The father of Rio Nanda Pratama filed the lawsuit Wednesday in the US state of Illinois, where the plane manufacturer is headquartered, over the death of the young doctor who was to have married his high-school sweetheart this week.

Pratama’s fiance Intan Syari, 26, has made headlines after she posed alone for photos in a wedding gown that she was to have worn at the couple’s nuptials in Indonesia.

Syari said her husband-to-be had asked in jest that she carry on with the photo shoot if he did not return from what turned out to be a fatal trip.

The 26-year-old man was among the 189 people killed when the Boeing 737-MAX plunged into the Java Sea on October 29, less than 20 minutes after leaving Jakarta on a routine flight to Pangkal Pinang city. There were no survivors.

The 737-MAX in question had only begun service for budget carrier Lion Air in August.

Questions have swirled about Boeing’s alleged failure to tell airlines and pilots about changes to an anti-stall system that is being investigated for its possible links to the crash.

The jet’s engines are heavier than those installed on prior versions, meaning the plane can stall under different conditions.

Boeing made modifications to the anti-stall system without informing air carriers and their crews, according to the Allied Pilots Association.

“The government investigators typically will not make a determination of who is at fault, and just compensation to these families will not be provided by the governmental investigations,” Curtis Miner from US-based firm Colson Hicks Eidson, which filed the lawsuit, said in a statement.

“That is the critical role of private lawsuits in a tragedy like this.”

There is still no answer to what caused one of the world’s newest and most advanced commercial passenger planes to crash. A preliminary report is expected at the end of the month.

Pratama’s family could not be immediately reached.

In the meeting on the sidelines of a series of leaders’ meetings on East Asian cooperation in Singapore, Li said that China and Myanmar are friendly neighbors and that the solid “paukphaw” (“fraternal” in the Myanmar language) friendship has stayed strong since the two countries established diplomatic relations 68 years ago.

The premier said China attaches great importance to its ties with Myanmar and stands ready to build on the tradition of friendship, enhance political mutual trust and increase the practical cooperation, thereby facilitating the continued steady progress in the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership between the two sides.

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang meets with Myanmar’s State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi in Singapore, on Nov 15, 2018. (ZHANG LING / XINHUA)

China is willing to work together with Myanmar in pursuit of further synergy between their development plans and carry out cooperation in human resources and education

Li Keqiang, Chinese Premier

China and Myanmar, both developing nations, face the same task of boosting economic development and improving people’s livelihood, said the Chinese premier.

China is willing to work together with Myanmar in pursuit of further synergy between their development plans and carry out cooperation in human resources and education, Li said.

Such efforts will help Myanmar develop its economy and society and benefit both peoples, he added.

China supports Myanmar’s efforts in maintaining its domestic stability and the approach of trying to resolve the Rakhine issue through dialogues and consultation between Myanmar and Bangladesh, and is willing to provide the relevant parties with necessary support in this regard, Li said.

Suu Kyi said Myanmar and China, both developing nations, have had a solid tradition of friendship. She said Myanmar would like to work with China to boost understanding and support, build on the friendly cooperation and promote joint development.

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Myanmar is willing to strengthen the cooperation with China in economy and trade, human resources and education, she said.

Suu Kyi thanked China for the many times it has extended help to Myanmar, especially the constant understanding and support in regard to the Myanmar peace process and the Rakhine issue.

Myanmar is willing to work together with the parties concerned to create a favorable environment for peace and development in the country, she said.

The Khmer Rouge’s former head of state Khieu Samphan, 87, and “Brother Number 2” Nuon Chea, 92, are the two most senior living members of the ultra-Maoist group that seized control of Cambodia from 1975-1979.

The reign of terror led by “Brother Number 1” Pol Pot left some two million Cambodians dead from overwork, starvation and mass executions but Friday’s ruling was the first to acknowledge a genocide.

The defendants were previously handed life sentences in 2014 over the violent and forced evacuation of Phnom Penh in April 1975.

But Friday’s judgement at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) also found Nuon Chea guilty of genocide against the ethnic Vietnamese and Cham Muslim minority group, among a litany of other crimes.

“The chamber finds that Nuon Chea exercised ultimate decision-making power with Pol Pot and… therefore finds Nuon Chea is responsible as a superior for all the crimes,” presiding judge Nil Nonn said.

“This includes the crime of genocide by killing members of Cham ethnic and religious group.”

Khieu Samphan was also found guilty of genocide against ethnic Vietnamese, though not against the Cham, he added.

Both parties were sentenced to “life in prison”, merging the two sentences into a single term, Nil Nonn said.

Hundreds of people, including dozens of Cham Muslims and Buddhist monks, were bussed into the tribunal, located in the outskirts of Phnom Penh to attend the hearing.

– Cambodia’s ‘Nuremberg’ –

The events covered by the verdict span the four years of the Pol Pot regime, and include extensive crimes against humanity.

“The verdict is essentially the Nuremberg judgement for the ECCC and thus carries very significant weight for Cambodia, international criminal justice, and the annals of history,” said David Scheffer, who served as the UN secretary general’s special expert on the Khmer Rouge trials from 2012 until last month.

The revolutionaries who tried to recreate Buddhist-majority Cambodia in line with their vision of an agrarian Marxist utopia attempted to abolish class and religious distinctions by force.

Forced marriages, rape, the treatment of Buddhists, and atrocities that were carried out in prisons and work sites throughout the country fall under the additional list of charges — which the two men were found guilty of as well.

“(The verdict) will affirm the collective humanity of the victims and give recognition to the horrible suffering,” said Youk Chhang, head of the Documentation Center of Cambodia — a research organisation that has provided the court with evidence.

It could also “provide a sense of closure to a horrible chapter in Cambodian history”.

The hybrid court, which uses a mix of Cambodian and international law, was created with the backing of the UN in 2006 to try senior Khmer Rouge leaders.

Only three people have been convicted by the court, which has cost more than $300 million.

Former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife died without facing justice, while “Brother Number 1” Pol Pot passed away in 1998.

The number of allegations against Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan was so vast the court split the trials into a series of smaller hearings in 2011.

Many believe Friday’s decision will be the last for the tribunal, which has been marred by allegations of political interference.

Prime Minister Hun Sen — himself a former Khmer Rouge cadre — has repeatedly warned he would not allow more investigations to proceed, citing vague threats to stability.

The court has launched investigations into four more Khmer Rouge cadres, though one was dismissed in February 2017, highlighting the difficulties of bringing lower level members of the brutal regime to justice.

Scheffer said that “challenges of efficiency, funding, and access to evidence” are issues that plague all international criminal courts, but argued the successes of the Cambodian tribunal should not be diminished.

Working as the pilot test project since April this year, the BlocRice app focuses on transparency and traceability using blockchain technology by implementing smart contracts as a tool and interactive consumer communication apps for a better user interface.

‘Party to the contracts’

“Farmers thus gain collective bargaining power since agricultural cooperatives will be party to the contracts,” said Oxfam in Cambodia country director Solinn Lim.

In its first year, Oxfam’s BlocRice project will work with 50 small-scale organic-rice farmers in Preah Vihear province.

The project is taking place through the rainy season in March, the country’s prime season to harvest and sell rice.

Smart contract

Oxfam says after the first BlocRice project completes next year, the platform will be expanded to 1,000 farmers in 2020 and 5,000 in 2022.

The goal is to promote a “smart contract”, a three-way digital contract farming agreement between farmers, exporters and buyers in the Netherlands.

The project digitises and registers these contracts on the blockchain platform. Details such as primary purchase price, trade volume and transportation method are recorded, with cashless payments made to the farmers through bank accounts for traceability.

Oxfam estimates that 60 per cent of Cambodia’s workforce is employed in the agriculture sector, and many of them do not have contracts with their clients.

Lack of market price knowledge and high-interest loans put pressure on farmers to sell produce and clear their debts, it said.

“It is not hard to see that all the economically active periods in Tengchong’s history were those when we had close contacts and deep exchanges with South and Southeast Asia, and the times of weaker economy were often when such contacts were weakened or interrupted for various reasons,” said Liu Pincheng, vice-head of Tengchong’s bureau of business and trade. The principle continues to work today, Liu said.

Tengchong is located along the Myanmar border. Historically, it served as a key transportation hub along the Silk Road in Southwest China.

The county town is about 200 km from Myitkyina, capital of Myanmar’s Kachin state.

Border trade prospered in Tengchong during the 19th and early 20th centuries, with cargo-laden horses trudging along the trading routes between Tengchong and northern Myanmar year-round.

Tengchong became a base for commerce for many Chinese and foreign businesspeople. More than a dozen international companies were set up in Tengchong. Imports and exports from the city accounted for 30.5 percent of the foreign trade in Yunnan in 1929.

Since China began its policy of reform and opening-up in the late 1970s, Tengchong has been taking advantage of its location, Liu said.

In the 1980s and ’90s, its economy saw rapid development soon after border trade was restarted.

The timber business alone attracted nearly a thousand import and manufacturing companies to Tengchong, bringing in a tidal wave of people, logistics concerns and capital, all of which contributed to the area’s development, Liu said.

In addition, the jade industry was one of the major foreign-oriented industries. Tengchong was once the largest import and processing base for jade in China.

In recent years, the city has sought to take advantage of opportunities brought by the Belt and Road Initiative, as well as by an economic corridor connecting China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and India.

It sped up transformation in the direction of its trade and development to suit the new economic trends.

“Tengchong’s import and export trade has basically formed a new and balanced structure, with imports including agricultural products and minerals, and exports such as engineering machinery, building materials and daily provisions,” Liu said, adding that trade between residents along the border has seen rapid growth in recent years, too.

In the first 10 months of 2018, the value of the city’s imports and exports reached $325 million, an increase of 48.4 percent over 2017.

In the past few years, agricultural cooperation with Myanmar has become one of the biggest growth points in Tengchong’s foreign trade.

There are 22 local enterprises engaged in cooperative agriculture in northern Myanmar, with 40,000 hectares of cultivated area and more than 10 varieties of crops.

Jinxin Trade Co is one of the largest Tengchong-based companies involved in such business. The company has more than 700 trained workers at its six agricultural bases in northern Myanmar, growing plants including bananas, rubber trees, rice, corn and sugar cane.

Since 2009, the company has signed cooperative contracts with four Myanmar companies and plans to develop 24,000 hectares of agricultural land in the area.

“Our Myanmar partners help integrate the land, and our company will provide seedlings, agricultural supplies, technology and management,” said Jiang Xiaohong, executive vice-president of Jinxin.

As of October, the company’s imports and exports in 2018 exceeded 91 million yuan ($13.4 million), and it brought in about 150,000 metric tons of agricultural products, according to Jiang.

Besides contributing to Tengchong’s economy, the company’s business has also greatly benefitted the lives of local farmers in Myanmar by offering more than 6,000 job opportunities－which rises to more than 10,000 during the busy farming season.

“Local farmers’ incomes have grown from an average 800 yuan per year to the current 4,500 yuan in the past few years,” Jiang said.

By 2017, the company had built 343 kilometers of roads near its planting bases, constructed two steel bridges longer than 30 meters, 63 bridges spanning 5 to 20 meters and funded construction of two schools, a church and two small clinics in Myanmar, Jiang said.

Jiang said the company’s experience reflects the development and transformation of Tengchong’s foreign trade over the years.

In 1991, He Yuanshu, president of Jinxin, founded the company on behalf of his village. The company was mainly engaged in the timber import business, growing rapidly and becoming one of the biggest in Tengchong.

After the timber business was banned by the Myanmar government in 2004, the company turned toward agricultural cooperation.

In the past few years, Tengchong has made great efforts to enhance the infrastructure and services of its port to handle the growing traffic between the two countries.

In 2017, the number of people entering or exiting through the port reached 878,000, up 20 percent yearon-year, accompanied by a year-on-year rise in the number of vehicles (47 percent), cargo volume (61 percent) and freight value (51 percent).

Currently, Tengchong airport is undergoing expansion and is expected to become an international transportation port soon, which will help the city build a one-hour aviation circle connecting itself with several countries in South and Southeast Asia.