PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP) expresses our grave concern over the arrest and detention of several top leaders of the Coalition of Cambodian Farmers Community (CCFC) by the local police. We call on the Cambodian authorities to respect their human rights and demand their immediate and unconditional release.
CCFC is one of PANAP’s longtime partners in our “No Land, No Life!” campaign to stop land grabbing and oppose human rights violations against rural communities. CCFC, established in 2011, is working with 74 communities across 10 provinces to address land rights and forced evictions resulting from development projects.
We were informed that yesterday, May 17, at around noon, police authorities from Cambodia’s Kratie province stopped the vehicles of Theng Savoeun, CCFC president and 16 other CCFC staff and some relatives who were travelling with them. They just came from a team-building activity in another province, Ratanakkiri, and were returning to the capital Phnom Penh.
The police reportedly claimed that CCFC did not inform the local authorities of their team building in Ratanakkiri. They also allegedly questioned why CCFC discussed Cambodia’s political situation during their team building, and confiscated the CCFC leaders’ laptops and cellphones.
While other staff members and relatives were later released, Theng and two senior CCFC staff – Nhel Pheap and Thann Hach – were detained for further questioning. The police also requested for documents & other information, including a list of names, about CCFC. Theng is now at the Ratanakkiri Provincial Court for further legal proceedings.
For PANAP, the cited reasons for the arrests and detention of Theng and his colleagues are unjustifiable and unacceptable. Their arrests and continued questioning are clear violations of their basic human rights and an attempt to undermine their work on advancing the right to land and resources of rural communities in Cambodia.
PANAP, through the “No Land, No Life!” campaign, has been closely working with CCFC to expose and stop the government’s Economic Land Concession (ELC) schemes that displace farming and indigenous communities in Cambodia. Along with other cases documented by PANAP and our partners, these were featured in the recent report of the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food presented last March before the UN Human Rights Council (HRC).
Reference: Arnold Padilla, Food Sovereignty Programme Coordinator, nolandnolife@panap.net
Erratum: An earlier version of this PR incorrectly identified one of the arrested leaders as Moeun Ratana instead of Thann Hach.
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