Peacemakers Trust posts news, reports or announcements of interest to people studying or working in the field of dispute resolution, conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Inclusion of an item on the media watch blog does not imply endorsement or agreement of Peacemakers Trust with views expressed by authors of posted items.
The political standing of women has “improved” in Nepal in comparison to many countries in Asia and the Pacific where works are being done to enhance women’s participation in politics, according to a new Asia Pacific Human Development Report on Gender.
“The political voice of women has improved in Nepal with the recent secured 1/3 quota in the Constituent Assembly. In comparison, only about 1/3 of countries in Asia and the Pacific have quota systems to enhance women’s participation in politics,” says the report titled, “Power, Voice and Rights: A Turning Point for Gender Equality in Asia and the Pacific” launched on the occasion of International Women’s Day in the capital on Monday.
Aid donors to Cambodia, including the US, EU, Japan, China and the World Bank, should send a strong message to the government that they will not countenance the bankrolling of Cambodia’s military by private businesses, Global Witness said today.
The call follows the announcement last week by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen of the formation of 42 official partnerships between private businesses and Cambodian military units.
Some victims of the Khmer Rouge say they are worried the reconciliation process will be hurt by limited civil party participation and an already long trial process at the UN-backed tribunal.
Of 4,000 victim applications to participate as civil parties, only around 500 are likely to be accepted, according to tribunal officials.
The tribunal process includes civil parties, who participate in trials alongside the defense and prosecution, as a third body in the proceedings.
At a forum of 200 people in Kampot province on Saturday, Thun Saray, head of the rights group Adhoc, said such a low number among the civil parties would stir disappointment among Khmer Rouge victims.
NEW YORK – Cambodia’s respect for basic rights dramatically deteriorated in 2009 as the government misused the judiciary to silence government critics, attacked human rights defenders, tightened restrictions on press freedom, and abandoned its international obligations to protect refugees, Human Rights Watch said today in its new World Report 2010.
The 612-page World Report 2010, the organization’s 20th annual review of human rights practices around the globe, summarizes major human rights trends in more than 90 nations and territories worldwide…
“Cambodians who speak out to defend their homes, their jobs, and their rights face threats, jail, and physical attacks,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The only way that the Cambodian government will end its assault on civil society is if influential governments and donors demand real change and put the pressure on.”
Why did a radical British professor become a cheer-leader for Pol Pot? And why was he murdered on the very day he’d met the brutal dictator?…
The name of Malcolm Caldwell is remembered now by very few people: some friends, family, colleagues, and students of utopian folly. In the 1970s, though, Caldwell was a major figure in protest politics. He was chair of CND for two years, a leading voice in the anti-Vietnam war campaign, a regular contributor to Peace News …
The name of Kaing Guek Eav is, arguably, known by even fewer people, at least outside of Cambodia. Instead it is by his revolutionary pseudonym “Duch” that Kaing is usually referred to in the press. Duch is the only man ever to stand trial in a UN-sanctioned court for the mass murder perpetrated by the Cambodian communist party, or the Khmer Rouge, in the late 1970s…
In each circumstance, the question that reverberates down the years, growing louder rather than dimmer, is: why? Why were they in thrall to a system based on mass extermination?
Defense teams for senior Khmer Rouge leaders still have the right motion for a cancellation of genocide charges brought last week, a tribunal expert said Monday.
“They have the right to file a suite to the Pre-Trial Chamber to remove the new charge,†said Hisham Mousar, chief of the Project of French Cooperation, at the Royal University of Law and Economics.
The additional genocide charge was added to those of war crimes and crimes against humanity originally brought against Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith.
Asit Biswas says the global water crisis is a self-inflicted wound.
Asit Biswas loves to tell the story of the Phnom Penh Water Authority. It was 1993 and a new manager, Ek Sonn Chan, had been appointed to the then bankrupt utility. Of the water that it piped from its reservoirs, 72% disappeared without ever being paid for. Chan decided to chase down errant customers, among them all of Cambodia’s government agencies and the Army. When asked to pay up, the officer in charge pulled out a gun. Chan retreated but went back the next day with a handful of journalists in tow. The general once again pulled out his gun. Chan cut off the water supply. The next day the Army paid its dues, and all the other agencies followed. Today the utility is flush with cash, and there is clean drinking water–the kind that can be had straight from the tap–available through the city, around the clock.
The clock is ticking away at the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Phnom Penh. Only one trial has been completed so far. The next case: the all-important trial of four surviving senior Khmer Rouge leaders is shrouded in doubt, given the court’s timetable and calculations that the trial not begin until mid-2011.
But by 2011, who knows how many of these ageing former leaders will still be alive?
When the Khmer Rouge emptied the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh of human inhabitants in 1975, one of Pol Pot’s soldiers murdered 4-year-old Theary Seng’s father. Later, Theary Seng, her mother and siblings ended up in a prison in southeast Cambodia. One day, Theary Seng awoke to an empty cell — the prison population had been massacred overnight. In a rare act of mercy, the Khmer Rouge soldiers allowed the handful of children to survive. Theary Seng eventually escaped to a Thai refugee camp and then to the U.S. Her story is by no means unique in Cambodia.
BAAN POM-SA-RON, Thailand – Children at the largest school in this village close to the Thai-Cambodian border have a new regimen to follow besides books and sports. They have drills, practising evacuation, in case their school comes under an artillery attack.
Hong Kong, China – Aki Ra was forced to be a child soldier in the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia in the early 1980s, taught to shoot a gun and plant deadly landmines.
He was later seized by the Cambodian army and the Vietnamese, who were fighting together against the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge, and he again planted explosives in the ground as war raged in the Southeast Asian nation.
Years later, when the United Nations came in to help restore peace to Cambodia, Aki Ra decided he needed to undo the damage he and others had done, so he began demining on his own after spending a year training with U.N. deminers.
BANGKOK, Thailand — Thailand announced Friday it plans to back out of an offshore border agreement with Cambodia, the latest barb in a diplomatic dispute fueled by Phnom Penh’s appointment of ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra as a government adviser.
The moves comes a day after both countries recalled their ambassadors and makes good on a Thai promise to review all its agreements with Cambodia.
Cambodia’s United Nations-backed tribunal for former Khmer Rouge leaders is set to announce it will bring prosecutions against five more suspects from the former regime.
But the plans are causing a deep divide among Cambodians and calling into question whether the tribunal can objectively prosecute these cases.
THE Court of Appeal has upheld the defamation conviction of opposition lawmaker Mu Sochua, an outcome the Sam Rainsy Party parliamentarian described as “politically motivatedâ€.
In an interview with Pambazuka News, Yash Tandon discusses the problems of ‘development aid’, his differences with Dambisa Moyo’s arguments in ‘Dead Aid’, the importance of Southern countries’ right to autonomy and his own book, ‘Ending Aid Dependence’.
The Asean Economic Ministers’ meeting on Thursday agreed to press on with the plan to reduce developmental gaps in a bid to bring the Asean Economic Community into effect in 2015.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is renewing calls for troops to withdraw from the disputed area near Preah Vihear temple and insists the matter should be settled through negotiation.
The United Nations urged Asian nations to make their new regional human rights body “credible” Thursday, as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) prepared for its official launch.
A law passed on Wednesday by Cambodia’s legislature limiting the size of demonstrations is the latest example of rising intolerance in south-east Asia, say advocates of free speech.
BANGKOK — Southeast Asian nations unveil a landmark human rights watchdog this week, but critics charge that it will be both toothless and include in its membership one of the world’s worst human rights offenders — military-ruled Myanmar.
