Hundreds of protesters assembled Wednesday outside Phnom Penh's municipal courthouse as two housing rights activists were tried on what Amnesty International called "trumped-up charges" of violence and fraud.
Anti-eviction activists Yorm Bopha, 29, and Tim Sakmony, 65, were arrested in separate cases in September and have been held in pretrial detention since then.
A large group of fellow activists assembled near the courthouse to protest the women's trials. They carried lotus flowers and shouted, "Justice. Justice." Dozens of pro-government counter protesters also gathered, chanting, "Victory."
Yorm Bopha, who has been fighting her eviction from a Phnom Penh neighbourhood for the past five years, stands accused of injuring two men in a street brawl. Tim Sakmony, a protest leader from another Phnom Penh community that was evicted this year from a large apartment complex, is accused of housing fraud.
Both evictions were carried out to make way for developments - a large mixed-use housing complex in Yorm Bopha's case and an unspecified development where Tim Sakmony lived.
Tensions between residents, authorities, and companies in Phnom Penh over land use have increased in recent years because of an upswing in large-scale development projects.
The country's tenure system is weak after the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime abolished property rights. Local rights groups estimated that more than 300,000 people across the country of 14 million have been forced off their land since 2004.
Amnesty has called Yorm Bopha and Tim Sakmony "prisoners of conscience" while its fellow human rights groups World Organization Against Torture and the International Federation for Human Rights said their detentions constitute "judicial harassment."