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Actions against land-grabbing in Cambodia

shared in Africa

By Ryan Schlief February 21st, 2011

At an international conference for African communities facing land-grabbing, LICADHO presented a video showing how communities in Cambodia are resisting forced evictions and land grabbing. The three-day conference, Land grabbing in Africa – Dangers and Challenges, was hosted by Caritas Senegal in cooperation with other groups like, FIAN – that is FoodFirst Information and Action Network.

The video is a great example of remixing: re-using existing footage and, in this case, adding tailored footage to serve the target audience. Given the tight timeline, there was no need to edit a new introductory segment describing forced evictions in the Cambodian context, when existing footage already served this purpose. Watch LICADHO’s video and see what I mean.

LICADHO staff in Cambodia worked long hours editing and re-editing the video – basically up to the very last minute. Uploading in Cambodia and downloading in Senegal an 8-minute video was an exercise in extreme patience for all of us. Unfortunately, due to illness, a LICADHO representative could not make the trip from Cambodia, however Jason Barber, who served as a consultant with LICADHO for many years, happened to be in not-exactly-nearby Uganda.

From where I was participating in the World Social Forum, the conference was actually 2 hours away from Dakar. (I was told only 1 hour away – so glad I left early!) I hustled down to the conference just in time for the presentation. After the Q&A, I turned right around a went back to Dakar.

The presentation and video sparked active debate among the participants about how to translate tactics from Cambodia to respective countries in Africa. Several times it was said that the actions of Cambodian communities against forced evictions and land-grabbing were inspiring to communities facing similar threats in Africa.

Seeing the tactics employed in Cambodia, participants in Africa could do their own practical application to their own struggles. I can not imagine this translation being as dynamic without the video examples provided by LICADHO.

Thank you LICADHO for sharing the actions of communities in Cambodia as positive examples of resistance to land-grabbing!. BY: http://blog.witness.org/