Titles near as students finally on way to district
Nearby, another supporter seconded the opinion.
“The war would still be continued as of today if he did not join with the government,” said the man, a former high-ranking Khmer Rouge official who did not wish to give his name due to his current affiliations. “We support him and follow him, because we didn’t want anymore fighting between Khmer and Khmer people.”
“It is a great achievement he has given people here,” echoed HemYet,57,afarmerfromMalai whose husband served as a cadre under Ieng Sary.
Sitting on her 50-hectare farm surrounded by workers and partially harvested cassava fields, Yetenumeratedthechangesthat had been made following Ieng Sary’s 11-year amnesty.
“During the fighting, Malai was a jungle – full of cobras and tigers. Many got sick and died from malaria,” she said. “Now we are in peace and have development. It’s a complete difference and it’s a great achievement he has given the people here.”
Indeed, this town has ballooned since its integration in 1996.Oncetheepicentreoffighting that raged throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the district is now home to more than 40,000 people – a fourfold increase over the past decade and a half.
At the bustling market, just one of the infrastructure projects popularly cited by residents here as proof positive of Ieng Sary’s success, vendors spoke of a man who changed their lives only for the better.
Thirty-four years after the Khmer Rouge were ousted from power and 18 years after the regime formally disbanded and fighting ceased, Sou Yan, 48, continues to live in disbelief.
“I never expected to be sitting here, selling stuff to people. I used to carry a gun and fight. I moved around always, I was separated from my family,” said the one-time child soldier who today works as an electronics vendor.
“Now, there’s no more war here. We don’t need it anymore.”
Asked whose responsibility thatwas,Yanisunwavering:Ieng Sary.
“If he didn’t lead the forces to stop fighting, I can’t say whether I’d even be alive today.” NEARLY 50 families in Koh Kong province’s Kiri Sakor district will finally receive official titles after repeatedly requesting – and being denied – student volunteers to measure their land, the villagers’ commune chief said yesterday.
Koh Pol commune chief Ev Kosal, who participated in the meeting between local authorities and land department officials at Koh Kong City Hall, confirmed that authorities had indeed agreed to send youth volunteers to demarcate villagers’ land, cementing what villagers feared was becoming a tenuous living situation.
Villager representative In Chron, 52, said the families’ land had gone unmeasured since the start of the volunteertitling program, raising fears among residents that their homes and farmland would be forfeited unless they could prove their legal ownership.
“We were afraid of having to move our houses and plantations, because this area is a conservation area,” she said. “We need land titles. That’s why we demanded them from the authorities many times, but at Monday’s gathering, they agreed to allow student [land measurers] to come.”
Fellow representative Sok Kherun said volunteers had wanted to measure the land in the first place, but were not allowed, and noted that, like other villagers, he had lived most of his 60 years in the area without receiving a title.
“We wondered why they did not come to measure our land, and some residents measured it already,” he said. “It was not fair at all.”