A prominent Cambodian labor leader affiliated with the country's main opposition party was fatally shot yesterday on a street in Phnom Penh, the latest in a series of suspected political killings.
Chea Vichea, president of the Cambodian Free Trade Union of Workers, was shot at close range while reading at a roadside newsstand, said the owner of the newsstand, Va Sothy.
"There were two assailants," Va Sothy said. "One was waiting on a motorcycle and the other walked toward him and shot him two or three times from about half a meter away."
Ung Bun Ang, spokesman for the Sam Rainsy Party, said the killing was probably linked to politics. He said the slain man was not a party member but had a close relationship with party president Sam Rainsy.
"Chea Vichea was a very strong advocate of workers' rights and human rights," Sam Rainsy said. "He had denounced corruption and human rights violations in this country. So apparently he was a target of the current regime."
The opposition party is locked in a struggle with the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen, whose own Cambodian People's Party won last year's general election but failed to get the two-thirds majority required to govern alone.
The runner-up Sam Rainsy and FUNCINPEC parties have refused to join a coalition government and called for Hun Sen to step down.
Government spokesman Khieu Kanharith condemned the killing, but dismissed speculation that it was politically motivated.
"Amid the currently tense situation, this [killing] could be the result of past disputes with other workers or garment factories. This is not political because he was not a political figure of any importance," he said.
At least three members of the Sam Rainsy Party have been killed in recent weeks. The culprits have not been apprehended.
Va Sothy said the gunman did not say anything to the 39-year-old labor leader, who was reading a newspaper, before shooting him and fleeing on the motorcycle.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS