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No officials to resign over Cambodia stampede
Source: Agencies |
November 30, 2010, Tuesday
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CAMBODIA'S prime minister said yesterday no state officials were to blame for a stampede last week that killed 351 people and ruled out resignations in the aftermath of the country's worst tragedy in 30 years.
Long-serving premier Hun Sen said calls for senior figures within the government and security forces to step down were politically motivated to serve opposition parties, but he said mistakes had been made and the situation was badly handled.
"No one will resign from their positions after what happened," Hun Sen said during the opening of a new government building in the capital, Phnom Penh.
"The incident happened because of carelessness and we didn't expect this thing to happen," he added. "The biggest mistake was that we had not fully understood the situation."
The stampede caused the biggest loss of life since the Khmer Rouge's regime's four-year reign of terror in the late 1970s, during which an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died from execution, disease, starvation and exhaustion.
The accident happened on Monday last week when more than 1,000 people celebrating the end of an annual Water Festival on a man-made entertainment island crossed a bridge. The crowd panicked and started to run.
Video footage showed hundreds piled on top of each other, dead, alive and unconscious for as long as three hours. Security personnel appeared disorganised and unsure of how to rescue the survivors.
The victims died mostly of suffocation, while some drowned after leaping into the Tonle Sap river below.
Mystery surrounds what triggered the stampede, with varying witness accounts. The government said in a preliminary report last week the Diamond Gate bridge moved slightly under the weight of people, who thought it was about to collapse.
The death toll was 456, but that was later scaled down to 347 when officials said many of the bodies had been counted twice.
Hun Sen, whose government has promised US$12,000 for the families of each victim, drew parallels with the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States under the presidency of George W. Bush, which killed 2,995 people.
"Did Bush administration officials resign following the incident in the US over planned attacks that were preventable?" he asked.
Hun Sen was widely expected to absolve his government of any blame and analysts say it is unlikely there will be any repercussions for his Cambodian People's Party.
Long-serving premier Hun Sen said calls for senior figures within the government and security forces to step down were politically motivated to serve opposition parties, but he said mistakes had been made and the situation was badly handled.
"No one will resign from their positions after what happened," Hun Sen said during the opening of a new government building in the capital, Phnom Penh.
"The incident happened because of carelessness and we didn't expect this thing to happen," he added. "The biggest mistake was that we had not fully understood the situation."
The stampede caused the biggest loss of life since the Khmer Rouge's regime's four-year reign of terror in the late 1970s, during which an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians died from execution, disease, starvation and exhaustion.
The accident happened on Monday last week when more than 1,000 people celebrating the end of an annual Water Festival on a man-made entertainment island crossed a bridge. The crowd panicked and started to run.
Video footage showed hundreds piled on top of each other, dead, alive and unconscious for as long as three hours. Security personnel appeared disorganised and unsure of how to rescue the survivors.
The victims died mostly of suffocation, while some drowned after leaping into the Tonle Sap river below.
Mystery surrounds what triggered the stampede, with varying witness accounts. The government said in a preliminary report last week the Diamond Gate bridge moved slightly under the weight of people, who thought it was about to collapse.
The death toll was 456, but that was later scaled down to 347 when officials said many of the bodies had been counted twice.
Hun Sen, whose government has promised US$12,000 for the families of each victim, drew parallels with the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States under the presidency of George W. Bush, which killed 2,995 people.
"Did Bush administration officials resign following the incident in the US over planned attacks that were preventable?" he asked.
Hun Sen was widely expected to absolve his government of any blame and analysts say it is unlikely there will be any repercussions for his Cambodian People's Party.
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