National Danger

Forced eviction in Spean Chhes (Photo: Licadho)

Op-Ed by Cambodian Learner

Dear Sir/Madam:

Since I see national danger in my eyes, I want to extend my vision to you that Cambodia now is destroying itself.

Rain forests, and trees have been largely destroyed. Many vast areas of lands and farms lands of the people have been transferred to private hands and companies partly belong to government officials and foreigners.

Cambodia has become so hot now since no much forests and trees to reduce sun heat (partly also affects from global heat wave); many farmers are crying because no lands for farms, no home, no water, and no food. Are we as humans, as rational humans, happy with this?

Impossible that Cambodia will experience bloody revolution from farmers who will direct their anger to kill "government officials".

In their mind, "government officials" become scary words, frightening, terrible and hateful. They are afraid of this word - not respect.

The word "government officials" therefore refer to scary persons - and disdainful, greedy and no virtue, and uneducated.

To restore value of this word, and help Cambodia from the coming danger - the government must stop displacing people from their lands and farms - that make them poor, homeless, landless, and slaves on their lands. In 18th century in Europe, federalist corrupted bourgeois were destroyed by bloody revolution from the poor and the farmers. I see that Cambodia is moving toward this unknowingly. See nowadays, the use of armed forces and soldiers in a violent way to scare people and to evict people from their lands - the same as authoritarian and totalitarian regimes did in Europe about 200 years ago. But when these authoritarian and totalitarian regimes collapsed because more and more people became poor, landless, increasing workers / proletariats with no skills, and hence rampant corruption and inequality, all the poor, the workers and farmers were willing to die to change the regimes. A lot of killings were made on the government officials during that time. See for instances, they got rid of Louis XVI in France, and even Russian royal places and those church officials who joint hands with the corrupt elite.

This occur again in Cambodian in the 21st century.

Cambodian Learner

The rotten peace dividend

In failing to make aid conditional on good governance, foreign donors have helped create a new disaster in post-conflict Cambodia.

Tuesday 23 October 2007
Simon Taylor (Global Witness)

Click here to read the article in Khmer with comments from Mr. Ly Diep

Today marks the anniversary of the 1991 Paris Peace Accords - the agreement which signalled the beginning of the end of decades of violent conflict in Cambodia and the start of the biggest and most costly peacekeeping operation in history. Yet 16 years later, the country once regarded as the international poster-boy for post-conflict nation building is fast becoming South-East Asia's newest kleptocracy; its reputation marred by allegations of massive corruption, impunity, human rights abuses, and repressive, undemocratic governance. The international community - whose money has bankrolled this shattered state's rehabilitation - has singularly failed to stop the rot. Lessons must be learned if other fragile states are to avoid a similarly disastrous outcome.

On paper, Cambodia's natural resources and state assets - the land, forests, minerals and heritage sites - were the basis for kickstarting the post-conflict economy. The revenue generated should have gone towards poverty alleviation and rebuilding infrastructure. Instead, systematic and institutionalised corruption has deprived the entire population of the revenue that could have come from these public goods.

A cursory glance at today's Cambodian business sector reveals the country's forests, land, mining, ports, national buildings and casinos to be predominantly controlled by a handful of government-affiliated tycoons or family members of senior political figures. Information about deals is not made available to the Cambodian people to whom the state's resources belong. Similarly, consultation with local populations dependent upon forests or land is often non-existent. For many Cambodians, the first they know is the sound of a chainsaw revving or a bulldozer arriving to flatten their crops.

Cambodia's forests are a case in point. In the 1990s they were described by the World Bank as the country's "most developmentally important resource". Today they are largely degraded, having been sold off over the years by the political elite to private companies or individuals intent on logging as much as possible to turn a quick buck. Most of the vast wealth generated has not reached the national coffers: instead it appears to have been siphoned off into the private bank accounts of the loggers and their political patrons.

While a booming textile and tourism industry has resulted in double-digit economic growth in recent years, the reality is that Cambodians are still among the world's poorest people and wealth inequality is increasing. With an estimated 35% of the population living below the poverty line, and the vast majority without electricity or mains water, survival remains a challenge for millions. Meanwhile, government-sanctioned forced evictions and land grabs are rife, human rights violations are common, corruption is endemic and impunity is the norm. Over the past five years, this has been accompanied by a backward-slide in space for civil society and political opposition to operate, resulting in a governance system recently described by the UN rapporteur on human rights as "a shaky facade of democracy".

Cambodia's donors have provided the equivalent of over 50% of the government's annual budget for over a decade now. Having spent billions of dollars in setting up a democratic system in Cambodia, one would assume that donors and their domestic tax payers have an interest in preserving it. Yet the international donor community has consistently failed to bring the government to book for blatant violations of its commitments to protect human rights, fight corruption, and ensure the protection of natural resources. In the 1990s, turning a blind eye was justified by the need to ensure "stability". From stability would flow economic development, and from economic development would flow political pluralism. The past 16 years have revealed the impotence of such logic. With each successive failure of the donor community to deal with the regime's failure to honour commitments to good governance, those responsible have increased their wealth and impunity. The end result is that Cambodians find it harder and harder to call their government to account.

It is not too late for the international community to redefine its terms of engagement with Cambodia, but it will require a fundamental shift in mindset. At its core must be a recognition that stripping a country of its assets for personal gain represents a mass violation of the social and economic rights of its people. Next, donors must impose sanctions on those who they believe are corruptly profiteering from the exploitation of the state's resources. These measures should include a freeze on all assets, restrictions on international travel and a ban on doing business with nationals of the donor country.

This will be a bitter pill to swallow for those donors who would prefer to enjoy an amicable relationship with the Cambodian government. Yet, if the international community cannot get it right in a small and relatively non-strategic country such as Cambodia, what hope for the likes of Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo? To continue to give overseas aid without the courage to tackle blatant mass corruption and poor governance is the equivalent of pouring good money after bad. Worse, it confers a badge of approval and reinforces the legitimacy of a government which is not acting in the interests of its own population. Cambodia and its people deserve better.

Harvested to make Ecstasy, Cambodia’s trees are felled one by one

September 3rd, 2009
By Sam Campbell
GlobalPost

International drug trade drives illicit safrole-oil factories deep in the Cardamom mountains.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The pulse of dance-club music plays like a jungle beat, as thumping bass notes flirt with flashing lights, liquor and ecstasy of the pharmaceutical kind.

Miles and miles away, a little-known multi-billion dollar battle is playing out in the remote wilderness of Cambodia, linking the club scene to the jungle in a more nefarious way.

Clandestine factories deep in the Cardamom Mountains of western Cambodia are producing safrole oil — also known as sassafras oil — the main ingredient in the party drug Ecstasy.

The recreational drug produces a euphoria its users say is so good even yawning is unparalleled while under its influence. But this euphoria is not without its downside — and not just the toll it takes on the brain, which at least one animal study shows can still be detected seven years from the time of use.

There is a growing, and perhaps just as deadly, price being paid by the local environment. Trees containing the viscous, fragrant, safrole oil are felled during the manufacturing process. Their oil-rich roots are mechanically shredded and boiled in large cauldrons. The resulting mixture is then distilled over fires that require enormous quantities of firewood to fuel them.

Safrole oil manufacturing is a big business, and as a result, severe deforestation and erosion scar the mountainous areas around the factories. The ramshackle, jury-rigged distilleries are perilous at best, and explosions are not unknown. Nearby streams that provide water for processing are soon fouled by factory waste, their delicate ecosystems poisoned. Even the oil itself is carcinogenic.

Though small-scale production of safrole oil for traditional remedies has been going on for centuries in Cambodia, the industrial production of oil destined for the narcotics trade has been ebbing and flowing since the late 1990s. In recent years, authorities have taken action against the safrole industry with some recent high-profile raids highlighting the issue.

A June 12, 2009 raid, led jointly by conservation NGO Fauna and Flora International and the Cambodian authorities, netted 142 barrels containing 5.7 tons of sassafras oil. Seized from a secluded house in the isolated village of O’ Kambou in the western Cardamom mountains, the haul could have produced 44 million tablets of Ecstasy with a total street value of $1.2 billion.

Most safrole oil distilleries are found in the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary, which is located in the Cardamoms and is where the majority of oil-bearing trees remain, according to FFI.

FFI and the Cambodian authorities have an ongoing cooperation. They began putting pressure on the industry in 2004, although a December 2008 investigation showed that production had again surged. Aerial flyovers around that time revealed 16 factories in operation. Subsequent raids have now reduced that number to four, said FFI Wildlife Sanctuary Technical Advisor Tim Wood. At the height of the industry in 2006, he added, there were at least 75 distilleries in the area.

In June 2008, 1,278 barrels of sassafras oil were destroyed in Pursat province by Australian police, environmental NGOs and Cambodian authorities. Tim Morris, Australian federal police assistant commissioner, said the haul would have produced an estimated 245 million Ecstasy tablets with a street value of $7.6 billion.

The western Cardamoms are part of southeast Asia’s largest mainland contiguous rainforest and serve as the last refuge for more than 80 of the world’s most threatened species, including Asian elephant, Indochinese tiger and Siamese crocodile, according to FFI.

Safrole oil, which is also used in the production of cosmetics and in the traditional Khmer remedies, is produced from the aromatic oil of a tree known in Khmer as Mreah prew phnom, which experts think is Cinnamomum parthenoxylon. The species is generally considered rare, and in Vietnam, it is classified as critically endangered. It has no common name in English and no one knows how many of the trees are left in the world.

Four Mreah prew phnom trees are needed to produce a single, 40-gallon barrel of safrole oil. An additional six trees of lesser value are felled to use as firewood in the processing of a single Mreah prew phnom tree.

Secrecy and geography conspire to keep the illicit safrole-oil trade under wraps. Oil is lugged out by human mules, often over many miles of punishing jungle terrain, to roads where it is smuggled through to Thailand or Vietnam. One factory worker, who requested anonymity, called the back-breaking work “so hard we wanted to die.”

Poverty-stricken recruits are paid $25 per month plus cigarettes, the worker said, and often have no idea of the oil’s true value or purpose. Once out of Cambodia, high-tech laboratories purify the sassafras oil and produce tablets of Ecstasy.

FFI’s Tim Wood says the business is run by highly organized trans-national crime syndicates. The same shadowy syndicates are thought to be involved in human and wildlife trafficking, drug smuggling and the illegal weapons trade.

Experts say Vietnamese criminals moved their operations to Cambodia over the past decade after ravaging Vietnam’s forests, essentially clearing them of Mreah prew phnom trees. Cambodian authorities have identified a well-connected ethnic Vietnamese kingpin at work in Cambodia, but so far he has eluded arrest, according to FFI.

Teams of local rangers have closed dozens of safrole oil factories. Chap Siet is one such ranger, who has worked in the Phnom Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary for the last 10 years. He says he thinks about future generations and feels compelled to protect Cambodia’s natural resources.

“Currently these natural resources are threatened by people who have power. These powerful people collude with offenders to destroy natural resources through wildlife poaching, illegal logging, land grabbing, and Mreah prew phnom oil production within the protected areas,” he said.

Chap Siet said he faces many difficulties patroling the forests.

“We often patrol in heavy rain and we suffer from many diseases such as malaria and typhoid. There is a shortage of patrol equipment and we need more rangers,” he said.

In a post-conflict country showing the scars of war, taking on the safrole mafia is certainly not for the faint of heart.

“Sassafras processing plants are frequently guarded by armed men and even booby-trapped with antipersonnel mines,” said David Bradfield, manager of the Cardamom Mountains Wildlife Sanctuary Project, which is overseen by FFI.

In March, a wildlife sanctuary ranger was killed. At that time, Environment Minister Mok Mareth pledged the government’s dedication to preserving natural resources, though the high demand for the illicit substance continues to drive the market.

According to the 2009 U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime World Drug Report, somewhere between 72 and 137 metric tons of Ecstasy were produced globally in 2007, the most recent year from which they have compiled data. It’s hard to say how much of that was produced in Southeast Asia, let alone Cambodia, but the UNODC does say that the stabilization of production in developed countries, like the U.S., has led to a spike in production in developing countries, many of which can be found in Southeast Asia. Some of the world’s largest clandestine factories were found and dismantled in that region, they reported.

“This development is of concern as it relates to the potential for future growth, given that many of these countries are emerging economies with growing middle-classes that may represent lucrative new markets for ‘ecstasy,’” a UNODC report said.

UNODC also estimates that between 11 and 23.5 million people worldwide used Ecstasy at least once in 2007. Of that number, between 2.3 and 6 million were in East and Southeast Asia.