Al Jazeera English - Witness: Don't Take My Land
In this episode of Al Jazeera Witness, former Khmer Rouge soldiers in Cambodia battle to keep the land given to them in a peace deal.
For much of the 1970s the Khmer Rouge held power in Cambodia, imposing a program of radical social reengineering on its people. The country was renamed Kampuchea, private ownership of land was abolished and the vast majority of the population was made to work on collective farms or on forced labor projects. Intellectuals, professionals and those seen as a threat to the revolution were all targeted and killed.
In all, the regime murdered an estimated one and a half million of its citizens constituting more than one fifth of the population. The Khmer Rouge were toppled by the Vietnamese in 1979 but today, nearly thirty years on, their legacy still hangs over Cambodians in particular regarding the vexed question of land rights. The Khmer Rouge destroyed many things including land registry documents and now there is little or no proof of who owns what.
As filmmaker Tim Pritchard discovered, nothing is straightforward when the title documents have simply vanished. Now, many ex-Khmer Rouge soldiers who were given land in return for putting down their guns fear they are being singled out for persecution. With speculators keen to take advantage of a boom in construction, many Cambodians now fear that their land will be stolen with no legal redress.
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About Al Jazeera - Witness
Rageh Omaar presents Witness, a half-hour daily documentary series which features short, specially commissioned or acquired films gathered from independent filmmakers.
Each documentary reveals the unknown lives of ordinary people, following their lives, telling their stories and portraying the challenges that confront them. Our witnesses are people in a situation or those who have observed them first hand.
The films cover conflict, belief, the past and the future and as well as bringing new stories to light they showcase the talents of a new breed of multi-skilled, frontline journalist. In the studio, Rageh will further explore the issues raised in the films, with expert guests on the subject matter and the filmmakers themselves.
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