Kandal villagers seek resolution to dispute
More than 200 villagers from Kandal’s Kien Svay district gathered in protest yesterday to urge the National Authority for Land Dispute Resolution to resolve their long-standing dispute with a CPP official. The protesters assembled in the Samrong Thom commune brandishing photos of the prime minister and his wife, encouraging authorities to find a resolution to the dispute, in which they claim to have lost more than 1,000 hectares of farmland. Village representative Hem Sopheap said more than 850 families lost their land in 2005, when Lok Hour, a Phnom Penh Municipal Council member and former deputy cabinet director for senate president Chea Sim, took possession of the land, forbidding villagers to continue farming. Later in 2005, Prime Minister Hun Sen had sent a letter to the NALDR instructing it to find a resolution for the villagers, but nothing had been done, Hem Sopheap said. “Today, we gather to find ways to continue farming the land we have not been allowed to farm. For about seven years, military officials have been hired to be stationed on the land to threaten us,” she said. …
