Accused secessionist in Kratie to meet with the press

May Titthara
The Phnom Penh Post

The man police allege was behind a so-called secession plan in Kratie province – an accusation used to justify a crackdown in which a teenager was killed last week – plans to hold a press conference to defend himself in the next two days, his brother said yesterday.

Hundreds of heavily armed police and military police assisted by a helicopter stormed Pro Ma village in Chhlong district’s Kampong Damrei commune on Wednesday and opened fire on villagers with automatic weapons, killing 14-year-old Heng Chantha.

The Ministry of Interior said they ordered the operation because a group known as Democratic Association, which they alleged was led by Bun Ratha, was planning to create an independent state in the village.

Eight people have been arrested in connection with the accusations.

But villagers and an anonymous military police official involved in the operation have said it was an eviction conducted on behalf of the company Casotim – which has a nearby 15,000-hectare economic land concession and long-running land dispute with the village. 

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May Titthara
The Phnom Penh Post

Hundreds of people fled in fear yesterday from the village in Kratie province where a bloody security forces crackdown the previous morning left a 14-year-old girl dead.

Joint police and military police forces locked down the area where a land dispute has raged this year, and claimed they had arrested seven villagers accused of plotting a succession with the group Democratic Association.

On Wednesday, joint forces estimated to have numbered close to 1,000 moved in, firing on those who stood in their way, to evict about 1,000 families from Pro Ma village in Chhlong district’s Damrei commune.

Fresh details emerged yesterday of what happened during the crackdown, which authorities have said was to capture the five masterminds of Democratic Association, including leader Bun Ratha, who has fled into hiding.

Pale-faced 44-year-old villager Pov Ban, who along with 10 others had taken refuge at an office of the rights group Adhoc and was still visibly in shock, said before the forces moved in, residents were given no opportunity to leave.


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“They warned us that if we dared to walk into this area [where we live], they would open fire. They sprayed gunfire at us to threaten us while we entered, meanwhile, a girl was injured in her stomach at her house,” he said, referencing young Heng Chantha, who died after being shot.

May Titthara
The Phnom Penh Post



Community activists and conservationists commemorating slain environment activist Chut Wutty on the weekend used the occasion to shed light on what they allege are the shadowy practices of a logging company in the southwestern Cardamom forests.

Activists amongst the hundreds of people who travelled to Koh Kong province’s Mondul Seima district discovered a yellow vine processing facility, which are generally prohibited under Cambodia’s forest law, at the premises of the firm Timbergeen.

But Suwanna Gauntlett, CEO of the conservation group Wildlife Alliance, which monitors the area where Timbergreen is licensed to clear the reservoirs of the Lower Stung Russey Chrum dam site, said the company had a permit to process yellow vine there.

“This [processing area] is right next to the reservoir, and it’s for yellow vine coming from the reservoir and they have licence for that from the Forestry Administration,” she said.

Chut Wutty, the late director of the Natural Resource Protection Group, was killed after military police officer In Rattana allegedly attempted to take the memory card of a camera he had been using to photograph stockpiles of yellow vine with two journalists on April 26.

A security guard who was working for Timbergreen, Ran Boroth, has been charged with accidentally shooting In Rattana during an attempt to disarm him.

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May Titthara
The Phnom Penh Post

 An estimated 600 people will travel to parts of the Cardamom Mountains in Koh Kong province to investigate illegal logging and commemorate the death of slain environment activist Chut Wutty tomorrow.

Communities from eight provinces that have been affected by deforestation will travel to Koh Kong province from May 10 to 13, a statement released yesterday by the Cambodian Center for Human Rights said.

They will first travel to Thma Bang district before moving on the next day to Veal Bei Point in Mondul Seima district’s Bak Khlang commune where Chut Wutty was shot, the statement said.

CCHR president Ou Virak said yesterday that the purpose of the trip was to show the government that those fighting deforestation would continue to stand up despite the loss of a leader.

“The very reason Chut Wutty was killed was because they tried to confiscate his camera and delete his memory card, and it was pretty obvious that a lot of illegal activities were going on that he was investigating,” he said.

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A Tuol Sleng interrogator speaks out

May Titthara
The Phnom Penh Post

Seated under a wooden house in a remote part of Takeo province’s Bati district, a grey-haired man in a blue and grey shirt takes a cigarette from his pack and lights it.

Exhaling a cloud of white smoke, the thin man, named Prak Khan, begins to speak.

“I never told my bitter background to anybody in my village, even my wife,” he says. “They only know me as a banana seller.”

What his neighbours don’t know is that from 1976 to 1979, Prak Khan, 60, was an interrogator at the infamous S-21 detention centre.

Records from the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-CAM) confirm that Prak Khan interrogated 51 prisoners, rewriting two of their confessions.

Some were high-level members of the Khmer Rouge purged from party ranks. Some were culled from the military, both Pol Pot’s and Lon Nol’s. Some were secretaries of districts and regions, and the rest were simply people accused of espionage by an increasingly paranoid Khmer Rouge leadership.

“My wife just found out when the ECCC invited me to testify on Case 001, so from now on, I have to speak out to let the young generation know about their history,” he says, his sadness plainly visible.

Prak Khan was born into a farming family in Takeo province, the oldest son out of five brothers and sisters. He worked on the farm feeding animals until 1971, when he joined the Khmer Rouge.

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Anti-loggers held back by FA officials

May Titthara
The Phnom Penh Post

 Forestry Administration officials reportedly blocked vehicles in three provinces from travelling to Koh Kong town yesterday on their way to the site where prominent environmental activist Chut Wutty was shot last month.

But hundreds of others from six provinces in a convoy of 27 vans made it to the provincial capital where they were to spend the night at Wat Thmey then travel to Mondul Seima district’s Bak Khlang commune today for a ceremony for Chut Wutty at Veal Bei point.

Chhim Savuth, a co-ordinator for public forums at the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, said villagers travelling from Koh Kong, Kampong Speu and Stung Treng provinces were all blocked.

“It is an illegal action and a violation of human rights,” he said.

In Kampong Thom, Forestry Administration officials forced about 50 villagers travelling to join the convoy to get out of their vans and made them thumbprint a report.


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