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Indigenous Bunong residents in Mondulkiri province’s Pu Teurt village said Thursday that authorities have given them seven days to dismantle a community office and leave land they consider ancestral, which has been granted to private companies.
Provincial authorities met earlier this week with community representatives, company representatives and district officials to try to resolve the dispute, according to an Information Ministry statement. The statement said residents had “encroached” on land within a development zone allocated to Eysan Eco Zone Co. and CM Construction Co.
Ches Yaven, 27, a Bunong woman from Pu Teurt, said residents never consented to the land being granted to the companies. At the meeting, she said, officials told residents they were lucky to avoid legal penalties and urged them to give up the land.
“They said we were illegally farming on state land and that if we refused to leave, we could face even greater difficulties,” Yaven said. “The authorities are lying to us. In reality, this land really is our farmland, burial grounds and sacred forest belonging to Indigenous people.”
Pechreada district Governor Vanna Mab said the land belongs to the state, which has the authority to allocate it to companies for development and to create jobs for local residents. Residents will be allowed to dismantle what they have built and take the timber and other materials with them before leaving the company’s land, he said.
“There has been no encroachment on anyone’s rights,” he said. “The company has full legal rights, with the proper procedures and documentation in place.”
The companies’ projects are in a multipurpose special economic zone that spans Pechreada and Ou Reang districts along the Vietnam border, according to documents residents shared with CamboJA News. The documents show CM Construction holds over 300 hectares and Eysan Eco Zone about 670 hectares.
The provincial administration recently approved land clearing by CM Construction at two sites, with approval in principle from the Land Management Ministry, according to the documents. The company plans to grow coffee and build an office in the zone. Eysan Eco Zone is also developing a coffee plantation.
CM Construction’s chairman is Ingsitat Virak, according to Commerce Ministry business registry records. Virak holds the title “neak oknha,” a higher rank of the oknha honorific the king grants to businesspeople, typically after a donation to the state of at least $500,000.
He is also honorary chair of the Cambodian Red Cross branch in Mondulkiri and a personal assistant to Bun Rany, according to Oknha News, a Khmer-language outlet that covers the country’s tycoons and business community. Bun Rany heads the Cambodian Red Cross and is the wife of Hun Sen, the Senate president and Cambodia’s former longtime prime minister.
Virak did not respond to calls to a phone number listed for him in business records. Hy Phalkun, a director of CM Construction, hung up when a CamboJA News reporter began asking questions.
Eysan Eco Zone chairman Choeung Kokyuang could not be reached for comment.
Residents last month accused Eysan Eco Zone of clearing their farmland, burial grounds and sacred forest, and sent a letter urging the provincial governor, [NAME], to halt development.
Pyeuy Phieng, a Pu Teurt resident, acknowledged to CamboJA News in September that the community does not hold formal land titles for the area.
Indigenous groups in Cambodia have long struggled to obtain collective land titles, leaving them vulnerable to land disputes and encroachment by development and commercial projects.
Sreum Chhounh, head of the Indigenous Peoples Community Network, said authorities should take a neutral position, examine the history of the land and consider whether the projects could be moved elsewhere.
“When authorities make such a decision, they are already violating Indigenous people’s rights,” Chhounh said. “Development of any kind should not violate anyone’s rights.”
The land dispute is not the first for Bunong residents in Pechreada district’s Bousra commune. In 2008, residents alleged that subsidiaries of Socfin Group forcibly cleared and seized their farms, burial grounds and sacred forests after the government awarded rubber concessions.
In 2015, a dispute with LKL Co. over the same land escalated into an armed confrontation, said Srouch Bei, another Pu Teurt resident. Provincial authorities then terminated the company’s license, he said, and then-Mondulkiri Governor Svay Sam Eang handed 826 hectares to 152 community families.