[NOTICE: The AHRC have developed a new automatic letter-sending system using the “button” below. However, in this appeal, we could not include e-mail addresses of some of the Cambodian authorities. We encourage you to send your appeal letters via fax or post to those people. Fax numbers and postal addresses of the Cambodian authorities are attached below with this appeal. Thank you.]

Dear friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission has learned that in the morning of December 21, 2006, ten police officers, four of whom were armed with assault rifles and the rest with electric batons, together with about ten staff and workers, led by three men named Nou Seila, Thun and Hay, employed by the land development company PHANEMEX, assaulted Chum Vanny, 53, his wife, Noy Chamroeun, 51, and their two sons, when they protested against that company’s grabbing of their land in Poh Toch village, Kompong Luong commune, Ponhea district, Kandal province, along Highway 5 from Phnom Penh.  In the assault, those men tied up the four persons and pointed gun at them. The victims managed to free themselves and ran away but the men pursued Chum Thanith, 26, one of the sons, caught up with him and repeatedly beat him with electric batons. He felt unconscious with open wounds at the top of his head and needed extended hospitalisation. The company has since occupied the land and started work on it.

CASE DETAILS:

The incident that led to violence was the third in the same month over the plot of land of 1.7 hectares Chum Vanny and his family have cleared and cultivated since the 1980s, but PHANIMEX has asserted Chum Vanny had sold it to them. As in previous years, in July of this year Chum Vanny began to clear and prepare that land to grow dry season rice when the flood receded.

The first incident happened in the morning of December 3 when his wife, Noy Chamroeun, started to sow rice seeds on that land while her husband was also there. At around 9:00am on that day, PHANEMEX representative Nou Seila went to stop her from sowing. An argument ensued. Noy Chamroeun challenged Nou Seila to produce documentation proving his company’s ownership of the land so that both sides could resort to the authorities to resolve the matter. Nou Seila, apparently losing the argument, dismissed the challenge, forcefully asserted his company’s ownership. He then assaulted her, grabbing her neck with both hands. She struggled to free herself from his stranglehold. In this struggle one of her hands hit his face. She failed to free herself and he forced her down to the ground and dipped her head into the water in the rice field. Chum Vanny then intervened to separate his wife and Nou Seila, and told the latter to produce ownership documentation and go together to the authorities for the settlement of the dispute.

In the afternoon Chum Vanny filed a complaint against Nou Seila with the local police, and in the morning the police summoned both sides to resolve the dispute, Nou Seila rejected Chum Vanny’s request for 270,000 riels compensation for his wife’s suffering and medical treatment, and for the presence of public officials whenever Nou Seila’s company wanted to do anything on that land.

The second incident happened in the afternoon of 12 December when Chum Vanny and his family apprehended three ordinary tractors, an earth moving tractor, a bulldozer and a ploughing tractor from the same company driving across the same plot of land and also the adjacent plots that also belong to him. They caught the driver of the earth moving tractor and brought him to the commune office to settle the issue of trespassing. But at the commune office that driver, his supervisor and a company official rejected Chum Vanny’s demand not to repeat their trespassing of his land.

The next day, December 13, Chum Vanny was sent a copy of a letter of request dated December 8, 2006, from Chroeung Khmao, deputy-prosecutor of the court of Kandal province, to the provincial governor to order Chum Vanny and Noy Chamroeun to temporarily suspend all activities on the contested land, in pursuance of a complaint of fraud filed by PHANEMEX against Chum Vanny. Chum Vanny and his family abided by this suspension order until the company moved to possess and work their land on December 21. On December 26, Chum Vanny was served a summons to appear before deputy-prosecutor Chreung Khmao for questioning on the charge of fraud as the company had accused him of having sold the land to it and then having no land to give in return for the payment.

As a matter of fact, Chum Vanny and his wife have sold two plots of land at other places to PHANEMEX, and a number of concerned local officials and witnesses have confirmed this sale. However, the couple have denied they had sold the contested land. PHANEMEX is owned by a woman named Suy Sophan who is known to have good connection with the ruling circle. This company has bought plots of land here and there in that commune over a number of years. Recently it has constructed several buildings and also walls in front of them in that particular village, and a shortcut road from Highway 5 to an ancient capital of Oudong which is a tourist site. Its walls have encroached upon villagers’ land and also the land of the commune office.

On April, 2006, hundreds of villagers protested against the encroachment of their land. Currently, some 1,000 villagers have signed or thumb printed a petition protesting against the same company’s encroachment on the commune office’s land. The chief of Kompong Luong, Prak Peov, has expressed his resentment when the company had not informed him of its activities in his commune, had dealt with higher up authorities and bypassed the commune authorities, and had created problems in his commune.

The AHRC has further learned that there is a practice by certain rich and powerful people and the authorities themselves of resorting to criminal charges against those who have protested against their land grabbing to subdue or silence them. Considering the chain of events surrounding this particular land dispute, the charge of fraud against Chum Vanny may have been laid to silence him and end his protest against the grabbing of his land. If he had really sold the contested land to the company and had prevented the company to possess it, the company could and should have requested the court to issue an eviction order and then the competent authorities to execute this order to possess the land.

The AHRC urges the prosecution of the court of Kandal province to drop the fraud charge against Chum Vanny and order PHANEMEX to return the land to its owners, abide by the due process of law and prove its ownership of it as Chum Vanny and Noy Chamroeun had requested from the company in the first place. Should it fail to prove its ownership, its owner, Suy Sophan, and her responsible employees should be prosecuted for infringement upon other people’s land as stipulated in articles 248, 249, 250, 251, 253 and 254 of the land law of 2001. The same prosecution should order an investigation into Nou Seila’s assault and battery on Noy Chamroeun on December 3, and the assault and battery on Chum Thanith by the men employed by the company on December 21, 2006. All those responsible for the offences should be brought to justice.

SUGGESTED ACTION:
Please write letters to the authorities listed below to intervene to drop the fraud charge against Chum Vanny, get PHANEMEX company to return the contested land to its rightful owners, Chum Vanny and Noy Chamroeun, urge it to abide by the due process of law to prove those owners had actually sold the land to it and seek a court eviction order to possess the land. If it cannot prove that sale, then its owner and responsible employees should be prosecuted respectively for infringement of land belonging to others and for the offences against Noy Chamroeun and Chum Thanith.

 

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