Serious Rights Violation in a Land Dispute in Kampong Cham

Serious rights violation occurred on August 8, 2010, in a conflict land area in Steng Trang district, Kampong Cham province, where around 100 villagers were intimidated to leave the farmland of 41 hectares. A group of around 20 police and military police officers utilized guns and electric batons to brutally compel them out of their rice field. In the event, three people were injured.

Regarding to the issue, Chum Koeun, the villager representative reported the event that when some villagers were trying to farm on the rice field, the group of armed forces came and banned them. The number of villagers was increasing up to about 200. Suddenly those 20 policemen and military police officers were about to seize a pair of tillers. Seeing that the people were gathering together to stop them from premeditatedly confiscating; in contrast, the armed forces started firing into the air twice to frighten the villagers. Some of them used elect batons to hit the people. This resulted in 3 people minor injured. Moreover, he added, Long Sreng International Rubber Company had grabbed villagers’ farmland by using armed forces and soldiers to threaten them and block the landowners from cultivating their rice products.

However, an RCAF warrant officer Klouk Phally, who was assigned to guard the plantation in Prek Kak commune, denied the police had assaulted and fired their guns to intimidate villagers during the confrontation. Klouk Phally confessed that the company had ordered him and other soldiers to inhibit such illegal activities; but his group just shot into the air twice to stop the people from committing violence, but there was no violence against the villagers.

Reported by Chear Thearith, deputy police chief in Steng Trang district, the police and military police had been employed by Long Srong Company, which was granted economic land concession there in order to grow rubber trees. He added that when he arrived at the scene, everything had finished.