As land battle rages, they sleep in their fields to save them
- Photography by Saobora Narin
Save Sayon, 35, sits outside his farm hut in Ratanakiri, guarding three hectares of ancestral Jarai land. Photo: Saobora Narin/HaRDstories
- By
- Eung Sea
- Published
- 8 min read
A Cambodian rubber company is accused of forcing indigenous farmers off their land through intimidation and below-market buyouts. Jarai villagers say the firm offers minimal compensation for ancestral plots – then seizes the land anyway when families refuse.
Sweat poured down Save Lim’s face as he returned from cutting cassava stems on his four-hectare farm on a hot morning in May. Like other members of the Jarai indigenous community in Cambodia’s Ratanakiri province, the 70-year-old relies on the land not just for income and food, but for cultural and spiritual purposes that stretch back generations.
Every night for the past five years, he has hauled his mattress, pillow and blanket out to a wooden hut facing his chamkar or farmland keeping watch for company workers or military who might return to burn his crops.
For the Jarai, land represents far more than economic value. Their animist beliefs centre on spirits that inhabit forests and farmland, making the loss of ancestral territory a spiritual as well as economic catastrophe.
“I am really worried about the future of this community. I can’t even sleep,” he said, crouching under his small farm hut. “We don’t know what will happen.”
Lim says his family’s farmland, cultivated for generations, has been ravaged by a rubber company controlled by the daughter of one of Cambodia’s former top generals. Company workers destroyed his cashew trees after they had grown for several years, he claimed. The new ones he planted were burned completely.
After exhausting all other options in their decades-long battle, Lim and other indigenous Jarai in Andong Meas district have taken to camping on their farms to keep company workers away. It’s a desperate last stand against what they see as the theft of their ancestral lands.
A concession born conflict
The roots of this dispute stretch back to March 2006, when the Cambodian government awarded a 70-year Economic Land Concession of 8,654 hectares to Heng Development Co. Ltd. Media reports alleged this company then forced Jarai and other indigenous residents off their land.
In 2011, the concession was transferred to 7 Makara Phary Co Ltd on a shorter, 50-year lease. No clear explanation was given for the change. Public records list Kim Sophary as the company’s chairman. Sophary is the daughter of Kun Kim, a retired four-star general and former chief of staff of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. Both were sanctioned by the US government under President Trump in 2019 for various human rights violations.
Stretching to the horizon, rubber seedlings planted by 7 Makara Phary stood two metres high but were not yet ready for harvest in May this year. A warehouse built by company workers served as a guard post, highlighting the firm’s efforts to secure the expansive plantation.
In recent years, company workers have created fresh disturbances on land used by Jarai families according to a 2022 report by VOD. They cut down smallholder farms, tilled the soil and replanted it with rubber crops, turning it into a large-scale commercial plantation.
“Even me, I wouldn’t take this compensation”
The company has offered Jarai families compensation of between 500,000 and one million riel (125-250 USD) for their land – a sum far below market value. A real estate broker offered nearly two hectares in the same district on Facebook in March for 20,000 USD
Many villagers told HaRDstories they felt pressured to sell at these prices under alleged threats and intimidation from armed company workers. Several residents said they were not given a real choice.
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Save Dean, a farmer and father of two in Tang Chea village, accepted the company’s compensation in March 2024. He received 1.6 million riel (about 400 USD) for two hectares where he grew cashews, believing he could keep his remaining 0.8 hectares for family crops.
“The company cleared all my land without my consent. It was gone at once. And I was told I cannot farm on my land,” Dean said. At one point, he said he saw workers preparing their guns inside a white pickup truck.
Left with no land, Dean now works as a day labourer cutting grass and harvesting others’ cashew crops for around 7.5 USD a day, trying to support his two young children.
Some families had their land cleared without any contract or compensation at all. This has forced them off ancestral lands without recompense, exacerbating the vulnerability of the Jarai people, many of whom are illiterate and seem unaware of their legal rights.
A superintendent overseeing security and day workers at the rubber plantation, told HaRDstories he found the situation “unjust” for the Jarai villagers.
“Even me, I wouldn’t take this compensation,” said Pholly, who gave only his first name. “You know, the company gives only 500,000 riel per hectare (125 USD). And I am not on the company’s side.”
Officials deny intimidation claims
Most affected villagers said sub-national authorities have been unresponsive in helping prevent land loss or secure adequate compensation, a claim local authorities deny.
Nhang deputy commune chief Heam Sam Orn, who oversees the land conflicts, denied there had been intimidation from the company, saying it has jurisdiction over the land from the government. He said the dispute with Tang Che village was “almost completely resolved”, though he did not address claims of unfair compensation.
Sam Orn said some residents hold “01BB titles” – part of a national campaign started in 2012 to document residential land and grant titles. But it remains unclear whether the company has claimed their land.
“It is undefined whether the affected land belongs to the company or other individuals,” Sam Orn explained, urging each person to appeal to authorities with proof. “It is difficult to solve.”
In October 2022, the national government granted nearly 600 hectares to 65 Jarai indigenous families in Nhang commune, with 401 hectares cut from the 7 Makara Phary concession. However, Jarai residents who spoke to HaRDstories did not know where this land was or who was benefiting.
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After residents launched a protest and submitted complaints in February 2024, authorities summoned them to the district office. They were offered the same compensation rates as before, but no other solutions, residents said.
7 Makara Phary did not respond to emailed requests for comment. A phone number listed in commerce records could not be reached.
Night and day vigils
Save Sayon, 35, can still visit his three hectares of farmland in Ket village, but he has noticed red-painted poles placed by company workers claiming it as theirs. He refused compensation, saying he had reserved the land for young Jarai to build their houses.
“I cannot take the money as this is customary land preserved for our next generation,” he said, folding his blanket after another night sleeping in his chamkar in May.
Sayon stays there almost every night. “I have to come and stay to oversee my chamkar because I don’t know when the company’s workers will come again.”
Similar scenes play out across the affected villages, as families take turns guarding their ancestral plots.
Sol Li, 45, takes the day shift. He packs lunch and waits at his chamkar to see if workers will come to clear his two hectares again. He says he cannot accept losing his fruit trees, his family’s entire income, even though he holds a “soft title” to protect the land.
“They claimed that the land belongs to the company. I refuted that people have used and cleared the land for cultivation for many years. How can it go to the company?” Li said.
“Whenever I was summoned to solve this issue at the commune or district, I was always prodded into taking the below-market price. I said ‘no, I just want my land’.”
When concessions override communities
The compensation disputes highlight deeper problems with Cambodia’s land titling system. The country’s rapid development over three decades has been marked by a race to mark, develop and sell increasingly valuable land after practically all ownership was reset during the violent Khmer Rouge regime and subsequent civil war.
After installing a new land law in 2001, the government began efforts to survey land and designate ownership through “soft” titles with local authorities or “hard” titles registered nationally. It also created an Indigenous Communal Land Titling program to grant recognised indigenous groups shared land spaces rather than individual titles.
Though seen as revolutionary in the region, the titling procedure became arduous, costly and complex. Of more than 450 indigenous communities in Cambodia, only 43 received collective land titles between 2011 and July 2024.
The struggle for land rights is complicated by Economic Land Concessions (ELC), government schemes granting long-term, minimally taxed leases to large companies. Over 250 ELCs covering more than one million hectares have been awarded since 1995. Although the government declared a moratorium on new ELCs in 2012, new concessions have still been granted.
These concessions legally permit seizure and development of lands often used by locals, especially indigenous Cambodians who rotate crops to maintain soil quality and use land for customary and spiritual purposes.
“Where will we go?”
Ramam Jork, the 63-year-old deputy village chief for Ket, said his community sought help from an NGO for nearly five years to document their customary lands and sacred forests. But after slogging through an arduous bureaucratic process, the NGO stopped operating.
“It has put my community land titling process to a grinding halt,” Jork said. They received no documentation from the NGO’s efforts, so are no longer pursuing communal land titles.
Most people were granted soft titles from the government, but these do not protect villagers’ livelihoods and cultural heritage, Jork said.
“Around 50 families in my village are bearing the brunt of losing land due to the company reassertion on the land. Even outsiders are trying to claim some parts of the community’s land,” he said. “Our community land is in a bind.”
Am Sam Ath, operations director of rights group Licadho, said indigenous communities pursuing Communal Land Titles face bureaucratic hurdles and conflicts with other land use policies.
“Indigenous people’s livelihood depends on their land such as rotational land for cultivation and they also have spiritual and cemetery land,” he said. “But it comes to their concerns when economic land concessions were granted without thorough study whether they overlapped with their land. This results in the loss of their land and violation of their rights.”
Sam Ath said expediting communal land titling is essential to prevent conflicts, preserve cultural heritage and promote sustainable development.
For indigenous people in Andong Meas, land represents more than livelihood – its ancestral heritage and identity. Sayon from Ket village said he will continue his nightly vigil because the Jarai village has no future without the land to which they’re tied.
“Our community land is very important for our future generation. When they need it, they can use some to build houses and do chamkar. We do not do anything else besides on this farmland, planting cassava and cashews for our livelihood,” he said.
“If all of the land is cleared, how can we have land to do farming? Where will Ket’s residents go to live?”
Edited by Danielle Keeton-Olsen and Fabian Drahmoune
Eung Sea is a freelance journalist focusing on human rights, environmental and social issues, primarily contributing to CamboJA News, one of Cambodia’s last remaining independent media outlets.
Saobora Narin is a Cambodian photographer and filmmaker living in Phnom Penh. He is a Sundance Institute Fellow with over a decade of experience in the film industry in Cambodia, a Visual Creator at fairpicture.org and a Angkor Photo Workshop alumni.
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