Activists decry detention of Cambodian monk

Australia Network News, May 24, 2012

Human rights group Licardho says the detention of the Cambodian Buddhist monk is unjustified. [AFP: File]

Human rights activists have criticised the detention of a Buddhist monk in Cambodia.

The Phnom Penh Post reports authorities detained award-winning human rights activist Loun Savath after he took photos of protesting villagers outside a court in the capital.

Naly Pilorge from human rights group Licardho has told Radio Australia she has spoken with the monk.

She says his detention is unjustified.

"We don't know if they will proceed to defrock him but if they do then the police and the courts can then pursue him on civil or criminal charges," she said.

"All of us believe that there's absolutely no basis for them to hold venerable Loun Savath, he did nothing he was just standing there."

Activists: Cambodian girl killed in mass eviction

NBC29.com May 16, 2012

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - Cambodian activists say a 13-year-old girl was shot to death Wednesday in the latest of several clashes between villagers and authorities trying to evict them to make room for development.

Hundreds of armed police and soldiers tried to sweep out villagers in northeastern Kratie province from what authorities claim is state land, villager and activist Bun Ratha said. The villagers say the land has been ceded to a Russian company as a concession to be developed as a plantation, but they have been farming it for years and have nowhere else to go.

Bun Ratha said the teen was shot as 10 policemen tried to force a family out of their house. He said the girl died en route to hospital. At least 500 people are believed to live on the property.

National Police spokesman Lt. Gen. Kiet Chantharith said he did not know of any girl being shot to death. He said the government had repeatedly ordered the villagers to leave, but they had defied efforts to push them out and fought back with homemade weapons such as axes and crossbows. He described the situation as "anarchy."

The incident comes days after Prime Minister Hun Sen issued a directive suspending new land concessions to private companies and ordering a review of existing ones. The directive was announced during a visit by a special U.N. human rights envoy who warned that land disputes in Cambodia must be fairly dealt with so that they do not provoke violence and social unrest.

The issue garnered worldwide attention last month after Chut Wutty, a prominent Cambodian environmentalist, was shot dead by a military policeman as he was returning from investigating illegal logging in a concession area.

Chan Soveth of the Cambodian human rights group Adhoc said about 200 police, soldiers and military police had taken part in the raid. He said villagers and a staff member of his group told him that the girl died after being shot in the chest.

He said the villagers were being confined to their houses while the authorities searched for the protest leaders. In recent months, the villagers had protested several times and blocked roads twice, he said.

Chan Soveth said the government had accused the villagers of trying to establish an "autonomous zone" - self-governing and outside of Cambodian law. But he said the villagers merely sought to be allowed to stay on the land they had been farming.

U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi said Friday after an eight-day visit that Cambodia's system of land concessions appears riddled with problems, including low transparency and minimal consultation with affected communities.

Subedi, who is due to make a formal report on the land issue later this year to the U.N. Human Rights Council, said the violence attached to the land issue was a major concern, and that a workable solution must be found.

"If a concession seeks to take individual's land and property, the right to a remedy should be accessible and appropriated compensation must be offered," he said.

Appeal from Ven. Loun Savath

Ven. Loun Savath (L) being threatened by a Hochimonk (R)

Ven. Loun Savath seen here being defended by villagers

"Participation for Survival" By Ven. Maha Phirum

http://www.box.net/shared/sivj2zv2a0g830686a4b

HRW criticized Beijing's ties with oppressive regimes and dictatorships in Sudan, Burma, Cambodia and Zimbabwe

Group: China cracking down on activists

Aug. 2, 2007
By ANITA CHANG Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press

BEIJING — One year before the start of the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government has failed to live up to promises of greater human rights and has instead clamped down on domestic activists and journalists, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.

China, which has long been criticized for its human rights record, has cracked down on dissent to stave off potential political instability, the human rights group said.

"The government seems afraid that its own citizens will embarrass it by speaking out about political and social problems, but China's leaders apparently don't realize authoritarian crackdowns are even more embarrassing," Brad Adams, the Asia director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.

The Beijing Olympics, which begin Aug. 8, 2008, are a huge source of pride for China. In bidding for the games back in 2001, Chinese leaders promised International Olympic Committee members that the Olympics would lead to an improved climate for human rights and media freedoms.

Instead, there has been "gagging of dissidents, a crackdown on activists and attempts to block independent media coverage," Adams said.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment on the Human Rights Watch statement. In the past, China has said it was fulfilling all the commitments made in it's bid for the games.

The IOC said it believed the Olympics have had a positive effect China.

"While some may question China's ability to meet it's obligations related to the Beijing Games, we think it is premature to state that China has failed to live up to it's pledges," IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davis said.

Human Rights Watch sighted several examples of activists who have been obstructed, including a husband-and-wife couple, Hu Jia and Zeng Jinyan, who have been under constant surveillance and travel restrictions since May for allegedly "harming state security."

Others include Jingo Yanking, a military surgeon who broke government secrecy to reveal the true scale of Beijing's SARS outbreak in 2003. He has reportedly been banned from leaving China to accept a human rights award in New York.

Hu, an AIDS activist, said law enforcement authorities told him last year, while he was in custody for nearly six weeks, that Olympic security measures started two years ahead of the Beijing Games.

"Olympic security includes extinguishing all threats," he said. "The greatest threats aren't necessarily terrorists or crime, the greatest threats are those who reveal China's social problems and protest the government."

Like many dissidents, Hu is under constant surveillance by plainclothes officers. His wife, Zeng, who is five months pregnant, was barred from attending a human rights meeting in Switzerland in June and had her passport confiscated.

For foreign journalists in China, Beijing has loosened decades-old reporting rules that required government approval for travel and interviews. Yet at the same time, it has clamped down on domestic media and Internet essayists.

"The Chinese government shouldn't waste this unique opportunity to use the 2008 Games to demonstrate to the world it is serious about improving the rights situation," Adams said.

The group also criticized Beijing's ties with oppressive regimes and dictatorships in Sudan, Burma, Cambodia and Zimbabwe. China has been accused of not doing more to stop the bloodshed in Darer, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million others displaced since February 2003.

China buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil exports, exports weapons to the country and is an investor in Sudanese dams and other infrastructure projects. Beijing has urged a political solution to the Darer crisis and, as a veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council, has blocked efforts to sanction Khartoum.

Steven Spielberg, who is working as a consultant on the Games' opening ceremony, has urged Chinese President Hu Jintao to change his government's policy on Sudan after the filmmaker was publicly branded a collaborator by Mia Farrow.

Farrow, a U.N. goodwill ambassador, has labeled the Games the "genocide Olympics."

After resisting calls for intervention, China dispatched a special envoy and lobbied Sudan to accept a U.N. peacekeeping force. The U.N. unanimously agreed Tuesday to send a 26,000-strong peacekeeping force to Darfur by the end of this year.