Thousands of villagers have grabbed the land of wealthier residents in Sihanoukville municipality, apparently inspired by a Monday speech by Prime Minister Hun Sen who admonished powerful Cambodians for taking land from the poor, officials said Thursday.
Villagers started seizing land earlier in the week in the Yeay Mao and Tumnup Rokorl areas of Mittapheap district near Sihanoukville port, said Sihanoukville Governor Say Hak.
“Those villagers grabbed the land, then they constructed small cottages and claimed that they owned the land. When the real landowners, who have land titles, asked for information, the villagers used knives, hoes and axes to chase the owners,” Say Hak said by telephone Thursday.
Kol Phally, Sihanoukville’s deputy police chief, also said thousands of villagers had grabbed land in recent days, but that, like Say Hak, he did not yet know the exact number.
“Those villagers defamed the speech of Samdech [Hun Sen],” said Say Hak, who branded the land-grabbing a crime.
He also lamented the reported references by encroaching villagers to the prime minister’s speech. At a forum on land issues at the Cambodia Development Council on Monday, Hun Sen vowed to crack down on land grabbing by powerful officials and to distribute land to the poor.
Say Hak said the culprits of the land seizures were not poor or landless farmers but rather wealthy people who could afford nice cars and motorbikes. They want to extort money from the true landowners and are asking for $100 to move, he alleged.
A meeting was held with Sihanoukville Municipal Court officials and police authorities on Wednesday, after which a statement was released, warning the accused land-grabbers to move peacefully, or be forcibly evicted by Saturday.
Investigators with local human rights group Adhoc are looking into the conflict, which is the most recent in Sihanoukville, an area rife with land disputes, said Latt Ky, land rights program officer for the organization.
Latt Ky said Adhoc investigators did not have enough information to determine whether illegal land grabbing had taken place.
A host of recent donor assessments have cited land issues as an increasing source of conflict in Cambodia and a barrier to reducing poverty.
At Monday’s land forum where Hun Sen promised to reclaim illegally-seized land, Nisha Agrawal, World Bank country manager, emphasized the need to distribute land to the poor.
Agrawal noted that countries with more equitable distribution of land have economic growth rates two to three times that of other countries.
A February report by Oxfam Great Britain, as part of a World Bank assessment, found that more than 1 million Cambodians are landless, and that the number is on the rise.
“The potential social and political unrest that could result from the continuing growth of this portion of the population is substantial and a cause for concern,” the report noted.
