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Two Men Sought in Brazen Rape, Abduction
Police are seeking two men suspected of raping a young woman after a brazen abduction from a
The victim, who is 16 years old, was allegedly kidnapped by two men at gunpoint from Soun Samneang beer garden around 1 am on Friday night, according to her brother, Ra, who witnessed the abduction and asked that only his first name be used.
Ra's account was corroborated by a police report and testimony of another witness, who asked not to be named with the two men still at large.
The men had been drinking at the beer garden earlier that night, Ra said. They drank until the restaurant closed, and just as Ra's mother arrived to pick up his sister, they returned in their car, a green Toyota Corolla, brandishing pistols.
The two men, both in their twenties, pushed his sister and mother into the car, Ra said in a recent interview from his apartment near Soun Samneang, where he shares a room with guards and waitresses from the restaurant.
He was unable to help because of the guns, Ra said.
"That night, they came," Ra said. "I was fighting with them, and they said, 'Be careful of dying,' and they also pushed me toward the car. I want these gangsters put in prison."
The kidnappers took the two women on National Road 6, dropping the mother at the
Chamkar Mon district police said they have received a complaint from the victim, who said she asked to use the phone of Tek Meas, after the alleged assailants left her, taking her phone and her jewelry.
However, staff members at the Tek Meas guesthouse said Monday they had no knowledge of the incident.
A night guard at the guesthouse, who declined to give his name, said he was asleep by 11 pm that night and did not know two men had taken a girl into a room.
"I know nothing. I heard nothing. I went to sleep as usual," he said.
Everyone with knowledge of Friday's incident was afraid to give his or her full name, for fear of reprisal.
The owner of the Soun Samneang beer garden, who gave her first name, Neat, said she had helped the victim file a complaint.
"I'm worried about this kind of case happening again at my restaurant, because the restaurant has no right to keep the guns of its visitors," she said. It is not possible to know which guests have guns, she said.
A coworker, Nuon, who is a beer promotion girl at Soun Samneang, said she and other girls at the restaurant are now afraid for their safety.
"Even the young gangsters have guns. That's why I'm afraid," she said, adding that she was forced to continue working to earn money and support her parents.
Ra said his sister and mother have gone into hiding.
Chamkar Mon District Police Chief Ouch Sokhorn said Monday the two suspects had been identified, but he declined to provide further details in the ongoing investigation.
However, Friday night's alleged crime was not an isolated incident, and similar cases are not hard to find.
Another victim, Leak, 21, worked as an Angkor Beer promotion girl last year at a similar beer garden in
"One man pointed the gun and forced me to get in the car, and they brought me to a guesthouse," she said. "One man wore a condom, but the other two did not. That's why I'm afraid of AIDS."
The event still haunts her, she said, and the memory of it hurts. She never filed a complaint, and now regrets it, she said, because the three men who raped her remain free.
Lim Mony, director of the women's department of the rights group Adhoc, said criminals in
"It shows that the honesty and dignity of the law are low down," she said. "The police do not fully protect the safety of society."
Most important, she said, such abductions and rapes exhibit a disregard for women, and especially women who work at night.
Nop Sarin Sreyroth, secretary-general of the Cambodian Women's Crisis Center, said Friday night's case highlighted a worsening problem, where offenders have no respect for the law.
If the men are not arrested and punished, it will affect the feeling of women who work at night, she said, and will encourage other similar crimes.
Phnom Penh Police Chief Touch Naroth said last week the city was meeting with guesthouse owners to make sure they register their guests before renting them a room, or face a fine or closure.
Guesthouses have become a favorite place for petty criminals to do drugs, commit crimes, and rape women, he said.
Read more!Sihanouk ville
Sihanoukville is surrounded by palm-fringed sandy beaches and pristine tropical islands off its south and west coast. Beaches here lies on the west contour of the city, from north to south, namely Victory Beach, Lamherkay Beach, Koh Pos Beach, Independence Beach, Sokha beach, Serendipity Beach and Occheuteal Beach. The most popular beaches are Occheuteal, Sokha, Independence and Victory. From here, you can go island hopping, diving, snorkeling and game fishing at the islands nearby.
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Samak is (almost) back
Two days after being kicked out of office by the Constitution Court, Samak Sundaravej is on the verge of becoming prime minister again.Mr Samak on Thursday accepted a formal invitation by the People Power party to have his name put up for nomination as premier when parliament meets on Friday.
The decision to nominate him again was taken at a PPP meeting on Thursday, and transmitted to Mr Samak by a top-ranking party delegation sent to his house, said PPP deputy spokesman Suthin Klangsang.
"Mr Samak has accepted his nomination for prime minister," Mr Suthin told reporters. "He said he is confident that parliament will find him fit for office, and that he is happy to accept the post."
The controversial re-nomination is certain to raise more opposition before MPs meet Friday morning. Anti-government protesters, business, and media editorials have called on Mr Samak not to run for premier again, after being ordered to resign by the Constitution Court on Tuesday.
On Thursday, anti-Samak forces got a hint of support from the army chief.
Gen Anupong Paojinda called on Thursday for the end of a state of emergency in Bangkok, imposed by Mr Samak, and said he would welcome formation of a unity government involving all political parties and perhaps outsiders. Such a "national government" appears unlikely, however.
The court disqualified Mr Samak from the post because he violated the constitution by hosting two cooking shows on commercial television.
The decision came just a few hours after the PPP resolved to re-elect the sacked premier for the top job in the government.
Shortly before Mr Samak announced his decision, representatives of six coalition parties held a joint news conference to announced their decision to continue to form a government alliance with the ruling People Power party (PPP) at its head. In effect, PPP gets to name the cabinet, as before.
They all agreed to support the person nominated by PPP as the leader of the government.
The meeting was chaired by Deputy PPP leader Somchai Wongsawat - currently the acting prime minister and the man most likely to become premier if Mr Samak decides not to stand, or is defated.
Representatives of Matchimathipataya, Pracharaj, Chart Thai, Ruam Jai Thai Chart Pattana and Puea Pandin parties announced that they will support whomever the PPP nominates for the prime minister's post.
At the press conference on Thursday afternoon, Chart Thai deputy leader Somsak Prissananantakul and Ruam Jai Thai Chart Pattana leader Chettha Thanajaro said the next prime minister who will be nominated on Friday must be able to solve the political crises.
The five coalition parties however plan to hold another meeting on Thursday evening to discuss the PPP’s premier nomination.
Drought claims Takeo's rice crop
HENG CHIVOAN
Takeo farmer Ouk Heng, 66, examines her paddy last week. Drought is threatening to destroy harvests in Takeo province, where few farmers have access to proper irrigation systems. "Last year the brown grasshopper ate 30 percent of our seeds, this year the drought could do much worse," said Chhoeung Sareth, 54, a farmer in Trapaing Sab commune, Barty district in Takeo province, which has been hit especially hard by the drought.
The farmers in her community are bracing for a complete loss of their crop this year. "The rice seedlings will die if there is no rainfall, and we will die if there is no rice," she said.
Voeung Chanthan, head of Barty district's agriculture bureau, said "our district has no water supply other than rain so the drought has destroyed 70 percent of the rice".
Ith Sarun, director of Takeo province's agriculture department, estimated the rice harvest would shrink by 20 percent but insisted there would be no food shortages.
The drought's timing couldn't be worse, as it comes during the critical early stages of the paddy harvesting process, said Grahame Hunter, an agronomist for the agricultural technical team ABK. "The only way to get around drought is irrigation, which most farmers ... don't have access to."
Tuol Sleng, From Prison to House of Memory
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| A monk pauses in a detention room at Tuol Sleng, a prison turned museum now under consideration for Unesco protection as a Memory of the World. |
Through one old building to the next, the group moved, and in the eyes of some, tears built, as they scanned the mug shots of scores of Cambodians who had been photographed just before their executions. As the tourists passed the photographs of the dead, the beds where they had lain, and the shackles that had held them, a few had to flee the building, sobbing.
"Terribly shocked," one foreign woman said. "We all followed the events at that time, through media and television. And when you see the real place and you are a witness though the photographs and paintings and the torture instruments of the torture cell, it's difficult to imagine the horror and tragedy."
Still, she said, "I think it is important that this museum was made."
As many as 100 visitors pass through here a day, most of them foreigners.
"When you come here you feel like you just want to be silent and try to imagine," said Valerie de Robillard, a French visitor who come in Cambodia for the first time. "It is a dimension that is even more terrifying in this genocide."
A high school called Tuol Svay Prey until August 1976, Tuol Sleng became the Khmer Rouge's largest prison facility. In less than two and a half years, the prison held at least 12,000 Cambodians, and as many as 16,000, who were tortured and interrogated under suspicion of spying or disloyalty to the regime. Nearly all of them were later executed and dumped into mass graves on the outskirts of town, at a place called Choeung Ek, touted now by tour guides and taxi drivers as "the killing fields."
Kaing Kek Iev, the 65-year-old former chief of the prison better known by his revolutionary alias, Duch, is now set for trial under the Khmer Rouge tribunal. The prison he once ran stands now as an icon of his regime's cruelty. It has also serves as a storehouse of evidence in his impending trial, holding thousands of documents and photographs that testify to atrocities committed under the ultra-Maoist regime, under which as many as 2 million Cambodians died.
Only seven survivors of the prison have been positively identified, and only three of those survive. Records indicate as many as 177 were released, but these survivors have not been found.
Tuol Sleng is now under consideration as a Memory of the World site, its documents and photographs, the walls themselves, and even the Choeung Ek "killing fields" to be protected by Unesco.
"We need to serve justice for all victims, whether they died or survived," the director of the museum, Chhey Sopheara said.
Prisoners were routinely tortured here, their confessions against the regime extracted under the worst of circumstances: waterboarding, electric shock, burns, prolonged hanging.
The Vietnamese forces that ousted the Khmer Rouge, on Jan. 7, 1979, found the prison and recognized a need to preserve it. Tuol Sleng ceased being a prison and began its life as a museum on Aug. 19, 1979, following a trial in absentia of the regime's leaders, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and Pol Pot. Pol Pot has died. Khieu Samphan and Ieng Sary have joined Duch in tribunal detention.
The Vietnamese left many of the rooms and cells as they found them. The museum is still inscribed by rusty coils of barbed wire, and visitors can walk past rows of cells just 1.2 meters wide. In a closet sit the old instruments of the Khmer Rogue: shovels, sticks, axes. Photographs of tortured children, handcuffed or chained, are on display on large wooden tables.
A requisite stop for most tourists in Phnom Penh, Tuol Sleng, known to the Khmer Rouge by its code name, S-21, is also visited by Cambodians who suffered from the regime.
"The prisoners were tied by their feet and hanged," said a man named Kreusnar, 26, whose father, older sister and uncle died under the Khmer Rouge and who came from Prey Veng province to visit the museum alone. "The Khmer Rouge prisoners were soaked in water jars or in basins. They had their nipples cut off. This torture to me seems fresh.
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