Land fight in Kampong Speu + Rubber firm destroys homes

[geovalin]

Land fight in Kampong Speu

Tue, 20 May 2014

May Titthara

Some 250 families in Kampong Speu province’s Phnom Sruoch district have sought intervention from rights group Adhoc to help resolve a land dispute involving a business they allege is headed by the son of former provincial governor Kang Heang.

Families from three villages say Heang, who left his position last year, offered a 910-hectare land concession to Master International Perison Group in 1997.

“We have filed to every government institution … our last choice is to depend on NGOs for help,” community representative Sao Pom said.

In 2011, the company began clearing fields, which prompted violent clashes.

Villager Sao Yuy, 64, said Prime Minister Hun Sen’s student land measurers had promised to demarcate the families’ land if they voted for the ruling party at last year’s election.

“We have already fulfilled our jobs, so this time we’ll act through our own means,” she said. “The authorities have given economic land concessions to the company blindly without knowing the land belongs to families farming yearly, so the authorities stoke disputes.”

A document signed by former Agriculture Minister Chan Sarun says the concession was Heang’s idea. However, he denied wrongdoing yesterday.

“We never seized people’s land. It is state land.… We do not know where these stupid people and idiots come from,” he said, adding his son was not involved in the company.

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Rubber firm destroys homes

Tue, 20 May 2014

Sen David

The Swift Rubber Company demolished three homes in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Chum district last week without compensation, telling about 120 families to leave immediately or face the destruction of more houses, according to villagers and rights group Adhoc.

“We lived there for more than 20 years, and we are workers of [swift’s] rubber plantation,” villager Chhun Socheat said.

“Today, they come to move someone’s house; tomorrow or the next day, it could be my house,” he continued.

Adhoc provincial coordinator Chhay Thy confirmed the uncompensated demolition.

Authorities notified residents of the impending eviction as early as December, and in February they gave families three months to vacate their homes, but villagers were upset that the notices included no mention of compensation.

O’Chum commune chief Khanch Sovy said new residents had no right to compensation, but authorities “will not allow the company to demolish [long-term] residents’ homes without any compensation”.

Pan Kirivuth, a security officer with Swift, said the land was the company’s and that new residents from other provinces “came to live there illegally”.