The Cambodian Ministry of Environment has blocked Indigenous communities from receiving ownership over thousands of hectares of customary farmlands and culturally significant forests in the Keo Seima REDD+ project zone.
The Wildlife Conservation Society, which works with the ministry to administer the project, did not disclose these land disputes caused by the project’s activities to standard setter Verra, and its auditors failed to identify these issues.
Indigenous peoples in the REDD+ project face arrests, imprisonment, crop destruction and property confiscation as a result of unclear boundaries and insufficient land allocated to their communities.
This reporting project received support from the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Journalism Fund.
This is the first article in our two-part series on Indigenous land rights and the Keo Seima REDD+ project. This series was co-written by a Cambodian journalist whose name is being withheld due to security concerns. Read part two here.
Mondulkiri provincial court on Monday questioned NGO rights group Adhoc official and four Bunong natives after land brokers and fellow villagers filed a defamation and incitement complaint against them. The complaint was made after the suspects submitted evidence of chopped trees and encroachment by the plaintiffs, made up of land brokers and a few villagers.
M’lou Prey II commune authorities, of Preah Vihear’s Chheb district, submitted documentation Tuesday to the district regarding alleged encroachment on land farmed by Indigenous Kuy people following a protest earlier this month.
On January 7, nearly 100 Kuy people from Bos and Preus Ka’ak villages gathered to prevent outsiders with tractors from clearing farmland. The dispute marks the second incident in less than a month of Kuy people from Chheb district fighting back against outsiders clearing community farmland.
Radang is a sacred mountain located within the Punong indigenous community land in Pou Lung village in Senmonorom district’s Romnea commune in Mondulkiri province. The villagers have always celebrated the mountain by making offerings to the spirits, an activity that has long prevailed.
However, the Radang Mountain land, covering an area of 4.76 hectares, is now part of a four year-long land dispute after some villagers allegedly sold the mountain land to two outsiders, identified as Phin Sophareak and Seng Yien.
The farmers of Knong Riel run when they see white faces.
A white face, for many farmers, means staff from Wildlife Alliance, one of Cambodia’s leading conservation NGOs, have entered the northern edge of the Cardamom National Park where dozens of families grow cassava, corn and other cash crops. The contested stretch of land, in the northwestern province of Pursat’s Phnom Kravanh district, is known locally as Knong Riel.
Following a land dispute, the Kampong Thom Provincial Court has given two indigenous Kui a one-year sentence in prison for their alleged involvement in a land dispute with a rubber plantation development company. The charges against them include “violence against real estate owners.”
Heng Saphen, a representative of the Kui indigenous people, expressed her dissatisfaction with the court’s decision, claiming that she was not involved in the alleged violence and that the company had even withdrawn their complaint.
This has led to ongoing disputes between the company and community members. She said that on the day of the incident [May 18, 2022], a group of villagers plowed the disputed land—which was in a condition of disrepair—with a tractor in order to grow crops, but the authorities arrived to put an end to it.
Ms. Saphen asserts that indigenous people are currently using the disputed land for farming and other activities like cassava planting. According to her, the potential loss of land could lead to significant challenges to indigenous livelihoods.
“The livelihood of Indigenous peoples is intricately tied to the land,” she emphasized. “Their way of life revolves around the land, as it provides for their needs and sustains their communities.”
Photo by Gerald Flynn/Mongabay
Expressing her discontent with the ruling from the Kampong Thom Provincial Court, Ms. Saphen stated her intention to consult with her lawyer regarding the possibility of appealing the verdict to the Court of Appeal.
Lut Sang, the lawyer representing the two Kui indigenous people, asserted that his clients were indicted by the judge without concrete evidence of their alleged crime. According to Sang, “the judge’s allegations in this hearing appear to be procedurally biased and in favor of the company,” Sang stated.
According to his statement, the evidence presented by the plaintiffs during the previous hearing did not align with the actual location of the disputed land, which was found to be over two kilometers away. He claimed that after measuring the area where the incident occurred, the local authorities discovered that the locals owned more than one hectare of land. This was not the same as the plaintiff’s claim that the villagers had encroached on 21 hectares.
Heng Saphen, a representative of the Kui ethnic group, was initially remanded in custody on June 14, 2022, as stated in a company complaint. However, he was later released on bail on June 30.
A conflict over land ownership between over 100 indigenous families and a rubber company first arose over ten years ago, following the company’s acquisition of state investment rights.
Based on the government’s location map from 2011, SAMBATH PLANTINUM Co., LTD, a company specializing in agriculture, industry, and rubber plantation, has been granted government investment rights for a vast area of 2,496 hectares in the Boeung Per Wildlife Sanctuary.
A group of 104 indigenous Kuay families residing near the investment site is urging the authorities to clearly mark the boundaries between the company’s land and the land owned collectively by the community. They claim that the company cleared many hectares of the villagers’ crops and installed encroachment poles on community land.
This timeline shows the bureaucratic hurdles Indigenous communities face when trying to seek land tenure in Cambodia. Image by Gerald Flynn/Mongabay.
In 2021, affected people sought the assistance of the Kampong Thom provincial authorities and the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction. The Department of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction of Kampong Thom Province recently took action in response to a request. On 13 August 2021, they issued a letter to Sambath Platinum and Tepi Agro, instructing them to cease erecting boundary posts and clearing crops, and the posts must be removed.
The department also emphasized the need for compensation to be provided to the affected people for the crops that were destroyed by the company.
A land dispute has reached a critical point in Ngon village, Ngon commune, Sandan district, Kampong Thom province. On June 29, 2022, 104 indigenous families submitted a petition to the provincial authorities, urgently requesting intervention to halt the company’s land clearance activities.
These families have been embroiled in a dispute for over a decade and are seeking a clear demarcation between their land and the company’s. According to a petition for assistance from the Kampong Thom provincial administration, the indigenous Kui people are facing the loss of land that they used to occupy and enjoy in the traditional manner and that has been jointly controlled from 1979 to the present.
More than a decade after subsidiaries of multinational rubber firm Socfin Group forcibly cleared and seized the farms, burial grounds and sacred forests of Bunong indigenous communities in Mondulkiri province, the company now seeks to collect tens of thousands of dollars from these farmers for the cost of “land preparation” and other fees.
Kuy indigenous peoples in Preah Vihear province’s Chheb district invoked ancestral spirits and held a “curse ceremony” to hex powerful people, including department of environment officials who they say are violating their land rights.
Local authorities ordered Kraol indigenous residents in Kratie to apologize on camera for burning down an Environment Ministry building, according to the local deputy commune chief.
The O’Krieng Senchey district administration in Kratie province have ordered the Sre Chis commune authorities to educate minority ethnic groups about the laws and legal instruments related to environmental protection.
After the burning of the Environment Ministry station, a filing cabinet and bent pieces of corrugated sheet metal were left at the scene. (CamboJA/Andrew Califf)
