Cambodia's turf war

After 28 years in the capital, eating like “a king” and enjoying the perks one receives as the son of high-ranking CPP officials, Sophal’s* move to the countryside was as jarring as it was eye-opening.

Until the day in June when he traded his designer threads for a pair of military fatigues and joined the ranks of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s elite student land-titling volunteers, the furore over land grabbing that had engulfed the rest of his country had gone largely unnoticed by the young man.

As one of roughly 2,000 student volunteers deployed by the premier as part of an ambitious titling scheme aimed at addressing Cambodia’s land-grabbing epidemic, Sophal slowly began gaining an appreciation of the extreme hardships rural villagers are exposed to through land grabbing.

But in Kampong Speu’s Thpong district, where Sophal works, the biggest problem for the volunteers isn’t their fledgling surveying skills or dealing with the finer points of village diplomacy, but rather the politics behind the most serious dispute in the area, one that leads all the way to the Cambodian Senate.

The so-called king of Koh Kong, ruling-party senator Ly Yong Phat, was granted a 9,000-hectare concession in Thpong’s Omlaing commune in 2010 that has led to recurring battles with about 2,000 affected families. His wife holds an adjacent 10,000-hectare concession.

Omlaing fell to the opposition Sam Rainsy Party in this year’s commune elections, with a 28-year-old – whose home was destroyed to make way for Yong Phat’s sugar plantation – winning the position of commune chief.

Land disputes have been entrenched in the Cambodian landscape for a generation, but it was in 2012 – a year marked by a startling upswing in the severity of violence used by companies and authorities – when something like a tipping point was finally reached.

With elections looming and increasingly sophisticated public-awareness campaigns launched by those being evicted from their land, the government finally began to move to enact broad-reaching policies that might address the potential powder keg.

From the very beginning of the year, when soldiers moonlighting as security guards for the firm TTY shot villagers protesting the appropriation of their land, the barbaric use of violence against people seeking the simple right to own land has reared its ugly head again and again.

Perhaps the most appalling example was the shooting of 14-year-old Heng Chanta by government forces – when they descended on her small village in Kratie province in May.

The government said the huge force, armed with machine guns and a helicopter, was cracking down on a secessionist movement, but villagers, land monitors, rights groups and foreign governments have disputed that account. Many have called the claim a thinly veiled cover to evict unarmed villagers embroiled in a long-standing land dispute with a rubber concessionaire.

Despite the huge, ongoing outcry over the incident, the government has refused to investigate Heng Chanta’s death or budge on its position. Instead, the so-called secession was used as justification to seek the subsequent arrests of at least half a dozen people.

Mam Sonando, owner of the independent radio station Beehive, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in stoking the “separatist movement”. Senior Adhoc investigator Chan Soveth faces questioning today on charges of aiding one of the perpetrators of the secession.

The charges against both men have been widely derided as politically motivated.

In the capital, long-running land disputes at Borei Keila and Boeung Kak lake took violent — and, at times, puzzling — twists and turns as authorities opted for heavy-handed approaches to those who defied orders.

Hundreds of Borei Keila residents who refused a revised compensation package that would have condemned them to tents on the outskirts of the city – rather than long-promised new apartments – were forcibly evicted from their homes on January 3.

Development firm Phan Imex, backed by municipal forces, demolished the homes of about 300 families, sparking violent clashes between evictees and police that ended in arrests – and, for some villagers, weeks in Prey Sar prison.

As evictees took up residence under staircases at Borei Keila, more than 20 women and children who protested the mass eviction were detained in the city eight days later and locked up in the Prey Speu social affairs centre, where they spent a week before climbing the walls and fleeing to freedom in tuk-tuks.