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Members of the Women’s Network for Unity in Cambodia are fighting for LGBT rights, land rights, peasant rights and |
PHNOM PENH, Dec 13 2012 (IPS) - For a brief moment last month,
mainstream international media turned the spotlight on Cambodia, one of
the world’s 48 least developed countries (LDCs), as a high-level visit
from U.S. President Barack Obama and the annual summit of the
Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN) gave this country of 14.3
million people a glamorous edge.
The burst of international attention also united many grassroots groups
and organisations, which came together under an umbrella called the ASEAN People’s Grassroots Assembly (APGA)
– comprised of farmers, fisherfolk, labour unions and other rights
groups – to protest the limits of the recently adopted regional human
rights declaration, and expose grave rights violations in Cambodia.
The difference is that while international scrutiny and curiosity
quickly faded, the activists’ work –against a backdrop of accelerating
regional cooperation between ASEAN’s ten member states – is only just
beginning.
According to Pisely Ly, a Cambodian legal activist, the most
marginalised members of society are just as badly off as they were
before Cambodia hosted the annual ASEAN gathering in mid-November.
Sex workers and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, for example, have few protections under the law.
Add to this the intersecting issues of widespread land evictions, loss
of livelihoods, women supporting rural families, trafficking and sex
work and the grassroots movement here is faced with a long road ahead,
she said.
ASEAN integration 2015
Plans to achieve full integration of the 10 ASEAN economies by 2015 also have Cambodian activists on edge.
If the integration roadmap goes according to schedule, member states
will experience increased regional trade and investment in the next two
years, which AGPA members fear will exacerbate the disastrous impacts of
Cambodia’s land policies. Already the government has signed off over
11,000 acres of arable land to various international investors.
The World Policy Institute reported that Chinese investments in Cambodia
have spiked since the China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement was inked in
January 2010, and now comprise 20 percent of total foreign investment in
the country.
Vietnam’s investments have grown as well, primarily in rubber plantations.
The consequences of these investments, which often lead to displacement, are grave and far-reaching.
Earlier this month Member of Parliament Mu Sochua visited a community
displaced by the Ly Young Phat palm sugar plantation land concession.
“One of the victims of land grabs was dying when we were there. She lost
everything to Ly Young Phat. She was pregnant and hunger pushed her to
seek food in the forest. She was poisoned by the mushrooms she
found…this is an extreme case of the end result of land concessions,”
Sochua told IPS.
The New York Times reported earlier this year, “One major problem is the
widespread grant of so-called Economic Land Concessions (E.L.C.). Under
Cambodia’s 2001 Land Law, the government is allowed to make use of all
“private state land” and lease up to about 25,000 acres to a company for
as many as 99 years. The government has carved out some of the
country’s best land one bit at a time, evicting many poor people for the
commercial benefit of a few.”
“We can (no longer) utilise our land to grow food,” said Pen Sothary, a
member of the Women’s Network for Unity (WNU) – a 6,400-member
collective of sex workers, LGBT people and garment workers based here in
Cambodia’s capital, echoing the sentiments expressed during a recent
collaboration between the WNU and the AGPA.
Between 2003 and 2008, land concessions in Cambodia affected a quarter
of a million people, according to the Cambodian League for the Defence
and Promotion of Human Rights (LICADHO).
Analysts believe a new draft law for 2012 will further weaken peasants’ ownership of their land.
Meanwhile, the ASEAN People’s Forum (APF), which represents civil
society within the region, recently released a statement expressing
concerns from farmers, fisher folk, sex workers and LGBT people that
regional integration could also worsen the situation in Cambodia.
Rural-urban migration fuels sex trade
Pech Sokchea, a transgender woman and member of the WNU, told IPS that
these land concessions have resulted in massive evictions and loss of
livelihoods.
The problem is particularly severe in a country where 70 percent of the population are subsistence farmers.
To avoid going hungry evictees “often become migrant workers and are at risk of being trafficked”, Sokchea told IPS.
Researcher Melissa Ditmore wrote in a recent WNU report, “High-interest
loans lead to landlessness among rural people, and consequently to urban
migration.” Ditmore also found that farmers lose out in credit
schemes, and sometimes borrow at a 500 percent interest rate to buy
seed. When crops fail, they often lose their land and their homes.
The International Labor Organisation (ILO) has documented rural to urban
migration, starting from the mid-1990s, as a trend among women seeking
work in garment factories in cities, where they typically earn a monthly
salary of no more than 60 dollars a month.
To supplement this meagre income, many also seek part-time work in the
‘entertainment’ industry, which consists of beer gardens, karaoke bars
and massage parlors, often serving as fronts for sex work. Back in 2009,
the ILO estimated the number of entertainment workers to be over 21,000
in Phnom Penh alone.
Entertainers’ salaries can be as low as 35 dollars a month, while the
going rate for sex work is about 25 dollars per night. This wage
difference is crucial for people struggling to make ends meet in an
economy that calls for a minimum monthly income of 177 dollars. Most
women also remit a large portion of their earnings to extended family
members still living in the countryside, according to the SOMO research
organisation.
Cambodian migrant workers who move around within the region in search of
better work may find higher wages outside the country, but no
protection for their rights as labourers.
Young Cambodian women working as maids in Malaysia have been subjected
to physical and sexual abuse by employers due to scant protection of
their rights. “Some women do not get paid and return empty-handed,” Keo
Tha, an elected secretary for the WNU, explained to IPS.
“Some are cheated and turn to sex work (in order to survive),” she
added. “Some become HIV positive and have no access to healthcare and
medicine.” The problem is made worse by the fact that the commercial sex
trade is illegal and unregulated.
WNU members are particularly concerned about the impact of the
‘loophole’ in the new ASEAN rights framework, which allows states to
adhere to internationally accepted human rights standards only insofar
as they do not trample on “cultural and religious” norms in each
respective country.
This caveat gives the green light to governments to ignore the rights
of, for example, LGBT people, Ly told IPS. Still, she has faith that
grassroots activists can come together to unite the many connected
issues in the country.
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