| Written by Cheang Sokha | |
| Friday, 28 November 2008 | |
| Senator Mong Reththy has promised jobs for villagers on his company's rubber plantation in Stung Treng province  Photo by: PHOTO SUPPLIED Soldiers stand over the recently-destroyed village of Anlong Krom in Kampot. CPP Senator Mong Reththy has announced plans to take villagers evicted from Anlong Krom village in Kampot province to work on his farm in Stung Treng. Tan Monivann, deputy director general of the Mong Reththy Group, said that the company has prepared 100 hectares of land to build houses for the villagers if they volunteer to live there and work for the company. "We have welcomed all of them if their intent is to live there and work for us," he told the Post Wednesday. "But we have heard that those people are not real landless people, that they were just squatting on the land." Tan Monivann said that the land in Stung Treng province, part of a 100,000-hectare agricultural land concession granted by the government in November 2001, is being planted with rubber trees. On Monday and Tuesday, villagers said that more than 100 police, military police and soldiers from RCAF Brigade 31 started torching and dismantling 300 villagers' homes in Anlong Krom, in Kampot's Taken commune, leaving them without shelter or food. Authorities say the villagers were living illegally on land belonging to Bokor National Park. Prak Khoeun, a villager whose home was dismantled, said that those evicted had received word that Mong Reththy was offering to take them to Stung Treng, but most of them did not plan to move. "We will not go there," he said. "Anyway, we feel afraid that we will be cheated, so we would rather stay here." Bokor National Park Director Chey Uterith said that the 55 families remaining at the site will be forced to leave by Sunday. "If they do not leave, we will file a complaint to the court," he said. "We will conduct a statistic of how many families are genuinely landless and then report them to Mong Reththy or the provincial authority." |
| Written by Sam Rith and Sebastian Strangio | |
| Friday, 28 November 2008 Thailand has accused the Kingdom of violating an international mine ban at a meeting on the Ottawa Convention, Cambodian delegates say INTERNATIONAL delegates to an annual conference in Geneva on the global land mine ban have ignored Thai accusations that the Cambodian military has planted fresh mines during recent tensions along the countries' disputed border, Cambodian officials said Thursday. "The Thais firstly complained that Cambodia isn't following the convention banning land mines. Secondly, they accused Cambodia of planting new mines in the border area," said Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan. According to the Cambodian delegation in Geneva, Phay Siphan said, the Thai complaints were ignored by the other meeting participants. "The other members of the convention said nothing. They did not listen to them," he told the Post. "They have understood we are people who want only to make peace. The Thais keep misleading the world." Chan Rotha, deputy secretary general of the Cambodian Mine Action Authority, said, "The donor countries will not pay attention to the Thais' accusations because they already know through their representatives in Phnom Penh that we have not laid any new mines." 'A grave threat' At least one Thai soldier has been killed and two others seriously wounded in a spate of land mine incidents that have occurred during the five-month military standoff on the border. Following a blast that wounded two Thai troops on October 6, Thai Foreign Ministry officials accused Cambodia of laying new anti-personnel mines on Thai territory, calling it "a grave threat for the international community" and a violation of the 1997 mine ban treaty. But Cambodian officials insist that the Thais stepped on mines left over from Cambodia's civil war in the 1980s and 1990s. Furthermore, Phay Siphan said that since unexploded mines were only on the Cambodian side of the border, the blasts proved that the Thais had crossed into Cambodian territory. |
New Delhi
30 November 2008
The political fallout from the Mumbai terror attack is beginning to take its toll on the administration of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. As Mr. Singh convened an all-party meeting to discuss security, his home minister submitted his resignation. VOA Correspondent Steve Herman reports from New Delhi.
India's home minister has resigned. The unpopular Shivraj Patil is the first political casualty in the wake of the unprecedented terror attack on the country's commercial capital.
Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil, left, and Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, right, look on during a Congress Working Committee meeting on the Mumbai terrorist attack, in New Delhi, 29 Nov 2008
Even before Mumbai was struck, Patil had been a target of opposition parties for his allegedly poor performance as the cabinet member tasked with domestic security. He is to be replaced by the respected finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was previously finance minister for five years, is taking over that portfolio.
The resignation of the home minister came as Prime Minister Singh convened an all-party meeting Sunday evening to obtain a consensus on comprehensive action against terrorism.
"In the face of this national threat and the aftermath of this national tragedy all of us from different political parties must rise above narrow political considerations and stand united," Mr. Singh said.
The prime minister has also announced the formation of a new federal investigative agency, stepped-up air and maritime security and is boosting the primary counter-terrorism unit, the National Security Guard.
A senior leader of the opposition BJP party, Arun Jaitley, says the resignation of the home minister does not adequately address the government's security failures.
"This government has no moral right to survive now," Jaitley said. "It is this weak policy of this government where the entire intelligence network had collapsed, the security responses were poor, the legal framework dealing with terrorism is non-existent. I think the prime minister must address the right questions, he'll find the right answers."
With a series of state elections concluding, both the government and the opposition now have their eye on parliamentary elections to be held in eight to 12 weeks.
Some of India's major media outlets are blasting the entire political establishment. The Times of India published a front page comment in its Sunday edition titled "Our politicians fiddle as innocents die." A Hindustan Times columnist blasted what he called incompetent politicians for using "terrorism as an excuse to win votes."
Television news channels criticized politicians for showing up at the scene of the terror attacks to make public comments while commandos were still battling the gunmen.
The terrorist siege of Mumbai left more than 170 people dead, including at least 18 foreigners, at ten locations. The well armed gunmen, estimated to number ten to 15, kept at bay one thousand commandos and elite combat troops for two and a half days. Mumbai police are pinning responsibility on Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group.
