About 50 families in Ratanakkiri’s Banlung town protested against a rubber company’s attempt to demolish their houses on Saturday, a villager representative said yesterday.

Leang Peang said that the Fwif Rubber Plantation Company transported about 100 employees to demolish the houses in order to take land for planting rubber, but villagers wielding axes and blocks of wood chased them away, he said.

A company representative who declined to be name said the land belongs to the company.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mom Kunthear at [email protected]