Cambodians hold ceremonies for stampede dead

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- Investigators on Wednesday were still trying to determine the cause of a riverside stampede that left nearly 400 people dead as thousands of Cambodians lit candles and made offerings to appease the souls of those who perished.

The mass deaths occurred Monday night as tens of thousands of panicked people tried to flee an island in the Bassac River across a narrow bridge during a traditional festival. What sparked the hysteric surge is unclear.
Witnesses, however, have criticized authorities for causing congestion by blocking a second bridge across the river despite the huge crowds that had gathered for the festival, and for a slow and confused emergency response after the disaster.

Officials say 378 people were killed and at least 755 others injured.

Prime Minister Hun Sen has described the stampede on Koh Pich - Diamond Island - as the biggest tragedy since the communist Khmer Rouge's reign of terror, which left an estimated 1.7 million people dead in the late 1970s. He has declared a day of national mourning on Thursday. On Tuesday night, tens of thousands of residents across the capital Phnom Penh carried out rituals at their homes to appease the victims' souls.
One woman said that people believed that after a tragedy on such a scale the souls of the dead would gather in the city and may wreak harm if not properly appeased.

"I asked their souls to rest in peace and not to be angry with those still alive in the capital, especially my family members and relatives," said Meng Houth, a 52-year-old woman who laid out a banana, cans of rice and salt along with incense and a candle in front of her home. City police chief Touch Naroth said Tuesday that investigators were still trying to determine the cause of the tragedy but suggested that the bridge's small size may have contributed. "This is a lesson for us," he said on state TV.

Survivors have recounted desperate struggles on the bridge in one of the rivers running past Phnom Penh, where a huge crowd had come to celebrate the last night of a three-day holiday marking the end of the monsoon rain season. As many as 2 million people are believed to have come to the capital to watch traditional boat races and many stayed on for a concert held on the island the bridge led to.

By MIKE ECKEL and SOPHENG CHEANG

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Cambodia: At least 345 dead in stampede in Phnom Penh

More than 330 people died, according to official provisional, in a stampede that occurred Monday, November 22, 2010 on a bridge in Phnom Penh during the traditional festivities of the annual Water Festival. The drama took place in the evening on the bridge that connects Phnom Penh and Diamond Island, a small island in the Mekong river on which stood the festivities of the last three days of the Water Festival.
Phnom Penh was in turmoil, the water festival was in full swing - this festival is one of the highlights of the year. Millions of Cambodians were strolling in the streets to watch the racing boats, fireworks and concerts ....
And it is precisely the end of a concert that went wrong. A stampede on a bridge that connects the capital with the island of diamond on the Mekong river has created panic, when a dozen people lost consciousness.

Trampled by the crowd or thrown into the river
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Hun Sen confirmed that at least 339 people died in the stampede on the bridge. They were trampled by the crowd or thrown into the River. According to witnesses, dozens of ambulances converged on the scene of the bousulade to provide first aid. Before the Calmette Hospital where the wounded were taken, relatives began to gather - many in tears. According to state television, quoting sourceshospital, at least 240 women have died in the disaster. 
 

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The greatest tragedy since the regime of Pol PotFor the head of government, it is "the biggest tragedy since the regime (Khmer Rouge) Pol Pot," which had left about two million deaths, a quarter of the population, under torture, to exhaustion or malnutrition between 1975 and 1979.
Hun Sen expressed his condolences to the families of victims by announcing a national day of mourning for Wednesday. The Prime Minister said that the causes of the deadly stampede had not yet determined. "It is necessary to further investigate what happened," he said, announcing that a commission would be formed for this purpose.

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Vietnam's Prime Minister welcomed even by the opposition

Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung who is currently on an official three-day visit in Cambodia, has been welcomed by opposition leader Sam Rainsy in a 14 November 2010 open letter. A year ago, following a border incident, Mr. Dung publicly "proposed that the Cambodian government take due measures to deal with Sam Rainsy's acts of sabotage and not permit similar cases to occur, as they negatively affect the fine relations between the two nations." In light of the Cambodian government mea culpa on the circumstances surrounding this incident (see following news "Hun Sen admits mistake in localization of controversial border markers"), Sam Rainsy wrote, "I would be grateful if you would acknowledge that you actually overreacted to my pulling out a few wooden poles in Svay Rieng province and possibly encouraged some unnecessary fallout from that insignificant incident." Read full text of Sam Rainsy's letter at http://tinyurl.com/2a3ppln

Hun Sen admits mistake in localization of controversial border markers
In a 8 November 2010 letter responding to opposition Members of Parliament, Prime Minister Hun Sen admits, at least by implication, that the government has made some mistake in the localization of some "tentative" or "temporary" border markers in provinces bordering Vietnam. « In the area of the tentative post # 185 [uprooted by Sam Rainsy on 25 October 2009], in particular posts # 184 to 187 along the border between Cambodia and Vietnam, the joint technical group from the two countries is continuing their study on the ground in order to search for material evidence/reference points necessary for the determination of the real location of those border posts. Because the joint technical group from the two countries has not planted any border post # 185 yet, the border demarcation work -- which is the work of the joint technical group to be conducted after the planting of those posts -- has not started yet either. » Therefore Sam Rainsy, who has been sentenced to 12 years imprisonment for "crimes" stemming from "destruction of public property," could not cause any damage to anything that does not exist and could not create any problem to any work that "has not started yet." Read Hun Sen's letter in Khmer at http://tinyurl.com/25ulw7c

Reasons for the government to prohibit visits to eastern border areas
The Hun Sen government is adamant that no Members of Parliament, no journalists, no diplomats, no NGO workers, no civil society representatives  and no  independent observers are allowed to visit areas near the border with Vietnam. There is a two-fold reason for this strict prohibition:
1- Nobody must be given the opportunity and possibility to do what Sam Rainsy did last year with the "tentative" border post # 185 in Svay Rieng province, i.e. collect the precise geographic coordinates of any border post with a GPS device, find out the location of that post on any official French-made or US-made map using appropriate computer programs, and see that the corresponding post is actually on Cambodian territory.
2- Nobody must meet with, and talk to, any Cambodian farmers living along the border who have been victims of land grabbing associated with border encroachment. Those farmers, whose number keeps increasing, are living evidence that is a denial to the government assertion that "not a single Cambodian farmer has lost his/her rice field in the ongoing border demarcation process." Read Hun Sen, Chea Sim and Heng Samrin's 16 November 2009 deceitful letter to King-Father Norodom Sihanouk at http://tinyurl.com/2uozunz
The strategy of the Vietnam-backed Hun Sen government is to prevent any form of border protest so that all currently "tentative" or "temporary" border posts will become, by 2012, permanent border posts, with the Cambodian people being placed before a fait accompli.

   

Sam Rainsy in Australia
Opposition leader Sam Rainsy will be visiting Australia from 18 to 30 November 2010. He will meet with Cambodian communities, the press, government officials and NGOs in Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Adelaide.

 

A single "royalist" party under CPP control
Prime Minister Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party is pushing hard for the merger of the two small and discredited "royalist" parties: Funcinpec and the Nationalist Party (formally Norodom Ranariddh Party). The CPP is desperate to give more credibility to the crumbling democratic façade of a two-party coalition government between former communists and present "royalists" in what is in fact a one-party system where all decisions are made by the CPP.

French court dismisses Hor Namhong's complaints
The French court in Paris has recently dismissed legal complaints for defamation lodged by Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong against three Web sites particularly critical of the Hun Sen government: KI-media, Khmerisation and Sacrava, which can be visited at http://ki-media.blogspot.com/ , http://khmerization.blogspot.com/ and http://sacrava.blogspot.com/ respectively.

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