The head of the country’s National Authority for Land Dispute Resolution on Wednesday said his authority was unable to resolve land disputes and that the responsibility for settling such disputes rested with the ministries responsible for handing out economic land concessions (ELCs) in the first place.
Rights groups have singled out ELCs—granted to industrial scale plantations and other developers thousands of hectares at a time—as the leading cause of land disputes across the country, responsible for rampant deforestation and mass evictions. …
In a recent report on land and housing rights, Adhoc said the 66 ELCs granted last year—half of them after Prime Minister Hun Sen put a freeze on new ELCs in May—lead to 55 land disputes and 232 arrests. …
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. …
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.” …
Four hundred Cambodian women could be sent to Singapore as soon as the middle of this year to work as maids under a pilot scheme by the governments of Cambodia and Singapore.
The Post has obtained an internal circular the Singapore Ministry of Manpower sent to its labour agencies. In it, the ministry asks agencies keen to bring in Cambodian maids to submit proposals by February 18. …
During a joint investigation with police and military police last week, the Forestry Administration found evidence of large-scale illegal logging by the Vietnamese owners of a rubber concession in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadaw district, officials said yesterday.
Phan Poeun, deputy chief of the provincial Forestry Administration, said that forestry officials had discovered more than 1,000 logs on land belonging to the Day Dong Yoeun rubber company – which was granted a 4,000-hectare economic land concession in 2007 – over the course of an investigation that began on December 6. …
Prominent female land activists Tim Sakmony and Yorm Bopha, who have been locked in Prey Sar prison since their arrest in early September, will face court today on charges rights groups say have been fabricated to stop them and others from protesting.
Hundreds of the women’s supporters from the dispute-plagued Borei Keila and Boeung Kak lake communities will gather outside Phnom Penh Municipal Court to await a decision on the women’s fate, Boeung Kak representative Tep Vanny said.
“We will be there to support our fellow land activists and ask the court to drop their cases and release them,” she said. …
A former Cambodian governor accused of shooting three garment workers during a labour protest was acquitted in a ruling that prompted outrage Wednesday from rights groups who say it highlights the impunity surrounding the country’s political elite.
Former official Chhouk Bandith was governor of Bavet town, in southeastern Cambodia, when he became the prime suspect in the Feb. 20 shooting of three female protesters. The women were wounded by the attack while demonstrating with 1,000 others for better working conditions and benefits outside their factory, which makes footwear for Germany’s Puma brand and others. …
Rights workers cautioned yesterday that a sweeping ban on internet cafés near schools was little more than a thinly veiled act of censorship.
Issued last month by the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, the circular says all internet cafés within 500 metres of a school must be closed, and bans gaming.
“This heavy-handed effort to shut down affordable and accessible venues for using the internet in Cambodia is not only legally unfounded, it is a transparent attempt to block part of the population’s access to independent sources of information through news sites and social media,” Naly Pilorge, director of rights group Licadho, said in a statement, which goes on to liken the circular to cyber-crime legislation in China and Vietnam. …
The court system is still “chronically underfunded” and laws on its management are almost 20 years overdue, the U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi said yesterday.
One year ago, during his sixth mission to Cambodia, Mr. Subedi described reform in the courts as moving at a “frustratingly slow” pace. In an interview yesterday, he said laws on the establishment of judges, organization of the judiciary and reform of the Supreme Council of Magistracy – all of which he has called for – have yet to materialize. …
Rights groups said they will continue to advocate in land grabbing and eviction cases, and villagers involved in such disputes said they will continue to turn to NGOs for help despite a warning by Prime Minister Hun Sen for civil society to stay clear of such issues.
Speaking at a land-titling ceremony on Friday, Mr. Hun Sen sent out a warning for villagers not to politicize or amplify their disputes over land. …
The custodians of a community forest in Ratanakkiri have accused a company of illegally bulldozing their protected jungle.
Sen Youn, a representative of the Jarai ethnic minority in O’Yadav district’s Lumchor commune, said yesterday an investigation with rights groups had uncovered that the Chea Chanrith Development company had illegally cleared 40 hectares of protected forest.
“I ask for intervention from authorities and human-rights groups because we are afraid our forest is being grabbed and there will be no more resources for us to earn [a living] from.” …
Capitalising on recent worldwide attention to their plight, some 200 villagers who say they’ve been robbed of their homes and land staged a vivid and stylised protest yesterday aimed at President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, calling for intervention in Phnom Penh’s land-titling crisis.
Boeung Kak and Borei Keila land activists, among others, took to the sand plateau of what was once a lakeside community bearing enormous “SOS” signs with the faces of US leaders in what they promise is the first of many protests timed to coincide with the ASEAN summit. …
Two years after breaking ground, a sugar refinery situated on a pair of controversial plantation belonging to CPP Senator Ly Yong Phat and his wife will have its first test run on Monday, Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday. …
He said the refinery would be a boon for locals both by providing them with jobs and offering private sugarcane farmers another market for their harvests. …
Along the Phnom Penh waterfront the city’s landmark flags have been raised and the street children and beggars are being removed – an unwanted sight for a government out to impress the biggest gathering of world leaders this country has ever seen.
At the center of this will be Prime Minister Hun Sen. His role as host of a series of summits, scheduled for later this week, will increasingly be focused upon as Cambodia’s turn as chair of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) has proved controversial. …
Cambodian authorities have disrupted several events held by nongovernmental organizations and have threatened to arrest anyone holding protests ahead of sensitive regional summits to be held in the capital Phnom Penh, rights groups said Wednesday.
The Independent Democracy of Informal Economic Association (IDEA) said authorities in Meanchey district forced the owner of a local restaurant to shut down the meeting space he had rented to a group of NGOs ahead of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit and the East Asia Summit from Nov 18 to 20. …
Ngoung Mongtha, an IDEA official, told RFA’s Khmer service that hundreds of NGO officials met on Wednesday morning to discuss requests for a petition the group planned to submit to leaders of the 10-member ASEAN body during the summit. …
Rann Boroth, the only man convicted in the double killing six months ago of the country’s leading environmental activist, Chut Wutty, and military police officer, walked free from prison on Friday after the Koh Kong Provincial Court issued an order for his release. …
On October 22, Mr. Boroth was sentenced to two years in prison for killing In Ratana, but Judge Khem Sophary, who did not explain his decision, immediately suspended 18 months of the sentence. …
Mr. Boroth’s release brings to an end what rights groups have described as travesty of justice, and a judicial investigation that raised more questions that answers regarding the killing of Chut Wutty. …
Reporters Without Borders has joined mounting criticism of the government’s handling of the April 26 murder of environmental activist Chut Wutty.
On Monday, a security guard was convicted of accidentally killing the officer officially blamed for the activist’s death. “How convenient,” the Paris-based advocacy group said in a statement Tuesday. …
“A botched investigation has been quickly closed because the authorities did not want to draw attention to environmental problems for which powerful people are to blam,” Reporters Without Borders said.
Less than a month before Asean heads of state are expected to approve the first-ever human rights declaration for the regional group, Cambodian and Indonesian NGOs yesterday urged member states to give their organizations a larger role in the process.
In the works for more than a year, the declaration is set to be approved during this year’s Asean Summit, which begins November 18 in Phnom Penh. But rights groups across the region worry it will be weaker than the international conventions some of the countries have already signed. …
In September, more than 50 NGOs and unions from across the region, including Chrac and five others from Cambodia, issued a joint statement urging Asean to amend the articles and bring the declaration in line with other international human rights conventions.
The Ratanakkiri Provincial Court has summonsed for questioning Kim Seanglay, a military policeman who was the subject of one of slain journalist Hang Serei Oudom’s articles on the illegal timber trade, Chhay Thi, an investigator for the rights group Adhoc, said yesterday. …
According to their lawyer, the victim’s mother, wife and daughter will testify today. …
In their complaint to Adhoc, Serei Oudom’s family alleged the reporter could be heard over the phone on the night of his disappearance talking to military police officer An Bunheng – who, along with his wife, was arrested as a suspect in the case.
In a move that stunned his supporters and drew ire from rights groups and foreign embassies alike, independent radio station owner Mam Sonando was sentenced to 20 years in prison yesterday on charges of insurrection.
Sonando, owner of broadcaster Beehive Radio and president of the rights group the Association of Democrats, was convicted of masterminding a so-called secessionist plot in Kratie province’s Pro Ma village in May – an accusation that has been roundly dismissed by rights groups and opposition figures as baseless and politically motivated. …
In addition to his 20-year sentence, Sonando was ordered by the court to pay a 10 million riel ($2,500) fine. The court also convicted in absentia alleged co-conspirator Bun Ratha – who had once volunteered for the Association of Democrats – sentencing him to 30 years’ imprisonment and a fine of 10 million riel.
Bun Chhorn and Sok Tong, also convicted in absentia, were each sentenced to 15 years and fined eight million riel, and three other co-defendants were given sentences ranging from 10 months to three years in jail. …
