October 2014 – Page 2 – The Speaker News Journal

Russian Rocket Launch, Bound for International Space Station, Successful

October 29, 2014October 29, 2014 by The Speaker Editors

Russia Rocket Launch, Bound for International Space Station, Successful

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Russia launched a Progress 57 Cargo Ship from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan Wednesday, bound for the International Space Station. The ship was launched just three hours after the failed launch of the American rocket Antares, which exploded over Wallops Island, Virginia. The Russian ship is expected to rendezvous with the International Space Station later Wednesday.

The Russian ship, a Progress M-25M space freighter, was launched on a Soyuz-2.1a from Baikonur space center Wednesday, according to Russian space agency Roscosmos.

“The launch was made at 10:10 AM Moscow time, Wednesday. All pre-launch operations and the launch of the space freighter by a new rocket were conducted as scheduled,” said Roscosmos.

The successful launch took place just three hours after the failed launch of the American Cygnus commercial cargo carrier Antares, which exploded after crashing back into the ground in Wallops Island, Virginia.

The Progress M-25M is expected to dock with the space station’s Pirs docking compartment exactly six hours after liftoff.

The Progress is carrying almost 5,200 pounds of food, fuel and supplies for the six-person International Space Station crew, including 1,322 pounds of fuel, over 100 pounds of oxygen, 925 pounds of fresh water, and 2,828 pounds of dry cargo.

Wednesday’s launch was Russia’s first using a Soyuz-2.1a rocket. Previous space freighters were launched atop Soyuz-U rockets. The 2.1a is a modernized version of the older launcher, and uses updated electronics, a digital flight control system, and is capable of lofting 300 more kilograms (660 pounds) to the International Space Station’s orbit, according to Roscosmos.

The upgraded rocket also uses less foreign parts than the Soyuz-U, which depended more heavily on components from Ukraine.

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Day Blakely Donaldson

Images: NASA

Brain Cells Created From Skin Cells in Landmark Study

November 3, 2014October 28, 2014 by Daniel Jackson

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A team of researchers from Washington University School of Medicine has converted human skin cells directly into brain cells. This breakthrough research is complimented by other landmark findings within the study–including that the cells were able to form neurological connections, both axonal and dendritic. The research holds promise for sufferers of neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington’s disease.

“Our study shows that the transplanted human cells derived by direct conversion of skin cells could actually behave like normal neurons,” Dr Andrew Yoo, assistant professor of developmental biology at the Washington University School of Medicine and lead researcher on the study, told The Speaker.

“We have evidence for both dendritic and axon growth,” Yoo told us.

“For dendritic growth, we found the transplanted cells could elicit spontaneous postsynaptic potentials, meaning that the cell were wired into the existing neural circuit and receive inputs from neighboring cells.”

The transplanted cells also formed axonal projections from the transplanted skin cells. “These cells are known to extend projections into certain brain regions. And we found the human transplanted cells also connected to these distant targets in the brain. That’s a landmark point about this paper,” said Yoo.

The team used a particular combination of microRNAs and transcription factors to reprogram the skin cells to become a particular type of brain cell known as medium spiny neurons.

Yoo’s team had found in previous research that exposing skin cells to two small RNA molecules–miR-9 and miR-124–could transform the cells into different types of brain cells.

The team is not certain how the transformation takes place, but has hypothesized that the two small RNA molecules open up the DNA inside the cells. That DNA holds the instructions for making brain cells. The team achieved transformation of a skin cell into a particular type of brain cell by adding molecules called transcription factors that the team knew were present in the region of the brain where medium spiny neurons are abundant.

“They are priming the skin cells to become neurons,” said co-author Matheus B. Victor of the small RNA molecules. “The transcription factors we add then guide the skin cells to become a specific subtype, in this case medium spiny neurons. We think we could produce different types of neurons by switching out different transcription factors.”

The spiny neurons produced by the team are the main type affected by the neurodegenerative disease Huntington’s disease, an inherited disease that causes a gradual decline of mental ability, accompanied by involuntary movement.

The team plans to achieve further understanding of how their results could help people suffering from Huntington’s disease.

“We are currently doing experiments to figure out how these transplanted cells send out axons to proper sites,” Yoo told us.

Next for the team is research that will use cells from patients with Huntington’s disease. Whereas the current research transformed human skin cells into mouse brain cells, the next step will aim to convert skin cells from humans with Huntington’s into mice with the same disease, again trying to create medium spiny neurons.

“For any future implications of using reprogrammed cells for cell replacement-based therapeutic approaches, it is imperative to show that the human neurons directly converted from fibroblasts could integrate into the brain circuit,” Yoo told us.

The report, “Generation of Human Striatal Neurons by MicroRNA-Dependent Direct Conversion of Fibroblasts,” was authored by Matheus B. Victor, Michelle Richner, Tracey O. Hermanstyne, Joseph L. Ransdell, Courtney Sobieski, Pan-Yue Deng, Vitaly A. Klyachko, Jeanne M. Nerbonne, and Dr Yoo, was published in Neuron Magazine, and was funded by various bodies including the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

By Daniel Jackson
Photos: Yoo Lab, Dierk Schaefer

Antares Rocket, Which Exploded Tuesday, Was Set to Fly Monday but Was Delayed by Stray Boater

October 30, 2014October 28, 2014 by Daniel Jackson

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The third Orbital Sciences cargo mission to the International Space Station was set to launch Monday, but was prevented by a stray boat which had entered restricted waters southeast of the launch pad in Wallops Island, Virginia. The launch was postponed until Tuesday due to public safety concerns, according to officials.

The Monday launch window was just 10 minutes long, restricted by the orbit of the space station.

The sailboat carried a single passenger without a radio, reportedly.

The Antares exploded seconds after launch Tuesday.

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The Antares carried over 5,000 pounds of supplies for the space station, including 32 mini research satellites, a meteor tracker, crew provisions, and a tank of high-pressure nitrogen to replace that used by astronauts during spacewalks. It also carried, according to the launch director, some high-priority “classified crypto equipment” thought to be for secure communications.

The Antares suffered “a catastrophic anomaly” a short distance above the launch platform, lost power, fell back to the earth and exploded on contact with the ground.

“Parts were sent flying everywhere, and then the vehicle fell back to the pad, exploding in an even larger fireball, setting the entire area on fire,” commented eye-witness Robert Pearlman, editor of the space history news website collectSPACE.com.

The cause of the explosion is not known, according to NASA officials.

By Daniel Jackson

Slideshow (NASA images):

John Lennon Letter Praising Yoko Ono Fetches $28,000

October 30, 2014October 28, 2014 by Joseph Reight

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A letter, penned by former-Beatle John Lennon to radio and television host Joe Franklin and praising the music of Yoko Ono, has sold for $28,171. The two-page handwritten letter was dated December 13, 1971, and was written in an attempt to get Ono onto Franklin’s New York TV show.

“I know you’re a musician at heart!” Lennon writes in the letter. “And especially I know you dig jazz. Well, Yoko’s music ain’t quite jazz but to help you get off on it, or understand it, please listen to a track on the Yoko/Ono/Plastic Ono Band, called ‘AOS,’ which was recorded in 1968 (pre Lennon/Beatles!) with Ornette Coleman at Albert Hall London, you could call it free form, anyway Yoko sits in the middle of avant-garde, classic, jazz—and now through me and my music—rock ‘n’ roll!”

The songs referred to by Lennon were on Ono’s solo album, “Fly.”

The letter also included a thumbnail sketch Lennon drew of himself and Ono, and was written on official Apple Records letterhead–the label started by the Beatles in 1968.

The letter was successful, reportedly.

“Yoko was on my show nine times,” Franklin commented recently on the events of 1971. “John Lennon was on three times. Yoko was only with him one of those times. Part of his whole thing was to convince her to be confident enough to do it on her own.”

The letter sold for $28,171–far above its presale estimate of $15,000-20,000–at the RR Auction in Massachusetts.

By Joseph Reight

Cholera Outbreak on the Rise in Western Africa

January 26, 2021October 28, 2014 by The Speaker Editors

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The Western African nation of Niger is experiencing an outbreak of cholera. To date, 51 people have died of the disease this year–deaths are on the rise, with 38 deaths taking place in September alone.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reported that 1,300 people have been infected with cholera so far this year in Niger. The high rate of infection has been caused in part by the heavy flooding which has existed in Niger since June.

The outbreak involves four of Niger’s eight regions, and UNOCHA is taking steps to contain the illness and prevent it from appearing in new places, according to officials.

Cholera is a food- and water-borne disease, like salmonella, polio, hepatitis A, e. coli, and transmissible spongiform enephalopathies–although cholera is a particularly aggressive infection–and is prevalent in Asia, Africa and South America.

The ingestion of food or drink contaminated with human waste is the common means of cholera transmission. Symptoms include diarrhoea and dehydration, and death can result within 24 hours if the disease remains untreated.

The world is currently experiencing its seventh recorded cholera pandemic. Each has been devastating.

There are currently 100 active strains of cholera in the world, which makes development of an effective vaccine difficult, as each vaccine can only target one version of the bacterium.

The current outbreak in Niger involves the special concern of 105,000 refugees from Boko Haram and the Nigerian army have settled in Diffa, southeastern Niger. Many of these refugees have settled on the islands of Lake Chad where there is limited access to drinking water and hygiene and sanitation are precarious.

Photos: Oxfam East Africa, barth1003, mashroms

Ebola “Family” Over 16 Million Years Old

October 27, 2014October 26, 2014 by Andrew Stern

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The Ebola Virus and the related Marburgvirus have been diverging for over 16 million years, according to a recent study by the University of Buffalo. Although filoviruses were once thought to date back only 10,000 years, new research using more reliable dating methods has shown that the origins of the virus go much deeper than the beginnings of large-scale human agriculture.

“An understanding of the timescale of evolution is critical for comparative virology but remains elusive for many RNA viruses,” wrote the authors of the report.

Experts had at one time believed that filoviruses came about around 10,000 years ago, and coincided with the rise in human agriculture.

According to the research of Professor Derek Taylor and others at the University of Buffalo, the viruses date back to the Miocene Epoch–16 to 23 million years ago.

“Filoviruses are far more ancient than previously thought,” said Taylor. “These things have been interacting with mammals for a long time–several million years.”

The science of measuring the age of diseases is still developing. Previous dating relied on mutation rates.

“Age estimates based on mutation rates can severely underestimate divergences for ancient viral genes that are evolving under strong purifying selection,” the researchers wrote in their report.

“Paleoviral dating, however, can provide minimum age estimates for ancient divergence, but few orthologous paleoviruses are known within clades of extant viruses.”

“For example, ebolaviruses and marburgviruses are well-studied mammalian pathogens, but their comparative biology is difficult to interpret because the existing estimates of divergence are controversial.”

The researchers looked at the paloviral elements of two genes in the ebolavirus family, and found that ebolavirus diverged from marburgvirus in the early Miocene.

The scientists searched within the viral genes in rodents preserved through fossilization.

“These rodents have billions of base pairs in their genomes, so the odds of a viral gene inserting itself at the same position in different species at different times are very small,” Taylor said. “It’s likely that the insertion was present in the common ancestor of these rodents.”

The knowledge may help scientists create better vaccines for Ebola victims. It could also help create programs that better identify emerging pathogens by providing insight into which host species serve the virus as “reseviors” for related pathogens.

“When they first started looking for reservoirs for Ebola, they were crashing through the rainforest, looking at everything–mammals, insects, other organisms,” said Taylor. The more we know about the evolution of filovirus-host interactions, the more we can learn about who the players might be in the system.”

By Andrew Stern

Photo: NIAID

ACLU Files on Behalf of Sex Offenders

October 26, 2014 by Cheryl Bretton

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The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Florida have filed suit against Miami-Dade County and the Florida Department of Corrections, seeking a permanent injunction against a housing ordinance that, the ACLU alleges, makes normal life extraordinarily difficult for former sex offenders, and actually causes the former offenders to become and remain homeless, a violation of their constitutional rights.

“As public policy, the Miami-Dade ordinance is a disaster,” said Brandon Buskey, Staff Attorney at ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project, of the 2010 ordinance that has made finding normal accommodation a challenge for former sex offenders. “It has created a homeless population living outdoors in squalor, while doing nothing to serve public safety.”

“Disease, exposure to the elements, no drinkable water–these conditions make it extremely difficult to find and maintain stable employment and psychological treatment, which are the only two factors proven to reduce the likelihood of reoffending. We know from decades of research that housing restrictions like Miami-Dade’s have no impact on reoffending and, are more likely to increase it,” said Busky.

The ACLU says that the ordinance has left about fifty former offenders with nowhere to live besides an outdoor area along railroad tracks on the outskirts of Miami-Dade county.

The railroad tracks are frequently recorded by probation officers as the “address” of the former offenders, the ACLU says, because finding affordable housing for former offenders is futile.

“Sending someone just out of jail into homelessness makes no sense, not for the person and not for the public. The Miami-Dade ordinance is not just unworkable, it’s unconstitutional,” said Nancy Abudu, Legal Director of the ACLU of Florida.

The ordinance is unconstitutional, according to ACLU, because the housing ordinance makes it so difficult for former sex offenders to obey without becoming homeless.

The ordinance prohibits former offenders from living within 2,500 feet from any building that the county labels a “school.” The category has been used to include shelters and other buildings, in addition to actual institutions of learning. The label has been used arbitrarily, according to ACLU.

The ACLU and the ACLU of Florida are seeking a permanent injunction against what they allege is an unconstitutional housing ordinance, and have directed their suit against Miami-Dade County and the Florida Department of Corrections.

By Cheryl Bretton

Photo: Ed Yourdon

China to Send 100,000 Troops to Xinjiang – Rights Group

November 23, 2014October 26, 2014 by Daniel Jackson

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China is expected to send 100,000 troops into its restless western province of Xinjiang to reinforce the People’s Armed Police force already there, according to a Hong Kong based rights group. Hundreds of people have died in recent months in Xinjiang’s ethnic unrest.

The Chinese Communist Party’s 18th Congress discussed a number of problems facing the government in its ongoing Fourth Plenary Session. The problems were both internal and external, and included the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, problems associated with the ouster of former security chief Zhou Yongkang, and the recent ethnic violence in the western province of Xinjiang.

Several bomb attacks and riots have left hundreds dead in Xinjiang over recent months.

According to Hong-Kong based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, the Chinese government is to deploy 100,000 troops to Xinjiang to assist local police already there.

The decision to send the troops is expected to be made at the ongoing Forth Plenary Session.

By Daniel Jackson

Photo: Andrew An

Mullah Jailed 20 Years for Raping Child

October 26, 2014October 26, 2014 by Sid Douglas

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A twenty-year sentence has been handed down to a mullah in an Afghan court. The man was found guilty of raping a 10-year-old girl known as Brishna. The girl has faced death threats from her community in the wake of her bringing suit against the man.

A Kabul judge handed down the sentence Saturday, hailed as a rare victory for women’s rights by support groups.

Hassina Sarwari, who runs a women’s shelter in Brishna’s province, said that the decision would most likely have been different except that the trial had been transferred from the girl’s village to Kabul.

Rape is often viewed as adultery in Afghanistan, where rape victims have been jailed themselves.

Brishna was violently raped last May in the village of Kunduz, Kunduz province.

While recovering in hospital, community members threatened her and her family, speaking of killing Brishna and dumping her in the river.

The threats of “honor killing” continued when Brishna was removed from the shelter by police and returned to her family.

Sarwani was also threatened by members of the girl’s family and powerful community members. She faces threats of “honor killing” for protecting Brishna.

By Sid Douglas
Photo: isafmedia

World Bank-Backed Corps and Small-Scale Fishers Fight Over Fishing Rights

October 26, 2014October 25, 2014 by Sid Douglas

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Enclosures of water are being dispossessed from small-scale markets in a rising trend of so-called “ocean grabbing,” according to a recent report by Transnational Institute (TNI) and Afrika Kontakt. Claiming that seas and shores must be taken from common fisher people in order to preserve sustainability, the World Bank is backing corporate interests and a rise in large-scale aqua-industry market-based fishing policies.

“Ocean grabbing is occurring in varied ways,” stated TNI in their report. “One common denominator is the exclusion of small-scale fishers from access to fisheries and other natural resources and access to markets through the adoption or reinterpretation of laws, regulations or policies affecting fisheries governance.”

“Throughout the world, legal frameworks are emerging that undermine the position of small-scale fisheries producers and systems, while strengthening or reinforcing the position of corporate actors and other powerful players. Such ‘perfectly legal’ reallocation processes may or may not involve coercion and violence, but are far from being considered as socially legitimate. They typically involve three types of mechanisms.”

Some key examples offered by the report were used to illustrate the variety of ways in which common access to fishing was being blocked. Luxury beach-resorts occupying long swathes of coastal land, destruction of mangrove areas for purposes of promoting export-oriented shrimp farms, and the rise of Rights Based Fishery (RBF) policies were some of the “technically legal” ways listed by which fisher people were dispossessed or their waters were destroyed in Sri Lanka, Ecuador, Europe, Canada and elsewhere.

The World Bank enabled “ocean grabbing” through legal frameworks such as its Global Partnership for Oceans (GPO), the report found. GPO enabled the spread of private property rights over the ocean’s fish resources, and was justified by the lack of economic and environmental “sustainability” in the world’s fisheries.

Growing populations around the world are placing stress on fish resources, according to the justification for GPO. For example, in South Africa, access to fish was curtailed for over 60,000 fisher people when a similar privatization program was passed.

The numbers of fisher people wanting access to water resources worldwide is in the billions.

“FAO estimates that 58 million people are engaged in the actual fishing and harvesting in wild-capture fisheries and aquaculture, and that more than 800 million people worldwide depend on fisheries in various ways,” stated TNI. “In addition to these figures, a large number of rural peasants and other people working in rural areas also depend on fishing as a supplement to their main livelihoods.”

By Sid Douglas

Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Rising to Global Threat – WHO

January 26, 2021October 25, 2014 by The Speaker Editors

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Tuberculosis is a disease that is seldom heard about these days, but the WHO and MSF have said that forms of TB known as multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) have risen to the level of a global threat. TB is already carried in a latent form in approximately one-third of the global population, and MDR-TB is increasingly the form that is being passed from person to person. Additionally, an even more dangerous form of the disease–extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB)–has been reported in 100 countries.

Tuberculosis has faded into the background of threatening diseases in the West. It saw renewed interest in 1991 when MDR-TB became epidemic in New York–nearly one-fifth of cases did not respond to treatment. That epidemic cost over $1 billion and several years of effort to bring under control.

Today in the US only 1.4 percent of an annual 9,500 TB cases are drug resistant, but the threat remains, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) global TB program director, Dr Mario Raviglione.

“They believe that TB is an extinct disease,” Raviglione said of the threat. “I don’t know why.”

WHO released a report this month that reported that nine million people became sick with TB in 2013–half a million more than previously thought. Of these, 3.5 percent of new cases were drug resistant.

“In many settings around the world the treatment success rate is alarmingly low,” WHO stated. “Furthermore, extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), which is even more expensive and difficult to treat than MDR-TB, has now been reported in 100 countries.”

Some countries currently have very high rates of MDR-TB. Belarus, for example, has a rate of 35 percent.

It is estimated that one-third of the global population harbors TB bacteria, but most are not aware that they carry the latent disease. The virus, however, continues to transmit to others while in its latent phase.

When TB enters its active phase–commonly when a person’s immune system is lowered–it becomes dangerous.

Children can be protected from TB–even its worst forms–by a widely distributed vaccine. Adults are usually protected by the same vaccine.

DR-TB is treatable, but the treatment requires long, expensive, painful side-effects to the antibiotics, including psychosis, deafness and constant nausea. The treatment takes around two years, and 50 percent of patients die. When it comes to XDR-TB, 80 percent of patients die.

Drug resistant TB is created by humans. Incomplete treatment allows the TB to adapt to antibiotics. When a person develops DR-TB they pass that form of TB on to others.

Of the TB cases that have been documented by the WHO worldwide, 3.5 percent are DR-TB cases passed on from people who have DR-TB.

“We think that drug-resistant TB is really becoming an epidemic in its own right,” said Dr. Grania Brigden, TB adviser for Médecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).

Photos: Gates Foundation and Microbe World

Cambodian Land Grabbing Is “Crime Against Humanity” – British Lawyer Files with International Court

October 26, 2014October 25, 2014 by Sid Douglas

Evicted: Borei Keila and Cambodian Land Grabbing.

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Cambodian land-grabbing constitutes a “crime against humanity,” British lawyer Richard Rogers has told the International Criminal Court (ICC). The lawyer is officially representing 10 Cambodian victims of the alleged abuse in the suit.

“I am confident,” said Rogers, who is a member of the Global Diligence LLP as well as the Cambodian Nation Rescue Party’s (CNRP) international counsel. “The law is very clear.”

Rogers has filed for the International Criminal Court to investigate a wave of violent land-grabbing in Cambodia which has displaced approximately 770,000 people. The land grab has been carried out by Cambodia’s ruling elite, Rogers alleges, and constitutes a crime against humanity.

The land grab has been “widespread and systematic” over the past 14 years, Rogers has stated. The elite classes have perpetuated mass rights violations in pursuit of wealth and power, “include murder, forcible transfer of populations, illegal imprisonment, persecution and other inhumane acts,” according to Rogers, who says that the acts amount to international crimes.

The elite has accomplished the land grab by exploiting land tenure insecurity in post-war Cambodia (particularly when the Khmer Rouge abolished land titles) and exploiting a corruptible judiciary and state security forces.

“The question for the ICC is, at what point do these types of human rights violations become so grave that (when taken together) they amount to an international crime and meet the gravity threshold? Do we wait until 5 percent of the population has been affected, or 10 percent?” Rogers said.

“The communication contends that senior members of the Cambodian government, its security forces, and government-connected business leaders carried out an attack on the civilian population with the twin objectives of self-enrichment and preservation of power at all costs.”

Individual perpetrators are not specifically indicated in the complaint, but it does recommend that court prosecutors investigate the role played by specific police and military units involved in evictions. “Deportation or forcible transfer of populations” falls under the ICC’s definition of crimes against humanity, Rogers has pointed out.

Approximately 770,000 people–6% of the Cambodian population –have felt the effects of land grabbing since the year 2000, according to Rogers’s evidence.

More than 145,000 people have been forcibly relocated from Phnom Penh.

Dissent and criticism have also been silenced through human rights abuses, Rogers contends. Lawyers, activists, journalists, unionists and opposition members have been silenced through threats and violence in order to protect the interests of the ruling elite.

“I am confident that the ICC will initiate a preliminary examination. The law on this is very clear. The definition of crimes against humanity does not require an armed conflict.” Rogers said.

The actions of land grabbers in Cambodia represent “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population” and are “pursuant to state policy”, according to Rogers’s complaint.

Cambodian officials are attempting to discredit Rogers’s claims.

Government spokesman Phay Siphann called the complaint “a joke”–the complaint was not only exaggerated, but politically motivated as well, Siphon stated.

“It’s polarised by politics. We might know who sponsors or who pays money for him and who belongs to whom. I understand [opposition deputy leader] Kem Sokha’s daughter is also involved in the complaint… It was [started] during the [post-election] campaign and related to the political deadlock.”

CNRP spokesman Yim Sovann countered Siphan’s criticisms, stated that although Rogers was CNRP counsel, the complaint was not politically motivated.

“Because Cambodian courts have proved unwilling and unable to deal fairly with human rights violations raised in the ICC complaint,” said Sovann, “we support the request for an investigation by the ICC prosecutor.”

By Sid Douglas

Photo: Luc Forsyth