Starvation lingers in Kampong Thom [-This is as bad as the KR regime!!!]

Yan Kim Hon (L), who fell ill after drinking unclean water, rests at Preah Kosamak Hospital in Phnom Penh yesterday. Photograph: Vireak Mai/Phnom Penh Post

Wednesday, 01 August 2012
May Titthara
The Phnom Penh Post

The villagers of Kampong Thom’s Thamasamlieng village are being asked for patience, but after nearly three years of broken agreements, health woes and food shortages that one rights group says has led to starvation deaths, that patience is wearing thin.

In December 2009, a lease granted to a Vietnamese rubber firm forced 1,750 families living on a social land concession to move from their homes in Santuk district’s Kraya commune.

Families, many with disabled members, had legally settled in the commune since 2005, an arrangement that came to a sudden stop with the granting of Tin Bean Rubber’s 75-year lease.

Last week, the displaced families sent 602 letters to the cabinet of Prime Minister Hun Sen asking for intervention, urging the government to grant the one-hectare of farmland legally entitled to each of them, instead of the current a 20 x 40 metre plot they now hold.

Flood Victims Fear Lean Year Ahead

Friday, 11 November 2011
Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer | Kampong Thom, Cambodia

“I’ll lack food and I’ll face poverty.”

Sen Simon, 36, gazed at her flooded rice field and home from high ground in Kampong Thom province’s Baray commune.

Her daily food and other necessities were taken care of by the government, but she saw little hope for her future, after severe flooding inundated the area last month. Five thousand square meters of her rice crop was spoiled by the flooding, which would make next year tough, she said.

“I’ll lack food and I’ll face poverty,” she said. “It’s difficult to think of what I’ll do in the upcoming year.”

Sen Simon is among tens of thousands of Cambodians displaced by severe flooding across the country, in Cambodia’s largest natural disaster in a decade. At least 250 people have been killed in the flooding, and another 1.5 million affected one way or another, according to the government’s disaster agency. At last count, nearly 400,000 hectares of crops had been damaged.

“My house is flooded,” said Som Vanthon, 56, another resident of Baray commune. “When the water recedes, my house will collapse, because the pillars, bamboo floor and palm-leafed walls will break.”

In the commune’s Chaktuk Lork village, residents have received aid packages containing 10 kilograms of rice, 20 packets of instant noodles, salt, fish sauce, blankets, mosquito nets and fishing nets from the government.

Under Hun Sen's regime nobody died of starvation, they only die under a pile of fabricated lies to hide the starvation and extreme poverty problems

The authority asks to correct the story of a woman who died of starvation

05 November 2007
By Ouk Sav Borey
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Heng Soy

The governor of Kampong Speu province asked RFA to correct one of its reports, claiming that a woman by the name of Phauk Saman died of heart disease and not from lack of food (starvation).

Kampong Speu governor Kang Hean’s letter which was sent to RFA, also included a letter of the victim’s husband and a report issued by the police and the commune authority claiming that Mrs. Phauk Saman died of heart disease, and not from starvation.

This request came after RFA reported on 24 September 2007, about the poverty faced by a family living in Veal village, Tuol Sala commune, Borset district, Kampong Speu province.

In that report, RFA broadcasted the claim made by Mil San, the victim’s husband who was left with 4 children in his charge, who said that his wife died of disease because of poverty, and his family has no money, no land, no house, and when they arrived in Veal village in the 90s, all the land in the village was already distributed out.

Mil San then said: “Life nowadays is very hard, we don’t have rice, we have nothing to eat. While we were starving, we looked for food, so we kept on marching, I don’t know why, when we arrived, she slept and died during her sleep, I didn’t know about it. You can say that she died because of disease also, but it was a combination of disease and starvation, we don’t have food, we have no money, no land, nothing. This land does not belong to me, I ask people to live on, I ask to stay on my younger sibling’s land, and I ask a small piece of land from several people. Earlier, I lived in the village, but when the villagers no longer have land to plant their crops, they asked me to move here. I kept on moving around with my belongings.”

At that time, Soeung Sambath, the former Veal village chief, claimed: “It was a combination of her disease and her poverty. I recognized that they were very poor and needy, where can they find any money to cure her?”

Chan Samrong, the new Veal village chief, at that time, also claimed that: “They don’t even have a small can of rice in their house, they have nothing. When it’s time to eat, sometimes they would go to the pagoda, and there, the villagers would take pity of them and they would give them a can of rice or two for them to cook and eat.”

Nuth Romduol, the Kampong Speu SRP MP, who participated in the funeral of the dead woman on 21 September, said that this family didn’t even have rice for the funeral. “I asked them, and I even went in to look around, just in case they lied, but they have absolutely nothing in their house. I asked him (the victim’s husband) where he got the food for the offerings to his departed wife? He said that the villagers helped him, all I saw was two small bowls: one with uncooked rice, and one with some cooked vegetable only.”

After the request for correction by the provincial governor, one RFA reported traveled to the Veal village one more time.

Mil San, the widower with 4 children under his charge and the victim’s husband, claimed that the letter which was sent to RFA, the police forced him to affix his thumbprint on a letter which was already written on it. He said also that the police changed his name from Mil San to San San, and his wife’s name from Kong Saman to Phauk Saman instead.

Mil San said: “The police called me to go to the station, they forced me to affix my thumbprint immediately. I don’t even know how to write, they wrote (the letter) by themselves, they wrote my name by themselves, when I got there, they immediately forced me to provide my thumbprint. At the station, there were a lot of police officers, I am only a civilian, I was very scared of them because they came in 3-4-5-6 motorbikes.”

When he was asked about the exact cause of his wife’s death, Mil San answered: “Her death, to tell you exactly, it was from starvation. We had no land to plant rice, we had no strength, we had to work for others to get rice to eat. She was sick and starved, if there is anybody who knows about it, it is the villagers, they know about it, they know that we have nothing, all of them knew.”

Soeung Sambath, the former Veal village chief, stressed to RFA reporter, that nobody taught Mil San to claim that his wife died of hunger. “You came to obtain this information, nobody taught Mil San to say that his wife died of starvation. When he answered in the past, H.E. Nuth Rumduol came to look at his family’s living condition. There were a number of village elders, but I did not remember all their faces because I was too busy greeting the guests, (Mil San) answered that they had nothing and they starved to death when the MP came. This starvation was Mil San’s answer provided to the MP.”

Mil San also talked to RFA about his current living condition. He said that after the death of his wife, two of his daughters went to work as garment factory workers. His older daughter who now lives with his younger sister, earns a living. But for his second daughter who lives with older sister, he doesn’t know if she finds a job yet or not.

Regarding his daily food, he said: “Everyday, I don’t have work, I eat tamarind and two small crabs, and that is enough for a meal. Eating crabs and tamarind give me some strength. I don’t own land, I have nothing to eat. Nowadays, everything is only temporary. Others help me, but now I owe people’s money. I still owe 120,000 riels (~$30).”

After RFA played the entire recorded story to the provincial governor, the deputy police commissioner in Borset district, and several police officers from the Tuol Sala commune office, the Tuol Sala commune council, the Veal village authority, and the Veal villagers, the authority stopped making the claims as they professed in their correction request letter to RFA, and they also stopped asking RFA to make the correction anymore.

RFA asked Kampong Speu Governor Kang Hean to discuss about the doubts surrounding RFA’s broadcast which he asked for a correction, after listening to the end of the story, he only said that those who lack lands to live on and to plant crops, should send a letter to the village, commune, district and provincial authorities to request for land, and the provincial authority will resolve this issue for them.

Kang Hean said that currently, the provincial authority confiscated several hundreds of hectares of lands for welfare distribution.