Activists Doubt Cambodia Pledge to Stop Land Concessions “If the government wants to be taken seriously it must take immediate action to end the ‘land grab’ crisis rather than just repeating old commitments which they themselves have already ignored.” A mad man who cannot sleep every night. Keep seeing prets and hell guards coming to take him. By Chun Han Wong, The Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2013 Activists are skeptical that Cambodian Prime Pret Minister Hun Sen will follow through on a pledge to stop a contentious practice of appropriating rural land for commercial use, an issue that hurt the leader and his party in elections in July. [I agree] In its new five-year political platform issued last week, the Cambodian government pledged to suspend new issuances of “economic land concessions”—a controversial program that was aimed at boosting agricultural exports but blamed by rights groups for a “land-grabbing crisis”—and conduct a review into existing concessions. The platform formalized a May 2012 moratorium on land-concession issuances ordered by Mr. Hun Sen. The move, according to the 61-year-old prime minister, would help meet the “needs of the people” by protecting Cambodia’s natural resources, and boosting “sustainability of the environment and socio-economic development with the halting of destruction of forest land.” [Whatever] Click to Read More ... Posted by Jendhamuni at 3:15 AM 1 comments Links to this post
Posted on: Tue, 01 Oct 2013 04:11:22 +0000
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