Eyewitness on Seh Daeng assassination bid

Originally posted at: Political Prisoners in Thailand

May 14,2010 at 8:40 pm

PPT doesn’t usually post much material that is not in newspapers or other media. However, this note from a reader struck as being of potential interest in the current murky circumstances:

Seh Daeng

Eyewitness account i’ve been sent of sae daeng shooting – please use but don’t mention me

“I was at Sala Deang area near the MRT station. A group of us reported about noise coming from the the Dusit hotel. What looked like a long stick extended from the roof top. Within minutes, the general (Seh Daeng) was speaking to his supporters, offering water to an elderly lady and giving her a hug. Moments later, a shot was heard from overhead. The object had been pulled back and a man with a black hood stood up and walked away. About 5 min. later. A man wearing the same outfit was escorted out of the hotel into a black police van. Quickly, it took off and proceeded to go up Rama 4 and turned left to go towards MBK.

Military officers where seen smiling and shaking each others hands from this killing of this man.

Our party was told by an army officer.

You have seen nothing, go back to your hotel at once or you will be arrested and deported.

He repeated again and again. You’ve seen nothing, nothing to see here. Go back to your hotels.”

RED SHIRT leader get shot!

By The Son Of the Khmer Empire

May 14,2010 at 8:32 pm

Seh Daeng (Rueters)

The up-date-news of the RED crack down by the double standard govt is reportedly posted at Political Prisoners in Thailand which interestingly Seh Daeng, the RED SHIRT’S security leader, was seriously shot and now he is being treated at Huachiev Hospital. Please read the collective news here.

Transparency increases, but there is still a long way to go

PhnomphenPost

May 14,2010 at 8:14 pm

Recent scandals over oil, gas and mining payments suggest a degree of transparency by a government firmly under suspicion

Photo by: Pha Lina Sok An signs an exploration agreement with Japan’s JOGMEC on May 4 in Phnom Penh. Stakeholders in Cambodia have different views as to whether the EITI is the right model."

DURING an otherwise routine presentation on the Cambodian economy on March 17, Ministry of Economy and Finance Director General Hang Chuon Naron chose the very last slide to offer a rare, detailed glimpse of Cambodia’s expanding oil and gas revenues.

The decision has since proven to be both a milestone in Cambodian transparency, and a millstone around the government’s neck.

On one hand, Hang Chuon Naron’s disclosure that the government received US$800,000 in December and $26 million in January for energy “signature bonuses” and a “social fund” represented a new level of state transparency for extractive industry payments in the Kingdom.

Subsequently, however, Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government has faced increasingly difficult questions on where the money came from, how it is being spent and to what degree payments derived from the extractives industry will be opened up for public scrutiny.

The missing $500,000 reportedly paid to the government by the world’s largest iron ore producer BHP Billiton – now the subject of a US securities and exchange commission enquiry – looks to be just the start of a period in which the government has increasingly been asked the question: Where has all this money gone?

For the first time, the Cambodian government has published state revenues publicly that detail payments foreign energy and mining companies have made to operate in the Kingdom. A TOFE (state financial operations notice) partly issued on the Finance Ministry website and fully presented at last month’s Oxfam America extractive industries conference in the capital showed the state received some 9.323 billion riels, or $2.25 million, from the sector in 2009. Of this total, 6.003 billion riels ($1.45 million) came from mining companies, with the remaining $800,000 derived from the oil and gas sector, according to official government figures.

But with Australian mining companies OZ Minerals and Southern Gold looking at imminent gold production in Cambodia, and US energy firm Chevron under pressure from the government to begin oil production as soon as 2012, the political opposition, civil society and the UN – among others – are pushing the government to go further on what they say is still limited disclosure.

“I think [this is] the first step, the first step that the government has [made] … to disclose this information to the public,” said Mam Sambath, chairman and executive director of the NGO Cambodians for Resource Revenue Transparency (CRRT).

Officials to make call on Kraya handouts

Phnompenhpost

May 14,2010 at 8:03

FFICIALS in Kampong Thom province’s Kraya commune say they will decide this month whether to grant plots of farmland to

Photo by: Heng Chivoan Former residents of a disputed section of land in Kampong Thom province’s Kraya commune sit near an excavator that was burned as part of a demonstration last year.

villagers evicted from their land in December, but affected families remain concerned they will not be able to plant crops ahead of this year’s wet season.

The evicted villagers – many of them military veterans – have been shifted to a relocation site at Kraya’s Thmor Samleang village, where they have built homes, but are still awaiting replacement farmland promised by the authorities.

Kampong Thom Deputy Governor Out Sam On said there had been a delay in the granting of the land because officials were checking to see that prospective plots did not have other owners.

“We have eight committees to study about providing farmland to the villagers,” he said, and added that on May 23, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) in Phnom Penh would make a decision as to the size of land to be granted to each family.

On December 15, some 1,700 families were evicted from Kraya commune to make way for a rubber plantation to be developed by the Vietnamese Tin Bien company.

Om Saran, an evictee residing at Thmor Samleang, said that if villagers did not get farmland in the run-up to the rainy season, when farmers typically begin planting rice seedlings, they would have no crops to harvest later in the year.

“We are worried that if authorities do not provide us farmland on time, villagers will not have food for the next year,” he said.

His fellow villager Prum Roth alleged that since the eviction, local officials had treated the residents like “animals”.

“The authorities only cheated us to agree to move to a new place and then abandoned us. They should provide us with farmland as soon as they can, as they know we depend on farmland,” he said.

Poe Oumoete, provincial monitor for rights group Licadho, called on officials to speed up the process of finding the land.

But Pich Sophea, Santuk district governor, said the Kampong Thom provincial council was merely awaiting the decision of MAFF.

“If they approve, our local authorities will start helping the villagers, he said. Ministry officials could not be reached for comment on Thursday.