feature

Indigenous people and development in northeast Cambodia The indigenous people of Ratanakiri province in northeast Cambodia have endured decades of violence and discrimination. During the past 15 years, new challenges have emerged that endanger their lands and forests, the very foundation of these indigenous societies. At the same time, “development” has brought about some significant changes and few benefits. If the experiences of indigenous people elsewhere in the Mekong Region are any indication, the future of Indigenous Tampuen community leaders attempt to stop the clearance of their farmlands by labourers working for an influential person who illegally purchased the land. In 1996, officials from the Land Title Department told the Tampuen communities of Rach, Pa-or and Om villages to thumbprint documents that would allow the transfer of 200 hectares of their agricultural and other common lands for a “development activity that would benefit them.” The communities initiated legal proceedings in Ratanakiri provincial court in an attempt to stop the clearance and for the return of their lands, which, to date, has been unsuccessful. Photo: Forest Mountain Voices Project

fter Cambodia’s independence in 1954, the government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk began to target the country’s remote provinces for development. Senior government officials visited northeast Cambodia and were shocked to find that there were very few ethnic Khmer inhabitants and large populations of indigenous and ethnic Lao people living in the region, most of whom could not speak the Khmer language. For the

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Ratanakiri’s indigenous communities is bleak. Dave Hubbel outlines some of the issues that confront indigenous people in Ratanakiri, and tries to find some reasons for hope.

previous five decades, the people of the northeast had been under the nominal control of the French colonial administration. In the five decades since 1954, the indigenous communities of northeast Cambodia have been subjected to the vagaries and violence of policies and actions for which, according to indigenous people, “government” (roatibal) in Phnom Penh and “organisations” (angkar) controlled by ethnic Khmer people are largely responsible.

Dave Hubbel has been researching issues relating to the environment and development in the Mekong Region for the past 15 years.

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other forestlands, and their grazing lands and fishing grounds – by non-indigenous people and state agencies1 (see box: Denied the right to return). Indigenous leaders also cite limited access to health services and education as other problems affecting their communities. Meanwhile, understanding of other risks, such as the environmental and social impacts of the construction or improvement of high-speed roadways, or of industrial tree plantations and monoculture crops replacing sophisticated land management and cropping systems, is gradually emerging amongst indigenous communities.2

Access to health services

An ethnic Brao woman planting upland rice in a swidden. Government policies and laws have effectively placed restrictions on rotational swidden cultivation by requiring the cropping or other ‘occupation’ of land rather than permitting land to lie fallow for a number of years. Photo: Ian Baird

According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), “Cambodia is plagued by a weak and politicised judiciary, political violence, intimidation of opposition party members and journalists, and widespread impunity for human rights offenders.” Furthermore, according to HRW, “Authorities continue to ban or disperse most public demonstrations. Politicians and journalists critical of the government face violence and intimidation and are barred from equal access to the broadcast media. In addition, the judiciary remains weak and subject to political influence. Trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation through networks protected or backed by police or government officials is rampant. The government continues to turn a blind eye to fraudulent confiscation of farmers’ land, illegal logging, and widespread plundering of natural resources.” Representatives of indigenous communities in Ratanakiri cite as the major threat to their communities and societies the expropriation of their homelands – their farmlands and even their house plots and villages, their swiddens and

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Indigenous people have significantly poorer health than other Cambodians. According to the Ministry of Health, the national level of infant mortality is 95 deaths per 1,000 live births. In Ratanakiri, child mortality rates are the highest in Cambodia, with infant mortality rates of 187 in every 1,000 and under-five mortality rates 231 in every 1,000. This means that nearly one-quarter of the children born in Ratanakiri die before they reach the age of five. Yet health professionals in Ratanakiri say that these figures are much underestimated, as government data is gathered only from villages officially registered with the Ministry of Interior which represent, at most, 50 per cent of villages in the province. Indigenous women’s access to ‘modern’ health services, particularly emergency natal and post-natal care for women and infants, is restricted by a number of factors, including the expense of these services, expense of travel to government health centres and the single referral hospital, lack of access during the rainy season or due to long distance travel, poor quality of facilities and services, and facilities and services that are inappropriate and/or insensitive to indigenous culture. The northeastern provinces have a high incidence of infectious-contagious diseases. The most common problems are malaria, diarrhoea, acute respiratory infections, tuberculosis, and intestinal parasites. Malaria is endemic in the northeastern provinces and the most common reason for hospital admissions. Tuberculosis and gastro-intestinal diseases are also endemic, and vaccine-preventable diseases and acute respiratory infections continue to be major causes of mortality. Malnutrition and anaemia are both recorded to be very

Denied the right to return: Indigenous people and Virachey National Park irachey National Park is one of Cambodia’s largest protected areas. It was established by a Royal Decree in 1993 and covers 332,500 hectares in Stung Treng and Ratanakiri provinces. However, there has been little recognition by government agencies or nongovernmental organisations, that this protected area was established on the homelands of indigenous communities and that park boundaries and regulations have negatively affected their livelihood security and their cultures. There are approximately 12,000 people in 41 villages now living adjacent to or just inside the boundaries of Virachey. The people who previously lived in the area now designated by the state as the National Park are largely from the Brao Umba and Kavet ethnic groups (both sub-groups of the Brao ethnic group). The Brao Umba historically lived north of the Sesan River and south of the Lao border in Ratanakiri province. The Kavet lived north of the Sesan River in mountainous areas in northeastern Stung Treng province and northwestern Ratanakiri province. During the Second Indochina War in the 1960s and 1970s, the societies and landscapes of the Brao Umba and Kavet (among other groups in northeast Cambodia) were being torn apart. By the early 1980s, many of the Brao Umba and Kavet had been displaced from their homelands – the Brao Umba escaping the Khmer The official site of Bang Geut village, Taveng district, Ratanakiri province, with the village gate in the foreground and the Rouge through a mass exodus to Laos in 1975, the Kavet community building in the background. Bang Geut is an (many of whom had become aligned with the Khmer indigenous Brao Umba community whose homelands are located Rouge) escaping the Vietnamese Army and fleeing to within the Virachey National Park. Park officials and the Ministry of Environment refuse to allow the Brao Umba to return to their Laos and to refugee camps in Thailand. By the midhomelands north of the Sesan River. Thus, they have established 1980s, many of the Kavet who had fled to Laos had this village south of the Sesan River, where most families reside for only two to three months per year and where the available returned to Siem Pang district in northeastern Stung agricultural land is already used by another community. During Treng province, and most of the Brao Umba returned to the rest of the year they live in their swidden fields located north Cambodia. However, remnants of the Khmer Rouge conof the Sesan adjacent to the boundaries of the national park. tinued to be based in the homelands of the Kavet and Brao Umba – the area that is now Virachey National Park. After returning from Laos, the Brao Umba were relocated near Ban Lung and in 1985 received permission to live near the southern banks of the Sesan, as their homelands north of the river were still considered to be insecure and dangerous. In the early 1990s, as the plans to establish Virachey National Park were being finalised in Phnom Penh, the areas north of the Sesan River continued to be deemed too insecure for the resettlement of the Brao Umba and Kavet. Although Khmer Rouge remnants continued to be active in Virachey until 1998, by the mid-1990s the security situation had improved to the extent that Brao Umba and Kavet began to gradually move back to their homelands, even though local government officials tried to dissuade them from doing so. But by this time, Virachey had been established, and indigenous homelands had become a protected area that, according to the park planners, was ‘sparsely populated’. Since the establishment of Virachey National Park, the United Nations Environment Programme, IUCN-The World Conservation Union, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the World Bank and its Global Environment Facility have provided the financial and technical resources that have allowed the Ministry of Environment to establish the park and enforce park regulations. The Ministry of Environment has consistently refused to acknowledge the rights of the Brao Umba and Kavet to return to their homelands, or to re-inhabit the park on a permanent or semi-permanent basis. The communities are now clustered around the borders of the park. For example, in Taveng Leu commune, Taveng district, Ratanakiri province, there are six villages situated on the territory that was once inhabited by only one village. This has led to the gradual degradation of forests in the area, as there is not enough forest outside the park boundaries to allow for sustainable swidden cultivation. The relatively high population density has had negative impacts on fishing, hunting and collection of non-timber forest products. As one Brao Umba elder commented, “In the past, each village had its own area and the areas were large enough to support swidden agriculture. Now, we are forced to live next to the Sesan River. Of course there is not enough land for everyone.” In Siem Pang district, Stung Treng province, Kavet communities are facing similar difficulties and, like the Brao Umba, their reasons for wanting to return to their lands inside the park are not only about being able to grow sufficient food for themselves. These communities believe that their cultural traditions can only be protected if they live in their traditional homelands, far from the ethnic Lao and Khmer influences that they feel are damaging their cultures. Said a Kavet deputy commune chief in Siem Pang district, “The only way for us to protect our culture is to return to our own lands in the mountains.”

Photo: Ian Baird

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Adapted from: Baird, I.G. (2007) Controlling the Margins: Nature Conservation and State Power in Northeastern Cambodia Watershed Vol. 12 No. 2 March – October 2007 Page 35

high among indigenous communities in Cambodia. This is seen to be closely linked to land alienation and loss of control over forest resources. The loss of land on which to farm and grow sufficient food, and denial of access to non-timber forest products such as small terrestrial wildlife, fishes, and edible and medicinal plants and herbs results in food shortage. Lack of accessible health information is also a problem in indigenous communities. According to a report by NGO Forum on Cambodia, 76 per cent of indigenous women have never heard of HIV/AIDS. Even where government health officials are able to access these villages, there is still a language problem. All health promotion materials in Cambodia are in Khmer language, requiring readers to be literate in Khmer, which most indigenous people, especially women, are not. As oral presentations of such health-related information in the villages is based on these written materials, indigenous women do not learn anything that is new to them (although they do create some very enjoyable jokes about how ethnic Khmer women believe that pregnancy can be prevented by putting a condom on a banana).

Access to education Most documents describing Cambodia’s ranking in global development put the adult literacy rate in Cambodia at 62 per cent. However, in the northeastern provinces where indigenous ethnic minorities are the majority, the adult

Traditional dancing in the Tampuen community of L’ern Chong, Ratanakiri province. Beginning in the mid1950’s with the government’s ‘Khmerisation’ programme, throughout the Khmer Rouge regime, and to the present day, successive governments have attempted to erase Ratanakiri’s indigenous cultures. Each government, so far, has not been successful, but each attempt is painful and disruptive for communities. Photo: Forest Mountain Voices Project

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literacy rate in Ratanakiri is 23 per cent and in Mondulkiri 33 per cent. In fact, these figures are very likely to be a significant overestimate of Khmer language literacy amongst indigenous communities. According to researchers and nongovernmental organisation (NGO) personnel working with indigenous communities in Ratanakiri, only ten per cent of indigenous people in the province are ‘functionally literate’ in Khmer language (meaning that they are able to speak, read and write Khmer at some level of competency). Only ten per cent of indigenous students enrolled in primary school in Ratanakiri complete their primary education, graduating at grade five. Most schools are in the provincial and district capitals, and most indigenous communities are not. The distance that indigenous children would need to travel so that they could attend school is simply prohibitive in terms of time and expense. The only secondary school in Ratanakiri province is located in the provincial capital of Ban Lung, and the very few indigenous students who are able to attend the school do so by living in the most austere of circumstances. Other factors affecting indigenous people’s access to education: labour of children and young people is often required for their families’ livelihood security; books and other materials are expensive; teachers are often absent for long periods of time; the language of instruction is Khmer, which most indigenous children cannot speak; and the lack of culturally appropriate and relevant education. However, some promising advances are being made to address some of these factors. A law on education that was drafted in 2004 continues to await approval by the National Assembly. The draft law recognises the distinctive educational needs of indigenous communities and the right to formal education in their indigenous language. Other significant events include the approval of scripts for five languages by the Cambodian Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports in 2003. Four of these scripts are for languages spoken in Ratanakiri province, and one for Mondulkiri province. All use the Khmer script as a base; so Khmer literacy is also strengthened. In the provinces of Preah Vihear, Kratie, Stung Treng, Mondulkiri and Ratanakiri, CARE International in Cambodia has worked closed with the Ministry of Education to develop an educational curriculum and programme with bilingual language instruction – the language of the indigenous community in which a school is located and Khmer

language. Indigenous children began the programme’s first school term in September 2002, and classes for children beginning grade five began in January 2007. Cambodia’s Ministry of Education has been a leading agency in the development of this bilingual curriculum in the country’s formal education system, and CARE and the Ministry are continuing to work together to develop, improve and expand the access of indigenous children to the programme in the five provinces. Independent analysts are concerned that some senior officials in the Ministry of Education view this programme as simply a “bridging programme” that will integrate indigenous children into the formal Khmer-language-only educational establishment (and, ultimately, into the dominant ethnic Khmer society). This indicates some of the nationalist tendencies challenging indigenous communities as they attempt to maintain their languages and cultures while enabling themselves to deal on a more equal basis with the Khmer population and the Cambodian state.

The influx of migrants The recent inflow of migrant groups presents additional threats to the homelands and cultures of indigenous communities. Of the three population groups listed in Table 1 as residing in Ratanakiri province, only the ethnic Khmer group has expanded, in terms of total population and percentage of population, at a rate faster than the natural reproduction rate of population growth, due to migration into Ratanakiri from outside the province. The vast majority of this population increase has occurred since the mid-1990s. The population of Ratanakiri increased 41 per cent between 1992 and 1998. While there are no official statistics indicating the present occupation and/or location of these ethnic Khmer in-migrants, independent researchers have found that many of these recent migrants have claimed and established farming plots on indigenous lands, particularly along newly-built or newly-renovated roads and in the vicinity of the provincial town of Ban Lung and the district towns of the province. The example of Ban Lung is instructive. In the late 1980s, the town’s population was predominantly made up of indigenous people, particularly the Tampuen ethnic group. Between 1992 and 1998, the population of Ban Lung increased by 82 per cent. Now, the town’s main market and the office of the Land Conflict Resolutions and Titling Project of the provincial Department of Land Management

are built on land that once belonged to a Tampuen community. Today, approximately 90 per cent of the population of Ban Lung is of Khmer ethnicity, with a large proportion of this population having settled in the town within the past decade.

Indigenous people in government As the numbers and proportion of the ethnic Khmer population have increased, so too have the numbers and proportion of ethnic Khmer top-level provincial government officials in Ratanakiri. Since the re-establishment of a conventional state auIndigenous P opulations, thority system during E thnic M inority P opulations,and E thnic K hm er P opulation the State of Camboin R atanakiriP rovince dia (1979 to 1992) and Indigenous G roups the continuing extension of state authorK reung 17,683 ity into the northeastJarai 20,312 ern provinces, senior B rou 8,560 government posiK avet 2,620 tions in the provinces Tam puen 27,239 of Stung Treng, K achok 3,383 Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri have alLun 267 most always been R hade 3 held by members of inP hnong 270 digenous groups. In S ub-total 80,337 Ratanakiri for example, % ofP rovincialTotal 70.2 % from the early 1980s to the late 1990s, the N ationalE thnic M inority G roups succession of proLao 10,354 vincial governors C ham 1,073 and deputy-goverV ietN am ese 935 nors taking these offices were almost all C hinese 877 members of S ub-total 13,239 Ratanakiri’s indig% ofP rovincialTotal 11.6 % enous populations. There are now a N ationalE thnic M ajority G roup total of eight deputyK hm er 20,875 governors in % ofP rovincialTotal 18.2 % Ratanakiri, compared TotalP opulation, with three deputyR atanakiriP rovince 114,451 governorships in the Source: Provincial Population Survey, Partnership for 1980s and 1990s, and Local Governance – Ratanakiri, 2003-2004.

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the recent increase in the number of positions of deputygovernor have been filled by ethnic Khmer people appointed by the central government in Phnom Penh. Thus, while indigenous people still hold top positions, namely the governorship and three of the deputy governorships, the percentage of indigenous people holding these positions has decreased to less than fifty per cent in the past five years. Consequently, indigenous people at the top levels of provincial government have lost some of their authority over issues of importance to indigenous communities as the responsibilities once held by indigenous officials have been diluted by the addition of deputy-governorship positions. At the district, commune and village government levels, many of the officials are members of indigenous groups. The people of indigenous village communities most frequently interact with officials at these levels of government – they are viewed as having the most relevance for their livelihoods. At the village and commune levels in particular, government officials come from their own or neighbouring communities, and are thus able to speak the local languages. Many of these officials are honest, hard-working, and devoted to the interests of the people they represent in general, and in particular to the indigenous communities in which they, their extended families, neighbours and friends live. Many others are highly susceptible to the temptations of money and influence offered to them by members of Cambodia’s politically influential/wealthy elite, and are enrich-

ing themselves by abusing their positions and betraying the trust of indigenous people. In the following sections, some brief cases illustrate the roles of government officials at the village, commune and district levels, as well as those of the military and police authorities, in the expropriation of indigenous lands. While some of these government officials are not indigenous people, many of them are. Having indigenous people in positions of authority in Cambodia does not necessarily mean that the interests of indigenous communities are well served by these government officials. Their positions of power as representatives of the state, their ability to speak indigenous languages, and their intimate knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of indigenous cultures and social norms, place them in a better position to take advantage of and exploit indigenous communities, compared to the ethnic Khmer government officials who are viewed much more suspiciously by these communities.

Corruption and land expropriation

In his report to the 62nd session of the UN Commission on Human Rights in 2005, Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous Peoples, Mr. Rodolfo Stavenhagen, warned that there was still an “implementation gap between legislation and day-to-day reality and that enforcement and observance of the law was beset with myriad obstacles and problems.” This is certainly the case in Cambodia. The Land Law of 2001 is explicit in its definition of indigenous land and the protections afforded to these lands until a formal process of collective land titling can be formulated and implemented (which is the subject of an on-going draftForest cleared in an “economic concession” along Route 78 between the ing process for a sub-decree provincial capital of Stung Treng and the Ratanakiri provincial capital of Ban Lung. According to the Phnom Penh Post (7-20 October 2005), “On July 25, to the Land Law which Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), Chan Sarun, wrote to could achieve this objecPrime Minister Hun Sen, asking for permission to award the concessions. The next day, the PM signed two letters giving Sarun the green light to award the tive). However, the adminland to the companies and Sarun confirmed that official approval was communicated to the companies August 8.” Photo: Ian Baird istrative, legal and political

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practices of provincial and national state agencies have completely undermined the Land Law, effectively making the Land Law irrelevant in the protection of the lands and cultures of indigenous communities in Cambodia (see report this issue). One recently documented example of the “implementation gap” helps illustrate the obstacles indigenous communities confront as they attempt to protect their lands from expropriation by influential individuals. In November 2005, the people of the indigenous communities of Rach, Pa-or and Om, in Aikapeap commune, O’Chum district, Ratanakiri province, attempted to stop the clearing of their crops and agricultural lands by a bulldozer and workers employed by Mr. Kith Sok Khay, an influential businessman who claimed to own the land. Representatives of the communities, with the support of the human rights organisation ADHOC, petitioned the Ratanakiri Provincial Court to order Mr. Kith and his employers to stop the clearance of the communities’ lands. In response, the court issued an ‘urgent deka’ (court order) to allow the land clearing to continue and threatening the arrest of any community members attempting to stop the clearance. Court officials stated that “certificates” held by Mr. Kith proved that he owned the land. ADHOC lawyers explained that under the Land Law of 1992, land title over agricultural land was not permitted, that possession certificates issued under the 1992 Land Law were for land to be used for farmer-family livelihood (not large-scale industrial plantations as proposed by Mr. Kith). Furthermore, they pointed out that the indigenous people of the communities had not applied for or received possession certificates and that they could therefore not have legally sold the land. Thus, ADHOC argued that Mr. Kith had violated Cambodia’s contract law by not undertaking open and transparent negotiations with the communities in his ‘purchase’ of their land, and that the Land Law of 2001 effectively prohibited the sale of indigenous community land until the communities had received collective title to their lands. The Ratanakiri Provincial Court refused to rescind the ‘urgent deka’. Weeks later, two community representatives were arrested and jailed for two and a half months. Clearance of the land continued until March 2006, when a provincial court ruling prohibited both the clearance of the land by Mr. Kith and the use of the land by village people to grow their food crops, pending a ruling by the court as to ‘ownership’ of the land.

Cash(ew) crops The two main changes in the landscape of Ratanakiri over the past 10-15 years is the disappearance of large tracts of natural forest and the replacement of this forest with large tracts of cashew trees. According to the Ratanakiri Department of Agriculture, there were 21,000 hectares of cashew plantations in 2005. More than half of these trees were less than five years old. Approximately 7,500 tonnes of cashew nuts were exported from the province for a total income of US$9 million, making cashews the largest source of income in the province. The planting of cashew trees continues, and production increased by 500 tonnes in 2006.

Indigenous community activist in Ban Lung hospital, Ratanakiri province. This activist was returning home from a community meeting when he was attacked. The community had met to discuss their on-going efforts to prevent expropriation of their land by an influential person.

While ethnic Khmer people have established large cashew plantations after illegally buying indigenous lands, it appears that a large proportion of cashew production is by small-scale farmers, many of whom are indigenous people. According to Jeremy Ironside, an independent analyst working in Ratanakiri, 70 per cent of the total income from cashew sales was received by small-scale farmers and 30 per cent of income went to Khmer investors with plantations of more than 10 hectares in size. Many indigenous families can now generate US$600 to $700 a year by growing cashews on their land and this money is being used to build new homes, buy motorcycles, to buy rice and other food during times of shortage, and to support children attending school.

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Cashew trees grow particularly well in the fertile red soils of the plateau around the town of Ban Lung. The main roads connecting Ban Lung to surrounding district towns have become the focus of the illegal sale and purchase of fertile indigenous lands. On the road to O’Chum district town for example, a road that was lined with ancient forest 15 years ago is now lined with cashew trees. Nowadays, forest remnants can be seen at a distance of two to three kilometres from the road. Communities located in the vicinity of these roads have used cashew trees for the dual purpose of income-generation and securing their land ownership. “The cashew crop is like making a land rights certificate,” said an ethnic Kreung man in O’Chum district, “We villagers can’t read or write, the crops we plant are our letters. After we plant cashew it’s like making a permanent claim to our ancestral land.” While cashews have served some important purposes for indigenous families and communities, some disadvantages are beginning to be observed as well. Indigenous people generally plant cashews in their swidden fields and particularly in the fertile red soil areas of the province. However, the swiddens are now becoming full of mature cashew trees, reducing the space in which food crops such as rice, maize, vegetables and other edible plants can be grown and replacing the natural forest that would have regenerated in the swiddens . In other communities, large areas of forest have been cleared to establish cashew plantations. Forests in the vicinity of communities that were once an easily-accessible year-round source of edible plants and other non-timber forest products are now cashew plantations. Few if any of the cashews are eaten by people in these communities. Land management practices in the long-term may also be affected by the cashew trees. Ethnic Kreung farmers told researcher Hannah Rushton that when the cashew trees in a swidden are cut down so that rice and other food crops can be grown, the crops tend to grow very poorly. The leaves of cashew trees are allelopathic and thus release chemicals into the soil that inhibit the growth of other plants, including grasses upon which the village’s livestock feeds. When livestock eat cashew leaves and/or the outer casings of the cashew nuts – and the toxins they contain – they become ill and some have died. In other locations where cashew is planted, the soil in the swiddens becomes hard, its absorption of water decreases, and erosion further

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deprives the fields of topsoil and fertile biomass. Ethnic Brao farmers who have experienced these impacts, hope that by leaving these swiddens to return to forested fallow for a number of years the quality of the soil may be sufficiently recovered for growing crops again. A small number of indigenous communities have decided to limit the amount of land on which each family can grow cashews. As a community elder said, “It is not that we don’t like cashews. Everyone likes to get money from selling them, but we also have to make sure that we have enough land for swidden agriculture because we eat rice, not cashews.” However, most communities have not yet initiated such measures.

Challenging times ahead From issues such as health services and education to secure tenure to their homelands, the indigenous people of Ratanakiri and elsewhere in northeast Cambodia are experiencing a difficult period at present. The Royal Cambodian Government has little interest or incentive to protect the special rights of indigenous people, particularly when a number of influential members of the government have been involved in the illegal purchase and expropriation of indigenous lands and resources.

Harvesting cashew nuts in Ratanakiri province. During the past 15 years, the total area of land planted with cashew trees has increased from less than 100 hectares to over 20,000 hectares, the majority of which is owned by small-scale farmers, most of whom are indigenous people. The income derived from the sale of cashew nuts has been of real benefit to indigenous families. However, some communities are beginning to place restrictions on the amount of land on which each family can plant cashews so as to maintain community forests and land available for cultivation of food crops. Photo: Forest Mountain Voices Project

The rubber plantation and the revolution

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fter Cambodia gained independence in 1954, the

government began a programme of ‘Khmerisation’

that targeted the indigenous non-Khmer ethnic groups in the country’s northeast. According to Charles Meyer, at the time an advisor to Prince Norodom Sihanouk and his government, the goal of the programme was to “Gather the Phnongs [indigenous people] – make them feel the need to learn how to speak, read and write Khmer – teach them how to get dressed – teach them how to work.” Traditional dwellings were to be replaced by Khmer-style houses, traditional clothing replaced by Khmer/Western-style clothing, local languages by Khmer, Animism by Buddhism, swidden agriculture by lowland wet rice cultivation. In other words, indigenous communities were to be developed and modernized by the Khmer state.3 The Khmerisation programme, including the associated influx of ethnic Khmer migrants and army personnel, rapidly created resentment amongst indigenous communities. But it was in 1960, when the government approved the concession for an 8,000 hectare rubber plantation in Ratanakiri province that indigenous people’s reaction to ‘Khmer-style development’ began to change from resentment to resistance and, eventually, revolution. The Preah Sihanouk State Rubber Plantation was established on the high-quality red soils around present-day Ban Lung, the provincial capital of Ratanakiri. In 1961, the clearing of forest and planting of rubber trees began on 500 hectares of land. During this time, Khmer government officials and senior military commanders also began to establish rubber plantations, led by the provincial governor who had a 100 hectare plantation. By 1966, the rubber plantation covered 2,200 hectares, after which planting of rubber trees dwindled to a stop. The establishment of the State Rubber Plantation (and other privately-owned plantations) required the clearance of forest and the clearance of people from these lands. The homelands of ethnic Brao and Tampuen communities were expropriated – without payment or other compensation – and the people were trucked to the edge of the plantation. To add insult to injury, these displaced people were then required to work to clear the land and plant trees; they were paid for their labour, but declining to do the work was not an option. When people resisted the expropriation of their lands or refused to work on the plantation, soldiers were sent to enforce the development of the plantation by, as Charles Meyer described it, “plundering, raping and killing”. Four Brao villages now located in Labang 1 commune, and five Brao villages in Labang 2 commune, had all of their lands confiscated by the plantation and were moved to their present locations in the mid-1960s. Other indigenous communities lost some of their lands or were otherwise impacted when the forests from which they gathered edible plants and other non-timber forest products were cut down to make way for the plantation. As conditions worsened for the displaced indigenous communities, their anger and resentment increased. When Brao people travelled to the provincial government office to protest the confiscation of their lands, security personnel used force to disperse them. Within a few years after the plantation began, large groups of people were moving away, fleeing to the forests in present-day Bokeo and O Yadao districts to join the Khmer Issarak, the socialist opposition to the Sihanouk government, and to escape the repression and violence of the military. Protests and resistance by indigenous people grew from cutting down a tree to block a road in the mid-1960s to burning 30 hectares of rubber trees in 1968. Resistance steadily increased, with many Brao and Tampuen men using crossbows to ambush army patrols. In February 1968, an uprising began just a few kilometres from present-day Ban Lung town, which historian David Chandler refers to as the “Brao revolt”. In March 1970, as the Second Indochina War continued to expand into northeast Cambodia from Laos and Vietnam, and as Cambodian communists continued to challenge government forces, the company abandoned the State Rubber Plantation only a few days before the government of General Lon Nol announced that it would no longer attempt to govern the entire northeast of the country. Remnants of the State Rubber Plantation can still be seen in and around Ban Lung. In the forty years after the plantation was established, some of the indigenous communities were able to eventually recover some of their lands expropriated by the plantation, while the remnants continue to be tapped for rubber, usually by ethnic Khmer people.

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For those familiar with the struggles of indigenous people around the world to protect their cultures and their lands and waters, the situation in Ratanakiri seems very grave. Besides the loss of their forests and lands, the fisheries of the Sesan River have been devastated by the impacts of dams built upstream in Vietnam. Vietnam is building more dams on the nearby Srepok River, where still more of Cambodia’s indigenous people will see one of their main livelihood resources – the Srepok fisheries – all but disappear. Meanwhile, Australian and Chinese mining companies are surveying gold and mineral deposits throughout the northeast, and it is likely the excavation of a number of massive open-cast mines on indigenous lands could begin in the next few years. The situation of the indigenous people of northeast Cambodia will get much worse before it gets any better. However, there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic about their future. First, facing a difficult situation is not a new experience for the indigenous people of Ratanakiri (see box: The rubber plantation and the revolution). The internecine warfare and the slave raids by the Siamese in the nineteenth century, then colonisation by the French, invasion by the Imperial Army of Japan, the French again, the Sihanouk regime’s Khmerisation programme, one of the twentieth century’s few successful peasant revolutions, the tyranny of the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese occupation, the United Nations Transitional Authority

in Cambodia (UNTAC), and the Hun Sen regime have all affected the indigenous people of Ratanakiri. The indigenous communities of today are a testament to the strength and resilience of their communities and cultures. Second, as noted above, there have been some important initiatives at the national policy level that could benefit indigenous people in the future. If the Ministry of Education’s indigenous bilingual language education programme and the Land Law of 2001 were implemented and enforced by the government and, if necessary, the courts of law, indigenous communities would have greater opportunities to protect and conserve their cultures and their homelands. Third, indigenous leaders have 15 years of experience of the conventional economic development model imposed by the current government. The present generation of leaders are beginning to apply methods of resisting and responding to this “development” at the community level and at levels of government and state authority. Fourth, some young indigenous people have graduated from high school, and many more are learning new technical and analytical skills by working with nongovernmental organisations and with their indigenous colleagues. They face many challenges as they attempt to live and work within various cultures while maintaining their connections to their own cultures and communities. These young people are amongst the indigenous leaders of the future – a future they hope will be better than their present.

Endnotes: 1 The other major threat often cited by indigenous leaders is the steadily increasing activities of evangelical Christian missionaries. 2 This article focuses on land and livelihood-related issues of concern for indigenous people in Ratanakiri province and as such, the impacts of large hydroelectric dams on the Sesan and Srepok rivers in Ratanakiri province are beyond its scope. Please see Selected References for suggested reading regarding river-related aspects of development in Ratanakiri. 3 The information presented here is drawn from I.G. Baird’s forthcoming Ph.D. dissertation. He can be contacted at [email protected]. Selected References Asian Indigenous Peoples Pact Foundation. December 2006. Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights: Cambodia. AIPP, Chiang Mai, Thailand. Available upon request to [email protected] or www.aippfoundation.org. Baird, I.G. 2005. Dipterocarpus wood resin tree tenure, tapping and trade in Teun Commune, Kon Mum District, Ratanakiri province, northeast Cambodia. NTFP Project, Ban Lung, Ratanakiri. Brown, E., C. Godden and N. Sopheak. 2006. Uniting indigenous communities in Cambodia to claim the right to maternal healthcare. Gender and Development 14(2). Human Rights Watch. 2005. World Report 2004: Human Rights and Armed Conflict. Human Rights Watch, New York. Ironside, J. 2006. Poverty reduction or poverty creation? – A study on achieving the millennium development goals in two indigenous communities in Ratanakiri province, Cambodia. ILO, Phnom Penh. Ironside, J.W. and I.G. Baird. 2003. Wilderness and cultural landscape: settlement, agriculture, and land and resource tenure in and adjacent to Virachey National Park, northeast Cambodia. Biodiversity and Protected Area Management Project, Ban Lung, Ratanakiri, Cambodia. McAndrew, J.P. 2000. Indigenous adaptation to a rapidly changing economy: the experience of two Tampuan villages in northeast Cambodia. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 32(4). Meyer, C. 1979. Les nouvelles provinces: Ratanakiri – Mondolkiri. Revue Monde en Developpement 28. NGO Forum on Cambodia. 2005. Rethinking Poverty Reduction to Protect and Promote the Rights of Indigenous Minorities in Cambodia. Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Wyatt, A.B. and I.G. Baird. 2007. Transboundary impact assessment in the Sesan River Basin: The case of the Yali Falls Dam. International Journal of Water Resources Development 23(3): 427-442.

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