Campaigns, criminalisation and concessions: Indigenous land rights in Cambodia
Campaigns, criminalisations and concessions: indigenous land rights in Cambodia
WRITTEN BY BUNLY SOEUNG
31 August 2022
In Cambodia, the violation of the land rights of indigenous peoples who have lived for thousands of years in their ancestral forests continues unabated. The problem remains pervasive while the government fails to implement relevant laws and policies to strengthen respect for indigenous rights, culture, identity, and aspirations. This sparks grave concern among researchers in developmental rights and human rights.
Indigenous peoples, who are called chuncheat in Khmer, constitute 2-3 per cent of the entire national population, or around 400,000 people. The majority live in the sparsely populated areas of North and North Eastern Cambodia, such as the provinces of Ratanakiri, Mondulkiri, Kratie, Stung Treng, Kampong Thom, and Preah Vihear. They have traditionally managed almost 4 million hectares of remote evergreen and dry deciduous forest. Their livelihood is basically dependent on their systems of managing natural resources for agricultural production, such as slash-and-burn cultivation. They have their own religious practices which are strongly linked to forest resources.
Like the majority of Cambodians, indigenous people suffered in the civil war that followed the 1970 military coup, including the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal regime (1975-1979), which completely abolished private land ownership. During the civil war, the provinces of Ratanakiri, Mondulkiri, Kratie, and Stung Treng became the bases for the revolutionary coalition of the Viet Cong and the Khmer Rouge. This revolution opposed the Lon Nol regime, which was believed to have received support from the US government to overthrow Prince Norodom Sihanouk. They also suffered from massive US air force bombing along the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the war in neighbouring Vietnam.
In Cambodia, the violation of the land rights of indigenous peoples who have lived for thousands of years in their ancestral forests continues unabated.
After decades of protracted civil war and foreign intervention, Cambodia held the 1993 UNTAC-supervised national elections that attempted to lay the foundations for a peaceful and stable future. The country began reconnecting to international communities, while, at the same time, the interest of local and international investors in the natural resources-rich highlands, for timber extraction and agro-industrial plantation, increased. The use of the land and the natural resources of the indigenous peoples changed dramatically.
In the 2000s, the government, to some extent, reluctantly recognised the rights of indigenous peoples. In 2001, the Department of Ethnic Minorities Development (under the Ministry of Rural Development and Land Law) was established, followed by the Land Management and Administration Project (2002), the Sub-Decree on Economic Land Concessions (2005), the ratification of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007), the Protected Area Law (2008), the National Policy on the Development of Indigenous Peoples (2009), and the Sub-Decree No. 83 (2009) on procedures of registration of land of indigenous communities.
Economic land concessions (ELCs)
Indigenous people in Cambodia have lived on their ancestral land for thousands of years. However, severe conflicts over land and loss of land emerged because most of their ancestral lands were given to private industrial agriculture companies by the government. According to the 2001 Land Law, the government has the right to lease up to 10,000 hectares of state land to private companies for up to 99 years for industrial agriculture investment, in order to generate economic growth in rural communities. According to the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO), the government has since granted these economic land concessions (ELCs) to 297 local and international companies involving more than 2.1 million hectares for large-scale industrial agriculture, while most parts of these granted lands are home to indigenous people whose human rights are deeply engrained in the land.
The companies that were granted ELCs have used granted lands for hydropower construction, exploitative mining, and illegal logging, which contributes to massive deforestation in Cambodia. Those development activities have caused adverse impacts, such as loss of forest land, spirit forest, burial forest, and reserved forest, as well as displacement, environmental pollution, violence and intimidation, and decreased household income. Since 2000, an estimated 770,000 people, or six per cent of the total population, have been forcibly displaced due to land disputes.
The failure or inability to check the abuse of the ELCs efficiently remains common. The main factor is bureaucratic weakness and a politicised and personalised bureaucracy that is closely related to the ruling elite, who manipulatively seek self-enrichment and aim to politically maintain their power at the expense of indigenous people and rural communities in the name of development. In May 2012, the government suspended the granting of ELCs in the midst of growing criticism and an inter-ministerial committee was formed to review existing concessions. Consequently, more than 100 concessions have since been revoked from concessionaires who did not abide by the law or the terms of the ELC lease.
China remains Cambodia’s top donor and strategic development partner. In 2021, Chinese foreign direct investment in Cambodia increased significantly, despite the impact of COVID-19. The total investment reached up to USD 2.326 million, a 67 per cent increase on 2020. Since the late 2000s, some Chinese investment projects have been directed towards large-scale projects on agriculture and natural resources, especially hydropower plants and land concessions incentivised by the Cambodian government’s attractive investment — ELCs. According to the LICADHO, of the 297 granted concessions (equivalent to 2.1 million hectares) about thirty Chinese companies control the largest total area, covering nearly 400,000 hectares. Most Chinese companies have maintained Cambodia’s entrenched socio-political system of patron-client networks. They have strong political connections with local political elites. This has caused land conflict, displacement, and environmental harm which grossly violates the rights of indigenous peoples.
Over time, the political landscape in Cambodia has dramatically changed. However, the entrenched traditional patronage system remains influential on contemporary patron-client relationships which dictate land management in Cambodia. It allows the ruling party the power to monopolise national and local government bureaucracies. In order to secure its grip on political power and retain loyalty, the ruling party has allocated positions, resources, and favourable business licenses to a limited group of closely linked ruling elites in the political, military, and business sectors, who are the party’s key supporters. This causes hierarchical corruption that hinders the efficient and effective execution of land policy reform.
The government has granted economic land concessions to at least 15 companies owned by prominent businessmen and politically powerful members of society. Many of these companies — although not all of them — became concessionaires because they had strong ties to, and joint ventures with, local influential politico-commercial elites, high-ranking officials, and political figures. Of notorious companies, Try Pheap, TTY, and Chinese Guangdong Hengfu Group, are some examples.
Communal land registration
Since 2009, the access of indigenous communities to legal communal land titles has been formally recognised by Sub-Decree No. 83. The communal land registration process involves three main stages. First, formal recognition of self-identification as a traditional culture by the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) is required. Second, an application for recognition as a legal entity at the Ministry of Interior (MoI) must be made. The third and final application is to the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning, and Construction for a collective land title.
In practice, the collective land registration process is complicated, lengthy, and expensive, and therefore excludes many indigenous communities. From 2011 to 2021, only 33 communal land titles have been granted to 33 separate indigenous communities, out of a total of 458 indigenous communities across Cambodia. Those titles cover 33,899 hectares of land where 3,235 indigenous families live. As of 2021, only 154 indigenous communities have received recognition from the MoRD and the MoI. For some, it is extremely hard to attain collective land titles since parts of their forests have already been given to private companies through ELCs. Negotiations between the MoRD, the MoI, and the companies involved are required prior to the commencement of the collective land registration process.
In 2018, almost 20 people representing more than 200 indigenous Chong families submitted petitions to the MoRD, the prime minister’s cabinet, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, to request an intervention to help them gain official recognition in Koh Kong province’s Areng Valley, after their petition was denied by local authorities. The MoRD’s chief of the administrative department received the petition and promised to bring it to his superior. Many Chong activists have been arrested for their campaign against a hydropower dam in the area. As of May 2022, approximately 300 hectares of indigenous Chong land in Koh Kong Province has been demarcated and the Ministry of Environment plans to hand the land back to the indigenous Chong people. In 2021, the government reviewed the application process for indigenous collective land titles, and indigenous land use in general.
Criminalising human rights activism and environmental defenders
Non-indigenous and indigenous peoples alike have suffered from the disastrous impact on socio-cultural aspects of their lives caused by domestic and foreign companies that have received ELCs. However, indigenous communities are particularly vulnerable since their social, cultural, and economic ties are deeply ingrained in forest land.
An indigenous rights movement began in the late 1990s when the government attracted a number of domestic and foreign companies to engage in large-scale land investment in the agro-industry. However, with the deterioration of freedom of expression and the increased number of human rights violations perpetuated by recently introduced punitive regulations, such as the 2018 revision of the Penal Code on lèse-majesté and Proclamation No. 170 ‘on publication controls of website and social media processing via internet in the Kingdom of Cambodia’, indigenous activism against those companies remains under severe pressure and has become more perilous.
Since 2017, the government has beefed up its effort to crack down on indigenous environmental activists who peacefully advocate protecting the environment and natural resources of indigenous communities. On 26 April 2012, indigenous environmental activist Chut Wutty was shot dead by military police while investigating illegal logging and land seizures with two journalists in the protected forests in Koh Kong province near the Thai border. He was one of Cambodia’s most dedicated, prominent land and environmental activists, but a spokesman for the government’s Council of Ministers called him a ‘great log trader’.
In October 2015, a Chong activist named Ven Vorn, who had played a key role in the campaign against the Areng hydropower dam, was arrested and imprisoned for five months on charges of illegally harvesting forest products. In 2021, five environmental activists from Mother Nature Cambodia were sentenced to between 18 and 20 months in prison and a fine of 4 million riels on charges of “causing social chaos” and insulting the king.
Indigenous peoples in Cambodia continuously face land evictions. An estimated 600,000 people have been forcibly evicted from their homes. Campaigning against illegal land grabbing is dangerous. In 2012, security forces opened fire on 1,000 families in the Kratie Province. A 14-year-old girl was killed. The families were forcibly evicted to make space for the agribusiness Casotim. No free, prior, or informed consent was obtained from the people before removing them from their lands, and no fair compensation was offered. The proposed Stung Cheay Areng Dam project in the Areng Valley, home to the indigenous Chong people, was another similar prominent case. In another case, the 2017 Lower Sesan II (LSS2) hydro dam project in Steung Treng Province has had a catastrophic impact on the cultural rights of the Bunong indigenous communities.
The violation of the land rights of marginalised indigenous peoples in Cambodia has been glaring and rampant. Opaque ELC policy, lengthy and expensive communal land-titling processes and the dominance of well-established patron-client relationships continue to exclude these people. Their right to have their consent asked for is completely ignored. There are no sufficient ways for them to engage meaningfully in the design and implementation of development projects. Consequently, far-reaching environmental, economic, and sociocultural impacts put their lives and livelihoods at greater risk and their future prospects remain gloomy if their land rights are not promoted and protected properly.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Bunly Soeung serves as a Lecturer in the Faculty of Social Sciences, Svay Rieng University. He is a Rotary Positive Peace Activator and a Research Fellow at the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace. In 2020, he was a short-term Research Fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law.
This article was first published by New Mandala and has been republished with the permission of the Editor. Image credit: Wikimedia.