Poor Cambodians turn to 'black magic' in land dispute

By Kate Bartlett

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia 

Rural Cambodians locked in a land dispute with a minister's wife have held a cursing ceremony - yet another instance of the country's dispossessed turning to "black magic" after being failed by the courts.

More than 50 villagers threw chili peppers and salt at effigies of Chea Kheng - wife of Minister of Mines and Energy Suy Sem - and other officials over the weekend, even attacking them with knives, The Cambodia Daily reported Monday.

"Villagers celebrated this cursing ceremony because they have filed many complaints with authorities, but there has been no solution for them," Seang Heng, who took part in the ceremony, told the daily.

The villagers have been in dispute with Kheng's company KDC International since 2007 over 145 hectares of land in central Kompong Chhnang province. The villagers, who accuse KDC of illegally grabbing their farmland for development, have taken their complaints through the courts many times - but to no avail.

In fact, in 2012 the provincial court ordered a 70-year-old woman, Chat Batt, to instead pay $2,500 in compensation to the minister's wife. Batt says she has lived on the land for the past 30 years.

Earlier this year a committee was established to try and resolve the dispute out of court, but not a single villager was included in it. Then in May, some of the 52 families affected by the case agreed to compensation of between $1,250 and $1,500 to give up their land, while others rejected it as far too little.

The situation became even more tense last month when, on one occasion, villagers briefly blocked tractors sent to clear disputed land and on another, physically fought with workers trying to build a KDC warehouse on the site and allegedly burnt the building down.

The villagers have appealed to both Prime Minister Hun Sen and the United Nations for help.

Last week, UN human rights envoy to Cambodia, Surya Subedi, called for a stop to any further development on the land until an agreement is reached.

"For more than 10 years now, the local community has been embroiled in a dispute over contested land and the complaints that they have sought to lodge with the court system against the authorities and KDC International for the alleged intimidation, violence and land loss, have remained unaddressed," he said in a statement.

"I call on the company, KDC International, to immediately halt development of contested land until all claims by individual families have been properly assessed by an appropriate independent body in a fair and transparent way."

However, workers have still forged ahead with building a wall around the area.

At Sunday's cursing ceremony, Oum Sophy, a villager, said she believed the black magic would work because the villagers have held such ceremonies before and have seen six local officials involved with KDC die over the past few years.

"We used to hold a cursing ceremony and we have seen results, because some people involved with the case died," Sophy told The Cambodia Daily.

So-called "cursing ceremonies" have become a recurring phenomenon in such disputes in recent years as numerous government-granted land concessions to companies have seen about half a million Cambodians evicted from their land.

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