The 63-year-old, a wily political survivor who defected from the Khmer Rouge to oversee Cambodia’s rise from the ashes of war, has vowed to remain prime minister until he is 74.

To do so he will need the support of Cambodia’s youth — a tech-savvy demographic whose votes may well be decisive in the next election, slated for 2018.

Two thirds of Cambodia’s 15 million population are aged under 30. Like their contemporaries everywhere they are avid users of social media — a sphere Hun Sen has until recently viewed with suspicion.

In 2013, young Cambodians voted in droves for the opposition, wearied by the endemic corruption, rights abuses and political repression seen as the hallmarks of Hun Sen’s rule.

A self-confessed digital dinosaur, Hun Sen has in recent months launched himself online with an arsenal of new media tools.

He has just debuted a ’Hun Sen’ App for Android and Apple phones — complementing a new personal website — to allow the public to “receive news about me quickly”.

Meanwhile his official Facebook page, minted in September, already has more than 1.9 million ’likes’.

“Wherever technology goes, we must be there too,” Hun Sen said recently, also revealing in a Facebookpost that he carries five smart phones to stay connected with his countrymen.

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy, whose Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) say they were denied a majority in 2013 by vote rigging, has more than two million ’likes’ on his official Facebook page and has long embraced social media to spread his message.

With under three years to the next election, the battle for power looks poised to play out online.

– What’s the game? –

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Sebastian Strangio, author of a recent book on the mercurial premier, says Hun Sen’s belated embrace of technology once more illustrates the “tactical flexibility” which has kept him in power over the decades.

“Cambodia’s old political battles have simply shifted online,” he added.

But Hun Sen’s online forays have received a mixed reception from his target audience.

“Awesome for an ex-bumpkin… but nothing special for young generation Khmers! They were there long before him,” one Facebook user posted in English on the premier’s page.

Others say the strategy is working, bringing the premier into the daily lives of young people.

University student Kea Ny, 26, told AFP many of his peers have changed their attitudes on the back of his social media outreach work.

“Among 10 of my friends, seven of them support him now. Before they all had negative feelings towards the prime minister,” he said.

While it good news for Hun Sen’s social media team, critics say the move is merely another feint by a master manipulator renowned for cracking down on freedom of expression.

The former communist cadre already leans heavily on pliant courts and security forces to keep rivals in check.

His government is now pushing for a cybercrime law, which critics fear will be used to target dissent.

Rainsy is currently in self-exile after a slew of criminal charges were brought against him and other core CNRP officials, which they say are politically-motivated.

An opposition senator has been also arrested over posting a doctored treaty of a highly-sensitive border area with Vietnam on Facebook.

Rainsy has been charged with being accomplice in that case.

Fearing arrest over the post, three other members of Rainsy’s social media team have fled Cambodia.

Others were not so lucky — including those in the age range the ruling party hopes to woo.

In August, a 25-year-old student was charged with incitement to commit a crime over an allegedFacebook post calling for a “colour revolution” in the country.

Another 25-year-old was charged in early January for posting “insults and threats” on Hun Sen’sFacebook page.

If convicted, he faces up to two years in jail.

“He (Hun Sen) is taking to social media to show his softer side,” Cambodian political analyst Ou Virak told AFP.

“The sinister flipside is of course an increased monitoring of social media, epitomised by the cybercrime law.”

Hun Sen’s political rivals say they are relaxed by his leap into the digital age.

“We focus on issues that the government does not pay any attention to,” Chheng Sorphorn, 29, a member of Rainsy’s social media team, told AFP.

The CNRP’s posts link to hot-button subjects such as land grabs, poverty, workers’ demonstrations, he added, explaining those draw the real support of the majority of Cambodians.

That leaves the CNRP bullish over its prospects at 2018 polls.

Yet few expect Hun Sen to cede power without a fight.

“If Hun Sen and the CPP sense they are losing their popular mandate they may resort to repression and violence… to stay in power,” warned Cambodia expert Carl Thayer, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

AFP

The women were sold into prostitution and children were forced into hard physical labour.

These details were released at a conference held yesterday in HCM City attended by delegates from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The conference was intended to summarise the crackdown of criminal activities along the border among the three countries last year.

Major General Ho Si Tien, head of The Police Department of Criminal Investigation in Social Order (C45) under the Ministry of Public Security, said that human trafficking victims found along the border among three countries accounted for 6 per cent of total cases found in Vietnam each year.

The victims are mainly from the provinces of Kon Tum, Gia Lai, Dak Lak, and Dak Nong, apart from Binh Phuoc, Dien Bien, Son La, Thanh Hoa and Ha Tinh, he said.

Colonel Le Tien Nam, deputy head of Police Office of Criminal Investigation in Social Order (C45), under the Nghe An Police Department, said that several human traffickers were once themselves victims of human trafficking.

They became human traffickers because they knew how to con people, he said.

Traffickers would keep identification cards of the victims. The victims were not allowed to bring money or valuables. All this was aimed at preventing them from escaping, he said.

Statistics from the C45 department showed that 87 human trafficking rings discovered along the border between Vietnam and Cambodia and 50 human trafficking rings between Vietnam and Laos.

Speaking at the conference, Major General Phan Van Vinh, head of the ministry’s C45 department said the situation of trafficking human via borders was very complicated. To cheat women and children, the traffickers used a lot of tricks, he said.

Vinh ordered the Vietnamese police force to closely co-operate with police in Laos and Cambodia to bring the situation under control.

ADB, through the GMS Core Environment Program, has played a lead role in supporting the Ministry of Environmental Conservation and Forestry to develop both the procedure and guidelines. ADB will continue support to help Myanmar build its environmental safeguards system to international standard.

“The EIA Procedure and environmental quality guidelines reflect the Myanmar Government’s progress in putting in place laws, regulations, and processes to manage its economy in a more environmentally sustainable fashion. ADB is very pleased to be supporting Myanmar to achieve this,” said Mr. Winfried Wicklein, ADB Country Director in Myanmar.

More than 200 representatives from government, civil society, and development agencies attended the launch event yesterday.

In response to reporters’ questions, the foreign minister spokesperson, Le Hai Binh, said that Viet Nam sends the deep condolences to the Indonesian government and victims’ families.

“We believe that the attackers will be punished properly,” he said.

The pace of technology is moving quite rapidly these days and many old people are struggling to come to grips with the simple tasks required to access social media sites like Facebook such as purchasing internet credit, creating accounts, logging on and posting pictures online.

Some older people are witnessing the younger generations glued to their phones and feel that they must be missing out on something and so would like to join the perceived fun of social media.

A resident of Viengchaleun village in Xaysettha district of Vientiane Somsack Vongsagna, is one of many people who started playing with Facebook last year. He soon found he had a lot to learn from his friends and younger people.

“Right now, I can post my photos on Facebook and am able to open Facebook for looking at pictures of my friends on social media,” he said.

Meanwhile other elderly people have also purchased nice mobile phones with all the latest features but they don’t like to play on the internet as they consider it a waste of time. They only use their fancy phones to make and receive calls from their family and friends.

So while some elder people can be seen to be trying to embrace new technology others are not and view it as a bit of a gimmick and wish their children had a few more practical skills.

However the vast majority of younger people cannot imagine life any other way, at least those who can afford fancy phones. But ordinary mobile phones can be found even in some of the most remote villages these days, such is the penetration of technology.

According to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications report to the National Assembly (NA) last year, Lao internet users have increased considerably, rising from only five percent of the entire population in 2008 to about 20 percent in the middle of last year.

Looking internationally, internet ready devices do make things more easy for foreign tourists visiting Laos who might otherwise have difficulties due to language barriers.

Today, it is now very easy for tourists to access information about the country via the internet and many overseas visitors to Laos can be seen doing just that.

It took security forces about three hours to end the siege near a Starbucks cafe and Sarinah’s, Jakarta’s oldest department store, after a team of around seven militants traded gunfire with police and blew themselves up.

A police officer and a Canadian man were killed in the attack, which – with the attackers – took the death toll to seven. Seventeen people, including a Dutch man, were wounded.

Two of the militants were taken alive, police said.

“Islamic State fighters carried out an armed attack this morning targeting foreign nationals and the security forces charged with protecting them in the Indonesian capital,” Aamaaq news agency, which is allied to the group, said on its Telegram channel.

Jakarta’s police chief told reporters: “ISIS is behind this attack definitely,” using a common acronym for Islamic State, and he named an Indonesian militant called Bahrun Naim as the man responsible for plotting it.

The drama played out on the streets and on television screens, with at least six explosions and a gunfight in a movie theatre.

ARMOURED CARS, HELICOPTERS

“The Starbucks cafe windows are blown out. I see three dead people on the road. There has been a lull in the shooting but someone is on the roof of the building and police are aiming their guns at him,” Reuters photographer Darren Whiteside said as the attack unfolded.

Police responded in force within minutes. Black armoured cars screeched to a halt in front of the Starbucks and sniper teams were deployed around the neighbourhood as helicopters buzzed overhead.

After the militants had been overcome, a body still lay on the street, a shoe nearby among the debris. The city centre’s notoriously jammed roads were largely deserted.

Indonesia has seen attacks by Islamist militants before, but a coordinated assault by a team of suicide bombers and gunmen is unprecedented and has echoes of the sieges seen in Mumbai seven years ago and in Paris last November.

The last major militant attacks in Jakarta were in July2009, with bombs at the JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels.

The country had been on edge for weeks over the threat posed by Islamist militants. Counter-terrorism police had rounded up about 20 people with suspected links to Islamic State, whose battle lines in Syria and Iraq have included nationals from several Asian countries.

HISTORY OF ATTACKS

Indonesia has the world’s largest Muslim population, the vast majority of whom practise a moderate form of the religion.

The country saw a spate of militant attacks in the 2000s,the deadliest of which was a night club bombing on the holiday island of Bali that killed 202 people, most of them tourists.

Police have been largely successful in destroying domestic militant cells since then, but officials have more recently been worrying about a resurgence inspired by groups such as Islamic State and Indonesians who return after fighting with the group.

Alarm around the world over the danger stemming from Islamic State rocketed after the Paris attacks and the killing of 14people in California in December.

On Tuesday, a Syrian suicide bomber killed 10 German tourists in Istanbul. Authorities there suspect the bomber had links to Islamic State.

Among those arrested in Indonesia’s crackdown late last year was a member of China’s Uighur Muslim minority with a suicide-bomb vest. Media said two other Uighur suspects were on the run.

Indonesian security forces have also intensified a manhunt for a militant leader called Santoso, regarded as Indonesia’s most high-profile backer of Islamic State, in the jungles of Sulawesi island. Santoso had threatened to unleash attacks in Jakarta.

– Reuters

According to Vo Niem Tuong, head of the Environmental Protection Bureau, the high density of fish and the narrow distance between cages affected the living environment of the fish.

Food that had been in cages a long time created bacteria, which also contributed to the reduction of oxygen, he said.

Fish breeders do not use professional standards and only use techniques based on their personal experience, environmental officials said.

The Dong Nai Province’s Veterinary Bureau, however, agreed with the farmers that the cause of the death of fish was polluted water discharged from factories, and not the farmers’ breeding methods.

Bureau officials said that they had told farmers in the past to breed fewer fish in cages, and the farmers had followed their instructions.

Farmers said that water pollution was the cause but noted that the authorities did not mention this factor in their report.

Tran Van Tinh, whose five tonnes of fish died during the incident, told Nguoi Lao Dong (The Labourer) newspaper that he had invested billions of dong to operate a fish farm. He lost most of his money after the fish died.

Vu Dinh Doanh, who was able to save half of his fish, said the authorities’ conclusion was groundless, based on his years of experience in breeding fish. If fish died in such large numbers, it would have happened before as well, he said.

In addition, feed for the fish is expensive, so he would not waste it, he added.

Several households in the village said that when their fish died, the fish living in the wild also died, so the breeding method was not the reason for the deaths.

“We know that at the end of each year, enterprises in nearby industrial parks clean their factories. The untreated waste water causes polluted water. We expect the Police Department against Environmental Crime to clarify this issue,” Nguyen Van Duong, one of the farmers facing serious losses after the incident, was quoted as saying in the paper.

The farmers said there were dozens of pipes discharging waste water from factories to the river.

Police officials have also begun investigating the incident.

On January 3-5, fish in many fish farms unexpectedly died. The total amount was more than 200 tonnes, causing heavy losses to 150 fish-breeding households in Hiep Hoa Commune.

According to the Dong Nai Province’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the density of fish cages in the area exceeds the planned density.

There are a total of 272 fish cages owned by 215 households.

The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, which has asked the Department of Natural Resources and Environment to strengthen monitoring of water quality in recommended areas, said it would improve inspection and strictly punish acts of environmental pollution.

In a related development, the Ba Ria – Vung Tau Province’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development has worked with the provincial Judicial Department to help farmers in Long Son Commune in Vung Tau city to complete procedures to proceed with a lawsuit against 14 enterprises in Tan Thanh District for creating pollution in the Cha Va River, causing serious losses to their fish farms.

Earlier, the provincial government had organised a meeting between the enterprises and farmers.

It was estimated that the pollution level was 76 per cent and total required compensation was VND13 billion (US$578,000).