No End in Sight for 12-year-long Land Dispute

Khmer Times/Aisha Down

Sunday, 31 January 2016

Villagers draw water from the well in Pa’oh village. 
KT/ Aisha Down

Four indigenous Tampoun villagers from Pa’oh village were questioned in Ratanakkiri provincial court again on Thursday, as criminal investigations continue regarding 11 suspects in a land dispute that has now lasted over a decade. The charges this time are encroachment. 

Kwai Lal, Kwah Thieuv, Kwah Chieuv, Rocham Phen, and seven others from Pa’oh face up to two years in prison if they are convicted of trespassing on land in Bar Kaev district’s Keh Chong that they maintain is theirs. After nine years of being called to court repeatedly, the men say they are exhausted, and still afraid of sudden arrest each time they make the fifty-kilometer journey to Ban Lung. But, with fields of rubber surrounding all but one side of their village, they say they have no choice but to protect what they have left.

The trouble started in 2004, says Thieng Vy, a schoolteacher in Pa’oh and one of the accused. Their village had been on the land since 1979, subsisting on traditional rotating agriculture, moving their fields every two to three years according to Tampoun custom. 

In 2004, he says, outsiders from three nearby Khmer villages, Lakhon, Lahon, and Sakrieng, began to encroach on some 184 hectares of Pa’oh’s land.

“They were cutting wood for someone quite wealthy,” says Mr. Vy. “Before, the land had a lot of forest on it, as well as our fields.”

Pa’oh’s villagers tried to fight back, seizing and confiscating chainsaws and giving them to the Forestry Administration. Khmer villagers from nearby kept on cutting. “They went at our trees with knives and saws,” says Mr. Vy.

In 2007, when most of the wood in the area had been cut, villagers from Lakhon, Lahon, and Sakrieng then sold the land to a private rubber company owned by a Khmer man from Phnom Penh, Ly Sokhim. Mr. Vy says the land went for $600 a hectare. Jang Phong, the company’s representative, says the 2007 price was $390 a hectare. 

After the sale, Mr. Sokhim cleared and planted rubber on about 114 hectares of the land around Pa’oh. Seven families in Pa’oh demonstrated at the provincial court to try to prevent him, but, says Mr. Vy, no one helped or solved the issue.

“He cleared it all, cut down cashews and burned rice we had there, and then planted rubber,” says Rocham Phen, another man facing charges.

However, when Mr. Sokhim tried to clear the 70 remaining hectares, a swath of land 10 meters from the boundary of the village claimed by the villagers of Lahon, a few people from Pa’oh steadily prevented him.

“We’d planted cashews there, cashews that were 15 to 16 years old already,” says Mr. Vy.

In the nine years since 2007, overseers of Mr. Sokhim’s company have shown up at the site nearly 20 times, says Mr. Phen.

“When they come, they have a nice car—ten of them in it,” says Mr. Vy. “They bring building materials to the site. When they come? We gather together, and we ask them to leave. We do not use violence, and we do not threaten them. We just say, ‘you can’t put those materials here.’”

Ordinarily, in a case like this, says Chey Mealea, Vice President of the Ratanakkiri court, the court works to help find a lawyer for the affected parties, and then to send the case to the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Land Cantonment, which are responsible for resolving land titling issues.

However, says Chhay Thi, Adhoc’s provincial coordinator, while Adhoc and the court initially found a lawyer and attempted to pass the case onward, representatives of Mr. Sokhim have continuously brought criminal charges in order to keep the case in the court.

“Jang Phong, the company representative, has been finding stories all along,” says Mr. Thi. “Violence, threats, and encroachment.”

In 2010, one villager was jailed for six months after he refused to give over five hectares of the affected land or accept money from the company. When released, he fled Ratanakkiri. “He’s too afraid to return,” says Mr. Thi.Jang Phong, Mr. Sokhim’s representative, has no comment on the number of criminal charges against the villagers. “The land is ours,” he says. “We have all the correct documents from the village of Lahon. The villagers from Pa’oh are encroaching.”

The six men can no longer count the number of times they have been to court. The journey is expensive and far, and the possibility of resolution is nowhere in sight. On Thursday, they arrived at 9 in the morning with no money left over for rice. An investigating judge on the case bought them lunch. 

“We’re so afraid every time we come. We don’t know, each time, what will happen—will we be arrested? It’s hard to keep coming. It’s hard on my work, and I don’t have the money for the trip,” says Thieng Blain, one of the accused. “I’m too old to do anything but plant potatoes now. I borrow a moto to go back and forth, and I borrow money for my gas.”

The court cannot say when the case might be tried. It’s been passed from judge to judge for years, and the new judge on the case has only worked on it for two months. “You can’t solve a land issue quickly,” says Mr. Mealea.

Villagers say that the new judge has encouraged them to pass the case back to the elders of Lahon village and Pa’oh village, to re-discuss the old boundary line. Mr. Thi is doubtful that this will work.

There might be another way out. A month ago, in front of the court, they say that they were offered $20,000 for the remaining land by someone connected with the company. Mr. Phong will not confirm the offer, though other sources have, saying that it was Adhoc’s idea to settle.

Pa’oh is a village of 118 families now. It is surrounded by even rows of rubber trees that stretch for kilometers—some are Mr. Sokhim’s, some belong to other companies. On a small stretch across the road from the village houses, there is a clear field with a patch of cashew trees at the end of it. This is the land the villagers have been protecting.

They can’t imagine accepting $10,000 per meter squared, he says, let alone what amounts to a little less than $300—a fraction of the yield of a year’s cashew crop—per hectare.

“We need land to live on,” says Kwah Lal, one of the suspects, “and land to support our children and grandchildren. We can’t take their money.”

The suspects, Kwah Thieuv, Rocham Prieung, Rocham Phen, and Thieng Vy, holding their court summons in front of the Ratanakkiri provincial court. KT/ Aisha Down