A/HRC/18/46 88 families claim to have lived since the early 1980s. The dispute started after military officials allegedly sold the land to the Taiwanese Meng Keth Company (owned by a Taiwanese businessman who had become a naturalized Cambodian citizen), which now claims that it owns the land; the villagers deny the sale. The dispute had been pending in the court system since 2004, and in December 2009, the Supreme Court ruled against the villagers. The clash came after prosecutor Kuth Sopheang led a force of hundreds of armed police and military police in an attempt to enforce the Supreme Court’s verdict. 16. These are some of the representative examples of problems relating to land rights in the country. Although the Government and local authorities have on a number of occasions, when acquiring land for public purposes, offered a reasonable package to residents in different sites to relocate elsewhere, there are still far too many cases where the Government has taken a heavy-handed approach towards the residents in disputed land areas. 17. In early 2010, the Council on Land Policy released a draft housing policy, which recognizes the right to adequate housing; the policy, however, is still pending. In May 2010, the Government adopted a circular relating to illegal temporary settlements in urban areas, which offers some solutions with regard to onsite upgrading and relocation. The circular, however, does not provide for a system by which the legality of urban settlements is determined. The Special Rapporteur hopes that a moratorium on eviction for dwellers in informal settlements will be respected until the Government can further develop its landdispute capacity, as recommended by the Human Rights Council in its resolution 12/25, which urged the Government to enhance its efforts to resolve equitably and expeditiously land ownership issues in a fair and open manner, in accordance with the 2001 Land Law, by strengthening the implementation of the law through the development of national guidelines to clarify relevant procedures. The Special Rapporteur urges the Government to redouble efforts to use both the existing and emerging domestic legal framework to resolve disputes, rather than allow land conflicts to erupt into violence, which has been escalating during the reporting period. B. Freedom of expression 18. The state of the right to freedom of expression and opinion in Cambodia remains a matter of concern. There has been a disproportionate use of defamation and disinformation provisions in the law by the Government against journalists, human rights defenders and political leaders, who seem to be resorting to self-censorship because of the fear of such possible charges against them. 19. The Special Rapporteur noted that provisions in many laws in Cambodia, including even the new Penal Code, go beyond international standards in curtailing people’s freedoms, as do the courts’ application and interpretation of such laws. The courts do not demonstrate sufficient understanding of the evolving international practice and jurisprudence and have a tendency to interpret the law literally rather than in spirit. For instance, in August 2010 Leang Sokchoun, a staff member working for the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO), and two others, Tach Vannak and Tach Le, were sentenced to two years in prison and a fine of two million riel, and another defendant, Tach Khong Phoung, was tried in absentia and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. They had been accused of distributing anti-government leaflets in Takeo province on 4 January 2010. The trial on 30 August was marked by a number of deficiencies, indicating that the defendants did not enjoy a fair trial. The evidence presented and the situation around this case suggested that elements for conviction under article 62 of the Penal Code for the crime of disinformation had not been not satisfied, as the alleged 7