The Cambodian Center for Human Rights says that a company with a controversial economic land concession in Koh Kong province banned the centre’s officers from photographing the area and ordered police to grab their cameras.

Officers from CCHR traveled to Sre Ambel district on December 14 to take pictures of land at the heart of a feud between the agricultural firm Heng Huy Company and residents in the district’s Chik village.

Van Sophat, the land program coordinator at CCHR, said in a statement released yesterday that the company’s owner, Heng Huy, who has a 779-hectare concession to harvest sugarcane, ordered him to hand over the camera he was using to take pictures of crops being bulldozed.

He claims police backed the owner up.

“I am deeply disappointed about the recent situation in Cambodia, for even the company’s owner has the right to command the police,” he said.

Attempts to reach Huy by phone yesterday were unsuccessful.