European Lawmakers Press for Probe of Land Concessions
Lawmakers from the European Union (E.U) are again urging the block’s trade commissioner to investigate Cambodia’s Economic Land Concessions (ELCs) over a raft of alleged rights abuses and consider revoking the duty free access their owners currently enjoy to member states. … Going mostly to industrial scale agri-business outfits at thousands of hectares at a time, the concessions have taken center stage as the country’s most pressing human rights problem blamed for everything from mass forced evictions, rampant deforestation and illegal logging. Under an E.U trade scheme for developing countries, some of those concessions have been exporting their products to member states duty free. … “The directive does not offer any compensation to the families affected by land grabbing, nor does it address abuses and, worst, land grabbers have obtained millions as a result of [trade] benefits from sugar imports over the last three years,” [the E.U lawmakers] said. The government has defended the ELCs, which now cover more than a tenth of all land in Cambodia, as lifting the country’s rural reaches out of poverty. …
