Khmer Rouge Veterans Seek Land Titles

[geovalin]

Some 84 families of Khmer Rouge veterans are preparing to march through Phnom Penh to deliver petitions calling for land titles to be granted for their farms.

 

PHNOM PENH — 

Some 84 families of Khmer Rouge veterans are preparing to march through Phnom Penh to deliver petitions calling for land titles to be granted for their farms.

The villagers, from Smach Meanchey commune in Koh Kong province, were promised the titles to the 150 hectares in question in 2007 when they agreed to relocate from Pursat province, they say.

 

Svay Tob, a representative of the group, said: “Previously, I lived in the Thmor Da region in Pursat province. Later the Koh Kong provincial authorities called on us to move to Koh Kong. They brought us here and allocated land, homes an orchards.”

 

However, Tob said that a conflict had ensued after the environmental group Wild Aid had prevented them from farming in the area due to increased deforestation.

The dispute was seemingly resolved when the government dispatched students to demarcate their land. But until now they have not received land titles, despite being allegedly charged by the local authorities for the service.

 

Previous complaints filed to the Forestry Administration and Agriculture Ministry had come to no avail, Tob added

Ros Vyravuth, Koh Kong’s land management director, denied that officials under his watch had extorted money from villagers in exchange for land titles.

District Governor Pen Vanna and his deputy, Sun Dara, could not be reached for comment.

 

In Kongchet, provincial coordinator for local rights group Licadho, said the veterans’ case was one of nine unresolved disputes in the area, warning that the government could face growing unrest if their concerns were not addressed.

 

“When the government lets cases drag on for too long without paying attention to finding solutions and ending the disputes, the communities affected by land abuses form networks and stage advocacy together,” he said.

 

source http://www.voacambodia.com/a/khmer-rouge-veterans-seek-land-titles/3675199.html

[Zenwind]

Khmer Rouge families claim “land titles”?  Private property ownership guarantees?  <deleted>? 

 

Forgive me if my studies of 20^th century totalitarianism and its ideological underpinnings are wrong, but don’t the Marxist/ Leninist/ Maoist dogmas behind the Khmer Rouge rationales absolutely repudiate ownership of private property? 

 

While the Khmer Rouge murdered millions of Cambodians for being “bourgeois”—i.e., for owning private property, no matter how modest, for being educated according to international academic standards, for aspiring to productive cooperative economic pursuits in a free society, and even for wearing eyeglasses – much of the wider world ignored/ excused the cultural/philosophical genocide. 

 

(Caveat:  The Khmer Rouge, as well as many other historical revolutionary movements, rebelled against tyrannical conservative statist regimes with long-established oppressive policies, granted, but it is never justified to accelerate the brutality of its “just solution” to such an incredibly immense exaggeration of murder and misery.) 

 

Now the families of these murdering collectivist savages want individual rights?  Are they claiming some kind of individualistic “victimhood”?  Poor babies. 

 

Get in line, people.  Buck up and pull some cooperative effort within free social productive interaction.  Do some work; earn your “private property”; contribute in a free marketplace of cooperation and voluntary agreement.  Harnessing government coercive (police) power is not the route to success (as your Khmer Rouge ancestors believed).  A free society thrives by everyone serving others with the free consent of trading between equals. 

 

(Another caveat:  no one should ever be penalized or discriminated against under law because their ancestors committed crimes, however heinous, as individuals must be judged only upon their own endeavors.) 

 

All in all, Cambodians have a huge burden ahead in their healing and reconciliation after such a history of horror.  I wish all of you better times.