Chinese Embassy Petitioners Sent Packing

Just hours before Chinese President Hu Jintao landed in Phnom Penh on Friday, a group of dismayed Koh Kong province villagers whose land is under threat from a sprawling Chinese tourism project were escorted onto a bus and sent back home before they were able to file their petition at the Chinese Embassy. A group of 15 police and military police officers stood outside the A5 guesthouse in Phnom Penh’s Tuol Kok district in the early morning and prevented the 33 villagers from traveling to the Chinese Embassy on Mao Tse Tung Boulevard, villagers and officials said. The expelling of the villager comes ahead of next week’s Asean Summit in Phnom Penh and sends out a strong message to protesters and activists who may be hoping to use the presence of the region’s leaders to have their voices heard. The villagers who were packed into the bus by police are part of some 1,100 families in Kiri Sakor and Botum Sakor districts of Koh Kong whose homes have been swallowed by a $3.8 billion tourism project being built by China’s Union Development Group (UDG). The project, situated on 36,000 hectares of land, looks out across the Koh Sdech archipelago. … Koh Kong deputy provincial governor Sun Dara arrived at the guesthouse in the early hours of the morning to tell the villagers that they must leave Phnom Penh and solve their qualms with the local authorities in Koh Kong, she said. … Contacted on Friday, Mr. Dara confirmed that he had ushered the villagers back to Koh Kong after authorities in Phnom Penh informed him that villagers from his province had arrived to file a petition at the Chinese Embassy. … “I explained to them that we should settle the matter in the province, especially because their march to the embassy would cause disorder and a security problem for President Hu Jintao.”…