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Posted by: | Posted on: December 22, 2022

សេចក្តីជឿជាក់លើខ្លួនឯង

បញ្ជាក់ខ្លួនឯងជាឱឡារឹក

១.ខ្ញុំឧទ្ទិសដើរលើវិថីរបស់ខ្ញុំ ដោយមានឬគ្មានអ្នកដទៃ។

I am committed to my path, with or without others.

២.ខ្ញុំមានសម្ភារៈជំនួយនៅក្នុងខ្លួនយកជំនះលើរឿងនេះ។

I have the tools within me to get through this.

៣.ខ្ញុំបន្តទៅមុខនៅក្នុងស្ថានភាពនេះ។

I am moving towards in this situation.

៤.នេះជាសិទ្ធិដ៏សក្តិសិទ្ធរបស់ខ្ញុំដើម្បីទទួលយកនិងជឿលើខ្លួនឯង។

It is my divine rights to accept and believe in myself.

៥.ខ្ញុំគឺល្អិតសុខុម មិនអាចកាត់ថ្លៃបាន និងប្រកបដោយគុណតំលៃខ្ពស់។

I am unique, invaluable, and worthy.

Posted by: | Posted on: November 6, 2022

Cambodia’s modern slavery nightmare: the human trafficking crisis overlooked by authorities

Cambodia’s modern slavery nightmare: the human trafficking crisis overlooked by authorities

Op-Ed: The Guardians

Despite promises by government to eradicate trafficking rings, people are still being sold in Cambodia and forced to run online scams

A suspected cybercrime compound in the coastal city of Sihanoukville.
In September Cambodian authorities recovered evidence of human trafficking, kidnapping and torture during raids on a suspected cybercrime compound in the coastal city of Sihanoukville. Photograph: Cindy Liu/Reuters

Lindsey Kennedy, Nathan Paul Southern and Huang Yan, Wed 2 Nov 2022 23.59 GMT

Sihanoukville, Cambodia, and made his way to the second floor, where his friend, another victim of trafficking, was waiting. The two had hatched a desperate plan to escape the modern slavery nightmare they’d been in since Xu was sold to an online scam company in the same building three months earlier, believing a well-paid data entry job awaited him.

They jumped from the balcony onto the first floor of the building next door, hoping to climb down to the ground and run. But Xu landed badly, injuring his spine.

Barbed wire fences are seen outside a shuttered Great Wall Park compound where Cambodian authorities said they had recovered evidence of human trafficking, kidnapping and torture during raids on suspected cybercrime compounds

“It was so painful and I couldn’t stand up. My friend ran away and left me when he saw I was injured,” he says. “The managers thought I’d die so they didn’t take me back into the building, they just stood watching and laughing at me.”

Xu crawled to a road, where a Cambodian tuk-tuk driver found him and drove him to a hospital, which then transferred him to the capital, Phnom Penh. A doctor there suggested he call Chen Baorong, the Chinese founder of a volunteer organisation dedicated to rescuing people like Xu who had been duped into travelling to Cambodia’s crime-ridden casino towns with the promise of work, only to find themselves trafficked into forced labour, scamming strangers online.

Chen came at once. But before he could help Xu find a way home to China, he was arrested.Chen’s work was said to have enraged a local governor, who was quoted by local media as saying that Chen had caused “headaches”. In a closed trial in August, Chen was sentenced to two years in jail for incitement and interference with state procedures.

Chen Baorong the Chinese founder of a volunteer organisation dedicated to rescuing people duped into travelling to Cambodia in a photo posted to the group’s WeChat account.
Chen Baorong the Chinese founder of a volunteer organisation dedicated to rescuing people duped into travelling to Cambodia. Photograph: WeChat

Eventually, Xu found his way back to China and was reunited with his family. He is undergoing spinal surgery following the injuries he received in his escape. The compound he was sold to for $7,500, Galaxy World, has now been shut down by authorities.

“Although they might not be able to catch the big boss behind it, they were able to catch some bad people and clean up the criminal activities in the compound, so this is good news,” he says.Advertisement

Over the past 18 months casinos, dormitory blocks, luxury hotels and remote office complexes across Cambodia and the wider region – many linked to powerful political figures – have become host to criminal operations running crypto, investment, and gaming scams. People from all over the world are lured by the promise of work, then forced to defraud strangers with threats of beatings, torture, and electrocution should they not comply. Initial calls for help triggered a handful of rescues, but as time went on, Cambodian authorities began dismissing reports of trafficking and detention as labour disputes.

The World Justice Project ranks Cambodia among the worst in the world for rule of law. Analysts say that highlighting the trafficking crisis both embarrasses the government and threatens to disrupt income streams for corrupt officials. According to survivors and family members, detainees who contact authorities often disappear or face reprisals, while some who escape and go to the police are returned to their captors. Xu, who was smuggled overland from China into Vietnam and then into Cambodia through the borderland casino town of Bavet, says Cambodian police on motorbikes picked him up from the border.

Sihanoukville
Victims of trafficking are lured to cities like Sihanoukville with the promise of work, before being sold into forced labour. Photograph: Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP/Getty Images

“The main obstacle is that many of the Chinese that run human trafficking and scam rings in Cambodia have a lot of influence,” says Ekapop Lueangprasert, a Bangkok volunteer whose network rescues and repatriates Thai victims. “If the local Cambodian authorities hear anything about a raid from their Thai counterparts, they inform the gangs, who move the victims and confiscate their phones. Sometimes when there are raids, the rescuers find the location empty.”

The Cambodian government has acknowledged the problem, vowing to eradicate trafficking rings by the end of October. The crackdown follows mounting pressure from local media, embassies and charities. The US Treasury’s downgrade of Cambodia to “Tier 3” – the lowest rating – in its 2022 Trafficking in Persons report, put the country at risk of sanctions and reduced foreign assistance. A five-day-long raid on one business park housing illegal online gambling sites seized nearly 10,000 phones and computers, a cache of handcuffs, guns, and tasers, and led to 495 arrests.

The ones that are ringed with barbed wire fences and CCTV cameras are so clearly prisons to hold human trafficking victims

But no charges have been brought against high-level figures. Cambodian police claim several notorious sites were already abandoned or showed no evidence of crime. Meanwhile, it’s unclear whether people removed from trafficking compounds have just been moved elsewhere. On 24 October, VOD English reported that some Thai and Taiwanese victims had been transported overland to Laos and Myanmar, where large-scale scam sites are a major problem. Others may have been relocated inside Cambodia.

“The Cambodian government feels like they gain very little from these [trafficking] activities… so they will either crack down or move these gangs into more legitimate casinos where they can collect taxes and revenue from them,” says Ekapop.

While the new policy is an improvement, he says parts of Cambodia’s border are littered with compounds yet to be shut down. “You can tell by looking at the buildings. The ones that are ringed with barbed wire fences and CCTV cameras are so clearly prisons to hold human trafficking victims … I think if the Cambodian government was serious about cracking down on human trafficking it wouldn’t be too hard.”

Attempts by the authors reach out to Cambodian police and government spokespeople went unanswered.

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Posted by: | Posted on: June 28, 2022

Recipes towards democratic unification

Recipes towards democratic unification

Seeing the election results declared by NEC triggered our assumption since the beginning that from preliminary result to final one shall not produce any differences especially for the opposition parties. There are allocating seats to parties but complaint resolution, its processes and acceptable investigated results are not transparently resolved. The results are likely a filter from NEC’s poor performance on neutrality, professionalism; from systemic threats by national and local authorities, voters list manipulations, and ballot casting-counting disenfranchisement intent etc. 

Moving forward, democratic forces are actually co-existing in every spectrum of Cambodian society, and they are eager to join with a reliable and confident force.

The pragmatists: Cambodia has encountered youth-bulk force as over 65% of the total population are young tech-savvy driving-force accumulating critical thinking, principle-oriented citizens, free of PTSD and past trauma syndrome, and democratic mindset; they are not supportive to political rhetoric of “thank you peace”, “physical infrastructure without having proper soft skills development”, “personality-centric leadership”, and “regarding Cambodian political dissents as treasons, revolutionary or colouring their own race to different society classes”.

The distractors: they are both planned and unplanned distractors among democratic movements. The severe planned distractors are a divide and conquer tactic maneuvered by the ruling party chief who has used all types of resources regardless of private or national wealth to infuse chronic division among people in the society especially among the opposition parties. The unplanned distractors are those gullible people and the corrupt-mindset citizens.

The democratic alliance sympathizers: Cambodia has accumulated democratic mindset and democratic dynamics since the liberation from France protectorate and this force was solidly empowered by the United Nations in 1993. This upcoming national election 2023 is an interesting election after the dissolution of CNRP in 2017 and the continuing cracking down of political dissents. The divide and conquer tactic could be applied only to old head citizens, but with current modern tech-savvy and cross-border young populations, the worst ramifications shall be boomeranged to the tactic user.

Thank you to those unrelentless standing-up individuals towards democratic values and social injustice, those democratic patrons behind the scene, those vigilant and resilient in the front-line, and those who are jailed unjustly while their spirits are high up above jailers’ machine and perpetrators mindset.  


Sophoan Seng      

Posted by: | Posted on: June 24, 2022

Letter: Candlelight Arrest Is a ‘Joke’

Letter: Candlelight Arrest Is a ‘Joke’

Nhim Sarom (Candlelight Party’s Facebook page)

Nhim Sarom (Candlelight Party’s Facebook page)🔊 Listen to this

Regarding “Candlelight Commune Chief-Elect Arrested for 2002 Robbery Case,” it is a joke for the Kampong Thom Provincial Court to have handcuffed Nhim Sarom, Candlelight Party commune chief-elect of Chamna Loeu commune. The use of a court warrant dated 10 years ago is the mark of a Kangaroo Court that ignores due process and pursues a predetermined conclusion, or of double standards where rules and laws are unfairly applied in different ways to different people. Legally speaking, the court in Cambodia has been notoriously accumulating distrust among Cambodian citizens. Politically speaking, the election is just a theater as the voice of the voters has never been respected.

This arrest is another testament to the incapability of the court and law enforcement in Cambodia. With prejudice and political partisanship, opposition dissidents are victimized, and they are found to be the wrongdoers in most legal and political cases. Can you imagine a society where good people are forced to be bad, and bad people are transformed to be good?

Sophoan Seng

President, Committee for Election Right of Overseas Cambodians

អានអត្ថបទ​រឿង «មេឃុំ​ភ្លើង​ទៀន ត្រូវ​បាន​ចាប់​ខ្លួន​ពី​ករណី​ប្លន់​ឆ្នាំ ២០០២» ជា​រឿង​កំប្លែង​សម្រាប់​សាលា​ដំបូង​ខេត្ត​កំពង់ធំ ដែល​បាន​ដាក់​ខ្នោះ​ដៃ​លោក ញឹម សារ៉ុម មេ​ឃុំ​គណបក្សភ្លើងទៀននៃ​ឃុំ​ចំណារលើ។ ការប្រើប្រាស់ដីការបស់តុលាការចុះកាលបរិច្ឆេទកាលពី 10 ឆ្នាំមុន គឺជាសញ្ញាសម្គាល់របស់តុលាការសត្វកាំងហ្គារូ (Kangaroo Court)ដែលមានន័យថាមិនអើពើនឹងដំណើរការត្រឹមត្រូវ និងធ្វើការសំរេចសេចក្តីកាត់ទោសនរណាម្នាក់ទៅតាមអ្វីដែលបានកំណត់ទុកជាមុន ឬតុលាការស្តង់ដារពីរ(double standard)ដែលមានន័យថាច្បាប់ និងនីតិក្រមត្រូវបានអនុវត្តដោយអយុត្តិធម៌ក្នុងវិធីផ្សេងគ្នាចំពោះមនុស្សផ្សេងគ្នា។ និយាយ​តាម​ផ្លូវ​ច្បាប់ តុលាការ​នៅ​កម្ពុជា​បាន​នឹង​កំពុង​ប្រមូល​ផ្ដុំ​ការ​មិន​ទុក​ចិត្ត​ពីប្រជាពលរដ្ឋ​កម្ពុជា​យ៉ាង​អសោច។ និយាយ​តាម​បែប​នយោបាយ ការបោះឆ្នោត​គ្រាន់តែ​ជា​ល្ខោននយោបាយ​ប៉ុណ្ណោះ​ព្រោះ​សំឡេង​អ្នក​បោះឆ្នោត​មិន​ដែល​ត្រូវ​បាន​គេ​គោរពទេ។

ការចាប់ខ្លួននេះ គឺជាសក្ខីកម្មមួយទៀត បង្ហាញពីអសមត្ថភាពរបស់តុលាការ និងការអនុវត្តច្បាប់នៅកម្ពុជា។ ជាមួយនឹងការរើសអើង និងការប្រកាន់បក្សពួកផ្នែកនយោបាយ អ្នកប្រឆាំងត្រូវបានរងគ្រោះ ហើយពួកគេត្រូវបានគេរកឃើញថាជាអ្នកប្រព្រឹត្តខុសនៅក្នុងសំណុំរឿងផ្លូវច្បាប់ និងនយោបាយ ភាគច្រើន។ តើ​អ្នក​អាច​ស្រមើស្រមៃ៉​ឃើញសង្គម​មួយនេះនឹងទៅជាយ៉ាងណានៅពេល​ដែល​មនុស្ស​ល្អ​ត្រូវ​បាន​បង្ខំ​ឱ្យ​ហៅថាជាមនុស្សអាក្រក់ ហើយ​មនុស្ស​អាក្រក់​ត្រូវ​បាន​បំលែងអោយ​ទៅ​ជាមនុស្ស​ល្អ​?

លោកសេង សុភ័ណ

ប្រធាន គណៈកម្មាធិការដើម្បីសិទ្ធិបោះឆ្នោតរបស់ពលរដ្ឋខ្មែរនៅក្រៅប្រទេស