There are almost 700 oknhas and sources say titles normally require a donation of about $100,000 to the ruling CPP.
Image Credit: REUTERS/Samrang Pring |
Cambodia’s Well-Heeled Military Patrons
Cambodia has struggled
in the aftermath of three decades of war, with 17 years of troubled
peace marred by political killings, dubious elections, and a litany of
human rights violations that have cast doubts over the political
process.
A population bubble and high crime rates have also reshaped the urban
landscape, where residents live behind high fences laced with razor
wire, windows are barred, and three padlocks on the front gate is not
unusual.
It’s a recipe of constant pressures.
Importantly, the pair insisted it was the rebuilding and restoration
of pride in the country’s military by the ruling Cambodian People’s
Party (CPP) that made their boast possible.
The occasion was the fifth anniversary of an unprecedented
sponsorship deal, which formalized a relationship between the Royal
Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF) and the country’s powerful business
tycoons, known by their official title as “oknha.”
“We needed hardware, so lots of private companies gave us money to buy weapons. I don’t want to reveal their names,” Tea Banh told hundreds of RCAF officials who gathered in the capital’s Peace Palace to toast the five-year-old deal.
Broke and Broken
Ou Virak, political analyst and founder of the local think-tank The
Future Forum, said the current security regime is a result of the war
years, when three of the main military factions registered as political
parties but made no effort to integrate their respective fighting
forces.
“The mentality of the CPP is that the military that has occupied
power ever since is that of the CPP. That mentality continues. There has
been no real effort to either demilitarize Cambodia’s politics or truly
nationalize the military,” he said.
As a result, he said “the CPP – seeing that the military is going to
continue to benefit them – has sought ways to strengthen their loyalty
and their power”.
Bloated with personnel, badly run, and ill-equipped, the RCAF was engaged in a border conflict with Thailand,
which erupted in 2008 after Bangkok ordered its troops to cross into
Cambodia and occupy territory around the ancient temples of Preah
Vihear, an area recognized in international law as Cambodian for more than a century.
It’s a sore point for Thai nationalists who’d like to re-write border
treaties. Their actions resulted in 85 people killed and another 205
wounded. It also highlighted the inadequacies confronting a
cash-strapped government that complained it could not afford a bed for
each soldier at $30 a head.
“Seventy-three per cent of our annual budget went to salaries,” Tea Banh said.
The donor-dependent Cambodian government passed a sub-decree
enshrining the oknha-RCAF relationship into law in February 2010. Oknhas
could donate to units in exchange for security to protect their
business interests.
In most countries sponsorship and patronage are reserved for sports
and the arts, not the armed forces. The Cambodian deal to carve-up and
privately fund RCAF confounded the critics. It was made worse by a long
line of bureaucrats who failed to articulate what the government was
trying to do.
According to local media reports from five years ago one official
described the deal as “not quite an alliance” and compared it with
sister city relationships. Authorities were also quick to note that RCAF
personnel were not allowed to go into business or be hired out.
“It is a culture of sharing and contributing to our nation, between
civil institutions and RCAF, during a period in which the armed forces
have faced difficult living conditions,” Tea Banh told the assembled.
For instance, Khaou Phallaboth, president of Khaou Chuly Group, gave
$100,000 in 2010 which bought rice, mosquito nets and secured water
supplies. Mong Reththy, CPP senator and head of the group that bears his
name, told one scribe the deal was an “Oknha Alliance With the
Frontline Soldiers.”
More recently, Hun Manet, son of the prime minister and commander of the 911 Airborne Brigade’s counter-terrorism unit, told The Phnom Penh Post that the list of companies engaged in sponsorship arrangements had now risen to more than 100, from an initial 42.
His unit is sponsored by Suy Sophan, owner of Phan Imex.
The Phnom Penh Post has also obtained an extensive list of Cambodian businessmen, senators and foreign companies with ties to the RCAF.
More prominent names include the sugar baron Ly Yong Phat, CEO of the
Royal Group Kith Meng, and China’s Unite Group, which sponsors Hun
Sen’s elite Bodyguard Unit.
Additionally, the Chinese government has emerged as the RCAF’s chief benefactor as it seeks out strategic allies amid confrontations in the South China Sea.
Earlier this year, Beijing provided Cambodia with a $200 million loan
for helicopters, trucks, uniforms, military vehicles, rocket launchers,
anti-aircraft guns, and equipment for an infantry institute it
established here in 2013.
Dueling Oknhas
Undermining the RCAF sponsorship program is the ruthless attitude to
business that oknhas bring to the job. Their interests range from
enormous land concessions and industrial parks to plantations, garment
factories, logging, resources, and agricultural interests.
Just before the prominent environmentalist Chhut Vuthy was shot dead
in 2012, he had been approached by a Cambodian soldier who was ordered
by a Chinese company to stop him from taking photos from a public road.
He was perfectly entitled to be there.
Thong Sarath – oknha and owner of the Borey 999 development project –
allegedly ordered the November 22 murder of another oknha, Ung Meng
Cheu, owner of the Shinmex Group.
His killing was captured on video, along with his tragic attempts at
shielding himself from an assassin’s bullet – which can be seen on
YouTube.
In another instance,
the property magnate Sok Bun said he would renounce his oknha title
while begging not to be imprisoned after a video was released showing
him viciously beating a woman while his bodyguard held a gun to her
head.
The woman, a television celebrity known as Ms Sasa, is the daughter
of an oknha who is also a high-ranking military officer with the prime
minister’s Bodyguard Unit.
The expansion of the oknhas has created a moneyed class of
politically connected elites along with an ever expanding wealth gap
that is marginalizing the poor and alienating the aspiring middle
classes, resulting in a dramatic slump in the CPP’s popularity.
There are almost 700 oknhas and sources say titles normally require a donation of about $100,000 to the ruling CPP.
Critics argued the oknha-RCAF deal was a simply a tool that binds
political, commercial and military power under the ruling party’s
banner, and augurs badly for the future.
“As land and forest becomes scarcer in Cambodia, the battle between
the country’s ruling elite to control these valuable natural resources
is intensifying,” Josie Cohen, a senior campaigner with Global Witness,
said.
She said the military had repeatedly protected the business interests
of its patrons with violence that included forced evictions over the
last five years, and adds that the oknha-RCAF deal is one program that
should be scrapped.
“We have repeatedly seen how companies belonging to powerful tycoons
use state security forces as private armies to guard their land
concessions,” she said. “The corporate-military sponsorship program
formalizes this arrangement and threatens to turn the battle for land
even more violent and deadly.”
A report released by
rights group Adhoc in 2013 found RCAF had evicted nearly 1,000 families
in 14 provinces off of about 2,000 hectares of land over the previous
five years.
“People who lose their land cannot farm and receive death threats if they confront the military,” the report stated.
More recently RCAF was named
alongside business groups, police, the gendarmerie and local
authorities in a complaint lodged in the International Criminal Court
(ICC) alleging crimes against humanity were committed through widespread
land grabbing – which has left its mark on more than 770,000
Cambodians.
Swearing Allegiance
Tea Banh has vowed to control democracy. He was very publicly backed
by General Chea Dara, RCAF deputy commander-in-chief, who said the
military’s role was to secure the position of the ruling CPP.
That has annoyed the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party
(CNRP), which sees the oknha-RCAF deal beholding the military to the CPP
as contrary to the nation’s constitution.
Cohen, who added the general’s pronouncements were “extremely
concerning,” said the military must be kept separate from
private-commercial interests.
“Allowing the military to become so politicized represents a serious
threat to the future of Cambodian democracy and reduces the chance of a
peaceful handover of power were the CPP to lose the general election in
2018 or at a later date,” she said.
The oknha-RCAF policy was at best born out of necessity but remains
shortsighted and has only reinforced perceptions of Cambodia as a feudal
society.
“Creating factions of the military into different regions controlled
by different tycoons is very dangerous,” Ou Virak added. “It is Hun Sen
who is pulling all the strings. He has managed to keep the peace. But
how long can this last? I think it is quite fragile as all it needs is a
spark. An economic downturn could be one.”
It is time for a rethink. In Cambodia, money and RCAF funding are not
the same problems as they were five to 10 years ago. Many of the oknhas
are senators in the National Assembly, some with assets worth in excess
of a billion dollars.
Perhaps, it’s now time to tax them efficiently and centrally fund the
military as a non-political instrument of power designed to protect the
country and provide security where it is needed among all of its
people, as opposed to a wealthy few.
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