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Cambodia lauds gun control success as regionally beneficial

Jun 15, 2007, 11:55 GMT

Phnom Penh - Cambodian military officials Friday unveiled decreased gun-related crime rates, saying the government's strict weapons control policy had led to the drop which they claimed benefitted not only Cambodia but the entire region. Officials from the Defence Ministry hosted the conference and released figures from the Working Group on Weapons Reduction which recorded 866 shooting related crimes in Cambodia in 2006, down from 921 in 2005. Most shootings recorded were the result of robberies or personal disputes, often business related, and only seven per cent of victims were aged under 18, with around 80 per cent of victims males, the report stated. 'These figures show the impact of the government's stance on arms control and the success of our security and public order measures,' the working group said in a statement. The Ministry of Defence director of the weapons control department, General Cham Kim Seng, told reporters the results proved Cambodia's commitment to adhering to an international convention of arms control and that it was no longer a source of illegal weapons, either at home or abroad. 'So far Cambodia has destroyed 200,000 weapons. So far Cambodia already has law and control. This not only solves the problem of weapons in our own country, but in the region and internationally,' General Seng said. Cambodia has been at peace for only a decade after 30 years of civil war which left it with a surplus of small arms and other weapons. In recent years the country has been linked to arms trading to a number of rebel and terrorist groups including the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Prime Minister Hun Sen last year publicly admitted that some Cambodian elements had previously illegally supplied weapons to the Tamil Tigers in the past but said that weapons trade from the country had been stopped. The report came just days after Hun Sen angrily rebutted reported claims from a Thai official that Cambodia's ethnic Cham Muslim minority had been aiding Muslim rebels in Thailand's restive south. © 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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