The general director of a local rice wholesaler accused of defrauding business associates in a deal has lashed out at the judiciary – claiming delays in legal processing have left him imprisoned for 13 months without trial. ...
Sovann Veasna is accused of cheating three businessmen –... continue
Nearly 90 representatives of 137 families in Battambang province, some of whom include former Khmer Rouge cadres, protested for a second day in Phnom Penh yesterday, claiming authorities had seized land they had held since the late 1990s.
Ul Yan who was among protesters at Butom Vatey pagoda, near Prime Minister Hun Sen’s house, said district and commune authorities colluded to grab 527 hectares of land in two communes in Bavel district and another in Phnom Proek district. …
A father whose three children were badly beaten by employees of a rubber plantation has accused a Ratanakkiri Provincial Court judge of threatening to send two sons, aged 14 and 21, to jail unless they accept $1,000 in compensation and drop the assault complaint.
Ry Saron is attempting to sue the plantation owner DM Group, for $40,000 for the May 5 beating that company employees inflicted with wood and metal poles on his three children and a neighbor.
The four were attempting to stop rubber plantation workers from clearing the land claimed by their families when they were beaten. …
Mr. Saron also alleged that Judge [Eng] Champnap threatened to charge his sons and his neighbor’s son with attacking the plantation workers, thus turning them into the perpetrators and not the victims of the assault. …
Under duress, Mr Saron said he agreed to thumbprint a statement, two lines of which he kept blank at the bottom, which Judge Champnap subsequently filled in himself stating that Mr. Saron had agreed to accept the $1,000.
“The judge said, “your sons will not be charged and the four workers will be also released,” he said. …
DM Group has been locked in land disputes for years.
Last year, Royal Cambodian Armed Forces Second Lieutenant Sin Vanny, 50, was arrested for shooting and injuring a 20-year old villager who was riding a motor cycle across land at the center of a separate long running land dispute between ethnic minority villagers and the rubber plantation. Lt. Vanny was moonlighting at the time as a security guard for DM Group in Lumphat district. …
About 20 people protesting their pending eviction from their homes near Phnom Penh International Airport blocked people from leaving or entering the airport for about half an hour yesterday, before a large force of police broke up their protest. …
In July, authorities told 182 families that their homes were in the way of a security “buffer zone” around the airport, and that they needed to clear out ahead of the arrival of the world leaders for two summits late last year. …
The residents insist they own their land legally, as local government officials had recognized their property transactions and house constructions over many years. But the municipal government has rejected those claims, saying they built their homes illegally regardless of what commune and district officials acknowledged in terms of their land purchase and construction. …
If the houses are not removed, the International Civil Aviation Organisation could blacklist Phnom Penh International Airport, he [Civil Aviation State Secretariat Say Sokhan] claimed.
Opposition lawmaker Son Chhay said yesterday that he would ask the government to cancel the land concession of a Vietnamese rubber firm in Ratanakkiri province he accused of logging and exporting wood illegally.
Mr. Chay, a candidate in July’s national election for the Cambodia National Rescue Party, wrapped up a three-day visit to Company 72’s rubber plantation in O’Yadaw district yesterday, during which he said he saw the firm’s employees logging inside thick, healthy forest. The country’s forest laws only allow concessionaires to fell forests inside their boundaries if degraded. …
Human rights groups and local communities have long accused rubber firms operating in Ratanakkiri of illegally encroaching on ethnic minority land and clearing community forests vital to the province’s minority groups. …
U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi on Tuesday received a thorny reception from hundreds of students at a Phnom Penh university, who angrily questioned his impartiality and unfurled banners calling for him to end his work in Cambodia.
Special rapporteur Subedi delivered a lecture to about 1,000 students packed into a room at the Cambodian Mekong University (CMU) on the theme of “The challenge of reconciling competing interests in the law of foreign investment.” …
As the floor was opened up for questions from students, 23-year-old Chea Chheng, a student of public administration at the Royal University of Law and Economics, took the microphone.
“You say Cambodia is the hell of human rights. Your report contains 180 pages describing all bad things about Cambodia. Why?” asked Mr. Chheng, referring to a report on Cambodia by Mr. Subedi in July, which was met with an angry response from the government at the time. …
Five other students from CMU and other universities around Phnom Penh then took the microphone to set about dishing out similar critiques of Mr. Subedi’s reports, which have covered matters such as land rights, independence of the judiciary and electoral reform, to yet more enthusiastic applause from the assembled young people. …
The event finished with the university’s chancellor, Ich Seng, saying that it was “important to have a human rights forum.”
The father of three youths allegedly beaten by DM Group workers earlier this month said court officers yesterday threatened to imprison him if he did not agree to compromise with the company and drop the case.
Ry Sarun appeared at Ratanakkiri Provincial Court yesterday to answer questions about his claims that DM Group employees attacked his three children while they were attempting to stop them clearing the family’s land. …
The occupants of 90 Phnom Penh households whose homes were partially or completely dismantled to make way for the Railway Rehabilitation Project partly funded by the ADB have demanded the bank offer them fair compensation.
In a letter submitted to the Inter-Ministerial Resettlement Committee, the ADB, the National Assembly and the Ministry of Economy and Finance yesterday, the villagers argued they had been unfairly locked out of compensation due to technicalities despite valid claims.
Luy Im, a representative of 23 complainants from Toul Sangke A, said she received only $100 in compensation after the front of her house was destroyed in 2011 to accommodate the works. …
The complainants, who include six households from Phum III and 65 from Tapeang Anhchanh, want the IRC to intervene because their compensation requests through one avenue of the ADB’s accountability mechanism have been rejected on the grounds that they were accepted via another. …
A year after a massive military raid here that left a 14-year old girl dead and hundreds of families evicted, there remains little sign of the original land dispute that turned this rural village into a hotbed of agitation.
But a new firm and a government-issued social land concession for other evictees in the province are creating new problems in the area.
Four months before the military raided Broma on May 16, 2012, hundreds of families had been protesting against a local rubber plantation owned by the private firm Casotim for allegedly encroaching on their farms. …
But old land disputes are giving way to new ones here, thanks to yet another agri-business firm’s plans in the area and the government’s own designs to turn nearly 19,000 hectares on the edge of the village into a social land concession for families across the province either without land or displaced by land disputes. …
[Technical officer for the provincial government’s department of land management] Mr. [Chan] Kong said the government had plans to clear 18,838 hectares of land and would eventually move 3,000 families who had been displaced by other land disputes across the province.
He rejected the families’ claims that the concession would take over any long-standing farms and said those claiming otherwise were opportunists hoping to stake out land they had never farmed. …
Contacted by phone, village chief Chea Chin said there was also more than farmland at stake. He said that hundreds of ethnic Cham families the government has sent to the village to move onto a new social land concession have already started clearing a 580-hectare government approved community forest the entire village and its 600 families rely on. …
The village chief said another 74 local families were also accusing a new rubber plantation in the area of encroaching on their farms. …
Mr. Kong…. confirmed that there was a 5,000-hectare concession in the area. …
The European union’s executive arm has responded to its parliamentarians’ concerns over rights abuses stemming from Cambodia’s economic land concessions, maintaining that, should the need arise, it “will be ready” to withdraw from its preferential trade agreements with the Kingdom.
In a joint letter to concerned members of parliament on Wednesday, European Commission member Karel De Gucht and vice president Katherine Ashton said they were monitoring the situation, and had stressed to the Cambodian government the importance of reforms, as well as the consequences of losing the no-tariff agreement, commonly known as “Everything But Arms” (EBA). …
One of the conditions of the EBA is that beneficiary countries adhere to rights declarations such as the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention Concerning Minimum Age for Admission to Employment, both of which concessionaires – particularly in the Kingdom’s sugar industry – have been accused of violating. …
A well-known community representative who has long battled alleged land-grabbing by economic land concessionaire Pheapimex Group was arrested on fraud accusations and jailed in Pursat province’s Krakor district yesterday.
Fellow community representative Lun Sivy, 42, said Kuch Veng, a member of the Cambodian Peace Network, was arrested in the forest at about 9 am by commune and district police officials. …
A local official and four ethnic minority Tompuon villagers appeared in a Ratanakkiri court on Friday to face accusations of land-grabbing and protesting against a private company that purchased their land in 2007, authorities said yesterday.
Rocham Pheun, an assistant to the chief of Keh Chung commune in Bakeo district, told the Post that the provincial court put out 15 warrants, summonsing himself and 14 other villagers to court after the company filed a complaint, though only four villagers appeared. …
The company is listed in court documents as Ly Sokkim Co, Ltd, though a Ministry of Commerce database does not list any registered business under that name. …
The trade commissioner and foreign affairs representative of the European Union (E.U.) have turned down a request from 13 members of the European Parliament that they immediately investigate Cambodia’s much criticized economic land concessions, but said they were monitoring the issue closely.
In a March letter to Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht and the E.U.’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Catherine Ashton, the lawmakers asked for an immediate investigation into the concessions, which they accuse of a raft of human rights abuses. They also asked that if the investigation corroborated their claims that the E.U. suspend the duty free access Cambodian exports currently enjoy to Europe under the Everything But Arms trade scheme—part of the E.U.’s Generalized System of Preferences (GSP).
Their request followed a resolution to the same effect passed by the entire European Parliament in October. …
The commission currently requires that human rights violations be “serious and systematic” before it launches an investigation that could strip a country of GSP benefits. In a report on Cambodia’s land concessions last year, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on human rights to the country, Surya Subedi, said that rights violations tied to the concessions were “serious and widespread.” …
While garments make up most of the trade, the E.U. has come under particular fire for giving duty free access to Cambodian sugar due to the rights abuses alleged at a pair of Koh Kong province plantations growing the commodity. Hundreds of local families accuse the plantations of stealing their farms, sometimes violently, and offering them little to no compensation. …
Thailand and Cambodia have signed four new agreements focused on bolstering trust and maintaining security.
Defence Minister Sukumpol Suwanatat made the announcement after the 9th GBC meeting at Wangjuntr Golf Park in Rayong’s Wang Chan district.
He said one of the four agreements concerned the spread of information.
Both parties committed to promoting positive and factual information about each other to help bolster trust and respect, the minister said.
The second agreement concerns the suppression of illegal activities in border areas, especially drug smuggling and logging. …
The third agreement involves supporting residents living in border areas by promoting job creation, tourism, education and health care. …
Both parties also agreed to endorse the results of the Joint Working Group (JWG) meetings, which aim to solve border disputes, as well as the joint agreement on landmine clearance drawn up by the Thailand and Cambodian Mine Action Centres.
Commune authorities in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadav district have allegedly banished a local resident for persisting with a lawsuit that accuses them of selling 500 hectares of community forest to two Cambodian developers for $300,000.
Romas Svang, who is a member of the ethnic Jarai minority, filed the suit in 2011. The 45-year-old said most villagers living near the forest received $200 to $300 for allowing developers to use the area. …
Ya Tung commune chief Rocham Vin said 199 families had agreed to sell the land, and received the money.
The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court yesterday charged two staffers of Vietnamese rubber concessionaire Hoang Anh Ratanakkiri (CRD) with causing intentional damage for allegedly setting fire to several homes belonging to a landowner with whom they were embroiled in a land dispute, deputy prosecutor Mom Vanda said. …
Ly Sok Ngim, owner of the plantation where the buildings were set ablaze, said she had filed a complaint with police seeking $200,000 in damages from Hoang Anh Ratanakkiri, which she said was the parent company of CRD. …
A year to the day since armed soldiers stormed into the remote village of Pro Mar in Kratie province, killing a 14-year-old girl, arresting her husband and evicting hundreds of families, Sreng Pho still has nightmares.
“I’m really scared when I think back to that day the authorities came to crack down on our village,” she said yesterday. …
Pho said villagers had been left without farmland and wanted to return to plant cassava but wasn’t sure if authorities were building a military base in the area, as reported by the Post in February. …
Prior to the eviction, villagers had been locked in a dispute with the company Casotim. …
Ratanakkiri provincial police on Monday arrested the chief of staff of a Vietnamese rubber concessionaire and his Cambodian translator who are believed to have burned down more than $5,000 worth of property related to a land dispute in O’Chum district, police said.
Meas Pov Bora, chief of the provincial minor crimes office, said that Vietnamese national Ngvieng Hong Fou, 30, chief of staff for a company called CRD, and his translator Sim Borin, 31, were arrested for allegedly setting fire to one house and four huts, and destroying some 200 bunches of cassava plants – alone worth $5,650 – belonging to local landowner Ly Sok Ngim. …
Provincial authorities in Ratanakkiri have warned ethnic Jarai villagers that they will be arrested if they continue to stop bulldozers belonging to a Vietnamese company from clearing forest in O’Yadav district’s Paknhai commune, community leaders said yesterday.
Sav Finh, leader of Lom village’s forestry protection committee, said provincial and forestry administration officials visited the cleared area late last week to warn villagers not to take direct action against the company again. …
O’Yadav district governor Dork Sar said the forest belonged to the state and that, if the company had been granted the land, the villagers had no right to stop the company’s activities. …
On May 13, we ran an interview with London-based NGO Global Witness accusing the Deutsche Bank and the International Finance Corporation of financing two Vietnamese rubber companies that are allegedly involved in land grabs in Cambodia and Laos. …
We asked both banks for a response and invited them on to the show to explain their positions. Both declined to be interviewed but sent these statements:
Michael West, Managing Director / Head of Communications, Asia Pacific [Deutsche Bank]:
“Deutsche Bank does not provide financing to Hoang Anh Gia Lai Group (HAGL), Dong Phu Rubber or Vietnam Rubber Group (VRG). The DWS fund shares referred to are held on behalf of investors. Deutsche Bank provides clerical trustee services to HAGL which is a listed company as it does to thousands of publicly listed companies globally.”
Hannfried von Hindenburg, Head of Communications for IFC in East Asia and the Pacific:
“IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, works with financial intermediaries, such as funds, because they can contribute to inclusive and sustainable financial markets that are essential to eradicating poverty and job creation. …
IFC will carefully study the findings of the Global Witness research and taking this research into consideration is part of our ongoing monitoring of our investments in Dragon Capital and VEIL.”
