Jakarta Globe, Agence France-Presse, May 13, 2013
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| A picture made available on May 10, 2013 shows an Indonesian farmer planting rubber seeds on a cleared forest near Teluk Meranti, Riau province, Indonesia. (EPA Photo/Bagus Indahono) |
Vietnamese
rubber firms bankrolled by an arm of the World Bank and Germany’s Deutsche Bank
are driving a land-grabbing crisis in Southeast Asia, activists said Monday.
Indigenous
ethnic minorities are bearing the brunt of the seizures, which have affected
tens of thousands of villagers and led to the clearance of swathes of protected
forests, according to campaign group Global Witness.
Vietnam,
the world’s third-largest rubber producer, is keen to tap surging demand for
the commodity in particular from China, which is hungry for car tyres and other
rubber goods as its economy booms.
Global
Witness accused two firm, Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) and Vietnam Rubber Group
(VRG), of driving forced evictions via subsidiaries linked to government
cronies in impoverished — and notoriously corrupt — Cambodia and Laos.
According
to the report, Deutsche Bank has multi-million dollar holdings in both
companies, while the International Finance Corp. (IFC) — the World Bank’s
private lending arm — invests in HAGL through financial intermediaries.
More than
1.2 million hectares (2.96 million acres) of land in Cambodia alone have been
leased for rubber plantations, Global Witness said, with some 400,000 people
affected by land grabs for rubber and other uses since 2003.
“The
governments in Cambodia and Laos are allocating large areas of land and ignoring
laws designed to protect human rights and the environment,” according to the
report.
“Often the
first people know about either company being given their land is when the
bulldozers arrive,” it said.
Global
Witness urged Cambodia and Laos to suspend all dealings with the two firms and
their subsidiaries.
It called
on Deutsche Bank and the IFC to withdraw their multi-million dollar funding if
the two companies fail to take steps to comply with human rights and
environmental standards within the next six months.
In
response, Deutsche Bank said an “intensive due diligence process” was conducted
before the shares were bought on behalf of its investors.
The IFC
declined to comment ahead of the report’s release, saying Global Witness had
not shared its full findings in advance.
The two
Vietnamese companies denied any illegal activities.
“We
contribute to the development of the local economy by paying necessary taxes…
creating jobs for tens of thousands of local residents, and contributing to
local communities,” HAGL said in a statement.
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