Over 60 Khmer Krom families prevent the Viet authority from digging a canal across their rice fields

September 01, 2009
By Sok Serey
Radio Free Asia
Translated from Khmer by Socheata of KI-Media

On 30 August 2009, over 60 Khmer Krom families living in Ang commune, Krobao district (renamed Tinh Bien by colonial Vietnam), Motr Chrouk province (renamed An Giang by the Hanoi regime), the former territory of Cambodia that is currently occupied by the Vietnamese authority, have gathered in their rice fields to defend their lands and to prevent the Viet authority from digging a canal through their rice fields as this action will lead to a loss of their farm lands without any compensation provided by Vietnam.

One Khmer Krom woman among the 60 families of protesters and peaceful demonstrators told RFA over the phone from the spot of the demonstration: “I came to protest the land for the canal… The [Vietnamese] state wants to take over this mount. Now, our people came over to prevent them from taking our lands, they cannot come and take our lands … It is difficult because they take our property and they wouldn’t provide any resolution for us, they just take them over!”

Another Khmer Krom woman declared that 2-hectare of her rice field was lost because of this canal digging plan. She demands for a compensation for this loss: “I have an important problem: rice field land … They showed up there, when they saw our group came out, they left.”

A source indicated that no violence took place during this protest, but the protesters promised that they will continue to protest to ask for compensations, and to prevent any canal digging that leads to the destruction of their rice fields. The demonstrators packed and brought food with them to sleep on the rice fields in order to prevent losses. They said that these rice fields belong to three or four generations of their ancestors.

On Sunday 30 August, officials from the Vietnamese embassy in Phnom Penh could not be reached to provide clarifications about the protest above.

Venerable Thach Vimean, spokesman of the Khmer Kampuchea-Krom Federation (KKF) in Cambodia, issued this appeal: “Currently, [Khmer Krom people] are living in extreme poverty. They lack food, education, i.e. Vietnam does not pay attention to them yet. Therefore, we ask the UN, as well as the KKF executive leadership in the US and other organizations, such as the US State Department, to get involved in this issue in order to push the Vietnamese government to pay attention to the plight of the indigenous [Khmer Krom] people who are the owners of the land, and who are living in extreme poverty and who are in dire need.”

Khmer Krom families who stood up in this protest, indicated that Vietnamese authority in Tinh Bien district, An Giang province, is currently putting in application a plan to dig a 10-km-long by 50-m-wide canal across several hundreds of hectares of their rice fields. More than 400 Khmer Krom families are affected by this plan to build this irrigation canal.