The Scramble for Cambodia - Hun Sen's Cambodia - page 186

2013, Hun Sen reversed the decision of local authorities, dispatching the tycoon Mong
Reththy to rebuild the homes of 29 families. 50
While Hun Sen's white-knight titling program benefited many people—the govern-
ment later claimed it had distributed 450,000 title deeds—it didn't do much to entrench
land rights as a legal concept. As the “Heroic Samdech Techo Volunteer Youth” went
about their work, the official government channels were bypassed and ignored. Land
ownership would come—if it came—like everything else in Hun Sen's Cambodia: as a
gift and an indulgence. Even though some people gained, the handouts failed to resolve
the contradictions at the heart of Cambodia's politico-economic system. The youth land
titling teams only operated in selected areas, and, like the earlier LMAP project, refused
to demarcate disputed land—the holdings most in need of legal recognition. 51 The gov-
ernment also continued to award concessions in apparent violation of its own moratori-
um. From May 2012 until the end of that year, 33 new ELCs were reportedly granted. 52
Hun Sen claimed these were already in the pipeline, but with little reliable public inform-
ation available there was no way to verify his claim. LICADHO said the loophole was
“so big it swallows the ban itself.” 53
As initiatives have come from above, the government has also moved to neutralize ef-
forts by NGOs and community activists offering their own solutions to the land crisis. In
Phnom Penh riot police have been dispatched to quell anti-eviction protests. As we have
seen, protestors from Boeung Kak lake were jailed, as was the independent broadcaster
Mam Sonando, charged with inciting the Broma “uprising.” In 2012, 232 people around
the country were arrested in relation to land and housing issues. By the end of the year, 38
were still in prison and 50 were wanted by the authorities. 54 And still the land crisis kept
claiming lives. In April 2012 the environmentalist Chut Wutty was shot dead. Six months
later the battered body of Hang Serei Udom, a journalist who had written about the illegal
timber trade in Ratanakkiri, was found stuffed into the trunk of his Toyota Camry on a
cashew plantation. 55 No one has yet been brought to account for either killing.
The government's belated initiatives amounted to a recognition that the country's land
crisis was now a threat to social stability, and conceivably its own hold on power. But
they failed to restore equilibrium to the system. Land and resources remained the primit-
ive currency of the CPP's shadow economy, providing business opportunities for the mil-
itary, the police, the military police, and every level of government above and between.
Cambodia's resources remained finite, but the hunger of the patronage state continued to
grow. More than ever, the needs of the rich and the needs of the poor pulled in opposite
directions. Would they pull the country apart?