ofGay: 2009-09-20

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Hop on Cambodia’s (very) light rail

Stephen Kurczy
The National (United Arab Emirates)

The flight
Return flights from Abu Dhabi to Phnom Penh on Singapore Airlines (www.singaporeair.com) cost from US$815 (Dh2,995), including taxes
The ride Roundtrip journeys (about 20km) on the bamboo train cost between $6 (Dh22) and $10 (Dh37), depending on your bargaining skills

The guide
While technically illegal, most hotels and tour operators in Battambang still organise trips to the bamboo train lines. Gecko Trails offers guide services and rents motorbikes for $8 (Dh30) per day, for those who wish to travel on their own to the station, which is situated about four kilometres outside of town. Thy Racky, a private guide (00 855 17 829 450) is knowledgeable, and speaks English fluently

Their driver winds a rope tightly around the motor and pull-starts the engine. As they accelerate away, Soung and Vat reassemble our car. Soung climbs aboard the rear railing and wraps a fan belt over a motor gear – the other end of the belt is already looped around the axle through a hole in the bamboo platform. He pull-starts the engine and we’re off. The breeze cuts the humidity and clouds of multicoloured butterflies flutter past.

As we hurtle down Cambodia’s decrepit train tracks on a bamboo platform the size of a billiards table, another car rushes in our direction, crammed with 17 passengers returning from marshy rice fields after a day of labour. Their trouser legs are still wet.

Green rice fields stretch out on either side. This is public transportation in parts of Cambodia, and it has become one of the the biggest tourism draw in Battambang, a town a few hours south-west of the temples of Angkor Wat.

Decades of slow and unreliable train service prompted Cambodians to make their own use of the tracks and hundreds of illegal “bamboo trains” now run along the single-lane, 596km-line, that begins near the Thai border in north-west Cambodia, extends east through Battambang to Phnom Penh, then runs south to the coastal port of Sihanoukville.

“There’s only one in the whole world,” a Battambang tour guide, known as Tap Tin Tin says, while escorting a Dutch family of five along the bamboo railway. “You see it transporting tourists, but it’s very useful for the Cambodians to carry rice or bring a cow or pig to slaughter in town.”

In Battambang about 100 tourists ride the cars daily, and hotels and tour guides all advertise rides on the renegade railway. Soon, however, their voyages along Cambodia’s makeshift railroad will end.

An ongoing, five-year, US$148 million (Dh544m) railway project aims to reclaim Cambodia’s tracks from disrepair and connect them to Singapore. De-mining and emergency repair work began in early 2008, and new tracks are expected to go down in November, according to Nida Ouk, an official with the Asian Development Bank, the project’s primary donor. In July, an Australian company, Toll Group, signed a concession to manage Cambodia’s rails.

In addition to increasing freight traffic and quadrupling current train speeds, Ouk says that the project’s funders plan to enforce the ban on the illegal bamboo cars, citing safety concerns and promising to provide alternative skills training to those who operate them.

“You can imagine, it could cause a major traffic accident,” he says.

As we speed toward the opposing car, my 19-year-old driver, Soung Vy, and his co-conductor, Vat Vy, 16, sit calmly atop the platform’s rear railing. Each has a pierced ear – Vat also has nose, lip and tongue piercings. Soung lifts his leg off our five-horsepower engine and pushes his foot down on a piece of wood suspended above the wheels to stop us from running into the car loaded with rice farmers. Five people sit on our cart, compared to 17 on the opposing cart, so we are obligated to disassemble and allow the other to pass.

When opposing cars hold equal loads, drivers decide who disembarks with a game of rock, paper, scissors. We deboard. Soung and Vat grudgingly walk to either side of our platform. They easily pick it up and set it in the brush. Each then lifts a set of wheels, hoisting the axle like a barbell, and sets it aside.

On the other car, Duk Kun, 40, is waiting to go home after a long day planting rice seeds on his one-hectare plot of land. He wears a cowboy hat and smokes a cigarette. Because his field is 15km from the nearest paved road, he rides the bamboo train every day during planting and harvesting season. Without it, he says, he would walk two hours to work. Beside him sits 10-year-old Ho Makara, riding home after visiting relatives down the line.

I had wanted to ride a real train, but when I arrived at the stately old colonial station in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, I found the gates locked. The landmark building last filled its atrium corridors when a nightclub hosted a dance party there earlier this year. The afternoon I visited, a few squatters slept on the floor.

Ouk Ourk, an official with the Royal Railways of Cambodia, told me that passenger services stopped last year because of the poor state of the tracks. Freight trains derail occasionally, he said, and petrol cars have tipped and spilt.

“We were worried about derailment, about someone dying – we haven’t had this, but we wanted to prevent accidents,” he said. Behind his office at the Phnom Penh station sat dozens of abandoned freight cars and several abandoned passenger cars. Holes dotted the floors and ceiling, broken seats rested in piles, and mounds of human faeces were scattered on the floor, vestiges from the poor who now live in the cars. Freight trains leave for Battambang about once a week and eke along the tracks at 10 to 20km-per-hour, said Ouk Ourk, creeping at a pace that gives bamboo operators adequate time to get out of the way or attempt to outrun it.

Ouk Ourk said the only way civilians ride the tracks is on a bamboo cart, and the best place to do it is in Battambang. Five days later, I arrived at the main train station in Battambang, another decaying colonial building and reminder of Cambodia’s history as a protectorate from 1863 to 1954 of the French, who built these tracks and buildings in the 1930s. Once again, the doors were locked.

A dozen children, aged two to 12, sat on the station’s windowsills and slid their flip-flops along the floor in a rudimentary game of marbles. Cows grazed beside the rails. Two volleyball nets were strung on grassy patches between the tracks.

As I waited for a bamboo train to pick me up, my guide and translator, Thy Racky, 36, got a call from our driver saying police would not let him enter town. Operators are forbidden from entering inner-city stations, although we’d convinced our driver to attempt to sneak in.

Instead, a tourist’s trip along the rail starts about four kilometres outside Battambang town, at the end of a winding dirt road in O Dambong village. Bamboo platforms are stacked on the ground outside another abandoned train station. A young man sells bubble tea for $0.25 (Dh1) from a mobile cart out front.

There is no ticket counter. Taped to the back of the building’s door is a piece of paper listing the names of train operators who share business on a rotating schedule. Cambodians pay about 25 cents for a one-way ride while foreigners pay about $10 for a trip 10km up the line to O Sra Lav village and back.

One traveller, 60-year-old Vive Armstrong from New Zealand, boarded a bamboo train without hesitation. “It looks smoother than the roads,” she said, referring to Cambodia’s notoriously bumpy streets.

After we let the horde of day labourers pass, I am seated cross-legged with two other passengers as we thump over the warped tracks. An emaciated cow occasionally meanders over the tracks.

Looking down as we cross a river I see pieces of cement missing from the 80-year-old bridge. I clench my jaw as we jump gaps in the tracks that are six centimetres long. I ask my guide, Thy Racky, if anyone is ever injured. He says six tourists were hospitalised last year when their bamboo train hit a bump and flipped off its wheels.

Railway officials have long utilised similar carts, but without engines, to inspect the tracks. Civilians began using the carts in the early 1980s after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, the radical communist regime that killed some 1.5 million Cambodians and left the country’s economy and infrastructure in disrepair.

Our bamboo train slows to a stop at O Sra Lav station, where I meet Pat Oun, 69. He owns a beverage shop catering to tourists, but he also says he built 200 engineless lorries before packing up his chisel and axe in 1983. Each took about four days’ labour, he says.

In those days, the operator pushed the cars forward with two long oars – like a gondolier. In 1992, according to local lore, a man named Mr Rit, now deceased, strapped an irrigation pump engine on the cart, creating the first motor-powered bamboo car.

“Everyone just thought a bamboo train would be very useful to transport things from here to there,” says Pat Oun. Today, a bamboo train sells for about $600 (Dh2,204), he says. The platform and engine each cost about $200 (Dh735), and the wheels, salvaged from the gears of old bulldozers and army tanks, cost about $180 (Dh660).

About 200 bamboo train operators work the tracks near Battambang, with hundreds more toward Phnom Penh and near the coast. Operators tell me that bamboo cars can travel the 338km distance from Battambang to Phnom Penh in 13 hours, several hours faster than the journey by passenger train before service was discontinued.

Back in Battambang town that night, while indulging in one of the famous fruit shakes at the White Rose restaurant, I meet Willem Bierens de Haan, a 25-year-old from the Netherlands. Earlier in the day, I saw him and his girlfriend whizz past me on a bamboo train, grinning wildly.

“We wanted to experience how the locals make use of the unused rails,” Willem says. “It’s like a roller coaster through the countryside.”

Vietnam 'making a mockery' of rights obligations, says Human Rights Watch

September 26, 2009
From correspondents in Hanoi
Agence France-Presse

VIETNAM is making a mockery of its obligations under the UN Human Rights Council, an international rights group said.

The communist country has rejected a raft of recommendations to improve its rights record raised during a periodic review by the UN Human Rights Council that ended this week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement.

"Vietnam - a member of the UN Security Council - has made a mockery of its engagement at the UN Human Rights Council," said Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director of the New York-based organisation.

"Vietnam rejected even the most benign recommendations based on the international covenants it has signed, such as allowing people to promote human rights or express their opinions."

Hanoi rejected 45 recommendations from UN member states, HRW said, including lifting internet and blogging controls on privately owned media, allowing groups and individuals to promote human rights, abolishing the death penalty and releasing peaceful prisoners of conscience.

Of the 93 recommendations accepted by the Vietnamese Government, many consisted only of broad statements of intent to "consider" proposals by member states, HRW said.

"Shockingly, Vietnam denied to the Human Rights Council that it has arrested and imprisoned hundreds of peaceful dissidents and independent religious activists," said Ms Pearson.

"Yet in just the four months since Vietnam's last appearance at the council, it has arrested scores more."

Vietnam said during the Human Rights Council review process that it had no "so-called 'prisoners of conscience'", that no one was arrested for criticising the Government and denied torturing offenders.

"Like China, Vietnam has rebuffed the Human Rights Council in an effort to sanitise its abysmal rights record," said Ms Pearson.

"The UN's rights review offers proof to the world that despite international concern, Vietnam has no real intention of improving its record."

The UN Human Rights Council made its recommendations after one of its regular examinations of a state's human rights records.

More than 10 people have been arrested recently in Vietnam for spreading "propaganda against the state". HRW highlighted the case of Huynh Ba, a land rights activist and member of the Khmer Krom ethnic minority who led protests by farmers in the Mekong Delta over confiscation of their land who was arrested on May 30.

More than 1000 members of the largely Christian Montagnards community fled to Cambodia after security forces put down demonstrations in the Central Highlands in 2001 against land confiscation and religious persecution.

Vietnam has strongly denied a 2006 accusation by Human Rights Watch that it detained and tortured Montagnards who returned home under a tripartite agreement after fleeing to Cambodia.

163 new species found in Asia

A Cat Ba leopard gecko (AFP/Getty Images)

Friday, 25 September 2009
By Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent
The Independent (UK)

A gecko with spots like a leopard and a fanged frog that preys on birds are among more than 160 new species that have been discovered along the Mekong River but which face the threat of extinction as a result of climate change.

Scientists in south-east Asia said that in 2008 they discovered 100 plants, 28 fish, 18 reptiles, 14 amphibians, two mammals and one bird species in the region that spreads over Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand Laos and southern China.

Yet almost before they are fully documented, the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) believes these new species could disappear because of the increased incidence of extreme weather linked to climate change. Floods, droughts and rising sea levels are all threats.

“After millennia in hiding these species are now finally in the spotlight, and there are clearly more waiting to be discovered. Some species will be able to adapt to climate change, many will not, potentially resulting in massive extinctions,” Stuart Chapman, director of the WWF Greater Mekong Programme, said in a report published yesterday. “Rare, endangered and endemic species like those newly discovered are especially vulnerable because climate change will further shrink their already restricted habitats.”

The countries through which the mighty Mekong drains have long been identified as being remarkably rich in wildlife and there have been numerous reports of scientists making magical discoveries of previously-unknown species. In 1997, a previously unrecorded muntjac deer was found while five years earlier the Saola or Vu Quang ox was recorded by outsiders for the first time, both animals being discovered in Vietnam.

The report, released ahead of major UN talks on climate change in Bangkok next week, makes clear that such zoological riches exist in a region of the world highly vulnerable to the impact of climate change. Governments in the region have also been unable to prevent the destruction of habitats as a result of logging and development.

“The recent conflicts in these areas means there have not been the number of scientific expeditions that have gone elsewhere,” said the WWF’s Heather Sohl. “The area is a very rich habitat with a lot of bio-diversity. But there is also great concern that “some of these new discoveries could become threatened or even possibly extinct.”

Among the stars in the new list of creatures is a fanged frog in eastern Thailand. Given the scientific name Limnonectes megastomias, the frog lies in wait along streams for prey including birds and insects. Scientists believe it uses its fangs during combat with other male frogs.

Another unlikely discovery was the Cat Ba leopard gecko found on Cat Ba Island in northern Vietnam. Named Goniurosaurus catbaensis, it has large, orange-brown catlike eyes and leopard spots down the length of its yellowish brown body.

Lee Grismer, of La Sierra University in California, said he found a tiger-striped pit viper in Vietnam - another creature mentioned in the report - while he was attempting to capture a second gecko species. “We were engrossed in trying to catch a new species of gecko when my son pointed out that my hand was on a rock mere inches away from the head of a pit viper,” he said. “We caught the snake and the gecko and they both proved to be new species.”

Simon Mahood, a conservation adviser for BirdLife International in Indochina, welcomed WWF's attention to the new species and said more could be discovered if additional money was directed towards conservation efforts. He told the Agence France-Presse: “We are seeing more reports of new discoveries and populations because this region is relatively poorly known, particularly when it comes to cryptic and less fashionable groups like fish and amphibians.”

Conservation Group: Climate Change Threatens Newly Discovered Mekong Species

Cambodian fishing boats at anchor in middle of Mekong River, on outskirts of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital (file photo)

By Daniel Schearf, VOA
Bangkok
25 September 2009

A conservation group says newly discovered species in the Mekong river region are at risk of extinction because of rising global temperatures.

The international conservation group WWF (World Wildlife Fund) says 163 species of plants and animals were discovered last year in the Greater Mekong region of Southeast Asia where the Mekong River flows.

Some of the most unusual animals included a frog with fangs in Thailand that eats birds and a leopard-spotted gecko found on an island in Vietnam.

But in a report released in Bangkok Friday, the WWF says that temperatures in the region are expected to rise by as much as four degrees Celsius in the next 60 years and that could threaten their existence.

The WWF says rare and endangered species are at the greatest risk from climate change, because rising temperatures could affect food supplies or cause weather problems that damage habitats. It says the newly discovered species are especially vulnerable because of their restricted habitats.

"Species that live at the tops of mountains only or low-lying islands only, like this Cat Ba gecko that was just found, are also at great risk to extinction from climate-change impacts," said Geoffrey Blate, WWF's climate change coordinator for the Greater Mekong.

The Greater Mekong region spans Burma, Cambodia, China's Yunnan Province, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Stuart Chapman, the WWF's program director for Laos, says changes to wildlife in the Mekong area could also affect many of the 60 million people who depend on the river for their livelihoods.

"Of all the region's the WWF works in, the Mekong region probably has the closest link between its resource and human livelihood than any other region in the world," he said.

The WWF says more than 1,000 new species have been discovered in the Greater Mekong region in the past decade.

The WWF report comes just days ahead of a major United Nations meeting in Bangkok on climate change.

The Bangkok meeting will try to narrow down a framework agreement on global emission targets to be negotiated at the end of this year.

Cambodia to end Bangkok Airways domestic flights

Cambodians testify for war crimes tribunal

In this photo taken Friday, Sept. 18, 2009, Cambodian-Americans Rany Ork, left, and Chanthan Pich, foreground, who survived the wrath of the Khmer Rouge, wipe tears from their eyes during a workshop in Long Beach, Calif. The two survivors are some of the many Cambodian refugees across the U.S. who are sharing their memories of Khmer Rouge atrocities with a legal team so they can be used as evidence in an international war crimes tribunal underway in Phnom Penh. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

In this photo taken Friday, Sept. 18, 2009, Cambodian-American Chorn Van wipes away tears as she listens to Khmer Rouge survivors document their stories of war crimes to others during a workshop in Long Beach, Calif. Van is one of the many Cambodian refugees across the U.S. who are sharing their memories of Khmer Rouge atrocities with a legal team so they can be used as evidence in an international war crimes tribunal underway in Phnom Penh. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

In this photo taken Friday, Sept. 18, 2009, Cambodian-American Nhen Chheng, 70, who survived the rath of the Khmer Rouge, wipes tears away as she recalls her experiences to other survivors during a workshop in Long Beach, Calif. Prom is one of dozens of Cambodian refugees across the U.S. who are sharing their memories of Khmer Rouge atrocities with a legal team so they can be used as evidence in an international war crimes tribunal underway in Phnom Penh. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

In this photo taken Friday, Sept. 18, 2009, Cambodian-American Sam Oeun York ,71, whose husband was killed by the Khmer Rouge, tells participants at a Long Beach, Calif., workshop how she survived the atrocities in Cambodia. York is one of dozens of Cambodian refugees speaking publicly _ many for the first time _ about Khmer Rouge atrocities so a legal team can use their testimony in an international war crimes tribunal underway in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

In this photo taken Friday, Sept. 18, 2009, Leakhena Nou, left, a Cambodian-American sociology professor at Cal State Long Beach, comforts Roth Prom, 63, during a workshop at the United Cambodian Community Center in Long Beach, Calif. Prom, is one of dozens of Cambodian refugees across the U.S. who are sharing their memories of Khmer Rouge atrocities with a legal team so they can be used as evidence in an international war crimes tribunal underway in Phnom Penh. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

By GILLIAN FLACCUS (AP)

(CAAI News Media)

LONG BEACH, Calif. — The tiny Cambodian woman trembled slightly and stared blankly ahead as she told the story that has haunted her for half a lifetime: her parents and brother died in Khmer Rouge labor camps. Her baby perished in a refugee camp.

Roth Prom has wanted to die every day since and had never spoken those words so publicly until last week, when five minutes became the chance for justice she has longed for silently for so many years.

"I'm depressed in my head, I'm depressed in my stomach and in my heart. I have no hope in my body, I have nothing to live for," she said quietly. "All I have is just my bare hands."

As the tiny woman in the polka dot blouse slipped back to her seat, many of the nearly two dozen other Cambodian refugees in the room began to weep. They know Prom's pain. They were all there to tell stories just like hers.

Prom, 63, is one of dozens of Cambodian refugees speaking publicly — many for the first time — about Khmer Rouge atrocities so a legal team can use their testimony in an international war crimes tribunal underway in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital.

From Virginia to California, refugees have spent the past few months pouring out long-suppressed memories to volunteers who fill notebooks with reports of gang rapes, execution, starvation, forced labor and brutal beatings. They attach names of dead relatives, sometimes a half-dozen per person, and scrawl out names of labor camps and far-flung villages where they lived for years on the edge of starvation.

The Khmer Rouge is implicated in wiping out an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians, nearly a quarter of the population, during their rule from 1975-79 under Pol Pot. People died from disease, overwork, starvation and execution in the notorious "killing fields."

Cambodians who fled their homeland decades ago relish the chance to participate in the war crimes trials unfolding thousands of miles away. The tribunal, a joint court created by the Cambodian government and the United Nations, allows Khmer Rouge victims to participate as witnesses, complainants and civil parties.

Depending on the stories, the accuracy of their memories and their own willingness to participate, survivors could be called to testify for the prosecution or defense and those filing as civil parties could be entitled to reparations. At a minimum, all filings will be archived and reviewed by those collecting testimony from survivors.

Leakhena Nou, the Cambodian-American sociology professor at Cal State Long Beach organizing the U.S. workshops, said submitting evidence forms is cathartic for victims who have often kept their trauma secret from spouses and American-born children. Many suffer from post-traumatic stress and have symptoms of severe depression, including memory loss, flashbacks and suicidal thoughts.

"They have a sense of powerlessness, but they have a lot more power than they realize," said Nou, founder of the Applied Social Research Institute of Cambodia. "Most of them have not even talked about it for 30 years. They've been silent for so long."

Last week, testimony in Phnom Penh concluded in the trial of Kaing Guek Eav, who commanded the S-21 prison where up to 16,000 people were tortured and killed. Eav, also known as Duch, was the first to go before the tribunal and is charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes, murder and torture. More than 23,000 visitors attended his trial, which continues in November with closing arguments.

Four other senior Khmer Rouge leaders are in custody awaiting trial set for January. Any testimony submitted by the end of the year can be used by prosecutors to bolster those cases.

The U.N. and Cambodian branches of the tribunal did not respond to e-mailed requests for comment.

Grassroots organizers with backing from the Asian Pacific American Institute at New York University have been building trust within the Cambodian-American communities for nearly two years but still expected many to shun the process out of fear and suspicion. Some victims believe the tribunal is run by the Khmer Rouge, while others fear if they speak out they could endanger relatives still living in Cambodia.

But Nou said turnout has been high, with some people even traveling from Arizona to share stories at the Southern California workshops held at a Cambodian community center.

"Before, they assumed that no one wanted to listen to them," she said. "They'll say, 'We thought that no one cared, that no one wanted to listen. But now that I know people want to listen, I have nothing else to lose. I've lost everything else already.'"

So far, the team has collected more than 100 statements from Cambodian expatriates at workshops in Virginia, Maryland, Orange County and Long Beach — home to the largest Cambodian ex-pat population. Future sessions are planned this fall in Oregon, Northern California, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.

They've uncovered chilling stories along the way.

One woman in Long Beach told of being gang-raped from dawn to dusk by Khmer Rouge cadres while 6 1/2 months pregnant. She never told her husband and only came forward last week because he had passed away.

Another recalled being held at gunpoint with her brother and being forced to watch as her father was executed and then disemboweled, his heart, liver and stomach ripped out by soldiers. The woman, now in her 50s, told the story to a volunteer in three distinct "spirit voices," as if to detach herself from the painful memories.

For Prom, the recent workshop in Little Cambodia was a chance to honor the memory of her loved ones — and to get justice for the brutal crimes that ruined her life and so many others. The Khmer Rouge split up her family, she was forced to pull a plow through rice paddies like an ox and her child died later in a refugee camp.

Prom harbors thoughts of killing herself and suffers from memory loss. She's terrified of the night — the time when Khmer Rouge soldiers would take neighbors away without explanation, never to be seen again.

"I try to forget, but it's hard to forget," Prom told a translator who dictated it to a volunteer law student. Prom had already penciled her story on paper in the rolling script of her native Khmer.

"I want to find justice for myself and for the Cambodian people," she said. "I'm here to teach history to the next generation, so this horrific crime will never happen again."

1,590 Gangsters Arrested for ‘education and Imprisonment’

Picture by DPA

Written by DAP NEWS -- Saturday, 26 September 2009

(CAAI News Media)

The Interior Ministry on Friday announced that so far this year authorities have arrested 1,590 gangsters across the country for morality education, with some sent to court for criminal behaviour.

Of those arrested, 454 gangsters, including 76 women, have been sent to the court for trial because they destroyed private and public property, or hurt innocents and competent authorities, or used drugs, Khieu Sopheak, Interior Ministry spokesman, told reporters at a press conference at the ministry.

“The rest we have educated in morality for them to be good youths in society and understand their responsibility to contribute to build a good society and good families. We require the guarantee from a family guardian before we release them,” he added.

“Some gangsters collect in groups to stay at guest houses, hotels, and entertainments clubs to use drugs. They finally become robbers and have created disorder, insecurity and crime,” he said. “In future, we will have a law for entertainment club management to combat these gangsters. So far we have cooperated with owners of the clubs to educate about the gangsters.”

“We have made efforts to prevent the youth from becoming gangsters through the media and education in schools but those youth chose to become gangsters themselves. Some subordinates in the groups are involved with disrupting neighboring people at night and committing crimes.”

Gangsters range from ten-year-olds to pensioners over 60, he stressed. “A large number of gangsters are located in wealthy areas like Kampo ng Cham, Battambang, Siem Reap and Preah Sihanouk provinces, and in Phnom Penh,” he added.

“We have been trying to take action regularly to crackdown on gangsters according to the guidelines from the Government. Gangsters come from different backgrounds, including wealthy, powerful families and the poor.”

Gangsters have spread to rural areas and have used swords to chop and kill each other in dancing ceremonies at local communities, he added. “We have arrested a lot of gangsters for education and imprisonment but we did not satisfy the people,” he said. “We need good youth for our society.”

“In total we have had 8,500 gangsters since 2006. From now on, the village chiefs, commune councilors have to provide the signs of the gangster in their communities to the competent police authorities in their areas to prevent them to be crimes, he said, adding that currently we have over 22,000 prisoners and inmates in 22 jails in total across the country, he said, adding that crimes have still increased in each year”

Cambodian gangsters lack a formal system of leadership, like crime syndicates in foreign countries, Keat Chantharith, spokesman for Cambodian National Police Commission, told reporters at the press conference. “They have just collected together as a group to drink alcohol and destroy private and public property, fighting each other for revenge in some cases.”

“In the near future we will have law enforcement experts and legal advisors from the US to help us to organize the law on those gangsters,” he said. “We have to join together to prevent gangsters.”