PHNOM PENH – As bulldozers slam down huge trees outside, Tann Sinthou brandishes a meticulously highlighted copy of Cambodia’s land law, hoping it will save her home, the latest public asset to go under the hammer in a slew of government land swaps. "This land is state land," the defiant 54-year-old cries from her veranda…
Read moreCambodia’s first soya milk factory eyes nourishing nation’s children
PHNOM PENH – Taking a break from her job of sifting through sacks of soya beans, Cambodian Chea Bunna sighs as she remembers foraging for frogs and crabs in rice paddies to fill her family’s stomach. Now she supports them by working in the kingdom’s first long-life soya milk factory. The 59-year-old with cataract-clouded eyes…
Read moreKids of the dump: Cambodia’s scavengers scrap out a livelihood
PHNOM PENH – Hauv Sokhon wears his blue baseball cap low over his eyes as he pokes through the stinking refuse of Cambodia’s most notorious rubbish dump. If he finds enough plastic and aluminium amid the oozing debris, he’ll earn a dollar today. Wielding a metal hook, the 13-year-old has eked out a living at…
Read moreCambodia school siege underlines kingdom’s struggle to recover from war
PHNOM PENH – A school siege which led hostage-takers to kill a Canadian toddler has underlined the struggle Cambodia still faces in recovering from decades of war. Sucked into the Indochinese conflict of the 1960s and early ’70s, wracked by civil war and then devastated by the 1975-1979 genocidal Khmer Rouge regime which oversaw the…
Read moreCambodian villagers cry foul over loss of land to Vietnam
PHUM PREY TUOL, Cambodia – The goosebumps prickle on the arms of Cambodian rice farmer Em Chouen when he recalls how he lost his land, allegedly to Vietnamese soldiers who beat him with iron rods. "I was ploughing my fields when the Vietnamese came and accused me of taking the land," he says, speaking at…
Read moreUnwavering loyalty for Khmer Rouge in final strongholds
Sitting on the steps of the empty villa of a former Khmer Rouge commander, Cambodian San Roeun passionately defends the mass killers he fought for as a soldier. Pol Pot’s ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge regime swept into Phnom Penh 30 years ago this Sunday, launching a nearly four-year pursuit of an agrarian utopia that would lead…
Read moreReclusive but free, Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge leaders wait for trial
Ly Kim Seng stabs her hoe into the weeds threatening her watermelons on land abutting Cambodia’s border with Thailand. She pauses to explain that her husband Nuon Chea, Pol Pot’s deputy during the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, is too ill to accept visitors. A child’s bicycle lies along the path leading to the mango-tree shaded…
Read moreFree private hospitals saving the lives of Cambodia’s sick children
Pen Naun sits breastfeeding her two-month-old baby in an airy but crowded hospital ward with scores of other fraught Cambodians, many lying on mats covering the terracotta-tiled floor. Receiving free treatment at this gleaming six-year-old private hospital run by a maverick Swiss doctor who plays a cello to help fund its operations, they are among…
Read moreAsian governments pledge to reduce disparities to help children
Twenty-six Asian governments pledged Friday to work towards reducing disparities within their countries in a bid to improve the lives of the region’s 600 million children. In a declaration, the countries pledged to "find ways to guarantee free or affordable services to all members of society. We recognise that the survival, growth and development of…
Read moreUNICEF head calls for more investment in Asia-Pacific youth
Asian governments are spending much less on public health than the global average, the head of the UN children’s agency said Wednesday in an appeal for more investment in the region’s youth. UNICEF head Carol Bellamy also said the fruits of unprecedented economic growth in the East Asian and Pacific region have not been shared…
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