RCAF soldiers allegedly used an armored personnel carrier to flatten and then take over 25 hectares of land claimed by villagers in Kompong Speu province on Tuesday morning, villagers and a human rights worker said Wednesday.
Forty RCAF soldiers from the ACO Tank Command Headquarters drove the machine-gun-mounted APC to flatten the 25 families’ farmlands and rice paddies in Phnom Srouch district between 7 am and noon, said Roth Thavy, provincial coordinator for rights group Adhoc.
“We couldn’t stop them because they were carrying handguns and rifles while they were flattening our land,” said Luy Samuth, a representative of the affected villagers in Taing Sya commune’s Sambour village.
Luy Samuth said the military vehicle also destroyed hundreds of meters of fencing.
Villager Poy Khem, 53, said the land he lost had belonged to his family since the Khmer Rouge were booted from power in 1979.
“Now my land is gone—how can I live if I have no land?” he asked. “They used anarchic power to rob our land.”
Minister of National Defense Tea Banh denied that RCAF soldiers had grabbed the land, saying the soldiers were part of a military unit with jurisdiction over 1,000 hectares of land that includes the area in question.
Provincial Military Police Chief Men Siborn said the land had been designated as a shooting range for the ACO soldiers, adding that the villagers had illegally cleared and occupied the land.
Roth Thavy claimed that the same military unit had previously grabbed land in 11 other villages in the district.
