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Monday, December 15, 2008

Saving Cambodia's Great Lake

Every May, when the rains come, water levels in the Mekong start to rise.
When the river flows into Phnom Penh it meets another river that drains from a lake in central Cambodia.
So full is the Mekong that it reverses that river's flow, forcing water back upstream and expanding the lake more than five-fold.
This is the Tonle Sap, the largest freshwater lake in South East Asia. Cambodians call it the Great Lake.
It is an area of extraordinarily rich biodiversity and a key breeding ground for fish, which migrate upstream from the Mekong to spawn in seasonally-flooded forest areas.
The lake is vital to Cambodia. It provides two-thirds of the country's protein and more than one million people depend on it directly for their livelihoods.
But the lake faces serious threats. Cambodia's population has risen rapidly and pressure on resources has increased. Fish stocks are threatened by over-exploitation and illegal fishing methods.
Farmers and developers have taken advantage of weak governance to seize and drain land in the flooded forest, destroying key wildlife habitats and polluting the lake.
More trees have been felled for domestic use by local people, some of whom have been hunting rare wildlife to compensate for smaller fish catches.
Last year, Prime Minister Hun Sen warned of a "serious environmental disaster" if the problems were not addressed.
Fish sanctuary
The Asian Development Bank-financed Tonle Sap Environmental Management Project (TSEMP) is leading efforts to do that.
Eight years ago, more than half the lots on the lake allocated to commercial fishing were released to local communities.
Part of TSEMP's work is helping villages create legally-recognised community fisheries to protect and preserve their own resources. More than 170 of these groups have now been set up.

Soer Tao is deputy head of the community fishery in Kampong Klaeng, on the lake's northeast shore.
The village is home to about 10,000 people living in stilted houses to cope with the seasonal flooding. Some 85% of residents depend on fishing for their livelihoods.
Ten years ago, Soer Tao says, illegal fishing and destruction of the forest were causing serious problems to villagers. But local management of resources is bringing benefits.
The village boundaries have been formally set. Residents patrol the area and if people are fishing illegally or if developers are trying to encroach into the flooded forest, they should now be better positioned to tackle the problem.
The village has also established a fish sanctuary, 300 metres by 30 metres, where fish can spawn during the dry season. It is marked by red flags and guarded at each end.
When the flooding comes, the fish will swim out - hopefully in greater numbers every year.
"The fish sanctuary will protect the fish as livelihoods for everyone," Soer Tao said.
New projects
But it is not just about protecting fisheries.
Preak Toal is a floating village. Everything floats, even the school and the petrol station, and everyone depends on the lake to live.

Many people live in floating communities on the lake
Now projects are being set up to help families diversify their livelihoods away from the lake in a bid to reduce pressure on resources.
Former poachers patrol a biosphere reserve, guarding the rare water birds that they used to hunt. Tourists pay to enter and local families use pedalos to show the day-trippers around.
Some residents have built floating gardens for fruit and vegetables, while others are growing mushrooms in their floating houses. One group is trying to turn water hyacinth into charcoal-like fuel.
But the initiatives are, of course, not perfect. It is still much simpler for villagers to get firewood from the forests and to sell fish for quick profit.
'Turning point'
Dr Neou Bonheur, director of TSEMP, admits that trying to promote environmental awareness to those struggling to make a living can be difficult.

Dr Bonheur says efforts to protect the lake must be sustained
"It is hard," he says, "but when we teach them not to cut the forest because it is a breeding ground for the fish, they see the benefits of that."
The villagers, he says, are not the greatest challenge.
"Now we are at a turning point - rice and fuel prices are up and there is a tendency to look for resources such as land, not from the communities but from outside groups who want to claim areas for development.
"That's the most difficult thing for us, the people who damage the communities and fisheries in that way."
Community resource management was put in place at the right time, he says, but it must be strengthened to ensure local people have a permanent voice.
He describes efforts to date as "so far, so good", but says they must be sustained.
"We cannot say it is now enough - we have to continue to work hard on many areas."
But there is one key issue Cambodia cannot control.
China, Thailand and Laos all want to dam the Mekong for hydropower, something experts say could have a serious effect on the seasonal influx of water and wildlife into the lake.
"We are a downstream country and less powerful compared to upstream countries," says Dr Bonheur. "We can only hope that through dialogue, Cambodia can voice its concern."
"The Tonle Sap is a great asset for Cambodia. We must protect it at all cost."

Cambodia's Dictator: Nowhere to Run; Nowhere to Hide!

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By Michael Benge
Cambodia's dictator, Hun Sen, may soon find he has nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. General Augusto Pinochet, Chile's former dictator, was arrested in London and is being held on an international warrant for extradition to Spain. Pinochet is accused of presiding over genocide, torture and kidnappings committed by his secret police after he seized power in a military coup, ousting President Salvador Allende. Allende, although democratically elected, was supported by the Soviet KGB and communist Cuba. Hun Sen is guilty of the same litany of crimes, but to a greater degree, which makes him a prime candidate for similar prosecution.
As pointed out in the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, "Leaders who trample on the human rights of others can be held to account anywhere in the world. We must take note that this is the way of the modern world. ... If a dictatorship is responsible for crimes against humanity, those responsible are being brought to justice by the international community. An accord was adopted in July that established an international war crimes tribunal for such a purpose. The atrocities the tribunal was to specifically address are primarily those in Bosnia and in African countries. But the approach is appropriate to bring to justice dictatorial regimes like that of Pinochet involving such crimes anywhere..."
Not only has Spain issued an international warrant for Pinochet's arrest, but six other European countries including France and Germany have followed suite, and the United States Department of Justice is contemplating similar action. Also, the Cuban American National Foundation is testing the resolve of Spain to pursue dictators, using Madrid's action against Gen. Pinochet as a basis for bringing criminal charges against Fidel Castro. The plaintiffs include Castro opponents in exile in Spain and Spanish relatives of Cubans executed or imprisoned because of anti-Castro activities. Similar charges can now be brought against Hun Sen by relatives of his victims living in France, Australia, the United States and elsewhere.
Hun Sen's crimes include: participation in the Khmer Rouge genocide during Pol Pot's reign as a military commander in the eastern zone; implementing the genocidal K5 plan as a Vietnamese puppet during their bloody occupation of Cambodia; leading the July 1998 coup in Cambodia that resulted in the extra-judicial murder of over 100 members of the democratically elected opposition; and as the Commander-in-Chief, ordering the recent bloody-repressive crackdown on democratic demonstrators in Phnom-Penh in which at least 34 people were killed and another 53 others simply disappeared. At the same time, Hun Sen's henchmen also tortured and murdered several reverend Buddhist Monks.
Recently, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed a r{missing words}tions, H.R. Res. 533, condemning Hun Sen for both his past and current crimes, and his culpability for violations of international law. A similar resolution, Sen. Res. 309, is pending in the U.S. Senate. Appallingly, U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia Kenneth Quinn tried to assuage Hun Sen's fears by assuring him that neither of these Resolutions were binding by law. What Quinn forgot to tell him is unlike Hun Sen's kangaroo courts, justice systems in the U.S., and in other democracies, can act independent of the political systems.
Although Cambodia's dictator purports to support bringing Khmer Rouge leaders before an international tribunal, he only wants three Pol Pot holdouts, Ta Mok, Khieu Samphan and Noun Chea--who have yet to submit to Hun Sen's command--brought to trail. However, Hun Sen wants them tried only in the inept and corrupt courts in Cambodia that he controls. Trying Khmer Rouge leaders could lead to his downfall, for invariability, some may "rat" on Hun Sen for they know his real role in the Khmer Rouge's hierarchical during the Cambodian genocide.
Although Hun Sen claims he had no role in the Khmer Rouge genocide, others say differently. According to a an October 30, 1989 article in The Washington Post, one eastern zone witness states, "Hun Sen...and the troops under his command killed indiscriminately anyone in their way." In Kompong Cham Province, they "cut the throats of critically wounded at the city hospital. During the battle to relive the provincial capital...my special forces unit discovered hundreds of bodies of men, women and children, young and old, including Buddhist Monks, who had been first tortured and then killed--some executed by a gunshot to the back of the head, others chopped to death with hoes, still others strangled to death or suffocated by plastic bags tied over their heads."
And Hun Sen, as Secretary General of the Cambodian Communist party during the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia from 1984-1989, was responsible for the deaths of "tens of thousands of victims." [This is a far greater number than the 3,000 killed or disappeared during Gen. Pinochet's 17 year rule.] According to witnesses, Hun Sen played a major role in implementing the K5 Plan during the Vietnamese occupation. Described as a "new genocide," Cambodians were formed into forced labor brigades to build an "Asian Wall" along the Thai border, where they died by the "tens of thousands" of starvation, exhaustion, disease, and land mine blasts. With no training and no tools, they were forced into the fields and forests to clear mines, more often than not, blown to pieces when they stepped on mines. If anyone tried to flee, they were shot on the spot.
The "Wall," some eight hundred kilometers, was to serve as a "defense line" for the Vietnamese troops against Polpotist bandits in the forests. This all took place during a little-known period in Cambodian history: the time from 1979-1989, after the Pol Pot regime and during the Vietnamese occupation. "Although overshadowed by the great genocide which took place between 1975 and 1978 under Pol Pot, the subsequent period also brought genocide of the same form, though of a lesser scope. It was perpetrated by Pol Pot's successors and former colleagues, among them Hun Sen." [See Marie Alexandrine Martin's "Cambodia, a new colony for exploitation;" Indochina Report--"The military occupation of Kampuchea;" Philippe Pacquet's "Nouveau Genocide;" and Esmeralda Luciolli's "Le Mur de Bambou-Le Cambodge apres Pol Pot"]
Nevertheless, Hun Sen has his defenders. One of them, Ben Kiernan, heads the U.S. funded Cambodian Genocide Program. He claims he has uncovered no evidence that Hun Sen was involved in the genocide. However, this would have been impossible, for the Khmer Rouge's policy was kill or be killed. One can only wonder what Kiernan's motives are. "Kiernan spent most of the mid-1970s, when the Khmer Rouge was in power, extolling its ideology and trying to discredit reports of Khmer Rouge atrocities." He was quoted as saying, "the Khmer Rouge movement is not the monster that the press have recently made it out to be."
According to The Wall Street Journal, in 1995, Kiernan came into possession of a huge cache of previously unexamined documents in Phnom Penh. It was thought that some of them related to American POW/MIAs from the Vietnam War. However, Kiernan refused to share them with the Department of Defense, even upon urging from Kiernan's funders, the Department of State. This gave rise to the suspicion that the documents may be incriminating to Hun Sen. He was senior military commander of the eastern zone, where numerous Americans became missing, a number of POWs were known to have been held, and several POWs murdered.
General Pinochet may have one saving grace, that is he is credited as being the father of modern day democracy and for catapulting Chile's economy from a static socialist one to one of the most prosperous in Latin America. He remains quite popular in Chile, and he maintains the status of Senator for Life.
Hun Sen should take this page from Chile's history book, and emulate General Pinochet. If Hun Sen turned his dictatorship into a liberal democracy, and worked with opposition leaders Prince Ranariddh and Sam Rainsy in rebuilding Cambodia's shattered economy; stopped the extra-judicial killings and brought the ones guilty for these crimes to justice; stopped the drug running; halted the illegal logging that is undermining Cambodia's food security; and turned over all of the Khmer Rouge leaders for trial by an international tribunal; he too might be pardoned and voted Senator for life. If not, Hun Sen may soon find he has nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Mr. Benge spent 11 years in Southeast Asia, over five years as a Prisoner of War-- 1968-1973. He is a diligent student of regional affairs, and works closely with the Cambodian-American community. For efforts in rescuing several Americans before his capture, he received the State Department's highest award for heroism and a second one for valor.