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| A woman holds a child in front of her house in Lor Peang village, in Kampong Chhnang province. Photo by: Derek Stout |
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| A boy (right) who is almost at the age when he could be trafficked to Thailand for work, with his family in Lor Peang village. Photo by: Derek Stout |
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| Keo Vannak, 49, participates in a protest outside the Kampong Chhnang provincial court earlier this month. Photo by: Derek Stout |
Friday, 30 September 2011 12:01
May Titthara and Derek Stout
The Phnom Penh Post
I worry about them [my sons] all the time because I don’t know if they will survive or die
Kampong Chhnang province – In the once-thriving village of Lor Peang, in Kampong Tralach district, work is scarce and men of working age are even scarcer.
Villagers, locked in a bitter, high-profile land dispute for almost 10 years and unable to farm local fields, estimate 90 per cent of their sons have been trafficked to Thailand – where many work on fishing boats notorious for the ill-treatment of workers.
“I worry about them [my sons] all the time, because I don’t know if they will survive or die,” 56-year-old villager Khiev Boeun told the Post.
He faces a problem common to almost every parent in the Ta Ches commune village. Even boys as young as 13 are said to have been smuggled abroad.
“We don’t know who we can depend on any more,” Khiev Boeun said from outside the provincial court house, where the community was trying to file a complaint on September 15 in an attempt to regain the land.
“Our farmland was lost, and I haven’t received any news from my two sons since they went to work in Thailand in 2009.”
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