The Angkor Elephant Company has pledged to reduce the working hours of its animals following the death last Friday of Sambo, one of 14 elephants it uses to carry tourists around the Angkor Wat temple complex, although critics say anything short of their release from captivity is too little.
Elephants previously worked two shifts a day: 7:30am to 10:20am, and 3:30pm to 6pm.
Angkor Elephant Company manager Oan Kiri said yesterday that a decision was taken on Saturday to reduce the morning shift by half an hour and the afternoon shift by 20 minutes.
“We did it the day after Sambo died. After the weather becomes normal, I will reconsider it,” said Kiri. “I have reported this to the owner of the company and he said he has no objection.”
A veterinarian working for the firm concluded Sambo died of a heart attack induced by the sweltering temperatures last Friday, which soared to 40 degrees in nearby Siem Reap that day.
Jack Highwood, deputy director of animal welfare at Mondulkiri-based NGO the Elephant Valley Project, was dismissive of the shift reductions in an email yesterday.
“The elephants should not be there in the first place. They are wild animals that are meant to live in the forest,” he wrote.
“If they are only ‘working’ four hours then they are chained up to a post for 20 hours. Neither of which is ideal.”
Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday called on all authorities to help relieve tens of thousands of drought-stricken Cambodians, but not without injecting some partisan politics into the mix.
“I appealed to all other political parties, both old and new, to take action [to supply water to people], and we are waiting to see which party can show up,” the prime minister told the audience while inaugurating a national road in Banteay Meanchey province.
“I appealed to all CPP working groups to resolve the water supply to their local constituencies.”
Hun Sen added that during the upcoming commune and national elections, the public will remember which parties stepped up to help.
Opposition lawmaker Yim Sovann yesterday said that while the CNRP is doing its best to collect relief donations from supporters around the world, providing disaster relief is the ruling party’s responsibility, according to the constitution.
“The ruling party collects the taxes, the international assistance, the international loans … and makes up the National Committee for Disaster Management,” said Sovann, who added that there would “not be this big of a problem” had the government prepared more thoroughly.
Indeed, the CPP has long been conflated with the government by a large chunk of the populace, said Sok Sam Oeun, director of the Cambodia Defenders Project, who questioned the rationale of putting the onus on parties who have no control over the apparatus of government.
Hun Sen wants the other parties to “help how?”, Sam Oeun asked. “The government has all of the funds.”
The agricultural NGO CEDAC similarly said on Monday that the Ministry of Water Resources knew about the coming drought since last year but the government had not adequately prepared.
Despite 2016 shaping up to be a “disaster year,” Hun Sen decided not to declare a state of emergency. However, during his speech, he called on the armed forces, the NCDM, the Cambodian Red Cross – which is run by his wife, Bun Rany – and private companies to help.
At the ceremony, Hun Sen symbolically poured water from a large tank into containers brought by drought-stricken residents of the province.
Keo Vy, spokesman for the National Center for Disaster Management, said yesterday that the drought was forecast to continue until July due to the impact of the severe El Niño cycle.
Vy said the NCDM currently estimated about 10,000 families are “severely” suffering from the water shortage. The drought has so far hit 18 of Cambodia’s 25 provinces.
Men Neary Sopheak, spokesman for the Cambodian Red Cross, said that all provincial offices are already working with local authorities to dig between 20 to 200 wells in each affected area.
Defence Ministry spokesman Chhum Socheat, meanwhile, said that all military divisions in the provinces are preparing pumps to transfer water from existing supplies to the drought-stricken areas.
Cash offered to the mother of Kem Sokha’s purported mistress by an opposition commune councillor was intended to help the woman’s family amid the ongoing scandal but was never delivered, the local official’s wife said yesterday.
Sam Rainsy Party member Seang Chet, a commune chief in Kampong Cham, was detained on Sunday by the Anti-Corruption Unit after Sokha’s purported mistress, Khom Chandaraty, complained she had been offered $500 to lie about her relationship with the CNRP leader.
Her complaint, in which she also accused several members of civil society of instructing her to lie to authorities, followed an abrupt U-turn by Chandaraty, who had previously strenuously denied she was Sokha’s lover.
Given that Chandaraty, aka Srey Mom, was being probed by police for “prostitution” and giving false testimony, some, including opposition leader Sam Rainsy, have suggested she was leaned on to change her story.
Authorities, however, have denied this. ACU chief Om Yentieng said his interview with Chet made him “80 per cent” sure a crime had transpired, though many have suggested the scandal is being exploited for political gain.
Yesterday, Chet’s wife, Sreng Khoeun, 43, said the couple had received cash from CNRP supporters abroad, via opposition lawmaker Mao Monivann, to distribute to the family, but Chandaraty’s mother had refused the money.
“I went to call Srey Mom’s mother to my home to receive the money,” Khoeun said. “My husband asked her whether she would take the money or not because she was poor, but she declined, saying she was already having problems and did not want to have further problems.”
Speaking yesterday, Monivann denied Chandaraty’s assertion that the money – sent from supporters in New Zealand – had strings attached. “I gave it to the commune chief so he could give it to the mother of Srey Mom,” he said, calling the money “humanitarian aid”.
“It was not the party’s money, it was from generous people who sent it via a party official; it was not money to shut [Srey Mom’s] mouth.”
Chet’s friend Sab Kosal, who was with the local official when ACU officials “restrained him and placed him in a car”, said the money was given to the commune chief on April 10, and Chandaraty’s mother refused it the next day.
He called for Chet’s release. “He works hard and provides good services for people,” he said.
Feeding rice porridge to her young niece outside Phnom Penh’s Olympic Market in 1999, Tat Marina, then the 15-year-old mistress of CPP official Svay Sitha, was dragged to the ground by the official’s wife, who then poured a liter of flesh-eating nitric acid on her.
The savage act of revenge carried out in broad daylight left Ms. Marina’s lips burned to blisters; the skin on her face, neck, back, chest and wrists melted. Doctors had to remove her ears, and the music video star could not talk for months after.
Tat Marina
Police never executed an arrest warrant for the wife, Khoun Sophal, and Mr. Sitha—who in 2009 claimed to have been a victim in the case—was later promoted from undersecretary of state at the Council of Ministers to secretary of state, where he remains today.
Such undisguised impunity stands in stark contrast to the recent inquiry into deputy opposition leader Kem Sokha’s alleged extramarital affairs, with anti-terrorism police investigating, an opposition official arrested and the case already in the courts.
The attentiveness by authorities in Mr. Sokha’s case has not passed unnoticed by Ms. Marina, who said in a message on Monday night that she wished authorities had carried out such a thorough investigations into the attack that left 40 percent of her body scarred.
“I still can’t get real justice. Cambodia’s judicial system is a joke,” she said from Massachusetts, where she received years of reconstructive surgery and now works at a department store’s returns desk.
“Cambodia’s judicial system serves only their favorite party. If they weren’t serving their favorite party, I would have justice,” Ms. Marina said.
“I’m not a political person, but I like for things to be equal. I want to see people treat others as equals. Doesn’t matter where they come from,” she said, adding that such equality simply did not exist in Cambodia.
“For example, in the cases of the rich and the poor, the rich will always win no matter what! If they couldn’t find anything guilty about you, they will find the way to make you surrender,” Ms. Marina said. “They don’t care if people live or die. It’s all about money and power.”
In contrast to the recent extensive investigations into Mr. Sokha and his alleged mistress, who until last week had denied the affair, authorities investigating Ms. Marina’s case after the December 1999 attack seemed less keen to prosecute.
Police at the time acknowledged a car seized at the scene was returned to Mr. Sitha’s family—“following orders from the top”—even as they immediately identified Ms. Sophal as the prime suspect and issued the arrest warrant that would never be acted on.
Rights groups for years bemoaned the impunity as Ms. Sophal and Mr. Sitha continued their lives without any consequences. Then a Cambodia Daily article in November 2011 led the Council of Ministers to publicly release a court conviction for Ms. Sophal.
Ms. Sophal, it said, had in fact been convicted in April 2001 over the acid attack and handed a suspended one-year prison term, which police had apparently been unaware of for the previous decade as they fended off claims of impunity.
Mr. Sitha’s wife never faced a day in jail for the attack on Ms. Marina.
Contacted on Tuesday, Tith Sothea, spokesman for the Council of Ministers’ Press and Quick Reaction Unit, headed by Mr. Sitha, said Ms. Sophal’s conviction scuppered any allegations of impunity.
“The court already implemented their procedures and handed down punishment. Did you just wake up?” Mr. Sothea said. “The case is already finished, so why keep digging it up and making problems?”
The spokesman rebuked suggestions that the different intensity with which the two cases were pursued was curious.
“How can I compare a case already punished many years ago to the present case?” Mr. Sothea said, adding that Mr. Sokha’s alleged sexual transgressions were rightfully being attacked by the state.
“Kem Sokha is a leader of the opposition politicians competing with the prime minister, so every action he takes must be correct and moral. For personal issues, when his partner reveals their love, it affects the public. How can he make people trust him?”
Mr. Sothea said Mr. Sitha was overseas so would not be available to comment.
Ms. Marina’s is not the only case where a senior CPP official has been embroiled in claims of an extra-marital affair that, unlike Mr. Sokha’s, ended in brutality and then went untouched by authorities.
Six months before Ms. Marina was beaten and doused in acid, fellow music video star Piseth Pilika was shot to death in broad daylight outside Phnom Penh’s O’Russey Market while out walking with her young niece.
The French weekly magazine L’Express published lengthy articles accusing Prime Minister Hun Sen’s wife, Bun Rany, of ordering the hit due to an affair the star was allegedly having with her husband.
Piseth Pilika’s sister released online scans of bank deposits for $50,000 and $100,000 alongside diary entries claiming that the money had come from Mr. Hun Sen—and that the starlet had been repeatedly warned that Ms. Rany might try to kill her.
The first lady’s alleged role in the case was never investigated, and no one has ever been held to account for the star’s murder.
Om Yentieng, who today chairs the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU), was at the time Mr. Hun Sen’s adviser and released written defenses denying the claims leveled against Ms. Rany. Mr. Yentieng and the ACU are now leading the detailed investigation of Mr. Sokha’s apparent affairs, ostensibly due to concerns about where he got the money to allegedly promise to buy property for mistresses.
Mr. Yentieng declined to comment on Tuesday when asked about the Piseth Pilika case and claims that money was deposited in her bank account by Mr. Hun Sen, whose official monthly salary would likely have precluded him from such largesse.
“I don’t have time to talk,” Mr. Yentieng said, adding sardonically: “I am afraid of you, Daily.”
In a 2003 attack, popular singer Touch Sreynich was shot in the face and neck, leaving her paralyzed from the neck down at the age of 24. Her mother was shot dead trying to save her. Ms. Sreynich now lives in California. Four years later, 23-year-old singer Pov Panhapich was shot in the neck and paralyzed. No one has ever been brought to justice for either attack, though rumors of jealous wives and high-profile husbands have shadowed both cases to this day.
Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak said on Tuesday that suggestions Mr. Sokha’s alleged affair was being pursued more
aggressively than the violence against Ms. Panhapich, Ms. Sreynich and Ms. Marina were wrong.
“The investigations are not different, it just depends how much attention people pay to them,” he explained. “In the Kem Sokha case, the reason that most of the people pay attention to the case is because he’s a high-ranking official.”
“We are still searching for the suspects, but we haven’t found them yet. We never closed the investigations into those cases,” he added. “If you know who did it, OK, tell us and we will take action.”
Adhoc president Thun Saray on Tuesday defended his rights group’s pro-bono legal representation of the alleged mistress of deputy opposition leader Kem Sokha, who last week rescinded her denials of the affair and accused Adhoc staff of convincing her to lie.
Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) Chairman Om Yentieng has summoned five of Adhoc’s rights workers, a U.N. official, an election administrator and a women’s rights advocate for questioning this week over Khom Chandaraty’s claim they urged her to lie about the affair.
Adhoc president Thun Saray speaks during a press conference at the organization’s headquarters in Phnom Penh on Tuesday. (Siv Channa/The Cambodia Daily)
Ms. Chandaraty, a 25-year-old hairdresser, made the accusation in a public letter last week after rescinding her denials on April 19 while being questioned for charges of prostitution and false testimony leveled by anti-terrorism police, who are investigating the affair. Mr. Saray called a press conference on Tuesday to combat the claims.
“I want to ask all of you journalists. When she came to meet us and was scared—telling her true story and asking us to help her and protect her honor—if you were us, who have 25 years’ experience on such affairs, what would you do?” Mr. Saray asked.
“If we did not accept her complaint or told her to go back home, we would have no virtue, and many people would have criticized our group,” he said.
Mr. Saray played a portion of Adhoc’s initial interviews with Ms. Chandaraty from last month, showing her detailing her story to Adhoc staff, including denials that she had an affair with Mr. Sokha.
The Adhoc president said his group’s lawyers had given Ms. Chandaraty a total of $204 to support her during questioning by authorities, per standard procedure when they take on a case, and then questioned why the national anti-graft body was investigating.
“We just provided her with legal advisers based on what she told us,” Mr. Saray said.
“What we understand is that the ACU investigates people who steal state money, but for us, we did not take any state money, so why is the ACU summoning us like this?” he said.
Mr. Yentieng declined to comment on Mr. Saray’s remarks.
Following the press conference, Adhoc’s deputy head of monitoring, Yi Soksan, who has also been summoned by the ACU, said the organization routinely accepted whoever came asking for help.
“In principle, when people come to file complaints with us at Adhoc, we usually accept, whether it’s land-grabbing, a human rights case, human trafficking or rape,” he said, adding that something was amiss.
“I think if Srey Mom’s case was a normal case, the ACU and the government would not be involved.”
The other three summoned for questioning over the alleged affair include Thida Khus, head of women’s rights NGO Silika; Ny Chakrya, National Election Committee deputy secretary-general and a former senior Adhoc official; and Sally Soen, who works at the U.N.’s local human rights office.
Mr. Yentieng on Sunday arrested an opposition commune chief who he says promised Ms. Chandaraty’s family $500 to deny the affair. The corruption czar has threatened to make more arrests in the case if necessary.
Two sons of Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) Chairman Om Yentieng have been appointed as assistants to the government graft-fighting body, sparking accusations of nepotism within the very institution meant to stamp out such practices.
A royal decree signed by King Norodom Sihamoni on Saturday names Yentieng Puthira and Yentieng Puthirith as two of eighteen new assistants assigned to the ACU, with ranks equal to undersecretary and secretary of state, respectively, effective immediately.
The appointments were requested by Prime Minister Hun Sen, who on Friday also signed off on a separate sub-decree assigning six lower-ranking assistants to the unit.
Mr. Yentieng declined to speak with a reporter on Tuesday, and ACU spokesman Keo Remy could not be reached. Nov Ra, an official in the prime minister’s cabinet, referred a request for comment back to the ACU.
Top Sam, the chairman of the National Anti-Corruption Council, which oversees the ACU, would not discuss the appointment of Mr. Yentieng’s sons but defended the appointment of assistants in general.
“Please look at all the units. It is not only the Anti-Corruption Unit that makes appointments. Other units make appointments, too,” he said, before hanging up on a reporter.
CPP spokesman Sok Eysan said it was only natural for the ruling party to appoint the children of its own members.
“It is normal,” Mr. Eysan said of the appointment of Mr. Yentieng’s sons.
“The CPP is the ruling party and has never appointed the children of the CNRP,” he said. “The CPP must appoint the youth of the CPP because we cannot appoint the youth of another party.”
The spokesman’s comments amount to an admission of political discrimination. But he denied any hint of nepotism and rejected the suggestion that the appointments might sully the ACU’s image.
“It is not nepotism,” he said. “It can only be nepotism if the people who are appointed have no knowledge. But [Mr. Yentieng’s sons] have the ability to do the work.”
The royal decree appointing Mr. Yentieng’s scions to his own unit does not describe their qualifications for the jobs or what aspects of corruption they will be advising their father on.
The brothers have apparently been riding on their father’s coattails for years.
According to a 2009 U.S. State Department cable released by the anti-secrecy organization Wikileaks, Mr. Puthira and Mr. Puthirith, ranking officers in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, are both department directors for the National Counter-Terrorism Committee. The same cable names Mr. Yentieng as a deputy director of the committee’s secretariat.
San Chey, country director for the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability, a good governance advocacy group, said their latest appointments would certainly dam-age the ACU’s image, especially amid a shakeup of the prime minister’s cabinet.
“It is not a good picture for the Anti-Corruption Unit now while the other ministries are under reform and while [Mr. Yentieng] gives advice to the other ministries,” he said. “It is a kind of nepotism.”
Mr. Chey said the appointments also had to be considered against the backdrop of a high-profile ACU investigation into CNRP Vice President Kem Sokha that looks to many like a politically motivated attack on the opposition.
“The public may decrease their trust in the ACU,” he said of the appointments. “Especially now that they are investigating the vice president of the CNRP, the public is looking purposefully into the ACU; they are looking at it very carefully.”
Kem Ley, whose Khmer for Khmer network advocates for a more democratic and transparent government, said the ACU had a moral obligation, if not a legal duty, to be more open about the qualifications of its staff.
He said the appointment of Mr. Yentieng’s sons would only deepen an already entrenched impression of nepotism and corruption within the CPP and of a government in which familial connections trump formal qualifications.
“Even if they are highly qualified, they cannot find a job if they do not have the right bloodline,” he said. “This has become the culture of nepotism, and the family institutions have been hardening within the current mandate. It is one kind of corruption.”
Before leaving the country last month, the U.N.’s special rapporteur for human rights in Cambodia, Rhona Smith, decried what she said was the prevalence of cases where there was a “difference between what the laws say and then the implementation.”
Nowhere has this difference been more conspicuous since she departed than in the government’s sweeping reinterpretation of the article in the Constitution that prohibits a lawmaker’s arrest without consent from two-thirds of the National Assembly.
—News Analysis—
Prime Minister Hun Sen delivers a speech in Siem Reap province last week defending the arrest of opposition lawmaker Um Sam An, in this still image from a video recording.
Jailing opposition lawmaker Um Sam An last week for social media posts made last year, the CPP government—which does not hold two-thirds of seats in parliament—said such a majority was not necessary because of an exception allowing arrests if a lawmaker is caught red-handed.
The claim relied on a clause in Article 80 of the Constitution, which gives lawmakers immunity from arrest, but makes an exception “in case of flagrante delicto”—when they are caught in the act of committing a crime.
“Don’t say you have immunity and they can’t arrest you, because it was an obvious crime,” Prime Minister Hun Sen said in a speech Tuesday, explaining that Mr. Sam An’s crime was still available for all to see.
“Now, at this hour, your [Facebook] page still talks about the fake maps,” Mr. Hun Sen said. “I don’t care that you’re an Assembly member or a senator.”
The CNRP lawmaker was duly charged hours later with committing crimes of incitement on April 9—he was arrested shortly after midnight April 10—even though he had made the posts about border demarcation some six months ago.
“Even if it happened in the past, it’s still considered ‘flagrante delicto’ from a legal and technical perspective,” Justice Ministry spokesman Chin Malin said last week.
“I give, as an example, that if Mr. Um Sam An killed someone and escaped but then returned, the police could arrest him because he committed an obvious crime, and everyone knows he did it before.”
Yet this broad interpretation of the “in flagrante delicto” clause had never before been put forward over the past 20 years, when the CPP could—and often did—secure the two-thirds vote to jail opposition lawmakers, and its introduction has not sat well with many.
Opposition lawmaker Son Chhay, defending Mr. Sam An at a press conference last week, argued that the clause was never meant to be a gaping loophole allowing for a lawmaker’s arrest when authorities claim to have clear evidence of a crime.
Instead, Mr. Chhay said, the clause was intended to cover the possibility of a lawmaker being caught in the act of committing a serious crime like murder, allowing police to intervene without waiting for the Assembly to meet and vote.
Yet even in a legitimate case of an “in flagrante delicto” crime, Mr. Chhay noted on Sunday, the exception is intended to be temporary, and does not allow—on its own—for prosecution to proceed, as it has in the case of Mr. Sam An.
“After they detain him, they have to get permission from parliament to lift his immunity to continue prosecuting the case,” Mr. Chhay said. “The Constitution says if you want to continue, you have to lift immunity, but the CPP do not have the numbers.”
The stipulation requiring approval by a two-thirds vote of the Assembly is also provided in Article 80.
“The accusation, arrest, or detention of an assembly member shall be made only with the permission of the National Assembly or by the standing committee of the National Assembly between sessions, except in case of flagrante delicto,” it says.
“In that case,” it stipulates, “the competent authority shall immediately report to the National Assembly or to the Standing Committee for decision.”
“The decision made by the Standing Committee of the National Assembly shall be submitted to the National Assembly at its next session for approval by a 2/3 majority vote of the Assembly members.”
“In every case above, detention or prosecution of a deputy shall be suspended by a 3/4 majority vote of the National Assembly members,” the article ends.
Mr. Malin, the Justice Ministry spokesman, said on Sunday that the final paragraph of the article was the basis of last week’s Assembly vote allowing for Mr. Sam An’s prosecution to go ahead despite his immunity remaining intact.
He denied that the absence of two-thirds majority approving Mr. Sam An’s detention prevented such a move for cases of “in flagrante delicto,” explaining that Mr. Sam An had simply failed to get the necessary votes to suspend his prosecution.
“The CNRP takes only one part for their explanation, but do not use the next phrase [about suspending the prosecution] to complete the meaning and if we want to understand the full meaning, we have to read the next paragraph,” Mr. Malin said.
“We were unable to find the three-quarters majority vote to stop the court’s procedures, so that’s why the National Assembly approved with 50-percent-plus-one to allow the authorities to continue with the arrest and detention of Um Sam An,” he added.
“The authorities understand that this was an obvious crime, and they don’t need to remove immunity.”
Yet Mr. Chhay said it was Mr. Malin who was selectively reading Article 80, adding that the CPP had invented the procedure where a simple majority allows authorities to continue detaining a lawmaker even without their immunity being stripped.
“They don’t have the numbers to remove immunity, so they have created this new law on their own of so-called ‘allowing to continue’ to detain Um Sam An with his immunity in place,” Mr. Chhay said.
“It is ridiculous, and it just means they have run out of ways to intimidate us following the law,” he said. “Now they will just openly abuse the law.”
Mr. Chhay’s view is shared by prominent lawyer Sok Sam Oeun, president of the Cambodian Defenders Project. Mr. Sam Ouen last week released a legal analysis arguing that even “in flagrante delicto” cases ultimately require immunity to be formally stripped.
“The Constitution provides the right for arrests in cases where the crime is an obvious crime, but after the arrest, they must send the case to the Assembly to decide to remove his or her immunity first, or to suspend the charges,” Mr. Sam Oeun wrote.
“From my understanding,” the lawyer added by telephone on Sunday, “if any lawmaker still has his immunity, he cannot be charged or detained. He must be released.”
“But the National Assembly, or the CPP parliamentarians, do not interpret it like this right now,” he added.
A high-speed police chase across Stung Treng province early Monday morning led to the confiscation of more than 1.5 tons of rosewood, but only after an SUV plowed into a police truck blocking the road, with two suspects eventually fleeing on foot.
Police in Stung Treng said they were informed by their colleagues in Preah Vihear province to the west that two cars were speeding toward the Vietnamese border with a suspicious load of timber, but that the smugglers switched vehicles—moving the wood into a Toyota Highlander and a Toyota Camry—shortly after entering the province, complicating the operation.
“We were not able to stop them sooner, as they were driving at high speed and had changed vehicles to evade us,” said Phat Sophana, chief of the Stung Treng provincial police’s anti-economic crime bureau.
Mr. Sophana said his officers spotted the Toyotas at about 1:30 a.m. on National Road 9 near Stung Treng City and gave chase, pursuing the suspects through the provincial capital for about 30 minutes. At the opposite end of the city, he said, police had parked trucks at the junction with National Road 7.
“We shot twice into the air with a pistol when the driver of the first car did not slow down, and it crashed into a pickup truck,” he said.
The driver of the car—the Highlander—then fled into the forest on foot, evading all six officers manning the roadblock, he added.
The driver of the Camry cruised through the ruptured blockage and was forced off National Road 7 by police moments later, but also managed to run away, Mr. Sophana said.
Combined, he said, the cars were loaded with 93 pieces of illegally logged rosewood weighing 1,540 kg.
Chhoeun Tola, head of the Forestry Administration’s Stung Treng cantonment, said the wood was being held at the cantonment office. He said he was confident that authorities would catch the smugglers using three sets of license plates found inside each of the vehicles, all of which were registered with the Ministry of Transport.
