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Speech at the Inauguration of a New Building Center of the Secretariat of
National Anti-Terrorism Committee
Phnom Penh, 21 April 2010
Your Venerable Monks
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen!
Today it is my great pleasure to attend inaugurating ceremony of a new
building center of the Secretariat of National Anti-Terrorism Committee.
The ceremony takes place right after the people nationwide had delightedly
celebrated the recent traditional Happy Khmer New Year, Year of the Tiger,
Buddhism Era 2554, which was on the 14th, 15th, and 16th April 2010.
This ceremony is another new occasion for me to visit and talk with officials
and armed forces of the Secretariat of National Anti-Terrorism Committee who
have made many successes and achievements so far, also we will observe together
new development of situation to which we must pay great attention and be
prepared for in order to fight against, prevent and combat terrorism threat.
Indeed, this new achievement stemmed from effort of all of us, especially the
leadership and officials of the secretariat of National Committee for
Anti-terrorism, to expand center and to modernize of facility and materials for
increased effectiveness and productivity of daily operations. Taking this
opportunity, I would like to express my high appreciation for success and result
that the secretariat of National Committee for Anti-terrorism has hard attained
thus far by scarifying physical and moral force for the cause of overcoming all
kinds of obstacles with sense of loving the nation and consciousness of
determination to protect national security, making contribution to building full
peace, stability, safety and social order for society and helping make and
maintain achievements which is high interest of the nation.
Undeniably, these successes and achievements are clear evidence reflecting sharp
determination of the leadership, officials and armed forces of the secretariat
of National Committee for Anti-terrorism in contribution to implementation of
national development policies that lead to materialize spirit of Rectangular Strategy Phase II i.e. growth, employment, equity and
efficiency.
Taking this opportunity, on behalf of the government I would like to highly
value endeavor of the secretariat of National Committee for Anti-terrorism to
ensure engagement for this task and to build institutional capacity which allow
this institution to make remarkable progress.
Obviously, witnessing human resource in June 2006, this agency had only 10
staff; however, at the present it has 504 staff in total comprising
of military officers, police officers, non-commissioned military and police
officers, soldiers, policemen, and has succeeded in building institutional
capacity and developing equipments base for active and effective anti-terrorism.
For that, National Police Force, Military Police, bodyguard unit, military units
and a number of civil institutions such as Ministry of Economy and Finance,
National Bank of Cambodia, Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Public Works and
Transportation, State Secretariat of Civil Aviation, General Department of
Customs and Excise, General Department of Cam-control, international sea ports
and international airports are always supporting and promoting security and
tirelessly contributing to capacity building through training and human resource
development, exchange of experience, information collection and analysis for
combating all kinds of terrorism at national, regional and world level.
At
the same time, I would like to admire all media networks for disseminating and
educating people to understand danger of terrorism activities and extremism and
have them always stand with the government for the cause of fighting with
dangerous enemies who are terrorists. Along with that, I would like to express
my complement to our people for being committed to and bring our nation with
full security, peace and without terrorism.
Moreover, I would like to compliment the cooperation among ASEAN countries and
the region against terrorism. Those countries always consider Cambodia a partner
county and offer both bilateral and multilateral support to the Secretariat of
the National Anti-Terrorism Committee to strengthen effort against tourism
activities.
In
front of us, this new building will enhance work effectiveness and continuous
progresses that the Secretariat of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee has to
fulfill and be responsible. This achievement is a strong foundation for all
works. In this spirit, I hope to see the Secretariat of the National
Anti-Terrorism Committee improves its work and expands the capacity of the
institution and cooperation in this courageous mission. The Committee has to
work harder and maintain achievements, with high conscious and continuity for
the benefit of organization and strengthen effectiveness and capacity to fight
against terrorism. Moreover, it has to response to international integration and
cooperation for the cause of peace and national and social development both in
present and future.
The
Royal Government has always been determined in the strengthening of peace,
stability and public order in the society. Keeping this in mind, we have
strengthen and enhance full capacity of our armed forces and actively joint with
international communities to prevent and crack down terrorist activities and
sabotages both inside and outside country as well as take necessary measures to
beef up effectiveness on prevention and cracking down all sort of crime
activities that might create fear and cause instability to Cambodia society. At
the same time, the Royal Government of Cambodia consider terrorist act as the
cruelest crime that bring loss of lives for all races, ages and places. Disaster
created by terrorism is a global challenge that requires joint effort from every
country of world to be effective.
Despite geographical location, political, social and economic condition of
Cambodia do not place Cambodia as a primary target for terrorism, Cambodia is
necessary to build its capacity for bother preparing itself to ensure safety of
Cambodian people and contribution in fighting against terrorism in order to
eliminate terrorism activities that put people of all countries in horror.
Therefore, it is important to continue improving capacity, skill and
professionalism to carry our duties and strengthen cooperation, strengthen
quality, ensure honesty to the nation, respecting the constitution and disciple
and morality, which are necessary to fight, foil and prevent terrorism.
Terrorism could happen in all forms and constantly adapt to the situation that
required detail studies and comprehension. For example, the 9/11 even is up to
now, 3144 days. In this event, eleven people hijacked four US plans and
unexpectedly used them for bombardment. Two plans were flown to hit the World
Trade Center in New York, while the third plan hit the Pentagon in Washington
and the fourth plan hit the ground. All people in those plans were killed. This
event claimed 3000 lives, most of them were American and only 85 people were
foreigners. Alqaida declared its responsibility for creating this scheme.
Two
years after, on the 12 October 2002, two night clubs in Bali, Indonesia, were
exploded and killed 202 people and injured 209 more. On the 5th August 2003, a suicide car-bomb detonated the exterior of the Mariotte Hotel in
Jakarta and killed 12 and injured 15 people. On the 9th September
2004, a bomb was detonated outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta and killed
11 people. Moreover, at Bali a bomb was detonated against killed 23 and injured
100 people on the 1st October 2005.
Outside the region, many bombs have been exploded and killed many people. For
example, on the 11th March 2004 in Madrid, a bomb exploded in the
subway and killed 192 people. On the 7th July 2005 in London, three
bombs in subway and four on buses were exploded and killed 50 and injured 700
people. Jordan, Egypt and Morocco had also been attacked by terrorists.
Through this, we must continue to seek deep understanding about the nature of
terrorism, its intention, and its effect on the socio-economy. By building the
capacity and getting a clear understanding of these issues can largely protect
and prevent people from the threat pose by terrorism.
In
this spirit, we must continue to implement of national anti-terrorism policy
that rely on a people-wide network that is preventive, protective, and offensive through a firm and joint mechanism between the government
and the people, government and the private sector in eliminating and eradicating
the threat of terrorism on our nation. Along with that, our strategy has to be
timely flexible because the threat of the terrorism always keeps changing. We
have to bear in mind as always that leaving the terrorism to be uncontrollable
can cause bad omen to the socio-economic development, especially tourism sector
and foreign direct investment. In this context, we have to tirelessly continue
our work ahead even though there is no sign of terrorism happening here, we have
to strictly and actively fulfill our duties. Based on this foundation, I would
like the Secretariat of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee, National Police,
Military Police, Armed Forces, State Agencies and all people to continue to
jointly upgrade the spirit of high carefulness and must not be careless,
however, we must remember that carelessness is underestimation, and
underestimation is the way toward disaster.
At
the same time, the Secretariat of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee must
continue to be a coordinating center for all national and international agencies
in all sorts of operation against terrorism and continue enhancing the
activities and capacity for the secretariat and all national competent
authorities in preventing and fighting against all kinds of terrorism acts.
Taking this opportunity, I would like to encourage the Secretariat of the
National Anti-Terrorism Committee to prepare the anti-terrorism maneuver because
it is an exercise for all competent authorities to nicely and effectively
coordinate and cooperate with each others as witnessed so far. The preparation
of the 2009 practice in Sihanouk province brought about 3 satisfactory
tremendous results: (1) all competent authorities including police, military
police, infantry armed forces, navy, various departments and units in the
province have been effectively put under the leadership of a head of General
Unit Commander, (2) departments and other units know how to cooperate in solving
problems of terrorism with spirit of high responsibility and (3) departments and
units are truly creative with high responsibility to fulfill the duties to
mitigate the crisis caused by terrorism acts. For instance, we have noted that
throughout the provinces there are 3 ambulances, but the Secretariat of the
National Anti-Terrorism Committee has conducted the simulation of which 60
people were killed and injured in order to test the ability of the provincial
authority in handling the situation. At the end, the provincial governor,
provincial health department and the port authority have jointly solved the
issue successfully by mobilizing other vehicles to help transport the victims
and have them quickly sent to the hospitals escorted by police motorcycles. For
this year, the Council of Ministers has instructed the Secretariat of the
National Anti-Terrorism Committee to prepare Multi-Sector Anti-Terrorism
Maneuver at the Phnom Penh International Airport in which I have instructed to
prepare the test for the spy from all institutions to try to work together in
order to jointly solve the crisis and based on this foundation, we will be able
to further improve cooperation among those spies. We actually believe that
there will be no terrorism act happening in Cambodia, but only such maneuver
that can be used as the training platform for our armed forces. This maneuver
can make our competent officers more skillful and responsive to overcome actual
event successfully.
In
this spirit, the Secretariat of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee must
continue the work of collecting and sharing data, building capacity to fight,
especially against terrorism acts, improving information technology, binding
information data to become an information bank that can facilitate the analysis
and research. Moreover, the Secretariat of the National Anti-Terrorism
Committee must use small or big scale maneuvers as a way toward improving
quality and efficiency for all related competent institutions for anti-terrorism
works.
In
this regard, I strongly believe that all related ministries/institutions;
private sector and all people will contribute to share cooperation more actively
for the cause of ensuring peace, stability, safety and social order for the
society and the socio-economic progress of Cambodia. Through this, I would like
to appeal to all relevant ministries/institutions, authorities, private sector
and all people to continue supporting and contributing to the mission of the
Secretariat of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee more intensively with high
spirit of responsibility in order to better maintain more favorable climate for
investment, tourism and business in Cambodia.
At
the end, together with the official inauguration of the “New Building Center
of the Secretariat of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee” today, I would
like to wish Samdech Chief and Deputy Chief of Monks, Venerable Monks,
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, National and International Guests the four
gems of Buddhist blessing: Longevity, Nobility,
Health ad Strength.
EndItem
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