Land grabbing by the rich in Cambodia decimating village life

Cambodia’s Landless Class – NYT, September 26, 2012
[Thanks to Tom for pointing this out.]
…Then in 2002 the police arrived and told them to leave, claiming that the sisters no longer owned it. No one among the 32 families in Chrolang had ever heard of Tep Menon, but the police said he was now the owner of the plot. And so began the sisters’ decade-long fight in the courts to keep their land.
Land grabbing — big and small — has become all too common in Cambodia. Protests and violent confrontations with the authorities have left a mounting death toll. Meanwhile, as more and more poor Cambodians are being dispossessed, many fear the end of the “communal rice bowl’’ and traditional village life that once guaranteed food and a family home for all. With no more land to go home to, village life is being decimated…