Asia Times (Hong Kong)
MONDOLKIRI, Cambodia - Chinese investments and contested land acquisitions in provincial Cambodia are stirring resentment and in some instances full-blown unrest, revealing a seldom-seen hard edge to Beijing's soft-power economic push into Southeast Asia.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has prioritized luring Chinese investment into his war-torn country to mitigate its historic reliance on Vietnam and more recent dependence on Western aid to keep the economy afloat. Chinese investors have recently filled large sections of Cambodia's private-sector gap through building infrastructure, establishing factories, and overseeing the construction of a new government Council of Ministers building in the capital Phnom Penh.
China's economic assistance to Cambodia has stood out as a showcase example of Beijing's growing clout in the region. But those growing ties are now becoming more complicated, as China's economic penetration into more remote corners of the country starts to spark emotionally charged foreign-versus-local land conflicts. Legal uncertainty concerning Cambodian land ownership and usage rights combined with China's sometimes rough-and-tumble business practices have resulted in a volatile mix in the northeastern province of Mondolkiri.
In August 2004, the Cambodian government agreed in principle to grant China's Wuzhishan LS Group a 199,999-hectare land concession for a period of 99 years, including an immediate allocation of 10,000 hectares to develop into a commercial pine-tree plantation in this remote, impoverished province. The problem: the original 10,000 hectares earmarked for an experimental phase of the project has gradually widened to encompass lands settled by villagers, who were not consulted by government officials about the terms and conditions of the land concession.
Local protest groups contend that the government failed to undertake an environmental or social impact assessment before approving the Chinese development project, and the local population and authorities were not consulted about the state-backed plan. Nor did local authorities make publicly available maps delineating the areas where the Chinese company was officially permitted to operate.
The World Rain Movement, an international environmental group, contends in a report that the government awarded Wuzhishan a land area 20 times as large as is permitted by Cambodia's 2001 Land Law. Other environmental and human-rights groups contend that the controversial concession overlooks provisions in the same law that grant collective ownership title to indigenous groups that have inhabited lands for generations. About half of Mondolkiri province's population consists of the animistic Phnong tribe, which claims the lands Wuzhishan aims to develop.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia, meanwhile, has gently waded into the controversy, confirming the details of the controversial deal without publicly passing judgment. Wuzhishan declined several interview requests for this article.
This land is my land
The month after the concession was granted, Wuzhishan began spraying large amounts of noxious herbicides to clear the land for planting, prompting local concerns that the chemical runoff might contaminate rivers, flora and fauna. Villagers who spoke with Asia Times Online claimed that the company quickly transcended the ill-defined 10,000 hectares and began to encroach on and in certain instances destroy shrines and graves on ancestral burial sites.
On April 4, 2005, 70 villagers from the nearby Sen Monorom commune protested against the company's activities at its designated Site 1, which Nga Narim, a 26-year-old villager, claims impinges on the commune's centuries-old traditional burial grounds, forests and communal grazing areas. Cambodian authorities, however, have so far sided with the Chinese investor, and police dispersed that particular protest with fire hoses. A deputy governor finally intervened, promising to respond to the people's demands, but failed to follow up, Nga Narim contends.
In June 2005, a larger group of 650 villagers demonstrated outside of the house of the Chinese company's technicians and supervisors. According to local villagers, the company representatives that day acknowledged their mistakes, promised to cease many of their operations and return contested land to villagers. Yet more than a year later, those pledges still had not been honored as the company continued to develop the land, they allege.
In a sign of the times, over the local population. When the first local protests kicked up in January 2005, provincial authorities summoned the relevant commune councilors and pressured them to sign and approve a map of the concession area that encompassed more than 86,894 hectares of land and was often illegible, according to a person familiar with the meeting. Cambodian officials have consistently sided with the ChineseWhen councilors Sen Monorom and Phoeul Tret refused to sign, the officials threatened to remove them from their official positions, he said.
The Cambodia Human Rights Action Committee issued a statement this June calling on the government to intervene and ensure that Wuzhishan respected local laws and called on Wuzhishan to stop all activities on the land until an independent representative of the government's inter-ministerial committee, on July 8 met with community representatives and promised that the Chinese company would stop its activities while the government solved the problem. He also promised to move police officials from the area who had served as the company's security guards.
As of October, villagers still complained that Wuzhishan was actively working the contested land.
"We have no recourse," said villager Dos Prek, 37. "The company and government officials use threats and intimidation. Now we fear arrest for trespassing on land that was taken from us. Even when we complain, they continue to encroach on our grazing land, spiritual forests and burial areas."
Resurrecting the past
After decades of war and years of lawlessness, Cambodia's land ownership and usage laws are often arbitrarily enforced. The country's transition toward more capitalism has been marred by a growing number of cases of corrupt government officials and politicians grabbing land for personal gain from villagers. And increasingly, Chinese companies find themselves in the middle of controversial land deals.
As the controversy mounted in Mondolkiri province, Hun Sen announced in a speech last year his intention to amend land laws that limited the size of land concessions for development purposes. Wuzhishan, which manages a massive pine plantation on China's Hainan island, has quickly emerged as a major player in Cambodia's timber, pulp and paper industry.
The Chinese plantation giant has close ties with Cambodia's politically connected agri-industrial conglomerate Pheapimex, which helped to grease the wheels for Wuzhishan to win a 315,000-hectare plot in Pursat and Kampong Chhnang provinces for a eucalyptus-tree plantation. Environmental groups claim more than 100,000 people could lose their homes to make way for that project.
The issue has become a political hot potato and threatens to resurrect Cambodia's now latent anti-Chinese sentiments. Son Chhay, an opposition politician with the Sam Rainsy Party, contends that Chinese investors' willingness to pay above local market prices for Cambodian land is fueling a nationwide land-grabbing phenomenon where local officials claim to appropriate public lands for development projects but in reality sell to Chinese investors for personal gain.
If that is so, it tracks a similar pattern to China's capitalist development model, where corrupt officials frequently lay claim to land that under the communist system was owned by the state but with the infusion of more capitalism is often in legal limbo. Land grabs have contributed heavily to the growing rural unrest in China, and now Chinese investors in cahoots with unscrupulous Cambodian officials threaten to unleash a similar restive phenomenon that could undermine Cambodia's transition toward a market economy, some analysts say.
That's a particularly risky course for Chinese investors, particularly considering the two countries' recent political history. Beijing's support in the 1980s through the early 1990s for the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, including supplies of weapons and ammunition, fueled and sustained the country's damaging civil war against the ruling communist regime implanted by Vietnam.
Many Cambodians still harbor bitter feelings toward China for its strong support of the genocidal Maoist regime, which stands accused of killing more than 1.7 million people. More recently, China has transcended its often unfortunate history in the region by placing emphasis on bilateral economic relations over political and strategic concerns. Yet in Cambodia, that diplomatic strategy is being undermined by certain investments that put profits before the local people Beijing is supposedly trying to win over.
Yin Soeum is a freelance journalist based in Phnom Penh.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has prioritized luring Chinese investment into his war-torn country to mitigate its historic reliance on Vietnam and more recent dependence on Western aid to keep the economy afloat. Chinese investors have recently filled large sections of Cambodia's private-sector gap through building infrastructure, establishing factories, and overseeing the construction of a new government Council of Ministers building in the capital Phnom Penh.
China's economic assistance to Cambodia has stood out as a showcase example of Beijing's growing clout in the region. But those growing ties are now becoming more complicated, as China's economic penetration into more remote corners of the country starts to spark emotionally charged foreign-versus-local land conflicts. Legal uncertainty concerning Cambodian land ownership and usage rights combined with China's sometimes rough-and-tumble business practices have resulted in a volatile mix in the northeastern province of Mondolkiri.
In August 2004, the Cambodian government agreed in principle to grant China's Wuzhishan LS Group a 199,999-hectare land concession for a period of 99 years, including an immediate allocation of 10,000 hectares to develop into a commercial pine-tree plantation in this remote, impoverished province. The problem: the original 10,000 hectares earmarked for an experimental phase of the project has gradually widened to encompass lands settled by villagers, who were not consulted by government officials about the terms and conditions of the land concession.
Local protest groups contend that the government failed to undertake an environmental or social impact assessment before approving the Chinese development project, and the local population and authorities were not consulted about the state-backed plan. Nor did local authorities make publicly available maps delineating the areas where the Chinese company was officially permitted to operate.
The World Rain Movement, an international environmental group, contends in a report that the government awarded Wuzhishan a land area 20 times as large as is permitted by Cambodia's 2001 Land Law. Other environmental and human-rights groups contend that the controversial concession overlooks provisions in the same law that grant collective ownership title to indigenous groups that have inhabited lands for generations. About half of Mondolkiri province's population consists of the animistic Phnong tribe, which claims the lands Wuzhishan aims to develop.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia, meanwhile, has gently waded into the controversy, confirming the details of the controversial deal without publicly passing judgment. Wuzhishan declined several interview requests for this article.
This land is my land
The month after the concession was granted, Wuzhishan began spraying large amounts of noxious herbicides to clear the land for planting, prompting local concerns that the chemical runoff might contaminate rivers, flora and fauna. Villagers who spoke with Asia Times Online claimed that the company quickly transcended the ill-defined 10,000 hectares and began to encroach on and in certain instances destroy shrines and graves on ancestral burial sites.
On April 4, 2005, 70 villagers from the nearby Sen Monorom commune protested against the company's activities at its designated Site 1, which Nga Narim, a 26-year-old villager, claims impinges on the commune's centuries-old traditional burial grounds, forests and communal grazing areas. Cambodian authorities, however, have so far sided with the Chinese investor, and police dispersed that particular protest with fire hoses. A deputy governor finally intervened, promising to respond to the people's demands, but failed to follow up, Nga Narim contends.
In June 2005, a larger group of 650 villagers demonstrated outside of the house of the Chinese company's technicians and supervisors. According to local villagers, the company representatives that day acknowledged their mistakes, promised to cease many of their operations and return contested land to villagers. Yet more than a year later, those pledges still had not been honored as the company continued to develop the land, they allege.
In a sign of the times, over the local population. When the first local protests kicked up in January 2005, provincial authorities summoned the relevant commune councilors and pressured them to sign and approve a map of the concession area that encompassed more than 86,894 hectares of land and was often illegible, according to a person familiar with the meeting. Cambodian officials have consistently sided with the ChineseWhen councilors Sen Monorom and Phoeul Tret refused to sign, the officials threatened to remove them from their official positions, he said.
The Cambodia Human Rights Action Committee issued a statement this June calling on the government to intervene and ensure that Wuzhishan respected local laws and called on Wuzhishan to stop all activities on the land until an independent representative of the government's inter-ministerial committee, on July 8 met with community representatives and promised that the Chinese company would stop its activities while the government solved the problem. He also promised to move police officials from the area who had served as the company's security guards.
As of October, villagers still complained that Wuzhishan was actively working the contested land.
"We have no recourse," said villager Dos Prek, 37. "The company and government officials use threats and intimidation. Now we fear arrest for trespassing on land that was taken from us. Even when we complain, they continue to encroach on our grazing land, spiritual forests and burial areas."
Resurrecting the past
After decades of war and years of lawlessness, Cambodia's land ownership and usage laws are often arbitrarily enforced. The country's transition toward more capitalism has been marred by a growing number of cases of corrupt government officials and politicians grabbing land for personal gain from villagers. And increasingly, Chinese companies find themselves in the middle of controversial land deals.
As the controversy mounted in Mondolkiri province, Hun Sen announced in a speech last year his intention to amend land laws that limited the size of land concessions for development purposes. Wuzhishan, which manages a massive pine plantation on China's Hainan island, has quickly emerged as a major player in Cambodia's timber, pulp and paper industry.
The Chinese plantation giant has close ties with Cambodia's politically connected agri-industrial conglomerate Pheapimex, which helped to grease the wheels for Wuzhishan to win a 315,000-hectare plot in Pursat and Kampong Chhnang provinces for a eucalyptus-tree plantation. Environmental groups claim more than 100,000 people could lose their homes to make way for that project.
The issue has become a political hot potato and threatens to resurrect Cambodia's now latent anti-Chinese sentiments. Son Chhay, an opposition politician with the Sam Rainsy Party, contends that Chinese investors' willingness to pay above local market prices for Cambodian land is fueling a nationwide land-grabbing phenomenon where local officials claim to appropriate public lands for development projects but in reality sell to Chinese investors for personal gain.
If that is so, it tracks a similar pattern to China's capitalist development model, where corrupt officials frequently lay claim to land that under the communist system was owned by the state but with the infusion of more capitalism is often in legal limbo. Land grabs have contributed heavily to the growing rural unrest in China, and now Chinese investors in cahoots with unscrupulous Cambodian officials threaten to unleash a similar restive phenomenon that could undermine Cambodia's transition toward a market economy, some analysts say.
That's a particularly risky course for Chinese investors, particularly considering the two countries' recent political history. Beijing's support in the 1980s through the early 1990s for the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, including supplies of weapons and ammunition, fueled and sustained the country's damaging civil war against the ruling communist regime implanted by Vietnam.
Many Cambodians still harbor bitter feelings toward China for its strong support of the genocidal Maoist regime, which stands accused of killing more than 1.7 million people. More recently, China has transcended its often unfortunate history in the region by placing emphasis on bilateral economic relations over political and strategic concerns. Yet in Cambodia, that diplomatic strategy is being undermined by certain investments that put profits before the local people Beijing is supposedly trying to win over.
Yin Soeum is a freelance journalist based in Phnom Penh.
3 comments:
I hope the Chinese would help Cambodia build ATOMIC BOMB too!
ahahahah.
IN 60'S AND 70'S CHINA HELP AND FULLY SUPPORTED KHMER ROUGE POL POT. 1.7 MILLION INNOCENT KHMERS GOT KILLED IN COLD BLOOD.
IN 2006 CHINA TRY TO DERAIL THE KHMR ROUGE POL POT TIBUNAL THROUGH ANOTHER KHMER ROUGE HUN SEN.
BIG COUNTRY LIKE CHINA HAVE NO MORAL AND SHAME IN KILLING SMALL COUNTRY LIKE CAMBODIA. IS THE WORLD GOING TO IGNORE THIS STINKING COUNTY CHINA FOR ANY LONGER?
THE WORLD ESPECIALLY THE US, THE EU AND THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENTS MUST STOP CHINA FROM COMMITTING CRIME AGAINST SMALL COUNTRY LIKE CAMBODIA.
(kaun neak sre)
This stupid gov't cannot see beyond the surface of China aids. They let the Chinese destoy Cambodia under the name of Chinese aids and again Cambodian people continue the suffering.
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