National Rescue Party has been in exile since 2009 to avoid serving 11 years in prison on charges many consider politically motivated.

Rainsy, 64, received a royal pardon last week at the request of Hun Sen, his bitter rival whose ruling party is almost certain to maintain its ironclad grip on power in the July 28 general election.

Hun Sen has ruled for 28 years, and his party has 90 of the 123 seats in the National Assembly. The prime minister recently said that he intends to stay in office until he is 74 — cutting back from an earlier vow to stay in control until he’s 90.

Critics of the government claim the election will be neither free nor fair, arguing that Hun Sen’s regime manipulates the levers of government and influences the judiciary to weaken the opposition.

Last month, 28 opposition lawmakers were expelled from parliament when a committee run by Hun Sen’s party ruled they had broken the law because they had originally won their seats in the name of the Sam Rainsy Party, but were campaigning under the recently established Cambodia National Rescue Party, into which it was merged.

They can still run in the upcoming election, but without parliamentary immunity. Immunity from arrest is a great benefit in Cambodia’s elections, and those without it are at risk of being charged with defamation for remarks seen critical of Hun Sen and his government.

Rainsy is a charismatic and fiery speaker — qualities that have landed him in trouble before.

He is expected to draw large crowds as he embarks on a whirlwind campaign tour that his party says will take him to over a dozen provinces in a week. He is likely to push …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

News, Politics, Government

Cambodia opposition leader returns from exile: party

July 18, 2013 Bartle Doo Leave a comment

Cambodia’s newly pardoned opposition leader arrived home from exile on Friday to help his party’s bid to end Prime Minister Hun Sen’s nearly three decades in power, the party said.

Thousands of cheering supporters gathered outside Phnom Penh’s airport and lined the road to the city centre to welcome Sam Rainsy, waving flags and shouting “change change!”

“He has arrived,” Prince Sisowath Thomico, a senior member of the Cambodian National Rescue Party, told AFP after Rainsy returned from France on a flight via Bangkok.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

This Day in History

Today in History for 17th April 2013

April 17, 2013 Bartle Doo Leave a comment

Historical Events

1797 – Sir Ralph Abercromby attacks San Juan, Puerto Rico in what would be one of the largest invasions to Spanish territories in America.
1969 – Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubcek deposed
1975 – Khmer Rouge captures Phnom Penh, Cambodia (Kampuchea Natl Day)
1983 – Nolan Ryan strikes out his 3,500th batter
1984 – Libyan embassy demonstration, 1 shot dead
1997 – John Bell, 115, recieves new pacemaker

More Historical Events »

Famous Birthdays

1845 – Isabel Barrows, US, editor/penologist (Conference on Negro Question)
1934 – Don Kirshner, rock and roll producer (invented bubblegum music)
1939 – Robin Knox-Johnston, yachtsman
1946 – J R Baines, professor (Egyptologist)
1973 – Ross Aloisi, Australian soccer midfielder (Olyroos, Olympics-96)
1982 – Lee Jun Ki, South Korean actor and model

More Famous Birthdays »

Famous Deaths

1838 – J Schopenhauer, writer, dies at 71
1941 – Al Bowlly, British dance band vocalist (b. 1899)
1987 – Cecil Harmsworth King, owner of Mirror Group Newspapers (b. 1901)
1995 – Nancy Mayhew Youngman, artist/educator, dies at 88
1995 – A R A (Anton) Murray, cricketer (289 runs and 11 wkts in 10 Tests), dies
1996 – Eva Jones, poet/novelist, dies at 82

More Famous Deaths »

From: http://www.historyorb.com/day/april/17

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Stevia Nutra Corp Reports Successful First Growing Season in Cambodia

March 15, 2013 Bartle Doo Leave a comment

By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

Filed under: Investing

Stevia Nutra Corp Reports Successful First Growing Season in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Stevia Nutra Corporation (OTCQB: STNT)- (The Company), an Agro-Management company focused on stevia agronomics, is pleased to report on the successful completion of an exceptional initial growing season at the Company’s Stevia Propagation Centre (SPC) in Cambodia.

The first harvest of high quality stevia leaves has commenced and samples have been prepared for third-party, independent testing to determine levels of Reb ‘A’ and Glycosides (totalsteviol glycosides – TSG). This measure of ‘sweetness’ content is a key determinant to the commercial viability of a stevia crop.

Stevia Nutra’s Chief Agronomist, Dr. Ahmed El Sheikh, noted that, “The ideal growing conditions here in Cambodia combined with our choice of seed variety and rigorous agronomy protocols have proven to be very effective. The stevia plants are thriving with better than expected growth and we are optimistic that initial leaf testing will yield positive results.”

Leaf samples have been sent to the prestigious ‘Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ in Beijing, the highest authority for stevia testing in China. “China’s expertise in stevia cultivation and refining is well established. This will be the first testing of our stevia leaf and we are eager for test results from this respected institution,” Dr. El Sheikh further commented.

“I am extremely encouraged with the results of our initial growing season,” noted Stevia Nutra’s President, Brian Dicks. “The combined efforts of Dr. El Sheikh, his team and our local partner, Ecologica Co. Ltd., have resulted in our establishing a thriving stevia propagation operation. Matching climate, soils, nutrients and cultivation practices with a robust and productive seed variety is a challenging exercise and our team has delivered.” Dicks further noted, “Our location in Kampong Speu Province, located forty-five minutes from Phnom Penh, has proven to be an excellent site for our agronomy operations and validates our selection of Cambodia as Stevia Nutra’s home in SE Asia.”

Dr. Hilary Rodrigues, CEO also extended his congratulations to the Cambodia team. “It is gratifying to see their efforts and dedication come to fruition on schedule and on budget. We can now move forward to the next phase of development with confidence after having successfully managed and completed this most challenging initial development phase.”

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News, Politics, Government

For Cambodia, worries that death may beat justice

March 14, 2013 Bartle Doo Leave a comment

Decades after Cambodia‘s brutal Khmer Rouge movement oversaw the deaths of 1.7 million people by starvation, overwork and execution, the regime’s imprisoned top leaders are escaping justice one by one. How? Old age.

Thursday’s death of 87-year-old Ieng Sary, foreign minister under the Khmer Rouge, is fueling urgent calls among survivors and rights groups for the country’s U.N.-backed tribunal to expedite proceedings against the increasingly frail and aging leaders of the radical communist group, which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.

Ieng Sary‘s wife, former Social Affairs Minister Ieng Thirith, was ruled unfit to stand trial last year because she suffered from a degenerative mental illness consistent with Alzheimer’s disease. Now, only two people — ex-head of state Khieu Samphan, who is 81, and the movement’s former chief ideologist Nuon Chea, who is 86 — remain on trial for their alleged roles in some of the 20th century’s most horrific crimes.

There are growing fears that both men could die before a verdict is rendered. Both are frail with high blood pressure, and have suffered strokes.

“The defendants are getting old, and the survivors are getting old,” said Bou Meng, one of the few Cambodians to survive Tuol Sleng prison, known as S-21, where up to 16,000 people were tortured and killed during the Khmer Rouge era. “The court needs to speed up its work.”

“I have been waiting for justice for nearly 40 years,” Bou Meng, who is 70, told The Associated Press. “I never thought it would take so long.”

When the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh in April 1975, they began moving an estimated 1 million people — even hospital patients — from the capital into the countryside in an effort to create a communist agrarian utopia.

By the time the bizarre experiment ended in 1979 with an invasion by advancing Vietnamese troops, an estimated 1.7 million people had died in Cambodia, which had only about 7 million people at the time. Most of the dead were victims of starvation, medical neglect, slave-like working conditions and execution under the Maoist regime. Their bodies were dumped in shallow mass graves that still dot the countryside.

The tribunal, officially known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, was tasked with seeking justice for crimes committed during that era.

News, Politics, Government

Khmer Rouge's Ieng Sary dies amid genocide trial

March 14, 2013 Bartle Doo Leave a comment

Ieng Sary, who co-founded the communist Khmer Rouge regime responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians in the 1970s, and who decades later became one of its few leaders to be put on trial, died Thursday morning before his case could be finished. He was 87.

The brother-in-law of late Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, Ieng Sary died before any verdict was reached in the trial, which began in late 2011 with four defendants and now has only two.

His death dashed hopes among survivors and prosecutors that he would be punished for his alleged crimes against humanity during the darkest chapter in his country’s history.

Lars Olsen, a spokesman for the joint Cambodian-international tribunal where Ieng Sary had been on trial, confirmed his death. Chea Leang, a co-prosecutor for the tribunal, told the press that he died of “irreversible cardiac failure.”

Ieng Sary had suffered from high blood pressure and heart problems and been admitted to a Phnom Penh hospital March 4 with weakness and severe fatigue. His body was being taken Thursday by ambulance from the hospital to Malai in western Cambodia, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold where his family lives, for his funeral.

Ieng Sary was being tried along with two other former Khmer Rouge leaders, both in their 80s, and there are fears that they, too, could also die before justice is served. Ieng Sary‘s wife, former Social Affairs Minister Ieng Thirith, had also been charged but was ruled unfit to stand trial last year because she suffered from a degenerative mental illness, probably Alzheimer’s disease.

“We are disappointed that we could not complete the proceeding against Ieng Sary,” Olsen said, adding that the case against his colleagues Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge‘s chief ideologist, and Khieu Samphan, an ex-head of state, will continue and will not be affected.

Ieng Sary founded the Khmer Rouge with leader Pol Pot. The communist regime, which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, claimed it was building a pure socialist society by evicting people from cities to work in labor camps in the countryside. Its radical policies led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people from starvation, disease, overwork and execution.

Ieng Sary was foreign minister in the regime, and as its top diplomat became a much more recognizable figure internationally than his secretive colleagues.

News, Politics, Government

Cambodian police beat eviction protesters

March 13, 2013 Bartle Doo Leave a comment

Cambodian police have beaten demonstrators who were marching toward the prime minister’s house to protest being evicted from their homes. The violent confrontation is a reminder that land grabbing remains a contentious issue in this election year.

Nearly 100 protesters, mostly women, marched Wednesday to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s home in the middle of Phnom Penh to petition him to provide land they claim was promised them when they were evicted from their homes in the capital’s Boueng Kak lake area to make way for a luxury real estate development.

About 100 police began beating demonstrators when they tried to push through their lines. At least two protesters were injured, with apparent broken limbs. At least four others fell unconscious.

Articles of Interest

Experts Warn About Asian War

February 9, 2013 Bartle Doo Leave a comment

By Breaking News

480px Ambassador Jon Huntsman Experts Warn About Asian War

Jon Huntsman, the former Ambassador to China, is getting nervous about how things are playing out in Asia:

“The tensions are real,” he said, citing the two nations’ maneuvering over islands in the East China Sea. Risks also are being raised by expanding activities such as surveillance flights in the region by other nations, including South Korea and Russia, he said.

“I worry about the military maneuvers in crowded airspaces and sea lanes” where an incident can escalate into something “beyond anyone’s ability to then de-escalate it,” Huntsman said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt” airing this weekend.

Read more at The American Interest. By Walter Russell Mead.

Articles of Interest

F-16s To Egypt, But Not To Taiwan?

February 8, 2013 Bartle Doo Leave a comment

By Breaking News

egypt map SC F 16s To Egypt, But Not To Taiwan?

Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which faces no existential threat, our Asian ally faces an increasingly belligerent and well-armed China. Yet only one gets the latest weaponry and the question is why.

On Jan. 30, a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer in the East China Sea near the disputed Senkaku Islands just north of Taiwan was “painted” by fire control-radar from two People’s Liberation Army warships, believed to be the Chinese frigates Linyungang and Wenzhou.

This was just the latest provocation by a China flexing its deep water naval muscle as it asserts itself in the East and South China Seas and pursues long-held territorial ambitions. One of those ambitions is the absorption into the People’s Republic of its alleged long-lost province of Taiwan.

China continues to add missiles targeted on Taiwan, adds naval capability including an aircraft carrier, expands its amphibious capabilities, as well as developing its own stealth fighter said to be roughly equivalent to our now-canceled F-22 Raptor.

Bartle Doo Article Archives

Tag Archives: Phnom Penh

Cambodian opposition leader returns from exile

Cambodia opposition leader returns from exile: party

Today in History for 17th April 2013

Historical Events

Famous Birthdays

Famous Deaths

Stevia Nutra Corp Reports Successful First Growing Season in Cambodia

Cambodian police beat eviction protesters

Experts Warn About Asian War

F-16s To Egypt, But Not To Taiwan?

Articles Archive