Hun Sen's ineffective war on land-grabbing

March 05, 2008

By LAO MONG HAY
Column: Rule by Fear

HONG KONG, China, In recent years, land-grabbing has been a big issue affecting many people and forestry areas across Cambodia. It has been feared that the grabbing of people's land could spark a "peasant revolution" as in the past, which led to the harsh communist revolution of the 1970s. On March 3, 2007, Prime Minister Hun Sen set out to wage "a war against land-grabbers" whom he identified as officials of his own party, the Cambodian People's Party, and people in power.

These powerful and rich people have invariably, through illicit means, secured ownership of lands already rightfully owned or occupied by powerless and poor people. They have also secured cooperation from law enforcement agencies and courts of law to enforce their ownership and to evict the owners or residents. In addition, they offer to pay compensation that is not commensurate with the market prices of the affected lands and the hardship of relocation. This unjust compensation has led to protests that, in turn, have led to forced evictions and/or arrests, mostly on fabricated charges.

When Hun Sen launched this war, there were doubts about his seriousness in eradicating land-grabbing. There were charges he was just electioneering prior to the commune elections held in the following month as the opposition Sam Rainsy Party was staunchly opposed to land-grabbing and was already working hard to help its victims.

There were some grains of truth in the charges. The announced war contributed to appeasing many people and secured for the CPP through that election the control of 1,592 commune councils out of 1,621of these local bodies across the country. The SRP also made some gains, overtook the second largest party, FUNCINPEC, and obtained control of 27 councils.

The war immediately won a number of battles against several land-grabbers. An army major was arrested, for example, for encroaching on more than 1,500 hectares of state forestry land, and an army general was forced to return 200 hectares of land to the government, although no action was taken against him. Moreover, a tycoon and two associates were arrested for falsifying documents regarding 300 hectares of land.

Later, in July, Hun Sen ordered the demolition of a foreign-owned luxury housing estate built on a filled-in lake on the outskirts of Phnom Penh for obstructing the flow of water and causing floods in the capital.

No such canons have been heard in other cases, however, and land-grabbing has not subsided.
For instance, in January 2008, Cambodia's National Authority for the Resolution of Land Disputes said it had received 1,500 cases of land-grabbing and had addressed one-third of them.

A human rights NGO, ADHOC, received 382 complaints against land-grabbing filed by people who came to seek its help in 2007, a figure down from 450 in 2006. However, it noted that the number of people arrested in protests against land-grabbing had almost doubled from 78 in 2006 to 149 in 2008, the number of forced evictions had increased from 16 in 2006 to 26 in 2007 and that these forced evictions had affected no less than 5,585 families.

Amnesty International said in a recent report that "at least 150,000 Cambodians across the country are known to live at risk of being evicted in the wake of development projects, land disputes and land-grabbing." Land-grabbing is thus an enormous problem when Cambodia has 14 million inhabitants and slightly more than 1 percent of its population is facing such a risk.

Moreover, the gravity of the issue apparently has not decreased in 2008. According to the news stories on its web site, Radio Free Asia reported 29 cases of land-grabbing in Cambodia in January and February -- on average, one case every other day. An army general close to Hun Sen was involved in one case, and a tycoon close to the ruling circle was implicated in another.

Unfortunately, the record of Hun Sen's war against the grabbing of forestry land is not any better. In a recent report, Cambodia's Ministry of Environment said that "a number of armed men and powerful people" were grabbing forestry land, even in national parks. Such people threatened park rangers and cleared the forest for ownership purposes. The same ministry noted that local authorities had issued ownership titles to these land-grabbers and recognized their commercial transactions in the national parks.

Similarly, it has recently been reported that, despite the government's action to take land back, forestry land-grabbing has been on the increase in almost all provinces. This increase has run parallel to the rise in land prices, which have shot up by 50 percent over the last year in urban areas.

Hun Sen needs to do more if his war against land-grabbers is to score any victory and land-grabbing is to be eradicated. He needs to reign in officials in his own party and others in power, as well as the rich and the companies these powerful people have supported or are associated with, and to stop making any more land concessions to all of them. Furthermore, he needs to halt any eviction without just compensation for the evictees.

Moreover, Hun Sen needs to ensure effective enforcement of the land law and the law on the protection of nature with no favor given to any party. He should end the practice of using executive orders to adjudicate land disputes and should instead utilize the due process of law.

He should also cease his control of the courts of law, clean up their corruption, provide them with adequate resources and respect their judgments. He should likewise empower the cadastral commissions set up under the land law, now very weak and starved of resources, to adjudicate disputes over unregistered land, provide them with sufficient resources and respect their independence and their decisions.
--
(Lao Mong Hay is currently a senior researcher at the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong. He was previously director of the Khmer Institute of Democracy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and a visiting professor at the University of Toronto in 2003. In 1997, he received an award from Human Rights Watch and the Nansen Medal in 2000 from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.)