Blood sugar: Oxfam accuses Coke and Pepsi of fueling land grabs – globalpost.com, October 8, 2013
…In the jungles of southeastern Cambodia, Kong vividly remembers the day in May 2006 when a bulldozer arrived without warning to prepare their rice paddy for a large-scale sugar cane plantation.
Kong had farmed the land since 1979, he said, just after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, under which an estimated 1.8 million Cambodians perished in fewer than four years. In its drive to create a communist, agrarian society, the regime had killed intellectuals, blown up the national bank and destroyed all documents of land ownership, leaving millions of farmers vulnerable to evictions as they still lack proper land titles.
“Before the plantation came, life was good and I could save some money for my family. Now I have to fish, but I just make a little bit, enough to get by from one day to the next,” Kong said…
Popular Posts