More than 40 families have issued a complaint to Prime Minister Hun Sen claiming that they were beaten or threatened by security guards at a Kompong Thom province rubber plantation.
Forty-two families sent a complaint to Hun Sen Tuesday asking him to allow them to cultivate farm land around the Tum Ring rubber plantation in Sandan district. The complaint claims security guards from Tum Ring continually harass them to prevent them from farming. Company officials could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
In one case, three unnamed, armed security guards began harassing Thy Sok Heng, who thumb-printed the complaint along with 42 other family representatives. “I was slapped by one of them,” the farmer said.
They “banned us from farming and planting rice,” he said. “If we still do it, they will use jungle law,” he said, a reference to the days of the Khmer Rouge when anyone who disobeyed was simply killed. “I have four hectares of land here, but I am not allowed to farm on it,” he said. “I don’t know what I will have to do to feed my family.”
Tok An, another representative of the families, said they were asking the prime minister to intervene because Hun Sen had promised her three hectares of land on the plantation “for the next generation” at the ground-breaking ceremony for the Tum Ring plantation on Aug 29, 2001.
“The rubber plantation owner does not follow what Hun Sen said for the people,” she said. “Instead security guards have threatened and harassed us all the time when we are farming and harvesting rice.”
Hem Savong, deputy governor of Kompong Thom, said Tuesday he had only just heard about the issue. He said the farmers should have made a complaint with the provincial authorities before taking their grievances to Phnom Penh, but promised an investigation.
“I will ask my people to work on it,” he said.
