Authorities in Mondulkiri province started tearing down the last of 195 houses claimed by villagers in Rayum commune at about 7 a.m. this morning. Three hours later, not one was standing.Many villagers say they have no idea where they are going to live, and one man vowed to set up a tent for lack of any better options.
Authorities, who have surrounded the village for a week, say the villagers’ homes sit on land belonging to a Vietnamese rubber company. They had set a deadline for villagers to clear out by this morning or be forcibly cleared out. Joint forces including military police and soldiers had already burned more than 50 homes on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Authorities say that villagers moved onto the land only after it was granted to three similarly named Vietnamese rubber companies. However, official documents show that the 28,000 hectares were given to one company called Pacific Pearl Joint-Stock Company in 2011, a violation of legal limits on the size of economic land concessions.
The joint forces used industrial logging saws to polish off the rest of the homes. The Vietnamese company representative, who identified himself only as Mr. Thy, said that the company has a concession from the government, and villagers were essentially squatters.
“Those villagers have no right to live on our land, and most of them are victims because they were cheated by a broker who sells company land to them at $1,000 per family.”
Pa Pheakey, 45, said no one spoke to her before tearing down her house. Without a residence, she has to suspend plans for the future indefinitely.
“I hope that I can find land for my daughter, who just married, but now everything is not coming true.”
Nhoung Sameoun, 29, said villagers who came here were in the process of applying for a social land concession with the district authority.
“I don’t know why we can not live on our land, and why a Vietnamese company has the right to control our land.”
Now that his house has been torn down, “I would like to ask the government to provide other land for us.”
The reason that villagers did not resist the operation, he said, was a fear of being arrested.
“Today, I will tie up a blue tent and live in it temporarily, because I don’t know where I can go.”
Sok Sera, head of the joint committee and deputy chief of administration at Mondulkiri hall, said that he did not provide any compensation for those villagers because they are new migrants and they are living on company land.
He did say that the administration would be willing to provide some money for travel and relocation.
He claims that the 195 families are originally from Kratie, Prey Veng, Kampong Thom and Kampong Cham provinces.
“If they have no land, they should make a request to their own local authority for a social land concession…because the provincial authority has no right to give them land.”
But Yi Soksan, an investigator for human rights group Adhoc, said that local authorities should have come notified the people about the land instead of waiting for them to build houses that would be torn down.
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