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... continue
Twelve ethnic Tampuon families living in Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat district yesterday filed a complaint with the provincial land management department, accusing the owners of a Vietnamese rubber plantation of clearing their farmland, local official said.
Tun Vantham, chief of Samuth Loeu village in Seda commune, said that since January 18, employees of the Kao Su Ea Lev BM Yoy Stock company have cleared more than 10 hectares of farmland belonging to 12 of the indigenous families, all of whom live outside the company’s 8,400-hectare, government-awarded economic land concession. …
A mother of four, with the youngest on her hip, said she was not impressed by the palatial government buildings where Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Council of Ministers have their offices.
Her own home is a wood-and-tin shack now partially buried under the Mekong River sand that is being piped in to fill up the Boeung Kak Lake in the capital to make way for a brand-new city of offices, condos, hotels and parks. These will be far out of the financial reach of the families who have been living round the lake since the early 1990s.
According to local rights groups, more than 400,000 Cambodians have been evicted from their homes since 2003. There have been two types of evictions – from the capital, to make way for development; and from the countryside, to make way for commercial plantations and industries, invariably by well-connected business interests. …
Reporting that the country had achieved better than expected economic growth last year, Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday targeted a rapid expansion of the country’s rubber industry and predicted that almost 1 in 10 Cambodians would soon be working in rubber. …
“Agriculture continues to play a crucial role in boosting our gross domestic product, employment, and contributing to rural poverty reduction,” Mr. Hun Sen said. …
According to figures provided by Mr. Hun Sen, rubber plantations now account for 1.2 million hectares of the 1.5 hectares of land the government awarded to private companies under its controversial economic land concessions.
Human rights groups, however, have estimated that far more land, at least 2 million hectares, has been distributed by the government as private concessions. …
The European Union’s ambassador to Cambodia raised issues of judicial reform, land reform and the upcoming national elections in a meeting with Prime Minister Hun Sen yesterday morning. …
The European Commission’s directorate-general for trade is currently reviewing a report by the U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia, Surya Subedi – which blamed the country’s policy of economic land concessions for serious and widespread human rights violations – to decide whether to launch its own investigation of the government’s land policies. …
Authorities in Kompong Thom province have ordered the owners of a Vietnamese rubber company to temporarily cease the clearing of part of Prey Long forest after local farmers alleged that the firm was encroaching on villagers’ land.
About 300 members of the Prey Long People’s Network on Wednesday protested at the Sandan district government office, alleging that the CRCK Company was clearing forest outside the boundaries of its 6,000-hectare economic land concession. …
Economic land concessions remain a major concern, with more than 230 people arrested in 2012, an increase of more than 150 percent from the year before, according to an annual report by the rights group Adhoc. …
That means land conflicts have increased, Thun Saray, president of Adhoc, told VOA Khmer. The government issued 66 directives setting aside 381,121 hectares of land in 2012, he said. That’s an increase of about 16.7 percent from the year before, he said. …
The number of people arrested over land disputes jumped 144 percent from a year earlier to 232 in 2012, the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (Adhoc) said Thursday. …
Speaking at a news conference, he [Adhoc president Thun Saray] said Adhoc last year received 70 complaints about land disputes affecting 101,408 hectares of land and 10,689 households. Sixty-two cases remain unsolved, he said. Provinces most affected were Battambang, Kampong Cham, Kampong Thom, Koh Kong, Mondolkiri, Rattanakiri and Siem Reap. …
As of December, he said, the government had given companies at least 2.6 million hectares in economic land concessions. …
Nean Narin, a humble man and father of three children, says his family is going hungry. Narin lives in the village of Boeung Kak, situated on the edge of Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh. For years, he and other villagers relied on the Boeung Kak Lake for fish and plants, which they would eat and sell.
But in mid-2008, construction workers began pumping sand into the lake “in preparation for the development of a 133-hectare commercial and housing project” sponsored by Shukaku, Inc. — a Cambodian firm owned by a Senator of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party – and leased to the Chinese-owned Erdos Hong Jun Investment Co., Ltd.
Over the next four years, the project would displace over 3,000 families. …
But a sugar plantation tycoon has since claimed that land, and the family now faces eviction for the second time, she told IPS. All the fruit trees Vanny’s parents relied on for food have been cut down, and no compensation offered. …
The market-driven economy – launched in 1989 and opened to foreign investors in 1993 – fuelled a rapid increase in FDI, from practically nothing in 1990 to 800 million dollars in 2008, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. …
While investments initially went straight into sectors like tourism (53 percent), infrastructure (21 percent) and the garments industry (20 percent), the past half-decade has seen a steady rise in land investments. …
Land investments are also characterised by a lack of data. The last report released by the ministry of agriculture, forestry and fisheries was in 2006. In that year, 30 land concessions were granted to foreign companies: about half were Chinese while the rest were Vietnamese, Thai, South Korean and from the U.S.
Not only is FDI displacing farmers but the beneficial trade ranking the European Union (EU) afforded Cambodia as an LDC — known as the Everything But Arms (EBA) agreement—has also taken a toll. The scheme allows duty-free exports of agricultural products to the EU and has sparked an upsurge of land grabs for sugar cane plantations.
These acquisitions have displaced over 1,500 families in the Koh Kong, Kampong Speu and Oddar Meanchey provinces. …
The Ministry of Agriculture will request that Prime Minister Hun Sen from now on revoke all economic land concessions (ELC) whose owners are found guilty of illegal logging or other major forestry crimes, a ministry official said yesterday. …
The Ministry of Agriculture will ask Prime Minister Hun Sen to cancel a 4,900-hectare economic land concession belonging to a Vietnamese rubber company in Ratanakkiri province on the grounds that the firm has been illegally logging on a large scale, officials said yesterday. …
According to rights groups Adhoc, which has also called on the government to cancel Day Dong Yoeun’s concession, the company has been illegally logging since July, and exporting the wood to Vietnam through the Phoum Thmorda border checkpoint. …
At 9 a.m. yesterday, more than 200 soldiers, police and military police officers were gathered outside a large mansion on Street 55 in Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district. …
All were waiting for their promised “ang pao” – red envelopes containing cash usually handed out during Chinese New Year – from Choeung Sopheap, the powerful owner of controversial land development firm Pheapimex and the wife of CPP Senator Lao Meng Khin.
Pheapimex holds a number of economic land concessions around the country, most notably a 316,000-hectare site in Pursat province’s Krakor district where villagers have staged several protests alleging that their land was illegally cleared. Armed military police officers have been deployed to guard the concession. …
Rights groups have long accused government security forces, especially the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, of protecting the private land concessions of well-connected families in a clear conflict of interests. …
Chea Vannath, an independent political analyst, said this practice of private business owners providing money to state employees would inevitably raise questions. “What you see now is the result of the [informal] policy for the higher-ranking [officials],” she said. “So if there is any change, there needs to be a policy from the top that the military and the police have to be independent and not have…financial transaction whatsoever from the business or private sectors.” …
The Prey Lang Community Network yesterday delivered a letter to authorities in Kampong Thom province’s Sandan district calling for the postponement of a Vietnamese concessionaire’s forest clearing and notifying authorities of their intention to deliver a lawsuit to the provincial hall tomorrow, network activists said.
According to the conservationist group, the lawsuit will be delivered by a 300-strong contingent that will march to the Sandan District Hall from the headquarters of CRCK Company, whose clearing, the group maintains, has spilled outside the bounds of its nearly 6,200-hectare rubber plantation concession, affecting forest lands used by the villagers for hunting and foraging and damaging villagers’ crops. …
“We demand the immediate postponement of the clearing so that we can maintain Prey Lang in the future, or else it will be too late, and we also fall into a hard situation,” he said. …
The clearing, he continued, occurred in Chhuk and Sapor Thom villages in Dang Kambet commune and had left only a small patch of forest, which villagers were not allowed to enter freely. …
Yong Yim’s voice rises to a high-pitched quiver when she talks about a planned dam in the Areng Valley that would inundate land her family has inhabited for hundreds of years to form what amounts to a giant battery. …
Now they are staring at forced relocation again, their ancestral homelands all but doomed to become yet another area on the fringes of the Central Cardamom Protected Forest (CCPF) to be devastated by the effects of hydropower dams. To date, there are three dam projects, some with multiple stations, under way on the boundaries of the CCPF. …
Lee, an engineer working on one of those projects, the Stung Tatai, told the Post late last month plans to begin construction of the bitterly opposed Cheay Areng dam were moving ahead rapidly.
“I spoke with the project leader of the Cheay Areng dam recently, and he said that next month [February] representatives from the company will meet with the Cambodian government to discuss the project,” Lee, who spoke on the condition his full name would not be printed, said. …
Previous studies conducted for the firm China Southern Power Grid, which dumped the project because they deemed it unfeasible, suggest that a 109-megawatt dam would be fed by a 20,000-hectare reservoir. …
Roughly 10,000 hectares of this reservoir would cover forest directly within the CCPF, the largest single encroachment to date on what is one of Cambodia’s last remaining well-protected conservation zones. The remaining 10,000 hectares of the reservoir would inundate the forest homelands of the Khmer Daeum. …
Tracey Farrell, senior technical director for Conservation International-Cambodia, which supports conservation programs in the CCPF, said in an email that a previous environmental impact assessment had found that the dam “failed to meet the minimum power density ratio of more than 100 watts/m2 of surface area of the reservoir”. …
There is no separating logging from land grabbing – the two issues are linked in a chain that starts with the selective logging of luxury timber (often, in the case of the CCPF, after a company is legally granted the right to clear a dam reservoir). It ends with migrants who are enticed to the area as manual labour vying with companies and powerful individuals to clear fell the remaining trees − the former seeking a livelihood, the latter seeking huge profits from large-scale agriculture. …
The government has slashed about 250,000 hectares of land from 79 economic land concessions (ELCs), forest concessions and wildlife protection concessions and will return it, replete with land titles, to “poor people”, January’s Royal Book says.
The publication, issued on January 17 and obtained yesterday, says the government has asked King Norodom Sihamoni to issue a sub-decree reclaiming the land in 19 provinces from 37 companies including Pheapimex, Casotim and TTY, which are locked in disputes with villagers.
“This is about giving land back to the people,” a line from the Royal Book states, echoing recent statements by Prime Minister Hun Sen. …
After a string of protests, including one in which TTY-hired guards shot four villagers, Hun Sen placed a moratorium on the granting of land concessions last May, although some continued to be granted because of a clause that allowed concessions already in the works to proceed. …
It is unclear how many people will benefit from the land returns, but Kuch Veng, a representative of Kbal Trach commune, in Pursat province’s Krakor district, said student volunteers had already issued land titles to villagers in a dispute with Pheapimex, a company owned by Choeung Sopheap, the wife of Cambodian People’s Party senator Lao Meng Khin. …
Etnhic Jarai families living in Ratanakkiri province’s Kakeo district yesterday filed a complaint with the provincial court, accusing a Vietnamese rubber company of clearing their ancestral land and filling in a lake they use for fishing and irrigation. …
Local officials say the company intends to grow rubber on the land, which is located outside the boundaries of its 8,400-hectare economic land concession. …
A track of land once farmed by 1,000 families in Kratie province — families violently evicted amid claims they were part of a separatist movement — is now home to a military base.
Unit 9 Royal Cambodian Armed Forces base, which will be finished later this month, is part of a larger security-infrastructure scheme for the area. The plans include a military police base, along with a road suitable for moving supplies from the center of Chhlong district to the remote village of Pro Ma, provincial and military police officials confirmed yesterday. …
Nine months ago, joint forces stormed this isolated village and staged one of the largest mass evictions in recent history.
Although the villagers were without guns, officials opened fire, killing a 14-year-old girl in the process.
Authorities then sealed off the area for days while they interrogated residents, before driving them as far afield as Kampong Thom province.
The government has vociferously and repeatedly defended its actions, saying they were necessary to staunch a separatist movement led by a local activist named Bun Ratha and Beehive radio owner Mam Sonando. …
“The army is constructing a road from Chhlong to here,” said Channa. “Seven kilometers from here, the military police plan to do the same thing and build a base. They have started clearing the trees. I’m not sure how large it will be.” …
Located adjacent to a 15,000-hectare rubber plantation – which since 2008 has been owned by concessionaire Casotim – this land had been locked in an increasingly tense dispute. Just one month before the raid, 700 villagers from the area staged a protest – blocking a national road for days in support of an outspoken village representative who had been arrested on accusations of destroying company property.
A provincial judge later ordered his release, noting that there was no evidence to support allegations against that representative, Bun Ratha.
The base occupies prime cassava field, which is just now yielding the harvest sown last year by the so-called secessionists. While Deputy Commander Channa said the base covers two hectares, and Provincial Governor Sar Cham Rong said it covers one hectare, the territory closed off to villagers is clearly far larger. …
Blocked off to those who did the planting, the land will soon be distributed among the soldiers living at camp, according to Channa.
“High-level officers are now figuring out how to divide the land among soldiers for their families,” he said, before insisting the land is currently off-limits to all.
“Even though some of the soldiers have recently faced a shortage of food, they do not touch the land.”
Such claims ring somewhat hollow. Strung along the 700-meter path leading to the base lay half-harvested fields – the underbrush is charred, dirt lies in clumps in spots where cassava had recently been pulled.
Villagers in Pro Ma had high hopes that Prime Minister Hun Sen’s land-titling program would see them awarded land to which they appear to have legitimate claim; instead, they have seen the process closed to them.
While some will receive titles on a planned social land concession, according to Provincial Governor Cham Rong, that opportunity will be closed off to “the former Bun Ratha group”. …
Part of the tragedy of Pro Ma is the seeming randomness of the edicts that now govern the village. Those farming a mere 50 metres away from the cordoned off area have been allowed to keep their land and keep their homes. Some have been allowed back in to harvest their cassava, others not. …
“I don’t know why some have gotten in and not others. My neighbour, for instance, can’t get back to her farm either, but some others have,” said Phat. …
Since 2008, a whopping $28 billion worth of investments has been pledged by local and international firms looking to set up luxury hotels, a new airport and even Cambodia’s first horse racing venue.
But a closer look at the list of investments approved by the Cambodian Investment Board (CIB)—a figure often trumpeted by officials to demonstrate the health of the Cambodian economy—reveals how many of those investments have either stalled, or stopped completely. …
Asian Development Bank senior country economist Peter Brimble said the total investment figures for each year should be treated with caution since they were “purely approvals.” …
Prime Minister Hun Sen’s land-titling scheme announced in June originally included a directive for granting collective property titles to indigenous communities, but this part of the program was scrapped weeks later as it was deemed too costly and time-consuming, documents obtained yesterday show. …
For “indigenous minority groups registered as ‘communities’ by the Ministry of Interior…the land identification process shall be done in the same working spirit as the one prevailing in the [Ministry of Land Management's ] cadastral department instructions on the implementation of the Royal Government of Cambodia’s Order 01,” the directive states.
“[T]he land shall be registered as collective ownership of the ‘community’ according to the request of its traditional authorities,” it continues. …
In what’s believed to be an unprecedented move, the Ratanakkiri Provincial Court has ordered two companies holding economic land concessions to face court questioning on accusations of illegal logging and land clearing.
Deputy prosecutor Ros Saram said he summonsed Vietnamese-owned Company 72 last week and will summons rubber plantation company Chea Chanrith today because of complaints made by the ethnic Jarai community in O’Yadav district. …
The villagers are demanding the company return and replant the forest and complete a land boundary study of the area. …
“We hope this sets a precedent for other companies in the region. It’s a good example that if they do wrong, they could go to court too,” he said.
“It’s a better result than in the past. Before, if the villagers complained, the court didn’t care; but if the company complained, the villagers got arrested.” …
