Cambodian villagers demonstrate against Mekong River dam project

by | Jun 30, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Protests & Symbolic Acts

By Prak Chan Thul / Reuters

Cambodian villagers demonstrated on Friday against a controversial Lao hydropower dam that activists say is being built in defiance of an agreement to assess its potentially damaging impact on millions of people first.

About 200 villagers whose livelihoods depend on the Mekong River urged a halt to the Thai-led construction of the $3.5 billion Xayaburi dam, which has angered Cambodia’s government and triggered a rare rebuke by Laos’s biggest ally, Vietnam.

“This dam won’t just affect the people in our country but will also affect many parts of Laos,” said Buddhist monk So Pra, organizer of the protest in Kompong Cham province, 124 km (77 miles) from the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.

The Xayaburi dam is one of dozens planned as part of Laos’s aggressive push to boost its tiny $7.5 billion economy and become the “battery of Southeast Asia” by exporting the vast majority of its power.

Foreign governments are concerned Laos is prioritizing its growth ambitions over ecological and environmental protection.

Under pressure from neighbors that felt its environmental impact study was inadequate, Laos agreed in December to suspend the project pending an assessment by foreign experts. Four countries share the lower stretches of the 4,900 km (3,044 mile) Mekong — Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.

Environmental group International Rivers released a report this week saying it had witnessed Ch Karnchang Pcl, Thailand’s second-biggest construction firm, resettling villagers, beefing up labor, building a large retaining wall and undertaking dredging to deepen and widen the riverbed.

“So far, Ch Karnchang claims that they are only going forward with ‘preliminary construction’ on the project,” said Kirk Herbertson, Mekong Campaigner for International Rivers.

“Ripping up the riverbed and resettling entire villages cannot be considered a preliminary activity.”

Te Navuth, secretary general of the Cambodia National Mekong River Commission, said Laos had violated a 1995 agreement requiring prior consultation before starting any development on the Mekong.

“Laos always said that it’s just preparatory work,” he said, adding Cambodia and Vietnam would jointly demand a halt.

Thailand could also be affected but, although small protests have taken place there, the government has been reluctant to oppose the project.

Ch Karnchang has a 57 percent share in the Xayaburi, which Thai banks are helping to finance. State-run Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) will buy electricity generated by the plant.

From Reuters: http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/06/29/us-cambodia-laos-idINBRE85S0FX20120629

Activist murdered by Cambodian police after refusing to hand over evidence of illegal logging

by | Apr 26, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Repression at Home

By The Guardian

A prominent Cambodian anti-logging activist, who helped expose a secretive state sell-off of national parks, has been shot dead by police in a remote south-western province while guiding journalists to the scene of illegal logging.

A Cambodian human rights organisation, Licadho, said the confrontation occurred on Wednesday when Chut Wutty, director of the Phnom Penh-based environmental watchdog Natural Resource Protection Group, refused to hand over a memory card with photos taken in the nearby forest by him and two journalists from the Cambodia Daily newspaper.

Licadho said he had taken the journalists to see large-scale forest destruction and illegal rosewood smuggling near a Chinese-built hydroelectric dam in Koh Kong, and on the way out of the forest came to a checkpoint where military police demanded the memory card.

However, Colonel Kheng Tito, a military police spokesman, said a policeman was also killed and claimed that Chut Wutty had been armed. “We are investigating the incident so we don’t have much detailed information,” he said. “All we know is that our military policeman was doing his duty and encountered this person and there was gunfire.”

He said: “Both sides were injured and later died in hospital.”

Military police detained the two journalists, according to Kevin Doyle, the Cambodia Daily’s editor-in-chief. He called for the safe return of Cambodian reporter Phorn Bopha, and Olesia Plokhii, a Canadian. The two were now “in the company of the army or military police in the forest”, said Doyle.

Chut Wutty, who was in his forties and leaves a wife and two children, had a reputation for speaking out against logging and corruption by government and big business. He campaigned against the government’s granting of so-called economic land concessions to scores of companies allowing them to develop land in national parks and wildlife sanctuaries.

He was particularly critical of Cambodia’s military police, who are often deployed to protect private business interests.

Kheng Tito said his officer had encountered Chut Wutty while patrolling against “forest crimes”.

He said: “Chut Wutty was also an activist against forest crimes; we don’t know how it became like this.”

The destruction of Cambodia’s forests and the forced eviction of rural families by armed men connected to influential businessmen was “so sad”, Chut Wutty told Reuters in February during an investigation in Koh Kong, near where he was shot.

Chut Wutty’s death was a “tragedy,” said Neang Boratino, a co-ordinator in Koh Kong province for the respected Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (ADHOC). “This is a threat to all forestry activists who work for the preservation of the nature,” he said.

Chut Wutty is the most prominent activist to meet a violent death in Cambodia since Chea Vichea, a union leader who fought for better pay and conditions for clothing workers until his 2004 assassination.

From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/26/cambodia-police-shoot-dead-antilogging-activist