Sand exports go on unabated
A RECENT boom in sand exports from Cambodia to Singapore, fuelled by a “complete lack” of transparency and government regulation, could severely damage the country’s riverine and coastal ecosystems, according to a report released on Monday by international anticorruption watchdog Global Witness. The 40-page report, titled Shifting Sands, argues that exports to Singapore, where the...
More on ‘Pyongyang’
Following my recent article on North Korea’s chain of restaurants across Asia, I appeared on Radio New Zealand’s This Way Up programme on Saturday, speaking about the operations and how they work to funnel cash back to the Kim clan in Pyongyang. Click here to listen to the segment.
War correspondents reminisce
Today marks 40 years since the Vietnamese communists rolled into Saigon, forcing the US to beat a hasy retreat from their embattled South Vietnamese client state. The occasion threw up its fair share of iconic images (see right), including the extraordinary sight of a North Vietnamese T-54 tank smashing open the gates of the city’s...
Father searches for truth
OFF a dusty track in Trapeang Chranieng village lies a half-finished Buddhist pagoda, its unpainted walls still exposed to the mid-afternoon sun. Like many across Cambodia, the new building – as well as a nearby shrine, built in 2007 – is dedicated to the spirits of those killed in the village while it was under...
Crunch time in corruption fight
ONE month after passing its long-awaited Anticorruption Law, Cambodia is entering a make-or-break period in its fight against corruption, a veteran Hong Kong corruption fighter said this week, and the first year after the law comes into effect will be significant in determining the legislation’s ultimate success. Under the law, set to come into effect...
An icon fades in Cambodia
PHNOM PENH – BY uprooting six wooden border markers last October along the Vietnamese border, Cambodia’s opposition leader Sam Rainsy again cast himself in the familiar role of a thorn in the flesh of authority. Earlier this year, a court sentenced Rainsy to two years in prison in absentia for uprooting the posts. He now...
Revisiting Lon Nol’s Cambodia
Forty years on, former participants reflect on the country’s star-crossed republican experiment
An unsafe house
Did Beijing’s economic assistance to Cambodia influence Phnom Penh’s deportation of 20 political refugees?
In the shadow of Vine Mountain
With an Australian inquest set to revisit the killing of three Western tourists by Khmer Rouge in 1994, former cadres in Kampot reflect on the events that led to the men’s capture and killing
Chinese linked to filling of lake
CHINESE companies have been closely involved in the controversial development of Phnom Penh’s Boeung Kak since its inception, according to news reports and local rights groups, who said they became aware of the companies’ role after a research group from China visited the site last week.
China’s soft power hardens in Cambodia
PHNOM PENH – A DAY after Cambodian authorities spirited 20 ethnic Uighur asylum seekers out of the country on an unmarked charter flight, China’s Vice President Xi Jinping touched down at Siem Reap International Airport. During his three-day visit in late December, the Chinese leader signed an unprecedented US$1.2 billion in economic aid agreements with...
