RADIO FREE ASIA (Washington, DC) 30 October 13 Phnom Penh Families Fighting Eviction Threatened With Deadly Snakes
[COLOR="#2F4F4F"]Photo @ URL: One of the snakes caught and killed by the residents locked in a land dispute with Khun Sear company in Phnom Penh's Sangkat Boueng Kak
A company battling to evict three families in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh has been accused of intimidating the residents by killing their pets and placing poisonous cobras in their homes in the middle of the night.
The families claimed they were attacked by employees of Khun Sear Import Export Company, which has offices on property adjacent to their homes.
Hundreds of residents in the capital are fighting or threatened with forced evictions as the government paves the way for private development.
Meanwhile, some 100 residents from the city’s Boueng Kak, Borei Keila, and Thmor Korl communities involved in long-festering land disputes staged a fresh protest march on City Hall on Wednesday, clashing with police who blocked their way.
The night before the protest, the three families locked in the dispute with Khun Sear in Sangkat Boeung Kak 1—located in a different part of the city from the larger Boeung Kak community fighting a separate dispute with private developer Shukaku Inc.—found three poisonous cobra snakes had been placed near their homes.
Residents killed one of the snakes, capturing the other two as evidence. One resident was injured by a snakebite in the process.
“Someone wanted to kill us, and if we hadn’t known what kind of snakes those were, we would have been killed,” one of the residents, Mok Seavhoung, told RFA’s Khmer Service.
He urged the police to help protect the safety of the families living there, who have refused to move out of their homes, saying the compensation they’ve been offered is too low.
Local rights groups Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee and the Housing Rights Task Force condemned the incident, saying it was the latest in a series of acts of harassment and intimidation perpetrated by Khun Sear employees against the families in recent days.
“CHRAC and HRTF are strongly condemning these continuous attempts of intimidation, violence, and death threats against the three families residing legally for decades on their plot of land in Boeung Kak 1,” the groups said in a statement Wednesday, urging authorities to help protect the families’ security.
“Bringing several dangerous snakes into the houses of urban poor families is more than an act of intimidation, it’s a death threat showing the intent to kill and should never be used … as a tool to try to win over a land dispute,” it said.
On Monday night, after company employees had threatened the families earlier in the day about killing their pets, two of their cats and one of their dogs were poisoned to death and left on the doorstep, according to the statement.
The same day, unidentified persons sprayed insecticide on one of the houses, and others harassed customers at one of the families’ businesses, it said.
Since May, the residents have faced the destruction of some of their property, demolition of their businesses, and threats on their physical safety, as well as had their water and electricity supplies shut off and five of their pets killed.
The company, which owns the land adjacent to the properties, has been seeking to extend their property to include the residents’ land.
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/housing-disputes-10302013184450.html
CAMBODIA DAILY (Phnom Penh, Cambonia) 31 October 13 Cobras Thrown Into Land Dispute Family’s Home (Mech Dara)
Three highly venomous cobras were thrown early Tuesday morning into the Phnom Penh home of a family locked in a dispute with a private company that wants to develop the family’s land in Tuol Kok district.
Ly Sreang Kheng, 58, his wife Mok Siv Hong, 51, and their son, Ly Bun Heang, are one of three families refusing to leave a building in Boeng Kak I commune, that was shared by commune council and CPP offices and the families before the government swapped the property with the Khun Sear Import Export Company.
The families have accused representatives from the company, which is owned by businessman Khun Sear, of waging a campaign of intimidation to force them to leave after they turned down $15,000 in compensation.
After the canvas bag containing three snakes was thrown through the window of his property, Mr. Sreang Kheng said he and his wife saw the perpetrator running away and identified him as an employee of Khun Sear’s company who they say has carried out previous attacks, including poisoning their pets.
“I identified this suspect when he was running away because he has tried to hurt my family many times. The situation is very bad and we are very afraid,” he said.
The family used a forked bamboo stick to try to trap the heads of the 1-meter-long cobras, which are extremely aggressive and can spit venom when threatened, but Mr. Sreang Kheng said he decided to club two of the snakes to death instead.
“We spent three hours trying to catch the snakes with the help of local police, and I killed two that weighed about 1 kg each,” he said.
The Housing Rights Task Force and the Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee on Wednesday released a joint statement condemning the incident and called on the government to prosecute the perpetrators.
“Bringing several dangerous snakes [into] the houses of urban poor families is more than an act of intimidation; it’s a death threat showing the intent to kill…. Since May 2013, the residents had their property destroyed, their business demolished, their physical security threatened and violated, their water pipes and electricity cut off as well as five of their pets killed [while] no real action [was] ever taken by the local authorities against the perpetrators,” the statement says.
Commune chief Vith Darith on Wednesday said that the snakes had probably been living in a nearby bush and got into the property by themselves.
“Nobody put the snakes into their home, they might have come from the nearby bush because a lot of poisonous things live in the bushes.”
Ham Kea, the commune police chief, said police would need to investigate before determining whether the snakes had been thrown or had entered the building of their own accord.
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/three-cobras-thrown-into-land-dispute-familys-home-46359/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=three-cobras-thrown-into-land-dispute-familys-home
