AN “OPEN LETTER” LEAVES UNSAID THAT CAMBODIA IS “A COUNTRY FOR SALE”

By Dr. Gaffar Peang-Meth
(for CambodiaWatch-Australia)

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s regime has got a superficial boost from a recent “Open Letter” written by a member of Australia’s Democratic Socialist Perspective. The letter brought a wave of negative reactions from regime opponents, whose attention was diverted momentarily from their usual focus on the regime’s violations of civil rights and the rule of law.

The Open Letter (to self-exiled opposition leader Sam Rainsy) was relayed to me by email from a high ranking member of a Cambodian royalist faction in Phnom Penh who wrote: “The government has the means to hire and employ little known western ‘reporters’ to write articles in favor of them. There are many people like this for sale in our country…” A string of communications from Cambodian expatriates expressed indignation against the letter’s author. I commented to a Cambodian elder with long experiences in Cambodia’s affairs since the 1950s that Cambodians should not be pulled away from their focus on civil rights by this distraction engineered by the prime minister.

The letter describes a “vibrant press” in Cambodia and the regime in power as representative of the “expressed will of the majority” of voters in the elections of July 27, 2008, though the Election Observation Mission of the European Union, which had a mandate to “conduct a comprehensive assessment of the electoral process in accordance with international principles for genuine democratic elections,” reported the 2008 elections “fell short of a number of key international standards for democratic elections.” “[T]here was a lack of confidence in the impartiality of the election administration among election stakeholders. The campaign was marked by consistent and widespread use of state resources by the governing party and the distribution of money and gifts by candidates and party officials was widely reported,” the EU-EOM’s Final Report said.

Human Rights Watch reported the 2008 elections were “marred by the [Cambodian People Party]’s near monopoly over the media, bias within the electoral apparatus, and coerced defections of opposition Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) members to the CPP [through] [l]ucrative offers of high-paying government positions and threats of reprisals…” Et cetera.

“Cambodia continued to drift toward authoritarianism in 2008 as Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) consolidated power through flawed elections in July [2008]. The elections were criticized by the European Union and the United Nations special representative for human rights in Cambodia for failing to meet international standards,” says HRW.

The government of Prime Minister Hun Sen rejects the EU-EOM report and the HRW report – among others – as “simply untrue.”

Yet, again, four years later the Phnom Penh Post of 15 March 2012 reports in “Top officials accused by election watchdog,” that Committee for Free Elections (COMFREL) in Cambodia distributed a detailed list of names of more than 100 high-ranking CPP and Royal Cambodian Armed Forces officials who used certain state properties on specified dates between September 2011 and January 2012 on behalf of the governing party, including breaching election laws by delivering gifts to citizens.

Cambodian Defender Project executive director Sok Sam Oeun reminded, if an RCAF two-star general goes to the grassroots and tells people to support the ruling CPP, citizens who fear him would do as told. Fear and intimidation that breed obedience do not represent the “will” of the people.

The regime’s Press and Quick Reaction Unit spokesman Ek Tha declared, the CPP “has not abused the law and has not taken state properties to propagandize for its interests.” What else could he have said?

As for the “vibrant press” mentioned in the Open Letter, last Sunday, the British Guardian published two relevant articles by Kate Hodal that call that assertion into question: “Journalist seeking truth about Khmer Rouge ‘fears for his life’: Award-winning film-maker Thet Sambath [whose 2009 documentary, “Enemies of the People,” was shortlisted for an Oscar] says he has been followed, harassed and chased during his research,” and “Plight of journalists in Cambodia: Journalists in Cambodia face ‘censorship, threats and intimidation’, despite high press freedom ranking.”

But there are other matters to be concerned about in Cambodia.

The 22 March annual report by rights group ADHOC alleges the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has given 2.3 million hectares of land, or about 14.7 percent of Cambodia’s total land mass, to 225 domestic and international companies in economic concessions in 2011 for “agro-industry development,” and that the 2.3 million figure is on the low side, since other government ministries also have given out land concessions.

ADHOC’s report included land concessions that were not approved through the public legal processes in place, finding irregularities in at least 123 of the 225 concession grants, concessions that bear no proper names of companies involved, concessions that encroach on preserved forests and national parks. These “land grants” trample on the civil and economic rights of all Cambodian citizens and have particularly angered the villagers whose rural properties are often affected.

The government rejected ADHOC’s report. While government spokesman Phay Siphan contested ADHOC’s figures, CPP Environment Ministry’s secretary of state Thuk Kroeun Vuth declared on 22 March that land concessions should be no cause for concern: “We still have a lot of land. Don’t worry, the government has a clear plan of what to do and which places to develop and which places to conserve.”

But ADHOC president Thun Saray said, “Cambodia barely has any more land to grant as an economic land concession,” and asked, “How will we have any to leave for the younger generation?”

Land reform project coordinator for the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, Ouch Leng, was reported in the Post to claim that so far in 2012 the government has given 65,066 hectares of economic land concessions to 14 private companies inside national park and wildlife sanctuaries in Preah Sihanouk, Kompong Speu, Siem Reap, Mondulkiri, Preah Vihear, Kratie and Kompong Thom.

Donald Frazier’s “China to Gamblers: Come to Cambodia” in Forbes.com of 21 March is disquieting: The government is selling off more than 130 miles of national park land to Chinese developer Tianjin Union Development Group, which plans to spend $3.8 billion to build a city-sized complex with an international airport and a dock for cruise ships surpassing in size the world’s largest casino, the Venetian in Macao!

Forbes described Cambodia as “unique among Asian countries” for drawing “beneficiaries, from French and Russian fortune-seekers to hedge fund and private equity funds,” due to Cambodians’ “permissive attitude toward money-laundering, nine-year tax holidays, but mainly the power of foreign-owned Cambodian companies to lease land for 198 years…”

On 22 March, the Phnom Penh Post’s “Watching a country change” quoted UNICEF country director Richard Bridle, who spoke at Phnom Penh’s Raffles Le Royal Hotel lobby about “the alarming inequality that is growing” in Cambodia: “The gap between those who are very rich and those who are very poor is worrying and it is a gap that is widening.” It is not just a widening wealth gap but also an ethical issue.

Bridle’s concern about the widening inequality is supported by a non-Cambodian professional with long experience working with peoples in developing countries who referenced data drawn from the World Bank: Although poverty in Cambodia has been reduced between 1993 and 2007, a third of Cambodians still live below the national poverty line (2,473 riel or US$0.61). The inequality levels have increased dramatically, WB data show. The Gini Coefficient has moved up from 0.35 in 1994 to 0.40 in 2004 and 0.43 in 2007 (0 being perfect equality and 1 being absolute inequality). Even within the rural areas where some 80 percent of the people live, rural inequality rose from 0.27 in 1994 to 0.33 in 2004 and climbed again to 0.36 in 2007.

Also, Cambodia is among countries with the highest burden of child under-nutrition and “alarming” levels of hunger and under-nutrition in the overall population.

These are among the many other problems that Cambodians inside and outside the country should be concerned about.

Premier Hun Sen is doing what he can to hold on to power. As he does, the economic and social welfare of the Cambodian people is not going to improve in spite of the emerging infrastructure. This showy infrastructure represents only a mirage of development.

On another hand, on 27 March 2012 Phnom Penh Post’s “Demarcation causes worry,” reported a recent Phnom Penh-Hanoi agreement on border demarcation that would reclassify some Khmer villages as being on Vietnamese territory and Vietnamese villages as being in Cambodia. This would place Khmers who never wanted to leave their homes as being on Vietnamese soil while Vietnamese nationals are legitimized on Khmer soil, a terrible mess that will haunt Khmers for generations to come.

Infrastructure represents a nation’s skeleton, but the country’s territory and sovereignty, and the people’s economic and social welfare, are the nation’s soul.

Today, this soul is being suffocated with Premier Hun Sen at the helm of Cambodia.

Dr. Gaffar Peang-Meth holds a B.A. degree in political science from Hiram College, an M.A. from Georgetown, and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He is retired from the University of Guam where he taught political science for 13 years. He is currently living in the United States. He can be contacted at peangmeth@gmail.com.