September 24. 2009
Stephen Kurczy
The National (United Arab Emirates)
The flightTheir 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.
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
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.”
"There was nothing happening over there" - Tea Banh
Cambodia's band of criminals?Officials Continue Dismissals of US Rights Hearing
By Sok Khemara and Taing Sarada
Washington
24 September 2009
A rights hearing held by a US House of Representatives commission earlier this month constituted a breech of Cambodia’s sovereignty and constitution, a government spokesman said Monday, while a senior military official dismissed concerns of rights abuses by soldiers.
“We regret that it contrasted with the Cambodian constitution,” said Phay Siphan, a spokesman for the Council of Ministers, referring to the rights hearing.
“We need to maintain our independence and sovereignty,” he said, as a guest on “Hello VOA.”
The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission held a hearing Sept. 10, inviting opposition lawmaker Mu Sochua and two other rights leaders to speak on concerns the government has increased its human rights abuses and restricted freedoms.
The government was accepting of criticism, Phay Siphan said, “but we do not want attacks and incitement at all, because we are preparing additional strengthening of the rule of law.”
He called the hearing biased for excluding Cambodian government officials and said Cambodia would not accept assistance with conditions.
Meanwhile, Defense Minister Gen. Tea Banh waved off concerns by commission members that Cambodian units had been involved in abuses of power.
Members of the Human Rights Commission wrote US Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sept. 18, alleging certain units, including Prime Minister Hun Sen’s bodyguards, engaged in human rights abuses.
“The information in that letter is all wrong,” said Tea Banh, who met with Gates in Washington on Monday.
The letter followed accusations from Human Rights Watch in the Sept. 10 hearing that the units had engaged in a variety of abuses.
“They want to accuse those soldiers of burning people’s houses down,” Tea Banh said. “The investigation at the scene was not like that. There were only two people living in that hut. So you can’t just accuse the whole division of violating human rights like that. There was nothing happening over there.”
He acknowledged that some senior soldiers committed wrongdoings, but he did not give more details.
“I don’t want to reveal their names, because I want to continue to correct them to be better,” he said.
However, Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said military officials who committed “hundreds” of violations have never been brought to justice.
“No one has ever been accountable under the Cambodian armed forces for the human rights violations,” he said. “People who are criminals are senior officials in the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces now.
The high-ranking gov't official (L) who hates criticisms vs the outspoken gov't critics (R)Letter to The Phnom Penh Post
Dear Editor,
This letter is in response to the situation that is currently playing out in Cambodia politics. I would like to play devil’s advocate since a Post reader, Chansokhy Anhaouy, made his argument for the Khmer government (September 23, see below). The so-called “fear” that Sam Rainsy Party parliamentarian Mu Sochua has stirred up within Cambodia against its government is the same type of political game that the current government has played in the past. I don’t place blame on one side over the other because in politics (anywhere around the world), whatever resources and network one has, he/she will utilise it the best way he/she can. In the case of MP Mu Sochua, she is simply taking steps she knows will help and work to garner the attention Cambodia needs. To say that she is the only one with a political agenda is like the pot calling the kettle black.
As a not-too-long-ago example, back in the 2008 national election, I recall the fear stir-up that was ubiquitous in Cambodia’s headlines, with one known high-ranking official at the centre of power grandstanding over the situation between Thailand and Cambodia. If that wasn’t propaganda, then I believe we’re all in a state of denial. Not to refer to the Cambodian-Thai conflict as unreal or made-up, but the strong nationalism that was created during that time was apparent. That was also created in fear – the same type of fear mentioned by reader Chansokhy Anhaouy in his letter to the editor. A game can’t be resumed unless both sides are in play. Here, both sides are certainly in play.
The reader previously said that those people who recently met with US congressmen to speak about their situation did have the right to do it and were “free to travel to perform their roles as opposition parties”. Correct.
They also have foreign citizenship and a party to back them up. They wouldn’t have gone to the US if they didn’t have an issue with the current Cambodian government. If their actions indicated democratic ways, then I can conclude that democracy in Cambodia is very selective because the average Khmer person wouldn’t dare speak out against the ruling party or the government. If this reader says it’s false that Cambodians can do what they can, then can he explain why the US has given so many Khmer citizens political asylum? What does that signify to the rest of the world?
One other thing is that many Khmers simply don’t get themselves involved in politics at all because they fear what can be done to them. They would rather be ignorant of laws and even their rights as citizens – not that knowing them would help. The average person would never put him/herself and/or their families in a position where they would be the target of violent threats and persecution.
Mu Sochua has done what any clever person would have done, knowing that her own government wouldn’t take any other positions besides those of the Khmer premier. If one’s government will not listen or even adhere to the complete ideas of democracy that its country claims to have, that person is stuck with nowhere to seek help and has lost faith in those leaders who were sworn to protect the people and their birthrights. What type of democracy is it where a country’s own people are trapped in their nation and have become mute in fear of being threatened by high-ranking officials who, by the way, do not wish for any dissent or criticism? Cambodia shouldn’t be about only words on a piece of paper that claims to be democratic. Let’s execute real actions and stick to a non-selective process of law for all citizens to convey what an actual democratic nation is. That is fair, my friends.
Dear Editor,
I am writing in response to your article “Congressmen fear for speakers’ fate”, written by Meas Sokchea and James O’Toole (September 17). Cambodia has an elected government that was voted in by the majority of the people of Cambodia. For both men to listen to a one-sided camp (opposition groups whose interest is to win the next election) and come back with such a suggestion as stated in this article is unacceptable. What are the agendas of these opposition groups?
James Moran and Frank Wolf have obviously abused their own power on this issue. As outsiders, both congressmen should not dictate change by helping to create an assumption that Cambodia is a fear state, such as to say that if you have spoken out against the Cambodian government, you should seek protection. It sounds to me like an infant’s game in politics.
I am a man who lives in Canada, but Cambodia is my birth country. It is still my home. I am aware of the situation there, its cultural, social and political situation. Any changes, whether they be cultural, social or political development, should be given time and addressed with constructive criticism, not with fear.
Sam Rainsy Party parliamentarian Mu Sochua, Licadho rights group president Kek Galabru and Community Legal Education Centre labour programme head Moeun Tola, who testified in front of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, are all doing things to serve their personal interests, endeavours and/or goals.
They are not necessarily doing what is best for the majority of the people and the good of the country.
It is obvious that in the business of politics, they have the political knowledge to use the Western media and mobilise international friends to support their causes.
But one should not give them full credit for what they do and should not make them be seen as stars.
Finally, I would like to remind both congressmen that it is because Cambodia is a monarchist liberal democratic country that the people whom they met can speak out and are free to travel to where they wish and perform their roles as opposition parties and groups similar to where we live in the West. This is the democratic way.
To be noted also, Canada is an educated and well-developed country with no history of genocide; and yet, large-scale corruption by banks and governments is a daily occurrence, and the human rights of our First Nations people and other minority groups are being violated daily. How is this a fair game?
The Phnom Penh Post
Translated from Khmer by Socheata
(Comments by Angkor Borey, the Voice of Cambodians Overseas)
Click here to read the article and comments by Angkor Borey in Khmer
SRP leader Sam Rainsy, who returned from overseas in the evening of Tuesday, told The Phnom Penh Post on Thursday that he recognized that he held a press conference in Bangkok, and that he also raised the issue of a number of Cambodian government leaders who were former Khmer Rouge cadres who still maintain their old mentality. However, Sam Rainsy said that he did not name PM Hun Xen as it was indicated in the clarification issued by the Council of Ministers’ PQRU (Angkor Borey Note: This is a lesson for Hun Xen, or [it can be considered as] stuffing Hun Xen’s words back into his mouth for his rude and mocking speech against Mrs. Mu Sochua without pointing out her name in Kampot. Hun Xen’s tactics led to a dispute that reached the court recently).
Sam Rainsy said: “I said that a number of leaders in the current government were former Khmer Rouge, they were at least regional cadre leaders, and they still maintain their old mentality and they still use violence, repression to shut down all types of freedom. I was speaking in general terms, I did not name any individual at all.”
Sam Rainsy added that he is not concerned about any lawsuit due to the issues he raised, but he asked that the information should not inflated, nor should it be added to other issues that could lead to lawsuits.
Nevertheless, the PQRU clarification indicated that, under the Pol Pot regime, PM Hun Xen was a victim who fled the Khmer Rouge killing pursuit, and he joined other Khmer VIPs to form the 02 December front to help liberate the people from the killing field, this is contrary to the accusations made by opposition leader. (Angkor Borey Note: In order to clearly learn whether Hun Xen and a number of other leaders in the current regime were former savage and cruel Khmer Rouge who committed the killing of Cambodians or not, please read our article titled: “Mystery of the Khmer Rouge leaders who now hold the Samdach titles” published in Article No. 760, dated 20 May 2009 and authored by Mr. Cheat Hungsa. In addition to the translation of Mr. Thach Saren’s letter sent the Washington Post newspaper recounting the cruelty of the current CPP leaders (Hun Xen is included among them also) and how his family was subjected to this cruelty, Mr. Cheat Hungsa also quoted Hun Xen criticizing former PM Pen Sovann. This quote was excerpted from a RFA broadcast on 23 December 2008, the essence of Hun Xen’s speech is as follows: “There was a guy who claims to be the father of 02 December, the father of 07 January, he said that I was his foot soldier. This guy strutted around in Phnom Penh the other day, I looked at him saying that he was the father of 07 January, the father of 02 December. Since mid-1977, I was the biggest leader along the eastern shore of the Mekong River. I built up a lot of troops already. Therefore, there was nobody else bigger than me. This guy, from what I know, he was only a lieutenant in the Vietnamese army, and he considered himself as my chief, then he went on to shout on the fly hive or beehive radio station and such. So, I want to tell this fellow, please be considerate … if you lie, lie with modesty … give a decent lie … I don’t need to reveal his name … in Khmer, he is called the liar-in-chief” (sic). In this regard, we believe that Hun Xen forgot that he was a “former Khmer Rouge leader” also and he even forgot that he was a “Yuon puppet” as well. If Pen Sovann was “Yuon”, doesn’t that makes Hun Xen an “absolute Yuon lackey”?).
It should be noted that the publication of the PQRU clarification was made following the declaration made by Mr. Sam Rainsy at a forum organized by the Thai Club of Journalists (FCCT) in Bangkok last Tuesday. Sam Rainsy indicated that political activists and village chiefs were killed or jailed, and they were forced to hide themselves because they do not support the ruling party. He indicated also that these various problems take place because a large number of Cambodian leaders were former Khmer Rouge leaders. He told the Thai media network that: “They still adhere to the Khmer Rouge ideals, they do not tolerate critics, and they do whatever it take to destroy their enemies, either by killing them or silencing the critics.”
Phay Siphan, spokesman for the Council of the Ministers, immediately rejected the issues raised by Sam Rainsy and he claimed that Sam Rainsy’s accusations were baseless. (Angkor Borey Note: Prior to joining the CPP, Phay Siphan was a renown anti-communist. Following his expulsion from his senate seat by the CPP, this same Phay Siphan went around criticizing the CPP all over Long Beach. But now, when he is turning into the “handyman” spokesman for Sok An, even for the dirty laundry affairs of Svay Sitha, Phay Siphan would come out to act as the latter’s spokesman. This is how an opportunist behaves, he is very flexible and he willingly bends to the wind, he would bark against anyone so long as he has a chair to cling on to!).
Phay Siphan told The Phnom Penh Post: “Mr. Sam Rainsy fights the government, but he can walk freely in the country. However, the government never discriminates against him.” Phay Siphan indicated that, currently, in Cambodia, there is no repression on the freedom of expression as the opposition, such as Sam Rainsy, claimed.
Nevertheless, reports issued by national and international organizations showed that human rights violations in Cambodia perpetrated by powerful officials and rich businessmen still victimized a large number of weak people. (Angkor Borey Note: If Phay Siphan actually made this claim, it can only mean that all the NGOS, as well as the UN Human Rights officials, are all crazy … is it not?
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)
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, 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 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-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)By GILLIAN FLACCUS
AP
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."
A Cat Ba leopard gecko (AFP/Getty Images)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.
Funds are running low, and the child sex tourism industry has boomed.
Now a US study has found that sex offenders from Australia are a big part of the problem in Thailand.
A report from the Protection Project at Johns Hopkins University found that sex offenders from Australia topped the list of foreigners involved in child sex tourism in Thailand.
Its executive director, Mohamed Mattar, says the economic downturn means plenty of cheap flights and more children and women living under the poverty lin
Letter from RFA employees kicked by out by Mr. Kem Sos to US
Ms. Ambassador Carol A. RodleyThe US Ambassador to Cambodia
Dear Ms. Ambassador,
We are writing today to seek your intervention over an improper action that the management of Radio Free Asia-Khmer Service (RFA) has taken against one reporter and two editors.
Let us brief you the background stories. On Sunday, September 20th 2009, our reporter Mrs. Seang Sophorn received verbal notice from RFA-Khmer Service Director Mr. Kem Sos that her contract to be terminated on September 30th by saying that RFA has ran out of budget. Mrs. Sophorn told us about her issue that “this is unfair, injustice, and abuse of the labor law because the termination is in a short notice and without legitimate reasons.”
On September 23rd, we, eight staff, sent email to Mr. Kem Sos urging to reconsider Mr. Sophorn’s case in the hope she might be able to get back to work. In the meantime, we met RFA Vice President Mr. Dan Southerland to extend to him our grievances and seek his intervention on Mrs. Sophorn’s case. We shared our view with Mr. Dan that “this action set not a good example, but fear, dread and unhealthy working environment. This action may also generate the question who will be the next?” Surprisingly, a day after the meeting with Mr. Vice President, Mrs. Sophorn received the phone call ordering her to leave RFA-Phnom Penh office right away.
On September 25th, Mr. Kem Sos organized a special meeting with three of us who joint the meeting with Mr. Vice President. The meeting lasted about 3 minutes. He said that RFA needs to restructure staff and this is the policy from the top management in Washington DC. No discussion. Mr. Kem Sos announced that your contracts were terminated and this is your last day with RFA.
We had worked for RFA for four years to support for freedom of expression and just cause. We consider the action against us is to silence those speak the truth and dare to defense innocence colleagues. This act clearly violates basic human rights and the law.
Therefore, we urge you to convey our grievances to the US Congress, the Senate and American tax-payers. We also urge you to call on RFA management not to punish and fire other staff the way they did to us.
Sincerely yours,