Khmer Circle:
It has taken almost three decades for the Hun Sen regime and
its Vietnamese patron to complete the first stage of deforestation which
focused on extracting large-sized trees for hard-wood timber export to the
world market. Across the country and most of the formerly thickly forested
provinces from Pursat and Oddor Mean Chey to Preah Vihea, Rattanakiri, Stung
Treng, Kg Thom and Mondulkiri the forests have now been combed clear of such
tall trees, leaving these regions sparsely covered with grass and juvenile
trees that gives the landscape the appearance of a savanna.
The second stage of the deforestation – still on-going –
completes this hatchet-job process on the hapless, friendless forests. The
young trees are being felled for commercial charcoal or burned to clear space
for commercial plantations such as sugar “farms” and rubber or palm oil plantations.
The remainder of these left-over trees [as seen in these pictures] are shipped
by the truckloads (always under the cover of darkness of the night between 8-10pm)
to the hundreds of Chinese-owned factories for fuel and power, presumably
because the trees provide a much cheaper alternative to other energy sources.
Meanwhile, many of these Chinese owners would hop about the Kingdom in their
private helicopters and are often rumoured to spend lavishly on recreational
pursuits like reserving an entire island off the south coast for their exclusive
use and retreat.
Some day when Vietnam will have fully annexed Cambodia,
Vietnamese ‘academics’ and ‘historians’ will claim how the once densely
forested and ‘uninhabited’ regions of the country had been first cleared by the
Vietnamese settlers for cultivation and farm lands instead of being left
"untiled" and "unused" by the Khmers – just as they have disingenuously
claimed over the territory of the Mekong Delta or Kampuchea Krom which had –
and has - always been part of Cambodia from recorded history.
Pictures supplied.
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