In change of focus, Hague court will prosecute government and individuals for environmental crimes such as landgrabs
A case lodged with the ICC alleges mass rights violations by Cambodian authorities related to land-grabbing. Photograph: Omar Havana/Getty Images
Environmental destruction and landgrabs could lead to governments and individuals being prosecuted for crimes against humanity by the international criminal court following a decision to expand its remit.
The UN-backed court, which sits in The Hague, has mostly ruled on cases of genocide and war crimes since it was set up in 2002. It has been criticised for its reluctance to investigate major environmental and cultural crimes, which often happen in peacetime.
In a change of focus, the ICC said on Thursday it would also prioritise crimes that result in the “destruction of the environment”, “exploitation of natural resources” and the “illegal dispossession” of land. It also included an explicit reference to land-grabbing.
The court, which is funded by governments and is regarded as the court of last resort, said it would now take many crimes that have been traditionally under-prosecuted into consideration.
The ICC is not formally extending its jurisdiction, but the court said it would assess existing offences, such as crimes against humanity, in a broader context.
The ICC’s policy paper on case selection and prioritisation declares: “The office [of the prosecutor] will give particular consideration to prosecuting Rome statute crimes that are committed by means of, or that result in, inter alia, the destruction of the environment, the illegal exploitation of natural resources or the illegal dispossession of land.”
Land-grabbing has become increasingly common worldwide, with national and local governments allocating private companies tens of millions of hectares of land in the past 10 years.
The anti-corruption campaigners Global Witness say this has led to many forced evictions, the cultural genocide of indigenous peoples, malnutrition and environmental destruction.
“Land-grabbing is no less harmful than war in terms of negative impacts on civilians”, said Alice Harrison, an adviser at Global Witness. “Today’s announcement should send a warning shot to company executives and investors that the environment is no longer their playground.
“The terrible impacts of land-grabbing and environmental destruction have been acknowledged at the highest level of criminal justice, and private sector actors could now be put on trial for their role in illegally seizing land, flattening rainforests or poisoning water sources.”
International lawyers said broadening the priority cases to include land-grabbing would recognise that mass human rights violations committed during peacetime and in the name of profit could be just as serious as traditional war crimes.
“It will not make land-grabbing per se a crime, but mass forcible evictions that results from land-grabbing may end up being tried as a crime against humanity,” said Richard Rogers, a partner in the international criminal law firm Global Diligence.
Rogers has lodged a case with the ICC on behalf of 10 Cambodians alleging that the country’s ruling elite, including its government and military, has perpetuated mass rights violations since 2002 in pursuit of wealth and power by grabbing land and forcibly evicting up to 350,000 people.
“Cambodia is a perfect example for this new ICC focus. It fits in to the new criteria,” he said.
He predicted it could have a bearing on the way business is done in certain countries. “Companies who want to invest in [some] places risk being complicit in crimes against humanity. Tackling land-grabbing will also help address some of the causes of climate change, since deforestation is very often a result of land-grabbing.”
The new ICC focus could also open the door to prosecutions over climate change, Rogers said, because a large percentage of CO2 emissions had been caused by deforestation as a result of illegal land-grabbing.
The ICC can take action if the crime happens in any of the 139 countries that have signed up to the Rome statute, if the perpetrator originates from one of these countries, or if the UN security council refers a case to it. Crimes must have taken place after the Rome statue came into force on 1 July 2002.
Reinhold Gallmetzer, a member of the ICC working group who drew up the policy document, said: “We are exercising our jurisdiction by looking at the broader context in which crimes are committed. We are extending the focus to include Rome statute crimes already in our jurisdiction.
“Forcible transfer [of people] can already be a crime against humanity, so if it is committed by land-grabbing – whether as a result or a precursor – it can be included.”
The ICC paper also lists other crimes, such as arms trafficking, human trafficking, terrorism and financial crimes, in which it intends to provide more help to individual states to carry out national prosecutions.
A US-based group of lawyers has launched an online campaign to raise funding to support a lawsuit against a UK company that bought sugar from a Cambodian plantations linked to human rights abuses.
The campaign is being undertaken by the International Senior Lawyers Project, which is representing a number of displaced villagers.
A successful model “can be used to seek justice for victims of land grabbing not just in Cambodia, but really all around the world,” Heather Einsenlord, human rights program director for the project, said. “The potential impact of a small donation can be quite profound and quite broad.”
Lawyers at the project is investigating the 2006 evictions of 200 families in Koh Kong province, who were forced from their plots of land to make way for industrial sugar plantations. Crops were destroyed, and villagers who resisted say they were brutally attacked. Villagers insist they are the lawful holders of the land.
Rights workers have called the products that come from such operations “blood sugar.”
The International Senior Lawyers Project is bringing suit against the UK company Tate and Lyle, claiming it failed at due diligence and did not confirm that operations at its sugar sources were in accordance with international human rights norms. Officials at Tate and Lyle did not immediately comment.
“We can no longer permit multinational corporations to make enormous profit at the expense of other people’s livelihood, and in some cases, other people’s lives,” Einsenlord said.
The project is aiming to raise $15,000 to cover printing costs for maps that would show villagers’ holdings, to help travel costs for villagers to meet with attorneys in Phnom Penh, and to pay local Cambodian lawyers legal fees, as well as other expenses.
Mark Morstein, a lawyer who is working on the case, said the proceedings will provide a foundation for a number of small farmers to understand Cambodia’s legal system—and that if it fails, they have the ability to seek judgement in international courts.
“It recognizes that many of the human rights violations that are occurring in Cambodia actually have a commercial basis,” he said. “There are commercial courts that have the credibility and have the enforcement mechanisms to compel a remedy where the Cambodian courts either cannot or refuse to do so.”
PHNOM PENH — Cambodia’s Supreme Court ordered the release of a land rights activist on Friday who has spent more than a year in jail on what rights groups claim are trumped-up charges. However, despite the release, the ruling from the five-judge bench disappointed many by sending the case back to a lower court for further investigation.
Yorm Bopha, a 30-year old mother of one, is a prominent member of a group of residents of an area in the capital known as Boeung Kak lake, where in recent years thousands of families have been evicted as part of an opaque land deal.
Her case has garnered attention at home and abroad, especially after rights group Amnesty International named her a prisoner of conscience, and called on its members to take action. Thousands wrote or emailed on her behalf.
On Friday, hopes were high among hundreds of Yorm Bopha’s assembled supporters, including many Buddhist monks, that the judiciary would free her unconditionally.
Yorm Bopha was confident as well. Speaking during a recess before the Supreme Court handed down its decision, she thanked people inside and outside Cambodia for their efforts.
Bopha said she was grateful for everyone's support, and was hopeful the court would "deliver justice" for her.
In the event, the Supreme Court ordered her released on bail, and instructed a lower court to revisit her case. It was much less than she and her supporters had hoped for.
Minutes later, Yorm Bopha told the media of her disappointment.
Bopha said she felt despondent that the case is being returned to the Appeal Court. She said this is being done to "shackle" her, and shows that authorities do not want her to file another complaint.
A municipal court sentenced Yorm Bopha to three years in jail last December for her alleged involvement in an attack on two men. Earlier this year, the Appeal Court reduced that term to two years. On Friday, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the Appeal Court and instructed it to examine all of the evidence.
Rights groups say the problem is that no evidence has ever been presented indicating that Yorm Bopha was involved in the case.
Outside the court, Amnesty International’s Cambodia researcher, Rupert Abbott, said the verdict has generated mixed feelings.
“Of course we’re pleased that she’s released - I think it shows that activism works. Her community’s been very active, day in, day out, and they’ve had some support from others, including Amnesty International members. We’re really pleased that she’s released. But we’re disappointed because the saga’s still continuing. The case has been sent back to the Appeal Court. She’s only released effectively on bail so it’s hanging over her. It’s another attempt to stop her activism and to silence her. So we’re concerned about that,” said Abbott.
Abbott said that he hoped the lower court - when it eventually looks into the case - would accept that there is no evidence against her.
“Let’s hope that her release today is a positive sign. Let’s hope that it symbolizes a change in attitude from the authorities - the government’s promised reforms here. Let’s hope her release today shows that this trend - harassing, threatening, attacking, imprisoning human rights defenders - let’s hope it’s coming to an end,” continued Abbott.
After the hearing on Friday, dozens of Yorm Bopha’s supporters followed her back to the prison to await her release, which will take place once officials have processed the necessary paperwork. She is expected to leave jail Friday.
Cambodian authorities must drop politically-motivated charges against four women involved in peaceful protests about the situation at Boeung Kak Lake in Phnom Penh, where almost 20,000 people have been forcibly evicted since 2008, Amnesty International said today.
Bo Chhorvy, Heng Mom, Kong Chantha and community leader Tep Vanny -- were charged with “obstructing public officials” and “insult” – crimes that carry hefty fines and prison sentences of up to one year.
Police and security officials used excessive force to break up Monday’s protest involving about 50 women outside a government building in the Cambodian capital. At least six demonstrators were injured and two reportedly attempted suicide.
Women have been at the forefront of a campaign to halt the eviction of families to make way for development around the Boeung Kak Lake area in heart of Phnom Penh. Peaceful protests take place regularly.
“Cambodian authorities must stop targeting activists who are peacefully defending their communities’ rights,” said Sam Zarifi, director of Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Programme.
“The politically-motivated charges against Tep Vanny and the other women, used in an attempt to silence legitimate protest, must be dropped. Authorities must immediately halt the use of excessive force against peaceful protestors.”
The four women spent Monday night in police detention in Phnom Penh and were denied full access to lawyers and medical care. Today they were charged and released under court supervision.
“The authorities’ decision to charge the four women reflects a worrying trend in Cambodia, where the space for legitimate public debate is narrowing,” said Sam Zarifi.
“Those seeking to peacefully claim their rights and voice their concerns are finding it increasingly harder to do so. Such a trend has worrying implications for the peaceful development of the country,” said Sam Zarifi.
In 2007, the Cambodian government granted the Boeung Kak Lake area, through a land concession, to a private development company, Shukaku. Many of the 4,000 families that lived around the lake have been forcibly evicted.
Authorities announced in August that the 779 families that remained near the late would be allotted 12.44 hectares for development.
However, a number of families were excluded from this arrangement, and the homes of eight families were destroyed in September 2011. Meanwhile, the process of granting land in the onsite development area has stalled.
“My house, possessions, clothes, all went up in smoke. Nothing was left”
Cambodian women are increasingly at the forefront of the battle against a wave of forced evictions sweeping the country, Amnesty International said today in a new report that urges the government to halt the practice.
Eviction and resistance in Cambodia: Five women tell their stories details through first-hand testimony the stories of Hong, Mai, Sophal, Heap and Vanny, women who have faced or continue to resist forced eviction from their homes and land. The stories illustrate the extent of the problem and show the trials faced at every stage of the brutal process. Some women have been able to resist eviction, others are virtually just clinging on, still more are left destitute.
Donna Guest, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Deputy Director, said:
“In Cambodia, women are at the forefront of the fight against forced evictions. Many have taken the lead in their communities’ struggle for justice, putting themselves at risk to defend their communities.
“The Cambodian authorities must bring about an end to the practice of forced evictions, which contravene international human rights treaties and tear families apart.
“They must ensure that genuine consultations are held with the people affected, and that residents receive sufficient notice and compensation or adequate housing where there is no alternative to eviction. The government should listen to the women who are trying to protect their homes and families.”
Mai, 48, a mother from the province of Oddar Meanchey, in north-west Cambodia, was pregnant in 2009 when she watched her home go up in flames. “My house, possessions, clothes, all went up in smoke. Nothing was left,” she said.
Her house and 118 others in her village, Bos, were bulldozed and burned to the ground by 150 police, military, and others believed to be workers employed by a company that was granted a concession over a large swathe of land, including Bos village, for a sugar plantation.
In October 2009, Mai was imprisoned for eight months for violating forestry laws when she travelled to the capital Phnom Penh to complain to the prime minister about the eviction. She was released in June 2010, but only after signing an agreement to relinquish the rights to her land. She now has little to provide for herself and her eight children.
Donna Guest, said:
“Women not only face impoverishment from forced eviction but threats and imprisonment when they try to resist, with no protection from the law.”
In the Boeung Kak Lake area of central Phnom Penh, nearly 20,000 people have either been evicted from their homes, or are at risk of losing them since a commercial development company was granted a 99-year lease in the area in 2007.
Thirty-one year old Vanny helps lead community resistance to the Boeung Kak Lake eviction.
On 11 August 2011, the community achieved a partial victory when the prime minister ordered a portion of land to be handed over to the remaining 800 families for onsite housing in plots with legal ownership.
Vanny said: “A lot of people think that this is the first success of people’s demonstration… it’s a great example for other communities all over the country.”
Yet Vanny still feels insecure. “When I leave my house, I don't know whether I can expect to come home or not.”
Vanny has good reason to be concerned, as she now faces a defamation charge brought by the Municipality of Phnom Penh. In addition, eight more homes on the edge of Boeung Kak Lake were destroyed by bulldozers on 16 September and the families left homeless.
Rapid economic development within a newly privatised land market has seen an increase in forced eviction across Cambodia.
Forced eviction often leads to loss of possessions and livelihood, the breakup of communities, and a deterioration of a family’s mental and physical wellbeing.
Access to education and health services can be disrupted. Many victims of forced eviction receive inadequate compensation and are resettled in remote areas. Husbands may need to spend long periods of time away from home seeking work, leaving their wives to cope alone.
Donna Guest, said:
“Tens of thousands of people across Cambodia are unlawfully losing their homes because of the demands of big business.
“The Cambodian government must not sacrifice human rights in the name of economic development.
“The loss of one’s home and community is a traumatic experience for anyone, but women in their role as primary caregivers for their family face a particular burden. Forced evictions also threaten the gains made in reducing poverty in Cambodia over the last 20 years.”
Amnesty International exposed the Cambodian authorities’ systematic failure to protect people from forced evictions in a 2008 report.
Forced evictions violate a person’s right to adequate housing, and are banned under international human rights treaties to which Cambodia is a state party.
A mother of eight, Hoy Mai was five months pregnant when she was forcefully evicted from her house in northwest Cambodia in 2009, according to Amnesty International. Her village – once home to more than 150 families, some of whom are now homeless – is now a guarded sugar cane plantation surrounded by empty fields, the group says.
Ms. Mai is one of the five “human faces” featured in Amnesty’s latest report on forced evictions in Cambodia – an issue that has long captured the attention of activists and multilateral organizations, from local Cambodian groups to the World Bank. But Amnesty hopes the new report will humanize the statistics, especially by profiling the role of women in the struggle against evacuations.
“Women increasingly are at the forefront, and are leading civil action against this,” said Donna Guest, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific deputy director. She added that women are typically the caretakers of the family and often stay at home, so the burden falls on them to protect their families from eviction.
Forced evictions have become commonplace in Cambodia, activists say, as investors look for more land for development, especially for natural resources. Amnesty contends that even though there are laws on the books in Cambodia to prevent forced evictions, those laws are often selectively applied or ignored. By Amnesty’s count, an estimated 10% of Phnom Penh’s population was evicted between 1990 to 2011.
Cambodian officials dispute activists’ accounts of the problem, and say many of the residents who are moved are given compensation.
“The report should not use the words ‘forced eviction,’ because it is just relocation for development,” said Beng Hong Socheat Khemro, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction.
“People always complain about the compensation and relocation, but they have to know that they live on state land illegally,” he said, though people who live on land legally are compensated by the government according to market prices. He said that when there are cases of people who have lived on their land illegally, but for a long time, the government will provide some compensation as a “humanitarian policy.”
Land ownership is often hard to prove in Cambodia, ever since the Maoist Khmer Rouge regime that controlled the country for several years in the 1970s abolished Cambodia’s land titling system and outlawed ownership of private property.
The Amnesty report is different from some previous studies of the issue in that it goes into deep detail about five women from cities and indigenous forest communities in Cambodia who said they had been forcibly evicted, or threatened of eviction.
“The court has no justice for poor citizens,” said Tep Vanny, a 31 year-old resident of Phnom Penh, in a video prepared by Amnesty. “[Poor] people don’t have any money to give them to deal with our problems.”
Ms. Vanny was one of the leading figures in a high-profile struggle against the developers of a project involving the Boeung Kak Lake in central Phnom Penh. After a private development company was granted a 99-year lease over the site – aimed at building a luxury residential and leisure complex – residents complained to City Hall, attracting international attention and prompting the World Bank to suspend loans to Cambodia. In August, Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen granted 12.44 ha of land around the lake to the displaced residents, in what activists have described as a rare victory against forced evacuations.
Amnesty acknowledges the government’s move at Boeung Kak Lake was a positive step. But the group says officials still need to do more – and acknowledge that the right to land and home ownership is guaranteed under international law. The report calls for the government to suspend all mass evictions until a clear prohibition on forced eviction is adopted, and stricter legislative guidelines are adopted.
“Land disputes can be solved, but not if politics is behind [the dispute],” said Nonn Pheany, a former spokeswoman for the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction who is now retired. She added that victims and “land grabbers” often do not understand each other, with the latter sometimes having no respect for the law.
“It is not easy to solve land disputes since it is so large scale,” Ms. Pheany added. “We have to spend much time studying the problem behind it.”
She said the government often does provide evicted residents with sufficient compensation. Amnesty’s report, though, said many residents would rather stay in their homes and not accept the compensation — but are forced to do so under duress. At one point, the report said residents of the Boeung Kak Lake area were offered US $8,500 for their houses regardless of the size of their plots of land, and were told to move to an area 20 kilometers outside Phnom Penh.
Ms. Pheany suggested that the government should register both private and public land and take steps to evaluate the consequences of private development on the land before selling that land to investors.
“Private business has to ensure that no human rights abuses occur on their development,” said Ms. Guest of Amnesty International. She added that Amnesty was appealing to international governments and using multilateral forums like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the European Union and the United Nations to ensure cooperation from both foreign investors and private companies.
According to the World Bank’s country director for Cambodia, Annette Dixon, the institution has not made any new loans to Cambodia since December 2010, and is continuing to watch the situation there closely.
RFA Photo Homes built on Boeung Kak Lake in central Phnom Penh.
Cambodian authorities scuffle with villagers over a land dispute in the capital.
Four women were injured and another four detained on Monday following a clash with Cambodian authorities over a controversial development project in the nation’s capital, according to villagers.
The women had gathered in front of city hall with other villagers from central Phnom Penh’s Boeung Kak Lake community to protest the loss of their land to a Chinese-Cambodian company.
The company has been filling in the lake with sand in preparation for the construction of a luxury residential site.
The villagers, many of whom had already lost their homes to a forced demolition, said they held the demonstration to ask for help from local officials after a group of land title officers visited Boeung Kak Lake to take measurements over the weekend.
“After being ordered to disperse, we scuffled with authorities who beat four women unconscious and detained another four,” said one villager, who asked to remain anonymous.
“Members of (the Cambodian rights group) Licadho assisted us in bringing the four injured women to a nearby hospital for treatment.”
The whereabouts of the four detained women were unknown and authorities could not be reached for comment.
Before the villagers' protest, Kong Chantha, a representative of the Boeung Kak Lake community, demanded that all residents whose homes had been demolished by developer Shukaku Inc. and local authorities be entitled to land within an area earmarked by Prime Minister Hun Sen in August.
According to Hun Sen’s decree, 12.44 hectares (31 acres) were to be set aside for 794 families who were facing eviction.
But local authorities say scores of families lack property titles recognized by the government and have excluded them from the land. Villagers contend that implementation of the decree has lacked transparency.
“I represent the people. I have no other means to exhaust in order to keep my house for my children,” Kong Chantha told RFA.
Sam Ath of Licadho said Cambodian authorities need to move faster in assigning the designated land to families facing eviction.
“We haven’t seen any discussions or dialogue taking place between the people and the authorities on the issue yet,” he said.
“What will happen if the government finishes measuring out the 12.44 hectares of land agreed to for the people, but some residents are left out?”
Nearly 20,000 people have either been evicted from their homes or are at risk of losing them since Shukaku Inc., which is owned by a politician from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, was granted a 99-year lease in the area in 2007.
Boeung Kak suicide
Meanwhile, the husband of a woman from the Boeung Kak Lake community said her body was found Saturday after she committed suicide out of desperation over being forcibly evicted.
Chea Dara, a 30-year-old mother of two, threw herself off of a bridge last week after she was left with no other option to protect her home from local authorities and the developer, according to her huband Doeung Phou.
Doeung Phou said his wife had struggled since 1980 to save money to purchase their eight square meter (86 square foot) home, but had been forced off of the premises as authorities prepared to demolish structures in the area.
“She just told me that she was hopeless and very worried about having no property—no land ownership and no home—for her children to stay in the future. She said she was afraid that the children would end up living on the street,” he told RFA.
A funeral was held for Chea Dara at a nearby pagoda on Saturday evening.
Cambodia’s land issue dates from the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime, which banned private property and forced large-scale evacuations and relocations throughout the country.
This was followed by mass confusion over land rights and the formation of squatter communities when the refugees returned in the 1990s after a decade of civil war.
Housing Cambodia’s large, young, and overwhelmingly poor population has posed a major problem ever since.
An estimated 30,000 people a year in Cambodia are driven from farmland or urban areas to make way for real estate developments or mining and agricultural projects.
Reported by RFA’s Khmer service. Translated by Sum Sok Ry and Yanny Hin. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
Cambodian people pass the time in the ruins of a house at the Boeung Kak Lake in Phnom Penh. The World Bank called on the Cambodian government to halt the eviction of another 10,000 people at a controversial real estate development and offered to help those who had lost their homes, (file).
Amnesty International called on the Cambodian government last Thursday to halt a wave of forced evictions affecting tens of thousands of people, a problem that shows no sign of letting up. Amnesty says women are increasingly putting themselves at the forefront in standing up for land rights.
Amnesty’s report tells the story of five women from across Cambodia who have been affected by forced evictions. The rights group says the Cambodian government is ignoring its international obligations by pushing ahead with forced evictions, and says Phnom Penh risks reversing 20 years of hard-won gains in reducing poverty.
“Amnesty International has been calling for an end to forced evictions for several years now. We’ve documented this extensively and of course the vibrant civil society in Cambodia has also been documenting and reporting on this practice which is unlawful under international law,” said Donna Guest, the deputy director of Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific department.
Women tell their stories
Guest says Amnesty wanted to focus on women and tell their stories as human rights defenders, as mothers and as wives.
"And this is to show the more human face - that these people are not just a statistic, these people have lives," she explained. "These people have had very adverse consequences - some of them have lost their homes, all their possessions, families have been split up. So that is why we are here today - to show the human face.
At the launch of the report, Guest was flanked by three Cambodian women who have been affected by evictions.
One of those women, Hong Mai, was evicted from her home in northwest Cambodia two years ago to make way for a sugar concession awarded to a ruling party senator.
She says armed authorities destroyed her house and all her possessions when they burned down her village and evicted the residents.
Hong Mai was five months pregnant, yet when she traveled to the capital days later to seek help from Prime Minister Hun Sen, she was accused of violating the Forestry Law and put in jail.
Eight months later she was released after signing an agreement to withdraw her claim to her land.
Hong Mai has not seen her husband since, and she and her five children are destitute.
Sanctions requested
She wants consumers in the European Union to boycott Cambodian sugar because, she says, "it is made from the land, life and blood” of people who have been thrown off their land.
Guest says Amnesty does not take a position on issues such as sanctions, but the organization is adamant that development should not come at the expense of human rights.
And as a European-based organization, Amnesty’s staff will continue to meet policymakers in Brussels and other European countries.
“We will ask our membership in the European countries - which are extremely active on this issue - to appeal to their members of parliaments, and also to raise awareness. I think part of any advocacy strategy must be to raise awareness so that people are aware of what’s going on. A lot of people have no idea what’s going on in Cambodia and this report today is an attempt to raise this profile, bring it to international attention, including in the EU countries,” Guest stated.
Amnesty’s focus on women and land rights was bleakly highlighted when a prominent land rights activist at the huge Boeung Kak eviction site in central Phnom Penh committed suicide this week.
Chea Dara, the mother of two children, threw herself off a bridge Tuesday - reportedly after her family was refused land at the lakeside site after a five-year battle.
At the release ceremony for the Amnesty report, Chea Dara's fellow activists wore black in tribute to her.
Where rule of law is weak, China’s investors should be wary of hiding behind local regulations, writes Liao Ruo, concluding a two-part article.
Perhaps concerned about the negative impact of the “relocations” from Boeung Kak, the commercial attaché at China’s embassy in Cambodia, counsellor Jin Yuan, gave an interview to the Global Times in January, rejecting responsibility on behalf of the Chinese firm. Shukaku bore sole responsibility for the relocations and Erdos Hongjun would only be involved after that process finished, he said, adding that compensation negotiations were being carried out by a special body appointed by the Phnom Penh government and had nothing to do with either company.
Admittedly, according to its contract, the Chinese company isn’t legally responsible for the relocations. But as a 50% shareholder in the joint venture and the project’s sole investor, doesn’t it have a social responsibility to the thousands of residents whose lives have been gravely affected by the scheme?
The Global Times report also stated that “Even though the residents’ buildings are mostly illegal, the development company has still paid out compensation and built alternative housing 20 kilometres outside of Phnom Penh.” The implication is that the residents’ demands are illegitimate, the developers have already done more than necessary and the Boeung Kak locals have no cause to bother the Chinese firm.
But in Cambodia, where the rule of law is weak, legality and justice may not always be one and the same. If you want to be a good investor, you have to make an effort to understand local realities, as well as obeying local rules.
Originally, the banks of Boeung Kak were uninhabited. But after the fall of the Khmer Rouge in the 1980s, Cambodians started to move back to Phnom Penh from the surrounding provinces and some settled here. In 2001, a new land law was passed: if a household could prove that it had lived in one place for the five years prior to 2001, then it owned the property.
Most of the residents around Boeung Kak meet that requirement. But the government has made slow progress certifying land rights, and so their ownership remains unrecognised. After the city government announced the leasing of land to Shukaku in February 2007, the locals started to fear they would sooner or later be driven away – and sure enough, the following year, government promises that locals would not be moved were broken, and pressure started to be applied. The nightmare began.
As the Global Times reported, the developers did provide compensation. Residents were given three choices: US$8,500 in cash; a new home 20 kilometres away from the city and US$500 for moving costs; or temporarily relocation to another site with the option of moving back in five years.
That may sound adequate, but it’s not. Land in the area already costs US$3,000 per square metre. Assuming each household originally had 50 square metres of land, it would have had a market value of US$150,000. And so $8,500 is far from a fair price.
The majority of the displaced residents had no choice but to head to the city’s outskirts and “spend about US$6,000 on a piece of land, and then another three or four thousand dollars building a house,” Sia Phearum, secretariat director of Housing Rights Task Force, a Phnom Penh-based NGO, told reporters. They couldn’t buy land in the city proper for two reasons, he said: one, it is too expensive, and, two, they would only be likely to be relocated again.
Unlike in Chinese cities, Phnom Penh does not have lots of residential property developments, and those that do exist are not built for ordinary people. If the average local wants a house, he or she “buys” a piece of land and builds on it. However, that “buying” normally means obtaining a proof of exchange from the village or county head, which has no legal force. If the government decides it wants the land, that piece of paper is not enough to prove ownership. Of course, residents can go through the proper formalities and have their land rights recognised, but that can cost US$1,500 in bribes to the authorities – more than an ordinary worker might make in a year.
The second option is no better. In early 2010, I visited the replacement housing provided to relocated locals by the developer: rows of single-storey buildings. Inside each house is just a large empty room. There are no kitchens, and the toilets are outside. Basic infrastructure is inadequate.
Most importantly, it’s too far from the city. Cambodia is not a developed nation, and leaving the city means going back to an agricultural society, away from modern infrastructure like electricity and running water. It can also mean losing your livelihood: Phearum said 60% of those who moved here ended up returning to the city and renting somewhere to live.
Moving has also caused employment and education difficulties. The women can no longer earn their usual income setting up small stalls by their front doors, as the area has very few residents – and those who do live here have no money to spend. Many of the men tend to work as motorcycle taxi drivers and this has problems too: it’s a 50 kilometre round-trip to the city, which means spending a lot more on fuel. There’s no nearby school, so some children dropped out. One middle school student told me that he’d missed a year of education, until an NGO gave him a bicycle so he could get to a school 20 kilometres away.
The third option, to move back to Boeung Kak in five years, is even less popular. The developers are promising apartments in high-rise buildings, meaning residents will not be able to run stalls at their front door. The community also has no confidence that the developer will keep its promises.
And so the remaining 800 residents are refusing all three proposals and demanding land where they can build homes near the lake. The developer can continue to say its compensation schemes are more than fair, but in reality the residents have been placed in a hopeless situation.
How did this project attract two or three different Chinese firms, and how can those firms ignore the pleas of the locals? Perhaps it has something to do with who the Cambodian partner is.
Shukaku’s chairman is senator Lao Meng Khin of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, and a special adviser to prime minister Hun Sen. He is also ethnically Chinese, and always accompanies the prime minister on visits to China. In 2009, Khin was invited to Beijing for the 60th anniversary celebrations of the People’s Republic of China. He is often found lurking in the shadows of large Sino-Cambodian joint ventures.
In March 2004, Cambodian International Investment Development Group (CIIDG) – of which Lao Meng Khin is also chairman – signed a deal with China’s Henan Jinqu Gold, forming Jinqu Mining, to extract gold ore in Cambodia. In November 2004, he imported a train from China South Locomotive and Rolling Stock, the first such purchase from China made by Cambodia. And, in February 2008, a consortium of four Chinese firms, led by the Jiangsu Hodo Group, invested in a special economic zone in Sihankouville, again in partnership with CIIDG.
An investigation by United Kingdom-based NGO Global Witness has found that Lao Meng Khin is also a director of a forestry company that cooperates with Chinese logging business Hainan Wuzhishan Group, and of two more firms which, judging by their names, are likely China-Cambodia joint ventures: Petrol Camchin and Sino Hydropower.
Clearly, he has excellent contacts with the authorities in charge of various resources. Global Witness estimates that Lao Meng Khin and his wife’s company, Pheapimex, has felling rights to 1.33 million hectares of forest – 7.4% of Cambodia’s total land area. According to a US embassy cable released by Wikileaks, Pheapimex has recently obtained usage rights for 315,000 hectares of land for plantations and mining.
Having such a well-placed Cambodian partner may ease the worries of many Chinese investors. But high political benefits also bring high political risks. On September 11 this year, Cambodia’s main opposition party, the Sam Rainsy Party, issued a statement describing Shukaku as “an enemy of the Khmer people”. It warned all law-abiding companies and organisations to avoid any connection with the company, including owning its shares, making joint investments, loans, guarantees, purchasing or supplying products or services or cooperating in any way. Although the governing Cambodian People’s Party still has a strong grip on power and the Sam Rainsy Party is very likely to remain in opposition for the foreseeable future, its rhetoric and the public opinion it represents must be taken seriously.
Monday, 11 April 2011 James O'Toole The Phnom Penh Post
The United States has registered sharp criticism of the Cambodian government in its annual human rights report, raising long-standing concerns about land rights, corruption and judicial independence.
A protester speaks in October of the eviction of residents of Phnom Penh’s Boeung Kak lake. (Photo by: Uy Nousereimony)
Released on Friday in Washington, the US report covers 194 countries and spans more than 7,000 pages. The section on Cambodia stretches 42 pages and paints a grim picture of human rights in the Kingdom, calling rule of law weak and corruption “endemic”.
“Members of security forces committed arbitrary killings and acted with impunity. Detainees were abused, often to extract confessions, and prison conditions were harsh,” the report states.
“Human rights monitors reported arbitrary arrests and prolonged pretrial detention, underscoring a weak judiciary and denial of the right to a fair trial. Land disputes and forced evictions, sometimes violent, continued.”
The report depicts a two-tiered society in which the well-connected rarely face legal action and are able to strip state and private assets with impunity. The poor, meanwhile, have difficulty navigating the court system and have little recourse in the face of violations such as land-grabbing and unlawful detention.
With just 30 percent of the country’s 751 lawyers offering pro bono services, the US said, basic legal rights are inaccessible to most of the population.
Reports of beatings and forced confessions in police custody were common, with illiterate defendants sometimes forced to sign confessions they did not understand. Defamation cases against poor villagers and government critics continued, and more than half of all appeals cases took place without defendants present.
Forced relocations increased in 2010 compared to the previous year, the US said, amid “ineffective” work by the government’s Cadastral Commission and National Authority for Land Dispute Resolution.
There were no reports of politically motivated murders, though the Kingdom’s security forces were responsible for at least 12 extrajudicial killings last year, the US said, citing data from local rights group Adhoc.
The government did receive credit for its religious tolerance and its cooperation with development groups on prison and refugee issues. The report also noted the passage of the country’s long-awaited Anticorruption Law last year, though it said government officials “frequently engaged in corrupt practices with impunity”.
Past US rights reports have drawn criticism from Cambodian officials, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs calling the publication “a routine that has nothing to do with human rights reality in Cambodia” following the 2008 report. Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan said yesterday that he had not yet seen the latest report, though he nonetheless dismissed its findings as “out of date”.
“Some issues are out of date – we’ve solved the problem already – and some issues, we can’t work 24 hours,” he said. The government, he said, is working “to build a culture of human rights respect through the law”.
US assistant secretary of state Michael Posner told reporters in Washington on Friday that growing restrictions on civil society organisations, of the sort now being considered in Cambodia with the government’s controversial draft NGO Law, are among the global human rights trends about which the US is most concerned.
“This week, for example, we’re in a diplomatic negotiation with the government of Cambodia, which is now considering adopting a new law to this effect, which would make it much more difficult for Cambodian human rights and other organisations to operate,” Posner said.
Restrictions on internet freedom and “discrimination against vulnerable groups” are the US’s other key global rights concerns for this year, he said.
Published: Wednesday, Mar 9, 2011, 14:27 IST Place: PHNOM PENH | Agency: Reuters
The World Bank called on the Cambodian government on Wednesday to halt the eviction of another 10,000 people at a controversial real estate development and offered to help those who had lost their homes.
The dispute centres on land around Boeung Kak Lake in the capital, Phnom Penh. Activists say around 2,000 families have already been evicted and forced to accept minimal compensation after the government leased the land to a private developer.
"We are deeply troubled and frustrated about the people who are being forced from their homes," World Bank President Robert Zoellick said in a statement.
He said the World Bank would help those facing eviction and that it had offered the government financing and technical advice.
"We are open to other ways to help these people. We have repeatedly called on the government to end the evictions. We are seeking a positive government response," he added.
Land ownership is a big problem in the Southeast Asian country, where legal documents were destroyed and state institutions collapsed under the Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s and the civil war that followed.
The World Bank had been helping the authorities with land management and administration but the government pulled out of the project in September 2009 because of rows over evictions.
"We call on the government to stop the evictions and to find a way to help the people. Over the last decade Cambodia has experienced high levels of economic growth, leading to increased pressure on land," said Annette Dixon, the World Bank's country director in Cambodia.
The World Bank statement acknowledged that people evicted from around Boeung Kak Lake had been "displaced in violation of the policies the Bank agreed with the government for handling resettlement" and that the Bank had been slow to respond.
A Cambodian government spokesperson declined to comment. An official working on the case said those who had already left the lake area had gone voluntarily and he denied activists' claims that the remaining families had been given a deadline to leave.
"We have accepted residents' request for talks on this on Friday," said Keut Chhe, deputy cabinet chief of Phnom Penh City Hall.
He said he could not comment on whether the government would renew its work on land management with the World Bank.
As Cambodia's economy booms after years of war and instability, its residents are struggling to cope with a new problem: Land grabs and forced evictions that have affected more than 250,000 Cambodians over the past five years, according to Cambodia-based rights group Licadho, which began recording data on land disputes in 2005. The roots of the problem can be traced back to the rule of the Khmer Rouge, a radical Communist rebel group that abolished Cambodia's land titling system in 1975 when they outlawed ownership of private property.
Although the Khmer Rouge lost power in 1979, even today few Cambodians possess official land titles, making it easier for private businesses to force people off their land for urban development projects and large-scale agro-business plantations.
Often, residents are relocated -- sometimes without compensation -- to areas far from their jobs, health care and adequate water and sanitation, activists say. In many cases, the companies benefiting from land acquisitions are owned or controlled by government ministers, ruling party senators, military officials and their family members, activists add.
"Over the last 15 years, Cambodia's ruling elite have enriched themselves by selling off the country's forests, fisheries, land and most recently mineral resources," said David Pred, executive director of Bridges Across Borders Cambodia.
The government dismisses charges of excessive and inappropriate land deals and says some development projects are necessary to promote the country's economy.
"Land and cultural resources are the two major potentials Cambodia possesses (which) can be used to develop the country," says Im Chhun Lim, Minister of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction, in Cambodia. So "there should not be a question to why Cambodia" uses its large tracts of land "for attracting investors for developing (the) country."
He adds that while some relocations create challenges for residents, over time living conditions improve as basic infrastructure is installed and relocated residents are integrated into their new areas.
Either way, advocates say, the disputes are likely to continue -- Cambodia's growing economy is expected to generate even more demand for land in the years ahead.
(New York) - The US selection of a Cambodian military unit with a record of human rights abuses to be the host of an annual peacekeeping exercise in Asia undermines the US commitment to promoting human rights in Cambodia, Human Rights Watch said today.
The "Angkor Sentinel" exercise is part of the 2010 Global Peace Operations Initiative, an effort jointly run by the US Departments of Defense and State to help train peacekeepers. Co-hosted by the US Pacific Command, Angkor Sentinel will be the largest multinational military exercise held this year in the Asia-Pacific region, with more than 1,000 military personnel from 23 Asia-Pacific countries taking part.
The peacekeeping exercises will begin on July 12, 2010, with a five-day "command post" exercise in Phnom Penh. A two-week field training exercise will follow, with Cambodia's ACO Tank Command Headquarters in Kompong Speu province as the host. The US Defense Department funded construction there of a US$1.8 million training center for the 2010 initiative.
"For the Pentagon and State Department to permit abusive Cambodian military units to host a high-profile regional peacekeeping exercise is outrageous," said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The US undermines its protests against the Cambodian government for rampant rights abuses like forced evictions when it showers international attention and funds on military units involved in grabbing land and other human rights violations."
For years, the ACO Tank Unit has been involved in illegal land seizures, as documented by the US State Department and by Cambodian and international human rights organizations. In November 2008, the unit seized the farmland of 133 families in Banteay Meanchey province, ostensibly to build a military base. In 2007, soldiers from the unit in Kompong Speu province used armored vehicles to flatten villagers' fences, destroy their crops, and confiscate their land.
Since 2006, the US has provided more than $4.5 million worth of military equipment and training to Cambodia. Some of that aid has gone to units and individuals within the Cambodian military with records of serious human rights violations, including Brigade 31, Brigade 70, and Airborne Brigade 911.
The Phnom Penh portion of Angkor Sentinel is likely to showcase elite Cambodian military units based near the capital, such as Prime Minister Hun Sen's personal bodyguard unit and Brigade 70, both of which have been linked to a deadly March 1997 grenade attack on the political opposition, and Airborne Brigade 911, which has been involved in arbitrary detentions, political violence, torture, and summary executions.US material assistance has also gone toward rights-abusing units such as Brigade 31, formerly known as Division 44, which in 2008 used US-donated trucks to forcibly move villagers evicted from their land in Kampot province. In recent years Brigade 31 has been implicated in illegal logging, land grabbing, and intimidation of opposition party activists during the 2008 national elections. The unit was also involved in summary executions of captured soldiers loyal to the FUNCINPEC party during a 1997 coup staged by Hun Sun.
Cambodian military personnel are not held accountable for serious rights violations. Instead, Hun Sen has promoted military officers implicated in torture, extrajudicial killings, and political violence, such as Hing Bunheang, the deputy commander of Brigade 70 at the time of the 1997 grenade attack, who was made deputy commander of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces in January 2009.
In December 2009, Cambodia deported 20 ethnic Uighur asylum seekers at grave risk back to China on the eve of a visit by senior Chinese officials to Phnom Penh. The US cancelled delivery of 200 surplus military trucks and trailers to Cambodia under the US Excess Defense Articles program. This was only the most minimal response to a serious breach of Cambodia's obligations as a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, Human Rights Watch said.
In February, Hun Sen announced plans for corporate sponsorship of military units as a way to support defense costs. More than 40 Cambodian businesses have agreed to subsidize military units, including some companies that have long been allowed to misuse military units as the equivalent of security contractors to protect and support their business ventures in agri-business, banking, casinos, and national media.
"By essentially auctioning off military units, Hun Sen revealed that many military units are little more than guns for hire, not the defenders of the Cambodian people," Robertson said. "The US should not be training corrupt and abusive military units for global peacekeeping."
The US government should suspend military aid to Cambodia pending an improved and thorough human rights vetting process that screens out abusive individuals or units from receiving any aid or training, Human Rights Watch said. Certain military units, as well as individual personnel from them, should be immediately banned from Defense Department assistance, including Hun Sen's bodyguard unit, Brigade 70, Brigade 31, and Airborne Brigade 911, and any of their sub-units.
"US support for peacekeeping training cannot mean turning a blind eye to soldiers and units who have violated human rights," Robertson said. "Instead, military units that are called to deploy abroad as international peacekeepers must be true professionals, not only in technical expertise, but in their respect for human rights."
Members of the Cambodian military take part in a parade on the outskirts of Phnom Penh on Oct. 13, 2009 Chor Sokunthea / Reuters
A land dispute in March between a sugar-plantation developer and a small community in the province of Kampong Speu motivated military police stationed nearby to spring into action, ostensibly in order to prevent an eruption of violence. It didn't take long, though, for the villagers to view the supposed peacekeepers as intimidators.
It wasn't the first time military personnel were seen as supporting the business interests of Ly Yong Phat, a prominent developer and Senator with the country's ruling party. Last October in the province of Oddar Meanchey, 100 families were driven off their land by members of an infantry brigade stationed in the area. They were moved to make way for another Ly plantation, according to the local rights group Licadho. Now that Ly's businesses will be officially sponsoring both of these military units following a new government initiative, says Licadho's Mathieu Pellerin, "it looks like a job-well-done payback." (See TIME's photo-essay "The Rise and Fall of the Khmer Rouge.")
At the end of February, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen kicked off a program creating partnerships in which businesses would provide donations for particular units of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. The government has framed the initiative, which involves some 60 pairings, as facilitating the magnanimous inclination of corporations operating in Cambodia to support the welfare of the country's troops. Observers, however, caution that the program will ultimately serve to further enmesh the country's powerbrokers — political, military and business — into a network to serve their mutual interests and ensure everyone's allegiance to the ruling party.
The Cambodian military regularly guards large-scale private land concessions across the country, according to rights groups, and has been used to evict the rural poor for business developments. Hun Sen's new policy, says U.S.-based watchdog group Global Witness, is a step toward formalizing that process. "Global Witness has documented links between Cambodia's military and powerful business tycoons for many years now, so the relationships are not new," says Eleanor Nichol, a campaigner with the group, which was expelled from Cambodia in 2007 after publishing a report, fervently refuted by the government, that linked prominent officials in the government, military and business community with the illegal logging trade. "This latest move ... to officially sanction these partnerships is particularly shocking because it legitimizes a guns-for-hire scenario."
The government and companies participating in the new patronage program reject claims that the partnerships could lead to improprieties. Ly Yong Phat says his involvement in the program is to compensate for the military's lack of funding for troops' basic needs. Corporate support, according to a government memo, will "solve the dire situation of the armed forces, police, military police and their families through a culture of sharing." The government has responded to criticisms by specifying that donations would likely come in the form of food and shelter. (See the top 10 news stories of 2009.)
The program has confounded regional security experts. "It's not unusual in militarized states like Iran, Yemen, Turkey and Vietnam for the army to own and run corporations, but the direct corporate sponsorship of active-duty units is something new and very worrying," says John Harrison, a security expert based in Singapore. The only country in the region that comes close to having a similar system is Indonesia, says Carlyle Thayer, a professor of Asian security affairs at Australia's University of New South Wales. Like Cambodia, Indonesia has a long history of blurred lines between military and political power. For years, Indonesia has used "foundations" to collect donations from the private sector to compensate for shortages in public military funding. While some of the money has been used for its intended purpose of supporting military families, the system has promoted alliances between the Indonesian army and companies wherein donations are exchanged for "mafia-like" criminal services, according to Human Rights Watch.
Cambodia's army-sponsorship initiative goes against the grain of business divestment in the militaries of China and Vietnam, says Thayer. Citing a need to bolster security preparedness in the army, the Chinese government in 1998 forced its entrepreneurial army to sell off the majority of its investments and compensated the subsequent revenue shortfall by increasing defense spending. Two years ago, Vietnam called for a similar plan in the name of army discipline. "Cambodia should heed [those] lessons," says Thayer.
But unlike China and Vietnam, where booming economic growth helped bolster state funding for the military, Cambodia's army is badly strapped for cash. The problem is exacerbated by the deployment of large numbers of troops along the border with Thailand, as the two countries continue to engage in a protracted border-demarcation dispute. Even though the corporate donations are ostensibly voluntary, organizing official partnerships raises questions about the pressures companies will face to participate — and what benefits will be extended, or denied, to them based on their contributions. The end result, warn a litany of local and international rights groups, could be a cash-driven race to the top among companies vying for government favor, matched by a race to the bottom in state support of laypeople involved in rows with influential corporations.
Observers have also raised concerns that the initiative could further skew Cambodia's political landscape, which has seen a dramatic consolidation of power by the ruling Cambodian People's Party over the past decade. "In times of need, the public in many countries will spontaneously support their military ... Cambodia's new program is something very different," says Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research in Singapore. By soliciting funds for the army, the government can position itself to arouse nationalist fervor that will, in turn, translate into support for its political backer: the ruling party itself.
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.
These days, for better or worse, we don't hear all that much about that once basket-case nation even though, as we speak, a leading henchmen of the notorious Pol Pot is on trial in Phnom Phen finally charged with crimes against humanity. As if surviving the Killing Fields wasn't enough, hapless Cambodians are now faced with a new peril - rampant land developers literally smashing entire communities, leaving thousands homeless. And David O'Shea reports that all this is going on with a proverbial wink and a nod from Cambodia's powerful political elites.
REPORTER: David O'Shea
This is a story about power in Cambodia - those who have it and those who don't. It's also about the power of money and what some would call 'progress' in this impoverished land. Right across the country, the poor and powerless are being shoved aside in the rush for so-called development, and it's happening with the complicity of Cambodia's leaders.
The story begins here in Boeung Kak Lake in the heart of the capital, Phnom Penh. Two years ago, a little-known developer signed a 99-year lease with the council for this 133-hectare site. And they're filling 90% of the lake with sand to build a high-rise. The problem for people living around the edge of the lake is, as the sand goes in the water level rises and their houses go under. Since the beginning, there's been a total lack of transparency about the deal. Opposition parliamentarian Sam Rainsy is quite literally wading into the debate.
SAM RAINSY, OPPOSITION PARLIAMENTARIAN: We are here to support the people and to protest against these so-called development projects that cause so many problems for the people living here.
REPORTER: This is a ridiculous situation.
SAM RAINSY: Ridiculous. They don't take into account the environment. They ignore, or they pretend to ignore, that when they fill in lakes, this is going to cause floods. But they don't care - they want to make profits.
REPORTER: Who is this 'they' you're talking about?
SAM RAINSY: They're unscrupulous businessmen who have the support of corrupt political leaders.
People here tell Rainsy they have seen nothing like it in 30 years.
SAM RAINSY: They say this is directly related to the nearby lakes being filled in.
REPORTER: It's not that you've had more rain this year than usual?
SAM RAINSY: No, it is not due to rain.
REPORTER: So it's a pretty miserable existence here at the moment?
SAM RAINSY: Yes, everybody is complaining. Behind their gentle smile you can perceive the anger.
DAN NICHOLSON, CENTRE OF HOUSING RIGHTS AND EVICTIONS: This is the biggest forced relocation of people since Khmer Rouge times - over 4,000 families - and it's happening without proper information, without proper consultation.
Dan Nicholson is with the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, headquartered in Geneva. They're campaigning for the 4,000 families set to be evicted from villages around the lake. Families who have lived here for years, including many who settled here immediately after the horrors of the Khmer Rouge period.
DAN NICHOLSON: The whole contract under which it's being done is blatantly illegal but even though we've gone to court, we can't stop it. There's a total lack of involvement of the community and for the benefit for the community. Instead, the urban poor are just being shunted out of town while the elite take over with another badly thought out development.
The community's legal challenge was dismissed by the court on a technicality. And for those residents resisting threats and intimidation to leave, the flooding is making daily life extremely difficult. Nicholson believes the company, Shukaku, may be using it as a strategy to force them out.
DAN NICHOLSON: They've been pumping sand into the lake for the last couple of months, and so when the rains came, all this flooding is much worse than usual at this stage - kind of a way to force the community out, I guess - those who're staying.
REPORTER: You think? So, that could be it?
DAN NICHOLSON: Yeah, well, they've been told either to go now or your houses will be flooded, so...
This enormous development will completely transform this part of Phnom Penh, but finding out anything at all about the company behind it is almost impossible. Shukaku has no office, and they're not even in the phone book. What we do know is that the company director is senator Lao Meng Khin, a close ally of Prime Minister Hun Sen. The senator is also director of Pheapimex, one of the most powerful conglomerates in the country. According to this report released a fortnight ago by the London-based NGO Global Witness, the senator made his millions in logging.
‘NGO GLOBAL WITNESS’: “ In a forest industry dominated by illegal logging and conflict with local people, Pheapmex held the dubious distinction of being notorious amongst the concessionaires for its ruthlessness and the level of destruction inflicted on its concession areas.”
On the other side of Phnom Penh is the community of Dey Krahorm. It's a market area in a great location, and like the residents around the lake, people have lived here legally for decades. Land titles here are still a mess following the upheaval of the Khmer Rouge years, but under a 2001 law, if people can prove that they've occupied land for more than five years, they have possession rights. What's more, Prime Minister Hun Sen specifically earmarked this area as a social concession, to be developed in conjunction with the existing residents. But that promise was broken, and it's clear the government is now supporting the developer. Negotiations for adequate compensation have just hit a wall. And community leader Chan Vichet knows that this is the beginning of the end. Vichet is on the way to City Hall to see if he can salvage the stalled negotiations.
CHAN VICHET, COMMUNITY LEADER (Translation): Here in Cambodia they don’t respect the poor. If there are legal proceedings, we always lose. In court even if you are right you will lose against the rich. We live here legally, but the Council considers us to be illegal residents. They say we are anarchists.
With no-one to stop them, Vichet and the other delegates march straight into the Deputy Governor's office.
CHAN VICHET (Translation): I’m bringing this proposal to you because the people are very worried.
WOMAN (Translation): Please make it short, it affects my business. Do whatever is possible.
DEPUTY GOVERNOR (Translation): Okay, let’s go outside, yes I will do something. Let’s go.
WOMAN (Translation): Thank you very much.
The Deputy Governor says the company's offer stands - $US20,000 per family or a house outside the city at the relocation site. The residents complain that $20,000 is a fraction of the land value for prime real estate in the centre of the city and the relocation site offers inadequate housing too far from their livelihoods.
DEPUTY GOVERNOR (Translation): Vichet, you have to change son. You have to change your attitude. We are not at war, we are educated people. That’s all I can do, the company has offered you $20,000.
WOMAN (Translation): That won’t buy a home.
DEPUTY GOVERNOR (Translation): It’s your decision. We won’t talk further because you don’t act decently. You respond by making faces at me. Very rude! You are very rude. You must excuse me, I regret making time to talk to you.
REPORTER: Mr Deputy Governor, can you guarantee that these people will be safe or are they going to suffer some kind of attack in the next few days?
DEPUTY GOVERNOR (Translation): Have you seen anyone get hurt? Did anyone get even a slap?
CROWD (Translation): No, no, no.
DEPUTY GOVERNOR (Translation): When your husband hits you at home it’s worse than my words to you.
REPORTER: So far nobody hurt. What about tomorrow or the next day?
DEPUTY GOVERNOR (Translation): Tell him I am not the one who makes decisions. He has a right to ask but I have a right not to answer.
Rumours are swirling that tonight is eviction night. I find Vichet at home - a broken man.
CHAN VICHET (Translation): I don’t know what to do now, if they use force to evict us we have to protect our homes. If we can’t defeat them, we just have to watch them do it because we have no power.
At midnight, police set up roadblocks and hundreds of officers move into place. Colour coded T-shirts are handed out to the hundreds of workers the company have trucked in to do their dirty work. At 2am a car pulls up, and axes are handed out to the workers. Around the corner scores of trucks are standing by to haul away the rubble. In the pre-dawn, the colour coordinated workers take up positions and on the dot of 6am, they attack.
MAN (Translation): Get them out, get them out, get the camera out of here.
At every entrance I'm turned back.
REPORTER: So, what's happening? Tell me what's happening. What's happening?
POLICEMAN: I don't know. It's the order. I don't know.
REPORTER: What's the order?
POLICEMAN: I don't know. I'm sorry.
The demolition work is swift. Within a few hours, it's all over. This is the ruins of Vichet's house. I spoke to him last night at midnight - or just before midnight. He was pretty resigned to losing his place, and here it is, gone. When the bulldozer driver ploughs through people trying to save their possessions, they strike back. The company's fire extinguishers are used to disperse them. An injured woman is carried out as others salvage what they can.
WOMAN (Translation): We paid money for these blocks, thousand of dollars, look what they have done to us by bulldozing these homes. Some were still asleep, got hurt and were hospitalised.
WOMAN 2 (Translation): My childrens jewellery.. ring, earrings, all gone. Why can’t they let us move without force?
WOMAN (Translation): They won’t let us take anything we had to fight to get our belongings. The owner of that house was unconscious and was taken to hospital.
Human rights workers observing proceedings could point to several laws broken here today.
NALY PILORGE, HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGNER: What the company has done with the complicity of authorities - military police and local police - is illegal. This was designated a social concession and it was sold to a company, which is prohibited. And if you see those buildings behind you, this is next - all these people that have been watching, I'm sure they know they're next. This is a very valuable piece of land. It's a really sad, sad situation, and again, illegal and with the complicity of the authorities.
The workmen on the roof of Australia's new embassy also had a ringside view of the destruction. The building is going up right in the middle of the eviction zone. All around it communities have been forced out or will be shortly - even though they have a strong legal claim to be there.
AUSTRALIAN ANTHEM: Australians all let us rejoice for we are young and free. We've golden soil... Our home is girt by sea...
It's Australia Day at Ambassador Margaret Adamson's residence.
REPORTER: Are you concerned that violent and illegal evictions are going on on the doorstep of the new Australian embassy?
MARGARET ADAMSON, AMBASSADOR TO CAMBODIA: Well, Of course we have concerns about how the Cambodian Government manages the issue of land tenure. It's a long-standing issue in the country and we have concerns which we express to the Cambodian Government on a regular basis.
REPORTER: This was right on the doorstep of the new Australian embassy, so it must be... doubly embarrassing for you at this stage, no?
MARGARET ADAMSON: I'm conscious of the location. .. I don't find it embarrassing, no. I find it a matter as I've said before to you, that is a matter which is played out in different parts of the country, so I don't see find on the doorstep of the Australian embassy any less deserving of our attention than anywhere else in the country.
REPORTER: Under the 2001 law, don't they have residency rights or possession rights?
MARGARET ADAMSON: It's very difficult to prove, though, isn't it? It's very difficult to prove...
REPORTER: If they've been there for longer than five years noticeably without violence... I understand what you say.
MARGARET ADAMSON: Absolutely. Absolutely. No, I understand what the principles are, but it is difficult indeed to actually have the documentation, documentation that is accepted, to enable those claims to be respected.
Together the international community pledged $1 billion last year to the Cambodian Government. The Global Witness report 'Country For Sale' is scathing about the role played by donor countries like Australia.
‘THE GLOBAL WITNESS’: “ Cambodia’s international donor community has consistently failed to bring the government to book for blatant violations of its commitments to protect the human rights of Cambodians, fight corruption and ensure the protection of land and natural resources.”
The land grabbing frenzy is going on right around the country. Of them all, one case stands out for its brazen abuse of power. The village of Kong Yu is in the remote north-east of the country near the Vietnamese border. The indigenous Jarai people here are culturally and ethnically distinct from the Khmers and the Vietnamese. They live in tight-knit communities and practice shifting agriculture on their ancestral lands. But the traditional ways are under serious threat. With a combination of lies, intimidation and financial incentives, a well connected woman is snapping up their land for a rubber plantation. Her name is Keat Kolney, sister of the Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. Her husband is Secretary Of State at the Ministry of Land Management, which is responsible for registration of indigenous lands. This footage shows the businesswoman in Kong Yu village handing out sarongs and cash.
DAN KING, COMMUNITY LEGAL EDUCATION CENTRE: The villagers in their mind on that particular day, they were not clear whether this was a donation by a rich state party official or whether this was, in fact, money for the purpose of selling the land, so in their minds they were clear. They were donating from the small, grassy hill called the Dombok, and it's approximately 50 hectares. Subsequently more has been cleared and Keat Kolney now claims 450 hectares of land.
Dan King is an Australian lawyer advising a team of Cambodian lawyers who've taken on the villagers' case. He says Cambodian law clearly states that indigenous land cannot be sold.
DAN KING: It's basically an open-and-shut case in terms of the documentation and the evidence. It's about the court having the courage to make a very difficult decision against a very high powered, connected individual to make sure that justice is done.
The villagers of Kong Yu have told their version of events on video. An American filmmaker helped them with the technology, but the villagers acted all the parts and filmed it themselves. The first scene shows the arrival of the company's brokers who want some land. The villagers declined, but were told that Prime Minister Hun Sen needed the land to house disabled soldiers, and if they didn't sell, it would be taken from them anyway. This was a blatant lie, but the villagers felt powerless to resist and agreed to hand over approximately 50 hectares. Then there's the party scene. The villagers killed a pig and the company supplied the beer, and in the middle of the festivities, out comes the inkpad again. Men from the company even went around the village in the middle of the night waking people up to get their thumb prints. The villagers only realised what it all meant later.
WOMAN 3 (Translation): After we agreed to give the land to them, some time later the company came with trucks and bulldozers and started to clear the land beyond the boundary hill. They damaged our rubber trees and the villagers went to stop them from clearing the land. All of us, young and old, went to the boundary to stop them.
But they failed, and the authorities accused them of disturbing the peace and locked up seven people. I approached plantation owner Keat Kolney through her lawyer to request an interview, but was told she was too busy. And at Kolney's plantation office near Kong Yu village, I get a frosty reception.
GUARD (Translation): Didn’t you see the sign? Unauthorised entry prohibited. See? The sign is over here. Unauthorised entry prohibited.
Back in the village, the lawyers are discovering that the community is now divided - into those who want to sell more land and those who want to get the land they lost back.
DAN KING: For the first time that we have been working with the villagers, for the first time they are thinking about selling a large piece of land - the whole community, not just a few families, but half the community - wants to sell the land. That is a serious situation. We won't have a case. There won't be a Kong Yu case if they sell their land.
Crucially, the village chief has turned.
VILLAGE CHIEF (Translation): The company authorised me to sort out the land issue and the villagers gave me the authority to do that as well.
DAN KING: The current village chief was then appointed because he was one of the strongest and most vocal advocates for fighting the case and to be getting the land back. Since then I think he has not seen the case move forward in the courts. As I said, he's obviously been talking to the company and his position has changed. He no longer supports the case. He is advocating the sale of land, and it is very sad to watch.
While the lawyers try to get him to stay the course and fight the case, he's now a staunch supporter of the company.
VILLAGE CHIEF (Translation): I am afraid we will lose the case in court because the company is rich and we are poor. We have accepted their money, how can we win? The whole village has accepted the money by making a thumbprint.
Some of the villagers are suspicious as to why he changed his mind.
WOMAN 3 (Translation): In fact, the district and the village authorities do not support the people since there is nothing in it for them, I think that they support the company because they gain from it. The villagers have nothing, all they have is the land.
But the company is stepping up its efforts to get the community to sell their remaining land, and now the local authorities are offering them more cash and even a school if they agree to sell. Like their compatriots right around this country, the villagers are quickly learning the ways of the modern world - where money talks.
