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| (Photo The Phnom Penh Post) |
Monday, 02 April 2012
Tep Nimol
The Phnom Penh Post
After a successful blockade on Saturday, villagers in Kratie province’s Snuol district have pledged
to shut down traffic on National Road 76A again if local authorities do
not honour their promise to help settle a local land dispute.
About 500 villagers from Pithnou commune barricaded the public road
for nearly 10 hours at the weekend in the hope of forcing an
intervention in the battle for their land.
Iv Saphum, Snuol district governor, confirmed that the provincial and
district authorities had caved in to the protesters’ demands in order
to get traffic flowing again.
The protesters are locked in a dispute with four private firms they accuse of clearing their land since April 2011.
They say that the Memot rubber company, Sovan Rithy, Samnang Angkor and Dai Nam began evicting villagers as long ago as 2002.
A source from the district authority said that the firms implicated
by the villagers in the land grab were officially awarded an economic
land concession of 5,000 to 8,000 hectares by the government in 2008 for
rubber plantations.
Heng Oun, a representative for the Pithnou commune, explained that
the villagers had reopened the road on Saturday in response to
assurances from the authority that the disagreement will be solved on
Tuesday.
However, they are taking nothing for granted.
“The villagers have made a tent so that they can stay on the side of
the road wait until April 3. If there is no solution, we will form a
bigger protest to block the road again,” he said.
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