In a move sure to enrage Taiwan, Ministry of the Interior Spokesman Kheu Sopheak said Cambodia is making arrangements for the group, arrested Friday in a raid on their operations in Phnom Penh, to fly to China in line with the country’s policy of maintaining relations only with China.

“The Ministry of the Interior is working on an urgent measure to expel the 49 Taiwanese on a special flight to China, not to Taiwan, because of the government’s One-China policy,” he said, referring to the policy that supports China’s sovereignty over Taiwan.

“The government recognizes only one China,” he said.

In the Friday raid on three districts in the city, police confiscated computers, headphones, and other equipment that they said the group had used to call and extort money from victims in Taiwan from their base in Phnom Penh.

The suspects, whom authorities said had entered the country illegally, are currently being held at the immigration department awaiting deportation.

The arrests are the third round of a crackdown on the same online scam operation, after authorities deported a group of 55 Chinese and Taiwanese nationals in September to face charges in China.

A few months earlier, authorities had rounded up 187 Taiwanese related to online scams in Sihanoukville, Svay Rieng, and Phnom Penh.

Cambodia’s Ministry of the Interior Spokesman Khieu Sopheak said the recent crackdown on what he called an international crime syndicate was a success for the country.

“Cambodia is not a haven for mafia to commit crimes. Cambodian authorities are just as capable as other authorities. We have worked to destroy this mafia network,” he said, adding that authorities are looking to make more arrests.

Cambodia, China, and Taiwan

China, which has cultivated close economic ties with Cambodia and is its top investor, claims sovereignty over the island of Taiwan and encourages other nations not to recognize it as a country.

China and Taiwan have been ruled separately since defeated Nationalist forces fled to the island at the end of the civil war with the Communists in 1949.

Beijing maintains that Taiwan is simply a renegade Chinese province which has no right to seek independence, and it has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control.

Cambodia severed formal relations with Taiwan in 1997, when Prime Minister Hun Sen ordered the closure of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, the de facto Taiwanese embassy in Phnom Penh, shortly after he took power.

Despite supporting the One-China policy, Cambodia has maintained trade relations with Taiwan.

In February 2011, the Philippines outraged Taipei when it deported to China 14 Taiwanese nationals, along with ten Chinese nationals, over their suspected involvement in a fraud ring. Taiwan retaliated with tightened immigration policies on Filipinos working in their country.

Reported by Sok Serey for RFA’s Khmer service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink.

On the third day of their strike, workers from the Chinese-owned SL Garment Processing Cambodia company’s two factories in the outskirts of Phnom Penh took their protest downtown, gathering in front of the Social and Labor Ministry building in the capital.

The protesters said they were determined to continue the mass strike until they receive better working conditions, benefits, and protection of their rights.

“If we don't have a solution, what will we do next? We will struggle until we can see a solution,” one worker shouted at the protest.

The demands are not an unusual refrain in the country’s garment factories, which are the country’s largest employers and hire more than 300,000 people, mostly women.

Art Thun, president of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers' Democratic Union, said the company should address the workers’ concerns.

“They will go to negotiate right at the factory, since whether or not the factory owner agrees [to their conditions] they still need to seek a proper solution for the workers. The owner can't avoid responsibility for this matter,” he said.

The factory’s management has condemned the strike as illegal and warned protesters not to try to take over the factory buildings.

“Don’t take any action to incite or lead workers to block the entrance gates to the SL factory companies,” a member of the management company shouted to the strikers through a loudspeaker.

Strikes and protests are not uncommon at textile factories, where laborers often work long shifts for little pay.

In February, protests by two thousand workers at the Chinese-owned Manhattan Textile and Garment Corp’s factory in southeastern Cambodia’s Kampong Cham province turned violent when workers blocked a national highway and vandalized the factory.

The industry has also been rocked by nearly a dozen incidents of mass fainting in the past year. The faintings are mostly blamed on workers' poor health, bad ventilation in the workplace, or exposure to dangerous chemicals, although some factory managements have disputed this.

Reported by Uon Chhin for RFA’s Khmer service. Translated by Taing Sarada. Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink.

The Xayaburi dam on the Mekong River may have to be redesigned to avoid any adverse impact on the environment, a senior Lao official says, citing a French study amid opposition to the project by green groups and neighboring nations.

Vice Minister of Energy and Mines Viraponh Viravong said that Laos received the findings from a French company hired to conduct an environmental assessment of the dam. Previous studies have said the dam could have a major impact on the regional environment and threaten food security.

“This study … confirms that if the Lao government wants to let the dam be redesigned, there will be no impact on the environment,” Viravong said recently.

The redesign, he said, would allow more river sediment to flow through the dam, a key concern for downstream countries whose agriculture depends on the river.

The Mekong River originates in China and flows through Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.  The silt deposits provide rich soil nutrients for rice and other crops.

Environmental groups have opposed the dam, saying it would block fish migration and sediment flow on the Lower Mekong, affecting the millions of people in Southeast Asia who rely on the river’s ecosystem for their food and livelihoods.

Viravong said Laos had hired the French consultants Compagnie Nationale du Rhone after the Mekong River Commission, an intergovernmental body that manages development on the waterway, called for further assessments.

“First we hired the Swiss company Poyry to do the impact study, but people were not satisfied with that, and now we have hired a French company,” he said.

In December, Laos and the three other MRC member countries—Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam—agreed the dam should be postponed pending the results of a new environmental impact assessment, which was to be conducted by Japan.

The decision followed a report by Poyry Energy AG, which was hired by the Lao government in May 2011 to review the dam’s compliance with MRC requirements.

In its final report submitted in August, the Swiss company found the project to be "principally in compliance" with the MRC's requirements, but international environmental groups said the study was flawed.

International Rivers, an NGO that works on water systems worldwide, said it found “numerous inconsistencies and scientific shortcomings” in the report and that the Lao government was using it as “false justification” that it had responded to MRC concerns about the project.

In its report, Poyry also recommended that over 40 further studies be conducted before the dam was built.

An earlier study by an expert group had recommended a 10-year moratorium on all mainstream Mekong dams due to a need for further research on their potentially catastrophic environmental and socioeconomic impact.

‘Wanting to know’

Environmentalists are seeking more information about the new French study.

"The Lao government will have to release this company’s report and [information about] how the studies were carried out,” Montree Chantawong, an expert on hydropower from the Bangkok NGO Towards Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance, told RFA.

“We want to know if it is true as the Lao minister has said,” he said.

He said a comprehensive assessment of the dam was required in order for all relevant parties to assess whether or not the dam is economically worthwhile.

Preliminary work on the dam site has already begun by Thai construction company Ch. Karnchang.

The company announced in April it had signed a contract for the construction of the dam beginning March, despite calls from the MRC to wait for a further study.

Over 3,000 residents near the dam site have been relocated to make way for the project, according to the Bangkok Post newspaper.

Opponents of the project are concerned that if the dam moves forward without regional consensus, it will pave the way for more hydropower projects on the river and render the MRC consultation process irrelevant.

At least 11 other dams have been proposed on the mainstream Lower Mekong, in addition to five already built on the upper part of the river in China.

Six of the 11 Lower Mekong projects are in Laos, which has said it hopes to become the “battery” of Southeast Asia.

Most of Laos’s 70 planned dams are on Mekong tributaries, over which MRC agreements have no sway.

Vietnamese opposition

The Xayaburi dam has also drawn protests from riparian communities in Thailand, where 95 percent of the electricity from Xayaburi is to be sent.

Last week, a group of Vietnamese scientists added their voices to the project’s opposition, urging Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and Vietnam's National Mekong Committee to formally lodge a protest with the Lao government.

“It is unacceptable to resume construction on the Xayaburi dam,” the scientists at the Vietnam Rivers Network wrote in a joint letter addressed to Dung, Vietnam’s Thanh Hien News reported.

The team of experts insisted that the dam will directly threaten the livelihoods of around 20 million residents in the Mekong Delta, as well as Vietnam's national and regional food security, the newspaper said.

In late April, another Vietnamese scientists’ group, the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Association, voiced its concern over the dam at a conference in April, saying the project will threaten regional food security and affect the lives of millions downstream, particularly in the Mekong delta, the heart of the country’s rice production.

Cambodia has already lodged its official protest with Laos over the project, warning Lao MRC representatives in a letter in April not to allow the dam to move ahead.

The letter followed earlier threats from Cambodia to take Laos to international court over the dam.

Reported by Nontarat Phaicharoen for RFA’s Lao service. Translated by Somnet Inthapannha. Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink.

‘Group of anarchists’

Cambodia’s Ministry of the Interior said in a statement that Wednesday’s action was not a forced eviction, but rather to shut down a “self-governing zone created by squatters.”

The ministry referred to the villagers as a “group of anarchists” led by Bun Ratha, director of the Cambodia-based NGO Democrat Association, who the statement accused of sparking a “rebellion against the government.”

“[Bun Ratha] is acting as if he is an authority figure, giving land away to the villagers,” the statement read. “He has led many demonstrations disturbing the public order.”

According to the Ministry of Interior, Bun Ratha “forced” the villagers to create the autonomous “squatter zone.”

“All actions led by the ringleader were in opposition to the elected government and [the group] had been working to build a self-governing zone,” the statement read.

“Their actions forced the government to take necessary actions, according to the law, to control the state administration,” it said.

Ministry of Interior spokesman Khieu Sopheak expressed sadness over the incident, but said the government crackdown was aimed at stopping Bun Ratha’s group.

“Our joint forces cracked down on the group because they had breached the law,” he said.

Khieu Sopheak said that the authorities were still searching for Bun Ratha and his accomplices who had fled from the scene of the clash. It was unclear if his four associates were amongst those captured by police.

Land conflicts

Cambodia has come under pressure from the United Nations and rights groups over the increasing number of violent confrontations between security forces armed with guns and activists—many of whom protesting land grabs.

Last week, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Cambodia Surya Prasad Subedi, visited Cambodia on a fact-finding mission on land disputes, expressing concern over the use of live ammunition against rights activists, which he called “a worrying trend, to say the least.”

Subedi, who is due to make a formal report on land issues later this year to the U.N. Human Rights Council, said in his initial findings that on the mission he had encountered issues of misconduct by concession companies or their subcontractors in many communities.

The issues ranged from land grabs, confiscation of livestock, the destruction of homes and property, damage to burial grounds, and physical aggression and armed intimidation, he said.

He added that in some cases, state agents such as provincial officers, forestry officials, and even police military units are involved in protecting companies and their concessions.

Cambodia’s land issue dates from the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime, which forced large-scale evacuations and relocations throughout the country. This was followed by mass confusion over land rights and the formation of squatter communities when the refugees returned in the 1990s after a decade of civil war.

Housing Cambodia’s large, young, and overwhelmingly poor population has posed a major problem ever since.

Reported by Samean Yun, Zakariya Tin and Uon Chhin for RFA’s Khmer service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

The group, hailing from ten provinces across the country, marched through the forest in Mondul Seima district of southern Cambodia’s Koh Kong province where Chut Wutty was investigating illicit logging operations when he was fatally shot on April 26.

Carrying tree branches and, in lieu of flowers, sticks of incense, they stopped at the site where the environmentalist, former president of Cambodia’s Natural Resources Conservation Group, was allegedly gunned down by a military police officer who was also found dead at the scene.

Chut Wutty’s son, Chhoeuy Odomraksmey, 19, teared up while reading a tribute to his father at the crime scene, while supporters, some carrying posters and photographs saying, “I am Chut Wutty,” prayed for the activist.

Cambodian Center for Human Rights Director Ou Virak, who organized the ceremony and march, said the gathering is meant to show that activists in the country will not be intimidated despite the threat of violence.

“Killing Chut Wutty can’t silence us. There will be a hundred thousand people like Chut Wutty,” he said. 

Rights groups have called for a thorough and impartial investigation into the case, the highest-profile death of an activist in the country in years.

Forest patrol

The two-day march, which began Thursday, was also to patrol the forest in a bid to identify any illegal timber-extracting activities.

The group’s action is meant to send a strong message to illegal loggers and anyone who might be behind them, the group said.

“If the government doesn’t want to protect the forest, we will protect the forest,” said Doung Deoum, an activist from northern Cambodia’s Preah Vihear province who joined the procession.

He added as long as the government allows them, they want to be forest guards.

Chut Wutty’s Cambodia’s Natural Resources Conservation Group’s members style themselves as Cambodia's "Avatars," based on Hollywood's popular environmentally-themed animation film.

The activists had been most active in Prey Lang forests in central Cambodia where green groups say illegal logging has intensified.

The Cambodian government has identified Prey Lang, which hosts Southeast Asia's largest lowland evergreen forest, as an important area for conservation, with high potential for carbon-credit financing, but it remains unprotected.

Most of the wood from Prey Lang is smuggled into China and Vietnam, where it is made into furniture and exported worldwide, some environmental groups have charged.

After the ceremony on Friday, the group marched into the compound of the Timber Green logging company, whose security guard has been charged with killing the military police officer who allegedly shot Chut Wutty.

Outside the company compound, the activists took pictures of piles of wood as possible evidence of illegal logging.

The group will camp the night at a nearby pagoda before starting a new patrol on Saturday.

Land concessions

While the activists were in the forest, a visiting U.N. human rights official paid his respects to the activist at his grave in Kandal province and called for a fair investigation into the case.

U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Cambodia, Surya Prasad Subedi, visiting the country on a fact-finding mission on land disputes, expressed concern over violence against rights activists.

“Let me say that in this and other cases in 2012, we have seen the use of live ammunition against human rights defenders. It is a worrying trend to say the least,” he told reporters at a press conference at the end of his trip.

“I understand the investigation of the incident is ongoing by the provincial investigating judge. I look forward to a speedy and just resolution of this case,” he said, adding that the development of Cambodia’s land and natural resources could be positive if done in a sustainable and equitable manner.

He welcomed new orders by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s, issued just after Chut Wutty’s death, to temporarily suspend land concessions that have led to land grabs in villages and illegal logging activities in forest reserves.

“This is a good step in the right direction,” he said.

Subedi, who is due to make a formal report on land issues later this year to the U.N. Human Rights Council, said in his initial findings that on the mission he had encountered issues of misconduct by concession companies or their subcontractors in many communities.

The issues ranged from land grabs, confiscation of livestock, the destruction of homes, and property, damage to burial grounds, and physical aggression and armed intimidation, he said.

He added that in some cases state agents such as provincial officers, forestry officials, and even police military units are involved in protecting companies and their concessions.

Reported by Chin Chetha for RFA’s Khmer service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink.

Laos has suspended construction on the controversial Xayaburi dam on the Mekong River following an uproar from neighboring Cambodia and environmental groups, a senior Lao government official said Wednesday.

An agreement was signed between companies for construction of the dam project from March this year even though a four-nation commission which manages development along Southeast Asia’s key river has not given the go-ahead for the project.

“No construction is going on; it’s discontinued, postponed,” Sithong Chitgnothin, director of the Lao Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ press department, told RFA's Lao service Wednesday in what is believed to be the first government statement that construction will be halted.

He said that Laos would stand by agreements of the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an intergovernmental body including Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam which manages development along Southeast Asia’s main waterway.

“The agreement of the four MRC members still stands and the Lao government will always abide by it,” Chitgnothin said.

In a landmark ruling in December, MRC member countries agreed that the dam project should not proceed until further assessment was conducted.

The decision followed an earlier recommendation by an expert study group for a 10-year moratorium on all mainstream Mekong dams—of which Xayaburi would be the first on the lower part of the river—due to a need for further research on their potentially catastrophic environmental and socioeconomic impact.

But in April, Thai company Ch. Karnchang announced it had signed a U.S. $1.7 billion contract with Xayaburi Power Co. for construction of the 1,290-megawatt dam, prompting protests from green groups in Thailand, where most of the dam’s electricity would be sent.

In the contract, the company set a start date for the construction on the dam in March 2012, in spite of the December MRC agreement that the dam should wait for further study.

Environmental groups monitoring the dam have said that preliminary construction around the dam site, including of roads and support facilities, has begun, but officials say work on the dam itself had not yet started.

Cambodia lodged its complaint in a letter to Lao MRC representatives last week, opposing the preliminary construction and warning Laos not to allow the dam to move ahead.

The letter followed earlier threats from Cambodia to take Laos to international court over the dam.

Through the MRC, established in 1995, member countries have agreed to a protocol for consulting with and notifying each other about use of the river’s resources, but the organization has no binding jurisdiction on what Laos does about the dam.

On Tuesday, an MRC spokesman reiterated that its members were in agreement that the project should be halted pending further study.

“All four Lower Mekong countries are still on the same page; that is, that the project needs more study on its impact, [as do] all projects on Mekong River,” Surasack Glahan, a communications officer at the MRC secretariat in Vientiane, Laos, told RFA.

Opponents of the project are concerned that the dam, which would block fish migration on Southeast Asia’s main waterway, could not only impact the lives of millions in the region who rely on the river for their food and their livelihoods, but also pave the way for other hydropower projects on the river.

At least 11 other dams have been proposed on the mainstream Lower Mekong, in addition to five already built on the upper part of the river in China.

Six of them are in Laos, which, with over 70 hydropower dams in total planned on its rivers, has said it hopes to become the “battery” of Southeast Asia.

Reported by RFA’s Lao service. Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Rachel Vandenbrink.