Khmer Times/Taing Vida Friday, 26 August 2016
The government is in a seemingly never-ending PR battle to prove its independence from Vietnam, but that battle took a turn for the worse yesterday when opposition members told government officials that local residents in Svay Rieng province were renting land to Vietnamese farmers, an act explicitly banned by Prime Minister Hun Sen last November.
Farmers were not only found to be renting their land to Vietnamese nationals, but many said Vietnamese tenants colluded with local authorities, who used Cambodian names on official documents to flout the government ban and hide the information from their superiors.
Five Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) members sent a letter to Interior Minister Sar Kheng and National Assembly President Heng Samrin on Tuesday, asking them to look into and potentially stop people living along the border with Vietnam in Svay Rieng province from leasing nearly 500 hectares of land to Vietnamese farmers.
Mr. Hun Sen banned Cambodians living along the country’s border from selling or leasing farmland and residential land to people from neighboring countries Vietnam, Laos and Thailand in an edict released on November 17, 2015.
The main purpose of the directive was to help residents use their own land for cultivation, but government officials also said demarcating border posts would be more difficult if foreigners occupied land inside Cambodia.
The letter says that in Chantrea district, residents reported that people were leasing 200 hectares of land to Vietnamese farmers. In Tuol Sdey commune, 196 hectares of land were being rented to Vietnamese nationals and 40 hectares were in Bavet City’s Prasat commune.
The opposition party members said it was paramount that the government act quickly to stop the land leasing because they were concerned residents would lose their land permanently if they kept renting to Vietnamese nationals.
The five who signed the letter could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak said yesterday that he had not yet examined the letter in detail, but would notify local authorities so they can check and take action if the situation was as the CNRP members claimed.
“The opposition usually accuses us when it’s close to the election. Authorities will check this matter. It is difficult because the people renting their land to Vietnamese people hide the information,” he said. “They have done this for a long time to earn money and they do not want to leave land empty without making any money from it. But we will advise them about the impact of these decisions in the future.”
Svay Rieng provincial administration director Ros Pharith said a team of government officials, led by Svay Rieng deputy provincial governor Pech Sovann, went to the communes yesterday to investigate but were unable to resolve the issue.
“After acknowledging the request immediately, provincial authorities went to those areas. But until this evening, we haven’t found a solution yet,” he said.
According to Mr. Pharith, Svay Rieng provincial authorities told residents living close to the border to stop leasing land to Vietnamese nationals and explained the “impact on national security.” He said they told everyone that if they did not have the proper land leasing documents, their agreements would be annulled.
But many people had already signed contracts legitimized by local authorities, so they decided to allow the practice to continue until the contracts expired, then enforce the ban.
In his directive last November, Mr. Hun Sen said farmers along the border should not be allowed to lease their land because the areas lacked official borders on both sides and proper land titles with the correct number of hectares had not been issued for some land owners.
He repeated his edict only last week when he wrote on Facebook that the practice had to stop for Cambodia to be able to fully demarcate its borders.
“We forbid them from renting land to Vietnamese people. This is not only for Takeo province, but for every province which shares a border with Vietnam,” he wrote.
Last October, the Interior Ministry sent a letter to every governor of provinces along the border with Vietnam, telling them to stop any residents renting or selling land to Vietnamese nationals, citing reports that farmers were allowing foreigners to cultivate plantations in provinces along the borders with Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.
The governor of Tbong Khmum province, Prach Chan, told Khmer Times in March that residents in his province had frequently rented their land to Vietnamese nationals in the past.
“Previously, there were a number of people in Ponhea Krek district and Memot district who rented their land to Vietnamese farmers,” Mr. Chan said. “After the Interior Ministry informed us, now there are no [plots of land leased to Vietnamese farmers] in the province.”
Interior Minister Sar Kheng told all sub-national authorities on July 14 to ban the rental or sale of land to foreigners in border provinces in an effort to “avoid border problems.”
“Land rental and sale along the border for a long time can become a territorial issue because other parties can then claim the land belongs to them since they have owned it for so long,” Mr. Kheng said.
Svay Rieng governor Chieng Am told Khmer Times in January that the issue was far more complicated than people were making it seem.
“Authorities already banned local villagers from renting land [to Vietnamese nationals]. I admit that many villagers had leased land to Vietnamese people for farming because they are poor, while Vietnamese [investors] can open big factories along the border and need land to do this,” Mr. Am said.
Koeut Phally, the Svay Rieng provincial coordinator for local rights group Adhoc, said yesterday that the government directive reduced the number of people renting their land to Vietnamese nationals, but the problem was still occurring because it was intricately tied to the issue of Vietnamese immigration trends.
“For the last three years, we haven’t found any serious problems because the land leasing contracts expired and the rights were returned back to the owners,” she said. “These are farmlands which Vietnam is using to plant [sugar] cane, and most Cambodians rush to Vietnam to be beggars and earn money there. This is a problem and the government needs to create work opportunities for its citizens in their own country.”
Mr. Hun Sen, now on a tour of all of the country’s provinces, said on Tuesday that he wants more people to move to the border areas, and he signed off on a proposal to construct a paved road in Takeo as an olive branch to those who say his desire for more people to live in areas along the border is hampered by the almost non-existent levels of development in these areas.
“I have instructed the Takeo provincial governor [Lay Vannak] and other governors of border provinces that the best way to protect the border is to send Cambodian people to live in the eastern, western and northern borders of the country,” he said.
But he added that the government had to do its part in making these areas amenable to populations.
“We cannot abandon the people who will be sent to live at the border. We need to prepare infrastructure, facilities and development for these areas.”