Phnom Penh - About 300 Cambodians handed in petitions to government ministries and organizations in Phnom Penh Tuesday to protest the growing national problem of land grabs and forced evictions. Organizers of the group action warned that landlessness is deepening poverty, and demanded an immediate end to intimidation and court action against people trying to protect their land.
Seng Sokheng, a spokesman for the community groups involved, said the petitions represent the concerns of 15,000 villagers in 19 of the kingdom's 24 provinces and municipalities.
He said the petitions were submitted to the National Assembly, the cabinet of Prime Minister Hun Sen, the Council of Ministers, the National Authority on Land Disputes and three government ministries.
"Some ministries were happy to receive the petition, and others were not," Seng Sokheng said of the reaction the villagers had received.
Organizers said 200,000 hectares of petitioners' land are at risk in this predominantly rural society, where more than 80 per cent of the population live in the countryside. The petitions contained more than 15,000 thumbprints, a standard way of signing in Cambodia, where literacy rates are low.
A government spokesman said he could not comment on the issue until he had discussed the petitioners' concerns with other government departments.
The land seizures are carried out by foreign firms, companies with government connections, or by politicians and the military. Development is the standard reason the government gives for granting mining or land concessions.
The community group gave the example of one military official who took communal farmland in Battambang province, western Cambodia. The group said the official then used the courts to threaten 37 villagers with theft of property for trying to farm the land.
"There are food shortages. People take loans and cannot pay [them] back," the group said of the affected villagers. "Food shortages lead to sickness, and people cannot pay for medical treatment."
The group warned that the litany of forced evictions, displacement and landlessness is reaching "crisis proportions."
"Evictions and land confiscation continue in Cambodia, despite calls by the World Bank, the ADB [the Asian Development Bank], the UN and Cambodia's donors for the government to enact a moratorium on forced evictions and land confiscation until it establishes effective conflict resolution mechanisms and relocation procedures meeting international standards," they wrote.
The organizers said communities are being driven into poverty, and their efforts to find peaceful solutions are met with intimidation, court action and even violence from the police and military.
"When we try to protect our legal rights, we receive intimidation," villager Pol Cheoun from Battambang province said in the statement. "We want the government and the donors to know what is happening. We are losing our land, forest and fisheries we depend on. We are getting poorer and poorer, and the rich are getting richer."
A community activist from the northern province of Oddar Meanchey told the Cambodia Daily newspaper that he is in favour of development, "but I don't want to see development lead people to tears."
Amnesty International wrote last year that 150,000 Cambodians are at risk of losing their land.
Source: DAP
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Hundreds hand in petitions to protest Cambodia land grabs - Summary
Thai man arrested for drawing Angkor Wat on bathroom floor
A Thai man was arrested for living illegally in Cambodia for more than ten years and for drawing an image of Angkor Wat on his bathroom floor, national media reported.
Police arrested Salavout Khamsan, 35, in Poipet in western Cambodia after neighbours saw the drawing of Cambodia's famous temple and told the authorities.
Poipet police chief Nuth Ly said the man had "desecrated the precious temple which is a World Heritage site."
The provincial police chief, Hun Hean, said the explanation given by the man - that he drew the image out of affection for the temple, and not to demean it - was not good enough.
"It is just an excuse, because he could have drawn it on paper and posted it on a wall," he said.
"Or he could buy a painting or a postcard with an image of Angkor, not draw it in front of a toilet and step on it."
Salavout Khamsan, a construction worker who entered Cambodia in 1998 through the Poipet checkpoint, faces up to six months in jail for visa violations.
Hun Hean said it is not clear which law will be used for punishing the alleged crime of drawing Angkor Wat on the bathroom floor.
Burma Court sentences Aung San Suu Kyi to 3 years
A special court set up in Insein Prison found Suu Kyi, 64, guilty of breaking the terms of her detention by allowing a US national to swim into her lakeside compound-cum-prison on May 3.
Burma's junta leader, Senior General Than Shwe, immediately reduced the court's three-year sentence in prison to one year and six months under house arrest.
TYPE A(H1N1) -Vaccine proves to be safe for human trial
GPO to launch FluMist tomorrow; victims on the rise
The Government Pharmaceuti-cal Organisation will next month start undertaking human trials on the live-attenuated vaccine against the type-A (H1N1) virus now that laboratories in the Netherlands and Russia have confirmed the virus-seed vaccine proved to be safe on animals, GPO's board chairperson Dr Wichai Chotewiwat said yesterday.Meanwhile, he added, that tomorrow the GPO would be coming up with the first few doses of FluMist, a nasal spray live-attenuated vaccine. The Public Health Ministry announced last week that the number of swine-flu victims had risen to 81 after 16 more patients succumbed to the virus. The ministry said it is suspected more than 500,000 people have been infected, and that the death toll was closer to 100 people.In a bid to tackle the outbreak, the Public Health Ministry and Mahidol University's ethics committees have, in principle, given the university's Faculty of Tropical Medicine the green light to research the vaccine.Citing a recent e-mail from laboratories in the Netherlands and Russia, Wichai said so far the virus-seed vaccine had been tested for safety and toxicity on mice and ferrets, and that a human trial would be launched in Thailand next month."The e-mails say that the virus-seed vaccine proved to be safe on animals and that there were no toxins or mutation," he said.The GPO will also be incubating the virus to make sure it is free from contamination before it is tested on some 400 volunteers from September 4. So far, about 100 people have volunteered for the trial, he said.In a bid to ensure safety of the volunteers, Wichai said the ministry's Ethical Committee would also set up a data and safety monitoring board. The World Health Organisation's regional office, based in India, will send a representative to help the ministry set up this board, while WHO staff members will work along with Thai researchers to monitor the safety and efficacy of the vaccine. The panel, which is still closely studying details of the project, has until today to decide on whether or not to allow the vaccine to be tested on humans.A recent report from the Ramathi- bhodi Hospital says that samples collected from a patient, who has already recovered, show that the type-A (H1N1) virus is resistant to the oseltamirvir antiviral drug.However, the ministry's advisory committee, chaired by leading virologist Prasert Thongcharoen, insisted that the evidence was not enough to confirm the virus is resistant to the drug, because the study was only done on the change to the virus gene's genetic position. He added that research had not been done on enough samples to confirm the virus was resistant."More samples need to be tested before we can confirm the virus is resistant," he said.However, Public Health Minister Witthaya Kaewparadai said just to be safe, he would reserve up to 100,000 courses of the second drug zanamivir.
Source: The Nation
Investment in Cambodian tourism reaches $354 mln in half year
The investment in Cambodia's tourism reached to about 354 million U.S. dollars in the first six months of this year and is a leading field that got the most investment, the local media said on Tuesday.
"Council for Development of Cambodia (CDC) approved about 1.22 billion U.S. dollars investment projects totally from private companies and 354 million U.S. dollars of the total is on tourism investment project," the khmer language newspaper Rasmei Kampuchea quoted the document from CDC as saying.
Agricultural field stands second row after tourism with 323 million U.S. dollars and next field is industry with 303 million U.S. dollars.
In total, Cambodia received 53 investment projects for the first half year and tourism field attracted seven projects, while agri-industry has 12 projects, garment industry with 14 projects and three in energy projects.
If we consider on the projects for the first six month of this year, it increases four projects but the investment capital went down about 3.2 billion U.S. dollars compared with the same period of last year, it said, adding that for first six month of last year, Cambodia yielded with 49 investment projects with about 4.43billion U.S. dollar.
Source: Xinhua
Cambodia, Vietnam to strengthen bilateral co-op between ruling parties
Cambodian People's Party (CPP) and Vietnamese Communist Party will continue to enhance their bilateral cooperation, a Cambodian official said Monday. Both sides agreed to enhance human resources development and share experience, Ieng Sophalet, assistant to Prime Minister Hun Sen told reporters after the talk between Hun Sen and Houng Binh Quan, member of Central Politburo of Vietnamese Communist Party and chairman of the Central Committee of International Relation Affairs of the Vietnamese Communist Party. Both sides will also exchange the visits of party delegations regularly to enhance the cooperation, he said, adding that Prime Minister Hun Sen requested both parties to promote bilateral cooperation in economy and trade amid the global economic and financial crisis. Houng Binh Quan and his delegation arrived here on Sunday for athree-day visit. He will also meet with Cambodia's Senate President Chea Sim and the National Assembly President Heng Samrimon Tuesday.
Source: Xinhua
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Cambodia: Law On The Statute Of Judges
Sunday, 9 August 2009, 11:47 pmPress Release: Asian Human Rights Commission
Cambodia: Law On The Statute Of Judges, Not Their Retirement, Is The Right End From Which To Tackle Judicial Reform
Last June the Cambodian government ignored the jurisdiction of the nomination and discipline of judges and prosecutors of the Supreme Council of the Magistracy (SCM) when it bypassed the court and got the King, who is chairman of this supreme judicial council, to retire and replace half of the eight SCM members. The retired members were Ouk Vithun, Prosecutor General of the Supreme Court, 62, an ex-officio member; Henrot Raken, 68, Prosecutor General of the Appeal Court, another ex-officio member; Khieu Sameth, 62, President of Kandal Provincial Court, an appointed member; and Sin Dim, 66, President of Preah Sihanouk Provincial Court, another appointed member.
The government’s infringement upon the SMC’s jurisdiction is unconstitutional as it violated the independence of the judiciary of which the SCM is an integral part. Apparently the government was not happy with the lack of the SMC’s swift disciplinary action against a provincial prosecutor whose alleged faults had been widely reported in the press.
Perhaps more importantly, the government was not happy with the SCM when the latter had not retired the judges and prosecutors it had proposed. The SCM had its own reasons for not heeding the government’s proposal. It wanted to uphold its independence and exercise its authority over the nomination and discipline of judges and prosecutors.
Even more importantly, there was no law on the statute of judges and prosecutors which should set the retirement age for them. The government has not yet enacted this long overdue law and also the law on the organization of the judiciary when the country‘s Constitution has specifically stipulated the need to enact both laws since 1993. Like the law on the statute of civil servants and the law on the statute of members of the armed forces, which have not been specifically stipulated in the Constitution and which had both been enacted in the mid-1990s, this law on the statute of judges and prosecutors would determine, among other things, the age of retirement for judges and prosecutors. Without this law, the SCM would have no legal basis to retire judges and prosecutors.
The SCM did not comply with a government decree (not a law) which has been echoed by subsequent government circular letters and which fixes the retirement age of 60 for judges and prosecutors when this decree was based on no law on the statute of judges and prosecutors. This inaction has led the government to accuse the SCM of defending certain members of the judiciary who have wished to remain in active service.
Now with a new composition more amenable to the government’s wishes, the SCM sets out to retire some 27 elder judges and prosecutors, retirement which some have seen as part of the long overdue judicial reform.
However, the retirement of the four members of the SCM in June and the planned retirement of a big batch of judges and prosecutors are but palliatives to defuse mounting pressure for judicial reform. These measures have tackled this reform at the wrong end and have in no way come to address the real issue of the legal foundation of Cambodia’s entire judiciary. They have further violated the constitutional principle of the separation of powers, judicial independence and consolidated the executive control of the judiciary.
If the government is not happy with the functioning of the SCM, the Prime Minister should raise the issue with the King who is its chairman when he has an audience with him twice a month (Art.20 of the Constitution). The government should not delay any further the enactment of the law on the statute of judges and prosecutors and the law on the organization of the judiciary so that judges and prosecutors, who belong to the same body of magistrates, would have proper legal status, which they don’t have at the moment, and all courts of law would be duly established by law, which they are not at the moment. Everyone would thus be entitled to be tried by an independent, competent and impartial tribunal established by law, a right which is specifically stipulated under Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Cambodia is a party.
The government cannot apply the law on the nomination of judges and on the functioning of courts of law enacted in the communist days, prior to the promulgation of the current Constitution, and any decree enacted thereof when they are not among the “Laws and standard documents in Cambodia that safeguard State properties, rights, freedom and legal private properties and in conformity with the national interests, (which) shall continue to be effective until altered or abrogated by new texts” under the transitional article 158 of the current Constitution.
The absence of the law on the statute of judges and prosecutors poses a big problem of legitimacy for the composition of the SCM itself whose three judge members should be elected by their peers, an election which has been held up for 16 years, which is too long. The lack of the legitimacy of the composition of the SCM in turn questions the legitimacy of the composition of the country’s Constitutional Council which is a sort of a constitutional court, whose three members are appointed by the SCM.
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) urges the Cambodian government to prioritise the building of the legal foundation and framework of the country’s entire judiciary, its organization and the status of judges and prosecutors by enacting the law on their statute, including their retirement age, in tandem with the law on the organisation of the judiciary, two of the important laws that are specifically stipulated in the country’s constitution. This is the right end from which it should tackle judicial reform in Cambodia. About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation monitoring and lobbying human rights issues in Asia. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.
ENDS
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Rob Hamill heading to Cambodia to testify against Khmer Rouge
Trans-Atlantic rower Rob Hamill is about to head to Cambodia to testify against the Khmer Rouge prison boss accused of torturing and murdering his brother.
Kerry Hamill was 27 when his yacht strayed into Cambodian waters back in the late 1970s.
A fellow crewman was shot dead while he and a passenger ended up at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, where both were tortured and murdered.
Mr Hamill has been furiously collecting evidence since he found out he could testify about his brother's killing.
He will testify before the tribunal next week.
