Who ordered soldiers from the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces to threaten villagers at the Kompong Speu Provincial court?
US support to RCAF amounts to US$4.5 million/year. A week’s training of RCAF unit in Kompong Speu by US Army cost US$1.8 million.
What about putting this into free and fair elections?
Read more about US support to RCAF
- Mu Sochua -
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| US Military command in Cambodia |
In a controversial decision by Cambodia’s Prime Minister, multinational corporations and other local enterprises will now be able to hire the country’s royal armed forces, Jody Ray Bennett writes for ISN Security Watch.
16 Aug 2010
By Jody Ray Bennett for ISN Security Watch
ISN.ETHz.ch (Switzerland)
To train Cambodian forces for a mere two weeks, the US Department of Defense built a $1.8 million training center for Cambodia's ACO Tank Command Headquarters in Kompong Speu province.
According to Human Rights Watch, “In November 2008, the [ACO] unit seized the farmland of 133 families in Banteay Meanchey province, ostensibly to build a military base [and] in 2007, soldiers from the unit in Kompong Speu province used armored vehicles to flatten villagers' fences, destroy their crops, and confiscate their land.”
Just a little over two years ago, The Guardian ran a quiet article claiming that the Kingdom of Cambodia was a “country for sale.” The article outlined specific events of Cambodian history that lead to the overwhelming privatization of the kingdom - the Khmer Rouge regime sending more than 300,000 locals into exile and two million from its cities directly into the paddy fields and farmland in the 1970s, and once overthrown, to the 1985 “frenzied land-grabbing” after the rise to power by Hun Sen, Cambodia’s current prime minister.
The article noted that once Sen came to power, “influential political allies and wealthy business associates raced to claim land that the Khmer Rouge had seized, gobbling up such large chunks of the cities, forests and paddy fields that Cambodians used to say the rich were eating the country.” Throughout the 1990s, nurses became restaurateurs and school teachers were transformed into rural farmers.
By July 2007: “The forests, lakes, beaches and reefs - and the lives of the thousands of residents - were quietly transferred into the hands of private western developers. Arguing that Cambodia could become a tourist magnet to challenge Thailand, [Hun Sen] began a fire sale of mainland beaches. By March [2008], virtually all Cambodia's accessible and sandy coast was in private hands, either Cambodian or foreign.”
