The call of Cambodia: Where nature's beauty and mankind's cruelty combine

From glory to ruin: Angkor Wat reminds you of the feats humans can attain, and how quickly the jungle can claim it all back

Dark history: Cambodia's stunning architecture is contrasted by its black history

Fascinated foreign correspondent: Michael Buerk and his wife Christine

Recovering: Traditional dancers are once again becoming common after they were massacred by the Khmer Rouge

6th May 2011
By Michael Buerk
Daily Mail Online (UK)

[Hun Xen] heads what is widely acknowledged as one of the most corrupt governments in the world, a kleptocratic elite that has made itself fabulously wealthy through seizing public assets and illegal logging, leading to repeated complaints of corruption from the World Bank.

The U.S. ambassador publicly accused government officials of stealing $500 million a year. All this when one in three Cambodians live on less than $1 a day.

Nature's been kind to Cambodia, but man hasn't. That's the fascination of the place - it's what makes it more than just another edgy tropical paradise on the backpacker trail.

In fact, this is the most compelling tourist destination in South-East Asia. You can go just to unwind.

The scenery is rich, the food - with its French colonial overtones - exotic. Park by the pool, order the beers and soak up the old Indochina, free of Thailand's rampant commercialism or Vietnam's frenetic crowds.

But this would be missing the point. The history of Cambodia adds up to a short course in human futility.

Successive rulers have tried to impose their own ideas of earthly heaven, which have all ended in varying kinds of ruin. And it is all there; awful, in every sense.

Two Decades of Resource Development Questioned

By Im Sothearith and Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
12 October 2009

[Editor’s note: VOA Khmer recently spoke with specialists in the field of natural resource management in developing countries and learned that Cambodia is not alone in struggling to use natural resources to benefit its citizens. The resource curse, where natural riches fail to help the poor, is a worldwide scourge, the global experts told VOA Khmer in numerous interviews. Below is Part Six of the original VOA Khmer weekly series, airing Sundays in Cambodia.]

Cambodia’s natural resources were not heavily developed during years of internal conflict, but significant exploitation in the last two decades has been questionable in bringing revenue to everyday Cambodians, and the nation’s gemstones, forests, oil, natural gas, even fish, are more likely to benefit the elite.

Over the last three years, London-based Global Witness has issued reports severely criticizing the government for mismanaging natural resources, claiming Cambodia’s elites are able to diversify their commercial interests to reap all forms of the country’s assets. The government denies these reports, which are also banned in the country.

Eleanor Nichol, a Global Witness campaigner, told VOA Khmer in an interview in Washington that the group’s goal was not to publish anti-government material, but the truth inevitably affected a few officials.

“We’ve become increasingly outspoken at the very high-level, institutionalized corruption, which we’ve come across in Cambodia’s natural resource sectors,” Nichol said. “And what we do is publish information on that high-level, institutionalized corruption. It’s not anti-government information. But what happens is, actually, that it tends to point back to members of the Cambodian government, because they tend to be using their positions of power to exploit their country’s natural resources. So, inevitably over the period of time, it has brought us into a conflictual relationship with the Cambodian government.”

Nichol said despite the angry response by the government to the reports, Global Witness is still willing to work with its leaders and officials.

“We would still like to work with the government, and we’d like to see them comment in a serious manner and respond in a serious and considered manner to some of the failures in government which we’ve unveiled in Cambodia’s oil and mining industries,” she said, “mainly because it is so crucial to the economic future of the Cambodian people.”

In the “Cambodia’s Family Trees”, published in 2007, and “Country for Sale,” published in 2009, Global Witness severely criticized the government for mismanaging its natural resources.

The rich and powerful have diversified their commercial interests, so that natural resources like beaches, forests, islands, land and mining are controlled by a handful of government-affiliated tycoons, high-ranking police, military commanders and family members, Global Witness reported.

Om Yentieng, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Hun Sen and head of the government’s human rights body, is named in “Country for Sale,” reportedly benefiting from the work of a mining company active in Cambodia, Float Asia Friendly Mation.

Global Witness reported Float Asia as extracting marble from the protected areas of Phnom Aural Wildlife Sanctuary and the Central Cardamom Mountains’ protected forest.

Om Yentieng dismissed the report as “stupid” and “nothing new,” saying Global Witness had accused Cambodia of wrongdoing “for years.”

“If their report is true,” he said, “then Cambodia is a hell, with no development, no double-digit development for five years, like this.”

Global Witness has also indicted high-ranking members of the military in its reports. In a visit to Washington and the Pentagon in September, Defense Minister Tea Banh told VOA Khmer the organization tended to “exaggerate the truth,” discrediting itself.

“One day the truth will be revealed, and their credit will be undermined,” he said.

Nguon Nhel, a prominent National Assembly lawmaker and stalwart of the Cambodian People’s Party, said the 123 representatives of the body are tasked with providing credible criticism of the government.

“We accept criticism and investigate whether the criticism is true, but some criticism is unacceptable,” he said.

Son Chhay, and opposition lawmaker for the Sam Rainsy Party, said the government should pay attention to detailed cases written in the Global Witness reports and respond with productive follow-ups.

Instead, the government has drawn criticism by silencing critics with lawsuits and jail terms, he said. They have filed no lawsuits against Global Witness, he noted, indicating to him the veracity of its reporting.

“The National Assembly seldom uses information from such organizations as Global Witness,” he said. “In principle, when we see such a report, we must go to the field accounted in the report, such as extraction mines in Kampong Thom and Ratanakkiri provinces.

“Of course it hurts that the report names those individuals,” he said, “but it’s an opportunity for the government to use the report as a benchmark to improve these irregular situations.”

Yim Sovann, spokesman for the Sam Rainsy Party and a lawmaker, told VOA Khmer by phone that so far concessions were not issued transparently.

“Every concession of natural resources, especially mines, must be publically handed out, so that people know where the government has allowed private companies to exploit, where mines are located,” he said. “They must have inventory and announce publically so that all companies have equal opportunity to auction. If we hand out concessions to a company secretly, without transparency, we lose a lot of national income.”

Government figures show that $3.6 million went into the national budget in 2008 for sales of forestry and mining concessions, with income from these expected to increase to $4.6 million in 2009. A Finance Ministry official said this was due to sale of concessions only.

Cheam Yeap, a member of the Cambodian People’s Party and chairman of the National Assembly’s finance committee, said incomes from natural resources are put back into the national budget for public spending.

“We have separate incomes generated from the investment of natural resources and other income, and a set percentage for investment and for other public spending,” he said.

Another official said the government had managed the country’s forests by ceasing timber export and replanting 49,000 hectares of trees.

Ty Sokun, director of Ministry of Agriculture’s forestry administration, told VOA Khmer that forests were still abused by local poor, private individuals and the armed forces, but on a small scale the government is cracking down on.

“We have strengthened law enforcement, sharpened technical skills and carried out international forestry management strategies for ASEAN,” he said. “We are leading and actively participating in carbon forest credit, so that it contributes to reduction of climate change and green house gas. In addition, it is noticed that while abuses decrease, wildlife increases. We have collected weapons to be destroyed.”

Cambodia was to be a model for post-conflict nation-building, following the introduction of peace and democracy in 1992 by UNTAC. However, Global Witness said, it turned into Southeast Asia’s newest kleptocracy, its reputation marred by corruption, human rights abuses, impunity, repression and undemocratic government.

Instead of using millions of dollars from natural resources to alleviate poverty, the reports said, the government could follow the example of Burma, where a handful of elite use money from the country’s natural resources to accumulate wealth and consolidate political power.

International experts working in Cambodia told VOA Khmer that they acknowledge the challenges Cambodia has faced over the past decades, but they are looking to the government to make more efforts to improve the management of natural resources.

This could benefit Cambodia in the long term, they say, especially with strong laws related to the environment, forestry, fisheries and mining, and as a younger generation rises in the government.

Cambodia's New War

Apr 17, 2009
By Katrin Redfern
The Daily Beast

The Nobel-nominated opposition leader of Southeast Asia’s saddest, bloodiest country has brought a message for Hillary Clinton: Our democracy needs your help.

Cambodia is at war again. This time, the battles surround who will control resources—land, timber, fisheries, oil—with a corrupt elite taking over the nation’s emerging export economy, while international donors turn a blind eye and 14 million Cambodians suffer.

“Cambodia is a democracy on paper but in reality a dictatorship. Our party activists are murdered because they fight for justice—life is still cheap in Cambodia.”

A new American president, many Cambodians hope, might change all that. Sochua Mu, an opposition leader and founder of the women's movement in Cambodia, recently returned to the U.S., lobbying Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to take a firmer line on democracy and human rights in her long-suffering country. “I needed to see the people in the new administration to urge them to re-assess U.S. foreign policy,” says Sochua in an interview with The Daily Beast. “Cambodia is a democracy on paper but in reality a dictatorship. Our party activists are murdered because they fight for justice—life is still cheap in Cambodia. Human trafficking, drug trafficking, land grabbing, and forced evictions are all carried out under the nose of the government.”

Sochua Mu’s story is uniquely Cambodian. Forced to flee for her life at 18 in the early 1970s as the Vietnam War spilled over the border, she left behind her parents, who vanished, as did one-quarter of the country’s population during the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror. Sochua wound up in America, won a scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley, and worked as a counselor and translator for the Cambodian refugees who began to trickle over. She eventually became a U.S. citizen.

During the 1980s, she returned to Southeast Asia, organizing schooling for children and social services for women in the refugee camps set up by the U.N. on the border between Thailand and Cambodia. In 1989, she was finally allowed to re-enter her homeland, “a country in ruins.” “I would take my young children on walks in streets where I learned to bike, where I wandered with my childhood friends, where I went to school, all the years of joy, of happiness, of deep feelings of comfort came back to me,” she says. “I came back to help rebuild a nation. The war and genocide also changed my people. They have lost their sense of trust for each other, they have become hard inside and desperate for just daily survival.”

Sochua started the first women’s organization in Cambodia, Khemera, designed to help poor urban women earn a better living. She campaigned to include women’s rights and concerns into the country’s new constitution, drafted in 1993, and became involved in efforts to rescue girls caught in Cambodia’s thriving sex trade. In 1998, Sochua ran for election and won a seat in parliament, taking over the women’s affairs ministry, which had previously been run by men. In a country that considers women inferior, Sochua mobilized 25,000 female candidates to run for commune elections in 2002. It was a first for Cambodia, and 900 of them were elected.

She negotiated an agreement with Thailand that allowed Cambodian women trafficked as sex workers to return to their home country instead of being jailed. She pioneered the use of TV commercials to spread the word about trafficking to vulnerable populations. Her work in Cambodia also supports campaigns to end domestic violence and the spread of HIV/AIDS, as well as women’s workplace conditions. In 2005, she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for her work against sex trafficking of women.

Her position in high government put her in direct conflict with Cambodia’s long-ruling prime minister, Hun Sen. Rather than participate in the corruption she saw around her, Sochua Mu renounced the leadership and joined the primary opposition party in parliament. Last week, Sochua announced that she is considering legal action against the prime minister for allegedly using derogatory and threatening language against her in a speech he made last month during a visit to her parliamentary district. The speech, widely reported on Cambodian TV and other media, warned villagers not to seek help from members of the opposition party, but to approach the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, and allegedly referred to Sochua using a Khmer term cheung kland—a gangster or unruly person, which has an especially insulting connation for women.

Her most frequent public disagreement with Hun Sen surrounds what she sees as a failure to prevent people in her district from suffering loss of property and livelihoods at the hands of powerful investors, often with the backing of local authorities and the military. Most Cambodians still depend on small-scale agriculture, forest exploitation, and fishing for their livelihoods but, because of the country’s turbulent recent history, land ownership is generally undocumented and often contested. As a result, it is easy for the powerful to acquire land to develop. More than 150,000 Cambodians, according to Sochua, were victims of forced evictions and land-grabbing in 2007 alone. Studies have estimated that such concessions cover as much as one-third of the entire area of Cambodia.

“It is now common practice for powerful corporations and government officials to utilize armed forces to push citizens off their rightfully and legally held land,” says Sochua. “These evictions are often violent, with soldiers wielding guns, tear gas and Tasers and burning houses to the ground, while citizens are beaten, maimed and arrested.”

Cambodia's economy relies on three principal sources of income: tourism, agriculture, and textiles. The United States is the largest overseas market for the latter. As former U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia Joseph Mussomeli put it, "Levi Strauss or the Gap could destroy this country on a whim."

George W. Bush's policy, as Sochua saw it, focused on military and security-centered aid. According to the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. provided Cambodia $54 million last year and $700 million total since the agency opened an office in the country in 1992. Other international donors, meanwhile, have done little better in holding the Cambodian government accountable on human rights, preferring “closed-door diplomacy,” as she calls it, to public criticism. “This practice has yielded next to no reforms,” she says, “and donors continue to be satisfied with token actions taken by the government to give a façade to democracy and social justice.”

Even that oversight is at risk. Chevron discovered oil offshore several years ago, and the Cambodian government says it hopes to begin pumping oil in 2011. The IMF estimated last year that the country could earn as much as $1.7 billion from oil within 10 years of the date that pumping begins—a big deal for this poor country, which relies on donors for half of its annual budget, but also more money that won’t carry any accountability.

Some aid agencies have called for a moratorium on aid until basic governance and transparency frameworks are in place. Sochua says that won’t happen until there’s a new regime. “That can only happen when we have a real election that is free and fair,” she says. “The West should insist on that, otherwise all the aid they have poured into Cambodia will not work”.

Katrin Redfern is a writer and editor at The Indypendent in New York City.

Elite Now Gain From Mines, Oil: Watchdog

By Taing Sarada, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
09 February 2009

The report names Gen. Ouk Kosa, head of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces military development zones; Cham Borey, brother of Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh; Dy Chouch, Hun Sen’s first cousin; Gen. Meas Sophea, commander of RCAF infantry; Sen. Ly Yong Phat, a CPP lawmaker and wealthy tycoon; senior Hun Sen adviser Om Yentieng; Sen. Lao Meng Khin, director of Pheapimex, one of Cambodia’s most powerful companies; Gen. Pol Sareoun, recently appointed commander-in-chief of RCAF; and Try Pheap, a pro-CPP tycoon.

The environmental watchdog Global Witness has issued an indicting report on Cambodia’s potential oil and mineral wealth, angering again many senior officials.

The report, “Country for Sale,” outlines the exploitation of the country’s gas and mineral rights for the benefit of a small elite.

Over the past 15 years, the London-based group says, 45 percent of Cambodia’s land has been purchased by private interests, while the millions of dollars paid by private companies for such concessions have not reached the national treasury.

Exploratory mining licenses have quietly been allocated to members of the ruling elite linked to the Cambodian People’s Party or their relatives, according the report.

Members of the armed forces guard mine sites in the provinces of Stung Treng, Preah Vihear and Pursat, and at some sites, land has been taken from local people through reported intimidation, according to the report.

Neither the National Assembly nor the appropriate ministries have enough say over the National Petroleum Authority, which is under the direct control of Hun Sen and his deputy, Sok An, the report says.

Global Witness in 2007 reported a “kleptocratic elite” had sold the country’s timber away, in a report that was banned from the country. The group says now many of the same officials are managing the country’s mineral and petroleum wealth.

Of mining sites investigated by the group in 2008, all were owned or controlled by members of the political or military elite.

The report names Gen. Ouk Kosa, head of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces military development zones; Cham Borey, brother of Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh; Dy Chouch, Hun Sen’s first cousin; Gen. Meas Sophea, commander of RCAF infantry; Sen. Ly Yong Phat, a CPP lawmaker and wealthy tycoon; senior Hun Sen adviser Om Yentieng; Sen. Lao Meng Khin, director of Pheapimex, one of Cambodia’s most powerful companies; Gen. Pol Sareoun, recently appointed commander-in-chief of RCAF; and Try Pheap, a pro-CPP tycoon.

Not every official named in the report was available for comment, but all who were dismissed the report as biased, exaggerated, or without evidence.

Om Yentieng, who is the head of Cambodia’s Human Rights Committee, said Global Witness had a track record of defaming the government.

“They have been speaking very badly about the Cambodian government for years,” he said. “They have a lot of things to say, a lot of lies about Cambodia.If it were like Global Witness says, Cambodia would already be like Hell.”

Defense Minister Gen. Tea Banh said he could not accept the report without evidence, calling Global Witness “a very bad group that always destroys the reality of Cambodia.”

“Cambodia has its own laws, and we never violate the law,” he said. “The companies that have licenses are legal.”

Pol Saroeun, who was named in the Global Witness report for having received mining licenses, dismissed the allegation.

“I have never had any company or run any business at all,” he said. “I am a soldier.”

Meanwhile, Ith Praing, secretary of state for the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Industry, said Cambodia was not even 100 percent sure offshore oil would become a reality.

“It is kind of too early to think about this, but I think the government is not stupid in managing revenue from its resources,” he said.

Global Witness Director Gavin Hayman told VOA Khmer that Cambodia should not provide new concessions to private companies too quickly, and should instead review the concessions they have already given. International donors should pressure the government to undertake an audit of the concessions, he said.

The Global Witness report accuses donors of turning a blind eye to potential mismanagement of funds and urges them to use their influence—in hundreds of millions of dollars of aid each year—to ensure the revenues go to the populace.

Millions of dollars are missing from national coffers in oil deals, the report notes.

For instance, each company is required to pay a negotiable signature bonus to the National Petroleum Authority—like the $7.5 million paid by Indonesia’s PT Medco Energi Internasional. Each company will also pay a significant fee annually for production in a concession block, just below $800,000 per concession in the first year.

So far, for the years 2006 and 2007, none of that money has appeared on the books of the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

Luok - "Sold": A Poem in Khmer by Sam Vichea

Click on the poem to zoom in

Poem in Khmer by Sam Vichea (on the web at http://kamnapkumnou.blogspot.com)

Living in fear of eviction by Cambodia's kleptocratic elite: Group 78

Phnom Penh (Cambodia). 05/02/2009: Children playing next to development program advertisement during a press conference held by the inhabitants of Group 78, living in fear over the threat of eviction. (Photo: John Vink/ Magnum)

Forced evictions: Group 78 families neighbouring Dey Krohom live in fear

05-02-2009
By Ros Dina
Ka-set in English
This article is also available in French and Khmer

Who’s next? After the violent Dey Krohom eviction which occurred on January 24th, several communities in Phnom Penh fear they might be the next victims of this type of operation. It is notably the case of 88 families living in a plot known as Group 78, located in the Tonle Bassac quarter, less than a hundred yards from the Dey Krohom area. The families held a press conference on Thursday January 5th as they themselves live under the threat of eviction and are concerned that they might suffer the same fate as their neighbours.

The representative for these families insisted on showing journalists different administrative documents, approved by the local authorities and allowing them to assert their rights on those pieces of land.

He also brandished a letter signed by National Assembly president Heng Samrin , dated October 8th 2008 and addressed to Phnom Penh governor Kep Chuktema, asking the latter to follow up the complaint issued by inhabitants of Group 78, who claimed title deeds in due form. The municipality never replied to the request and argued that the papers provided were not valid, according to the representative of Group 78 families.

However, the latter does not intend to give up and repeated his request to the National Assembly, the Ministry of Land Management and the Ministry of Justice for them to intervene on that case and urge the municipal authorities to meet the expectations of those families.

“One must not accuse the population of Group 78 of occupying that land in an unlawful or illegal way. We all have papers and we are indeed the owners of these land plots even if we do not have official title deeds yet”, the representative pointed out.

Put off by the tragic fate experienced by their neighbours in Dey Krohom, residents of Group 78 fear today that the authorities might use any excuse to accuse families of acting illegally, and thus resort to force against them. “Here, we are even scared of using some paint... If they see that, they will come and destroy everything. What we demand is a right to housing. We are not looking for disputes. But with what happened in other places, we are so scared of being accused of such or such thing, and then that these accusations might be used as excuses to use violence against us”, he said.

Since 2006, after they received an eviction order from the Chamkarmon area, residents of Group 78 have been trying to obtain help in order to assert their right to live on these plots of land. To date, the Phnom Penh municipality has not addressed their claims.

Cambodia's mining, oil sector allegedly corrupt

Thursday, February 05, 2009
By DENIS D. GRAY

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — The corrupt elite of Cambodia, one of the world's most impoverished nations, has laid the groundwork for siphoning off vast profits from a coming boom in mining and oil exploitation, a nongovernment organization said Thursday.

Britain-based Global Witness said that rights to exploit the resources have been allocated behind closed doors by a small number of power brokers around Prime Minister Hun Sen and other senior officials. The report, titled "Country for Sale," said "the same political elite that pillaged the country's timber resources has now gained control of its mineral and petroleum wealth."

"Unless this is changed, there is a real risk that the opportunity to lift a whole generation out of poverty will be squandered," the report said.

Global Witness, which has worked in Cambodia for more than a decade, said its findings were based on numerous interviews with industry insiders in the country and with others around the world over the course of 2008. The report's appendix also cites a number of academics, journals and newspaper reports.

The allegations were denied by Suy Sem, the minister of Industry, Mines and Energy, saying Global Witness "always defames the government."

"Regarding the exploration for oil and gas, we operate under procedures that are very fair and transparent and based on the rule of law," he told The Associated Press in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. He did not address specific allegations in the report.

The government's spokesman could not be reached despite numerous attempts.

Others have raised concerns that rather than pulling Cambodia out of its "beggar status," the revenue windfall will further fuel already rampant corruption. The Berlin-based Transparency International ranked Cambodia 166 out of 180 on its 2008 world corruption index.

The report said international donors, which prop up the country, have so far turned a blind eye to the looming "corruption disaster." Donors, including the United States, European Commission and the World Bank, pledged $1 billion in development aid two months ago, without using the opportunity to demand transparency in the emerging industries, it said.

More than 75 companies, including such internationals as Chevron Corp. and BHP Billiton, were already working in the mining and oil sectors and have paid upfront sums to the government, the report said.

"Companies need to come clean on what they have paid to the government to secure access to these natural resources, or risk becoming complicit in a corrupt system," the report said.

Global Witness said it wrote to both Chevron and BHP asking them to reveal any payments made to the Cambodian government or government officials. Chevron, it said, did not respond while BHP said it had made no illegal payments related to its mining operations.

Chevron spokesman Gareth Johnstone told the Associated Press on Thursday that the company could not comment until they had a chance to read the report.

Global Witness said it could not find a record of bonuses paid to secure concessions totaling millions of dollars in the 2006 or 2007 revenue reports of the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

Of the mine sites investigated in 2008, Global Witness said every one was controlled or owned by members of Cambodia's political and military elite, including top military commanders and relatives of Hun Sen and cabinet ministers.

Charged with control over the gas and industry is the newly created Cambodian National Petroleum Authority, which is stocked with politicians close to Hun Sen and maintains a blanket of secrecy over its activities.

"The small number of elite power brokers who run the state have sold off potentially valuable concessions to companies in a manner which is non-transparent and highly dubious," the report said.

The report said the government's actions duplicate the wholesale destruction of forests with few of the resulting profits ending up in national coffers or among the general population.

The report also said the government was opening up environmentally sensitive areas to private companies, with mining activity already proceeding in at least six of the country's 23 protected areas.

Over the past few years, Cambodia has been buzzing with excitement — and anxiety — about an oil discovery by U.S. energy giant Chevron Corp. off the southwestern coast. There have also been discoveries of other minerals including bauxite, iron ore, copper and chromium, while onshore oil reserves are also being explored.

Conferences and discussions, both domestic and international on how to deal with the windfall have been held.

U.S. Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli told The Associated Press in 2006, shortly after the discovery, that Cambodia could fall victim to an "oil curse" that has afflicted other developing countries.

Some estimate that in coming years Cambodia may reap some $1 billion in annual oil revenues, enough to cut its ties to foreign development aid if the funds are properly utilized.

Associated Press writer Sopheng Cheang in Phnom Penh contributed to this report.

Elite 'selling Cambodia's future'

Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in the world with 40 per cent of the population in poverty [EPA]

Thursday, February 05, 2009
Al Jazeera

"There is a real risk that the opportunity to lift a whole generation out of poverty will be squandered" - Gavin Hayman, Global Witness

Cambodia's economic future is being jeopardised by high-level corruption, with officials siphoning millions of dollars earned from the country's oil and mineral reserves, a report by a British-based nongovernmental group has claimed.

The report by Global Witness, released on Thursday, said rights to exploit the country's resources had been allocated behind closed doors by a "corrupt elite" of powerbrokers close to the Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen.

Speaking to Al Jazeera Gavin Hayman, the group's campaign director, said Cambodia's mining and oil industries were just beginning to take off, but already tens of millions of dollars in earnings were not accounted for.

That money, he said, was a vital national asset that should be directed towards national development needs.

"We aren't in a disaster yet, but we're on the brink of one," he said.

Cambodia is one of the world's poorest countries, with average incomes less than $300 a year and more than 40 per cent of the population living below the poverty line.

Missing millions


The Global Witness report, entitled Country for Sale, said researchers had found millions of dollars paid by oil and mining companies are missing from national accounts – money that, the group said, could eventually help Cambodia become independent of foreign development aid.

"The same political elite that pillaged the country's timber resources has now gained control of its mineral and petroleum wealth," Hayman said.

"Unless this is changed, there is a real risk that the opportunity to lift a whole generation out of poverty will be squandered."

The group said foreign aid donors should make further assistance conditional on Cambodia implementing new governance measures for key industries.

The report cites Australian mining giant BHP Billiton as confirming it paid one million dollars to the Cambodian government, but Global Witness says the funds have not been declared in the 2006 or 2007 government revenue reports.

It also alleges that $7.5 million paid to the Cambodian National Petroleum Authority by an Indonesian energy firm also did not reach the national treasury.

Banned

The allegations were denied by Suy Sem, the minister of Industry, Mines and Energy, who said Global Witness "always defames the government".

"Regarding the exploration for oil and gas, we operate under procedures that are very fair and transparent and based on the rule of law," he told The Associated Press news agency in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.

In 2007 a Global Witness report Cambodia's Family Trees accused relatives of Hun Sen as well as close friends and senior government and military officials of stripping what remains of the Cambodia's forests for their own profit.

The government banned copies of the report from being distributed in Cambodia, although it can easily be downloaded from the internet.

Cambodia's officials at the time dismissed that report as "totally groundless, unacceptable rubbish", accusing Global Witness of engaging in a "political campaign" against the government.

Cambodian Oil, Mineral Wealth Sold To Corrupt Elites-Watchdog

February 04, 2009

BANGKOK (AFP)--Cambodia's political elite has captured the country's oil and mineral wealth, putting its economic future at risk while international donors turn a blind eye, an environmental watchdog said Thursday.

London-based Global Witness said impoverished Cambodia has enough natural wealth to wean itself off foreign aid but international donors must do more to ensure the assets are properly managed.

In its new report entitled: "Country for Sale," the group said earnings from oil, gas and minerals were being "jeopardized by high-level corruption, nepotism and patronage" in allocating and managing the assets.

"The same political elite that pillaged the country's timber resources has now gained control of its mineral and petroleum wealth," said Global Witness Campaigns Director, Gavin Hayman.

"Unless this is changed, there is a real risk that the opportunity to lift a whole generation out of poverty will be squandered," he added.

The Cambodian government banned a previous damning report published by Global Witness on Cambodia's forests in June 2007, which claimed the same elites were illegally logging the nation's forests.

In its new report the group said oil, gas and mineral assets had been parceled out by a small number of powerbrokers surrounding Prime Minister Hun Sen and other senior officials.

It also suggested that millions of dollars paid by oil and mining companies to secure access to the resources might be missing from national accounts.

"Companies need to come clean on what they have paid to the government to secure access to these natural resources, or risk becoming complicit in a corrupt system," Hayman said.

So far more than 75 companies are working in Cambodia's extractive sectors, the report said, including some internationally known operators such as Chevron Corp. (CVX) and BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP).

Last month international donors pledged nearly $1 billion in development aid to Cambodia, their most generous aid package ever to the impoverished Southeast Asian nation.

But Global Witness said the agreements didn't go far enough in securing new governance measures for natural resources.

Cambodia expects to begin oil production of its offshore fields in 2011, following the discovery of oil in 2005 by Chevron.

The kingdom is sitting on an estimated hundreds of millions of barrels of crude - and three times as much natural gas - but it remains unclear how much of the black gold can actually be recovered.

Cambodia on brink of oil and mining corruption disaster; donor governments fail to act: Global Witness

Global Witness report calls for immediate moratorium on both sectors until basic governance structures are in place

5 February 2009
Global Witness Press Release

A corrupt elite has captured the country’s emerging oil and mineral sectors while Cambodia’s international donors turn a blind eye, a new report from anti-graft NGO Global Witness claims today.

Cambodia – one of the world’s poorest countries – could eventually earn enough from its oil, gas and minerals to become independent of foreign development aid. The report, Country for Sale, exposes for the first time how this future is being jeopardised by high-level corruption, nepotism and patronage in the allocation and management of these critical public assets.

Country for Sale details how rights to exploit oil and mineral resources have been allocated behind closed doors by a small number of powerbrokers surrounding the prime minister and other senior officials. The beneficiaries of many of these deals are members of the ruling elite or their family members. Meanwhile, the findings suggest that millions of dollars paid by oil and mining companies to secure access to these resources may be missing from the national accounts.

“The Cambodian government does not have a process for allocating resources outside of patronage,” said Global Witness Campaigns Director, Gavin Hayman. “The same political elite that pillaged the country’s timber resources has now gained control of its mineral and petroleum wealth. Unless this is changed, there is a real risk that the opportunity to lift a whole generation out of poverty will be squandered.”

In December 2008, donors pledged US$1 billion in development aid, yet failed to use this opportunity to demand new governance measures for the industries.

Private sector companies also have a role to play in improving the governance of Cambodia’s extractive industries. So far over 75 companies are working in Cambodia’s extractive sectors, including some internationally known operators such as Chevron and BHP Billiton. Country for Sale documents how many of these companies have already paid significant upfront sums to the government. Very few of them have disclosed these payments.

“Companies need to come clean on what they have paid to the government to secure access to these natural resources, or risk becoming complicit in a corrupt system,” said Hayman.

Country for Sale can be downloaded from http://www.globalwitness.org For more information and interviews, please contact Global Witness on the following numbers: In London +44 (0)20 7561 6399 or +44 (0) 7912 516 445 In Bangkok +66 (0)860 520 268

(1) Global Witness exposes the corrupt exploitation of natural resources and international trade systems to drive campaigns that end impunity, resource-linked conflict, and human rights and environmental abuses. Global Witness was co-nominated for the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize for its leading work on ‘conflict diamonds' and awarded the 2007 Commitment to Development Ideas in Action Award, sponsored jointly by Washington DC based Center for Global Development and Foreign Policy magazine.

(2) Global Witness’ last report on Cambodia, Cambodia’s Family Trees, showed how a small group of individuals surrounding the prime minister and other senior public officials have exploited the country’s forests for their personal profit. The report can be downloaded from http://www.globalwitness.org/media_library_detail.php/546/en/cambodias_family_trees

(3) Global Witness wrote to both Chevron and BHP Billiton in October 2008 to ask them to reveal any payments made to the Cambodian government or government officials. At the time of publication, Chevron had not responded. BHP Billiton however, did reply to say that BHP Billiton, Mitsubishi and the Cambodian Government have established a joint social development fund. The total contribution of BHP and Mitsubishi is to be US$2.5 million. BHP’s response stated: “BHP Billiton has never made a payment to a Cambodian Government official or representative and we reject any assertion that the payment under the minerals exploration agreement is, or the amounts contributed to the Social Development Projects Fund are, ‘tea money’.” BHP also shared how much had been paid to the Cambodian government, adding: “In accordance with the terms of a minerals exploration agreement with the Cambodian government which granted BHP Billiton and Mitsubishi the right to explore for bauxite an amount of US$1 million was formally paid to the Cambodian government in September 2006.”

(4) Cambodia’s donors are:
Australia
Belgium
Canada
China
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Ireland
Japan
Sweden
United Kingdom
United States
United Nations
European Commission
Asian Development Bank
International Monetary Fund
The World Bank Group

Country for Sale [by Cambodia's kleptocratic elite]

Report – 05/02/2009
Source: Global Witness

Cambodia - one of the world's poorest countries - could eventually earn enough from its oil, gas and minerals to become independent of foreign development aid. This report, Country for Sale, exposes for the first time how this future is being jeopardised by high level corruption and nepotism in the allocation and management of these critical public assets.

Country for Sale details how rights to exploit oil and mineral resources have been allocated behind closed doors by a small number of powerbrokers surrounding the prime minister and other senior officials. The beneficiaries of many of these deals are members of the ruling elite or their family members. Meanwhile, millions of dollars paid by oil and mining companies to secure access to these resources appear to be missing from the national accounts.

In the course of its investigation into Cambodia's oil, gas and mining sectors, Global Witness obtained a number of key documents. Global Witness believes that it is important that these documents, which include key regulations for the extractive industries are easily available in the public domain.

Read the press release

Read about Global Witness' work on Cambodia's forest sector

Click here to download the report in Khmer (PDF)

Click below to download the report in English (PDF)
Country for Sale high res
Country for Sale low res

US Could Ban ‘Kleptocrats’ From Entry

By Brian Calvert, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
23 January 2008

Click to listen to Heng Reaksmey reports in Khmer

Top Cambodian officials implicated in illegal logging could face a ban from US entry, according to a new US law.

Under a recently inacted 2008 spending law, the State Department must compile a list of foreign government officials and their immediate family members suspected of involvement in corruption in natural resources depletion.

Any name the on the “anti-kleptocracy” list will not be granted entry into the US, with exceptions for UN meetings or law enforcement requirements, according to the law.

“If it now it becomes hard to, you know, go and stay in your nice house in Manhattan or wherever you happen to have it, then too bad,” said Simon Taylor, director of the resource monitor Global Witness.

A 2007 Global Witness report, “Cambodia’s Family Trees,” names a number of high-level officials and family members as part of countrywide illegal logging rackets.

Congress has urged the State Department to consider the report when making its list of Cambodian officials.

A State Department spokesman said Wednesday the US “takes all allegations of corruption seriously.”

The US “shares many of the concerns” raised by the Global Witness report and is “reviewing all relevant information” to compile its list, the spokesman said.

Government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said Congress was seeking to ban Cambodian officials as a way to attract votes ahead of a presidential election and said the move to ban corrupt officials was not a “presidential decree.”

In fact, Congressional elections are not held this year, and the US does not run on a decree system.

The potential ban was welcomed by some conservationists in Cambodia.

“It is right for the United States to deny entry visas for those violating international law, because logging is an important issue,” said Hieng Rith, director of the Cambodia National Research Organization. “When all the trees are logged, there will be no rain. By definition it’s just like destruction against humanity, as humans will die if there is no rain.”

The Global Witness report, issued in June 2007, angered Cambodian officials and was immediately banned across the country.

It said Cambodia’s forests were being stripped clean by a network of Cambodian elite that generated its wealth from the seizure of public assets, including wide swaths of forests.

Officially ejected from the country in 2006, Global Witness spent years investigating the networks of illegal logging.

The report implicates more than a dozen officials, including Forestry Minister Chan Sarun, Forestry Administration Director Ty Sokhun and military officers of the elite military Brigade 70, which Global Witness called a “private army” of Prime Minister Hun Sen.

The officials have denied wrongdoing in the past, and were unavailable for further comment Wednesday.

All of them are part of a circle of kleptocrats and cronies surrounding Hun Sen, Taylor said.

“Either he’s looking the other way, because they’re too close, which doesn’t say much for his authority, or he’s part of the problem,” Taylor said.

Global Witness was “disappointed” that language in the bill was removed that would have banned US companies from doing business with listed kleptocrats, but Taylor said the group would continue to push for stronger language in the future.

“Here we are in Cambodia ten years down, we’ve had a decade worth of billions of dollars of delivery, and very little delivery, I think, beyond personal wealth expansion in Phnom Penh and a few other centers," he said. "And meanwhile, the average lot of the average Cambodian hasn’t gone up that much, and the assets of the state have been stolen and parked offshore.”

For more information, see the Global Witness report, and the 2008 Consolidated Appropriations Act.

US could ban travel for Cambodians tied to illegal logging

Cambodia intricate family trees of the thieves of the Nation (Global Witness)
Click to zoom in

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — The US has passed a law that could see travel bans for Cambodian officials accused of looting the country's natural resources, a move hailed Wednesday by conservationists as a strike against illegal logging.

The law, enacted in December, endorses calls by the US Congress to deny visas to Cambodian officials identified in a 2007 report by the environmental watchdog Global Witness as being guilty of plundering Cambodia's forests.

London-based Global Witness's caustic study, titled "Cambodia's Family Trees," accused a "kleptocratic" elite of systematically clearing Cambodia's woodlands.

It named several figures close to Prime Minister Hun Sen, including Forest Administration Director General Ty Sokhun and Agriculture Minister Chan Sarun, as being directly involved.

In response, an outraged government last year banned the Global Witness report from Cambodia and continues to dismiss its allegations.

A Cambodian government spokesman could not be reached Wednesday for comment on the US legislation.

But the law "sends a clear message that the exploitation of Cambodia's natural resources by a small group of powerful individuals at the expense of the country's poor is unacceptable," Global Witness director Simon Taylor said in a statement received Wednesday.

The legislation, which authorises spending by Washington, instructs the US State Department to identify foreign officials, and their relatives, who are believed to have "been involved in corruption relating to the extraction of natural resources in their countries."

It also endorses a congressional subcommittee recommendation to "prohibit corrupt Cambodian officials identified in the June 2007 Global Witness report ... from entering the United States."

But it is unclear if the law will result in visa refusals for individual Cambodians.

US embassy spokesman Jeff Daigle told AFP that "there is no ban ... no specific names have been given to the embassy."

Illegal Logging Continues in Forests of Pursat and Battambang Provinces

A monk points out a tree in a typical Cambodian forest. Forests like these are under threat from rampant illegal logging

Chiep Mony, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
10 September 2007

Logging across two of the country's forested northwestern provinces continues unabated, often with collusion from forestry administration officials, a rights group said Monday.

Ou Vireak, head of the Cambodia Center for Human Rights, said his office had received reports of illegal logging from residents in Pursat and Battambang provinces.

A group that monitors conflict and resources, Global Witness, has said Cambodia's illegal logging is undertaken by a "kleptocratic elite" with close ties to Prime Minister Hun Sen and his family.

The still-lucrative trade has turned people in these provinces into "logging merchants," Ou Vireak told VOA Khmer.

During a human rights forum in Bakan district, Pursat, local residents told Ou Vireak their forests were nearly gone.

Residents reported logs being hauled away from the forests in cars, taxis and other vehicles, without license plates, driven by men in plain clothes.

"The people did not say the that the forestry administration officials are the ones who practice illegal logging, but that it is possible some of the administration officials condone it," CCHR investigator In Kong Chin said. "When the ministry's inspectors go to check, the people in charge give signals to those transporting the logs, to halt temporarily."

Chea Sam Ang, deputy director of the Forestry Administration, said authorities worked "every day" to find ways of controlling illegal logging.

"We do not tolerate anything," he said, adding that forestry officials in Bakan district, as in others, were in place to protect the trees, not log them.

Illegal logging: Is the Thief of the Nation related to the Chief of the Nation?

Kleptocratic élite: Hun Neng (L) and his younger brother Hun Sen (R)

In Woods of Hun Sen's Brother, Illegal Logging Continues Unmitigated

Heng Reaksmey, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
15 August 2007

A report from a former government forest monitoring group earlier this year has failed to dent the trade of illegal timber, residents of Kampong Cham province say.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, residents said they have stood helplessly and watched as truck after truck laden with high-value trees—illegally cut and harvested—pass them by on National Highway 6A, on their way from the provincial forests to destinations unknown.

The governor who controls Kampong Cham, Hun Neng, brother of the prime minister, could not be reached for comment.

Witnesses say trucks with large timbers loaded onto them, with high-quality trees resting underneath, are covered with blue tarps and sent out of the forest.

The forest monitor Global Witness earlier this year issued a report linking the trade to Prime Minister Hun Sen, his relatives and friends, and a Cambodian "kleptocratic elite."

In the wake of the report, Hun Neng said if he ever saw a Global Witness investigator, he would break his head open, a threat the group quickly denounced.

Row Between Global Witness and Government Continues

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

Heng Reaksmey, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
13 August 2007

The London-based forestry monitor Global Witness and the Cambodian government traded a fresh round of barbs over the weekend, following Global Witness's calls on World Bank chief Robert Zoellick to investigate corruption in Cambodia's logging sector.

"The Cambodian government, increasingly desperate to defend their already tarnished public image, has issued a press release demanding a change in Global Witness' leadership and a call to the organisation's donors to cut funding," Global Witness said in a statement Friday.

A Cambodian Embassy statement earlier this month called the group's recommendations to the World Bank "amusing and disturbing."

Global Witness issued a lengthy report earlier this year linking illegal logging to Prime Minister Hun Sen, his family and an extended "kleptocratic elite."