A Peasant Movement, Kleptocratic Elites and the Global Supply Chains

Abstract

This chapter presents the resistance of a Cambodian peasant community against an exploitative kleptocrat. It depicts the relative failure of peasant and NGO movements targeting an industrial agro-sugar company, and the government institutions. It provides the historical events of the protests of the peasants from 2006 to 2016, and traces the dynamics and tactics of their protest alongside the responses of government institutions and foreign companies that jointly invested with a senior politician known as a ‘sugar baron’ in Cambodia. Considered as one of the best examples of how communities persistently resist foreign investments, the case involved tactical escalation from non-violent domestic movements to international networking: global supply chain movements. Thus, the documentation ranges from initial information-seeking protests, to the seeking of support of NGOs and political elites, to pursuing the supply chains of the sugar product exported from Cambodia to Thailand, from Thailand to the UK and then to the EU. It is clear that, although the movement’s approaches were solid and sophisticated, they did not achieve most of the demands because the government institutions perceived them as having harmed the rent extraction of the sugar baron, a close friend of the regime’s patron.