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Suu Tov KhmerKrom (mysong myvoice)

Monday, August 17

Garment exports plummet 18pc over first half of year

Garment Manufacturers Association head Van Sou Ieng says industrial disputes like the one in this file photo are to blame for the garment-sector downturn, as new figures show first half exports fell 18pc. (Photo by: Tracey Shelton)

Monday, 17 August 2009

Chun Sophal
The Phnom Penh Post
It is difficult for us to estimate the total value for long-term exports of apparel in Cambodia ...
Commerce Ministry figures show a smaller drop than over the first quarter as manufacturers group head blames industrial unrest, not economic crisis

Exports of garments, footwear and other textile products dropped 18 percent year on year over the first half to US$1.27 billion, Ministry of Commerce figures released at the weekend show.

Exports to the United States, Cambodia's key market, were down 30 percent. Canada took 13 percent less by value, while European purchases were down 5 percent over the period.

The figures were released by the ministry's Trade Preferences Systems Department and account for all exports under the generalised system of preferences (GSP) and most favoured nation (MFN) programmes.

Cambodia exports almost all its garments, textiles and shoes through these schemes, which allow the world's least-developed nations to avoid quotas imposed by rich countries on exports from other developing countries.

Looking for a rebound

Department Director Mean Sophea said he expected a rebound would begin to be seen in September.

"It is difficult for us to estimate the total value for long-term exports of apparel in Cambodia because the situation of the world's economy has not recovered yet," he said.

Month-by-month data was not available at the weekend, but the figures suggest the rebound may have already started. In the first quarter of the year, garment exports fell 26.41 percent year on year across to $534.6 million, suggesting a better second quarter.

In March alone, exports were down 38.03 percent year on year to $164.3 million.

Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh told the Post in May that export orders for that month and June would provide a strong indicator of the sector's prospects for the rest of the year. The two months coincided with the start of the "hot season" in the US and Europe, he said.

Van Sou Ieng, president of the Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia (GMAC), told the Post Sunday that the decrease in apparel exports could not be blamed entirely on the global economic crisis.

Cambodia's garment products are more expensive than those of China, Vietnam and Bangladesh, and the country was clearly losing to its more efficient competitors., he said.

"I believe at least 100 factories have been closed down and suspended so far because there has been no orders," Van Sou Ieng said.

Industrial unrest

He also revised a prediction he made in May that exports would fall 30 percent for 2009 on the previous year. He said Sunday he anticipates a 40 percent decline for the full year, claiming that buyers were being scared off by strikes and demonstrations.

Sector representatives have also blamed high electricity prices, customs inefficiencies and a poorly trained workforce for the garment industry's low competitiveness.

Ath Thun, president of the Cambodian Labour Confederation, admitted that factories were closing and that there is pressure on the sector, but said Sunday that GMAC exaggerated the number of closures to scare unions. Factory owners are using the global economic crisis as an excuse to close factories without paying workers' wages properly and to frighten workers from protesting or negotiating, he said.

"I think Cambodia's garment sector would have collapsed already if 100 factories were really closed because the country's total number of factories is only around 300," he said.
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NZ man seeks justice for brother at KRouge trial

Rob Hamill's brother Kerry was one of three foreigners who were murdered by the 1975-1979 communist movement

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

By Suy Se
AFP


PHNOM PENH — A New Zealand Olympic rower told Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes court Monday how he had felt like killing the boss of the Khmer Rouge prison where his brother was killed by the regime.

Rob Hamill's brother Kerry was one of three foreigners who were murdered by the 1975-1979 communist movement after their yacht was blown off course and into Cambodian waters.

Hamill, who represented New Zealand at the 1996 Olympics, was testifying at the trial of jail chief Duch, who was accused of overseeing the torture and execution of about 15,000 people at the Tuol Sleng detention centre.

"At times I have wanted to smash you, to use your word, in the same way that you smashed so many others," he said. Duch has said that the Khmer Rouge used the official term "smash" to refer to killing its enemies.

"Today, in this court room, I am giving you all the crushing weight of emotion -- the anger, the grief, and the sorrow. I am placing this emotional burden on your head," Hamill said.

Kerry Hamill, 27, was sailing through the Gulf of Thailand in 1978 with two friends, Canadian Stuart Glass and Briton John Dewhirst, when their yacht was intercepted by a Cambodian patrol boat.

Glass was shot dead immediately while Dewhirst and Hamill were taken for interrogation and torture at Tuol Sleng for two months, during which they were forced to confess to being CIA agents. They were then killed.

Earlier Monday, Frenchwoman Martine Lefeuvre wept as she told the tribunal how her Cambodian husband was tricked into returning from overseas to die at Tuol Sleng.

She said her French-educated spouse, Ouk Ket, was asked to return home in 1977 from his job as a diplomat in Senegal, Dakar, to help the reconstruction of Cambodia.

But she said that on arrival Ouk Ket was "kidnapped with his hands tied behind his back, blindfolded, and brought in a truck" and went to "hell" at the jail.

Lefeuvre said that in 1991 she and her family came to see Tuol Sleng, which was turned into a genocide museum after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, and found his name on a list of the dead.

"I came before this chamber in order to ask for justice to be done for this barbaric crime," the 56-year-old nurse told the court, demanding the "maximum sentence" for Duch.

Duch, a 66-year-old former maths teacher whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, said he felt remorse for their suffering.

"I was such a coward at that time. I did not dare to assist anybody," Duch told Hamill.

Duch has previously accepted responsibility for running the jail and begged forgiveness, but insists that he did not have a central role in the Khmer Rouge hierarchy.

Led by Pol Pot, who died in 1998, the Khmer Rouge emptied Cambodia's cities in a bid to forge an agrarian utopia, resulting in the deaths of up to two million people from starvation, overwork and torture.
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Brother of NZ victim rages at Khmer Rouge trial

A Cambodian man watches television at a restaurant in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, Aug. 17, 2009 as it shows Rob Hamill from New Zealand whose brother was killed by the Khmer Rouge during its 1975-1979 rule in Cambodia. The TV program is broadcast during the trial of Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, who is tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the U.N.-backed tribunal. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Tuesday, August 18, 2009
By SOPHENG CHEANG
AP


PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The brother of a New Zealander tortured and killed by the Khmer Rouge three decades ago told the man who ordered the execution on Monday that he wished him a similarly gruesome fate.

Kerry Hamill was 28 when his yacht was blown off course into Cambodian waters in 1978, and he was captured by the radical communist regime. He and a shipmate, Briton John Dewhirst, were taken to Phnom Penh's S-21 prison and later killed.

Kerry's brother, Rob, wept as he testified at the trial of S-21's commander, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch — the first of five senior Khmer Rouge defendants to be tried by a U.N.-assisted tribunal and the only one to acknowledge responsibility for his actions.

"Duch, at times I have wanted to smash you, to use your words. The same way that you smashed so many others," Rob Hamill said, sitting in a suit and tie, his hands folded before him. "Smash" was the euphemism the Khmer Rouge used when ordering executions.

"At times, I have imagined you shackled, starved, whipped and clubbed, viciously. I have imagined your scrotum electrified, being forced to eat your own feces, being nearly drowned and having your throat cut," said Hamill, referring to some of the horrors faced by prisoners.

Duch sat behind him, expressionless.

"I have wanted that to be your experience, your reality. I have wanted you to suffer the way you made Kerry and so many others (suffer)," Hamill said.

About a dozen Westerners were among the estimated 16,000 people held at the prison before being killed. The communist regime's radical policies while in power from 1975-79 caused the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people nationwide by execution, overwork, disease and malnutrition.

Rob Hamill, 45, a rower who represented New Zealand at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, said his family learned of his brother's death 16 months after he disappeared. Their parents read in a newspaper that he was executed after two months at S-21.

"Death not by shipwreck, not by drowning or freak accident, but death by torture. Death by torture not over a few seconds or minutes or hours or days or weeks even," said Hamill.

Asked by judges for his response, Duch (pronounced DOIK) repeated his earlier testimony that he received orders to kill the Westerners and burn their bodies.

He asked for forgiveness from the victims' families, acknowledging that they had suffered miserably.

He said he was not offended by being blamed.

"Even if the people threw stones at me and caused my death, I would not say anything," he told the court.

Duch is charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture and murder, and could face a maximum penalty of life in prison. Cambodia has no death penalty.

His trial is expected to wrap up by the end of the year.
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