--- On Wed, 11/3/09, Bruno-Manser-Fonds <bmf@...> wrote:

> From: Bruno-Manser-Fonds <bmf@...>
> Subject: ++++ BREAKING NEWS +++ ACCOR sets conditions for future cooperation with Malaysian logging group
> To: "Bruno-Manser-Fonds Info" <bmf@...>
> Date: Wednesday, 11 March, 2009, 7:49 PM
> Basel, 11 March 2009
>
>
> MEDIA RELEASE, BRUNO MANSER FUND (BMF), BASEL / SWITZERLAND
>
>
> +++ BREAKING NEWS +++
>
> ACCOR sets conditions for future cooperation with
> Malaysia's Interhill logging group
>
> Interhill have been given six months to comply with social
> responsibility standards  –  ACCOR: “We are extremely
> sensitive towards questions relating to local communities
> and the environment”
>
> ACCOR, the Paris-based European hotel group is setting
> conditions for its future cooperation with Malaysia's
> Interhill logging group on a 388-room hotel project in
> Sarawak / East Malaysia. ACCOR is thus reacting to a
> campaign launched by the Bruno Manser Fund (BMF) over the
> controversial Novotel Interhill hotel, which is currently
> under construction in Kuching, the state capital of Sarawak.
>
> The French business group is requesting Interhill to set up
> social responsibility standards for its logging operations
> in Sarawak’s Middle Baram region and to implement
> significant measures within the next six months:
>
> “We have asked those in charge at Interhill to commit
> themselves, in writing, to the progressive establishment of
> social responsibility measures”, writes ACCOR in a letter
> to the Bruno Manser Fund, published today. “The
> maintenance of our commercial partnership requires the
> definition of realistic but significant targets. It
> similarly requires the establishment of a timetable,
> especially for the next six months, prior to the opening of
> the hotel. Finally, it requires a verification procedure to
> be drawn up in conjunction with our local teams.”
>
> The French hotel group explicitly states that BMF and the
> Accor group “share common aims, particularly in the field
> of local development and the fight against the sexual
> exploitation of children.” ACCOR’s letter is signed by
> Hélène Roques, the group’s Director for Sustainable
> Development.
>
> By putting pressure on Interhill, Accor is acknowledging
> BMF’s criticism of Interhill's socially and
> environmentally destructive logging practices. Interhill’s
> logging operations in a 55,000 hectare timber concession in
> Sarawak’s Middle Baram region have had a devastating
> effect on the indigenous Penan communities and have depleted
> the tropical rainforests which have provided the basis of
> the Penan’s livelihood for centuries.
>
> The Bruno Manser Fund welcomes ACCOR’s decision to
> pressurise Interhill on social standards but warns that
> results might not so easily be achieved, given that
> Interhill has a long track record of corporate misbehaviour.
> “Social responsibility should, first and foremost, entail
> recognition of the native communities' land rights and
> respect for the "adat" - the customary rights
> system”, said BMF Director Lukas Straumann.
>
> BMF is asking Interhill to put an immediate stop to its
> intimidation of local communities and to withdraw all those
> employees who have been involved in intimidation or
> harassment from its timber camps in the Middle Baram.
> Interhill is also being asked to guarantee the security of
> both the Penan representatives and the victims of alleged
> sexual abuse in the company’s area of operations. By way
> of an immediate move, Interhill must withdraw its bulldozers
> from the community forest of Long Item, a Penan village that
> is currently struggling to preserve its last forest reserve
> from logging.
>
> According to ACCOR, Interhill has not yet responded to the
> French group’s demands. A meeting between the Bruno Manser
> Fund and ACCOR is scheduled for next week.
>
> - Ends –
>
>
> Please contact us for more information:
>
> Bruno Manser Fund, Association for the Peoples of the
> Rainforest
> Socinstrasse 37, 4051 Basel / Switzerland
> Tel. +41 61 261 94 74
>
> www.bmf.ch, info@...
> www.stop-interhill.com

-----Original Message-----
From: David Pred [mailto:davidpred@...]
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 11:59 PM
To: davidpred@...
Subject: The destruction of one Cambodian community

Dear Friends,

It is with deep sadness that I write to inform you that the Dey Krahorm
community lost their three-year long struggle to keep their land and
save their homes when they were brutally evicted on Saturday morning.

Dey Krahorm, or Red Land village, is located in the heart of the fastest
growing area of the Phnom Penh. The community began residing in Dey
Krahorm in the mid 1980's, when they cleared the swampland and filled it
with red soil making it habitable for housing.  Some of the country's
most famous artists, actors and musicians were among the first to settle
the area.  The population of the village grew to an estimated 805
families by 2003.

In 2003, the Dey Krahorm land was granted to the community as a Social
Land Concession, following Prime Minister Hun Sen's announcement to
provide secure land tenure and to assist in the onsite upgrading of 100
inner-city poor communities each year until all of Phnom Penh's urban
poor communities have secure land tenure and full basic services. Dey
Krahorm was to be among the first urban poor communities to become
beneficiaries of this plan. The Social Land Concession included the
provision for onsite upgrading on 3.7 hectares of the total 4.7 hectares
of land, and secure legal tenure rights for the community. The remaining
1 hectare was allocated for private development.

In 2005, a private company, 7NG Construction Co, negotiated a contract
with the village chiefs, effectively swapping the prime land in Dey
Krahorm for housing at a relocation site 20km outside of Phnom Penh. The
Dey Krahorm residents never agreed to an off-site relocation and were
never consulted about the contract. Under Cambodian land and contract
laws it is illegal to sell other people's rights to land, so the
contract with 7NG is legally invalid.  Unfortunately, Cambodia is a
country ruled by guns and money not laws.

Since the beginning of the land dispute, the community has been
subjected to continuous harassment by authorities and company officials.
Community leaders and activists who have defended the rights of the
community have faced false criminal charges for destruction of company
property or incitement against the government. Most families succumbed
to this intimidation and moved to the relocation site or accepted
minimal compensation offers for their homes and land.  However, around
150 villagers refused to give in and stood their ground in Dey Krahorm,
where they have successfully resisted numerous eviction attempts since
2006 though a remarkable campaign of creative, active non-violence.

We at Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia have stood in solidarity
with the Dey Krahorm families for the last two years and have become
dear friends with many of them.  For the last several weeks, during a
period of heightened threat, some of us have been sleeping inside the
community to help give the families strength and bear witness in the
event that the eviction warnings came true.

Dey Krahorm is often described in the media as a slum, but anyone who
has spent anytime in the community knows how much more special it is
than a collection of urban poor dwellings.  Dey Krahorm is a community
of artists, comedians, aging musicians and teenaged break-dancers.  It
is a community of shell sellers and market vendors, civil servants and
friendly school children.  It is an organized and empowered community,
whose members understand their rights and have steadfastly stood up for
them against enormous odds.

Now it is a pile of rubble.

Dey Krahorm's families' homes were demolished on Saturday morning by
hundreds of military police and private contractors armed with
bulldozers, sledgehammers, hatchets, iron bars, pistols and tear gas.

Shortly after the break of dawn, security forces and privately
contracted "breakers" who had been assembling around the community since
2am moved in.  Families locked themselves in their houses but the doors
were soon knocked down and the residents removed.  Riot police led the
way by ushering out residents and pushing back observers. Some people
who attempted to resist the destruction of their homes were taken away
in handcuffs. Others were violently thrown to the ground, beaten and
kicked by the breakers. Fire extinguishers and tear gas grenades were
fired at residents and observers at close range.

Some of the breakers were as young as 13 years old.  These child
breakers were equipped with hammers or metal sticks and actively
participated in the demolition of houses. The company employees
directing the child breakers put them in great danger, as they were
instructed to disassemble the upper stories of falling homes.

Many residents who refused to leave their land were not able to salvage
their possessions.  All their personal belongings were destroyed,
including motorbikes, furniture, clothing, televisions, cooking
utensils, photographs, family heirlooms, schoolbooks, and important
medication and documents.  Every time these families owned was buried
under their demolished homes.

Excavators tore down the larger houses and bulldozers crushed their
remains. On one occasion, a bulldozer nearly crushed a resident.  The
woman was extremely agitated and attempted to hit the driver, who became
angry and retaliated by driving directly at her and pushing mounds of
debris in her direction, seriously threatening the woman's life and
safety.  The woman fainted due to trauma and collapsed amidst the
rubble, when the bulldozer came barrelling at her and came within inches
of crushing her to death.  She was carried away by her wailing daughter
and was later found to have sustained fractures to her hip and ankle.

Others tried to immolate themselves in a final act of defiance, but were
prevented from doing so by police, who carted them away before they
could burn themselves alive in protest.

Flat-bed trucks took away the debris and re-usable building materials.
Officers were witnessed carrying away electrical goods.  Some families
who agreed to move to the relocation site were allowed to load their
remaining possessions onto trucks and were driven away.  They were
hauled off and dumped in front of the relocation site 20 kilometers
outside the city.  No food, water, shelter or latrines were prepared for
them there.  27 families who were on the company's list of those deemed
"eligible" for compensation were given small flats resembling one-car
garages at the distant relocation site.  Hundreds of other "ineligible"
families assembled makeshift tents as they wait in limbo for the
authorities and company to decide their fate.  38 families refused to
get onto the trucks and instead went to the offices of the local human
rights organization Licadho.

Meanwhile, the Deputy Governor of Phnom Penh Mann Chouen delivered a
press conference where the Dey Krahorm market once stood.  Afterward, he
met with police and military officers and congratulated them on the
operation.  Then he posed for photographs with various 7NG staff,
including the owner's son, and the spokesperson for the Council of
Ministers.  They smiled for the cameras in front of the smouldering
remains of the community that they just destroyed.  The attending press
failed to ask the company how it managed get away with stealing a $44
million dollar piece of real estate in the heart of Phnom Penh.

This is the face of development in Cambodia today. The forced eviction
of Dey Krahorm is unique only in that it occurred in the heart of the
capital city and has therefore attracted a great deal of media
attention.  However, there are hundreds of communities just like Dey
Krahorm across the country, where land is taken from the poor with
impunity by powerful elites, usually under the banner of Development.
Their stories are most often unheard but they are suffering from the
same distorted development model that allows a tiny elite to amass
enormous wealth while the country's natural resources are plundered and
the most vulnerable are driven into deeper and deeper impoverishment.

More than 3 million people, or 25% of the population, are now landless.
More than 150,000 people are known to be living under immediate threat
of forced eviction, however this number is almost certainly much higher.
Millions more live without tenure security, never knowing if their land
might be targeted next.   In the absence of the rule of law, these poor
communities have no effective legal remedies available to them.

This morning more than 100 Dey Krahorm families went to City Hall to
demand restitution for their property that was taken and destroyed on
Saturday.  They were told that cash compensation is now off the table
and all they can get is one of those sad flats that the company has
built at their relocation site.  The families have always rejected this
option because the site is far away from their jobs and small businesses
in the city, where their children attend school and where there are
basic services available.  Moving out there would constitute a complete
disruption of every aspect of their lives and would almost certainly
result in deeper impoverishment.  Now they being forced to choose
between homelessness and moving somewhere against their will.

BABSEA will open up our Phnom Penh office and Volunteer House to provide
temporary accommodation for the displaced families beginning tomorrow
night.  We are appealing for donations to provide food, clothing and
other essential items for these families for the next two weeks, and
tarps and mosquito nets for those who were dumped in 7NG's parking lot
outside the city.  We also seek donations to support the community's
ongoing advocacy and legal expenses.  You can support their efforts by
writing again to the Cambodian authorities and demanding that the
families be fairly compensated for their losses and that the urgent
humanitarian needs of those at the relocation site be met:

H.E. Kep Chuktema

Governor,

Municipality of Phnom Penh

No 69 Preah Monivong Blvd,

Sangkat StrahChak, Khan Daun Penh

CAMBODIA

Fax:  +855-23 724156

Email: phnompenh@... <mailto:phnompenh@...>



cc

H.E. Samdech Hun Sen

Prime Minister

Office of the Council of Ministers

No 41, Russian Federation Blvd,

Phnom Penh

CAMBODIA

Fax: + 855 23 426 054

Email: cabinet1b@... <mailto:cabinet1b@...>



Mr. Srey Sothea

Chairman,

7NG

No 22, 23A, Borei Santepheap II

Sangkat Chom Choa, Khan Dangkoa,

Phnom Penh,

CAMBODIA.

E-mail: info@...




Thank you once again to all those who emailed and faxed letters in
response to our last appeal.  I'm sorry that some of those letters were
rejected by a full inbox at City Hall.  But nothing beats faxes rolling
in all the time!

Secure donations can be made online at:

https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=21899
<https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=21899> .  Choose Stop
Evictions Campaign from the drop-down menu to direct your donation to
support for Dey Krahorm.

A photo essay of Saturday morning's crime is attached and much more will
be posted on our website in the next several days.

In peace,

David



BABSEA is registered as a Not for Profit Organization in the State of
Florida. A copy of the official registration (#CH 28194) may be obtained
from the Division of Consumer Services by calling toll-free
(1-800-435-7352) within the State of Florida. Registration does not
imply endorsement, approval, or recommendation by the state.






--
David Pred
Co-Founder/Director
Cambodia Program Advisor
Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia
#144H Street 143, BKK III
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Mobile:  (855-92) 285954
Tel/Fax: (855-23) 220930
Website: www.babsea.org <http://www.babsea.org>

Dear Friends, 

We have been recently receiving emails of the nature below. Usually, someone you know is in some foreign country and is in an emergency. They usually ask for money to be wired. 

PLEASE BE WARNED THAT THESE ARE SCAMS. 

DO NOT REPLY TO THESE EMAILS. 

DO NOT SEND MONEY. 

It is best to confirm through credible sources (family, friends) whether such is true. If you have the mobile phone the person, please give them a call.  

> > ----- Forwarded Message ----
> > From: Ashish John <ashishingty@...>
> > To: wcs.solita@...
> > Sent: Tuesday, December 2, 2008 6:18:32 PM
> > Subject: I need your help please.
> >
> >
> > How are you today,I am in  hurry writing this mail to
> > you,I am in some terrible situation and I'm really
> going
> > to need your urgent help.I had travelled to Nigeria
> > yesterday to visit a new Researchers' Complex in
> Lagos ,
> > Unfortunately for me all my money ,diaries and my
> return
> > ticket was stolen at the hotel where i lodged, I am so
> > confused right now, I don't know what to do or
> where to
> > go,I didn't bring my phone here and the hotel
> telephone
> > line's was disconnected during the robbery
> incident,so i
> > have access to only emails, Please i want you to lend
> me a
> > sum $1,850 usd today, just to clear my Hotel bills and
> get
> > the next plane home, I shall have your money
> reimbursed
> > immediately on my return.I want you to send it through
> > western union outlet.Write me so i can let you know
> how to
> > send it.I'll be waiting on you at the Hotel lobby
> for
> > your mail.
> >
> > With regards,
> >
> >  Ashish

--
Maria Teresa Padilla-Matibag
Home phone 9321924
Mobile 09189195032
Email: tespmatibag@...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: CANDO <candontfp@...>
Date: Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 3:18 PM
Subject: [ntfpcambodia] Re: Indigenous Crafts Showroom and Gallery Opening
To: ntfpcambodia@yahoogroups.com

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Aloisa Zamora-Santos <aloisasantos@...>
Date: Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 10:35 AM
Subject: Please vote for us: www.ntfp.org a semifinalist in the Phil Webby Awards
To: aloisasantos@...


------ Please circulate widely -----

Indigenous Rights Endorsed in Barcelona

The World Conservation Congress - the largest international gathering of conservationists - agreed recently in Barcelona to recognize indigenous and traditional peoples' rights when land is set aside for ecological or wildlife preservation. But some indigenous leaders say more is needed to heal long-simmering rifts between conservationist and indigenous groups.

Read: Conservationists Address Indigenous Peoples Injustices