the decision for 3 days , but eventually had to move ; the army transported them in trucks to the village of Thongnamy . Provincial employees promised them compensation upon their arrival : land , rice , irrigation . They got most of what was promised , but the land they were provided never got the expected irrigation system — so in 2006 , they started building a canal by themselves . Their leader continued still furious about these events . He showed us a document stipulating the investment made in Paksong by the families : 93,375,000 Kip , or about 12,000 USD at the time .
This evidence is revealing on many points . Of course , the most obvious element is the authoritative way state authorities enforced a decision with no regard for previously granted rights of resettlement . But the Hmong did not simply give up . Their leader collected books on land rights , gathered official documents regarding the resettlement in Paksong , and compiled a list of the assets and investments his people had made in order to calculate a very precise bill of 12,000 USD . His attitude clearly indicates a clear understanding of land rights according to the law , as well as how to use evidence to pressure authorities . This goes beyond mere economic considerations : his insistence demonstrates that the issue of compensation was a way for his group to express their strong disapproval about the whole affair , and to phrase it in terms that emphasize their right to such compensation under the law . 8
World Food Policy
8 Green and Baird describe a similar process among the Heuny resettled in Champasak Province ( 2016 , p . 13 , 18 ).
96
Thongnamy provides a second example of the ways land policies can be used by groups on the social margins . This village where the above-mentioned group of Hmong was forcibly resettled has in fact attracted thousands of migrants from the north of Laos . The hamlet of 40 families in 1995 has now become a small rural city of more than 6,000 inhabitants ( Petit , 2006 , 2008 ). The migrants who came after the year 2000 could not be provided with land by the authorities , despite access to land being an important commitment of the resettlement propaganda . This led to the creation , in 2002 , of a committee of 52 landless families from various ethnic backgrounds , with a majority of Khmu . On the advice of two Khmu generals contacted by a leader of this committee , they officially presented their demands at different levels of the state administration : the district , the province , and the capital .
In 2003 , a land allocation program was designed under the aegis of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests , and in 2004 , each family was allotted a few hectares in the forest of a neighbouring village , Na Bouay . However , residents of Na Bouay considered themselves the legitimate owners of their village ’ s land and refused to give it for free to the new migrants . The situation was very tense and the district authorities ended up not enforcing the new land allocation , siding instead with the inhabitants of Na Bouay . Altogether , only five to seven families benefitted from the land allocation .