Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Government Urged to Support Rights Declaration for Minorities

Win Thida, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
18 September 2007


Humanitarian organizations are pushing the Cambodian government to ratify a UN declaration on human rights that would help ensure more respect for the country's ethnic minorities.

The UN declaration, which was approved at the General Assembly last week, says in part that native minorities have the right to ownership and the use of land and resources passed down from their ancestors.

Cambodia's minorities often have different forms of land ownership that leave them open to manipulation by unscrupulous officials and businessmen.

"We appeal to the Cambodian government to support and ratify the UN declaration of the rights for the native minority groups in Cambodia," a minority woman from the Kuoy tribe in Preah Vihear province said at a news conference Wednesday.

Minorities should be included in development discussions before large projects begin, she said.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Humanitarian organizations should push the Vietcong government to do the same because the Khmer Krom People is already a victim of the Vietcong oppression!

Anonymous said...

I found that instead of promoting social development to parallele with economic development, Cambodian government has down graded Cambodian people from poorer to poorest. Offcourse there are many cars in the roads from international aids, free economy imposed by United Nation in 1991 for a peace agreement. But in reality, this government has never wanted to help khmer people to move upgrading. Look at China with 1.5 billions population now, they have corrected all their hotels, hospitals, all public facilities, friendly access for disable citizen. These kind of access are usually seen in western world. But now China has a policy of caring their population with no discrimination. Cambodian powerfull persons are still stealing people lands and people properties like, Mong Rithy, Year Oy, Yeay Phann, Ly Yong Phat, Kok An etc.. etc.. These people cannot even read or write a words of Khmer but have occupied at top public positions to steal people properties.