Cambodia's elite stripping last forests while foreign donors do little, NGO claims

BANGKOK, Thailand: Senior government officials and tycoons in Cambodia, including relatives of the prime minister, are illegally felling some of the country's last, once-great forests while international donors who bankroll the impoverished nation do virtually nothing to stop the plunder, a non-governmental organization said Friday.

"Logging is part of a massive asset stripping for the benefit of a small kleptocratic elite," said Simon Taylor, director of the London-based Global Witness, referring to powerful businessmen, senior military and police officers and ministers closely linked to Prime Minister Hun Sen.

"The forests of Cambodia have been ransacked over the past decade by this mafia with little or no benefit flowing down to the ordinary people," Taylor said in an interview before the release of a 95-page report detailing massive corruption and illegal logging which continues under the eyes of foreign donors who annually provide some US$600 million (€446 million) in aid — equivalent to about half the national budget.

Taylor said the destruction has further impoverished Cambodia's already hard-pressed rural people by depriving them of forest products, including food and medicines, as well as vital water sources.

Two individuals cited in the report as among the kingpins denied all wrongdoing, while the government spokesman, Khieu Kanharith, provided with a copy of the report, did not respond despite numerous attempts to reach him.

The aid-giving Consultative Group on Cambodia, which includes Australia, the European Union, Japan, the United States and the World Bank, has over the years voiced concern over Cambodia's forestry sector. But non-governmental groups like Global Witness say the group has applied little pressure on the regime to institute genuine reform despite the leverage they could exercise.

Hun Sen has made promises, normally before the aid givers gather, and strident verbal attacks against foreign critics of Cambodia's record on logging as well as human rights and corruption. The next group meeting is scheduled for late June.

"The donors have failed. They are basically spineless. The message that Hun Sen gets from the donors is that they don't really give a damn," Taylor said.

He said the only hope for Cambodia's remaining forests would be for the international community to make tough demands, and speak with one voice.

Under criticism, the government in 2002 suspended widespread logging concessions to foreign and local companies which had blatantly raped the forests.

But these, the report says, have simply been replaced by devious ways to continue illegal felling, including "economic land concessions" under which forests are cut down to make way for plantations and the timber sold in contravention of a 2001 law. Permits and licenses are illegally issued by government officials to cronies, while the armed forces "have kept up an assault on the country's forests that does not even pretend to be legitimate," the report says.

Brigade 70, the reserve force for Hun Sen's personal bodyguard unit, is also the country's timber transport and trafficking service, according to Global Witness, which has monitored Cambodia's forests for the past 12 years and was expelled from the country in 2005.

The most powerful logging syndicate is headed by Dy Chouch, the prime minister's first cousin. He, along with his ex-wife Seng Keang, an intimate friend of the Hun Sen family, and her brother Seng Kok Keang, runs a company which Global Witness says is illegally taking timber by the truck loads from Prey Long under the guise of a rubber plantation development scheme.

Prey Long, located in the central province of Kompong Thom, is the largest remaining lowland evergreen forest in mainland Southeast Asia and home to endangered wildlife, including elephant, gaur, tiger and the Asiatic black bear.

The land was awarded to Seng Keang Company by Minister of Agriculture Chan Sarun, brother-in-law of one of the company's business partners who is related to Ty Sokun, director-general of the Forestry Administration and an adviser to Hun Sen.

Ty Sokun described Global Witness staffers as "insane, unprofessional people" with no knowledge of forestry, and said their report was deceptive. He said Cambodia has increased its forest cover in recent years.

However, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates the country lost 29 percent of its primary tropical forests between 2000 and 2005, and most foreign experts agree that the loss continues at an alarming rate.

Seng Kok Heang said his company had legal permits to cut and transport logs out of Prey Long, having won a concession from the government to turn 6,200 hectares (15,320 acres) hectares into a rubber plantation. He said the accusations against him were "unacceptable," also dismissing Global Witness allegations that he attempted to kill two community forest activist who had protested illegal logging in Prey Long.

Reporters Ker Munthit and Cheang Sopheng in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, contributed to this report.