The panel was informed that more than 1,000 families were evicted from their land, including numerous disabled veterans and Cham minority people.
There is evidence that local residents were deprived of their rights to access and use forest resources, and that local communities, in particular Indigenous Peoples, have been deprived of their traditional land rights and properties. One suggested reason for the great haste in land capture is to prevent these communities from completing their land registration.
Although there is proof that compensation was given to communities in some cases, there is also evidence that compensation was not given in many other cases (for example, compensation for the loss of resin trees). In those cases where compensation was paid, the compensation given was nowhere near the timber value, which was worth approximately ten times what was paid.
Additionally, villagers who were not interested in the sale of their forest land were not offered an alternative, and had no option other than to accept unrepresentative compensations.
The employment offered by the company as justification for its presence was largely seasonal, unskilled and poorly paid, leaving communities without access to a sustainable source of income.
