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.

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.

Cambodia For Sale - SBS Australia Video

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Video Journalist David O'Shea reports from Cambodia, where locals are now faced with a new peril - rampant land developers literally smashing entire communities, leaving thousands homeless.

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.)

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.