Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

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Posted by: | Posted on: December 3, 2008

Stigma on Judicial Reform in Cambodia

I appreciate the appealing for thorough investigation of the UN representatives to the death of Heng Touch (PPP: UN representatives call for investigation into prison death). This case is considerably not the first one of impunity happened in Cambodia. The legal frailty has strongly rooted in Cambodia and it has gradually become the “culture of impunity”.

Since 1993, administrative and judicial reform is one of the priorities of the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) to achieve its “National Programme to Rehabilitate and Develop Cambodia”. After the UNTAC-sponsored election, the UNs and other international stakeholders have utilized both carrot and stick tactic to speed up the reforms in Cambodia. In one hand, they urged the RGC to accelerate reforms with soft and hard pressure, while in another hand they still keep providing funds to develop various projects run by the government. But we can see only the good writing law has become the result of their effort while the implementation and legal enforcement are still slack. Ronald Bruce in his article “The Political Economy of the Royal Government of Cambodia” emphasised that the political culture of Cambodia strongly embedded in the political leadership of “the familism, cupidity, narrow horizons and reluctance to absorb or tolerate opposing point of views”. With the administrative system of “the clans and clients”, Ronald articulated his example said that the architect of the nation’s economic reformist Sam Rainsy was once ousted from position because of his hard line resistance to this culture. Judicial reform, among other national reforms have frequently undercut by the continuity of malfeasance, corruption, and violence, Ronald observed.
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Posted by: | Posted on: December 3, 2008

Successful NGO should be replicated

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7spLHsRIF9Q

FEDA Cambodia – Ksach Poy

December 3, 2008
A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
Pacific Daily News
(Guam)

Once, Cambodia was a powerful empire that ruled areas of today’s Laos to the north, the former South Vietnam to the east, Thailand to the west and a portion of Malaysia to the south.

Imperial expansionism, wars, disease, mismanagement of state power and the economy, and internal discord, have reduced Cambodia to its present size of 69,898 square miles, of which 90 percent is rural and poor. Thirty-five percent of the country’s 14 million people, earn less than 50 cents a day; some scavenge city dumps and live on rat meat.

Several miles southeast of Battambang city, on the Sangker River, lies a village called Ksach Poy. During the reign of the Khmer Rouge, villagers there revolted and the village became a killing field.

In 1979, after Vietnamese troops knocked Pol Pot out of power and sent his gangs fleeing to the Thai border, 16-year-old Soth Plai Ngarm, from a Khmer Rouge forced labor unit, walked through Ksach Poy, where his mother and relatives lived. He saw “dead bodies and corpses everywhere.” He shed tears and moved toward the Thai border. As Ngarm later speaks, he had “almost no hope” in humanity.

In the 1980s, destiny drew a path for Ngarm and me to meet.
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