Around 100 Phnom Penh residents facing expulsion from their homes gathered in front of City Hall on Wednesday, delivering a petition to make the city “eviction free.”

The demonstrators came from eight communities inside the city, warning in their petition that 10 percent of Phnom Penh’s residents have been evicted over the last 20 years, thanks to the rising value of urban real estate.

Some 150,000 people have been displaced in that time, they said, including forced evictions where their homes were bulldozed.

The petition calls for city leaders to stop forced evictions that present a bad image.

City administrative officer Keo Kosal said he received the petition, which would be reviewed.

“People have met with many difficulties when they leave the city, far from businesses, far from places of work and far from children’s schools,” said Ton Srey Pov, a Boeung Kak lake resident. “We’re delivering the petition to the city governor [Kep Chuktema] to help intervene and stop evictions of people from the city.”

“Eviction of people is making people poorer,” said Lim Sambo, 57, a former resident of the Dey Krahorm neighborhood in Phnom Penh that saw a massive, violent eviction in 2008.

Chan Saveth, chief monitor for the rights group Adhoc, said the Phnom Penh government needs to provide opportunities for the city’s poor, “who have as much the right to live in Phnom Penh as others.”

Link:
City Residents Present Petition Against Eviction

Human Rights Watch is calling for new legal protections for the thousands of Cambodians who work in Malaysia as domestic workers. Rights workers say both countries must do much more to prevent an array of abuses including physical and sexual violence.

Abuse

Human Rights Watch workers interviewed 28 women who were employed as domestic workers. Nearly half reported suffering physical or psychological abuse from their employers.

Another three said they were raped – one by her employer.

The common theme is a lack of assistance or legal protection in Malaysia for the thousands of Cambodian women working there.

Human Rights Watch says in Cambodia well-connected recruitment firms forcibly confine women in poor conditions in training centers for months before sending them abroad.

Recruitment firms provide cash advances to families, as well as food and livestock, driving the women into debt bondage. And they charge huge training fees, which takes the women months to work off.

Deceived

The title of the report, “They Deceived Us At Every Step”, conveys the scale of the dangers the women face, says Human Rights Watch’s women’s rights researcher Jyotsna Poudyal 

“The report is basically a comprehensive account of what happens when women decide to travel from Cambodia to Malaysia,” said Poudyal. “So it documents the abuses and exploitation at each step of the migration process. Our concerns are basically about women who decide to migrate must be protected, and this report looks into the recruitment steps, and then comes up with concrete recommendations of what could be done to improve the situation.”

Exploitation

Human Rights Watch says as a first step Malaysia and Cambodia should abide by and then ratify the International Labor Organization’s convention on domestic workers, which protects workers from violence and exploitation.

Poudyal says Phnom Penh must draft a comprehensive migration law that addresses issues such as debt bondage, child recruitment and other abuses common to the recruitment side of the industry.

About one-third of the Cambodian population lives below the poverty line, and there are very few jobs available locally for the estimated 300,000 young people who enter the labor market each year. That means conditions are ripe for exploitation, and unscrupulous recruitment firms have taken advantage.

Role of media

After media reports highlighting the serious abuses of Cambodian women in Malaysia, the Cambodian government last month announced a halt to sending domestic workers to Malaysia.

But Poudyal says besides the suspension, which is most likely temporary, Phnom Penh has shown little interest in tackling the problem.

“From our point of view it seems that the government is keen to promote migration, but at the same time extremely reluctant to extend basic protections to its workers,” added Poudyal. “So I would say that if Cambodia is serious about being a big exporter of labor then they have to resolve these issues in the long term.”

The abuses can begin even before the workers arrive in Malaysia.

Recent raids on recruitment centers in Cambodia have revealed a litany of abuses, including girls as young as 14 being trained for domestic work in Malaysia. False documents are used to get around the requirement that they need to be 21.

But government action is complicated by the fact several recruitment firms are owned by relatives of those tasked with policing them in the labor and interior ministries.

Human Rights Watch says Phnom Penh must prosecute any and all companies and individuals involved in abuses.

Recruiters

And, Poudyal says Malaysia must overhaul its labor law, which currently excludes domestic workers.

“So we are calling on the Malaysian government to revise those laws so that domestic workers are protected, as well as strengthening the legal assistance for workers who might have been trafficked, who are in a situation of abuse, and then basically revising the sponsorship system which ties the worker to an employer,” said Poudyal. “So for instance, if the worker flees abuse, then very likely she would be arrested or deported.

Two years ago Indonesia barred its citizens from working in Malaysia after reports of similar abuses. That action forced Malaysia to ensure that Indonesian domestic workers were awarded protections.

But Cambodians are currently excluded.

Human Rights Watch says that needs to change. Since 2008 at least 40,000 Cambodian women and girls have been sent to Malaysia to work as domestic servants.

One young woman the group interviewed said she was made to work 22 hours a day, was beaten and kicked by her employer and his wife, and was never paid.

None of the 28 women interviewed said they had received their promised salary in full. Most said they received wages that were far lower, while some reported receiving nothing at all.

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Legal Protections Sought For Cambodian Domestic Workers in Malaysia

So Ath No, the 49-year-old son of a senior government official, was released by kidnappers in the predawn hours Monday, nearly two weeks after his abduction.

The kidnappers had originally asked for a $1 million ransom from his father, So Phon, who is an undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Interior.

So Phon said Monday he had paid no ransom and did not know the reason his son was released.

So Ath No was taken by four men from his home in Phnom Penh’s Russey Keo district on Oct 8. He was released around 1 pm in Tuol Kork district and took a motorcycle taxi home, So Phon said.

So Ath No was recovering from his ordeal and would not speak to reporters, So Phon said. He said he wanted to thank the kidnappers for releasing his son unharmed.

It remains unclear whether police have any leads in the kidnapping. Kiet Chantharith, a spokesman for the national police, said he had not been informed of So Ath No’s release.

Other police officials were not available for comment.

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Kidnap Victim Released Unharmed, Father Says

The protocol chief of the ruling party president, Chea Sim, has been charged with fraud and forgery and is currently in provisional detention at Prey Sar prison, officials said Thursday.

Pheng Kunthea Borey, 56, was arrested at the Cham Yeam international border checkpoint in Koh Kong province on Wednesday, as she was trying to cross into Thailand, according to police officials and her lawyer, Kouy Thunna.

Hers was the fourth arrest since Friday of officials linked to Chea Sim, a powerful member of the Cambodian People’s Party who is also the Senate president, the Cambodia Daily reported.

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court charged Pheng Kunthea Borey with forgery and fraud on Thursday. Kouy Thunna said he was not clear of the exact crimes she is alleged to have committed until he closely examines the case, and police officials declined to elaborate.

Kheng Tito, a spokesman for the military police, said the arrest came after Phnom Penh court issued a warrant.

Kouy Thunna said he would ask for bail.

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Chea Sim’s Protocal Chief Arrested at Thai Border

Among the nearly 100 booths set up at this year’s Water Festival in Lowell, Mass., was Hope Worldwide.

The booth was established to help raise funds for the Sihanouk Center of Hope, a hospital in Phnom Penh that provides healthcare to some of the nation’s poorest.

“One of the great things about working at the Cambodian Sihanouk Hospital Center of Hope is that is has a tremendous amount of support from many different organizations,” said Milton Drake, a doctor and the Northwest’s director for Hope Worldwide.

The Center of Hope not only treats general illnesses, he said, but it also treats HIV and AIDS patients free of charge.

The center began 15 years ago, as a way to help treat Cambodians who could not afford expensive care or medicine.

Debbie Drake, Milton’s wife, is also a volunteer for Hope Worldwide. She had come to the Lowell festival to help raise funds for the center with the help of some of the tens of thousands of Cambodians and other Southeast Asians who might come through.

“We want to make them aware of the hospital in Cambodia and the good things being done over there after the tragic time in their country,” she said.

The center has served more than 1 million patients, she said.

“I think we’ve ended up with more awareness than money, but it’s good,” she said. “Awareness is good. Awareness will bring more money. We trust in God that the funds will come.”

Vandara Chhum, a Cambodian volunteer at Hope Worldwide, said churches around Lowell had raised $5,000 from a basketball campaign to send to the Center of Hope, which is in Phnom Penh, and to the Sonja Kill Hospital Center of Hope, in Kampot province.

She said she hoped to explain to Cambodians at the festival the work of the two centers.

“Money to run day-to-day operations come from companies, while doctors from the US and other [countries] volunteer to work free of charge,” she said.

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Lowell Water Festival Aids Hospital in Cambodia

Thailand’s recently elected Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra has made her first official visit to Cambodia. The one-day trip marks a new start in bilateral relations, which have been poor in recent years.

Thai premier Yingluck Shinawatra and her Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen have begun the process of rebalancing matters between the two neighbors, after years of deterioration.

New allies?

Phnom Penh was openly thrilled in July when Yingluck’s party won Thailand’s general election and replaced the Abhisit government that Cambodia felt it could not work with.

Prime Minister Yingluck leads the political party of her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, a former prime minister and an ally of Hun Sen.

Abhisit’s tenure saw relations between the two nations decline to their lowest point in years and was marked by an escalating war of words and a series of border clashes that left at least 28 dead this year. ASEAN group chair Indonesia led efforts to mediate a ceasefire.

And in July the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled both sides must withdraw troops from disputed land near the Preah Vihear temple.

Bilateral meeting

Cambodia’s Information Minister Khieu Kanharith says the two leaders discussed the issue in Phnom Penh.

“First of all, when we talk about border, prime minister [Hun Sen] says we have to follow the decision of the International Court, and also keep the role of the Indonesians,” said Kanharith. “The Thai prime minister agreed.”

Khieu Kanharith says Cambodia and Thailand have also agreed to work together to clamp down on cross-border crime.

Business trip

Thailand said it would send a group of businessmen to Cambodia later this year to try and boost trade and investment.  Trade has been flat for the past year or two, while Thai investment into Cambodia collapsed.

Another bone of contention this year was the jailing in January of two Thai nationalists, Veera and Ratree, who crossed into Cambodia illegally.  The two received sentences of six and eight years, and Phnom Penh has said many times since that they will not be entitled to release until serving at least two-thirds of their term.

But Khieu Kanharith hinted some movement might be forthcoming.

“As a message to the mother of Veera and the sister of Ratree, that the government is seeking the way to have the release of the two convicts according to Cambodian legal procedure,” said Kanharith.

He said Cambodia’s king is entitled to reduce sentences, even though the government would not.   

Optimism

In summary, Kanharith said the talks were fruitful.

Earlier, Cambodian government spokesman Koy Kuong had said he expected the visit to restore bilateral relations and cooperation in all fields, with an emphasis on resolving differences through dialogue.  

Outstanding issues between the countries include demarcating disputed stretches of their border, a process that stalled under Abhisit, and how to share oil and gas in a 27,000-square-kilometer zone in the Gulf of Thailand.

The rest is here:
Yingluck Visit Boosts Thai-Cambodia Relations

Van La is a rice farmer in Kampong Speu province’s Udong district. Like many Cambodians, she is illiterate. And while she hopes her children will not suffer the same fate, many parents and educational professionals fear that Cambodia’s education system may fail her.

“We face difficulties,” she said as she worked at planting rice seedlings on a recent day. “We illiterate, it’s like we have blind eyes, and we don’t make any progress like the literates.”

Government statistics show that 70 percent of the population is somewhat literate, but development experts say that a poor education environment and other factors are hurting the country’s progress.

Van La said she was determined to send her children to school, so that they might learn to read and write and better their futures, but she could still face an uphill struggle.

Poor parents cannot always afford to send their children to school, where low-salaried teachers often ask for bribes.

“If my family has money, I will study to high levels like others,” said Un Dom, who is 12 and lives in the same district. “But if my parents have no money, I cannot continue my studies in upper classes. I have a poor family. I may not be able to study to the upper classes as others do.”

Some parents, like Van Botum, 34, who lives in Phnom Penh, say that even when they send their children to school, they aren’t learning as well as they should.

“My oldest daughter studies in Grade 6, as normal,” she said. “But my youngest daughter, in Grade 5, can’t read or write at all. She feels bad, ashamed and fearful, and then she doesn’t mind her studies.”

Educators, too, acknowledge the difficulties.

Ros Tith Malay, a teacher at Boeung Trabek primary school, said the worries of parents and children are warranted.

“Teachers have a hard time making a living from the government’s inadequate offers of salary,” she said. “So the teachers have to demand money from students in exchange for their teaching, for fuel and to support their lives.”

Rong Chhun, president of the Cambodian Independent Teachers Association, said such practices damage Cambodia’s human resources and socio-economic development.

“The young have very little knowledge, no skills and no resources,” he said. “So investors hesitate to invest in Cambodia.”

Illiteracy also begets its own problems, said Heng Sreang, a professor at the Royal Phnom Penh University.

“The illiterates cannot walk out of their villages,” he said. “So their lives are facing more poverty.”

Even those few who can read and write have difficulties finding a job, he added.

Santosh Khatri, an education specialist at Unesco in Phnom Penh, said illiteracy is common among the rural poor, those who survive on basic agriculture. Efforts are underway to encourage more reading, he said. “They can improve their livelihoods and improve their agricultural techniques” with literacy.

The government, meanwhile, has “six strategies” in its approach to education, including the promotion of literacy, said Ou Eng, director-general of the Ministry of Education.

“For this reason in both primary and secondary schools, we have a number of works aimed at strengthening education quality and service with equity,” he said.

Original post:
Parents Say Poor Education Aiding Illiteracy

A coalition of non-governmental organizations says it received a warning from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to “readjust” some of their work, following a controversy over land rights along a railway line development.

The NGO Forum said Monday it is preparing a response letter to the ministry, after it wrote a letter to the Asian Development Bank in 2010 warning of dangerous construction on a line slated for rehabilitation.

The latest row between the NGO sector and the government comes amid increased warnings that the government is moving to curb the influence of the country’s burgeoning civil society. A new law moving toward parliamentary debate has raised concerns that organizations critical of the government can be shut down or have their work impeded under ambiguous regulations.

Koy Kuong, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said it had warned NGO Forum, the Housing Rights Task Force, Bridges Across Borders and Sahmakum Teang Tnut, or STT, to rethink the way they worked with Cambodians whose lands are threatened by development.

Some of those same NGOs have given their support to a highly public land dispute in Phnom Penh over a development project at Boeung Kak lake. Residents there were recently promised a small plot of land on the development site after years of protest and only after the World Bank threatened to withdraw funding to the country if the problem was not addressed.

Koy Kuong said the four NGOs had written to complain to the ADB in October 2010 over the rehabilitation of a railway line in Battambang province, where two children were killed. “The four NGO representatives blamed the death of the two children on the government,” he said, calling the claim “false.”

STT, meanwhile, which works with poor communities on housing rights, has had its activities suspended by the Ministry of Interior, for “failing to modify its leadership” at the behest of the government.

Critics say the group was suspended for its work with the urban poor in Phnom Penh, who have proven a headache city officials and developers.

Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, said the STT suspension and the ministry warning to the four NGOs represented “pressure” on civil society.

“Some NGOs will begin to be afraid,” he said.

Tith Sothea, a spokesman for the Council of Ministers, which is currently reviewing the latest NGO law, said the government “cannot accept” accusations it is trying to put pressure on the rights of non-governmental agencies.

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Civic Groups Warned to ‘Readjust’ Their Work

Phnom Penh officials met with representatives from the Beoung Kak lake area on Thursday, the first move toward dispensing land to some 800 families who had refused to make way for a massive development project.

The city will provide around 12 hectares of land to the families to build houses, but they must build them to code and pay property taxes, Phnom Penh Governor Kep Chuktema said.

The titling came at the order of Prime Minister Hun Sen, following a threat by the World Bank that it would suspend funding if the impasse between villagers, the city and the developer were not resolved.

“I will have a commission to make the land titles for you on Monday,” Kep Chuktema said. “I would like you all to be prepared to cooperate, because we have measured [the land],” he said. “This is the official property.”

Tep Vanny, a community representative, said the city will issue the land titles, but discussions will have to continue about the construction of homes.

“The land titles are very important for Boeung Kak residents, as well as all the people throughout Cambodia facing eviction,” she said. “When we have land titles for our children and grandchildren, forever, we have safety of land and home.”

Vong Sokheng, a 44-year-old resident of one community near the filled-in lake, said the land titles will prevent the types of protests that led to violent clashes with authorities.

“Our people are very happy and are prepared to cooperate with the authorities to make the land titles,” she said.

Um Sokhon, a 60-year-old woman from the area, said she had waited “a long time” for a title, which she said will now give her some comfort. “In the past, I lived in fear of confiscation,” she said.

However, even after Monday’s meeting, some residents, like Daung Kea, 43, remained wary.

“I’m happy mixed with sad,” Daung Kea said. “When we clearly see the land titles in our hands, we’ll be satisfied.”

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City Moves To Begin Titling at Boeung Kak Lake

Phnom Penh authorities say they will not allow a union demonstration against rising prices of food, fuel and other living expenses.

The newly established Cambodian National Confederation for Laborers Protection, had requested permission from the city to hold its march Sunday, but were told instead that only a maximum 200 people would be allowed to gather at the city’s Freedom Park.

Chey Sovan, a vice president of the union, said they would bring 1,500 people to the park, although they would not march as planned. Workers are upset at the rising cost of living, and are demanding the government intervene to lower the prices of food, fuel and other goods.

The union said it has already filed a request to Prime Minister Hun Sen to help alleviate the pressure of the rising costs but had so far had no response. It plans to gather workers, teachers, motorcycle taxi drivers and other workers in protest.

Keurth Che, deputy administration director for Phnom Penh, said in a statement the city would not allow a march. The organizers will be fully responsible for the security of an assembly and must ensure it does not affect the business of government or dignitaries and is not done at the behest of any political party, he said.

Chey Sovan called the city’s refusal was counter to the freedom of expression.

“I think they have a fair right [to hold a march],” said Chan Saveth, lead monitor for the rights group Adhoc. “They are implementing their role in rights and freedoms to show their opinion to the royal government. But if the royal government prevents them from holding a march that reflects the democratic process, it can make this situation a threat to them not to implement their rights and freedoms.”

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City Denies Permission for Union March Sunday