More than 200 Khmers Krom Beaten By Vietnamese Police

4th April 2008
By Ouk Savbury
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Khmerization

More than 200 Khmers Krom from many villages, who have protested in front of a town hall of Chau Laing commune, Svay Tong district in the Vietnamese province of Moat Chrouk (An Giang) on 7th April, were beaten by the Vietnamese authority.
Representatives from Chi Pheng, Ta An and An Loi villages of Chau Laing commune have said through telephone that the Khmers Krom have built a bridge of 10 metres in length across a creek for crossing to go to work in their farms which located on the other side of the creek.
They’ve said that they’ve just finished transplanting about 30 hectares of their rice farms when, on the 6th of April, the Vietnamese authority came to destroy their bridge to prevent the them from crossing to work on their farms. So, they decided to hold a protest to demand to the Chau Laing commune authority to resolve the issue for them. Instead of resolving the issue for them, the Vietnamese authority have used about 300 policemen to throw rocks at the Khmer Krom protesters.
One of the protesters said: “ There were 300 of them who were throwing rocks at about 200 of us and we threw rocks back at them. Some of us were hit and some of them were hit. We want our land back to farm in order to feed our families. Now, we are very poor and have to work for others to earn a living. I am appealing to the United Nations to please help the Khmers Krom because we have suffered enormously under the (Vietnamese) oppression.”
A woman from Ta An village claimed that there were some people who have suffered minor injuries from the clashes between the Khmers Krom and the Vietnamese authority. And about 3pm the protesters have dispersed without obtaining any resolution from the Vietnamese authority.

She said: “the Vietnamese (authority) did not resolve the issue for us, they just telephoned to the commune authority to come down to threaten us.”
Radio Free Asia was unable to obtain any comments from the spokesman of the Vietnamese embassy in Cambodia at the time of this program going to air on Monday the 7th of April. //