(New York) - At their first meeting in two years, international donors should tell the Cambodian government it must improve its human rights record or face a reduction in non-humanitarian aid, Human Rights Watch said today.
On December 6-7, Cambodia's Consultative Group of donors will meet in Phnom Penh to pledge specific amounts of international aid for the next year. International aid makes up almost half of Cambodia’s budget.
Human Rights Watch said that in the 11 years since the end of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Cambodia, the government has shown contempt for its own Constitution and international human rights standards. Cambodian authorities continue to ban most public demonstrations, abuse and intimidate opposition politicians, and ignore basic demands of the rural populace for secure land tenure. Politicians and journalists critical of the government face violence and intimidation and are denied equal access to the broadcast media. The government has made little progress in reforming its incompetent and corrupt judicial system. Cases of politically-related violence and crimes committed by government authorities--or those with ties to high-ranking officials--are almost never prosecuted or even investigated, leading to near complete impunity.
“Donors have the leverage but have yet to show the will to confront Prime Minister Hun Sen and his government over human rights, the rule of law, and good governance,” said Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “After a decade of broken promises and ineffective donor action, this cycle of rewarding deceit with more aid should end in 2004.”
For the 2004 Consultative Group donor meeting, Human Rights Watch highlighted the escalating problem of rural landlessness and associated human rights violations. Confiscation of farmers' land, illegal logging, and widespread plundering of the natural resources on which Cambodia's rural population depends for its livelihood continue to plague Cambodia’s poor. For most villagers, land is their only source of support. Yet people in the countryside are increasingly dispossessed of their land, often through violence or the threat of violence by officially backed forces. Instead of taking action, the government regularly restricts the ability of victims to exercise their basic rights to assemble and protest.
“Even in areas important to donors, such as rural development, Hun Sen still presides over a government that does much more to abuse villagers than help them,” said Adams. “This should be an easy subject for donors to raise forcefully and to demand immediate action.”
Human Rights Watch said that the government has the ability to end or severely limit these practices. From time to time government officials make public statements condemning illegal land seizures, but no action is taken against the offenders. In October 2004 Hun Sen called for a review of major new land transactions and a moratorium on new concessions until a subdecree on concession policy is approved. Despite the official pronouncement, serious land conflicts -- and the threat of violence -- persist. During the last month alone, several disputes have resulted in violence or threats against villagers, including:
- Pursat province, eight people were wounded in a grenade attack on November 13 when 1,000 villagers gathered to peacefully protest forest clearing in a long-disputed eucalyptus and pulp concession granted by the government to the Pheapimex Company. In a follow-up attempt to demonstrate against continuing land clearing, villagers were turned back by dozens of police and military policy blocking the highway and the concession site.
- In Kratie province, community forestry activists were threatened and one was beaten by a soldier after villagers confiscated several chainsaws being used by illegal loggers in a wildlife sanctuary on November 22. Similar events have occurred in Kratie over the last two years.
- Battambang province, more than a hundred families became landless when soldiers took over their rice fields and then sold the land to new owners in 1997. Rights workers fear violence could break out this week as the families attempt to harvest the rice crop they planted on the disputed land. The families are confronting provincial authorities, police, soldiers, and gendarmerie, who are siding with the new “owners” in the land dispute.
- Ratanakiri province, thousands of indigenous villagers face loss of their ancestral lands as district and commune officials -- working on commission for land brokers from outside the province -- pressure illiterate villagers to thumbprint sales contracts. Villagers are threatened that if they do not contribute land for "development projects," the land will be confiscated anyway, without compensation to the villagers.
“Landlessness and people's inability to express themselves about their increasing desperation are flashpoints for violence and rights violations," said Adams. “The fact that the courts and cadastral commissions invariably rule in favor of the rich and powerful in land dispute cases, rather than the poor, only fuels peoples’ frustration and lack of trust in the government.”
Human Rights Watch said that villagers are increasingly unable to voice their concerns because of strict new government policies restricting freedom of assembly. During the last two years, authorities have banned, dispersed, or intervened during dozens of public demonstrations in Phnom Penh and the countryside -- sometimes using excessive or disproportionate force -- on the grounds such gatherings threaten public order or national security.
Human Rights Watch urged Cambodia’s donors to accept their responsibilities and insist on reform in exchange for the large amounts of aid that prop up the national budget. Aid should be monitored closely to ensure that it relieves poverty, instead of perpetuating rights abuses, corruption and landlessness.
“Donors have been right to identify the lack of credible land security as one of the primary obstacles to economic investment and development,” said Adams. “Yet it does little good to fund the creation of a land title office if donors will not intervene when land is stolen from the intended beneficiaries by soldiers with political backing in Phnom Penh.”
