The Cambodia daily All the News Without Fear or Favor Monday, February 2, 2015 Volume 60 Issue 44 2,000 riel/50 cents Police Arrest 5 Montagnards In Ratanakkiri B y a un P heaP THE CAMBODIA DAILY Police in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district yesterday arrested five Montagnard asylum seekers and were searching for three ethnic Jarai villagers who had been helping them evade authorities since they arrived from Vietnam about two weeks ago, villagers and a rights worker said. A Jarai villager, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals from authorities, said police from O’Yadaw district’s Som Thom commune arrested the five asylum seekers while another four fled into the forest. The group of nine, which in cluded two young children and an infant, arrived in Ratanakkiri on January 19. Twenty-three other Montagnards—an indigenous group concentrated in Vietnam’s Central Highlands—who crossed into the province over the past month are also hiding in O’Yadaw district. All of the asylum seekers claim to be fleeing religious and political persecution in their home country. Another Jarai villager, who was looking after the group of nine when police arrived, said about 10 officers in five vehicles entered So Kul village at about 4:30 p.m. “They tried to arrest the nine people while they were staying on farmland in the forest,” the villager said. Continued on page 6 Reuters A line judge and a security guard apprehend a protester during the men's singles final between Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray at the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne yesterday. Play was briefly disrupted when two people ran onto the court to protest Canberra's offshore detention of asylum seekers. In Restive Pagoda, City Sees Threat of ‘Secession’ B y M ech D ara THE CAMBODIA DAILY Phnom Penh City Hall has created an ad hoc committee to investigate whether monks at the restive Samakki Raingsey pagoda—a hotbed of anti-eviction activism that has raised the ire of local authorities over the past several months— have been properly ordained. Rights groups and monks at the pagoda say the move is a ploy to silence one of the few pagodas in the city not under the thumb of the ruling CPP and to stamp out legally THE CAMBODIA DAILY Page 8 cambodiadaily.com For the past half-year, Samakki Raingsey has offered shelter to communities from the provinces that have come to Phnom Penh to press the government to intervene in their land disputes with private companies. Police have repeatedly blocked the visitors and their hosts from leaving the pagoda to protest, and in November arrested a pair of monks who were on their way to a planned rally there. Contacted yesterday, municipal spokesman Long Dimanche said Continued on page 2 Military, Police Top Brass Get Party Promotions B y M ech D ara Jordan Still Seeks Swap After IS Kills 2nd Japanese Hostage protected dissent. In a statement posted to its Facebook page on Friday, City Hall said the committee was created in the wake of the fatal stabbing last month of the pagoda’s second deputy chief monk by a fellow monk “to resolve illegal controversies and other anti-government acts” there. It said Phnom Penh deputy governor Khuong Sreng presided over a meeting of the committee on Tuesday to review the work of the pagoda’s monks and other inhabitants. The ruling CPP welcomed 306 new members to its central committee on the final day of its party congress yesterday, injecting a heavy dose of fresh blood into the upper ranks of the party, which nearly lost its decades-long grip on power in the last national elections. The additions more than double the size of the central committee to 545 members, and include some of the country’s top military and police officials, as well as all three of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s sons. Speaking with reporters at the close of the congress, Information Minister Khieu Kanharith boasted of adding 45 women to the central committee and 70 “young” members under the age of 50. Of the 268 members on the central committee list heading into the congress on Friday, 27 had died since it last convened in 2013, one resigned and another was kicked out. “We had to add them because the old ones are getting old and The Daily Newspaper of Record Since 1993 dying,” Mr. Kanharith said. “We need to select the youth because 50 percent of the country is under the age of 30, so we selected youth with some experience.... We need successors with enough capacity.” He said the party made no changes to its more exclusive standing and permanent committees, and that the ailing chairman of the central committee, Senate Pres ident Chea Sim, who missed the congress because he was getting medical treatment in Vietnam, had Continued on page 2