Tep Vanny, a Cambodian land activist talks to VOA Khmer Service is in
Washington on March 29, 2013, during her trip in the US capital to
receive a leadership award from Vital Voices, an organization started by
Hillary Clinton in 1997.
02.04.2013
by Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
WASHINGTON DC - Cambodian rights issues are in the spotlight this week,
with a delegation of activists arriving in Washington for a leadership
awards ceremony.
Tep
Vanny, a Cambodian housing rights advocate who has been central to
organizing other activists in Phnom Penh, is in Washington to receive a
leadership award from Vital Voices, an organization started by Hillary
Clinton in 1997.
Accompanying her are two other activists, Eang Vuthy, director of
Equitable Cambodia, and Sia Phirum, secretariat director of the Housing
Rights Task Force.
In interviews with VOA Khmer, the Cambodian activists said they will
meet with prominent international groups and policymakers to explain
land grabs, forced evictions and other pressing issues.
That includes meetings that focus on Cambodia’s sugar trade to the
European Union, which relies on land that farmers say were taken from
them by a company belonging to powerful Cambodian officials.
Eang Vuthy said more international pressure will prevent land grabs for major export crops like sugar.
“Both the EU and partner organizations have thoroughly worked to solve
these problems, but in fact we don’t have a solution,” he said.
“Everyone is working on it.”
The EU and private sugar companies have their own policies for
investment and trade that could lead to action, he said. “I think the
solution will definitely occur as long as all the partners work
together.”
Sia Phirum, whose Housing Rights Task Force helps advocate for 61
families who say they have been refused land on a major development site
at Beoung Kak lake, said many of those affected—and who are
activists—are women.
Prime Minister Hun Sen last year ordered land be given to the families,
who are all that remain of some 4,000 displaced, but advocates say they
were not given land by local authorities.
Sia Phirum said she was proud of Cambodian women for their non-violent
advocacy. “One cannot say we’ve struggled in vain,” she said.
The leadership award for Tep Vanny will encourage more women to
participate in politics and advocacy, she said. “We are human beings,”
she said. “We should not give up our struggles.”
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