AFP
PHNOM PENH - CAMBODIANS hold a national day of mourning on Thursday after more than 450 people died in a festival stampede that officials believe was caused by rumours that an overcrowded bridge was collapsing.
Grieving relatives and government officials, including Prime Minister Hun Sen, were expected to attend an early morning religious ceremony at the scene of the tragedy on Monday, the final day of the Water Festival.
Authorities said the throngs of revellers crossing to an island in Phnom Penh that was one of the main festival sites panicked as rumours rippled through the packed crowd that the bridge was about to give way.
'The deaths happened because the bridge was overcrowded and there was panic that the bridge was collapsing because it is hung by cables and it was swaying,' said Prum Sokha, who is heading a panel investigating the tragedy.
'Some started screaming that the bridge was collapsing, that people were getting electric shocks and that the iron cables were snapping, so the people pushed each other and fell down and the stampede happened.
'The people had nowhere to run,' said Mr Sokha, secretary of state at the Ministry of Interior. The government admitted it had overlooked issues of crowd control, while the victims' families expressed growing anger about security at the event, which attracted some three million revellers from all over Cambodia.
3 comments:
A bad bad thing,
I want to hear some persons to be sack from their roles: Chief of Water Festival organiser, Phnom Penh governor, Phnom Penh Police Chief.
Victims can be survised from dying by Just doing a basic CPR in place.
Government officials and all media controlled by CPP tried to hide another cause of the death:
ELECTRICUTE by the bridge wires.
The fact finding commission must be independent, committee members who handed pick by the government could NOT find out the true cause of the death. Its finding result will be manipulated as the case of the Chea Vichea killing.
As the first report by Channel NewsAsia and the interview of the injured people by Phnom Penh Post Newspaper, the electrocute on the bridge caused the stampede.
The death of more than 450 people could not be justified by the stampede only on 7 meters wide and 100 meters long bridge. A doctor at Calmette Hospital who refused to give his name said most the death from suffixation and electrocute. Also, during this mayhem there were reports of turning off the lights on the bridge.
It's a great insult to the death and injured people by denying the electrical shock factor.
Blaming only on the stampede, Koh Pich Company who owned by relatives of the powerful and pro-CPP tycoon, will not be liable for this disaster.
Suing or prosecuting the rich, the powerful and the tycoon in Cambodia is out of question, but if we could not find the real cause, we never could fix the problem.
This was a man made tragedy, not a natural disaster.
Please find out the truth so we could really learn from it, and all the death can rest in peace.
Your Majesty Samdech Ta former King Norodom Sihanouk,
Prime Minister Samdech Hun Sen,
Thank you for your both kindness and understanding.
What we need is prevention methods, not to let this type of accident happen again in the future.
It also makes me very worried to see so much alcohol allowed to enter or be produced in our beloved Kingdom of Cambodia? What about “ YA BA “ and other types of DRUGS from Thailand and Vietnam?
Can His Majesty Samdech Ta and Samdech Hun Sen stop all sorts of drugs coming to Cambodia? The accident may not be related to drugs and alcohol but just some thing that I could not sleep peacefully from now on to the future, in the names sake of true Khmer citizen.
Can Samdech Hun Sen kindly ask all 5 million Vietnamese illegal immigrants to peacefully return to Vietnam, so Koh Pich will not be too crowded more and more every day, every month and every year to come.
All Vietnamese illegal immigrants can easily come in and settle inside Cambodia even though they already have their own country Vietnam.
When Cambodia is too crowded, definitely we Khmer people can not go to settle inside Vietnam, can we?
Please Vietnamese, you said you came to rescue us from Pol Pot, and you don’t want to return home, it is not right according to 23rd October 1991 Paris Peace Agreement, can all of you go back to your country now.
Vietnamese illegal immigrants, you see because 5 million of you are inside Cambodia, it makes us too crowded and we wasted our lives at Koh Pich without good reasons.
Your Vietnamese Communism expansionist mind in Cambodia, is to give an excuse to China mainland to occupy your Spratly Islands, Parcel Islands, the whole of your Eastern sea border and perhaps the Northern border sooner or later.
5 million Vietnamese illegal immigrants in Cambodia, please go back home to defend your country from Chinese mighty economic invasion.
May I pray to God and the Lord Jesus Christ that those who have lost loved one will be comforted.
My condolences to all the victim's family.
Regards,
Kulen Monorom
(The rice farmer's son)
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