Cambodian government accused of brutally evicting villagers

Wed, 19 Nov 2008
DPA

Phnom Penh - Cambodian human rights groups accused the government and military Wednesday of brutally evicting hundreds of families and torching their homes in a rural southern village early in the week. Rights monitors said at least three people were seriously injured by beatings when soldiers, police and forestry officials forcibly evicted up to 300 hundred families from the 20-hectare site Monday.

Authorities torched about 130 homes on Monday and another 170 on Tuesday in the second such eviction in the area this year, the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights said in statement.

"The ownership of the land in question is unclear, but authorities claim that it is protected state forest. Some of the people living there say they have been there for several years, while others settled there more recently," the statement said.

The group said soldiers also blocked a road leading to the village in Kompot province Monday, preventing medical workers and rights groups from reaching the site.

"They used the armed forces to evict people. It was violent and brutal," Try Chhoun, provincial coordinator for the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association, told The Cambodia Daily.

Try Chhoun said soldiers and police told villagers they had stolen land belonging to Prime Minister Hun Sen and warned that the area would soon be occupied by disabled soldiers.

Bokor National Park Director Chey Ulterith, who administers national parks in the area, accused the villagers of trying to occupy and then sell state-owned land, and then repeat the process at another village, the newspaper reported.

Land ownership and "land-grabbing" has been a source of intense conflict over the past few years in Cambodia's provinces, where property values have skyrocketed.

Human rights groups have accused the government of leaving thousands of villagers homeless by seizing parcels of rich agricultural land to hand over to politically connected companies.

Villagers say troops torched 300 homes [-RCAF Brigade 31 should be sent to defend Cambodian border ... not torch down Cambodian homes]

Wednesday, 19 November 2008
Written by Cheang Sokha and Sebastian Strangio The Phnom Penh Post

Villagers living on disputed land near Bokor National Park violently evicted for the second time in six months, say human rights groups

HUNDREDS of families are homeless after their violent eviction from their village on the outskirts of Bokor National Park in Kampot province, according to local residents and rights groups.

Villagers from Anlong Krom, in Kampot's Taken commune, say hundreds of troops from RCAF's Brigade 31 arrived without warning Monday and Tuesday and set fire to 300 wooden homes belonging to the residents - the second eviction from the area this year.

In June 300 armed soldiers from Brigade 31 demolished the homes of 200 families, who fled to the nearby hamlet of Kbal Damrey.

Anlong Krom resident Hem Da said villagers gathered to protest Monday morning but were threatened with arrest by the soldiers.

"When villagers protested, [the soldiers] hurt them and threatened to arrest and imprison them," he said. Rights groups say six local villagers were injured - three seriously - as they protested the destruction of their property.

Hem Da added that no replacement housing has been provided to the affected residents. "They have not found a relocation site for us," he said. "We have nowhere to live."

The eviction came a day before four residents from a nearby village are scheduled to stand trial on charges of robbery and damaging private property in an earlier confrontation with Brigade 31 soldiers.

Nhek Chantha, 52, Vong Ma, 46, Moeu Sopheak, 19, and Noeu Kak-Kada, 18, were arrested in June for protesting the subdivision of land in Kbal Damrey village, needed to house the villagers evicted from Anlong Krom.