Ahead of today’s demonstration in Ratanakkiri province against forestry crimes, and claims by a human rights worker that officials had attempted to discourage locals from attending, ethnic minority villagers from neighboring Mondolkiri province said Wednesday that their movements are being monitored by authorities.
Speaking on the sidelines of a two-day annual conference on the country’s ethnic minority communities, six Phnong minority members from Mondolkiri told how they must register with their commune chief when traveling outside the province, particularly to NGO-organized events.
“They put pressure on us although they understand indigenous people have freedom and full rights to travel,” said a 49-year-old resident of the province’s O’Reang district, who would only give her name as Sale for fear of repercussion.
“Local authorities abuse our rights to travel by ordering us to seek permission from them,” she said at the conference’s closing ceremony Wednesday.
The requirement for Phnong villagers in Sen Monorom commune to report their travel plans followed in the wake of mass demonstrations in 2005 against a land concession given by the government to the Chinese-owned Wuzhishan LS Group.
Local communities said the concession to cultivate trees for paper pulp processing encroached on large swathes of their ancestral farmlands and spirit forests.
Ouk Saroeun, chief of Sen Monorom commune, said Thursday that he does not order locals to report their travel arrangements, but suggests that they report to his office in the interest of personal “safety.”
“We are concerned about people’s safety, which is why we suggest to them that they inform us of their whereabouts when they go [somewhere],” Ouk Saroeun said.
“Whatever we are doing is to protect them,” he said, adding that if a villager disappears they will have information from which to work with.
Ngy San, deputy director of NGO Forum on Cambodia, which organized this week’s indigenous people’s meeting, said that in mid-2007, 12 minority villagers from Ratanakkiri province were forcibly returned from a meeting in Phnom Penh on hydropower dams on the province’s Sesan River.
Police ordered the villagers to return to the province following an order by Provincial Deputy Governor Chey Sayoeun, Ngy San said.
“We are not inciting villagers during the conferences and workshops…. We just want to help our indigenous people understand the law and their rights,” he said.
However, Interior Ministry Secretary of State Sak Setha said Wednesday that there is no requirement, under the law or Constitution, where a person requires permission to travel.
