Land returns after complaint to World Bank offer hope to indigenous villagers
by Sun Narin
Lmam Pjanh, a Kachork ethnic village, stands inside her simple wooden house in the northeast Cambodia’s Rattanakiri province. Photo: Sun Narin/VOA Khmer
KAK VILLAGE, Rattanakiri Province Lmam Pjanh recently sat on a mat in her simple wooden house and recalled the times when Kak Village, situated in a bend of the Sesan River, was a place of plenty.
Until the late 1990s, she said, the ethnic Kachork village in the rolling hills of Cambodia’s remote, northeastern Ratanakkiri Province was surrounded by thick forests in which the villagers would create clearances to farm dry rice and let their animals graze. Nearby, small streams and the Sesan teemed with fish.