The Report on the Prevention and Obstruction of the Peaceful Non-Violent March by Cambodia Community Peace-Building Network (CPN)
The event
On 14th June, 2010, there was a national meeting on “Petition To support the highest words, recommendations of Samdech Akheak Mohasenapoadei Decho Hun Sen, Prime Minister of the Royal Government of Cambodia” at Russian Cultural Center in Phnom Penh, in which around 300 representatives of the communities participated. This national level meeting was organized by CPN, a network to bridge the communities which are facing land disputes across the nation. Since 2008, CPN has been working on collecting the thumbprints of the victims of land issues and those thumbprints summed up to 61,418 in total now.
For the plan of March applied to Municipality, CPN will march from Wat Phnom to Prime Minister’s residence next to Independence Monument, Phnom Penh but after rejected by Municipality, CPN changed to and decided to gather altogether in front of Wat Botum Watei pagoda without legal permission neither from Municipality, nor from Ministry of Interior.
In the morning on 15th June, 2010, around 300 representatives above gathered at the Park in front of the Wat Botom Watei to make a peaceful and non violent march from there to Prime Minister’s residence in order to submit their petition with 61,418 thumbprints they had collected to the Head of Government of Cambodia. We could see that there are many police, Military police, armed forces holding guns, tear gas bomb, shields, stun batons were deployed and surrounding the march.
At 7:30 am, these groups started to walk towards the Prime Minister’s house, but immediately were prevented from walking by the authority and armed forces, making a long line just standing to block way of the march.
When they were prohibited from continuing the march, UNOHCHR officials tried to talk and negotiated with the authorities in order for those groups to continue their peaceful march. However, they were totally rejected by the authorities, saying that no matter what the reason it may be, any march won’t be allowed without any permission from the city hall. Threatened by the armed forces, and seeing that there’s no way to make the march, the representatives of the people decided to just hand over their petitions and thumbprints to Mr. Nut Cham Reun, an official of the Prime Minister’ assistant’s office.
After handing their petition and thumbprints to the official at Prime Minister’s office, one of the representatives of the people announced that the Prime Minister’s office certainly received their petitions and thumbprints and the office will decide if those will be handed to Prime Minister or just solved by the under level after they check those documents. He continued to say that his groups of the people now can leave the park and go back, and the authority continued to announce to order those groups to disperse.
Mr. Nut Cham Reun just try to lobby with people to go back home, he did not make people hope on him, he said that it is up to type of case, he could not decide it would be resolved well or bad result in the future. He just took this petition to Prime Minister’s cabinet.
While the most of the groups were making the way to leave the park, there were two groups, one from Me Mot, Kampong Cham and the other from Banteay Meanchey, did not agree to disperse and continued to stay there longer. However, again the police were deployed in front of those groups and they chased the groups to make them disperse.
Conclusions
CPN has been working on this petition and collecting the thumbprints of the victims more than 2 years, and it is truly regretful to see their peaceful march were prevented by the authorities, threatening with armed forces. The authorities should have not used the armed forces to prevent the ordinary people from marching peacefully and expressing their opinions or their problems. Having seen the authorities did not protect the people, they did not fulfill their duties.
The prevention and oppression of March, it meant that It is a discrimination in social class between vulnerable and noble. It is showing that armed forces also an accomplice in supporting powerful land grabbers, private company who violated laws and abuse human rights throughout all area of Cambodia.
Recommendations
The city hall should give the clear reasons for the reject of the request from the people to make the peaceful march, because they just rejected the request without any reasons this time. The UNOHCHR statement issued on 14th June, 2010 says, “Authorities must demonstrate that March or Demonstration would seriously risk endangering public order before they decide to prohibit the march under the new Peaceful Demonstration law”. Just the same as the statement, we wonder how this CPN’s peaceful demonstration can risk the public order, because there were only around 300 people and they changed the plan to walk around Wat Bothom Watei inside the park, where there is no public traffic.
Since they have good communications with the victims and the affected communities, ADHOC should seek the way to cooperate with CPN in order to seek the constructive system to resolve the land disputes across the country. Moreover, it will be helpful if ADHOC get the detail data of the land disputes in each province under the cooperation with CPN.
Phnom Penh, 15th June, 2010
Ouch Leng, Miku Kamumira, Men Sothy,
Ke Phos, Yi Sok San
