Hun Sen Rules Out Hosting Exile Thai Gov’t

 

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Tuesday rejected speculation that Cambodia could play host to an exile government formed by the forces loyal to former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra who were ousted in a coup d’etat last week.In a speech delivered at Phnom Penh’s Koh Pich at a ceremony for graduates from the Royal University of Phnom Penh, Mr. Hun Sen also warned Mr. Thaksin, his long-term ally and friend, of the instability that could be caused by forming a government-in-exile. 

“Firstly, Cambodia regards the Thai situation as Thailand’s internal problem, and Cambodia will not interfere and has not interfered in Thailand’s internal problems,” Mr. Hun Sen said at the ceremony.

The prime minister explained that he had been in Shanghai when the Thai military declared martial law at 3 a.m. on Tuesday and had phoned instructions immediately back to Phnom Penh.

“When there was a coup, I contacted [Deputy Prime Minister] Sar Kheng and asked him to issue a directive for the armed forces along the border to maintain a normal relationship and to not deploy armed forces to avoid any misunderstandings,” Mr. Hun Sen said.

“Our attitude is to work hard to keep a normal relationship with the Thais whether there is a civilian government or military government,” he added. “Now I hear that the Thai king signed [off the military] to lead the country, so it is finished because their king has signed to lead the country.”

“I hope that former prime ministers Yingluck and Thaksin will understand about Cambodia’s stance, because now Yingluck and Thaksin are not the prime ministers leading their country,” Mr. Hun Sen said.

Mr. Thaksin’s sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, was ousted as prime minister three weeks ago in a highly politicized decision from Thailand’s Constitutional Court. On Thursday, the Thai military then ousted the rest of her government and assumed power.Mr. Thaksin was ousted as prime minister in a military coup in 2006 and fled to Dubai to avoid charges of corruption.Mr. Hun Sen, who has for many years cultivated a close personal relationship with Mr. Thaksin—whom he once dubbed his “eternal friend”—had promised the former Thai leader and his followers safe passage and sanctuary in Cambodia, and even allowed Mr. Thaksin and his red-shirt supporters to rally at Angkor Wat in 2012.

“Prime Minister Hun Sen has an iron heart and it is lucky for the neighboring country,” Mr. Thaksin told supporters at the time. “If he did not have [an] iron heart like this, thousands of you could not come here.”The friendship led to speculation in international media earlier this week that Mr. Thaksin could be allowed to organize forces in Cambodia.Mr. Thaksin’s international lawyer, Robert Amsterdam, was on Sunday quoted by Australia’s national broadcaster, the ABC, as saying Ms. Yingluck’s ousted government and Mr. Thaksin’s supporters were planning to set up a government-in-exile to oppose the military junta. The ABC openly speculated that Cambodia could play host.

At Tuesday’s ceremony, however, Mr. Hun Sen put the kibosh on rumors that Mr. Thaksin’s forces could be allowed to organize in Cambodia. Instead, he called on the red shirts in Thailand to wait for the junta to call fresh elections in the country in “a year and a half or two years.”

“I confirm that Cambodia is not the location to provide any countries or any group of Thais or any countries to create an exile government, and the Cambodian Constitution does not allow Cambodia to become a location opposed to any countries,” Mr. Hun Sen said.

Mr. Hun Sen also said a government-in-exile could lead Ms. Yingluck, Mr. Thaksin and their Pheu Thai party to “meet with an incident” and called on the pair to reject Mr. Amsterdam’s public claim.

“This opinion, if I were Thaksin, I would reject now,” Mr. Hun Sen said, before explaining that he was offering the advice in his capacity as a political analyst and not as Cambodia’s prime minister. “If I were Yingluck, I would reject it now because it is a very dangerous opinion.”“This opinion, it could make Yingluck and Thaksin die,” he added.The prime minister called on Cambodians living in Thailand to follow the orders handed down by the Thai military and to avoid joining in activities that could be perceived as political or insurrectionary.“Please don’t join any groups to oppose any other groups,” he said.

Mr. Hun Sen cut his teeth as prime minister under the Vietnamese-backed People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), which fought through the 1980s and early 1990s against a Cambodian government-in-exile on the Thai border formed from remnants of regimes from the 1960s and 1970s.

The exiled forces were backed by Thailand, the U.S. and China and frequently withdrew into Thai territory to the protection of the country’s strong military when attacked by the forces of the Vietnamese and PRK.The Foreign Affairs Ministry also released a statement Tuesday informing Cambodians living in Thailand of the 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew imposed by the Thai military and announcing that Cambodia’s embassy in Bangkok had set up a hotline for anyone facing “emergency problems.”“There will be no problems if our Cambodian people respect their rules and laws,” said Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong.

Two Uyghur Teens Shot Dead After Kashgar Knife Attack

 

Authorities in northwestern China’s Xinjiang on Wednesday shot and killed two teenage Uyghur suspects who allegedly injured two people in a knife attack, police said, in the latest violence to hit the restive region.The incident occurred around 8:00 p.m. local time in Kashgar city, southwest of the regional capital Urumqi, after police attempted to arrest the two armed men in response to a public complaint, local authorities told RFA’s Uyghur Service.“We arrived at the spot after the public report and we encircled the suspects, as they were holding knives,” said Alimjan, chief of police at Kashgar’s Yengibazar (in Chinese, Dongmen) police station.

“However, they attacked the public upon seeing us, injuring two Han Chinese, so we fired on the suspects,” he said, adding that the action was based on the government’s “shoot to kill” order following increasingly deadly violence attributed to “separatist” groups in the region.Alimjan said that one of the suspects died at the scene, while the other succumbed to gunshot wounds during treatment at an area hospital.

The police chief said that his unit had only been called in to “keep order and calm the situation,” so he was unclear about the identification of the two suspects.“When I saw them, they looked like they were 17 or 18 years old. Later, I was told by investigators that they were both born in 1996,” he said, before referring further questions to the Kashgar prefectural police department.

The chief of police for Kashgar’s Yawagh district told RFA that the knife attack had been carried out by “separatists,” referring to Uyghurs who chafe under Chinese rule in the Xinjiang region.“We are so busy after … [the] separatist attack,” he said.“Right now we are tightening our checks and surveillance of the entire city.”Dawutjan Hoshur, chief of Kashgar’s Kumbagh police department, said that the incident occurred 5 kilometers (3 miles) away from his station, near a hospital for the treatment of respiratory diseases.

“Han Chinese traders reported [the suspects] to the authorities, so the Yengibazar police, together with a SWAT team, dealt with the suspects,” he said.“I do not know the details of the incident. This happened in the Yengibazar police jurisdiction, so they know more information.”

Recent violence

The latest incident occurred less than a week after a bomb exploded in front of a police department and four other bombs were defused by authorities in Yarkand (Shache) county in Kashgar prefecture on May 23.

A day earlier, five suicide bombers carried out an attack on a vegetable market in Urumqi, leaving 39 people dead and more than 90 others injured in the worst violence in Xinjiang in years amid tensions between ethnic minority Uyghurs and Han Chinese, the dominant ethnic group in China.Uyghurs in Xinjiang say they are subjected to discriminatory and often violent checks and searches and restrictive religious and cultural policies and suffer from a lack of economic opportunity.

China Central Television recently reported that the elite Politburo, a decision-making body of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, had met under the chairmanship of President Xi Jinping and discussed measures to counter "extremists" in Xinjiang in the wake of last week’s explosions.Beijing has announced a one-year crackdown to hunt down and punish "terrorists" in Xinjiang and "prevent terrorism and extremism from spreading to other regions."

Mysterious bones stoke conspiracy

 
A package containing charred human remains was delivered to the Cambodia National Rescue Party office in Phnom Penh yesterday morning.Despite a seeming complete absence of hard evidence, some are convinced the remains – found on Saturday at a mountain in Kampong Speu – belong to 16-year-old garment worker Khim Saphath, last seen with blood pouring from his chest after police opened fire with live ammunition during a January 3 garment strike crackdown on Veng Sreng Boulevard.

Dim Keang, a local CNRP activist, retrieved the remains from Mareas Prov mountain in Samrong Tong district on Saturday, after being led there by local villager Mao Touch.Because locals say they saw a truck travelling to the vicinity on the night of January 3, followed by what appeared to be the glow of a fire, Keang said he believes that Saphath’s body was burned there by soldiers, despite no examination of the remains having been carried out to this point.Yesterday, just hours after making the trip from Kampong Speu with the remains in tow, Keang went into hiding after learning that Touch had been detained by police for questioning.“Police took my son this morning at 7am, and to this point he has not returned,” Yim Sorn, Touch’s father-in-law, said yesterday evening.

“They took him to the commune police station and now to the provincial police station. “My son did not do anything wrong, he just found the area [where the body was burned].”
According to Preap Porn, a CNRP official who sits on the council of Srang commune, where Touch lives, and who accompanied Keang to Phnom Penh with the remains, Keang is now in hiding because he fears being arrested.But Sam Sak, head of the Kampong Speu provincial police’s serious crime department, said officers had merely called in Touch to clarify what he had found at Mareas Prov mountain.“We want him to clarify and show us what he saw at the place where the incident took place. He has clarified differently from [what] Dim Keang has claimed. He said that he has never met Dim Keang although Dim Keang has said that he went to [the site] with Mao Touch. He also said that he only found ashes there and no remains,” he said.

Sak added that Touch would be released tomorrow and that police now wished to speak with Keang.
Teang Sien, an opposition provincial councillor in Kampong Speu province, told the Post yesterday that he, Keang and Porn had brought the remains to Phnom Penh in a car yesterday on the orders of Nuth Romdoul, a CNRP lawmaker-elect in Kampong Speu.A Post reporter also saw a package allegedly containing those remains – which are said to include a skull and several bones – on the table of an office at CNRP headquarters yesterday morning.Both Romdoul and CNRP spokesman Yem Ponharith declined to comment yesterday as to what they were going to do with the remains or why the party was keeping them.Kim Souern, the father of Khim Saphath, whose family held a funeral for their missing son soon after he disappeared in January, said yesterday that he had no idea whether the remains belonged to Saphath.

He also revealed that weeks after Saphath disappeared, the family received an anonymous phone call saying that two to three bodies had been burned near Mareas Prov mountain, not far from an army barracks.“They said that two or three dead bodies were burnt in a fire with car tyres. But I don’t know whether or not either of them were my son,” he said.“I have nothing more to say. I just have regret. If someone asks me to examine the remains I will.”Providing further fodder for conspiracy theorists, police and rights groups attempting to access the site where the remains were found yesterday were blocked by soldiers, who said that they were conducting a training exercise with live ammunition.
Investigators from rights groups Adhoc and Licadho both said that soldiers from the elite Brigade 70 unit had blocked them from entering the site.
“The soldiers guarding there did not even allow police to examine the location where the body was burned.… I think the allegation that the army is training is just a pretext,” Rath Thavy, a senior investigator for rights group Adhoc, said.
But Sak, of the Kampong Speu police unit that is investigating the case, said that after the military exercise concluded today, police would be allowed to enter to investigate.
Adhoc has also called for the remains to be sent to Thailand for DNA testing.
“We cannot know if the remains belong to anyone until we do a DNA test,” Ny Chakrya, head of human rights and legal aid at the organisation, said.
Mao Sophan, commander of Brigade 70, could not be reached yesterday.

Royal documents affirms Vietnam’s sovereignty over sea, islands

The acknowledgement was announced at the sixth working session of the Asia Pacific Regional Committee for the Memory of the World Programme held in Guangzhou, China.

According to Deputy Secretary-General of Vietnam National Commission for UNESCO Nguyen Manh Thang, the heritage won the UNESCO vote thanks to its accuracy and uniqueness, as well as its role in Vietnam’s relations with foreign countries.The documents, which were formulated as part of the State management under the Nguyen dynasty (1802 -1945) - the country’s last monarchy, comprised more than 700 original collections of papers circulated in 11 out of 13 reigns of the dynasty.They were categorised into documents submitted by central and local agencies for the King’sapproval, those promulgated by the King, and diplomatic documents.The papers contain rich and trustworthy information which fully reflects all aspects in Vietnam’s social life from early 19th century to the middle of the 20th century, from politics, economy, diplomacy, public security and defence, to culture, education and health.Notably, the heritage is among rare documents stored all over the world that had autographs of the Kings, providing viewers with a closer approach to the literary styles, thoughts and opinions of the Kings about specific issues.

The collection is also a treasured source of reference for further research on the domestic and foreign policies of the Nguyen dynasty.Furthermore, the documents gathered much information on diplomacy, agreements and trade agreements signed between the Nguyen dynasty and foreign countries, such as China, Laos, Thailand, France and Spain. They were also made of reports presented to the Kings by envoys after their visits abroad.A strong evidence of Vietnam’s sovereignty over its sea and islandsThe dossier of the collection was submitted to the UNESCO on October 31, 2013, by the National Archives Centre. However, the documents had drawn much attention from historical researchers decades ago.

The researchers have found a source of information written in the documents reflecting the Nguyen dynasty’s exercise of sovereignty over its sea and islands, particularly over the Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelagos.These documents were a link to a historical fact that since 1816, King Gia Long – the founder of the Nguyen dynasty, assigned naval forces to carry out surveys in the Hoang Sa archipelago.The surveys in the archipelago became a general rule in the following reigns, as a number of the documents revealed the measurement, mapping, tree planting, temple construction, and coral exploitation conducted by the soldiers.

Most of the papers referring to the Hoang Sa archipelago were seen under King Minh Mang’s reign (1820 -1841), including the paper dated June 27, 1830, on the rescue of a French merchant ship sunk in the archipelago, one dated on April 2, 1838, on weather forecasting in preparation for an upcoming survey, and another dated July 19, 1838, to ask for tax exemption for ships on missions to Hoang Sa.

Under King Bao Dai’s reign (1925 -1945) – the last King of the Nguyen dynasty – the issue was also mentioned in some of the documents, such as the paper dated December 15, 1939, on bestowing a medal to Liuis Pontan, a French officer who died while performing his duty in Hoang Sa, and the paper dated February 10, 1939 on the King’s approval to honour a troop for their contributions to establishing a military post in Hoang Sa.Therefore, the King Nguyen approved papers not only took effect in the country’s administration but are also legal instruments asserting the undeniable sovereignty of Vietnam over its sea and islands.UNESCO’s recognition for the heritage is a significant step representing the world’s appreciation for the fact that Vietnam has exercised its sovereignty over its sea and island throughout the country’s history.

A dangerous dance: China, Vietnam posture in the South China Sea

 

It takes a long time to get to the middle of nowhere. For a contingent of almost 40 reporters, hours of waiting both on land and then at sea preceded a trip to one of the world's most hotly contested areas of maritime real estate.The Vietnamese government had been at pains to keep this media trip under wraps, keeping print, online and broadcast journalists from Asia and the United States guessing as to the day and time of departure.That secrecy may have been for naught: at a pre-departure briefing we are told that while the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not formally informed its Chinese counterpart of the presence of journalists in the area, a Coast Guard official mentions that "chances are" China knows about it.

But depart we do, boarding a small coastguard support vessel Monday evening as the sun dies over Da Nang, bound for the disputed waters surrounding the South China Sea's Paracel Islands, known to China as the Xisha Islands.China's controversial installation of an oil-rig in these waters at the beginning of May sparked protests -- some of which turned violent -- in Vietnam and statements from a variety of world leaders, urging the two sides to resolve this dispute quickly and without bloodshed.

READ: Chinese ships reach Vietnam to evacuate citizensOne side, at least, appears to be in agreement. "The Vietnamese Coast Guard are committed to resolving the situation peacefully," says Hoang Tuan Anh, the captain of the supply ship upon which we hitch a ride.

Strictly utilitarian, our sturdy ride boasts one 125mm cannon on its prow and two 14.5mm guns aft. It is the kind of supply ship that every coast guard needs, and also houses a huge number of plastic 10-gallon jugs of drinking water, a galley piled with vegetables, and a bevy of live chickens under one of the exterior staircases -- supplies badly needed by their crew mates and friends on the front line.As the sun rises again the next morning, we're still chugging steadily toward our destination, claimed by both China and Vietnam. 

Vietnamese boat sinks after collision with Chinese vessel

Clear messageA mid-sea ship change to CG 8003 -- and slightly less cramped conditions -- awaits us as noon approaches. By then we have reached the area where China had, earlier in the month, unilaterally planted a flag on this area of supposedly oil rich sea. The flag, in this case, was an imposing oil-rig that sent a clear message: the Xisha Islands are ours to do with what we will. 

 

No buoys mark the territory, and there is no landfall in sight: just a shimmering expanse of deep water, albeit one with the promise of fossil fuel riches beneath.As we arrive news comes that the rig -- run by state-owned oil company the China National Offshore Oil Corporation's (CNOOC) -- has been moved: no small task for something as big and unwieldy -- yet politically volatile.The operation to move the structure began on Monday morning and was completed by 10.30 p.m. local time, just hours after our voyage began but, equally, hours before we arrived in the zone.

Approaching the area, dots on the horizon become ships, which then become a flotilla -- or perhaps more accurately two separate flotilla -- of both Chinese and Vietnamese commercial and coast guard vessels.This mishmash of fishing and military vessels is all that remains of the flashpoint of a couple of weeks ago, and in a seemingly stage-crafted set of maneuvers dance around this expanse of utterly blue, clear sea.

Aggressive foghorns

It's a lively affair, alternating between angry, static-y rhetoric that informs the Chinese that they are in violation of international law, and aggressive foghorns and sirens, raising a cacophony on this otherwise peaceful, sunny afternoon."I've traveled out to these waters many times but recently the Chinese have been more aggressive towards the Vietnamese," says Hoang, captain of the support vessel. "I'm proud to protect Vietnam."The dance is supervised by the respective country's coast guard vessels, who hopefully have too much sense to engage directly with each other. But hanging over the day's events is the knowledge that just hours before, a Chinese fishing vessel had rammed and sunk one of its Vietnamese counterparts.

No lives were lost in this incident but it is the first time that a boat has been sunk in this chapter of the often-acrimonious relationship between these two ideologically similar neighbors.

As the afternoon begins to wrap up, one of the larger Chinese coast-guard vessel homes in on our ship, horn blasting incoherently as it attempts a little maritime brinksmanship.

Nobody on board CG 8003 seems to be overly worried, although life jackets are donned as a fillip. Like a dog reaching the end of its chain, the Chinese vessel barks at us a few remaining times, before turning heel.Off the starboard bow, two other Chinese vessels harry a smaller Vietnamese fishing boat, pushing it further from the center of this disagreement which, if left untended, could have dramatic consequences for these two countries, key players in a region that is -- perhaps belatedly -- starting to buck under the weight of Chinese hegemony.