In Ratanakkiri Land Dispute, Long Wait for a Judge

An elderly couple, one of the minority villagers, living in Ratanakirri, are also caught up in a land dispute with the sister of Cambodia’s Finance Minister, Keat Chhon. (Photo: by Say Mony)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i-OVzv7vZo&feature=player_embedded

Tuesday, 06 September 2011
Say Mony, VOA Khmer | Ratanakkiri province, Cambodia

“We used to cultivate, herd cattle, look for animals and vegetables, like bamboo shoots, and harvest rice there, but now it has been cleared."

Minority villagers who are caught up in a land dispute with the sister of Cambodia’s Finance Minister say they have waited years for the courts to look at their complaints. But in this remote part of the country, they say, they have had little luck getting a judge willing to take on the case.

The land dispute is centered around Kong Yu village in Ratanakkiri province. Villagers here say they have waited four years to have a hearing for their complaints against Keat Kolney, the sister of Keat Chhon, who is the Finance Minister and holds the position of Deputy Prime Minister.

They made their complaint in January 2007, claiming they had been tricked out of their ancestral land for a rubber plantation backed by Keat Kolney.

“The land grabber is a big person,” said Lmam Phil, a representative of the villagers, who belong to the Jarai minority. “But the judge is a small one, as the villagers and myself understand it.” That means no judge will touch the case, for fear of retribution, he said.

If you are CPP Keat Chhon's sister, you have free rein in land-grabbing and the court is also on your side

Kong Yu village in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district has been fighting for 450 hectares of ancestral land since 2004. (Photo by: SEBASTIAN STRANGIO)

Court drops land complaints

Monday, 13 April 2009
Written by May Titthara and Sebastian Strangio
The Phnom Penh Post

Ratanakkiri prosecutor rejects two criminal filings in dispute between ethnic Jarai and Keat Kolney, sister of finance minister

A RATANAKKIRI provincial court prosecutor has dismissed two criminal complaints relating to an ongoing land dispute between an ethnic Jarai village and a Phnom Penh businesswoman, but lawyers involved with the case say they remain in the dark as to the reasons for the dismissals.

Prosecutor Mey Sokhan's rejection of the two complaints is the latest event in a protracted land dispute that has pitted residents of Kong Yu, a village in Ratanakkiri's O'Yadav district, against Keat Kolney, the sister of Finance Minister Keat Chhon.

Keat Kolney says she purchased 450 hectares of land from the Kong Yu villagers in August 2004 for a rubber plantation, but lawyers from the Community Legal Education Centre (CLEC) filed a criminal complaint on behalf of the village in January 2007, saying Keat Kolney tricked them into thumbprinting transfer documents.

In June, Keat Kolney's lawyers brought a counter-complaint, accusing the CLEC of incitement and the villagers of illegally occupying the land.

Although both complaints were dismissed on February 2, Pen Bonna, provincial coordinator for local rights group Adhoc, said Kong Yu residents were not informed until Friday.

"They should have sent a letter to villagers when the court prosecutor dropped the lawsuit," he said.

"It's a sensitive point. It's very hard for the court to find justice for the people."

No reason given

Despite Friday's notification, CLEC lawyer Sourng Sophea, who is helping represent the village in court, was unaware of the reason the case had been dismissed but said it could only be based on firm legal and factual grounds.

"I don't know the reason. According to Article 41 of the Criminal Procedure, the prosecutor has to give a reason [for the dismissal], but I haven't yet received a letter," he said.

When contacted Sunday, Mey Sokhan said he had been reassigned to Stung Treng provincial court and declined to comment on the Kong Yu case, while new court prosecutor Lou Sousambath could not be reached for comment.

But Thar Saron, the Ratanakkiri provincial judge presiding over the case, said the cases had been dismissed in February because lawyers from both sides were "busy" and that the villagers and Keat Kolney would come together for a meeting early next month.

"The aim of the face-to-face talks will be to ask both sides to come to an understanding [so that] neither side will win or lose," he said Sunday.

Sourng Sophea said he knew nothing about the proposed meeting but that the villagers would make a decision on whether to appeal the dismissal of criminal complaints after the Khmer New Year.

A civil case relating to the disputed land is still set to come before the provincial court, but Sourng Sophea said no date had yet been set for its next hearing.

Land Suit Renewed Against Keat Chhon’s Sister

Land Suit Renewed Against Minister’s Sister

By Chiep Mony, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
23 December 2008

A group of Jarai villagers in Ratanakkiri province has filed a second suit against the sister of Finance Minister Keat Chhon, alleging her company failed to follow a court order to stop clearing disputed land.

Fifteen representatives of Pate commune, O’Yadao district, filed suit “after their crops and graves were damaged due to land clearance by Mrs. Keat Kolney’s company,” said Sek Sovanna, a lawyer for the Community Legal Education Center, which is representing the villagers.

The second suit follows a January 2007 court action by villagers of Pate’s Kong Yu village, who accused Keat Kolney’s company of defrauding them of 450 hectares of land, an allegation Keat Kolney has denied. However, Keat Kolney did tell the courts in March 2007 she would suspend development of the land.

In the newest complaint, villagers told the courts that on Oct. 23, workers for Keat Kolney resumed clearance on the disputed land and continued to do so despite the orders of a provincial court judge on Oct. 28.

On Monday, Keat Kolney’s lawyer, Chhe Vibol, denied the allegation.

“Following the suit in 2007, my client has never cleared that land,” he said, declining to comment further.

Judge Thor Saron, who issued the order for the company to cease clearance, declined comment Monday.

Ros Saram, a Ratanakkiri court deputy prosecutor, confirmed receipt of the newest complaint.

Ethnic minorities most vulnerable to land grabs, rights groups say

Kong Yu residents relax after a long day tilling their communal farmland in Ratanakkiri, which Keat Kolney claims to have purchased in 2004. (Photo by: SEBASTIAN STRANGIO)

Thursday, 30 October 2008
Written by Sam Rith and Sebastian Strangio
The Phnom Penh Post

JUDGE APPROVES KONG YU INJUNCTION
Thor Saron, vice president of the Ratanakkiri provincial court, approved an injunction Tuesday forcing Keat Kolney's Progressive Farmers Association to stop clearing of the remaining 170 hectares of farmland that residents of Kong Yu village claim belongs to them. The company started clearing the land October 23, in apparent contravention of a 2007 legal agreement that work would be suspended until the court handed down its verdict. "I have issued an injunction to ask the company of Keat Kolney to postpone clearing the disputed land until the case is completely solved through legal means," Thor Saron said Wednesday.

An agricultural boom has spurred the approval of illegal land concessions in Ratanakkiri province, which local advocates say are threatening the livelihoods of indigenous minorities


RATANAKKIRI PROVINCE
THE Toyota Landcruiser arrives in the village just as the morning sun breaks through the trees, casting long shadows across the rust-coloured earth. After exchanging a few quiet words with the driver, half a dozen young villagers - no more than teenagers - get into the vehicle, which pauses for a moment and then roars away, trailing clouds of dust.

According to residents of this small Jarai community in Ratanakkiri's O'Yadao district, young people are picked up each day and taken to pick beans on a nearby rubber plantation - a change to traditional farming practices that is a worrying sign for the community.

Although the Jarai of Kong Yu village appear to have successfully absorbed the more visible signs of modernisation - from motorbikes and baseball caps to artesian wells and laundry soap - indigenous rights activists say an epidemic of land-grabbing threatens the livelihood of the community, and others across the country.

Kong Yu representative Sev Twel said that since losing ancestral farmland to a controversial land deal in 2004, many villagers have been forced into day labour in order to survive.

"Most of the people in my community right now have enough crops for just half of the year," he said. "Then they have to work for others in order to support their families for the rest of the year."

The Kong Yu villagers have been fighting for their land since August 2004, when Keat Kolney, the sister of Finance Minister Keat Chhon, claimed to have purchased 450 hectares of land from the villagers. But Kong Yu residents say they only agreed to the sale after commune authorities told them the land was needed for disabled army veterans.

Villagers subsequently signed documents approving the sale, but maintain they only agreed to sign away 50 hectares of land, rather than the 450 claimed by Keat Kolney's Progressive Farmers Association, which has since planted rubber trees on 270 hectares of the land.

In 2007, lawyers for the Kong Yu villagers filed legal complaints, but following inaction by the presiding judges, some Kong Yu residents despaired that they would never regain their land.

Kong Yu village chief Romass Neath said he is now tired of fighting because his attempt to petition the courts has borne little fruit. "We would speak one word, and [the judges] replied with 10 words," he said. "They have more power and rights than us."

Disputes increasing

Tim Sinath, director of the provincial Land Management Department, said Ratanakkiri had experienced few cases of land-grabbing compared to other provinces. "Since 2004, we have received only 47 land dispute cases throughout the province and those cases are very small," he said.

But local officials and rights groups say that land disputes have risen in Ratanakkiri, driven by a frenzy of land speculation that has seen the value of nutrient-rich ancestral lands spiral upwards.

Thor Saron, the presiding judge in the Kong Yu case, said he has seen a marked increase in the number of land dispute cases brought before the court in the past year.

"Land dispute cases have increased because the land prices in Ratanakkiri ... increased tenfold in a one-year period," he said. "In short, when the land price increases, land disputes also increase."

In May 2008, Oryung Construction Co, a South Korean rubber firm, started clearing a 100-hectare plot of land in Ratanakkiri's Andong Meas district following a 2006 agreement with the government handing Oryung a 6,866-hectare economic land concession abutting the Se San River.

Lawyers from the Community Legal Education Centre (CLEC) say that the residents of four Jarai villages affected by the clearing were not informed about the development.

CLEC sources are also concerned about government plans for the development of Yeak Loam, a volcanic lake near Banlung. Tin Luong, chief of Yeak Loam commune, said provincial authorities had invited him in June to discuss the development potential of the lake, which is maintained by the string of minority Tumpuon communities that ring its shores.

"The community representatives did not agree with the development because they are concerned about losing the natural state of the lake and the right of the community to control it," he said. "I do support the idea of development because only development can make my commune progress and give people jobs."

A vulnerable minority

Around 1.5 percent of Cambodia's population - around 220,000 people - are indigenous minorities, according to the government's Department of Ethnic Minority Development. But while minorities form the biggest population in Ratanakkiri, rights groups said that they are vulnerable to land-grabbing because of linguistic and cultural differences.

For instance, Dam Chanthy, director of the Highland Association, noted that the idea of individual ownership did not dovetail well with the communal land use practised by minority groups, and that land-grabbers were using this to their advantage.

"Usually, the dispute happens on the community's land because someone in the community sells the land without informing the other members," she said.

Ngy San, deputy executive director of the NGO Forum, agreed that the isolation of such communities made them more vulnerable to exploitation.

"Most indigenous minorities do not get much information from the outside world, about land prices or the contents of the Land Law. It is easier for outsiders to manipulate the situation," he said.

Legal protections

The land of ethnic minorities is nominally granted protection under Cambodia's 2001 Land Law, which states that "no authority outside the community may acquire any rights to immovable properties belonging to an indigenous community".

The law also states that the community "does not have the right to dispose of any collective ownership that is state public property to any person or group" - a point that CLEC lawyers claim invalidates the Kong Yu purchase.

"The law says that community land is state land before it is registered, but there is a condition that this state land cannot be sold because it is controlled by indigenous people," said Ly Ping, a CLEC lawyer working on the Kong Yu case.

However, the subdecree necessary to enable the registration and delineation of indigenous lands is yet to be drafted.

Chhan Saphan, secretary of state in the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction, told a gathering of donors in March that a sub decree had been drafted and circulated to stakeholders for consultation.

Tim Sinath added that he had been involved with land registration pilot projects in two local villages, the lessons of which would be incorporated into the draft subdecree, which he expected to be passed and approved in 2009.

But Ngy San said that the lack of an enabling subdecree permitted a highly selective implementation of the Land Law.

"Many articles of this law require subdecrees," he said. "It is a problem with many laws in Cambodia. Until there is a subdecree, the law cannot be implemented in detail. What I know for sure is that the Land Law is not enough," he said.

Others have expressed concern about protection for indigenous lands in the interim.

"We are concerned that if the drafting and implementation of the subdecree drags on for too long ... indigenous communities will continue to lose their lands to economic land concessions," Christophe Peschoux of the UN's human rights office, said Monday in his opening address to the National Forum on Indigenous People.

"Interim protective measures are needed to protect lands against abuse."

Locals, Lawyers Prepare for Battle Over Land

Jarai children (Photo Credit: Andrew Nette/IPS)

By Andrew Nette - Newsmekong*

RATANAKIRI, Cambodia, Jul 10 (IPS) - In thick forest in the north-east Cambodian province of Ratanakiri, a team of lawyers uses a global positioning satellite handset to mark the location of traditional spirit forests and gravesites belonging to local Jarai villagers.

The stark contrast between old and new, the latest technology and ancient beliefs, illustrates the changes sweeping this remote part of the Cambodia, mainly populated by Indigenous people.

It also marks the latest round in an ongoing dispute many believe typifies the epidemic of land grabbing sweeping the country and its impact on indigenous people.

The lawyers are from the Phnom Penh-based Community Legal Education Centre (CLEC). Their ethnic Jarai clients are from Kong Yu village, about 42 kilometres out of Ban Lung, Ratanakiri’s capital.

The air is hot and alive with dragonflies as Roman Phil, a Kong Yu elder, directs the lawyers towards a traditional Jarai burial site, a dense patch of forest strewn with ceramic urns. The lawyers mark the spot on their GPS handset.

The location of the burial site and other areas of spiritual significance will be used as evidence in a case lodged by Kong Yu villagers in the provincial court against the company that they say has cheated them out of land.

The company, the Progressive Farmers Association, has already cleared much of the land, including graveyards and spirit forests, and planted it with rubber trees, a popular cash crop in Cambodia.

"We would never destroy spirit forest. It is too important for our ancestors and for us," says Phil. "They destroyed some of these and did not even give us a chance to remove the remains."

Now the Kong Yu people are alarmed at recent suggestions by local authorities that the company wants even more of their land. "If the company comes to clear more land we will protest," maintains Phil. "We are determined to protect our land."

According to a memorandum from Legal Aid of Cambodia, the dispute originated in March 2004, when the then village chief and other local officials asked Kong Yu villagers to sell a portion of their land to high-ranking official in Phnom Penh.

The villagers rejected the offer, saying that it was their ancestral land essential to the preservation of their culture.

The officials returned about a month later, according to the January 2007 memorandum, and informed the villagers they needed the land for Prime Minister Hun Sen’s disabled soldiers. They threatened to simply take it without compensation as it belonged to the government, the document says.

Believing they had little choice, villagers agreed to donate 50 hectares.

The authorities returned several more times and asked families to put their thumbprints on documents -- most of the Kong Yu people do not speak or read Khmer -- which they said were needed to facilitate the deal.

In one instance, they brought alcohol to celebrate the land donation. Once the villagers were drunk, they asked them to affix their thumbprints to additional documents and also to do the same on behalf of villagers absent from the party, according to the Legal Aid of Cambodia document.

The buyer turned out to be Keat Kolney, wife of a prominent official in the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction, and sister of Keat Chhon, Cambodia’s finance minister.

Kolney only visited the village once, in August 2007, together with officials from Phnom Penh and local commune government, when she distributed gifts and envelopes of cash.

The villagers were asked once again to thumbprint documents in Khmer before they could receive the gifts. Those who did so were allowed to keep gifts, but the village chief immediately collected the envelopes after distribution.

The next day the chief distributed 400 US dollars to villages and a further sum to widowed families and children. Media reports at the time claimed the chief and members of the local government received payments for facilitating the deal.

Approximately one month later, the company informed the villagers they were taking 500 hectares of land.

Amid village protests, bulldozers belonging to the Progressive Farmers’ Association, which Kolney chairs, started clearing the area soon after.

"They have already destroyed a lot of our crops when they cleared, including cashew, cassava and banana trees," says Phil.

The villagers’ traditional shifting cultivation practice is also now under pressure, explains Phil. "As the land becomes smaller, it becomes more difficult to do this practice."

Lawyers representing the Kong Yu people filed a lawsuit with the Ratanakiri provincial court in January 2007, saying the sale is illegal.

"I feel very confident we have a strong case," states Am Sokha, coordinator of CLEC’s Public Interest Legal Advocacy Project. "We have the legal arguments and a lot of evidence the people did not voluntarily sell their land, but were cheated."

There are only 46 families residing in Kong Yu, though the final contract in the disputed sale bears 101 thumbprints.

Lawyers representing the villagers maintain that many of the thumbprints on document can only belong to people who do not live in Kong Yu, including local officials with no legal entitlement to the land.

In response to the court action, Kong Yu elders say the local government has engaged in of a campaign of intimidation.

Roman Phil says he has been threatened with arrest and jail. Lawyers representing the villagers have been prevented on several occasions from accessing their clients.

A document presented to the Ratanakiri court by Kolney’s lawyer in October 2007 says the land was bought legally through a broker who told her that the Kong Yu people had wanted to sell their land since 2001. The document states the villagers decided to sell their land because "they are facing livelihood difficulties (and) they are in debt". It also said they feared people from a neighbouring village would grab their land.

It also says Kolney knew nothing about the claims made by officials that villagers needed to give up 50 hectares of their land for Hun Sen’s disabled soldiers.

In response to doubts about the validity of the thumbprints on the purported sale document, Kolney’s lawyer recently told the English-language ‘Cambodia Daily’ that some of the villagers had thumbprinted the document twice to get more money.

The Konh Yu case is merely one of many ongoing and emerging land disputes taking place across the province, according to NGOs and local indigenous groups.

In Chrung, another Jarai community 30 minutes’ drive from Kong Yu, local elders tell how they were nearly cheated out of their land.

Although some of the details get confused in the translation from Jarai to Khmer to English, it was probably 2001 when speculators connected to business figures in Phnom Penh came to Chrung and told the local people they wanted to develop their village.

The local people were told they would be hired as part of the deal to work on the land. They were asked to put their thumbprints on documents in return for a kilo of salt per thumbprint, although some were also reportedly given money.

"We only gave our thumbprint because we thought the deal was to develop our village," says one elder. "Then we were told we had signed a contract to sell our land." After several years of legal proceedings, Cambodia’s then monarch King Norodom Sihanouk intervened and the villagers got their land back.

As they speak, Chrung elders clutch official documents wrapped in plastic and pass around old colour photographs showing them during an audience with King Sihanouk at his Phnom Penh palace.

Despite their victory, many Chrung villagers have subsequently sold their land, say NGOs familiar with the case.

Cambodian law specifies no time frame within which the Kong Yu court case must be tried. Some doubt the case will ever get to a courtroom.

Meanwhile, the Kong Yu villagers say they have plans to go to Phnom Penh and perhaps petition King Sihanouk for a resolution to the case.

(*This story was written for the Imaging Our Mekong Programme coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific.)

U.N. criticises Cambodian land-grabs

PHNOM PENH, Dec 10 (Reuters) - The United Nations criticised Cambodia on Monday for failing to protect the rights of the poor, saying land was being routinely seized by large businesses with government connections and the courts were doing nothing.

"Indigenous people are losing their lands. Their lands are being stolen," Yash Ghai, the U.N.'s human rights envoy to the impoverished southeast Asian nation, told a news conference at the end of a 10-day visit.

During his trip, he went to the jungle-clad northeastern province of Rattankiri, where ethnic minority hill-tribes are in a protracted legal dispute over a 500-ha (1,200-acre) plot of land with the sister of the finance minister.

"People told me that their lands were taken away and they preferred not go to the court," Ghai said.

He also described as "completely unacceptable" reports of villagers being beaten up at the scene of another alleged land-grab south of Phnom Penh.

There was no immediate response from the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who has been in charge for the last two decades.

After a previous visit in which Ghai accused him of ruling with an iron fist, Hun Sen branded the Kenyan a "long-term tourist" who should be fired.

(Reporting by Ek Madra; editing by Ed Cropley)

CAMBODIA: Police suppressed freedom of assembly and expression in Rattanakiri Province

3 December 2007
CAMBODIA: Denial of freedom of expression & assembly

Dear friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information from the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights (CCHR), human rights organization in Cambodia that police force prevented the holding of a public forum which CCHR organised on 27 November 2007 in Rattanakiri province. The police set up a roadblock to prevent the organizers from entering the place so that the forum was not held. Even though the villagers were unable to enter the venue, they started speaking with the organisers about the land grabbing in their area that had affected their livelihoods.

CASE DETAILS:

On 18 November 2007, CCHR informed the commune, district and provincial authorities of its plan to organise a public forum on 27 November 2007 in Kong Yuk village, Patey commune, O Yadao District in the northeastern province of Rattanakiri. The commune chief, Sev Ngang, gave a positive reply welcoming the forum. The district authorities did not reply. The provincial governor replied with a "disagreement" with the forum on the grounds of "insecurity" in the area, which was not justified based on the real situation, according to the organisers.

CCHR invited relevant officials and Members of Parliaments (MPs), but none replied to their invitation, except the Patey commune chief. CCHR also proceeded to disseminate information on its forum in and around Kong Yuk village and invited villagers to participate in it. It then got a make-shift meeting hall built with cover and floor mats for participants and invited guests.

All was set for the forum to be open, and in the morning of November 27 some 300 villagers arrived at the venue ready for debates and discussions. However, before the opening of the forum, the local police, without issuing any ban notice to the CCHR organisers, dispatched a force of nine officers, some of whom were armed with assault rifles to the access road some 3 kilometers away from the venue. This group set up a roadblock with their car and two motorcycles to bar CCHR organizers from making their way and bringing their audio equipment to the forum.

The O Yadao district police chief, Ma Vicheth, said that the police action is well warranted when "the organizers had not informed the local authorities." However, the Patey commune chief contradicted Ma Vicheth's allegation, saying that "the organizers had informed the district authorities and these authorities gave them authorisation."

CCHR Director Ou Virak tried to talk with the police on the spot and then called Police Inspector Ma Vicheth to get the police to remove the roadblock so that the organizers could proceed to the forum with all the equipment and the forum could begin. During the negotiations some 100 villagers were walking from the venue to join the organizers at the police roadblock to request the police to remove the roadblock and allow the organisers to proceed to the forum. Those villagers offered to carry all the equipment if the police did not allow the organizers' vehicle in.

Upon learning about the arrival of those villagers, Ma Vicheth charged that Ou Virak had incited the villagers to stage a demonstration without authorization and threatened to arrest him for such incitement. Unable to persuade the police to remove the road block Ou Virak gave up and cancelled the forum. But at that road block those villagers were nevertheless voicing in front of the CCHR organisers their grievances against land grabbing in their area that had affected their livelihood. The organizers simply recorded those grievances to air on their radio programme.

When asked about the police action, a representative of the villagers said it was a violation the rights and freedoms of the people meant to cover up corruption among local officials who colluded to sell the community land of the indigenous people. He said: "they shut the forum and they deny the rights of the people."

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

The Cambodian Centre for Human Rights (CCHR) is a non-governmental human rights organisation. It has been organising public forums in different localities around the country to enable people in and around those localities to debate and address local, regional and national issues together with relevant local, district, provincial and government officials, and also their Members of Parliaments (MPs), all whom it invite for the occasion.

During each forum, it sets strict rules of order for speakers to "take the floor" in turn in the pre-set time allocated to each speaker, on the first-come, first-served basis, to ensure fairness and allow everyone to have a voice if they so wish. The full length of each forum will then be broadcast on a number of radio stations whose airtime CCHR has bought.

Rattanakiri province where the forum was due to take place is a remote northeastern province bordering Laos and Vietnam. It is sparsely populated, and its population is mainly composed of different groups of indigenous people. All these people have a tradition of communal land ownership which the Cambodian Land Law recognizes and protects.

Over the past ten years or so there has been a continuous acquisition of land in that province "for development purposes", especially by the rich and the powerful after the opening of roads to that province. This acquisition has affected the communal ownership of those people and reduced their "living space" where many of them still practice slash and burn cultivation. Because of an ineffective enforcement of the Land Law, abuse of power and corruption of local officials, an increasing number of large areas of land in that province have been acquired as private property by powerful and rich people. Communal land has increasingly been and those indigenous people's livelihood is being threatened.

In that particular area where the public forum was to be held, those indigenous people have been affected by a case of alleged land grabbing by a lady dignitary named Keat Kolney who is the wife of Chann Saphann, a Secretary of State for Land Management Urban Planning and Construction and the sister of Finance Minister Keat Chhon. The affected villagers have been protesting against this landgrabbing for some time. They wanted to participate in the planned forum to voice their side of the story and appeal to the government to protect their communal land.

Cambodia has a history of grave violations of human rights, and to prevent the repetition of this history it has undertaken, as its international human rights obligations, to ensure respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms. It has adhered to all international human rights norms and standards and incorporated them into its constitution.

The AHRC has learned that back in September the same local authorities and police had banned a seminar forum a radio NGO called Voice of Democracy had organized in the same locality. The Cambodian authorities have practically banned all public demonstrations since 2003, and have also banned or disrupted many of public forums organized by CCHR and Voice of Democracy.

The AHRC deplores the action taken by the authorities of Rattanakiri province and by the police of O Yadao district in particular for their suppression of freedom of assembly and expression which is a constitutional right Cambodian citizens. Action should be taken against the police of O Yadao district and effective measures should also be taken to prevent any repetition of such suppression.

SUGGESTED ACTION:

Please send your letters to the authorities listed below to call for action to stop all action to suppress freedom of assembly and expression in Cambodia. The AHRC is writing separate letters to the UN Special Representatives of the Secretary-General for human rights in Cambodia and UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression calling for their intervention into this case.

To support this appeal, please click here:

Suggested letter

Dear_________

CAMBODIA: Police suppressed freedom of assembly and expression in Rattanakiri Province

I am writing to you to express my deep concern about the suppression of the constitutional rights to freedom of assembly and expression of the villagers of Kong Yuk village, Patey commune, O Yadao District in the northeastern province of Rattanakiri on 27 November 2007 by the Cambodian authorities and the police of the locality.

I have learned that those villagers, altogether some 300 of them, are indigenous people. They went to participate in a public forum organized by an NGO called the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights (CCHR) with a view to expressing their views and positions on a pending landgrabbing case which was badly affecting their livelihood.

Those villagers had already been at the forum when a police force composed of nine officers, some of whom were armed with assault rifles, was dispatched to set up a roadblock with their car and two motorcycles some 3 kilometers away from the forum to stop CCHR officials, the organizers, and bar them from traveling with all their equipment to that forum. Some 100 villagers walked down from the forum to request the police to remove the roadblock. They even offered to carry that equipment if the organizers were not allowed to drive their vehicle with the equipment to the forum.

It is shocking to learn that, not only the police inspector named Ma Vicheth rejected the request from both the organizers and the villagers, but he took their gathering at that place as a demonstration and threatened to arrest CCHR Director Ou Virak for inciting those villagers to stage it without authorisation. After exhausting all means to persuade the police to remove the road block, the organizers had to cancel the forum.

The police action was tantamount not only to stopping that forum but to suppressing the rights of those villagers to freedom of assembly and expression as guaranteed by the Constitution of Cambodia and by the international human rights instruments to which Cambodia is a party.

I strongly urge you to take action against the police inspector of O Yadao district for the suppression of these constitutional rights of Cambodian citizens and also effective measures to prevent such suppression in future.

I trust you will take this proposed action and measures.

Yours sincerely,

---------------------

PLEASE SEND YOUR LETTERS TO:

1. Mr. Samdech Hun Sen
Prime Minister
Cabinet of the Prime Minister
No. 38, Russian Federation Street
Phnom Penh
CAMBODIA
Tel: +855 2321 9898
Fax: +855 23 36 0666
E-mail: cabinet1b@camnet.com.kh

2. Mr. Sar Kheng
Deputy-Prime Minister
Minister of Interior
No.275 Norodom Blvd., Phnom Penh
CAMBODIA
Fax/phone: +855 23 721 905 / 23 726 052 / 23 721 190
E-Mail: info@interior.gov.kh or moi@interior.gov.kh

3. Mr. Tea banh
Deputy Prime Minister
Minister of National Defence
Russian Federation Street
Phnom Penh
CAMBODIA
Tel: +855-23 883184 / 428171
Fax: +855-23 883184
E-mail: info@mond.gov.kh

4. Mr. Ang Vong Vathna
Minster of Justice
No 240, Sothearos Blvd.
Phnom Penh
CAMBODIA
Fax: +855 23 36 4119 / 21 6622
E-mail: moj@cambodia.gov.kh

5. Mr. Henro Raken
Prosecutor-General
Court of Appeal
No 240, Sothearos Blvd.
Phnom Penh
CAMBODIA
Tel: +855 11 86 27 70
Fax: +855 23 21 66 22

6. General Hok Lundy
National Police Commissioner
General-Commisariat of National Police
Phnom Penh
CAMBODIA
Tel: +855 23 21 65 85
Fax: +855 23 22 09 52

7. General Sao Sokha
Commander
Military Police
Mao Tse Tung Blvd
Khan Tuol Kok
Phnom Penh
Cambodia
Tel: +855 12 36 3636

8. Mr. Christophe Peschoux
Director
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights - Cambodia
N 10, Street 302
Sangkat Boeng Keng Kang I
Khan Chamcar Mon
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Far Far East Capitalism: Keat Chhon’s sister accused of bribing villagers to lie to the court on her behalf

Ministers’s sister accused of bribing villagers

28 July 2007
By Moeung Tum
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Socheata

The sister of the minister of economy and finance (Keat Chhon) was accused of bribing several dozens of villagers in Ratanakiri province to get their help in acting as her witnesses in a provincial court case involving land disputes.

The Cambodia Daily reported on Saturday that Keat Kolney, the younger sister of Keat Chhon, was subject to such accusation.

Sev Nhang, the chief of Pate commune, located in O’Yadaw district, Ratanakiri province, claimed that 39 villagers received 50,000 riels ($12.50) each from a former village chief by the name of Puch Svanh, a man who used to help Keat Kolney in her land transaction with villagers living in the region.

Sev Nhang, who is also a SRP party member, said that villagers told him that those who received the bribe were asked to write a declaration letter claiming that, in the past, the villagers did indeed accept to sell their lands to Keat Kolney. The villagers also accused Puch Svanh of telling the villagers how to answer during the clarifications they will give to the provincial court.

Sev Nhang added that, not only that, all the bribed villagers received foods from cars which distributed them when they go to court to provide their clarifications.

On 24 July, 42 villagers told the Ratanakiri provincial court that they volunteered to sell their lands without receiving any pressure from anyone.

However, these claims are contrary to the complaint brought up by another 12 villagers who sent in their lawsuit to court in January 2007. The 12 villagers said that villagers were forced to sell their lands located in Kong Yu village, and that they only agreed to sell 50-hectare of lands, because they heard that these lands will be redistributed to invalid soldiers in the name of prime minister Hun Sen.

However, Keat Kolney turned around and took these lands to plant rubber trees instead. Nevertheless, even with such accusation leveled against Keat Kolney, Prak Soeun, the provincial court clerk rejected such accusation of briberies.

An official of the Community Legal Education Center which represents a number of villagers in the land dispute, said that the provincial court should investigate this accusation of briberies because it is an illegal act.

Land Dispute Unearths Tension

From front, villagers in Phnom Penh: Sev Phem, 35; Romas Fil, 45; Sev Noch, 50; Sev Kem, 19; Sev Thveal, 23. They traveled to the capital in a failed attempt to get government officials to intercede in a land dispute. (By Erika Kinetz For The Washington Post)

Cambodian Villagers Challenge Networks of Patronage

Wednesday, July 4, 2007
By Erika Kinetz
Special to the Washington Post

"We believe there are those high in the government who are concerned about this and working hard to counter illegal logging ... It's not a totalitarian regime" (sic!) - Joseph Mussomeli, US Ambassador to Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- His grandmother's bones went missing two years ago, not long after the rains stopped. "The grave is all rubber trees" now, said Sev Thveal, 23. Part of the Jarai minority, he can barely read and write and has worked the land so long that his toenails are a permanent shade of brown.

He and 11 villagers are alleging in court that a wealthy businesswoman named Keat Kolney, whose husband and brother are senior figures in the Cambodian government, has illegally taken land belonging to 70 rural families to make way for a rubber plantation.

Keat Kolney declined to comment, hanging up when reached by telephone. But she denies the claims of wrongdoing, said her lawyer, Chhe Vibol, and is responding with legal action of her own.

The dispute is unfolding as Cambodia struggles to emerge from three decades of genocide and civil war. Now, the Southeast Asian country is trying to move beyond its thuggish past and build a society founded on the rule of law rather than networks of patronage.

Cambodia joined the World Trade Organization in 2004, and the government, which recently got its first sovereign debt ratings from Standard & Poor's and Moody's, plans to open domestic stock and bond markets as early as 2009. Government leaders cite these moves as proof of major progress, but human rights workers and many ordinary Cambodians say little has changed.

"A wealthy and powerful social class has emerged on the back of the state -- through the exploitation of the people and the country's resources," Yash Ghai, the U.N. secretary general's special representative for human rights in Cambodia, said in prepared remarks to the United Nations' Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Global Witness, a British advocacy group that served as Cambodia's forest monitor until it was expelled from the country in 2005, made similar charges in a recent report, saying a "kleptocratic elite" has been stripping Cambodia of its natural resources.

"In Cambodia's civil war, the warring factions used the country's natural resources as a means of generating income to fuel their military spending," Eleanor Nichol, a Global Witness campaigner, wrote in an e-mail from Washington. "Since then, Cambodia's political elite have found it hard to kick the habit of using the country's natural resources as their own personal cash cow."

Accusations from Global Witness enraged Cambodian officials, who denied wrongdoing and dismissed the report as politically motivated. The government banned the report's domestic dissemination -- an ineffective gesture as the document is freely available online -- and promised to launch its own investigation.

Despite booming economic growth, Cambodia is still heavily dependent on donor aid. When donors sat down in Phnom Penh on June 19 and 20 and committed to deliver $689 million, the Cambodian delegation included two men who Sev Thveal contends have the power to put his dead grandmother to rest.

They were Keat Kolney's older brother, Keat Chhon, who is the country's finance minister; and her husband, Chhan Saphan, one of the most powerful officials in the Ministry of Land Management.

Chhan Saphan declined an interview request, and Keat Chhon didn't respond to requests for comment.

Sev Thveal and his fellow villagers say that in 2004, Keat Kolney bribed numerous local officials with cash to help trick and bully the villagers into signing away close to 1,100 acres of their most fertile farmland.

Villagers contend that local officials threw a party for them, serving beer, traditional rice wine and pork. When villagers became drunk, officials took their thumbprints. Some of Keat Kolney's cash went to the villagers, the lawsuit contends, but they say they didn't realize what they were being paid for.

The plaintiffs say they thought they were signing over only about 125 acres to disabled soldiers from a group affiliated with Cambodia's prime minister, Hun Sen. But soon bulldozers arrived and cut through about 665 acres of cashew trees, rice paddies and vegetable gardens to make way for a vast rubber plantation. Villagers say they've lost 60 percent of their arable land and have not seen a single disabled soldier.

Now they want their land back. Chhe Vibol, the lawyer, says it's too late. "Rubber trees have already been planted on more than 200 hectares," or about 500 acres, he said. "Giving all the land back is impossible."

On June 21, Keat Kolney filed criminal lawsuits against the villagers and their lawyers, according to Chhe Vibol. She has also lodged a formal complaint with the Cambodian bar association, contending that lawyers working for two legal aid groups advising the plaintiffs have fallen under the sway of foreigners.

"We purchased the land legally," Chhe Vibol said.

Last month, villagers traveled from Ratanakiri, a remote province in northeastern Cambodia, to the capital Phnom Penh, where they visited the Ministry of Economy and Finance and made daily pilgrimages to the Ministry of Land Management, hoping to secure audiences with Keat Kolney's powerful relations and persuade them to intercede.

They had no luck. Now they're back home in Ratanakiri, hoping the imperfect wheels of Cambodian justice will turn in their favor. Ith Mathoura, one of their lawyers, says that's unlikely. Cambodia's notoriously corrupt judiciary, she says, almost always serves the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor.

"The land problem is everywhere in Cambodia," said Brian Rohan, an American attorney working as a legal adviser at the Community Legal Education Center, which is helping represent the villagers. "There is a lot of land-grabbing because the value of land is going up, stability has returned, and there is a lot of economic activity."

The case, he added, is "a powerful symbol for whether the Cambodian government is committed to implementing any of the policies it professes to support during its conversations with donors."

Government spokesman Khieu Kanharith declined to comment on the litigation between Keat Kolney and the villagers but warned against jumping to conclusions. "A few trees do not constitute a forest. What is most important is the political will of the government to establish the rule of law," he said.

He points to Cambodia's WTO entry, an arduous process that has required writing or rewriting many laws, as evidence of that commitment. "Our main concern is to make our law reach international standards. Sure, from paper to practice, there will be a gap, but at least the government is laying the ground for the rule of law," he said.

Now many are asking: How far has Cambodia actually come?

"There is clearly a grievous problem in this country with illegal logging and land-grabbing," U.S. Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli said in an interview. "No one with any credibility can deny that. The prime minister has admitted as much himself."

But Mussomeli added that he was not aware of evidence that would substantiate all the allegations Global Witness made against high-ranking officials.

"We believe there are those high in the government who are concerned about this and working hard to counter illegal logging," Mussomeli said. "It's not a totalitarian regime."

Meanwhile, villager Sev Thveal has a more immediate problem: his dead grandmother.

His family hasn't been able to appease her spirit with a proper buffalo sacrifice, he said. Because his farm got bulldozed, he has had to start buying rice to eat and doesn't have any extra money.

"I used to visit the burial ground of my grandmother every day of every month of every year," Sev Thveal said. "Now her spirit maybe just goes everywhere. She's homeless."