Phnom Penh LUG Planet

Norbert Klein: 18 January shooting – Prime Minister’s interventions bringing changes?

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:43:58 +0000

This is to document events related to the shooting of villagers on 18 January 2012 who saw their land getting lost – until finally the Prime Minister intervened on 31 January 2012, ordering decisive action to be taken. But new reports on 2 February 2012 do not show that the atmosphere has changed.

Land disputes happened in increasing numbers since many months. Some cases of violent evictions had received also wide international attention – like the destruction of the settlement in Dey Krahom – the continuing conflicts around the Boeng Kak lake (the lake has by now completely disappeared, it has been filled with sand) – and the struggle of a final group of residents evicted from the Borei Keila area.

A security guard hired by TTY points an assault rifle at villagers during a protest in Kratie province earlier this month when four villagers were shot (Phnom Penh Post)

Now is was reported that four protesters had been shot, and at least one is in a serious condition in a hospital in Vietnam. The Cambodia Daily reported on 20 January 2012 also about a general climate of increasing tensions:

Courts Step Up Charges In Land Disputes

The number of criminal charges meted out to villagers embroiled in land disputes rose by more than 50% in 2011, compared to the previous year, according to figures released by the rights group ADHOC yesterday.

The rights group found that the courts charged 475 villagers embroiled in 220 land disputes last year, compared to 306 charges laid in 2010. The number of people that fled their homes for fear of arrest also rose to 335 people, and 88% rise compared to 2010. Out of all those who were charged last year, 133 were arrested, 56 were detained, and 84 were released.

“The majority of innocent people were charged, arrested and detained by the courts in order to force them to thumbprint documents that gave their land to private companies or powerful people,” said Ouch Leng, a land rights officer for ADHOC, who compiled the figures.

The Cambodia Daily had reported on 20 January 2012:

The government yesterday ordered the arrest of uniformed guards who shot at the group of villagers, injuring at least four, after a land dispute had turned violent Wednesday…

The gun man – identified as Royal Cambodian Armed Forces soldiers by one government official – opened fire after about 300 villagers approached workers of TTY Co. LTD to demand that they stop clearing a stretch of land along the road in Snuol district, where villagers were drying their cassava harvest.

One could have expected that order by the government would initiate a process towards punishment for the perpetrators and justice for the victims. In its edition one day later, The Cambodia Daily reported however, that the director of the TTY company, Mr. Na Marady, declared that he would not implement an agreement made between the provincial authorities and the affected villagers, allowing them to keep their land and their houses, and those injured during the shooting would be compensated, and their medical bills would be paid. He also denied that the gunmen were his guards.

Snuol district, Kratie province: On 18 January 2012, military personnel acting as security guards for TTY Co. Ltd opened fire on a group of villagers who had gathered to prevent clearing of their farmland by company's excavators:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VJ0d-7953I

There were new changes, according to The Cambodia Daily of 24 January 2012: Mr. Na Marady agreed to give back some land, as he had received an order by the government. But he gave a report about the shooting which is not substantiated by a video which was taken by a mobile phone:

The guards just fired on the ground and the bullets accident ricocheted. If they shoot at villagers intentionally… many people would be dead now,” said Mr. Marady, who declined to comment on the gunmen’s identities.

Though the authorities promised almost immediately last week to arrest the guards who had shot the four protesters, police have yet to even identify the shooters – pictures of whom have circulated widely in the media – let alone make a single arrest.

Prime Minister Hun Sen used the opportunity of a road construction ceremony in Mondolkiri on 31 January 2012 to address the shooting; according to The Cambodia Daily, he said:

Prime Minister Hun Sen… called on the director of the TTY rubber company to help find the company’s guards, who are still at large…

Mr. Hun Sen also warned other land development companies to refrain from using violence in land disputes with local communities, or they will risk losing their economic land concessions…

“I have ordered [officials] to take strict measures in this case. The perpetrators have to come out to confess and we have to investigate how the company got the guns.”

The Prime Minister then turned to TTY Director-General Na Marady, who was in the crowd of assembled officials, and warned him to cooperate better with authorities to help find the guards who opened fire… Adding that company management would otherwise be held responsible for the incident.

“Oknha Na Marady, you would know the perpetrators clearly; please identify the shooters. If not, you would face questioning.”

“Anywhere there are problems with villagers, the company has to stop [land clearing] immediately. If not, the company has to be responsible, I would like to condemn this action, and I will take the land concessions from any company that causes violence to villagers.”

After these stern warnings against land development companies that use violence in land disputes with local communities, a victimized villager expressed hope: “We will get land soon because the believe in Samech Hun Sen’s recommendation.” And human rights organizations’ staff expressed similar confidence: “The Prime Minister has previously already said that government armed forces cannot be hired to protect companies.”

New reports in The Cambodia Daily on 2 February 2012 destroyed these hopes.

Municipal security guards force a woman into a police van on 1 February 2012 (Cambodia Daily)

One day after Prime Minister Hun Sen warned against the use of violence in land disputes, six female protesters from the Borei Keila and Boeng Kak communities were violently packed into a police van yesterday after municipal authorities blocked them from marching on Phnom Penh’s Monivong Boulevard.

The protest, which started peacefully, escalated at around 11 a.m. when about 100 residents from Phnom Penh’s Borei Keila community, who were violently evicted from their homes last month, gathered with about 50 residents from the Boeng Kak lake area at City Hall to demand that authorities address their ongoing land dispute grievances.

More than 100 riot police who had created a barricade with their shields prevented the protesters, who have now been demonstrating for weeks, from walking along Monivong Boulevard, resulting in the outbreak of violence…

The police and security guards eventually threw five female protesters from the Borei Keila community and one from Boeng Kak lake into a parked police van.

“They grabbed me like a pig or an animal and threw me inside the prison van, and my head hit the car wall,” said Ath Samnang, 28, a Borei Keila resident, who spoke yesterday afternoon from inside the municipal police station where she was detained.

The family and friends of the shooting victim, who had to be transported to a hospital in Vietnam, have spent already US$6,000 for transportaion, operations, and treatment; they are still waiting for the promised financial help.

Three quite different voices have been reported to have expressed their dismay:

Sia Phearum, Secretary-General of the Housing Rights Task Force: “We monitored the protest and found that the local authorities and Phnom Penh municipal authorities have no capacity to solve the problem – they just know how to beat people and arrest people. I think they also disrespect the Prime Minister.”

Mu Sochua, member of Parliament, called on Phnom Penh municipal governor Kep Chuktema to seek solutions. “This is a total culture of impunity. No use of force by the police is justified, and the governor hasn’t even come to address this.”

Seniors CPP lawmaker and de facto ruling party spokesperson Cheam Yeap said the authorities had no right to detain land dispute protesters. “Villagers have rights for protesting, and the authorities had no right to arrest them.”

It is time and again surprising to observe that there are cases where law enforcement authorities start to act only after being reminded by the Prime Minister about their duties. And also, how quickly such orders are forgotten and not adhered to again.

Norbert Klein: Council of Ministers and UN Special Expert – continued

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 10:32:58 +0000

The following items are added as follow-up to the previous posting here: Council of Ministers Spokesperson Censured UN Special Expert on 26 January 2012.

On Friday, 27 January 2012, The Cambodia Daily reported:

In a letter addressed to Mr. Scheffer dated yesterday, Mr. Siphan said his comments on the meeting were misinterpreted. According to Mr. Siphan, he had only said that Mr. Scheffer “understood” Mr. Sok An’s position “that the Royal Government of Cambodia cannot overturn the decision of the Supreme Council of the Magistracy.”

“I never suggested that agreement had been reached at the meeting,” he told Mr. Scheffer in the letter. “I hope this clarification will help to reassure you.”

Only on 28 January 2012, the Press and Quick Reaction Unit of the Office of the Council of Ministers published the following report dated 13 January 2012:

SUMMARY REPORT OF THE MEETING OF
THE SUPREME COUNCIL OF THE MAGISTRACY
ON THE PROPOSED APPOINTMENT OF
MR. LAURENT KASPER-ANSERMET
AS INTERNATIONAL CO-INVESTIGATING JUDGE IN THE ECCC

On 13 January the Supreme Council of the Magistracy met to vote and count the ballots concerning the proposed appointment of the International Co-Investigating Judge in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.

The meeting discussed the request by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to appoint Mr Laurent Kasper-Ansermet as International Co-Investigating Judge, forwarded by the Royal Government to the Supreme Council of the Magistracy for its consideration.

Following discussion, the meeting reached the view that Judge Laurent Kasper- Ansermet’s posting of a considerable number of documents on his Twitter account concerning the ECCC, and specifically concerning Cases 003 and 004 since his appointment as Reserve International Co-Investigating Judge, would appear to violate of the Code of Judicial Ethics, the Internal Rules and legal principles as follows:

compromising the confidentiality and integrity of investigations by the public circulation of five names connected to ECCC Cases 003 and 004, which are protected by Article 121 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, Rule 56 (1) of the ECCC Internal Rules and Rule 19 of the Code of Judicial Ethics adopted by the Supreme Council of the Magistracy. This information was circulated despite the clear opposition of the Co-Investigating Judges expressed in their public statement issued on 9 June 2011;

criticizing both of his own colleagues, Co-Investigating Judges You Bunleng and Siegfried Blunk, by distributing information which violates several principles, namely Article 3 (1) of the ECCC Code of Judicial Ethics and Article 15 of the Code of Judicial Ethics adopted by the Supreme Council of the Magistracy on 5 February 2007, which states: “a judge should not express any opinion that could lead to conflict or criticism of judicial officers holding differing opinions”. Furthermore, this distribution could have an adverse impact and cause confusion or doubts regarding [his/her] impartiality, which is prohibited by Rule 8 of the Code of Judicial Ethics adopted by the Supreme Council of the Magistracy and could undermine the standing and integrity of the ECCC, which is prohibited by Rule 7 (2) of the Code of Judicial Ethics of the ECCC.

According to the results of the ballots cast and counted, the members of the Supreme Council of the Magistracy decided not to appoint Mr Lauret Kasper Ansermet as international Co-Investigation Judge, replacing Mr Siegfried Blunk who has resigned

Phnom Penh, 13 January 2012

- – - – -

Several observations are noted here, some related to the Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia, some related to older publications, in an effort to understand better what is being reported. Any clarifications or comments are – as always – welcome.

A summary of the proceedings of the Supreme Council of the Magistracy – part of the judicial branch – is presented by the Press and Quick Reaction Unit of the Office of the Council of Ministers – part of the executive branch. All such decisions are to be seen in the context of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia, from which follow some quotes:

Article 51:
… The legislative, executive, and judicial powers shall be separate.
Article 128:
The Judicial power shall be an independent power
Article 130:
Judicial power shall not be granted to the legislative or executive branches.
Article 133:
Judges shall not be dismissed…

Already on 13 January 2012, The Phnom Penh Post had reported under the headline KRT judge backflip:

Details about communications between UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and Prime Minister Hun Sen had been published but later declared retracted. These exchanges of letters and reports about meetings related to the planned change in the position of the judge Laurent Kasper-Ansermet, who had been appointed as Reserve Co-Investigating Judge on 1 December 2010 to succeed the Co-Investigating Judge Siegfried Blunk who had declared to resign on 9 October 2011, claiming that there had been political interference, compromising the independence of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).

The Council of Ministers’ spokesbody, the Press and Quick Reaction Unit [PQRU], issued a press statement yesterday, including details of letters between the premier and Ban.

However, it was quickly replaced by a three-paragraph statement on the government’s position toward the endorsement of Swiss judge Laurent Kasper-Ansermet, who will oversee controversial cases 003 and 004 with his Cambodian counterpart.

“We wish not to reveal details about the communications,” Ek Tha of the PQRU told the Post after the sudden replacement of the lengthy and detailed press statement with one of just three paragraphs.

“The first press release was done by another staffer – that information is not for the media, we wish to retract the first statement.”

The “retracted” press statement detailed a November 3 response letter from [Prime Minister] Hun Sen to [UN Secretary-General] Ban [Ki-Moon]’s October 18 request to him that the Supreme Council of Magistracy appoint Kasper-Ansermet as the new co-investigating judge.

“Response from the Prime Minister to the Secretary-General suggesting prudent consideration in the light of ‘certain activities by Mr Laurent Kasper-Ansermet that have been brought to public attention’,” the press statement reads.

However, this and the details of 11 other exchanges between the UN and the Royal Government of Cambodia regarding the endorsement of Kasper-Ansermet were replaced by the Press and Quick Reaction Unit with a three-paragraph press statement only 50 minutes later…

“In general, there have been communications and written letters [about the appointment],” Ek Tha [of the Press and Quick Reaction Unit] said, without providing further detail. “The Prime Minister talks at the national level and represents the national interest of Cambodia on the international stage.” – “We have never interfered with the work of the court,” Ek Tha said.

However, Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan denied there had been any correspondence at all between Hun Sen and Ban [Ki-Moon].

“The Council of Ministers has drafted some reports, a profile of [Kasper-Ansermet] to give to the Supreme Council of Magistracy for information in making their decision whether to approve him,” Phay Siphan told the Phnom Penh Post yesterday.

Yesterday’s government press statement also said that the Supreme Council of Magistracy was now “independently carrying its normal procedures and legal considerations before a decision would be made.”

It is surprising that mentioning the names of Meas Ruth, Sou Seth, Im Charm, Ta An and Ta Tito related to the Cases 003 and 004 is now considered “compromising the confidentiality and integrity of investigations” – these names have been mentioned on the Internet hundreds of times since the early months of 2011.

On Friday, 27 January 2012, The Cambodia Daily had also reported:

…Finishing off his first visit as the UN’s new special expert on the court, David Scheffer on Wednesday said Judge Kasper-Ansermet had no need for re-approval by the Supreme Council of the Magistracy – having been approved once as a reserve investigating judge – and expected him to continue his investigations at the tribunal as soon as he returned from Switzerland…

Without going into specifics, Mr. Scheffer, the UN special expert, said Wednesday that Deputy Prime Ministers Sok An left him “optimistic” about Judge Kasper-Ansermet’s future after their meeting the day before.

“If it [the investigation] encounters difficulties, we’ll deal with those difficulties if and when they arise,” Mr. Scheffer said.

“I was not informed at all last night that those difficulties would be presented, so my expectation now is that [Judge Kasper-Ansermet]… will be able to fulfill his duties in the country.”

Looking forward to the return of Judge Laurent Kasper-Ansermet to Cambodia.

Norbert Klein: Council of Ministers Spokesperson Censured UN Special Expert

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:02:39 +0000

Some readers may remember that on 20 October 2011, I documented three quite different press statements – all issued on the same day, all related the Khmer Rouge Trial, from the following sources:

The Office of the Council of Ministers, Royal Government of Cambodia, Press and Quick Reaction Unit
Lars Olsen, Legal Communications Officer, Public Affairs Section, United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials
United Nations Under Secretary-General for Legal Affairs, Ms. Patricia O’Brien

Now we have a similar, though different case. The Press and Quick Reaction Unit of the Office of the Council of Ministers distributed a press release on 24 January 2012, publishing the same text also on their website:

Joint Statement by Deputy Prime Minister His Excellency Sok An and Ambassador David Scheffer, Special Expert to the Secretary-General of the United Nations

Joint Statement
by Deputy Prime Minister His Excellency Sok An and
Ambassador David Scheffer,
Special Expert to the Secretary-General of the United Nations

This afternoon Deputy Prime Minister His Excellency Sok An met with Ambassador David Scheffer, the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Expert on the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials, to discuss the ongoing cooperation of the United Nations and the Royal Government of Cambodia in support of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).

Their discussions were frank and constructive, and covered a range of important issues facing the ECCC. They agreed that the trial proceedings before the ECCC are a historic achievement in serving the interests of justice and the victims.

Although the Deputy Prime Minister and the Special Expert have differing views on the interpretation of the ECCC Agreement, they intend to continue their close discussions on the most critical issues, and both remain optimistic that the Court can achieve its mandate.

Phnom Penh
24 January 2012

But on 26 January 2012, The Cambodia Daily reported the following:

The UN’s special expert on the Khmer Rouge tribunal yesterday denied the government’s claim that he had accepted Cambodia’s rejection of its nominee for the investigating judge and said he expected Laurent Kasper-Ansermet to carry out his full duties in the role.

The Supreme Council of the Magistracy turned down Judge Kasper-Ansermet’s appointment to international co-investigating judge at the tribunal on 13 January. In turn, the UN accused the government of breaching the deal they struck in 2003 for a hybrid war crimes court that would try the most senior and most responsible leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime.

But after a meeting between Deputy Prime Minister Sok An and UN special expert David Scheffer on Tuesday, Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan told the media that Mr. Scheffer had agreed with the deputy prime minister that the Supreme Council’s decision to not appoint Judge Kasper-Ansermet could not be overturned.

Yesterday, Mr. Scheffer categorically denied that account.

“He mischaracterized what I certainly communicated in my meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Sok An,” Mr. Scheffer said in a news conference. “There was never any agreement with Sok An that that decision to not appointed the UN appointee could not be overturned. There was no agreement.”

So far, as the UN understood the agreement, said Mr. Scheffler, who helped draft the original 2003 deal with the government, the reserve judge had every right to take on the full duties of investigating judge without a second approval.

“So I made that very clear, and our view is that this particular individual, Judge Kasper-Ansermet, has clear authority to fulfill his duties in this country, and we look forward to him doing so,” he said.

“This is not some situation yesterday where the United Nations agreed with the rejection of this judge by the Supreme Council. Quite the reverse; we object very strongly to that rejection, and we say that, regardless off it, he has authority under the treaty. So I want to make that very clear,” he added.

Mr. Siphan, the Council of Ministers spokesman, stood by his account of Mr. Scheffer’s meeting with Mr. Sok An, and his claim that Mr. Scheffer had agreed that there was no overturning Judge Kasper-Ansermet’s rejection.

The following report by The Cambodia Daily of 26 January 2012 adds a new element:

Mr. Siphan… censored Mr. Scheffer for taking his clarification to the comments attributed to him to the public. “I wish to see him more professional,” Mr. Siphan said. “He should call me first. He’s not in a position to react to the newspaper.”

Does this mean that a high-ranking officer of the United Nations should first get clearance before he can speak to the press? Obviously there is a discrepancy between the atmosphere in the press release by the Quick Reaction Unit of the Office of the Council of Ministers, and what Mr. Scheffer’s sees as a fundamental conflict between the present position of Cambodian authorities and the contracted agreement of 2003.

Three press statements on the Khmer Rouge Trial

Pockey Lam: SFD’11 Competition is on!

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 04:00:53 +0000

All organizing teams of a Software Freedom Day 2011 event are invited to submit their event report in order to participate in the Best SFD Event Competition 2011.

For the winning teams we have very amazing prizes! We are very proud to be able to offer in partnership with our sponsors, Lemote, a manufacturer of MIPS computers using only free software and free drivers. Lemote will provide 3 Yeeloong netbooks for the winners of 2011. Besides, the Free Software Foundation will be providing again Richard Stallman Essays and Richard will sign the book himself for the 2nd year. Big thank you to Lemote and the Free Software Foundation.

For the 2011 competition, three teams will be selected as usual by the Software Freedom International board and reading previous years winning entries should give you some inspiration (this was a free tip!).

Submission deadline is February 16th, ~~2011~~ 2012 (UTC 0500) and the winning teams will be announced in early April the latest. And of course the submission link itself which I shouldn’t forget to remind you about is at http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/cgi-bin/report.py . Join the competition now and good luck to all!

PS: We are very concerned about SOPA and have joined the strike as many others. SFD website will come back from the dark on 19th January.

#HackerSpacePP: Hackerspace 1st Birthday Party! Sunday 22nd January from 6pm!

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 02:00:35 +0000

Come join us for our first birthday on the roof of Hackerspace. There will be a BBQ, drinks, music, fun and lots and lots of laughter!

Beers, soft drinks, water will be on sale by Hackerspace or feel free to bring your own!

All the fun starts at 6pm on Sunday 22nd January. The location of Hackerspace is shown on the map here.

Looking forward to seeing you all!

From the Hackerspace Phnom Penh Community.

Party Time! Hackerspace Phnom Penh First Birthday Party!

Pockey Lam: Bangalore Hackfest – Day 4 & 5

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 11:31:52 +0000

While we had all those GNOME people around we took the opportunity to set up some extra sessions for the “public” to benefit of the event. March 31st and April 1st saw 4 extra sessions organized with specific objectives separate from the GNOME 3.0 release: student training sessions over 2 days, one full day for a business sessions and a distribution collaboration meeting while we had some of the right people on site.

The student training was very popular, all the tickets sold out within a day and the trainers nicely extended the session by doing an extra day in order to accept more students. In total over 250 students were trained and introduced to the Google Summer of Code program. We received a lot of positive feedback and it was nice to see that participants are all very passionate about joining the GNOME community. As usual, we collected email addresses and will make sure they can join the local GNOME User Group later! For those who may not know I will talk about Building a GNOME User Group on Sunday (hopefully my voice will return – maybe too much GNOME people baby sitting?). It is probably a good idea to come and discuss if you are interested to learn some of the tricks to establish or grow your own community.

April 1st (yesterday) was the last day before the conference, so I spent most of my time with the volunteer team to make sure everything was ready for The Day including the three tracks, the exhibition hall and a few other details.

Being part of this hackfest really made me happy and I wouldn’t have thought being around all these GNOME hackers could be such an enjoyable experience! I was also very impressed by how productive each respective team – release, marketing and GNOME.Asia – has been on its own and in their collaboration with one another. Everyone has been working really hard to ensure the success of GNOME 3.0 and of the GNOME.Asia Summit. The hard work of the past 8 months for some, and more for others, was definitely worth it! Please stay tuned as I will continue to cover the two conference days on this blog.

: Lionel sharing his experience of GSoC after a hand-on session given by Akhil about bug squading.

: Josselin giving a speech about science computing with Free Software.

: Distribution collaboration meet up in progress.

Norbert Klein: Three press statements on the Khmer Rouge Trial

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:28:31 +0000

Three press statements on the Khmer Rouge Trial – all issued on the same day of 20 October 2011

The Office of the Council of Ministers
Royal Government of Cambodia
Press and Quick Reaction Unit

PRESS STATEMENT

This afternoon H.E. Deputy Prime Minister Sok An and Ms Patricia O’Brien, Under Secretary-General for Legal Affairs, the Legal Counsel of the United Nations, met at the Office of the Council of Ministers to discuss recent developments at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).

Both Parties reiterated their strong support for the work of the ECCC, their appreciation to the donors, and pride in its success achieved to date, including unprecedented public participation. They stressed the critical importance of Case 002 as one of the most significant cases in international judicial history, bringing to trial all the surviving senior leaders of a genocidal regime.

The Deputy Prime Minister emphasized the need for decision makers on both sides to discharge their responsibilities without allowing themselves to be distracted by intense speculation, pressure and interference from the media and other outside parties.

They welcomed the imminent Final Judgment in Case 001 and the announcement that the substantive trial in Case 002 will commence on 21 November 2011 and they expressed their desire that the judicial processes move forward speedily and smoothly.

= = = = = =

Lars Olsen
Legal Communications Officer, Public Affairs Section
United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials

PRESS STATEMENT

H.E. Deputy Prime Minister, Sok An, and Ms. Patricia O’Brien, United Nations Under-Secretary General for Legal Affairs, the Legal Counsel, met this afternoon to discuss recent developments at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).

The Legal Counsel’s visit follows the resignation on 9 October 2011 of international Co-Investigating Judge Siegfried Blunk. In his press release of 10 October 2011, Judge Blunk linked his resignation to statements by senior officials of the Royal Government of Cambodia opposing the progress of Cases 003 and 004.

The Legal Counsel referred to the Secretary-General’s strong support for the work of the ECCC.

The Legal Counsel expressed concern regarding recent developments at the ECCC. She reiterated the United Nations’ consistent call upon all persons to respect and support the integrity and independence of the ECCC judicial process.

The Legal Counsel strongly urged the Royal Government of Cambodia to refrain from statements opposing the progress of Cases 003 and 004 and to refrain from interfering in any way whatsoever with the judicial process. She emphasized the obligation of the Royal Government of Cambodia to cooperate fully with the ECCC.

= = = = = =

Please find attached a press statement from the
United Nations Under Secretary-General for Legal Affairs, Ms. Patricia O’Brien.

PRESS STATEMENT

The Legal Counsel referred to the Secretary-General’s strong support for the work of the ECCC.

Norbert Klein: On Law Enforcement

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 15:59:00 +0000

There is some follow-up news to the last blog here, from 1 January 2012, on Royal pardons. I had quoted a report saying that Foreign Minister Hor Namhong had stated on 29 December 2011: “There is the law and only prisoners who have served two thirds of their jail term can get a royal pardon from the King.”

But contrary to this law, a Russian citizen was set free, a man with enormous financial resources, who had been convicted for sexual abuses affecting young girls from the age of 6 to 16, more girls than in any other court case in Cambodia so far.

There was quite some press coverage, also in Khmer language publications. Here follow some selected quotes from The Phnom Penh Post of 3 January 2012:

Provincial police in Preah Sihanouk: Lost track of him the day after Christmas.
Border police: Requesting photographs.
The Phnom Penh Post helps out with this problem:

Convicted pedophile Alexander Trofimov (right) poses with a young unidentified girl in this undated photograph.

Government spokesmen know nothing or offer vague ideas.
Ministry of Interior spokesman Khieu Sopheak: He did not know whether the recently released Russian national – who is wanted in his home country for alleged sex crimes against six girls aged nine and 10 – was still in Cambodia or had left for another country. He might have changed his name again and left the country.
National Police Chief General Pin Piseth: Referred questions to the force’s spokesman Kirth Chantharith, who said police were not even looking for Trofimov. “Trofimov is free to stay in Cambodia, and he has no obligation to inform the police. If his visa is valid, he is free to stay.”
[And all this related to a person who should not have been pardoned and released – according to the statement by Minister Hor Namhong, quoted above.]
Ou Virak, the Head of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights was quoted to have aid that this is not just one irregularity. The called pedophile pardons as being “symbolic of many problems in Cambodia,” including the lack of a functioning judiciary in the context of a culture of impunity.

What is needed, therefore, is clearer, better law enforcement? Several voices had been reported to ask for an investigation and public disclosure of the procedures that led to the release of Trofimov/Molodyakov after spending only less than half of his four years sentence in prison – while high ranking persons like the Minister of Foreign Affairs Hor Namhong stressed that a pardon is legally possible only after two thirds of the prison term has been fulfilled – a position also confirmed by Liv Mauv, the deputy head of the Ministry of Interior’s Department of Prisons – and the same Ministry declared that his name had not been on the list of 642 people for whom a pardon was requested from the King.

Is it correct to assume that the Prosecutor General of Cambodia is now searching how this breach of law could happen, and who is responsible for it, so that justice is upheld?

So law enforcement will bring justice.

But during these days, we observe a serious of violent events in Phnom Penh – all the result of claimed law enforcement.

In 2003, the Pheapimex company had reached an agreement with the authorities to develop an area in Borei Keila for its own business interest, promising to build 10 buildings for 1,776 families to be displaced. But Pheapimex constructed only 8 buildings. The chairwoman of Pheapimex, Suy Sophan, is now quoted to say that “the offer of 10 buildings was just an estimate” and that the company “could only afford to build eight buildings” – about 300 families were left out. Some agreed later to be relocated, but others remained in the places they used to live, negotiating for more compensation or better alternatives.

On 3 January 2012, their poor housing was destroyed, under the protection and actions of law enforcement personnel, though it was reported that no representatives of Phnom Penh City, nor of the Pheapimex company were present at the site during the violent clashes during the eviction.

The Prampi Makara District Governor Som Sovann had been quoted as saying that “the squatting families were being removed from the area for aesthetic reasons” to create a clean city. For the evicted people, this meant to be trucked to places 30 or 45 kilometers away, where there is no electricity and no potable water, no schools and no medical facilities.

Further scenes of how law enforcement was enacted can be seen on two brief videos here, in English (1 min. 25 sec.):

For further reflection on this video, I looked up what Wikipedia, the free Internet encyclopedia, says about justice – and I found this:

Justice is a concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, or equity,
along with the punishment of the breach of said ethics;
justice is the act of being just and/or fair.

Norbert Klein: Transiting – from the Past through the Present into the Future

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 09:51:36 +0000

The Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) carries, with every e-mail sent, the following line:

“…a society cannot know itself if it does not have an accurate memory of its own history.”

Have a look – click! – at their resources: the Documentation Center of Cambodia, the Cambodia Tribunal Monitor, and the Sleuk Rith Institute – the latter is a Permanent Documentation Center of Cambodia, explaining that it refers to “Sleuk Rith, dried leaves that Cambodian religious leaders and scholars have used for centuries to write on them and to document history, disseminate knowledge, and preserve culture.”

There are many people who do not share this conviction. They say we just have to be positive, look into the future, forget the past, newer waste time looking back whatever it was, things will be all right if we just think of and trust in a better future.

I cannot share this disregard for the foundations on which we may build the future, our future.

There are lots of reasons to look back when looking ahead. Because we hope the future will not continue to repeat some problems of the past, but allow us to have a “happy new year” as most greetings around this time of transition from 2011 to 2012 say. I collected some of the wishes I got:

- bring many opportunities to your way – OK
- to explore every joy of life – every?
- wishing you the best – thanks
- reaching impossible heights – impossible hights carry the danger to fall down deeply
- happy holidays and a healthy and successful 2012 – healthy, OK, but what is success?
- a happy new year with all your wishes fulfilled – all?
- turning all dreams into reality – but the dreams of some are the nightmares of others
- a very happy new year full of health – it did not work well for 2011
- great opportunities for Internet synergies – OK, let’s continue to work on it
- safe holidays – safe holidays at home, not on the road; most people in the country do not travel
- now free installation for $100 – a surprise as even “free” costs $100
- health, prosperity – health: taking care and listening to the doctor; prosperity: I need more advice
- turning all efforts into great achievements – agreed, achievements require efforts
- building a peaceful society through education – all the educated who have power agree?
- peace and prosperity – some fights for more prosperity take the peace away from others
- Happy holidays! and everything else for a happy 2012 – what everything?

What is the reason for repeating so many nice generalizations year after year, which have not been fulfilled after similar ones were sent a year ago?

So this is the challenge: we cannot know ourselves if we do not have an accurate memory of our own past. To go with a clear mind into 2012 requires that we reflect seriously about 2011. What, then, would be a happy new year?

Surely not the same for everybody individually. But I personally hope for an environment where it is easier to understand simply and clearly the rules of life that can be trusted for all of us. For a society, that means to know what the laws governing society are clear, and that they are the same for all.

Unfortunately, there are many examples remembered from the past year which have created confusion. What happened, and why, has to be clarified, faced, and properly dealt with, so that things from the past that went wrong will not be repeated in the future. We have to know what went wrong in the past, to trust that it is possible to change things – they will not just change automatically, changes require action. Without this hope it is not easy to look confidently towards the future.

On 30 December 2011, there were the following two headlines on facing pages in The Cambodia Daily, to which I add some explanatory background information from various previous reportings:

Pardon for Vera Elusive After Ministers Meet

Two Thai nationals, Mr.Veera Somkwamkid and his secretary, Ms. Ratree Pipattanapaiboon, were arrested after crossing into Cambodia on 29 December 2010. The Phnom Penh Municipal Court had convicted them for spying, illegal entry into Cambodia, and entering a restricted military area. They were sentenced to jail for eight and six years respectively.

On 29 December 2011, Foreign Minister Hor Namhong was reported to have confirmed the government’s official position that Mr. Veera and Ms. Ratree would have to serve out at least two thirds of their jail terms first; adding that concerning the pardon, there is the law and only prisoners who have served two thirds of their jail term can get a royal pardon from the King.

Two-thirds of 8 and 6 years are 5 ½ and 4 years.

Early Release of Pedophiles condemned by Rights Group

On 20 December 2011, Alexander Trofimov (his real name is sometimes stated to be Stanislav Molodjakov) was pardoned and released from prison. He had been convicted for sexual crimes – the largest conviction of one person in Cambodia. In 2007 he was charged for buying sex from six girls between the ages of 6 and 16 – but after that, 13 more girls accused the Russian businessman of sexually abusing them. He was convicted to serve 17 years in jail.

Before his arrest he was leading a Russian-led investment group developing Koh Pous (Snake Island) into a high class tourism “mega resort” through a US$300 million project.

But there are further mysteries. A Ministry of Interior official said Trofimov’s name was not on the list of 642 inmates that had been sent to the King for pardons and reduced sentences for the mass release in December. Liv Mauv, a deputy head of the ministry’s department of prisons, said, “I don’t know what special condition allowed Alexander Trofimov to be pardoned,” explaining that inmates must serve two-thirds of their sentence before they are eligible for pardon.

Since 2003, many foreigners were jailed for child sex crimes or deported to face trial in their home countries. He is also being investigated in Russia in connection with child sex allegations. But a request by the Russian government to extradite Trofimov had been rejected by the Cambodian appeals court in 2007, where his prison sentence of 17 years was reduced to 7 or 8 years (according to different reports).

In the Russian press it was also reported that the

Cambodia’s King pardons Russian pedophile. The pedophile was granted amnesty by King Norodom Sihamoni…

Trofimov’s case has been the highest profile case in Cambodian history as it involved the largest number of underage victims molested by one person. The country is riddled with poverty and police corruption, and has long been known as “pedophile heaven.” Several years ago, the government of Cambodia decided to fight for a better image of the country.

RIA Novosti is not responsible for the content of outside sources.

Mr. Pavel Seskanov, the head of the consular section of the Russian embassy in Phnom Penh, was quoted to have said on 27 December 2011 that the Russian embassy had requested the Cambodian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, asking for an update on a renewed Russian extradition request.

So far, it is not publicly known where the person sought is, nor what kind of response the Cambodian government is giving to the Russian embassy.

Two-thirds of 17 years would have been more than 11 years; after the reduction to 7 years two thirds is more than 4 ½ years.

My own big wish for 2012?

That law and law enforcement become more transparent, less mysterious, with less contradictions. And therefore more just. So that poor moto-doub motorcycle taxi drivers are not held up by a group of several police with walkie-talkies, tracking them, and fining them, for not having the correct double rear-view mirrors – which they should have, as it improves their own safety – while big black cars race along at the same time, crossing the middle line of a road, with or without having number plates, endangering others. But the police does not care. Or why can they not care in such cases?

Only by remembering and facing what was and is wrong, there may be a way to overcome it.

#HackerSpacePP: NEW Ruby Study Group

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 06:28:13 +0000

Ruby Programming Study Group

Exciting NEW Ruby Study Group

Sessions are EVERY Thursday at Hackerspace from 6pm -> 8pm.

Format for the evening will be:

Discussion of one Ruby concept (e.g. Lambda, Proc and block)
One or two programming exercises to cement the previous discussion (e.g. implement a counter using a Lambda)
One major programming challenge that can be worked on over several weeks (e.g. build a program that outputs LCD style numbers from a string input)

Hope to see you all on Thursday evenings!

Darren

Norbert Klein: Some clarifications – Christmas

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 10:30:17 +0000

Guarding a Christmas shopping tree

Yesterday I was asked about why there is a Christmas holiday in “the West” which is now also taking on in Cambodia: to be nice to others by giving gifts, and also the business community is promoting this as a welcome opportunity to increase sales.

So I looked up again the old stories in the Bible in the books of Mathew and Luke, according to the New International Version of an English translation. I abbreviated it some, and I added some comments. The two other books in the series – Mark and John – do not say anything about the birth of Jesus; they just record other things that they had known about him, considered to be important.

Joseph Accepts Jesus as His Son (Mathew):

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah [an expected leader, giving hope for the future] came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but she was found to be pregnant. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream:, “Joseph, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people.”

When Joseph woke up, he did what [he had dreamed] the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

Just like good journalists do, Mark put in a clear time reference: when the “world-wide” census was held – while the land was under foreign domination by the regional power of the Roman Empire. Even so, the dating – written down much later by the authors of the Bible, human beings with limited knowledge of distant historical facts – is not clear. Wikipedia says:

“The Gospel of Luke links the birth of Jesus to a “world-wide” census ordered by the Roman emperor Augustus carried out while Quirinius was governor of Syria. This is thought to be a reference to the census of Judea in 6/7 AD; however, Luke also, like the Gospel of Matthew, dates the birth to the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BC, ten years before the census of 6 or 7 AD. According to Raymond E. Brown, most modern historians suggest that Luke’s account is mistaken.”

On the way to be registered

And just like it was for the census in Cambodia, or for the registrations for elections, everyone has to travel to their home-town.

Though Joseph and Maria were not married, they traveled together.

The Birth of Jesus (Luke):

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth to Bethlehem. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger [an open box in which feed for livestock is placed], because there was no room available for them in the guesthouse.

It was a long way from these events remembered until today, but it changed a lot. How many of the Christmas shoppers, watching Christmas trees, think about the history that the boy born in Bethlehem ended up as criminal, being executed as a violator of traditional culture and religion, a despised criminal, where only some women who did not accept that this was the end of their hopes and lives:

It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.

But Wikipedia collected more from many scholarly writings:

Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus’ most celebrated disciples, and the most important woman disciple in the movement of Jesus. Jesus cleansed her of “seven demons”, conventionally interpreted as referring to complex illnesses. She became most prominent during his last days, being present at the cross after the male disciples (excepting John the Beloved) had fled, and at his burial.

Pope Gregory the Great’s homily on Luke’s gospel dated 14 September 591 first suggested that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute: “She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary, we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark. And what did these seven devils signify, if not all the vices? … It is clear, brothers, that the woman previously used the ointment to perfume her flesh in forbidden acts.”

In 1969 the Vatican, without commenting on Pope Gregory’s reasoning, implicitly rejected it by separating Luke’s sinful woman, Mary of Bethany, and Mary Magdala via the Roman Missal.

This identification of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute was followed by many writers and artists until the 20th century. Even today it is promulgated by some secular and occasional Christian groups.

No related posts.

#HackerSpacePP: Introductory Photography Workshop

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:22:54 +0000

Introductory Photography Workshop
- 3 nights this January

Intro: What is a camera? (Wed, January 11)

Exposure: What makes a photograph? (Wed, January 18)

Putting it together: Vision and composition (Wed, January 25)

Workshop: 7pm – 8pm
Video: 8pm – 10pm

A three part introductory photography workshop. This course is aimed at people just starting to take their hobby more seriously or those who’ve been making photographs for a while but want to refresh on some of the basics.

Each workshop will be followed by a video presentation from the acclaimed BBC series The Genius of Photography.

A camera is not necessary to take part however access to a camera with manual controls (such as DSLR or an advanced point-and-shoot type camera) will be helpful.

For more information or to reserve a spot please email justinpn@gmail.com

Norbert Klein: The UN Human Rights Day – on Social Media on the Internet!

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:36:43 +0000

Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

On the occasion of the Human Rights Day, celebrating human rights and commemorating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was adopted on 10 December 1948, Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, published a Statement specifically referring to the role of the Internet for the protection and promotion of human rights:

Today, as in the past, editorial and financial factors – as well as access – determine whether or not protests, and repression of protests, are televised or reported in newspapers around the world. But, wherever it happens, you can now guarantee it will be tweeted on Twitter, posted on Facebook, broadcast on Youtube, and uploaded onto the internet.

That is why I also quote here from her Statement, including, at the end, the reference to the Internet resources used by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights:

2011 has been an extraordinary year for human rights.

A year when a single word, embodying the thwarted quest of a single impoverished young man in a remote province of Tunisia, struck a chord which swiftly rose to a crescendo.

Within days it had rolled into the capital, Tunis, with such a roar that, in just four weeks it knocked the foundations from under an entrenched and apparently invincible authoritarian regime. This precedent, and its radical revision of the art of the possible, quickly reverberated into the streets and squares of Cairo, followed one after another by towns and cities all across the region, and, ultimately, in different forms, across the world.

That word, that quest, was for “dignity.”

In Tunis and Cairo, Benghazi and Dara’a, and later on – albeit in a very different context – in Madrid, New York, London, Santiago and elsewhere, millions of people from all walks of life have mobilized to make their own demands for human dignity. They have dusted off the promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and demanded “freedom from fear and freedom from want,” the Declaration’s shorthand for all the civil, political, social economic and cultural rights it contains. They have reminded governments and international institutions alike that health care, and education and housing, and access to justice, are not commodities for sale to the few, but rather rights, guaranteed to everyone, everywhere, without discrimination.

In 2011, the very idea of “power” shifted. During the course of this extraordinary year, it was wielded not just by mighty institutions in marble buildings, but increasingly by ordinary men, women, and even children, courageously standing up to demand their rights. In the Middle East and North Africa, many thousands have paid with their lives, and tens of thousands have been injured, besieged, tortured, detained, and threatened, but their newfound determination to demand their rights has meant they are no longer willing to accept injustice…

The message of this unexpected global awakening was carried in the first instance not by the satellites of major media conglomerates, or conferences, or other traditional means – although these all played a role — but by the dynamic and irrepressible surge of social media.

The results have been startling.

By the end of this first year of the global awakening, we have already seen peaceful and successful elections in Tunisia and, earlier this week, in Egypt — where the turn-out for the first truly democratic elections there for decades has exceeded everybody’s expectations, despite the shocking upsurge in violence in Tahrir Square.

Today, as in the past, editorial and financial factors – as well as access – determine whether or not protests, and repression of protests, are televised or reported in newspapers around the world. But, wherever it happens, you can now guarantee it will be tweeted on Twitter, posted on Facebook, broadcast on Youtube, and uploaded onto the internet. Governments no longer hold the ability to monopolize the dissemination of information and censor what it says…

On Human Rights Day 2011, I urge everyone, everywhere to join in the internet and social media campaign my office has launched to help more people know, demand and defend their human rights. It is a campaign that should be maintained so long as human rights abuses continue.”

- – -

Internet resources (accessible by a mouse click on the color-highlighted items):

As part of the campaign, on 10 November an online discussion began on Facebook and Twitter (#CelebrateRights) in English, French and Spanish called “30 Days and 30 Rights.” It is also being carried in Chinese on Weibo – 微博 – Pinyin Wēibó. It counts down to Human Rights Day on 10 December with a daily posting about one specific article of the Universal Declaration – 30 in total.

In addition, the High Commissioner for Human Rights is hosting an event at 9:30 EST in New York on the eve of Human Rights Day (i.e. 9 December), when she will answer human rights questions sent in via different social media platforms from all corners of the world. The event will be webcast and streamed live. Stay tuned, and send in your questions, using #AskRights

For more information on the Human Rights Day campaign.

Follow the live tweet of the High Commissioner’s press conference on Twitter at #CelebrateRights

Follow us on Facebook.

Make a wish for Human Rights Day.

For more information on the High Commissioner’s social media conversation

Check our YouTube Channel for videos related to Human Rights Day.

As the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights referred in her Statement to “Tunis and Cairo, Benghazi and Dara’a, and later on – albeit in a very different context – to Madrid, New York, London, Santiago and elsewhere, [where] millions of people from all walks of life have mobilized to make their own demands for human dignity, I add here references to the Arab Spring (Arab spring: an interactive timeline of Middle East protests).

A link also follows here to activities of people which had started in the USA under the slogan Occupy Wall Street – the leaderless movement of people from many different backgrounds and political persuasions, with the common goal to no longer silently tolerate the greed and corruption they see in the holders of big economic power, with material – as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said – that does not easily make it into news televised or reported in newspapers, but is on the Internet.

It is interesting that in the Occupy Wall Street reporting, there is also a quote from the 1944 State of the Union Address by a republican US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is no surprise that also President Barack Obama recently referred to President Roosevelt’s vision of a more just United States of America:

It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

Is this vision not the same for every nation, that the future development of a country cannot be achieved if it is disregarding injustice – “if some fraction of our people – whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth – is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure”?

Which are the fractions in Cambodia – one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth?

Norbert Klein: Who else but the victims are concerned with the disappearing lake?

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:07:23 +0000

The lake that had been - all pictures can be enlarged by a mouse click

Some years ago, departing on a flight to Bangkok, I took this picture – a historic reminder of something that is no more. The struggle of the residents around the lake has been regularly reported, their claim that – according to Cambodian land laws – people who have been in uncontested residence for a certain number of years can apply for land registration: the procedure for land registrations had been financially supported formerly by the World Bank – until the Cambodian government canceled the relevant contract with the World Bank after senior management of the bank had questioned the way in which this program was implemented – excluding the residents around the lake. Then there were adjustments – the Prime Minister decreed that a certain piece of land should be made available for re-development at-the-site for some residents (after others had accepted re-location to a far away site without a school for their children, and without easy access to participate in the informal sector of the economy, including short term employment in the capital city). Some families, still threatened by relocation, have excluded from his scheme for procedural reasons which the victims did not understand in time.

A dredging ship, where the Mekong and the Tonle Sap river meet - with pipes extending to the left

During a visit in March 2011 I had seen some of the destruction, but there did not seem to be immediate physical danger for the people still in some of the houses – though the flooding of some other houses had forced their inhabitants to flee, loosing their properties.

I will not try to document the continuing legal and the related police battles here. I just want to show some of the physical features of what is happening to replace the lake, to make place for more high rise buildings, while other construction sites in town are either partly finished but idle, because the finances foreseen to complete them are no longer available, or they are completed but find hardly enough renters to fill this new space – and pay for it.

Dredging into the pipe system

Transporting sand by barges

Sand and mud from the Mekong river is either pumped directly through a long pipe system into the lake, or it is first transported by barges to take the same final destination.

The pump

At the end, the landfill is pumped into the former lake – by now the remaining water level is higher than many of the remaining houses – and the lake is “secured” by a wall of soft mud and sand.

The most scary point I saw was a small piece of “dam,” made of mud and garbage, where the water level is already reaching it’s upper rim. Fortunately, the rainy season seems to be over – otherwise a heavy downpour, or a dog digging for something, might suddenly open an outlet, and the flowing water might trigger a flood, quickly inundating many houses still inhabited.

Talking to many people in Phnom Penh about the city losing its lake, and the people around losing their homes and livelihood, I am time and again surprised that many people do now know much about what is going on just right behind Calmette Hospital, the largest medical care facility in town. The authorities have provided a place where those who consider themselves to be victims can “legally” make their problems public at the “Democratic Corner” or “Freedom Park.”

Even here, not more than 200 people are permitted to demonstrate

As Boeng Kak Lake area residents realize that their calls for attention by demonstrating at the “Freedom Park” neither receive much attention from the authorities, nor do they attract much solidarity from many residents in town, the value of such a specially designated place for demonstrations is more and more doubted. After the ribbon-cutting to open the “Freedom Part,” representatives of the authorities to whom the voices of the demonstrators are directed, are no more there. Efforts by victimized people to bring their concerns instead directly to the City Hall of Phnom Penh to get personal attention, led to violent confrontations with the police.

While such efforts, to have human communication going on, have not progressed well, machinery seems to have replaced dialogue: the pumps are running.

Norbert Klein: “…ordinary people who risked their lives…” – part of the forgotten history of Phnom Penh

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:56:28 +0000

The Meta House in Phnom Penh has at present an exhibition of photographs and corresponding testimonials of stories about moral courage of ordinary people who risked their lives to save others. These are related to actions during the Holocaust to the periods of violent conflict in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Cambodia. The exhibition is also an effort, as described in The Cambodia Daily, to provide the “narrative of rescuers instead of the constant narrative of perpetrators and victims.”

I take this occasion to add here information from a book about the “rice lift” to Cambodia in March 1975, which I found recently: Larry Partridge: Flying Tigers over Cambodia – An American Pilot’s Memoir of the 1975 Phnom Penh Airlift (McFarland & Company, Jefferson/North Carolina, and London, 2001, 196 pages).

Though I live in Cambodia since 1990 and try to learn about the old and the recent history as background for the dynamics in present day Cambodian, I had never heard about the “rice lift.” I read this book with great attention, appreciating the many details described. It is written by an American civilian pilot, who writes:

“…we were officially listed as noncombatant personnel, but nobody mentioned that to the people who attempted so many times to do us harm. What ‘noncombatant ‘ meant, in our case, was we weren’t allowed to shoot back.”

The book contains much more than a simple description of a terrible period of history. The author shares his own inner struggles about his involvement in an almost impossible task – and he describes how many other people, Cambodians and other foreigners, lived through this period – or lost their lives. In the following, I let Larry Partridge speak, for large sections, in his own words.

On 1 March 1975, a Flying Tiger cargo plane – this company was the first scheduled cargo airline in the United States – was on the way from Manila to Bangkok, with a one-hour stopover planned on the ground in Saigon. The USA had already announced in 1969 to withdraw all troops from South Vietnam, but the situation in Cambodia had become more and more critical. During this stopover, while the pilot – Larry Partridge – and the co-pilot – Jim Winterberg – were looking forward to a nice seafood dinner in Bangkok, things changed completely. The station manager of Flying Tigers informed them that the Khmer Rouge had completely surrounded Phnom Penh: “The airport was still open but was now within range of rebel artillery, and normal air traffic had come to a halt. There were at least one million refugees as well as residents in the city and starvation was rapidly approaching.” Rice was available, Flying Tigers had assigned an airplane – but they needed a crew; would they volunteer, instead of continuing to Bangkok? They could stop again any time. “Under the circumstances, neither of us felt that ‘no’ was an option.”

DC-8-63

Next morning at 4:00 they were woken up to take a car at 5:00 to the airport, where a DC-8-63, already loaded with 48 tons of rice, was waiting for them to be taken to Phnom Penh.

They got the local standard flight instructions: After takeoff, circle over the airport while climbing to 15,000 feet [approx. 4,600 meters], an altitude considered to be safe from ground-to-air missiles used. The first words they picked up on the air traffic control radio on the way to Phnom Penh was the warning “incoming” – which meant that artillery, rockets, or both were hitting the airport where they were to land soon. They had been told that “if an incoming rocket was going to be a hit-or-near-miss, someone at Tailpipe Bravo [the special bunker with the air traffic control on the ground] would usually see it falling, giving everyone a few precious seconds to get behind or under something. The 105 mm artillery was dangerously different in that it gave no warning! If it had your name on it you would never know what hit you.”

“The one thing that did kind of confuse the issue was the shelling was now light enough to allow most of the usual air traffic to come and go again. This was great for moving goods and people, but there was little coordination between all the different operators, both military and civilian… ‘be advised that there is traffic all over the place – high, low, fast, and slow.’”

Thus started the daily routine. Depending on the military situation at the Phnom Penh airport, there were up to four flights between Saigon and Phnom Penh per day: ‘…incoming – you’ll see some smoke off to the right, you want to go around? – Um… we just saw two hits by the terminal, is that it? … We’ll land OK…’

One problem after the other appeared: “While the unloaders were happily doing their thing,” a check revealed “that the brakes were still very hot. This was caused by landing a heavy airplane on a fairly short runway on a hot day. If we were going to take off and spend some time at a cool altitude this would not be a problem, but after the short flight back to Saigon the brakes would still be hot and the risk of blowing a tire would be very real. The typical family car carries around 30 psi [air pressure] in its tires. The DC-8-63 main wheel tires used 200 psi and if the internal temperature reached a high enough point, the tire would explode with the force of a sizable bomb… Normally, the solution would be to spend an hour or so on the ground, but that was totally out of the question.”

“Just as we started up the runway, two T-28 fighters landed, facing us and turned off on the terminal ramp to await our passage. This was definitely not standard procedure for a peacetime airport, but somehow it seemed safe as all the pilots involved were highly skilled and on top of the situation.”

“As we ended our first day on the job… we had a lot to think about. A quick, unremarkable dinner and it’s off to bed we go.”

Most of the following days follow a similar pattern: flight preparations and loading – or unloading in Phnom Penh – observing ‘incoming’ shooting while preparing to land or when on the ground, reflections on what is going on – especially related to other people in this situation.

“As we sat on the ramp unloading we could see the Khmer Rouge were trying to do their job as hit after hit thumped into as small farm about 400 yards [approx. 350 meter] off to our right and forward a bit. That’s a clean miss, but the way they are hitting in the same small area worried us a lot as an adjustment in our direction would have been deadly… Silently, we wondered about the family that had once lived there. Were they still alive? One can usually come up with some reasons a warring faction does this or that, but blasting a gentle little farm to bits while trying to destroy an airplane full of food?”

One of the ground staff “pointed out an old couple on the ramp and told us their story. Probably in their seventies, she had something in her apron and he was carrying a small pail with a handle. The ‘something’ in her apron was sand and his pail held thin tar. Every time an incoming round pecked a small hole in the ramp they would quickly fill it with sand and tar (a regular crew patched the large ones). They just showed up one day and started filling holes while everyone, military and civilians alike, assumed that someone of authority had allowed them into the area. Questions were finally asked and it became clear that they had just quietly arrived on their own. This caused a big row among the Cambodian troops who were supposed to be enforcing a super-secure perimeter around this ramp. The Old Couple just ignored all this and stayed on the job they created while shouts were shouted and fingers were pointed. Finally, everyone cooled down and after it was decided that they were not KR agents, an officer asked them where they lived. The Old Man stood quietly while she gestured toward a small pile of belongings… Using scrap corrugated sheet metal, some troops assembled a lean-to and the Old Couple had a humble home again. Their ‘pay’ for the job was whatever spilled rice they could sweep up plus handouts from Tailpipe Bravo [the air traffic control bunker].”

Once the head of the US Federal Aviation Administration Southeast Asia Region came to inspect the operation and went also along on a flight to Phnom Penh. He understood that the shrapnel on the runway took a heavy toll on the wear of tires which had to be changed more frequently than normal. He wondered “why we didn’t ask for a truck with an electro-magnet under it (they’re used for picking up metallic foreign objects that could damage the aircraft). I pointed to a wrecked and burnt-out vehicle that was the magnet bearer. The man who had been driving it was dead. The runway was just too dangerous a place for any length of time.”

Some flights were routine without trouble: “Land, taxi in, park at Tailpipe Bravo, shut down number 1 and 2 engines [but leave number 3 and 4 running, as there was no electricity supply on the ground to start up the engines again], wave at the Old Couple, offload, restart 1 and 2, taxi down the runway, do a u-turn, line up, and we were off and headed back to Saigon.” But time on the ground had to be kept short: the unloading of 48 tons of rice took less than 10 minutes, and the record of the shortest time from landing to liftoff achieved once was only 13 minutes.

There was always reason for such haste.

“We were lined up on final approach… I saw a few people walking or riding on bicycles… A group of monks in their saffron robes! It all looks so normal! This isn’t a war zone… We got a gentle landing but it was accompanied by the ugly rattling of shrapnel as we passed through a double cloud of black smoke! A brown puff just to our left, then ‘Krack!’ We were on the taxiway facing the ramp when a large cloud of brown smoke appeared right in the offloading area. I said, ‘Aw shit, someone got hurt by that one!’

After we were parked I looked to the right and spotted the Old Woman. Tears rolled down her face as she looked at me. I had no trouble spotting the blood and body parts the was trying to hide.

The score was: Four killed outright, two lost both legs and died on the way to an aid station, and one more died at the station. Several others were wounded.

Bad news, good news. The good news was the Khmer Rouge shooter didn’t put two or three more rounds into the same spot. That probably would have ended the Ricelift.”

The Ricelift staff did a lot of thinking: “All the work, the hot days, the discomfort, and the risk were now just silly things that probably, in the end, would mean nothing. – Sure we got paid, but we would also get paid for flying a load of toys from Hong Kong to Seattle, or a bunch of tourists from New York to St. Martin. I think, to our credit, neither Big John [from the flight control bunker at Tailpipe] nor any of us ever seriously considered turning our backs on these people in spite of the doubts and the probable outcome. Where there is a grain of hope there is … hope.”

After surviving another attack – “waiting for hearts to either restart or to stop forever” – “John asked how much longer we were going to stay on this lousy job. I told him a long as he and Tailpipe Bravo kept up their end we’d do the same. He smiled and said: ‘That’s the answer I had for you if you asked first.’ He was going to say more but was rudely interrupted by the usual ‘incoming’ and a thump.

Offload completed, we quickly taxied to the west end and commenced our last takeoff of the day. We hadn’t really talked about it but we all had come to the same conclusion about the same time. We were trapped!

If we continued to fly supplies into Phnom Penh, our friends at the airport and the city’s occupants might eventually die. If we (everyone in the airlift) decided discretion was the better part of valor and pulled out, the wholesale killing of thousands of men, women, and children would start within a matter of hours. The situation was that critical. A handful of civilian volunteer aviators had been unwittingly endowed with powers normally reserved for Gods and Generals!”

Various companies and planes were flying to Phnom Penh

From Saigon:

Airlift International – C-130 Hercules – fuel oil and rice
Flying Tiger – DC-8 – rice, having started the Ricelift
World Airways – DC-8 – truck parts, fuel oil, some rice

From U Tapao in Thailand:

Bird Air – C-130 Hercules – ammunition to Phnom Penh, ammunition and food to Neak Loeung (dropped by parachute)
Trans International – Curtis C-46 – gasoline and parts, meat, canned goods, some fresh vegetables

The Flying Tiger team had made a realistic appraisal of the limited value of their efforts of carrying 48 tons of rice per flight.
“At the office someone had totaled the poundage flown on our flights alone, not counting other crews or airlines. It came to 2,737,600 pounds of rice. That would have been impressive, except for the depressing fact that the estimated population (including refugees) of Phnom Penh was around three million souls. In ten hard days we had managed to deliver less than a pound of rice per person, not per day, but total.”

There were also regular personal contacts in Saigon. Their 13 year old newspaper salesgirl had asked them: “’How long you gonna go to Phnom Penh?’ I had to tell her we didn’t know. ‘Anyway, nobody tries to kill me, but you better stop going to Phnom Penh.’”

“One of us remembered her asking if we were going to church on Sunday – when we answered no, she said if we fly airplanes and fly them to Phnom Penh, we really should go to church, and we could go to hers. When I said that we weren’t Catholic she just said, ‘That’s okay, you be with me.’ – ‘You keep goin’ to Phnom Penh somebody’s gonna make a hole in you.’

When the time comes, how the hell are we going to extract ourselves from this ‘Family’ we are gathering around us?”

As early as 18 March 1975, the director of Flying Tigers Flight Operations, Oakley Smith, had started to talk to the two pilots about being replaced – at that time they had completed 46 flights. “’As soon as I can dig up a couple of replacements. You guys are outta here.’” Why wasn’t I happy about what I had just heard? What the hell is wrong with me?! I had done some thinking and I said I would gladly go home on one condition: I would be allowed to return in two weeks. Jim said: ‘Me too.’ Jim and I had never talked about this and I was pleasantly surprised to find he felt the same. It would be a shame to break up a team. Oakley seemed genuinely puzzled so I added to Jim’s nods that we felt we were helping our friends. ‘It’s a very hard thing to explain.’

We had often talked about the day we could get the hell out and go home, but when Oakley actually offered it that day I almost panicked. I didn’t understand what had happened to me (us) but something had screwed with our good sense. After I stumbled through this silly explanation Oakley said he thought he understood, but when our replacement arrived we would go home. After two weeks, if we still felt the same way he would personally arrange our return to Saigon.”

On 23 March 1975 information came in that “two pilots were on their way to relieve Jim and me. We could plan on flying tomorrow if Phnom Penh was open, and we’d probably by leaving for home sometime on Tuesday.

I felt it again. Panic was too strong a term, but close to what I felt when I thought of leaving.

I thought about Maria attending Mass in the morning and the comfort she and others must be enjoying by having at least that age-old ritual to rely upon. I envied her.

I wondered how my family was getting along. If I miss them so much, why am I almost afraid to go home. Am I not ‘me’ any more? How could I change so much in just three weeks?

When Jim [the other pilot] and I talked about going home, I mentioned my strange reaction to the thought. Jim was surprised to find that e wasn’t alone in feeling this way. He didn’t understand it either but agreed it was very real.

I had a double lump in my throat. A big one for the family I would be coming home to and one only a little smaller for the family I would be leaving behind.

24 March 1975 would still be a normal working day. “The first news of the day wasn’t pleasant. A C-47 carrying fuel oil into Phnom Penh was hit by a SAM-7 missile while approaching to land – it “turned into a ball of fire and plunged into the ground a few miles west of the airport. As this was in Khmer Rouge territory there was no way to check, but it was assumed that all four souls on board had returned to earth for the last time.

Soon, we were on our way into the shooting gallery. We came sliding in at 15,000 feet and spiraled steeply down for our landing. If we did take a bad hit, at least our remains would end up in friendly territory.

Our Cambodian boss had a full crew again. Several soldiers had volunteered to leave the relative safety of the bunkers and learn how to unload DC-8s. Everything seemed to click and we were back to the speedy offloads.

Then a large ‘Thump’ as we turned and headed for the runway. Very quickly we were airborne. Just two more trips without mishap would mean Jim and I were done. Fifty-three ‘missions’ completed without a scratch. No more ‘Thumps’ followed by the harsh rattle of metallic hail. No longer would we have the ‘pleasure’ of learning what fresh human blood smelled on a hot day.

If we were lucky, we could stop trying to think of some way to help the thousands of gentle people in two nations who were strangling on the putrid fumes generated by the fallout of battles between so-called left and right.

Yes, I was in a very somber mood on this, our last (one way or another) day.”

Then again the standard air traffic control radio on approaching Phnom Penh: “…descend and land your discretion … active is runway 05 … traffic is Blue 46 inbound, you’ll both be here about the same time so maybe you can work together on landing sequence … incoming is still pretty quiet.”

The pilots of the two planes radioed each other – they were lined up so that Blue 46 would land first, the DC-8 second.

“Blue 46 showed a puff of blue tire smoke as she touched down. The timing looked perfect, they would be turning off to their ramp well before we passed that spot. Then the day turned bad. Really bad – a large blast of brown smoke erupted just in front of their number one (left) engine and beside the cockpit. Blue 46 began a slow turn to the left and ended up in a cloud of dust.

Later we compared notes and it was unanimous we all felt we would very likely have been in Blue 46′s place had they not asked to go ahead of us, thus slowing us down.

As we left, we saw an Air America helicopter had landed beside Blue 46. We knew then that if necessary, Blue 46′s crew would soon be in Saigon for medical attention.

On the way back, the next words from Saigon were: “’You guys are through for the day. Phnom Penh is shutting down for a while. Enjoy it, this will be your last landing in Saigon.’

Damn, it felt strange to gather up my stuff and prepare to leave my job here. Fifty-two times on the bull’s-eye was enough.

[As for the Blue 46:] Shrapnel had bounced off the pavement and punched holes in the lower left side of the cockpit. A large piece entered just below the Captain’s ribcage and after doing grievous damage exited just below his right shoulder. Amazingly, he was still alive. The co-pilot had less severe but painful wounds to his left neck area.”

The following day, on 25 March 1975, the pilots would be on a flight to Hong Kong, proceeding to Tokyo and Anchorage, then home.

When a stewardess on the China Airlines plane saw the Flying Tigers stickers on the luggage of the two pilots, she asked if they new anything about the airlift to Cambodia. “’Ma’am, we are the airlift.’ I assured her there were others involved, but we were the first pilots to start the ‘Ricelift’ out of Saigon. ‘You guys look pretty tired. Was it bad?’”

Departure was delayed until a man in a co-pilot’s uniform with a large bandage entered from the back entrance, and then another heavily bandaged person was carried on a stretcher.

“Our stewardess friend said the patient was a Chinese pilot who had been severely wounded in Phnom Penh and was on his way to Hong Kong for special surgery. ‘Do you know anything about it?’ she asked. Jim turned and stared out of the widow, leaving me to answer the question.

They had been blown off the runway right in front of us as we landed in Phnom Penh.

I looked toward the rear and I noticed the medical attendant and our stewardess friend were having a serious conversation with the Chinese co-pilot [of the Blue 46]. He turned and when he saw my concerned expression he came up to me and said: ‘He is dead now.’”

“When I left Saigon, I expected to return in two weeks, so I just said ‘See you later’ instead of good-bye. This book will be my closure and a way of finally saying good-bye to the many people we tried so hard to help.”

Larry Partridge never came back again. On 17 April 1975 the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh. The foreign air control ground staff at Tailpipe left before, flying to U Tapao in Thailand. It was later reported that the Cambodian staff unloading the Ricelift planes were beheaded for having cooperated with the enemy.

Norbert Klein: Millionaires to Congress: Raise our taxes!

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:05:50 +0000

On 13 September 2011 I had reported: “Some very rich want to pay more taxes.”

They ask for it again:

Millionaires to US Congress: Raise our taxes

By ALAN FRAM – Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Members of Congress’ deficit-reduction supercommittee face daily pressure from groups defending programs like Social Security, veterans benefits and defense spending from cuts. This week will offer something different: Millionaires insisting that their own taxes be raised.

A group called Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength is sending about two dozen of its members to the Capitol on Wednesday to ask lawmakers to boost taxes on people earning at least $1 million a year. They say they have planned meetings with seven members of the deficit-cutting panel or their staffs, plus others sessions including with House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, and even Grover Norquist, the conservative anti-tax activist.

The group claims more than 200 members, mostly Democrats and progressives, organizers say. Leaders say their ranks include Ben Cohen, a founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream; fashion figure Susie Buell; the actress Edie Falco and executives from major Internet companies like Google and Ask.com.
“Any deal reached by the supercommittee that does not ask millionaires to pay their fair share should be vetoed,” the group said Monday in an email.

The full text is here.

Who is rejecting this? Some of the other rich.

Some very rich want to pay more taxes

Fred Muller: Screen calibration breakthrough on GNU/Linux

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 03:28:46 +0000

If like me you are running GNU/Linux and have spent a little money on a nice LCD/LED screen (or simply a modern laptop with great colour and resolution) you may have noticed that getting your colours right has been a challenge: indeed all the screen calibration devices are proprietary, do not have native software running on GNU/Linux and are rather pricey. Well this is over! Richard Hughes from the GNOME project among other things has just launched a fully open source hardware/software colorimeter project: the ColorHug!

It has a GPL bootloader, GPL firmware image and GPL hardware schematics and PCBs. It’s faster than the proprietary hardware, and more importantly a lot cheaper. [...] I’m offering a 20% discount on each unit, on the assumption the first users will be testing the firmware and reporting problems. If you want to support a cool open source project, I’m asking £48 for each unit, plus postage and packaging.

.
As the main website puts it the discount is based on the understanding you’re helping out testing the hardware and software and it might be a bit more complicated than just plug-and-play. You will always be able to update the firmware to the latest versions as the hardware is improved.

Well this is what I’ve been looking for for years so I already made my pre-order and if like me you’ve been longing to see real colours on your screens and can help out with the project then just go and pre-order yours as well!

Norbert Klein: How comes that there is a lack of clarity about Cambodia’s foreign debt?

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 09:49:47 +0000

While the debt crisis of some European countries is debated day by day, with figures of funds needed to fix the situation increasing over the last weeks and months, there was also some debate related to Cambodia’s obligations to pay back its international loans.

International loans related discussions, and negotiations related to Cambodian debts incurred by former governments from the USA – during the Lon Nol government – and from the Soviet Union – during the State of Cambodia era – had been in the press in the past from time to time.

Recently, higher debts to be paid back to China started to be widely discussed. But there was disagreement in public news reports about the amount of money owed by Cambodia.

On 26 October 2011, The Cambodia Daily had reported, referring to Mr. Cheam Yeap, the chairman of the National Assembly’s Commission on Economics, Finance, Banking and Auditing:

Cambodian debt to China now stands at $4 billion, 35 % of last year’s gross domestic product and more than half of the country’s total outstanding debt to foreign donors…

He added that Cambodia’s total amount of outstanding debt has reached $7 billion, a figure that includes $1.8 billion in debt to Russia [when both countries were socialist allies] and the USA [US$444 million, by now, with interest - contracted during the Lon Nol government] that was accumulated in the 1970s and 1980s.

Mr. Yeap said he was unaware of the terms and conditions on the debt to China, but analysts say that the terms on Chinese loans are some of the least affordable among all of Cambodia’s donors…

China also provides the least favorable terms on concessionary loans, offering an interest rate of 2% on most loans, five times higher than that of countries like South Korea and Japan, according to a recent study released this months by the NGO Forum.

On 3 November 2011, The Cambodian Daily reported a correction of some of the figures which had been reported one day before:

… Mr. Hun Sen announced that Cambodia’s national debt stands at only $2 billion, contradicting information provided last week by Mr. Yeap, the chairman of that National Assembly’s Commission on Finance, who had pegged the debt level at $7 billion, including $4 billion owed to China alone…
“Some have put forth that Cambodia is in debt to China for about $9 billion, but I would like to make it clear here that up until now, grants, non-interest loans and low-[rate] concessional loans altogether have reached $2 billion,” the Prime Minister said.
“If the lender is not scared, we should not be scared. It should be lenders like China, Japan, and Korea that must be scared that we won’t have enough to pay them back.”
Mr. Yeap said he did not understand exactly what the prime minister meant regarding national debt but said the Prime Minister must be a right “because he has the documents about that.”

“Normally, [Mr. Hun Sen] manages all this, so I’m not clear on what he means.”

On the following day, 4 November 2011, The Cambodian Daily wrote that “Government Officials [are] At Odds Over Debt Levels”

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Hun Sen said Cambodia’s debt stands at just $2 billion, contradicting information provided by CPP lawmaker Cheam Yeap last week that the number is actually $7 billion, or 63% of last year’s gross domestic product.

Mr. Yeap, chairman of the National Assembly’s Commission on Finance, retracted that figure yesterday, claiming he no longer knew what it was.

“We don’t know how much we owe in total,” Mr. Yeap said, adding that he was uncertain about whether Mr. Hun Sen’s claim was accurate or not, since he did not follow the speech.

The Cambodia Daily adds that the “mystery behind Cambodia’s debt levels comes as governments worldwide are paying close attention to their budget deficits…”

Last week, the National Bank of Cambodia said Cambodia’s debt at the end of 2010 stood at $5.4 billion, of which $2.5 billion was loans from other governments. The Ministry of Finance in March said the total for the same period stood at just $3.1 billion.

“I do not know about this issue, so I dare not to answer,” said Ut Chhorn, an Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Finance, referring all questions to Finance Minister Keat Chhon.

Secretary of State at the Ministry Ouk Rabun also declined to comment.

Clarifications are necessary. That not everybody has all figures present all the time is not surprising. What is surprising, however, is that the persons involved, or the newspapers reporting, did not point to the place where all information about such loans is stored and available – or is it not? The Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia says in Article 90:

The National Assembly is an organ which has legislative power, and performs its duties as provided for in the constitution and laws.

The National Assembly shall approve the national budget, state planning, loans, financial contracts, and the creation, modification and annulment of tax.

The National Assembly shall approve administration accounts.

Would it not be easiest just to pick up the figures from the administration of the National Assembly? The approval of all loans and financial contracts that affect the national budget and state planning are recorded at the National Assembly. That is what the Constitution says. If a list with all approved loans and their conditions would be accessible to the public, there would be no public concern and controversy, confusion, and mystery about the level of international debt.

An Internet web site of the National Assembly or of the Ministry of Finance, with a list of all loans approved by the National Assembly, according to the Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia, would clarify the situation about necessary future paybacks.

At the same time some public clarification might be achieved related to the government’s Social Development Fund – an administrative account? – into which huge payments by foreign oil and other natural resources exploring companies were made, and often with widely disparaging reports emanating from different government institutions about the amounts and their designation.

#HackerSpacePP: Job Posting: HTML / CSS, Photoshop

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 10:39:46 +0000

SEEKING KHMER
HTML WEBSITE UPDATER with Photoshop Skills
FOR IMMEDIATE HIRE

Workload:
Meet with Website Content/Design Manager 1 hour
Turn around updates by the following meeting next week

About Content:
New content will almost always fit into current formats. Only sometimes will new pages be made, and the design will be explained in detail.

Content in English

Skills in Photoshop / cropping, resizing images necessary as I will deliver files sometimes in need of cropping/adjusting and resizing.

Payment:
Can negotiate monthly salary or hourly after discussion

www.sasabassac.com
Please call Erin 012 507 917
erin@sasabassac.com

#HackerSpacePP: Digital Drinks Phnom Penh

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 11:15:18 +0000

Digital Drinks Phnom Penh is a Monthly meet-up for Phnom Penhers interested in all things digital. Join us to meet others interested in digital marketing, design, development, social media, blogging and anything else digital.

RSVP:
Register for the first Digital Drinks event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DigitalDrinksPP
Also sign-up to the notifications email list to get future invites.

WHEN:
From 6:30pm, Wednesday November 2.

WHERE:
Our first meet-up is being held at The Empire, located on Street 130. The nearest cross-street is St 5… so it is pretty close to the riverside. More information on The Empire Facebook page

AWESOME:
The Empire will be extending Happy Hour to 9pm… just for us! woo woo.

Fred Muller: Celebrating SFD tomorrow in Shantou, China

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 03:59:02 +0000

As the title says it, I will be finally celebrating SFD tomorrow. That’s only one month and 10 days after the official date. Since we are doing this in Shantou University we had a few scheduling issues and were trying to also coordinated with Professor Mao from Taiwan, himself SFD organizer this year. I will be presenting “Why Software Freedom matters” which I initially wrote for GNOME.Asia 2011 and then reviewed with Richard Stallman to share it with SFD teams this summer. Pockey will be presenting “Why and how to contribute to Free Software”. The STU Linux Association will present as well but I am not aware of the specific topics yet.

And for those who wonder what’s happening with SFD during the “low season” we still need to open the 2011 competition. Unfortunately my 3 development machines have died on me over the past month and I did struggle with Debian not installing from USB or burned CDs to be faulty (Murphy’s law you know, I really feel great about the whole thing! ). On the bright side this will give equal time to all teams to submit their report.

Last but not least the SFI Board will have a meeting early next month and should finalize a few cool things we’ve been discussing at the last meeting. So stay tuned!

#HackerSpacePP: Urban Voice Info Event

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 03:39:44 +0000

Urban Voice Information Event

6pm Thursday 3rd November

@ Hackerspace PP

Urban Voice is new website that provides a map-based visualisation of developments in Phnom Penh, based on the idea of crowdsourcing information.

Using the Ushahidi crowdmapping platform, members of the public can submit reports to Urban Voice concerning any urban development issue, from deteriorating roads and flooding to the location of public buildings or new skyscrapers. The citizens of Phnom Penh have many different interests and Urban Voice is the place where these can be brought together. Urban Voice is a source of information, as well as a site for civic engagement.

Following our presentation at BarCamp PP Urban Voice will be hosting an information and discussion evening @ Hackerspace demonstrating how to use the website and how you can become involved in the future development of Urban Voice site.

FREE DRINKS AND SNACKS PROVIDED!
HackerspacePP:

#91, St 454, Phnom Penh
Map available at: http://www.hackerspacepp.org/find-contact-hackerspacepp/

For more information please email us at: info@urbanvoicecambodia.net

Download the flyer: Urban Voice event at Hackerspace 3.11.2011

Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=236966029690664

Twitter: @UrbanVoiceCam

Norbert Klein: A loophole? Or a violation of a high level order?

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 09:42:13 +0000

It had been reported that the Prime Minister had signed an order on 15 October 2011, saying:

From now on recruiting, training and sending of women to work as maids in Malaysia is temporarily suspended.

Such an order did not come as a surprise, because there had been repeated reports about exploitation and abuse of Cambodian women, working in Malaysia, and there had been repeatedly also reports that the agencies in Cambodia did recruit trainees which are younger than the rules prescribed, and also, that some of the trainees were held against their will in training centers. Two Cambodian women working in Malaysia committed suicide during recent months.

This order of the Prime Minister – clear in wording and in spirit – was welcomed by many, speaking for a Cambodian labor union [reported in the Khmer language on-line newspaper Cambodia Express News - CEN - http://www.cen.com.kh], by Human Rights NGOs, and by concerned family members and politicians. The Ministry of Labor obviously saw it differently.

It was reported that the Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training met with the Association of Cambodian Recruitment Agencies on 17 October 2011. Subsequently it was reported that the Ministry saw a loophole in the words of the Prime Minister, claiming that in spite of this ban, already registered women would be allowed to continue their training and to be sent to Malaysia. As there are about 7,000 persons receiving training at present (3,000 of them registered with the Ministry to go to Malaysia), this “interpretation” of the order of the Prime Minister – finding a “loophole” – would in practice mean that business as usual is continuing.

Minister of Labor and Vocational Training Vong Sauth was quoted to have said that the order of the Prime Minister was not violated, claiming that the words of the Prime Minister noted above actually have a different meaning:

These words mean to suspend the new recruitment activities, so if they are recruited already and have signed job contracts, they will go.”

To add more back ground and context: It is surely not widely known that already about 30,000 Cambodian women are employed in Malaysia. According to a Malaysian law on migrant workers, the lowest age limit is 21 years, but some women in training said that they are 18 years old. From one recruitment agency’s training center in Phnom Penh, Century Manpower, 22 persons in training – aged between 13 and 25 – had been freed by a Military Police raid earlier in October, and on 20 October 2011, 4 underage girls were set free by a police raid on the training facilities of the SKMM Investment Group in Phnom Penh.

In spite of the “loophole” claimed by the Minister of Labor, the Association of Cambodia Recruitment Agencies declared on 20 October 2011 that their 13 members with no longer continue training and sending household helpers to Malaysia. Their president said they had taken these decisions voluntarily, “This is our own decision. We have to protect our reputation… I don’t want these things to be on the front of the newspapers.”

A Secretary of State of the Interior Ministry welcomed this decision of the Association of Cambodia Recruitment Agencies:

This is in accordance with the government ban order… It’s not good to send women to work as domestic workers in Malaysia, where they face serious risks.

Ministry of Labor officials are reported to have declined any comment on this decision of the Association of Cambodia Recruitment Agencies which had now stated that they would not use the “loophole” offered by the Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training.

In the meantime, it has also been reported every day that groups of women are still leaving Cambodia on flights to Malaysia to work as household helpers.

= = = = =

These events show that not only the spirit of the order to suspend the training and sending of domestic helpers to Malaysia was violated. It is also difficult to see how such a “loophole” could be interpreted, reading the clear words of the Prime Minister, who is at present abroad.

These events belong into a wider context: the frequently appearing problem that words of an order or of the law are not implemented, but even brazenfacedly contravened.

On 21 October 2011, private armed security guards at a rubber plantation in the Snuol district of Kratie province detained a group of villagers and members of the local authorities for several hours, who wanted to inspect 200 hectares of contested land that belongs to the farmers, they claim. A Snuol district governor criticized the detaining of government officers and rights workers:

The company was wrong for holding rights workers and our officials who were permitted to measure the disputed area.

In this case, the permission issued by a district authority was violently disregarded by a private company. In the other case, a government minister found a way to interpret the Prime Minister’s order to open a “loophole” – and it was finally a private business association, that first had welcomed the “loophole,” but after some back and forth, decided “voluntarily” to act according to the Prime Minister’s order.

[Most of related information reported in The Cambodian Daily.]

What is the meaning of law and order, if such actions continue publicly, disregarding the implementation of law and order?

#HackerSpacePP: Pictures from Cambodia Startup Weekend!

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 02:43:52 +0000

Last weekend Hackerspace was home to teams building up their business prototypes for Cambodia’s first Startup Weekend event!

Here are some pictures of that event kindly sent to me from Justin (who is based at Kinyei in Battambang)

Pockey Lam: SFD around the corner!

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 11:56:54 +0000

SFD 2011 worldwide map: 442 SFD teams from 86 countries registered!

2011 Software Freedom Day is approaching, are you ready yet?

To add to the collection of our Software Freedom Day music library (yeah we can call it a library now, we have two) we have another song named Free, A Song For Software Freedom to complement the excellent SFD song “Celebrate Software Freedom Day”. Both songs are licensed under CC-BY-SA, so you should feel free to share it with your friends especially during the Software Freedom Day! A special thanks to Erwin Galang, Meric Mara, Deng Silorio and Karl Ramirez for the composition of those two very cool SFD songs!

And since we are discussing the day itself please do document your event, use the #softwarefreedomday tag, upload photos, make movies, blog, tweet (on identica of course!) and get ready for the SFD 2011 competition. While we haven’t made any formal announcement yet we have some pretty exciting gifts again this year which we are sure will please all your team. Stay tuned!

Pockey Lam: Celebrate SFD Song and many other resources!

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 05:41:47 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqP6eJd6GZc

2011 Software Freedom Day is approaching, in order to help you with planning, we have set up a few important pages where you can find resources for your SFD event including the brand new SFD song “Celebrate Software Freedom Day”, torrent links to DVDs (OpenDisc SFD version, FreeCulture, FreeDistro), FLOSS application for Mac DVD, logos, slides, videos, templates, all source files of whatever you can find on the wiki and plenty of more stuff. Head to our marketing wiki page to find a list of those. A special thanks to 8LayersTech, Erwin Galang, Meric Mara and Deng Silorio for the composition of the very cool SFD Song!

We will continue working on providing more slides and ideas by the end of the week. Please also feel free to upload your cc licensed slides and other resources to share with other teams.

All the best to your preparation!

Fred Muller: ChinaSFD.org back online!

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 19:23:10 +0000

We have been working on getting Chinasfd.org back online as we lost access to sfdchina.org (our old home for the past 3 years) due to an unwilling admin to give us access to both the domain and the server. That also means we had to start from an old backup I had “somewhere” (backup backup backup, and always do backups!) which was half working for no reason (oh, did I mention you also need to test your backups?).

Once the fun was over, all the work of updating content, upgrading to latest versions of stuff and integrating the new rocking SFD map and registration system (and localizing it) took place. I also want to thank Candis, our hosting partner in Asia, who is always here to support us whenever we need space and bandwidth.

Now, the system is only half integrated as I still need to figure out how to write an API to synchronize registrations between global SFD and local chapters. I personally feel this direction could boost SFD celebrations by letting local organizations handle promotion AND registration themselves (on their own infrastructure) while still getting the same centralized point where everyone knows how to find all the teams in the world.

We are still far from it as for example shipping companies require addresses in English only which means even if the form is localized and hosted by a local representative, people would still need to use English for the address. Also telephone format is an issue as a few of our team leaders never had to make international calls in their life and wonder what is their own international dialling code. Localizing the form and getting more teams will surely reveal several other issues.

But at the end of the day those problems of having new teams that we never heard of before are good problems to have. They are problems we need to resolve with highly motivated individuals or organizations in specific regions who could make SFD grow and therefore boost FOSS awareness and adoption. In China for example the local chapter takes care of getting their own team packs and shipping it to teams. This is one way and I am sure there are many others.

SFD preparation has been a blast for me this year and I can only think that 2012 will be even better. In the meantime let’s get ready for Saturday 17th, 2011 and Happy SFD to all! I’ll be celebrating in Shantou, China, where will you be?

Pockey Lam: SFD Countdown in 12 languages!

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 05:01:48 +0000

On top of the badges we now have a multi-lingual countdown counter supporting all time zones. Currently twelve languages are supported (English, German, Portuguese, French, Khmer, Sinhalese, Persian, Korean, Spanish, Galician, Chinese simplified and traditional). Feel free to place one of the counters in your website or blog. It is very easy to add a new language should you need it and even documented.

Link to countdown usage page:
http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/en/participate/countdown
Link to translation howto:
http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/CountDown/
Link to promotion badges:
http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/Promote

A big thank you goes to all the translators who have helped us to create the necessary png files for each language!

Happy SFD preparations!

#HackerSpacePP: Sunday Rails 3.1 Hackathon (Sept 4th)

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 04:31:44 +0000

Alongside with the hot release of Rails 3.1 this week, we will have a mini hackathon day this Sunday (Sept 4th) having fun and hacking apps on the new Rails3.1 release.

Event details are as follows:

Time: 9.00am till late

Place: ~~Hackerspace Phnom Penh~~ Note! changed venue to InSTEDD iLab (Phnom Penh Center, 4th Floor, Building B1, Sangkat Tonle Basac, Chamkarmon, Phnom Penh)[View Map]

Agenda: It won’t be a hardcore hackathon, but the idea is to get your hands dirty with Rails 3.1. Come up with your own simple idea and hacking the app using Rails 3.1 release, have fun!

Contact: SamnangChhun(016701721), Alvin (012213715)

*Note: there will be an introductory session after the Saturday Devcamp (Sept 5th), those who want to know more about hackathon, or are interested to join, check us out in the Devcamp/HackerspacePP.

#HackerSpacePP: Saturday DevCamp at InSTEDD iLab (Sept 3rd)

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 04:28:55 +0000

Exciting monthly DevCamp is coming again. For this August, we’re going to have our DevCamp event a bit late than what we had planned as we are having interesting speaker Mr. Peng Boren, software developer from Nokor-IT, willing to share his knowledge on using Limon font and Khmer unicode on android application. On that day he is going to explain the constraints on building android application that could correctly display Khmer characters and share his solution and findings accompanying with Demo.

Here are the details of the event:

Topic : Techniques in building Khmer application on AndroidPresent By : Peng Boren

Venue : InSTEDD iLab (Phnom Penh Center, 4th Floor, Building B1, Sangkat Tonle Basac, Chamkarmon, Phnom Penh)[View Map]

Date : Saturday, September 03, 2011Time : 2:00 pmCost : $0, just bring your questions and passion to share

Language : Khmer

Contact: 016 701 721 (Samnang), 017 532 005 (Long)

Presenter Bio : Peng Boren is a Software Developer & Mobile team leader working for Norkor-IT. Boren has tremendous practical work experience in Software Development especially leading in bringing Khmer content to Android application in Cambodia.

See you all this Saturday,
ShareVisionTeam.

#HackerSpacePP: Weekly Hack Night: Ruby programming study group is up!

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:50:31 +0000

Ruby programming study group is up!

We have two energetic students here, Samda and Chaung started this. They made it to Hackerspace today just to start learning Ruby, and managed to finish 4 exercises on “Learn Ruby the Hard Way“. They decided to run a study group for this, so for those who are interested in joining the study group, you can either come tomorrow (Thurs, Sept 1st) or next Tuesday (Sept 6) to meet them and discuss more about the study group.

The current study group members are:

Samda
Chaung
Samdy
Liyong

Please feel free to contact Samda (muy.samda13 at gmail dot com) or Chaung (sengthaichor at yahoo dot com) if you have any question.

At a Google Tech Talk in 2008 Matsumoto further stated, “I hope to see Ruby help every programmer in the world to be productive, and to enjoy programming, and to be happy. That is the primary purpose of Ruby language.”

#HackerSpacePP: A Day in The Life of Phnom Penh HackerSpace Phnom Penh

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 00:22:16 +0000

A lot of people often ask what HackerSpace Phnom Penh is all about and I’m glad to answer. But as you all know a picture speaks a thousand words.

Here’s a series of pictures taken on Friday 26th of August, just another day at HackerSpacePP.

4pm: Jack (left) playing with his new toys that just arrived in the post (Arduino delivery) and Ole putting together web and iOS clients for out torrent server and media library.

Did anyone see an instruction manual?

4.45: Serious work underway in the co-working space or is it the countdown to beer o’clock.

7.30pm: The attendees of Alvin’s iOS development group wrapping up for the evening.

7.55pm: Chris & Darren doing some evening Upstart hacking in the cage.

8.26: The movie night kicks off with Pirates of Silicon Valley.

9pm: Chris annoying all of the movie attendees by using flash photography during the movie.

So there you have it, a snapshot of the kind of things you can expect when you visit Phnom Penh HackerSpace.

Tim Chan Rithy: RadioTux - The last day before back from Berlin :-D

noreply@blogger.com (12rithy) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 07:44:00 +0000

lolzzz The last day before I back from Berlin, I have been interview with RadioTux for 30minutes at Desktop Summit 2011. We talking about moonOS ;-) but you know what, I feel so nervous when they guy from RadioTux asking question to me. I don't know what the good answer is :-D

Tim Chan Rithy: Final GSoC 2011 Evaluation soon!

noreply@blogger.com (12rithy) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 07:39:00 +0000

It is so hard and fun to be a GSoC 2011 student :-D I working with my project Appshell at FOSSASIA organization. The final evaluation will take place at the end of this month. OMG! I feel so nervous @.@

Moon OS: FOSSASIA 2011 Announced

12rithy@gmail.com (Chanrithy Thim) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 17:57:07 +0000

FOSSASIA 2011 was announce officialy during the Desktop Summit 2011 and it will take place in Ho Chi Minh City of Vietnam on November 11-13. This year FOSSASIA is focus on "Women in IT" and "Mobile Applications". I am going to there and present my Google Summer of Code 2011 project "Appshell" and moonOS will appear in the FOSSASIA as well. We will try to make fun and get more new ideas to improve moonOS for the next version moonOS 5.

So see you in FOSSAISA 2011.

Tim Chan Rithy: Fly to Germany - Desktop Summit 2011

noreply@blogger.com (12rithy) — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 19:23:00 +0000

Flied 18hours from Cambodia to Germany to join the Desktop Summit conference that take place in Berlin from 6-12 August 2011. The event was so great and I met a lot of people in different project, different skill, different kind. Many developer around the world came here to share their experience and get new experience.

I have fun with the event but my foot almost broken because I don't walk so far for long time sine I was in primary school. I was join the party of Desktop Summit and back on 2:00AM but I cannot find bus from the place near the party. So I walk with my mentor so far to find the bus. Anyway, I can look at view in Berlin and it is awesome city!!!^.^

Tim Chan Rithy: Back! មកវិញហើយ!

noreply@blogger.com (12rithy) — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 19:14:00 +0000

យូរហើយដែលអត់បានប្រកាសអីនៅទេនេះ អាឡែងតែជាប់ជើងក្នុង Facebook & Google+ ហាហា... ឡូវមកវិញហ្អៃ! :-D

Long time no post sine I so busy in Facebook & Google+ lolzzz Now back for some post :-D

Pockey Lam: SFD2011 Schwag ready

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 09:15:47 +0000

Since its launched a week ago, we already have 188 SFD events registered from over 60 countries.

Team packs are now READY to ship and the deadline to request for this excellent Schway is TOMORROW! If you plan to organize a Software Freedom Day (SFD) event this year, but haven’t registered yet, you should do it now! Schwag availability is subject to first come first served basis (200 packs in total) and each pack will include:

3 t-shirts
a 2-meter long banner
20 stickers
10 tshirt transfer labels (make your own SFD tshirts)
3 DVDs (OpenDisc, FreeCulture and FreeDistro (PC-BSD ISO included) ~~and Free BSD~~)
20 balloons
a flyer

Registration is very easy, you just need to :

Create a wiki page of your event here, and then
Submit your event information here

If you have any issue regarding registration, please:

Read the create the team page howto or,
Contact us via email: sfd-discuss(at)sf-day.org or IRC: #sfd @freenode server.

If you wonder what is SFD or how to organize or participate in a SFD event? Please go to our website and read our startguide.

If you have already registered your SFD event, you should receive your team pack in early September. All the best to your preparation!

Please help us to promote Software Freedom Day by placing a SFD web banner on your website / blog and link back to your SFD event page or softwarefreedomday.org front page.

Moon OS: Big Donation from Thomas Walters

12rithy@gmail.com (Chanrithy Thim) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 07:18:54 +0000

On 25 July 2011, we recieved a big donation of $500 from Thomas Walters that make us surprise because we never got any big donation like this since moonOS 1 release. We will use the donatation money to buy a new hosting and Internet connection in our place.

Thank you so much Thomas Walters for supporting moonOS.

Pockey Lam: 2011 SFD Registration is launched!

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 13:41:26 +0000

This is with a great pleasure (and small delay) that we are announcing registration opening for SFD 2011! In fact some of the SFD team leaders have already started to create their wiki pages and participated in the soft opening and registration testing that we started 2 days ago. Most bugs should have been cleared out of the way and we remain available for any problem you may encounter through email or on IRC (#SFD on freenode). A special thanks goes to Fred, who wrote us this brand new registration script for 2011 and the many years to come!

We also want to particularly thank our sponsors who are making this possible, namely Canonical, Google, Nokia/Qt in China and Linode. We have also attracted more media sponsors this year (from 2 to 5 in total now) where we are running a A4/Letter size ad in the August/September edition for most (some are quarterly magazines). In no specific order those are Linux Magazine (long time partner), Linux Journal (yeah, welcome!), Ubuntu User, Admin Magazine and Smart Developer. And we are still in discussion with 2 or 3 other organizations.

Like last year there are about 10 days to goodies deadline (limited to the first 200 teams and Canonical is still providing Ubuntu CDs), so just go create a new team page under http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2011 (not continent this year) and fill the registration form! In 2011 goodies will include tshirts, tshirt labels, banners, stickers, balloons and DVDs (OpenDisc, FreeCulture and FreeDistro).

Last but not least we want to thank all the new volunteers who have joined the SFD global marketing team and are helping with global tasks. One of the net outcome has been our new SFD logo for 2011 which we will keep moving forward (thank you David, Jeff and Maxus Singapore) and the multimedia DVD which we have finally managed to make (thank you Diego and Marcos). All artworks are available here and under a CC-BY license.

Please also help us to spread the words and promote Software Freedom Day by placing one of the banners here! And happy SFD preparations!

Do subscribe to the discuss mailing list if you haven’t yet, read SFD Planet (we also have Spanish, Portuguese and German – URLs need to be updated), read our blog to keep posted (or RSS feed to it) as well as check out the SFD 2010 winners for inspiration and thank you to Makerbot and FSF for the prizes.

Pockey Lam: 2010 Best Event Competition Winners

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 05:59:13 +0000

Software Freedom Day 2010 Best Event Competition result announcements: Africa, Asia and Australia under the spotlights!

Hudson, New Hampshire (July 21, 2011) – Software Freedom International is proud to announce the SFD 2010 best event competition results. Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) with the goal of educating the public about the existence and the benefits of using FOSS in education, in government, at home and in business.

The SFD Best Event Competition is an international recognition of the efforts made by individual organizing teams in regards to spreading the importance of Software Freedom and reaching out to the relevant groups of people in their area. Each year three teams are chosen and the awards given to those teams are meant to help them further in their tasks for the years to come.

This year, two leading organizations from the Free and Open Source Software movements have joined us to reward those exceptional achievers: the Free Software Foundation, the non-profit organization behind the Free Software movement, and Makerbot, a private company pushing the concept of Free Software to physical media and making an fully open source 3D printer.

Among the 40 submissions we have received the three teams that came out as outstanding organizers and promoters of Software Freedom in 2010 are spread over 3 different continents. We would like to name in no specific order:

SFD team Melbourne, Australia
SFD team Yaoundé QV, Cameroon team
SFD team SPCF-CITE, Angeles City, Philippines

As a side note we are very pleased to see winners from different areas this year, especially Africa and would also like to mention some entries which didn’t make it in the top 3 but definitely deserve to be mentioned:

CPU & Software Freedom Network team, Manila, Philippines
8layes team, manila, Philippines
Limestone Coast GLUG, Mount Gambier, Australia
NOSK team, Lalitpur, Nepal

The above teams should be an inspiration to all SFD organizers and help you to prepare for SFD 2011 which will happen on Saturday September 17th this year.

About SFI

Software Freedom International is the non-profit organization at the origin of Software Freedom Day. SFI handles sponsorship contracts, official team registrations, sending out schwags to teams, the annual Best SFD Event Competition and many other things.

For more information please contact:

Software Freedom International
info (at) softwarefreedomday.org
or visit our website at www.softwarefreedomday.org

Pockey Lam: Call for hosts for GNOME.Asia Summit 2012

Tue, 31 May 2011 13:20:58 +0000

The GNOME.Asia Committee is inviting proposals to host GNOME.Asia Summit during the 1st quarter of 2012. GNOME.Asia Summit is the yearly GNOME Users and Developers Conference in Asia. The event focuses primarily on the GNOME desktop, and also covers applications and the development platform tools. It brings together the GNOME community in Asia to provide a forum for users, developers, foundation leaders, governments and businesses to discuss both the present technology and future developments.

GNOME.Asia Summit was held in Beijing, Ho-Chi-Minh City, Taipei and Bangalore respectively over the last four years. We would like to continue finding new locations as we spread GNOME throughout Asia, and we are looking for local organizers to rise to the challenge of organizing an excellent GNOME event. The GNOME.Asia committee will assist in the process, but there is a definitive need for individuals to be actively involved and committed to the planning and delivery of the event.

You can learn more about GNOME.Asia Summit at our official website: http://www.gnome.asia

For those of you who would like to host the next GNOME.Asia Summit in 2012 you are hereby invited to write a formal proposal to the gnome-asia-committee-list (at) gnome (dot) org . The deadline for the proposals is July 4, 2011 Monday UTC 2359. Please send your proposal to gnome-asia-committee-list (at) gnome (dot) org. We might invite you to present your proposal in more details over our regular IRC meetings, or send you additional questions and requests. Results will be announced by the end of July 2011.

The conference will require availability of facilities for one week, including a weekend, during the 1st quarter of 2012 (January to March 2012). Dates should avoid other key free software conferences or other events that may have conflict and will be confirmed together with other GNOME teams which might get involved.

Key points which proposals should consider, and which will be taken into account when deciding among candidates, are:

Local community support for hosting the conference.
Venue details. Information about infrastructure and facilities to hold the conference should be provided.
Information about how internet connectivity will be managed.
Lodging choices ranging from affordable housing to nicer hotels, and information about distances between the venue and lodging options.
The availability of restaurants or the organization of catering on-site, cost of food/soft drinks/beer.
The availability and cost of travel from major Asian and European cities.
Local industry and government support.
Please provide a reasonably detailed budget.
Bear in mind that at GNOME.Asia Summit, the hallway track and social activities are also very important.

Please check the GNOME.Asia Summit check list [1] and howtos [2] when putting together a proposal. Please also feel free to contact gnome-asia-committee-list (at) gnome (dot) org if you have any questions.

Please help to spread the words and we are looking forward to hearing from you soon!

GNOME.Asia Committee

[1] http://www.gnome.asia/about/gnomeasia/event-organization-checklist
[2] http://www.gnome.asia/about/gnomeasia/summit-planning-howto

Pockey Lam: GNOME.Asia Summit 2011, our biggest event ever!

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 05:49:01 +0000

After Beijing, Ho-Chi-Minh City and Taipei, the forth GNOME.Asia Summit took place in Bangalore, India on April 2nd and 3rd 2011. Organized right before GNOME 3.0 release the feedback has been overwhelming with many people telling us it was the best Free and Open Source Software conference ever in India! Having chosen a theme to echo the changes GNOME is going through “The next generation free desktop: GNOME 3.0″ we were able to deliver over 40 presentations and lightning talks from 30 speakers coming as far as Canada, USA, France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden. Of course Asian countries such as China, Taiwan, the Philippines and India were well represented too. In short the whole world came to speak about GNOME at the GNOME.Asia Summit 2011 in Bangalore and apparently really enjoyed it!

On the attendance side out of the 1,400 online registrations a thousand participants actually showed up at the conference (very consistent ratio over the years when registration is free) with a split of 80% students and 20% professionals. Of course this wouldn’t have been possible without the support of our 15 sponsors and partners (yeah!), the 30 volunteers who helped us on site and the 6 exhibitors who took the time to bring valuable activities and discussions during our breaks. A special thank you also goes to the journalists who made it to the conference and helped to cover the event.

In terms of successes it was the first time we had over 90% GNOME related talks, which is a 20% improvement over our “previous record” in Beijing 4 years ago! We can already feel the good things coming out of this event such as several GNOME User Groups in the making all over India (Bangalore, Chennai, New Delhi, etc) as of now busy with website building and members recruitment, or GNOME.Asia new popularity generating a lot requests from various Asian communities to host the next summit.

Another major achievement of the GNOME.Asia Summit 2011 was the diversity and range of activities offered together with the summit. On top of the conference, we also hosted :

5 days hackfest attended by 17 hackers (Release, Marketing and GNOME.Asia teams), with successful outcome ranging from team building (April Fools joke), a successful and on time GNOME 3.0 release, GNOME.org ready for launch and GNOME 3 website improvements, release notes, advocacy, etc.
1 day installfest on a hundred machines all using the latest and greatest of OpenSUSE
5 days GNOME 3.0 helpdesk where we helped a hundred users to copy GNOME 3 images to their USB sticks or directly supported installation on their laptops
2 days student training with 7 talks and 3 hand on sessions per day, reaching out to 260 students
1 day business session with 4 talks given by The GNOME Foundation, Oracle, EDF and Lanedo
2 days shooting of marketing video campaign “I am GNOME”
1 face to face distribution collaboration session between interested parties on site

A huge thank you goes to the GNOME release, marketing & GNOME.Asia teams, our speakers, our trainers, our volunteers and our participants as well as our sponsors and partners Google, Oracle, Mozilla, Novell, Lemote, Lanedo, EDF, Candis Group, JoomlArt!, Dayananda Sagar Institutions, Intel, Airtel, Convergent, Linux Format, Linux Pilot, and The Hindu. We also would like to specially thank Bharath who worked around the clock and allowed us to put things together in Bangalore. We couldn’t have made such a wonderful event without all of you!

And now you can enjoy those great moments that made the whole event unforgettable! For those of you living in Asia it is time to subscribe to the GNOME.Asia, GNOME Bangalore or GNOME India mailing list if you have done so yet, and for everybody else time to try out GNOME 3 and visit a launch party in your area. Last but not least, see you all next year!

Pockey Lam: GNOME 3 rocks!

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 02:34:53 +0000

Following the release of GNOME 3.0, the world has been celebrating GNOME 3 here and there starting from April 6th: 141 registered GNOME 3 release parties spreading over 47 countries according to this wiki page. Being on the GNOME.Asia committee for 4 years already, I am happy to see that 43% (61 parties) of the release parties are from Asia (in 15 countries), India actually organizing the most (20% i.e. 29 parties in total), followed by Greater China (9% i.e. 12 parties in total). That makes me feel that all those efforts and time spent on GNOME.Asia are starting to bear fruit.

In Europe, we have 41 parties (almost 30%) coming from 21 countries, Germany leading the pack with 8 parties, followed closely by Spain and France (6 parties respectively).

The Americas have 36 parties (25%) coming from 8 countries with Mexico hosting almost half (16 parties i.e. 11%). And finally we also have 3 parties in Africa. While this is not a lot for such a big continent it is definitely a start for GNOME and we should try hard to keep those people motivated and participating in the project.

In Greater China, it’s worth mentioning that organizers from Taipei, Kaohsiung, Beijing and Hong Kong coordinated their events to provide live video between each others. It is a good sign for the community to see collaboration among different cities or countries and maybe something we could extend on different aspect of GNOME.

Another challenge among us now is to transform those celebrations into deep involvement in the project. GNOME has a lot to offer, and that was very obvious when we discussed with the college hosting GNOME.Asia 2011, however the road to participation is not always clear to everyone. I wonder what could be the most effective way to achieve this goal and would be happy to hear how people started to get involved at first (maybe something to learn there?).

It is now time to promote GNOME 3 by blogging about your parties! Don’t forget to tag your blog posts, microblogging messages and photos with #gnome3parties, and link them to the GNOME wiki page. You can also join the best photo competition by simply adding your photo link here.

Fred Muller: Bangalore GNOME 3.0 Hackfest

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 21:05:09 +0000

Already 5 days in Bangalore, India and time to give an update on what has been done and what’s left to finalize. I have indeed been silent the past 2-3 months preparing the GNOME.Asia Summit and working on Software Freedom Day to get up to speed for 2011. So I am at my first GNOME hackfest and from what I have been told, one of the biggest ever. In total we have about 16 people working on the GNOME 3.0 release, from making sure we catch all the critical bugs, to fixing them, writing documentation (I’ve just been assigned to write some missing sections – that will be my first contribution to the GNOME code base) and preparing the associated marketing campaign (which has already started of course).

On top of those major tasks we are also providing training to the students of Bangalore (2 days totalling 200 seats), organizing a business session with case studies to explain to local companies how others make money with GNOME and Free Software, running a helpdesk to support people curious about GNOME 3.0 and, making sure that all the necessary tasks for the GNOME.Asia Summit have been completed. I have to send a huge thank you to Bharath for his devotion and support everyday and all the sponsors who have made this great event possible. It is a real pleasure to see so many people supporting us and we can definitely feel the pressure not to disappoint anyone.

In that respect I have been particularly impressed with the release team who is not taking their task lightly and have somewhat skipped the group meals since Tuesday. They still move from the hotel to the hackfest location with us but seldom leave their keyboards. The above photo is a shot I just took in their room before writing this post… Of course no one in the team has written their talk for the weekend, but that shouldn’t prevent participants from attending

On the bright side we have reached 1400 registrations for the summit and I doubt anything could stop the success of what we’ve been working on for the past 6 months. India even got qualified for the cricket world finals, which has only happened twice since 1975 (2003 best runner up, 1983 winner). So obviously everything is on our side and the 3.0 release should be a magnificent one.

Last but not least I want to thank the GNOME Foundation for its support and allowing me to join the hackfest and the conference.

Moon OS: moonOS 4 at Desktop Linux Reviews

12rithy@gmail.com (Chanrithy Thim) — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 06:12:22 +0000

Last time Desktop Linux Reviews covered moonOS 3 Makara with the great sound. Now moonOS 4 appeared in there again. Thanks to Jim Lynch for wonderful reviews. Check it out here. Thanks everybody for big support to the project!

Tim Chan Rithy: Move to Khmer language!

noreply@blogger.com (12rithy) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 07:18:00 +0000

Dear all,

Blogging in our own language is better right? I love to speak my language anyway!!! SO after today my blog will write in my native language. Sorry if you can't read :-)

Moon OS: The Linux Experience "moonOS 4 Review"

12rithy@gmail.com (Chanrithy Thim) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 06:39:00 +0000

What a surprise today when I found the new moonOS 4 review at The Linux Experience. We would like to thank reviewer Chema Martín for this review. So thank you everyone for your big support!

Tim Chan Rithy: If Facebook really shutdown!!!

noreply@blogger.com (12rithy) — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 15:43:00 +0000

Tonight I saw some of my friends sharing news about Facebook going out of business. If it true, I'm not feel well and maybe sick and sad. :'( This is not good! I'll lost all of my friends, especially my friends who lived in different country :'( Many people talking about this, so it's make me feel a bit scare.

Hopeful this is not true! I don't want to lost my friends!!!

Tim Chan Rithy: Can't attend to my close friend's party :(

noreply@blogger.com (12rithy) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 12:48:00 +0000

Last yesterday, I'm so happy and can't stop laugh but today I'm sick Y_Y I can't attend to my close friend's party the evening. It should be fun! I feel unwell with this situation. :(

Hope you guy happy with the party!!! :)

Tim Chan Rithy: Second successful year of my life! :) 2011!

noreply@blogger.com (12rithy) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 02:34:00 +0000

I'm so surprise about this. This is very early, early 2011. I'm so successful with my new moonOS 4 code name "Neak" ^^ Many people talking about moonOS 4. I lose all bandwidth of my website in about 6 days after released. WOW! This is the third time of my life and this year is my second successful year. The first is 2009, the year of moonOS 2 and 3. Now is the year for moonOS 4. Thanks to everyone for big support of my project

Soo! Soo! Soo! Rithy soo! ^^

Moon OS: moonOS in the Press!

12rithy@gmail.com (Chanrithy Thim) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 02:11:29 +0000

What a surprise yesterday when we found out that both OMG! Ubuntu! and Web Upd8 had an article covering moonOS Neak release! We would like to thanks both reviewers Joey and Andrew and encourage every one to read those 2 articles here and here. So thank you everyone for your big support!

Tim Chan Rithy: Hello World!!!

noreply@blogger.com (12rithy) — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:50:00 +0000

#!/bin/env python

print "Hello Everybody!!! ^^"

Moon OS: moonOS 4 Neak Released!

12rithy@gmail.com (Chanrithy Thim) — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 08:49:29 +0000

The team is proud to announce the release of moonOS 4.

Some highlight feature:

We're switch to GNOME as Main Edition for now. Enlightenment and LXDE Edition will come next.
Based on Ubuntu 10.10 with the all new feature.
Introducing new moonOS File Hierarchy System
Introducing Appshell Framework.

Checkout Release Note for more information...

Fred Muller: Mentoring for GNOME at Google Code-in

Sun, 26 Dec 2010 05:28:00 +0000

I’d like to mention to all the students potentially reading my blog that I am mentoring one task of the many GNOME tasks that GNOME has submitted this year. Google Code-In for those not aware, is something similar to Google Summer of Code except it’s happening now and targeting pre-university students (13-18 years old). Tasks are also supposed to be completable within 3-5 days maximum. So if you’re interested just drop by at the task website and apply for the task you’re interested in. You can find further information here specific to GNOME and Google Code-In. You can also leave me a comment here or find me on IRC (BLUG_Fred).

Moon OS: GNOME T-Shirt Contest

12rithy@gmail.com (Chanrithy Thim) — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 04:43:28 +0000

GNOME 3.0 is coming in April 2011 and they are looking for YOU to help design a t-shirt that celebrates the GNOME 3.0 release! So if you have design skill and would like to see the millions of us, GNOME users, wearing your art, then give it a try. For more information please go here...

Fred Muller: GNOME T-Shirt design contest!

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 14:30:06 +0000

For the designers out there I’d like to mentioned that the GNOME Foundation is launching a T-shirt design competition to prepare for the launch of GNOME 3.0. So if you have a bit of designing skills and would like to see the millions of us, GNOME users, wearing your art, then give it a try. First prize also entitles you for U$100 and 2 T-shirts of your own design, though we all know no one does it for the money!

Now for those of you just curious to see what the latest GNOME Shell looks like I recommend trying out compiling from the GIT repository as explained here starting around the middle of the page. It’s definitely nice to see Free Software innovating and coming up with complete new ideas and interfaces in desktop computing. Note that this is still a work in progress (code freeze should happen around February-March) and might not work so well on your machine. Tip: ‘ALT+F2 – debugexit – ENTER’ gets you out!

Fred Muller: GNOME Rocks (too)!

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 17:07:58 +0000

An update from the GNOME Summit where we’re reaching the third and last day of this great event. Attending the summit has definitely given me a much better idea of who are the real people behind those chopped-off heads from the GNOME Planet and who does what. I’ve been impressed and inspired by some of the people contributing to GNOME as a hobby and not because they are being employed by a company investing in GNOME. There are way too many people to name them all, but Jason from the marketing team is one of them. It has been also very enlightening to see how some of the people having the luck of getting paid for their work on GNOME had GNOME flowing through their veins and caring so much about things such as branding and how we should all be involved in GNOME directions as community members. In fact the common denominator of all those people attending is the passion that fuels their interest and commitment to GNOME and all its related issues. I was also very happy to meet Xan again, who also attended the GNOME.Asia Summit in Taipei this summer, and Srini from India and many more guys (the list is way too long).

On the third day we are lucky enough to be hosted in the MIT Media Lab which is a beautiful building with a splendid view on the river. We have a huge 9 panels LCD screen for presentations and discussions, plenty of rooms and empty spaces to drill down on all the potential issues remaining before the GNOME 3 release.

I’ve taken on the initiative to put up a group of sales presentations for GNOME, highlighting both the benefits and the technology of GNOME geared towards decision makers and engineers (so it’ll probably be 2 different presentations) to entice them to use GNOME on whatever project they’re doing. I’m hoping to use those more specifically for all the device manufacturers I meet regularly in South China and would definitely be excited to see products coming out with GNOME (rather than anything else).
So quite a few challenges ahead and some work to do as the information related to GNOME and its technologies or applications in the real world is spread over several persons within the GNOME community. But that’ll be a great way to meet more GNOME developers and make plenty of new friends!

Fred Muller: Attending GNOME Boston Summit

Sat, 06 Nov 2010 15:59:42 +0000

Last minute decision (and thanks to a misunderstanding) I’m attending the GNOME Boston Summit and will use this opportunity to build a sales presentation for GNOME technologies geared towards device manufacturers. The GNOME Foundation is again financially helping me to go there, as they did for GNOME.Asia Summit. It’s pretty interesting to see the latest directions in GNOME Shell and be part of discussions about what effect could be integrated here and there and listen to people giving feedback on the various issues left before the final release. I’ll probably blog more the conference tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.

Last but not least I’ll use this opportunity to meet up with SFI board member, founder and treasurer, Matt Oquist as he lives about 3 hours from Boston and we’ll be talking about Software Freedom Day. That’s pretty exciting all by itself as we’ve been talking and doing things together for over 3 years now without even meeting each others.

Fred Muller: Maintaining multiple websites

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 10:16:45 +0000

As we have just finished upgrading the Beijing GNU/Linux User Group website I was realising that I actually maintain around 10+ community sites using various pieces of software (and plug-ins) and I was curious to hear how people in the same position were keeping track of all this. I currently use a mixture of emails, Gjots, Firefox built-in password manager (which loses password every now and then) and of course, my neurones. I am in fact wondering how the tasks could be optimised to make sure you get to track every single piece of software used, security announcements, new releases, special custom job done here and there, “watch-out lists” when you’re doing a server move or re-install, know which site to update when there is such a need to upgrade and probably more. So what are you tips or experiences on the matter?