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Families fight to get their land back

During this last decade, Cambodia has both enjoyed economic growth and suffered from its side effects, one of which is land disputes. More than 70 % of the Cambodians are farmers, who depend largely on land for living. However, a sudden increase of land price in late 1990s has made thousands of families landless and victimized countless individuals who fought for their land. The National Authority for Land Disputes Resolution (NALDR) has been established since early 2006 under the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior, yet its power is still in suspicion.

“Without land, we will die. So we had better risk dying by fighting against them,” says Mr. Svay Yu, a 58 years old villager in Oudong district. He is one of the community representatives advocating for land rights in the Cambodia province, Kompong Speu.

According to him, 496 families from ten villages in his province have been fighting for their land since 2004.

Signed out of fear

He told us that after the national election in 1993, the Cambodian military troops arrived and settled down in the area claiming that it belonged to the army. First they asked to get 20-30% from the crop yield, with the promise that they would provide the security. They also agreed that people could use the land for cultivation.

As they were scared the peasants signed a contract leaving their land to the army. Afterwards they were suddenly no longer allowed to get into their rice fields, and they realized they had been cheated. The military used their signature to show the public that the villagers had voluntarily given the land to the military.

From 2004 until the end of 2006, the military unit used the land for their own cultivation ignoring the villagers’ hardship. Moreover, they also tried to grab more land from the neighbor villages by using armament.

Successful protests

Noticeably, there were two riots made by the villagers in an attempt to stop the military from seizing the land. The first riot was not successful while the second, led by Mr. Svay Yu, did succeed.

Mr. Svay Yu told at the meeting that he made the little kids and children go in the first front line, women in the second while men came behind. The military unit dared not to harm the children, and women, who did throw stones and wood at them. Thus they were angrily ousted from one plot of land, which now belongs to one group of villagers.

But the rest of the land is still occupied by the army. In 2007 the military divided the land plot and put it for sale. Now, the land has been sold, while people are still claiming their rights and need help on the issue.

Trained to complain

In order to make the villagers stronger in the future, they have been taught about human rights, advocacy and legal procedure plus the team spirit that are useful tools for them. Thus the villagers are able to lodge complaints against the military on their violation to various bureaucratic authorities from commune to national level; however government officials keep pushing around the duty and have no clear cut instruction on how people can issue a process to reach a solution.

Villagers will not be able to survive without land. Presently, they are having food shortage. On one hand, they have to struggle for food while, on the other hand, they have to be well prepared for the fight to protect their land, since the military keep grabbing more land to sell to private individuals and companies. “If we cannot have the land back, we just need a proper compensation,” Svay Yu says, expressing this hope on behalf of all land-victims.

DanChurchAid has been funding this project implemented by two local organizations. They train the villagers and provide technical assistance on how they should advocate for their rights, and seek assistance from the government through legal process.

By Pagna Sam