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Cambodian acid attacks highlighted by new film


Tat Marina prior to the acid attack against her
Tat Marina and her brother following the acid attack (Photo: The Cambodia Daily)

March 12, 2009

ABC Radio Australia

A US production company has released a feature film highlighting the issue of acid attacks in Cambodia.

Finding Face features a case involving a heinous acid attack on a young karaoke singer by the wife of a senior Cambodian official in 1999. With many similar attacks going unpunished, the film's producers hope the movie will provide victims some sense of justice.

Presenter: Girish Sawlani
Speaker: Tat Marina, acid attack victim; Patti Duncan, producer, Finding Face; Skye Fitzgerald, producer, Finding Face; Jason Barber, human rights consultant, LICADHO

Click here to listen to the audio program (Windows Media)SAWLANI: Tat Marina was just 16 when she was brutally attacked by the jealous wife of a high level Cambodian government official.

The teenage Karaoke singer had been in a relationship with Cambodia's undersecretary of state Svai Sitha, but didn't realise who he was at that time or the fact that he was married.

When his wife Khoun Sophal learnt of her husband's affair, she was raged with jealousy. And in December 1999, she and an assailant, believed to be her nephew, attacked Marina and poured highly toxic acid on her face outside Phnom Penh's Olympic market.

The attack left her with severe burns to her face and body. Her lips were burnt to raw swollen blisters and had her ears removed by doctors as gangrene set in. While a warrant for Khoun Souphal's arrest was issued soon after, she's never been caught and is still believed to be hiding in Cambodia.

Marina's story's now being revisited in the documentary film Finding Face produced by the US based Spin Film. The film's co-producer Patti Duncan says putting the film together was an enormous challenge, but was driven by the need to raise awareness of acid attacks that have since increased substantially.

DUNCAN: She wanted to raise awareness about the topic of acid attacks, particularly in Cambodia where they have been on the rise. We hope that the film can also provide a vehicle for Marina as she continues to go through her own healing process.

ANONYMOUS VICTIM: They closed my case, they've never contacted me for any investigation or they never investigate anyone, they just close the case immediately, maybe right after the night of the accident, I don't know why they did this.

SAWLANI: Finding Face also explores the plight of other acid attack victims in Cambodia and underscores the fact that many of them will never find justice. Here's Jason Barber, a consultant with Cambodian Human Rights group Licadho.

BARBER: There's no reason to think that every acid attack in Cambodia ends up in the newspapers. So the real number of attacks we have no idea, I think no one has any idea. In '99 to 2004 I think there were 75 attacks reported, with more than 100 victims.

SAWLANI: In this respect the film's other producer Skye Fitzgerald sees Finding Face as a tool for justice for Marina and other victims.

FITZGERALD: The fact that there's never been any justice in any form and likely there'll never be any justice within the judicial system for her, this film is a way for them to seek some small form of justice and at least in the court of public opinion. There's a power and a strength to that that the family has reason to � that in itself is a goal worth achieving.

SAWLANI: In the months, and years following the brutal attack, the perpetrators husband, Svai Sitha had contacted Tat Marina in the United States expressing concern and even offering to take care of her needs. But he warned Marina and her family not to pursue a legal case. And with many of Marina's Cambodian based family members speaking out in the film, their safety is a matter of concern. But Co producer Skye Fitzgerald says any threats against them would incur a backlash.

FITZGERALD: We were very careful to collaborate with and brief a number of organisations including Human Rights Watch, the US embassy in Phnom Penh, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia, local human rights NGOs. We're very careful to brief them over the nature of the family's vulnerability when the film was released, and to create what we like to call a cultural or public accountability so that if someone were so foolish as to make a threat against the family there's be a significant outcry within the international community.

SAWLANI: It's been more than nine years since the attack and Tat Marina has moved on and lives in the United States with her brother and young son. But the main perpetrator, Khoun Sophal remains at large.

While Marina's role in the film gives her with some sense of justice, she remains haunted by the ordeal.

MARINA: I always get nightmares every time, sometimes it's not every time. I've tried to leave my past behind but it's so hard. When strange people come out of nowhere and they saw me the way I look and they look at me what I've done to myself, and that is I come home at night time and always have a nightmare.


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Cambodians draw for land [-Stealing from Puthea to give to Phal?]


Many Cambodians lack land of their own. Photograph: Abbie Trayler-Smith

A Cambodian scheme to redistribute land to the poor is drawing criticism from expropriated farmers, writes Francis Deron in Le MondeWednesday March 11th 2009
Francis Deron
Le Monde (France)

"Whereas the vast majority of farmers had their own plot of land 20 years ago, nowadays about one-fifth of the rural population is totally destitute, owning nothing whatsoever" - World Bank official

Day breaks in a village in Kompong Cham province, Cambodia, east of Phnom Penh. The paddy fields are deserted. Women are busy with the washing, but everyone is watching the family heads who have gathered around a map of the village and its surroundings showing the plots of land in the draw.

An official with a megaphone takes a chit from a box and reads out a number. The men, sitting cross-legged on the ground, look anxiously at the number they have been allocated, though they must surely know it by heart. Finally the official announces the name of the winner.

This strange procedure is part of the Land Allocation for Social and Economic Development (Lased) programme. With help from the World Bank and the German Organisation for Technical Cooperation (GTZ), the Cambodian government is giving eligible families land that cannot be transferred for at least five years. It is up to beneficiaries to build a home on the plot and make a livelihood there. Initially, some 8,000 families will be involved.

Of course that is a very small number compared with the masses of Cambodia’s landless peasants, estimated at half a million by the World Bank – but it is a start.

There is nothing new about the problem of land ownership for peasant farmers but it has become an explosive issue in Cambodia. In the 1960s the nascent Khmer Rouge movement played on land shortages to drum up support for the Communist insurrection that helped overthrow the regime of the former king, Norodom Sihanouk. Publicising the current scheme sends the message that the government is looking out for the landless.

After the fall of the Khmer Rouge and the disappearance of officials and public records, confusion surrounded the redistribution of land as private property. To complicate matters further, tens of thousands of people were gradually returning from refugee camps. Much of the land was seized by those with power or influence. Estimates suggest that less than 1% of the population took control of 20% to 30% of the land in that first wave of privatisation, which started in 1991.

"Whereas the vast majority of farmers had their own plot of land 20 years ago, nowadays about one-fifth of the rural population is totally destitute, owning nothing whatsoever," says a World Bank official.

Many of these people had to sell their land, often illegally, to pay for the high cost of medical treatment when family members were injured by landmines in the fields. Until recently in Cambodia, explosive devices left over from 30 years of insurrection and war were still maiming or killing people, at a rate of about 1,000 victims a year. Some families might have lost their only buffalo, depriving them of the means to farm their land. They would have had no option but to sell and find work as seasonal farm labourers.

Only families with per capita earnings of less than 50 (US) cents a day qualify for the Lased programme. Launched in 2003 it concerns publicly owned land that local authorities are required to give up as "social land concessions".

However, the scheme has been unevenly deployed. Nine out of 20 provinces have complied, five others are still hesitating and Prey Veng, a densely populated province bordering on Vietnam, has announced it has no available land.

Rapid population growth has not helped, more than doubling numbers in some districts that were already hard pressed to feed everyone 20 years ago. Many plots lie fallow too, but demand far outstrips the political determination to exploit such land.

Protest movements by expropriated farmers, backed by Cambodian and foreign human rights organisations, are increasingly common. They have recently started taking their complaints to court. They have not had much success so far, but the rising number of cases prompted the prime minister, Hun Sen, to threaten to disband the authority in charge of settling land disputes on account of its inadequate results.


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SRP worried by councillor delays


The Phnom Penh Post

Written by Vong Sokheng
Thursday, 12 March 2009

Party says discrimination slowing approval of commune officials, who have a vote in May poll.

Photo by: HENG CHIVOAN
CPP supporters during the July election. The SRP claims political discrimination is impeding voter registration for the May poll.A SPOKESMAN for the opposition Sam Rainsy Party on Wednesday expressed concern that the party would not be able to fill all of its commune councillor positions in time for municipal, district and provincial council elections scheduled for May, citing a high number of current vacancies and a slow approval process.

In order the fill a councillor seat, party officials must submit an application and wait for it to be approved by district and provincial officials, the Ministry of Interior, and finally the National Election Committee.


Yim Sovann, the spokesman, told the Post Wednesday "at least 50 percent" of the party's estimated 200 commune councillor seats were empty because of defections, resignations or deaths.

The elections - which involve the Cambodian People's Party, the SRP, the Norodom Ranariddh Party and Funcinpec - will see 11,353 commune councillors vote to determine representation of their respective parties at the higher-level district councils and the municipal and provincial councils.

In order the fill a councillor seat, party officials must submit an application and wait for it to be approved by district and provincial officials, the Ministry of Interior, and finally the National Election Committee.

The NEC reported in February that it would accept applications up to March 10. Reached on Wednesday, however, NEC Secretary General Tep Nytha said the body was still accepting applications and would hold off on releasing a preliminary voter list until March 24. He said he knew of 50 applications that had yet to be approved by the Ministry of Interior.

Yim Sovann said he had appealed to district and provincial officials to expedite the approval of applications by processing forms more quickly.

He said the SRP made a similar request in a letter sent last month to the Ministry of Interior and the NEC.

"Political discrimination remains a major concern" in getting applications approved, he said.


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