Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
But economic development wasn't far behind. In 2004 Cambodia and its neighbors
created the Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam Development Triangle area, a scheme to develop
the countries' remote border provinces and “modernize” the lives of the region's minority
peoples. In the decade since, Ratanakkiri has been transformed. National Road 78, once
an unpaved dirt road, was recently resurfaced with Chinese funds and is now an all-
weather highway dissecting the province from east to west on its way to the Vietnamese
border via Banlung. Huge swathes of Ratanakkiri's jungle, mostly secondary forests that
ethnic minority peoples cultivate in a dispersed rotational system, have been converted
into rubber, cassava, and cashew plantations. While patrolling along National Road 78 in
1992, Clais recalled having to dodge shots from Khmer Rouge hidden in the thick jungle.
“We couldn't see the sky,” he said. “Now the forest is kilometers away, if it exists at all.”
The new roads have brought economic opportunity, and a wave of poor Khmer mi-
grants from other parts of the country. Once a dusty frontier town, Banlung has grown
into a bustling provincial capital with wide tarmacked roads, public parks, and a clutch of
new government buildings. At night the highway outside town is alive with the epileptic
neon of karaoke bars and beer gardens. And then, in the blackness a few kilometers fur-
ther out, begin the rubber plantations, the dark grids of
Hevea brasiliensis
, carpeting the
countryside in every direction.
According to ADHOC, the government has granted ELCs to 27 companies in Ratana-
kkiri, covering more than 220,000 hectares. Almost half are located inside the Virachey
National Park, which was opened up to ELC developments in early 2011, when Hun Sen
to his other business interests, Pheap has rapidly become the face of big-ticket enterprises
in Ratanakkiri. To the south he runs a special economic zone and a casino on the Viet-
namese border. In February 2013 he was granted the rights to all wood felled in ELCs
across the entire province—an arrangement one observer said would only speed the de-
gradation of Ratanakkiri's remaining forests.
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Fifty kilometers east of Banlung, in a small hut with a bamboo floor, 56-year-old Ro-
mas Thno shrugged his shoulders as he recalled the decade-long legal battle his people
have waged to secure their land. Back in 2004, a businesswoman named Keat Kolney
arrived one day in this red-earthed village and informed its inhabitants that Hun Sen re-
quired 50 hectares of land to house disabled military veterans. After some discussion
the villagers agreed, and Kolney organized a traditional, alcohol-enhanced ceremony to
celebrate the deal. Once the villagers were drunk, they were presented with contracts to
thumbprint. Instead of 50 hectares, however, the fuzzily viewed contract signed away
500. No army veterans ever arrived. Kolney's company cleared the land and began plant-
ing rubber trees. There was nothing the people of Kong Yu village could do. Keat Kolney
was doubly connected: she was the sister of the finance minister Keat Chhon, and the
