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| Chheang Vuthy, from Kampong Thom province, speaks at a press conference in Phnom Penh yesterday organised by NGO Forum in an effort to find a resolution to the Prey Lang dispute. (Photo by: Pha Lina) |
Friday, 04 March 2011
May Titthara
The Phnom Penh Post
Representations for villagers embroiled in a land dispute with Vietnamese-owned CRCK Rubber Development Company in Kampong Thom province said officials have used intimidation to halt protests over the company’s development of an area in Prey Lang forest.
The claims were made at a press conference held by the NGO Forum, an umbrella group of organisations operating in Cambodia, during which representatives said local police have compiled a list of villagers they say are inciting others to protest.
Last month hundreds of residents from four provinces surrounding the 200,000 hectare forest defied police and local officials to protest the clearing of sections of the forest by CRCK.
Sandan district Governor Sim Vanna said at the time that CRCK had been granted a 6,044 hectare land concession by the government last year to plant rubber.
Kampong Thom deputy Governor Uth Sam An said on Monday that the land being developed by KRCK was not communal land, as alleged by local villagers, but part of a concession made to a previous company, and therefore villagers had no right to the land.
During yesterday’s workshop, villager representatives claimed that police from three communes in Sandan district had visited five villagers to record their names for a complaint to be filed by CRCK in provincial court, claiming they were illegally inciting residents to protest.
“[Police] have tried to find many ways to threaten us, but we were protesting to save Prey Lang forest,” said Chheang Vuthy, a villager representative, at the workshop.
Am Sam Ath, a senior investigator for local rights group Licadho, said the villagers were fully within their rights to conduct peaceful protests and urged that CRCK show evidence that they have a right to the land they are clearing.
“As in previous cases when villagers protest, the authorities threaten villagers by filing complaints to the court. This is not a good way to reach a solution,” he said.
Sandan district Governor Sim Vanna said yesterday that the villagers had largely stopped their protest and denied that police were gathering names for a legal complaint.
“I don’t know about the police going to the village to take down names,” he said.
Vong Phan, a village representative, said she would like the government to recognize Prey Lang land as community land because it is a “rice pot” for people in four provinces, referring to residents’ reliance on the forest for their livelihoods.
She said about 20,000 families in Preah Vihear, Kratie, Steung Treng and Kampong Thom provinces rely on the forest.
10 comments:
i think it is good to help and encourage development in cambodia; however, in the rural places of cambodia, they should look into sustainable development like living with the environment and preserving it at the same time while introducing new, modern way of life as well.
Youn take it and said development.you think afte 99 years
They all go back to youn . no way
it's become youn village and it will be 2 or 3 generation they are living there. the land belong to them and they claim as khmer also and how many place like that.what will be .modern way of take control Cambodia
The government has leader, so do the people. without leader there can't be demonstration.
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if what is said is true and believed by the people, it is not an incitement.
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government must stop using the wrong term, incitement, to persecute innocent Khmer. if it is true, it is the right and freedom of speech of the people.
the Yourn and the chinese are taking their shares in cambododia. The Yourn take land in the country side while the chinese concentrate within the city limit. The Hun Sen Governors in every states don't seem to know what police are doing within their states. They are idiots and inconpetent people.
what we have are idiot governors working for idiots leaders who are illiterate people.
Opposition law-makers should quiz the government more on these 99 years concessions over any specific terms and clauses agreed, and publicise or make them known to the public, civil bodies etc.
There is evidence of people living along the Sesan river being affected by environmental/chemical pollution and water level receding (exposing riverbed in places) due to a Vietnamese hydraulic dam having been built upstream in Vietnam.
The official reason that Vietnam gives for turning to Laos and Cambodia for prime forest areas and cultivable land space is that Vietnam is faced with land resource constraints, in part, owing to ecological damage done to her forest during the last war.
If so, it appears, Vietnam is quite oblivious to the same disastrous impact that her direct actions and activities are having on the lives of rural Khmers (and Laotians) whose very existence and survival hinge on these forests.
In a video clip posted here recently about villagers' protest against the destruction of their land and forest in the name of development, a government official was heard reassuring the protesters of the care and correctness of its direction and decision on these large scale concessions. In other words, he was instructing the villagers that despite their worries, everything is well and will be fine; the authorities are in the process of transforming their lives for the better by introducing an alien form of livelihood that they neither desire nor have much faith in, such as becoming coolies or wage labourers on their own turf! For most of these folk, it's a hark back to the KR years when they had been stripped of any sense of economic independence by having been made to slave for Angka.
The state has no legitimate right to deprive these people of their traditional access to forests where they and their ancestors would have roamed and foraged for foods and timber needed for subsistence purposes, especially, at a time not burdened by armed conflict in the immediate region.
What can be concluded from this brief sketch, and without any intention to exaggerate or sensationalise, is that:
a) by means of these concessions in hundreds of thousands of hectares of land, the ghosts of the 'Vietcong' of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s who had invited themselves over and occupied and controlled these interiors of the country have now been well and truly resurrected once more without even the military pretext with which to justify their intervention and reemergence. Metamorphosing is a quintessence of the Vietnamese!;
b) Stop telling people that chopping down their forests and trees and forcing them to relocate against their will, or forbidding them to access their ancestral territories, are all in their own interest!
Well, at least stop telling them that the government knows what is good for them, when their entire country is well on the way to becoming another vast desert like Madagascar!
CPP > hammock > zzz = deforest
12:23 AM
agree with you there, this is how they take the Cambodian land . 99 years Hun Sen may be die two times already, so who know after that. this is a quit way to make money for the CPP and Hun Sen the traitor of the Khmer people. Everything in Cambodia is for sale as long as the price is right then you buy it for 99 years. just to name a few : Beng Kok, Phnom Bokor, Kos Pich, Kos Pos, Angkor Wat, Tonle Sap, Kos Kong and many more so call land concession. This is how they run the country.
Beside this we don't know how many billion dollars they borrow from other countries such as China, Korea and others.
Hun Sen, his family and his gangs are enjoy themselves while the Cambodian people are suffered and this suffering may continue for generation if we the Cambodian don't do anything about it.
If we are the Cambodian the poor, the middle class don't do anything Cambodia will end up like Khmer Krom or could be wost.
Million of Youns in srok Khmer and their culture spreading like mushroom all over Cambodia and soon we the Cambodian will lose our Identity and that would be the end of our Cambodian.
So think about it and do something about it to help and keep our Cambodia for the future.
This is not Khmer rubber plant fields
,it is a Vietnam plant to swallow land.How Vietnam took Champa land,
Khmer krom in Chey Chetha II era,
Vietnam always said,"may I take few
provinces to train Vietnam soldiers,
my dear King,his Vietnamese queen";
she was so sweet,sweeter than honey
bee honey.
Khmer lost Khmer Krom land because
of her sweet pussy.
Look! Vietnam govt sent 6,000,000 immigrants and Vietnam soldiers to
stay in seven seven rubber plant fields.These 20,000 Viet soldiers make babies every single night;in
ten years how much they can make?
Cambodia is no longer a Khmer state
;it is a Vietnam province.Hun Sen is just a governor of Hanoi.
When will Khmer people wake up,
stand up,and rise up against Hun Sen dictatorship and Vietnam colony
.
Dare to die for Khmer lovely land.
What Khmer people need are FREEDOM,LIBERTY,AND BE AS A KHMER
STATE.
cambodia should develop the town of kompong sralau into a big city as it is located in a very beautiful area of northern preah vihear province adjacent to the mekong river, etc! in fact they should build a railway and concrete roads in this part of cambodia to connect to all northern cambodia and the rest of cambodia from there, really! look on the cambodian map, this area is very beautiful and scenic and so on!
isolation have no more place in cambodia. we have to develop cambodia into a modern nation, you know! god bless cambodia.
Cambodia lets foreign countries wiped Khmer forest out,few hundred
years later this golden land will
become barren land.People will live
underground like rats.How greedy
they are the evil human beings!
The rapacious and dull are destroying themselves.They build
things to heaven,but is true;they
take down themselves to hell.
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