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Dragon Boat Races Return to Cambodian Capital for Water Festival

Pigeons fly past as participants row dragon boats during a competition as part of the Water Festival on the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh on November 26, 2023. (AFP)
Pigeons fly past as participants row dragon boats during a competition as part of the Water Festival on the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh on November 26, 2023. (AFP)
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Dragon Boat Races Return to Cambodian Capital for Water Festival

Pigeons fly past as participants row dragon boats during a competition as part of the Water Festival on the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh on November 26, 2023. (AFP)
Pigeons fly past as participants row dragon boats during a competition as part of the Water Festival on the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh on November 26, 2023. (AFP)

Tens of thousands of spectators thronged the riverfront in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh Sunday for an annual dragon boat race -- the centerpiece of the kingdom's three-day water festival, cancelled during the Covid pandemic.

Around 300 boats, their crews dressed in matching bright T-shirts, strained for the win as they dipped their colorful paddles into the Tonle Sap river with the royal palace behind them.

Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni, Prime Minister Hun Manet, his father Hun Sen and senior government officials looked on as the yearly extravaganza began, with crowds urging the canoes over the final line.

Concerts, parades of lantern floats bedecked with colorful neon lights -- each representing a government ministry -- and fireworks are all part of the three-day festival that will last until Tuesday.

"I am happy that we can meet to celebrate the water festival," 38-year-old rower Hom Phos told AFP.

"I am so excited because it is our national festival."

The festival was last held in 2019, after which it was halted during the pandemic.

"During the Covid pandemic, everyone was worried about it, and we were not happy. But now we are happy again," fellow rower Yorn Vorn, 45, told AFP.

The festival marks the end of the rainy season when the Tonle Sap river, which joins the mighty Mekong River in front of the Royal Palace, reverses flow.

The celebrations turned deadly on the last day of the festival in 2010, when more than 350 people were killed in a stampede on an overcrowded bridge after panic spread over rumors it was about to collapse.

Then Prime Minister Hun Sen described the disaster as Cambodia's worst tragedy since the Khmer Rouge's 1975-1979 reign of terror, which killed up to a quarter of the population.

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Australia Bans Uranium Mining at Indigenous Site

A view shows a sign at the Energy Resources Australia (ERA) Ranger Project Area in Kakadu National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Northern Territory, Australia, July 11, 2024. (Reuters)
A view shows a sign at the Energy Resources Australia (ERA) Ranger Project Area in Kakadu National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Northern Territory, Australia, July 11, 2024. (Reuters)
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Australia Bans Uranium Mining at Indigenous Site

A view shows a sign at the Energy Resources Australia (ERA) Ranger Project Area in Kakadu National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Northern Territory, Australia, July 11, 2024. (Reuters)
A view shows a sign at the Energy Resources Australia (ERA) Ranger Project Area in Kakadu National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Northern Territory, Australia, July 11, 2024. (Reuters)

Australia moved Saturday to ban mining at one of the world's largest high-grade uranium deposits, highlighting the site's "enduring connection" to Indigenous Australians.

The Jabiluka deposit in northern Australia is surrounded by the heritage-listed Kakadu national park, a tropical expanse of gorges and waterfalls featured in the first "Crocodile Dundee" film.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the national park would be extended to include the Jabiluka site -- which has never been mined -- honoring the decades-long desires of the Mirrar people.

"They were seeking a guarantee that there would never be uranium mining on their land," Albanese told a crowd of Labor Party supporters in Sydney.

"This means there will never be mining at Jabiluka," he added.

Archaeologists discovered a buried trove of stone axes and tools near the Jabiluka site in 2017, which they dated at tens of thousands of years old.

The find was "proof of the extraordinary and enduring connection Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander have had with our land", Albanese said.

"The Mirrar people have loved and cared for their land for more than 60,000 years.

"That beautiful part of Australia is home to some of the oldest rock art in the world," he added.

Discovered in the early 1970s, efforts to exploit the Jabiluka deposit have for decades been tied-up in legal wrangling between Indigenous custodians and mining companies.

It is one of the world's largest unexploited high-grade uranium deposits, according to the World Nuclear Association.

Rio Tinto-controlled company Energy Resources of Australia previously held mining leases at Jabiluka.

The conservation of Indigenous sites has come under intense scrutiny in Australia after mining company Rio Tinto blew up the 46,000-year-old Juukan Gorge rock shelters in 2020.

Australia's conservative opposition has vowed to build nuclear power plants across the country if it wins the next election, overturning a 26-year nuclear ban.