ofGay: 2009-08-30

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Top official in China's volatile Urumqi sacked

Chinese paramilitary police form a line as they disperse the crowds after the unconfirmed report of a needle attack on a boy outside the People's Square in Urumqi, Xinjiang province, China, Saturday, Sept. 5, 2009. Thousands of troops, backed by tanks and metal barricades, patrolled the western city of Urumqi on Saturday after five people died in protests over a series of bizarre needle attacks that China's police chief has blamed on Muslim separatists.(AP Photo/Andy Wong)

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer

URUMQI, China – Chinese leaders bowed to public demands and sacked the head of a western city wracked by communal violence and a bizarre string of needle attacks, hoping to calm uneasy mobs and end protests that percolated for a third day Saturday.

The removal of Urumqi's Communist Party Secretary Li Zhi came amid reports of police again dispersing crowds outside Urumqi's government offices using tear gas, and more unconfirmed reports of needle attacks, including one on an 11-year-old boy in a downtown square.

The city's chief prosecutor announced further details about four people arrested over the attacks, but offered little to back up the government's claims that they were an organized campaign to spread terror.

Protesters marched by the thousands Thursday and Friday demanding the resignation of Li and his boss, Xinjiang party secretary Wang Lequan, for failing to provide adequate public safety in the city. Also sacked was the police chief of Xinjiang, China's westernmost region that abuts Central Asia and whose capital is Urumqi.

An Urumqi government spokeswoman and the official Xinhua News Agency gave no reasons in announcing the changes. But July's riot was the worst communal violence in more than a decade in Xinjiang — where Uighur separatists have waged a sporadically violent campaign for a homeland. The renewed protests this week underscored the difficulties authorities were having in reasserting control.

The firing may also help quash calls to dismiss Wang — a member of the country's ruling Politburo and an ally of President Hu Jintao.

"I would say that this is the sacrificial lamb," Russell Leigh Moses, an analyst of Chinese politics based in Beijing. "But it will be interesting to see what the reaction in the streets is and whether this satisfies people's anger or not."

Li, a 58-year-old career official in Xinjiang, played a visible role during the July violence and recent protests. In July he climbed atop a car with a megaphone and urged an angry crowd of Han Chinese to show their patriotism by fighting separatists but not ordinary Uighurs.

On Thursday, when more than 10,000 people protested through the city, Li and Wang separately waded into crowds to meet with protesters to defuse tensions, only to be greeted with shouts to "step down."

"Do I not know that I should protect my brothers and sisters?" Li told them, according to footage aired on Urumqi's TV station and recounted by a local newspaper editor.

It wasn't clear whether protesters would be assuaged and two key demands — an end to the syringe attacks and the swift punishment of those responsible for the July rioting — have yet to be met.

Urumqi's prosecutor said among the 21 suspects in custody, all of them Uighurs, two jabbed a taxi driver with a heroin-filled syringe to steal 710 yuan ($105) to buy drugs.

Overall, a show of force by thousands of troops on patrols restored calm to much of the city. Paramilitary police manned checkpoints around government and party offices and put up barricades backed by tanks at entrances to a heavily Uighur neighborhood — a sign that officials were worried the mainly Han protesters might try to storm in.

More than 500 people have sought treatment for stabbings, though only about 100 showed signs of having been pricked, according to state media reports. Members of a visiting People's Liberation Army medical team said they conducted checks on 22 patients who showed clear signs of having been stabbed and found no indication that radioactive or biochemical substances had been used in any of the attacks.

Tests were still being conducted for HIV, hepatitis, and sexually transmitted diseases, and the results would be made public at a time to be determined by the Xinjiang government, said Qian Jun, one of the team's leaders.

Urumqi Prosecutor Udgar Abdulrahman said four of the detained suspects — three men aged 19, 34 and 47, and one woman, 22 — were charged with endangering public security. Aside from the two who stabbed the taxi driver for drug money, Abdulrahman said the others acted separately. One jabbed a fruit seller and the other a police officer. No motive was given for the other attacks.

Abdulrahman did not cite an obvious political link to the stabbings, but said he believed there was a degree of coordination. "At this point, we think there is a plot and it is organized," he said.

Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu said Friday the same Muslim separatists that Beijing blames for the July 5 ethnic rioting also orchestrated the syringe attacks.

The government has not provided an ethnic breakdown of the five killed in Thursday's protests. A report in Urumqi's Morning Post on Saturday said a "small number of people became overexcited and lost control of themselves" during the demonstrations. It said casualties included police, paramilitary troops and innocent civilians, but gave no specifics.

By most accounts, the July 5 riot started after police confronted peaceful Uighur protesters, who then attacked Han Chinese. Days later, Han vigilantes tore through Uighur neighborhoods to retaliate.

US, SKorea envoys discuss NKorean nuclear claim

South Korean Unification Minister Hyun In-taek, right, shakes hands with the U.S. special envoy for North Korea Stephen Bosworth during their meeting at the South-North Dialogue Secretariat building in Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, Sept. 5, 2009. Washington's special envoy on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, is in the region for discussions with China, South Korea and Japan over how to bring Pyongyang back to six-nation talks that the North has boycotted since earlier this year. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

By KWANG-TAE KIM, Associated Press Writer

SEOUL, South Korea – Top nuclear envoys from South Korea and the United States held talks Saturday on a strategy to bring North Korea back to disarmament talks, a day after the North claimed it is in the final stages of enriching uranium.

U.S. special envoy on North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, and South Korean envoy Wi Sung-lac made no comments after their meeting. Bosworth later met with South Korea's minister in charge of relations with North Korea, and the Unification Ministry said the two agreed to closely cooperate in resolving the nuclear dispute.

Bosworth said in Beijing on Friday that any nuclear development in North Korea was a matter of concern.

"We confirm the necessity to maintain a coordinated position and the need for a complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula," he said.

Bosworth is to leave for Tokyo on Sunday for similar consultations with Japanese officials. Chief U.S. nuclear negotiator, Sung Kim, plans to return to Seoul on Tuesday to meet with Russian nuclear envoy Grigory Logvinov.

North Korea also announced it is continuing to weaponize plutonium. Uranium offers an easier way to make nuclear weapons, and uranium-based bombs may work without requiring test explosions.

Washington shows no signs of easing pressure on North Korea through new U.N. sanctions, despite a series of conciliatory gestures by the North, including the release of two detained American journalists and a reported invitation to top U.S. envoys, including Bosworth, to visit Pyongyang.

"We are prepared for both dialogue and sanctions," the North said in a letter to the U.N. Security Council carried Friday by its official Korean Central News Agency. If some members of the council put "sanctions first before dialogue, we would respond with bolstering our nuclear deterrence first before we meet them in a dialogue," it said.

The North warned it would be left with no choice but to take "yet another strong self-defensive countermeasure" if the standoff continues. It did not elaborate.

A pro-North Korean newspaper in Japan urged the U.S. to hold talks with the North to make the Korean peninsula nuclear-free. The Choson Sinbo newspaper, widely seen as a mouthpiece for North Korea, said time is not "limitless" for the U.S. to decide whether to hold talks or continue to pursue sanctions.

The U.S. has pressed for North Korea to return to six-nation talks on its nuclear program with the U.S., South Korea, China, Russia and Japan.

North Korea has said it will only talk one-on-one with the Obama administration.

Bosworth said Friday the U.S. is willing to have direct talks, but only within the framework of the six-nation talks.

Analysts said the North appears to be trying to add urgency to the standoff.

"The North is saying that the more delayed U.S.-North Korea talks are, the greater its nuclear capabilities will become," said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at Seoul's University of North Korean Studies.

Meanwhile, a report by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security said there is no sign of reconstruction at the North's main Yongbyon nuclear reactor, which was partially disabled under an agreement reached in the six-nation talks. It cited commercial satellite imagery taken Aug. 10 by DigitalGlobe.

Separately, North Korea also said it will continue to seek self-defensive measures in response to an alleged U.S. move to develop a new bunker-buster bomb, KCNA reported. It claimed the U.S. is accelerating production of the bomb to destroy "underground nuclear facilities" in North Korea and Iran.

___

Associated Press writers Jae-soon Chang and Wanjin Park in Seoul, Chi-Chi Zhang in Beijing and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

Southern Thailand’s Turmoil Grows

A vehicle burned after a bomb attack in Thailand's Yala province, south of Bangkok, on Friday.

The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/

Published: September 4, 2009

PAKA LUE SONG, Thailand — The soldiers patrolling this hamlet racked by insurgent violence measure their progress modestly: two years ago, when villagers saw them coming, they closed their shutters. Now, they say, most residents peer out of their wood-frame houses and offer strained smiles.

“The local people have started to open their hearts,” said Capt. Niran Chaisalih, the leader of a government paramilitary force garrisoned at the village school.

Paka Lue Song, only a 15-minute drive from the provincial capital, Pattani, is a starting point for Thailand’s influx of troops into the country’s troubled southern provinces, where ethnic Malay Muslims are battling for autonomy from Thailand’s Buddhist majority.

The number of people in security forces, including the army, the police and militias, in the region has doubled over the past two years to about 60,000, said Srisompob Jitpiromsri, a leading expert on the insurgency and the associate dean at Prince of Songkla University in Pattani.

The huge increase in security forces initially helped reduce the violence as well as the death toll, which fell by 40 percent last year. But the number of killings has risen in recent months. More than 330 people have been killed so far this year, compared with 285 in the same period last year. Among the dead are civilians — including many Malays — soldiers and insurgents.

There have been so many killings in the three southern provinces — about 3,500 since 2004 — that the government began distributing a glossy brochure last year guiding victims’ families through the process of applying for government compensation.

Although the insurgency has been active for decades in the south, the current phase is considered particularly dangerous because the militants appear to have more of an Islamist agenda and because apparently sectarian attacks have strained the mutual tolerance between Buddhists and Muslims. It also comes at a time of deep political turmoil and social unease in Thailand that has hobbled several governments in the last three years and last year drove away many of the tourists who help sustain the country’s economy.

The surge in troops is palpable across the three southern provinces, only a few hours’ drive from Thailand’s main tourist beaches. There is now the equivalent of one soldier or police officer for every seven households. Soldiers in Humvees patrol the main roads, and police and military checkpoints screen motorists every few miles.

Sa-nguan Indrarak, the president of a federation of schoolteachers in the south, questions whether the army’s presence has been worth the $3.2 billion that the government has spent in the south over the past five years. (Teachers, obvious symbols of the Thai state, have been prime targets in the insurgency, with 95 killed since 2004.) Troops should leave and the government should train local security forces, who have a better understanding of the terrain, Mr. Sa-nguan argues.

Soldiers are resented in part because they behave inappropriately around both mosques and Buddhist temples, drinking, dancing and flirting, he said. But there have also been reports of human rights abuses; in January, Amnesty International published a report saying security forces “systemically engage in torture” — including using electric shocks — in their attempts to gather information and to force communities into withholding or withdrawing support for the rebels.

The insurgency has been distinct from other rebel movements in the region because the perpetrators remain shadowy, ill-defined groups that do not claim responsibility for the violence. Experts say they believe that the aims of the groups, among them the Pattani Islamic Mujahedeen Movement and the National Revolution Front-Coordinate, are to drive Buddhists from the area, discredit the government and put into place strict Islamic laws.

Although they say they believe that some financing for the groups comes from abroad, several counterterrorism experts in Thailand and elsewhere discount significant connections with other militant movements, like Al Qaeda and the Indonesian group Jemaah Islamiyah. The movement here, they say, appears to involve a localized struggle over territory and control overlaid with historical resentment over the domination of the Thai state.

Malay Muslims make up about 80 percent of the 1.7 million people living in Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala Provinces.

The ouster of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a military coup in 2006 raised hopes that the generals who took over, including several senior Muslim officials, would be more conciliatory than Mr. Thaksin, who had blamed bandits for the violence and oversaw a hard-line policy toward the area. But despite an unprecedented apology for Mr. Thaksin’s iron-fisted policies by a military-installed prime minister, the insurgency has ground on.

In Paka Lue Song, a village considered dangerous enough that local journalists refuse to enter it, army medics are trying to win over villagers by giving them free medical treatment. As soldiers prepared to walk through the village on a recent day, one raised the antenna of a radio to hear a dispatcher issue a bulletin: a police officer had been ambushed in Yala Province.

Sumeth Pranphet/Associated Press
Soldiers aided victims of a bombing on Thursday in Pattani Province, southern Thailand, where ethnic Malay Muslims seek autonomy from the Buddhist majority.

The soldiers proceeded on their mission, handing out vitamin C to children.

Second Lt. Pongpayap Petwisai, a 27-year-old army doctor, walked through the village prescribing medication for eye infections, dispensing balms for aching muscles and monitoring blood pressure.

“What we are trying to do is get people on our side,” said Dr. Pongpayap, who was partly inspired to become a doctor by the 1998 film “Saving Private Ryan.”

More recently, the government has also stepped up its program of providing weapons to local militias and “village guards,” especially in Buddhist enclaves. These volunteers now number about 71,000, according to Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat, who monitors the insurgency for the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization that aims to prevent deadly conflicts.

She said she feared that the program could backfire, leading to vigilante killings if the weapons fell into the wrong hands.

Those who cooperate with the military are already at risk of being attacked by insurgents.

In Paka Lue Song, Dr. Pongpayap examined the injured hand of Gade Yusoh, a 57-year-old rubber tapper who soldiers said had been helpful to them.

Gunmen suspected of being insurgents fired into Mr. Gade’s house one evening three months ago while he was watching television. “I’m not afraid,” he said. His nervous laugh suggested otherwise.

It remains unclear if the programs aimed at winning the hearts and minds of villagers — a standard counterinsurgency practice — are working. When this reporter toured a neighboring village without the army medical team, local officials heaped scorn on the government initiative.

“They just want a photo opportunity,” said one local government official, who asked for anonymity for fear of retribution by the army. Other criticism has been more public. Outside a village Dr. Pongpayap visited, graffiti appeared the day after.

“Don’t come back here,” it said. “If you shoot one of us, we will shoot two of you.”

International call to learn to love vultures - or lose them

http://www.afrol.com

afrol News, 4 September - BirdLife Partners in Africa and elsewhere have joined with raptor conservation and research organisations around the world to call for an “image makeover” for vultures. They will be celebrating International Vulture Awareness Day on 5 September 2009.

This comes against a backdrop of recent reports of problems facing vultures in Africa and the ongoing ones in Asia.

There have been mass vulture deaths in East Africa associated with misuse of chemicals, huge population declines in West Africa due to habitat loss, and the disappearance of vultures from large areas of their formers ranges in South Africa because of the continued use of vulture parts in traditional medicine and sorcery, the partnership noted.

Other threats identified include power line collisions and electrocutions, disturbance at breeding sites, drowning in farm reservoirs, direct persecution and declining food availability.

Vultures are said to fulfill an extremely important ecological role. They keep the environment free of carcasses and waste, restrict the spread of diseases such as anthrax and botulism, and help control numbers of pests such as rats and feral dogs by reducing the food available to them. They are of cultural value to communities in Africa and Asia, and have important eco-tourism value.

"Indeed vultures provide a perfect example of the link between birds and people. Loss of vultures would mean loss of important natural services to people, for example the cleaning of the environment of animal carcasses and waste at no charge”, said Dr Hazell Shokellu Thompson, BirdLife's Regional Director for Africa.

"One major challenge to detecting and countering these threats is that there are very few people out there watching vultures, let alone counting them. Thus it is difficult to determine population trends and to detect declining populations", said Paul Kariuki Ndang'ang'a, BirdLife's Species Programme Manager for Africa. "The Asian Vulture Crisis has shown that without proper monitoring, a population crash can take place virtually undetected."

The BirdLife Africa Partnership is therefore urging people to notice the important roles that vultures play, and the crisis they are currently facing. Organisations and individuals that have the capacity are encouraged to take action for vultures where feasible.

Some of the main conservation actions that have been identified for vultures in Africa include: establishing a monitoring network for African vultures, establishing legal protection for the species in range states, eliminating the veterinary use of diclofenac and other toxic drugs in Africa, and carrying out education and awareness programmes, particularly targeted at farmers, to reduce persecution, unintentional poisoning and hunting for cultural reasons.

By staff writer

Khmer Rouge timeline

Commarade Duch (The Murderer)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com

Globe and Mail Update
Last updated on Friday, Sep. 04, 2009

1942. November 17. Birth of Kaing Guek Eav.

1960 - Sept. 30. Creation of the Communist Party of Kampuchea.

1963 - Saloth Sar, alias Pol Pot, becomes CPK secretary.

1964 - Kaing Guek Eav joins CPK, takes revolutionary alias Duch.

1965 - Duch becomes math teacher.

1966 - Duch goes underground with the Khmer Rouge.

1968 - Duch is arrested by King Sihanouk's police and sentenced to 20 years.

1970 - March. King Sihanouk deposed in a coup by Lon Nol, who grants amnesty to political prisoners, including Duch, who leaves for a zone controlled by the Khmer Rouge.

1971 - July. Duch put in charge of the M-13 jail until January 1975.

1975 - April 17. Khmer Rouge enter Phnom Penh and force millions of city residents to collective farms.

1975 - End April. Border clashes between Cambodia and Vietnam.

1975 - August 15. The S-21 jail is established in Phnom Penh and Duch named deputy commander.

1975 - October. S-21 becomes fully operational.

1975 - November. Duch marries.

1976 - March. Duch becomes the chairman of S-21.

1977 - Vietnamese troops raid Cambodia's Svay Rieng province. In August, the Khmer Rouge attack Vietnam's Tay Ninh province.

1978 - December. After years of border skirmishes, Vietnam invades Cambodia.

1979 - January 2-3. The last mass execution of S-21 prisoners takes place: 200 Cambodian and Vietnamese victims are killed.

1979 - January 7. Khmer Rouge regime overthrown. Vietnamese troops enter Phnom Penh, discover S-21 where the remaining prisoners had been killed hours before. Duch flees with the Khmer Rouge to their border sanctuaries.

Early 1990s. Duch distances himself from Khmer Rouge, returns to teaching.

1992 - After his wife's murder in a burglary, Duch attends Christian seminars.

1996 - Jan. 5. Under the pseudonym Hang Pin, Duch is baptized after converting to evangelical Christianity.

1999 - May. Duch is arrested after being retraced by Irish photographer Nic Dunlop.

2008 - August. Duch indicted for crimes against humanity.

2009 - March. Beginning of trial hearings against Duch.

Military doctors assist poor Cambodians

The pig was born Saturday, Sept. 5, 2009, with no nose in Svay Chrum village, Kandal province

Southern Thailand’s Turmoil Grows

A Thai detainee (left) kisses his child as a relative looks on following a gathering in the yard of Narathiwat jail. There are several hundred suspects imprisoned in Thailand's troubled southern provinces, says rights group the Cross Cultural Foundation, and their jail terms often have a devastating effect on their families with many remaining out of contact for long periods of time. (AFP/File/Madaree Tohlala)

A Thai detainee (left) is hugged by his wife following a gathering in the yard of the Narathiwat jail. There are several hundred suspects imprisoned in Thailand's troubled southern provinces, says rights group the Cross Cultural Foundation, where they face security-related charges. (AFP/File/Madaree Tohlala)

A Thai detainee (left) eats lunch with members of his family during a gathering in the yard of Narathiwat jail. There are several hundred suspects imprisoned in Thailand's troubled southern provinces, says rights group the Cross Cultural Foundation, with many remaining out of contact with their families for long periods of time. (AFP/File/Madaree Tohlala)

A soldier stands guard as students leave their school for home in Thailand's Yala province, about 1,084 km (674 miles) south of Bangkok September 2, 2009. REUTERS/Surapan Boonthanom

Rescue workers carry the body of an injured policeman after a car bomb attack, to a hospital in Thailand's Yala province, about 1,084 km (674 miles) south of Bangkok. A bomb in a pick-up truck exploded in Thailand's southern Yala province on Friday, killing a policeman and wounding 10 villagers, police said, the latest deadly blast in a region plagued by insurgent violence. The bomb, hidden in a truck parked near an intersection, exploded as a police officer drove past in his car, a police spokesman said. "His body was trapped and burned," he said. REUTERS/Surapan Boonthanom

A view of the scene of a car bomb attack in Thailand's Yala province, about 1,084 km (674 miles) south of Bangkok . A bomb in a pick-up truck exploded in Thailand's southern Yala province on Friday, killing a policeman and wounding 10 villagers, police said, the latest deadly blast in a region plagued by insurgent violence. The bomb, hidden in a truck parked near an intersection, exploded as a police officer drove past in his car, a police spokesman said. "His body was trapped and burned," he said. REUTERS/Surapan Boonthanom

Policemen inspect the site of a car bomb attack in Thailand's Yala province, about 1,084 km (674 miles) south of Bangkok . A bomb in a pick-up truck exploded in Thailand's southern Yala province on Friday, killing a policeman and wounding 10 villagers, police said, the latest deadly blast in a region plagued by insurgent violence. The bomb, hidden in a truck parked near an intersection, exploded as a police officer drove past in his car, a police spokesman said. "His body was trapped and burned," he said. REUTERS/Surapan Boonthanom

Firefighters extinguish a fire on a pick-up truck after a bomb attack in Thailand's Yala province, about 1,084 km (674 miles) south of Bangkok . A bomb in a pick-up truck exploded in Thailand's southern Yala province on Friday, killing a policeman and wounding 10 villagers, police said, the latest deadly blast in a region plagued by insurgent violence. The bomb, hidden in a truck parked near an intersection, exploded as a police officer drove past in his car, a police spokesman said. "His body was trapped and burned," he said. REUTERS/Surapan Boonthanom

Cambodia in Pictures - The Urban's life

EIU revises Cambodian economic growth forecast

Happy International Vulture Awareness Day (IVAD09)!

Life in focus

Locals call it Smoky Mountain. Stung Meanchey Municipal Waste Dump is a 40-hectare tip on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, where thousands come to escape the crippling poverty of rural Cambodia. Here, amid the haze of toxic smoke from the smouldering garbage, they scavenge their living. Sonang, 13 (above), is one of the many children whose families live and work here. Photo: Simon O'Dwyer

September 6, 2009
CLAIRE HALLIDAY
The Age (Australia)

WHEN Age photographer Simon O'Dwyer first visited Cambodia in 1997 to photograph the landmine clearing work being done by AusAID and the Cambodian Mine Action Centre, he found a country devastated by war and death.

Under the command of Pol Pot, between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge systematically killed an estimated 2 million Cambodians, almost a quarter of the country's population.

The victims' ''crimes'' ranged from having an education or speaking a foreign language to being a soldier or government official from the previous regime. Entire families were imprisoned and murdered and, even today, the country remains forever changed, with generations lost to the Killing Fields.

Back in 1997, despite Cambodia's continuing struggles with poverty and disease and the pain still so visible on the scarred bodies of so many people, O'Dwyer also saw a resilience and hopeful dignity.

It was a resilience and hope that he explored further on a recent trip back - photographing the displaced people of Andong Village, the Stung Meanchey garbage dump and the historic temples of Angkor.

"For me, returning so many years later, the growth of tourism has taken a small part of that initial charm, but the spirit of the people and their hopes for a happier future remain," O'Dwyer says.

With more than 42 per cent of the country's population under the age of 15, Cambodia is a young country that is trying to move forward; taking what it can from a growing tourist market that draws international visitors to both the memorials of its grisly past and a raw beauty that decades of killing and conflict have not been able to destroy.

Next weekend, as part of the third Ballarat International Foto Biennale, a collection of photographs from O'Dwyer's two Cambodian journeys will be on display. It is just one of the exhibitions being staged at venues in and around the Ballarat Heritage and Arts precinct featuring at least 2000 images from up to 500 photographers.

For festival director Jeff Moorfoot, the decision to include O'Dwyer's work was based on his belief in the photographer's "humanist approach" to the subjects he photographs.

"There is a real empathy with his subjects, rather than sensationalism," Moorfoot says.

no drop wasted

Hey, man

Pig Fly Out of Markets for Chinese Ceremony

Land mine victims face bleak prospects: survey

Photo by: Tracey Shelton
Double amputee Chhay Sorn, 47, who lost his leg in 1981 while serving as a soldier, begs along the riverside on Thursday.

The Phnom Penh Post
Friday, 04 September 2009
Chrann Chamroeun and Robbie Corey-Boulet

DISCRIMINATION and poor education are among the factors preventing land mine victims from finding jobs, depriving many of access to basic necessities such as food, water and housing, according to a new survey of land mine survivors.

Nearly three-quarters of survey respondents said they believed land mine survivors were the last to be chosen for jobs, according to a report on the findings from Handicap International titled "Voices from the Ground: Landmine and Explosive Remnants of War Survivors Speak Out on Victim Assistance".

The report, released Wednesday, was tied to the launch of a campaign calling on an upcoming mine action conference to increase assistance to amputees and other land mine survivors. At that conference, to be held in Cartagena, Colombia, Cambodia will present its national strategy for clearing all antipersonnel mines, a requirement under the 1997 Ottawa Treaty.

Whereas Cambodia has made marked improvements in the medical care and physical rehabilitation of land mine survivors, economic integration and employment opportunities are still lagging, according to the report, which drew on the responses of 78 survivors.

Chhay Sorn, a 47-year-old land mine survivor, said in an interview Thursday that the bleak job outlook prompted him to move from his native Kandal province to Phnom Penh five years ago. He now earns between US$1 and $2 each day begging money from tourists on Sisowath Quay.

He said he was injured in a land mine explosion in Pailin while fighting the Khmer Rouge in 1981. After he recovered, an NGO trained him to make artificial legs and wheelchairs, he said, but the money he was able to earn with that training was insufficient, even though he was unmarried and had no children.

"It was very difficult for me to find a job because there is discrimination against crippled men in this society," he said.

More than two-thirds of respondents said they believed economic reintegration opportunities had not improved since 2005, according to the report. Only 17 percent said they had seen some improvement.

But the report noted some progress on the discrimination front: 73 percent said they believed educational and professional discrimination had decreased.

Photo by: Tracey Shelton
Double amputee Chum Sokhorn, 46, sells books on the riverside Thursday.

Thong Vinol, executive director of the Disability Action Council, said Thursday that he had also seen a decrease in discrimination, adding that disability legislation adopted and approved earlier this year would be "a key instrument" in reducing it further.

That said, the survey found that discriminatory hiring policies remained in place in government schools, and that the Ministry of Social Affairs,

Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation continued to insist that job applicants be "able-bodied". Officials from the ministries could not be reached for comment Thursday. The report noted that the Education Ministry was "revising its policies".

The survey yielded a particularly dismal assessment of the government pension system, with delayed payments and bribery among the issues reported.

The report warned several times that Cambodia's dependence on external support for disability services might not be sustainable: "Donor fatigue and prospects of reduced aid were considered as challenges to continuing the current level of service provision."

Heng Ratana, director general of the Cambodian Mine Action Centre, said he had not seen the report, but that Cambodia had "limited resources" and would need to rely on external support for the foreseeable future.

This view was echoed by Chum Bunrong, secretary general of the Cambodian Mine Action and Victims Assistance Authority.

"Cambodia is poor. That's why it needs NGOs to help," he said.

The Phnom Penh office of Handicap International Belgium declined to comment in advance of a forthcoming press conference to announce the report's findings.