Cambodia: Eliminating opportunists in land disputes requires effective local administration and proper public consultations

Friday, 20 March 2009
Press Release: Asian Human Rights Commission

The Cambodian government’s drive for the all out development and beautification of urban centres has created one of the most serious problems for its people. This particular problem is widely known as land grabbing. It is characterized by the grabbing of the land belonging to the poor and weak with unjust or no compensation, by the rich and powerful. Over recent years, and very likely in the years to come, land grabbing has and will affect hundreds of thousands of such people.

In many cases, victims of land grabbing have protested their evictions when they felt the compensation was unjust. This resistance has invariably ended up with the authorities using brute force to evict residents from their homes and lands. The latest of such brutal forced evictions took place in January 2009 when, in the early hours of the morning, hundreds of armed police and company workers, backed up by demolition machines, went to demolish hundreds of homes in the Dey Kraham community in the centre of Phnom Penh and forcibly trucked the residents away to a resettlement area.

In many land grabbing cases, the authorities have claimed that opportunist people had moved on to the land and pressed for compensation when such land was state property now used for other purposes or after such land had been made into private property or granted as concession to the rich and powerful for economic purposes. The claim of the presence of such opportunists has weakened the resistance and demand for just compensation of bona fide residents on the concerned land. As mentioned above, when they are poor and weak, such resistance and demands have eventually lead to their forced eviction.

Very recently over 50 people from the remote northern province of Oddar Meanchey went to stage a protest in front the Prime Minister’s residence on the outskirts of Phnom Penh to request him to get fair compensation for them from a sugar plantation company which had allegedly grabbed their land. But this company claimed that it had received this land as a concession from the government for a sugar plantation. The provincial governor, Pich Sokhin, said more than 200 families affected had already agreed to accept compensation ranging from US$300 to 1000 per family. However, Pich said, when the company started the plantation of sugar cane some local villagers and other people from other provinces moved on to the land and built small cottages with the intention of causing trouble and claiming compensation from the company.

Earlier on, in November 2008, armed police and soldiers used force and fire to evict hundreds of families in an area which the authorities said was located in a state-owned land, which was part of the Bokor National Park in the province of Kampot. The park’s director, Chey Uterith, said that those families had built small homes in that part of the park in the previous year. Chey accused them of grabbing the land with the intention of selling it to others. They then move on to a new site and repeat the process.

The presence and demand for compensation of such opportunists who have moved on to the land in dispute, national parks or the like could have been avoided if the concerned public authorities, especially the local authorities, were effective in the administration of the territory under their jurisdiction. As monitors have observed, in all elections, those local authorities are very effective in identifying people who are supporters or not supporters of the ruling party, and use their influence on them and pressurize others to vote for this party.

If they are that effective, they should also be able to identify people who are residents and know the exact location of their homes under their jurisdiction. Furthermore, they should be able to recognize all new people who have moved on to the disputed land and take necessary measures to prevent them from doing so at the outset. They could for instance get court orders to get them out of the land and/or prevent their construction work. At the very least they could distinguish the newly built homes from the older ones of the bona fide residents and legitimate claimants for compensation. The governor of Oddar Meanchey province and the director of the Bokor National Park could have and should have stopped those opportunists from moving on to that land for sugar plantation and that park, respectively, right from the start when they knew of their first move. These two officials have yet to explain their inaction at the time.

Furthermore, the problem with these opportunists could have been avoided. The distinction between them and those bona fide residents and legitimate claimants could be made a straight forward and perhaps disputes could have been avoided altogether if all the concerned authorities were to effectively enforce and comply with the Land Law of 2001 and all the regulations thereof.

The Land Law determines the ownership and acquisition of land. A government Sub-Decree on Economic Land Concession issued thereof, dated 27 December 2005, sets out a detailed procedure to be followed by all concerned authorities before deciding to grant any concession of land for economic purposes. Article 4 of this sub-decree for instance lays down a set of criteria that must be met first. For instance, the use of the land whose concession is under consideration must be consistent with the land use plan adopted by the Provincial-Municipal State Land Management Committee (Criterion 2), and there must be public consultations with territorial authorities and residents of the locality (Criterion 5). Not all residents have to be included in these public consultations, however, when Article 35 of the same sub-decree stipulates that the concession granting authority has to organize such consultations with territorial authorities and “representatives of local residents.”

Large numbers of residents may justify this limitation of consultations to representatives of local residents. But for these consultations to yield binding outcomes and to avoid disagreements and protests from any other residents, the concession granting authority must ensure that these people are genuine representatives of all residents and are not handpicked or selected by it or any other authority or the applicant for the concession, and that these representatives are subject to no influence or pressure whatsoever. Such consultations would help ascertain further the bona fide residents and henceforth thwart any attempt by opportunists to move on to the concerned land to demand compensation.

Effective public administration and compliance with the Land Law and the regulations thereof, especially the Sub-Decree on Economic Land Concession, could not only thwart attempts by opportunist to make money out of moving on to the lands of others, but could also go some way to avoid land disputes and address the land grabbing problem.

About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation monitoring and lobbying human rights issues in Asia. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.

Two more concessions for the Vietnamese Sokha Hotel Group

18 Feb 2009
By Kang Kallyan
Cambodge Soir Hebdo
Translated from French by Tola Ek
Click here to read the article in French

The Sokha Hotel Group, whose CEO is also the chairman of the Sokimex oil company, has obtained from the government the approval for two concession contracts: one for the development of the Bokor national park, and the second one for the development of the Kirirom national park.

The official signing of the contract took place this morning, on 18 Feb, during the groundbreaking inauguration of the construction site for a 5-star hotel at the top of Bokor. The Sokha Hotel Group, just as it was engaged to do last year, had already undertaken the renovation of the road leading to the top of the mountain. Villas, restaurants and casinos will see the daylight soon with a total investment amounting to several billions of dollars.

The history of the Bokor park goes all the way back to the French protectorate era. Created in 1922, it became a popular tourist resort for people who came here for the casino gambling. After the war, it was destroyed and the site was completely abandoned while the infrastructures were left in ruin.

Violent land eviction leaves poor villagers homeless, starving

The forced eviction was carried out by a mixed group of about 100 RCAF Brigade 31 soldiers, forestry officers, environment officers, police and military police. Most of them were armed with handguns or AK-47s. (Photo: Licadho)

Friday, 21 November 2008
Written by CHEANG SOKHA
The Phnom Penh Post

Hundreds rousted by RCAF soldiers in Kampot are in dire need of shelter, rights monitors say, as the government says illegal squatters must go

HUNDREDS of families whose homes were torched and dismantled earlier this week in a violent land eviction near Bokor National Park say they have been left starving and without anywhere to go, local villagers told the Post Thursday.

Up to 300 houses in Anglong Krom, in Kampot's Taken commune, were destroyed during the eviction Monday and Tuesday by RCAF soldiers from Brigade 31, who have been involved in earlier evictions in the same area, villagers said.

Six villagers were injured - three of them severely - while clashing with the troops as their properties were ransacked, rights monitors say.

"IF WE HAD A CHOICE WE WOULD NOT STAY HERE.... WE ARE LIVING IN FEAR."

Hem Da, whose home was torched to the ground, said that villagers were now sleeping under the open air without shelter or food, while being threatened with arrest from soldiers in the area.

"We have nowhere else to go, so we might as well die here," Hem Da said.

"Most of the villagers here are starving, as their food supplies have run out."

Hem Da said that on Thursday, an environmental police officer from Bokor National Park arrived and ordered villagers to leave within three days.

"If we had a choice we would not stay here," he said. "We are living in fear under the watch of soldiers."

Am Sam Ath, a monitor for human rights NGO Licadho, said that on Thursday his organisation took rice and fish to the villagers.

"The violent eviction by the armed forces is an abuse of human rights," he told the Post while on his way to the site. "These people are very poor, so the destruction of their homes means they are now even poorer."

Am Sam Ath added that even those villagers living illegally on the land should have been informed before their eviction so that they could prepare themselves.

"[The government] should come to investigate how these people are living," he said. "Then look at the possibility of relocating them instead of kicking them out with nothing."

More evictions to come

Chey Uterith, the director of Bokor National Park, said that the army had evicted 192 families and that among those, only 83 owned the homes they were living in. He added that villagers from three other locations nearby will also be evicted in the near future.

"The villagers were not living there legally," he told the Post on Thursday. "We will figure out how many families really deserve new land and will try to provide concessions for them."

A military official in Brigade 31 told the Post that the number of illegal homes being built had increased, and that soldiers were now guarding the area against the squatters.

[Hun Sen's elite] Brigade 31 seizing land: villagers

The Centre for Development of Disabled Soldiers in Kampot province. (PHOTO SUPPLIED)

Tuesday, 16 September 2008
Written by Cheang Sokha
The Phnom Penh Post

On the fringes of Bokor, a dispute is raging between Brigade 31 soldiers, who say they're redistributing land to the poor, and local villagers who say they're losing their homes

A VILLAGE in Kampot province's Bokor National Park remains the focus of a land dispute that villagers say has resulted in members of Prime Minister Hun Sen's elite Brigade 31 evicting residents and preparing the land for sale to a private company.

The Centre for Development of Disabled Soldiers was begun in June this year, nominally to provide housing for veterans with disabilities at Kbal Damrei, located in the park.

But local residents say the military has used the pretense of the centre to expel them from their homes and sell the land for profit.

"We have been told that soldiers are preparing the land for sale to a private company," said Nhek Chanthol, who lives in Kbal Damrei.

Nhek Chanthol said about 1,000 families live on the land but that nearly 500 of them have been displaced and their crops destroyed by soldiers bulldozing the area.

Brigade 31 commander Sun Saroeun denied the claim and said his troops are only dividing the land with the villagers for the benefit of veterans.

"I don't have the right to sell any of this land," Sun Saroeun told the Post Sunday.
"The agreement to divide land into smaller plots was signed by the head of our government."

Sun Saroeun said those spreading the rumours of a private sale are themselves outsiders who purchased plots illegally from current residents and lost them when authorities redistributed the plots.

"We are trying to provide land for landless people," Sun Saroeun said.

Land redistribution

The dispute began on June 23, when Brigade 31 soldiers posted land redistribution signs throughout the village.

Residents responded by pulling them up. A later protest saw the arrest of four residents, including Nhek Chanthol's mother - all of whom remain in Kampot provincial prison on charges of robbery and destroying property.

Chin Lida, a lawyer from the human rights group Licadho who is defending the four prisoners, said the court is in the process of investigating the case and a trial is expected to start soon.

One resident, who gave her name as Thim, said the land the soldiers had allotted to villagers is being repossessed, according to a press release from the human rights group Adhoc.

"They let people onto new areas of land. Once it is cleared, they repossess it," she was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile: The spirit world of the Elephant Mountains

Sunday, February 18, 2007
James Pringle
Posted by the International Herald Tribune (France)

BOKOR, Cambodia
This once-opulent but long-abandoned hill town, located high above the sea on a spur of Cambodia's Elephant Mountains, is as evocative of French colonial days in Indochina as it is possible to get, down to the bottles of Bordeaux for sale at the forest ranger station.

When the stars blaze from the clear night sky and one sees the ghostly shadow of the deserted Bokor Palace Hotel at the edge of a 3,500 foot-escarpment, it is easy to imagine the orchestra playing prewar French favorites like "Valentine" by Maurice Chevalier, and numbers by his onetime lover, Mistinguett.

Colonial officials, rubber planters and their well-coiffed wives or mistresses would step out on the dance floor for the tango, rumba and Charleston.

Chips would click down on roulette tables in the nearby casino, now a deserted shell, as bow- tied attendants called "Faites vos jeux, mesdames et messieurs."

But the screams of small apes calling to their mates in the cool night are the only nocturnal cries one hears today.

And at dusk Bokor resembles nothing so much as the setting of a Marguerite Duras novel like "The Lover" — or a spooky Hollywood movie. Nowadays, the population of the town is only 20.

Two girls come in to the ranger station for a dinner of rice, fish and winter melon soup, glad to escape the solitude, and easily imagined dangers.

Unfortunate, even terrible, events have really happened here. In the 1970s and '80s, the Khmer Rouge threw their victims over the nearby cliff, dead or alive, often tossing live grenades to finish them off. Skulls and human remains littered the jungle for years, until nature played its part.

The Cambodians, great believers in the spirit world, say Bokor is haunted.

Thai Vong, 29, my driver, who zig- zagged uphill for two hours over broken rubble on the once-tarred jungle track from Kampot, a town far below, suddenly dragged himself from the clifftop.

"Something was tugging my leg toward the edge," he nervously explained, insisting he was not, in turn, pulling my leg.

The first Western explorers reached the plateau in 1917, and in 1922 the hill station was founded, similar to the now tourist-clogged Vietnamese hill resort of Dalat, where the Emperor Bao Dai hunted tigers.

In the 1940s, in a microcosm of major conflict elsewhere, there was battling between Communist Viet Minh and French forces, then, in the 70s, fighting raged between the pro-Western Cambodian government and nascent Khmer Rouge.

The 1980s brought pitched battles between Khmer Rouge, holed up in the deserted Roman Catholic church, and invading Vietnamese forces holding the bullet-pocked hotel 500 yards away. Somehow the church's cross survived. Inside, a Khmer Rouge artist left a self-portrait on the wall.

Nowadays, there are still uniformed men armed with AK-47 rifles. But these are forest rangers employed to discourage illegal logging and to protect wildlife, which includes tigers, boar, bear, deer, python, deadly kraits and, in the more remote jungle, elephants.

Before arriving, I doubted that animals could have survived decades of fighting and bombing. But my doubts vanished as a large, black boar suddenly raced across our tracks.

The ranger, Vi Rang, 21, said he would not have shot the boar, even if it charged us.

"I'd have fired in the air, as I do to scare poachers and illegal loggers," he said.

All this is encouraging news to those who thought Cambodia's wildlife had disappeared. There is currently a debate on whether to devote all efforts to protecting what is now a national park or to encouraging more tourism, besides the iPod-toting backpackers now venturing to this unspoiled, magical time-warp.

Supporters say the largely mine-free Bokor would surely benefit from tourism. After all, as a senior ranger said, "Despite everything, the animals survived, and are even claiming back their land."

James Pringle covered the war in Vietnam and Cambodia.