A criminal complaint has been filed with the International Criminal Court, alleging crimes against humanity.
Lawyers have filed a criminal complaint against Cambodia’s “ruling elite” at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, alleging that crimes against humanity had been committed by authorities responsible for
widespread land grabbing.
The filing is being widely seen as a test case that human rights groups hope will set a legal precedent with ramifications for land grabbers across the world and limit the illegal confiscation of land.
“The cumulative effect of these violations has pushed this situation beyond the boundaries of human rights abuses and domestic crimes,” the filing said. It includes allegations of murder, illegal imprisonment and other inhumane acts, among them being forced to live in squalid conditions and being exposed to life threatening illness.
“In furtherance of its twin-objectives of self-enrichment and maintaining power at all costs, the Ruling Elite have committed serious crimes as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Cambodian civilian population, pursuant to a State policy.
“The crimes fulfill all the legal elements of crimes against humanity.”
The filing says the ruling elite had sought to establish a kleptocratic system “after seizing power” in the 1980s with the twin objectives of “self-enrichment and maintaining power at all costs.”
The primary source of self-enrichment, it says, stems from land grabbing “on a truly massive scale.”
Land grabbing has become
a chronic issue across Cambodia over recent years. Angry protests are an almost daily event and the issue contributed to the reduced margins achieved by Prime Minister Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) at last year’s election.
Richard Rogers of Global Diligence LLP, who represents ten Filing Victims, says that about 777,000 people, or six percent of the population, had been affected by land grabbing, which he says amounts to a crime of forcible transfers under the ICC statute.
Rogers observes that up until 2012, 145,000 people, or about one percent of the population, had been forcible transferred from Phnom Penh. Among the 190,000 indigenous minorities, half had been excluded from their ancestral lands. About 20,000 Cambodians became new victims of land grabbing conflicts in the first three months of this year.
Rogers expects an initial assessment of the filing will take three to six months. At that point the ICC will decided whether to open a preliminary investigation through the Office of the Prosecutor, which will then send an investigation team to Cambodia.
That preliminary examination could take two to three years, which may lead to a formal investigation and a trial on alleged crimes against humanity committed by Cambodia’s ruling elite.
Rogers said that neither Hun Sen nor the CPP were targeted in the filing because “not everyone in the CPP was land grabbing.” The ICC filing focuses on members of the armed forces, the police, and the gendarmerie responsible for implementing forcible transfers.
“Entire villages have been burned to the ground and possessions stolen or destroyed. The evictions have been perpetrated by armed police, gendarmes, the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, as well as by private security forces with the support of the State apparatus.”
He said land grabbing in Cambodia was widespread, reflecting a policy put in place by the ruling elite. When taken together these alleged crimes met the ICC threshold in terms of gravity that would qualify the allegations as a crime against humanity.
The filing is endorsed and supported by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and Global Witness, which monitors environmental exploitation and human rights abuses.
According to the filing, the ruling elite used the state apparatus to “maintain power at all costs” in attacks that were not just limited to Cambodians challenging the system. Also targeted were monks, journalists, lawyers, environmental activists, trade unionists, civilian protestors, and opposition politicians the filing refers to as dissidents.
“Dissidents have been assassinated, murdered, beaten-up, subjected to trumped-up charges and illegal detention, and persecuted due their opposition to the Ruling Elite.
“Initially resorting to tactics such as grenade attacks and drive-by shootings, it is estimated that the Ruling Elite has orchestrated over 300 politically motivated murders since the 1990s.
“In recent years the Ruling Elite have relied heavily on a corrupt judiciary to crush dissent,” it said. “Dissidents have been brutally murdered by professional assassins or condemned to linger in jails on spurious charges.”
3 comments:
Quoting from Eliyahu, Torah Teacher:
[ When the Declaration of Independence was first drafted it read “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and Property.” Property, in this context, largely referred to land. The colonists realized that secure rights to one's own land are indispensible to one's personal liberty. When nobody, not even the government, can control what you do on/with your own land, only then are you truly free. The colonists knew this truth from reading the Scriptures, not the least of which was Leviticus 25, which deals with the liberty-land connection in depth.
In the final draft of the Declaration of Independence, "life, liberty, and property" was changed to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." While "the pursuit of happiness" is a lovely thought, this nebulous phrase lacks any real liberty-securing power, especially when compared to the concrete benefits of secure rights to land. Rather than securing your land-owner rights as a sovereign over your own domain, now liberty means doing what might make you "happy." Today, if you can pick out the movies you want to watch, the brand of beer you want to drink, and the football team you want to cheer, you have all the liberty promised by the de-fanged phrase. How did this slight of hand that so devalued real liberty occur in the Declaration? No one knows for sure, but the fact that it happened at all shows us that even then, in the midst of the "Founding Fathers", the age-old selfishness that has always sought to grow rich at the expense of the common man was at work, undermining the foundations of full liberty for every citizen - rights that can only be secured by land.
The lesson in this is that, in this world, there is always an evil elite few who keep the deck stacked in their favor, so that the common man is always kept under their control, for the elite to fleece at will. A pretense of liberty exists for the sake of order, but the real power and liberty remains in the hands of the elite who control the vast majority of the world's real wealth, it's land!
YHWH, of course, has always understood this. That is why His plan for the freedom of His people includes an everlasting grant of land. This is a very BIG THING in Scripture. Following are some verses that reveal how YHWH purposed and fulfilled this land grant in a practical, concrete way.]
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I did not site the the Scripture as directed. The point is; God's ways are perfect in every aspect of his peoples lives as dictates by his Word. This does not mean man is going to do what he had put forth as just and good. Because man is always rebelling against his truth.
MagogMademn
Please help find justice for these poor Khmer folks who had been powerless on these ISSUES,Cambodians can not have any power to fight back these pigs elite of Cpp Hanoi's thugs,as you can see they all the REFUGEES in their own country affected by greedy elite-pigs of Hanoi Cpp.
Only foreigner's lawyers are the last hope for these poor Khmers to get justice and hopefully get their land back from these greedy's pigs [Cpp-thugs] Please help these poor folks to fight these pigs in ICC, prosecute those elites,sending a strong message to these pigs not to commit crime against humanity.Take Hun sen to court (ICC) help find justice for the poor.Thank you.
It is time for ICC and world leaders pay more attention to Khmer suffering from devastate consequence off modern colonialism of one government for a country but act as a colonial sovereign from another . They are unlawfully confiscate land from their legal owner and gave to some one of their favorite like their families , friends , acquaintances or foreigners who give them more bribe . They don't have a rule of law in this wonderful country . All rule of law is came from mouth of colonial insider authorities or leadership . Real Khmer land owner don't have any right to protest or protect them self ,their families or their belonging , all power is on the hand of the group leader . Atrocities of all kind , the killing , brutal biting , imprison or force bribery is routine in the regime . The world leadership had to share more responsibilities and we are Khmer victim of this inhuman cruelty ask the UN or ICC to help , because this is the last resource and hope for our innocent life under ferocious of a modern colonial Vietnam atrocity .
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