Cambodia carve-up under the spotlight

By Sebastian Strangio

Asia Times Online 

Jul 10, 2012

PHNOM PENH -There were scenes of jubilation in Cambodia's capital last month when a group of 13 imprisoned women - including a 72-year-old grandmother - was set free by an appeal court. The women were arrested in May during peaceful demonstrations against the forced eviction of thousands of families living around Boeung Kak Lake, an area in central Phnom Penh earmarked for a glitzy housing and commercial development.

The company behind the controversial development is known as Shukaku Inc, an obscure firm known to be a front for the interests of Lao Meng Khin, a leading tycoon and senator for the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP). Two Chinese companies are also reported to be investing in the project, which has seen the lake - once ringed by a bustling community of more than 4,000 families - reduced to a massive sand bank in the center of the city. Most families have already left the site in exchange for resettlement or small cash hand-outs, but a robust protest movement continues to resist eviction.

After their arrest on May 22, the 13 Boeung Kak women were charged with illegally occupying private land, and in a swift trial held just two days later - an unprecedented turnaround for Cambodia's poorly resourced court system - were each sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail. One land rights activist told Agence France-Presse at the time that the proceedings were "a show trial - a complete charade".

The plight of the "Boeung Kak 13", as they widely became known, immediately attracted sympathy at home and internationally: the band of working mothers and grassroots activists even received support from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who called for their release during Cambodian Foreign Minister Hor Namhong's recent visit to Washington DC. Though the appeal court failed to overturn their convictions - it merely reduced their sentences - the band of hardy women and their supporters have vowed to fight on.

"The land that belongs to the company is the villagers' land, so we will keep protesting," said Khek Chanrasmey, 31, who has lived at the lake since 1980.

The release of the Boeung Kak 13 is Prime Minister Hun Sen's government's latest reaction to rising concern about mass evictions triggered by the sale of Cambodian land to foreign firms. Since the late 1990s, when the disintegration of the feared Khmer Rouge brought long-awaited political stability, the CPP-dominated government has put the country up for sale. Millions of hectares of land have been leased to foreign development companies working in cahoots with local tycoons, turning the wild landscape of rural Cambodia into a patchwork of rubber, cashew, sugar and cassava plantations.

According to the local human-rights group Licadho, which monitors land disputes and rights abuses, foreign mining and agriculture firms now control a total of 3.9 million hectares in Cambodia, or 22% of the country's surface area. Industrial agri-business deals, known as economic land concessions (ELCs), now account for 53% of Cambodia's total arable land. Last year alone, the government approved 2 million hectares in concessions for 227 plantation firms.

These new ELCs have also been blamed for the evictions of thousands of farmers from their land, and have led to an escalating number of protests, arrests and violent clashes in all corners of the country. To give just a few recent examples: on May 16, a week before the Boeung Kak arrests, a 14-year-old girl was shot dead by security forces during a violent land altercation in Kratie province. The authorities recently detained Loun Savath, a Buddhist monk who has supported the Boeung Kak protestors and other victims of land-grabs, and threatened to disrobe him. Both these events came a month after the fatal shooting of the prominent forestry activist Chut Wutty by military police in a remote part of Koh Kong province.

Local activists have also launched a boycott against Cambodian "blood sugar". According to the Cambodia Clean Sugar Campaign, villagers have been forcibly cleared from thousands of hectares of sugar plantations - including ten tracts of land owned by Ly Yong Phat, another CPP senator-tycoon - during which their crops were destroyed, homes burnt down and animals shot by hired thugs and state security forces.

Lands for allies
Hun Sen has responded to the upsurge of bad publicity by announcing a moratorium on the granting of new economic land concessions. The May 7 order stated that officials should "temporarily postpone providing economic land concessions" and "ensure there is no impact to community land and people's livelihoods". The order also stated, however, that all previously earmarked ELCs would be able to proceed.

So far these have included three rubber plantations totaling 21,624 hectares, which the premier approved on May 18, and four further ELCs encompassing 35,000 hectares-all in protected areas and wildlife sanctuaries-granted on June 7. Licadho's director Naly Pilorge said the loophole in the moratorium was "so big it swallows the ban itself" and that it was unclear how many more pre-mortatorium concessions were in the government's pipeline. Her group said in a statement that it had documented new concessions totaling over 80,000 hectares, "an area larger than the size of Singapore", since the moratorium was imposed.

Other government critics were quick to point out that the ban came a month before important local elections, which the CPP won convincingly. "The ruling party tried to gain support from the people before the election. They try to make a show a little bit, but after that the people will suffer again," said Yim Sovann, a spokesman for the opposition Sam Rainsy Party. "If you want to solve the problem, you must stop giving land concessions to private companies. The priority is our farmers. If our farmers don't have enough land, there will be social turmoil."

Hun Sen has also appointed his second son Hun Manith - a colonel in the armed forces, with no known experience in land administration - as deputy secretary-general of the government's land dispute authority. In this role, Manith will be responsible for leading a new land titling drive that will give displaced villagers parcels of land within ELCs and state forests. Im Chhun Lim, the Minister of Land Management, has said that the titling program, announced by Hun Sen last month, will "bring the safety of land occupation, leaving the owners free of concerns and confusion".

Independent observers, however, argue these changes are merely a cosmetic fix, and have pointed out that past "bans" have had little effect. In May 2009, for instance, Hun Sen announced a ban on sand exports amid concerns that industrial-scale dredging in coastal areas threatened long-term environmental damage. Within months, however, dredgers had restarted operations. The United Kingdom-based watchdog group Global Witness claimed that up to 796,000 tonnes of sand were being removed from Koh Kong province each month as of mid-2010, mostly for export to Singapore. Past bans on illegal logging have met a similar fate.

"I see the same thing with the logging. It's still going on," said Son Soubert, an independent political analyst.

In fact, the problem may lie with the very systems of patronage that have kept Hun Sen in power in Cambodia for nearly three decades. Under this system, preferential access to Cambodia's rich natural resources is granted to tycoons, military commanders and politicians as a reward for political loyalty, in return for their financial support of the CPP. Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, said this has led to a burgeoning of economic interests to which Hun Sen parcels out spoils but lacks the power to control.

"He's succeeded to rule for many years with that style of leadership," Virak said, but "the pie is getting smaller, and more and more people are getting interested in it." With an upsurge in popular discontent tied to land issues, the stability of this finely-balanced system is something that can no longer be taken for granted, he believes.

"If more and more people are beginning to think Hun Sen does not have the power he would like them to believe, it will be interesting to see if he can continue to hold power the way he has," Virak said. "I don't know if it's going to work beyond the next five years."

Sebastian Strangio is a journalist based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He may be reached at sebastian.strangio@gmail.com