A reflection in the shadow

Reflection - the 9^th Ministerial Conference – Bali Indonesia

In December 2005, I was among the Cambodian travelling to Hong Kong delegation whose sole purpose of the trip is to protest against the World Trade Organisation - WTO. It was one of the most significant international protest experience I have gained: being disguised as the anti-WTO groups, unwelcomed by local shop owners, trouble makers… We are the different from the others. Some people in Hong Kong and back home look at us with a difference facial expression… Yet the experience was great, the one where I felt the power of the mass was strong, the collective minority could make our voice heard to the majority one who prefer to be at the safe side. I experienced all sort of things from the government’s control and reaction toward the protesters; Korean farmers dove into sea under 12c temperature to swim toward the WTO convention center in protest against the ongoing agriculture talk; Korean farmers led the mourning match in memories of Mr. Lee who killed himself in protest against WTO rules and regulations that kill farmers all around the world; tear gas sprayed from helicopters onto protesters trying to match into the convention to stop the ministers from signing bad deals, and the more experiences. The Momentum was strong, the public in Hong Kong not only support us but cheered and joined in our matching, the students held banners in solidarity with us… As a result, we were able to make impacts, minimal, yet it is the impact on the life of WTO – to make it stuck for few years.

December 2013, again I was in Bali for the same purpose because the evil institution is reborn, in a stronger force and aiming to pass the bad package, the Bali package. From the 5th to the 9th Ministerial Meeting of the WTO, from the side of the anti-WTO group, the demand is increasingly more pressing, changing from “Down Down WTO” to “#End WTO” purposefully aiming to dismantling the institution that increasing create more and more suffering on people, especially poor people in developed and developing countries and only protect the interest of corporation and rich countries to exploit more from the poor and powerless.

Cambodia’s membership in WTO as LDC – from an angle

Since the Cambodia’s full membership to WTO in 2004, Cambodia enjoys, to some extent, the benefits of LDCs status such as the intellectual property access, access to generic medicines. However, laws and regulations has been developed and approved to accommodate the free flow of trade. Notably, we have seen an increase size of agricultural land being converted into cash crop plantation for agribusiness such as cassava, rubber, palm oil, sugarcane, and corn. The Cambodian government, until 2013, has approved more than two million hectares of land as land concession (ADHOC, 2013) some of which lasts up to 99 years. The concessions are mainly for the purpose of cash crop plantation for exports or for logging concession. The great move of the government in ELC has caused so much contagion on land disputes in rural and urban areas, leaving poor farmers landless, increasing internal and labour export to domestic work and construction work and impacts on indigenous people culture and traditional ways of life in addition to losing their control over communal land.

Besides the great leaps in land management by corporation, there are two significant moves of the Cambodian government in the area of export-led growth agriculture. Firstly, the Cambodian government is committed to achieve the exportation of one million tons of milled rice per years to foreign market. The push for export of rice greatly impacts Cambodia in which over 80% of the population depends of subsistence farming for household consumption. While the sufficiency of rice for domestic market is not yet ensured, the promotion of rice exportation only serves to increase no food sovereignty in Cambodia. Secondly, Cambodia government has proposed a draft law on “Land Use and Land Management” which basically allows the company to have power and control over the farmers’ productivity through contract farming. Experiences from other countries has shown that contract farming increase the probability of farmers losing over their control over what to produce, when to produce, how to produce as well as their bargaining power with the companies over the price of their products. Most often, farmers ends up with indebtedness due to increasing cost of agricultural inputs. In this direction, Cambodia is embracing free trade in agriculture sector which puts the interest of corporations over the sovereignty of the people in food.

We are also seeing an increase of basic public services run by private providers such as education, particularly at tertiary level, healthcare services, telecommunication and the like. With water and electricity being in the hand of autonomous management, which basically means that private provide jointly run and provide services. Along with the move from state run to private management comes with an increase with prices for services.

With export led-growth policy, the growth is Gross Domestic Products is certainly increasing, from 487 USD per capita in 2005 to 946 USD in 2012, according to World Bank. Have that growth equally distributed about the population and whether the well-being of people and their livelihood improve remain is yet another set of discussion. What has all these changes in free trade, in WTO accession and mean for our majority of the Cambodian population? The cost of living has certainly increase, we pay more for the price of gasoline for our motorbike; we pay more when we get the bill for our healthcare. Most people attend free paying at university level as the seats for the state scholarship is getting smaller and smaller. The cost of agricultural inputs are sky-rocking and we need larger amount of chemical fertilizer for the rice to grow. Farmers today end up spending more money on the cost to produce then to simply buy the imported rice from the neighbouring countries. They are trapped in the spinning cycle of debt and poverty. Is this what we as the people anticipated for?

The struggle of the people today brought us back to the remembrance of our Korean farmer who killed himself in great scarifying of the call to end WTO; to remind us that the world today is governed by the powerful government who are backed by greedy corporations ones who thinks about the profits over lives of the people. The unjust systems that leave the great majority in suffering and poverty because of the rules and regulations that protects the few corporations. And this has been legitimized under the regime of the WTO. The Bali Package is passed in Bali and the three elements under this package - trade facilitation, agreement on agriculture, and LDCs package - only accelerate the exploitation of corporation over resources in developing and least developed countries. 

We are asking our government to stand by the power and work for the people. To listen to what the people want and formulate policy and laws that protect the benefits and interest of the great majority of the population and not the few elites. We are asking our government to strengthen the sovereignty of the country as an independent state, to be able to produce and to feed ourselves on our own ground first before we trade away the produces for the sake of free trade.

A final point to consider, the Mother Earth has had enough for everyone to live on well if we do in harmony with her and treats her with great respect and follow her life cycle.