Remaining families living in Lycée Descartes call to France for help

Phnom Penh (Cambodia), 30 April 2009. The remaining eight families who refuse to leave their dwelling inside Lycée Descartes are protesting outside the French embassy for suitable compensation.©Vandy Rattana

Ka-set
http://cambodia.ka-set.info

By Duong Sokha
01-05-2009

Cambodian families who have been living for several years in a building located on the premises of the Phnom Penh French high school René Descartes still refuse to leave and demand compensations higher than what the Cambodian government has so far offered. After about thirty Cambodian and French students organised a demonstration outside the school on April 9 in favour of the housing rights of 37 families living under threat of eviction, most of them have one after the other accepted to move out. Depending on the surface area of their home, they will receive a compensation of 5,000US$ to 10,000US$ as well as a 4metre by 4 metre plot of land in the Steung Meanchey area. Still, eight of them are resisting and voiced their message loud and clear on Thursday, April 30 in front of the French embassy in Cambodia.

Following a meeting at the Municipality of Phnom Penh with secretary of state and spokesperson for the Council of Ministers Phay Siphan and the capital’s deputy governor Mann Chhoeurn, sixteen out of the remaining twenty-four families who still live on the premises of the René Descartes high school eventually accepted the Cambodian authorities’ ultimate offer. They are due to receive a compensation of 8,000 to 15,000 US$, depending on the surface area of their current homes and whether they wish to have the piece of land in the Steung Meanchey area. For their part, the eight representatives for the eight remaining families gathered on Thursday April 30 outside the French embassy in Phnom Penh to express their disagreement and have a petition signed, urging the French government to intervene in their favour.

In front of the embassy’s main entrance, demonstrators put up three banners on which they had written, in Khmer, the following messages: “Friendship between Cambodian and France = justice for the people”, “You need a school, we need a home” and “We support the Royal Government of Cambodia’s policy to hand over the former Institute of Affairs [National Institute of Affairs – the school took over the premises in central Phnom Penh] to the French embassy, but we ask you to help us find suitable accommodation”.

“Yesterday [Wednesday April 29], sixteen families accepted [compensations] because the municipality of Phnom Penh told them it was an order of the prime Minister [Hun Sen]. They were told that this dossier was going to be sent over to deputy prime Minister Sok An to ask him for his recommendations, with a view to launch judicial action against residents. They got scared of the judicial system”, one of the demonstrators, Kim Vicheth, denounced. “There are ten of us in my family. The government offers us a 10,000-dollar compensation. With that, we cannot buy a decent house. Thus, we have come to the French embassy to ask for their intervention, either with people, or financially. We hope they will be able to help us”, the young man explained to journalists, accompanied by his father. In order to be able to accommodate together all of his family members in conditions that would be identical with those in their current apartment, Kim Vicheth claims compensations four times higher than those proposed by the state: a 8m x 16m piece of land and 40,000 US$.
Demonstrators then duly gave the petition they wrote for French ambassador Jean-François Desmazières to representatives of the French embassy in Cambodia. However, the French diplomats did not commit to anything with the representatives of the families.

Reached by Ka-set, deputy-governor of Phnom Penh Mann Chhoeurn pointed out for his part that the families who accepted to leave had started to receive on Thursday April 30, the sums of money they were due to get, as promised, “on an account at the Acleda bank”, to help them buy a new home. As for the remaining families, the representative of the Municipality did not wish to say any more: “This is about their right [to demonstrate], but they will leave”. “The goal of the French and Cambodian governments is to train human resources in the future, via the high school”, the high-ranking civil servant said. Cambodian authorities will certainly concentrate their efforts in the solving of this case before the visit, in France at the end of May... of the Cambodian head of government, Hun Sen.