[ad_1]
The company first seized Yim Sophat’s land in 2016, claiming her rice fields and cashew orchards were not hers at all, even though she had title to the land and had farmed it for years in Cambodia’s northern Preah Vihear province.
The 61-year-old woman joined neighbors who were dispossessed of their property to complain to village, district and provincial officials. They then took their disputes to the courts and the Cambodian government’s anti-corruption department, saying only bribes could explain the officials’ inaction.
“There is no answer,” she told VOA Khmer this month. “Whether the land is worth money or not, they should be provided with a solution so that [villagers] Other lands could be found. But there is nothing.”
Yim Sophat said she now makes a living by walking through the forest and picking rattan in exchange for rice.
“The cashew trees were bulldozed,” she said. “I was sad.”
The other party in the dispute is Delcom (Kampuchea) PTE, which villagers were told holds a license to explore and mine gold on about 1,800 hectares of land in the province’s Rovieng district. One of the company’s shareholders is reportedly Hing Bun Heang, the powerful head of the prime minister’s bodyguard unit.
Yim Sophat’s experience typifies the dangers posed by Cambodia’s fledgling industrial gold mining industry, according to a new report by Equitable Cambodia, a non-governmental natural resources watchdog.
this Report — “A snapshot of Cambodia’s gold mining industry: rights violations and environmental damage” — notes that in 2007 a government official touted the industry’s promise to reduce reliance on donor aid and fund everything from schools to infrastructure and social projects.
The report said that while companies have stepped up extraction in recent years, there was little evidence that local communities or national budgets had benefited. Most companies involved in the industry lack public visibility and have clear links to ruling party powerbrokers.
“since [2007]“The ongoing corporate takeover of mineral resources has allowed party elites in many industries to maximize profits and exploitation of natural resources while effectively minimizing accountability,” Fair Cambodia noted in its report.
“The expansion, mechanization, and chemicalization of the mining industry has multiplied the risks to Cambodian citizens and communities, especially indigenous peoples, of land grabbing, environmental damage, and occupational health and safety,” the report added.
The Dercon mine is one of four case studies in the report, which also looks at mines in Ratanakiri, Mondulkiri and Kratie provinces. Locals in these areas have long engaged in small-scale “artisanal” gold mining, a practice that was banned once commercial interests moved in.
Indigenous communities interviewed by Equity Cambodia voiced similar grievances and demands, saying that chemicals used in gold mining have polluted waterways, destroyed their traditional lands and livelihoods, and forced them to leave their homes — often without compensation or public participation.
The exception is Renaissance Minerals, an ASX-listed company that manages the O’Kvau mine in Keo Siema district, Mondulkiri province. Villagers report that the company provides good jobs for Cambodian nationals, adheres to basic safety measures, offers medical benefits, and invests in local infrastructure — a stark contrast to a nearby mine owned by Chinese holding company Rongcheng Industrial Investment (Cambodia).
“Villagers are generally satisfied with Fuxing Mining, but the company has encroached on villagers’ traditional lands and lacked transparency into its early plans and activities,” the report said.
Renaissance Minerals acquired the Cambodian interest from another Australian company, Oz Minerals, which admitted to paying bribes to Cambodian officials to obtain mining permits. In 2016, Renaissance Minerals merged with another ASX-listed company, Emerald Resources NL, and produced its first gold from the O’Kvau mine in 2021.
A company official declined to comment on specific claims in the report.
“We are aware of your email and factually incorrect reporting and have forwarded it to the Cambodian authorities for their information and action,” Alison Kerr, executive assistant and office manager at Emerald Resources, wrote in an email to VOA Khmer.
In contrast, the Fair Cambodia report said local villagers had few good things to say about the site selection for Dekang.
The report said villagers were forced to accept land compensation far below market value and “threatened to be forcibly evicted without compensation if they did not comply.” The report said authorities were waging a campaign to get indigenous communities to reject their cultural traditions. It also described the physical toll that mining operations were taking on locals.
“Interviews revealed that the health status of the community has deteriorated dramatically over the past five years. Many villagers reported an increase in the incidence of cancer, swelling, abdominal pain, Alzheimer’s disease, nephritis and tumors in the community,” the report said.
Representatives for Delcom could not be reached through phone numbers registered with Cambodia’s corporate registry. VOA Cambodia also reached out to Preah Vihear provincial officials for comment but did not receive a response.
At the national level, a person who received a call from Mines and Energy Minister Keo Rattanak told reporters that they had called the wrong number. Ung Dipola, director-general of the Ministry of Mines and Energy, could not be reached for comment for this report.
According to officials from the Ministry of Economy and Finance, seven companies in the country had valid gold exploration licenses last year. phnom penh postThey said mining companies contributed $15 million to the state coffers in 2022, almost all of it from Renaissance Minerals.
Dipola told the Bangkok Post in November 2022 that exploration activities were also underway in Tboung Khmum, Ratanakiri and Battambang provinces, and said more mining licenses could be issued if “there is sufficient production potential.”
Environmental group Mother Nature Cambodia has for years called for greater transparency in the industry, while also focusing on the damage done to local communities. Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, co-founder of the group, who is banned from entering Cambodia, said commercial gold mining has changed local demographics and power dynamics since its arrival.
“The influx of large numbers of foreign workers will at least have an impact on their culture, traditions and language. Crime rates will rise. Local authorities will no longer care about their needs, but only the needs of companies,” he said.
Ultimately, commercial mining forced many people to leave, leaving them without land to farm and without a viable way to make a living. Gonzalez-Davidson said there was a certain inevitability to commercial mining, but the Cambodian government failed to ensure the public benefited from developing a public asset.
“Show the whole country how much money Cambodia makes, what are the taxes? What are the royalties? And also publicly state what is the positive impact on health and education in the province and the country? You get nothing,” he said.
“So my biggest concern is that this is clearly making a lot of corrupt people very wealthy, while the Cambodian people are not benefiting very much.”
A team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs came to similar conclusions in their study Last year’s reportentitled “Improving transparency in Cambodia’s extractive industries”.
The authors said revenue from gold mining had “huge potential” to benefit Cambodia, but the industry also highlighted “flaws” in Cambodia’s extractive sector, where “historical trends have been towards data opacity rather than transparency”.
Jennifer Motzfield, one of the study authors, said gold mining is less damaging to the environment than some other extractive industries, such as sand mining in the Mekong River, but it is not as abundant as other extractive resources.
“Overall, gold mining in Cambodia does have the potential to provide significant economic growth in terms of state revenue and job creation, but there are also environmental challenges that could harm the Cambodian way of life that the government needs to better compensate for,” she said in an email to VOA Khmer.
She said Cambodian nongovernmental organizations — including Open Development Cambodia, which commissioned the report — were putting sustained pressure on officials to increase transparency in the sector.
She added: “There are also greater external pressures encouraging the government to adopt a more open approach, such as opportunities for foreign direct investment or the chance to join international organisations, which can bring in more state revenue and improve Cambodia’s living standards overall.”
Tun Mean, another villager in Lo Vien district, said he had watched Delcom’s mining operations gradually expand since 2014. He said his own farmland had also been affected by pollutants from the mining site that seeped into local waterways.
“It affects farmland, it affects people, it affects natural resources and it causes water pollution,” he told VOA’s Khmer Service.
But Tun Mean sees no improvements, such as new schools, roads or bridges, that would make up for the damage.
“Well, it looks like we don’t have the right infrastructure yet,” he said.
[ad_2]
Source link
