Loss of Land and Lives
Written by Jenna Corrice
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https://altheamd.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/cambodia-where-have-all-the-forests-gone/ |
In Cambodia, there is a
struggle that is going on between the government and the indigenous people who
live there. The Bunong, a Cambodian indigenous people, grew many things. The
Bunong were thought of as wonderous elephant keepers. They harvest foods from
small rice to large pumpkins and delicious bananas. The gathered plants for
medicine as well as honey and resin in the forests they lived in. In these same
forests they held sacred, they buried their dead and revere the spirits living
in the rocks and trees. These same lands drastically changed in when bulldozers
were given free reign in order to destroy these fields.
Over
a decade after the government granted nearly fifty thousand acres to a Thai
company, many people find themselves without homes, without jobs, and without
means of supporting themselves and their families. For when the government
granted that land to that company the people living there were overlooked, they
were pushed aside in favor of other pursuits. While these land leases were
meant to promote development in poor areas, nearly eight hundred families of
the indigenous Bunong were displaced. Displaced from the lands of their
ancestors and what was rightfully theirs. Not just the Bunong, but many
Cambodian indigenous communities live in worry and fear, dreading that it will
next be their land that is sacrificed in the name of progress of many forms.
Many
companies are being given rights to land that should not go to them. Progress
should only go so far. It should not come at the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands
of people. Sacred lands are being cut down and razed in order to build roads,
create plantations, and more. With this there is an even sadder reality that
once the trees within the forests are cut down, nothing is done with the land.
The wood is just sold, and the ground is left bare. This is devastating to the
land and the people on it. The trees they hold sacred are cut down and taken.
The animals are displaced, and all other life, plant and animal alike are
trampled and pushed aside. Lush green landscapes turn into the barren brown and
red of the dirt.
The
indigenous people should not have to worry about whether they get to keep what
is already theirs. With this there is an office within the government of
Cambodia that specializes in human rights as well as the International Labour
Organization (ILO) along with donor agencies that are working to help assist
the indigenous communities. They together are working towards giving claim of
land with ownership that is made specifically to help with the needs of these
peoples. As of 2013, in Cambodia there were more than fifty communities of
indigenous people that were recognized as legal entities and were registered.
With this, the government gave communal land titles to around four thousand
people.
With
the loss of the forests and lands, the indigenous lose their homes and their
way of life. Before they would grow their crops and gather from the land around
them. Without this being a possibility now, the indigenous people now have to
sell their labor to various employers in order to make a living and survive.
They are losing their culture and ways of life. Their traditions are being lost
in favor of trying to push forward and living. Exploitation was easy for the
companies and very little about law was understood by the indigenous people.
Suddenly the people were finding themselves band from their own land and not
knowing what to do or who to turn to for help.
With
the Cambodian indigenous, recognition of rights to land came be difficult.
There is twenty-nine step process that needs to be followed and collective land
registration must be pushed through three different ministries. They must first
be recognized as indigenous, then the community must be considered a legal
entity, and finally a collective land title could be issued. With deception
though and disregard for laws, many rights are ignored and trampled with use of
laws that contradict each other.
Even
though there are groups helping, more and more each day, there needs to be more
done in order to help the indigenous people understand what they need to do in
order to get their rights heard and not ignored. More needs to be done in order
to not step all over the lives and rights of these people. Word needs to spread
to show the injustice of the situation at hand. This cannot go unseen and
ignored in the ignorance of the world at large. The indigenous peoples should
be encouraged to defend their rights and claim to the land, they should be made
to see that they can demand that they be heard, that they are not insignificant
in this world and they have just as much claim, if not more, to be there and
here as anyone else does in the end.
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