The Asia Indigenous Peoples Network on Extractive Industries and Energy (AIPNEE) denounces the attacks against the Indigenous Bunong community in Kbal Romeas, Stung Treng, Cambodia due to the initiation of the Lower Sesan 2 Hydropower Dam, an $816 million megadam project.
Kbal Romeas is now in the verge of being submerged with the dam’s operation set to begin in 25 Sept. 2017. By the time of the dam’s inauguration, the 58 Bunong families of Kbal Romeas are already submerged in water. Also to be affected are 124 families from the Sre Kor village, with Lao people in residence. The government and company have dismantled the Sre Pok bridge that connects Kbal Romeas to the rest of Stung Treng without consulting the community.
Indigenous communities have been protesting against the dam project because their lands will be destroyed – their cultural identity, sacred sites, ancestral graves, and traditions included – when the dam is fully operational. Instead of heeding the call and demand of the community, the government has threatened and harassed the village toward their forced eviction from the remained of their ancestral land. It deployed around 200 armed forces to quell protesters when the removal of the bridge took place.
Authorities are forcing them to move to the nearby Sreveng relocation site, which was designated without any consultation nor consideration of their living. The Bunong and Lao communities refuse to move to the transfer site primarily because it only offers agro-industry labor as livelihood – a far cry from the self-sustaining farming and fishing that they have been dependent of for hundreds of years.
The Cambodia government and Hydro Power Lower Sesan 2 Co. Ltd. claim that the dam will stabilize country’s power supply and lessen the country’s energy importation, decreasing electricity rates. In truth, however, this is state sponsorship of private interests. We question the “benefit” posed by the proponents because such public-private partnerships especially in developing countries take advantage of the consuming public in the name of profit.
Indigenous communities are already suffering from state neglect. Healthcare, education, infrastructure development, and other social services have been absent in recent years to compel desertion from their ancestral lands. The harassment and state neglect they experience toward their forced eviction, is clearly an outright violation of their indigenous rights over their lands, resources, and territories.
AIPNEE supports the Bunong people’s refusal of the compensation offered and the struggle against their displacement. We support Indigenous Peoples’ assertion of their rights to land and life. Development projects should never be undertaken at the expense of destroying ancestral domains and the indigenous people they sustain. The Bunong people have spoken: their right to self-determination must prevail.
OPPOSE THE LOWER SESAN 2 HYDROPOWER DAM!
STOP THE FORCED EVICTION OF THE INDIGENOUS BUNONG PEOPLE!
PROTECT THE STUNG TRENG ANCESTRAL LANDS!
STOP THE HARASSMENT AND RIGHTS VIOLATIONS AGAINST INDIGENOUS PEOPLES!
RESPECT THE RIGHT OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES TO LANDS AND TERRITORIES!
Reference: Beverly Longid, Secretariat Coordinator, aipnee.org@gmail.com
