Khmer Rouge now kidnapping westerners - police
Khmer Rouge now kidnapping westerners - police
PHNOM PENH (Agencies): Khmer Rouge guerrillas have begun a new policy of kidnapping westerners in Cambodia to raise money and scare off foreign investors, a police commander said yesterday.
The government blamed the Maoist guerrillas for the abduction on April 11 of Britons Dominic Chappell, 25, and Tina Dominy and Australian Kelly Wilkinson, 24, in southern Sihanoukville province.
"Yes -- we can say this kidnapping of westerners is a new policy of the Khmer Rouge because there are two gains for them -- ransom and the disruption of the country's economy by deterring foreign investment," said Maj. Gen. Teng Savong, spokesman for the National Security Ministry.
He said roads leading to the seaports of Kampot and Sihanoukville were no longer totally safe.
Visiting Australian Immigration Minister Nick Bolkus said yesterday: "Our most recent information is they're safe. There have been sightings." He declined to elaborate.
Bolkus told a news conference two Australian federal police officers were liaising with the British embassy and Cambodian officials investigating the kidnappings.
The British embassy has warned in a travel advisory that Khmer Rouge guerrillas may be targeting Westerners. The Australian embassy warned only of "lawless elements".
Western diplomatic sources say the abduction could be the work of renegade Khmer Rouge units operating outside the control of their headquarters. The possibility that disgruntled, unpaid government soldiers or police are responsible was not ruled out.
Wilkinson's father and brother have arrived in Cambodia and are being accompanied by an Australian embassy official.
A Reuter photographer returning from Sihanoukville yesterday said the government had deployed a squad of military police at the scene of the kidnapping in Sre Ambel village.
A reporter also returning from Sihanoukville said suspected Khmer Rouge rebels shot and slightly injured an American motorcyclist near Sre Ambel on Monday night.
The American was recovering in Phnom Penh's Calmette Hospital from the attack, whose motive was not clear.
Khmer Rouge guerrillas in neighboring Kampot province are holding U.S. aid worker, Melissa Himes, 25, and two Cambodian staff, kidnapped on March 31 while on a well-digging project.
A spokesman for Himes' employer, Food for the Hungry International, said there was no change in the situation.
Westerners seized by the guerrillas in the past -- either during a robbery or for ransom -- have been freed unharmed.
Meanwhile, AFP quoted an aid agency official as saying yesterday that Khmer Rouge guerrillas shot and seriously wounded an American aid worker who was driving a motorcycle along the main road from Cambodia's port town of Sihanoukville to the capital.
"He was shot through the foot and across the neck," Ruth Miller, a representative of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, said."It's an absolute miracle that he wasn't killed."
The incident occurred around 6 p.m. (1100 GMT) Monday when the aid worker, who is in his late twenties, was driving along National Route 4, about 70 kilometers southwest of Phnom Penh.
Miller did not identify the worker.
She said her colleague spotted two gunmen dressed in Khmer Rouge uniforms at the side of the road from a distance of about 100 meters.
"He was fairly certain it was the Khmer Rouge," she said.