Hot News ( Forgiving and forgetting ) | Have Video

Forgiving and forgetting

Once a senior figure in Pol Pot’s murderous Khmer Rouge regime, former navy chief Meas Muth, who was charged last week with war crimes and crimes against humanity, claims to have found forgiveness through religion.

Muth, who faces charges of “murder, extermination, enslavement, persecution on political and ethnic grounds, and other inhumane acts”, now enjoys a reputation in his home village as a kindly father who will do anything to help his fellow man.

Faced with increasing health problems, the 77-year-old spends much of his time on his sprawling estate in Battambang province’s Ta Sanh village.

Currently in the process of building a pagoda on the grounds of his home, Muth sees religion as a means of escaping his notorious past.

“In about 23 years' time, I will have lived for a century, so what I am worried about recently is finding the money to finish the pagoda construction, and at noon [every day] I am trying to read the Buddha’s book and think about the Buddha’s words,” he said yesterday.

Now better associated among his neighbours with philanthropy than mass murder, Muth says most recently he sold his own truck to purchase materials that are being used to build a hall for local monks. Sitting on a hammock in a small outhouse that rests in the shadow of his large wooden home, Muth explained that Buddha’s teachings have taught him to “forgive everything”.

“Before, I was angry with the Americans for throwing bombs on my head; I was so angry. But now I have found happiness, I forgive all,” he said.

With charges laid against him last Tuesday by Khmer Rouge tribunal international co-investigating judge Mark Harmon, Muth could soon be brought face-to-face with the past he is trying to evade.

While espousing his forgiveness of others, Muth, who is accused of killing foreigners captured in Cambodian waters and purging his own soldiers, had little to say about his own crimes.

“I decided to stop talking about the ECCC or anything to do with the Khmer Rouge,” he said bluntly.

“I used to record my voice on tape to describe everything about me but now … I have decided to stop talking about this, because I understand about what the court is doing,” he said. “If I speak out or don’t speak out, it’s meaningless; all the accusations are not true, so what they’re doing is just revenge for what they lost during the Lon Nol regime.”

Local villagers and monks, who have become close with the former Khmer Rouge leader, were also reluctant to speak about his past, and said Muth’s age was reason enough for his crimes to be forgiven.

Schoolchildren cycle past one of Meas Muth’s community projects yesterday in Battambang province’s Ta Sanh village. Heng Chivoan

“If we’re talking about the law, they have to sentence him, but if we think about morals, they shouldn’t, because he is old,” said a villager, who gave his name only as Rorn and who works with Muth planting cassava.

People in the local community, he added, regard Muth as a father because “he manages everything for people here. He has provided farmland, land for housing, [and] pagodas for the people. He is a very good person and people love him.”

Another villager, who declined to give her name, said she feared the impact Muth’s arrest would have on the community.

“If he’s gone, will villagers here have farmland? Will villagers here have a good standard of living? Will villagers have a pagoda?” she asked, adding that seeing Muth at the pagoda every day showed he deserved redemption. “He is [a] very good man. Please do let us know if the court is going to arrest him,” she said.

Samlot district’s deputy chief monk, 83-year-old Prey Tann, echoed the villager’s concerns.

According to Tann, Muth has constructed four pagodas in the district, and, without him, he fears construction on the latest one may remain incomplete.

“I think if the government arrests him and brings [him] for sentencing in Phnom Penh, Tasanh Chas pagoda will not get completed, because it’s only him that tries to construct this pagoda,” he said.

For now, details of whether Muth will be arrested remain unclear, particularly given the strident government opposition to the cases. On the day the tribunal announced the charges, court legal communications officer Lars Olsen said “it has not been possible, within a reasonable time, to get any arrest warrants executed”.

Heather Ryan, a court monitor for the Open Society Justice Initiative, said that if the investigating judge issues an arrest warrant, the judicial police have an obligation to carry it out.

But Olsen would not confirm yesterday whether there were plans to arrest Muth, citing confidentiality.

Meanwhile, Muth says he doesn’t want to know about the charges. “Recently, I am pretending to be a deaf person; I don’t want to hear about the ECCC.”

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Hot News ( Villagers spurn firm’s ‘gifts’ ) | Have Video

Villagers spurn firm’s ‘gifts’

A plantation company with its sights set on a community forest long used by local ethnic minority Jarai in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district arranged a meeting with more than 200 villagers this week to try to persuade them to sign over the woodland.

Representatives of the Heng Yieb Co, flanked by local authorities, hoped Monday’s meeting would go off without a hitch, bringing along boxes of foodstuffs and jars of wine they hoped would lower tensions and ease the talks to follow.

But the best-laid plans often go awry.

The 250 villagers took their seats around the company officials as they produced about 50 boxes of instant noodles, bags of salt and three large jars of wine.

But the Heng Yieb representatives were surprised to hear the villagers’ response to their offer of “gifts”.

“The company told us that they were not bribing us, rather they were just bringing us presents and asking if it was OK for them to clear our community forest land,” said Pouy Yang, 51, an ethnic Jarai who attended the meeting.

“But we rejected it. We will not allow them to clear [our land], because it will affect us badly.”

The villagers have depended on the forest for generations, he added, and allowing the company to clear the land would lower their living conditions.

The villagers asked the company to find another site to grow rubber.

Chhay Thy, provincial coordinator for local rights group Adhoc, said Heng Yieb Co had been granted an economic land concession (ELC) in the province years ago, but its development so far had broken the law on ELCs and subsequent government decrees.

While the company says it was granted a 5,000-hectare concession in 2009 that encompasses the community forest, their designs on the area would seem to fall afoul of the government’s recently adopted “tiger skin policy”.

Under that policy, signed by the environment and agriculture ministries in May last year, land inhabited by farmers must be excluded from concession areas companies hope to develop.

“The community strongly disagreed with the company’s plan to clear their land and offer them ‘gifts’, so they all went home,” he said.

The company, however, denied that the food and wine were gifts or that they were asking permission to clear the land.

Company director Meas Sokunmony said the goods were for everyone to share and the meeting was held to inform the villagers of the development plans.

“They are not gifts . . . So far, I have given hundreds of cases to the soldiers already,” Sokunmony said.

Mar Vichet, O’Yadav district governor, said the land was state-owned, “but villagers want the land for the next generation”.

“I admire those villagers who dared to express their concerns and not be afraid of anyone. I will forward their request to the provincial authorities for review and discussion,” he said.

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Hot News ( National Assembly expenses under scrutiny ) | Have Video

National Assembly expenses under scrutiny

Son Chhay, deputy chair of the National Assembly’s Banking and finance commission, yesterday demanded detailed spending reports from assembly administrators during a commission hearing with senior members of its general secretariat.

Following a two-hour closed door meeting, the opposition lawmaker told reporters that his investigations have uncovered irregular expenses at parliament this year including the purchase of $12,000 lightning rods and the construction of a $50,000 gate.

“The loss of money at the National Assembly comes from two major sources. Firstly, spending in relation to hospitality reaches about $11 [million] to $12 million per year. This hospitality includes guests visiting our country through the National Assembly or lawmakers going on missions abroad, with $11.55 million spent, which is extravagant and no one checks,” Chhay said.

“[The] second area is spending on construction and the purchase of materials which are unusually expensive”, he continued, citing the purchase of a $35,000 flagpole, plans to buy a number of similarly priced photocopiers, and the planned acquisition of a fleet cars costing almost $100,000 each.

He said that evidence of widespread nepotism and ghost workers in addition to such questionable expenses meant the commission required clarifications from assembly secretary-general Leng Peng Long.

“I also stressed to them that stealing from the budget . . . [and] placing staff based on nepotism or bribes are crimes under the penal code,” he said, repeating allegations that assembly deputy secretary-general Mith Karen has more than a dozen family members working in the administration. Attempts to reach Karen were unsuccessful.

Cheam Yeap, the commission’s chairman and a senior CPP lawmaker, did not attend the meeting. He has reportedly disapproved of Chhay’s push to question Peng Long but could not be reached for comment about the matter yesterday.

Chhay claimed Peng Long answered during the meeting that he would have to wait for National Assembly president Heng Samrin to give him permission to pass documents to the commission that could shed light on exorbitant spending.

According to Chhay, the assembly’s budget is almost $40 million for 2015, with 1,351 workers currently on the payroll, a more than three-fold increase from 2006.

Peng Long declined to comment on Chhay’s allegations yesterday when reached by phone. He referred questions to commission chairman Yeap.

Ly Kimleng, a CPP lawmaker and the commission’s secretary, said the questioning focused on the assembly’s procurement. She confirmed that a request for documents had been made so parliament’s expenditures could be reviewed, but unlike Chhay, claimed Peng Long had agreed to provide them. “They agreed that they will provide the documents we want and what is available,” she said.

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Hot News ( ‘Arrogant’ NGOs mocked ) | Have Video

‘Arrogant’ NGOs mocked

Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday lashed out at a group of NGOs that boycotted this week’s consultation on two election-related draft laws at the National Assembly, characterising them as prima donnas that consider their presence more important than other interested groups.

Speaking at a graduation ceremony at the National Institute for Education, the premier slammed the Electoral Reform Alliance (ERA) for skipping Monday’s meeting, which saw the two major political parties publicly defend a new National Election Committee law and amended election law.

ERA members have claimed the new election law is worse than the old one, will place undue restrictions on the freedom of NGOs, and was drafted without meaningful consultation by parties simply suiting their own political interests.

Hun Sen yesterday attributed their unwillingness to participate in Monday’s forum to arrogance.

“Because of [their] obsession with stardom, there were some organisations boycotting,” he said.

“But [we can] ask, has this boycott caused [us] to die? [We] have not died. We are going ahead smoothly.”

The premier continued by saying that the participation of the ERA – whose findings after the 2013 poll were used by the opposition CNRP to back up their claims of widespread election fraud – was irrelevant, as the laws were not made to satisfy them.

“Now [we] have heard that if the parliament invites [them] again, they would come [and join],” he said.

“There is no time [to call all of you again]. Attending or not attending is your business. No one is going to satisfy just a few of you.”

He added that although the groups, which include longtime poll monitors like Comfrel and NICFEC, may consider themselves essential to election reform, their failure to approve the laws would not stop the parties from pressing forward with their plans to pass them in the National Assembly.

“No, it is not like this. [We have] one country, one institution, one mechanism; [we] will never let it become deadlocked.”

At Monday’s meeting, CNRP election reform working group member Eng Chhay Eang also appeared to rebuff the ERA’s concerns, saying those who claimed the amended election law was worse than before had clearly not read the old law.

Comfrel executive director Koul Panha yesterday continued to call for CPP and CNRP leaders to hold further, and more in-depth, consultations with civil society.

The ERA had complained before Monday’s meeting that they had not been given enough time to prepare, given that full drafts of the law were only released on the weekend.

“Why did [Hun Sen] say that this law does not belong to civil society?” Panha said, citing a provision of the amended election law that would levy harsh fines on NGOs if they are deemed to have insulted political parties or candidates during the election period.

“These laws will affect civil society, so they must be allowed to join [with the parties] and discuss them properly.”

Separately, UN rights envoy Surya Subedi on Monday evening backed NGO calls for further public consultations, saying in a statement that “the parties must not negotiate away national and international human rights standards”.

“It is regrettable that the draft law was shared only on the eve of the consultation, precluding the possibility for civil society and other interested actors from examining it in depth and contributing meaningfully to the consultation,” he said.

“The process of consultation must continue with sufficient time to enable all those with views to articulate them, so as to enable Parliament to embark on an informed debate prior to proceeding on the enactment of these important laws.”

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