B’bang villagers freed
Thursday, 12 November 2009 15:03 Chrann Chamroeun
THE Battambang provincial court on Wednesday announced its decision to drop five-year-old trespassing charges against six villagers involved in a long-running land dispute.
But one of the men, community representative Chem Keo, remained behind bars awaiting a verdict from the Appeal Court on related charges.
“I announced a verdict to lift the illegal trespassing charges against the six men,” said Judge Duch Sok Sarin, though he declined to explain why.
Ho Chheng Ourn, a lawyer for Legal Aid Cambodia who is representing the families, said the judge had failed to give a reason when he read out the verdict.
The fight over 124 hectares of farmland in Battambang’s Thmor Kol district has dragged on since 1999, when Ieng Oeung filed a complaint against 38 families he accused of illegal trespassing. The families said they had been living on the land since the mid-1980s.
Authorities evicted the families in 2002. Since then, there have been five separate incidents of arrests after various evictees were allegedly caught trespassing on the land.
