Bid to cut funds over Cambodian rights abuses [Donors urged to cut aid after the jailing of Mam Sonando]

The Sydney Morning Herald

October 3, 2012 

By Lindsay Murdoch

Jailed … the land rights campaigner Mam Sonando. Photo: Reuters

BANGKOK: Donor countries including Australia are being urged to confront Cambodia over escalating violence and human rights abuses linked to the plunder of natural resources.

Human Rights groups say the jailing of 71-year-old journalist Mam Sonando for 20 years on Monday was a politically motivated move to silence protests over the granting of economic land resources to companies and the eviction of thousands of land owners by force.

Mr Sonando, a human rights campaigner who owns a radio station in Phnom Penh, has been a critic of the Prime Minister, Hun Sen, who urged in a national broadcast that he be arrested for masterminding ''a plot to overthrow the government''.

There have been at least three deaths and a number of controversial arrests linked to an increasing number of land disputes that have emerged as companies move to exploit Cambodian resources such as rubber, sugar and minerals.

In a joint letter, human rights groups asked donors providing almost half of Cambodia's budget not to reward the country with more funds and to ''make a co-ordinated and public condemnation of the government's increasing human rights abuses''.

Australia is sending Cambodia almost $78 million this year.

Surya Subedi, the UN Human Rights Council's special envoy for Cambodia, criticised Mr Sen's government last week, saying Cambodia's population was growing ''desperate and unhappy'' about land rights abuses.

The World Bank froze new lending for Cambodia last year over its treatment of hundreds of families facing eviction from land around a lake in Phnom Penh.

The jailing of Mr Sonando has prompted outrage inside the country and outside it. Critics accuse Mr Sen, who has been in power since 1985, of having politicised the bureaucracy and courts to silence public criticism.

Rights groups called the accusations against Mr Sonando baseless and said the government was seeking to justify a crackdown on a land dispute in May, during which a 14-year-old girl was shot dead by security forces at a protest rally.

Mr Sonando had played a leading role in the dispute and, through his independent Beehive Radio, had spoken out against human rights abuses. The court on Monday also sentenced two other activists to 30 and 15 years in jail.

Earlier this month, Cambodian journalist Serei Oudom, who had exposed rampant illegal logging, was found dead in the boot of his car. In April, Chut Wutty, one of Asia's leading environmentalists, was shot dead by a soldier after leading journalists to an illegal logging site.