Showing posts with label khmer mp3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label khmer mp3. Show all posts
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Thursday, November 25, 2010
“It is clear, too, that Phnom Penh was unprepared for any large-scale disaster”: AHRC
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| People visited the site of the bridge stampede in Phnom Penh on Thursday, paying their respect by offering flowers and prayers and burning incense. (Justin Mott for The New York Times) |
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| Mourners offered prayers for the victims of the bridge stampede in Phnom Penh on Thursday. (Justin Mott for The New York Times) |
Questions Remain in Cambodia Crush
November 25, 2010
By SETH MYDANS
The New York Times
“While the exact cause of the stampede last night remains unclear, with contradictory reports indicating it may have been instigated by either crowd antics or poor construction of the bridge to Koh Pich island, the failure of the state to control the crowd and limit the damage from the stampede is clear,” the report said.
“It is clear, too, that Phnom Penh was unprepared for any large-scale disaster,” the report said. “Responses by police and military were lacking and may even have contributed to the stampede while hospitals were overwhelmed. Emergency and medical personnel resorted to piling bodies together, covering them with mats or sheets.”
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — More than two days after hundreds of people died in a huge, tightly jammed crowd on the last night of a water festival, both the cause and the death toll remained unclear on Thursday.
Most of the victims were caught in a crush on a small bridge. Rather than being trampled, the victims suffocated or were crushed to death by a dense, immobile crowd in which some people were trapped for hours.
Various officials gave different counts of the death toll, which may not include victims who drowned or were taken from the scene.
On Wednesday, the government said at least 350 people had died and 400 were injured. But among other tallies on Thursday, the Phnom Penh Post newspaper, citing government sources, said the death toll had climbed to 456.
As grief and shock turned to demands for explanations, questions grew on Thursday over the cause of the crush, over the response by the police and over the city’s readiness to handle an influx of as many as 3 million people for the festival.
A preliminary government investigation reported that the mostly rural holiday-goers panicked when the suspension bridge began to sway slightly under the weight of the crowd.
This conformed with a report by a military police investigator, Sawannara Chendamirie, who said on the morning after the disaster that survivors told him there had been shouts that the bridge was collapsing.
There have been reports, beginning immediately after the disaster, that some people were electrocuted, possibly by strings of lights on the fretwork of the bridge. Some reports said the police fired water hoses at the crowd that might have contributed to this.But doctors at Calmette Hospital, the city’s main hospital, said they had seen no sign of electrocution among either the injured or the dead. They said this absence of evidence did not rule out the possibility, but they said most of the injured had suffered from the squeezing of the packed crowd. Some patients at the hospital said they had been unable to breathe and had passed out.
The police came under criticism for a failure of crowd management and for an inadequate and incompetent response to the disaster. One officer said only half the officially reported number of police were actually deployed. Badly injured survivors reported being dumped into vehicles together with the dead.
The government did quickly mobilize help for relatives of victims, many of whom traveled from distant provinces to claim the dead. Tables were set up near a makeshift morgue to confirm identities. Military trucks offered transportation home for coffins and family members. The morgue was all but cleared within a day, although some people wandered the hospital grounds holding snapshots of missing relatives.
The Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission issued a report that documented the questions and criticisms.
“While the exact cause of the stampede last night remains unclear, with contradictory reports indicating it may have been instigated by either crowd antics or poor construction of the bridge to Koh Pich island, the failure of the state to control the crowd and limit the damage from the stampede is clear,” the report said.
“It is clear, too, that Phnom Penh was unprepared for any large-scale disaster,” the report said. “Responses by police and military were lacking and may even have contributed to the stampede while hospitals were overwhelmed. Emergency and medical personnel resorted to piling bodies together, covering them with mats or sheets.”
Mr. Ouch Leng's Urgent Appeal for Fact Finding of Justice for Hundreds Innocent Dead and Injured in the night of the 22nd Nov 2010
By Ouch Leng
On behalf of victim’s family, Human Rights Defenders in Cambodia and all over the world I am pleased to appeal to all compatriots, national and international media, embassy, human rights and democracy practitioners, justice makers, politicians, NGO, OI, UN; to take action in fact finding even though there have been information or a lot of rumor said that they were died and injured vitally by suffocation, footing each other or by electrocution. Notwithstanding that they are human being not the animals; their spirits need meaningfulness for their lives and fair reason of death. As we can see on the CNN, Phnom Penh Post news and other news around the world broadcasted and shown the motive of the incident. These are also the evidence to be background for a criminal investigation, forensic analysis. Therefore please all criminal police both Cambodian and Interpol, FBI, CSI investigate with transparency and independence to bring justice for innocent victims.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Scarcity of fish in Mekong Delta’s flood season [- Could it be due to overfishing in the Tonle Sap by illegal Vietnamese immigrants?]
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VietNamNet Bridge – People in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta often say “as dirt-cheap as linh fish” but this statement is wrong now.
This is the flood season in this region but the price for linh fish at markets in Long Xuyen city, An Giang province is up to 180,000 dong (nearly $10) a kilo. Last year, the price for a kilo of linh fish was only several thousands of dong. Why has the fish become expensive?
VietNamNet reporters went in mid-October to Con Coc village, which is called the village of linh fish, in An Phu district, An Giang province, to find the answer.
Despite it being the flood season Con Coc was abnormally dry . Fishing equipment was placed along the road. Many fishing boats were not used.
“In previous years, if you went to our village, you would have to use a boat,” Nguyen Minh Chi, a local official told VietNamNet.
“The flood season is also the time to catch linh fish. This year flood doesn’t come so local people have to plant maize instead,” Chi said, pointing to a newly-grown maize field along the Hau river, a branch of the Mekong River.
Nguyen Minh Huong, 70, who has earned his living by catching linh fish for several decades, said he used to catch hundreds of kilo of linh fish in previous flood seasons but this year flood doesn’t come so he had to plant maize.
Nguyen Van Tong, a fish creel maker, said last year he sold nearly 40,000 linh fish creels to local people and clients in Cambodia. This year even his clients in Cambodia didn’t buy creels because of the low water level in the Mekong river.
“Young people in our village went to Cambodia to catch fish but they had to return home and in the end went to Saigon and Binh Duong to seek jobs,” Tong added.
The fishing season Bung Binh Thien in An Phu district, An Giang province, which is called the “God’s Fish Lake” because it used to be full of fish all the year round, is also poor this year.
“I have been drawing up nets from 4am but I until now (9am) I’ve caught less than a kilo of fish. I used to catch 30-40kg of fish a day,” Mrs. Lai Thi Hai said.
VietNamNet reporters called Huynh Quang Dau, director of Antesco company, which often purchase linh fish in An Giang during the flood season. Dau only said briefly: “Flood hasn’t come so we couldn’t buy linh fish this year”.
An Giang people said that in the past, linh fish was in plenty and it was dirty cheap. People used to buy linh fish to process animal feed. But now linh fish is very expensive.
“Linh fish comes from Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake. During the flood season, the baby fish go to An Giang’s flooded fields. At the end of the flood season, they go to the Mekong River to go back to Cambodia to lay eggs. Linh fish has become An Giang’s specialty during the flood season,” explained Doan Ngoc Pha, deputy director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of An Giang province.
Pha said that many people thought that flood in the southwestern region is the same one as the flood in the central Vietnam. But flood in the southwestern region is the good time for local people to earn money from breeding and catching fish and planting specialty vegetables like nhut, bong sung and dien dien. This year they have suffered losses as flood water doesn’t come.
He also said that without flood water, the next rice crop will be not good.
He said that flood water doesn’t come this year possibly because of the dams built by China in the upstream of the Mekong River and the drought in Laos and Cambodia.
According to the An Giang Hydrometeorology Centre, the flood peak in the Hau river (a branch of the Mekong River which runs through An Giang) this year was only 3.05m, over 1m lower than last year. This is the record low level in dozens of years, except for 1998.
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