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.

Cambodia: A land up for sale?

Romam Fil says he was tricked into signing away more land
The Cambodian government has been accused of undermining the poor

Wednesday, 12 August 2009
By Robert Walker
BBC World Service

"They cleared areas where our people had their farms, and they destroyed our burial ground" - Romam Fil

Romam Fil is moving rapidly through a dense patch of forest. Every few metres he pauses and points to edible plants and roots that the Jarai people of north eastern Cambodia have relied on for generations.

Then suddenly the trees come to an end. In front of us is a vast clearing, the red earth churned up and dotted with tree stumps.

Beyond that, stretching as far as we can see is a rubber plantation, the young trees are still thin and spindly and sway gently in the breeze.

This is the scene of a battle the Jarai people of Kong Yu village have been fighting, and losing for the past five years.

It started when local officials called a meeting and said they needed some of the forest.

"They told us they wanted to give part of our land to disabled soldiers," said Mr Fil.

"They said if you don't give us the land, we'll take it. So we agreed to give them a small area, just 50 hectares."

The villagers say they were then invited to a party and when many of them were drunk they were asked to put their thumbprints on documents.

"Most of us don't know how to read or write, and the chiefs did not explain what the thumbprints were for," said Mr Fil.

The villagers later found they had signed away more than 400 hectares - and the land was not for disabled soldiers, but a private company who began making way for the rubber plantation.

"They cleared areas where our people had their farms, and they destroyed our burial ground," said Mr Fil.

Political connections?

Lawyers for the owner of the plantation company, a powerful businesswoman called Keat Kolney, insist she bought the land legally.

But groups advocating for local land rights in Cambodia say part of the reason she was able to acquire the land is because she is married to a senior official in the ministry of land management.

It is not the only case where those closely connected to senior government figures are alleged to have taken land from poor Cambodians.

Five years ago, in north-western Pursat province a large grazing area was turned into an economic land concession - land the government grants to private firms for investment in large-scale agriculture.

It was allocated to a politically well-connected company called Pheapimex.

"They just came one day with their bulldozers and started clearing the land straight away," said Chamran, a farmer in the area.

"So we organised a demonstration but then a grenade was thrown among us - we don't know who by. Nine people were injured. The military police pointed a gun in my stomach and said if you hold another demonstration we will kill you."

Transparent process

Under the law, land concessions granted by the government should not exceed 10,000 hectares but the Pheapimex concession, although much of it is so far inactive, covers 300,000 hectares.

Global Witness, an environmental pressure group, estimates Pheapimex now controls 7% of Cambodia's land area.

The organisation says the company's owners, a prominent senator and his wife, have strong links to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Pheapimex did not reply to requests for a response to these allegations, but the Cambodian government maintains that the process by which private companies acquire land is both transparent and legal.

"The requirement is not to be close to the prime minister," said Phay Siphan, spokesman for Cambodia's Council of Ministers.

"The requirement is that you have enough capital, you have the technology to develop the land."

'Kleptocratic state'

It is not just in rural areas that people complain of losing land.

Cambodia's recent stability, following decades of violence, has attracted a rapid boom in tourism and a race among foreign and local entrepreneurs for prime real estate on which to build new resorts.

Many of the country's beaches have already been bought up.

And rights groups estimate that 30,000 people have been forcibly evicted from their homes in the capital Phnom Penh over the past five years to make way for new developments.

The roots of the problem date back to the 1970s when the brutal Khmer Rouge regime abolished private property and destroyed many title documents.

A land law passed in 2001 recognises the rights of people who have lived on land without dispute for five years or more, but in many cases it is not being implemented.

The UN estimates hundreds of thousands of Cambodians are now affected by land disputes.

The government has said that they are not forcefully taking land from farmers
But land is not the only state asset being sold at an alarming rate.

Beginning in the 1990s, large swathes of the country's rich forests were bought up by logging companies.

Now sizeable mining and gas concessions are also being granted to private enterprises.

Eleanor Nichol of Global Witness believes individual members of the Cambodian government, right up to the highest levels, are benefiting.

"Essentially what we're dealing with here is a kleptocratic state which is using the country and its assets as their own personal slush fund," she said.

The Cambodian government rejects these allegations.

"They could accuse [the government of] anything they like. Cambodia operates under a modernised state of law. Everyone is together under one law,” said Phay Siphan.

Back in Kong Yu village, the Jarai people are waiting to hear the result of suit filed in a local court to try to get their land back.

"If the company gets the land, many of our people will starve," says Mr Fil.

"If we lose the land, we have lost everything.”

Assignment is broadcast on BBC World Service on Thursday at 0906 GMT and repeated at 1406 GMT, 1906 GMT, 2306 GMT and on Saturday at 1106 GMT.

Jarai land not 'worthless'

Friday, 22 May 2009
Written by Community Legal Education Centre
Letter to The Phnom Penh Post

Dear Editor,

The Community Legal Education Centre (CLEC) and Legal Aid of Cambodia (LAC) would like to clarify a number of statements made by Judge Thor Sarorn of the Ratanakkiri provincial court regarding the planting of trees on contested land in the province.

The judge's remarks concern the longstanding land conflict between Keat Kolney and the ethnic Jarai villagers of Kong Yu village in Ratanakkiri. Referring to the recent planting of rubber trees on land that was illegally cleared in late 2008 under the pretense of creating a "fire road" around Keat Kolney's existing rubber trees, the judge was quoted as saying, "Keat Kolney doesn't want anything besides developing useless forest into rubber trees." We would like to remind the judge that this recently cleared land in fact contained farmland and an ancient burial ground of the Kong Yu villagers. We have shared our photographic and GPS evidence with the judge to support this assertion. Far from being "useless" land, this land is hallowed land to the Jarai people. Furthermore, as such, it is subject to special protection under the 2001 Land Law.

The judge also said that the Kong Yu villagers had filed their lawsuit in early 2007 only because they had been incited by lawyers working for NGOs and foreigners. We would like to point out that our lawyers have been diligently working on this case since 2006. They have been proud to work closely with the Kong Yu villagers as they have peacefully exerted their lawful rights to complain to the court and other authorities. For the judge to describe our lawyers' work as incitement reveals a misunderstanding of both our work and of the nature of incitement itself.

All of our lawyers' work has been meticulously conducted according to Cambodian law and procedure. Furthermore, our work of supporting and defending the Jarai villagers as they assert their legal rights cannot constitute incitement because nowhere - not even in Cambodia - does assisting another to assert lawful rights constitute incitement. In other words, one cannot be incited to do something that is legal.

It was a proud day for Cambodia's justice system in January 2007 when the Jarai villagers from Kong Yu filed their complaint against such a powerful individual as Keat Kolney. It will be an even prouder day when the court actually takes actions to resolve this case according to law.

Community Legal Education Centre
Legal Aid of Cambodia
Phnom Penh

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.

Khmer Intelligence News - 4 February 2009

KHMER INTELLIGENCE NEWS
4 February 2009

No army or police reshuffle in the next three weeks (2)

King Norodom Sihamoni left Cambodia today for a three-week visit to China where he will stay with the King-Father and the Queen-Mother in Beijing. Some observers infer that there would be no army or police reshuffle during the King's absence because only the Monarch can sign off Royal Decrees promoting or demoting high-ranking government officials.

49 potential Assembly seats for non-CPP parties (1)

Funcinpec (FUN) and Norodom Ranariddh Party (NRP), which have just signed a cooperation agreement for the upcoming provincial and district elections in May 2009, would have won 9 National Assembly seats, instead of 4 (2 + 2 ), had they presented a single list of candidates at the last parliamentary poll in July 2008.

If the following non-CPP political parties had been united last year they would have won the following number of Assembly seats (out of 123):

• Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) + Human Rights Party (HRP): 34 instead of 29 separately (26 + 3).
• SRP + HRP + NRP: 41 seats instead of 31 separately (26 + 3 + 2).
• SRP + HRP + NRP + FUN: 46 seats instead of 33 separately (26 + 3 + 2 + 2).
• SRP + HRP + NRP + FUN + Smaller Parties: 49 seats instead of 33 separately (26 + 3 + 2 + 2 + 0).

Simulations are made in the framework of the prevailing proportional representation system using the largest-average formula. Details at http://tinyurl.com/63zuyc

Land grabber Keat Kolney testified in favor of Hor Nam Hong in Paris (1)

In relation with the defamation lawsuit he filed against opposition leader Sam Rainsy before the French Court , Foreign Affairs Minister Hor Nam Hong produced last December in Paris a testimony from Ms Keat Kolney, who is Finance Minister Keat Chhon's sister.

Keat Kolney wrote: "Mr. Hor Nam Hong, whom I knew and met at special meetings presided over by Ieng Sary [at the Boeng Trabek re-education camp], was torn apart [in his conscience] and had to resign himself to following the will of the Khmer Rouge."

Keat Chhon recognizes that he was Pol Pot's personal secretary and special adviser from 1975 to 1982. His sister Keat Kolney is currently involved in land grabbing in the Northeast of Cambodia and has clashed with indigenous people (hill tribe minorities) there.

See details of Keat Kolney's activities at http://tinyurl.com/cos5al and at http://tinyurl.com/dkeedq

Semantics and politics: "Siem" and "Yuon" versus Thailand and Vietnam (2)

Ordinary Cambodian people continue to widely use old and traditional terms to speak about their neighbors even though they may not sound politically correct for some people.

For instance, headlines in today's main Khmer-language newspapers, both government-affiliat ed and opposition-affiliat ed, call Thailand or Thai authorities "Siem". Similarly, the same newspapers have been often calling Vietnam or Vietnamese authorities "Yuon".

Actually, the words "Siem" and "Yuon" have been used by the Khmer people since several hundreds years ago, at a time when Thailand (formerly Siam ) and Vietnam (formally Annam ) did not exist under their current names, as evidenced by inscriptions on century-old temple steles.

Nowadays, in their daily language, Khmer people indifferently use "Siem" or "Thai" on the one hand, and "Yuon" or " Vietnam " on the other. There are old geographic places such as Siem Reap province, Kampong Siem district (in Kampong Cham province), Banteay Yuon (a village in Pursat province), Prek Yuon (a river in Kandal province). In culinary arts, there is a dessert called Chomnei Siem (Thai delicacy) and a dish called Samlo M'chu Yuon (Vietnamese sour soup).

Therefore "Siem" and "Yuon" are not derogatory words as some foreign "experts" pretend.

See today's Cambodian newspapers' headlines at http://tinyurl.com/d9ouqu

[End]

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
Phnom Penh
Cambodia
Tel: +855 23 987 671 / 987 672, 993 590 / 993 591 or +855 23 216 342
Fax: +855 23 212 579 / 213 587

Thank you.

Land dispute in Pate commune, Ratanakiri province

29 July 2007
By Ratha Visal
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Socheata

On Friday 27 July 2007, Kong Yu villagers, in Pate commune, Ratanakiri province, rejected the report claiming that about 30 villagers recognized they indeed sold their lands and agreed to stop suing Keat Kolney – wife of Chhan Sophan, the secretary of state at the ministry of land management, urban planning and construction (and also the sister of Keat Chhon) – regarding a 500-hectare land dispute.

48-year-old Romas Tin confirmed that this was not the real intention of the villagers: “They don’t want to accept it (helping lie for Keat Kolney), but they were scared of the former village chief who threatened them.”

35-year-old Romam Mum, confirmed also that villagers lack understanding and they feared for their personal safety, that was why they forced themselves to provide their thumbprints on the declaration (helping Keat Kolney exculpate herself) presented to them by the former village chief.

Romam Mum said: “The former village chief summoned us to the hotel, they paid for the food and drink, they paid for the transportation, they paid us when we came back home 50,000 riels ($12.50). During the court session, the former village chief said to fight it.”

Puy Svanh, the former village chief, rejected the accusation made by the villagers against him: “Who forced them? Saying that I forced them? They just say whatever they want.”

Last week, Mey Sokhorn, the prosecutor of the provincial court, summoned about 30 villagers to come and clarify the 500-hectare land dispute between the villagers and Keat Kolney.

Nevertheless, Chhay Vibol, Keat Kolney’s lawyer said: “Whatever they said, it depends on the court clerk, I don’t know anything. We help them some for their trip to come here.”

Miss Ith Mathura, a lawyer for the Community Legal Education Center who is defending the ethnic minority villagers, said that she was looking for additional proofs to confirm the rejection of the report on the villagers.

Ith Mathura said: “Puy Svanh, the former village chief, forced them (villagers) to repeat what he told them, if they refused to repeat they were not allowed to come back home, and they would be sent to jail, they were threatened to repeat after him.”

Miss Sev Khem, a representative of the Kong Yu villagers, said that the villagers continue to make their claims and their lawsuit against Keat Kolney to reclaim back the community lands which were used by the villagers for ethnic traditions.

In January 2007, 12 representatives of the Kong Yu and Kong Thom villages provided thumbprints on two lawsuits rejecting the transfer of ownership on 500-hectare of lands between villagers and Keat Kolney which was concluded by the commune and village authorities. The 12 accused Keat Kolney of colluding to falsify documents tricking the villagers in a corruption scheme to occupy community lands and turning them into a rubber plantation.

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."

Cambodian land grab exploits poor and marginalized people

WHITE GOLD: Much of the indigenous land that gets illegally sold through economic concessions goes to individuals and companies interested in investing in lucrative rubber plantations. Southeast Asia is today's main source of natural rubber, accounting for more than 90 per cent of global output in 2005.

04/25/2007
STORY & PHOTOS BY LUKE BROCKI
The Powell River Peak (www.zwire.com, BC, Canada)

PART THREE OF A SERIES

Powell River Peak reporter Luke Brocki travelled to Cambodia and Vietnam after winning a fellowship administered by the Jack Webster Foundation and funded by the Canadian International Development Agency.

The third installment in his series of development-related stories explores land alienation in indigenous minority communities in Cambodia's Ratanakiri Province. In his travels, Brocki found a collective of non-governmental organizations and human rights advocates fighting illegal land sales and rampant government corruption that threatens the livelihoods of these rural communities.

Alienation
The remote forests of Ratanakiri Province, the same ones that housed Pol Pot's main party encampments in the 1960s, are on the front lines of Cambodia's newest struggle--the struggle to stop the land grab.

Indigenous minorities, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, are losing their land and livelihoods to land concessions sanctioned by a government blinded by economic development.

The World Rainforest Movement, an international network of citizens' groups involved in efforts to defend the world's rainforests, reports that by 2004, private companies had taken control of 2.7 million hectares of land under concession contracts in Cambodia.

The land grabs threaten to destroy Ratanakiri's ecosystem as forests are razed and replaced with monoculture plantations of rubber and cashew.

Human rights advocates say there is no clearer example in Cambodia today of the rich and powerful exploiting the poor and marginalized. The demands of lawyers fighting the land grabs are simple: return the land to the communities to which it rightfully belongs and punish those who stole it, but the accused don't feel they're breaking any laws and, given a serious lack of detail in the country's legal framework, this is proving difficult to disprove.

"Previously all the natural resources in the area have been protected, but this protection was war and political instability," says Graeme Brown, Ratanakiri coordinator for Community Forestry International (CFI), an organization that helps rural communities stabilize and regenerate forests by designing, organizing and facilitating policy dialogues at various levels of government.

"If you look regionally, you see Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Burma. War across that whole region has finished and political stability is coming about. All the resources in the Mekong Region have become available."

Brown is an Australian volunteer based out of Ratanakiri for the past seven years. His program, now localized into a Cambodian organization that CFI continues to support, deals with indigenous rights. Specifically, his team is studying and mapping indigenous systems of land management in hopes the mainstream system will recognize the differences.

"The farms are owned by the community, but there are individual family rights within that. Same thing with the forest; it is owned and used collectively. The mainstream systems don't cater well to that because they're based on individual land ownership."

The communities Brown studies practice a form of slash and burn agriculture, which, to the untrained eye, leaves large portions of land vacant and unexploited.

"The problem is that communities would be using shifting cultivation within a rotational system," he says. "They'd clear an area, farm it for three to five years, then move to another area. In the interim, it allows the forest to regrow."

But when villagers leave their fallow farm plots, they face a risk of outsiders taking the land. Companies eyeing the land for its fertile soil appeal to a government obsessed with economic development and are often granted the land in a concession. It is usually planted with rubber trees, thus being removed from the agricultural cycle. Resulting disputes erupt into bitter battles, since indigenous people don't have documents to prove the land belongs to them. In a defensive strategy, some plant cashews on the fallow land to strengthen their claim of tenure; it becomes harder for outsiders to claim the land isn't used for productive means when villagers are seen harvesting nuts for export to neighbouring Vietnam. But, either way, the land leaves the rotational system so important for indigenous agriculture.

"It's anarchic," says Brown. "If the ownership of land is not clear, it cannot be sold. It's a fundamental legal principle. And, according to the [2001] Land Law, they must manage the land according to traditions. That was put in there to stop land grabbing. If you translate that, it means the sale of indigenous people's land is not legal, because it's not a traditional form of management. But those protection measures are not enforced."

There are lessons to be learned from the recently devastated Amazon, but they're not positive ones: the rich and powerful got away with it and they want to do the same here, says Brown. "There's not a lot of distinction between government and business in Cambodia. This concept of a trickle-down economy doesn't work because the legal systems don't work. It's a suck-up economy. Because of the kickbacks through informal fees, resource exploitation is further centralizing power. Poor people are being told they have to develop, but in fact they're having their resources extracted away from them."

Ngy San, deputy executive director of the NGO [non-governmental organization] Forum on Cambodia, an umbrella organization seeking to build cooperation between Cambodia's NGOs on issues affecting Cambodia's development, agrees. "If you focus on the free-market economy, competition is not fair to people without education and power, to those who don't understand the laws. Land is getting taken before completion of the titling process and it's a few hundred people who have had the opportunity to buy land, people with strong connections to the party."

Under the 2001 Land Law, which was passed to provide a legal framework for land matters, an ancestral claim to the land is enough to prove ownership, but that's not the case in practice, says Ngy. What's worse, he says, is that most of the articles in the Land Law are too general to be implemented in the absence of sub-decrees and regulations. And waiting for those sub-decrees to fall into place requires time the communities don't have. Unless something changes, there'll be little land left to be titled in the future, he says. "The government doesn't care about sustainable development of the country. They just want to export the resources and make money and protect their power. Under the current government, it will change for the worse. The history of Cambodia will come back again."

Kong Yu
One village in Ratanakiri has been making recent headlines in Cambodia's English newspapers since it decided to fight for the return of land it lost to a shady deal several years ago. Kong Yu, located in the O'Yadao district, some 40 kilometres from provincial capital Banlung--two hours by car along a bumpy dirt road--has attracted the attention of human rights and legal advocacy groups and become the poster child for the fight against land alienation in Cambodia's northeast.

About 45 families in the village of Kong Yu are affected by an illegal land sale finalized in 2004. These families are part of the Jarai indigenous group and rely on the seized land--500 hectares--to practice traditional swidden or slash and burn agriculture, cattle grazing and collection of non-timber forest products.

According to the Phnom Penh-based Community Legal Education Center (CLEC), a local NGO dedicated to the promotion of the rule of law, democracy and development in Cambodia, commune officials met with Kong Yu villagers in March 2004 and attempted to persuade them to sell communal land to a person in Phnom Penh, claiming the land legally belonged to the state and later explaining the seizure was necessary to give the land to disabled soldiers from Prime Minister's Hun Sen's army--a lie designed to deceive and threaten the villagers.

These meetings took on an increasingly hostile tone and the villagers, threatened and unfamiliar with government institutions and practices, agreed to give away about 50 hectares. Families in Kong Yu then received gifts of $400 and a sarong, but local officials did not tell them this was in exchange for their land. The deal was sealed at a feast organized by authorities in August 2004. CLEC reports authorities got villagers drunk on rice wine and had them thumbprint documents written in Khmer script, a language largely foreign to Ratanakiri's indigenous people. No copies of the documents were provided to the villagers.

Villagers subsequently learned they had signed away not 50 but 500 hectares of communal land and not to Hun Sen's soldiers, but to a well-connected buyer.

The buyer, Keat Kolney, is the sister of the senior minister at the ministry of economy and finance, and the wife of the secretary of state at the ministry of land management.

Since the land deal went down, bulldozers have cleared about 300 hectares of communal land, company workers have replanted the razed area with rubber trees, and villagers approached CLEC for help and formal legal representation. The case, filed as a joint complaint by 12 signatories on January 23, 2007, accuses the buyer and seven others of tricking villagers out of about 500 hectares of land in August 2004. Villagers have requested the prosecutor take legal action against the suspects for fraud, faking private documents, bribery and the abuse of the land of indigenous peoples. The case is moving its way up Cambodia's legal system, having been first heard in provincial court in early March.

CLEC lawyers say this case, despite being one of the smaller land grab conflicts in the country, is one of the most egregious examples of a recurring pattern of land grabbing in ethnic minority regions: powerful individuals from Phnom Penh identify desirable lands and work through corrupt local officials to circumvent the 2001 Land Law and illegally acquire the land.

But the buyer remains unrepentant. Keat Kolney's assistant representative Nou Prieh, feels the land sale was legal, since each villager thumbprinted a document agreeing to sell his or her individually managed plot of land. Furthermore, he feels the complaint doesn't represent the feelings of the village, but those of a few unhappy individuals. "The other villagers are happy with the company because we provide them jobs," he says at his estate on the newly created rubber plantation bordering Kong Yu village. "During the crop season, villagers come here to clear the grass and get paid from 7,000 to 9,000 riel per day."

He isn't worried about the case reaching provincial court. The goals of the rubber plantation are parallel to the goals of the government to develop industry, he says. "This is Cambodia, so I don't worry."

Sev Khem, one of the signatories of the complaint, disagrees. She feels the village stands united in its dissatisfaction at the 2004 sale. About 65 villagers gather around her during an interview and shout their disapproval. "Nobody has ever worked at the plantation," she says, adding the company's presence on their land has been detrimental to their safety as well as their livelihood. She says the company's bodyguards continue to utter threats and extort money from the villagers by taking hostage their farm animals.

History lessons
The history of Cambodia will come back again, warned Ngy San above. He wasn't talking about ancient, forgotten history. According to Ian Baird, a Victoria native making Southeast Asia his home for the past 15 years, happenings of the 1960s put into perspective the current political climate in Cambodia. "This particular point is very important for the land grabbing issue: the whole revolution against [Norodom] Sihanouk was largely based around rubber plantations," says Baird, executive director of Global Association for People and the Environment (GAPE), an international NGO that coordinates community development and conservation programs in Southeast Asia.

Sihanouk ruled Cambodia from 1954, a year after Cambodia gained independence from France, until 1970, when he was betrayed and overthrown by his close associate, Lon Nol. Sihanouk remains one of Cambodia's most controversial postwar figures. Followers admire his patriotism and neutrality, crediting him with keeping Cambodia peaceful through the 1960s in the face of war and revolution in neighbouring countries. Opponents see him as indirectly engineering the country's downfall into Pol Pot's murderous Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s.

"Essentially, you had a situation where he was expropriating people's lands and forcing people to work," says Baird, who recently returned to academia as a human geographer after a long stint in activism.

The high rates of return of rubber plantations were no secret to Sihanouk in the 1960s and neither were the fertile red volcanic soils of Cambodia's northeast, so he mandated the creation of an 8,000-hectare rubber plantation in Ratanakiri Province. Since urban Khmer were afraid of the area's tribal magic, spirit powers and malaria, they did not want to farm the plantation and Sihanouk forced locals to do the work. "The plantations were coming in and people were getting upset," says Baird. "The people were ripe for someone to come in and organize them against the government. They were ripe to be picked."

Unfortunately, the picker was Pol Pot, returning to the hills of Ratanakiri from a postsecondary education in France and establishing a foothold in Cambodia's underground communist movement.

Today, recent history is giving an encore performance. "Starting in about 1993, donor countries were pushing Cambodia's government to industrialize and it eventually took on a life of its own," says Baird. "And you can be sure Hun Sen is well aware of this. There've been recent amnesties where they've released all these villagers that have been jailed for fighting for their lands. Land issues is why the revolution happened before."

The problem continues to gather international attention; Donica Pottie, Cambodia's Canadian Ambassador, expresses similar concerns. "Indigenous people's rights to communal ownership of traditional lands are established under the existing Land Law," she states in a January release on the land sector.

"However, six years have now passed since the adoption of that law and still not a single indigenous group has been issued with title . . . there is a genuine risk that little land will be left to register once a regulatory framework for collective title is in place."

The race against time to pass sub-decrees and issue communal titling to Cambodia's indigenous minorities continues.

Summary of problems

• The 2001 Land Law recognizes collective land ownership of indigenous communities and contains provisions for interim land security and the prevention of the sales of land in the absence of a titling process. But, following standard Cambodian legal practice, the law consists of general principles that lack sufficient detail for its application; the sub-decrees and implementing regulations needed for its effective implementation have proven difficult to attain.
• Severe land alienation, already affecting countless indigenous communities in Cambodia, is now gaining momentum in the face of peace and political stability, with large multinational companies taking an interest in the prospective economic gains from land grabs.
• Indigenous people are a small minority, disadvantaged by language, social and cultural barriers and highly dependent on their natural resource base for survival. Many are uneducated, unfamiliar with Khmer laws and concepts of individual ownership, and thus ripe for exploitation.
• Land loss, largely in the form of economic concessions, is fueling a breakdown of the social fabric and livelihood of indigenous communities and destroying future options and possibilities for community development and poverty reduction.