Cambodian farmers demand stop to land grabs, evictions

By Robert Carmichael


Phnom Penh - 'The land is our rice pot,' a rural villager told a packed hall in the Cambodian capital.

The speaker, Leng Simy, arrived in Phnom Penh this week from a village in western Cambodia, one of 300 villagers representing 15,000 people from across the kingdom who came in a coordinated move to get the government and international donors to listen to their concerns about evictions and land grabs.

The numbers are significant. Organizers said 700,000 hectares of mainly communal land are at risk for this group of petitioners alone. Amnesty International last year estimated that 150,000 people across Cambodia were at risk of being forcibly evicted in land grabs generally perpetrated by the politically powerful, the military and companies awarded land concessions

One purpose of the trip to Phnom Penh was to deliver thumb-printed petitions protesting the land grabs to government ministries, the prime minister, parliament and the national land dispute authority. Another purpose was to be heard, which for people in Cambodia's rural areas is difficult.

Leng Simy told the meeting and media Wednesday that her village had lost its communal land to a company growing cassava and palm oil.

Her experience was a common one, and one shared by Chann Na from Kampot province in southern Cambodia. Clutching the microphone, she told the audience how a company took land that villagers used for grazing cattle. She said she hopes the national government would resolve the problem, but she said she also knows the petition might make no difference.

'If there is no solution, then the representatives from all the provinces and cities will come again to Phnom Penh until at last we have a solution,' Chann Na told the audience. 'And we will not come in ones and twos - we will all come together. I hope that will generate a solution.'

Her comments generated an enthusiastic round of applause from a worried and frustrated audience of villagers. The reason for their concern is easy to understand: More than 80 per cent of Cambodia's 15 million people live in rural areas. To lose your land is to lose your livelihood, and there is no social safety net.

The story of Cambodia's land is not straightforward. Under the catastrophic 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge regime, private property was abolished and land records destroyed. To this day, more than 90 per cent of the nation's land parcels do not yet have legal title, which makes it easy for the unscrupulous to take them.

And as stability returned in recent years after decades of strife, land prices rocketed. The result is that evictions and land grabs have also soared.

One local human rights group recorded 335 land dispute cases last year alone. And remedies are hard to come by: The courts typically favour those with power, which limits the options for ordinary people, and the military and police are regularly used to put down any dissent.

Loun Sovath, a monk from the western province of Siem Reap, told how villagers in his area had 100 hectares stolen by 'rich and powerful people' earlier this year. During a protest at the disputed site, several villagers were shot and wounded by authorities. Others were arrested 'just as the Khmer Rouge did,' he said, and 11 are now in jail.

'Previously, people would file a complaint with the local and provincial authorities, but they didn't get resolved until they came to Phnom Penh,' Loun Sovath told the hall. '[The government's] solution now is that they arrest more people. I am asking that the government please consider the land issue. This is not a game.'

It is not only the country's majority Khmers who are losing land to a scourge that runs the length and breadth of the kingdom. Soal Nak is from the Jarai tribe, an ethnic minority in the north-eastern province of Ratanakkiri, where land, forests and religion are wrapped together in tribal culture and livelihoods.

'Our people remain worried about losing our land and our forests and our traditional way of life,' he said. 'If we lose our forests or our land, then our traditional ways go, too, and more than that, we will lose our togetherness as a tribal community.'

It was too early to say whether the petitioners' concerns would be addressed, but early signs were not encouraging. The government was caught off-guard by the collaborative effort and was trying to find out whether civil society groups were involved - a classic case of shooting the messenger, said a long-term member of one of these groups.

At least one villager has decided not to return home. Ngou Leang is a representative from a village in the western province of Banteay Meanchey whose commune chief colluded to grab land used by 280 families.

She spoke by phone Wednesday to fellow villagers who had stayed behind. They told her the authorities had come to the village and threatened to arrest everyone for protesting about land issues.

'So for now,' she said, 'I cannot go back home.'