You Ay, secretary of state for the Ministry of Women’s and Veterans’ Affairs, informed villagers Saturday of a plan to donate 100 hectares of her land in a bid to resolve a land dispute that has lasted more than five years in Phnom Sruoch district, Kompong Speu province, she said Sunday.
At a meeting held on the disputed land, You Ay said she would give families their own plot of land, as part of a settlement reached with Sam Rainsy Party’s Kompong Speu parliamentarian Nuth Rumduol. The two began negotiations after villagers staged protests in Kompong Speu and Phnom Penh.
You Ay said she will decide who gets the land after families submit requests, including copies of their identification cards.
“The majority [of villagers] agreed to welcome my donation,” she said.
You Ay has accused the villagers of selling her land and then refusing to move and recruiting others to settle there in an attempt to take control of the land and sell it later. Villagers have said she forced them to sell at a low price and bulldozed the land of those who would not sell.
Villagers said Sunday that her offer of 25- by 50-meter plots for chosen families was not enough for the 574 families who now live on the contested land. They also complained that they would be required to move from their current location and to clear the new land.
“We already grow crops and we cannot move,” villager Youy Sovann said. “Twenty-five meters by 50 meters is too small to grow crops to make a living.”
Nuth Rumduol said the plots would be “very small, just enough to build a house.”
You Ay also announced that two men wanted by police for organizing the land-grabbing would be granted amnesty if they apologized before the Kompong Speu provincial court and signed a declaration not to engage in criminal activity.
Nuth Rumduol said villagers told him the two men were not guilty.
