International environment watchdog Global Witness on Tuesday hailed the passage of a US law that could result in entry visa bans for Cambodian officials accused of environmental plunder.
US lawmakers enacted measures last month endorsing a Congressional call for the denial of visas to government officials identified by Global Witness in a report last year. However it remained unclear Tuesday whether individual Cambodian officials would ever be subject to visa bans as a result of the new law.
“There are no travel bans on any Cambodian officials,” US Embassy spokesman Jeff Daigle said.
Legislation passed in December to authorize spending by the US government instructed the US State Department to identify foreign officials believed to have engaged in natural resources corruption.
The law also contained an endorsement of a US Senate subcommittee’s call “to prohibit corrupt Cambodian officials identified in the June 2007 Global Witness report entitled Cambodia’s Family Trees…from entering the United States.”
Daigle said there had so far been no discussion between the Phnom Penh Embassy and Washington officials to consider the allegations of wrongdoing leveled by Global Witness against Cambodian authorities.
While the Embassy takes a mixed view of the Cambodian government’s environmental stewardship, it does not know for a fact that any Cambodian officials are engaged in activities related to the illicit trade in natural resources, Daigle added.
In June, the government banned the lengthy Global Witness report that accused a “kleptocratic elite” of Cambodian officials and others of involvement in illegal logging.
Government spokesman and Information Minister Khieu Kanharith said the US legal provisions were unfair and unwelcome.
“I am sure the US official making this decision did not take time to verify the accuracy of the facts related in the ‘family trees’ document,” Khieu Kanharith wrote in an e-mail.
“Calling on donor countries to stop assisting Cambodia won’t work, because their representative[s] are [in] the field and they know Cambodia better than those people in the Cambodia Global Witness section or the bureaucrats in Washington,” he said.
In a statement Tuesday, Global Witness Director Simon Taylor said the law’s passage made the US stand out among Cambodia’s international donors.
“Only with tough action such as this will we begin to reverse this process of state looting,” Taylor said.
The US government currently maintains travel bans on senior Burmese government officials and has in the past imposed them on members of the Zimbabwean government and supporters of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.
Forestry Administration Director Ty Sokhun, who figured prominently in the Global Witness report and who has strongly denied the organization’s allegations, said Tuesday he was not interested in the law’s passage.
“I am not interested. [The report] has no value and it is worthless,” he said. “Only maniacs valued the report.”
Agriculture Minister Chan Sarun could not be reached Tuesday, but National Assembly Deputy President Nguon Nhel said the subject of the law should be taken up with US officials in Phnom Penh.
“It will be an injustice if the US government does not have a discussion with the Cambodian government,” he said.
SRP leader Sam Rainsy said targeted threats of visa bans could be very effective against leaders as they do not concern the general public.
“I think Cambodian leaders will be more sensitive than the Burmese generals, because they dream of being welcomed by the US. They dream of being well seen by the US,” he said.
