HRW urges Cambodia’s donors to put pressure on land titling campaign

A woman cries during a protest near Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen's house

 in Phnom Penh, on April 22, 2013. The residents of Boeung Kak Lake have been 

embroiled in a long-running land dispute with a real estate development firm 

in the capital. REUTERS/Samrang Pring

BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - As Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen suspends a controversial land titling campaign ahead of national elections, Human Rights Watch urged Cambodia’s donors to insist that the secretive scheme - which amounted to land grabs by the powerful - be reformed or discontinued.

The one-year-old programme lacks transparency and accountability and could leave thousands dispossessed from their land, and is conducted in a bullying manner, the New York-based rights group said in a statement.

Villagers who were trying to prove their land was illegally confiscated were threatened with arrest, and others were refused help because they were deemed to support the political opposition, HRW said. Some communities were forced to give up their shared territories.

“Some have received benefits, but the campaign has failed to institutionalise respect for rights,” Phil Robertson, deputy director of HRW’s Asia division, told Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Moreover (it) has provided a stage for Hun Sen and the CPP (Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party) to further punish those they deem to be troublemakers, such as villagers who protest to protect their land and their rights, and the non-governmental organisations who support them.”

The “Heroic Samdech Techo Volunteer Youth” scheme was being carried out by hundreds of students, recruited from supporters of the CPP.

The name of the group refers to an honorary title Hun Sen has taken, and the students are dressed in military uniforms and transported in government military vehicles, HRW said.

Hun Sen and the CPP financed the campaign, with supplementary funding from private domestic and international firms associated with the party and coordinated by Hun Sen’s son, army Col. Hun Manit, it added.

Hun Manit is also deputy secretary-general of the National Authority for Resolution of Land Disputes, deputy chief of Hun Sen’s cabinet and deputy chief of the Defense Ministry Intelligence.

NEED TO WALK THE TALK

Land ownership is particularly problematic in Cambodia with legal documents having been destroyed in the 1970s when the Khmer Rouge regime abolished private property as part of its drive for a communist agrarian utopia.

An estimated 85 percent of households in Cambodia today do not have land titles, leaving them vulnerable to land grabs.

Three out of five families in rural Cambodia are either landless or do not own enough land to meet their food needs, a precarious situation that, combined with widespread corruption, feeds a cycle of poverty, according to activists and aid agencies.

Rights group Licadho says politically-connected companies have secured leases for an area the size of Wales - totaling 2.1 million hectares and affecting more than 400,000 land dwellers. The so-called economic land concessions have accelerated in the past few years, Licadho says.

Hun Sen's titling plan was announced in June 2012, ostensibly to resolve these issues. It has been in operation since June 28, 2012.

A year later on June 11, Hun Sen announced the land titling campaign would be suspended until after national elections on July 28. 

HRW is calling on Cambodia’s donors to demand the government reform the land titling programme or failing that, terminate it.

“The international donors are long on rhetoric about transparency, consultation and participation, but when a top priority Cambodia government programme actively flouts those principles, and retaliates against villagers defending their rights and NGOs trying to monitor the programme, those same donors keep their mouths shut,” Robertson said.