31^st March 2011

The disappearance and then equally strange reappearance of former Chinese diplomat and now Australian spy novelist, Yang Hengjun, a critic of China’s human rights abuses in an internet blog that has a wide audience in China, appears another sign that Chinese conservatives are increasingly in the ascendency in the country. Widely believed to have been detained by China’s Secret Police, Radio Australia now reports friends say he has contacted them saying he had been ill and in hospital. But they reportedly say there was something “strange” about his manner, when he made those calls.

Sydney Morning Herald’s John Garnaut believes the arrest could have been a “stuff-up” where local security officials got ahead of their overlords in Beijing. Yang has now been released, it is believed, on the understanding that he now behaves in a way that allows the authorities  to save face in advance of Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s pending visit to China.

Nevertheless, it is becoming clear that there is a crackdown on any evidence of dissent by Beijing spooked by events in the Middle East. In an apparent lurch to the right, whereas China’s previous five-year plans were generally focused on the economy and little else, the latest, released at the end of the National People’s Congress (NPC) last week, outlines a new imperative of imposing tighter control over the populace.

According to author, journalist and academic Dr Willy Wo-Lap Lam, the Blueprint contains lengthy sections on buttressing public security, tackling “mass incidents”, as well as implementing “social management” (shehui guanli), which are code words for boosting socio-political stability. New social-management offices are being set up nationwide with at least one such unit for every major street in big cities as well as for each of the country’s 40,000-odd towns and rural townships.

In an apparent reaction to the estimated 100,000-odd mass incidents – including riots and disturbances – that had struck the country annually since the late 2000s, the Blueprint disclosed for the first time the CCP leadership’s elaborate plans to build a nationwide “yingji xitong (rapid-response system) for tackling emergency incidents”.

While no deadline has been mentioned, this labyrinthine wei-wen (“upholding stability”) apparatus, which is under the overall supervision of the CCP, is expected to be put together by 2015 with a budget for 2011 set at 624.4 billion yuan (US$95.18 billion) – 23.3 billion yuan ($3.55 billion) more than that of the PLA.

Also significant is the Blueprint’s recommendation that “social organizations” (shehui zuzhi), which is the official term of Chinese-style non-governmental organizations (NGOs), be put under tighter government surveillance. The document noted that NGOs should be subject to a system of controls that consists of “a synthesis of legal supervision, government supervision, social supervision and self-supervision”. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/MC31Ad02.html

Scuttlebutt has it that Britain’s telecommunication’s giant, Vodafone, is about to enter Cambodia’s congested mobile phone market and, in doing so, will give the local industry a much needed shake up as well as provide genuine competition to the dominant duopoly of Mobitel and Metfone.

Vodafone is the world’s largest mobile telecommunications company measured by revenues and the world’s second-largest measured by subscribers (behind China Mobile), with around 341 million proportionate subscribers as of November 2010. It operates networks in over 30 countries and has partner networks in over 40 additional countries. These include networks in the Asia-Pacific in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, as well as partnership agreements with other carriers in a number of other countries including Indonesia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka.

The company is also noted for its embrace of innovative business models in Africa, such as its pro-poor mobile payment solution developed in Kenya that has been copied throughout the developing world, including here in Cambodia.

Unconfirmed reports have it that first on the list of prey – sorry – acquisitions is local operator qb, which has been struggling to gain market traction since being taken over by a new management team earlier this year. A number of others are expected to follow suit.

There is also speculation that the latest entrant, Emaxx, whose announced business plan fails to make sense to analysts here, is in reality a play in anticipation of this new development, or even a stalking horse for Vodafone.

Local observers are wetting themselves in anticipation of the blood-letting that could ensue.

30 March 2011

Terry McCoy notes that, since 2006, 17 accused sorcerers have been killed in provincial Cambodia, usually following a sickness in the community that villagers found suspicious, according to local NGOs.

Moreover, roughly two-thirds of homicides involving sorcery don’t make it to criminal court. Of the 15 different cases involving sorcery accusations and homicide since 2006, only six have led to prosecution, Licahdo reported recently.

The farther out you go into Cambodia’s under-policed countryside, superstition and shamanistic practices are central to the fabric of society. Such practices and beliefs, McCoy writes, create an alternate geography that most rural Khmer inhabit where culture, fear, and magic coalesce.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/110328/cambodia-magic-murder-sorcery

Actually, you don’t need to go into the countryside. Even educated Khmers subscribe to these beliefs.

30^th March 2011

In a survey that will come as no surprise to foreign businesses here, the AFP reports Indonesia and Thailand are perceived as Asia’s most corrupt economies, with Cambodia seen as the third most corrupt, in an annual survey of foreign business executives by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) released yesterday.

The March results are based on more than 1,700 responses from 14 Asian economies plus Australia and the United States, which were included for comparison purposes, PERC said. In a grading system with zero as the best possible score and 10 the worst, Indonesia got 8.32.

Cambodia came in with a score of 7.25, followed by India with 7.21 and Vietnam with 7.11.

A grade greater than 7.0 indicates that a “serious” corruption problem exists, PERC said.

Perceived as Asia’s most corrupt country in the 2008 survey, the Philippines made a marked improvement with a score of 7.0 to rank sixth from the bottom this year. It was followed by Malaysia with 6.70, Taiwan with 6.47, China with 6.16, Macau with 5.84, South Korea with 4.64 and Japan with 3.99.

Singapore and Hong Kong retained their top two rankings as the region’s least corrupt economies, although there are concerns about private-sector fraud, according to the survey.

Thailand was seen as the second most corrupt country with a grade of 7.63, but PERC said foreign investors were more concerned about political stability, which suggested that businesses are willing to tolerate certain levels of corruption as long as they are predictable and can be factored into cost structures.

Corruption may even help to “oil the wheels” of business in some circumstances but the overall costs to an economy are recognized as negative because it inevitably produces a misallocation of resources because it acts as an extra “tax” that confers no benefits for the country as a whole.

The Cambodia Mine Victim Information System (CMVIS) reports there were 286 landmine casualties in 2010 in the Kingdom, an increase on the 244 reported in 2009 and 271 in 2008, with 15 new casualties in January this year. It estimates that since 1979 there have been 63,821 mine casualties, which corresponds to 39 landmine deaths and injuries every week for 31 years, with about 44,000 survivors.

The government introduced a Law on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of People with Disabilities in 2009 to support the right to employment without discrimination, and in the same year adopted a National Plan of Action for Persons with Disabilities, including landmine survivors, in order to better address needs and provide services, but life for the disabled in Cambodia remains tough, writes Catherine Wilson. http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3090&Itemid=207

However, as ever when it comes to Cambodia, there is a disturbing undercurrent to the story that the piece doesn’t mention.

In the article, Wilson describes the tribulations of one such mine victim who works selling books outside the National Museum in the heart of Phnom Penh. She mentions that this unfortunate belongs to The Angkor Association for the Disabled (www.angkorad.org/).

For a disturbing insight into the running of this “NGO”, check out the following: http://www.travelfish.org/board/post/cambodia/1637_scam-or-gem-the-truth-about-angkor-association-for-the-disabled—a–live-in–volunteer-s-experience