Guest post from ActionAid senior program coordinator Sally Henderson.
We are sitting on a raised wooden structure, surrounded by verdant forests, the kind which feels like it would grow on you if you stood still for long enough.
Surrounding us, are members from a group of community foresters who live in the village of Sambour Meas right-up on the border between Cambodia and Thailand in Oddar Maenchy Province.
They begin their presentation referring to large butcher paper sheets covered with the curves of Khmer letters. This community collects honey, leaves, mushrooms, rattan and berries amongst other non-timber products from the forests. They grow rice but the yields have been poor especially in the last few years due to duration and frequency of drought.
We are getting a bit hot and sweaty, but what they are about to tell us is so inspiring that we manage to forget about our state for a while.
Recently, as many readers may know, there has been the outbreak of conflict between the Thai and Cambodian forces. By the time we are sitting with these villagers the conflict has ended but the soldiers are still present in the forests.
The villagers patrol regularly in these forests, equipped only with a knife and a mobile phone. They noticed a group of soldiers that were cutting down logs illegally. When they approached, the soldiers stated that they had permission from their commander to log in the forest and then proceeded to fire on the community patrollers.
On return to their homes, the patrollers informed the head of the group of what had happened. With the support of CDA staff, an ActionAid Cambodia implementing partner, the community group rang the Cambodian Forestry Commission with such persistency that, the responsible official eventually agreed to contact the Army Commander.
The Commander confirmed that not only was no permission given to log the forest, but that the community was entitled to seize the logs that had been cut. They did just this and the logs were used to construct a community hall.
The community has also taken the army to court for firing on unarmed civilians and by the time we were there, they had visited the two-hour distant Siem Rep three times for court hearings.
After hearing this story, we looked upon this modest group of villagers with different eyes. We are left with an image of mobiles, knives, solidarity and persistence being used to fight against armed soldiers.
There will be more battles to fight in the future. This area was one of the last strongholds of the Khmer Rouge and was declared a Province only recently.
The Government has not started land titling here for communities, but have started to grant economic land concessions to foreign companies to grow lucrative crops such as rubber and sugar cane.
Foreign companies tend to bring their own staff and if they employ locals it is at such low rates that crossing the border to Thailand is more lucrative. CDA is working with many to map the community holdings and have pushed for the land titling process to be accelerated, but they expect troubles ahead.
Though something tells me this particular community is up for the fight.
