Vietnam claims the new law contravenes international conventions on human rights. In another development, newspaper editor Nuon Chan, an outspoken critic of the Cambodian Government, has been shot dead in Phnom Penh by gunmen on motorbikes. It's trial by fire,' says Luzmila Loayza. The trial she's referring to is, however, somewhat unexpected. Some recent problems for her group have come not so much from the past few years, when international coffee prices have sunk to levels not seen since the 1930s, but from their current sharp rise.
Local traders offer cash in advance against the commitment from the farmer to sell their crop.
This is hard to resist, particularly if producers are impoverished. The sums being offered increase as prices rise but still don't reflect the true market value of the coffee. The profits taken by these traders leave small producers reduced to life at subsistence level. Nor that the standard of living of its members improves and they become less vulnerable to the hated local traders, the intermediarios , who have traditionally offered the only source of credit. Since Cecooag Nor began dealing with international 'fair trade' organizations in 1991 its central office has developed a fund that pays for doctors, teachers and technical assistants in each of the nine different co-operative unions that make up the group.