Cambodians forced from their land by developers

Picture: Past evictions turned ugly- their houses were burned, they were beaten and arrested.

The Cambodian government is investigating hundreds of cases of developers forcing people from their land to make way for industry.Human rights groups say the number of people being forcibly evicted from their houses by big businesses is rising.Chum Bunrong, spokesman for the Cambodian Government's National Committee for Land Disputes, says his organisation is investigating 350 claims relating to illegal forced eviction.He told Connect Asia that companies have been known to falsify documents inorder to push people from their land adding to the perception that the government favours industry above the people."Sometimes they don't have any licence but there are some brokers who want to exploit developments in the area and they cheat people, sometimes they take land from people by faking documents etc," he said."It is a subject for our investigations."