A
golf course in front of an almost-complete hotel inside the Union
Development Group’s massive resort area in Koh Kong’s Kiri Sakor
district. Sreng Meng Srun
It’s paradise – for some
On the shore of Koh Kong province’s Kiri Sakor district
overlooking a cluster of islands, a flourishing new golf course lies
vacant but for a handful of workers tending its empty greens.
The Romanesque hotel behind it, replete with a bold central dome,
luxury VIP suites and an alluring swimming pool, is just a taste of what
its owners rather ambitiously claim will become the largest tourist
destination in all of Southeast Asia.
Long silent amid a barrage of accusations that it has forcibly
displaced more than 1,000 families, duped them on compensation and
decimated a protected national park, China’s Union Development Group has
now adopted a decidedly press-friendly attitude as it attempts to win
hearts and minds.
[Another candidate to the list of ICC defendants. CPP helping to build the case of crimes against humanity...]
“We are going to build hotels, a resort, commercial centre … airport,
highway, hospital, schools, everything,” representative Ngou Tieng Lung
says, adding that the port will begin operating next year.
As for the five-star hotels, casinos, airport, satellite city and
industrial parks, all of this, Ngou says, will be added piece-by-piece
over the next 25 to 30 years.
About 20 kilometres back from the tranquil coast they once called
home, some of the villagers pushed aside for this gargantuan development
are not going quietly, and have continued to fight, most recently by
blocking company trucks and bringing their case to the media.
The latest uproar came after the company and local authorities
allegedly burned down the homes of 45 families that were refusing to
relocate in late January, an accusation Ngou denies.
“We didn’t set their homes on fire, only tents. Also, we never
stopped fishermen from fishing, but we allowed them to settle in
temporary tents when they went fishing at night,” he says.
“Anyway, they had made a contract with authorities and the company,
and they had to move when the company needs it [the land] for
investment, but they didn’t just set up tents, they built homes.”
The land in dispute falls inside a gigantic 36,000-hectare concession
granted in 2008 to Union Development Group, which was later granted
another 9,100 hectares to develop a hydropower dam.
About $10 million out of the $3.8 billion development plan for the
project has been set aside for relocation and compensation, Ngou says,
lamenting that many villagers still abandon the homes his firm has built
for them for months at a time to go back to the sea to fish.
“No other companies help people as we do. We build houses for them.
We give land and build a five-room school, a pagoda, a market for them,”
he says.
Construction
is undertaken next to an already-finished golf course inside the Union
Development Group’s resort area in Kiri Sakor district, Koh Kong,
earlier this month. Sreng Meng Srun
“We are not like others who got the land from the government, and they log and do nothing.”
It is true that Union Development Group cannot be accused, as many
other concessionaires can be, of simply abandoning their development
commitments in favour of turning a quick buck from timber and jumping
ship.
The infrastructure it is developing, including a four-lane highway
and the hydropower dam, will undoubtedly push land prices up in the
vast, already-built relocation villages as it claims, though probably a
long time from now.
And though no match for their land by the sea, the package villagers
are supposed to receive, including a house, farmland and financial
reimbursement for property lost, looks far more generous than what has
been put on the table in many of Cambodia’s other notorious development
projects.
But when it comes to the implementation of this deal, organisations
such as the UN human rights office, Adhoc and Licadho have found that
while what has been pledged looks nice on paper, core promises aren’t
being delivered.
“If we look at the reality, the government has given compensation
such as 50 by 100 metres of land and a new house of 6 by 7 metres, but
nothing can be grown on the land over there,” says Soksan Yi, deputy
director of land rights and natural resources at Adhoc.
“Moreover, the government also promised to give two hectares of land
for farming. Until now, according to our observations, the relocation
area doesn’t have any land available for farming yet. From 2008 until
now, it has been about five to six years, and they did nothing over
there.”
One villager the Post met who had managed to grow a reasonable mango
tree plantation and spoke in the presence of company officials, was not
entirely pessimistic about the relocation.
“When we moved from one location to another, of course it was
difficult,” Chan Phaly, who relocated about four years ago, told
reporters during a company-escorted trip earlier this month.
“But after a long time of working really hard, we will get something.
For the relocation, they needed to demolish many things, so we lack
[things we need].”
A
man sits next to the charred remains of his house that was allegedly
burned to the ground by Chinese company Union Development Group in Koh
Kong’s Botum Sakor district in February. Heng Chivoan
Outside of the gaze of a company entourage, however, other evictees,
including Peam Kay village chief Kem Rithy, say the soil is so bad at
most of the relocation plots that many residents have fled as far as
Thailand in search of work; and the complaints go further.
The Post has heard directly from evictees during multiple trips to
the concession that compensation has simply not been paid or reduced to a
fraction of what was promised.
For these families, many of whom have resided happily by the water
since they moved there in the 1960s or 1980s, the financial compensation
offer ranges from $8,000 to $200 per hectare lost depending on the
strength of the families’ documented claim to the land and duration of
tenure.
Ngou claims 1,147 of them have now received full compensation,
leaving just 18 outstanding, but as recently as this week, that claim
was being publicly disputed.
At a press conference on Wednesday, when Adhoc announced it was
filing more than 100 land complaints to courts across the country, yet
another villager came forward contradicting Ngou’s assertion that the
company had not destroyed people’s houses.
“If we agreed to accept their compensation of $8,000 per hectare,
after we thumbprint, they will give us only $200. They cheated us, and
we did not agree for them to tear down our house,” enraged villager Rong
Ky told the conference.
In his 2012 report on the situation of human rights in Cambodia
focusing on concessions, UN rights envoy Surya Subedi found that,
according to the terms of the 2008 lease, Union Development Group was
responsible for the costs of compensation, while the government was
responsible for administering it. Where a “resolution to relocate
certain villagers or legal land possessors” could not be found, activity
was to be suspended.
Nevertheless, Union Development Group is pushing on. It says that,
ultimately, if a dispute can’t be resolved, it is up to the government
and the courts to find a resolution, because the company has done its
part.
Ministry of Environment spokesman Bun Leut and Koh Kong provincial governor Bun Leut could not be reached for comment.
As for its new approach to media engagement and transparency, Ngou is
coyly apologetic when quizzed about why reporters were blocked by
security personnel last month while trying to visit one particular
village that has refused to budge.
“For this one, I will ask the Kim Security [firm] if, next time, any
journalist or NGO wants to go in, just let them go in, because the
security never inform us you know,” he says laughing.
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