Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
wife of a senior official in the Ministry of Land Management. She was also protected by
the provincial court in Banlung, which backed her claims against the people of Kong Yu,
who have fought in vain to have the deal annulled.
Kong Yu's inhabitants belong to the Jarai ethnic group, an Austronesian people related
to the Cham Muslims, to minority people in Vietnam, and, more distantly, to the Malay-
speaking peoples of Southeast Asia. At first glance, they have successfully absorbed the
more visible aspects of modernization: motorbikes, Angry Birds baseball caps, artesian
wells, laundry soap. But Romas Thno says the loss of their land has cut the community
adrift. Having lost their rotational farmlands and spirit forests, each family in Kong Yu
now has just a hectare or two to cultivate—not nearly enough to support themselves.
Many young people have been forced to take jobs on the rubber plantations. In Romas
Thno's hut, a scraggly tortoiseshell cat limped across the floor as the somber 56-year-old
quietly lit his pipe, puffing until the acrid smoke filled the dark room. “Now we have to
do the same sort of farming as other Khmer people,” he told me. “We've lost everything.
Even our two ancestors' burial places were cleared to plant rubber trees.”
When I visited Kong Yu in 2008 the rubber saplings were still small, and the village
chief Romas Neath had angrily lamented the lack of action by the court. “We would speak
one word, and [the judges] replied with ten,” he said. “They have more power and rights
than us.” Four years on Keat Kolney's rubber trees were nearing their gloomy maturity
and the community seemed worn out by its struggle. Three different judges have now
presided over the Kong Yu case, but still no verdict has been handed down. In a hut
nearby a group of men sat drinking in the middle of the day. Cows munched on the grass
as women strung out lines of colored laundry. Romas Thno was resigned. “We just want
to know who has won and who has lost,” he said.
Back in Banlung, dusk was falling. Four-wheel drives covered in red dust roared through
the city streets and children played on a white concrete monument commemorating Janu-
ary 7. Sitting on the porch of his office, Pen Bonnar, then the provincial ADHOC rights
monitor, explained how land disputes have erupted in all of Ratanakkiri's nine districts,
mostly involving government-backed plantation firms. A serious man in a white short-
sleeved shirt, Bonnar had worked in Ratanakkiri since 1999. In that time he has seen
the toll that development has taken on its minority peoples. “Even though villagers' life
wasn't developed in the past, they didn't have to worry about losing their land,” he said,
as the sun's last rays fell across the road outside.
Minority people are especially vulnerable to exploitation. Only a small number speak
or read Khmer fluently. The Land Law contains generous provisions for indigenous
peoples, including a recognition of community-based land rights, but, like the law as a
whole, these have yet to be implemented. “A lot of businessmen have come to take over
indigenous lands,” Bonnar said, “and villagers are constantly worried, afraid that one day
