Ethnic Bunong Families Seek Solution to Communal Land Dispute
Three ethnic minority communities in Mondolkiri province’s Pech Chreada district are drafting a petition to send to provincial authorities in an attempt to resolve a land dispute in which part of their communal land has been granted to other communities and private landowners. In June, officials from the three ethnic communities of Pulu, Lames and Puochar in Bosra commune—better known as villages 5, 6 and 7—submitted documents with the Ministry of Land Management’s cadastral department in order to apply for a 10,000-hectare communal land title designed to protect their ancestral lands and register 350 Bunong families as the rightful owners. But the area overlaps with previously granted concessions, which has put the Bunong families into dispute with private concessionaires, said Em Sopheak, provincial coordinator for the Community Legal Education Center. “Some 1,000 hectares of the requested [communal] land is overlapping with a government social land concession, while a few thousand more hectares are under private-title holders,” he said. “This has complicated the [communal] land situation in Bosra since it is in dispute with these concession companies and private-title holders.” The Bunong communities in Bosra have been struggling for years to protect their ancestral land from two rubber companies and it was hoped that the mapping process, which was paid for by the local Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, would finally secure the land to help preserve the minority’s traditions and identity. …
Kuch Naren
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/ethnic-bunong-families-seek-solution-to-communal-land-dispute-45669/
