Protesters swarm shopping district

Tens of thousands of red-shirt protesters blocked a major intersection in the capital's business centre on Saturday, paralysing traffic and closing shopping malls, as they continued their campaign to force Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to immediately dissolve the House of Representatives.

Leaders of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) announced their mobile rally plan in the morning at Phan Fa Bridge, saying they would muster at two locations -- Ratchaprasong intersection and Vibhavadi-Rangsit Road.

The first group of protesters was dispatched to set up a stage at the intersection. A few hours later, thousands of red-shirts converged on the Ratchaprasong area, bringing business and traffic to a halt.

Police from Lumpini station tried to negotiate with the protesters, asking them to open one lane for traffic but they refused. Traffic around the intersection was totally blocked before noon.

Large shopping malls in the area closed, including Central World, Gaysorn Plaza, Big C, Siam Centre and Siam Discovery.

Pol Maj Gen Piya Utayo, spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Bureau, said police have received reports that the protesters would stay overnight at the Ratchaprasong intersection.

Police would continue to negotiate with the protesters and ask them to withdraw from the area because there are schools and hospitals in the vicinity.

Red-shirt leader Jatuporn Prompan said this rally coud last for three days. A House dissolution is the least the government could give the protesters, he said, adding that Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuabn had no right to try to negotiate with them to reduce the dissolution timeframe to eight months.

"We cannot let Abhisit rule the country any longer," he told the crowd. "The government has no legitimacy to rule."

The Centre for Administration of Peace and Order (CAPO) estimated there were 60,000 people taking part in the red-shirt protest in the capital on Saturday, spokesman Col Sansern Kaewkamnerd said.

He urged the protesters to listen to police and open routes for traffic and pedestrians.

Col Sansern said CAPO had no plan to crackdown on protesters, provided they remain within the law.

In the morning, a group of people who called themselves "Silent Power" gathered at Rama IX Park in Prawet to voice their opposition to the continuing protest.

They distributed stickers saying, "End the protest. We want a peaceful life." Many of them wore pink shirts and waved Thai flags.

They marched from the park to Seri Centre shopping mall and back to the park. They dispersed afterwards.

Authorities have deployed 50,000 soldiers, police and security personnel in the city to maintain law and order under the provisions of the Internal Security Act.

This photo gallery shows red-shirt protesters at Ratchaprasong intersection on Saturday.
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"If the US gives us the equipment, we are happy. And if they won't give it to us, it is also good": Khieu Kanharith

Cambodia shrugs at US punishment over Uighurs

04/02/2010
Agence France-Presse

PHNOM PENH--The Cambodian government on Friday said it was untroubled by a US refusal to send military aid to the Southeast Asian nation as punishment for its deportation of 20 Chinese Uighurs.

The US stopped a shipment of 200 military trucks and trailers on Thursday in response to Phnom Penh's controversial December deportation of the ethnic Uighur asylum seekers to China, where they said they would face torture.

Nations and rights groups deplored Cambodia's move to expel the Uighurs, who had been labelled "criminals" by Beijing after fleeing China's far western Xinjiang region following violent clashes with the majority Han.

Cambodian government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said his country was not concerned by the cancelled donation of surplus US military supplies, part of an American aid programme.

"If the US gives us the equipment, we are happy. And if they won't give it to us, it is also good," he told AFP.

"There will be no effect to our military work," the spokesman added, saying that the UN refugee agency had been too slow in assessing the Uighurs' claim to refugee status.

The decision to deport the Uighurs came a day ahead of a visit by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, during which he agreed 1.2 billion dollars in aid and loans to Cambodia with Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Clashes between Xinjiang's Uighurs and China's majority Han ethnic group in July left nearly 200 dead and 1,600 injured, according to official tolls.

The US State Department in its last annual human rights report said that China was stepping up cultural and political repression against Uighurs in Xinjiang.

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Cambodia bristles at US aid cut over deportations

Friday, April 02, 2010
AP

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Cambodia bristled Friday at a U.S. decision to cut a small military aid program to protest the December deportation of Muslim asylum seekers to China, saying if they deserved protection the United States could have offered it.

The United States announced Thursday it had suspended the program that supplied surplus trucks and trailers. It was a response to Cambodia's deportation of the 20 Uighurs who had fled ethnic violence last year in China's far west. China accused the Uighurs of involvement in the violence.

The suspension involves about 200 vehicles supplied directly to the Cambodian military and does not affect the roughly $60 million civilian aid program to Cambodia, said U.S. Embassy spokesman John Johnson.

In statements to the U.N. refugee agency, the Uighurs said they witnessed and documented the July rioting in the Xinjiang region between their minority group and majority Han Chinese and that they feared lengthy imprisonment or even the death penalty if they were returned to China. It was China's worst ethnic violence in decades.

"These Uighurs were not real political asylum seekers," said Cambodian government spokesman Khieu Kanharith. "If they were real political asylum seekers, the United States could have granted them asylum in the U.S."

"We're happy if the United States provides us with aid, but it's their right to suspend it," he said.

China had called the group criminals and presented Cambodia with arrest warrants, the spokesman said. Cambodia said it deported the group because they had entered the country illegally.

"Cambodia couldn't refuse the request from China to deport them, because China sent us arrest warrants," Khieu Kanharith said.

China is key ally and donor to impoverished Cambodia.

Days after the deportations, China announced a $1.2 billion aid package to Cambodia. China has denied the aid was linked to politics saying it came with "no strings attached."

The group of Uighurs had made the journey from China's far west through to Vietnam and then Cambodia with the help of a network of missionary groups.

The U.S., the U.N. and several rights groups had urged Cambodia not to deport the group. Following the deportations, the U.S. said it was "deeply disturbed" and that the incident would affect Cambodia's relationship with the United States.

China has not revealed the fate of the deportees.

Overseas activist groups say Uighurs in China have been rounded up in mass detentions since the summer's violence that killed about 200 people in Xinjiang. Almost 200 people have been tried and several dozen death sentences have been handed down, although authorities haven't said how many people have been executed.

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A History Tour of Phnom Penh's Buildings

http://www.forbes.com/

via CAAI News Media

Ron Gluckman, 04.02.10

Forbes Asia Magazine dated April 12, 2010

Phnom Penh is one of Asia's most architecturally intact cities.

Tourism and investment are booming in Phnom Penh, and the Cambodian capital's rich architectural heritage is a big draw. It seems like a city from 50 years ago, the result of the Khmer Rouge taking Cambodia back to Year Zero. The eerie sense of a bygone Asia is a perfect backdrop for the boutiques, galleries and restaurants springing up by the score in the historic mansions. But development inevitably brings demolition. "Every day something seems lost," says Alexis de Suremain, who runs hotels in several historic estates and Chinese House, in the city's oldest Chinese shophouse.

Help could come from Asian Heritage Properties, a fund open to large investors that aims to buy key heritage buildings, restore and rent them out. "Call it social capitalism," says Patrick Davenport, who plans to launch the fund with Douglas Clayton, who runs Leopard Capital, Cambodia's largest investment fund. "It's sad to see Phnom Penh repeat all the same mistakes of the rest of Asia," he says. "But there is still time to try a different approach."

RIGHT:This tower-topped structure often stops traffic along the busy intersection of Street 108 and Norodom Boulevard. One of Phnom Penh's oldest buildings, it claims numerous features that are not found anywhere else in the city. Historic preservation groups such as Heritage Watch put it high on the list of municipal architectural treasures that runs to hundreds of buildings.

LEFT: Largely the residence of squatters and ghosts in recent years, this ornate, early 1900s estate has been a favorite of filmmakers chronicling the war era; bullet and mortar holes are still visible. Often threatened with demolition, it was recently acquired by the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Cambodia, which runs a restaurant and bar in a renovated colonial structure nearby. The fcc plans a boutique hotel; guests will have views of the National Museum and the fairy-tale Royal Palace.

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Cambodia shrugs off U.S. halting shipments of military trucks

April 02, 2010
Source: Xinhua

Cambodia shrugged off U.S. suspended shipments of 200 military trucks over retaliation of Cambodia's deportation of Chinese asylum seekers last year.

Koy Kong, spokesman for Cambodian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, said that Cambodia has her full sovereignty to implement its policy in deporting the illegal 20 Chinese Uighur asylum seekers back to China in December last year.

"It is the rights of U.S. government to either donate or suspend such assistance. Cambodia is implementing its own policy and laws within the frameworks of full sovereignty," Koy Kong told Xinhua.

"That means U.S. can implement their policy and we can implement ours."

Foreign media quoting United States Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the United States informed Cambodia last month that it was suspending the shipment of 200 military trucks and trailers as a consequence of Cambodia's December decision on the illegal Chinese Uighur asylum seekers.
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TRAVEL NOTES

The figure of a young Khmer girl carved in stone at the Cambodian temple of Angkor Wat.

AP / DAVID LONGSTREATH

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Floods, then drought, did in Angkor

The Warwick Mall will rise again; Angkor Wat wasn’t so lucky.

It turns out that flooding rain, intersperced with decades-long drought, conspired to topple the historic city of Angkor, researchers from the U.S., Australia, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam have reported. They studied the ring patterns of millennia-old trees found the Khmer empire’s former capital and found they were subjected to water and food supply-depleting weather events, leaving the city vulnerable to interrelated infrastructural, economic and geopolitical pressures in the 14th and 15th centuries.

The finding, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, sheds new light on the mystery surrounding Angkor’s demise in 1431. Spanning about 400 square kilometers (98,842 acres) in southwestern Cambodia, Angkor is South-East Asia’s most important archaeological site, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which listed it as a World Heritage site in 1992.

The analysis showed several abrupt reversals from drought to very intense monsoons during the late 14th and early 15th centuries.

Vatican artifacts stopping in St. Louis

The Missouri History Museum in St. Louis will be the only Midwestern stop in a traveling exhibition of rarely seen art and artifacts from the Vatican.

“Vatican Splendors: A Journey through Faith and Art” opens May 15. The exhibition is one of the largest collections of Vatican art, documents and historically significant objects ever to tour North America. Some of the items have never left the Vatican.

Highlights include artwork, personal objects and tools of Michelangelo; frescoes and mosaics; artwork dating to the third century; and bone fragments and other relics of saints.

Tickets go on sale April 19. Details: mohistory.org/home/.

Tracking college friends online

Want to keep track of your friends on spring break or any other time of year? A new Web site started by college students aims to make it easier.

With Gtrot — gtrot.com/ — you can use Facebook to check out where your friends are headed and broadcast your own travel plans. Gtrot also links with travel booking sites like Kayak.com to help you hop onto your friend’s flight. And through Gtrot, you can see a map of where your friends have been, to pick up tips on a city you might be planning to tour.

Of course, your friends have to be registered on Gtrot and Facebook for all this to happen. But if you’re a college student heading to Cancun or Panama City, Fla., chances are they’re on Facebook already. Gtrot just takes things one step further, said Zachary Smith, one of the site’s young co-founders.

“Being college students ourselves, we saw the need for a more integrative kind of travel experience,” said Smith. “We’re the target audience.”

He noted that any highly mobile person on Facebook will find Gtrot handy, even if it’s just to share a cab to the airport.

“Especially during major academic holidays, when thousands of students leave the same campus for similar destinations, our cab- and ride-sharing tools will help travelers save money and reduce the environmental impact of their trips,” said Robert Corty, another Gtrot co-founder, in a press release.

Moving artwork on Disney cruise ship

The walls and floors will come alive on Disney’s latest cruise ship.

More than 20 pieces of moving artwork will line the decks of the Dream, which launches early next year, while two interactive floors will keep kids on their feet in the ship’s youth areas.

The new interactive experiences were unveiled during a recent press demonstration at the headquarters of Walt Disney Imagineering, the company’s creative design team.

The 22 pieces of “enchanted art” will be showcased on LCD screens encased in glass and surrounded by a frame housing speakers and a camera that can detect when a cruiser is in front of it. For example, if a passenger is looking at a photo of Walt Disney on the beach in Rio de Janeiro, the characters from “The Three Caballeros” may zip through the landscape.

In the ship’s youth areas, children will be encouraged to step, jump and pound on two interactive floors featuring games with characters from such Disney films as “Bolt,” “Tron” and “Princess and the Frog.” Glowing pads around the floor’s perimeter are used to detect weight and control what happens on 16 screens planted within the interactive floor surface.

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SRP officials storm out of city workshop

Animated CPP Mann Chhoeun (R) (Photo: John Vink/Magnum)

Thursday, 01 April 2010
Meas Sokchea
The Phnom Penh Post

DOZENS of Sam Rainsy Party district councillors stormed out of a workshop at City Hall on Wednesday in response to what they perceived as attacks on their party’s leadership, then staged a press conference at which they called for Phnom Penh Deputy Governor Mann Chhoeun to be removed from his post.

The workshop, which was convened to cover the effective use of city data books, descended into partisan rancour after Mann Chhoeun accused “opposition lawmakers” of groundlessly blaming municipal officials for the eviction of poor residents of Phnom Penh to the capital’s outskirts.

SRP district councillors at the event said afterwards it was clear that Mann Chhoeun had been referring to their party, and also that the deputy governor said he had wanted to knock out their teeth.

“I have always heard Mr Mann Chhoeun attack the opposition party. He did not say the specific party name, but he was focusing on the SRP,” Thach Khunsarin, a Meanchey district councillor, said at the press conference staged at party headquarters following the walkout.

“We would like to request that the government remove Mr Mann Chhoeun from his post as Phnom Penh deputy governor.”

SRP lawmaker Ho Vann also said he believed Mann Chhoeun’s behaviour was evidence that he is unfit for his role.

“What we heard from Mann Chhoeun today was impolite. He is not suitable to be a leader. Beating us until our teeth fall out – is he suitable to be deputy governor? He is not a politician, and this is not a time to propagandise,” he said.

Reached Wednesday afternoon, Mann Chhoeun denied the allegations levelled against him by the SRP district councillors.

form : ki-media.blogspot.com

“I just called on them to learn on behalf of the authorities. Some of them did not want to work but attacked instead. Then they walked out. This shows that they do not have good manners, that they are impolite people,” Mann Chhoeun said.

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