Battambang (Cambodia). 11/12/2006: an internet café. (Photo: John Vink/ Magnum)
05-01-2009
By Duong Sokha
Ka-set in English
Click here to read the article in French
Click here to read the article in Khmer
Since the Internet officially appeared in Cambodia in 1997 when the first Network Operating Centre (NOC) offered its services, this communication means for the broadcasting of information has become popular throughout country, together with the development of cable and satellite television and radio. But after more than a decade, the development of this communications medium is becoming a source of worry for the Ministry of Information, concerned about the potential impact of new technologies on the Cambodian society. The Ministry aims at putting down in writing a few regulations concerning “broadcasting services used via electronic systems” in a law which is currently in the process of being drafted. According to the Ministry of Information, the new legal document will not apply to news websites (such as Ka-set), since the main goal here would be to control the broadcasting of audiovisual data, games, entertainment and online advertisements, in order to make sure that rules – of a rather moral nature – are respected by all.
A response to technological evolutions
With the development of new technologies, the Ministry of Information of Cambodia has had to adjust to a wider scope of responsibilities. The Ministry, already in charge of regulating the usual analogue-audiovisual services, which include to the present day twenty-five radio stations and seven television channels broadcast in Phnom and/or Cambodia's provinces, had to extend its control to satellite radio and television, and, progressively, to these same means of communication, but broadcast via the internet, as explained by Nouv Sovathero, Secretary of State of the Ministry of Information and in charge of drafting the Bill, which will gather 12 chapters and 67 articles.
“Radio and television services have a strong influence on listeners and viewers”, he says. “The aim of this law is therefore to check on any broadcasting activity carried out via electronic systems, including the broadcasting of public shows”.
The new law will apply to audiovisual broadcasting via the Internet but also to mobile phones, the use of which has become commonplace in the space of a few years in the country. Today, mobile phone users can listen to the radio, watch the television and share texts, sounds and images.
By extending its responsibilities, the Ministry of Information's main goal is, according to the Secretary of State, to ensure the respect of good morals. “For instance, if we hear that there may be Internet games which have a negative impact on youngsters, or on the society as a whole, the Ministry of Information, in collaboration with the concerned authorities, will issue a warning to the person in possession of a broadcasting licence or will simply confiscate it”, Nouv Sovathero argues. “We will also make sure that advertisement reaches a certain standard of quality so that the interdiction to broadcast abusive or misleading announcements is duly respected.”
A double licence for local Internet service providers
The new text will define a legal frame for people in charge of editing audiovisual data online and for Internet service providers (ISP), whether they be companies or individuals, whose responsibilities are above all technical. Providers who are currently required to apply for a licence at the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications before being able to be fully functional, will have to apply for a second licence at the Ministry of Information if the law is enforced. The team in charge of drafting the law issued these recommendations on the basis that Internet service providers are the ones who allow users to surf the web and access data on the network. Therefore, since they are classified as data producers and distributors, they should also be accountable to the Ministry of Information. Here again, the clear objective is to prohibit the broadcasting of obscene sounds and images...
Nouv Sovathero cited the example of images displayed on a blog and the recent subject of controversy, representing topless Apsaras standing in sensual poses, which according to him might shock the Cambodian public and arouse sexual impulses among internet surfers. The law would then allow the control of such content. The Secretary of State gave another example: “If a website displays the picture of a beautiful Cambodian actress and makes a montage with the body of a naked person, which Ministry is entitled to react to this, at the moment? The Ministry of Culture? Or the Interior?With the new law, the Ministry of Information will have prime responsibility over that as it will control the broadcasting of all audiovisual data”, the official observed.
Lessons of good manners for TV and radio presenters
In the same fashion, the law also stipulates the creation of a training centre intended for television and radio presenters. There, they would follow a training course meant to provide them with “manners” and the art of expressing oneself using an academic and refined Khmer language.
“Most of our presenters are not professional and besides, they are not acknowledged by our Ministry [of Information]”, Nouv Sovathero deplores. Some speak Khmer with a heavy foreign accent! It is something that worries us. With the new law, they will be required to be of Cambodian descent, able to read and express themselves in accordance with the rules of Khmer grammar. Foreign presenters who speak Khmer will not be authorised to exercise any longer, due to their incorrect and inaccurate pronunciation”, the Secretary of State detailed, insisting on the fact that the point was to make people respect “morality” in programmes broadcast throughout Cambodia...
End of 2009, kick off
The text of the bill, now complete, was handed to the director-general of the General Department of Information and Audiovisual at the Ministry to be examined and will soon be passed onto an ad hoc committee chaired by the Minister of Information, for new examination.
Before its submission to MPs, Nouv Sovathero observes, the text will then be “sifted through” by all those it concerns: holders of a licence for audiovisual broadcasting and representatives of the radio, television, cable channels sectors but also Internet service providers.
The Secretary of State also claimed he requested the financial and technical help of Internews, a France-based non-governmental organisation for the empowering of local media worldwide, in order to organise at least three seminars with a view to collect opinions on the law before jurists at the Council of Ministers take over the task and examine it. “We received positive answers from the NGO. Our goal is to make sure that all those who are concerned by the law can take part in this process so we can create a law that is efficient and acceptable to all”, he insisted, adding that if things went as planned, the law should be presented to MPs for a final vote at the end of 2009.
The law, according to Nouv Sovathero, only fills the gaps present in the system, as more and more people find an interest in these new means of audiovisual data broadcasting.
According to Sar Ratana, who chairs the Department of Regulations at the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, some thirty Internet service providers are registered to the present day in Cambodia, with however less than ten of them being fully operational. Besides, the Ministry holds records of some two hundred Internet cafés throughout the country, figures which are far below the reality of things, since many owners do not follow the necessary steps to obtain a licence. And according to the same governmental sources, the official number of Internet users in Cambodia does not exceed 18,000 people (data made public in October 2008 following a seminar on information and communication technologies). Here again, reality seems to go past official statistics. A private study carried out in 2008 for the Miniwatts Marketing group about the use of the Internet worldwide, available on the “Internet World Stats ” website takes into account estimations made by the International Communications Union which state that there are at least 70,000 regular Internet users in Cambodia today. And the flow of users should increase considerably in the next few months and years, as it is the case in most Asian countries.
With the elaboration of this law regulating digital broadcasting, the Ministry of Information hopes to follow the evolutions of modern technology. As for the Internet, other regulations are also planned, starting with a law on electronic trade.
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News websites not affected
According to Nouv Sovathero, the law on “broadcasting services used via electronic systems” will not concern online journalists but their work will continue to be subject to the 1995 Press Law. “The new law is not meant to control news editors but to manage general broadcasting online. Therefore this law shall not apply to news websites”, the Secretary of State commented. If a news website broadcasts inaccurate information, the Ministry of Information will react, the official, who was himself a journalist once, detailed. Journalists who work exclusively for online media, not coupled with a printable medium, are already entitled to a press card in Cambodia. The director of the Media Centre in relation with the Ministry of Information, pointed out that some 1,800 press cards were given out to Cambodian journalists and around 500 to foreign journalists in 2008, all media taken together... It is the case of Ka-set journalists.
Internet and audiovisual content about to be subject to regulations in Cambodia [-Big Brother Hun Sen wants to watch you!]
Monday, January 5, 2009ECCC co-prosecutors butting heads against each other on the possibility of launching additional prosecutions
Chea Leang (L) and Robert Petit (R)
05 Jan 2009
By AN
Cambodge Soir Hebdo
Translated from French by Tola Ek
Click here to read the article in French
One of the co-prosecutors said that he is ready to initiate legal investigations against other suspects for crimes committed under the KR regime, the other categorically refuses to go along.
More prosecutions or not? The situation is at a standstill at the KR Tribunal. A communiqué was distributed on Monday 05 January providing details on the position taken by each of the two ECCC co-prosecutors.
[Robert Petit,] the International co-prosecutor, has proposed the filing of two new Introductory Submissions and one Supplementary Submission as there are reason to believe that “the crimes described in those submissions were committed, and these crimes are within the jurisdiction of this Court.” He also added that “he does not believe that such prosecutions would endanger Cambodia’s peace and stability.”
His Cambodian colleague, [Chea Leang,] is of the opposite opinion. She does not wish to see other people being charged as she promotes the “national reconciliation” process, and also because of “the spirit of the agreement between the United Nations and the Government of Cambodia.” Finally, she prefers that the Court should instead prioritize the trials of the five suspects already detained because of the tight budget available for the KRT.
The outcome is important as it reflects two visions for the trial of the former KR members. On one side is the vision supported by Westerners which favors the widening of the number of additional prosecutions, and on the other side, the Cambodian vision which never hides its lack of enthusiasm in such proceeding.
ECCC Co-prosecutors arguments for and against the inclusion of additional suspects in the KR crimes
International co-prosecutor Robert Petit (L) and National co-prosecutor Chea Leang (R)Office of the Co-Prosecutors
5 January 2009
The International Co-Prosecutor has proposed the filing of two new Introductory Submissions and one Supplementary Submission as, according to him, there are reasons to believe that (1) the crimes described in those submissions were committed, (2) these crimes are within the jurisdiction of this Court, and (3) they should be investigated by the Co-Investigating Judges. 
He believes that this last set of cases to be prosecuted by this Court would lead to a more comprehensive accounting of the crimes that were committed under the Democratic Kampuchea regime during 1975-79. He does not believe that such prosecutions would endanger Cambodia’s peace and stability.
The National Co-Prosecutor believes that these investigations should not proceed on account of (1) Cambodia’s past instability and the continued need for national reconciliation, (2) the spirit of the agreement between the United Nations and the Government of Cambodia (“Agreement”) and the spirit of the law that established this Court (“ECCC Law”), and (3) the limited duration and budget of this Court. She feels that this Court should instead prioritize the trials of the five suspects already detained, especially when, according to her, the Agreement and the ECCC Law envisioned only a small number of trials. She maintains that this Court’s mandate can be adequately fulfilled by the prosecution of the suspects already detained.
The Co-Prosecutors are issuing this statement pursuant to Internal Rule 54 to ensure that the public is duly informed of ongoing ECCC proceedings. They now await the determination of this disagreement by the Pre-Trial Chamber. This adjudicatory process is, by law, confidential. Notwithstanding this disagreement, the Co-Prosecutors have been and shall continue to work together, in all their cases, to ensure that justice is rendered to the victims of the Khmer Rouge.
- End -
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Domestic violence turned fatal: Beat your wife ... at your own risk
Sunday, January 4, 2009Monday, January 05, 2009
The dead husband (Photo: Rithysen, Koh Santepheap)Domestic violence: Wife angered by her husband’s beating and attempt to kill her squeezed and bit his penis until he died
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Koh Santepheap newspaper
Translation from Khmer by Socheata
Pursat province: A domestic violence took place causing a woman to grab and pulled her husband’s penis to bite and squeezed it without mercy. The husband pitifully died the next day from the pain inflicted. The strange incident took place in Kampong Leu village, Kbal Trach commune, Krakor district, Pursat province on 30 December 2008. Vuth Voeun was the 38-year-old victim, and Sy Voeun, his 38-year-old wife live in the village above.
According to information provided by the Kbal Trach police station, this domestic violence started with 15-liter of rice alcohol bought by the wife to sell at home. However, the husband invited over several of his friends and they drank all the wine while the wife was harvesting rice in the field. The police officer indicated the family house also sells wine and some spices for their survival.
On the day of the incident, the wife bought 15-liter of rice wine to sell to the villagers before they travel to their harvesting work or when they return home from a day of harvesting. On the same day, Voeun, the wife, went to harvest rice the entire day also. In the evening, when she returned home, she saw her husband and several of his friends drinking all the wine she bought for sale, she got mad and a dispute ensued with her husband. The police officers indicated that when his wife gave him a fit, the husband got angry and he rushed to pull her hair to beat her and intended to break her neck. At that moment, the wife started grabbing on to his penis, squeezed and bit it without mercy until the husband was so hurt and fell down, but he did not dare tell any neighbors about this incident and he did not go the hospital either. In the morning, the husband was found dead with his hand pitifully groping over his groin. The wife was arrested by the police and brought in to the station for questioning.
The latest report indicated that on 16 December, the couple above also had a dispute and the wife already bit her husband penis once already, but the incident was not fatal to him. However, on the second round of the fight, the biting and squeezing were more severe than the first time, and this led to his death.
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07 January celebration controversies
Monday, January 05, 2009
Khieu Kanharith (Photo: DR, Cambodge Soir Hebdo)04 Jan 2009
By Ung Chansophea and Alain Ney
Cambodge Soir Hebdo
Click here to read the article in French
Translated from French by Luc Sâr
Demands have been made in favor for the commemoration of 1991 Paris Peace Accords on Cambodia. The presence of CPP logos during the 07 January celebration will certainly raise criticisms from other political parties.
“It will be a ceremony to everybody’s memory,” Khieu Kanharith, government spokesman, indicated during a press conference about the 30th anniversary of the end of the Khmer Rouge regime.
While some are criticizing the choice of this date which marks the beginning of the Vietnamese intervention in Cambodia’s internal affairs, Khieu Kanharith retorted: “Some people said that 07 January should not be celebrated, but rather 23 October 1991, the date of the signing of the Paris Accords… but one must remember that if there were no 07 January 1979, there wouldn’t be 23 October 1991 either.”
Trying to cut short another controversy, Khieu Kanharith indicated that two logos will be seen during the ceremony: the 07 January banner and the CPP logo. To those who ask about the presence of the ruling CPP party logo, Khieu Kanharith replied that it is Hun Sen’s party who paid the bill for this anniversary which amounts to “several million riels,” and that the government did not pay for it. Nevertheless, he reassured that “07 January doesn’t belong exclusively to the CPP, but to all the Khmer people.” Khieu Kanharith did not indicate if other political parties have asked to contribute financially to be able to display logo at the Olympic Stadium.
Close to 40,000 people will participate in the festivities organized inside the Olympic Stadium in Phnom Penh. NGO and embassies representatives, as well as other party political parties are invited.
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Police Begin Enforcement of Helmet Law
Sunday, January 04, 2009
By Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Washington
02 January 2009
Phnom Penh police fined 236 motorists for failure to wear helmets Thursday, the first day of new enforcement measures, a top official said.
"This morning, we just fined those who were not wearing helmets, and later on we will fine any motorist without a rear-view mirror and without a license plate," said Col. Chev Hak, deputy chief of Phnom Penh traffic police, as a guest on "Hello VOA" Thursday.
Chev Hak estimated that about 85 percent of Phnom Penh motorists were now wearing helmets, following threats of stricter enforcement by Prime Minister Hun Sen last month.
An estimated 179 people had died in 700 traffic accidents, about one person every other day, Chev Hak said, making it the leading killer of Cambodians.Hun Sen called traffic deaths a worse scourge than landmines or AIDS.
Chev Hak appealed to motorists to wear their helmets and not try to outrun police blockades, as this too was dangerous.
"If the police fine you, its only 3,000 riel," about $0.80, he said, "but if you turn away, causing an accident, there will be a lot of money spent."
Ieng Sary Released Again From Hospital
Sunday, January 04, 2009
By Kong Sothanarith, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
02 January 2009
Jailed Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Sary was released from Calmette hospital Friday, ending his second visit to the hospital in a week and raising concerns his health may be failing.
The return to the hospital of the ailing leader raises again the specter that the five jailed leaders will escape their days in court, even as the tribunal is preparing for the first trial since its 2006 inception, of Kaing Kek Iev, the chief of Tuol Sleng prison, early this year.
"His situation could be serious," Ang Oudom, Cambodian defense lawyer for Ieng Sary, said Thursday, adding that his client may need an operation. However, if the operation would cause adverse effects on his health, he said, "then the doctors would not do it."
Arrested in November 2007, Ieng Sary, 84, faces charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role as the foreign minister of the Khmer Rouge regime. Of five jailed leaders, he has visited the hospital the most times.
He was released from Calmette Wednesday, Dec. 24, after two days in the hospital for treatment of a swollen leg, and readmitted Sunday, Dec. 28. Family members have told his lawyers he has kidney disease.
Cambodian minister: Foreign tourist arrivals in 2008 less than expected
Sunday, January 04, 2009
PHNOM PENH, Jan. 4 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia received less foreign tourists in 2008 than expected due to the global financial crisis and the instability in neighboring Thailand, national media said on Sunday.
The total number of foreign tourist arrivals in the kingdom in 2008 stood at 2.15 million or so, a 6 percent rise over 2007, but much less than the expected 15 percent to 20 percent, Chinese-language newspaper the Commercial News quoted Tourism Minister Thon Khong as saying.
Around 33 percent of them came to Cambodia through Thailand and 29 percent through another neighboring country Vietnam, the minister said.
In 2008, top 5 providers of foreign tourists for Cambodia were South Korea, Vietnam, Japan, the United States and China, he added.
Tourism is among the pillar industries of the kingdom, as its Angkor Wat in Siem Reap province and the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh municipality keep on attracting foreign visitors to watch the miracles of the Khmer nationality.
If This Isn’t Slavery, What Is?
Long Pross (Photo: Nicholas D. Kristof/The New York Times)Sunday, January 04, 2009
If This Isn’t Slavery, What Is?
Long Pross (Photo: Nicholas D. Kristof/The New York Times)
Fighting Sex Trafficking in Cambodia
January 3, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The New York Times
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia
Barack Obama’s presidency marks a triumph over the legacy of slavery, so it would be particularly meaningful if he led a new abolitionist movement against 21st-century slavery — like the trafficking of girls into brothels.
Anyone who thinks it is hyperbole to describe sex trafficking as slavery should look at the maimed face of a teenage girl, Long Pross.
Glance at Pross from her left, and she looks like a normal, fun-loving girl, with a pretty face and a joyous smile. Then move around, and you see where her brothel owner gouged out her right eye.
Yes, I know it’s hard to read this. But it’s infinitely more painful for Pross to recount the humiliations she suffered, yet she summoned the strength to do so — and to appear in a video posted online with this column — because she wants people to understand how brutal sex trafficking can be.
Pross was 13 and hadn’t even had her first period when a young woman kidnapped her and sold her to a brothel in Phnom Penh. The brothel owner, a woman as is typical, beat Pross and tortured her with electric current until finally the girl acquiesced.
She was kept locked deep inside the brothel, her hands tied behind her back at all times except when with customers.
Brothel owners can charge large sums for sex with a virgin, and like many girls, Pross was painfully stitched up so she could be resold as a virgin. In all, the brothel owner sold her virginity four times.
Pross paid savagely each time she let a potential customer slip away after looking her over.
“I was beaten every day, sometimes two or three times a day,” she said, adding that she was sometimes also subjected to electric shocks twice in the same day.
The business model of forced prostitution is remarkably similar from Pakistan to Vietnam — and, sometimes, in the United States as well. Pimps use violence, humiliation and narcotics to shatter girls’ self-esteem and terrorize them into unquestioning, instantaneous obedience.
One girl working with Pross was beaten to death after she tried to escape. The brothels figure that occasional losses to torture are more than made up by the increased productivity of the remaining inventory.
After my last column, I heard from skeptical readers doubting that conditions are truly so abusive. It’s true that prostitutes work voluntarily in many brothels in Cambodia and elsewhere. But there are also many brothels where teenage girls are slave laborers.
Young girls and foreigners without legal papers are particularly vulnerable. In Thailand’s brothels, for example, Thai girls usually work voluntarily, while Burmese and Cambodian girls are regularly imprisoned. The career trajectory is often for a girl in her early teens to be trafficked into prostitution by force, but eventually to resign herself and stay in the brothel even when she is given the freedom to leave. In my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, I respond to the skeptics and offer some ideas for readers who want to help.
Pross herself was never paid, and she had no right to insist on condoms (she has not yet been tested for HIV, because the results might be too much for her fragile emotional state). Twice she became pregnant and was subjected to crude abortions.
The second abortion left Pross in great pain, and she pleaded with her owner for time to recuperate. “I was begging, hanging on to her feet, and asking for rest,” Pross remembered. “She got mad.”
That’s when the woman gouged out Pross’s right eye with a piece of metal. At that point in telling her story, Pross broke down and we had to suspend the interview.
Pross’s eye grew infected and monstrous, spraying blood and pus on customers, she later recounted. The owner discarded her, and she is now recuperating with the help of Sina Vann, the young woman I wrote about in my last column.
Sina was herself rescued by Somaly Mam, a trafficking survivor who started the Somaly Mam Foundation in Cambodia to fight sexual slavery. The foundation is working with Dr. Jim Gollogly of the Children’s Surgical Center in Cambodia to get Pross a glass eye.
“A year from now, she should look pretty good,” said Dr. Gollogly, who is providing her with free medical care.
So Somaly saved Sina, and now Sina is saving Pross. Someday, perhaps Pross will help another survivor, if the rest of us can help sustain them.
The Obama administration will have a new tool to fight traffickers: the Wilberforce Act, just passed by Congress, which strengthens sanctions on countries that wink at sex slavery. Much will depend on whether Mr. Obama and Hillary Clinton see trafficking as a priority.
There would be powerful symbolism in an African-American president reminding the world that the war on slavery isn’t yet over, and helping lead the 21st-century abolitionist movement.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
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Cambodia: Oil-rich Kuwait in August granted a 546-million-dollar loan in return for crop production
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Global trends driving 'land grab' in poor nations: activists
Sunday, January 04, 2009
KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) — Resource-hungry nations are snapping up huge tracts of agricultural land in poor Asian nations, in what activists say is a "land grab" that will worsen poverty and malnutrition.
Global trends including high prices for oil and commodities, the biofuels boom, and now the sweeping downturn, are spurring import-reliant countries to take action to protect their sources of food.
China and South Korea, which are both short on arable land, and Middle Eastern nations flush with petrodollars, are driving the trend to sign up rights to swathes of territory in Asia and Africa.
"Today's food and financial crises have, in tandem, triggered a new global land grab," the Spain-based agricultural rights group Grain said in a recent report.
It said that some deals were targeted at boosting food security by producing crops that would be sent back home for consumption, while others were to establish money-making plantations like palm oil and rubber.
"As a result of both trends, fertile agricultural land is being swiftly privatised and consolidated by foreign companies in some ofthe world's poorest and hungriest countries," it said.
In one of the biggest deals, South Korea's Daewoo Logistics said in November it would invest about 6.0 billion dollars to develop 3.2 million acres (1.3 million hectares) in Madagascar -- almost half the size of Belgium.
Daewoo plans to produce four million tonnes of corn and 500,000 tonnes of palm oil a year, most of which will be shipped out of impoverished Madagascar -- where the World Food Programme still provides food relief.
"We will build everything from ports and railways to markets on a barren and untouched area," said Shin Dong-Hyun, general manager of the WFP's financing and strategic planning department.
Although commodity prices have fallen from their highs earlier this year, resource-poor and heavily populated countries are still concerned about securing long-term supplies.
Walden Bello, from Bangkok-based advocacy group Focus on the Global South, said the looming global recession is not likely to halt the trend which he fears will worsen the lot of landless peasants.
"In a situation where global agricultural production has become so volatile and unpredictable, I would not be surprised if the Middle Eastern countries that are engaged in this would continue to push on," he told AFP.
Bello said that many of the deals were struck in dysfunctional and corruption-ridden nations, and rejected claims the land being signed away is of poor quality, and that the projects will bring jobs and improve infrastructure.
"What we're talking about is private parties using state contracts to enrich themselves," he said. "It's an intersection of corrupt governments and land-hungry nations."
In Cambodia, where the WFP also supplies aid, oil-rich Kuwait in August granted a 546-million-dollar loan in return for crop production.
Undersecretary of State Suos Yara said Cambodia was also in talks with Qatar, South Korea, the Philippines and Indonesia over agricultural investments including land concessions.
"If we do this work successfully, we can get at least 3.0 billion dollars from these agricultural investments," he said.
"With the (global financial) crisis, this is a chance for Cambodia to look to the future by pushing agriculture in order to attract foreign investments."
But opposition lawmaker Son Chhay said he was suspicious about why a wealthy nation like Kuwait needed to lease land to grow rice rather then just import the grain.
"Cambodian farmers need the land," he said, urging the government to limit the area under lease and ensure Cambodia was not plundered by foreign nations.
In the Philippines, another land lease hotspot, a series of high-profile deals has clashed with long-running demands for agrarian reform including land redistribution.
"It will aggravate the problem of landlessness, the insufficiency of land for Filipino peasants," said Congressman Rafael Mariano, who also heads the Peasants' Movement of the Philippines (KMP).
However the Philippine government is undeterred and during President Gloria Arroyo's visit to Qatar in December, officials opened talks over the lease of at least 100,000 hectares of agricultural land to the emirate.
Bello said he expected these sorts of deals to increase, forcing peasants from rural areas and into cities where together with the global downturn they will add to the ranks of the unemployed.
"It's particularly explosive in those countries where you have a high degree of landlessness, like the Philippines where seven out of 10 rural people do not have access to land," he said.
In the impoverished and corrupt dictatorship of Laos, some experts estimate that between two million and three million hectares have been parcelled off in a rampant and uncontrolled process that has now been suspended by the government.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation has sounded alarm over the loss of land in a country where in rural areas, every second child is malnourished and access to land for foraging of natural resources is critical.
"If the environment is changed, with the trees cut and replaced with industrial crops," said FAO representative in Laos, Serge Verniau, "they can face serious danger".