Dispatch to Prey Lang

Day 2 of my whirlwind entrance into the field of Cambodian human rights work and I’m dispatched to the provinces with 3 colleagues. We are heading to a Cambodia Center for Human Rights (CCHR) organised public forum, these are a model of dispute resolution bringing together communities and local authorities to communicate about things like land issues and employment.  A rare opportunity for marginalised communities to air their grievances and often their only taste of participatory democracy. I’m eager to get out into the country and see some activity and as we head North in a big 4 by 4 car I try to download information from my colleagues. The last public forum attempted in this place was broken up by police armed with AK47s and so CCHR is keen to bring along extra people including a few international faces (a counter deterrent I think). 

We stop for the night in Kompong Thom in Central Cambodia, a quiet town, that is apart from the karaoke bar on the floor above my bedroom of the hotel. So with music seeping through the walls and stilettos scraping over my head I get little sleep before waking up at 5 am to continue our journey. 

We take a dusty road with a bright orange ball of sun rising in the east and head further North through the flat dry fields towards the Prey Lang Forest.  Stopping for pork and rice for breakfast in a ramshackle village which has grown up around the logging trade we are apprehensive about the day ahead and bring a little attention from villagers dressed in our blue CCHR jackets. One colleague, Ted, is an inspiring 80 something volunteer.  He keeps us entertained with the brilliant incidental anecdotes which pepper his speech, working in Azerbajan, fronting a rockband, his apartment in Manhattan… 

The Prey Lang Forest is the largest remaining primary forest on the Indochina peninsula with evergreen forest and rare primordial swamps.  700,000 people rely on the forest for their livelihoods including 200,000 indigenous Kuy people – “Our Forest” (Prey Lang in the Kuy language) is now threatened as the forest is being destroyed at an alarming rate. There is now an internationally supported campaign to stop the deforestation.  Despite this the Cambodian government continues to grant land concessions to logging companies.

In my legal ignorance I question how the government can award contracts to logging companies and someone suggests they are “illegal” contracts (awarded by the government). This seems to sum up the state of a nation - impoverished people in isolated parts of the country continually marginalised and disadvantaged by their own corrupt government. I am on a shockingly steep learning curve about Cambodia and also about human rights but learning fast…

As we continue our journey our president is alerted to commotion at the local logging company so we divert to see what’s happening.  It’s only 7 am and there are hundreds of people gathered on a narrow lane outside the mill.  500 villagers have spent recent dayspatrolling the forest on 250 motorbikes and setting up roadblocks takingmatters into their own hands to prevent illegal/ legal/ semi-legal andgenerally immoral logging. Villagers from different districts have reported large scale illegal logging of bamboo, resin and luxury trees which belong to residents and the reaction of some communities has been to burn illegally logged wood and the equipment used to do so.  Some illegal operations are reported to be run by the police and the military.   Villagers gathered now to vent their frustration at the loss of their livelihoods by burning logged wood and equipment. Who are the criminals here? The villagers? Police? Government? Vietnamese logging company? 

The villagers are now assembling at the mill, a show of force, the motorbikes are piled up against a barrier where a bunch of security and police are gathered in starched uniforms of blue and green. 

The villagers are allowed to enter the factory and we go in too, joining the throng of local activists, UN observers and journalists.  I have been trusted with a huge camera which I don’t know how to use but fiddle with it to document activities, a few people ask if I’m a journalist.  The space has been cleared by the factory owners leaving a workers squatting by piles of sawdust. The district governor reads out a letter permitting the company to log but the permission ran out in November 2011. The frustration is palpable and the air is tense with uncertainty but the gathering disperses peacefully.

We move on a few kilometres to the forum which is organised and facilitated by the CCHR project team.  Under a canopy with colourful flags by a small lake villagers are assembled on plastic chairs and on the ground facing a panel of selected local authorities, police chiefs.  The middle aged male, plump, panellists appear uncomfortable, possibly irritated at the outrage of being forced out to this backwater to participate in a basic process of talking to the citizens they represent. There is a tradition of respect and deference to authority in Cambodia which has a hierarchical society. Despite their frustration the assembled public politely applaud the introductory speeches of the panellists.  The applause reserved for their own representatives who bravely stand up and question the authorities however is much more vigorous.  And noticeably also for the (more relaxed) opposition party politician who is on the panel. There are opposition parties in Cambodia but the main ruling party controls most associations and allegiance to the party comes before all else so in many ways the government operates like a one party state. 

The authorities feel threatened enough to have a 30 strong armed police presence including their own film crew to intimidate the crowd, videoing anyone who is bold enough to stand up and comment at the microphone. The police are also hunting the villagers who have been destroying the loggers’ equipment. Young boys have turned up with hand written signs “Stop destroying our resin trees.”

The forum goes on for four hours and the heat is rising.  A nice older man gravitates to me and we converse a little in French and English. Seeing I don’t understand he interprets a little. He also stands up to face the panel, standing defiantly at the microphone he draws tittering laughter from the crowd.  He tells me he was making an analogy between the authorities as cats and the villagers as mice. And it is time for the mice to wake up and take revenge on the big cats. He has a wicked glimmer in his eye.  Perhaps he has waited a lifetime to make such a statement publicly to the authorities and he is beyond worrying about the consequences.

After the forum I attend a surreal lunch of sour fish soup in the middle of the steamy jungle with colleagues, UN colleagues, mosquitoes and the local provincial governor.  It seems that the authorities are capable of saying the right things at the right times and there are assurances of following up issues.  Whatever changes come about from such activities it’s clear that giving ordinary people a voice is totally empowering and makes the authorities unsettled and take note. After lunch in the oven-like heat of the day we wander around the ruins of a group of ancient temples (pre-Angkorian so over 1000 years old) before all falling asleep in the air-con as we phlitter back to Phnom Penh.