As Kampong Speu’s Metta forest is rapidly destroyed, locals’ allegations against Brigade 70 soldiers are multiplying: a monk’s phone confiscated to prevent photos of forest clearing, seven Buddha statues destroyed, and the land sold to tycoons for dirt mining.
Ahead of the June 5 vote, the country currently has only one commune chief who is not from the ruling CPP: the KNUP’s Da Chhean in Banteay Meanchey. Chhean is now working with the CPP.
O’Smach commune was the exception to the ruling party’s near-sweep of Oddar Meanchey province in 2017. Even the sitting CPP commune chief admits: “People here think differently. If they have a problem with their leaders, they want to change them.”
The sugarcane company that evicted them is gone, but Preah Vihear farmers say others are now moving into their land. The commune chief hasn’t intervened, and the opposition candidate says he has “no right” and laughs nervously.
In Kampong Thom’s Sakream commune, the Grassroots Democratic Party’s Choeun Nasy spent five years trying to work with the ruling CPP in his role as second deputy chief. “I almost gave up,” he says.
Residents and officials living around Phnom Penh’s canals say trash is quickly returning to waterways amid heavy rains, with at least one commune chief candidate promising to scrub the stench from garbage-clogged canals in his campaign.
Agriculture Minister Veng Sakhon assured animal welfare NGO Wildlife Alliance that an animal rescue center at Phnom Tamao will remain untouched, but did not address the potential destruction of hundreds of hectares of protected forest around it through the planned privatization of land.
Authorities stopped environmentalists investigating sewage flows into Phnom Penh rivers a year ago, jailing them for plotting. But black, foul-smelling discharges are continuing even as city officials said this week that they were unaware of a problem.
Monks and villagers say that a group of people purportedly hired by the military to cut down Kampong Speu’s Metta forest are continuing to destroy a densely forested area full of wildlife, and are now only about 200 meters from a pagoda inhabited by a nature-protecting monk.
Riverbanks at a stream near the Bassac river in Takhmao city collapsed over the weekend, damaging a Khmer-Chinese temple and pavement near the provincial city hall.
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