Rights Groups Demand Investigation into Cambodian Activist's Death

28 April 2012
By Mu Sochua

The cold blooded assassination of Chut Wutty is a tragedy and totally deja vu - a repeat of the cold blooded murder of Chea Vichea on 22 January, 2004

Like Chea Vichea, Chut Wutty had a mission. The two men knew the forces they were facing. They were fearless, they looked straight into the eyes of those who wanted them dead.

They both received open threats and knew they would be killed.

They walked tall. Their interests go beyond saving one life.

The government went after them. The government never did much to prosecute those who wanted them dead.

Who killed Chea Vichea?

The people know the answer but the government is still "investigating". Chea Vichea's brother and the people of Cambodia want Chea Vichea to be recognized as a national hero. That would require a royal decree. The people of Cambodia are still waiting.

 

Who killed Chut Wutty?

The least the government can do is to hand over the investigation to an independent team. It starts with the protection of the key witnesses who were in the car with Chut Wutty when he was killed. It also starts with the doctor who conducted the autopsy. What kind of bullet-it hit the knee and traveled up to the stomach. An expert is needed.

The military police who killed Chut Wutty was also killed. How? Why?

Anti-loggi​ng activist shot dead in Cambodian forest

Chut Wutty, slain forest activist (Photo: CCHR)

27 April 2012
By Mu Sochua

It is high time we question the strategy of donors-using back door diplomacy to deal with violation of human rights and the sale of Cambodia.

It should be reminded that donors have not openly challenged or successful in demanding a set date for a donor meeting with the government.

The meeting has been indefinitely suspended by the government with no explanation.

Tax payers need to know how assistance to Cambodia get to the people of Cambodia. Tax payers need to know why donors continue to set no conditions on aid.

Donor complacency is part of the problem.

Global Witness Skeptical of Anti-Corruption Measures

Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Washington, DC Wednesday, 13 October 2010

“The Cambodia government has a track record of pacifying its international aid donors with reformist rhetoric and commitments to transparency, while in fact doing little to change their actual behavior.”

The environmental watchdog Global Witness on Tuesday lambasted the government's recent anti-corruption efforts as unpersuasive and warned donor countries a new law would not attack the problem at senior levels of government.

“This strategy will will not succeed in catching the real villains,” Global Witness representative George Boden said in a statement Tuesday, referring to the recent passage of anti-corruption legislation and the formation of an anti-corruption investigative unit. “This does not represent a break from the well-documented and entrenched patterns of corruption at the highest levels of Cambodia's government, and it should not be welcomed as such.”

The anti-corruption law and Anti-Corruption Unit have been criticized as toothless to attack the pervasive corruption across the government. But government officials have dismissed the criticism and called Global Witness' statement untrue.

Global Witness, which was expelled from the country in 2005 after critical reports of the timber trade, said the ACU was too close to the executive branch of government to effectively prosecute “senior political figures.”

“The threat of defamation against whistleblowers is also likely to deter many from coming forward,” the group said. It also called Om Yentieng, the head of the ACU, “a close associate of Prime Minister Hun Sen [who] has links to mining interests.”

“Global Witness has repeatedly documented how senior Cambodian government officials have sold off the rights to the country’s natural resources in dubious deals, against the interests of ordinary Cambodians and the environment,” the group said. “Senior figures close to the prime minister have personally benefited from this wholesale stripping of the country’s assets, and yet very little action has been taken to address this situation.”

“The Cambodia government has a track record of pacifying its international aid donors with reformist rhetoric and commitments to transparency, while in fact doing little to change their actual behavior,” Boden said. “This anti-corruption strategy looks like the latest example of this tactic.”

Keo Remy, a spokesman for the Anti-Corruption Council, a policy body built by the new law, dismissed the statement. Specifically, he said, the law was set up to protect informants.

“The government did not establish this law in vain,” he said. “It was established with the willingness to crack down on corruption.”

Donors, meanwhile, had shown “a lot of support” for the anti-corruption measures, he said, adding that all countries, including Global Witness' UK, have forms of corruption.

“But for Cambodia, we knew this, and we made a law, and the government showed its willingness to prevent and counter it,” Keo Remy said.

Foreign donors meet to help the dictator oppress Cambodia?

Foreign donors meet in Phnom Penh for aiding Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, June 2 (AP) - (Kyodo)—International aid donors opened the annual Consultative Group meeting here Wednesday to decide on the level of aid disbursements to the country for 2010.

More than 100 representatives from 16 donor countries, including Japan and the United States, and from seven international financial organizations such as the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, are attending the forum. They are expected to make aid pledges at the end of the two-day meeting.

The group has met annually since 1996, and as of today, Cambodia has received foreign aid worth about $4 billion.

In December 2008, considering the global economic crisis, Cambodia had sought about $500 million for 2009, but it received $951.5 million, almost double, as China pledged $257 million, followed by the European Union with $214 million and Japan with $113 million.

Cambodia received aid pledges of $690 million in 2008.

Delivering a speech at the opening of the forum to the group, Prime Minister Hun Sen promised that his government will continue to tackle several key issues including corruption, judicial reform, and land disputes, all of which have been often cited by the donors as being areas of concern.

On Monday, Global Witness, a London-based environmental advocacy group, urged international donors to tackle the gross mismanagement of the country's natural resources.

"The Cambodian government has been promising to reform for years, but nothing had changed," said Global Witness Campaigns Director Gavin Hayman.

Three days ahead of the meeting, members of parliament of Cambodia's opposition Sam Rainsy Party issued a statement praising and acknowledging the progress made in several areas but saying more work remains in key sectors.

Cambodia is one of the world's poorest nations with some 35 percent of its 14.5 million people living below the poverty line, defined as earning less than $1 a day.

Opinion: 'Progress' means trash the poor in Cambodia

In Cambodia, even the smallest children are put to work, scavenging for 14 hours a day for plastic, glass, metal. These children are at incredible health and safety risk and earn barely a penny an hour. These children are exploited and abused in the extreme - the victims of overpopulation. (A Decent Life Charity)

By Paul Wallis
Digital Journal

The world needs to start setting standards for international aid. Things have to be achieved, not just said to be achieved. It’s not enough to simply allow another pack of vultures to set up shop in disaster areas. The message has to be, “Do the job right, run the place according to law, or we pull the plug on you.”

It’s called progress, anyway. Most crimes have at least some euphemisms. Teams of workmen arrive at a residential location near Phnom Penh. They’re carrying axes. At 6AM they move in and start demolishing the houses. With the people still in them.

The idea? High rises. You know, those obvious essentials to people whose annual income would perhaps buy a week’s rent in the average Western home.

Bulldozers move in, and hit people trying to find their possessions. At least one woman is hospitalized. The residents react, and throw things at the bulldozer. Fire extinguishers are turned on them. A cat is killed in the process, and people wander around what looks like Stalingrad.

The land, as you will have guessed, is prime land. The residents were offered compensation of about $20,000. They said it wouldn’t buy them another place to live, and they knew their land was worth more.

Australia’s SBS current affairs show Dateline got a first hand view of this blatant violation of human rights and property laws.

*** Please note, this is a pretty infuriating, upsetting video.

A moment of farce was achieved by an interview with the Australian ambassador, who was asked if she was embarrassed that was happening practically on the doorstep of the new Australian Embassy. She was diplomatically not embarrassed.

As an Aussie, I, however, was embarrassed. We led a peacekeeping mission in the 90s to try and get Cambodia back into the current part of human history. We, like many other countries including the US, donate a lot of money to support Cambodia.

It turns out that as usual with international aid, we’re supporting the rich, not the majority of the population. Obviously, Cambodia’s poor have no rights, and less future. We’re clearly not supporting human rights, international law, or anything resembling sanity.

Cambodia is a mirror of the truth of all the international aid. That’s progress, folks. If you happen to remember all the visions of global development, pulling the Third World out of poverty, building a better world, this is what happened to it, just about everywhere on Earth.

This is where 50 years of talkfests has got the human race. Four billion people living in the Middle Ages with cell phones. Wars, revolutions, genocides, political and business babble, followed by what is basically oppression in another form. It’s infallible. One collection of corrupt vermin is replaced by another. Aid becomes a matter of protecting people from the following sets of disasters.

All the good intentions seem to be paving others’ roads to hell.

The world needs to start setting standards for international aid. Things have to be achieved, not just said to be achieved. It’s not enough to simply allow another pack of vultures to set up shop in disaster areas. The message has to be, “Do the job right, run the place according to law, or we pull the plug on you.”

My guess would be that we don’t need saints running aid programs. We need cynical bastards who wouldn’t trust their own grandmothers with a baby.

I don’t think you can be simultaneously determined to save the world and equally determined to look under every rock to find out who’s causing what’s wrong with it.

Then maybe we'll see some real progress.

This opinion article was written by an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily intended to reflect those of DigitalJournal.com