Monday, October 26, 2009
Activists protest closed summit
CAMBODIAN and regional human rights groups have slammed the exclusion of five activists from a meeting with regional leaders at the 15th ASEAN summit on Friday, overshadowing the launch of the bloc’s long-awaited rights watchdog. Leaders from the 10 ASEAN member states were set to hold rare talks with rights group representatives – one from each country – in the Thai resort town of Hua Hin on Friday morning, but the governments of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines and Singapore barred activists from the meeting at the last minute.Debbie Stothard, media coordinator of the independent ASEAN People’s Forum, which selected the delegates, said she was “shocked” by their exclusion, as the meeting had been in the pipeline since the February summit. “There was an organised process of interactions with ASEAN governments” leading up to the meeting, she said. “This is an outrageous development. It is a rejection of civil society and of the democratic process by which they were selected.”The government’s exclusion of Ney Vannda, Cambodia’s representative and the advocacy chief of local rights group Adhoc, mirrored similar events at February’s ASEAN summit, when Cambodia joined the Myanmar military junta in blocking activists from attending a similar face-to-face meeting.Adhoc president Thun Saray could not be reached for comment on Sunday, but Kek Pung, president of fellow rights organisation Licadho, said she was “disappointed” to hear activists were excluded from the meet, and that ASEAN had contradicted the spirit of its 2007 charter. “ASEAN has just approved a charter saying it should have a human rights body, so I think it’s important that civil society should take part,” she said.Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, said he was unsurprised by the incident, but that he was “puzzled” the Cambodian government went to the effort of barring Ney Vannda from a routine meeting. “There’s nothing for this government to lose by letting these people into the meeting. It’s not helping the government’s reputation or that of ASEAN,” he said. Officials said the five activists were barred because they had not been approved by their governments in line with previous agreements. “The foreign ministers of ASEAN have agreed that the only civil society organisations that had the right to attend the meeting with leaders of ASEAN were civil society groups sent by their governments to participate [in the summit],” Foreign Minister Hor Namhong told reporters at Phnom Penh International Airport on Sunday. Stothard, however, said that several government-selected “civil society” groups had enrolled in the ASEAN People’s Forum in order to wrest the nomination to appear at the meeting from independent groups. “Civil society [organisations] should not be considered pets of government. Trying to replace us with mirror images of the government doesn’t make the problems go away,” she said.Friday’s events came as ASEAN launched its Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, a body that has also come under fire for lacking the mandate to enforce rights standards. Bridget Welsh, a Southeast Asia expert at Singapore Management University, said the body was “a start” but fell “far short” of being a credible mechanism, and Stothard said only Indonesia and Thailand had held a transparent selection process for their delegates to the commission.Sripapha Petcharamesree, the commissioner representing Thailand, did not wish to comment on the barring of the rights activists but said critics should take stock of ASEAN’s human rights achievements. The commission “is far from perfect, but it is a milestone within ASEAN,” she said Sunday. “One of our duties is to make it better.” ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CHEANG SOKHA AND AFP
PM’s offer seen as gamesmanship
Comments in Thailand welcoming Thaksin raise questions, eyebrows.AS ASEAN delegates gathered in Hua Hin, Thailand, this weekend, intent on inaugurating a new human rights body and articulating visions of European Union-style cooperation, the latest conflagration in the long-smouldering dispute between Thailand and Cambodia threatened to overshadow the proceedings.Prime Minister Hun Sen touched off the controversy last week when, in a meeting with leading Thai opposition member Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, he called fugitive ex-Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra his “eternal friend”, offering a residence in Cambodia to the elusive billionaire who has lived in exile since last year following his conviction on corruption charges in 2006. Thai leaders were quick to cite an extradition agreement between Thailand and Cambodia that they said they would promptly pursue in the event of Thaksin’s arrival here, but in a statement released Friday, the Cambodian government said it would not extradite Thaksin, with Hun Sen telling reporters in Hua Hin that Thaksin could serve as his economic adviser.But as leaders from both countries exchanged barbs over the course of the weekend, analysts questioned whether Hun Sen’s entreaty to Thaksin was a serious offer or just political gamesmanship.Josh Kurlantzick, a Southeast Asia expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, noted the history of ties between Thaksin and Hun Sen, which extend back to the 1990s and Thaksin’s career as a telecommunications mogul. He allowed, though, for the possibility of Hun Sen using Thaksin’s extradition as a diplomatic bargaining chip.“Hun Sen and Thaksin’s relationship is strong enough, from what anyone could tell from the outside, that Hun Sen is unlikely to hand over Thaksin for political points,” he said. “That said, Hun Sen isn’t exactly a sentimentalist when it comes to politics.”Though Hun Sen probably preferred Thaksin’s government to that of current Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, the prospect of Thaksin’s serving as an economic adviser in Cambodia is unlikely, said Christopher Roberts, a lecturer at the University of Canberra and the author of an upcoming book on ASEAN.“I think most likely it’s just political posturing from Hun Sen,” he said, adding that Thaksin would only take up the offer with a very specific objective in mind.“The only reason that Thaksin would take up this option would be for the purpose of influencing the situation” in Thailand, he said.Duncan McCargo, a Southeast Asia specialist at Britain’s Leeds University, said Hun Sen’s offer to Thaksin had been “carefully timed”, aimed more at embarrassing his Thai hosts in Hua Hin than at securing Thaksin’s presence in Cambodia.This sort of gamesmanship, Kurlantzick said, has been a common theme in Cambodia’s dealings with Thailand of late.“I think, bluntly, that Hun Sen these days rarely misses an opportunity to stick it to Thailand, and this is a prime opportunity,” he said.
South Korean president visits today for signings
Lee, Hun Sen share history of economic cooperation
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak gets into a limousine Tuesday after arriving at Hanoi’s Noi Bai international airport. Lee’s next stop will be Phnom Penh when he lands today for talks with the government and King Sihamoni before leaving on Friday. AFP
Although we have just a short-term relationship, I think that our friendship tie is very strong.
BILATERAL TRADE
2005 Cambodia exports - $2.01mSKorean exports - $150.72m
2006 Cambodia exports - $3.196mSKorean exports - $146.11m
2007 Cambodia exports - $2.587mSKorean exports - $192.28m
2008 Cambodia exports - $7.415mSKorean exports - $229.77m Source: Embassy of South Korea PRIME Minister Hun Sen and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak are to meet in Phnom Penh today to sign a host of bilateral agreements, most of which are economic, in what will be Lee’s first visit to the Kingdom since becoming president in February last year.In an economic capacity, the two leaders have known each other for more than 13 years as part of a relationship that has driven economic ties between the two countries and led South Korea to become the second-largest foreign investor in Cambodia, according to analysts and observers.Hun Sen’s first interaction with Lee in Seoul in July 1996, a year before the two countries established diplomatic relations, focused purely on one question, says an unnamed official at the South Korean embassy in Phnom Penh: How can Cambodia develop economically?As a longtime employee of Hyundai Engineering, which he left after 27 years in 1992, Lee had spent his professional life in a country that had exited the disruption and chaos of the Korean War and initially struggled to develop following partition, falling behind North Korea in terms of economic output. In 1977, when Lee became South Korea’s youngest CEO at Hyundai, South Korea was still in the process of struggling for electoral democracy – in other words, it was a country not dissimilar to 1990s Cambodia.“South Korea (including CEO Lee) was [perhaps] the only country with the experience among developed countries that grew [from being] undeveloped,” says Ho Jai-jung, a business reporter at the Seoul-based Dong-A Ilbo newspaper, who has previously met with Lee. In 2000, two years after Lee resigned from a second term in the Korean National Assembly and was fined 4 million won (US$4,000) for breaking election rules on campaign fundraising, Hun Sen asked him to become a special economic adviser, a role that has been referenced numerous times, but which remains largely unclear in terms of its scope and mandate.The same year, this working relationship saw Lee visit Phnom Penh, during which time he and Hun Sen held “in-depth discussions … on [Cambodia’s] economic development”, said the South Korean official. “Since then, whenever Prime Minister Hun Sen visited [South] Korea, he and Lee engaged in discussions on a wide range of areas, including economic issues.”Lee already had considerable experience in infrastructure and investment projects in mainland Southeast Asia.While at Hyundai in the mid-1960s, he worked as an accountant in Thailand for Hyundai Construction on a two-year project building the Pattani-Narathiwat highway. Later, in the 1970s, he worked on a huge bridge project in Malaysia that involved close interaction with its former enigmatic leader Mahathir Mohamad. During the next decade, Lee was involved in the construction of a host of projects in Indonesia, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia. Lee had therefore built some of the largest infrastructure projects in Southeast Asia over a period of nearly three decades, an experience Hun Sen apparently hoped to tap into.Although reports this decade said Hun Sen had many foreign economic advisers, Lee’s influence appears to have been significant, as Cambodia received an influx of investment from South Korea, particularly from companies within the Hyundai group.At the end of 2003, Hyundai Engineering started provincial power-supply projects that saw infrastructure, including transmission lines, installed in eight rural towns in the Kingdom, Choi Kang-shik, the firm’s vice president of overseas marketing, said Tuesday by telephone. Before these projects were completed in November 2006, Hyundai Engineering consulted on a project developing Sihanoukville’s sewerage system that was implemented in 2004 and later worked on Battambang’s hydroelectric power plant.Still, Hyundai managers say that Lee’s former ties to the diversified group of companies did not further its standing in the Kingdom.“I don’t think so,” said Kim Song-soo, director of Hyundai Amco Cambodia Co Ltd. “He did – and will [continue to] – consider Hyundai as one of the Korean business groups, not more than that.”By the time Lee was elected president in 2008, which saw him end his role as Hun Sen’s adviser, South Korea had become the second-largest investor in the Kingdom after China and was providing Cambodia’s key tourism industry with more arrivals than any other country. “Such frequent exchanges between the two … clearly attest to the fact that the close relationship between our countries is progressing faster than at any time before,” said the South Korean official.However, 2008 also saw the onset of the global financial and economic crisis. Since Hun Sen’s attendance of Lee’s inauguration ceremony in Seoul last year, South Korea’s economic presence in the Kingdom has waned drastically, almost defining Cambodia’s experience of the crisis.Even as approved investment for South Korean firms soared from $148 million to $1.2 billion from 2007 to 2008, largely over the earlier part of the year, actual investment in Cambodia fell from $629.49 million to $472.89 million, according to the Korean embassy in Phnom Penh.Cambodia’s exports to its closest business partner continued to rise, reaching $7.4 million last year, mostly made up of garments and textiles, according to the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency office in Phnom Penh. Exports were worth $4.8 million in 2007.However, these small gains did little to offset losses elsewhere, with orders from major garment buyers in the United States and Europe, which account for more than 80 percent of Cambodia’s garment exports, tailing off rapidly. What really hurt Cambodia where Korea was concerned was the cancellation or delay of many high-profile developments, which ripped the heart out of the local construction sector.With the won falling around 30 percent against the US dollar, building materials were suddenly much more expensive.South Korea has also been a key source of growth in Cambodia’s tourism sector, with the country accounting for more arrivals last year than any other. But since the downturn, South Korean tourists have stayed away. The fall in tourism has been compounded by the winding down of trade and investment since the fourth quarter of last year, meaning fewer Korean businesspeople have made the five-hour flight.Arrivals from South Korea, almost all by air, plunged 31.23 percent in the first seven months of this year compared to the same period in 2008, the largest fall of any country’s visitors. More Vietnamese than South Koreans have visited in 2009. Again Cambodia’s relationship with South Korea on the tourism front defines the sector’s woes since the economic downturn began. Although arrivals are up, particularly from Vietnam, air arrivals – the big moneymaker – were down 13 percent in the first eight months year on year, according to Ministry of Tourism figures. This prompted South Korea’s Asiana Airlines to suspend flights between Incheon and Siem Reap for nearly three months up to the middle of next month.Still, South Korea is going ahead with new projects in Cambodia. Hyundai Amco Construction, a division of Hyundai Motor group, started Phnom Penh Tower in December, and Dae Jo-young, director of Hyundai’s new assembly plant in Koh Kong province, said last week that the project is delayed but ongoing and could begin operations in February.Yet more deals – most notably on mining and energy – are due to be signed after Lee touches down in Phnom Penh today, along with a new arrangement on loans to the Kingdom, a government statement said.“Although we have just a short-term relationship, I think that our friendship tie is very strong,” South Korea’s Ambassador to Cambodia Lee Kyung-soo told reporters last week.In many ways, this is a relationship that has been established and defined by Hun Sen and Lee, almost purely in economic terms.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak gets into a limousine Tuesday after arriving at Hanoi’s Noi Bai international airport. Lee’s next stop will be Phnom Penh when he lands today for talks with the government and King Sihamoni before leaving on Friday. AFP
Although we have just a short-term relationship, I think that our friendship tie is very strong.
BILATERAL TRADE
2005 Cambodia exports - $2.01mSKorean exports - $150.72m
2006 Cambodia exports - $3.196mSKorean exports - $146.11m
2007 Cambodia exports - $2.587mSKorean exports - $192.28m
2008 Cambodia exports - $7.415mSKorean exports - $229.77m Source: Embassy of South Korea PRIME Minister Hun Sen and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak are to meet in Phnom Penh today to sign a host of bilateral agreements, most of which are economic, in what will be Lee’s first visit to the Kingdom since becoming president in February last year.In an economic capacity, the two leaders have known each other for more than 13 years as part of a relationship that has driven economic ties between the two countries and led South Korea to become the second-largest foreign investor in Cambodia, according to analysts and observers.Hun Sen’s first interaction with Lee in Seoul in July 1996, a year before the two countries established diplomatic relations, focused purely on one question, says an unnamed official at the South Korean embassy in Phnom Penh: How can Cambodia develop economically?As a longtime employee of Hyundai Engineering, which he left after 27 years in 1992, Lee had spent his professional life in a country that had exited the disruption and chaos of the Korean War and initially struggled to develop following partition, falling behind North Korea in terms of economic output. In 1977, when Lee became South Korea’s youngest CEO at Hyundai, South Korea was still in the process of struggling for electoral democracy – in other words, it was a country not dissimilar to 1990s Cambodia.“South Korea (including CEO Lee) was [perhaps] the only country with the experience among developed countries that grew [from being] undeveloped,” says Ho Jai-jung, a business reporter at the Seoul-based Dong-A Ilbo newspaper, who has previously met with Lee. In 2000, two years after Lee resigned from a second term in the Korean National Assembly and was fined 4 million won (US$4,000) for breaking election rules on campaign fundraising, Hun Sen asked him to become a special economic adviser, a role that has been referenced numerous times, but which remains largely unclear in terms of its scope and mandate.The same year, this working relationship saw Lee visit Phnom Penh, during which time he and Hun Sen held “in-depth discussions … on [Cambodia’s] economic development”, said the South Korean official. “Since then, whenever Prime Minister Hun Sen visited [South] Korea, he and Lee engaged in discussions on a wide range of areas, including economic issues.”Lee already had considerable experience in infrastructure and investment projects in mainland Southeast Asia.While at Hyundai in the mid-1960s, he worked as an accountant in Thailand for Hyundai Construction on a two-year project building the Pattani-Narathiwat highway. Later, in the 1970s, he worked on a huge bridge project in Malaysia that involved close interaction with its former enigmatic leader Mahathir Mohamad. During the next decade, Lee was involved in the construction of a host of projects in Indonesia, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia. Lee had therefore built some of the largest infrastructure projects in Southeast Asia over a period of nearly three decades, an experience Hun Sen apparently hoped to tap into.Although reports this decade said Hun Sen had many foreign economic advisers, Lee’s influence appears to have been significant, as Cambodia received an influx of investment from South Korea, particularly from companies within the Hyundai group.At the end of 2003, Hyundai Engineering started provincial power-supply projects that saw infrastructure, including transmission lines, installed in eight rural towns in the Kingdom, Choi Kang-shik, the firm’s vice president of overseas marketing, said Tuesday by telephone. Before these projects were completed in November 2006, Hyundai Engineering consulted on a project developing Sihanoukville’s sewerage system that was implemented in 2004 and later worked on Battambang’s hydroelectric power plant.Still, Hyundai managers say that Lee’s former ties to the diversified group of companies did not further its standing in the Kingdom.“I don’t think so,” said Kim Song-soo, director of Hyundai Amco Cambodia Co Ltd. “He did – and will [continue to] – consider Hyundai as one of the Korean business groups, not more than that.”By the time Lee was elected president in 2008, which saw him end his role as Hun Sen’s adviser, South Korea had become the second-largest investor in the Kingdom after China and was providing Cambodia’s key tourism industry with more arrivals than any other country. “Such frequent exchanges between the two … clearly attest to the fact that the close relationship between our countries is progressing faster than at any time before,” said the South Korean official.However, 2008 also saw the onset of the global financial and economic crisis. Since Hun Sen’s attendance of Lee’s inauguration ceremony in Seoul last year, South Korea’s economic presence in the Kingdom has waned drastically, almost defining Cambodia’s experience of the crisis.Even as approved investment for South Korean firms soared from $148 million to $1.2 billion from 2007 to 2008, largely over the earlier part of the year, actual investment in Cambodia fell from $629.49 million to $472.89 million, according to the Korean embassy in Phnom Penh.Cambodia’s exports to its closest business partner continued to rise, reaching $7.4 million last year, mostly made up of garments and textiles, according to the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency office in Phnom Penh. Exports were worth $4.8 million in 2007.However, these small gains did little to offset losses elsewhere, with orders from major garment buyers in the United States and Europe, which account for more than 80 percent of Cambodia’s garment exports, tailing off rapidly. What really hurt Cambodia where Korea was concerned was the cancellation or delay of many high-profile developments, which ripped the heart out of the local construction sector.With the won falling around 30 percent against the US dollar, building materials were suddenly much more expensive.South Korea has also been a key source of growth in Cambodia’s tourism sector, with the country accounting for more arrivals last year than any other. But since the downturn, South Korean tourists have stayed away. The fall in tourism has been compounded by the winding down of trade and investment since the fourth quarter of last year, meaning fewer Korean businesspeople have made the five-hour flight.Arrivals from South Korea, almost all by air, plunged 31.23 percent in the first seven months of this year compared to the same period in 2008, the largest fall of any country’s visitors. More Vietnamese than South Koreans have visited in 2009. Again Cambodia’s relationship with South Korea on the tourism front defines the sector’s woes since the economic downturn began. Although arrivals are up, particularly from Vietnam, air arrivals – the big moneymaker – were down 13 percent in the first eight months year on year, according to Ministry of Tourism figures. This prompted South Korea’s Asiana Airlines to suspend flights between Incheon and Siem Reap for nearly three months up to the middle of next month.Still, South Korea is going ahead with new projects in Cambodia. Hyundai Amco Construction, a division of Hyundai Motor group, started Phnom Penh Tower in December, and Dae Jo-young, director of Hyundai’s new assembly plant in Koh Kong province, said last week that the project is delayed but ongoing and could begin operations in February.Yet more deals – most notably on mining and energy – are due to be signed after Lee touches down in Phnom Penh today, along with a new arrangement on loans to the Kingdom, a government statement said.“Although we have just a short-term relationship, I think that our friendship tie is very strong,” South Korea’s Ambassador to Cambodia Lee Kyung-soo told reporters last week.In many ways, this is a relationship that has been established and defined by Hun Sen and Lee, almost purely in economic terms.
Thaksin a central figure at 15th ASEAN summit
Hun Sen’s overtures to Thai ex-PM stoke rhetorical flames, but Hor Namhong emphasises progress on regional economic ties, meeting with US president.
Photo by: Heng Chivoan Hun Sen arrives at Phnom Penh International Airport after attending the 15th ASEAN summit in southern Thailand.PRIME Minister Hun Sen, Foreign Minister Hor Namhong and the rest of the Cambodian delegation returned Sunday from the 15th ASEAN summit in Hua Hin, Thailand, a meeting at which leaders faced distraction by Hun Sen’s controversial invitation to Thai ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.Speaking to reporters after his arrival at Phnom Penh International Airport, Hor Namhong said that ASEAN leaders had focused on bolstering economic ties both within the bloc and with global allies.“There will be a meeting between leaders of ASEAN and US President Barack Obama on November 15 in Singapore,” Hor Namhong said, adding that regular meetings between the US and ASEAN would occur in the future.China, meanwhile, promised to increase its loans to ASEAN nations to US$6.5 billion, while Japan “will look for investment in developing members of ASEAN including Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar,” Hor Namhong said.Away from the meeting rooms in Hua Hin, though, Hun Sen and Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva engaged in a war of words stemming from Hun Sen’s invitation for the exiled Thaksin, on the run from Thailand following his ouster in a 2006 coup and conviction on corruption charges, to come to Cambodia and serve as his economic adviser. “Millions of Thai people, the Red Shirts, support Thaksin. Why as a friend can’t I support Thaksin?” Hun Sen said in Hua Hin, adding: “Many people talk about Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar, why not talk about Thaksin? That cannot be referred to as interfering.”Abhisit rebuked his guest, telling reporters there was no comparison with the Myanmar opposition leader. “I don’t know how many people share [Hun Sen’s] view that Thaksin is like Aung San Suu Kyi. I doubt there are many, for fairly obvious reasons,” Abhisit said.Thailand deployed thousands of security forces in and around Cha-Am over the weekend in order to avoid repeats of disruptions at previous summits. Bangkok’s The Nation newspaper reported Sunday, however, that members of the anti-Thaksin People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) plan to protest next month outside the Cambodian embassy in Bangkok. Hor Namhong said that despite recent differences, the Cambodian government had “received assurances from Thai authorities that they will protect our embassy.”
Photo by: Heng Chivoan Hun Sen arrives at Phnom Penh International Airport after attending the 15th ASEAN summit in southern Thailand.PRIME Minister Hun Sen, Foreign Minister Hor Namhong and the rest of the Cambodian delegation returned Sunday from the 15th ASEAN summit in Hua Hin, Thailand, a meeting at which leaders faced distraction by Hun Sen’s controversial invitation to Thai ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.Speaking to reporters after his arrival at Phnom Penh International Airport, Hor Namhong said that ASEAN leaders had focused on bolstering economic ties both within the bloc and with global allies.“There will be a meeting between leaders of ASEAN and US President Barack Obama on November 15 in Singapore,” Hor Namhong said, adding that regular meetings between the US and ASEAN would occur in the future.China, meanwhile, promised to increase its loans to ASEAN nations to US$6.5 billion, while Japan “will look for investment in developing members of ASEAN including Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar,” Hor Namhong said.Away from the meeting rooms in Hua Hin, though, Hun Sen and Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva engaged in a war of words stemming from Hun Sen’s invitation for the exiled Thaksin, on the run from Thailand following his ouster in a 2006 coup and conviction on corruption charges, to come to Cambodia and serve as his economic adviser. “Millions of Thai people, the Red Shirts, support Thaksin. Why as a friend can’t I support Thaksin?” Hun Sen said in Hua Hin, adding: “Many people talk about Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar, why not talk about Thaksin? That cannot be referred to as interfering.”Abhisit rebuked his guest, telling reporters there was no comparison with the Myanmar opposition leader. “I don’t know how many people share [Hun Sen’s] view that Thaksin is like Aung San Suu Kyi. I doubt there are many, for fairly obvious reasons,” Abhisit said.Thailand deployed thousands of security forces in and around Cha-Am over the weekend in order to avoid repeats of disruptions at previous summits. Bangkok’s The Nation newspaper reported Sunday, however, that members of the anti-Thaksin People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) plan to protest next month outside the Cambodian embassy in Bangkok. Hor Namhong said that despite recent differences, the Cambodian government had “received assurances from Thai authorities that they will protect our embassy.”
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