Fire season brings warning from ministry

As the Kingdom moves into the heart of the dry season, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forests and Fisheries has issued a set of guidelines on the prevention of forest fires, stressing that jail is in the cards for those starting blazes.

The notice, issued to various government ministries on January 21 and obtained by thePost yesterday, says that while the time of year brings with it naturally occurring fires,those caused by human activity “are the most worrying issue”.

Punishment for setting fires in forests carries a three- to five-year prison sentence, and in the case of mangrove forests, five to 10 years, according to the document.

However, Forestry Management Office director Dr Kao Dana, said that despite having the laws on the books, arresting offenders has proved difficult in practice.

“We cannot arrest; when we arrive there, the people run away,” he said.

Based in Phnom Penh, Dana coordinates with the various provincial Forestry Administration (FA) offices to investigate fires and illegal logging. However, he says, the resources to crack down are lacking.

“Look at the experience in Japan … The government flies over the area and then you see the person burning,” he said, pointing out the wealthier country’s resources, adding that – airplanes aside – there are not enough firefighters and equipment is expensive.

While Dana could not speak to whether fires observed raging in Stung Treng, Koh Kong, Mondulkiri, Ratanakkiri and Kratie were due to logging activities, deforestation compounds the issue.

“[Loggers] first cut it down. After six months, the trees are dead; after that it can burn easily. The forest in Cambodia is not easy to burn unless you cut the old trees first,” he said, referring to how a tropical forest dries out once the canopy trees are felled.

Speaking by phone yesterday, Mondulkiri’s provincial governor, Svay Sam Eang, said there were a lot of “small” forest fires throughout his province.

Asked how the provincial government worked with the local FA to solve the problem, Sam Eang said “we have a plan” but did not go into detail.

Travel guide author Matt Jacobson, who has lived in the country since 1997 and travelled through Mondulkiri and Kratie just last week, said yesterday that he had not seen smoke from fires so bad “in years”.

The worst, he said, is in the Cardamon Mountains of Koh Kong, where he said visibility has dropped to the point where he can no longer see the Gulf of Thailand from coastal hills.

“It’s the worst in the country down here.”

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Firm denies circumventing Malaysia maid ban

Four domestic workers sent to Malaysia despite an official moratorium on the practice have been repatriated amid claims of unpaid wages and harsh working conditions, though the company that recruited them has insisted that the terms of their employment didn’t technically violate the government ban.

The four women, who were all from Kampong Chhnang province and who went to Malaysia in May, returned to Cambodia on February 25. However, three more women from the same province are reportedly being detained by Malaysian immigration authorities.

One of the repatriated women, Phon Srey Mey, 19, arrived back to her home in Koh Thkov’s Tamoul Krom village claiming she had worked for almost a year with no salary.

Srey Mey said yesterday that every time she would ask for her salary, her boss would tell her that she would get paid the following month.

“Every week, I had to borrow $7.50 from the team leader at the company,” she said. “We didn’t have enough food and the working conditions were very hard. If we couldn’t finish our work, they wouldn’t allow us to go home.”

Srey May said when she returned to Cambodia, the company made her sign a contract saying that her “salary” was money she had borrowed for expenses such as the cost of her passport and flight.

A ban on Cambodians going to work as maids in Malaysia was implemented in 2011 after a series of often brutal cases of abuse.

The company that recruited the four women, APTSE&C Cambodia Resources, claims the women were not working in Malaysia as maids.

However, the company the women worked for – H2O Cleaning Service – on its website described the women’s job as part-time maids, catering to employers who didn’t want to deal with problems that could arise from employing full-time domestic workers.

Labour advocate Moeun Tola, head of the labour program at the Community Legal Education Center, yesterday questioned the loophole and the effectiveness of the ban.

“I think the company tried to manipulate the ban,” Tola said.Heng Sour, spokesman for the Ministry of Labour, meanwhile said APTSE&C Cambodia Resources was not even licensed and recommended the women file an official complaint with the ministry so their cases can be investigated.

“We will take action if this company committed any wrongdoing,” he said. Saw Sreythea, 45, whose daughter also arrived last month, said she planned to file a complaint with the Ministry of Labour, but would wait to do so until her three nieces were released from Malaysia.

She added she was “afraid” the company could retaliate against her nieces. Sen Setthy Chey, executive director of APTSE & C Cambodia, said the owner of the company in Malaysia was arrested and the three other women were being held as witnesses. However, he insisted the women were not working as maids.

In December, both countries signed a memorandum of understanding to lift the ban, although the details are still being worked out.

Tola said his organisation had found the ban wasn’t effective in preventing maids from being sent to Malaysia.

“Maids were still sent,” he said. “It’s quite shameful for the Cambodian government not to fully manage the ban.”

Chum Sunry, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the ministry helped repatriate 573 Cambodian workers in 2015, including 55 women from Malaysia and 82 women from China.

He said most of the women who were returned from Malaysia were maids.


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KRT witness recounts giving birth in security centre

When Moeurng Chandy gave birth to a daughter in prison at the Au Kanseng Security Centre in 1978, there was not a hospital or a midwife in sight.

As she testified at the Khmer Rouge tribunal yesterday, she had only the help of a male medic, who cut the umbilical cord, and other female inmates at the regime’s “re-education school”.

Chandy gave evidence immediately after her ex-husband Phon Thol – who said he had not spoken to his former wife since 1986 – vacated the witness stand.

It was the second day the court heard testimony regarding the Au Kanseng prison, located near the current provincial hospital in Ratanakkiri, which housed soldiers and civilians during the Khmer Rouge regime.

Responding to questions from prosecution lawyers, Chandy said she was tasked with cooking rice in the prison’s kitchen soon after giving birth.

“However, I did not have any breast milk to give my baby,” she said. “When you asked me this question, it triggers the pain inside me.”

“I asked for sugar cane juice to feed her, and that happened because I did hard work,” she continued. “I had to carry the wood planks from the forest.”

Describing a moment of warmth during an otherwise bleak existence, Chandy told the court how, when she was still weak from childbirth and given meagre food rations, her fellow inmates would take turns to carry her share of the wood.

“Luckily enough, the baby survived and is still living now,” she said.

Chandy also testified to having witnessed a security guard named Ta Auy murder a woman at the centre.

“That woman was smashed with the back of the hoe . . . [and] she died,” Chandy said.

“This was an actual incident I witnessed. He was so cruel and vicious.”

Rehashing topics addressed during her ex-husband’s testimony, Chandy spoke about a group of ethnic Jarai women and children she had seen arrive at the centre, only to be taken away shortly thereafter.

A few days later, she said, she found herself near a previously empty crater – caused by a B-52 bombing – some distance from the compound.

“I returned and could smell the decomposing bodies from the cracked-open soil,” she said.

Like Thol, she suspected the Jarai people had been “smashed” – the term by which the regime referred to executions – “and thrown into the pit”.

Chanthy and Thol were only reunited and managed to escape when Vietnamese troops invaded, forcing guards to evacuate the prison. The trial resumes on Monday.


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CRF kicks off annual forum with rice competition

The Cambodia Rice Federation opened its annual rice festival yesterday with a competition to find the country’s best rice, with Prime Minister Hun Sen scheduled to address the forum today.

The three-day festival, the fifth time it is being organised by the Cambodia Rice Federation (CRF), gave out three awards in different categories, with the announcement of two other awards to be made by Hun Sen today. The competition was a way to push farmers and millers to increase the quality of rice produced in the Kingdom, said Sok Puthyvuth, president of the CRF.

“Based on this competition, the federation will know where the best rice is grown and farmers and associations can study and learn more about the technique used across the country,” Puthyvuth said.

The Battambang-based agricultural community of Sangha Phal was awarded the best paddy in the Kingdom, with its representative Nov Sopheap saying the 200 farmers who make up the community will now look to expand its operations and use better growing techniques.

“With the prize, we will expand membership and land that is farmed to produce more rice. We will also provide technical assistance to people to get access to good seeds,” Sopheap said.

Chan Pech, general manager of Cambodian rice miller Signatures of Asia, which won best parboiled rice, said his product was popular in the European Union, where it was appreciated for its quality.

“It makes us proud that Cambodia can produce the best quality of rice, like India or Pakistan. The prize will encourage us to strengthen the quality going forward,” he added.

Cambodia’s biggest rice exporter, Amru Rice, was awarded for having the best quality long grain white rice, while the remaining two awards will be for fragrant and jasmine rice. Over the next two days, the meeting will conduct sessions with technical experts looking to improve productivity and access to finance, as well has have panel discussions with government officials and the private sector.


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Third suspect held for Kampot murder

Police have apprehended a third suspect in the case of the suspected rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in Kampot province, and have also found what they believe to be a second murder weapon.

Last Monday evening, victim Khun Nay disappeared in the Lboeuk commune of Chhouk district. On Wednesday at 6am, her mutilated corpse was found by her elder sister in a rice field a few hundred metres from her house, with grotesque injuries to her neck and face.

The first suspect, a 17-year-old boy, was brought in by police that day for questioning. Two days later police in Phnom Penh apprehended a second teenage suspect. According to Kampot deputy police chief Sau Kimoeun, both boys have been released.

The new suspect, identified as 24-year-old San No, was arrested on Saturday at 9am. He was found inside his house, located only 15 metres from the victim’s residence, where he lives with his wife and child, according to Lboeuk commune police chief Min Phal.

Phal said Kampot police had told him that they were “almost 100 per cent sure” this suspect was the killer.

Though the suspect has denied killing the girl, investigators found “blood on his collar and some scratches on his face and neck”, said Kampot deputy police chief Kimoeun.

“We will send him to the provincial court on Monday to charge him with rape and murder,” he added.

According to Lboeuk commune police chief Phal, villagers told investigators that they had witnessed the suspect involved in an argument with the victim on the night of her disappearance in which the victim allegedly remarked that the suspect had “an ugly face; no one loves you”, to which the suspect allegedly replied, “Wait and see.”

A fisherman who was out in the rice field that night told investigators that around 8pm he heard a ruffling in the distance. When he pointed his torch towards the noise, he saw a man running from a woman lying down in the brush. He thought he was witnessing a pair of hiding, spooked lovers, he said.

James McCabe, director of the Phnom Penh-based Child Protection Unit, which has been assisting Kampot police in the investigation, said that a new suspected weapon found at the crime scene on Saturday, a 10-centimetre wooden plank, had been ripped off from the suspect’s own fence. “It fit like a glove” on the fence, he said.

Another suspected weapon, a bloodied palm frond, had been found on Wednesday.

The blood found on the new suspect’s clothes would be sent to Vietnam for DNA testing, he added.


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