Vietnamese Court Refuses to Return Rou Temple’s confiscated farmlands

May 14, 2009

According to a Khmer-Krom Buddhist follower of the Rou Temple in Tinh Bien District, An Giang province, on May 6, 2009, the Abbot of Rou Temple went to Long Xuyen city to file a complaint in the Vietnamese court regarding to a Vietnamese man who took over his temple’s farmlands.

In 2001, Le Van Sung registered the title of his farmland (12 cong) and added 18 cong of the Rou temple’s farmlands into his title illegally without the consent of the Khmer-Krom Buddhist monks in the Rou temple. Now, Sung gave 30 cong farmlands to his son-in-law named Banh Kim An. (Note: cong is a measuring unit that is used to measure the size of the farmland. Each cong is approximately about 25 square meters.)

In the court, the Vietnamese judge, Ngoc Van, told the Abbot of Rou Temple that he does not have any legal documentation such as a farmland title, to prove that the 18 cong of farmlands that Banh Kim An posses today had belonged to the temple. It is a tactically strategy that the Vietnamese Judge has used to tried and cover up for Banh Kim An. Ironically, Banh Kim An has no evident to prove that his father bought that 18 cong from anyone in order to claim that it belonged to his father either in the first place.

Like most Vietnamese living in Vietnam, Judge Ngoc Van was aware that that all the farmlands belonging to the Khmer-Krom temple throughout Kampuchea-Krom doesn’t have any farmland title. Armed with that knowledge, they were able to confiscate most of lands belonging to the Khmer-Krom temples. This is the reason why we keep hearing the stories that the Vietnamese encroaching on the Khmer-Krom’s temple farmlands or even encroach on the lands surround the temple to build their houses.

Whenever the Khmer-Krom Buddhist monks filed complaints, the Vietnamese authorities, appear to support any Vietnamese persons who has the power and money to bribe corrupted Vietnamese Judges and confiscate what is left of the fast disappearing lands belonging to the Khmer Krom people.