Landless Cambodians see nothing sweet in EU sugar deal
An EU scheme to boost trade with developing nations is fuelling land grabs in Cambodia, activists say, with thousands evicted from their property to make way for a booming sugar industry. Campaigners are taking their fight to European supermarkets, encouraging a boycott of Cambodian sugar, which they claim is often grown on land snatched illegally from rural farmers. Yi Chhav said she had no choice but to return to her family plantation to work for the sugarcane grower that took her land, toiling for about US$1.50 a day in the sea of swaying emerald green plants that swallowed her rice paddies. “If we say there’s no way we’ll go to work in the sugarcane plantation then what will we have to eat? There’s no work,” the 68-year-old widow told AFP at her modest home in southwestern Koh Kong province. ”…
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/1211528/1/.html
