UCLA doctoral student John Scott-Railton uses mapping technology to help villagers in Cambodia and Senegal

May 6, 2010
By Shoshee Jau
Daily Bruin (UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA)

John Scott-Railton first stepped into Cambodia in 2006 carrying three global positioning systems receivers, determined to revolutionize the country’s water and sanitation systems.

“What if you take cheap, hand-held global position systems receivers, make points and make an objective ... map, and combine it with public health measures?,” Scott-Railton had asked himself. “I just wanted to see if this crazy idea would even work.”

Yet shortly after his arrival to Cambodia, he realized that water and sanitation were the least of his worries. After seeing the government bulldozing and claiming villagers’ land by force, Scott-Railton, currently a doctoral student at UCLA, said he redirected the goal of his project and decided to use his receivers’ mapping technique to salvage the property rights of thousands of Phnom Penh villagers.

“All the people from the village came to me and told me to please help them,” he said. “It was the worst feeling in the world because I felt so useless and they had false hope in me.”

Teaming up with various Cambodian nonprofit organizations, Scott-Railton developed a map of about 5,000 households in a central community of 25,000 to 50,000 people in Phnom Penh. With the help of interns from Cambodian universities, he conducted a census of the entire community.

Because the Cambodian government often took away villagers’ land without properly compensating them, Scott-Railton worked to provide documentation and proof of their property.

“The idea was to do all this work in support of legal cases, and the lawyers would use the maps and numbers to set up a case,” he said.

Scott-Railton came to UCLA to pursue his doctorate degree in 2008. In addition to his studies and work as a teaching assistant, he also began field work in Dakar, Senegal, using his devices’ mapping technique to analyze flood control methods in the city.

UCLA’s Center for Community Partnerships recently recognized Scott-Railton for his work in Senegal through the Rishwain Social Justice Entrepreneurship Award. He will also be presenting his project in Belgium this coming fall.

Because the monsoon season periodically brings chronic flooding to 800,000 Dakar villagers each year, families built a complex network of small dams and pathways around the city to keep the waters out. However, these networks only aggravated the problem, Scott-Railton said. After learning that citizens expected the government to aid them in flood control, he spoke with political leaders and advised them to take action.

Scott-Railton said he likens the situation in Dakar to the international problem of global warming because the lack of government regulation has allowed citizens to do as they like, exacerbating the initial problem.

In order to tackle the global warming issue, Scott-Railton said that people must partner with their communities and their governments in a global effort.

In spite of his accomplishments, Scott-Railton holds deep respect for his students and always tries to provide them with as much help and as many resources as possible, said Kennan Cronen, a third-year political science student.

“He’s always excited about his students’ ideas and ready to give his expertise,” Cronen said. “When I got funding for a solar panel project, John said that if we wrote a paragraph on the project, he would get an L.A. Times article written about it.”

Still in his 20s, Scott-Railton embodies what people can achieve through hard work, dedication and passion, said Gary Lee, a friend from Scott-Railton’s undergraduate years who helped him launch his project in Cambodia.

“John is a very easy person to work with,” Lee said. “He tries to understand other parties’ interests, and he’s never thought he was better than others.”

Hun Sen Said Disliking Supreme Commander Ke Kim Yan for Having Too Much Land

Ke Kim Yan (Bottom right) (Photo: AFP)

01 Oct 07
By Srei Ka
Moneakseka Khmer
Translated from Khmer and Posted online

According to a senior officer of the Cambodian People's Party [CPP], Hun Sen is angry with Ke Kimyan because he sees that Ke Kimyan owns too much land. It is not known whether Ke Kimyan bought the land from the people or he just grabbed it. However, it is a fact that vast tracts of land in the regions controlled by the armed forces have become Ke Kimyan's personal property, such as in Kampong Spoe province. The same officer said that in the Pong Peay area where a Korean company is investing without laying out any capital in the CamKo City project, Ke Kimyan also owns quite a huge tract of land there. And we are not talking about a number of other provinces.

Therefore, because he sees that Ke Kimyan owns so much real estate, which partly affects some development projects and crop plantations of the people, Hun Sen is not very pleased with Ke Kiyan. However, in reality Ke Kimyan's land is not located in industrial zones but is mostly agricultural land for fruit tree growing. As such, he cannot easily sell these plots of land and is therefore obliged to keep them, thus making him look so rich in land everywhere because the land he owns is not very sought-after.

As for the other CPP officials, they are wilier as they seek only to own land in industrial zones, which can be easily traded for great profits that they immediately deposit in banks. Hence, these officials are not seen as owning much land. For instance, Cham Prasith, minister of trade, and Sok An, minister of Council of Ministers Cabinet, apparently do not own hundreds of hectares of land like Ke Kimyan but each plot of land they own can fetch millions of dollars on the market.

This officer said that some CPP army chiefs, police officers, and high-ranking officials make a lot of money and are busy sending it to overseas banks. Sending and packing money to be deposited in foreign banks is not very obvious. No one knows how much money flows out because in Cambodia there is no anti-corruption law. When an official takes office, or leaves it, he does not have to declare his assets at all. Therefore, no one knows how many hundreds of millions of dollars these officials have.

According to this CPP officer, Ke Kimnyan's possessions cannot be compared with those of the civilian officials around Hun Sen like Cham Prasith, Sok An, Keat Chhon, Pen Simorn, Chea Chanto, or Chan Sarun. Let alone these civilian officials, Ke Kimyan's cannot be compared even with the assets of fellow army chiefs and police officers, such as Moeng Samphan, Kun Kim, Pol Saroeun, Meas Sophea, and Hok Langdi.

This CPP official said that between Hok Langdi and Ke Kimyan, the former being National Police Director General and the latter Armed Forces Supreme Commander, Hok Langdi is by far the richer. He did not know from where Hok Langdi has accumulated his fortune, but his son who is training as a pilot in Australia can afford to pay $100,000 a month for renting an airstrip. If Hok Langdi is not loaded, how can he do such a thing? However, comparing the land ownership between Hok Langdi's and Ke Kimyan's, the latter beats the former by a mile. Hok Langdi does not own much land but he has a lot of money, which is not very obvious to most observers. As for Ke Kimyan, he does not have a lot of money but he has a lot of land albeit not easily sellable but very visible. For this reason, Hun Sen is said to dislike Ke Kiyan, who owns so much land but does not make huge contributions to the CPP coffers like other police chiefs and army commanders. In fact, besides owning land, Ke Kimyan is not as rich as other CPP police officers, army chiefs, and senior officials.

An economic expert said that any country would do well if corrupt officials use the proceeds from their national-asset stripping acts to build factories and enterprises or to invest in various fields in the country, making the country prosper and helping bring jobs for the people so they can make money and live a better life. This is called poverty reduction because the looters of the national assets use the national money to invest in their own nation.

According to past observation, Cambodian officials known to own millions of dollars usually divert their money overseas and seek investors to come invest in Cambodia from abroad instead, thus keeping their own money fallow. It is frequently seen that some mainland Chinese having only $100-200.000 do not hesitate to sink their small capital in Cambodia and, enjoying the complicity of some corrupt government officials, they usually become rich in the end, making millions in profit, which they take back to their own country. Because Cambodian officials tend to send their money abroad, it is normal that a country with a great outflow of capital like Cambodia sees its domestic economy slump.

At the same time, this economic expert said, however, that it is probably because the Cambodian officials are afraid they might be accused of having a lot of money from stripping the national assets that they dare not make investment in their own country, preferring to pack up and send their loots abroad while continuing to suck up money from inside the country. This is why some diplomats have said that the Cambodian elite are never satiated.