Human Rights Abuses in Cambodia – Call for EU Investigation
FIAN Germany, along with nine Cambodian and European civil society organizations and coalitions published an open letter to European Union Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht on June 26 calling upon the EU to investigate serious human rights abuses connected to agricultural goods, including sugar, being exported to the EU under the Everything But Arms initiative.
In Cambodia there has been a dramatic escalation in the granting of agro-industrial concessions to private companies. The record increase in new concessions in 2011 brought the amount of land under the control of agro-industrial firms to roughly 12 percent of Cambodia’s total land mass.
The result of this sell-off has been an alarming erosion in the enjoyment of the fundamental human rights of affected people, who have suffered from forced eviction, reduced access to farming and grazing land, and the destruction of forests that they depend upon for their livelihoods.
Monitoring by human rights organizations indicates that at least 700,000 people across the country have been affected by this land-grabbing epidemic since 2000, including approximately 51,000 people in the past year alone.Sugarcane is the one of the leading ‘boom crops’ driving the Cambodian land-grabbing today.
The Boycott Cambodian Blood Sugar Initiative calls on the sugar industry to stop bleeding Cambodian farmers by taking their land.
Read the open letter to the EU Trade Commissioner below.
Visit the website: Boycott Cambodian Blood Sugar