Living with the enemy
Four years after they began fighting the well-connected concessionaire DM Group, members of the ethnic Tampuon who remain in Svay Sor village are exhausted.
While the DM Group has seen its complaints against villagers and activists routinely heard at court, those filed by the affected families remain stalled or are ignored. …
DM Group, which first moved into the district in 2005, has been steadily acquiring land in three communes occupied by indigenous Tampuon villagers.
Over the years the company has amassed at least 1,500 hectares by under-compensating and intimidating residents, rights monitors maintain, forcing scores of villagers to flee from their ancestral homeland. In Svay Sor, 40-year-old Plenh Thaem has seen her neighbors leave one by one. …
