Cambodians forced from their homes to make way for development in the capital, Phnom Penh, have ended up in this squalid camp that lacks the most basic services. (Robert James Elliott for the International Herald Tribune) International Herald Tribune
By Seth Mydans
Published: July 17, 2008
ANDONG, Cambodia: When the monsoon rain pours through Mao Sein's torn thatch roof, she pulls a straw sleeping mat over herself and her three small children and waits until it stops.
They sit on a low table as floodwater rises, sometimes to shin level, she said, bringing with it the sewage that runs along the mud paths outside her shack.
Mao Sein, 34, is a widow and a scavenger, and as these things go, she could be doing worse. When the government raided a squatter colony in Phnom Penh two years ago to clear it for a new development, it allowed 700 families to resettle to this open field 20 kilometers, or 12 miles, outside the capital.
There is no clean water or electricity here, no paved roads or permanent buildings. But the fact that there is land to live on has drawn scores of new homeless families, now squatting among the former squatters.
Like tens of thousands around the country, the people here are victims of what experts say has become the most serious human rights abuse in the country - land seizures, forced evictions and homelessness.
"Expropriation of the land of Cambodia's poor is reaching a disastrous level," Basil Fernando, executive director of the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong, said earlier this year.
"The courts are politicized and corrupt, and impunity for human rights violators remains the norm."
With the economy on the rise, land is being seized for logging, agriculture, mining, tourism and fisheries, and in Phnom Penh, soaring land prices have touched off what one official called a frenzy of land grabs by the rich and powerful.
The seizures can be violent, including late-night raids by the police and military and sometimes apparent arson as shanty neighborhoods burn down.
"They came at 2 a.m.," said Ku Srey, 37, who was evicted along with most of her neighbors here in June 2006. "They were vicious. They had electric batons - chk chk chk chk. They pushed us into trucks, they threw all our stuff into trucks and they brought us here."
In a recent report, Amnesty International estimated that 150,000 people around the country were now at risk of forcible eviction as a result of land disputes, land seizures and new development projects.
These include 4,000 families who live around a lake in the center of Phnom Penh - Boeung Kak Lake - that is the city's main catchment for monsoon rains and is now being filled in for upscale development.
"If these communities are forced to move, it would be the most large-scale displacement of Cambodians since the times of the Khmer Rouge," said Brittis Edman, a researcher with Amnesty International, which is based in London.
That, in a way, would bring history full circle.
Like other ailments of society - political and social violence, poverty, and a culture of impunity for those with power - the land issues have roots in the country's tormented past of slaughter, civil war and social disruptions.
The brutal rule of the Communist Khmer Rouge, during which 1.7 million people are estimated to have died, began in 1975 with a mass evacuation of Phnom Penh, forcing millions of people into the countryside and emptying the city.
It ended in 1979 when the Khmer Rouge were driven from power by a Vietnamese invasion, sending hundreds of thousands of refugees across the border into Thailand.
The refugees returned in the 1990s, joining a floating population of people displaced by the Khmer Rouge and a decade of civil war. Many ended their journeys in Phnom Penh, creating huge squatter colonies.
Now many of these people are being forced to move again, from Phnom Penh and from around the country, victims of the latest scourge of the poor: prosperity.
The Cambodian economy has begun to percolate, with growth estimated as high as 9 percent last year. Phnom Penh is beginning to transform itself with modern buildings, modest malls and plans for skyscrapers - one of the last capital cities in Asia to begin to pave over its past.
Andong, with its shacks, its sewage and its displaced people, is the other face of development. It looks very much like the refugee camps that were home to those who fled the Khmer Rouge three decades ago.
Whichever way the winds of history blow, some people here say, life only gets worse for the poor.
If it is not "pakdivat" (revolution) that is buffeting them, they say, it is "akdivat" (development).
Between 1993 and 1999, Amnesty International said in its report, the government granted concessions for around one-third of the country's most productive lands for commercial development by private companies.
In Phnom Penh, between 1998 and 2003, the city government forcibly evicted 11,000 families, the World Bank said. Since then, Amnesty International said, forced evictions have reportedly displaced at least 30,000 more families.
"One thing that is important to note is that the government is not only failing to protect the population but we are also seeing that it is complicit in many of the forced evictions," said Edman of Amnesty International.
The government responded to the report in February through a statement issued by its embassy in London.
"Just to point out that Cambodia is not Zimbabwe," the statement read, setting the bar fairly low. "Your researcher should also spend more time to examine cases of land and housing rights violations in this country, if she dares."
Little by little, the people here in Andong have made it home, some of them decorating their shacks with small flower pots. A few have gathered enough money to buy bricks and cement to pave their floors and reinforce their walls.
But this home, like the ones they have known in the past, may only be temporary. The outskirts of Phnom Penh are only a few kilometers away. In a few years, as the city continues to expand, aid workers say, the people here will probably be forced to move again.
By Seth Mydans
Published: July 17, 2008
ANDONG, Cambodia: When the monsoon rain pours through Mao Sein's torn thatch roof, she pulls a straw sleeping mat over herself and her three small children and waits until it stops.
They sit on a low table as floodwater rises, sometimes to shin level, she said, bringing with it the sewage that runs along the mud paths outside her shack.
Mao Sein, 34, is a widow and a scavenger, and as these things go, she could be doing worse. When the government raided a squatter colony in Phnom Penh two years ago to clear it for a new development, it allowed 700 families to resettle to this open field 20 kilometers, or 12 miles, outside the capital.
There is no clean water or electricity here, no paved roads or permanent buildings. But the fact that there is land to live on has drawn scores of new homeless families, now squatting among the former squatters.
Like tens of thousands around the country, the people here are victims of what experts say has become the most serious human rights abuse in the country - land seizures, forced evictions and homelessness.
"Expropriation of the land of Cambodia's poor is reaching a disastrous level," Basil Fernando, executive director of the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong, said earlier this year.
"The courts are politicized and corrupt, and impunity for human rights violators remains the norm."
With the economy on the rise, land is being seized for logging, agriculture, mining, tourism and fisheries, and in Phnom Penh, soaring land prices have touched off what one official called a frenzy of land grabs by the rich and powerful.
The seizures can be violent, including late-night raids by the police and military and sometimes apparent arson as shanty neighborhoods burn down.
"They came at 2 a.m.," said Ku Srey, 37, who was evicted along with most of her neighbors here in June 2006. "They were vicious. They had electric batons - chk chk chk chk. They pushed us into trucks, they threw all our stuff into trucks and they brought us here."
In a recent report, Amnesty International estimated that 150,000 people around the country were now at risk of forcible eviction as a result of land disputes, land seizures and new development projects.
These include 4,000 families who live around a lake in the center of Phnom Penh - Boeung Kak Lake - that is the city's main catchment for monsoon rains and is now being filled in for upscale development.
"If these communities are forced to move, it would be the most large-scale displacement of Cambodians since the times of the Khmer Rouge," said Brittis Edman, a researcher with Amnesty International, which is based in London.
That, in a way, would bring history full circle.
Like other ailments of society - political and social violence, poverty, and a culture of impunity for those with power - the land issues have roots in the country's tormented past of slaughter, civil war and social disruptions.
The brutal rule of the Communist Khmer Rouge, during which 1.7 million people are estimated to have died, began in 1975 with a mass evacuation of Phnom Penh, forcing millions of people into the countryside and emptying the city.
It ended in 1979 when the Khmer Rouge were driven from power by a Vietnamese invasion, sending hundreds of thousands of refugees across the border into Thailand.
The refugees returned in the 1990s, joining a floating population of people displaced by the Khmer Rouge and a decade of civil war. Many ended their journeys in Phnom Penh, creating huge squatter colonies.
Now many of these people are being forced to move again, from Phnom Penh and from around the country, victims of the latest scourge of the poor: prosperity.
The Cambodian economy has begun to percolate, with growth estimated as high as 9 percent last year. Phnom Penh is beginning to transform itself with modern buildings, modest malls and plans for skyscrapers - one of the last capital cities in Asia to begin to pave over its past.
Andong, with its shacks, its sewage and its displaced people, is the other face of development. It looks very much like the refugee camps that were home to those who fled the Khmer Rouge three decades ago.
Whichever way the winds of history blow, some people here say, life only gets worse for the poor.
If it is not "pakdivat" (revolution) that is buffeting them, they say, it is "akdivat" (development).
Between 1993 and 1999, Amnesty International said in its report, the government granted concessions for around one-third of the country's most productive lands for commercial development by private companies.
In Phnom Penh, between 1998 and 2003, the city government forcibly evicted 11,000 families, the World Bank said. Since then, Amnesty International said, forced evictions have reportedly displaced at least 30,000 more families.
"One thing that is important to note is that the government is not only failing to protect the population but we are also seeing that it is complicit in many of the forced evictions," said Edman of Amnesty International.
The government responded to the report in February through a statement issued by its embassy in London.
"Just to point out that Cambodia is not Zimbabwe," the statement read, setting the bar fairly low. "Your researcher should also spend more time to examine cases of land and housing rights violations in this country, if she dares."
Little by little, the people here in Andong have made it home, some of them decorating their shacks with small flower pots. A few have gathered enough money to buy bricks and cement to pave their floors and reinforce their walls.
But this home, like the ones they have known in the past, may only be temporary. The outskirts of Phnom Penh are only a few kilometers away. In a few years, as the city continues to expand, aid workers say, the people here will probably be forced to move again.
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