Cambodia lacks the ability to administer its sea waters

06 December 2009
By Pen Bona
Radio France Internationale
Translated from Khmer by KI-Media
Click here to read the article in Khmer

Click here to listen to the audio program in Khmer

PM Hun Xen asked the authority involved to make arrangement with Thailand about the fishing activities inside Cambodian waters. Hun Xen’s oder took place after the authority closed access to Cambodian waters to all Thai fishing boats for a period of time. The authorization to allow foreign boats to catch fish in Cambodian waters is under criticism by the opposition and civil society, however, to the government, this is the best choice to bring money to state coffer.
The administration of sea waters is a complicated issue for Cambodia. Hun Xen publicly recognized about this difficulty and, ultimately, the government allowed fishing boats from neighboring countries to come and catch fish in Cambodian waters in exchange for money paid to the state coffer.

At a speech given during the inauguration of a road construction site in Siem Reap province, next to the Thai border, on Saturday, Hun Xen explained that the administration of the vast sea waters is a difficult task. This is the reason why foreign boats are allowed to fish in Cambodian waters through mutual arrangements and understanding along with payment to Cambodian authority.

This policy came under intense criticisms from the opposition and civil society, as well as from a number of Cambodian fishermen. Critics said that the Cambodian government’s action is tantamount to allowing free reign to foreign fishermen to destroy Cambodian water resources.

According to Cambodian fishermen, Thai and Vietnamese fishing boats use modern and illegal equipments allowing them to catch huge amount fish and other sea products. These Cambodian fishermen are concerned about the destruction of fisheries in Cambodian waters, and they blame the government’s inability to administer its sea waters.

However, to Hun Xen, this is the only best possible administration because it allows the government to earn some income rather than allowing foreign boats to sneak in and fish illegally since the government cannot administer these waters.

Nevertheless, on 04 December, the Cambodian Council of Ministers recently approved a draft law to set up a national committee for open sea security. The explanation provided for the setup of this committee is to administer the sovereignty of Cambodian sea waters with the aim of protecting national resources.

Rural poor petition Cambodian authorities over land grab

August 13, 2009
ABC Radio Australia

A group of 300 Cambodian people affected by land grabs and evictions - and representing thousands more - gathered in Phnom Penh yesterday to tell the government of their concerns, and to call with a single voice on the government and donor nations to act to protect their land.

Presenter: Robert Carmichael in Phnom Penh
Speaker: Leng Simy, villager; Loun Sovath, monk; Soal Nak, Jarai villager

Click here to listen to the audio program (Windows Media)

CARMICHAEL: It's hard being heard in Cambodia, particularly if - like 80 percent of Cambodians - you live in the countryside. It's harder still if you want to speak out against rich or powerful people trying to take your land. That's not something the government encourages, and the courts are seldom much help. That leaves few options. But this week in Phnom Penh a group of 300 Cambodians from 19 of the Kingdom's 24 provinces and municipalities joined up to petition the government, the prime minister, parliament and the national land dispute authority, to help them keep their land.

This is an agricultural society, and for rural Cambodians land is life. Organisers of the petitioning event say the amount of land under dispute for the 15,000 people they represent totals more than 700,000 hectares. It is commonly acknowledged by rights organisations that rising landlessness could prove the country's biggest challenge. In recent years Cambodia experienced a boom in land prices, and a similar rise in evictions, land grabs, and the granting of huge concessions to often-shadowy companies. That result works against the stated desire of government and donor nations to reduce poverty.

The government, ever wary of dissent, seems to have been taken off-guard by the petitioners. Authorities are trying to find out if civil society organisations were behind the collaborative effort. Whether or not there was help from civil society is beside the point. The voiceless rural people whose land is being taken from them - often with official collusion - got the chance to be heard. People from across the Kingdom stood up and told the media and each other of their experiences and fears.

Leng Simy's story was typical. She comes from Pursat province in western Cambodia, and told attendees that a company came and took communal land five years ago to plant cassava and a palm oil plantation.

LENG: As the journalists know, the land is our rice pot. Before we were afraid that the government didn't know we had a problem there. But now we have raised this problem, so the government is now aware of it. We will not file a complaint again.

CARMICHAEL: From further west in Cambodia, Loun Sovath, a monk, said villagers in his area of Chi Kraeng in Siem Reap province were victims of a high-profile land grab by rich and powerful people earlier this year which saw them lose 100 hectares. Some villagers were shot and wounded during a protest at the disputed site. The monk said the police arrested and handcuffed villagers just as the Khmer Rouge had done, then jailed them.

LOUN: I request that the land issue please be considered by the government. This is not a game. Before when they had a problem people were not injured - they still had the use of their arms and legs, even those who were poor. But this time they have broken arms and legs, and imprisoned people who have also lost their land.

CARMICHAEL: Soal Nak is from the Jarai tribe, an ethnic minority in the north-eastern province of Ratanakkiri whose communal land is under threat. He applauded the idea of submitting the petitions to the different ministries, and like many of the people has hopes that the national government will resolve their problems where the local authorities have failed.

SOAL: Our people remain worried about losing our land and our forests and our traditional way of life. If we lose our forests or our land, then our traditional ways go too, and more than that we will lose our togetherness as a tribal community.

CARMICHAEL: At the close of the two-hour session, a man stood up at the microphone and sang a haunting song - one I am told whose words he composed himself. He sang about loss - the loss of his land, his cattle, his livelihood, and the corrupt authorities who refused to help. It was more than a metaphor for the difficulties experienced by rural Cambodians. His worries are those of many tens of thousands. But today, at least, those concerns were heard.

Cambodia: A government in denial ... by the likes of Hun Sen, Baby Hor and Sea Kosal

A government in denial: from the top (Hun Xen - Left) to the bottom (Baby Hor 5 Hong - Center, and Xea Koxal - Right)

The government’s Rectangular Development Strategy to develop Cambodia Dey Krahorm eviction site - 24 January 2009
Addressing the issues? How the Cambodian Government responded to a Global Witness report on extractive industries

Excerpt from "Land Grabbing & Poverty in Cambodia: The Myth of Development"
Published by Licadho

In recent years it has become a tragic cliché to say that Cambodia is suffering from an “epidemic” of land-grabbing by the rich and powerful – an epidemic which is resulting in the loss of residence and livelihoods by the poor and vulnerable on a massive scale.

The statistics, which have become more alarming year by year, speak for themselves. In the 13 provinces in which LICADHO works – roughly half the country – more than a quarter of a million people have been affected by land-grabbing and forced evictions since 2003.

• In the capital, Phnom Penh, 133,000 people – more than 10% of its population – are believed to have been evicted since 1990.
• In 2008, according to Amnesty International, a further 150,000 Cambodians were at risk of forced relocation nationwide.
• As of 2004, it was estimated that 20-30% of landowners held 70% of the country’s land, while the poorest 40% occupied only 10%; in the countryside, 45% of families were landless or near landless.

The excuse invariably trotted out by the government whenever another group of people are forcibly evicted from the homes they have occupied for years, and sent to a distant relocation site lacking the basic amenities for living, or lose the farmland that has sustained their families for generations, is that this is necessary for “development”.

There is little doubt that the appropriation of land in Cambodia has been a very positive development for the powerful individuals and private companies who have acquired prime real estate at little or no cost – as well as government officials who profited from the transactions.

There is little evidence, however, that ordinary Cambodians are benefiting from the mass confiscation of their land. On the contrary, those who are displaced are explicitly excluded from any benefits, and instead find themselves facing loss of income, poor health, lack of education and other dire consequences that are directly opposed to the government’s public commitment to development, expressed through targets such as the “Millennium Development Goals” (MDG).

There is no sign of the Cambodian authorities slowing down the pace of land grabbing and forced evictions, usually committed in flagrant contravention of their own laws. Economic Land Concessions continue to be granted in unlawful secrecy, concealed from the public, and sometimes in sizes far exceeding the legal limit of 10,000 hectares.

Social Land Concessions continue to be established illegally – in fact, not a single one has been completed in accordance with the relevant laws – and perversely have been used to steal land from the poor rather than provide it to them. The Cambodian military continues to be involved in evictions, in contravention of the law, as well as heavily implicated in landgrabbing for their own benefit. The Cambodian courts continue to act on behalf of rich and powerful interests, ignoring the evidence, the Land Law and other relevant legislation, enforcing eviction where ownership remains undecided and imprisoning those who dare to protest. And to underline the fact that these evictions are really about grabbing valuable land – rather than actual development – many sites from which people have been evicted in recent years remain largely untouched by their new owners.

The government, meanwhile, says there is no problem.

A Government in Denial

Despite a mounting tide of concern and criticism from both Cambodian civil society and the international community, the Cambodian government has so far adopted a policy of blanket denial that any problem exists – even going so far as to deny that any forced evictions take place – and of attacking those who point out otherwise.

Typical was the government’s reaction to Miloon Kothari, the UN Special Rapporteur on Housing Rights, who visited Cambodia in 2005 and found a “frenzy now across the country by the rich and powerful in Cambodia to acquire land”. Instead of addressing the valid concerns raised, Prime Minister Hun Sen launched a personal attack on the Special Rapporteur, saying in a public speech that “One guy, a UN representative… He came just for money. He regarded Cambodians as thieves.”

When in 2008 Amnesty International released a detailed report on forced evictions in Cambodia, the government responded by denying that any “unlawful and forcible evictions” take place. Bizarrely, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs cited the under-threat communities of Borei Keila and Dey Krahorm in Phnom Penh – where human rights workers have documented countless violations of land rights in recent years – as being “happy” with the government’s approach. (Within a year of the ministry’s statement, the remaining families of Dey Krahorm would be violently evicted in yet another example of forced evictions which the government claims do not occur). Meanwhile Hor Nambora, Cambodia’s Ambassador in London, attacked the messenger, accusing Amnesty International of “sensationalism” and its researcher of being an “adventurist”, and instead of addressing the report’s detailed criticisms boasted of the international donor community’s praise and support for the government’s policies.

Ambassador Hor continued in a similar vein in 2009, when he responded to a Global Witness report on Cambodia’s extractive industries – which also highlighted the widespread allocation of land to private companies – by ridiculing the report as “rubbish”, claiming that the organization was “naïve” and stating that Cambodia’s donors were “fully aware of the way the Royal Cambodian Government’s conducts its affairs and its commitment to demonstrating the highest possible standards.”

But perhaps the most telling response was that of Dr Sea Kosal, Cambodian Ambassador to the UN, following the visit of UN Special Representative Yash Ghai to Cambodia in December 2007. During his visit, which focused on land and housing rights issues, Professor Ghai warned of the social instability which Cambodia risked because of such uncontrolled “development”. Dr Sea responded with a furious letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon accusing Professor Ghai of having “incited the people in Cambodia to revolt” against the government (ironically echoing the spurious criminal “incitement” charges that are frequently brought against the representatives of communities fighting evictions and land grabbing).

The government ignores such warnings at its peril. Numerous local and international human rights organizations have supported Professor Ghai’s observations. The links between land alienation and conflict are well-documented. And the dangers for Cambodia have been repeatedly highlighted, most recently in a report issued by a British think-tank in March 2009 on risks posed by the global financial crisis, which analyzed factors such as social inequality and economic distress, and concluded that Cambodia is currently one of the very most vulnerable nations in the world to social and political unrest.

Such willful disregard of the problems facing the country does no favors to the Cambodian people and, in the long run, will do no favors to the Cambodian authorities. While there is no doubt about the complexities of economic management – and that the country is affected by many factors outside its control – Cambodia is in the fortunate position that there are steps which could be taken immediately to address the hardships faced by its people. First and foremost among these would be to stem the tide of land-grabbing and other economic pillage in the name of “development”.

Cambodian workforce needs overhaul [... Cambodian leadership also needs an overhaul]

May 25, 2009
AFP

PHNOM PENH - CAMBODIA has an 'urgent' need to invest in education and health to further grow its economy and reduce poverty, a United Nations economist said at the launch of a report on Monday.

'Cambodia has a serious lack of qualified workers and this is something that needs urgent priority,' UN Development Programme (UNDP) economist Brooks Evans told reporters.

Mr Evans made his comments during the launch of a UNDP study on Cambodia's competitiveness in the global economy, which ranked it near the bottom among southeast Asian countries.

Cambodia also finished last in regional higher education training scores while 40 per cent of its population does not even finish primary school, Mr Evans said.

He added that lax rules and regulations have caused investors from the United States, Europe and Japan to shy away from setting up operations in the country, one of the world's poorest.

'Cambodia is potentially losing out on huge amounts of foreign direct investment,' Mr Evans said.

Cambodia enjoyed several years of double-digit economic growth until last year, but has seen sharp declines in garment exports and tourism - its two key industries - because of the global financial crisis.

Despite the recent economic expansion, under-employment, where someone's work earns only a meagre return, remains high in Cambodia.

Some 30 per cent of the country's 14 million people live on less than 50 US cents a day.

Land Issues Stump New Government

Land dispute in Siem Reap (Photo: RFA)

By Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
27 January 2009

Six months after July’s national election, critics of the new administration of the Cambodian People’s Party say it has so far been incapable of solving the ongoing problem of land disputes.

This inability was underscored by the forced eviction—by tear gas and water cannon—of hundreds of Phnom Penh slum-dwellers in the Dey Krahorm neighborhood Saturday morning.

“I voted for the CPP, hoping this area would have justice and a fair resolution after the election,” said Horn Sar, a 49-year-old evictee of Dey Krahorm. “But right now, I’ve met with injustice through eviction. So I request Prime Minister Hun Sen to protect justice for the poor Dey Krahorm residents.”

The CPP took 90 of 123 National Assembly seats in the July 27 election, but they have so far done little to deal with the concerns of people like Horn Sar, who are at risk of displacement and land grabs, rights workers say.

“One hundred and forty land dispute cases were promised to be solved by the ruling officials during the election campaign,” said Chan Soveth, deputy chief of investigation for the rights group Adhoc. “But those cases are still a concern and cannot be solved at all.”

Local institutions, such as land dispute committees, as well as the National Authority for the Resolution of Land Disputes, have proven incapable of solving the problem, Chan Soveth said. “So six months after the election, land disputes have no result and have no resolution.”

Ou Virak, head of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, agreed.

“The government has no real willingness to solve the land disputes,” he said. “The authorities continue to use violence in the eviction of the people from their houses, especially in the case of Dey Krahorm. Before the election, the authorities allowed the people to protest land-grabbing, in order to get votes from the people. But after the election, we haven’t seen results coming from the result of the vote. So the government has fallen down.”

On Saturday, armed riot police fired tear gas and water cannons to evict hundreds of residents from Dey Krahorm, razing an area that had been part of an ongoing land dispute with developer 7NG.

Residents say they have not been fairly compensated by the development company. 7NG representatives say the company has offered each family an apartment on outskirts of Phnom Penh. Hundreds of Dey Krahorm evictees gathered on Monday and Tuesday in front of the National Assembly, seeking monetary compensation instead of an apartment.

“We don’t want to get the house from the company, because in that place the housing is not proper and we can’t make business, have no schools, and have not enough water and electricity and no toilets,” said Kim Hong, 58, a Dey Krahorm evictee.

Cheam Yiep, a CPP National Assembly lawmaker, said the government was capable of solving the disputes, but could not solve the thousands of cases before it in only six months. Resolution of the disputes was a priority, he said, “because Prime Minister Hun Sen is not happy about land grabbing by powerful men or rich men, or those who make injustice for farmers or ordinary people.”

Cambodia's Development Challenges

A woman works with a corn harvest in northwestern Cambodia on January 16, 2008. (AP/Heng Sinith)

July 25, 2008
Author: Jayshree Bajoria
Council on Foreign Relations

Cambodia today is far from the nightmare of the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime, which was responsible for as many as two million deaths. With high economic growth, increasing levels of foreign investment, and regular parliamentary elections, Cambodia has made considerable progress. In November 2007, the UN-backed genocide tribunal tasked with trying surviving members of the Khmer Rouge finally began work. Despite restrictions placed on the trial by the Cambodian government, experts say it will still bring a sense of justice to Cambodians. So far, five officials from the Communist regime have been arrested by the court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But concerns remain over the governing style of Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Sen, expected to win another five-year mandate in July 27 parliamentary elections, has dominated the country's politics for two decades. A former Khmer Rouge member, he has been reluctant to give up power, even staging a coup in 1997. Human Rights Watch says the Cambodian government has made no progress in the past decade on the rule of law, judicial independence, or human rights. Freedom House, another U.S.-based rights watchdog, rates Cambodia as "not free" in its 2008 index tracking political rights and civil liberties. It says government officials continue to "engage in land grabs and other abuses with impunity, failing to improve social and economic conditions for the majority of the population."

Corruption remains a serious problem for economic growth and development. Transparency International's 2007 Global Corruption Barometer listed Cambodia as one of the countries most affected by bribery; 72 percent of survey respondents said they had paid a bribe to obtain services. In February 2008 testimony to a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, Scot Marciel, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs said, "weak rule of law, rampant corruption, and weak institutions remain major challenges to Cambodia's democratic development and sustained economic growth." Despite double-digit growth in gross domestic product (GDP) in recent years, Cambodia remains a poor country. More than 30 percent of the population lives under the national poverty line and nearly 90 percent of the population is rural, with over 65 percent employed in the agriculture sector.

Cambodia has tried to catch up with its other more economically dynamic neighbors through greater regional economic integration, and has pursued dialogue with Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand over border disputes. In the current military standoff with Thailand over a temple along the border, Cambodia's government has sought the help of its neighbors as well as the United Nations.

Over the last decade, Sen has cultivated especially close economic relations with China, one of the country's major investors. China also gives Cambodia millions of dollars in aid annually and provides military assistance. Some experts say unconditional assistance from China worsens corruption in Cambodia. Simon Taylor, director of the international anticorruption group Global Witness, told Radio Free Asia in May, “The effect of lots of money coming in with few strings attached, going to a lot of people in the government, is generally exacerbating corruption.” International human rights organizations say donors must condition development assistance on reform in areas such as human rights, good governance, and the rule of law.

Cambodia: People's complaints need prompt responses

9/5/2008
By Ch. Narendra
MyNews.in (India)

Since the end of the communist regime in the early 90s, the Cambodian people have dared to make complaints and vent their grievances against injustices even though they are still very much gripped by a fear psychosis.

There are several venues for such complaints and grievances; they can go directly to the police, the courts, concerned authorities, human rights and complaints committees of the government or the Parliament. Many complainants use one such venue after another, or all at the same time, depending upon the gravity of those injustices, the number of people involved and their resources.

However, due to bureaucracy, officialdom, corruption or mere lack of concern on the part of these institutions, the people rarely have their complaints addressed without giving some sort of incentive to concerned officials otherwise they have to wait for an indeterminate period of time before getting any responses what-so-ever, if those concerned officials have ever cared to provide such responses at all.

Because of such a lack of purpose, the public does not have any confidence in those institutions at all. Many people, though they still make their complaints to them, have now related their stories to the media to publicise their case with a view to getting their messages across to top leaders, especially to Prime Minister Hun Sen, known as the strongman of Cambodia, to seek their direct attention to find justice for them.

According of a newspaper report dated May 8 2008, five representatives of 150 Tumpuon indigenous families living in three adjacent villages in Lomphat district, Rattakakiri in the northeast, went to relate the story of the grabbing of their 250 hectares of communal land by the deputy governor of that district to the Reaksmei Kampuchea newspaper in Phnom Penh.

These five representatives affirmed to the newspaper that all the 150 families would soon go to stage a protest in front of the Parliament and then in front of the Office of Prime Minister Hun Sen “to seek his help to find justice” for them.

Five days earlier, a news report on Radio Free Asia said that representatives of 776 families protested against Amy Unit 331 for grabbing of over 800 hectares of their paddy fields in Taken commune, Chhouk district, Kampot province.

This radio station also reported on May 7, in a case of land grabbing in the same province, that the provincial governor named Chey Sayoun allegedly prevented owners of the affected plots of land from having any say in a meeting with those owners on April 26. Furthermore, he threatened to “bulldoze away” their houses and crops to clear the land for the construction of an airport to silence their protest.

The same radio station has reported numerous cases of people’s protests, especially against land grabbing, and invariably, those victims have sought direct intervention from Hun Sen to find justice for them.

The people also have other grievances to relate to the media. The Koh Santepheap newspaper dated May 5 reported that unnamed rice traders complained that they had to pay the police in Angkor Borei district, Takeo province in the south a bribe of 130000 riels (US$32.5) per truckload to transport rice from that boarder district across to Vietnam.

The same newspaper also reported a complaint from a man named Nop Phirum against a deputy police chief named Heng Chantho in Ta-Kream commune, Banan district, Battambang province, after he had requested Heng’s intervention to stop a gang’s cruel assault on Nop’s younger brother-in-law. Heng was then busy with his drinks at a place at foot of a hill nearby and did not bother even to send his subordinates to stop the assault.

The above are just a few of the cases reported in the media. There are many others. They all call for responses from all concerned authorities, responses which are the constitutional duties of the government and the rights of citizens under articles 35 and 39 of the country’s Constitution.

The Cambodian government must ensure that such responses are provided promptly and, in cases of alleged corruption or negligence on the part of public authorities mentioned above, conduct prompt investigations and take appropriate action to prevent their repeat in future.