EU Under Fire for Policy Linked to Land Grabbing in Cambodia
KAMPONG SPEU PROVINCE— Three years ago, Pao had a farm and a charcoal stove near a stream in a community called Omlaing in western Cambodia. The farm gave her rice, charcoal sales gave her extra income and the nearby forest provided edible and medicinal plants.
Pao and her fellow villagers were told their land had been leased to a company owned by Ly Yong Phat, a powerful senator and businessman with the ruling Cambodia People’s Party (CPP), for a sugarcane plantation.
Some villagers had documents proving they owned the land but even so, their homes were razed, their farms and forests ploughed over and their water diverted to irrigate the plantation.
Their story underscores the corruption, abuse of power and impunity for which Cambodia is notorious. It also suggests a European Union policy designed to alleviate poverty is exacerbating it, says a report published on Tuesday by two non-profits, Equitable Cambodia and Inclusive Development International. …
The EBA grants preferential access to the European market for all products from Least Developed Countries (LDCs), except arms and ammunitions.
In the years following the agreement, Cambodia has become a major sugar-producing nation.
The amount of land leased to industrial agricultural firms for sugar production jumped from a “negligible” amount to more than 100,000 hectares between 2006 and 2012, according to a human rights impact assessment of the EBA in Cambodia called Bittersweet Harvest, compiled by Equitable Cambodia and Inclusive Development International.
All tariffs and quotas for sugar were phased out for EBA countries in 2009. Since then, the value of Cambodia’s annual sugar exports jumped from $51,000 to $13.8 million in 2011, said the report, adding that 92 percent of exports went to the EU during this period. …
In response to the report, the European Commission in Cambodia said the EU took “very seriously the issue of alleged land grabbing and forced evictions” relating to large-scale agro-industrial investments, adding there had been positive developments. These included a moratorium on new economic land concessions—large plots of land leased by the government to companies—and a large-scale land registration campaign to resolve land disputes, it said. …
L.Y.P Group, along with Thai-owned KSL Group, Mitr Pohl Sugar Corp. also of Thailand and Taiwan’s Ve Wong, is at the forefront of the sugar industry in Cambodia.
It controls 86,000 hectares including 10 sugar and rubber plantations and a special economic zone, accounting for about 4.3 percent of all land concessions nationwide, said LICADHO. …
The long-standing dispute between land owners and the sugar company has led to at least 100 protests and three orchestrated roadblocks, with 29 villagers charged in penal cases, LICADHO said. …
The Irrawaddy News Magazine Staff
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