Cambodia's crackdown on land grab protests

Cambodia's crackdown on land grab protests

At least 400,000 people are affected by increasingly common land disputes in Cambodia.

Now the government has decided to crack down on protests against land grabs by arresting anyone who is caught organising a protest.

Already more than a dozen people have been charged.

Al Jazeera's Stephanie Scawen reports from the capital, Phnom Penh.

Note by School of Vice

Yes, it is a well oiled, rehearsed response given by CPP hierarchy to foreign reporters and media, be it to do with the plight of the thousands who live along the polluted river Sesan, the impact of gigantic hydraulic dams, the clearing of vast swathes of forested lands to make way for so-called development projects such as rubber and oil-palm plantations etc. The implication is that any material losses befallen upon such “minority” groups as a result of implementing these projects would be tolerable, necessary price to pay for the greater overall benefits to be gained by the vast majority of people. So it's quite all right if a few innocent people get shot, killed, imprisoned, beaten and so on whilst the country is being developed!

Furthermore, as this report mentions the government tries “to develop the country” by granting land concessions to private companies but it faces corruption, making it sound almost as if "the government" itself is somehow helpless bystander in all of this whereas all the indications and evidence point to direct correlations in agreements affected at the highest echelons of government and so-called investment companies who invariably set about implementing their approved projects with scant regard being paid to the possibility of local livelihoods being destroyed or to environmental concerns.

Certainly some lower level officials may be benefitting from the chain of institutional corruption, and whilst the government sees short-term merit in allowing corruption to flourish because it can hardly afford to pay  the wages of its employees in all sectors and because of its manifestly bankrupt economic policies [the hundreds of "advisors" attached to the government and its ministers are often drawn from the same cesspool of self-serving sycophants and psychopaths or scoundrels who are just as adept at playing along the game that has after all served themselves and the people they are there to advise well enough so far!] the dispossession of thousands of ordinary Khmers off their arable lands can go on indefinitely. But, along with this massive land-grab, dispossession and the wholesale destruction of the environment the country now seriously faces the loss of national sovereignty on an unprecedented scale through this economic land concession madness. Most of the lands or estates once held in public ownership or in state possession are now being or have been effectively transferred into private foreign hands or controls. It's as if the leadership is being drugged into a zombie-like state and induced to sign whatever "development proposal" being presented before them, or that they are actually conscious of what is happening but knowing that it is too late to save a sinking ship instead choosing to help hasten the crisis further by breaking open the national safe, take the cash and assets for themselves and make a run for the life-boats!