Villagers spurn firm’s ‘gifts’
A plantation company with its sights set on a community forest long used by local ethnic minority Jarai in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district arranged a meeting with more than 200 villagers this week to try to persuade them to sign over the woodland. Representatives of the Heng Yieb Co, flanked by local authorities, hoped Monday’s meeting would go off without a hitch, bringing along boxes of foodstuffs and jars of wine they hoped would lower tensions and ease the talks to follow. … “The community strongly disagreed with the company’s plan to clear their land and offer them ‘gifts’, so they all went home,” he said. The company, however, denied that the food and wine were gifts or that they were asking permission to clear the land. …
Phak Seangly
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/villagers-spurn-firms-gifts
