City Hall offers final warning to displaced farmers
A group of about 200 farmers from Kratie province refused on Thursday to leave a pagoda in Phnom Penh—their home base for protests against their eviction at the hands of a Vietnamese rubber company—as the city’s deputy governor warned them that the municipal government would “implement the law” if they did not head back to their homes by this morning. Deputy governor Khuong Sreng arrived at the Samakki Raingsey pagoda at about 9 a.m. Thursday along with a group of officials assigned to determine where individual villagers had lived before moving to disputed land in Snuol district’s Khyoem commune. The government officials, after surveying the farmers, found that 148 had lived in Kompong Cham province before moving to the disputed land in Kratie province, 50 were from Kratie province, four from Prey Veng province, one from Kandal and one from Takeo. … The villagers have been staying at the pagoda for the past week as they have petitioned government offices and embassies to help mediate the dispute following their eviction on May 2 by Vietnamese rubber firm Binh Phuoc 2. … On Wednesday, Mr. Sreng suggested that the villagers were not simply fighting to keep their land, but were serving the interests of the opposition CNRP, whose president, Sam Rainsy, has voiced his support for the group, referring to them as “internal refugees.” Lorn Voeun, a 45-year-old villager, on Thursday refuted this claim. “We have just come to fight for our land, not for any political reasons.” …
Aun Pheap and George Wright
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/city-hall-offers-final-warning-to-displaced-kratie-farmers-59436/
