Soldiers from the elite Brigade 70 get ready to provide security for the November 10-13 ASEAN Summit and related meetings. RCAF
With the Kingdom set to host the ASEAN Summit and related meetings from November 10-13, members of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces’ (RCAF) Brigade 70 will be deployed to Phnom Penh International Airport to ensure the safety of delegates.
Lieutenant General Mao Sophan, commander of the elite RCAF unit, said on October 29 that his forces are prepared to maintain public order and protect the safety of all of the delegates and other visitors who will be in Phnom Penh for the summit.
He said the training they had undergone had played an important role in increasing the knowledge and professionalism of the army.
“Training plans have continued to encourage our troops to increase their capacities and quality and to increase their knowledge and skills based on their geographic locations and in response to the needs of their units,” he added.
Cambodia has prepared more than 10,000 members of the armed forces and police to protect the delegates’ safety.
In addition to the official delegations, 1,385 journalists from 30 different countries have also applied to cover the summit, according to Phos Sovann, director-general of Information and Broadcasting at the Ministry of Information.
He said the largest contingents are the 478 Cambodian journalists and 175 correspondents from Japan, 133 from South Korea and 100 from the US.
He added that a total of 1,205 journalists had successfully registered, 727 of them are foreigners and 220 are information ministry officials, with the rest being independent Cambodian journalists.
A total of 79 journalists were denied registration because they failed to fulfil the required conditions, but those who were denied registration would receive an email confirmation that would allow them to correct their mistakes in time to still cover the summit.
He noted that the successfully registered journalists will be divided into groups, such as host journalists who can get into some priority locations of the meetings and journalists following specific country delegates who can follow their own delegations to certain priority meeting locations.
Freelance journalists will need to have media centre coordinating officials accompanying them. This group will need to register for each meeting they are interested in to receive a pool pass.
Each meeting is required to allow in only two people: a pool photographer and pool videographer who have agreed to allow the other media outlets to use their photos and footage for their coverage of the meeting.
“Journalists who are allowed to cover each meeting must leave the meeting rooms after the chairperson or co-chair makes the statement of interest,” he said.
The information centre set up for the media can accommodate between 1,200 and 1,400 journalists and is set up to provide a video and audio feed from the meeting rooms to the media centre so the journalists would not need to go to the meeting room and can follow everything that happens in any meeting from the information centre.
