DailyChatter: Truth and fear in Cambodia
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Truth and fear in Cambodia
Cambodian leaders claim King Norodom Sihamoni has asked them to investigate the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) for filing a petition asking the monarch to intervene in the alleged persecution of anti-government activists.
Reported on Thursday bythe Cambodia Daily — a respected news website that analysts cite as a key source of information about Cambodia’s inner workings — the investigation is the latest in a worrisome escalation of political tensions in the authoritarian Southeast Asian country.
“The Cambodia government is going after the opposition with hooks and tongs in a way that we haven’t seen since the dispute over the 2013 election results,” Human Rights Watch Asia Deputy Director Phil Robertson told The Financial Times.
It’s not clear if the king really asked for the probe. But if the government says something is true, well, then, it must be true, critics say.
The government has signaled that it will jail CNRP leader Sam Rainsey, who has been in exile since 2015, even though he received a royal pardon in a criminal defamation case. His deputy, Kem Sokha, faces charges of soliciting a prostitute stemming from a conversation he allegedly had over the phone. He denies the charges.
Opposition leaders want Prime Minister Hun Sen to let Rainsey return and drop the charges against Sokha.
Opposition lawmakers gave the king the petition earlier this week. The lawmakers delivered the appeal after a standoff with police who refused to let around 1,000 activists march to the palace, the Associated Press reported.
CNRP claimed to have collected around 200,000 thumbprints for its petition. Those numbers fueled the opposition party’s argument that Hun Sen rigged the 2013 elections that kept him in power after 31 years in office.
Cambodia became famous in the United States over the so-called “killing fields” where an estimated two million people, or a quarter of the population, died during Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot’s communist revolution in the 1970s.
Hun Sen is a former Khmer Rouge leader.
The groundswell of opposition support appears to be causing him worries over local elections slated for next year and a general election expected in 2018.
The U.N. has expressed concerns over the situation.
“The Secretary-General is concerned about the escalating tensions between the ruling and opposition parties in Cambodia, particularly arrests or attempted arrests,” said U.N. spokeswoman Devi Palanivelu, Reuters reported. “A non-threatening environment of democratic dialogue is essential for political stability and a peaceful and prosperous society.”
At the same time, three of the prime minister’s bodyguards were also convicted last week of beating up two CNRP lawmakers outside parliament. They’re going to prison for a year.
Human Rights Watch suggested that the guards’ prison sentences could be a whitewash, an attempt to show the persecution of opposition members doesn’t go to the top of the Cambodian power structure.
But the two lawmakers received serious injuries, so they received a lesson no matter what people believe about who was behind the violence.
WANT TO KNOW
Syria: Time for air drops
The U.S., the U.K. and France are urging the U.N. to intervene in embattled areas of Syria and deliver more humanitarian aid – this time from above.
The western powers argue that the Syrian government under President Bashar Assad failed to meet an internationally agreed upon June 1 deadline to distribute aid across the war-torn country.
The situation is critical for those trapped in these areas, they say: roughly 4,000 people in the Darayya suburb of Damascus have been without food aid since 2012.
And while air drops are complex and risky, according to some policymakers, they are a last resort to providing "sustained and regular" relief to thousands of Syrians. The ground convoy that reached this area yesterday only carried medicine and other non-food items.
The U.N. Security Council is set to discuss the matter Friday.
Turning up the heat on Pyongyang
The U.S. is upping the pressure on North Korea following Pyongyang's recent series of missile tests by warning foreign banks Wednesday they could face sanctions if they do any business with the communist country.
The U.S. Treasury designated North Korea a "primary money laundering concern" and said it would ban non-U.S. banks from processing dollar transactions on behalf of Pyongyang — a move called a "U-turn" that essentially blocks North Korea's international trade, said the Wall Street Journal.
It could also put the U.S. in conflict with China — North Korea's biggest trading partner by some measure — ahead of a meeting between U.S. and Chinese officials in Beijing next week. It also follows China's recent attempt to mend relations with Pyongyang over its tensions with North Korea's nuclear program.
China for its part warned against aggravating tensions on the Korean peninsula and cautioned that U.S. sanctions should not harm "the legitimate rights and interests of China."
Armenian history, Europe's present
Germany will likely put more strain on Europe's controversial refugee deal with Turkey on Thursday when it takes on a violent chapter of the former Ottoman Empire's history: the Armenian genocide of 1916.
The German Parliament will vote on a symbolic resolution that classifies the massacre of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians and Christian minorities in 1915 and 1916 by Ottoman forces as genocide and calls for a "commemoration" of the tragedy.
It's a move that has got tempers flaring in Ankara: Turkey has consistently rejected the use of the term "genocide" to describe this century-old event.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim called the ballot "ridiculous" and "a real test of friendship" and insinuated that Germany was using the symbolic vote as a means of diverting attention away from domestic issues.
President Erdogan also criticized the measure, warning that "bilateral ties" would be damaged as a result of the German Parliament's actions. Turkey's deal with the EU — still in the works — would remain unaffected, he said.
Others aren't so sure.
DISCOVERIES
Punching Above Weight
The mantis shrimp is six inches long and lives on the floor of tropical seas. It's not particularly beautiful as far as tropical creatures go but it certainly punches far above its weight.
To be specific, it delivers a knock-out blow the speed of a .22-caliber bullet that shatters glass.
Scientists have long been fascinated by the crustacean's hammer, known as a dactyl club, which it uses to kill prey — and they have now cracked the mystery.
The club is made of chitin — material in insects' shells — and hydroxyapatite, material in our teeth. The inner layer has a "corkscrew pattern" and the outer layer has a "herringbone" structure, and scientists think this allows the club to buckle flexibly, and therefore not break on impact, according to the journal Advanced Materials.
The scientists say this shrimp's sophisticated club could be very useful to human beings — in helmets for football players, body armor for soldiers and even in the bodies of cars and airplanes.
See this featherweight's powerful punch in slow motion here.