Pailin land dispute brought to capital
About 100 villagers from Pailin province travelled to Phnom Penh yesterday to ask Prime Minister Hun Sen to intervene in their 70-hectare land dispute with the provincial governor, a village representative said. Dem Deam, 40, a resident of Pailin’s Stung Trang commune in Sala Krao district, said that the villagers came to Phnom Penh to pass along a petition to Hun Sen’s cabinet, asking it to send volunteers to issue them titles for the more than 2,100 hectares of land they have farmed for more than a decade, including 70 hectares which villagers say were recently cleared and converted into cassava fields by Governor Y Chhean. … On June 14, Hun Sen issued a sub-decree giving authorities across the country six months to measure parcels of land for people embroiled in land disputes in protected forests and on lands given as economic concessions to companies. … Prak Sophima, the Pailin provincial co-ordinator for the rights group Adhoc, said yesterday that the land in question affected five villages in Stung Trang commune, and confirmed that some parcels had been cleared for plantations. …
