Cambodia yesterday gave an unprecedented media tour of a strategically crucial naval base as authorities try to knock down a report of a secret deal allowing Chinese warships to dock there.
The Ream Naval Base near Sihanoukville is on the Gulf of Thailand with easy access to the South China Sea.
The Wall Street Journal this week reported that a deal had been struck allowing China to dock its warships and store weapons at the base.
Scores of reporters were taken from Phenom Penh to Ream on a brief government-steered tour.
They were driven in vans donated by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army with thanks written in Khmer on the back windows.
Billboards on the approach to the base in Chinese and Khmer advertised soon-to-be-built restaurants and hotels.
After the whistle-stop tour, Cambodian Ministry of National Defense spokesman Chhum Socheat told reporters that the kingdom had “nothing to hide.”
Reporters were shown a number of outhouses and a jetty where several Cambodian-flagged patrol ships had docked.
It was unclear where the blue-gray boats, armed with canons, had come from, although China has donated several warships over the past few years.
“You [journalists] from national and international media are our eyes and noses... We have nothing to hide from foreigners who still accuse us of doing this or that,” Chhum Socheat said, adding that satellite imagery would prove if Chinese ships had used the base.
The US embassy in Phnom Penh has said that Cambodia suddenly withdrew a request for help to upgrade the base.
“This causes us to wonder if the Cambodian leadership’s plans for Ream Naval Base include the possible hosting of foreign military assets and personnel on Cambodian soil,” an embassy official said on Thursday, requesting anonymity.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
RSS