1. law, govt and politics

WEEKEND EDITION
The CambODIa DaIly
All the News Without Fear or Favor
Volume 60 issue 73
Saturday-Sunday, March 7-8, 2015
2,000 riel/50 cents
Orphanage
Director Claims
Child Sex Case
Fabricated
B y S imon H enderSon
and K Hy S ovutHy
The CamboDia Daily
The former chief of anti-pedophile NGO Action Pour Les Enfants (APLE), who was jailed Friday by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on charges of indecently
assaulting children, claimed the allegations were fabricated by APLE
founder Thierry Darnaudet as revenge for reporting his ex-boss to
authorities over similar allegations
in 2013.
Hang Vibol was APLE’s first director in 2003 but left the organization he helped set up alongside Mr.
Darnaudet two years later to work
exclusively as head of the Our
Home orphanage and school in
Meanchey district, where he was
arrested on Wednesday afternoon.
“The Phnom Penh Municipal
Court charged him with indecent
assault based on articles 246, 247,
and 248 of the criminal law [as] he
committed indecent assault against
many children,” said deputy municipal prosecutor Kol Bon on Friday,
declining to comment further.
On Thursday, APLE released a
statement acknowledging its role
in the arrest and resulting relocation of more than 60 children at the
orphanage, which was shut down
on Thursday. The group said it had
Continued on page 2
Siv Channa/The Cambodia Daily
Deputy Prime Minister Bin Chhin, left, shakes hands with senior CNRP official Kuoy Bunroeun at the National
Assembly on Friday during the signing ceremony of a new draft election law, which is expected to be voted on
by lawmakers in the coming weeks.
Parties Sign Off on Final Draft of Election Law
By
and
C olin m eyn
K uCH n aren
The CamboDia Daily
The country’s two major political
parties signed off on the final draft
of a revised and highly controversial election law on Friday, with civil
society groups arguing that the bill
is unconstitutional due to a provision that restricts their activity during the election campaign period.
The result of months of negotiations between working groups for
the ruling CPP and opposition
reuTerS
Weekend Page 1
cambodiadaily.com
Assembly. If there is any change,
it’s the [Assembly] legal commission’s work to decide if it can be
changed or not,” he told reporters.
At a ceremony following the
meeting, Mr. Chhin sat at a table
with Kuoy Bunroeun, the head of
the CNRP’s working group, and
signed off on a final draft of the law.
The creation of a new election
law, along with the formation of a
bipartisan National Election Committee (NEC), was at the center of
Continued on page 2
Burmese Police Arrest Five Student Protesters
LETPADAN, Burma - Police in Burma
Artist Reflects on Everyday
Experiences in Cambodia
CNRP, the new draft law will be
discussed at a public seminar on
Monday before being sent in the
coming weeks to the National Assembly, where it is expected to receive bipartisan support.
Deputy Prime Minister Bin
Chhin, head of the CPP’s delegation in the talks, said following a
meeting at the National Assembly
on Friday that any changes to the
law would have to be made during
the legislative process.
“If so, it’s the duty of the National
arrested five students on Friday
from among a crowd of about 200
protesters locked in a standoff with
security forces barring their entry
into the commercial hub of Rangoon, a witness said.
The arrests follow rising tension between the government and
students protesting for months
against an education bill.
Protesters say the bill curbs academic independence by stifling
student unions and putting deci-
sions in the hands of the government rather than universities.
A group of students began
marching from the central city of
Mandalay more than a month ago,
but police stopped them in Letpadan, 140 km from Rangoon, and
blockaded them behind vehicles
and barriers.
The government has barred
them from Rangoon, Burma’s
largest city and the site of numerous student-led protests, including
those in 1988 that sparked a prodemocracy movement that spread
The Daily Newspaper of Record Since 1993
throughout the military-ruled
country.
On Thursday, police and plainclothes vigilantes detained eight
people who had gathered in downtown Rangoon to show solidarity
with the Letpadan protesters.
Some were beaten with batons,
witnesses said.
Police on Friday arrested five students who broke off from the larger
protest to march through Letpadan shouting accusations that police had used violence against the
Continued on page 6
The CambODIa DaIly
2
aNd also
Pair of Fetuses Play Hide-n-Seek
reuTerS
GARy, Indiana - Authorities in Gary,
Indiana, on Thursday were investigating the origin of two fetuses that
were briefly hidden in the rafters of
a funeral home morgue.
One of the fetuses bore a tag
from Methodist Hospital that identified it as male, the funeral home
said. The gender of the other fetus,
which was in the 24th to 26th week
of gestation, is unknown, Lake
Parties...
1
a July deal struck between Mr.
Hun Sen and CNRP President
Sam Rainsy that ended the opposition’s 10-month boycott of the National Assembly.
During the drafting process, the
CPP has proposed a raft of controversial changes to the country’s
election law, almost all of which
have been accepted by the CNRP
in the face of threats from Prime
Minister Hun Sen to scrap the process completely and stick with the
current, CPP-controlled electoral
system.
Only excerpts of the draft law
have been publicly released, but
Mr. Chhin and Mr. Bunroeun have
offered regular updates on its status
following biweekly talks in recent
months.
Among the more controversial
provisions are articles that restrict
the participation of civil society
groups in election campaigns, allow
members of the military and court
officials to take part in campaigns,
prevent dual nationals from holding
positions on the NEC, and a recently added rule that would see parties
Continued from page
Orphanage...
1
pursued its ex-director with the
same vigor as any other suspected
pedophile after being asked by the
authorities to investigate Mr. Vibol.
But outside the courtroom yesterday, Mr. Vibol said Mr. Darnaudet was taking revenge on him after Mr. Vibol attempted to report
the Frenchman to authorities two
years ago for violent and sexual assault against children.
“Thierry Darnaudet was angry
with me because I sent a report to
the Ministry of Social Affairs and
the Ministry of Interior in 2013 asking them to ban the APLE president from running an organization
in Cambodia,” Mr. Vibol said.
“I knew his story—I knew he
Continued from page
SaTurDay-SunDay, marCh 7-8, 2015
Newsmakers
County coroner Merrilee Frey said.
The fetuses had been stored in
the home’s morgue since the late
1990s and were placed in the ceiling of the morgue in September
by an employee who was later dismissed, said a spokesman for the
Smith, Bizzell & Warner Funeral
Home.
Coronor’s office investigator Scott
Sefton said a pathologist was due to
examine the fetuses on Thursday.
n LOS ANGELES - Film star HarriSon ford was injured on Thursday
when the “Star Wars” actor crashed his vintage plane on a Los Angeles
golf course shortly after taking off from a nearby airport, his publicist
said. The single-engine plane clipped a tree as it attempted to return to
Santa Monica Airport shortly after takeoff, and the pilot was “alert and
talking” as he was taken to a local hospital, assistant Los Angeles fire
chief Patrick Butler said. Ina Treciokas, publicist for the 72-year-old actor, issued a statement confirming the details: “Harrison was flying a
WW2 vintage plane today, which had engine trouble upon take off. He
had no other choice but to make an emergency landing, which he did
safely. He was banged up and is in the hospital receiving medical care.
The injuries sustained are not life-threatening, and he is expected to
make a full recovery.” (Reuters)
lose their seats for boycotting parliament after an election.
Mr. Rainsy said on Friday that
he did not want to comment on the
specifics of the law until the public
seminar on Monday, but added
that he believed despite the many
concessions made by his party, the
bill guaranteed improved elections
going forward.
“I think that the final version of
the law is a compromise, and by
definition—by nature—you are
never fully satisfied with a compromise,” the opposition leader said.
“And I think the same applies to
the other side.”
Mr. Rainsy said the law would
enable the CNRP and other opposition forces in the country to have a
greater chance at electoral success.
“On the whole, I think it will
work better for us and we can do
much better with the improvement
of the law. The CNRP can do much
better than before and the force for
change in this country could do
much better,” he said.
However, election monitors and
civil society groups have blasted
the new law, focusing their criticism on a provision that prevents
civil society groups from “insulting”
political parties during election
campaigns.
Preap Kol, executive director of
Transparency International Cambodia (TIC), which dispatches
hundreds of monitors to oversee
elections, said the provision violated the constitutional rights to freedom of expression and political
participation.
“Debates, public forums, all of
these activities will be banned under the law. This violates the Constitution,” he said.
“I have heard that many professional, neutral and independent
civil society groups are very disappointed with the articles that restrict their political rights to be involved in the electoral process,”
he said.
Lao Mong Hay, a political analyst
and adviser to CNRP Vice President Kem Sokha, said that the process of drafting the new law was
flawed from the beginning.
“I think right from the start,
there were violations of some basic
principles already, and as an individual citizen, I felt that the nation
shouldn’t have violated such principles,” he said.
Among these violations, he said,
were the exclusion of dual nationals
and the relatives of political party
leaders from holding positions in
the NEC. “In both cases, every
Cambodian citizen has a right to
public service,” he said.
Mr. Mong Hay said that the
CNRP had likely decided that having joint control of the NEC—
which will have four members
from each party and a ninth, neutral member—justified the concessions necessary to push through
the reforms.
“Perhaps they are comfortable
with power sharing. That is, they
have equal seats for members on
the NEC and they can have influence and authority in the NEC,”
he said.
However, Mr. Kol at TIC said
the opposition party might have
had unrealistic expectations for
the impact of the reforms that it
did achieve.
“First of all, I think the CNRP is
probably too optimistic about what
the election will be like in 2017 and
2018,” Mr. Kol said.
“And I totally disagree that the
NEC is independent,” he added.
“The new NEC that came into law
is a bipartisan body, you cannot
use the word independent. But it is
acceptable to say it is probably better than the previous NEC.”
had committed child sex abuse in
India and Cambodia,” Mr. Vibol
said.
Mr. Vibol claimed that two disgruntled former senior staff members, who he had forced out of Our
Home two years ago, had done
Mr. Darnaudet’s bidding by filing
false complaints and then manipulating innocent children into accusing him of sex crimes.
“I did not commit these crime
against the children—I deplore
child abuse,” said Mr. Vibol, who
worked as a juvenile rights officer
for local NGO Licadho in the 1990s.
“In the cases I am accused of, I
was bathing them normally like
any father would bathe a child, but
Jean Marie Anno and Keo Pisethdara twisted this,” he said, referring to his two former colleagues.
Mr. Pisethdara is the former
executive director of Our Home
and now runs Action for Rural
Economic Development of Cambodia. Mr. Marie Anno is the vice
president of D’Orleans Checy in
Phnom Penh. The French-run
NGO was a partner of Our
Home, rebranded in 2011 from
Our Home International, but the
relationship soured in 2013 over a
dispute, according to its website.
Mr. Mario Anno also worked for
APLE during Mr. Vibol’s tenure.
Mr. Vibol’s legal team—Suy
Sokhon and Huy Phap—said on
Friday that Mr. Darnaudet tried to
force their client to forge documents accounting for $450,000
from the Spanish NGO Global Humanitaria after an attack on a child
at a separate NGO Mr. Darnaudet
operated in India. But Mr. Vibol
had refused.
“My client is innocent,” Mr. Sokhon said.
Mr. Darnaudet could not be
reached Friday.
Samleang Seila, APLE’s current
director, said there was no meaningful link between APLE and the
allegations, as his NGO came on
board only after the Ministry of
Social Affairs requested its help.
Mr. Seila said he could not talk
about the individuals mentioned by
Mr. Vibol, as they were not mentioned as part of the investigation.
“Mr. Vibol, however, is in total
denial of what he did, despite the
huge amount of evidence against
him,” he said. “But we will let the
court find justice—if he is innocent,
he is innocent. If he is guilty, he
should be held legally accountable
for what he did to the children.”
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