Today's 5 stories related to land / eviction

[geovalin]

Firm ordered to stop clearing land

Thu, 13 February 2014

Chhay Channyda

Authorities in Pursat’s Krakor district yesterday ordered a cassava company to stop clearing land on which more than 60 families claim they have planted rice and other crops since 1997, villagers and a company official said.

Following protests in Anlong Tnort commune on Tuesday, villager Lim Kim Y, 51, said district governor Tim Sarin met with them yesterday and announced he was suspending the activities of company Ratanak Visal on the land, which was being prepared for a cassava plantation.

“They asked the company to stop clearing the land, but the company’s machinery is still in the disputed area,” he said. “The local authorities are paying us lip service – we’ve yet to see any official letter ordering the company to stop clearing the land.”

Even so, Kim Y said, the villagers would stop protesting to give the company a chance to withdraw from the area.

When contacted yesterday, Sarin, the district governor, said he was too busy to comment on the meeting.

Kim Y, a former border police officer, said the disputed land was about 250 hectares of Ratanak Visal’s economic land concession.

Following initial clearings and protests, villagers had been told by the government that provincial lawmakers would meet them after the election to address the issue, he added. “The election’s now over and no one has seen any representatives come and settle this case for us.”

Tuon Nguon, a company representative present at yesterday’s meeting, confirmed an order to suspend the land clearing had been issued. But Kim Y, he added, had “masterminded” the protests in an attempt to gain land he is not entitled to.

“There are three masterminds … who led people from outside the commune and from Phnom Penh,” he said.

“In fact, for people affected, we have already measured land based on a government directive. We used to have more than 3,600 hectares of land, but now we have measured and given up more than 1,400 following the directive. I do not know what to do next,” he said.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/firm-ordered-stop-clearing-land

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Villagers in limbo as dam starts

Thu, 13 February 2014

Phak Seangly and Daniel Pye

Construction at the controversial Lower Sesan II dam site in Stung Treng province has already begun, according to villagers, who will today petition several ministries, the Chinese embassy and the headquarters of the Royal Group to open negotiations with them.

According to the villagers, who travelled to Phnom Penh yesterday, several families have already been relocated and offers of compensation have been pitiful. The Royal Group is contracted to build the dam with Chinese firm Hydrolancang International Energy Co Ltd.

Fut Khoeurn, 35, a representative of three villages that will be flooded by the dam’s reservoir – Kara Bey Chrum, Kbal Romean and Srey Sronok – said yesterday that the government and Hydrolancang did not discuss compensation with villagers.

“The compensation is unacceptable. It’s miserable. If we do not get more compensation, we will not relocate,” Khoeurn said, adding that the authorities plan to relocate them to a rocky hillside across the river from their current villages, which are situated on arable land.

Adding to the villagers’ concerns, the companies have not considered that the communities’ burial grounds will also be flooded.

“Our graveyards and spirit places of our ancestors are not included in the compensation list.… Many generations of our ancestors are buried there,” Khoeurn said.

In late January, representatives of Hydrolancang met with Prime Minister Hun Sen to discuss the project. The government then said it would begin construction at the site in early February.

“The government only listens from the top down. It’s a decision between the government and companies,” Khoeurn said.

Meach Mean, coordinator of 3S Rivers Network, which represents some 75,000 people who may be affected by the dam, said that construction at the site had already begun.

“All of the roads have been built, and they also began drilling in the riverbed last month. And some villagers around the dam site, about 12 families, have received compensation and relocated,” he said.

Mean said yesterday that there was no clear policy on compensation, while villagers said they had been offered about $50 per square metre.

He added that if construction proceeded without the firms providing a proper relocation site, the government’s promises would have been broken.

“It will be the opposite of what [Hun Sen] has said. He said water, infrastructure, roads, hospitals, housing, everything would be ready before the community began to move to the new village.”

Dam Samnang, 28, another community representative, begged the government to seek a solution to the dispute.

“The government does not think about us. We want them to talk to us,” he said. “The problems are not solved yet, but the construction has already started.”

Hak Vimean, deputy director for the provincial environment department, declined to comment on the construction, and Tung Ciny, deputy director general of the Ministry of Industry, Mining and Energy, could not be reached.

Mean said that the main problem with the companies’ relocation plan was a lack of food security in the future, while some villagers, he added, had only been offered 20 kilograms of rice and some lamp oil to tide them over.

“This is the big problem in the future. When they are moving to the new area, their occupation will be stopped, so they will not have any income. They cannot produce agriculture [at the new site]. Twenty kilograms of rice cannot sustain their families,” he said.

Representatives of the Royal Group and Hydrolancing did not immediately respond to requests for comment yesterday.

Ang & Associates, a Royal Group subsidiary, reportedly signed a joint-venture agreement with local businessman Sok Vanna, the brother of Sokimex founder Sok Kong, to clear the 36,000-hectare site in preparation for the $816 million project. Construction of the dam is due to be completed by 2017.

Ly Be, 60, a villager from the reservoir site, said: “It’s hopeless now, because construction has already started.”

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/villagers-limbo-dam-starts

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Chainsaws snatched in Mondulkiri

Thu, 13 February 2014

Phak Seangly

Mondulkiri villagers seized seven chainsaws on Tuesday from illegal loggers claiming to be selling timber to logging tycoon Try Pheap’s company.

A group of ethnic Pnong villagers came across the three illegal loggers during a patrol of their community forest on Tuesday, according to Bil Vanthy, 27, a villager in O’raing district’s Ondong Kraleng village.

“They were cutting luxury timber … in the protected forest. Our rangers found them and seized the chainsaws and rifle, but we did not arrest them. They ran into the forest,” he said.

Local Pnong families created a ranger group to protect their 2,000 hectares of forest land after illegal loggers were spotted in late 2013, Vanthy said, adding that other villagers have since been spotted logging as well.

“When they saw that the logging makes money, some community members started to log too, and it is hard to stop,” Vanthy said.

Try Pheap company representative Sreng Meng said that loggers were “playing tricks by using the company’s name”.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/chainsaws-snatched-mondulkiri

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Plot thickens for evictees

Thu, 13 February 2014

Khouth Sophak Chakrya and Stuart White

Scores of families in Phnom Penh’s Borei Keila community tore down a corrugated metal fence and took up temporary residence in developer Phan Imex’s unfinished Building 9 as anger over smaller-than-promised relocation plots boiled over yesterday morning.

The occupation began after local and municipal authorities came to the site yesterday to measure plots of land for displaced families embroiled in the long-running land dispute. The plots became a point of contention, however, when it was discovered they were only three-by-four metres – half as big as the four-by-six-metre plots residents were promised, Borei Keila resident Chher Phan said.

“This is the reason behind our action, and we decided to live temporarily in Building 9 while we wait to live in the temporary settlement that Phnom Penh municipal authorities will build for us as we wait for resolution based on the 2003 and 2004 [resettlement] agreement” with developer Phan Imex, said Phan, who is occupying a room with her three children and another seven-person family.

At about 11am yesterday, the Borei Keila families could be seen making themselves at home in Building 9, sweeping out the building’s dusty one-room apartments and laying down floor mats for seating. Some gathered to chat in the open-air portions of their newly claimed flats.

Chhay Kimhorn, who also claimed a room in Building 9, said that even though the building was incomplete – many rooms sported uneven concrete and gravel floors rather than tiles – the occupiers would hold out until an agreement was reached, “even if there is a violent crackdown”.

Development at the site has been stalled for years after Phan Imex declared it had run out of money, and yesterday building occupier Chum Ngan said that if the development was bankrupt, the building should go to the community.

Phan Imex chief Suy Sophan could not be reached for comment yesterday.

There were no police in sight for the better part of yesterday’s occupation, but Prampi Makara district governor Sorm Sovann called the action a “serious offence”, brought on by a small group of rabble-trousers.

“We are sorry that they believed the incitement by a small group of people and broke the law by breaking into the building without permission,” he said. “We will take administrative measures when we get orders from our superiors.”

Municipal spokesman Long Dimanche said yesterday that authorities had called for a handful of community representatives to come to City Hall today for talks, but residents were adamant yesterday that the entire community accompany them in the interest of “transparency”.

And while Dimanche also said that yesterday’s action “is against the law, obviously, and interrupts the resolution-finding process”, he would not say how authorities planned to deal with the break-in.

However, after Veal Vong commune chief Keo Sakal visited the building around 4pm yesterday counting occupants and asking them not to stay the night, occupier Has Chenda said that she was “afraid of security” evicting them at night.

“Maybe they will come to take us away,” she said.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/plot-thickens-evictees

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Dam site still logged: NGOs

Thu, 13 February 2014

May Titthara

NGOS have accused logging tycoon Try Pheap’s MDS Import-Export Company – which had a licence to clear forest during the construction of the Stung Atai hydropower dam in Pursat – of continuing to log the area despite the dam being finished.

Ouch Leng, director of the Cambodian Human Rights Task Force (CHRTF), said he and officials from two other NGOs visited the dam site last week and observed logging in the area.

“The [stung] Atai hydropower dam is operational and the reservoir is full, so why does the company still log wood?” Leng said. “In fact, they are just using the licence as an excuse.”

Two other NGOs – the Natural Resource Protection Group and another that did not want to be named due to fear of repercussions – accompanied CHRTF members on the visit and supported Leng’s claims that logging was continuing around the Chinese-built dam in Veal Veng district.

Documents seen by the Post show that the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries approved a request in 2009 for MDS to collect wood from the area while the dam was under construction.

“[T]he ministry agreed with the request of the Forestry Administration by permitting … Mr Kev Chann Thorn, representative of MDS Import and Export, to collect wood … at the Atai hydropower dam,” reads a letter from the ministry, dated May 4, 2009.

Leng said that due to a lack of transparency in the bidding process, Pheap was able to buy the timber for just a fraction of what he would have been able to sell it for.

According to the same document, inked by ministry secretary-general Lor Rasmey, MDS was permitted to pay only $189 for every cubic metre of luxury timber it took from the site. Certain grades of luxury timber can fetch thousands of dollars per cubic metre.

One of the unnamed NGO workers who went to the site last week said he saw up to 20 MDS trucks transporting timber out of the dam area and along National Road 4.

“The activity is completely illegal, but they say they are restoring the area. How can forest remain?” he said.

A representative of MDS Import-Export, who asked not be named, denied the allegations, saying that the company’s contract finished last year.

“How can we log in Pursat province? There are international conservation groups such as CI and Wildlife Alliance that monitor very strictly and use planes to check the middle of the forest,” he said.

Pheap, who has licences to clear economic land concessions across the country, has been accused of cross-border timber smuggling and forcing the eviction of more than 1,400 families in his quest for ELCs.

Rasmey and Khorn Sareth, a senior Forestry Administration official, could not be reached for comment yesterday.

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/dam-site-still-logged-ngos