27 hurt as police try to evict Cambodian villagers

By SOPHENG CHEANG

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -Associated Press- Police and villagers clashed Thursday in Cambodia, when authorities tried to evict residents of land awarded to a Taiwanese man by a court, leaving 27 people injured.

Brigadier Gen. Keo Pisey, chief of Kampong Speu province's police, said 100 police officers charged with the eviction were met by some 400 villagers, who attacked the officers as they arrived at the disputed land and wounded 14 of them.

"We were assigned to implement court-ordered eviction proceedings by asking those villagers to move out of the disputed land but once we arrived, we were welcomed by stones, sticks and slingshots," Keo Pisey said.

A representative of the villagers, Son Bun Chhuon, said police arrived with AK-47 rifles, shields and electric batons and beat them. He said 13 villagers were hurt, including a pregnant woman and a 12-year-old boy. He said four of them were in critical condition.

All 13 injured people are being treated at their homes because they fear that if they go to the hospital, the police will return and succeed in ousting them from their land, he added.

In recent years, land disputes have become frequent occurrences in Cambodia, usually pitting poor farmers against developers. Several people have been killed and wounded. Human rights groups have charged that several thousands of urban and rural dwellers have been illegally and inhumanely evicted from land that has been appropriated by corporations and influential individuals.

Keo Pisey, the police official, said he ordered his forces to withdraw from the disputed area -- 160 acres (65 hectares) of rice paddies and houses 25 miles (45 kilometers) west of the capital, Phnom Penh -- to avoid further violence.

Keo Pisey said the villagers had lost a lawsuit in which a court award the land to the Taiwanese man, but the villagers claimed the land belonged to them and the court just favors the rich and powerful.

Son Bun Chhuon said the land had been owned by the villagers since the collapse of communist Khmer Rouge regime in 1979, but a decade later a senior police officer and the Taiwanese man staked a claim to it and asked the villagers to move away.

"I have only a small piece of land for my home and planting rice; if I lose that land, it means that I will lose my life," he said by telephone. "I would became a beggar and my children will die if our protest is not successful."