In Bosra, a Bunong Community Keeps Up Its Fight Against French Firm Bolloré

A French appeal court is today set to hear a Bunong community’s lawsuit about a rubber plantation built on ancestral land. Their traditional claims to land are in contention. But in Mondulkiri, villagers say debt and wage labor are supplanting their traditions.

PECH CHREADA DISTRICT, Mondulkiri—Seated on his motorcycle, Khlang Thol points out an area with his finger. “This is where my field used to be. I was growing rice and fruit trees on this roughly 3-hectare land,” says the 43-year-old farmer. “If any food was missing, I would go find it in the nearby forest.”

Following his ancestors’ traditions, Thol would change the location of his field every five to six years, in order to let the earth regenerate without the use of chemicals. “What I could grow in a year was enough to feed my wife and my six children,” he says.

But these days, the only thing that remains of Thol’s former rice field are rubber trees, perfectly aligned as far as the eyes can see, in this remote area of Cambodia’s highlands.

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