A father waits outside the commune health centre for HIV tests results with his daughter. // Alex Consiglio
By Alex Consiglio and Khy Sovuthy
The Cambodia Daily
ROKA COMMUNE, Battambang province – While police on Thursday searched the home of the unlicensed doctor suspected of spreading HIV to more than 100 people here, Prime Minister Hun Sen, speaking in Phnom Penh, said he had serious doubts about the accuracy of the equipment used in multiple rounds of testing.
Since the Roka commune health center in Sangke district began preliminary testing for the virus on December 8, about 110 people have been found to be infected with HIV, including 19 children. Five more were found to be carrying the virus Thursday morning, according to the center’s director.
But speaking to some 1,000 students and government officials at a graduation ceremony at the National Institute of Education, Mr. Hun Sen said he was all but certain that the spate of positive HIV results was due to faulty testing equipment, rather than an actual outbreak of the virus.
“So far, I 99 percent do not believe that it’s AIDS,” Mr. Hun Sen said. “If out of 800 people, 106 are infected, that’s the end of us.”
“Probably, if we were tested using those machines, half of us would be infected by AIDS. I still don’t believe it. I don’t believe it.”
Mr. Hun Sen said all available “technological resources” must be exhausted before coming to any conclusions.
“Is an 80-year-old person infected with AIDS? And are young children infected with AIDS too? So, we don’t need to make a quick conclusion. We must use all available technological resources,” he said.
“We don’t mean that we look down on our doctors and equipment, but it’s extremely hard to believe.”
Of the 90 villagers who had tested positive at the commune center as of Tuesday, 89 again came up positive when tested a second time at the provincial referral hospital on Wednesday, according to Mean Chhi Vun, director of the Health Ministry’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Dermatology and STD (NCHADS).
The unlicensed doctor’s son sits outside their home as police begin to search the area. // Alex Consiglio
By Alex Consiglio and Khy Sovuthy
The Cambodia Daily
ROKA COMMUNE, Battambang province – As at least 16 more villagers in Battambang province’s Roka commune tested positive for HIV Wednesday—bringing the total number of positive tests over the past week above 100—provincial police began questioning the unlicensed doctor whom villagers suspect of spreading the virus.
About 105 villagers, including 19 children, have now been found to be infected with HIV since the Roka commune health center began preliminary testing for the virus on December 8, creating a public health panic with little precedent in the country, which has been largely successful in curbing an HIV/AIDS epidemic that peaked in the late 1990s.
Ninety of the patients who have tested positive in initial tests at the commune health center over the past week had a second test at the provincial referral hospital Wednesday and 89 cases were confirmed, according to Mean Chhi Vun, director of the Health Ministry’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Dermatology and STD (NCHADS).
Many villagers are blaming Yem Chrin, an unlicensed doctor who frequently made house calls to many of the commune’s 8,897 residents, for the outbreak, said Hea Sik, head of the Health Ministry’s HIV/AIDS program in Sangke district.
By Mech Dara and Alex Consiglio
The Cambodia Daily
Just one day after being arrested, a Cambodian-American man was on Thursday sentenced to two years imprisonment for publicly displaying a banner declaring himself the new leader of Cambodia following the death Prime Minister Hun Sen.
Phnom Penh Municipal Court Judge Im Vannak convicted Han Visot, 51, of incitement, incitement to discriminate, and insults against public officials.
“The municipal court sentences Han Visot to two years in jail,” Judge Vannak said.
Mr. Visot was arrested Wednesday outside the Royal Palace holding a banner that claimed Prime Minister Hun Sen, along with his wife, eldest son and Interior Minister Sar Kheng, had died and that he was to be the country’s new leader.
“I wrote it because god told me to,” Mr. Visot said in the courthouse hallway before his speedy trial Thursday. “God wants me to be the leader of Cambodia because I am the only one that can talk to him and understand his message.”
By Alex Consiglio and Phorn Bopha
The Cambodia Daily
In June, after about a quarter million migrant workers returned from their jobs in Thailand fearing the military junta’s crackdown on illegal labor, Cambodia’s government announced it had slashed the cost of emigration, and would charge workers only $49 to legally return to work across the border.
But Srey Pech, a recruitment agency manager, is charging migrant workers up to $600 to help them find work in Thailand.
Ms. Pech, who claims to be the manager of a B.S.R.O. Best Manpower franchise, one of the private recruitment agencies enlisted by the government to implement its policy, is raking in hundreds of dollars from workers looking to obtain passports, visas and transportation into Thailand, where a job hopefully awaits them.
“I’m not really sure where the money goes,” said Ms. Pech, sitting outside her home, which also acts as her office, in Phnom Penh’s Choam Chao commune. “It’s up to my boss. I cannot really talk much because we are using the other company’s name.”
A border police officer yells while photographed at a crossing in Banteay Meanchey province on the Stung Bot river that operates next to a border police station. (Alex Consiglio/The Cambodia Daily)
By Phorn Bopha and Alex Consiglio
The Cambodia Daily
POIPET CITY, Banteay Meanchey province – When So Khim, a 24-year-old from an impoverished rice-farming family in Pursat province, decided recently that he wanted to find a job in Thailand, he did not even consider applying for a passport to cross the border legally.
Instead, he paid a broker $15 and joined a group of 90 other villagers from across the country, all as desperate as he was to work in Thailand. Together they trekked through dense forest last week and snuck across the border in Banteay Meanchey province’s Malai district.
“When we got into Thailand, about 10 Thai soldiers were waiting on the other side,” Mr. Khim said. “They shot three times in the air and told us not to move.”
