Officials on Thursday urged Global Witness to retract a report that accuses government forestry officials of helping commercial loggers illegally harvest Cambodia’s forests.
The report, released last week by the independent forestry watchdog ahead of Monday’s donor-government meeting, has angered Prime Minister Hun Sen, who threatened Wednesday to expel the group from Cambodia. He said Global Witness has undertaken a politically motivated campaign to embarrass the government.
Global Witness issued an apology to Hun Sen on Tuesday. But Ty Sokhun, director of the Ministry of Agriculture’s Department of Forestry and Wildlife, said Thursday that an apology from Global Witness was insufficient. He said the group should correct the report and say it was wrong, and added that Global Witness “should not be in Cambodia.”
Ty Sokhun also said some lower-level forestry officials may file a complaint in court, claiming their reputations were damaged by the report’s allegations of laziness and corruption within the forestry department.
Both Ty Sokhun and May Sam Oeun, secretary of state at the Ministry of Agriculture, said the government would be able to properly monitor logging operations on its own, should Global Witness leave Cambodia.
“I think Hun Sen is very serious about this,” May Sam Oeun said.
Jon Buckrell of Global Witness said Thursday that he had tried to contact Ty Sokhun and officials at the Ministry of Agriculture, but received no response. Ty Sokhun said that department officials had unsuccessfully attempted to set up a meeting with Global Witness.
“Global Witness believes that the best way to move forward is to discuss the report with the government,” said Buckrell. “But we believe the report to be fully accurate, and a complete retraction would undermine our integrity.”
Buckrell added that if the government can demonstrate Global Witness made mistakes in its report, then they would correct those mistakes.
On Wednesday, International Monetary Fund representative Mario de Zamaroczy told reporters that in order for the IMF to continue to support Cambodia with loans, Global Witness must continue as the government’s independent forestry monitor.
“A very serious conditionality is that Global Witness, on behalf of the donor community, is part of the forest crime monitoring unit,” said de Zamaroczy, according to an Associated Press report.
The IMF suspended loans in late 1996, in part because of the government’s inability to collect logging revenue.
A crackdown on illegal logging initiated by Hun Sen in early 1999 and the October 1999 creation of a forest crime monitoring unit—which includes Global Witness— helped persuade the IMF to resume loans that same month.
