A.C.E.
April 4, 2016
U.S. museum returns 10th-century
Khmer statue to Cambodia
The Associated Press
P
Continued from page one
net company Naver Corp.
It remains to be seen
whether users outside
Japan would be as willing
to pay for such perks. Line
has been rapidly growing
in some parts of Asia, such
as Indonesia.
Line has signed on major
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Motor Corp., and plans to
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interests
to
devise
advertising
that
will
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Shintaro Tabata, another
Line executive.
Line says it plans to
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easier, partnering with a
major Japanese credit-card
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store chain. Online Line
purchases will accumulate
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converted into cash.
Htin Kyaw sworn in as Myanmar’s president
Continued from page 5
RELIC RETURNED. The torso of Rama, a 10th-century stone
statue, is displayed during a handing-over ceremony in Phnom Penh,
Cambodia. Cambodia welcomed home the stone statue, which was
looted from a temple during the country’s civil war, from a U.S. mu-
seum. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)
said the statue was stolen during the civil war in the 1970s
and later transported to the U.S.
“Now after a long journey, he is finally back home,” he
said.
High-speed Mercedes crash ignites uproar
Continued from page 3
wreck.
The Mercedes driver, Janepob Verraporn, 37, now tops
a list of “Bangkok’s deadly rich kids,” as one Thai
newspaper calls the children of privilege who have killed
with their fancy cars. Television talk shows, social-media
forums, and editorials have chimed in on a debate that
asks whether justice will be served this time or — if
history is any guide — if Janepob will walk away from the
crime without serving time.
Police have rushed to defend themselves against
criticism for initially mishandling the case and acting to
shield Janepob, whose father owns a luxury car import
company.
“The law is the law — whether you are rich or poor, you
have to pay for what you’ve done,” national police
spokesman Songpol Wattanachai said, asking skeptics to
have faith in the police. “Justice will be served. Just
because he is rich doesn’t mean he won’t go to jail. I’m
asking people not to think that way.”
Police who initially handled the case in Ayutthaya
province, about 30 miles north of Bangkok, were quickly
sidelined after failing to test Janepob for alcohol and drug
use — and then defending the blunder. Speaking on
television, a police commander said the suspect had the
right to refuse breath and blood tests, adding that both
police and rescue workers did not smell any alcohol on
Janepob’s breath.
Amid public uproar, police filed a charge against
Janepob for driving while unfit or intoxicated, which
carries a prison sentence of three to 10 years, said
Ayutthaya’s
deputy
police
chief,
Col.
Surin
Thappanbupha. Under Thai law, he said, a refusal to be
tested is tantamount to driving under the influence.
Janepob faces another charge of reckless driving
causing death and property damage, which carries a
maximum of 10 years in prison. Janepob was spared
provisional detention after posting 200,000 baht ($5,700)
bail while still at one of Bangkok’s private hospitals.
The Bangkok Post newspaper said in an editorial that
the case had hit a nerve in Thailand because of “the sense
that there is one set of rules for the rich and influential
and another for everyone else.”
“Stop me if you’ve heard this one before,” the editorial
begins. “An expensive car crashes. One or more people die.
A person with a recognizable name ... emerges from the
wreckage and flees the scene. No breath test is
administered. Compensation is offered and the family
Message service Line entering
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Although social-media
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It also sells sticker imag-
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in Japan, some of which are
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according to Line, a
subsidiary of Korean inter-
By Sopheng Cheang
HNOM PENH, Cambodia — Cambodia has
welcomed home a 10th-century Khmer statue that
was looted during the country’s civil war before
spending the past three decades at an American museum.
The sandstone Torso of Rama statue, which stands 62
inches high and is missing its head, arms, and feet, was
formally handed over at a ceremony in Phnom Penh
attended by government officials, the U.S. ambassador,
and the director of the Denver Museum of Art.
The museum said it acquired the statue in 1986 from
the Doris Weiner Gallery in New York City but only
recently learned new facts about its provenance.
“We were recently provided with verifiable evidence
that was not available to us at the time of acquisition, and
immediately began taking all appropriate steps ... for its
return home,” Christoph Heinrich, the museum’s
director, said in a joint statement with the Cambodian
government.
Cambodia’s Secretary of State Chan Thani thanked the
museum for voluntarily returning the piece, which he said
shows its sensitivity to Cambodian culture.
“The return also highlights the serious looting in the
past that had occurred in our country and the
government’s efforts to repatriate those artifacts that left
the country illegally, which are parts of our soul as a
nation,” he said in the statement.
The statue will be returned to its home at the Prasat
Chen temple on the Koh Ker temple complex in Siem Reap
province, which is also home to the famed Angkor Wat
complex.
It is the latest artwork returned to Cambodia in recent
years. Among the galleries that have repatriated art are
the Guimet Museum in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum
of Art in New York, the Cleveland Museum of Art,
Sotheby’s auction house, Christie’s auction house, and the
Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California.
Yim Nolson, an official in charge of Cambodian culture,
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 13
tries to wriggle their way out of any legal consequences.
The police fail dismally at their job.”
One of Thailand’s most famous untouchables is an heir
to the Red Bull energy drink fortune. In 2012, Vorayuth
Yoovidhya, a grandson of Red Bull founder Chaleo
Yoovidhya, slammed his Ferrari into a policeman and
dragged the officer’s dead body along a Bangkok street
before driving away. Vorayuth, who was then 27, has yet
to be charged. In that case, police initially attempted to
cover up his involvement by arresting a bogus
suspect.
In 2010, Orachorn Devahastin Na Ayudhya was 16 and
driving without a license when she crashed her sedan into
a van on a Bangkok highway, killing nine people.
Orachon, the daughter of a former military officer, was
given a two-year suspended sentence.
In a country that values deference and patronage, and
where police are infamously corrupt, there have been
many other similar cases. But Janepob’s carried the
added shock value of visuals. The video of the crash was
taken by a nearby car’s dashboard camera, and quickly
went viral. Police confirmed the video’s authenticity
despite a time stamp with the wrong date, apparently
because the owner had not set the date and time. A few
days later, another video was uploaded and widely shared
showing Janepob’s Mercedes smashing through an Easy
Pass toll gate about an hour before the crash.
Bangkok resident Nant Thananan, 35, was among
many who expressed their exasperation on Facebook.
“It’s so frustrating because there’s nothing we can do.
We know this case will go away. We’ve seen it before,” said
Nant, who owns a popular Bangkok food truck. “We keep
asking ourselves, when are the police going to be ashamed
enough to do the right thing?”
Associated Press writer Ying Panyapon contributed to this report.
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The
military
has
reserved 25 percent of the
seats in parliament for
itself, guaranteeing that no
government can amend the
constitution without its
approval. The military also
heads the Home Ministry
and the Defense Ministry,
which gives it control over
the corrections depart-
ment, ensuring that the
release of political prison-
ers is its decision to make.
Also, it ensured that one
of Htin Kyaw’s two vice
presidents is a former
general, Myint Swe, a close
ally of former junta leader
Than Shwe. Myint Swe
remains on a U.S. Treasury
Department blacklist that
bars American companies
from doing business with
several tycoons and senior
military figures connected
with the former junta.
Zuckerberg’s run in Beijing’s
toxic air stirs Chinese public
Continued from page 16
that morning.
Journalist and avid run-
ner Peng Yuanwen joked
that Zuckerberg’s lungs
had single-handedly fil-
tered Beijing’s smog after
the city’s air quality notice-
ably improved by early
afternoon.
“The human-flesh smog
vacuum is better when it’s
American made,” teased
Peng, playing on a joke
among Beijing residents
that they filter the city’s air
with their lungs by
inhaling harmful particles.
Others
noted
that
Zuckerberg’s run took him
through the square where
hundreds of thousands of
Chinese students gathered
in the spring of 1989 to
demand democracy. The
movement ended in the
early hours of June 4 after
troops and tanks crushed
all resistance, killing hun-
dreds, possibly thousands,
of protesters.
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