Land Dispute Unearths Tension

Cambodian Villagers Challenge Networks of Patronage

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- His grandmother's bones went missing two years ago, not long after the rains stopped. "The grave is all rubber trees" now, said Sev Thveal, 23. Part of the Jarai minority, he can barely read and write and has worked the land so long that his toenails are a permanent shade of brown.

He and 11 villagers are alleging in court that a wealthy businesswoman named Keat Kolney, whose husband and brother are senior figures in the Cambodian government, has illegally taken land belonging to 70 rural families to make way for a rubber plantation.

Keat Kolney declined to comment, hanging up when reached by telephone. But she denies the claims of wrongdoing, said her lawyer, Chhe Vibol, and is responding with legal action of her own.

The dispute is unfolding as Cambodia struggles to emerge from three decades of genocide and civil war. Now, the Southeast Asian country is trying to move beyond its thuggish past and build a society founded on the rule of law rather than networks of patronage.

Cambodia joined the World Trade Organization in 2004, and the government, which recently got its first sovereign debt ratings from Standard & Poor's and Moody's, plans to open domestic stock and bond markets as early as 2009. Government leaders cite these moves as proof of major progress, but human rights workers and many ordinary Cambodians say little has changed.

"A wealthy and powerful social class has emerged on the back of the state -- through the exploitation of the people and the country's resources," Yash Ghai, the U.N. secretary general's special representative for human rights in Cambodia, said in prepared remarks to the United Nations' Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Global Witness, a British advocacy group that served as Cambodia's forest monitor until it was expelled from the country in 2005, made similar charges in a recent report, saying a "kleptocratic elite" has been stripping Cambodia of its natural resources.

"In Cambodia's civil war, the warring factions used the country's natural resources as a means of generating income to fuel their military spending," Eleanor Nichol, a Global Witness campaigner, wrote in an e-mail from Washington. "Since then, Cambodia's political elite have found it hard to kick the habit of using the country's natural resources as their own personal cash cow."

Accusations from Global Witness enraged Cambodian officials, who denied wrongdoing and dismissed the report as politically motivated. The government banned the report's domestic dissemination -- an ineffective gesture as the document is freely available online -- and promised to launch its own investigation.

Despite booming economic growth, Cambodia is still heavily dependent on donor aid. When donors sat down in Phnom Penh on June 19 and 20 and committed to deliver $689 million, the Cambodian delegation included two men who Sev Thveal contends have the power to put his dead grandmother to rest.

They were Keat Kolney's older brother, Keat Chhon, who is the country's finance minister; and her husband, Chhan Saphan, one of the most powerful officials in the Ministry of Land Management.

Chhan Saphan declined an interview request, and Keat Chhon didn't respond to requests for comment.