VIENTIANE - It is an increasingly familiar
tale in Laos: poor farmers are pushed off their
ancestral lands by corrupt local officials to make
way for capital-rich, foreign-invested plantation
agriculture.
But the tenacity of one small
group of agrarians who are fighting back has
revealed the abuse of power that attends many Lao
land dealings, representing a landmark case in the
country's often opaque and obscure authoritarian
politics.
In a classic David versus
Goliath struggle, farmers in Paksong, southern
Laos find themselves pitted against Singaporean
coffee company Outspan Boloven, a subsidiary of
agribusiness giant Olam International. The company
won a government concession
to plant coffee on what
the protesting agrarians claim were illegally
seized lands.
The farmers have staged rare
protests in communist-run Laos, bringing national
attention to their grass roots plight and
perceived high level corruption in the land deal.
Puan, a thin, angular-faced man involved in the
fight, said during a recent trip to the national
capital to air grievances, "We will die for our
land."
A Vientiane-based Lao lawyer, who
declined to be named because he is providing
informal legal advice to the group, agrees that
violence is often the only recourse for farmers
victimized by state-backed land-grabbing. "Maybe
some have to die so that the world takes notice of
what is happening in this country - the misuse of
power, the suppression of protest," he said.
A delegation of the aggrieved farmers
first came to Vientiane in late February and by
several accounts were heavily harassed by
officials, forcing them to move between safe
houses. An interview on national radio with the
group's members is believed to have triggered one
popular call-in program's cancellation (see Off
the air in Laos, Asia Times Online, February
22, '12).
Apart from protests, the group
has twice pleaded for intervention with the legal
department of Laos' National Assembly, each time
presenting detailed dossiers of their claims to
the land to the Petitions Office. Both times
officials' have made empty promises to investigate
the situation, they claim.
The
Vientiane-based Land Issues Working Group (LIWG),
a nongovernmental organization that has supported
the case, is known to have mediated with Outspan
Boloven representatives and on behalf of the group
approached the local Singapore Embassy.
Those efforts, however, have so far failed
to cool grass roots passions. "We don't want an
agreement; we want our land back. They [company
representatives] came to the area last week but no
one talked to us. They should leave," Puan
insisted, the rest of his group nodding in
agreement.
Profitable brew Lao
coffee, like Lao beer, is now internationally
renowned.
The organic coffee grown by
smallholder farmers on the Boloven Plateau
commands premium prices in global markets, and has
fueled a surge of trendy coffee shops in Lao
cities. The rich volcanic soils and conducive
climate of the country's southern plateau has
recently attracted foreign investors to the
organic growing region.
In 2010, Sonexay
Siphandone, Governor of Champasak province and
former Communist Party Secretary, granted Outspan
Boloven the use of 150 hectares of prime
agricultural land on a 30 year concession basis.
Siphandone hails from one of the country's most
powerful political families, with known commercial
interests spanning hydropower, hotels and land
holdings.
The concession represented the
maximum amount of land that could be legally
granted by a provincial authority; larger
concession land areas require national level
approval.
LIWG noted in a report that
under such concessions companies often start
clearing land after receiving the maximum plots
allowed by the provincial government while their
request for more land is pending in Vientiane. In
the case of Outspan Boloven, LIWG notes, the
clearing had been ongoing while national approval
was still pending.
Over the protests of
local farmers, the company expanded its original
150-hectare plantation to more than 1,100
hectares, impinging on over 140 hectares of
productive village lands, burning high value trees
such as rosewoods and teak, and desecrating
graveyards and ancestral shrines in the clearing
process, according to aggrieved farmers.
Already 1,460 hectares have been planted
with coffee, and the company has announced plans
to expand its holdings to 3,000 hectares.
"Companies often destroy graveyards and
shrines to eradicate claims of ancestral ownership
and demoralize communities," said Scotland-based
filmmaker Serge Marti, drawing parallels between
what is happening now in Laos to palm oil
development in Indonesia.
Video shot in
the contested area in Paksong a week before the
delegation arrived in Vientiane showed piles of
burnt and smoking timber and bamboo clumps. Bare
earth exposed by company bulldozers is ringed by
openly distraught villagers.
"Outspan gave
the villagers 20 tons of rice three years ago.
That was for over 1,000 people. But in the long
run how can the families of Nong Mek, Nong Tua
Nong Hin and Nong Tiem [villages] live?" asked the
filmmaker who declined to be named for reasons of
security. "We will have to send emergency food aid
down to the families that are starving."
Puan, an unofficial delegation leader,
opened a red ledger that accounts for the local
losses incurred by the Outspan Boloven plantation:
205 hectares of productive forest, 10 hectares of
encroached housing land, 71 hectares of watershed
forest and 14 hectares of specialty incense bark
trees felled to make way for the Singaporean
company's coffee trees.
His accounting
shows that some 52 families have lost all of their
land and income sources, including the uprooting
of their own coffee trees. None of the affected
families were compensated for the land or their
loss of livelihoods, nor were any formal
agreements or contracts signed with village
leaders, he says.
Soon after the agreement
with the governor's office came into force,
Outspan Boloven brought in tractors and leveled
the ground without any local consultations. "They
worked day and night. The noise and light did not
allow us to sleep," Puan grumbled. "We went out
and tried to stop them, but they told us we had no
rights anymore as the land had been granted by the
governor."
Soumpheng, a village head in
the area settled by the ethnic Nya Hitun/Yahern
minority, takes issue with that interpretation. He
says attempts to get an explanation from the local
district and provincial offices were met variously
with obfuscation, lies and threats.
"The
land was granted to us by the (former) Royal Lao
Government in 1901…The French colonials brought
coffee in 1954 [and] later we fought to make them
leave our land, just like we fought against the
Americans. So we are veterans of fighting and are
unafraid," he said.
"After the socialist
government forbade shifting cultivation, we had no
trouble diversifying. We planted lots of
commercial trees and other subsistence crops. The
money we got enabled us to pay our land tax. We
have been awarded certificates of appreciation
because we always paid our taxes on time," he
added.
LIWG's analysis supports the basis
of these complaints. "Clearance of crops appears
to have taken place before permission was given by
village leaders in regard of private and
crop-cultivated communal land, although the survey
report said that Outspan [Boloven] should obtain
permission from village leaders first before
clearing."
Damage control Olam
International, an integrated agricultural produce
supply company, is among Singapore's top 40
largest companies, with a multinational presence
in 65 countries worldwide.
The company
claims to be among the world's largest suppliers
of coffee, sesame, cocoa, rice, spices, peanuts,
cotton and tropical hardwood products, supplying
over 11,000 different customers. Coffee from the
first harvested Outspan Boloven crop has already
been exported to California, according to the
company.
The company's local office could
not be reached for comment, but its central office
in Singapore responded to queries about the
controversy through Gong Communications, a
London-based public relations company.
Sara Firouzyar, a Gong Communications
representative, said Olam International was
concerned about the local protests against the
plantation. "We believed in good faith that we had
followed national laws and relevant processes,"
she said.
Firouzyar said the company first
learned about the protests from LIWG, rather than
the subsidiary's representatives, and that an
independent three-person team - comprised of one
Lao and two Dutch nationals - had since been
engaged to investigate and perform an audit on the
situation.
Firouzyar said that Olam also
promised to hold 12 stakeholder meetings, which,
if they happen, mused long-time Lao resident Richard Hollis, in an email, "may cast unwanted light on
government corruption and ineptitude."
At
the same time, she maintained that the project was
consistent with "Olam's Livelihood Charter", which
states the company aims "to bring prosperity to
our farming and rural communities. We build
long-term relationships based on fairness and
trust. We seek to transfer skills and knowledge
through partnerships."
Olam International
declined to respond to how the company would meet
the demands of protesting farmers who are fighting
for a return of their seized ancestral lands.
"We are also actively recruiting a
qualified, local community specialist to be based
in Laos to ensure that we are able to build strong
local relationships going forward," said
Firouzyar. At the time of this writing, the
composition of those committees was still being
negotiated.
Some hope that Olam
International's apparent willingness to negotiate
might provide Lao civil society with a much needed
fillip, as well as provide a lightning rod for
land rights reform. Laos ranks 158th out of 180
countries surveyed on Transparency International's
global corruption perception index, a ranking
influenced by a recent surge in official land
grabbing.
Although not reported in the
state-controlled press, land grabbing is fueling
rising rural unrest across the country, according
to NGOs monitoring the situation. They feel that
Governor Siphandone's role in granting the
controversial Outspan Boloven concession, as well
as similar land concessions he has given in the
area to Vietnamese agribusiness investors, should
be opened to public scrutiny.
Farmers like
Puan, however, have lost all faith in official
channels for transparency and justice. "This is
our dignity and our lives" he said. "We are not
afraid to die."
Beaumont Smith is a
freelance journalist.
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