Ethnic Minority’s Scared Mount Clash with Moeung Sok Granite Product Enterprise

Saturday, May 19, 2007

The clashing between ancient beliefs in Ratanak Kiri province and modern economics at mount Nam Lyr reached a new pitch this week, as villagers and company officials dug in their heels in advance of negotiations, which were scheduled to being Wednesday.

On Saturday, 120 Phnong minority residents from Bou Sra village went to Nam Lyr and hauled Moeout Sok’s to drilling machines out of the jungle with a tractor, villagers said this week. It took took them seven hours. The seven workers from Moeout Sok who had set up camp near the work site—a makeshift bamboo platform with an abandoned game of checkers and the remnants of a roatsted deer—were no math for the asngry Phnong.

At the beginning of this month, an ominous grid of boreholes appeared at the base of the mountain, which lies within the Phnom Nam Lyr Wildlife Sanctuary. On May 3, blasting began. Villager protests halted the company’s work on May 18, but already more than a dozen huge chinks of rock had tumbled from the mountain into a nearly stream.

Next time if the Moeung Sok Granite Product Enterprise come, the Phnong and all the minority villagers will use violence, said villagers. The villagers added that there was no choice. If that company destroys this, the company kills us. Villagers have bows, arrows and swords too.