How Cambodia’s Secretive Timber Auctions are Fueling the Illegal Logging Trade

 By Zsombor Peter and Aun Pheap | July 14, 2014
In the predawn hours of May 6, a flatbed truck packed with lengths of illegally logged timber sped past a checkpoint in Ratanakkiri province, knocking aside a police car and racing off.
Police later tracked down the truck to a house in Banlung City. In the raid that followed, two men jumped a fence and got away. But they had left behind their illicit haul—5 cubic meters of luxury-grade timber, including more than a ton of especially rare rosewood, coveted for its hard, blood-red grain. 
By law, the government will have to put the wood up for public auction, just as it must with all the timber it seizes from illegal loggers across the country, and deposit the proceeds with the state treasury. But there is scant evidence that any real auctions ever happen, and there is nothing public about them.
Government officials charged with running the auctions and signing off on the winning bids refuse to provide a full explanation of the process. Based on what they will say, the government has continued to sell tens of millions of dollars worth of timber at bargain rates to a businessman who recently served as an adviser to Prime Minister Hun Sen. The man heading the committee approving the secretive sales is the prime minister’s personal assistant.
NGOs trying to monitor Cambodia’s thriving illegal logging trade say they have never seen or heard any trace of an actual auction and have been kept completely out of the loop. Environmental protection groups say the practice is prone to abuse, actually helps fuel illegal logging, and should stop. Some suggest sending the wood up in flames.
“When there is more illegal logging, there is more corruption, and [it is] easy for the government to make money,” Pen Bonnar, a senior investigator for rights group Adhoc, said of the auctions. “This means the illegal logging cannot stop.”
The businessman winning the bids lately is timber magnate Try Pheap, a man with land holdings and timber purchase deals across the country—and the frequent subject of illegal logging allegations himself.

Nothing to Hide

In March 2013, when the government auctioned off nearly 5,000 cubic meters of wood seized from illegal loggers and stored up across the country, Mr. Pheap won the lot for $3.4 million.
Government officials and staff for Mr. Pheap say his buying spree has continued.
When the government put up for auction another 6,000 cubic meters of wood in January, Mr. Pheap won the lot again, this time for $1.5 million, said Hout Ponloer, head of planning and finance at the Ministry of Agriculture’s Forestry Administration.
Mr. Ponloer, who showed reporters a record of the sale last month, said the 6,000 cubic meters was all the wood the government had seized from illegal loggers—or those hauling more wood than their transport permits allowed—the previous year.
However, Chey Sith, the head of a freight company who has worked with Mr. Pheap to ship his wares overseas, said Mr. Pheap also won a bid for seized wood in Preah Vihear and Pursat provinces in April at $4 million, and another for seized wood in Ratanakkiri and Stung Treng provinces in May for more than $2 million. They were just waiting for the paperwork to haul it away.
“The national Forestry Administration made us pay more than $2 million after winning the bidding and we have, but we haven’t taken the wood away yet,” he said in May.

Mr. Sith would not say how much wood the money had bought. The Forestry Administration’s Mr. Ponloer said he knew nothing about a timber auction in April or May, and that as far as he knew there had not been an auction since January. Forestry Administration officials in three of the provinces Mr. Sith named declined to comment on anything to do with auctions.
In Stung Treng, Forestry Administration cantonment deputy chief Chean Yudong said his office gathered up and stored whatever illegally shipped or logged wood was seized in the area. But the auctions, he said, were run out of Phnom Penh.
“We collect the wood from illegal transport and loggers and keep it,” he said. “We send a report on how much wood we have when the upper levels need to hold a bid…. The company [that buys the wood] just shows us a permit issued at the national level and we let them take it.”
He declined to say which companies had been issued the permits, whether any of these permits had been issued for Mr. Pheap, or who approved the sales.
Mr. Ponloer, who spoke with reporters at his Phnom Penh office last month, said the winning bids were all approved by a committee set up just for the purpose, the Committee for Evaluating and Bidding for Wood. He showed the reporters a list of committee members. At the top of the list, as chairman, was Eang Sophalleth.
When asked if the committee’s chairman was the same Eang Sophalleth who served as Prime Minister Hun Sen’s personal assistant, Mr. Ponloer snatched the list back from across his desk. He said the other 10 members of the committee were from the ministries of Agriculture and Finance, but declined to name them.
After last year’s national elections, Mr. Sophalleth was made an undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Agriculture and cabinet chief to the minister, Ouk Rabun. But his business card still lists his other job first—“Assistant to Samdech Techo Prime Minister HUN SEN.”

In his office at the ministry, Mr. Sophalleth said his days were occupied with making sure the country managed to export a million tons of rice by the end of next year, an ambitious target the prime minister has made a personal priority.
Asked about his position on the auction committee, Mr. Sophalleth said he did not know he was on it or that it even existed. He said it was often the deputies on these committees who did the real work.
“Sometimes they put your name on a committee and you do not know,” he said.

Officials at the ministries of Agriculture and Finance, however, not only confirmed that Mr. Sophalleth was on the committee but said they have seen him chairing the meetings.
“He always joins the meetings,” said Chann Heng, the Agriculture Ministry’s head of administration. “I’ve seen him at the meetings.”
Mr. Heng, whose desk sits in a cramped corner two floors down from Mr. Sophalleth’s office, said meetings of the auction committee were usually held at the Ministry of Agriculture. He said members and chairmen were all handpicked by the ministers of agriculture and finance whenever it came time for an auction.
“The minister chooses the committee for each bidding, and usually it [the chairman] is Eang Sophalleth,” he said.
Mr. Heng said he did not have records of the committee’s work at hand, because the documentation was all stored upstairs in the office of the cabinet chief, Mr. Sophalleth.
Soun Pinkanika, the head of natural resources revenue at the Finance Ministry’s state property department, also sits on the auction committee and says she has also seen Mr. Sophalleth chairing the group’s meetings.
“He is the chairman of the committee for bidding and for discussing the price of forest yield for auction,” she said. “He is the chairman, so he attends the meetings.”
Ms. Pinkanika refused to say who was bidding in or winning the auctions. She said the events were usually advertised a few weeks in advance in the pages of Rasmei Kampuchea, but did not know who would have records (The paper’s advertising director said he could not remember the placement of any such ads). And after four years on the committee, Ms. Pinkanika said she did not know the ground rules for the auctions or whether the rules even existed in writing.
She said the records of all timber auctions were with the Forestry Administration.
Until last year, the auction committee was headed for many years by Ung Sam Ath, a deputy director general at the Forestry Administration. Mr. Sam Ath declined to comment on the auctions and referred all questions to his boss, Forestry Administration director general Chheng Kim Sun.
Mr. Kim Sun said he had “no idea” how much wood the Forestry Administration was auctioning off or how much money the government was making off of the sales.

“I have nothing to hide,” he said by phone, after having just canceled a scheduled meeting with a reporter and refusing to release any records of the auctions or a list of committee members.
“I have a mandate to report to parliament. I have no mandate to talk to you,” he said, and ended the conversation.
Only the Powerful
NGOs that monitor the country’s forest sector say they have all encountered the same secrecy. More than half a dozen NGOs said they have seen no effort by the government to sell off the seized timber openly and competitively.
“They never allow the NGO to attend the auction. [We] want to try, but they never allow,” said Adhoc’s Mr. Bonnar, who now works out of Phnom Penh but spent more than a dozen years in Ratanakkiri, one of the country’s hotbeds of illegal logging.

“Only the powerful people can bid. They take very [good] care about who comes to the bid. It [is] not free,” he said. “Not only me, all the NGOs that work closely with the government, they don’t get the information. They [are] only called when they [authorities] go to catch the illegal loggers…. They want to [show] that they do work.”
Toby Eastoe has been working side by side with the Forestry Administration to stem the illegal logging trade for more than six years, first for Flora and Fauna International and now for Conservation International. He hasn’t once seen any trace or accounting of the auctions, either.
“They just happen, and the wood disappears…. They’re always done pretty quietly,” he said.
“Auctions are part of the timber trade and it’d be nice if it could be monitored,” he added. “We just don’t know about them; we never know when it’s going to happen.”

One man involved in the local timber trade for the past two decades says that’s just the way the government wants it.
The businessman, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, buys up logs from plantation owners across the country to feed his timber-processing factory.
A businessman like him should be in a prime position to bid in the auctions. But even with a sizable operation and 20 years in the trade, he said he did not dare to participate. He said he dealt with the Forestry Administration on a regular basis and that the auctions were clearly roped off for a select few.
“This one only the special person can do it, not like me,” he said. “This one I cannot do. Once I do, I die. I don’t touch.”

He liked the thought of buying up lots of luxury-grade timber, selling them off, and making a tidy profit. But he will not even risk asking officials how he might get involved.
“This information I don’t need to gather, because I know it’s danger,” he said. “Luxury wood I don’t involve. If I involve, my reputation gets in trouble.”
For those who do get to take part, tens of millions of dollars stand to be made.
When Mr. Pheap won the auction in January for $1.5 million, he paid an average of $250 per cubic meter.
Mr. Pheap’s staff won’t say how much they sell the wood for, or to whom. But the Chinese retail website Alibaba is full of traders hawking luxury wood from Cambodia. Some offer a cubic meter of rosewood for anywhere from $7,500 to $35,000.

But with rosewood stocks dwindling fast, most of the illegally logged wood authorities are seizing lately is the less valuable—but still luxury grade—thnong.
Alibaba has a cubic meter of thnong from Cambodia going for $3,850. At that rate, 6,000 cubic meters of thnong alone could fetch Mr. Pheap $23.1 million, more than 15 times what he paid for the haul he won in January.
Mr. Bonnar, at Adhoc, said even those prices may be modest. He has spoken with loggers who say a cubic meter of thnong in Vietnam can go for $10,000 or more.
With Mr. Pheap paying only a few hundred dollars per cubic meter, he said, “I think it’s very low, much lower than the market price.”
The timber auctions have been good to Mr. Pheap. But Mr. Pheap —who served as an adviser to Prime Minister Hun Sen from 2009 to 2010—has also been good to the ruling CPP.
In May 2013, Mr. Pheap donated $100,000 to the Cambodian Red Cross, an organization headed by Mr. Hun Sen’s wife, Bun Rany, who has used Red Cross events to stump for the CPP and slam the opposition. The donation came just two months before last year’s national elections.
In 2011, Mr. Pheap footed the $30,000 bill for a CPP party office in Preah Vihear province. He donated another $100,000 for a new head office for the Boeng Per Wildlife Sanctuary, also in Preah Vihear, a pristine wilderness inside of which the Environment Ministry had just granted him 10,000 hectares for a rubber plantation.
Mr. Pheap owns at least two other plantations, both in the remote eastern reaches of Virachey National Park in Ratanakkiri. In February 2013, the Agriculture Ministry wrote to Mr. Kim Sun at the Forestry Administration to let him know that Mr. Pheap had just been granted exclusive rights to buy up all the wood on plantations like his across the province. As with the auctions, there was no sign that Mr. Pheap had any competition for the deal.

Let It Burn

NGOs blame most of the deforestation in the country on these plantations, whose owners clear-cut thousands of hectares of healthy forest at a time. Using satellite data and regular reports from farmers who live around the plantation, the groups say the owners are logging well outside of bounds as well. Both are forbidden by law. Staff for Mr. Pheap admit they have no way of telling whether the timber the company is buying off the plantations in Ratanakkiri is being logged legally, fueling speculation among environmental protection groups that the arrangement is covering up a massive laundering operation.
But NGOs say the timber auctions are driving forest loss, too, letting buyers essentially launder illegally logged timber through the system, at the same time giving the government a multimillion-dollar reason not to take stronger action against the loggers who make the auctions possible.
Global Witness, a U.K.-based environmental transparency group that has done extensive work investigating government involvement in Cambodia’s illegal logging rings, says the auctions should stop.

“In almost every country in which Global Witness works on forest issues, most recently Liberia, we have come across seized timber being auctioned off,” said Josie Cohen, a land campaigner for the group. “This is usually just a scam to launder illegal timber into the market with the original illegal logger, who is usually in league with the authorities, profiting from the auction. This system in effect legalizes illegal timber and therefore further fuels logging.
“In Cameroon and DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo], for example, the money raised from auctions goes to the Forest Ministry plus the seizing officer gets to keep 10 percent of the funds, hence the system provides huge incentive to provide timber for auctioning.”

Better to burn the wood and take the incentives away, she said.
“In order to create an effective deterrent against illegal logging, the ‘loot’ has to be removed from the system and the market. Burning timber has therefore proved to be an effective deterrent against illegal logging.”
In Cambodia, some villagers are doing just that. Besieged by illegal loggers and rogue plantations, and having lost faith in the local rangers and police who should be protecting their forests, more and more of them are mounting community patrols of their forests and setting fire to caches of illegally logged timber where they find them.
Villagers around central Cambodia’s Prey Long Forest have been burning timber for the past few years. Others in Mondolkiri announced last month that they would start doing the same.

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), another U.K.-based environmental rights group, says the auctions are letting Cambodia and its neighbors sidestep their own legal protections for some of the rarest and priciest of their tree species.
Cambodia’s 2002 Forestry Law prohibits the harvesting of rare tree species like rosewood. Last year, the country joined 176 others in giving Siamese rosewood in particular Appendix II protection under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. The government now has to issue a special export license anytime someone wants to trade the timber abroad.
But even then, any semi-processed rosewood gets an exemption from the rules under the convention’s Annotation 5. EIA says this exemption, along with government auctions, leaves the supply of illegally logged rosewood alive and well.

In a recent report, EIA blames an unhealthy appetite in China for high-end wood furniture—and countries like Cambodia that are happy to feed it—for driving rosewood to the brink of extinction across the Mekong region.
In the forests of northern Cambodia, rosewood trees are now so rare—and valuable—that impoverished villagers paid by local middlemen risk their lives to sneak into Thailand for even a few leftover stumps. Every year, dozens of them are shot dead by Thai soldiers.
Any of the wood they bring back that gets seized and booked ends up in the auctions. EIA says this situation, and now the exemption for semi-processed rosewood in the Endangered Species Convention, helps keep the illegal loggers going.

A team of undercover investigators EIA sent to Laos earlier this year found traders misusing the paperwork from government auctions to export up to five times the amount of illegally logged wood they officially bought, mixing the auctioned timber with their own hidden stores. In March, another trader in Shenzhen, China, showed the investigators a re-export permit issued by Vietnam for rosewood coming from Cambodia, rosewood the Cambodian government claims it never let out of the country.
“Despite domestic laws prohibiting harvest and trade, Annotation 5 provides a perverse veneer of legitimacy to ongoing trade in semi-processed rosewood products made with illegal timber,” the group says.
“The Annotation also allows countries that seize illegal timber and auction it in local markets to continue doing so. Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia regularly conduct such auctions. This timber is then exported to global markets as finished products outside the scope of [the convention]. EIA’s investigations have shown that such auctions are clearly corrupted and paperwork generated by them is then used to launder far larger volumes of equally illegal timber into international markets.”
Despite its harvesting bans and convention restrictions, Cambodia has been exporting ever more high-grade wood to China, according to U.N. trade data analyzed by the EIA. Of the 60,000 cubic meters Cambodia officially exported to China from 2000 to 2013, a third was shipped out last year alone.
EIA says the exemption for semi-processed wood should be lifted and the auctions in Cambodia and its neighbors stopped.
What little praise EIA offers the Mekong countries for trying to stem illegal logging it gives to Thailand, which it says has for the most part put a stop to timber auctions.

A Legal Business?
Mr. Sith, who coordinated Mr. Pheap’s international freight shipments until last month, insisted that Mr. Pheap was strictly abiding by all the relevant rules and regulations.
Last year, researchers at the University of Maryland looking at the latest satellite data ranked the countries with the fastest rates of deforestation. Cambodia ranked fifth in the world.
Across the country’s northeast, teams of men caught logging illegally have told villagers, rights workers, and even reporters that they work for Mr. Pheap. On a visit to Virachey National Park in December last year, reporters saw illegal loggers hard at work—sawing down the rarest trees, hauling them out of the forest, floating them across the river, loading them onto waiting trucks and driving them to a local depot. The man paying for it all, the loggers said, was Mr. Pheap.
But Mr. Sith argued that most of the world’s “chopping” was happening elsewhere.
“Who chops? The Try Pheap Company never chops, but we have to clear the land,” he said. “Who is the big chopper? Canada, Papua New Guinea, USA. Why don’t you ask them?”
Mr. Sith rejected claims that the company was colluding with illegal loggers, that its deal with the Agriculture Ministry in Ratanakkiri was letting plantations launder wood, or that the auctions were doing the forests any harm.
“Try Pheap does not motivate the people to chop. We just go to the auction,” he said.
Asked for details and figures on the company’s bids and exports, Mr. Sith said he was out of time. He said he could not meet again because the rainy season had arrived and he would be tied up with work on his private farm.
He suggested calling Sam Phany, the company’s chief of administration. Mr. Phany declined to comment. Pheang Chetra, Mr. Pheap’s head of public relations, also declined to comment, and refused to put reporters in touch with the company’s spokesman.
“I think nothing is secret, but we have our own regulations,” Mr. Sith said. “So please eliminate your doubt. We have to be a legal business.”

Sources: TheCambodiadaily

Artist Leang Seckon Reflects on Cambodia’s Journey

By Michelle Vachon | June 23, 2014

Leang Seckon has spent the past few years revisiting through his art a childhood that was filled with the sound of bombs falling over his village in the early 1970s. Through his elaborate collages, he has also reflected on the vibrant world of songs and movies in 1960s Cambodia—a world that died during the Pol Pot years.
In his latest series, the artist has become even more personal, illustrating the journey of a Cambodian man who grew up amid this turmoil and emerges today in a country very much connected with the global scene, having to decide who he is. 

Entitled “Hell on Earth,” Mr. Seckon’s series of 14 large works—mainly 2-by-2 meters—and five small collages will be exhibited in London in a solo show opening Friday at Asia House. The month-long exhibition has been organized by the London gallery Rossi & Rossi, which represents him.
A few of the works are the tapestry-style scenes for which Mr. Seckon is known. “World Born,” for instance, is a vast patchwork of painted images and pasted illustrations from past and present. They range from Chinese artists and international movie stars to old motorcycles and new sports cars, images of century-old British royals and a Gustav Klimt painting. They also include Hindu and Buddhist imagery along with an Angkorian sculpture.

This work is about the “normal world” to which Cambodia now has access, Mr. Seckon said in an interview. “I talk about…the universe born, the city born, the art born…growth of nature, of the country, everything exploding.”
Also in his signature style, there is the painting he describes as “King Sihanouk’s Tea Party.” The work is divided into four sections with the late King Norodom Sihanouk in the middle, pouring tea. A sign above him reads, “King Sihanouk’s Tea Shop.”
The two upper quadrants of the work show images related to the Khmer Rouge and political factions of the 1980s that King Sihanouk eventually brought to the negotiating table, which led to the 1991 Paris Peace Agreement and the official end of war in the country. The lower sections refer to today’s political parties, the ruling CPP and opposition CNRP, which, Mr. Seckon noted, could do with a “tea party” to iron out their differences.

However, several of the paintings in the series are a marked departure from Mr. Seckon’s familiar exuberant collages.
“Hell on Earth” is a striking work featuring an elephant carrying a man and two figures dressed in black Khmer Rouge-era garb. Although garlands of flowers adorn the elephant, the people are in the process of killing, and the bottom half of the painting is red with the blood of their victims. An emaciated figure of the Buddha stands below, comforting the dead.
Entitled “The Elephant and the Pond of Blood,” the artwork illustrates the Khmer saying “Chheam Dap Poh Damrei,” or “blood reaching to the stomach of the elephant.” The upper part of the work is painted on fabric from the skirts that village women wore and mended endlessly during the civil war in the early 1970s, he said. The lower part is a collage of red paper for wrapping incense sticks.

The last painting of the series is entitled “Desire,” or “Kiles” in Khmer. It features a nude man seen from the back who is looking at himself in the mirror where his face is reflected as a tiger while his shadow on the wall is that of a wolf. These actually are the three figures on the back of the elephant in the first painting.
The acrylic work about a man’s journey is based on Mr. Seckon’s life, the 44-year-old artist explained. It is painted on three kramas, the iconic checked Cambodian scarf.

In the 1980s, Mr. Seckon lived in the countryside, watching over buffaloes in the field. “After the Khmer Rouge, life was difficult,” he said. “We were poor. Sometimes I would cry because I could not go to school and I was just a buffalo boy.” Mr. Seckon had wealthy relatives in Phnom Penh whom he would envy, unsure how to be as successful as them. In the end, he listened to some of their advice about the importance of education, but chose his own distinctive path.
In “Desire,” Mr. Seckon explained, “The young man tries to learn about himself…and he’s scared.”
Unfortunately, he soon gets caught in unrealistic dreams of fame and wealth, and ends up seeing a powerful tiger in the mirror instead of his own reflection. “He has wasted his future because he lost knowledge of who he is: He just wants to be a movie star,” Mr. Seckon said.
This outcome differs from Mr. Seckon’s own. “Today, I’m very clear about my own journey…. As for my appearance, some say my face is not very international, but I reply that it’s beautiful because it’s like any of those at Angkor,” he said, laughing.

This will be the second solo exhibition that Rossi & Rossi is staging of Mr. Seckon’s work in London, the first one having been in 2010. Since then, the artist’s work has featured in Singapore twice, and Mr. Seckon took part in the Season of Cambodia arts festival in New York last year.
“I think what is special is the way that Seckon can make the public [feel] very personal and vice versa:  The public is never indifferent in front of Seckon’s work, on the contrary there is always great engagement and interest in the story behind the paintings and the artist,” the gallerist Fabio Rossi said in an email.
Leang Seckon’s exhibition “Hell of Earth” runs through July 25 at Asia House in London.

•  Sources : Cambodia Daily

As Workers Stream Back, Gov’t Scrambles to Respond

By Colin Meyn | June 21, 2014
More than 1 percent of Cambodia’s population has returned from Thailand since the country’s military took power in a coup d’etat late last month, fleeing a regime intent on cleaning the country’s labor force of illegal immigrants.
Some 200,000 Cambodians, most citing rumors of arrest and violence by the Thai army toward illegal migrant workers, have left or been forced out of their jobs and found their way back across the border.

At the Poipet border crossing, where the vast majority of workers have re-entered the country, the government has shown unusual efficiency, sending soldiers and military trucks to tend to exhausted workers and send them back to their home provinces. Volunteers with the Cambodian Red Cross, Scouts and other youth groups have provided a steady supply of food and water.
Though the Labor Ministry places the number of Cambodian workers in Thailand at about 90,000, estimates from rights groups and the Thai government place the number at more than 400,000. Facing limited job prospects and low wages at home, Thailand’s robust economy has been a magnet for impoverished Cambodians.

“If you do the same job in Cambodia and in Thailand, you earn about three times the salary in Thailand,” said Tun Sophorn, national coordinator for the International Labor Organization. Employers in Thailand also offer benefits, such as free meals and lodging, that aren’t provided in Cambodia. Over the past five years, Mr. Sophorn said, sophisticated recruitment networks have been formed to bring illegal Cambodian workers into the Thai labor force.
For Cambodians, going through the legal process to emigrate into Thailand is often prohibitive. “If you were to go through legal channels, you may take a longer time and spend more money than if you go through illegal channels,” Mr. Sophorn said. “That is why you have such a large undocumented population [of Cambodian workers] in Thailand.”

Now that about half of this migrant population is back in the country, the government is facing the challenge of what do with almost a quarter of a million people who had been making relatively good money and supporting their families through their jobs. “The government has to fulfill their obligation to respond to people who now don’t have the means to feed their family,” said Thun Saray, president of local rights group Adhoc.
“I think it will be hard to find jobs for 200,000 people. It’s hard because they left their country because they could not find work. Now when they are back it is hard for them,” he said. “That is the big job for the government.”

• Sources : Cambodia Daily

City’s Teenagers Swept Up in Bubble Tea Boom

By Hay Pisey and George Styllis | June 19, 2014

Phnom Penh may be a couple of decades late to the bubble tea game, but the sugary-sweet craze that began in Taiwan during the 1980s has officially caught on.
In a scene replicated throughout the city, a group of students were sitting outside a Gong Cha cafe this week, leaning on each other’s shoulders as they scrolled on their smartphones and sipped pint-sized cups of milky tea with little black balls at the bottom. 

“I like the taste of the bubble tea here because it’s not so sweet like other shops, and it is near my school,” said Tep Sophanith, a 22-year-old university student who has been coming regularly to the cafe since it opened last year.
Spending $2.50 per tea-infused drink, Mr. Sophanith said he spends about an hour per visit relaxing with classmates.

“I come here with several friends for a chat at lunch or after class,” he said.
When Taiwan-based chain Gong Cha opened in mid-2013, there were about five cafes serving bubble tea in the city, according to Thay Chheangmeng, marketing executive for Gong Cha, whose local franchising rights are owned by Brown Coffee.
Since then the number has soared to more than 40, he said.
The rapid growth has been driven by a teen market looking for an alternative to coffee, he said, with most shops popping up near schools, universities and malls.

As Gong Cha has grown, so too have its main rivals, Taiwanese brand Chatime and Cambodian-owned PopTea. Chatime now has 20 outlets across the city, according to Hak Techsieng, a supervisor at the Boeng Keng Kang III outlet. He said that sales at one shop amount to about $500 a day.
Answering the phone at one of PopTea’s many new outlets in the city, an employee said that she couldn’t comment due to the cutthroat nature of the bubble tea market these days.

“I can’t give you information about the shop because my boss is afraid you might be a competitor,” the employee said.
Proh, an information technology worker, said he often spends about $30 per bubble-tea cafe visit, as he buys drinks for his whole family, adding on extra ingredients including red beans, aloe vera and grass jelly.
“There are a lot of flavors which are delicious and fun,” he said. “My family can enjoy something different each time.”

In Taiwan, the bubble tea industry turned sour for a short time in 2013, when authorities seized hundreds of tons of food starch—often used in the sweet tea—that had been contaminated with maleic acid, a cheap food additive that can cause kidney problems if consumed in large amounts.
Although Cambodia has had no such problem during its bubble tea boom, Phnom Penh health officials said that consumers should drink the sugary tea in moderation.
“It is better not to drink it every day,” said Ngy Meanheng, the executive director of Phnom Penh municipal health department. “The World Health Organization said that full-grown people should not drink more than a can of sweet juice that contains a sweet taste per day.”
If bubble tea in Cambodia were found to be contaminated, Ministry of Health secretary of state Heng Taykry said the government would not hesitate to shut them down.
“If [bubble teas] are poisoned, they will be closed,” he said.
City Hall spokesman Long Dimanche said he saw no problem with the shops opening up across the city, noting that there are worse things to do than sip sugary drinks.
“If [we] see young people are chatting [at the shops], it is better than betting on a football game,” he said.
With each new shop that opens, competition heats up, and for some tea shops, the bubble has burst.

For Boba Taiwan Bubble Tea, which has three branches in Phnom Penh, the cafe boom has put a squeeze on manager Yeun Channa’s business. When Boba opened just over a year ago, each shop was selling about 300 to 400 cups per day.
Now it’s down to about 200 a day.
“My sales have decreased because there are many competitors now…and some of my customers go to other shops,” she said.

However, Ong Singly, a senior at Mekong University who drinks bubble tea about once a week, said that the bubble tea industry should have plenty of room for expansion, as students simply prefer the sweet drink to the obvious alternative.
“I like bubble tea because it is different from coffee,” he said. “When I drink coffee, it gives me a fever.”

• Sources: Cambodia Daily 

At City’s 2,500-Riel Shops, It’s Buyers Beware

By Hay Pisey and Simon Henderson | June 2, 2014

Customers may not expect top-of-the-line products when they shop in discount stores for shampoos, shower gels or beauty creams. But as a police raid on a 2,500-riel store in Phnom Penh last week showed, neither should they expect to get exactly what they are paying for.
Following a complaint from Pich Beauty Co. Ltd. that the 2500 Riel Mini Mart in Daun Penh district was peddling fake lotion in Leivy’s branded containers, economic police raided the store last Monday and confiscated hundreds of bottles of counterfeit toiletries and beauty products.

Customers browse items for sale last week at a 2,500-riel store on Sihanouk Boulevard in Phnom Penh. (Siv Channa)

The scale of the potential knock-off problem is unclear, but growing fast. Authorities have only a vague idea of how many 2,500-riel shops are operating in Phnom Penh, but say they are formulating a plan to make sure their deals are real.
Ly Kong, director of the municipal commerce department, said there are only seven 2,500-riel shops officially registered in the city. But he estimated that there are between four and 10 in every city commune—anywhere between about 300 to more than 700 such shops across the city.
“These sort of shops have been open for more than a year at least, but we have not got numbers for the total amount in Phnom Penh yet,” he said, adding that he would begin asking commune officials to get the figures.
Long Sreng, chief of the Ministry of Interior’s economic police department, who led last Monday’s raid, said it is highly likely that other products stocked by the city’s numerous 2,500-riel marts do not comply with trading standards, whether they are fake, rebranded or simply well past expiry dates.
For the economic police department, cutting off the supply chain of such fake goods will become a priority, he said.
“First of all, we intend to find out who produced the fake shampoos and other products we found [last Monday] because they pose a threat to the country’s economy and public safety,” Brigadier General Sreng said.
Police believe that empty branded bottles seized last week were imported from Vietnam and then filled with counterfeit product in Cambodia, and have compiled a report on last week’s raid and sent it on to Camcontrol, the Commerce Ministry’s customs inspection unit, he added.
“I don’t know when they will take action, but we have informed Camcontrol authorities and they will then go and carry out quality control checks in 2,500-riel marts, especially on food products that may have already expired.”
Mom Dany, 50, who runs four 2,500-riel shops in Phnom Penh, the first of which she opened two years ago, said she had heard all about the police bust on Monday but had no worries about a similar raid on her own outlets.
“I do not worry about police investigating my shops because the products are all listed with the correct expiry date and there are no expired or fake products,” she said at one of her shops in Chamkar Mon district, adding that her daughter and son-in-law travel to Thailand and China and purchase stock directly from wholesalers.
Ms. Dany said that as 2,500-riel shops are becoming ever more popular, with increasing competition between them, many retailers are likely feeling threatened.
“There must be some supermarket owners making complaints to the police because they charge more than 2,500 riel for the same product,” she said.
The 2,500-riel shops are also facing the threat of being undercut, with 2,400-riel stores now popping up. In a crowded market, discounted name-brands and household miscellanies are being sold for a fraction of the price they can be bought for at the supermarket, or even at the local market.
Chiv Ty owns two 2,400-riel shops and claims to have come up with the idea for discount shops in Cambodia after visiting Japan and seeing the success of similar stores there. Since he opened his first shop in Tuol Kok district’s Phsar Doeum Kor commune just one year ago, the venture has proved very successful.
“I make about $750 in an average day, earning a profit of between $100 to $200 per day,” he said, adding that he employs 10 people in each store.
His success, he says, is based on a simple premise—he sells products at prices that customers who earn low salaries can afford to buy, though everything on sale is not being sold at the eponymous price.
“My prices start at 2,400 riel and go up to $10,” he said. “But the same products in a market are hard to bargain, while my prices are low and they are set.”
He buys his goods exclusively from middlemen who come to him with whatever they have on offer. “About 80 percent of the products I buy are from China and the rest are from Thailand, Vietnam, or here in Cambodia,” he said.
But keenness for a bargain does not inure all customers to the potential risks involved. At a 2,500-riel shop on Sihanouk Boulevard, shoppers said they were not surprised at the police’s discovery.
“I would buy only some types of products in this kind of shop,” said 23-year-old Her Rainer. “I wouldn’t buy food and snacks or beauty products because I don’t trust those types of products when they are very cheap.”
Another customer, Hang Monika, also 23, said she shops at 2,500-riel stores for kitchen products such as dishwashing soap, plates and anything that doesn’t pose a health risk.
“I would never buy food and lotions at discount shops because I know they will not be good quality,” she said.
And the pay-off for all 2,500-riel-shop entrepreneurs is not guaranteed. The overabundance and proximity of selfsame discount shops selling similar or identical products has introduced some business owners to the law of diminishing returns.
Kim Leang said there are about six of the same shops on the same street as her store in Chamkar Mon district, all of which sell similar goods—all bought from the same wholesalers.
“I have been running my business for about a year now, and for the first half of the year, business was fine,” she said.
Now, many people are running the same kind of business and the glut of 2,500 shops now open on Street 271 has left her pessimistic about the future of her enterprise.
“My business is slow now. There are just too many shops on the same street.”
pisey@cambodiadaily.com, henderson@cambodiadaily.com

© 2014, The Cambodia Daily. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced in print, electronically, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without written permission.

Workers Turn Models on Political Catwalk

By Mech Dara and Alex Willemyns | May 26, 2014

About 150 garment workers turned out to the Phnom Penh of­fices of the United Sisterhood Alliance NGO on Sunday to watch a politically charged fashion show entitled “Beautiful Clothes, Ugly Reality.”
Aimed to highlight “the income gap between Cambodian garment workers and the selected CEOs of brand companies,” according to show organizers, the two-hour program featured a medley of cat-walking, political theater and speeches calling for a $160 month­ly basic wage. 

Workers model clothes at the ‘Beautiful Clothes, Ugly Reality’ fashion show in Phnom Penh on Sunday. (Siv Channa)

After a brief dance described as “crackdown hip-hop,” which featured four young men “krump­ing” with their arms over house music punctuated by gun-shot sound effects, a group of about a dozen female garment workers, on their day off work, emerged onto the catwalk.
The workers-turned-models, who served as the stars of the rest of the show, presented a range of colorful clothing that had no unifying theme other than hav­ing been produced in a Cam­bo­dian garment factory.
Items spanned from unbranded plain black dresses to jacket tops and T-shirts displaying the “Pu­ma” and “Adidas” logos.
Event organizers said the show was designed to stress to both the government and the brands being displayed—H&M, Adidas, Puma, Gap, Old Navy and Nike—the need for a higher basic wage.
“If we don’t demand, there will be no change,” said Phon Sreivin, one of the workers who took part in the program.
“Before the government decided to give us only $95, but after the workers’ demand movement, the government agreed to pay us more—and we will continue to make demands until we can live in dignity,” she said.
The show soon transitioned into a more openly political segment, with the garment-worker models re-emerging onto the catwalk to present a list of problems faced by workers on the current $100 basic monthly wage.
Wearing white shirts and red bandanas, the women presented grievances including “forced overtime,” “fixed duration contracts” and “health risks.”
Songs such as Swedish duo Icona Pop’s 2012 hit “I Love It”—whose distinctive electro-house chorus repeatedly rings out “I don’t care, I love it”—were blasted over the speakers during the circuit.
The models were then joined by a flurry of others, dressed as protesters and activists wearing the “$160” headbands of the na­tionwide garment worker strike that began late last year.
The group marched in frenetic circuits of the catwalk until the inevitable theater of repression ar­rived in the form of men dressed up as the notorious, helmeted district security guards.
With some of the guards armed with toy rifles, the forces and the protesters tussled in a choreographed back-and-forth. A protester was then shot dead in a dramatization of the strike repressions of January.
After the show, garment workers who attended said that the demands for a $160 basic monthly wage were still alive in their minds.
“The arrest, ban, threats and killing of our activists cannot prevent a workers’ movement,” said Hil Chandy, 23. “We still demand all buyers take responsibility to find a solution for $160 for all workers.”
dara@cambodiadaily.com, willemyns@cambodiadaily.com

After Budget Cuts, Institut Francais Looks to Rebuild

By Michelle Vachon | June 8, 2014

In the heyday of Indochina prior to World War II, France’s colonial policy in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam included a “mission civilisatrice,” or civilizing mission.
Cambodia had the good fortune that Frenchmen such as George Groslier, Adhemard Leclere and members of the research institute Ecole francaise d’Extreme-Orient interpreted this as both bringing in French knowledge and technological advances, and helping Cambodians research and develop their arts and culture.

The Institut Francais (Siv Channa)

While this “mission” has faded away along with its colonial empire, France has continued what could be called cultural diplomacy, that is, using French culture in all its forms—from culinary to performing and visual arts—as a way to promote France and develop international relations.
The French Cultural Center, now called the Institut Francais, opened its doors in the early 1990s and has since been a cornerstone of this policy—initiating Cambodians to the best of French culture while supporting Cambodian artists as they forge ahead in defining this country’s cultural identity.
But its plans were abruptly disrupted in the late 2000s when the French government’s first budget cuts were applied to staggering effect over the next few years.
Today, the Institut Francais’ budget is about a quarter of what it was in 2010, which has translated into severe cuts in its cultural activities.
In the absence of a Cambodian-government arts development policy or a contemporary arts museum, the Institut Francais has offered artists in every field—from circus artists to actors, dancers, musicians and visual artists—outlets to develop and produce their work. Any drop in its activities is deeply felt among the country’s artists.
In November 2004, the institute’s organizers had brought to Phnom Penh more than 200 Cambodian circus artists, making Cambodians and foreigners aware that the form was part of the country’s tradition. The week-long festival Tini Tinou, or “here and there,” also included French circus artists and attracted thousands of visitors.
By 2007, however, the Institut Francais could no longer afford to hold the event and turned it over to the organization Phare Ponleu Selpak in Battambang city, which runs a circus school.  But this proved too taxing on Phare’s resources and the festival disappeared in 2010. In the meantime, enrollment at the National Circus School in Phnom Penh has dropped to two students this year, with the lack of opportunities to perform discouraging young Cambodians from pursuing that career.
The other major loss has been the “Lakhaon” theater festival. An annual event since 2007, it usually involved a renowned French director who staged either a French classic such as Moliere’s “The Miser” or a Cambodian work. The shows were staged with Cambodian actors and presented in Khmer with French and English subtitles. During the last festival in 2012, a French writer-director of Cambodian parentage, Jean-Baptiste Phou, staged a four-character play featuring Cambodian actress Dy Saveth and set in the waiting room of the Cambodian Embassy in Paris.

Phang Vathana, left, and Nop Sangvaleaph at work in Le Bistro, the Institut Francais restaurant that opened in late March. (Siv Channa)

The festival included Cambodian companies and was a showcase for those from the provinces, said Olivier Planchon, the French Embassy’s cultural attaché and the institute’s deputy director. “There are many of them and they rarely perform in Phnom Penh,” he said. Efforts were made throughout the years to present the 26 forms of Cambodian theater, putting an emphasis on those that had hardly ever been produced, he added.
Since the last “Lakhaon” two years ago, Cambodian theater has virtually gone dark in Phnom Penh, as such event requires not only funds but also the technical know-how of the Institut Francais’ French and Cambodian teams.
Over the last two decades, the Institut Francais’ role and budgets worldwide have altered according to economic constraints but also due to changes in French governments and senior public servants, with some seeing support to the arts in developing countries as essential as assistance to rural development or education, while others have viewed the institute’s role strictly as a public relations entity promoting French culture.
This has led to budget cuts at the institutes throughout the world.
“But in Cambodia, we have been especially affected because the budget had been so high,” Mr. Planchon noted. “We had been favored with grants much bigger than elsewhere. This was the legacy of the 1990s, the years…during which France as well as other countries had invested heavily to help rebuild the country in all fields and [in the case of France] in the cultural sector.”
Today, the institute’s funding for cultural programs is minimal.
But even amid the cuts, due to French government accounting, there remained last year funding available for “investment” in Cambodia. That money could not be carried into cultural programs, said Romain Louvet, cooperation and cultural program advisor at the French Embassy in Phnom Penh and the institute’s director. With something of an eye to loopholes, the institute spent the funds on an extensive renovation program that has transformed the Institut Francais’ buildings on Street 184, enclosing the ground-floor hall on one side of the street, and adding a glass-cube reception area plus an outdoor bistro and an indoor restaurant on the other.
“Since we had ‘reserves’ available, it seemed appropriate to get involved in a building program that would demonstrate the Institut Français’ wish to be in line with the time,” Mr. Louvet said.
The institute had been at that same location since the early 1990s with no renovation done for a number of years. And if this week was any indication, students who gravitate around the institute appreciate its new features: They enjoy the garden seating areas along the library and take advantage of the air-conditioned exhibition hall in the midday heat.
Finding themselves with next to no budget for cultural programs, the institute has instead tried to come up with a strategy to generate funds, well aware that it will take years—if ever—before it can operate at the early 2000s levels.
One major element of this tactic has been to open a French restaurant. Set up during the building makeover, Le Bistro is now operated by the institute in partnership with Le Votre—a French catering service specializing in supplies for restaurants. Its goal is to attract a Cambodian as well as Western clientele; its menu at this point is classic French cuisine, restaurant Manager Anthony Hervoche said. “It’s French culture through its cuisine.”

Le Bistro restaurant at the Institut Francais. (Siv Channa)

The Institut Francais also hopes the number of students taking French-language lessons will increase. There currently are 5,000 students enrolled in Phnom Penh and at the institute’s annexes in Battambang City and Siem Reap City.
Another way for the institute to continue activities with little or no budget has been to take advantage of touring events that the French government organizes each year as part of its “cultural diplomacy,” which are funded out of a budget separate from that of the Institut Francais.
The institute’s current exhibition, Arts and Food, featuring photos on the theme of food is one such event.
The dance performance presented Wednesday night by French director Fabrice Planquette of the A.Lter S.Essio company, was another. This performance enabled the institute to stage a Cambodian production—Chumvan Sodhachivy’s dance “Alphabet”—in the same show, Mr. Planchon said. In the same way, the concert of the French rock band Dissonant Nation Thursday night at Chenla Theater will also feature the Cambodian rock band Cartoon Emo.
When the Institut Francais celebrated its 20th anniversary two years ago, 20 of the country’s foremost painters and photographers—such as Sopheap Pich, Mak Remissa, Sre Bandaul, Meas Sokhorn, Chhim Sothy and Em Riem—donated artworks for a silent auction to benefit colleagues in financial difficulties. Some of these artists whose works sold for thousands of dollars had agreed to this because the Institut Francais was asking.
“Since its opening, the institute has tremendously supported Cambodian artists,” painter Chhim Sothy explained at the time. “It may have been called ‘French’ Cultural Center, but it was not French but Cambodian artists who were encouraged and exhibited there.”
vachon@cambodiadaily.com

© 2014, The Cambodia Daily. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced in print, electronically, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without written permission.

Hackers infiltrate eBay to access personal data

Officials at eBay said hackers gained access to customer data,
including names, birth dates, and passwords.
It does not appear that credit card numbers were taken, they said.

By Nicole Perlroth | New York Times   May 22, 2014

 SAN FRANCISCO — In the latest high-profile breach of a company’s computer network, hackers have infiltrated the online marketplace eBay, gaining access to the personal data of 145 million customers, the company said Wednesday.
The hackers broke into an eBay database containing names, e-mail addresses, birth dates, encrypted passwords, physical addresses, and phone numbers.
There was no indication that the attackers obtained financial information such as credit and debit card numbers or gained access to customer accounts at PayPal, which is owned by eBay, said Amanda Miller, a company spokeswoman. The company has not seen evidence of fraudulent activity that could be linked to the breach, she said.
Still, hackers could use the stolen data for identity theft. Personal information — such as e-mails, passwords, and birth dates — is regularly sold on the black market to criminals who use it for phishing or identity theft.
Security experts warned that the stolen information would make eBay customers easy targets for phishing attacks, in which criminals send e-mails that bait victims into clicking on malicious links or direct them to fake login screens where they are asked to enter more valuable information, such as a Social Security number.
“Expect an uptick in phishing. Do not click links in e-mail or discuss anything over the phone,” warned Trey Ford, a strategist at Rapid7, a security firm in Boston.
EBay discovered the breach earlier this month when the company’s internal security team noticed that some of its employees were engaged in unusual activity on its corporate network, said Mark Carges, the company’s chief technology officer. He said eBay uses several different security technologies, which alerted staff to suspicious activity.
EBay contacted the FBI’s San Francisco office as well as an outside computer forensics firm. Working together, they found that hackers had been inside eBay’s corporate network since late February.
By studying computer logs, eBay discovered that hackers had stolen the credentials of several of its employees and, with their user names and passwords, gained unauthorized access to eBay’s corporate network. Once inside, they were able to copy a database containing information on all 145 million of the company’s customers, according to Alan Marks, eBay’s senior vice president of global communications.
Marks said eBay stored its financial data separately. Still, the company advised users with the same password for eBay and PayPal to change passwords immediately on both.
Though notification laws differ, most states require that companies notify customers of a breach only if their names are compromised in combination with other information such as a credit card or a Social Security number. But there are exceptions for encrypted information: As long as companies scramble consumer information with basic encryption, the law does not require firms to tell customers about a breach.
In eBay’s case, the company stored users’ names, e-mail, and physical addresses and birth dates in plain text but encrypted their passwords.

Google must delete 'irrelevant' links at the request of ordinary individuals, rules top EU court

The European Court of Justice struck a major blow against the right of internet companies to hold unlimited information on individuals when it ordered Google to remove links that are deemed “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant”.
The court’s decision will allow individuals the right to ask internet search engines to remove links to information about them that they do not want known – which could be seen either as an assertion of the right to privacy or an attack on free speech. Google and free speech activists reacted angrily to the court’s verdict which could guarantee individuals a “right to be forgotten” on the internet which is not currently available.
It is unclear exactly how the ruling will be implemented considering the sheer volume of online data and internet users. For individuals keen to erase embarrassing incidents from their past, it could prove a handy tool for re-shaping their digital footprint, while data protection advocates are calling it a victory against the all-powerful internet giants.
But for champions of free speech, the potential for misuse is deeply worrying.
“This is akin to marching into a library and forcing it to pulp books,” said Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive of Index on Censorship. “Although the ruling is intended for private individuals, it opens the door to anyone who wants to whitewash their personal history.”
It was a repossessed home in Catalonia which sparked the battle between privacy campaigners, search engines such as Google and free speech advocates. Mario Costeja Gonzalez was dismayed to find searches on his name still threw up a 1998 newspaper article on past financial problems, even though many years had passed and his debts were paid off.

Read more: Q&A: The ECJ ruling on Google
Comment: how easy is it to clean up after yourself?
Editorial: A fine principle, but fiendish to implement

A Spanish court referred his request for the link to be removed to the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg, which ruled in favour of Mr Costeja. The judges decided that search engines did have a duty to make sure that data deemed “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” did not appear. Ordinary citizens could also request that search engines remove links to sites which contained excessive personal data on them.
Google had argued that it was not in control of the content – it was merely linking to it – and therefore the onus for removing any out-of-date information was on the websites themselves.
“We are very surprised that [this decision] differs so dramatically from the Advocate General’s opinion and the warnings and consequences that he spelled out. We now need to take time to analyse the implications,” said a Google spokesman, Al Verney. He was referring to an opinion issued an adviser to the European Court of Justice last year expressing concern that freedom of speech could be threatened.

 This clash between the right to privacy and the right to information is an ongoing one in Europe. In 2012, the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, proposed a law granting people the right to be forgotten on the internet. The European Parliament however watered it down, and internet companies have been lobbying member states not to approve the legislation.
They have an ally in the free speech groups, which argue that giving an individual the right to decide what can be removed from search engines with no legal oversight has worrying implications.
“The court’s decision is a retrograde move that misunderstands the role and responsibility of search engines and the wider internet,” said Ms Ginsberg. “It should send chills down the spine of everyone in the European Union who believes in the crucial importance of free expression and freedom of information.”
Javier Ruiz, Policy Director at Open Rights Group, agreed. “We need to take into account individuals’ right to privacy, but if search engines are forced to remove links to legitimate content that is already in the public domain... it could lead to online censorship,” he said.

 But the battle lines are not entirely clear. People are increasingly concerned about the safety of their personal data since allegations emerged last year of mass government surveillance. The EU’s Justice Commissioner, Viviane Reding, called the ruling a “strong tailwind” in the commission’s efforts to tighten data protection in the bloc. “Companies can no longer hide behind their servers being based in California or anywhere else in the world,” she wrote on Facebook.
It is now up to legal experts with search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing to work out how they can possibly implement the law, and what processes will be put in place to allow people to appeal against the links,. For the man who started it all, he is pleased that his case has created an opening for ordinary people to stand up to the often faceless Internet giants. “It’s a great relief to be shown that you were right when you have fought for your ideas, it’s a joy,” Mr Costeja told the Associated Press.