We, the undersigned civil society organizations, condemn the Kompong Speu Provincial Court’s decision yesterday to arrest and detain two community representatives involved in the ongoing Omlaing Commune land dispute. The bogus charges against the two community representatives constitute yet another instance of Cambodia’s rich and powerful using the judicial system as a tool of enrichment and weapon of intimidation. We also condemn the response of mixed police forces to the villagers who came to the provincial court to show their support.

Omlaing Commune Council member You Thou and community leader Khem Vuthy were arrested on charges that they incited villagers to burn two temporary shelters used by construction workers belonging to Ly Yong Phat’s Phnom Penh Sugar Company. The two representatives also stand accused of colluding to set the structures on fire.

The two representatives appeared in court on Wednesday. The same day, more than 500 villagers drove for hours on farming trucks to Kompong Speu city, so that they could support their community representatives. Mixed police lined their path, and reported the group’s progress to their superiors. Early the next day, hundreds of other villagers headed to town to also show support. At least three of them were beaten by police and 7 others suffered minor injuries. Other villagers from the same group were prevented from reaching town altogether, with police disabling the engine of one farmer’s truck. We believe these acts to be attempts to intimidate the villagers and severely restrict their freedom of movement and assembly.

We also condemn the legal process by which the two community leaders were arrested. By all accounts, the charges are unfounded. Numerous eyewitnesses claim that the pair were not present when the workers’ shelters were burned. On Wednesday, the court refused to listen to defense witness. The prosecution, meanwhile, failed to offer any evidence of the defendants' "guilt". The prosecutor justified the detention of the two leaders by citing “their obvious crimes and other basic reasons.” In accepting this statement as “evidence,” the court clearly demonstrated that it was operating with a presumption of guilt, rather than innocence.

The villagers’ land was confiscated by Okhna Ly Yong Phat, a Senator from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party. The villagers were offered - and refused - a paltry sum $100 to $200 per hectare to abandon their farms and livelihoods. That’s when the intimidation started.

Ly Yong Phat’s involvement in controversial and often violent land evictions is well-documented. In 2006, hundreds of families lost farming land in Koh Kong Province to make way for a sugar plantation. Hundreds more villagers in Oddur Meanchey met a similar fate in October 2009 when soldiers and police violently evicted villagers and burnt their homes to make way for another Ly Yong Phat concession from the government.

The Kompong Speu land concession has legal questions of its own. Ly Yong Phat’s 10,000 hectares of land are immediately adjacent to another 10,000-acre concession owned by Kompong Speu Sugar Company, a firm whose ownership has not been made public. The two companies, however, have used the same representative to deal with Omlaing villagers, and also used identical applications when requesting their respective concessions. In effect, it appears that this may be a “backdoor” 20,000-hectare concession - in violation of Article 59 of Cambodia’s land law, which limits concessions to 10,000 hectares.

We urge all levels of the Cambodian government to allow people to exercise their rights to freedom of movement and assembly and to provide opportunities for affected people and communities to express their concerns and their opinions on issues that are vital to their livelihood and to the development of this country. We also urge the release of the two community representatives on bail pending a full and fair investigation by competent authorities.

For more information, please contact:
▪ Mr. Yeng Virak, Executive Director of CLEC, 012 801 235
▪ Mr. Ouer Narin, CCHR Researcher, 012 606 118
▪ Mr. Ou Virak, Executive Director of CCHR, 012 404 051
▪ Mr. Am Sam Ath, LICADHO Monitoring Supervisor, 012 327 770
▪ Ms. Pilorge Naly, Director of LICADHO, 012 803 650

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